And there it is

The Justice Department on Thursday took the legally and politically momentous step of lodging federal criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump, accusing him of mishandling classified documents he kept upon leaving office and then obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them.

[...]

The charges against him include willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and a conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The Justice Department made no comment and did not immediately make the indictment public.

[...]

Trump confirmed on his social media platform that he had been indicted.

[...]

The former president added that he was scheduled to be arraigned in federal court in Miami at 3 p.m. on Tuesday.

[...]

Mr. Trump remains under investigation by Mr. Smith’s office for his wide-ranging efforts to retain power after his election loss in 2020, and how those efforts led to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. He is also being scrutinized for potential election interference by the district attorney’s office in Fulton County, Ga.

  NYT

UPDATE 06/09/2023:  LOL

Posting on Truth Social, Trump wrote:

For purposes of fighting the Greatest Witch Hunt of all time, now moving to the Florida Courts, I will be represented by Todd Blanche, Esq., and a firm to be named later. I want to thank Jim Trusty and John Rowley for their work, but they were up against a very dishonest, corrupt, evil, and “sick” group of people, the likes of which has not been seen before. We will be announcing additional lawyers in the coming days. When will Joe Biden be Indicted for his many crimes against our Nation? MAGA!

  Guardian

Donald Trump's lawyers Jim Trusty and John Rowley have delivered their resignations to the former president, the pair confirmed to NPR in an emailed statement.

"We will no longer represent him on either the indicted case or the January 6 investigation," they wrote. "It has been an honor to have spent the last year defending him and we know he will be vindicated in his battle against the Biden Administration's partisan weaponization of the American justice system."

  NPR

Personally, I think he already ruined it by representing Trump at all.

UPDATE  01:00 pm:

The charges:

UPDATE 01:19 pm:

The 49-page indictment gave the clearest picture yet of the files that Mr. Trump took with him when he left the White House. It said he had illegally kept documents concerning “United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”

[...]

In a particularly stinging portion of the indictment, Trump’s own words about the importance of protecting classified documents are recited. He said, for example, that “we can’t have someone in the Oval Office who doesn’t understand the meaning of the word confidential or classified.” He also said, “In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”

[...]

It is unusual for prosecutors to unseal an indictment before a defendant shows up in court for an initial appearance. But the decision to release the document in this case came as Mr. Trump and his allies had been aggressively attacking the investigation and, in the view of federal law enforcement officials, distorting elements of the case.

  NYT

Former President Donald J. Trump declared at a meeting in July 2021, six months after leaving the White House, that a document in front of him was “classified” and “highly confidential.”

[...]

The transcript demonstrates that Mr. Trump was not only aware he had sensitive material, but had it with him at his club at Bedminster, N.J., where the meeting took place, and that he knew he no longer had the power to declassify material.

[...]

At the time, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Mr. Trump had appointed, had been a subject of multiple media portraits describing him as pressing back against an erratic president in the final months of the presidency.

Mr. Trump went on a tear about General Milley.

“Isn’t it amazing, I have a big pile of papers,” Mr. Trump said at one point. Papers could be heard rustling, and then Mr. Trump began appearing to point to a specific document, saying, “Look, this was him.” At another point he said, “This was the Defense Department and him.”

[...]

He described something in front of him as “like, highly confidential,” and maintained it was really General Milley who wanted to attack Iran (in fact, General Milley cautioned against such a move).

[...]

Mr. Trump and his allies have repeatedly asserted that, while still in office, he had declassified all the material he took with him from the White House (though the charges may not rely on whether anything was classified). But his assertion appeared to be undercut by the recording.

“As president, I could have declassified them, now I can’t,” Mr. Trump was recorded saying, according to the person familiar with its contents. He then reiterated something was “classified” as he and one of the women in the room talked over each other, according to the person familiar with its contents.

“Isn’t that interesting? It’s so cool,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “You probably almost didn’t believe me, but now you believe me.”

  NYT

The Indictment

We love the tell-alls

Sometimes we don't believe it all, but I'm guessing most of the crazy shit people say about Trump is true.

Omarosa Manigault Newman was offered a $15,000-a-month contract from President Trump’s campaign to stay silent after being fired from her job as a White House aide by Chief of Staff John F. Kelly last December, according to a forthcoming book by Manigault Newman and people familiar with the proposal.

But she refused, according to the incendiary new book, “Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House,” which also depicts Trump as unqualified, narcissistic and racist.

[...]

After she was fired, Manigault Newman wrote, she received a call from Trump campaign adviser Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, offering her a job and the monthly contract in exchange for her silence.

  

You just know that Lara, who is getting a divorce from Junior, knows shit she's getting paid handsomely not to tell.

The proposed nondisclosure agreement allegedly said Manigault Newman could not make any comments about President Trump or his family; Vice President Pence or his family; or any comments that could damage the president.

Obviously this woman is not so stupid as people might have wanted to believe. As for integrity, all bets are off.  But she's gonna get bulldozed.

In a statement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the book “is riddled with lies and false accusations.” She added: “It’s sad that a disgruntled former White House employee is trying to profit off these false attacks, and even worse that the media would now give her a platform, after not taking her seriously when she had only positive things to say about the President during her time in the administration.”

Well, there IS that argument.

Manigault Newman does not offer evidence for some of her most explosive charges but extensively taped her conversations in the White House.

Seems like everybody who knew Trump taped their conversations.

Manigault Newman includes in the book specific quotes from White House aides. She describes many scenes inside the White House in detail — explaining who was in the room and exactly what was said.

And, lordy, there's tape.

Manigault Newman has known Trump for more than a decade and held one of the highest-paid positions in the West Wing for a year, securing the job as an “assistant to the president” after starring as a famed villain in his TV show, “The Apprentice,” and working for the Trump Organization.

[...]

Manigault Newman, who was the highest-ranking black employee in the White House, calls Trump a “racist, misogynist and bigot.”

[...]

[She] is expected to appear on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning and will then go on a longer publicity tour.

With bodyguards, we hope.

She questions Trump’s mental state, describes him as unstable and portrays him as unable to control his impulses. She recounts the extensive lengths that staff members have gone to in attempts to keep him in line.

“All we need to remember is that Trump loves the hate,” she writes in the book. “He thrives on criticism and insults. He delights in chaos and confusion. Taking to Twitter to call him names only fuels him and riles his base. To disarm him, starve his ego; don’t feed into it.”

Too late.

White House aides have long described Manigault Newman as a problematic employee who tried to stage a wedding photo shoot at the White House, exploded at other West Wing aides and left shoes strewn around the West Wing. For months, they accurately feared that she was taping conversations inside the building. In the eyes of many around Trump, the book is another publicity-grabbing stunt from a reality TV star known for them.

All no doubt true. And hilarious. But if she's got tapes, it will be hard to argue.  I'm not expecting Trump to do much, if any, tweeting about Omarosa's book. I think he'll be afraid of what he might have said on the tapes.

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

UPDATE:

Aaaaaand, there it is.

It won't matter.

Except maybe to the illegitimate children.

UPDATE 8/13:

Boy, was I wrong about Trump...

He called her a lowlife, and now he's tweeting:

Apparently, she didn't think it mattered.

Aaaaaand, what was that you said to her immediately after she got fired?

UPDATE  8/14:

Dear God!

Waiting for him to call her the N-word on Twitter before someone can get him under control.

President Trump blasted his firstborn son as a “f--kup” after learning he had released emails about a controversial Trump Tower meeting attended by a Kremlin-connected lawyer who had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton, according to Omarosa Manigault Newman’s forthcoming book.

Manigault Newman, who was unceremoniously fired from the White House last December, says the President erupted in anger after she met with him in July 2017 and told him she was “sorry to hear” Donald Trump Jr. had posted screen grabs on Twitter of his email exchanges with British publicist Rob Goldstone.

“He is such a f--kup,” Trump said of his son, according to Manigault Newman’s tell-all book, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily News. “He screwed up again, but this time, he’s screwing us all, big-time!”

  NY Daily News

Lordy, I hope there's tape.

More tapes

Omarosa Manigault-Newman, a former aide to President Trump, secretly recorded conversations with the president while she was serving in the White House, multiple sources told the Daily Beast.

  The Hill

NOBODY trusts him.

Rudy and Trump are so, so guilty

And if Rudy keeps going on TV, the Mueller investigation will never end.

Today, on Fox and CNN, Rudy blew out another tire.

Cohen is now reportedly willing to tell prosecutors that Trump knew about, and approved, the [Junior Trump Tower] meeting ahead of time.

[...]

“Cohen is alleging that the meeting took place. We are making it clear that the President was not at that meeting. Cohen doesn’t even allege that. To cut it off.”

  TPM

No one said he was. This is an odd thing to have to make clear.

On the same day of the dirt meeting, Giuliani said Monday, Cohen (or someone speaking to reporters on his behalf) has claimed “that he was in President Trump’s office, Donald Trump Jr. walked in and told him about the Russian meeting.”

“That is categorically untrue,” Giuliani said. “Did not happen. Two witnesses demonstrate that. He has talked about this endlessly on those 183 unique recordings and he never mentions it at all.”

[...]

Giuliani added on Fox News: “So the public record contains a leak by Cohen that he was present at a meeting in which Donald Jr. came in and informed the President. We deny that happened. We say it didn’t happen and if it had happened, it would’ve been mentioned a long time ago on the various hours of tapes that we have.”

So who are the witnesses that Junior didn't come in to telll Trump about the meeting when Cohen was in the room?

The two witnesses, [Giuliani] told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota Monday morning, are the President and his son.

No comment necessary.

Giuliani told Fox News that he and Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow had heard from reporters who’d been told about another meeting “in which they [Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and ‘possibly others’], out of the presence of the President, discussed the meeting with the Russians.”

He categorically denied that the un-reported meeting he’d just brought up had ever happened.

[...]

Giuliani later said that the supposed meeting he’d heard about from reporters had happened “three days before” the Russian dirt meeting.

[...]

He added later, “The second meeting was brought to my attention through Jay Sekulow. Both of us dealt with it with two different reporters, essentially the same information, about this meeting that took place three days earlier [that is, three days before the dirt meeting] with a whole group of people.”

He continued: “Everyone of those people says it didn’t happen. And why do I mention it? Because first of all, I thought it was going to come out, and second, my experience is that when you have something like this floating around, it comes out. And I don’t want it to come out and be un-rebutted when it originally comes out.”

So, this is a pre-buttal, I guess.

“When I thought that it was going to be published,” Giuliani said, “I wanted to get out in front of it.”

But he didn't deny it originally. That only happened after he decided it wasn't going to be published. What he told CNN was it wasn't about Clinton dirt - and that it was before the Tower meeting.

Rudy Giuliani told CNN that two days before the Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer to get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton there was a planning meeting to prepare that meeting. It included Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and others.

  Political Wire

President Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani says key players from the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 attended another meeting days before but it was on an unrelated subject and the president wasn't there.

Giuliani gave several confusing answers about the meeting in morning TV interviews – then called in to 'Fox and Friends' to try to clean up any misconceptions about it.

[...]

'That's a real meeting on another provable subject in which he was not participating,' he told CNN's 'New Day.'

[...]

He also appeared to confirm the meeting happened when he said: 'And this meeting that Cohen's talking about took place before the meeting with the Russians.'

[...]

The head-spinning commentary about a Trump Tower meeting that happened as well as two other meetings that he said didn't happen came on a day when Giuliani also said colluding with Russia may not even be a crime.

The comment raised a possible new legal defense even as he lowers the bar following a series of emphatic denials by Trump that there was no collusion.

[...]

'So I said today that there was no collusion therefore – and that collusion also is no crime. I've been saying that from the very beginning,' he [said].

It's a very, very familiar lawyers argument that the alternative, my client didn't do it and even if he did it, it's not a crime. And I have said that over and over again – collusion is not a crime. The only crime there is hacking and it's ridiculous to think that the president hacked. Now why do I say that? I say that to attack the legitimacy of the investigation,' Giuliani said.

[...]

On Fox, Trump said of the meeting before the meeting with Russians: 'We checked with their lawyers, the ones we could check with, which were four of the six. That meeting never-ever took place. It didn't happen. It's a figment of [Choen's] imagination or he's lying. The only meeting they found for that day that included any of these people is a meeting about the Hispanic judge that the president had criticized back around that time. So that hopefully sets the record straight.'

  Daily Mail

But of course it doesn't. Was there a meeting or not? I'm gonna say yes. And it was not about what Trump said about the Hispanic judge. Why would the Trump Tower meeting people be concerned about that and hold a meeting on it?

Giuliani took to the airwaves Monday morning to keep up the president's attacks on Mueller, who is heading the Russia probe, and faulted him for failing to publicly buttress Trump's position regarding a leaked recording of a tape between Trump and his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen discussing a payment involving a former Playboy playmate.

'When you're getting beaten up by all kinds of anonymous tweets coming from (Cohen lawyer) Lanny Davis and Cohen, and you put out something like that, you have every right to say you explain it, Mueller, stand up and be a man,' Giuliani told CNN's 'New Day.'

1) Why would Mueller be responsible for publicly backing Trump's statements?

Host Alisyn Camerota asked why it was up to Mueller to support the president's tweet.

'Because he has the conflict, not the president,' said Giuliani.

Did she just let that go? How is that an answer?

2) "Anonymous" tweets "coming from Lanny Davis and Cohen"? How does that work?

Giuliani also taunted Mueller in an interview with Axios published Monday.

'Why don't you write a report and show us what you have, because they don't have a goddamn thing,' Giuliani said.

Dear Rudy: the report comes at the end. And, since they already have several guilty pleas, several more indictments, and a couple of trials, I think we have to admit they do have something.

But he claimed Trump still has a 'soft spot' for Michael Cohen, who Giuliani has been branding as a liar amid signals he may cooperate with Mueller.

Perhaps that line was the whole point: Don't spill any more beans, Michael. The president might want to pardon you.

Giuliani is a hot mess. Here's the Fox call-in.



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

UPDATE:





UPDATE:  7/31:

The other tapes

It seems some of the audio tapes Cohen made of his clients' phone calls include Trump and Stormy Daniels' prior attorney Keith Davidson revealing privileged information to Cohen (purportedly because he was working against Daniels' interests and with Cohen). 



Mike, it's called "fighting back".

No collusion; no hookers

“He brought up what he called the ‘golden showers thing’ … adding that it bothered him if there was ‘even a one percent chance’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true,” Comey writes in “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” a copy of which was obtained by The Post.

“He just rolled on, unprompted, explaining why it couldn’t possibly be true, ending by saying he was thinking of asking me to investigate the allegation to prove it was a lie.

  Market Watch

Good point, Susan

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

Fun with Trump

This is the first of two excerpts adapted from Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump (Twelve Books), by Michael Isikoff, Chief Investigative Correspondent for Yahoo News, and David Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones. It will be released on March 13.

[...]

While in the Russian capital [Nov. 9, 2013], Trump was also scouting for new and grand business opportunities, having spent decades trying — but failing — to develop high-end projects in Moscow. Miss Universe staffers considered it an open secret that Trump’s true agenda in Moscow was not the show but his desire to do business there.

[...]

Once in Moscow, Trump received a private message from the Kremlin, delivered by Aras Agalarov, an oligarch close to Putin and Trump’s partner in hosting the Miss Universe event there: “Mr. Putin would like to meet Mr. Trump.” That excited Trump. The American developer thought there was a strong chance the Russian leader would attend the pageant. But as his time in Russia wore on, Trump heard nothing else. He became uneasy.

“Is Putin coming?” he kept asking.

[...]

Trump’s trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe contest was a pivotal moment. He had for years longed to develop a glittering Trump Tower in Moscow. With this visit, he would come near — so near — to striking that deal. He would be close to branding the Moscow skyline with his world-famous name and enhancing his own status as a sort of global oligarch.

During his time in Russia, Trump would demonstrate his affinity for the nation’s authoritarian leader with flattering and fawning tweets and remarks that were part of a long stretch of comments suggesting an admiration for Putin.

[...]

Trump’s brief trip to Moscow held clues to this mystery. His two days there would later become much discussed because of allegations that he engaged in weird sexual antics while in Russia — claims that were not confirmed. But this visit was significant because it revealed what motivated Trump the most: the opportunity to build more monuments to himself and to make more money. Trump realized that he could attain none of his dreams in Moscow without forging a bond with the former KGB lieutenant colonel who was now the president of Russia.

  Yahoo

Rewind to June 15, Los Angeles. Aras Agalarov and his pop star son Emin planned a big dinner at a restaurant in the Palazzo hotel and casino.

Much to their surprise, they received a call from Keith Schiller, Trump’s longtime security chief and confidant, informing them that his boss wanted to join their party. Sure, they said, please come.

[...]

After the dinner, part of the group headed to an after-party at a raunchy nightclub in the Palazzo mall called the Act. Shortly after midnight, the entourage arrived at the club. The group included Trump, Emin, [Rob] Goldstone, [the reigning Miss Universe, Olivia] Culpo, and Nana Meriwether, the outgoing Miss USA.

[...]

The Act was no ordinary nightclub. Since March, it had been the target of undercover surveillance by the Nevada Gaming Con­trol Board and investigators for the club’s landlord — the Palazzo, which was owned by GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson — after complaints about its performances. The club featured seminude women performing simulated sex acts of bestiality and grotesque sadomasochism — skits that a few months later would prompt a Nevada state judge to issue an injunction barring any more of its “lewd” and “offensive” performances. Among the club’s regular acts cited by the judge was one called “Hot for Teacher,” in which naked college girls simulate urinating on a professor. In another act, two women disrobe and then “one female stands over the other female and simulates urinating while the other female catches the urine in two wine glasses.”

Hmmmm. Maybe that's where Old Lard Ass got hooked on the idea of golden showers.

(The Act shut down after the judge’s ruling. There is no public record of which skits were performed the night Trump was present.)

Oh, OK. But there is a list of people who might be able to tell us. Goldstone likes to talk.

Back to November when Trump flew to Moscow for the big Miss Universe event.

Trump was soon whisked to a gala lunch at one of the two Moscow branches of Nobu, the famous sushi restaurant. [...] An assortment of Russian businessmen was there, including Herman Gref, the chief executive of Sberbank, a Russian state-owned bank and one of the co-sponsors of the Miss Universe pageant.

Trump was treated with much reverence. He gave a brief wel­coming talk. “Ask me a question,” he told the crowd. The first query was about the European debt crisis and the impact that the financial woes of Greece would have on it. “Interesting,” Trump replied. “Have any of you ever seen ‘The Apprentice’?” Trump spoke at length about his hit television show, repeatedly noting what a tre­mendous success it was.

[...]

Trump next went to the theater in Crocus City Hall. It was the day before the show. This was Trump’s chance to review the con­testants and exercise an option he always retained under the rules of his pageants: to overrule the selection of judges and pick the con­testants he wanted among the finalists. In short, no woman was a finalist until Trump said so.

I'm surprised in this day and age we still have beauty contests, but I would have assumed there was some sort of fix on them. Still, that Trump himself got to make the finalist decisions - why would any contestant waste time doing the beauty pageant routine? Why not just get a date with Old Lard Ass?

At each pageant, Miss Universe staffers would set up a special room for Trump backstage. It had to conform to his precise require­ments. He needed his favorite snacks: Nutter Butters and white Tic Tacs. And Diet Coke. There could be no distracting pictures on the wall. The room had to be immaculate. He required unscented soap and hand towels — rolled, not folded.

In this room would be videos of the finalists who had been selected days earlier in a preliminary competition and the other contestants, particularly footage of the women in gowns and swim­ suits. Here, a day or two before the final telecast, Trump would review the judges’ decisions.

[...]

“If there were too many of women of color, he would make changes,” a Miss Universe staffer later noted. Another Miss Universe staffer recalled, “He often thought a woman was too ethnic or too dark-skinned. He had a particular type of woman he thought was a winner. Others were too ethnic. He liked a type. There was Olivia Culpo, Dayanara Torres [the 1993 winner], and, no surprise, East European women.” On occasion, according to this staffer, Trump would reject a woman “who had snubbed his advances.”

[...]

“If he didn’t like a woman because she looked too ethnic, you could sometimes persuade him by telling him she was a princess and married to a football player,” a staffer later explained.

Jesus Christ.

After the event, there was a rowdy after-party with lots of vodka and loud music. A 26-year-old aspiring actress, Edita Shaumyan, made her way into the VIP section, entering the roped-off area at the same time as a famous Russian rap singer named Timati. Shaumyan caught Trump’s eye. He approached her, gestured to Timati, and asked, “Wait, is this your boyfriend? You’re not free?” She said no, she wasn’t there with Timati. “You’re beautiful,” Trump told her. “Wow, your eyes, your eyes.” According to Shaumyan, “He said, ‘Let’s go to America. Come with me to America.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no. I’m an Armenian. We’re very strict. You need to meet my mother first.’”

I doubt if Mama Shaumyan would approve of a man on his third marriage and fifth child.

Trump later had somebody give Shaumyan his business card with his phone number on it. She never called.

Sad!

And shortly after the Miss Universe event, Agalarov’s daughter showed up at the Miss Universe office in New York City bearing a gift for Trump from Putin. It was a black lacquered box. Inside was a sealed letter from the Russian autocrat. What the letter said has never been revealed.

Let me guess. There was no gift from Putin, nor any letter from him. More hype.

[In 2014] the Obama administration and the European Union imposed tough sanctions on Russia in response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and his military intervention in Ukraine. It would be a kick to Russia’s already faltering economy, struggling because of the plummeting price of oil. And one round of sanctions imposed by the EU targeted Russian banks in which the Russian government held a majority interest — that included Sberbank, which had agreed to finance the Trump deal. Its access to capital was now hindered.

In this environment, the plans for the Trump Tower in Moscow crumbled.

Another, very big, reason for Trump to hate Obama.

According to the Trump Organization, Ivanka Trump, after touring Moscow with Emin, killed the deal for business reasons. But Rob Goldstone suspected that the demise of Trump’s project with the Agalarovs influenced Trump’s view of sanctions: “They had interrupted a business deal that Trump was keenly interested in.”

The Pee Tape never goes away

Who is Alex Van der Zwaan?


And who is Alex Van der Zwaan's father-in-law, aside from a guy with the great name German Khan?

The plaintiffs are among the backers of Alfa Bank, a financial institution that the dossier accuses of involvement in Russian efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

[...]

Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan filed suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, claiming that their reputations were unfairly tattered by the so-called dossier.

[...]

In May, the same three Russian oligarchs filed a separate libel suit in a New York state court against BuzzFeed over its publication of the dossier.

  Politico

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

Nunes House UnAmerican probe: State Dept. - Part 2

Unlike Steele, Shearer does not have a background in espionage, and his memo was initially viewed with scepticism, not least because he had shared it with select media organisations before the election.

However, the Guardian has been told the FBI investigation is still assessing details in the “Shearer memo” and is pursuing intriguing leads.

[...]

The Shearer memo was provided to the FBI in October 2016.

It was handed to them by Steele – who had been given it by an American contact – after the FBI requested the former MI6 agent provide any documents or evidence that could be useful in its investigation, according to multiple sources.

The Guardian was told Steele warned the FBI he could not vouch for the veracity of the Shearer memo, but that he was providing a copy because it corresponded with what he had separately heard from his own independent sources.

  Guardian

Well, there you have it. One of my questions answered. Exactly as I assumed. Steele wouldn't have handed over such a memo without an explanation.

Among other things, both documents allege Donald Trump was compromised during a 2013 trip to Moscow that involved lewd acts in a five-star hotel.

The pee tape never dies.

[T]here is no evidence that his memo was ever sought by Clinton campaign officials.

Sources say that while he lacks the precision and polish of a seasoned former spy like Steele, Shearer has also been described as having a large network of sources around the world and the independent financial means to pursue leads.

Honestly, it becomes more and more evident that Trump and his backers are becoming more and more desperate, from fear.

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

McCabe testimony (from the memo)

I think this is what we're going to need to see the minority report's rebuttal to (if they have one):

Note: he doesn't say there were no other documents or facts that were in support of a warrant, just that the FBI wouldn't have even sought a warrant without the dossier.  I don't know if that's true or if that's his opinion.  He was, after all deputy director.  He should know.

So this strikes me as damaging to Mueller's investigation.  I'm not concerned that Mueller doesn't have an explanation that's perfectly legitimate, but we won't get to see it until Mueller is finished.  That's not good for proponents of stringing Trump up by his tiny thumbs.

Maybe somebody could get hold of that pee tape and release it.

I don't see how this would have any bearing on the obstruction of justice case, though.  Nor the money laundering one.  Other than to muddy the whole thing in people's minds.

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

UPDATE:  For clarity (I hope), I should say that what I think is the bare bones of this crap is that a) the FBI was interested in and began investigating Carter Page back in July - or maybe as early as 2013 when they discovered Russian attempts to recruit him - and, b) Nunes and the Trump cabal are objecting to a FISA warrant in October allowing them to investigate the Trump campaign through Page.

Exactly when during the summer of 2016 the surveillance of Page began is unclear. Importantly, however, an unidentified government official told the New York Times that the FBI and DOJ waited until Page was no longer part of the Trump campaign before seeking the warrant — investigators being leery of crossing the line of direct spying on a political campaign member. The Trump team distanced itself from Page in early August, so it was presumably around this time when monitoring began.

  National Review

The National Review is in error about when Page was out of the campaign - that was late September, according to this timeline and this Washington Post article.  That's still within the parameters of waiting until he's not in the campaign to secretly monitor him.  He's still in contact with members of the Trump campaign, though, and makes a trip to Moscow.

This is the most confusing bunch of investigations since Watergate.  But maybe that's because I wasn't buried up to my nose in the reporting on Watergate.  I was actually living a life.

UPDATE:  Hugely important:

That, I think was the only thing that made the memo actually of any import.  If that's gone, the memo is pure shit.

The Pee Tape on Hannity?

Why are they bringing this up now?  Hmm?  Is it getting close?

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

The Pee Tape that wouldn't stay buried

With the release of the transcript of Glenn Simpson's testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the infamous Pee Tape has come back into the conversation. Here's something from a British reporter [Paul Wood] back in January last year that I didn't see at the time, as people weren't willing to believe such an outlandish claim from the Steele dossier, so American news pretty much dismissed it, defended Trump, and moved on.

Back in August, a retired spy told me he had been informed of its existence by “the head of an East European intelligence agency”. Later, I used an intermediary to pass some questions to active duty CIA officers dealing with the case file – they would not speak to me directly. I got a message back that there was “more than one tape”, “audio and video”, on “more than one date”, in “more than one place” – in the Ritz Carlton in Moscow and also in Saint Petersburg — and that the material was “of a sexual nature”. The claims of Russian kompromat on Trump were “credible,” the CIA believed. That is why these claims ended up on President Obama’s desk last week, a briefing document also given to Congressional leaders and to Trump himself.

[...]

A former CIA officer told me he had spoken by phone to a serving FSB officer who talked about the tapes. He concluded: “It’s hoakey as hell.” Mr Trump and his supporters are right to point out that these are unsubstantiated allegations.

  The Spectator

But in August, Wood had a slightly different story.

At a news conference this week at his New Jersey golf club, the President bizarrely asserted that the Steele dossier had been paid for by Russia in order to damage him. This is the latest twist in Trump’s response to the dossier, which began with flat denials in January that he had been filmed by Russian intelligence with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room.

That remains unproven. Nevertheless, Steele is not the only source. I heard of Russian kompromat — compromising material — on Trump from two sources months before the Steele dossier came to light. That might be evidence for Trump’s statement that Russian intelligence, as well as the US agencies, are out to get him. There are, though, reports of witnesses in the hotel who corroborate Steele’s reporting. These include an American who’s said to have seen a row with hotel security over whether the (alleged) hookers would be allowed up to Trump’s suite. The dossier’s account of hookers in a Moscow hotel room was the subject of gossip among a select group of journalists, politicians, and intelligence people for months before it was published. Now, claims are circulating of more tapes showing even more extreme behaviour. Expect these allegations to emerge in due course.

  Conservative Circle

We'll be waiting.  While those aren't crimes, they're fuel and they bolster the idea that, as blackmail material, Trump is beholden to the Kremlin.

Oh, and there was also this little tidbit about one of Trump's Russian mob pals:

For several weeks there have been rumours that Sater is ready to rat again, agreeing to help Mueller. ‘He has told family and friends he knows he and POTUS are going to prison,’ someone talking to Mueller’s investigators informed me.

We hope so.

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

And, of course, the Pee Tapes can't be far away

I haven't read the Simpson transcript myself, so I'm not absolutely certain that Abramson's statement "that includes the salacious stuff" was actually said by Simpson, or whether Abramson is adding that himself.  I would hope it's the former.  At any rate, here's a link he provides to Trump 'compromising' claims from the BBC.

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

On with the book saga

Donald Trump’s lawyers threatened legal action on Wednesday night against his former right-hand man Steve Bannon, marking a fresh escalation after a day of turmoil that left the White House reeling.

A cease and desist letter accuses Bannon of violating a non-disclosure agreement by speaking about his time on Trump’s election campaign to Michael Wolff, whose new book has caused shockwaves in Washington.

  Guardian

I'm not at all surprised by a threat to sue. This is standard Trump. The "cease and desist" part is meant to stop publication of the book.  And, of course, apologize to the president.  Apparently, they sent a cease and desist to both the publisher and Bannon individually for violating prior agreements.

Charles Harder, the president’s lawyer, told ABC News that Bannon’s communications with Wolff “give rise to numerous legal claims including defamation by libel and slander, and breach of his written confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement with our clients. Legal action is imminent.”

[...]

Bannon hosted Breitbart News Tonight on Sirius XM radio as usual on Wednesday night, CNN reported, and made little reference to the acrimony. But when a caller brought up the issue, Bannon replied: “The president of the United States is a great man. You know I support him day in and day out.”

[...]

Now executive chairman of the conservative Breitbart News website, Bannon is known to be planning to throw his weight behind several candidates that share his hardline nationalist agenda.

Surely they don't want him to cease and desist from that.

“Aides thought they had more time to prepare for the book’s formal release,” the Washington Post reported on Wednesday night. “Trump spent much of the day raging about the book to top aides, officials and advisers said … As he fumed, some aides were still frantically searching for a copy of the book, and even senior aides like [Hope] Hicks had not seen it by the afternoon, officials said.”

[...]

Wolff said in an author’s note that the book was based on more than 200 interviews, including multiple conversations with the president and senior staff. But [spokeswoman Sarah] Sanders claimed that Wolff “never actually sat down with the president” and had spoken with him just once, briefly, since Trump had taken office. She dismissed the book as “trashy tabloid fiction”.

Which liar are we supposed to believe?  Reportedly, Wolff has tapes.  Darn those tapes.  Always getting Old Lard Ass in trouble.

The furious controversy consumed time and energy in the west wing just as Trump prepared for a weekend retreat at Camp David with Paul Ryan, the House speaker, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to discuss Republicans’ plans for 2018. The stakes could not be higher with the president’s approval rating at rock bottom and mid-term elections looming in November.

Think they'll tell him they don't need his services any more?

The Trump administration is also going to start barring White House employees and guests from using their personal cellphones at work, press secretary Sarah Sanders said early Thursday.

Sanders said in a statement that the "security and integrity of the technology systems at the White House is a top priority for the Trump administration."

  The Hill

I bet that's right.

It won't stop the leaking.

And here's that Hollywood Reporter article promised yesterday ( THR's Matt Belloni is going on CNN in a few minutes to talk about it.  You know who will be watching.  We'll be watching for the ensuing tweets.)

Excerpts:

Since the new White House was often uncertain about what the president meant or did not mean in any given utterance, his non-disapproval became a kind of passport for me to hang around — checking in each week at the Hay-Adams hotel, making appointments with various senior staffers who put my name in the "system," and then wandering across the street to the White House and plunking myself down, day after day, on a West Wing couch.

[...]

The nature of the comedy, it was soon clear, was that here was a group of ambitious men and women who had reached the pinnacle of power, a high-ranking White House appointment — with the punchline that Donald Trump was president. Their estimable accomplishment of getting to the West Wing risked at any moment becoming farce.

[...]

Kellyanne Conway, who would put a finger-gun to her head in private about Trump's public comments, continued to mount an implacable defense on cable television, until she was pulled off the air by others in the White House who, however much the president enjoyed her, found her militancy idiotic. (Even Ivanka and Jared regarded Conway's fulsome defenses as cringeworthy.)

[...]

Steve Bannon tried to gamely suggest that Trump was mere front man and that he, with plan and purpose and intellect, was, more reasonably, running the show — commanding a whiteboard of policies and initiatives that he claimed to have assembled from Trump's off-the-cuff ramblings and utterances. His adoption of the Saturday Night Live sobriquet "President Bannon" was less than entirely humorous.

  Hollywood Reporter

And therein lay his downfall, I have no doubt. One is not allowed to be more important, more famous, smarter, or more admired than The Most Notable Loser.

"How much influence do you think Steve Bannon has over me? Zero! Zero!" Trump muttered and stormed.

[...]

Jared and Ivanka were against Priebus and Bannon, trying to push both men out. Bannon was against Jared and Ivanka and Priebus, practicing what everybody thought were dark arts against them. Priebus, everybody's punching bag, just tried to survive another day.

[...]

How to get along with Trump — who veered between a kind of blissed-out pleasure of being in the Oval Office and a deep, childish frustration that he couldn't have what he wanted? Here was a man singularly focused on his own needs for instant gratification, be that a hamburger, a segment on Fox & Friends or an Oval Office photo opp. "I want a win. I want a win. Where's my win?" he would regularly declaim. He was, in words used by almost every member of the senior staff on repeated occasions, "like a child." A chronic naysayer, Trump himself stoked constant discord with his daily after-dinner phone calls to his billionaire friends about the disloyalty and incompetence around him.

[...]

"It's a littleee, littleee complicated …" [Trump] explained to Priebus about why he needed to give his daughter and son-in-law official jobs.

[...]

By July, Jared and Ivanka, who had, in less than six months, traversed from socialite couple to royal family to the most powerful people in the world, were now engaged in a desperate dance to save themselves, which mostly involved blaming Trump himself. It was all his idea to fire Comey! "The daughter," Bannon declared, "will bring down the father."

"Littleee"? So maybe he really does say "bigly".

[Anthony] Scaramucci, a minor figure in the New York financial world, and quite a ridiculous one, had overnight become Jared and Ivanka's solution to all of the White House's management and messaging problems. After all, explained the couple, he was good on television and he was from New York — he knew their world.

[...]

There was, after the abrupt Scaramucci meltdown, hardly any effort inside the West Wing to disguise the sense of ludicrousness and anger felt by every member of the senior staff toward Trump's family and Trump himself. It became almost a kind of competition to demystify Trump. For Rex Tillerson, he was a moron. For Gary Cohn, he was dumb as shit. For H.R. McMaster, he was a hopeless idiot. For Steve Bannon, he had lost his mind.

Aha! Now I see where Trump came out yesterday with the "Steve Bannon has lost his mind" bit.

There was more: Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he'd repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn't stop saying something.

Can we add OCD to his list of mental issues?

By summer's end, in something of a historic sweep [...] almost the entire senior staff, save Trump's family, had been washed out: Michael Flynn, Katie Walsh, Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon. Even Trump's loyal, longtime body guard Keith Schiller — for reasons darkly whispered about in the West Wing — was out. Gary Cohn, Dina Powell, Rick Dearborn, all on their way out. The president, on the spur of the moment, appointed John Kelly, a former Marine Corps general and head of homeland security, chief of staff — without Kelly having been informed of his own appointment beforehand.

Okay. I have to stop here a moment. Earlier, I wondered if George Papadopoulos was the person Fusion GPS refers to when they say the Steele dossier merely confirmed things the FBI already knew from intel and "someone inside the Trump camp." Then, I wondered if it could be Bannon. Now I have a third possibility: Keith Schiller. Recall that when he left the White House it was reported that he had testified regarding the Moscow hotel room (Pee Tape) claims. Could he have been"flipped" by Mueller's team early on? He would indeed be someone who knew lots of intimate things about Trump. ??

Insiders believed that the only thing saving Mueller from being fired, and the government of the United States from unfathomable implosion, is Trump's inability to grasp how much Mueller had on him and his family.

[...]

Donald Trump's small staff of factotums, advisors and family [...] came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.

At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends.

And there, Wolff ends the article. Somebody look into that, ok? That's a major problem.

The Pee Tape keeps on giving

On February 6, in one of his seething, self-pitying, and unsolicited phone calls to a casual acquaintance, Trump detailed his bent-out-of-shape feelings about the relentless contempt of the media and the disloyalty of his staff. The initial subject of his ire was the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, whom he called “a nut job.” Gail Collins, who had written a Times column unfavorably comparing Trump to Vice-President Mike Pence, was “a moron.” Then, continuing under the rubric of media he hated, he veered to CNN and the deep disloyalty of its chief, Jeff Zucker.

Zucker, who as the head of entertainment at NBC had commissioned The Apprentice, had been “made by Trump,” Trump said of himself in the third person. He had “personally” gotten Zucker his job at CNN. “Yes, yes, I did,” said the president, launching into a favorite story about how he had once talked Zucker up at a dinner with a high-ranking executive from CNN’s parent company. “I probably shouldn’t have, because Zucker is not that smart,” Trump lamented, “but I like to show I can do that sort of thing.” Then Zucker had returned the favor by airing the “unbelievably disgusting” story about the Russian “dossier” and the “golden shower” — the practice CNN had accused him of being party to in a Moscow hotel suite with assorted prostitutes.

Having dispensed with Zucker, the president of the United States went on to speculate on what was involved with a golden shower.

  NY Magazine

Speculate? Or relive?

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

Was this the same night as the pee party?

How did we miss this story? Perhaps it was the date of it: January 14, 2017. We were preoccupied.

Former Miss Hungary Kata Sarka, 30, told a reality show host last May that she was attending a [2013 Miss Universe] pageant after-party when a man surrounded by bodyguards approached her.

[...]

"We were in Russia, at the final for the Miss Universe and then a man approached me and grabbed my hand, drew me to himself, and asked 'Who are you?'" Sarka told Kasza Tibor, the host of a Hungarian show.

[...]

"And then he said 'and why are you here?'" Sarka continued, giggling. "And he gave me his business card with his private number and told me in which hotel and which room he is staying in. And his name is Donald Trump."

[...]

After Trump's election, Sarka told the Hungarian tabloid Blikk that she saved the President-elect's golden-hued business card, and allowed a photographer for the paper to take a picture of it.

Sarka told Blikk that she never took Trump up on his offer to join him in his hotel room. When asked why, she responded, "He's not my type."

  NY Daily News

Good taste.

Put this in the "wait and see" column

I'm not sure what to make of this. But I'm going to post it here for possible future reference because it's made it as far as Laura Rozen's Twitter account. Two new (at least to me) Russian names in the mix:  Artem Klyushin and Konstantin Rykov.

And some seemingly damning evidence of Trump conspiring with Russia to get control of the White House.  (Or at least of the Russians conspiring to make Trump the US president with a credulous and naive Trump unwitting target.)  Or maybe just Russian wanna-be important people bragging about influence they never actually had?  I don't know.

So now I guess I have to follow Seth Abramson's Twitter account.

Sheeeeeesh.  I spend too much time on this infernal wormhole as it is.  Newsweek published an article Friday discussing Abramson's analysis of the recently revealed Mike Flynn information, which I have not yet read.  Knock yourself out.

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

UPDATE:

The Pee Tape

I'm guessing there's something else that's either on that, or other, tapes that frightens Trump.  He's brushed off all sorts of sex scandals.  Those won't hurt him.  Unless, perhaps, there are sex tapes with boys.  Otherwise, he would have just claimed that it was something akin to locker room talk and Trump supporters would have simply shrugged and wished they could have been the one in that room partying with paid women.

It could be that denying the existence of the pee tape is simply a way to cast doubt on everything in the Steel dossier.  Or, there could be something else that hasn't yet been discovered/told.  At any rate, the tape as it has been described doesn't hurt him at all.

The Russians have plenty of kompromat on The Most Notable Loser via his money laundering dealings. They don't need a pee tape, but where's the harm in having it? It could be useful in some other way or at some other time.

The pee tape just got that much more believable

September 20

[Longtime Trump aide Keith] Schiller, a former security chief to Trump who is close to the president, had been telling confidants for weeks that he was close to leaving, according to numerous reports. Schiller was said to be unhappy about having his access to the president reduced by new White House chief of staff John Kelly

The former Trump aide has also reportedly been unhappy with the reduced paycheck he was forced to take upon joining the administration. CNN reports his White House salary at $165,000, a significant drop from his former earnings in the Trump Organization, where he earned $294,000 a year.

Schiller has worked for Trump in New York since at least 1999 and began serving as Trump’s director of security in 2004. Until Wednesday, he served in the White House as director of Oval Office operations.

[...]

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters earlier this month that rumors of Schiller's departure were "not true" and that Schiller planned to stay in the administration.

  The Hill

She lies every time she opens her mouth.

But...that's not the point here.

November 10

[President Donald Trump's long-time confidant Keith] Schiller privately testified that he rejected a Russian offer to send five women to then private-citizen Trump's hotel room during their 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant.

[...]

Schiller was asked about the Daily Caller article, and he confirmed a Russian made the offer to send the women to Trump's room which was raised around lunch-time, sources said. He was asked who made the offer, but he could not recall the identity of the individual, sources said.

[...]

Multiple sources said the offer to send women to Trump's room came from a Russian who was accompanying Emin Agalarov, a pop star whose father is a billionaire oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and who worked with Trump to bring the pageant to Moscow. But Schiller said the offer did not come from Agalarov himself, the sources said, disputing the Daily Caller report on that matter.

[...]

On their way up to Trump's hotel room that night, Schiller told the billionaire businessman about the offer and Trump laughed it off, Schiller told the House intelligence committee earlier this week.

After several minutes outside of Trump's door, which was Schiller's practice as Trump's security chief, he said he left.

  CNN

Really? Who was guarding Trump's very large body after that?  And, who went in?

Schiller denied knowing about the salacious allegations contained in the dossier. He was also asked about a wide-range of issues, including meetings between Trump associates and Russians, and he denied having knowledge of many of those interactions, sources said.

[...]

Moreover, he denied knowing about the deliberations around the firing of FBI Director James Comey, saying he was only called into (sic) deliver a letter with the news to the FBI.

I know nothing. I.e., there's a lot to know.

I offer the following with the caveat that I haven't tried to verify the claims.

Okay on the first part, but I don't see how that ensures Congress won't look for any other guard.

While it may protect Kremlin agents (or at least be intended to do so), I don't see how this limits potential witnesses.  On the contrary, I would think it would encourage Mueller to seek out other witnesses for verification of Schiller's tesitmony.

Here's that thread.  Read it for yourself.  It does indeed sound like Putin was setting Trump up to be compromised, something I understand is SOP for high profile Americans in Russia.  Especially if they're as easily stroked as Trump.

Here's a bit that I hadn't heard before and have not corroborated...

And, purportedly peed on the bed the Obamas slept in at Trump's direction.  Stupid stuff, but compromising nonetheless if on tape.  Well, it might have been at election time.  Although, for the life of me, if he'd already gotten away with the pussy grabbing tape, why would he worry about this one?  There's even more to the story, I think.

Schiller is hoping to stay out of the deal.

But he's not compromised by women peeing on a bed.  He's compromised by dealing with Russian mobsters and money laundering.  It's the business aspects of whatever it was he did in Moscow.

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