- The biggest and worst problem with Trump is the Russian Connection. At different times Trump has said both; that he did meet Putin, he’s talked to Putin, and he had a relationship with Putin. And at other times Trump said that he did not meet Putin, he never talked to Putin, and he does not know Putin. (Trump can’t have it both ways, he needs to pick a lie and stick to it.) But Trump is defending Putin; Putin is a corrupt thief (he makes a salary similar to our President, $400,000. per year, but some how, on that salary, he has become one of the richest men in the world, a multi billionaire. Putin is looting and stealing from his own country to the point that it’s as though he’s sucking money out of the country with a hose). And Putin is a brutal murderous fascist dictator, he’s had people imprisoned over trumped up charges and they sometimes suddenly die in jail, he’s had people shot in the street, he’s had people thrown out of windows, he has poisoned over 30 people; there is a man that has been poisoned by Putin twice and he fought for his life and survived to testify to the US Senate. There are even Russian social movements against Putin, one of them named Open Russia that Putin has banned. And the founder of Open Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is the former head of Yukos Oil, former because Putin took his oil company from him; Putin imprisoned on fake fraud charges for 10 years all because Khodorkovsky opposed Putin. Khodorkovsky managed to stay alive long enough for Amnesty International to help get him pardoned in 2014 then he went into exile in Switzerland. But Trump says he admires Putin.
On The Rachel Maddow Show with On Assignment with Richard Engel Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, reports on the meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit, and talks with prominent Putin critic, political activist, and chess master Garry Kasparov.
On The Rachel Maddow Show with On Assignment with Richard Engel Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, reviews the history of post-Soviet Russia and the rise to power of Vladimir Putin.
On The Rachel Maddow Show with On Assignment with Richard Engel Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, looks at the criminality and corruption of the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia and the brutality committed against those who try to expose it.
On The Rachel Maddow Show with On Assignment with Richard Engel Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, looks at some of what one report counts as over forty mysterious political deaths in Russia in just the past three years.
On The Rachel Maddow Show with On Assignment with Richard Engel Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, looks political and activist opposition to Vladimir Putin in Russia, growing despite the ever-present threat of crackdown and prison.
On The Rachel Maddow Show with On Assignment with Richard Engel Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, and NBC’s Kelly Cobiella look at how members of the American political right are building an appreciation for Vladimir Putin through guns and Evangelical Christianity.
And you have to ask yourself why Trump is kissing Putin’s butt. There is a dossier that claims the Russians have dirt on Trump. So the answer could be something about Russian hookers, which does not surprise me since he’s cheated on his past wives, so why not his current wife too. But even if the Russians do have that dirt on Trump this goes much further than blackmailing Trump over just cheating. And even though Trump lied about it, as usual, and said that he had nothing to do with Russia Trump has business investments in Russia. Trump’s son even admits that they have business in Russia but Trump is also trying to make more money in Russia.
- In April, suddenly the Oversight Committee was all but shut down, after the investigations started with other committees, Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz, Chairman of the Oversight Committee, first announced that he wouldn’t run again then announced that he would be leaving Congress altogether. Some wonder why he is doing that; could it be because Chaffetz was going to have to investigate Trump but he knows those investigations would not end well for Trump or Chaffetz.
The President’s eldest son (Donald Trump Jr.) son-in-law (Jared Kushner) and former campaign chairman (Paul Manafort) are sitting down with the staff and members of several Senate committees, but sources tell CNN some of the meetings will be behind closed doors and not under oath. But even if the men don’t raise their right hand before speaking, they still have to tell the truth. Federal law makes it a crime to “knowingly and willfully” give “materially” false statements to Congress, even if unsworn — which is not to be confused with the more general crime of perjury for lying under oath. The consequences for either crime are serious: one can face up to five years in prison. Like many criminal statutes, however, proving a witness “knowingly” sought to mislead sets a high bar for prosecution — meaning the omission can’t be merely a mistake or accident. And the “materiality” requirement means the false statement has to actually matter — i.e., a tendency to influence the listener. While it is rare to see charges filed for lying to Congress, there is precedent.
- Roger Stone, a former Trump campaign adviser, who says he quit the campaign but Trump claims he was fired, is under investigation for having advanced knowledge of hacking and colluding with the Russians.
On The Rachel Maddow Show Walter Dellinger, former U.S. solicitor general, talks with Rachel Maddow about a lawsuit filed against Donald Trump for his role in the public sharing of materials hacked by Russians during the 2016 election.
- Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, met with Russians and was recruited by Russian spies. The FBI even obtained a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Warrant to monitor Carter Page.
- Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump campaign adviser who briefly served in the White House communications office, confirmed to ABC News that he has received a request for information and testimony from the House Intelligence Committee.
- At some point one has to ask themselves does Trump know anybody that doesn’t have some kind of connection to Russia. Most of Trump’s people have ties to Russia in one way or another and Flynn and Manafort and several others of Trump’s people used to actually work for the Russians.
- And Trump was in business with a sanctioned (he had US sanctions against him), illegal, crooked and corrupt government official business partner to build a Trump Tower in a country just south of Russia; Azerbaijan (Azure Bijan), which is also a crime, a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Trump’s daughter took video when she went there for Trump, I’ve seen what the building looks like. Trump didn’t end the project until a month after he won the election; he was trying to not get caught. Not that he has anything to do with Trump what so ever but Frederic Bourke of the company Dooney & Bourke (they make luxury fashion accessories like purses and shoes) already went to jail for the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act so it is a real crime. Therefore a question comes to mind; why is Trump not in prison right next to Frederic Bourke?
- One of Putin’s friends, who is considered the Fertilizer King in Russia, bought one of Trump’s houses for almost 2 ½ times of the $40 million Trump paid for it just 2 years earlier even though Trump put nothing into the house, that was a more than $50 million profit to Trump for doing nothing; a $95 million total, it was the largest real estate sale in the US. The Fertilizer King never lived in the house and tore it down after he bought it.
And the Fertilizer King’s private plane was seen parked at the same airports near Trumps plane in several cities that Trump went to campaign in but Trump claims he never met the guy. Obviously the Fertilizer King was following Trump around the country to several cities for a reason.
- And even the Russians tell the truth more than Trump and his people do because the Russians said that they did communicate with Trump’s people. Putin himself has always lied and denied any involvement with the US election hacking even though something like that would have to be either ordered by Putin or the hackers would have to get permission from Putin to do it. But Putin also said that his country has “never engaged in” hacking another nation’s elections and we know that’s a lie, the Russians have tried to hack almost every Western nation’s elections at one time or another. The closest Putin has ever come to admitting anything was when he said that hackers with “patriotic leanings … may try to add their contribution to the fight against those who speak badly about Russia.” And Putin told NBC’s Megyn Kelly that even her “underage daughter” could have been behind the hacking. And that is as close as one will ever get with Putin admitting anything.
European countries, including Germany, Estonia, Poland and Australia, as well as the Dutch, the French and the British even have information about Trump’s people contacting the Russians. Other countries like The United Arab Emirates, whose Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, even arranged secret meetings between one of Trump’s people, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, and a Russian close to Putin in an effort to create a back channel line of communication between Putin and Trump. The meeting took place around January 11th, 9 days before Trump’s inauguration, in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean. Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or Trump’s transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian.
- There is even a dossier about Trump and his people illegally colluding with the Russians (Trump and his people were in on it with the Russians). The more the investigators check the information in the dossier the more they are finding it true and the former MI6 British spy, Christopher Steele, who wrote the dossier went into hiding when it 1st came out in January because he was worried about his own safety, he returned in March, and the US Senate and Congress want him to testify (some are even willing to go to him if necessary).
- And Trump and his people tried to stop (or “knock down” is the word that was used) the multiple investigation reports, that’s the same thing Nixon tried to do, a coverup, and that is something that they were not supposed to do and they were told no.
- July 19th 2017 The New York Times published an exclusive report that came from a 50 minute interview that President Donald Trump provided to Maggie Haberman, Peter Baker and Michael Schmidt. Here are Excerpts From The New York Times’s Interview With Trump.
The wide-ranging interview covered many topics, but among them was what some might see as a threat towards Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 General Election. Amid many suspicions that the real story behind Trump and Russia is financial support and possible money laundering, Trump apparently “warned that investigators would cross a red line if they delve into Trump family finances unrelated to Russia,” according to the report. Trump said too that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was running “an office rife with conflicts of interest. The president said as far as he is aware, he does not believe he is personally under investigation by Mueller. “I’m not under investigation. For what? I didn’t do anything wrong,” Trump told the newspaper.
The interview, which the New York Times described as “wide-ranging,” also included questions about health care and other topics, but the Russia investigation and its fallout dominated the conversation, the newspaper says.
The discussion about “adoptions,” is apparently a reference to the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law meant to punish Russian human rights abusers by barring them from entering the US. The Russian parliament responded to the law by banning American citizens from adopting Russian orphans. It is the same law that Donald Trump Jr. says was a topic of conversation at a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on then-campaign opponent Hillary Clinton. According to the New York Times: “Mr. Trump acknowledged that it was ‘interesting’ that adoptions came up since his son, Donald Trump Jr., said that was the topic of a meeting he had with several Russians with ties to the Kremlin during last year’s campaign.”
On All In with Chris Hayes Donald Trump told the New York Times he never would have hired Jeff Sessions as attorney general if he knew he was going to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
On The Rachel Maddow Show Matthew Miller, former spokesman for the Department of Justice, talks with Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump’s distorted view that the Justice Department, including the FBI, should be in his loyal service.
On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell In an astonishing interview with the New York Times, Trump said if knew Sessions would recuse himself in the Russia probe, he’d have picked a different Attorney General. Lawrence O’Donnell explains this is a “signal” from Trump about the unfolding investigation.
On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks says Trump’s extraordinary public attack on AG Jeff Sessions reminds her of Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre – and warns Sessions against taking Nixon’s legal advice. Mieke Eoyang and John Heilemann also join Lawrence O’Donnell.
On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Trump says he wouldn’t have hired Jeff Sessions if he knew he was going to recuse himself and blasts James Comey & Bob Mueller.
Trump’s legal team declined to comment on the issue. But one adviser said the president has simply expressed a curiosity in understanding the reach of his pardoning authority, as well as the limits of Mueller’s investigation. With the Russia investigation continuing to widen, Trump’s lawyers are working to corral the probe and question the propriety of the special counsel’s work. They are actively compiling a list of Mueller’s alleged potential conflicts of interest, which they say could serve as a way to stymie his work, according to several of Trump’s legal advisers. A conflict of interest is one of the possible grounds that can be cited by an attorney general to remove a special counsel from office under Justice Department regulations that set rules for the job. The president is also irritated by the notion that Mueller’s probe could reach into his and his family’s finances, advisers said.
- July 21st 2017 in The Washington Post a response to Trump’s question about pardoning himself: Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, was chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007 and is vice-chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Norman Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, was chief White House ethics lawyer for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2011 and is chair of CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington).
Can a president pardon himself? Four days before Richard Nixon resigned, his own Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opined no, citing “the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.” We agree. The Justice Department was right that guidance could be found in the enduring principles that no one can be both the judge and the defendant in the same matter, and that no one is above the law. The Constitution specifically bars the president from using the pardon power to prevent his own impeachment and removal. It adds that any official removed through impeachment remains fully subject to criminal prosecution. That provision would make no sense if the president could pardon himself.
The pardon provision of the Constitution is there to enable the president to act essentially in the role of a judge of another person’s criminal case, and to intervene on behalf of the defendant when the president determines that would be equitable. For example, the president might believe the courts made the wrong decision about someone’s guilt or about sentencing; President Barack Obama felt this way about excessive sentences for low-level drug offenses. Or the president might be impressed by the defendant’s subsequent conduct and, using powers far exceeding those of a parole board, might issue a pardon or commutation of sentence.
Other equitable considerations could also weigh in favor of leniency. A president might choose to grant a pardon before prosecution of a person when the president believes that the prosecution is not in the national interest; President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon in part for this reason. Or a president may conclude that even if a person may have committed a crime, he was acting in good faith to protect the national interest; President George H.W. Bush pardoned former defense secretary Casper Weinberger in the Iran-contra affair in part for this reason. In all such instances, however, the president is acting as a kind of super-judge and making a decision about someone else’s conduct, the justice of someone else’s sentence or whether it is in the national interest to prosecute someone else. He is not making a decision about himself.
On All In with Chris Hayes Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the House Judiciary Committee when it recommended three articles of impeachment against then-President Richard Nixon, weighs in.
On The Rachel Maddow Show Bob Bauer, former White House counsel under President Obama, talks with Rachel Maddow about whether Donald Trump would have to announce if he has pardoned someone and whether a pardon could be seen as an obstruction of justice.
The effort to investigate the investigators is another sign of a looming showdown between Mr. Trump and Mr. Mueller, who has assembled a team of high-powered prosecutors and agents to examine whether any of Mr. Trump’s advisers aided Russia’s campaign to disrupt last year’s presidential election. Some of the investigators have vast experience prosecuting financial malfeasance, and the prospect that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry could evolve into an expansive examination of Mr. Trump’s financial history has stoked fears among the president’s aides. Both Mr. Trump and his aides have said publicly they are watching closely to ensure Mr. Mueller’s investigation remains narrowly focused on last year’s election.
During an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday (July 19th), Mr. Trump said he was aware that members of Mr. Mueller’s team had potential conflicts of interest and would make the information available “at some point.” Mr. Trump also said Mr. Mueller would be going outside his mandate if he begins investigating matters unrelated to Russia, like the president’s personal finances. Mr. Trump repeatedly declined to say what he might do if Mr. Mueller appeared to exceed that mandate. But his comments to The Times represented a clear message to Mr. Mueller.
For weeks, Republicans have publicly identified what they see as potential conflicts among Mr. Mueller’s team of more than a dozen investigators. In particular, they have cited thousands of dollars of political donations to Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, made by Andrew Weissmann, a former senior Justice Department official who has expertise in fraud and other financial crimes. News reports have revealed similar donations by other members of Mr. Mueller’s team, which Mr. Trump’s allies have cited as evidence of political bias. Another lawyer Mr. Mueller has hired, Jeannie Rhee, represented the Clinton Foundation. To seek a recusal, Mr. Trump’s lawyers can argue their case to Mr. Mueller or his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. The Justice Department has explicit rules about what constitutes a conflict of interest. Prosecutors may not participate in investigations if they have “a personal or political relationship” with the subject of the case. Making campaign donations is not included on the list of things that would create a “political relationship.”
Mr. Trump’s advisers are split on how far to go in challenging the independence of Mr. Mueller, a retired FBI director and one of the most respected figures in law enforcement. Some advisers have warned that dismissing Mr. Mueller would create a legal and political mess. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump has kept up the attacks on him. In his interview with The Times, which caught members of his legal team by surprise, he focused on the fact that Mr. Mueller had interviewed to replace Mr. Comey as the FBI director just a day before Mr. Mueller was appointed special prosecutor, saying that the interview could create a conflict.
In addition to investigating possible collusion between Russia and Mr. Trump’s advisers, the special counsel is examining whether the president obstructed justice by firing Mr. Comey. Some of Mr. Trump’s supporters have portrayed Mr. Mueller and Mr. Comey as close friends. While they worked closely together in the Justice Department under President George W. Bush and are known to respect each other, associates of both men say the two are not particularly close.
Mr. Mueller’s team has begun examining financial records, and has requested documents from the Internal Revenue Service related to Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, according to a senior American official. The records are from a criminal tax investigation that had been opened long before Mr. Trump’s campaign began. Mr. Manafort was never charged in that case. Federal investigators have also contacted Deutsche Bank about Mr. Trump’s accounts, and the bank is expecting to provide information to Mr. Mueller.
Lawmakers are concerned that after the president’s recent blasts at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump could replace one of his longest-term supporters with someone willing to dismiss Mueller. Sessions has recused himself from the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with Trump’s campaign. Firing Mueller would violate that recusal. Despite Trump labeling the investigation as a “witch hunt,” Mueller remains highly respected in Congress. While still under-construction, the Senate plan to block Trump from firing Mueller has bipartisan support.
Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is working with the Democrats to craft a bill creating a three judge panel to review the firing of any special counsel investigating a president or that president’s team. “This isn’t just about this special counsel,” Graham said. “It’s about anyone who meets this specific set of circumstances. The panel of judges would review any firing of a special counsel to ensure it meets the statutory requirements. The panel would determine whether the firing was legitimate or not.” Graham’s plan has support among Democrats, though his frequent ally, Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., wondered “How we can stop the president from firing the people he appointed I don’t know.”
In the House, Representative Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said he has instructed his staff to write a bill that, if Trump fires Mueller, would have Mueller rehired, and keep his investigation alive. “The plan would be for Congress to rehire him, to put him beyond the reach of the president,” he said. “I think if the president was to make any effort to fire Mueller, it would ignite a storm.” But Representative Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., said that while he believed the Senate could find bipartisan support, he has serious doubts whether the House, where Republicans have a strong majority, would agree. “I don’t think we’d have many members of the other party in this house willing to say that firing Mueller was a step too far,” he said.
On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Graham bill would stop Trump from firing Special Counsel Mueller. Jeff Sessions is speaking out about being under public attack by Trump over the Russia investigation and Lindsey Graham has issued a warning to the president about the consequences of firing the attorney general. Paul Butler and Ron Klain join Lawrence O’Donnell.
John Dowd, one of Trump’s lawyers, said on Thursday (July 20th) that he was unaware of the inquiry into Trump’s businesses by the two-months-old investigation and considered it beyond the scope of what Special Counsel Robert Mueller should be examining. “Those transactions are in my view well beyond the mandate of the Special counsel; are unrelated to the election of 2016 or any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and most importantly, are well beyond any Statute of Limitation imposed by the United States Code,” he wrote in an email.
The president told the New York Times on Wednesday (July 19th) that any digging into matters beyond Russia would be out of bounds. Trump’s businesses have involved Russians for years, however, making the boundaries fuzzy. The Justice Department’s May 17 order to Mueller instructs him to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign” as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation,” suggesting a relatively broad mandate.
Agents are interested in dealings with the Bank of Cyprus, where Wilbur Ross served as vice chairman before he became commerce secretary. In addition, they are examining the efforts of Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and senior aide, to secure financing for some of his family’s real-estate properties. The information about the investigation was provided by someone familiar with the developing inquiry but not authorized to speak publicly. The roots of Mueller’s follow-the-money investigation lie partly in a wide-ranging money-laundering probe launched by then-Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara last year, according to the person.
FBI agents already had been gathering information about Manafort, according to two people with knowledge of that probe. Prosecutors hadn’t yet begun presenting evidence to a grand jury. Trump fired Bharara in March. The Manafort inquiry initially focused on actions involving a real-estate company he launched with money from Ukraine in 2008. By the time Bharara was fired, his office’s investigation of possible money laundering extended well beyond that, according to the person briefed on the Mueller probe. The Bharara investigation was consolidated into Mueller’s inquiry, showing that the special counsel is taking an overarching approach. The various financial examinations constitute one thread of Mueller’s inquiry, which encompasses computer hacking and the dissemination of stolen campaign and voter information as well as the actions of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Joshua Stueve, Mueller’s spokesman, declined to comment, as did a Manafort spokesman and Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Kushner. Spokesmen for the White House, Trump Organization and Ross didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Mueller’s team is looking at the Trump SoHo hotel condominium development, which was a licensing deal with Bayrock Capital LLC. In 2010, the former finance director of Bayrock filed a lawsuit claiming the firm structured transactions in fraudulent ways to evade taxes. Bayrock was a key source of capital for Trump projects, including Trump SoHo. The 2013 Miss Universe pageant is of interest because a prominent Moscow developer, Aras Agalarov, paid $20 million to bring the beauty spectacle there. About a third of that sum went to Trump in the form of a licensing fee, according to Forbes magazine. At the event, Trump met Herman Gref, chief executive of Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank PJSC. Agalarov’s son, Emin, helped broker a meeting last year between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer who was said to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton and her campaign.
Another significant financial transaction involved a Palm Beach, Florida, estate Trump purchased in 2004 for $41 million, after its previous owner lost it in bankruptcy. In March of 2008, after the real-estate bubble had begun losing air, Russian fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev bought the property for $95 million. As part of their investigation, Mueller’s team has issued subpoenas to banks and filed requests for bank records to foreign lenders under mutual legal-assistance treaties, according to two of the people familiar with the matter.
On All In with Chris Hayes The president doesn’t want Robert Mueller to cross a ‘red line’ and look at his finances. Good luck with that.
On The Rachel Maddow Show Greg Farrell, investigative reporter for Bloomberg News, talks with Rachel Maddow about Special Counsel Robert Mueller including Donald Trump’s personal business and finances as part of the Trump Russia investigation.
On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell The Washington Post reports Donald Trump is asking about his ability to pardon aides, family members, and himself, and that his lawyers are looking for ways to limit Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. Post reporter Rosalind Helderman joins Lawrence O’Donnell.
On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Amid breaking news from the Washington Post and New York Times, the 11th Hour panel weighs in on the Trump White House plan to undercut special counsel Robert Mueller.
On The Rachel Maddow Show Bob Bauer, former White House counsel under President Obama, talks with Rachel Maddow about what happens to the Trump Russia investigation if Donald Trump tries to go after Robert Mueller or the investigation itself.
- August 14th 2017 as reported in The Washington Post: Three days after Donald Trump named his campaign foreign policy team in March 2016, the youngest of the new advisers sent an email to seven campaign officials with the subject line: “Meeting with Russian Leadership – Including Putin.”
The adviser, George Papadopoulos, offered to set up “a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump,” telling them his Russian contacts welcomed the opportunity, according to internal campaign emails read to The Washington Post.
The proposal sent a ripple of concern through campaign headquarters in Trump Tower. Campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis wrote that he thought NATO allies should be consulted before any plans were made. Another Trump adviser, retired Navy Rear Admiral Charles Kubic, cited legal concerns, including a possible violation of U.S. sanctions against Russia and of the Logan Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from unauthorized negotiation with foreign governments.
But Papadopoulos, a campaign volunteer with scant foreign policy experience, persisted. Between March and September, the self-described energy consultant sent at least a half-dozen requests for Trump, as he turned from primary candidate to party nominee, or for members of his team to meet with Russian officials. Among those to express concern about the effort was then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who rejected in May 2016 a proposal from Papadopoulos for Trump to do so.
The exchanges are among more than 20,000 pages of documents the Trump campaign turned over to congressional committees this month after review by White House and defense lawyers. The selection of Papadopoulos’s emails were read to The Post by a person with access to them. Two other people with access to the emails confirmed the general tone of the exchanges and some specific passages within them.
Papadopoulos emerges from the sample of emails as a new and puzzling figure in the examination of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials and their proxies during the 2016 election, now the subject of a special-counsel investigation.
On The Rachel Maddow Show Rachel Maddow reports breaking news from Bloomberg News that among thousands of documents turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating Trump-Russia, roughly 20,000 of them are from the Trump campaign.
- Trump does not even understand the issue, he thought that the Democrats would be happy about Comey being fired. No, we are smart enough to not believe Trump’s fake reasons for firing Comey and to recognize a coverup when we see one. And if you notice whenever someone investigates just a little too much and either finds information or gets close to finding information out about the Trump Russia connections then Trump fires them, Sally Yates, Preet Bharara, James Comey, who is next?
These coverups or attempted coverups are crimes, they are obstruction of justice. Obstruction of justice is a crime, in and of itself, with or without the crimes of collusion and conspiracy. And some have even mentioned election fraud too. The subpoenas have started to fly and people have started to lawyer up. Here are some of Rachel Maddow’s thoughts about Comey being fired and other Russia issues.
On The Rachel Maddow Show Rachel Maddow reports on the latest embarrassing spectacle from the Donald Trump administration and points out the facets of a solidifying Republican counter narrative that aims to discredit the FBI and the Trump Russia investigation.
On The Rachel Maddow Show Tim Weiner, historian of the FBI and CIA, talks with Rachel Maddow about the Republican effort to discredit the FBI and the Trump Russia investigation, and what Donald Trump doesn’t understand about the FBI.
On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams As Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues his investigation into all things Trump and Russia, former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman says he believes Trump’s behavior makes him look guilty.
On The 11th Hour with Brian Williams Analyzing Trump’s behavior concerning the Russia probe, former Watergate Prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks says she believes the President’s actions make him look guilty.
- This is the height of corruption; you can’t get much more corrupt than all this with Trump and his people. 17 different intelligence agencies agree that we were hacked by the Russians along with propaganda, disinformation and fake news all disseminated by the Russians which is still going on.
Hell Trump even looked right into TV cameras and asked the Russians to hack Hillary and said that they would be rewarded. The intelligence agencies like the CIA, the spies, had evidence of the Russian’s election interference fairly early on. So the intelligence agencies do not even trust Trump enough to tell him some things that other Presidents knew like how they get information from the Russians because they are afraid that he will leak it back to the Russians.
- And WikiLeaks (a website that leaks secret documents that have been hacked from where ever) is in bed with the Russians. WikiLeaks is considered basically a front for Russian intelligence. There is collaboration between RT (Russia Today), which is an English version of state run Russian TV (also known as Russian intelligence) and WikiLeaks and Trump to attack the US and US intelligence agencies which is why the Russians kept leaking US and US intelligence agency documents.
And Nigel Farage (the Brexit guy, the British Exit from the European Union) may be in bed with WikiLeaks, Trump and the Russians too. Nigel Farage was seen going into and coming out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where the owner of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, is hiding out (Julian Assange, the owner of WikiLeaks, is hiding and has been hiding at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 to evade arrest and prosecution by Sweden for rape, he is a criminal). But Nigel Farage claimed that he couldn’t remember what he was doing in that building when he was asked as he was coming out of the building. And now Nigel Farage is a “person of interest” in the US counter-intelligence investigation that is looking into possible collusion between the Kremlin and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Sources with knowledge of the investigation said the former Ukip leader had raised the interest of FBI investigators because of his relationships with individuals connected to both the Trump campaign and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whom Farage visited in March.
On All In with Chris Hayes The Russophilic Republican Congressman confirmed to journalists that he met with the Wikileaks founder, whose organization has been deemed by the U.S. as a ‘hostile intelligence actor,’ and now he wants to brief Donald Trump on the meeting.
- Jeh Charles Johnson
- That is very similar to Watergate, with Watergate the DNC (Democratic National Committee) was broken into and bugged (wiretapped), Nixon and his crew just did not have the technology to hack at the time and since no one else had the technology at the time either there was nothing to hack into at the time. And one could throw Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal into the mix too. But this is ending up being worse than Watergate and Iran-Contra put together, for one thing with Nixon at least American people did the breaking in and the bugging but with Trump he had the Russians doing the hacking. Plus this is moving much faster than Nixon’s crap was and this has much more going on with it. And Nixon was always talking about leaks to the point that he created a unit he called “The Plumbers” to find and stop all the leaks. Trump is also always talking about “illegal leaks” he just hasn’t created his version of “The Plumbers” yet. Perhaps because Trump is actually massively more ignorant than Nixon ever was.
On The Rachel Maddow Show Michael Beschloss, NBC News presidential historian, talks with Joy-Ann Reid about the differences between Donald Trump’s current situation and Richard Nixon’s situation ahead of his resignation.
- On May 12th Trump had his Attorneys release a letter dated as though it was written in March (who knows when it was actually written) claiming that Trump has no business ties with Russia with a few exceptions such as the 2013 Miss Universe pageant held in Moscow, the Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev who purchased Trump’s Palm Beach mansion for $95 million in 2008 and the Attorneys said that “over the years, it is likely” that the Trump organization has engaged in business with Russian sources, “such as sales/rentals/fees for condominiums, hotel rooms, rounds of golf, books, or Trump-licensed products.” From previous reporting we already knew about this stuff, there is obviously more that we do not know about that Trump is still hiding and the Senate Intelligence Committee wants to know about it. Trump claimed the letter was “Certified” as though saying the letter was “Certified” meant that the letter proved something, the letter was sent by “Certified” mail so someone had to sign for it, that is what the “Certified” means, “Certified” refers to the class of mail used to send the document. The letter was sent by “Certified” mail to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
The letter written by Attorneys that Trump paid to say whatever Trump wanted to say proves nothing what so ever, there is no proof to backup anything in the letter at all. “This is an artfully written letter, covering a limited time period,” said David Cay Johnston, an expert on taxes and a former New York Times Reporter who has written extensively about Trump. “Much of what we need to know about Trump and Russian money and that includes money from Kazakhstan, Turkey and other places where Russian oligarchs operate involves transactions prior to 10 years ago.”
- After Trump won the election the Russians were celebrating, they were having Trump documentaries on TV, and they were having Trump parties, there was even a Trump band that played rock & roll. During the campaign debates Hillary called Trump “Putin’s Puppet” and she was right. Everything that Trump was trying to blame on Hillary during the general campaigns actually applied to Trump himself and/or Trump’s people; even to the point that Vice President Pence is doing the exact same thing that Trump badgered Hillary about for months, using a private computer server and it got hacked but Pence is trying to claim it’s not the same.
- On Bill Moyers web site there is an Interactive Timeline: Everything We Know About Russia and President Trump. As well as A Timeline: Pence’s Role in the White House’s Russia-Related Mess and What Don’t You Know About the Trump/Russia Connection?
On The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell Attorney Steven Harper has prepared a timeline with more than 400 data points of all the events surrounding the Trump team and Russia. He prepared it as if it had to be presented to a jury. Lawrence O’Donnell also discusses the findings with Bill Moyers.
A congressman, Congressman Eric Swalwell of CA, has a “Connect the Trump-Russia Dots“ guide on his website. And Swalwell and other Congress people and Senate people want independent investigations. There are multiple investigations, both espionage and criminal, for the initial crimes of Collusion and Conspiracy and the coverup crime of Obstruction of Justice, as well as financial crimes such as Money Laundering, and the situation worsens on a daily basis. This is an elaborate, involved complicated scheme, one hell of a giant hot mess, and you have to follow the web of puzzle pieces or dots to put it all together. And more puzzle pieces or dots show up every day, the level of corruption with Trump is unbelievable and much more than we have ever seen before. I guess the thought was sabotage and any other dirty thing they could think of to do was easier than winning fair and square and with integrity, cheat to win by any means necessary. Trump is an illegitimate President; Trump and the Russians basically stole the Presidency, the executive branch of our government; we only have 3 branches, Executive (which is the President), Legislative (which are the Congress and the Senate) and Judicial (which are the courts), to our government and they took a whole branch. This is basically a bloodless (since no one has a bullet in their head, yet) political coup, that’s what this is a political coup, this is RussiaGate and this may not end well for Trump. People in other countries know political coups quite well but we, the United States, were never supposed to have any political coups (bloodless or otherwise); our system was set up to avoid having this happen at all. But yet here we are with RussiaGate in our faces. The New York Times asks is Trump the Criminal President? I, for one, say that Trump is the Criminal President. And The New York Times also offers some free advice to Trump aides: “Quit while you can” but it may be already too late for that.
- And, by the way, Russia wants Alaska back; they even went so far as to create a petition while Mr. Obama was still in office, written in clunky English, on the official White House website seeking Alaska’s secession and return to Russia. Some people took it as a joke but some people took it seriously. They had generated more than 37,000 signatures; a little more than a third of the 100,000 signatures they needed at the time, 2014, in order for Mr. Obama to respond. If they get more signatures then we’ll see if Trump actually gives Alaska back to the Russians.
And Russia was also trying to get California to secede from the United States. The petition needed 585,407 valid signatures by July 2017 to qualify for next year’s, 2018, ballot. But luckily the Moscow based leader of the “CalExit” campaign, Yes California Independence Campaign President, Louis Marinelli, decided to secede himself back to Russia so he resigned and withdraw his petition.
