WaPo paraphrased-

Senator Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.): If Unidicted Co-Conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio tried to coach somebody not to testify, or testify falsely, would that be a crime?

Attorney General Nominee William P. Barr: Yes.

Slam Dunk. Of course it has been since the Lester Holt interview after Comey’s firing where he said this–

Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it

And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.

And when he told the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak this

I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job, I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off. I’m not under investigation.

Today the buzz (hah, I am sooo punny) is about this-

President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project
by Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier, BuzzFeed News
January 17, 2019

President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.

Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit Russia during the presidential campaign, in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jump-start the tower negotiations. “Make it happen,” the sources said Trump told Cohen.

And even as Trump told the public he had no business deals with Russia, the sources said Trump and his children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., received regular, detailed updates about the real estate development from Cohen, whom they put in charge of the project.
…
(T)he two sources have told BuzzFeed News that Cohen also told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie — by claiming that negotiations ended months earlier than they actually did — in order to obscure Trump’s involvement.

The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.

This revelation is not the first evidence to suggest the president may have attempted to obstruct the FBI and special counsel investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

But Cohen’s testimony marks a significant new frontier: It is the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia.
…
A spokesperson for the Office of Special Counsel declined to comment.

Cohen also declined comment — but the law enforcement sources familiar with his testimony to the special counsel said he had confirmed that Trump directed him to lie to Congress, and also that he had provided details of his conversations about the project with the president and Ivanka and Donald Jr.

Those three members of the Trump family have distanced themselves from the Moscow project, saying that they had little knowledge of the negotiations. But a picture of their deep involvement is now emerging, as FBI agents and prosecutors pore over witness interviews and internal documents from Cohen and other Trump Organization officials and executives.

Trump was even made aware that Cohen was speaking to Russian government officials about the deal. The lawyer at one point spoke to a Kremlin aide as he sought support for the tower.

Trump also encouraged Cohen to plan a trip to Russia during the campaign, where the candidate could meet face-to-face with Putin.
…
Ivanka Trump was slated to manage a spa at the tower and personally recommended an architect. She also instructed Cohen to speak with a Russian athlete who offered “synergy on a government level” to get the Moscow project off the ground, in another aspect of the deal first revealed by BuzzFeed News that later was affirmed by the special counsel’s sentencing memo. Cohen rebuffed the athlete’s proposal, which angered Ivanka Trump, according to emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump’s attorney wrote that she was only “minimally involved” in the project. “Ms. Trump did not know about this proposal until after a non-binding letter of intent had been signed, never talked to anyone outside the Organization about the proposal, never visited the prospective project site and, even internally, was only minimally involved,” wrote Peter Mirijanian.

Donald Trump Jr., meanwhile, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 7, 2017, that he was only “peripherally aware” of the plan to build a tower in Moscow. “Most of my knowledge has been gained since as it relates to hearing about it over the last few weeks.”

The two law enforcement sources disputed this characterization and said that he and Cohen had multiple, detailed conversations on this subject during the campaign.

Cohen will testify publicly before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Feb. 7.

There was immediate reaction-

And more considered reaction-

Mueller might finally have a smoking gun
By Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post
January 18, 2019

President Trump once joked that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and still retain the support of his base. That proposition may soon be tested.
…
No one has a real understanding of “collusion,” because it is a non-legal, vague term. A conspiracy can be complicated, hard to prove. “Suborning perjury,” a phrase known to anyone who’s watched “Law & Order,” is specific and simple.

In this case, if the report is accurate, the charge of suborning perjury would not rest merely on former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s testimony. (“BuzzFeed says that Mueller’s office has more evidence than just Cohen’s testimony that Trump directed him to lie to Congress. Per the report, Cohen’s testimony is backed up by ‘interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.’”) Trump’s hapless TV attorney Rudy Giuliani can smear Cohen all he likes; multiple witnesses and documents are not so easily dismissed. Moreover, one has to wonder if this conversation — like the discussion about former Playboy model Karen McDougal — was taped.
…
The question then is not if such action was illegal, or if it is impeachable, but if it can be proved. None other than Graham told us in the Bill Clinton impeachment proceedings in the House that we simply cannot allow a perjurer to remain in office:

The assertion that Senate Republicans would never break with Trump and never vote to impeach has rested primarily on the assumption that the evidence would never be so conclusive and the crime would never be so serious that senators would lack excuses to avoid conviction. All of that goes out the window if multiple pieces of evidence demonstrate Trump suborned perjury. At that point, public opinion may present Republicans with a choice: Get Trump out of office now, or we’ll vote all of you out in 2020.

I think Bill Clinton didn’t even commit perjury much less suborn it. ‘Is’ can mean a variety of things depending on context, it is the dialectal present tense first-person and third-person singular of ‘to be’ and one of the most common words in the English language (‘the’ #1, ‘a’ #2).

But you you know, consensual sodomy albeit with a super creepy power dynamic is faaar more important than TREASON!

What Collusion?

Stephen

Seth

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Soviet Union breaks WWII Leningrad siege; Robert F. Scott reaches South Pole; Boston Strangler suspect Albert de Salvo convicted.

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.

Benjamin Franklin

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The New York Times–

Dear Mr. President:

On January 3rd, it was my privilege as Speaker to invite you to deliver the State of the Union address on January 29th. The Constitution calls for the President to “from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.” During the 19th Century and up until the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, these annual State of the Union messages were delivered to Congress in writing. And since the start of modern budgeting in Fiscal Year 1977, a State of the Union address has never been delivered during a government shutdown.

In September 2018, Secretary Nielsen designated State of the Union Addresses as National Special Security Events (NSSEs), recognizing the need for “the full resources of the Federal Government to be brought to bear” to ensure the security of these events. The extraordinary demands presented by NSSEs require weeks of detailed planning with dozens of agencies working together to prepare for the safety of all participants.

The U.S. Secret Service was designated as the lead federal agency responsible for coordinating, planning, exercising, and implementing security for National Special Security Events by Public Law 106-544, December 19, 2000. However, both the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security have not been funded for 26 days now — with critical departments hamstrung by furloughs.

Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest that we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29th.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

NANCY PELOSI
Speaker of the House
January 16, 2019

Couldn’t have done it better myself.

Now, does she have the power to do this? Oh my yes. Members of the Executive Branch (with the exception of the Vice President who is also President of the Senate) can only speak to members of either Chamber by invitation. Of course they can extend that privilege to anyone they want, as the did with Winston Churchill.

Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio is no Churchill (though Winnie was terribly misguided in other ways he was legitimately viewed as a great hero of WW II, moderately competent, and could speak in complete sentences and paragraphs).

The other thing about it is that Joint Sessions of Congress, which the State of the Union is delivered to, can only be called by mutual agreement of Senate and House Majority Leadership. Nancy says no? It ain’t happening. Also they are typically held in the House Chamber because the Senate is simply not big enough to accommodate 435 extra people plus a ton of guests. Speaker Pelosi is within her rights to order the Sargent at Arms for the House and the Capitol Hill Police to lock the door and turn out the lights.

Oh, it sucks to be Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio tonight. Of course he craves attention more than anything and to take away his Public Fawning Ritual is like taking a Smartphone away from a teenager.

“Daddy! Mommy is being so unfair!”

Not only that, because Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio can neither read nor write it was being crafted by the Racist Steve Miller as a 45 minute pitch to blame Democrats for the Shutdown and I’m sure it would have gone just as well as the 12/11/18 meeting.

If we don’t get what we want one way or the other, whether it’s through you, through a military, through anything you want to call, I will shut down the government, absolutely.

And I’ll tell you what, I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems, and drugs pouring into our country.

So I will take the mantle. I will be the to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it. The last time you shut it down it didn’t work. I will take the mantle of shutting down, and I’m going to shut it down for border security.

Or the 1/9/19 meeting where Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio screamed at Nancy and Chuck for about 20 minutes and then banged his teeny tiny little hands on the table and stomped out, slamming the door behind him so you could tell exactly how pissed off he was that his tantrum didn’t get him what he wanted. Republicans tried to deny it but while they were busy lying (literally at the very same time) Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio was busy Twitting-

Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time. I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!

Or the 8 minute Prime Time Address he had to beg for which was a mere re-hash of his standard stump rant sandwiched like a squirt of sugared lard between 2 crunchy fund raising appeals. It was as bad as an Oreo. Funny thing that as bad and stiff as they were Nancy and Chuck beat him in the Ratings.

Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio is losing this debate, badly. Our old buddy poblano says-

“Trump’s approval ratings had been steady at about 42 percent for several months before the shutdown. Since then, they’ve been declining at a fairly linear rate of about half a point for every week that the shutdown has been underway, while his disapproval rating has increased by half a point per week,” he explained.

Silver noted the 2020 election is still a long way off, but said, “there are some reasons for Trump and Republicans to worry that the shutdown could have both short- and long-term downsides.”

Trump could be in the worst political position of his presidency by March.

“For one thing, there’s no particular sign that the shutdown is set to end any time soon. And if the decline in Trump’s approval rating were to continue at the same rate that it has so far, it would take his political standing from bad to worse,” he explained. “By Jan. 29, for example, the day that Trump was originally set to deliver the State of the Union address before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disinvited him from addressing Congress, his approval rating would be 39.3 percent, and his disapproval rating would be 55.9 percent.”

“By March 1, at which point funding for federal food stamps could run out, his approval rating and disapproval rating would be 36.9 percent and 58.4 percent, respectively, roughly matching the lowest point of his presidency so far,” he noted.

Silver also said that the shutdown may be harming Trump with Capitol Hill Republicans.

“Congressional Republicans are not a group Trump can easily afford to lose. They have a lot of power to check Trump’s presidency, from modest measures such as treating his Cabinet nominations with more scrutiny to extreme ones like supporting his impeachment and removal from office,” he reminded.

Silver also noted, “the shutdown has prompted Trump to double down on his all-base, all-the-time strategy.”

“The lesson of the midterms, in my view, was fairly clear: Trump’s base isn’t enough,” he concluded. “Despite some initial attempts at reaching out to the center, such as in passing a criminal justice bill in December and issuing trial balloons about an infrastructure package, Trump’s strategy of shutting down the government to insist on a border wall was aimed at placating his critics on the right, such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and members of the House Freedom Caucus.”

Taken together, 2020 may look more like the 2018 midterms than the 2016 election when Trump won the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote.

“In the midterms, voting closely tracked Trump’s approval ratings, and he paid the price for his unpopularity,” he reminded.

Brilliant! The Shutdown is also tanking the Economy (over and above Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s ignorant Tariffs).

Shutdown’s Economic Damage Starts to Pile Up, Threatening an End to Growth
By Jim Tankersley, The New York Times
Jan. 15, 2019

The partial government shutdown is inflicting far greater damage on the United States economy than previously estimated, the White House acknowledged on Tuesday, as President Trump’s economists doubled projections of how much economic growth is being lost each week the standoff with Democrats continues.

The revised estimates from the Council of Economic Advisers show that the shutdown, now in its fourth week, is beginning to have real economic consequences. The analysis, and other projections from outside the White House, suggests that the shutdown has already weighed significantly on growth and could ultimately push the United States economy into a contraction.

While Vice President Mike Pence previously played down the shutdown’s effects amid a “roaring” economy, White House officials are now cautioning Mr. Trump about the toll it could take on a sustained economic expansion. Mr. Trump, who has hitched his political success to the economy, also faces other economic headwinds, including slowing global growth, a trade war with China and the waning effects of a $1.5 trillion tax cut.
…
For now, the White House shows no signs of being ready to relent, and Kevin Hassett, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, continued to blame Democrats for the economic damage.

“Congress needs to look at the harms that we’re talking about,” Mr. Hassett said, “and address them.”

Mr. Hassett said on Tuesday that the administration now calculates that the shutdown reduces quarterly economic growth by 0.13 percentage points for every week that it lasts — the cumulative effect of lost work from contractors and furloughed federal employees who are not getting paid and who are investing and spending less as a result. That means that the economy has already lost nearly half a percentage point of growth from the four-week shutdown. (Last year, economic growth for the first quarter totaled 2.2 percent.)

Tired of winning yet?

Nancy Pelosi Is Winning
by Peter Beinart, The Atlantic
1/16/19

(H)igh-minded centrists are urging Pelosi and the Democrats to compromise. “Rather than talk about the immorality of a wall,” The Washington Post recently urged, “Democrats could use their leverage to achieve a truly moral purpose. In return for a few billion dollars for a segment of the president’s wall … Democrats might permanently shield from deportation well over 1 million ‘dreamers.’” A recent Bloomberg editorial scolded Democrats for wanting “to deny the other [side] anything that might be portrayed as a victory,” and warned that “the only alternative to compromise, now that power in Washington is more equally divided, is paralysis.”

But Pelosi knows that the alternative to Democratic compromise isn’t necessarily paralysis. It may be Democratic triumph. Trump, like Bush, has picked a fight that is popular with conservatives but unpopular with the public at large. Most Americans don’t think there’s a border crisis, don’t support a border wall, and blame Trump for the shutdown. As a result, Republican members of Congress are under more political pressure to back down than their Democratic counterparts, and the longer the shutdown continues, the more that pressure should grow. For the time being, at least, conservative opposition has forced Trump to shelve talk of declaring a national emergency. All of which means that the most likely outcome to the current standoff is that Trump caves. And since the wall was Trump’s signature campaign promise, such a retreat could depress conservative enthusiasm and impair his chances in 2020. “If he gives in,” Lindsey Graham recently warned, “that’s probably the end of his presidency.”

That’s what Pelosi is aiming for. In pure policy terms, there’s a case for compromise. Arguably, it’s worth wasting a few billion dollars on a border wall to safeguard the “Dreamers” who are stuck in an agonizing legal limbo. But Pelosi is focused on something bigger: the emasculation of the president. For years, Democrats have wondered when their leaders would start playing tough. Turns out Pelosi has been doing so all along.

Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio has decided to throw another tantrum, canceling a Congressional Delegation visit of both Republicans and Democrats to visit troops in Afghanistan (the stopover in Brussels is to refuel and consult the NATO Commanders who invoked their mutual defense responsibilities under the North Atlantic Charter to assist us against the Taliban and Al Quaida in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attack on the territory of the Continental United States, the only time in the 70 year existence of the organization it has been, the Egyptian component is simply a lie).

Of course it was secret. Afghanistan is a War Zone! Of course they can’t fly commercial. AFGHANISTAN IS A WAR ZONE!

Pelosi and the Democrats will not be swayed. Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s only choice is complete capitulation and blaming it on Mitch McConnell.

Even that will not save him from Mueller’s net and his litany of lies.

Oops.

Well, “hacking the DNC” (Theft) is not the only crime here. Campaign Finance Violations, Treason and Espionage, Tax Fraud, Bank Fraud, Plain Old Fraud, Money Laundering, Lying Under Oath, Perjury, Suborning Perjury, Obstruction of Justice, and Abuse of Power to name only a few.

The correct word is “Conspiracy” and damn right it’s a crime.

Giuliani’s absurd ‘collusion’ walkback signals serious worry about Trump’s vulnerability
By Greg Sargent, Washington Post
January 17, 2019

Everybody is having a grand old time with Rudy Giuliani’s buffoonish new comments on CNN about President Trump and “collusion” with Russia. But beyond the obvious comic relief here, Giuliani’s appearance potentially signals two important things: First, serious worry about Trump’s vulnerability; and second, the beginnings of an endgame to save him.

In an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Wednesday night, Giuliani was pressed on the news that former campaign chairman Paul Manafort allegedly shared polling data with an operative tied to Russian intelligence. Cuomo noted that there is already ample evidence that Trump campaign members committed “collusion” with Russian efforts to sabotage the election on Trump’s behalf.

“I never said there was no collusion between the campaign, or between people in the campaign,” Giuliani responded. “I said the president of the United States. There is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you could commit here: conspiring with the Russians to hack the DNC.”

“The president did not collude with the Russians,” Giuliani continued. He then said, preposterously, that Trump has not actually claimed that “nobody” on his campaign conspired with Russia. Trump has, of course, said “NO COLLUSION” countless times.

Indeed, Trump’s team has repeatedly said the campaign did not conspire with Russia, or has dramatically downplayed the meaning of it, as Aaron Blake’s timeline shows. So this is a real shift: Giuliani now acknowledges that it’s perfectly possible members of Trump’s campaign did engage in conspiracy.
…
Neal Katyal told me that this appears to be a tacit admission of serious vulnerability — as well as an effort to lay the groundwork for a last-ditch defense of Trump, should more come out. It also makes the nonstop claims that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is leading a “witch hunt” look ridiculous.

“They’ve been saying for two years that this is a witch hunt,” Katyal told me. “As a lawyer, given the recent revelations, Giuliani now has to pivot and outline the next line of defense.”

“This is straight out of the organized-crime playbook,” Katyal continued. “The boss says, ‘There was no conspiracy.’ Then prosecutors prove there was a conspiracy between your subordinates and a criminal organization. Then the defense shifts to, ‘Okay, there was a conspiracy, but the boss didn’t know anything about it.’”

To be clear, we’re presuming here that Giuliani said these things for a reason. We can’t know this — he is prone to strange and inexplicable outbursts — but if he did, it points to an endgame that Giuliani may be mulling for Trump.

Bob Bauer, the White House counsel under former president Barack Obama, told me that Giuliani “must have some continuing hope” that Mueller cannot prove Trump knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, which Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Manafort attended in the expectation of gaining dirt on Hillary Clinton produced by the Russian government.

In recent days, new revelations have surfaced. We have learned that after Trump fired James B. Comey as FBI director, the FBI launched a separate investigation into whether Trump was actively working on behalf of Russian interests. We now know Trump went to extraordinary lengths to conceal his communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, even shielding them from his own top advisers.

We have also learned that Mueller is closely scrutinizing whether Trump was directly informed by longtime adviser Roger Stone of the latter’s advance knowledge of a coming dump of Russian-hacked Democratic emails.

If Mueller determines that the Trump Tower meeting constituted conspiracy, or if more comes out about that meeting or about other collusion we’ve already seen, or if still other conspiring that we don’t know about yet surfaces, Trump’s team will have to build a wall between that and Trump himself — which Giuliani is now doing.

“The insulation of Trump from the campaign is meant to remove him from the circle of any illegal conspiracy,” Bauer told me, adding that Giuliani is moving “to narrow the defense against collusion by arguing that the president is not responsible for what his campaign did.”

But this is a weak defense. It still remains to be seen what Trump knew about all the collusion, whether or not he actively participated in it. And we still don’t know what else Mueller has established. Giuliani’s defense signals he might be worried that still more is coming.

“If you’re the head of an organization, and you’re aware that your associates are conspiring, even if you weren’t the one doing the conspiring you could face criminal liability for it,” Katyal said. “Right now we have only the tip of the iceberg from Mueller. Giuliani may be starting to float a new defense in the event that there’s more damaging information on the conspiracy front coming out.”

Giuliani’s new comments also signal the coming political defense for Trump. Whether or not Mueller ends up indicting, should he clearly establish conspiracy by members of Trump’s campaign, it could prove politically devastating. Giuliani has now signaled this is a real possibility. He is “drawing a tight line around Trump,” Bauer noted. “Since Mueller is unlikely to indict, the defense is against impeachment.”

As an afterthought, you’d think that Giuliani’s new tacit admission that Trump campaign members very well may have committed collusion would put an end to all the screams of “witch hunt.” Of course, Giuliani and Trump will continue describing the Mueller probe as just that, and the obvious absurdity of this won’t trouble Trump’s supporters in the least.

Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio, his Family, his Company, and his Foundation are thoroughly corrupt and should be charged, tried, and convicted under the RICO statutes for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations.

More what it’s like when you quit your life to become a professional Gamer.

How To Manage An eSports Team

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Benjamin Franklin born; Soviet and Polish forces liberate Warsaw; Eisenhower farewell address; Japan earthquake; Al Capone is born; Muhammad Ali born.

Your own need to be shines out of any dream or creation you imagine.

James Earl Jones

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Some of the gaslighting Republicans try to do in relation to Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s Russian Treason Plot is to deny that there is any Quid Pro Quo, This For That.

Like pushing “Collusion”, which is not a crime, as a substitute for “Conspiracy”, which is, they’ll claim that Russian aid during the 2016 Election and Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s pro-Russia Policies are entirely co-incidental. This is because trading things of value for political favors is EXPLICITLY A CRIME! Either Bribery or Extortion depending on who asks who for what and how.

For instance were I Mayor or something and you came into my office and said, “Hey, I want to put in a Development,” and I said “Sure, that’ll be $100,000,” that would be Extortion. If on the other hand you came to my office and said “I want to put in a Development, here’s $100,000 for you to expedite it,” that would be Bribery.

As I say Republicans will deny there’s any evidence of Quid Pro Quo when in fact there’s plenty already in the Moscow Tower Project and Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s Real Estate Money Laundering Scheme.

To be more charitable than you should, you might contend this is just garden variety White Collar Crime, part of his standard business model (along with Fraud and Tax Evasion).

But it’s really much worse than that.

Yesterday Chuck Schumer and 11 defecting Republicans put the kibosh on Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s plan to lift Treasury sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea on Russian Oligarch with ties to Putin and the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence, widely believed to have been the Government Spy Organization behind the Internet Research Agency’s theft of email from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta) Oleg Deripaska.

Yes, the very same Oleg Deripaska that Paul Manafort owes over $20,000,000 and to whom the Internal Polling information from Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s 2016 Campaign which really has no utility (besides as a curiosity) except to microtarget Disinformation to Facebook idiots (really, really don’t like Facebook) was given through an intermediary but with strict routing instructions.

In other developments in the Manafort case yesterday, Mueller filled his brief detailing at least four categories of lies Manafort told while he was supposedly co-operating. The document is about a 100 pages long (counting appendixes and exhibits) and is heavily redacted so I’ll wait for some more reporting before I’ll talk about it.

The Times today also tells us-

Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia
By Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper, The New York Times
Jan. 14, 2019

There are few things that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance among the United States, Europe and Canada that has deterred Soviet and Russian aggression for 70 years.

Last year, President Trump suggested a move tantamount to destroying NATO: the withdrawal of the United States.

Senior administration officials told The New York Times that several times over the course of 2018, Mr. Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Current and former officials who support the alliance said they feared Mr. Trump could return to his threat as allied military spending continued to lag behind the goals the president had set.

In the days around a tumultuous NATO summit meeting last summer, they said, Mr. Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance, which he presented as a drain on the United States.

At the time, Mr. Trump’s national security team, including Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, scrambled to keep American strategy on track without mention of a withdrawal that would drastically reduce Washington’s influence in Europe and could embolden Russia for decades.

Now, the president’s repeatedly stated desire to withdraw from NATO is raising new worries among national security officials amid growing concern about Mr. Trump’s efforts to keep his meetings with Mr. Putin secret from even his own aides, and an F.B.I. investigation into the administration’s Russia ties.

A move to withdraw from the alliance, in place since 1949, “would be one of the most damaging things that any president could do to U.S. interests,” said Michèle A. Flournoy, an under secretary of defense under President Barack Obama.

“It would destroy 70-plus years of painstaking work across multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic, to create perhaps the most powerful and advantageous alliance in history,” Ms. Flournoy said in an interview. “And it would be the wildest success that Vladimir Putin could dream of.”
…
American national security officials believe that Russia has largely focused on undermining solidarity between the United States and Europe after it annexed Crimea in 2014. Its goal was to upend NATO, which Moscow views as a threat.

Russia’s meddling in American elections and its efforts to prevent former satellite states from joining the alliance have aimed to weaken what it views as an enemy next door, the American officials said. With a weakened NATO, they said, Mr. Putin would have more freedom to behave as he wishes, setting up Russia as a counterweight to Europe and the United States.

An American withdrawal from the alliance would accomplish all that Mr. Putin has been trying to put into motion, the officials said — essentially, doing the Russian leader’s hardest and most critical work for him.

Quid Pro Quo.

I mean, I can hardly blame Russia from their standpoint. Like a warm water port it’s something that’s been a goal for a long time.

Rachel Maddow

There are more verses but writing song lyrics is hard and I am lazy.

The Fake Border Crisis, Steve King, and Our Lying, Racist President

Trevor Noah: Racism Detective

When You Quit Your Life To Become A Professional Gamer

Next you’ll be telling me Chess is not a real sport.

And don’t get me started on Curling, Darts, and Pachisi.