Secret CIA source claims Russia rigged 2016 election

The irony. Wasn’t Trump calling out Comey for doing such a fantastic job just 30 days ago? LOL.

I love how Trump is too stupid to even parse his complaint properly. He all but confirms whatever information the media has is legit by the way he phrases the tweet. He could have cast doubt on the whole thing by tweeting “Rogue factions in FBI and government “leaking” FALSE information to fake media in an attempt to undermine America! Bad dudes! Sad!”. Instead he pretty much just solidified whatever the next media revelation is.

I’m honestly surprised he hasn’t yet had the audacity to tweet out something along the lines of “Where was FBI when Crooked Hillary emails needed investigating?!”.

First of all, Priebus has to go. Today. Even if there’s nothing illegal in what happened—and even, as seems completely implausible, the request was made out of simple anger at inaccurate reporting instead of abject terror that accurate reporting was getting too close to where the borscht got made last year—Priebus is revealed as a guy who should not be allowed to spread butter with anything sharper than his thumb, let alone run the staff of any White House, including Camp Runamuck. This is, or ought to be, a career-ender.

Not that there’s anything untrue about any of that quote … but Preibus leaving would just make Bannon and Miller more powerful.

Agree 100%.

Agree fully. He is the one eyed man in the land of the blind.

Kinda hoping for a Star Trek TOS-style throw down with McMaster and all these guys.

400 quatloos on McMaster!

What are the Trump braintrust playing at? Kicking out all the news orgs that are chasing down the Russia connection is making it very clear that there’s fire to go with the smoke.

He openly said, again, today that that was the case.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/there-s-more-to-the-michael-cohen-story

In any case, the article is a backgrounder on Artemenko, pivoting off the original story in the Times. It goes into various details about Artemenko’s background. Then it gets to Cohen. In an interview at Strana.ua, he says that while Sater is a recent acquaintance, he’s known Cohen since back when Cohen was setting up the ethanol business in Ukraine. So at least according to to Artemenko, he and Cohen have known each other for some time. This wasn’t just a courtesy meeting Cohen took with a stranger as a favor to Sater.

And then there’s this.

Artemenko told Strana.ua that this wasn’t the first time they’d talked about the “peace plan.” He says that he was discussing the peace plan with Cohen and Sater “at the time of the primaries, when no one believed that Trump would even be nominated.”

So at least according to Artemenko, discussions about the “peace plan” go back to the first half of 2016.

That’s interesting.

Darrell Issa: “You’re going to need to use the special prosecutor’s statute and office to take — not just to recuse. You can’t just give it to your deputy.”

Rep. Darrell Issa said on HBO’s “Real Time” that Attorney General Jeff Sessions — who Trump appointed as the nation’s top law enforcement officer — should not handle the problem.

“You cannot have somebody, a friend of mine Jeff Sessions, who was on the campaign and who is an appointee,” the California Republican said in response to a question from host Bill Maher. “You’re going to need to use the special prosecutor’s statute and office to take — not just to recuse. You can’t just give it to your deputy. That’s another political appointee.”

Issa emphasized that “there may or may not be fault” with Trump’s associates but said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutality toward political enemies highlighted the need for such a probe.

It’s a start, but everyone in DC knows that if there’s a midterm bloodbath, Issa’s the first man down. His district isn’t the conservative bulwark it once was; they voted pretty heavily for Clinton in November.

Need a couple of other reps who are less threatened to also feel the heat.

Wow, that’s the first positive thing I’ve seen Issa do or say!

Maybe bigger news, but not nearly as splashy, is what’s going on with the Senate investigation of contact between the Trump administration and the White House.

Until yesterday, both Mark Warner and Ron Wyden–senior Democratic Senators on that panel–had expressed support that Senator Burr from North Carolina (a Republican and the chairman) would do a fair and impartial job of overseeing the investigation.

Then yesterday Burr came out and admitted the White House had contacted him and made other statements essentially admitting that he’d been both speaking to the White House and releasing WH talking points to the press as committee leaks on the subject.

So Friday night, both Warner and Wyden issued separate statements: either they see something from Burr proving that there’s no tampering going on, or they’re pulling the plug on the investigation and recommending and independent investigation.

While the far left gets pissy about center-left Democratic senators like Warner and Wyden, this is the reason they have a valuable place in politics. Both guys are very well respected among colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Neither guy is a real shoot-from-the-hip type. Both are considered in their statements and maybe circumspect to a flaw sometimes. And if they’re both saying “We need an independent investigation,” that is the kind of thing that carries a great deal of weight in the Senate, even as it comes from two members of the opposition party.

Is that good or bad?

Well, if you’d like to see a pretty serious investigation of the Trump ties to Russia, it’s pretty good. That investigation isn’t happening without something of a contribution from Republican senators on that side of things. There are Republicans who will take note of Warner and Wyden expending the capital they’ve built in this manner. It’s a step in the process.

Finding out the chief White House counsel may have been talking eased sanctions with the Russians as far back as early 2016 is likely another step in the process.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/it-s-all-so-confusing-the-michael-cohen-file

Maybe Cohen is just incredibly savvy and made a ton of money on those Trump properties. Because two years ago, in February 2015, New York real estate trade sheet The Real Deal reported that Cohen purchased a $58 million rental building on the Upper East Side. Sources who discussed the deal with The Real Deal told the paper that Cohen also owned buildings on the Lower East Side and in Kips Bay. That’s a lot of buildings. And apparently it was a real score securing the deal for the Upper East Side apartment building because there were a lot of foreign purchasers bidding on the property too. Robert Knakal, whose firm represented the seller told the paper: “While they were not successful here, there were many foreign bidders competing for this asset. Historically, foreign buyers have provided equity financing for local operators but rarely have purchased rent-regulated assets directly. This could be a new trend unfolding.”

Maybe Cohen first hit it rich with the ethanol business he set up with family in Ukraine and that’s what allowed him to start buying so much Manhattan real estate?

Presumably Cohen’s in-laws or their family back in Ukraine are the ‘family’ with whom he set up in the ethanol business - where and when Artemenko says they first met. But wait, Cohen told Hunter Walker that he’d only visited Ukraine “twice” in “either 2003 or 2004." And that was because his “brother’s father-in-law lives in Kiev.”

Wait, is Cohen’s brother also married to someone from Ukraine? I guess it’s possible Cohen’s brother is married to an Australian woman and his wife’s father just happens to live in Kiev. But whatever the specifics Cohen sure seems to have a ties to Ukraine, doesn’t he? Was the family he set up the ethanol company with, his brother’s Ukrainian in-laws?

This is playing out pretty much exactly as expected…