Comrade Papadopoulos proactively reaches inside to adjust his wireThumbnail: Papadopoulos was a Trump foreign policy adviser and the first of the Trumpanzee bandits to plead guilty in the Putin-Gate investigation. Now 30, he worked for the kooky right-wing think tank, the Hudson Institute from 2011 'til 2015 and then joined the Ben Carson presidential campaign. After Trump drove Dr.
Today was the dual hearing on the unconstitutional nature of Joe Arpaio's pardon and on his own request to vacate his conviction. That's a little context for an understanding of what role Michael Dreeben is meant to play on Robert Mueller's team looking into Putin-Gate. Greg Farrell did the reporting for Bloomberg on how Mueller can tackle the expected preemptive pardons Trump is expected to start handing out to family members and regimistas.
If Looks Could Kill Dept.: Naturally in the above photo it's the World's Blowsiest Blowhard bloviating, while Senate Majority Leader "Miss Mitch" McConnell, er, sits silently by -- of course it could be that he's just thinking about the fun of going home to the company of Transportation Sec'y Mrs. Miss Mitch. (Note: If you have a suitably Photoshoppish imagination, feel free to visualize Miss Mitch with a hatchet buried in that odious head.
Republican politicians, Senators Tom Cotton (AR) and Thom Tillis (NC) are very different characters but there is no way to accurately describe either one of them without using the words "right wing" or even "very right wing." Each was on TV yesterday, Tillis with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, and Cotton with John Dickerson on CBS news' Face the Nation. Believe it or not, somehow Señor Trumpanzee came up in both conversations.
Thursday morning Trumpanzee was up early tweeting his nonsense about his pal Putin. He decided it blame the Republican-controlled Congress-- hi, Paul! hi, Mitch!-- for the deterioration of relations between the U.S. and Russia. "Our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low.
Mike Allen: "Sessions allies tell us he won’t quit, and will have to be fired: This is his life’s work and dream job. (Yesterday, he took on sanctuary cities.) And in Trumptown, you can be down now, but back in favor after you endure a little humiliation. Ask Steve Bannon."Odd how right-wing Trumpbots are cheering their president on to fire Jeff Sessions, an icon of racism, xenophobia and... well...
Trump's like the guy, pulled over by a traffic cop for speeding, who says to the cop who comes over to write him a ticket, "you better not look in the trunk or else!" The analogy falls apart a little when you realize Mueller had already been looking in the trunk-- even if he isn't putting out press releases or leaking about it. Trump's flipping out that Mueller can examine his tax returns-- i.e., that there's a real sheriff in town who's going after the bad guys.
Start at 2:25. Chris Hayes to Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell: "How long are you allowed to go before you retroactively file as a foreign agent?" Note Swalwell's carefully phrased non-answers, as well as Hayes' seeming failure to know that not registering is a very common practice.
Speaking Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority conference in Washington, Charles Krauthammer pointed out that Trump, stumbling around like a drunk, is making poorly thought out moves that are backfiring. "Comey," he said, "handing over his notes to former Director Mueller, who is running the investigation, means that Trump is now under investigation.
Tom Cole (R-OK): "I won’t defend anyone who obstructs justice. Time for Comey to appear before Congress.”Late this afternoon, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein could no longer dither and finally announced that he had appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller to serve as a special counsel to oversee the ever-widening Putin-Gate scandal.
