US politics general thread

[rietrot]

Uh...

Ukraine, Seeking U.S. Missiles, Halted Cooperation With Mueller Investigation

Lol This is completely ridiculous. The US has played on all the sides of all the regime changes in the past. Now selectively trying to prosecute people who might have talked to some Russian somewhere through time is going to backfire spectacularly. This Mueller investigation is becoming more and more of a joke each day. It is rather fun to watch them trying to grap at some Republican straws in the haystack of Clinton and Obama's mess.

 

[Unhappy1]

The entire Russia investigation exists because of Trump's retarded handling of Comey. Similar retardation has taken fold in the Stormy Daniels case. 4D chess where Trump doesnt even know how a single piece moves within the board.

 

[greg0205]

Well... This can't be good... Feds tapped Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's phones

Federal investigators have wiretapped the phone lines of Michael Cohen, the longtime personal lawyer for President Donald Trump who is under investigation for a payment he made to an adult film star who alleged she had an affair with Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the legal proceedings involving Cohen.

It is not clear how long the wiretap has been authorized, but NBC News has learned it was in place in the weeks leading up to the raids on Cohen's offices, hotel room, and home in early April, according to one person with direct knowledge.

At least one phone call between a phone line associated with Cohen and the White House was intercepted, the person said.

 

[cerebus]

The amount of rakes they step on... What's almost funniest is how Hannity even tries to give him an out, and he's like 'no no, I mean it!'.

And then there's this gem:

Imagine if that came out on October 15, 2016 in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton? … Cohen made it go away.

Sure sounds like an admission that the payment was related to the presidential campaign

 

[OrbitalDawn]

Hahahahaha.

A Pruitt Aide's Attack on Zinke Angers the White House

A press staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency attempted to distract from his boss’s troubles by planting stories that would reflect poorly on the secretary of the interior.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

Weird that they would lie about something like this.

Trump’s Appointees Pledged Not to Lobby After They Leave. Now They’re Lobbying.

 

[greg0205]

Oh myyyyy...

[video=youtube;Kcw8aoGxgss]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcw8aoGxgss[/video]

 

[Techne]

Giuliani: Trump is 'committed to' regime change in Iran

During the December protests in the country, Trump tweeted that it was "TIME FOR CHANGE!," adding "the great Iranian people have been repressed for many years."

"Iran is failing at every level despite the terrible deal made with them by the Obama Administration," Trump wrote on Twitter on Jan. 1. "The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food & for freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!"

Utter BS. Iran dropped the Dollar and now it is time for " change". Same thing happened in Iraq, Libya and Syria. Pakistan may be next. They all of a sudden became violaters of religious freedom the same day they dropped the US Dollar.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

^ More importantly, why is the president's personal lawyer discussing foreign policy? They've got perma-hawk Bolton to do that crap.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/business/michael-cohen-lawyer-trump.html

In addition to his legal and taxi businesses, Mr. Cohen has had a seemingly charmed touch as a real estate investor. On one day in 2014, he sold four buildings in Manhattan for $32 million, entirely in cash. That was nearly three times what he paid for them no more than three years earlier.

Seems totally legit and not at all a front for money laundering.

 

[cerebus]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...fe54b4-44c4-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html

In the nine years before he ran for president, Donald Trump’s company spent more than $400 million in cash on new properties — including 14 transactions paid for in full, without borrowing from banks — during a buying binge that defied real estate industry practices and Trump’s own history as the self-described “King of Debt.”

Trump’s vast outlay of cash, tracked through public records and totaled publicly here for the first time, provides a new window into the president’s private company, which discloses few details about its finances.

It shows that Trump had access to far more cash than previously known, despite his string of commercial bankruptcies and the Great Recession’s hammering of the real estate industry.

Why did the “King of Debt,” as he has called himself in interviews, turn away from that strategy, defying the real estate wisdom that it’s unwise to risk so much of one’s own money in a few projects?

And how did Trump — who had money tied up in golf courses and buildings — raise enough liquid assets to go on this cash buying spree?

 

[Techne]

^ More importantly, why is the president's personal lawyer discussing foreign policy? They've got perma-hawk Bolton to do that crap.

Nah, the more important question is who are the twats running the monetary policy show that also basically dictate US foreign policy. Guilliani is just a puppet show trying to whip up local support.

 

[saturnz]

Nah, the more important question is who are the twats running the monetary policy show that also basically dictate US foreign policy. Guilliani is just a puppet show trying to whip up local support.

yeah the important bit is monetary policy, but most people on this forum do not understand the evil of fiat currency and usury or that central banks have a monopoly over currency in "free capitalist markets" and its accompanying interest rates

 

[OrbitalDawn]

Israeli Operatives Who Aided Harvey Weinstein Collected Information on Former Obama Administration Officials

The e-mail appears to be part of an undercover campaign by an Israeli private-intelligence firm to discredit Obama officials who had been leading proponents of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The campaign was first reported, on Saturday, by the British newspaper the Observer. However, sources familiar with the effort and pages of documents obtained by The New Yorker reveal that there is more to understand. Two of those sources told me on Sunday that the operation was carried out by Black Cube—a firm that was also employed by Harvey Weinstein and that offers its clients access to operatives from “Israel’s élite military and governmental intelligence units,” including the Mossad.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

The NRA just named one of the most infamous gun runners in the world to be its president

The National Rifle Assn. just named someone convicted in connection with illegal gun sales to be its president.

That would be former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a top national security adviser to President Reagan who played an instrumental role in the Iran-Contra affair that marred Reagan’s second term. For those with short memories, that was the secret deal to violate multiple federal laws by selling arms to Iran — yes, “Death to America” Iran — in exchange for help freeing U.S. hostages in Lebanon and for money to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

 

[cerebus]

So Melania Trump's anticyberbullying campaign is... original.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

Things just took a turn for the worse for Cohen... Seems he set up an extremely obvious pay for play scheme.

Michael Cohen Took Cash From Russian Oligarch After Election

The Daily Beast can confirm that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a company controlled by Putin-aligned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

The allegations were initially made Tuesday by Michael Avenatti, porn actress Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, and confirmed by a source familiar with the matter.

“How the **** did Avenatti find out?” the source asked The Daily Beast.

According to a dossier published by Avenatti on Tuesday evening, “Vekselberg and his cousin Mr. Andrew Intrater routed eight payments to Mr. Cohen through a company named Columbus Nova LLC beginning in January 2017 and continuing until at least August 2017.”

AT&T confirms it paid Trump lawyer Michael Cohen for 'insights' on administration

Telecommunications giant AT&T said Tuesday night that it had paid President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen for "insights" about the Trump administration.

AT&T's admission came after a lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels claimed the company, drug giant Novartis and a Russian oligarch had all made payments to Cohen's firm.

Daniels' lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said AT&T had made four separate payments of $50,000 apiece to Cohen's company, for a total of $200,000 in late 2017 and into early 2018.

Novartis also paid Cohen $400k and soon after their new CEO got a personal meeting with Trump.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

More info here:

Firm Tied to Russian Oligarch Made Payments to Michael Cohen

A shell company that Michael D. Cohen used to pay hush money to a pornographic film actress received payments totaling more than $1 million from an American company linked to a Russian oligarch and several corporations with business before the Trump administration, according to documents and interviews.

Financial records reviewed by The New York Times show that Mr. Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer and longtime fixer, used the shell company, Essential Consultants L.L.C., for an array of business activities that went far beyond what was publicly known. Transactions totaling at least $4.4 million flowed through Essential Consultants starting shortly before Mr. Trump was elected president and continuing to this January, the records show.

Among the previously unreported transactions were payments last year totaling about $500,000 from Columbus Nova, an investment firm in New York whose biggest client is a company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch. A lawyer for Columbus Nova, in a statement Tuesday, described the money as a consulting fee that had nothing to do with Mr. Vekselberg.

Other transactions described in the financial records range from hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments by Fortune 500 firms with business before the Trump administration, to small amounts related to unexplained activities in foreign countries.

 

[The_Assimilator]

I'm sure Mueller already knows all of this... and if he didn't, it's just more to add to that juicy, thick dossier he's putting together.

When he finally decides to prosecute... hoo boy.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

I'm sure Mueller already knows all of this... and if he didn't, it's just more to add to that juicy, thick dossier he's putting together.

When he finally decides to prosecute... hoo boy.

He's apparently been in touch with Novartis about the Cohen payments since Nov '17...

Also, this got worse for Cohen, somehow...

Trump’s lawyer pitched himself as a fixer to Novartis and got paid $1.2 million

“He reached out to us,” the Novartis employee said, providing STAT with the company’s version of events as it scrambles to contain the fallout from being entangled in the investigations surrounding Trump and his inner circle, including Cohen. “With a new administration coming in, basically, all the traditional contacts disappeared and they were all new players. We were trying to find an inroad into the administration. Cohen promised access to not just Trump, but also the circle around him. It was almost as if we were hiring him as a lobbyist.”