Trump, June 2017: From [Covfefe] with Love

During the years that Bayrock and Trump did deals together, the company was also a bridge between murky European funding and a number of projects in the U.S. to which the president once leant his name in exchange for handsome fees. Icelandic banks that dealt with Bayrock, for example, were easy marks for money launderers and foreign influence, according to interviews with government investigators, legislators, and others in Reykjavik, Brussels, Paris and London. Trump testified under oath in a 2007 deposition that Bayrock brought Russian investors to his Trump Tower office to discuss deals in Moscow, and said he was pondering investing there.

"It's ridiculous that I wouldn't be investing in Russia," Trump said in that deposition. "Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment."

One of Bayrock's principals was a career criminal named Felix Sater who had ties to Russian and American organized crime groups. Before linking up with the company and with Trump, he had worked as a mob informant for the U.S. government, fled to Moscow to avoid criminal charges while boasting of his KGB and Kremlin contacts there, and had gone to prison for slashing apart another man’s face with a broken cocktail glass.

In a series of interviews and a lawsuit, a former Bayrock insider, Jody Kriss, claims that he eventually departed from the firm because he became convinced that Bayrock was actually a front for money laundering.

this this THIS is the story. Charles Pierce wrote about Sater a few months ago. Few other journalists have picked up on it.

noted red-ink enthusiast josh marshall was kicking it around for a while too

Yeah it seems to be starting to crest a bit more, especially if Mueller and team are locking onto it. Schindler had also written about it (in the Observer IIRC, amusingly enough).

Dutch journalists made a documentary about Trump's ties with Russia (though Bayrock, KazBay, etc), it aired a month ago or so, the English version is on youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UR2YQQ9J8U
(They tracked down Sater at his house (at about 42:00))

(that's an informally merged version of the two episodes. the original episodes are here: 1) ZEMBLA - The dubious friends of Donald Trump: the Russians and 2) ZEMBLA - The dubious friends of Donald trump: King of Diamonds)

zembla, the zairean man-boy love association

didn't someone link the whowhatwhy pieces? lotta sater stuff there. the thesis is that sater has been so useful to the fbi's investigation of the russian mob that they've been hesitant to "use him up" on the trump investigation. i'm not sure it quite holds water but there are certainly a lot of gory details.

https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/03/27/fbi-cant-tell-trump-russia/
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/04/05/felix-sater-problematical-friend-trump-forgot/

"I heard yesterday that the idea that you couldn't prosecute an incumbent President was more of a norm than a law. & it was based on the idea that it would cause major disruption if it was seen that the office of president could be so compromised. Further to that the idea that the President was known to be under investigation had already caused that lack of faith in the role so there was now no reason not to go ahead with a prosecution.
That quite apart from the lack of belief in the role that 45 is causing all by himself.
So fingers crossed that good prevails and utter corruption doesn't.
But not holding my breath, like"

I was under the impression you can prosecute but only the Senate can do the prosecutin'

I think the alternative viewpoint was that it wasn't possible for an incumbent President to actually be prosecuted. So he would have to cease to be a President before he could be prosecuted. e.g. Nixon only becoming prosecutable once he resigned but then being almost instantly pardoned by Ford.

is this from maddow?

The irony of Trump stamping his name on everything is that everything connects to Trump.

Sources reported that @SenateMajLdr's cheeks distended to many times their original size. https://t.co/1Z625GhZ9g pic.twitter.com/W3tsSlJOsj

— The Onion (@TheOnion) June 20, 2017

an op-ed today in the NYT by lowell weicker! that's a blast from my connecticut past. forgot that he was on the watergate commission AND i forgot that he was still alive.

and boy did Nixon and Reagan hate him

i've seen 6, none w/in shouting distance of great

but looks good next to Gaspar Noe

sorry

well sure Weicker was one of the last lib/mod Republicans

Worth a read: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/13/nyregion/weicker-an-outcast-runs-again.html?pagewanted=all

i like lowell. i like that he started his own party to run for governor. he was more of a republicrat. he had nice things to say about democrats. sheesh, yeah, another era...

loved ella though. god love you, ella! we won't forget you.

i like that he was #fucktrump early on too.

http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Weicker-Donald-Trump-a-bigoted-con-artst-6449424.php

In the midst of it all, surely Alfred can appreciate that there is love

Joe Scarborough wrote a love song for Mika 💕 https://t.co/vkixoD9yzJ pic.twitter.com/LxJqzSX1b3

— Connor Ryan (@connortryan) June 21, 2017

He and Sekulow can go out on tour together. It'll be the Hunter Thompson/G. Gordon Liddy lecture tour of its time.

Ned, I'm eating lunch.

It'll be the Hunter Thompson/G. Gordon Liddy lecture tour of its time.

I saw Liddy w/ Tim Leary -- was this a different one?

Was deeply under the impression Thompson/Liddy had swung through SoCal together in the late eighties -- possibly conflating two separate appearances, though.

ok, i saw Gordo/Tim in '80-81

Morbs kept the ticket stub in a shoebox under his bed.

Later, he kept Liddy there.

explains that scratching noise

guys, the georgia-6 result was bad. no need to sugarcoat it. it's just one data point though, and the overall trend when you look at the other special elections seems good

whoops meant for the other thread

i have some old ticket stubs, haven't seen that one

Liddy would have been glad to appear on a stage attacking Tim Leary, because Tim wouldn't have fought back. Hunter Thompson was as much of an attack dog as Liddy was, and he would have torn Liddy a new asshole every night. Liddy would have avoided HST like the plague.

obv Liddy was the more truculent onstage, but it was clearly a showbiz arrangement.

I'm confused, k3vin, wasn't it what you wished for?

have we talked about the Jay Sekulow Band yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zajoKA5ehMo

joan crawford chi chi posted about it upthread

FBI: lone wolf terrorism is the greatest threat we face.

/lone wolf white guy shoots congressman

FBI: pic.twitter.com/vTreEqrcIU

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) June 21, 2017

He must've been a lone different kind of animal. Still gotta watch out for those wolves, man.

sad lol it's not terrorism if it's only one guy now? ok

No no, it's just that they were finally able to conclusively determine that he was a white American. Ergo nothing to worry about re: terrorist threat.

look white americans are not a dangerous group hell bent on spreading their ideology, regardless of the cost of human life

just a guy from Illinois w/ domestic assault history

reg'lar

guess what everybody

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/21/what-is-in-gop-senate-obamacare-repeal-plan-239812

Here’s what is known so far about the bill’s contents:

— It would eliminate Obamacare’s subsidy program and replace it with a different structure to help low-income people afford insurance. But Republicans are still trying to craft an alternative that would prohibit coverage of abortion without violating the strict reconciliation rules enabling them to pass the bill without a Democratic filibuster. Republican sources tell POLITICO they're confident they can get the subsidy language through with the abortion prohibitions.

— Republicans plan to offer states a waiver to opt out of major parts of Obamacare and create their own health care rules. The bill would alter a waiver that was part of Obamacare — known as 1332 waivers — and make them easier to obtain.

— The bill is also expected to dramatically reshape Medicaid. Instead of an open-ended entitlement, states would get a set amount of money per person. In a win for conservatives, the Senate is expected to cut the program as aggressively as the House did until 2025 or 2026 and then make payments that grow in line with inflation. States are expected to have significant new flexibility for how they run their Medicaid programs. Republicans are likely to include a carve-out for certain children with complex medical needs, according to several sources.

— The bill is expected to repeal Obamacare’s taxes, but how soon that is done is fluid because it would likely depend on how much tax revenue is needed to cover other costs associated with the GOP plan.

— Cost-sharing subsidies to help pay insurers for low-income individuals' out-of-pocket expenses are expected to be continued through the annual appropriations process, requiring a 60-vote threshold.

— Lawmakers are weighing moving a House-approved fund that provided $115 billion for states to stabilize their insurance markets to the Children's Health Insurance Program. Doing so would preserve restrictions on federal funding of abortion.

it's like they want to force you to have babies just so they can murder them a decade or two later

well it's a really effective way to keep the undesirables demoralized

first we force you to be born, then we extract labor/wealth, then you die = it's a perfect system!

I guess you could add "Republican vote" to "labor/wealth" there

first we force you to be born, then we extract labor/wealth, then you die = it's a perfect system!

u forgot the soylent green step #pvmic

It would fucking rule if Paul Ryan got stomped by a Steel Mill Super Mario. pic.twitter.com/fAFP1ZEmAC

— Chris Person (@Papapishu) June 21, 2017