Felonious 45 Friday

[ESF]

Dec 14, 2018 13:12:19 GMT -5 mbcdefg said:

Chris Christie withdraws name for consideration for COS.

Lmao

Cheeto must be losing his mind now that even Christie won't lick his boots.

[sparrowsong]

Trump might have to start considering people who are short or have a mustache soon.

[sparrowsong]

Papadopolous wants to run for Congress in 2020.

[karinothing]

I don't think anything will come out of PAC coordination only because I think a lot of campaigns do this. They may say they don't and may hide it better but it is all the same people running things. They are all friends and drinking partners and often other types of partners. Party/Candidate and PAC coordination is rampant. I remember when working for the State party and in order not to coordinate we moved staffers to a trailer in the parking lot. I mean come on . . .

[ESF]

Remember in the month or two after Trump won the election, and he reveled in in playing White House Apprentice by summoning people to come and beg for jobs while worshiping at his altar and beg for a job, only to later humiliate them by choosing someone else?

And now, look at where we are. Like rats from a sinking ship.

It's beautiful.

[DotAndBuzz]

Dec 14, 2018 13:12:19 GMT -5 mbcdefg said:

Chris Christie withdraws name for consideration for COS.

Lmao

Once (or thrice+) burned, finally shy...

[ESF]

Dec 14, 2018 13:26:18 GMT -5 karinothing said:

I don't think anything will come out of PAC coordination only because I think a lot of campaigns do this. They may say they don't and may hide it better but it is all the same people running things. They are all friends and drinking partners and often other types of partners. Party/Candidate and PAC coordination is rampant. I remember when working for the State party and in order not to coordinate we moved staffers to a trailer in the parking lot. I mean come on . . .

I think the PAC/Campaign coordination is a problem not because it's a technical violation of the campaign finance laws, but because they were effectively laundering money and knowingly running a campaign that was heavily reliant on foreign funds. In the Twitter thread I posted above, the speculation is that one or more PACs may have been paying Manafort (a Trump campaign staffer), which I'm assuming is not a routine thing. Plus the PACs got foreign money.


Also,  have you seen this?

www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/12/nra-trump-2016-campaign-coordination-political-advertising/

There's a lot of experts in here who seem shocked by these documents and levels of coordination between the campaign and the NRA. If this is normal stuff, that's very disturbing.

[bowies]

Lol, Christie must read the headlines on Google News. There was one earlier today that said Trump was getting ready to give it to Christie in a “reality show” type spectacle.

[bowies]

I think today’s grand jury is in regards to either the inauguration bribery fund or the PAC/foreign government slush fund. Wouldn’t shock me at all if the head of the NRA was indicted next. Butina supposedly spilled the goods and now the coordination piece is in the news.

Who held the purse strings of the inauguration fund?

[ESF]

Dec 14, 2018 13:49:52 GMT -5 bowies said:

I think today’s grand jury is in regards to either the inauguration bribery fund or the PAC/foreign government slush fund. Wouldn’t shock me at all if the head of the NRA was indicted next. Butina supposedly spilled the goods and now the coordination piece is in the news.

Who held the purse strings of the inauguration fund?

So I don't think it's related to the inaugural fund, because I think that the inaugural fund is not a Mueller investigation, and it might even be being run by SDNY. Also WSJ reporter on Maddow last night seemed to think that investigation was still in the early stages.

I think the secret Mueller proceeding today is one Maddow has talked about before. Last month, she talked about a secret under seal proceeding that has had a couple urgent appeals to the DC Circuit. There is a new judge there that came from the Trump White House that has recused himself from the appellate proceedings connected to this case. Now that proceeding is back down to the district court. 

[wambam]

This is probably a dumb question. Will we have an answer to this sealed grand jury mystery today?

[ESF]

Dec 14, 2018 14:22:28 GMT -5 wambam said:

This is probably a dumb question. Will we have an answer to this sealed grand jury mystery today?

Unless it leaks, no.

I'm sure there is an army of reporters in every square inch of that courthouse hoping to catch a sight of someone. 

[secretlyevil]

Dec 14, 2018 13:39:31 GMT -5 DotAndBuzz said:

Dec 14, 2018 13:12:19 GMT -5 mbcdefg said:

Chris Christie withdraws name for consideration for COS.

Lmao

Once (or thrice+) burned, finally shy...

Finally learned...it's amazing.

[anodyne]

Mystery Mueller mayhem at a Washington court

www.cnn.com/2018/12/14/politics/mueller-grand-jury-mysterious-friday/index.html?no-st=1544814825

The entire level of the building on which the appeals court is housed was locked down.

For more than an hour, the press waited, staking out stairwells and exits. The gaggle of law clerks dispersed about an hour after the arguments started, and then silence. No recognizable attorneys were spotted coming in and out of the courtroom or even the building.

No sign that it was Mueller's office. No sign of defense counsel. The courthouse security had ushered the lawyers into and out of the building for their secret hearing completely under cover. The sealed hearing stayed confidential.

And then, about 10 minutes after the court activity appeared to wrap for the day, a black Justice Department car rolled into Mueller's office building, bringing attorneys including Dreeben and Zainab Ahmad back to their home base.

[centralsquare]

[DotAndBuzz]

Dec 14, 2018 15:20:47 GMT -5 centralsquare said:

[cville]

As we all know, real Gs move in silence with violence.

[sparrowsong]

Lol! Scene 26 in the eventual movie “Individual 1.”

Flynn gave the FBI agents who came to interview him "a little tour" of the area around his White House office. While he was doing that, President Trump walked right through the middle of the group "but nobody paid any attention to the agents."

[ESF]

Dec 14, 2018 15:20:47 GMT -5 centralsquare said:

This is some solid reporting.

The Trump Inaugural Fund Scandal is my absolute favorite scandal because it's one of the few where the only real victims are other awful people. Not only can I read it without wanting to throw things, but I just laugh and laugh and laugh. The donors either won't care, in which case it reveals they intended to bribe him when making their donation and they are going to start being outed, or they'll be pissed their funds were misused, in which case, they deserve it for having donating to this con man. 

[ESF]

By the way, the person complaining about the misuse of funds, Stephanie Winstron Wolkoff? She was in the news earlier this year, when it was revealed she got $26 mil from that committee. I wonder if she stopped complaining when they bought her silence.

www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/us/politics/melania-trump-inauguration-adviser.html

[bowies]

Looks like Mulvaney got the short stick lolllllll.

[centralsquare]

I DIE.

[ESF]

I love the internet

[centralsquare]

Dec 14, 2018 18:42:10 GMT -5 ESF said:

I love the internet

[sparrowsong]

Wait, I took a nap and this happened?

[bowies]

I was being glib above but looks like I was right. Acting means temporary. Hope Mulvaney knows he’s there until he’s fired.

[ESF]

This is hilarious.

Remember when Mulvaney was both the head of OMB and the acting head of the CFPB? Is Mulvaney going to do two jobs again?

[bowies]

Back to the grand jury story - looks like one of the SC attorneys that was supposedly present is a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs. Odds that the next round of indictments involve Saudis? High.

[ESF]

Dec 14, 2018 20:08:09 GMT -5 bowies said:

Back to the grand jury story - looks like one of the SC attorneys that was supposedly present is a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs. Odds that the next round of indictments involve Saudis? High.

Joy Reid is covering for Maddow and she said one of the two Mueller team people there today was the person who is also handling the Flynn piece.

Reid also said that it appears to relate to a dispute over a grand jury witness, and that whatever it is, it’s important enough that the court has been willing to drop stuff to hear things relating to it ASAP and undergo unprecedented security measures.

I’m thinking this has something to do with Mike Pence.

[debatethis]

Dec 14, 2018 19:38:05 GMT -5 ESF said:

This is hilarious.

Remember when Mulvaney was both the head of OMB and the acting head of the CFPB? Is Mulvaney going to do two jobs again?

No. Deputy OMB is filling the Director role. Coincidentally, his wife was one of my debate partners in college. I seriously wonder if they've both been injected with scopolamine (drug that makes you compliant) because they used to both have brains. And compassion. And we went to a Christian college.