Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

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Time For Paul Manafort To Trade In His Designer Threads For A Prison Jumpsuit

CNN

(UPDATE: Manafort's bail was revoked on June 15 

and he was sent to jail to await trial.) 

Of all the bad actors who attached themselves to Donald Trump in the course of the Russia scandal, former campaign manager Paul Manafort may be the baddest, and so it would be fitting -- and overdue, as well -- if he ends up trading one of his Italian designer business suits for an orange prison jumpsuit after his bail hearing on Friday.  Besides which, those two home confinement monitoring ankle bracelets he has been wearing kind of ruin his man of the world look. 

In addition to Manafort's all-around badness, which includes a long career making and squandering several fortunes while lobbying on behalf of a rogue's gallery of corrupt foreign leaders, including Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Mobutu Sese Seiko in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angolan guerrilla heavyweight Jonas Savimbi and more recently pro-Kremlin autocrats, he has believed himself to be above the law.   

Just like Trump. 

It was not particularly surprising that Manafort's lawyers mounted a series of largely frivolous challenges to Robert Mueller's authority after the special counsel charged he and longtime assistant Rick Gates with a slew of money laundering and tax and foreign lobbying violations last October 30 and expanded on those charges on February 22 based on evidence that not only contradicted White House statements that Manafort was an inconsequential player who did all that bad stuff prior to joining the campaign in early 2016, but was continuing doing bad stuff right up to and long past his indictment.   

It also was not particularly surprising that Manafort would refuse to plead guilty and agree to cooperate with Mueller as did Gates and three other non-Russian Mueller perps -- Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan --  despite the probability he will spend the rest of his life in prison because of the multitude and seriousness of the charges.

But it was jaw dropping even by Trumpian standards when Manafort violated not once but twice the generous home release conditions approved by federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson and secured by Manafort putting up a $10 million bond based on his properties in New York, Virginia and Florida.

Last December 4, Manafort was back in Judge Jackson's courtroom where he was scolded for ghost-writing an English-language op-ed piece about his work for deposed Ukrainian president and Vladimir Putin puppet Viktor Yanukovych with his Kiev office manager Konstantin Kilimnik, who has problematic ties with Russian intelligence and was a likely conduit between the Trump campaign and Russians who were merrily undermining American democracy by interfering in the 2016 election.   

This was a violation of a court order banning Manafort from making statements to the press, prompting Jackson to note that "This is a criminal trial, not a public relations campaign."  

Then last Monday Mueller notified the court he had evidence that Manafort and Kilimnik had been tampering with witnesses after journalists Alan Friedman and Eckart Sager revealed that in late February they had been contacted by their one-time pals Manafort and Kilimnik as part of a scheme to try to shape and coordinate the accounts of former business partners given to prosecutors that were, in part, the basis for the indictments.  In other words, to lie. 

These orchestrated lies were related to the work of former Manafort-Kilimnik partners to tamp down international criticism of Yanukovych for corruption, persecuting rivals and pivoting toward Russia and Putin.   

Last Friday, Manafort was slapped with two additional charges -- obstructing justice and attempting to obstruct justice -- and Kilimnik became the 20th notch in the special prosecutor's belt when he was indicted on similar charges. 

Kilimnik, as a Russian national, is beyond Mueller's reach as are the 13 Russians and three Russian firms previously indicted for illegally using social media to sow political discord in the election through devastatingly effective actions that supported Trump's candidacy and disparaged Hillary Clinton. 

But it is pretty much the consensus view of former white-collar criminal prosecutors that Manafort has done his dash and his days wearing two home confinement monitoring ankle bracelets (one for indictments returned by a Virginia grand jury and another for those returned by a Washington grand jury because he has refused to allow the cases to be consolidated) may end on Friday when Judge Berman rules at a bail hearing as to whether Manafort should be incarcerated for his serial indolence. 

That incarceration presumably would continue through the first of Manafort's two scheduled trials, which begins on July 10 and should be an appropriate backdrop to the final weeks of the midterm elections lest anyone need reminding what Trump has wrought on the republic with the help of thugs like Manafort and the practiced silence of Vichy Republicans. 

Manafort's penultimate act prior to joining the Trump campaign was to engineer a social media-based disinformation campaign for Yanukovych that anticipated what Russia and its army of trolls did in the 2016 U.S. election.   

It was Manafort who lobbied Trump to join his campaign and work for free despite being deeply in debt.  There was a spike in campaign contacts with Moscow almost immediately after he joined the campaign and a further uptick when he was named campaign manager.  That is a pretty strong circumstantial case for collusion, but the distance between circumstantial and provable can be substantial even if seeming coincidences in the Russia scandal are anything but.  

Court filings by Mueller indicate that he has tacked away from investigating Manafort's financial crimes to his campaign activities. 

These filings hint at Manafort and Gates being cutouts to convey information between the campaign and Putin's cyberwarriors, with Kilimnik being the conduit.   Mueller also obtained a new search warrant for phone records and bank account information pertaining to Manafort after Gates agreed to cooperate.  The phone records may be what are called "historical cell site information" in investigative parlance, meaning that Mueller is tracking the timing of Manafort's previous movements.  

It has been fascinating -- in the grotesque sort of way that a slow-motion train wreck is fascinating -- to watch the Russia scandal unfold.  

From the first intimations in late 2016 that the dark hand of Putin was at work to elect Trump to our dawning realization that the Trump campaign colluded in that effort to our astonishment at how enormous their involvement was, there has been one jaw-dropping revelation after another.  And so the notion that the Kremlin may have sent Manafort into a campaign he was soon to manage to make sure that it helped Putin play his evil game would at one time have seemed preposterous, but now is increasingly possible. 

Does that explain Manafort's refusal to cooperate?  We may know more on Friday, as well as whether trading charcoal grays for orange will have a clarifying effect on the baddest of the bad.  

Click HERE for a comprehensive timeline of the Russia scandal

and related developments. 

      

Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

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Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

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King Donald Is Not Above The Law. It's Time For Mueller To Issue That Subpoena

EVAN VUCCI / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The big takeaway from the "bombshell" confidential memorandum that President Trump's criminal lawyers sent to Special Counsel Robert Mueller is that it is a dud.   Trump's lawyers all but conceded that he obstructed justice.  But because he is above the law he can do anything he wants, according to their unitary executive pretzel logic, so it is impossible for the president to illegally obstruct the Russia investigation because he has the constitutional power to terminate it.   

So there. 

The January 29 memo, leaked to The New York Times, exploded legal heads from coast to coast, and the clean-up was barely underway when Rudy Giuliani pressed the view on two Sunday television news shows that the president probably has the constitutional authority to pardon even himself.  But has no intention to do so because the political backlash might lead to impeachment.  Trump then waddled in on Monday, repeating Giuliani's argument in a tweet and adding he would have no need to pardon himself because he hasn't done anything wrong. 

So there there. 

It is important to pause here and note that the memo, which is without convincing legal citations, was drafted by John Dowd and Jay Sekulow back in the days when Trump had a semblance of a real legal team and there was a shadow of a chance that he could escape Mueller's ever tightening grip. 

But as the instances in which Trump clearly sought to obstruct the Russia investigation have continued to pile up, that shadow has disappeared.  Oh, and self-victimization is not a legal strategy.   

This is not to say that the meticulous Mueller will conclude he has a legally airtight obstruction case and will recommend impeachment.  We don't know.  But Giuliani, who has backed into the role of lead presidential lawyer with the departure of Dowd and apparent demotion of Sekulow, is a beyond-his-prime crank whose strategy appears to be outshouting hosts on television news shows.  That will not save Trump from the special counsel any more than will faux outrages like Spygate, although it will further ingratiate himself to House Vichy Republicans and his reliably clueless base. 

Nor will the argument advanced in the January memo that since the president cannot be indicted while in office (which based on previous legal rulings is true enough), he also cannot be subpoenaed or hauled before a grand jury.  And it should be mentioned yet again that for a man who has done nothing wrong, Trump, his lawyers and congressional helpmates are spending an awful lot of time mewling over the whole stinking mess. 

There are three reasons the absolutist view that Trump has the rights and powers of a king and not a democratically elected president will go down in flames -- Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Michael Flynn. 

Using Trumpian logic, Nixon would not have been guilty of obstruction for ordering the FBI to drop its investigation of the Watergate burglars or paying them off to keep them quiet.  The Supreme Court disagreed.  Unanimously.    

Using Trumpian logic, Clinton would have prevailed when he argued he was too busy running the country to answer a subpoena in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. The Supreme Court disagreed.  Unanimously.

Using Trumpian logic, Trump could not have impeded the FBI's nascent Russia investigation because he did not know that Flynn was under investigation when he asked James Comey to let his pal go.  The Supreme Court will disagree.

Giuliani further claimed on Sunday that Trump could have assassinated Comey to end the Russia investigation and not face prosecution while in office, which recalls Trump's own infamous refrain during the 2016 campaign that "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters." 

What is so frightening is less than they said these things than that they believe them. 

But we are talking the Constitution and not gunplay.  It's time for Maximum Bob to issue that subpoena. 

Click HERE for a comprehensive timeline of the Russia scandal

and related developments.

Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

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Why A Convincing Case Can Be Made That Trump Is A Playboy Model's Baby Daddy

WOMENS WEAR DAILY / REX / SHUTTERSTOCK

What do a fat-cat Republican donor, a Playboy model and the 45th president of the United States have in common?  Maybe not much if you choose to ignore the fascinating ties that bind them.  But when you make those connections, refuse to succumb to what may seem to be mere coincidences and stir in a healthy dose of speculation, you're looking at what may be the Mother of All Sex Scandals. 

The Republican donor is billionaire venture capitalist and defense security contractor Elliott Broidy, who is a former Republican National Committee co-chair.  The model is Shera Béchard, Playboy's Miss November 2010 centerfold.  The other guy is, of course, Donald Trump. 

According to the "authorized" story as it has dribbled out in reports first in the Wall Street Journal and then The New York Times, CNN and The Associated Press, Béchard was Broidy's mistress until he got her pregnant and she had an abortion. 

Béchard then hired Keith Davidson, who happened to be the lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom said they had flings with Trump.   

Broidy just happened to go to Michael Cohen, Trump's longtime personal attorney and fixer, and together Davidson and Cohen hammered out a nondisclosure agreement in late 2017 under which Béchard (identified as Peggy Peterson in the NDA) would not reveal the affair or that she had become impregnated in return for $1.6 million over two years from Broidy (identified as David Dennison in the NDA).   

That is the "authorized" story, such as it is.   

But what if this story is yet another whopping TrumpWorld lie and the impregnator was Trump himself and not Broidy?   That alternative explanation, laid out in convincing detail by law professor Paul Campos in New York magazine, holds water because it fits so well with what we know about the various players. 

STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE KNOW SO WELL about one of the various players is that Broidy has a long history of bribery, and at its heart the $1.6 million Béchard hush agreement arguably is a cover-up concealing a bribe. 

Besides which, Broidy has had multiple reasons for helping out his old friend in the White House. 

He has repeatedly negotiated outcomes with the White House and Defense and State departments favorable to his foreign clients, principally Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and his security firm, Circinus LLC, since Trump became president. Circinus already has netted at least $800 million in contracts since Trump took office. 

Several of Broidy's mega-buck deals have hinged on whether he could convince Trump, son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and other Trump administration bigs to take various actions, most notably including breaking off diplomatic relations with longtime U.S. ally Qatar, whose arch enemies are (you guessed it) Saudi Arabia and the UAE.    

It seems more than a coincidence that when Cohen's lawyer (even lawyers have lawyers in this twisted saga) first waved the attorney-client hankie in court after FBI agents raided Cohen's office, home and hotel suite on April 7 looking for evidence that Trump's longtime personal lawyer and fixer had committed bank and wire fraud and campaign finance violations in trying to suppress damaging stories about Trump just before the election, the lawyer said Cohen had too many clients to name. 

When a federal judge ordered him to name them, there turned out to be but three: Trump, Fox News scold Sean Hannity . . . and Broidy. 

Broidy always has fought hammer and tong any and all allegations and aspersions cast against him.  But curiously, he immediately "confessed" to knocking up a Playboy model (Béchard's name had not yet been made public) in a ho-hum statement in which he perfunctorily apologized to his wife and said of the model, "She alone decided that she did not want to continue with the pregnancy, and I offered to help her financially during this difficult period."

Timing being everything -- and noting that an extramarital affair involving an off-the-radar Republican fat cat would not be that big a deal while an affair with Trump would be yuge -- Broidy's mea culpa was at the height of his campaign to demonize Qatar.  Hanging in the balance were a $1 billion deal with Saudi Arabia and a $600 million deal with the UAE. 

The first installment of Broidy $1.6 million payment to Béchard was made on December 1, 2017 — one day before an Oval Office meeting with Trump where he passed on flattering words from Saudi Arabia and the UAE about a Middle East peace plan being pushed by Kushner and one day after he wrote a $189,000 check to the RNC.   

That was far more than he had ever given the party and may be the result of a big payoff to him from George Nader, a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia and the UAE who was dying to have his picture taken with Trump to prove his Washington lobbying clout.   

THE WHITE HOUSE

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE KNOW SO WELL about one of the various players is that Trump has a well-documented history of having unprotected sex with women in the adult-entertainment industry.  That, say Daniels and McDougal, was the case with them.  And Béchard, of course, became pregnant.    

How's this for the real story? 

The Béchard nondisclosure agreement was not just uncannily similar to the $130,000 hush agreement that Cohen had gotten Daniels to sign two weeks before the 2016 election in return for keeping quiet about a year-long affair with Trump that commenced in 2006 when The Big White Hat (who had not been seen in public since May 10 until she appeared at an event on Monday) was caring for four-month-old baby Barron.       

Daniels and Trump were identified by the same Peggy Patterson and David Dennison monikers as in the Béchard-Broidy hush agreement, and the $1.6 million was funneled through Essential Consultants LLC, a Delaware-based shell company Cohen had first set up to facilitate Daniels-Trump payments.  

Trump also has a well-documented history of being obsessed with Playboy models like McDougal and Béchard, had a long-standing close friendship with Hugh Hefner, and often visited the Playboy mansion, to which he brought contestants from his television show, The Apprentice. 

Béchard actually was Hefner's girlfriend at one time, while Trump's and Hefner's friendship suddenly and mysteriously came to an end sometime in 2016. 

Broidy's reputation as a briber also is well known, and in one instance he paid over $90,000 to the girlfriend of a high-ranking official in the office of the New York State comptroller. 

The payments were made from April 2004 through October 2005 and were used to cover the girlfriend's living expenses, rent and hospital bills.  Broidy also agreed to pay $5,500 a month to a relative of the girlfriend about the same time for a total of $44,000, and both sets of payments were concealed through a sham loan agreement.  

The upshot of that bribe was a 2009 felony guilty plea.  The charges eventually were knocked down to a misdemeanor because of Broidy’s supposed cooperation with prosecutors.  

Meanwhile, the Journal reported earlier this year that the influence-peddling Broidy was going to make tens of millions of dollars by getting the Justice Department to drop an investigation into a multibillion-dollar bribery scandal involving 1MDB, the Malaysian state investment fund.  A possibly hacked email -- and the FBI reportedly is investigating a slew of hacks targeting Broidy -- revealed a plan to pay Broidy and his wife $75 million if they could successfully lobby the Justice to drop the probe.

PINTEREST

ONE OF THE THINGS THAT WE  KNOW SO WELL about one of the players is that from appearances his . . . er, lifestyle could not be more different than Broidy's. 

Broidy's home life seems to have been a model of stability.  He is 60, has been married for over 25 years to a woman of about his own age, and there has been no indication he consorted with a Playboy model or any other woman before the Béchard hush agreement story broke.  Trump, on the other hand, is a thrice-married serial adulterer with an established record of sleeping with Playboy models and porn stars.  And how about this: Béchard and Daniels look so much alike that they could be sisters, exemplars of Playboy's wholesome but sexy girl-next-door masturbatory fantasy.

How did Broidy know to go to Cohen?  And why was the $1.6 million payment over 10 times more than Daniels got? 

Broidy knew "to go to" Cohen because Cohen had hot wired the deal in the first place. The $1.6 million was a reflection of the fact Trump had knocked up Béchard at the height of the presidential campaign or possibly shortly thereafter, whereas Trump's affairs with Daniels and McDougal were 12 years ago when he was a mere celebrity pussy grabber.   

So how will we ever know what was really going on?   

Campos believes that when FBI agents raided Cohen's office on April 7, they found documentation of what was actually a fabricated affair concocted by Cohen and Davidson to create a justification for funneling Broidy's money to Béchard while creating a paper record designed to protect Trump from further exposure.  

Michael Avenatti hints that may be the case.  

Avenatti, whom Daniels hired after dismissing Davidson, has given Cohen and Trump fits in his media-savvy push back against them.  

"I think at some point we are going to find out, if in fact the client in connection with the [$1.6 million] settlement was, in fact, Mr. Broidy," Avenatti has said.  "I'm going to leave it at that." 

When contacted by Campos, he added, "There are considerable and serious questions as to this alleged settlement.  Many things about it simply do not appear to add up or pass the smell test." 

Finally, there is a most interesting retweet from Béchard.   

While Béchard was paid big bucks to remain silent and shut down her Twitter account, she reactivated it late last month to retweet a tweet from New Yorker reporter Ronan Farrow, who had just broken the story of a Treasury Department whistleblower who leaked Cohen's financial records to Avenatti.  This was because, in Farrow's words, "records of bigger, potentially more sensitive, swaths of suspicious transactions appeared to be missing from a government database." 

Perhaps records that would tell the true story of who Shera Béchard's baby daddy is?    

Richard Codor's Carton du Jour (Vintage Edition)

CRAIN'S N.Y. BUSINESS (FEBRUARY 1990)

MORE HERE.

How Much Trouble Is That Little Misha Cohen In? Let Us Count The Several Ways.

© RICHARD CODOR

Pick one: Will the end of the Donald Trump presidency have more to do with a special counsel who has dug deeply into the campaign of then-candidate Trump's collusion with Kremlin lowlifes, a rampantly corrupt fixer with a reputation for making Trump's problems go away, or a porn star whom Trump bedded with a streak so stubborn and a lawyer so clever that one particular problem not only didn't go away, it now poses a potentially greater threat to his presidency than do Robert Mueller or Michael "Misha" Cohen.

l myself don't care, just so Trump goes away. 

Trump hired Cohen as his attorney in 2006 because he viewed him as a new conduit for money -- much of it laundered -- from Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union that had kept Trump's impressively mismanaged business empire from going under in the late 1990s and in subsequent years.  This was because of Cohen's extensive "cash-intensive" business contacts, including taxi medallion businesses in New York, Chicago and elsewhere that have piqued investigators' interest, hence Dick Codor's great cartoon atop this post.  And because Cohen could help make Trump's "problems" evaporate, whether through legal sleight of hand, lawsuits or outright intimidation.  

Cohen and Donald Jr. and Ivanka, Trump's two eldest children, basically ran the Trump Organization while Daddy-O starred in a reality TV show and chased porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, among many other women with impressive bosoms and rounded heels.  It was Cohen and the kids who did most of the deal making with an astonishing array of bad people from whom other businesses fled in horror. (Okay, perhaps feigned horror.)  

While all that rot has indeed been hiding in plain view for years, it did not escape the notice of the elite Public Corruption Unit of the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, which has an impressive record of bringing down politicians and businesspeople, Democrats and Republicans alike. 

Lawyers for Cohen and Trump were back in court on Wednesday in yet another hearing following April 9 raids by FBI agents on Cohen's Manhattan office, apartment and hotel room based in part on a referral from Special Prosecutor Mueller.  They seized a passel of cellphones, a computer hard drive or three, the contents of a shredding machine and 10 boxes of records related to the Public Corruption Unit's investigation into possible bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations as part of its examination of Cohen's efforts to suppress damaging stories about Trump just before the 2016 election. 

Cohen attended the hour-long hearing but did not speak.  

Because Cohen was the key intermediary between the Trump family and its sleazy global partners and presumably kept records of it all, these records should provide prosecutors with an invaluable window into Trump's relationship with Cohen, including his role in helping to arrange payments during the 2016 campaign for women who had sex with Trump and him lying about it.    

Anyhow, lawyers for Cohen and Trump threw a fit after the raids, claiming that many of the documents and communications were off-limits to prosecutors because they might be protected by attorney-client privilege.  District Judge Kimba Wood then appointed retired judge Barbara Jones, a former organized-crime prosecutor, as a special master to arbitrate what would be released in an effort to balance the interests of all parties. 

In their initial request for a special master, Cohen's attorneys said thousands of the seized documents might be covered by attorney-client privilege, but they have flagged only 252 items as privileged.  (Recall also that Cohen's lawyers said he had too many clients to name, but when forced by Wood to name them, only came up with Trump; Elliott Broidy, who is a Trump mega-fundraiser and was a Republican National Committee finance chair, and Sean Hannity, the Fox News anchor and Trump sycophant and apologist.)   

Long story short, Jones on Wednesday approved prosecutors getting a million (okay, 1,025,063) files from three of Cohen's cellphones seized last month. Prosecutors already been given access to nearly 300,000 (okay, 292,006) pieces of potential evidence seized in the raids.  

Lawyers for Cohen and Trump told Wood it would take them until mid-July to finish their review of the materials because they were only a third of the way through them. Wood said that was too long and gave them until June 15.  She said that if they fail to meet that deadline, she will allow prosecutors to take control of the review. 

When it rains in MishaLand, it pours, and Cohen is up to his Bulgari necktie in storm clouds. 

For openers, Evgeny Freidman, known as the New York Taxi King and a longtime business associate of Cohen's in the once-lucrative medallion trade, has agreed to cooperate with federal and New York state prosecutors in a massive tax fraud case.  He will avoid doing any jail time by testifying against Cohen.   

Then there is Daniels, who fired lawyer Keith Davidson and replaced him with Hollywood go-getter Michael Avenatti, and has sued to be released from a $130,000 nondisclosure agreement engineered by Cohen two weeks before the election requiring her to remain silent about a year-long affair with Trump that began in 2006 when The Big White Hat (who has not been seen in public since May 10) was caring for four-month-old baby Barron.    

Trump and Cohen have filed a $20 million countersuit against Daniels, while she has amended her own suit to include an allegation that Cohen defamed her by insinuating that she lied about her affair with Trump. 

Avenatti also attended the Wednesday hearing and did speak. 

He had said he wanted a role in the case so he could ensure that any confidential records or recordings related to Daniels weren't improperly disclosed, but withdrew the request after Wood told him in a sarcasm-drenched rejoinder that while he was free to speak in her courtroom, he would have to end his "publicity tour on TV and elsewhere" if he entered the case, a reference to his frequent appearances on CNN and elsewhere.  

Cohen had paid Daniels the $130,000 through a Delaware shell company called Essential Consultants LLC, which he used to arrange another hush agreement for Broidy (yes, that Broidy) who knocked up Playboy bunny Shera Bechard.  

Cohen and Davidson apparently were operating in concert in the Bechard affair, according to the Wall Street Journal.  When Bechard found out she was pregnant by Broidy, she contacted Davidson, who then brought in Cohen to contact Broidy.  Cohen was Broidy's lawyer in negotiations that resulted in a $1.6 million settlement and confidentiality agreement, for which the Journal says Davidson bagged a $640,000 fee and Cohen a paltry $250,000. 

It gets better.  A lot better. 

Financial documents obtained by Avenatti from a Treasury Department whistleblower show that Cohen's Essential Consultants has all the earmarks of being a classic slush fund. 

It was the recipient of a cool $500,000 from Viktor Vekselberg, a billionaire industrialist who is one of the richest men in Russia, a member of Vladimir Putin's inner circle and guest of honor at Trump's inauguration, as well as several Fortune 500 companies looking for access to Trump by making off-the-books payments to Cohen.  

Beyond Cohen, Vekselberg and Broidy are persons of considerable interest to Mueller.  

Vekselberg was stopped by FBI agents working for the special counsel when his private jet landed at a New York area airport in early March and his electronic devices were searched.  He is among the seven Russian billionaires and 17 top government officials sanctioned by the Trump administration on April 6 in the most aggressive effort to punish Putin's inner circle for interference in the 2016 election and other Russian aggressions. 

Broidy, meanwhile, secretively lobbyied the Trump administration to isolate Qatar and undermine the Pentagon's longstanding relationship with the Gulf country, a longtime U.S. ally in that troubled region.  Broidy's security firm, Circinus LLC, has secured at least $800 million in foreign defense contracts since Trump took office and Broidy began advocating for outcomes favorable to the countries Circinus lists as clients, which does not include Qatar.   

If this seems like one big happy family, you'd be right except for the happy part. 

Click HERE for a comprehensive timeline of the Russia scandal

and related developments. 

  

Reflections On Memorial Day 2018

It is Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. 

The holiday originally was called Decoration Day and was a day of remembrance for Union soldiers who died in the American Civil War. After World War I, it was expanded to include soldiers who died in any war.  It more recently was expanded to allow retailers to shamelessly peddle their stuff at those ubiquitous if dying monuments to rampant capitalism -- the shopping mall.  

As always, I've hung an American flag outside of Kiko's House this Memorial Day, a 48-star banner that long waved outside the rural Minnesota farmhouse of my love's Norwegian immigrant forebears.  

As always, I will keep the weekend simple and go for a hike and perhaps a swim in our spring-fed mountain pool (brr!). 

As always, I will remember that freedom of speech is not protected by journalists like myself but by the men and women who have given their lives to defend American values. 

As always, I will feel a sadness over loved ones and friends who will not be with us  because of their sacrifices.  

But this Memorial Day is different.  So have too many holidays of remembrance as I have slouched into my dotage.   Besides being sad, I also am angry -- a slow burn, I suppose -- over the mess that we've made of our once great country.    

As my cousin County Bumpkin was fond of saying, dissent and bickering are the soundtrack of a democracy.  But this should be a golden age for America and it is anything but.  I cannot recall a time in my life when so few have so much and so many are struggling.   

When an unrelenting fear rules our lives and the president's narcissistic craziness indelibly colors our country and culture. 

When America's heart and soul -- its middle class -- is so beleaguered. 

When we are so incapable of a national consensus on anything beyond the belief that government and many of our institutions have failed us. That things only will get worse before they get better, if they ever get better.    

So what’s to be done about this dismal state of affairs?  

Nothing.  

Such pessimism is uncharacteristic of me, let alone Americans in general, and I feel a twinge of shame that I am unable to be more upbeat this Memorial Day weekend.  But my glass is well below half empty, especially when I reflect on the sacrifices our men and woman at arms are asked to make.

Sacrifices for what? An ill-focused War on Terror?  The pathetic war in Afghanistan?  Preparing for the next war with an evil nut who has access to the nuclear codes as commander in chief? 

You tell me.  

-- Love and Peace, SHAUN