The Illegitimate President-- "A Mistake We Should All Regret"

Donald Trump, Jr by Nancy Ohanian

It's been clear for over a year now that Putin crony and deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank, Alexander Torshin, was funneling Kremlin money into the Trump campaign through the NRA. I've been looking forward to Mueller laying out all the evidence on that one in precise detail when his investigation of how Putin stole the 2016 presidential election is completed. Now Michael Isikoff is reporting that the FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations implications Trump Jr and Torshin.

José Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime, said that bureau officials in recent months requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” the godfather.

“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.”

The comments by Grinda were the first clear sign that the FBI may be investigating Torshin, possibly as a part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Torshin-- a close political ally of Vladimir Putin-- had multiple contacts with conservative activists in the United States during the election, seeking to set up a summit between the Russian president and then candidate Trump. Although the summit never transpired, Torshin did meet briefly with the president’s son at a private dinner in Louisville during the May 2016 annual convention of the NRA. A member of the NRA since 2012, Torshin has been a regular attendee of the group’s conventions in recent years and hosted senior members of the group in Moscow.

Grinda said that the FBI, in its request for the evidence to the Guardia Civil, the Spanish National Police, provided no explanation as to why it was interested in the material and he didn’t ask for one. “I don’t have to ask them why they want this information,” he said. But Grinda added that if Mueller or any other U.S. prosecutor seeks to use the material as part of a court case, they would have to make a second, more formal request to do so to the Spanish government.

...Despite the suspicions about his ties to Russian money laundering, Torshin continued to travel frequently to the United States and even showed up as part of a Russian delegation in February 2017 to the National Prayer Breakfast, where he was at one point scheduled to meet with President Trump. (The meeting was canceled the night before, after National Security Council officials raised concerns about it.) More recently, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden sent multiple letters to the NRA asking about its ties to Torshin and other Russian figures, questioning whether Russian money was funneled to the NRA to help pay for the more than $30 million the group spent on political ads and get out the vote efforts during the 2016 election.

Benjamin Lamdy, writing for Vanity Fair, raised a silly question yesterday: Is Don Jr. A Criminal Or An Idiot? He knows the answer; everyone knows the answer. Meanwhile former FBI director, James Comey, fired by Trump in a major obstruction of justice move, was on Conor O'Brien Friday night. Comey asserted that Trump was making up his spy gate nonsense. Watch:

Who Wrote The Guam Governor's Imbecilic Lines Of Praise For The Lord Of Bedminster?

Republican Eddie Baza Calvo, son of former Governor Paul Calvo, was elected in 2010. He was a Ted Cruz primary supporter last year but has quickly come around to a very Trumpian worldview after Trump beat Cruz in the GOP primary. Guam doesn't get to vote for president but their official presidential preference poll was a lopsided landlside-- against Trump. Hillary won 23,052 votes (71.6%) to Trump's 7,779 votes (24.2%). Calvos and Trump staged an absurd and embarrassingly choreographed phone conversation (above) on Saturday. Calvos' statements of devotion to Señor Trumpanzee were likely written by Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller or one of the other goofballs in the Trumpanzee White House. Trump babbling about the North Korean nukes crisis helping tourism was pure off-the-cuff Trumpanzee, no Bannon or Miller needed: "I have to tell you, you have become extremely famous all over the world. They are talking about Guam; and they’re talking about you... I can say this: You’re going to go up, like, tenfold with the expenditure of no money."

On the other hand, there is no doubt that this is Trumpanzee White House-created propaganda silliness: "I have never felt more safe or so confident than with you at the helm. So, with all the criticism going on over there from a guy who is being targeted, we need a president like you. So I’m just so thankful. And I’m glad you’re holding the helm, sir." Sick!

Robert Underwood, who was Guam's congressional Representative for a decade, had a very different perspective than the sadly sycophantic Calvos. "For the United States, [Guam is] the place from which you can project power into Asia in an unfettered way... When President Trump says, 'Go ahead and do what you're gonna do on Guam and see what happens subsequently,' it causes you to think, 'Well, would he say that if Anchorage had that same threat? If Kim Jong Un said he would hit Anchorage, would he say, 'Go ahead hit Anchorage and see what happens?' How do people really see Guam in the context of the U.S. family? So are we just like cannon fodder? Are we just extras? Are we just not part of the equation?" Are Eric and Trumpanzee, Jr. scurrying to build a new Trump Tower on Tumon Bay?

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Jeff Sessions Speaks, Sort Of

-by Noah

Two quotes from Richard Nixon, as he discussed ways to cover up Watergate:

1. “ You can always say you can’t recall.”

2. “I don’t give a shit what happens. I want you to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amedment, cover up or anything else, if it will save it, save this plan. That’s the whole point.”

If you were playing buzz-word bingo during Tuesday’s Jeff Sessions “testimony,” and you had promised to throw down a tequila shot each time the words ‘don’t recall,’ ‘no recollection,’ or some variation of same (at least 46 times by my count) were uttered by Trump’s Attorney General, you may still be in the hospital or in the local drunk tank. God help you. God help us all.

I sure wish Sessions had just stuck with his refusal to not come before the Senate Intelligence Committee and testify. Instead, he showed up and refused to testify. I guess, like his boss, he always looks for the best way to thumb his nose at as many Americans as possible. The only difference is that Sessions took over 2 hours to do so on TV, while his boss can do it in just 140 characters on Twitter.

On the one hand, it was a waste of TV airtime, but, on the other hand, Americans were able to get yet another example of how much contempt the Trump administration has for them. Like Dan Coats and Mike Rogers last week, Sessions refused to answer questions without having a legal basis to refuse. Sessions wouldn’t even say whether or not he had spoken with President Trump about Comey’s handling of the Russia investigation. Trump’s men act like men with a lot to hide.

To Republicans, oaths obviously mean nothing but there was more going on than the contempt and evasion. That was overkill and is being reasonably well covered.

I had some "favorite" moments. The first one came in his opening statement.

I have never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States.

Translation: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." Funny how he could be so definite in his opening statement but not at all when asked questions. I’ve never heard of amnesia that comes and goes intermittingly.

I also couldn’t help but notice that Sessions claimed a different version of events surrounding the now infamous “clear the room” meeting between former FBI Director James Comey and President Trump. Last week, Comey said Sessions didn’t respond when he implored Sessions to never put him in that situation again. Sessions said he did respond, so, one of the two men is lying, i.e. perjuring himself. Which of the two men are you inclined to believe, Comey or the one who already lied about meeting with Russians during his confirmation hearing? Or, was it just that amnesia thing again?

I was left with another specific impression that hasn’t gotten as much coverage as it deserves. The republican senators in attendance had a bone to pick. It seems that the existence of California’s new senator, Kamala Harris, really symbolizes something wrong with their world. Harris is a former San Francisco District Attorney and a former state Attorney General who represents California as the state’s junior Senator.

Senator John McCain, who isn’t even on the committee but came as a guest, piped up and tried to intimidate her as he had tried last week but... still she persisted. He singled Senator Harris out for abuse, as did Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) when she, like other Democratic s enators before her, caught Sessions up when he could not come up with a legal basis to not answer the questions, especially ones dealing with his conversations with Trump. He couldn’t say whether his reason was executive privilege or some super nebulous double secret, previously unconfirmed legality concerning confidential conversations that might be, someday, potentially subject to executive privilege. Try as he might, Sessions just couldn’t quite describe the legal details on that one for the simple reason that this mythical “longstanding practice,” unlike executive privilege, is not laid out in our constitution.



Hmm, what is it about Senator Kamala Harris that makes old white guys from the south so nervous? Sessions even admitted that she made him nervous as he constantly reached for his water glass. I expected that he was about to claim “I dew duclair. Ahh feel a case of tha vapors coming on. Mah ah be excused?”

Sessions is a living dinosaur who walks among us and sees his old plantation world going bye-bye when he looks at Harris. That was an obvious qualification for the job when Trump chose him. The idea that Senator Harris can lean in and ask her questions of him is just soooo wrong to people like Sessions. Even the idea that she can be a senator is wrong to people like Sessions. Sessions deserves and earned 100 times the disrespect he gave us on Tuesday. Good for Senator Harris.

To turn things around and reference a statement from Hillary Clinton, years ago; perhaps it would have been better if Jeff Sessions had just stayed home in his kitchen and baked some cookies.