Summery of Trump/Russian Collusion investigation so far

Below is a quick summary of the investigation’s major points — and it’s meant to be a small-c conservative summary. I understand why many people are ready to believe the worst about President Trump, but you will be able to follow the story more clearly if you avoid jumping to unproven conclusions.

What we know:

A Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, had extensive talks with people linked to the Russian government, about “dirt” and “thousands of emails” that Russia had on Hillary Clinton. The Russians told him they were “open for cooperation” with the Trump campaign, as Papadopoulos later told federal investigators.

Papadopoulos was more than the lowly volunteer that the White House is now making him out to be. In a March 2016 interview with The Washington Post, when Trump was bragging about the quality of his foreign policy advisers, Papadopoulos was the third person he named — “excellent guy,” Trump said.

But Papadopoulos does not appear to have been at the center of the presidential campaign. Rather than making decisions himself, he asked for guidance from more senior Trump campaign officials.

Some senior campaign officials were clearly willing to talk with the Russians. The documents released yesterday suggest as much. So does Donald Trump Jr.’s previously reported meeting with a Russian lawyer who had promised dirt on Clinton.

For now, these conversations seem to be separate from the charges filed against Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, and Rick Gates. Manafort and Gates were charged with secretly working as agents of a foreign (Russian-backed) government for years, hiding their income from that work and lying about it to federal investigators.

It’s certainly possible that Manafort also colluded with Russia during the presidential campaign. It’s also possible that prosecutors are using the other alleged illegal activity as leverage to get Manafort to cooperate in the campaign investigations.

What we don’t know:

Did Trump campaign officials collude with Russian agents on the release of the emails? There is not yet any public evidence that the conversations between campaign officials and Russian agents led to actual coordination. Maybe Russia’s approaches to the Trump campaign went nowhere — and that Russia then released the emails anyway, for its own purposes. That would be a far less damning series of events for Trump and his aides.

Which senior Trump campaign officials were aware of — or participated in — Papadopoulos’s conversations with Russian agents? The Papadopoulos plea agreement includes multiple references to his exchanges with an unnamed campaign supervisor. “Great work,” the supervisor told him, about the conversations. How much more did top officials know, and what did they do?

What’s the relationship, if any, between the Papadopoulos conversations and Donald Trump Jr.’s later meeting with a Russian lawyer? The approach to Trump, which came later, didn’t seem to building off of the Papadopoulos talks, based on what we know so far. It seems to have been a fresh, separate approach. Is that because the Papdopoulos talks went nowhere?

What did President Trump know, and when did he know it? So far, the investigation has publicly linked Trump to the Papadopoulos conversations only through a single meeting involving multiple people. At it, Papadopoulos told Trump he could set up a meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin. It remains unclear how Trump responded, if at all, and what else he knew about any of the links between his campaign and Russia.

What does Robert Mueller, the special counsel, already know that he hasn’t made public? The best guess seems to be: A lot.

Yesterday’s filings were full of new information, which suggests that Mueller is releasing information on his own timeline, rather than having it drip out through anonymous leaks — as The Times’s Nick Confessore noted. Daniel Alonso, a former federal prosecutor, tweeted: “Mueller/FBI/IRS are not leaking. Exactly as it should be.”

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A campaign of ‘confusion.’ “Trump’s media allies downplay, deflect and deny stories that are trouble for the White House,” CNN’s Brian Stelter explained. “Instead, they tell viewers and readers to hate Hillary Clinton.”

“This is a campaign of confusion. It is one of the most important things happening in politics today,” Stelter said. And it was in full swing yesterday, as Trump’s media allies tried to shift attention toward fake Clinton scandals.

Fox News hosts talked about uranium (a non-scandal) and cheeseburger emojis (seriously), although Shep Smith was a notable exception, covering the news in a reasonably accurate way.

At RedState, a writer argued: “Today’s indictments were a huge disappointment to those hoping for a deus ex Mueller event to remove Donald Trump from the White House.” The charges against Papadopoulos, “a bit player in this whole sorry melodrama,” were “preordained at the very moment he agreed to be interviewed by federal agents because if they want you, they got you.”

On the Christian Broadcasting Network, the televangelist Pat Robertson said that Trump “has every right to shut Mueller down … He can grant a blanket pardon for everybody involved in everything and say, ‘All right, I pardon them all. Case closed. It’s all over.’ And I think that is what he needs to do.” From   David Leonhardt Op-Ed Columnist

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Jared Kushner Doesn't Read

Jared Kushner Doesn't Read, Former Employee Says

A former employee of Jared Kushner has claimed the senior adviser doesn’t read and calls his father “daddy.” Kyle Pope, who worked as an editor for the New York Observer while Kushner was publisher, has described his time working for Kushner in a tell-all article for the Columbia Journalism Review, where he is currently editor-in-chief and…

Paul Manafort has been indicted and will turn himself in to the FBI later today.

CNN is reporting that Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort has been indicted and will turn himself in to the FBI later today.

It’s not clear what Manafort has been charged with but a federal judge is expected to unseal the indictment against him on Monday.

The New York Times is reporting that one of Manafort’s business partners Rick Gates has also been instructed to surrender to authorities.

When a prosecutor allows you to turn yourself in rather than a perp walk down Mainstreet it usually signals the perp is working with the prosecutor 

Update 8:00am

when Manafort arrived at the FBI field house for processing just after 8:00 a.m. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Manafort has been charged with tax fraud, among other things.  

Manafort was indicted under seal on Friday. The indictment is expected to be unsealed later Monday, CNN reported.

Watch the clip of Manafort arriving at the FBI field house on Monday morning, via CNN:

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White Nationalists Pose Threat to America, Say Troops

White nationalists like those that marched in Charlottesville in August pose a greater danger to America’s national security than conflicts in which the U.S. is fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, say U.S. troops.

Flake evokes McCarthy era, calls on public 'to stand up' to Trump in new op-ed

Retiring GOP Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) wrote in a new op-ed for the Washington Post on Tuesday that it's time for Republicans to stand up to President Trump, insisting that he will be "guided only by the dictates of conscience" for his remaining term in the Senate.

The Arizona Republican said he's reminded of Joseph Welch, former Chief Counsel for the Army, who famously stood up to Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisc.) during a congressional hearing. Welch's decision famously ended his career.

"As I contemplate the Trump presidency, I cannot help but think of Joseph Welch," Flake wrote. "The moral power of Welch’s words ended McCarthy’s rampage on American values, and effectively his career as well."

Flake said that thanks to President Trump, America has reached a similar point in its history.

"We face just such a time now. We have again forgotten who we are supposed to be," Flake wrote.

"There is a sickness in our system — and it is contagious."

Flake then went on to list several of Trump's most controversial moments, including his public feud with Gold Star father Khizr Khan and his rhetoric toward North Korea leader Kim Jong Un.

"How many more disgraceful public feuds with Gold Star families can we witness in silence before we ourselves are disgraced?" Flake wrote. "How many more childish insults do we need to see hurled at a hostile foreign power before we acknowledge the senseless danger of it?"

"How many more times will we see moral ambiguity in the face of shocking bigotry and shrug it off?" he added.

In his speech on the Senate floor announcing his decision not to seek reelection, Flake accused Trump of threatening "civility and stability." 

In the op-ed, Flake warned he will be governed only by his conscience for the remainder of his term.

"To that end, and to remove all considerations of what is normally considered to be safe politically, I have decided that my time in the Senate will end when my term ends in early January 2019," he wrote. "For the next 14 months, relieved of the strictures of politics, I will be guided only by the dictates of conscience."

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The fake news about fake news

Illustration: Rebecca Zisser / Axios

1. It's nearly impossible to sway an election with the amount of money we've so far uncovered from Russian spending.If there were no debates, hundreds of millions of other ad money not spent and no campaign visits, then perhaps the pool of money we've uncovered so far on Facebook, Twitter and Google could sway opinions. But what we've uncovered thus far is way too small to have done this alone. (Mark Penn has a column about this in the WSJ.) However, Russian fake news spread by bots through organic posts could've had a much larger impact, and we're still uncovering details about those efforts.
2. Fake news isn't illegal, but it can be weaponized: There's no law that says the spreading of false information is technically illegal. Internet libel laws are not very strong in the U.S. and the government only has jurisdiction over illegal content (like child pornography), which the FCC regulates, or clickbait scams, which the FTC regulates.
3. The tech platforms mostly define fake news as financial hoaxes: Most tech platforms take action on content that leads to false commercialization or "hoaxes," things like diet pill scams or clickbait. A lot of fake news sites that are removed on Facebook are hoaxes, as Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg emphasized in her interviewwith Axios two weeks ago. Ryan Goodman and Justin Hendrix have a good list that shows the scale of Facebook's organic fake news problem.
4. Fake news perpetrators have a lot of financial incentives to create fake news that has nothing to do with politics: Any content that caters to emotions is more likely to be engaged with, and thus is easier to monetize from an advertising perspective. BuzzFeed's recent piece about overseas content farms making money off fake content is a good example.
5. This isn't just a Russia problem: A lot of cheap information and fake news is created in other countries and right here in the United States. While it's troubling that a foreign entity could've utilized tech platforms to illegally buy ads or produce fake content to sway our elections, the prevalence of false or misleading information being peddled by U.S. citizens or citizens around the world is also a problem. For example, The Daily Beast reported last night that a company owned by a man on Staten Island provided internet infrastructure services for a Kremlin propaganda and fake news site.

The bottom line is it's only going to get worse: Earlier this year, Axios outlined a number of ways fake news creators are becoming more creative in the face of efforts to stamp them out, often pivoting from circulating their own misleading stories to developing sophisticated techniques that manipulate real news.

Source: Axios











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Damning List Of Trump Failures That Led To Niger Attack

Maddow laid out the facts:

So there’s a lot that has nothing to do with the Trump administration, that is hard to get your head around, around this deployment and this attack and this grievous, grievous loss. But then you add on top of that the particularities of this administration – which hasn’t bothered to appoint a director at the National Security Council with responsibility for Africa, which hasn’t bothered to appoint an Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, which just inexplicably last month angered and infuriated the neighboring nation of Chad by adding them to the president’s travel ban despite Chad being our most experienced, battle-hardened military ally in the region. … Of course, at the apex of responsibility here, we still have a commander-in-chief who will not discuss this incident, even today, will not talk about it.

As Maddow said on Monday, it’s unclear what exactly led to the deadly ambush in Niger, but we can say with increased certainty that the president’s own actions since taking office only increased the possibility of such an attack – whether it’s failing to fill key positions in charge of overseeing the region or implementing reckless policies just to please his uninformed base of supporters.

It certainly doesn’t help the administration’s cause that, weeks later, they still refuse to shed light on what went wrong and what led to the tragic death of four Green Berets – and, of course, how we can prevent future attacks from happening.

Instead, the only time the president chooses to talk about this is when he is smearing the grieving widow of one of the four soldiers lost in Niger, Sgt. La David Johnson.

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Trump Refuses to implement Russian Sanctions

Sen. John McCain and  Sen. Ben Cardin sent a letter to President Donald Trump late last month expressing concern that his administration had not yet implemented new sanctions against Russia that he signed into law on August 2.

"As critical deadlines are approaching, it is imperative that your Administration implement the law to its fullest extent to uphold and protect American interests," the senators wrote. "Given the ongoing threat that Russia poses to the US and our other allies, we are particularly concerned about the need for vigorous enforcement of the sanctions against Russia."

Trump, who has expressed lingering doubts that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, said shortly after signing the bill into law that "America will not tolerate interference in our democratic process," and he denounced "Russian subversion and destabilization."

But the president appears to have blown past the October 1 deadline McCain and Cardin gave the White House to clarify which entities the administration planned to sanction within Russia's defense and intelligence sectors. The senators made their letter public on Wednesday.

McCain is chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Cardin is the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The pair had requested a briefing from the State Department and Treasury on the administration's "overall sanctions implementation plan with respect to Russia," according to the letter, but never received it. 

The delay calls into question the Trump administration’s commitment to the sanctions bill which was signed into law more than two months ago, following months of public debate and negotiations in Congress," the senators said in a joint statement on Wednesday. "They’ve had plenty of time to get their act together."

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump has called the sanctions legislation, which also targets Iran and North Korea, "seriously flawed." He said shortly after signing the bill that it "improperly encroaches on executive power, disadvantages American companies, and hurts the interests of our European allies." He tweeted later that Congress was to blame for the US relationship with Russia being at an "all-time & very dangerous low."

A provision in the sanctions law requiring Trump to get congressional approval before altering or lifting sanctions on Russia was a major point of contention between the White House and Congress. But Trump was all but forced to sign the legislation, which had a veto-proof majority and would have passed regardless of his approval.

"As you know, the law provides for Congress to review any administration determination to remove sanctions designations on individuals or entities," McCain and Cardin wrote in their September 28 letter to Trump.

"Based on the overwhelming Congressional support for enacting this law, and that provision in particular, Congress will undoubtedly take that role seriously," they said.

source AP 

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New Details Emerge About Attack That Killed US Soldiers in Niger

New details are emerging about the attack that left four U.S. soldiers dead in Niger as U.S. congressional leaders are demanding answers from the Pentagon. The U.S. Green Berets (special forces), along with four Nigerian soldiers, were killed on October 4 in an ambush in Tongo-Tongo, a village near the border with Mali.

WHO director general rescinds Robert Mugabe's appointment as ‘ambassador' post

The new head of the World Health Organization has rescinded an invitation to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to serve as a goodwill ambassador for the global health agency, saying he has heard the criticism the appointment generated.

Ex-presidents get the band together

AP's LM Otero

"The five living former presidents ... appeared together for the first time since 2013 at a concert to raise money for victims of devastating hurricanes in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands," AP's Will Weissert reports:

• "Democrats Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and Republicans George H.W. and George W. Bush gathered in College Station, Texas, home of Texas A&M University, to try to unite the country after the storms."
• "Texas A&M is home to the presidential library of the elder Bush. At 93, he has a form of Parkinson's disease and appeared in a wheelchair at the event. His wife, Barbara, and George W. Bush's wife, Laura, were in the audience."
• "Lady Gaga made a surprise appearance."
• "The appeal backed by the ex-presidents has raised $31 million since it began on Sept. 7, said Jim McGrath, spokesman for George H.W. Bush."
• President Trump "offered a video greeting that avoided his past criticism of the former presidents and called them 'some of America's finest public servants.'"
• "Four of the five former presidents — Obama, George W. Bush, Carter and Clinton — made brief remarks that did not mention Trump. The elder Bush did not speak but smiled and waved to the crowd."
• Donate here.

Note* Donald Trump was Golfing as he does during every important moment in our country 

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Trump Lied About Contacting Gold Star Families

Documents reveal that Trump lied about contacting nearly every Gold Star family, and the White House was forced into scramble mode because they knew that Trump’s statement was not true.

Roll Call obtained the documents showing that the White House is scrambling to cover Trump’s lie, “The email exchange, which has not been previously reported, shows that senior White House aides were aware on the day the president made the statement that it was not accurate — but that they should try to make it accurate as soon as possible, given the gathering controversy. Not only had the president not contacted virtually all the families of military personnel killed this year, the White House did not even have an up-to-date list of those who had been killed. The exchange between the White House and the Defense secretary’s office occurred about 5 p.m. on Oct. 17. The White House asked the Pentagon for information about surviving family members of all servicemembers killed after Trump’s inauguration so that the president could be sure to contact all of them.”

The Trump administration cares so little about those who die serving their country that they didn’t have an accurate casualty list. The White House knew that Trump didn’t call all of the Gold Star families, but they never corrected him, or the public record. The Trump White House is astonishingly incompetent, and they cover their incompetence with arrogance and lies. Trump never contacted the Gold Star families because he didn’t even know who died.

You better believe that George W. Bush and Barack Obama knew and felt sadness and grief with a member of the US military lost their life. Donald Trump isn’t fulfilling the minimum duties of the presidency. If it wasn’t for his corruption, conflict, and frivolous waste of taxpayer funds, it would be the country had no president at all.

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5 things from this week that didn’t involve Trump’s condolence calls

Here are five stories from the Trump administration you may have missed this week.

 

1. D.C. Court weighs undocumented teen seeking an abortion must wait for a sponsor: Judges with the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the Department of Health and Human Services has untilOct. 31 to find a sponsor for an undocumented teenage girl in order for the abortion she is seeking to move forward, the Washington Post reported.
2. Women’s rights group sues DeVos over campus sexual assault changes: The women’s rights group Equal Means Equal is suing the Department of Education over its decision to rescind Obama-era rules about the way that campuses must handle sexual assault allegations.
3. Trump’s pick to head White House environment council once called belief in climate change “paganism”: Trump’s new selection to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality once called belief in climate change a “kind of paganism” for “secular elites,” according to CNN. Kathleen Hartnett White, the former head of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, was on a conservative online radio program in 2016 when she made the comments to the host.
4. Fired New York U.S. attorney says Trump is vetting his replacement:According to former United States Attorney Preet Bharara, Trump has beenpersonally interviewing candidates for the position of U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Washington, D.C. The decision to personally vet U.S. attorneys in those two jurisdictions creates a potential conflict of interest for a president who may one day be investigated by those same attorneys for his New York-based businesses.
5. EPA to restrict settlements with environmentalists: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has vowed to end the agency’s practice of settling lawsuits with environmental groups. “We will no longer go behind closed doors and use consent decrees and settlement agreements to resolve lawsuits filed against the agency by special interest groups,” Pruitt said while announcing the new policy.

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President Trump keeps flip-flopping on whether he supports a bipartisan bill to stabilize health care markets

President Trump keeps flip-flopping on whether he supports a bipartisan bill to stabilize health care markets. And it has created a weird dichotomy in the Senate: No one's taking his position on the bill very seriously at any given moment, even though it needs his support to pass and become law. Trump has shifted from sounding supportive of Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray's bill, to calling it a "bailout" for insurance companies, and back again, and back again. But Alexander and Murray — and a lot of their colleagues — are simply pushing ahead. And support for their bill seems to be growing, at least in the Senate, irrespective of what Trump says. What they're saying: Axios's Caitlin Owens caught up with a few Republican senators to ask them how much Trump's vacillations are affecting things: "Which one's he on now?" Sen. Johnny Isakson quipped as Caitlin began her question. Even with the president's shifting support of the bill, "I'm moving it ahead to try to get it in a position where if it's signed, it's a good law for Georgia," he said. When asked if Trump changing his mind so much made it hard to predict where he'll land on the bill, Sen. Jeff Flake said, "I think that's rather obvious." "They just need to pass it during the 5 minutes he is supportive," one GOP lobbyist said. Be smart: It's awfully early in the administration for Trump's own party to be so securely on its own, independent trajectory. But Trump's opinion will likely hold more sway in the House — meaning, if he wants to pick a side, he could probably exercise some real leverage over the final product.

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Russia-sponsored troll networks still operating, targeting America

WASHINGTON — The number of networks of Russian-sponsored trolls spreading propaganda to the United States and Europe may number in the hundreds, including the one team drawing wide attention for blitzing American social media outlets last year with divisive information in a bid to tip voter sympathies to Donald Trump, according to an Obama administration Pentagon official.

Were The Clintons Paid By Russia?

Fact-Check: Were The Clintons Paid By Russia?

President Donald Trump kicked off Thursday with a series of tweets that all but accused Hillary and Bill Clinton of corruption and accepting of millions of dollars from Russia. He also slammed his predecessor, Barack Obama, for knowing about a deal that gave a Russian state-run company control of 20 percent of the uranium in the United States, but not shutting it down. “.