Stormy's lawyer is on the case

Oh dear.

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

A different Christopher Steele report

That's an RT article headline from early November, 2015.

Mikhail Lesin, a prominent Russian political figure and mass media expert credited with inspiring the creation of Russia Today (now RT), has died in Washington, DC after a heart attack.

Lesin, a former press minister and ex-head of Gazprom-Media, Russia’s largest media holding, died at the age of 57 on Wednesday, according to family members. “Mikhail Lesin died from a heart stroke,” a family member told RIA Novosti.

Meanwhile, TASS has reported that Lesin was found dead in his hotel room in Washington, DC, citing the Russian Embassy in the US. Police found no signs of foul play, but a formal investigation has been launched. It has been reported that Lesin had been suffering from a prolonged unidentified illness.

  RT

Fast forward to a BuzzFeed article today:

The FBI possesses a secret report asserting that Vladimir Putin’s former media czar was beaten to death by hired thugs in Washington, DC — directly contradicting the US government’s official finding that Mikhail Lesin died by accident.

The report, according to four sources who have read all or parts of it, was written by the former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who also wrote the famous dossier alleging that Russia had been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” Donald Trump.

[...]

Both the UK and the US have blamed the Kremlin for poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England this month, using a rare nerve agent that endangered bystanders. (Russia has denied it was behind the poisoning.) In the wake of that attack, the British government has opened a review of all 14 suspicious deaths linked to Russia that a BuzzFeed News investigation exposed last year.

[...]

• Steele’s report says that Lesin was bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for an oligarch close to Putin, the four sources said.


• The thugs had been instructed to beat Lesin, not kill him, but they went too far, the sources said Steele wrote.


• Three of the sources said that the report described the killers as Russian state security agents moonlighting for the oligarch.


• The Steele report is not the FBI's only source for this account of Lesin's death: Three other people, acting independently from Steele, said they also told the FBI that Lesin had been bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for the same oligarch named by Steele.

Lesin’s corpse was found in a Washington, DC, hotel room on the morning of Nov. 5, 2015. The coroner determined that he had died from blunt force injuries to the head and had also sustained blunt force injuries to his neck, torso, upper extremities, and lower extremities.

  Buzzfeed

All that was consistent with a heart attack?

After an 11-month investigation, a federal prosecutor announced in late 2016 that Lesin died alone in his room due to a series of drunken falls “after days of excessive consumption of alcohol.” His death was ruled an “accident,” with the coroner adding acute alcohol intoxication as a contributing cause of death, and prosecutors closed the case.

His room must have been full of furniture that he kept falling on as he continued to get up and have another go at walking. I wonder what he hit his neck on.

“What I can tell you is that there isn’t a single person inside the bureau who believes this guy got drunk, fell down, and died,” an FBI agent told BuzzFeed News last year. “Everyone thinks he was whacked and that Putin or the Kremlin were behind it.”

[...]

For his report to the FBI about Lesin, Steele gathered intelligence from high-level sources in Moscow, according to the two sources who read the whole report.

All four of the people who read Steele’s report said it pins Lesin’s murder on a professional relationship gone lethally awry. According to the report, they said, Lesin fell out with a powerful oligarch close to Putin. Wanting to intimidate Lesin, the oligarch then contracted with Russian state security agents to beat up Lesin, the report states, according to three of the sources. The goal was not to kill Lesin, all four sources said Steele wrote, but Lesin died from the attack.

Perhaps as a result of a heart attack incurred while being severely beaten.

Since the outcry over the poisoning death of Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England recently, the British government has agreed to review the case of Lesin, along with another 13 suspcious deaths exposed by BuzzFeed that are allegedly linked to Russia.?


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

Dear God

Perhaps Trump does need his own personal intelligence agency.

Important announcement

Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy

Not long ago, Devin Nunes was an obscure Republican congressman accustomed to running for re-election essentially unopposed as he quietly ascended the ranks in Washington.

But his starring role in one of the defining sagas of the Donald Trump presidency has provoked a real threat back home. His work defending the White House from questions about Russian meddling in U.S. elections has made Nunes a vulnerable target in the midterms, even though Trump won his central California district by 10 percentage points.

A local prosecutor, Democrat Andrew Janz, is on track to raise $1 million this quarter after raking in more money online than any Democrat in the country, except for Conor Lamb, who won the recent special election in Pennsylvania.

  NBC

I can't wait for the Mueller team to announce an indictment against Nunes for his participation in the Trump campaign "collusion" with Russia. Will they call the House Intel Committee report null and void?

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

Annnnd...yet another law firm that won't represent Trump

A prominent Chicago defense attorney said Monday that he had declined an invitation to lead President Trump’s legal team responding to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, underscoring the president’s difficulty in attracting top legal talent to represent him in the probe.

Dan K. Webb, a Republican, is a former U.S. attorney for Illinois and a corporate and white-collar-defense lawyer for the firm Winston and Strawn.

  WaPo

And, apparently not a total fool.

I thought Trump was "happy with" the attorneys he has now and wasn't looking for any new ones.

Two days ago:

Whatever.

In a statement, his firm said the president and his team recently reached out to Webb and D.C.-based partner Tom Buchanan.

“They were unable to take on the representation due to business conflicts. However they consider the opportunity to represent the President to be the highest honor and they sincerely regret that they cannot do so,” the firm said.

Yeah, we know.

Trump and his allies have been reaching out to several lawyers in recent weeks, including some who had turned Trump down after he interviewed them last spring and summer to be his personal lawyer in Mueller’s investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election and whether the president’s campaign coordinated with Russia in this effort.

He thought hee had a better chance NOW?

Well, he has Cobb and Sekulow. Actually, really only Sekulow for a personal attorney. Cobb represents the office of the president.

Sekulow is a constitutional lawyer and radio host who has been quick to acknowledge that he lacks the experience to oversee a complex criminal investigation like the one the White House and Trump now face.

Oh, darn.

Sekulow is a constitutional lawyer and radio host who has been quick to acknowledge that he lacks the experience to oversee a complex criminal investigation like the one the White House and Trump now face.

[...]

Trump had asked Sekulow to reach out to Theodore B. Olson on March 19. By the next morning, after The Washington Post reported the offer to Olson, his firm — Gibson, Dunn — was insisting that Olson would not take the job.

Olson said Monday in a television appearance on MSNBC that the White House appeared to be in regular “turmoil” and “chaos” with a new departure and White House shake-up every other day. “This seems to be beyond normal,” Olson said.

So, not likely to change his mind about representation, huh?

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

She's not his type

President Trump has privately told several people that Stormy Daniels’s allegations of an affair with him are a “hoax” and that Daniels isn’t the type of woman he finds attractive, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

The president has publicly been silent about the Stormy Daniels controversy, but after she appeared on “60 Minutes” on Sunday night and shared the details of her alleged affair, Trump privately attacked her and her media tour among administration staffers.

  The Hill

So if she's not his type, then ex-body guard Keith Shiller is going to testify that he never acted as a go-between and never stood guard outside the door while she and Trump met, right?

Trump has reportedly come to the conclusion that the details of the alleged affair will not significantly damage his political support and that the issue will eventually pass.

[...]

The president did not think Daniels appeared credible, according to a source who spoke with the Post.

Over the weekend at his Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, Trump also questioned friends and guests about their thoughts on the Daniels controversy.

His friends and advisers reportedly warned him that he had little to gain from engaging with Daniels.

I wonder if he asked Melania what she thought.  He's never getting back in that bed, is he?

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

In a nutshell

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

The importance of Rick Gates

Politico has a somewhat lengthy article about Rick Gates and his importance to the Mueller team now that he's flipped.  Check it out.

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

The incompetence extends to the president's lawyer's lawyer

In case you missed it, Avenatti is Stormy Daniels' lawyer, and at one point, Cohen bragged that he would be winning a lawsuit against her that would allow him to take an extended vacation "on her dime."



Which does make it seem like he used the threat tactic first, and assumed it worked until stories started reappearing right before the election.

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