Window On A Scandal: Why Tuesday Was A Large Day Bordering On The Huge

ALEX WONG / GETTY

If you are following the Russia scandal, which an increasing number of concerned Americans apparently are, Tuesday was a large day bordering on the huge.  In the span of a few short hours, we were provided a window into why the scandal is not going away, is increasingly engulfing the First Family, and further confirmation that the U.S. is basically defenseless as Russia prepares to interfere in the midterm elections as it did in 2016 in delivering the presidency to the Kremlin-loving Trump. 

And behind it all was the invisible but steady hand of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. 

White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, who in scandal terms is dead meat, albeit photogenic dead meat, kicked things off with eight hours of non-testimony before the beleaguered House Intelligence Committee by acknowledging that a president who routinely exaggerates and lies has occasionally required her to do the same -- specifically what she termed "white lies" -- but invoking executive privilege of a sort, lied yet again in saying she hadn't lied about anything having to do with election interference. 

On the other side of the Capitol, Admiral Michael Rogers, director of the NSA and head of the U.S. Cyber Command, told the long faces on the Senate Intelligence Committee that Trump has given him no new authority or capabilities to strike at Russian sabotage ahead of the midterms, and he has been left with no choice but to cobble together his own response to foreign cyberthreats as the president continues to insist that the whole thing is "fake news." 

But the big news was anything but fake. 

Trump son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who like Hicks also is dead meat, although certainly not photogenic, is viewed by officials in at least four countries -- China, Israel, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates -- as ripe for manipulation because they know they can take advantage of his unashamed commingling of business and official duties, his immense financial difficulties (he needs a billion bucks fast) and foreign policy naïveté, according to a blockbuster story in The Washington Post, which undoubtedly was based on leaks from long knives in the intelligence community for whom Trump and Kushner have been an unrelenting nightmare because of their Me First Always approach to national security. 

You didn't ask, but methinks that Trump, who last week washed his hands of Kushner's security clearance woes, would throw his son-in-law under the bus if he finds himself vulnerable, and that may include not pardoning him if he is indicted.  

As it is, the odds of Hicks and Kushner escaping Mueller's indictment machine -- which has bagged more than 100 criminal counts against 19 people and three Russian companies, netting five guilty pleas -- range from slim to nonexistent.

Meanwhile, Mueller's investigative juggernaut reportedly has been asking witnesses about Trump's seamy business activities in Russia prior to 2016 (you know, the ones he repeatedly insists did not exist), specifically the timing of his decision to seek the presidency, potentially compromising information the Russians may have on him, and why his efforts to brand a Trump Tower in Moscow kept falling through. 

As early as 1984, Trump began tapping into what would become an extensive network of contacts with corrupt businessmen, mobsters and money launderers from the former Soviet Union, Russia and their satellite states to make deals ranging from real-estate sales to beauty pageants sponsorships to bailing out his frequently ailing enterprises.   

It is tempting to say that Trump built that network himself as his business empire grew, but in reality members of the network more often used him as a convenient patsy.  This has been especially true of money launderers, and it is not an exaggeration to say that dirty Russian money saved Trump, if only barely.   

These developments come at a time when a new CNN poll finds that 61 percent of Americans say the Russia scandal is a serious matter that should be investigated.  Some 55 percent say Trump has tried to interfere with Mueller's investigation and 60 percent are not confident that Trump is taking steps to safeguard the nation against future sabotage.  

Expect those numbers of spike after the events of Tuesday -- a large day bordering on the huge. 

Click HERE for a comprehensive and searchable timeline of the Russia scandal. 

Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

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Ivanka Trump: Faux Feminist, President Whisperer & Accessorized Bling Peddler

BRYAN R. SMITH / AFP-GETTY

Ivanka Trump did not, of course, get to choose her father.  And as a rule, the children of presidents should be off limits from media scrutiny, or at least have a modicum of privacy away from the harsh glare of the 24/7 world in which celebrities live.  But Ivanka is not just any president's kid.  She is the First Daughter of a man whose vileness is without bounds, and her carefully choreographed effort to portray herself as a president whisper whose voice of reason is a foil to Daddy's ignorance is utterly phony. 

That falseness is yet again on offer in the aftermath of Ivanka dodging a question from NBC News' Peter Alexander while on a taxpayer-funded jaunt to South Korea for the Winter Olympics regarding her father's accusers -- you know, the 20 or so women who have said Trump made unwelcome sexual overtures and, in some cases, sexually assaulted them. 

Pro that she is, Ivanka paused a moment for effect just like her media trainer instructed her to do before answering that "I think it's a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter if she believes the accusers of her father when he's affirmatively stated there's no truth to it. . . . I don't think that's question you would ask many other daughters."  

Trying to shame the questioner might indeed be appropriate under other circumstances, but not when your father is president of the United States and a career creep, the allegations of sexual misconduct are credible, some of the women have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in hush money, you want the benefits of being a Trump without the accountability, and hold an official but unspecified position in his administration.  (As in what the hell was Ivanka doing in Pyeongchang telling the South Koreans that Daddy's administration was putting "maximum pressure" on North Korea's nuclear program?)  

By all accounts, Ivanka is an intelligent woman.  While she should be grateful for being a white woman of privilege who has been given opportunities very few women not born with platinum spoons in their mouths are afforded, she could have left the nest at any point -- whether after she made her first million or hundredth million -- if the values she says she holds so close to her ample bosom meant more to her than her Ivanka-branded push-up bras, tummy control pants and thousand-dollar accessorized bling patriotically made in overseas sweat shops.   

But those piously mouthed values do not mean more, not by a Chinese copyright let alone a New York minute.   

And while I usually am able to eke out at least a modicum of sympathy for even the most unsympathetic of public figures, I cut Ivanka no slack -- none whatsoever.  This is because she has decided that working in the Tweeter in Chief's dark shadow -- let alone down the hall from him in a sumptuous West Wing office refurbished (with metallic accents!) in contrast to the pedestrianly beige offices of other aides who are, of course, overwhelmingly men -- is more important than acting on, let alone living, the platitudes she mouths.   

There are worse cases of nepotism in politics.  After all, Caligula tried to make his horse a consul of Rome.  But Ivanka's role as one of Daddy's top aide is like a Twilight Zone episode on Take Your Daughter To Work Day.  

A KEY PART OF THE IVANKA MYTHOLOGY is that there is a sensitive soul lurking beneath her cooly composed surface.  I am sure that the fact that story is endlessly retold has nothing to do with the over-hyped praise for her book Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules For Success, a DIY guide for female empowerment that is a strawberry frappuccino version of Daddy's bestselling Art of the Deal. 

According to an oft-told version of the story, the future Drainer of Swamps was working really hard at Trump Tower for a forthcoming presidential debate in the fall of 2016 with She Who Should Be In Jail when an aide rushed into the room and declared the WaPo was about to publish an article saying that he had bragged to the host of Access Hollywood in 2005 about grabbing a woman's private parts.   

As Ivanka joined others waiting to see a video of the open-mic stunner, Daddy claimed the description sure didn't sound like him, but the video proved him wrong and then some:

I'm automatically attracted to beautiful women -- I just start kissing them, it's like a magnet.  Just kiss.  I don't even wait.  And when you're a star, they let you do it.  You can do anything.  Grab 'em by the pussy.

Daddy grudgingly agreed to say he was sorry if anyone was offended.  But Ivanka in all her grown-up-ness made the case for a "full-throated apology" (pun not intended). When Daddy remained unyielding, her eyes welled with tears, her face reddened and she hurried out of the room in apparent frustration.   

Perhaps the real reason Ivanka fled was so she could tend to her smeared makeup.  But what the media mavens who swallowed whole a story that was fed them by her publicists failed to note is that after hurrying out of the room, she came back. 

And has come back again and again to a father who never had time for she and her brothers when they were growing up, abused her mother mentally and physically, according to credible accounts, has bragged over the years about the size of his johnson and its many conquests, once remarked that he'd like to bed Ivanka if she wasn't his daughter, instructs the managers of his resorts to fire or at least hide "ugly" woman employees, and as president is doing more to disempower women than Phyllis Schlafly, who almost single-handedly stopped passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, did during her entire knuckle-dragging career. 

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO READ OF IVANKA'S GILDED PAST, let alone browse the anodyne wisdom of Women Who Work, and not conclude that she has stolen shamelessly from Hillary Clinton.  Daddy's vanquished opponent actually believes in empowerment for women, most of whom Ivanka has bupkis in common with because life for her is all about power and money. This  makes her a perfect mate for Jared Kushner as well as #MeToo movement poison. 

When Ivanka writes

Pursue your passion!  Make sure you, and not others, define success!  Architect a life you love in order to fully realize your multidimensional self!

in Women Who Work, I can't escape the vision of a harried working mother who rushes home to pop dinner into the microwave and wonders how her multidimensional self is going to survive with a baby on the way, no parental leave policy from an employer who pays her less than the men she supervises, and a president who would deny her maternity care and believes having a womb is a pre-existing condition. 

None of this would particularly matter if Ivanka was just another pretty face on the red carpet at the Met Gala or was just hanging with Daddy when they arrived back in Washington from yet another weekend enjoying chocolate cake with world leaders at Mar-a-Lago, not someone whose career started at the top of the career ladder because of her association with The Apprentice and has catapulted into a position of authority in the White House, including in effect being an ersatz first lady since Melania Trump dwells in her East Wing hidey-hole.

I do, however, foresee a career change in Ivanka's future. 

The felonious Mr. Kushner, whom CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin sardonically notes also has a White House job only because he is in the "lucky sperm club," may have run out of luck.   His family real estate business is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, making him even riper for manipulation and blackmail.   He is locked in a struggle with Chief of Staff John Kelly, who following the Rob Porter scandal, has insisted that the dozens of White House officials operating under interim security clearances like Kushner (and Ivanka) give up access to highly classified information.  It also is only a matter of time before Special Counsel Robert Mueller pounces on his sorry ass.     

Kelly probably was going to lose the Kushner security clearance battle, but then it was reported that the Justice Department has informed the White House that unspecified "significant information" requiring additional investigation would further delay Kushner's security clearance process, and he subsequently was stripped of his high-level security clearance, limiting his ability to view highly classified information. 

Kushner is now likely to be eased out and the royal scammers can head back to New York where unctuous reporters are less likely to ask Ivanka "inappropriate" questions. 

While none of this may matter to the women who buy her stuff at Macy's, I suspect it does to many more women who actually have her number because they star in their own reality show.  (Hint: It's called life.)   

It is men Ivanka is best at fooling.

Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

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Perseverance Furthers: Maximum Bob Has The Goods. Give Him Time To Deliver

ELIZABETH BROCKWAY / DAILY BEAST

As diverting as it has been to watch Donald Trump further degrade the Oval Office as he keeps attaining new lows, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly self destruct and the splenetic machinations of the Republican Congress to bankrupt the republic, what we could use is a new around of Russia scandal indictments to . . . uh, clear the air. 

Well, we've gotten them in spades with indictments over the last 10 days involving 16 people, 13 of them Russian, three Russian companies and new charges against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, who like two other Trump campaign officials has agreed to help Special Counsel Robert Mueller.  In all, Mueller has issued more than 100 criminal counts against 19 people and those three companies, and netted five guilty pleas.   

So I guess what we really could use is a gut check. 

This because while Mueller has more than made the case that Russia worked to cybersabotage Hillary Clinton in a (successful) effort to tip the election to Trump, he has not proven collusion (or conspiracy in criminal law-speak).  While I have believed for some time that there was collusion and that the special prosecutor will make that case when he and not we are ready, I'm following the inestimable Josh Marshall's lead in positing the following:

Even the most articulate skeptics of there having been no intentional collusion fall into two traps.   

First, they buy into the frayed Trump campaign talking point that it was too inept to conspire with the Russians. Second, these skeptics are ignorant of how successful intelligence operations work, which is to say with deliberation and patience. 

This helps explain the multiple approaches the Russians made through cut-outs like the Maltese professor who met with George Papadopoulos or the Russian lawyer who arranged the Trump Tower meeting with Donald Jr., both of whom had Kremlin ties.  They also were on the lookout for desperate and easy prey like Manafort.  

And so collusive relationship was cemented over the course of a long campaign.  It worked. 

The proof of there having been collusion is that from June 2016 onward, Trump and the campaign acted like they knew Russia had their backs and was working to get Trump elected, which explains why the contacts with cut-outs and even more direct meetings continued through to Election Day and into the presidential transition.  

Collusion bubbles just below the surface in Michael Flynn's December 1 plea agreement with Mueller. 

It states that "the false statements and omissions" of Trump's short-lived national security adviser "impeded and otherwise had a material impact on the FBI's ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Campaign and Russia's effort to interfere with the 2016 presidential election." 

A big link hoves into view in the seminal June 9, 2016 sitdown at Trump Tower. 

With one of the three members of the campaign brain trust who attended the meeting already indicted and the other two likely to be, it has taken on an outsized importance to Mueller's investigation because it would appear to be prima facie proof of collusion.  

Prior to the meeting, there already had been several attempts by Russians to find entry points into the campaign through cut-outs, an effort that accelerated after Trump clinched the Republican nomination on May 26, 2016 amidst a flurry of media reports that his campaign had no agenda, was disorganized and several key positions had been left unfilled. 

On June 2 in a speech in San Diego five days before the California primary, Trump hammered Clinton over emails deleted from her personal server while she was secretary of state.  

"By the way, Hillary Clinton is missing 30,000 emails," he said.  "They've been deleted.  30,000.  30,000."   

THE NEW YORK TIMES

When eldest son Donald Trump Jr. scrolled through his email in-box on June 3, there was a message from Rob Goldstone, a publicist whose musician clients included Emin Agaralov, the son of a Russian oligarch and former Trump Sr. business partner who was close to Vladimir Putin.  Goldstone did not equivocate in the June 3 message:

The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning, and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.  This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump -- helped along by Aras and Emin. 

Donald Jr. responded not by refusing the offer or alerting the FBI, but by replying with the now infamous words, "If it's what you say I love it."  

It is highly probable that Trump Sr. was informed of the enticing news and approved of the meeting.   But had his son not already briefed him, Trump almost certainly would have known after he reportedly spoke by phone with Emin Agalarov on June 6.  In any event, in June 7  tweet he promised "big news" on Clinton's "crimes" in a forthcoming "major speech."  

Trump amplified on the promise that night after winning the California and New Jersey primaries.  

"I'm going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week," he declared in a victory speech in Briarcliff Manor, New York.  "And we're going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.  I think you're going to find it very informative and very, very interesting.  I wonder if the press will want to attend.  Who knows?" 

Meanwhile, Donald Jr. had invited two other key campaign players to the meeting -- son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort. 

The meeting commenced at 4 p.m. and lasted 20 to 30 minutes.  Trump himself had attended a Trump Victory Fund fundraising lunch at the nearby Four Seasons before returning to his Trump Tower penthouse, where he remained for the rest of the afternoon. 

The three Russians on the other side of the table were lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, Ike Kaveladze, an official in Agalarov's real estate company, and a classic cut-out -- lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (photo below) -- who has continually lied about who she is, who she was representing, and the real reason for her being at the meeting.    

When news of the meeting was first reported by The New York Times on July 8, 2017, Veselnitskaya described herself as a private attorney who wanted Trump to roll back the Magnitsky Act if he became president.    

The act, passed by Congress in 2012, was named for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer and auditor who uncovered a $230 million web of corruption and fraud involving law enforcement, tax officials and the Russian mafia.  He died in a Moscow prison in 2009 where he had been held without trial after allegedly being beaten and tortured by government officials.  

The Magnitsky Act, which was aggressively supported by Clinton, prohibited the Russian officials believed to be responsible for Magnitsky's death from entering the U.S. or using its banking system, and preceded by 15 months the first of three rounds of Obama administration sanctions on Russia in response to its takeover of Crimea.   The Magnitsky Act so outraged Putin that he retaliated by banning the adoption of Russian children by Americans.  

Contacted by The Times, Donald Jr. also stated that the meeting was about adoptions, but that explanation lasted barely 24 hours.  

YURY MARTYANOV / AFP-GETTY IMAGES

On July 9, The Times reported that Donald Jr. had agreed to the meeting on the premise that damaging information on Clinton would be provided.  Donald Jr. confirmed that, but asserted the information was not useful and disingenuously claimed that it was merely a pretext to discuss adoption.  

On July 10, The Times published the pre-meeting email exchange between Goldstone and Donald Jr.    

On July 11, Donald Jr. posted on Twitter screenshots of the emails between he and Goldstone with an accompanying statement saying he believed the meeting would be about "Political Opposition Research."  "To put this in context," he stated, "this occurred before the current Russian fever was in vogue."  

On July 12, President Trump, returning from a G20 meeting in Germany aboard Air Force One, told reporters, "Don is -- as many of you know Don -- he's a good boy.  He's a good kid.  And he had a meeting, nothing happened at the meeting . . . [which] I only heard about two or three days ago" but nothing came of it.  

On July 31, The Washington Post blew that lie to smithereens in reporting Trump had overruled his aides to personally direct that misleading statements be issued regarding the meeting.   

Trump never gave his "major speech" on Clinton, and it is easy to see why.  The "dirt" Veselnitskaya brought to the meeting was small beer, a convoluted tale in which Clinton played a peripheral role, at best.  

Meanwhile, it turned out Veselnitskaya was not exactly a babe in the woods.  She had an intelligence background, was hard-wired to Putin and had discussed the "dirt" with one of Russia's most powerful officials, prosecutor general Yuri Y. Chaika.  

A memo Veselnitskaya brought to the meeting was nearly identical to one Chaika's office had given a U.S. congressman in April 2016, The Times reported in late October.  It alleged that Ziff Brothers Investments, an American firm, had illegally purchased shares in a Russian company and evaded tens of millions of dollars of Russian taxes, two of the brothers were major donors to Democratic candidates, including Clinton, and by implication the donations were tainted by "stolen" money.  

Veselnitskaya embellished on the story in an interview with a Russian media outlet in late October, undercutting both Trumps in saying that Trump Jr. had asked her for financial documents showing that money from the alleged Ziff brothers' evasion of taxes had gone to Clinton's campaign but she did not have any.  

The Trump campaign officials at the meeting felt let down and even baffled by Veselnitskaya's presentation about the Democratic donors.  

"Some DNC [Democratic National Committee] donors may have done something in Russia and they didn't pay taxes," Donald Jr. was to say later.  "I was like, 'What does this have to do with anything?' "  

That, of course, misses the point.  

The Trumps, anxious if not desperate to climb into bed with the Russians, were hoodwinked, but only after Donald Jr, took the bait and shared it with his father, who with his trademark impetuosity and confidence that his attacks on Clinton seemed to be working at a time when little else in his campaign was, went public and promised major revelations.  

Manafort has been indicted by Mueller's grand jury for money laundering and tax and foreign lobbying violations, although not (yet) for campaign-related crimes.  But the news on Friday that Rick Gates, Manafort's business associate and Trump deputy campaign manager, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying and will cooperate with the special counsel puts further pressure on Manafort to also flip because his longtime right-hand man will now be the government's star witness against him.

Manafort was campaign manager when the Republican National Convention platform on Ukraine was magically watered down in a nod to Putin.  He approached Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch and Putin pal with an offer to brief him on the campaign and, of course, was on board at the Trump Tower meeting.  He was shown the door in August 2016 when his Russia ties became too obvious to conceal. 

Meanwhile, Donald Jr. and Kushner also are in the special prosecutor's crosshairs as he works patiently -- and steadily -- up the Trumpian food chain.  

So was the Trump Tower sitdown an attempt by Russian intelligence to gauge how willing the campaign was to accept assistance from Moscow?  You bet it was even if the president's son ended up not loving what Veselnitskaya had to say. 

And if Manafort does agree to cooperate, can he land for Mueller the biggest fish of all?   

Click HERE for a comprehensive and searchable timeline of the Russia scandal. 

Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

MORE HERE.

When A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words. Or Five: 'I Don't Give A Shit.'

HERE'S WHY. (AND HOW ABOUT THOSE SMALL HANDS?)

Kushner May Be A Member Of The Lucky Sperm Club, But His Gig Is Just About Up

© GREG NASH

(PORTIONS OF THIS POST WERE PUBLISHED IN OCTOBER 2017) 

There was a time in Jared Kushner's life when he could have turned away from the Dark Side.   

That time might have been in 2005 when following an investigation by then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, Kushner's billionaire father Charles pleaded guilty to 18 counts of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering, a charge arising from retaliating against his sister's husband, who was cooperating with Christie, by hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, arranging to surreptitiously videotape their encounter and sending the tape to his sister.   

That time might have been in 2006 when Kushner, who had flown to Alabama on many weekends for over a year to visit his father in a federal penitentiary, looked in the mirror at his tousle-haired self and realized he needed find a better way forward, perhaps by summoning the lessons he was taught at the Orthodox yeshiva he had attended in North Jersey.  

That time might have been in 2007 when Kushner met and fell in love with an attractive young woman of means who shared his interest in real estate, later describing their first date as "the best deal we ever made!"  

But Kushner not only did not turn away from the Dark Side, he embraced it with a vengeance as he became his father's biggest defender in loudly proclaiming that Christie had unfairly prosecuted him despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.   

Eleven years on, Kushner has parlayed his now well-honed skills as a manipulator, blame shifter, liar and poster boy for nepotism for whom everything is about money, as well as marriage to that attractive young woman of means, into the ultimate deal -- an intimate working relationship with Donald Trump.   

Kushner, in his position as head of the digital team of his father in-law's presidential campaign, may have been responsible for making sure that Russian hackers knew which voters to target with a sophisticated cyber onslaught of fake news in the Kremlin's successful effort to sabotage Hillary Clinton and hand the election to Daddy-O.  He also popped up with an uncanny regularity at many of the meetings with the very Russians being investigated by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, including one where he proposed that a secret back channel be established for the then president-elect to communicate privately with the Kremlin.  

Kushner, in his position as a White House senior advisor with a mandate to make China and Mideast policy despite his utter lack of experience, has joined the emoluments gravy train and advised his father-in-law on a range of important decisions, including appointing Michael Flynn despite his treasonous conduct and firing James Comey on specious grounds that serendipitously, if unintentionally, led to Mueller's appointment.  

But now Kushner, whom CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin sardonically notes has a White House job only because he is in the "lucky sperm club," may have run out of luck.   

His family real estate business is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy under a crushing debt load, making him even riper for manipulation and blackmail.   He is locked in a struggle with Chief of Staff John Kelly, who following the Rob Porter scandal, has insisted that the dozens of White House officials operating under interim security clearances like Kushner give up access to highly classified information, and it probably is only a matter of time before Special Counsel Robert Mueller pounces on his sorry ass.   

Kushner's security clearance has been pending for 13 months because he has not been straightforward about his contacts with businesses and foreign governments prior to Trump taking office.  In fact, he has revised his security application multiple times as he keeps adding literally scores of contacts he misremembered, to use one of Dubya's favorite words.  Nevertheless, he has still had access to closely guard information, including state secrets and the president's daily intelligence briefing.     

Kelly, who already is on tenterhooks after being outted as a lying thug not unlike his boss after the Porter wife-beating debacle and other embarrassments, was likely to lose this particular battle, especially after Kushner and wife Ivanka (referred to as "Javanka" by Steve Bannon) reportedly stopped by Mar-a-Lago last weekend en route to Washington from a Caribbean getaway to badmouth the former Marine general as Trump considered whether to give Kelly the heave-ho while raging over Mueller's indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian companies. 

But then The Washington Post rolled a grenade into Kelly's bivouac on Friday night, reporting that the Justice Department has informed the White House that unspecified "significant information" requiring additional investigation would further delay Kushner's security clearance process.

Kushner is now likely to be eased out, but if the prodigal son-in-law does prevail, consider this: A man in the crosshairs of the Russia scandal investigation -- which at its heart is a counterintelligence investigation -- is allowed continuing access to the nation's most sensitive intelligence.    

In any event, Kushner is not likely to win a showdown with Mueller, and the recurring bouts of amnesia surrounding his security clearance, including his extensive contacts with Russians during the campaign and presidential transition, are of keen interest to the special counsel as he digs ever deeper into Russian interference in the election.     

Kushner didn't even have the opportunity to wash that Caribbean sand from between his toesies when CNN reported that Mueller's interest in him has expanded to include his efforts to secure a half-billion dollar bailout from China and Qatar for a white elephant office building at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York that he bought for an inflated $1.8 billion at the height of the housing bubble but is now severely underwater.     

Not coincidentally, Kushner leaned on Trump to support an Arab boycott of Qatar, which had turned down he and his father for the bailout, while the family business may be forced into bankruptcy next year if the building can't be refinanced.  He has maintained a relationship with Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai that borders on the secretive because the two have met frequently without the government's top China specialists being present.  The Chinese, in fact, call Kushner "their lucky charm," according to one counterintelligence official, because he is so compliant.    

There are three prongs to Mueller's investigation -- Russia's efforts to interfere in the election, obstruction of justice and lying to thwart the investigation, and collateral financial crimes.  Kushner is so mobbed up that he is, to my knowledge the only actor deeply involved in all three.  
Except for Daddy-O.

Click HERE for a comprehensive and searchable timeline of the Russia scandal. 

  

Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

MORE HERE.

The Perverse Serendipity Of The Republican Congressional Russian Blame Game

PINTEREST

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of 13 Russians and three Russian companies for their grassroots election skullduggery is a rare opportunity -- not that many people will avail themselves of it -- to reflect on the manifold failures to safeguard the 2016 presidential election.  Much of the responsibility for that goes to the Obama administration and news media, but most of the blame rests squarely with the congressional Republican leadership, the very cowards who keep enabling Vladimir Putin's favorite dummy -- Donald Trump -- by blaming everyone but the president in weaponizing the scandal for rank partisan gain. 

There is a perverse serendipity to the leadership's blame game since it was Mitch McConnell, chief among the many hyper-partisan cohorts, who repeatedly rebuffed top Obama officials who wanted to show a united public front against Russia's cybersabotage of the election once that was established beyond a doubt over the summer of 2016.  (At that point, the possibility of Trump campaign collusion was a sideshow.) 

History will judge the McConnells harshly, perhaps not unlike Hitler appeasers in the late 1930s, and while their obdurate behavior verges on the traitorous now, it clearly was then. 

In April 2016, U.S. intelligence intercepted the first communications among Russians who discussed aggressively trying to influence the election by sabotaging Hillary Clinton. By early June, the CIA had confirmed the veracity of the intercepts, and on July 26 the White House was informed that intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails.   

In late August, CIA Director John Brennan began briefing the so-called Gang of Eight, the highest ranking four Republicans and four Democrats on congressional intelligence committees on the unprecedented Russian incursion.   

Senate Majority Leader McConnell was briefed on August 25, but took no action even after two Democrats, Diane Feinstein and Adam Schiff, released a statement on September 22 saying that Russia was "making a serious and concerted effort" to influence the election. 

In late September, the Obama administration asked McConnell to warn state election officials of possible attempts to penetrate their computer systems by Russian hackers.  (It turned out voter rolls in 21 states were breeched.)  McConnell, questioning the veracity of the intelligence, refused to consider any White House effort to challenge Russia publicly as anything but an act of partisan politics.

McConnell repeated his skepticism publicly on October 7 after the White House publicly accused Russia of engaging in a massive hacking campaign.

By then, with the election a month away, it was too late for any kind of bipartisan front against the greatest threat to American democracy since the Soviet Union stole atomic bomb secrets over 70 years ago.

Way too late.  Or as then-Vice President Biden put it, "the die had been cast . . . this was all about the political play." 

Fast forward to Tuesday when Trump, still in full foam over the Mueller indictment, declared in a tweet that Obama didn't go far enough to resist Russian election interference because he thought Clinton would win and didn't want to "rock the boat."  

As he sometimes can be, Trump was right -- to a point. 

He was correct that the indictment should result in a reexamination of why Obama and his aides failed to do enough, but that would inevitably lead back to why McConnell and Trump's congressional sycophancy answered the White House's call to arms by sitting on their hands because they feared it would make Trump's seemingly long-shot chances even longer.

Trump's tweet, like his obscene explosion over the weekend blaming the Parkland, Florida school massacre on the FBI because "they are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion," was greeted by Republicans with silence leavened with some applause. 

And so the Republicans remain united -- against pushing back against Russia when it might have mattered in the run-up to the election and for pushing back against everyone but Russia and Putin's dummy in the wake of Mueller's indictment.

Oh, and one more thing.   

If Russian meddling occurs in the run-ups to the November election and the mid-term 2018 election, which from what we now know is likely, will McConnell come out of his cave and sound the warning? 

Next question?

Click HERE for a comprehensive timeline of the Russia scandal.

Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

Codor is an internationally known cartoonist and illustrator. Enjoy!

The Mueller Indictment Is Only The Tip Of The Iceberg: Beware What Lies Beneath

It was a classic Trump Moment.  The beleaguered president, relieved that the indictment by Robert Mueller of 13 Russians and three Russian companies for election interference unsealed on Friday had not included any connections to his campaign, crowed on Twitter that he had again been exonerated.  But Trump's elation soon turned to fury as he realized that few people were buying that argument because they understood that the special counsel still had he and his campaign in his sights, and there ensued a profanity-laced monsoon of new tweets in which he, among other things, falsely and obscenely blamed the Parkland, Florida school massacre on the FBI because "they are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion." 

The awful implication of Trump's non sequitur is that if the feds lay off investigating him, then more children won't die, which is yet another new low for the bottom-feeding cretin who happens to be president of the United States. 

But the outburst also was remarkable for what Trump did not say: That the by now copiously-documented efforts of a foreign power to undermine American democracy would not be tolerated.  But then never is heard a discouraging word about Vlad the Impaler from the White House and, among other indications that Trump refuses to get serious about Russia, his administration has yet to act on additional sanctions authorized by Congress in July.   

Indeed, the indictments are only the tip of the scandal iceberg and that lying beneath the use of social media through pseudonymous Russian conspirators working at the grassroots level to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Trump laid out in extraordinary detail in the new indictment are other shoes that have not yet dropped concerning: 

A massive Russian email hacking and electronic records theft operation. 

Multiple efforts by the Kremlin to infiltrate the Trump campaign. 

Repeated efforts by Trump to thwart the investigation by obstructing justice.

Predicting where Mueller may go next is a fool's errand.  Focused as the news media was on other tentacles of Russia's interference and Trump's blanket description of the scandal as a "hoax," Mueller's Friday indictment came as a surprise.  

It should not have because it was a timely and brilliant rebuttal to the arguments of Trump and his congressional sycophancy, including Devin Nunes, Charles Grassley and Lindsey Graham, that the special counsel's investigation is politically motivated. 

As Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein took pains to stress when he met with reporters shortly after the indictment was made public, while "there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity . . . [the] special counsel's investigation is ongoing." 

Indeed, within hours it was revealed that Mueller had flipped deputy Trump campaign manager Rick Gates, who had pleaded not guilty to money laundering, tax and foreign lobbying violations in October but now will plead guilty to fraud-related charges and testify against business associate and one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort. 

That means that three of the four Americans indicted by Mueller are now cooperating, and it can be assumed that the level of detail Mueller and his investigators have of the grassroots effort in battleground states is matched by what they know of interactions between Russians and the campaign. 

While the Russians hid behind fake names in carrying out their grassroots work, they were considerably more transparent -- and in fact often explicit -- in direct encounters with the Trump campaign, including individuals like Manafort, who attended the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting, along with Trump's eldest son Donald Jr. and son-out-law Jared Kushner, where they were promised "dirt" on Clinton from the Kremlin. 

In other words, the Friday indictment only scratched the surface of a widespread conspiracy that certainly involved campaign officials if not Trump itself. 

Note also that while there is no crime called collusion, working with others toward an unlawful end is known as conspiracy in criminal law.  Conspiracies to defraud the government under 18 U.S.C. § 371 include those that impair, obstruct or impede lawful government functions such as carrying out a federal election.  That is precisely the statute Mueller used in charging the 13 Russians and three Russian companies and would apply to American co-conspirators. 

Mueller is indeed far from finishing up.  In fact, he may only be getting started.

Click HERE for a comprehensive and searchable timeline of the Russia scandal.