Random Politics & Religion #31: 2018 Edition

Daily reminder that the President does not have a button, big or small, on his desk that he can push and nukes go up in the air.

Daily reminder that the President does not have a button, big or small, on his desk that he can push and nukes go up in the air.

Things are getting a bit explodey today...

Bannon: 2016 Trump Tower meeting was 'treasonous'
CNN

Best lines:

Exclusive: Previously undisclosed emails show follow-up after Trump Tower meeting
CNN

EMAILS!!! And not Hillary's!!!

Fusion GPS co-founders slam GOP's 'fake investigations'
CNN

Kinda tame compared to Bannon's but...

And I will check other sources on this stuff.

He's the POTUS, Vic. He says he's got a button, there's a button.

Why would he lie? He's never done it before.

you have to enter the lunchcodes

you have to enter the lunchcodes

Lunchcode = ham and cheezey on wry.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was recently indicted on money laundering and other charges, is challenging the authority of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in a new lawsuit.

Manafort’s lawyers in court documents filed Wednesday call into question Mueller’s decision to charge their client with crimes they say have "no connection whatsoever to the 2016 presidential campaign or even Donald Trump."

As part of his investigation into Russian meddling in the recent election, Mueller in October indicted Manafort and longtime associate Rick Gates on 12 counts related money laundering, tax fraud, failing to reigster as foreign agents and conspiracy against the United States.

“The investigation of Mr. Manafort is completely unmoored from the Special Counsel’s original jurisdiction to investigate ‘any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,’” the complaint reads.“It has focused on unrelated, decade-old business dealings — specifically Ukraine political campaign consulting activities of Mr. Manafort.”

The filing also takes aim at the Justice Department and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein— who approved the special investigation after President Trump fired James Comey as FBI director.

Rosenstein had been tasked with overseeing the probe after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from from the investigation.

Manafort in the lawsuit claimed Rosenstein unlawfully handed Mueller authority to investigate "anything he stumbles across while investigating, no matter how remote from the specific matter identified as the subject of the Appointment order."

Manafort in the suit requested a federal judge reject Mueller's appointment and dismiss the case against him.

"The lawsuit is frivolous but the defendent is entitled to to file whatever he wants," a Department of Justice spokesperson said in response to the filing.

I miss when Chanti posts questionable links from questionable sources.

This is why Trump won:

I think cat ladies shouldn't be allowed to vote.

A generation ago, Republicans sought to protect President Richard Nixon by urging the Senate Watergate committee to look at supposed wrongdoing by Democrats in previous elections. The committee chairman, Sam Ervin, a Democrat, said that would be “as foolish as the man who went bear hunting and stopped to chase rabbits.”

Today, amid a growing criminal inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, congressional Republicans are again chasing rabbits. We know because we’re their favorite quarry.

In the year since the publication of the so-called Steele dossier — the collection of intelligence reports we commissioned about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia — the president has repeatedly attacked us on Twitter. His allies in Congress have dug through our bank records and sought to tarnish our firm to punish us for highlighting his links to Russia. Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, The Wall Street Journal, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers.

We are happy to correct the record. In fact, we already have.

Three congressional committees have heard over 21 hours of testimony from our firm, Fusion GPS. In those sessions, we toppled the far right’s conspiracy theories and explained how The Washington Free Beacon and the Clinton campaign — the Republican and Democratic funders of our Trump research — separately came to hire us in the first place.

We walked investigators through our yearlong effort to decipher Mr. Trump’s complex business past, of which the Steele dossier is but one chapter. And we handed over our relevant bank records — while drawing the line at a fishing expedition for the records of companies we work for that have nothing to do with the Trump case.

Republicans have refused to release full transcripts of our firm’s testimony, even as they selectively leak details to media outlets on the far right. It’s time to share what our company told investigators.

We don’t believe the Steele dossier was the trigger for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russian meddling. As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp.

The intelligence committees have known for months that credible allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia were pouring in from independent sources during the campaign. Yet lawmakers in the thrall of the president continue to wage a cynical campaign to portray us as the unwitting victims of Kremlin disinformation.

We suggested investigators look into the bank records of Deutsche Bank and others that were funding Mr. Trump’s businesses. Congress appears uninterested in that tip: Reportedly, ours are the only bank records the House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed.

We told Congress that from Manhattan to Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., and from Toronto to Panama, we found widespread evidence that Mr. Trump and his organization had worked with a wide array of dubious Russians in arrangements that often raised questions about money laundering. Likewise, those deals don’t seem to interest Congress.

We explained how, from our past journalistic work in Europe, we were deeply familiar with the political operative Paul Manafort’s coziness with Moscow and his financial ties to Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin.

Finally, we debunked the biggest canard being pushed by the president’s men — the notion that we somehow knew of the June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower between some Russians and the Trump brain trust. We first learned of that meeting from news reports last year — and the committees know it. They also know that these Russians were unaware of the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s work for us and were not sources for his reports.

Yes, we hired Mr. Steele, a highly respected Russia expert. But we did so without informing him whom we were working for and gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: Why did Mr. Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun?

What came back shocked us. Mr. Steele’s sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive — and now confirmed — effort by the Kremlin to help elect Mr. Trump president. Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the F.B.I.

We did not discuss that decision with our clients, or anyone else. Instead, we deferred to Mr. Steele, a trusted friend and intelligence professional with a long history of working with law enforcement. We did not speak to the F.B.I. and haven’t since.

After the election, Mr. Steele decided to share his intelligence with Senator John McCain via an emissary. We helped him do that. The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power. We did not, however, share the dossier with BuzzFeed, which to our dismay published it last January.

We’re extremely proud of our work to highlight Mr. Trump’s Russia ties. To have done so is our right under the First Amendment.

It is time to stop chasing rabbits. The public still has much to learn about a man with the most troubling business past of any United States president. Congress should release transcripts of our firm’s testimony, so that the American people can learn the truth about our work and most important, what happened to our democracy.

Well I've studied cat ladies. And there is a fine line between cat owner and cat lady. I think once you get past like 6 cats you are dangerously close to cat lady.