Will The Republic Of Absolution Without Confession Permit The Don To Go Free?

VANITY FAIR

Richard Nixon's Constitution-undermining crime spree is rewarded with a presidential pardon and he is later rehabilitated as a sage.  General William Westmoreland is rewarded for his ruinously deadly Vietnam War policy by being named Army chief of staff.  Elliott Abrams is a leading architect of the law-breaking Iran Contra affair whose bloody hands are all over the massacre of nearly 1,000 El Salvadoran women and children and is rewarded with jobs in the Dubya and Trump administrations.  Only a few low-level subordinates are punished for the extralegal Bush Torture Regime while the real perps are rewarded with cushy retirements after being excused by Barack Obama. 

And so it goes in the Republic of Absolution Without Confession. 

This shambolic history keeps repeating itself, and you'd better believe that it will play an outsized role in determining the fate of Donald Trump.   In fact, because Trump is president (pardon the term) of the Republic of Absolution Without Confession, he may never pay for his methodical destruction of the things that once made America great. This despite the best intentions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and subpoena-empowered House Democrats. 

(The only exception to that Absolution Without Confession history actually strengthens the argument: Vice President Spiro Agnew, an out-and-out crook, copped a plea to a single felony charge of tax evasion in 1973 and resigned not because he was repentant but because he needed to be gotten out of the way because of the growing likelihood of Nixon's impeachment.  Removing one crook only to replace him with another might have created big problems.)   

Absolution Without Confession in America -- as opposed to the canonical law version of the Roman Catholic Church -- and the possibility Trump will benefit from this recurring lapse of judgment has been much on my mind because removing Trump is not just about lawbreaking.  He is a mentally unstable incompetent with only a fleeting acquaintance with reality and a pathological liar toxically unsuited to be in the same room with the nuclear football.

The recent and long overdue dressing-down of an unrepentant Abrams before a House committee by a freshman congresswoman wearing a hajib and armed with a conscience really brought the Absolution Without Confession conundrum into focus for me.  And Charles Pierce, as well, whose Esquire essay is a must-read if you love America but are bewildered, as you should be, about how the worst official misdeeds go unpunished.   

Writes Pierce:

In so many of these cases, the process bespeaks a fundamental distrust among our political elites about the sturdiness of our democratic institutions, a distrust that weakens them in turn and renders them less sturdy. 

The ostriches amongst that political elite, as well as too damned many constitutional and presidential scholars, fear that impeaching Trump would be too traumatic for a nation that has survived a lot of very heavy shit, including two world wars.  

In a democracy, what doesn't kill you will make you stronger, and Pierce is atypically sanguine in believing Trump will get his just desserts:

This may be the administration that breaks the pattern for the first time since Nixon skulked off to San Clemente. Donald Trump's corruption is so sweeping that the sound of the confessions may well be deafening.  I don't think anyone worries about whether or not this presidency fails, since it began to fail just about from the moment the president*'s hand came off the Bible. . . . 

The crimes and misdemeanors are so grossly obvious that the elite terror of holding their friends accountable will not be a factor this time around.

Still, and as Pierce notes, Trump is the beneficiary of 40 years of constitutional negligence and cowardice just as were Nixon, Westmoreland, Abrams and the five lapel-pin patriots in the image atop this post -- Douglas Feith, David Addington, Alberto Gonzalez, George Bush and Dick Cheney, important players all in the embrace of torture and willful subjugation of the rule of law. 

As in, maybe Trump will resign if we promise not to prosecute him, which is a contemporary version of Agnew Lite since the disgraced veep never saw the inside of a prison cell.  

This is a test.  It is a test of our durability and mettle as a people.  The Blue Wave victories of November, Maximum Bob and Adam Schiff notwithstanding, our institutions of checks and balances have thus far failed us, and all the while the Lindsey Grahams and Roger Stones gin up outrageous claims of Trump being the target of a deep-state coup d'état as The Don packs federal appeals courts with right-wing zealots who will separate us from even more of the things that once made America great. 

Yes, this is a test. 

Big Russia Scandal Riddles: Felix's Loyalties, Oleg's Jet & Oh So Much More

THE NEW YORK TIMES

“Why would there be?” ~ Vice President Pence’s reply when asked whether 

there had been any contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign.

At this point, we probably know more about the Russia scandal than we don't.  That goes for Mike Pence, too.   

We know that at least 17 Donald Trump campaign officials and advisers had more than 100 contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks.   

We also know that six of those officials and advisers have been charged criminally by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. 

We further know that prosecutors have obtained three sentencings, one conviction at trial, seven guilty pleas and charges for a total of 199 criminal counts. 

We suspect that despite fevered speculation to the contrary, Mueller is not wrapping up his 22-month probe and may be tying various investigative threads together to cement a conspiracy case.  

But the scandal is riddled with riddles, as would any criminal enterprise so vast and with so many actors.  Among the weightier riddles are these:

* The name of Felix Sater (photo, above) constantly pops up as Trump's former business partner, convicted stock swindler and sometime FBI informant with Russian mob ties who tried to get a Trump Tower Moscow deal and helped broker a Ukrainian "peace plan" in return for Trump lifting sanctions. 

Whose side is Sater on?  Will it turn out that for all of his bad behavior, he has been a secret ally of Mueller's?  

* Speaking of Putin, what does the Russian leader have on Trump?  Beyond the salacious if unproven Moscow Pee Tape allegation, there are suggestions that he has the president under his thumb because of a range of possibilities, including illegal financial dealings to hard evidence of his collusion. 

Is there an alternative explanation as to why Trump seems to be in Putin's thrall?  

* Putin pal Oleg Deripaksa's private jet arrived at Newark's Liberty International Airport shortly after midnight on August 3, 2016, hours after Paul Manafort and Rick Gates turned over sensitive campaign polling data to suspected Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik. 

Did Kilimnik travel on the oligarch's jet?  What did happen -- and does it matter? 

* Hillary Clinton lost the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by a combined 77,744 votes.  She would have won the Electoral College if relatively few Trump voters in these states who possibly were pinpoint targeted by Russian bots, had voted for her instead. 

From whom did the Russians glean the targeting information?  Was Cambridge Analytica involved?   

* There is a mysterious person mentioned in a document filed by prosecutors identified only as having a seven-character name who had dealings with former Trump campaign manager Manafort in regards to an aspect of the investigation that remains secret. 

Who is this person, and did Manafort lie about him in breeching his plea agreement to protect this key player? 

* Alfa Bank and Deutsche Bank may play roles in the scandal, Alfa because of suspicious interactions between its computer servers and a Trump server during the campaign and money-laundering Deutsche because it kept loaning tons of money to Trump when no other bank would give him a cent.   

Then there is the foreign state-owned mystery bank jousting with Mueller.  Is any of this bank stuff a big deal? 

* Mueller also is investigating the extent to which several Middle Eastern countries -- Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel -- sought to influence the Trump campaign and presidential transition to position themselves for insider access to the new administration. 

Will Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has commingled business dealings with those countries and his official duties, be indicted?

* Why was Mariia Butina being held in solitary confinement in the Alexandria (Va.) Detention Center and at one point was moved to a smaller and more meagerly equipped solitary cell?  Did she and boyfriend Paul Erickson direct money to the Trump campaign through the National Rifle Association? 

Might Butina and Erickson really be chumps and not a Russian spy and lover tandem as prosecutes allege in an arguably weak case?   

Despite all the convictions, indictments and charges, Mueller has yet to provide proof of a conspiracy or cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russians, let alone a hands-on role for the Obesity in Chief, but that could change when these riddles become clear.

Click HERE for a comprehensive timeline of the Russia scandal

and related developments. 

A Somali-American From Minnesota Takes On A Neocon From Nightmares Past

CNN

I have found the intensively covered natterings of the most vocal of freshman congressfolk, who happen to be Democratic women who rode the Blue Wave to upset victories, to be alternately boring and unhelpful.  Everywhere you turn, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is imparting pearls of her 29-year-old wisdom while Ilhan Omar busily digs holes with ill-advised remarks on Israel, immigration and other hot topics.  But as a weary if longtime observer of too many unnecessary American wars, Omar has earned my sincere thanks for calling out Elliott Abrams, a foreign-policy thug who still trods the halls of the Capitol thinking up new ways to kill young American men and women. 

There will be a special place in Hell for Abrams.  It's called the Neocon Corner, and other members past and mostly future include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Pearle, Paul Wolfowitz and Irving Kristol.  

In principle, there was never anything particularly wrong with the political movement known as neoconservatism, which after all was a reaction to failed policies of the 1960s and 1970s.  But neocons are especially dangerous as war hawks go because they labor under the illusion that they are God's chosen leaders in carrying out the doctrine of  American Exceptionalism.  You know, that God (there's that dude again!) created the U.S. to not only be the bestest nation, but to scold other nations about how to mind their affairs and meddle in those affairs, whether starting wars and imposing American-style democracy at point of gun or fomenting regime-toppling dissent with a large helping of human rights abuses. 

The neocon masterpiece was -- or should I say is -- the Iraq War (perhaps 400,000 dead, including nearly 4,000 Americans) because years since this carnage was officially over it continues to roil the Middle East, which plays into the hands of Iran, with whom neocons have been trying to start a war since forever.   

Then there was a nasty piece of work called Iran-Contra. 

This particular neocon excursion occurred during the second Reagan administration when Abrams and other senior White House officials put one over on the Gipper, who was in the process of losing what little mind he had, to secretly facilitate the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo because of that American Embassy hostage messiness, with the intention of using the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras in Nicaragua, to whom Congress had wisely prohibited arms sales.   

In the end, Abrams and 10 other administration officials were convicted for their law-breaking binge.  All were pardoned by President H.W. Bush. 

But you can't keep a good neocon down, and Abrams went on to hold a foreign policy position in the Dubya administration and now is Special Representative for Venezuela in the Trump administration, which is a great fit since Trump and Abrams never met a brutal foreign leader and human rights abuser they didn't like. 

That tailor-made role -- and fears that the White House is trying to foment a war in Venezuela over control of the nation's presidency -- is what brought Abrams before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a tigress by the name of Ilhan Omar, who confronted Abrams over Iran-Contra and his unwavering lifelong support of thugs abroad. 

In one of several tense exchanges during the Wednesday hearing, Omar recalled long-ago testimony from Abrams about a massacre in which units of El Salvador's U.S. trained and equipped military killed nearly 1,000 civilians in 1981 in the village of El Mozote under the approving eye of Reagan pal General Efraín Ríos Montt, who soon became president.   

Abrams, in effect, had called the massacre fake news and the Reagan administration's record in El Salvador a "fabulous achievement," never mind that Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity in 2013. 

OMAR: "Do you think that massacre was a 'fabulous achievement' that happened under our watch?" 

ABRAMS: "That is a ridiculous question, and I will not respond to it.  I am not going to respond to that kind of personal attack, which is not a question."

And so it went as the hajib-wearing, far-left 37-year-old Somali-American politician from Minnesota took on the scowl-wearing, far-right 71-year-old neocon warmonger from Nightmares Past.

OMAR: "Would you support an armed faction within Venezuela that engages in war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide if you believe they serve the U.S. interests as you did in Guatemala, El Salvador or Nicaragua?" 

ABRAMS: "I am not going to respond to that question." 

The emergence of a viable left wing in Democratic Party politics is being viewed with concern -- and sometimes panic -- by people who ought to know better if they have any knowledge of the sordid history of American foreign policy since World War II, most of it anyway.   

At home, the economy needs a massive rebalancing in favor of Main Street.  The same old pols aren't going to get that done, but maybe Omar, AOC and their hair-on-fire colleagues can get that ball rolling with radical but necessary income tax reforms.  Despite Republican hysterics to the contrary, we're not talking socialism here, only a long-overdue brake on runaway capitalism. 

I do wish Omar could have been a little more polite in taking on Abrams.  There's nothing wrong with good manners.  But he needed to be called out.  

Predictably, Omar got mostly negative reviews for what many old hands saw as impertinence.  Some called for her removal from the committee.  Yes, the same old hands who conveniently forget American misdeeds from not so long ago but roll over when the next imperialist folly comes along.          

Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

MORE HERE.

(UPDATED) Perfidious Mitch McConnell Puts Another Notch In His Traitor's Belt

JOSHUA ROBERTS / REUTERS

Mitch McConnell has emerged as a villain of immense consequence -- even Benedict Arnold comparisons fall short -- because of his refusal to sound the alarm when the extent of Russian election interference became known in 2016, to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and to be a check on a rogue president after eight years of playing obstructionist meanball with a good president.   And now he has outdone himself by being a rubber stamp for the Obesity in Chief's fake national emergency. 

Or as one pundit put it, the Senate majority leader has learned a new trick: Role over and play dead in the face of Trump's most insidious assault yet on the constitutional order. 

In one respect, McConnell is even worse than the president, who is an ignoramus when it comes to American history and a fatally clueless narcissist, while McConnell is deeply versed on that history, smart and clever, albeit like a fox.  He has calculated that his 38 percent approval rating, which is as lousy as Trump's, may threaten his chances of remaining the longest-serving Republican leader in Senate history and being reelected to a seventh term in 2020.  He is unpopular back home in Kentucky and ranks among the least popular senator in the country with his own constituents.  

McConnell has no personal investment in Trump and never has.  He probably hates Trump's guts, while his survival as a GOP majordomo is contingent on staying on the president's good side until his own power is seriously in jeopardy and he can pirouette away and break ranks.  Or Trump double crosses him.   

In any event, Trump needs McConnell more than McConnell needs Trump.  And screw the republic and the horse George Washington rode in on. 

While McConnell certainly is not compromised to the extent the Don is, he has had much to do with making over the GOP into a pro-Russian party.  He got a cool $2.5 million in the 2015-16 election season from Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard "Len" Blavatnik, an oligarch who is the business partner of Oleg Deripaska.   (Deripaska did about $60 million worth of business with Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and controls three companies that the Trump administration has thoughtfully relieved of Obama administration-imposed sanctions.) 

Charles Pierce calls McConnell "the thief of the nation's soul," and while America's multiple political crises have a distinctively bipartisan stench that Democrats helped create, it is not possible to top his perfidy. 

As its first act in the new Congress, the new Democratic majority passed House Resolution 1, a massive anti-corruption measure aimed at restoring the credibility of American elections, safeguarding the right to vote that has come under steady Republican attack and outlawing partisan gerrymandering.  It also called for a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United, that most pernicious of Roberts Court decisions. 

McConnell's reaction to this forthright, clear-headed and long overdue clarion call for reform? 

"It's a power grab," opined the man for whom exercising power has long been an end unto itself. "Apparently the Democrats define 'democracy' as giving Washington a clearer view of whom to intimidate and leaving citizens more vulnerable to public harassment over private views. . . . The bill goes so far as to suggest that the Constitution needs an amendment to override First Amendment protections." 

I would argue that McConnell, by virtue of flagrant violation of an oath of office he has taken six times and perpetual exploitation of his leadership role for power and profit, has done more to undermine democratic norms than even Trump.  

But nothing tops his rejoinder to Obama in September 2016 when he and Paul Ryan, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were invited to the Oval Office where Obama pleaded with them to forge a bipartisan alliance to fight back against Russian election interference and work with state and local election officials to thwart Election Day threats.  McConnell refused, telling the president that he was trying to politicize the matter and, if he went public with the interference, he would use it as a political hammer on Hillary Clinton, whose campaign at that very moment was being sabotaged by his Kremlin pals. 

The thief of the nation's soul, indeed.

(UPDATED) In Which We Go Deep Into The Twisted Saga Of Lyin' Paul Manafort

ALEXANDRIA (VA.) SHERIFFS OFFICE

We have established beyond a reasonable doubt -- and then some -- that former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort will lie about anything at any time if he believes that is advantageous.  But what happens if his continued lying on Trump's behalf after signing a plea agreement in a bid to get a reduced prison sentence doesn't result in a presidential pardon?  Does he then walk back all of his lies to try to avoid spending the rest of his life in the big house? 

The answer to that question, just one of many surrounding this twisted saga, has some immediacy.  

In the words of one pundit, Manafort seemed to be Robert Mueller's "golden goose" because he was considered the key to unlocking the collusion puzzle for the special prosecutor as Trump's primary conduit to Russia.  That took a giant leap when Manafort, on the eve of his second trial, agreed to cooperate with Mueller. 

Manafort, the high-flying lobbyist in an ostrich skin jacket who fell to earth, has been confined to a lockup in Northern Virginia since June following witness tampering allegations, and his sentencing on one of two sets of charges against him is scheduled for March 13.  He faces a long prison sentence, or maybe a really long prison sentence now that it has been found he breached that plea agreement and Trump does not pardon him. 

Before we attempt to answer the pardon question, let's first unpack the case. 

Trump was one of the first clients retained by Manafort, Roger Stone and Charlie Black when they founded a lobbying business in 1980.  Spy magazine later was to name the firm the "sleaziest of all in the Beltway." 

In 2005, Manafort began a long business relationship with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian with extensive Russian intelligence connections who has been indicted by Mueller.   

By 2016, Manafort had taken at least 14 trips to Moscow and his ties to the Kremlin through his Vladimir Putin-allied clients in Ukraine were extensive.  

In February 2016, Stone, who also has been indicted, recommended to Trump that he hire Manafort, who curiously offered to work for Trump's campaign for free although he was in dire financial straits, suggesting the possibility he already was working for Moscow in its nascent effort to interfere in the presidential election.  

On June 6, 2016, Manafort attended the infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian cut-out promising "dirt" on Hillary Clinton and took contemporaneous notes later seized by FBI agents working for Mueller. 

On June 20, 2016, Manafort, who had been under FBI surveillance approved by the FISA Court, became Trump's campaign manager.  Two months later, he was dismissed after The Washington Post reported that he had been paid millions of dollars by a pro-Moscow Ukrainian political party.    

Manafort met with Kilimnik several times through 2016, including an August 2, 2016 meeting with Kilimnik and Manafort's associate Rick Gates, who has been indicted and is cooperating with Mueller, where Manafort reportedly shared detailed campaign polling data with Kilimnik. 

Meanwhile, in late July 2016, Christopher Steele wrote in a memo that became part of his infamous dossier that one of his sources reported that a "conspiracy of cooperation" between the campaign and Russia is "well-developed," and is "managed on the Trump side by . . . Manafort." 

On October 30, 2o17, Manafort and Gates were indicted for conspiring against the U.S. for money laundering and tax and foreign lobbying violations.  They entered not guilty pleas. 

On February 22, 2018, Manafort and Gates were additionally charged with lying to banks, Manafort by exaggerating his income to secure millions of dollars in cash loans as part of a decade-long $30 million money laundering scheme as political consultants in Ukraine.  Manafort pleaded not guilty. 

On June 8, 2018, Manafort and Kilimnik were charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice for tampering with potential witnesses against them. 

On August 21, 2018, Manafort was convicted by a jury on Northern Virginia of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to disclose a foreign bank account.  A mistrial was declared on 10 other counts after the jury was unable to reach a verdict. 

On September 14, 2018, Manafort agreed to a plea deal under which he would cooperate with Mueller, plead guilty to two charges that were to be heard at his now short-circuited second trial and forfeit $26 million in assets. 

On November 26, 2018, Manafort's plea agreement was revoked after prosecutors said he had repeatedly lied.  It also was revealed that Manafort's lawyer, Kevin Downing, was providing reports to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani about the scope of the questions prosecutors were asking Manafort under the plea agreement, providing the beleaguered Trump with inside information. 

On February 4, according to a transcript released later, Mueller's prosecutors stated at a closed hearing that they believed Manafort had continued to lie in the hopes of a pardon. 

Then on Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that Manafort "intentionally" misled the special counsel, FBI and a grand jury about a range of topics at the heart of the scandal, including his interactions with Kilimnik and money that was routed through a pro-Trump political action committee to help pay his legal bills.    

Are you still with us?   

If so, you can grasp the multitude of paths the saga can take from here on out.  This includes yet another opportunity to debate the difference between collusion and conspiracy, whether there is indeed a difference, and whether Manafort's activities qualify for both or either.

Anyhow, my best guesses are that:

Trump will not pardon Manafort.  

This is because he already has sold out Trump and the further damage the president has suffered because of revelations in Mueller's so-called "speaking indictments." 

Manafort's co-equal Gates still is cooperating, and a pardon would cause an uproar at a time when Trump is on thin ice between the Russia scandal, myriad House Democratic investigations and eroding Republican support. 

Even if Manafort is pardoned, does it really matter since he likely will be hit with state-level charges in a New York minute?  (Pun intended.)    

And it is much too late for Manafort to walk back all of his lies to try to avoid a lengthy prison term. 

We'll know at Manafort's sentencing.  Or maybe not.

Click HERE for a comprehensive timeline of the Russia scandal

and related developments. 

(UPDATED) Will The Enquirer Dick Pic Uproar Be The Fatal Scandal For Trump?

THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

Two things are certain about the National Enquirer-Jeff Bezos scandal.  It is sordid and it is complex.  To which a third thing can be added: If it turns out that the Bezos dick pic text messages were stolen with the approval -- tacit or otherwise -- of Donald Trump, then this finally may be the scandal that takes him down. 

There is a great deal of wishful thinking wrapped up in that statement since Trump has survived scandals that would have felled mere mortals.  But those scandals were then and the Enquirer scandal is now, and now is a time in the president's odious odyssey when he is on such thin ice between the Russia scandal, myriad House Democratic investigations and diminishing Republican congressional support that he could fall through at any moment. 

And as Gail Collins notes in The New York Times, "Everything sleazy always seems to wind up with a Trump connection."  

Speculation, claims and denials aside, we don't know how the pics with which the Enquirer tried to extort and blackmail the world's richest man were accessed in the first place.  In fact, we're still far from knowing that.  But anyone like your Faithful Correspondent who wants, hopes for, craves and obsesses over closure -- as in getting Trump the hell out of Washington -- is drawn to the speculation of Washington Post reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia that "a government entity" may have accessed the Bezos texts. 

"Gavin De Becker told us that he does not believe that Jeff Bezos' phone was hacked," Roig-Franzia said of Bezos's longtime security consultant.  "He thinks it's possible that a government entity might have gotten hold of his text messages." 

If that "government entity" was a U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agency, it would only be able to obtain the contents of the texts -- or sexts, as some are calling them -- with court approval.  While it's hard to imagine why a court would sign off on messages between Bezos and girlfriend Lauren Sánchez, it is easy to imagine a nefarious operator bypassing that constitutional nicety.  

"Government entity" also could refer to a foreign government, and here Saudi Arabia looms large.  Foreign governments aren't supposed to have access to Americans' private communications, but that notion has been smashed to smithereens with the vast Russian hacking of Democratic emails. 

Enquirer owner David Pecker has ties to Trump's buddies in Riyadh, including publishing a glossy 100-page magazine through Enquirer parent company American Media Inc. celebrating the desert kingdom and visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to the U.S. in April 2018.    

AMI has denied that the Saudis directed the magazine's production or paid for it, but The Associated Press reported otherwise while noting that three weeks before the prince's stateside arrival and lavish White House reception, the media company sent a copy to the Saudi embassy, where it circulated among officials who then shared it with the Washington foreign policy establishment. 

Meanwhile, The New York Times has reported that Pecker traveled to Saudi Arabia after MBS's U.S. trip to meet with him and even believed that the Saudis would help fund his coveted acquisition of Time magazine. 

In December, former longtime Enquirer editor Jerry George linked Pecker, Trump and the Saudis in an MSNBC interview.  George said that Pecker was using his AMI's coverage to help the Trump campaign and the Saudis in order to get financing for acquisitions and was holding onto damaging information to use as bargaining chips. 

"David got close to the Trump pals, including you know, Saudi money and Jared Kushner's . . . banking friends," George told MSNBC host Ari Melber.  "So he ultimately gathered some bargaining chips that he planned to use in time to get something he needed."     

MBS, with Trump's willing acquiescence, has sought to cover up the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident, U.S. resident and columnist for the Bezos-owned Washington Post, and on Friday refused to provide Congress a report determining who killed the journalist, defying a demand by lawmakers intent on establishing whether MBS was behind the grisly assassination as is widely believed. 

As awkward as it is applauding a ruthless autocrat like Bezos (and yes, I'm an Amazon Prime member), he did America a huge favor in blowing the scandal wide open in the form of a remarkable online post titled "No Thank You, Mr. Pecker" in which he detailed the extortion and blackmail attempt by the Enquirer.  

"Sometimes Mr. Pecker mixes it all together," Bezos wrote, describing a White House dinner "to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia.  At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions." 

Bezos laid out several reasons why the Saudis might want to target him.      

The Washington Post owner acknowledged the paper has earned the president's enmity for its relentless coverage of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the various financial conflicts of interest created by Trump's failure to fully divest from his businesses, its dogged coverage of the Khashoggi assassination and bromance with MBS.   

Trump, who is incapable of keeping his pie hole shut, tweeted shortly after the Enquirer broke the story of Bezos's impending divorce from his wife of 25 years, that Bezos (whom he called "Bozo") was "being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post." 

During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Enquirer published many favorable stories about Trump and hit jobs on Hillary Clinton while paying $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal with Trump's apparent knowledge to suppress her claim of a long-running affair with Trump, a practice known as "catch and kill." 

For the record, the Saudis deny having anything to do with the scandal while an AMI attorney on Sunday said that the Enquirer did not engage in extortion or blackmail.  The attorney said the source was a longtime tipster, while De Becker and some others see Lauren Sánchez's brother, Trump supporter Michael Sánchez, as the likely culprit.  Sánchez denies that despite "confirmations" by several news outlets, but even if he was involved, it begs credulity that he didn't have co-conspiritors. 

If the Saudis did gain access to the texts, it would likely be through some kind of hacking of a telecommunications provider rather than into the phones of Bezos or his girlfriend directly. 

No matter, because the truth may come out because of Pecker himself, who finds himself in the unaccustomed position of being on the defensive, but possibly in a shitload of trouble at a time when the Enquirer, a shadow of its former self back in the era of the O.J. Simpson and John Edwards scandals, is hemorrhaging money. 

In September, the publisher agreed to cooperate with federal investigators looking into AMI's involvement with the Trump campaign in making hush-money payments through then-Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen in return for a plea agreement brokered by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York under which he and AMI would be granted immunity.   

That agreement, which contained boilerplate saying that if the company committed "any crimes" in the future, "AMI shall thereafter be subject to prosecution," now appears to have been voided because of the Bezos scandal.  If Pecker knows who obtained the texts -- and he may not -- then he's not the only one in big trouble. 

Now, all of a sudden, maybe we're talking about an impeachable offense.       

The National Enquirer-Donald Trump Sick Shtick Reaches A Perverse New Low

NEW YORK POST

In an emerging scandal with Donald Trump's dirty if small hands all over it, the president's favorite supermarket tabloid has been caught red-handed trying to extort and blackmail an arch enemy and the world's richest man -- Jeff Bezos. 

Longtime Trump pal David Pecker, owner of the National Enquirer's parent company, had obtained salacious text messages between Bezos, the Amazon founder and CEO and Washington Post owner, and girlfriend Lauren Sánchez.  Whether they were hacked, possibly by a government agency, or simply leaked by someone unhappy about Bezos's impending divorce is not yet known, but what is indisputable is that Pecker then ham-handedly attempted to shake down Bezos by threatening to publish dick pics of the billionaire unless he backed off his investigation into the Enquirer's unflattering stories about the affair and divorce. 

The scandal -- and does America really need yet another one involving Trump? -- burst into the open on Thursday evening in the form of a remarkable online post written by Bezo titled "No Thank You, Mr. Pecker."   

The post included incriminating emails from Enquirer execs and stated that Bezos and his longtime security consultant Gavin de Becker had been informed by Enquirer parent company American Media Inc. that it wanted them to make a false public statement that they "have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI's coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces."   

Or else. 

The "or else" included a suggestion from top Enquirer chief content officer Dylan Howard that the tabloid would publish salacious photos of Bezos and Sánchez if AMI's terms weren’t met.  

"I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during our newsgathering," Howard wrote, explaining that the Enquirer had a "below the belt selfie" of Bezos, among other shots.  Howard added, "It would give no editor pleasure to send this email. I hope common sense can prevail — and quickly." 

Trump has not been directly linked to the scandal.  But Bezos, Amazon and the WaPo have been frequent targets of his wrath.   

Among other things, the president has threatened to arbitrarily raise the postal rates Amazon pays based on his false claim that Amazon is costing the U.S. Postal Service billions of dollars a year.  In fact, the retail colossus is the USPS's largest customer and the biggest reason it hasn't gone under.   

The early stages of the scandal began on January 9 when Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, revealed they would be divorcing after 25 years of marriage.  This, Bezos said, was two days after the Enquirer had informed him it would be publishing a story about his relationship with Sánchez, who is a former Los Angeles television news anchor.  

Soon after the story was published, Trump tweeted gleefully that Bezos (whom he called "Bozo") was "being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post." 

The Enquirer later published what it called "sleazy text messages and gushing love notes" between Bezos and Sanchez, raising questions about how the tabloid was able to get such intimate material, and prompting Bezos and De Becker to begin investigating. 

Pecker has had a long and mutually beneficial friendship with Trump. 

The Enquirer, along with Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, did much to burnish Trump's image as a playboy and billionaire entrepreneur extraordinaire as he struggled to get out from under repeated bankruptcies in the 1990s.  During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Enquirer published many favorable stories about Trump and hit jobs on Hillary Clinton (whom it variously called corrupt, racist, bulimic, prone to rages and stricken with liver damage from boozing) while paying $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal with Trump's apparent knowledge to suppress her claim of a long-running affair with Trump, a practice known as "catch and kill." 

The Pecker-Trump friendship took an interesting turn in September when Pecker agreed to cooperate with federal investigators looking into AMI's involvement with the Trump campaign in making hush-money payments through then-Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen in return for a plea agreement brokered by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York under which he and AMI would be granted immunity.   

That agreement, which contained boilerplate saying that said that if the company committed "any crimes" in the future, "AMI shall thereafter be subject to prosecution," now appears to have been blown to smithereens and SDNY prosecutors are back on the case. 

While it is not yet known whether the texts were hacked or leaked, some people including De Becker see Lauren Sánchez's brother, Michael Sánchez, as the likely culprit. 

The Hollywood talent agent is rabidly pro-Trump and runs with known Trump associates Roger Stone and Carter Page, but is vigorously denying any involvement and claims the texts may have been obtained by the U.S. National Security Agency, British intelligence, or the Mossad. 

Okay. 

"Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I've decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten," Bezos wrote on Medium, an online publishing platform.  "If in my position I can't stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?"

Meanwhile, New Yorker writer Ronan Farrow says that he and "at least one other prominent journalist" who had reported on the Enquirer, its obliging relationship with Trump and "catch and kill" policy also received blackmail threats from AMI.  Farrow says he refused to cut a deal, while Daily Beast and The Associated Press are said to have also received similar threats.  

On Friday morning, the AMI board announced that it will investigate Bezos's claims despite the fact that the company "believes fervently that it acted lawfully in the reporting" on him.  In other words, even if the texts were provided in bad faith, AMI is not responsible for that and therefore is in the clear, which is quite a stretch of the definition of legitimate newsgathering since the purpose of publishing the photos was extortionate and not their newsworthiness. 

As Kristin Kanthak, a professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, noted on Twitter, "You know we are at a disgusting moment in our nation's history when the billionaire sending out dick pics is the HERO of the story." 

Beyond its over-the-top nature, the scandal also tells us several things about Pecker and Trump.  Both are manipulative and evil . . . oh, and not very smart, because it is only a matter of time before all the sordid details tumble out.