herding cats
herding cats's JournalMueller just scored another huge win as longtime Trump ally turns snitch (Felix Sater)
Russian-born Felix Sater’s relationship with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and their links to the President’s international business deals in the former Soviet Union are rapidly becoming a major focus of Mueller’s probe, including subpoenas to compel sworn testimony and produce evidence.
He is a twice-convicted felon, who spent eleven years cooperating with the FBI and spent most of that time, plus the following seven years, working for the Trump Organization formally and informally as a business associate.
Details of Sater’s decades-old cooperation agreement indicate that Mueller’s prosecutors – one of whom, Andrew Weissmann, approved his deal originally – possess an overwhelming amount of leverage to obtain his cooperation, even in today’s case. McClatchy reports:
[Felix] Sater is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation and provided more than six hours of closed-door testimony on Wednesday to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which also focused heavily on the deals involving Cohen, according to multiple people with knowledge of the hearing.
Sater previously provided similar closed-door testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017.
Felix Sater is also a childhood friend of embattled Trump lawyer Michael Cohen from Brooklyn, with whom he was involved with in both a secret Ukraine peace deal after Trump’s inauguration and in a Moscow Trump Tower deal during the election. But his history with the Trump Organization goes back to the early 1990s.
https://washingtonpress.com/2018/04/06/report-trumps-russian-mafia-linked-partner-just-turned-states-evidence-for-mueller/
All three Channel 4 News Cambridge Analytica documentary videos
One
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Two
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Three
Did Manafort Use Trump to Curry Favor With a Putin Ally?
“I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage, right?” Manafort wrote.
“Absolutely,” Kilimnik responded a few hours later from Kiev. “Every article.”
“How do we use to get whole,” Manafort asks. “Has OVD operation seen?”
According to a source close to Manafort, the initials “OVD” refer to Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and one of Russia’s richest men. The source also confirmed that one of the individuals repeatedly mentioned in the email exchange as an intermediary to Deripaska is an aide to the oligarch.
The emails were provided to The Atlantic on condition of anonymity. They are part of a trove of documents turned over by lawyers for Trump’s presidential campaign to investigators looking into the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election. A source close to Manafort confirmed their authenticity. Excerpts from these emails were first reported by The Washington Post, but the full text of these exchanges, provided to The Atlantic, shows that Manafort attempted to leverage his leadership role in the Trump campaign to curry favor with a Russian oligarch close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Manafort was deeply in debt, and did not earn a salary from the Trump campaign.
https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/541677/
If you don't have the time to read this right now bookmark it and read it later. It's a must read for those following the Trump/Russia story.
Good news!! Voters send two more Democrats to the Oklahoma Capitol!
Democrats flipped two GOP-controlled districts on Tuesday, giving Oklahoma's minority party a morale boost heading into a long season of special elections as they prepare for 2018.
Voters on Tuesday decided on Democrats to represent them at the Oklahoma Capitol after their elected officials resigned in disgrace, leaving the legislative seats vacant and forcing the mid-year contests.
Michael Brooks will be the new state senator for District 44 in the southwest Oklahoma City metro area, beating Republican Joe Griffin.
Brooks won with more than 54 percent of the vote. On Facebook, he thanked supporters and said the race was about teachers, budget cuts and families.
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In Tulsa's House District 75, voters picked Karen Gaddis to replace former state Rep. Dan Kirby, who resigned following an investigation into sexual harassment claims made by a former assistant.
Gaddis beat Tressa Nunley with more than 52 percent of the vote.
http://newsok.com/article/5556001
Congratulations to Senator Michael Brooks and Represenative Karen Gaddis! 
This is how we begin our journey to retake each and every state the GOP controls, by winning these local level elections!
Deputy AG threatened to quit after being cast as impetus of Comey's firing...
Deputy AG threatened to quit after being cast as impetus of Comey's firing, which was already decided, official says
https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/862507406693212160
Back at work Monday morning in Washington, Trump told Vice President Pence and several senior aides — Reince Priebus, Stephen K. Bannon and Donald McGahn, among others — that he was ready to move on Comey. First, though, he wanted to talk with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his trusted confidant, and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, to whom Comey reported directly. Trump summoned the two of them to the White House for a meeting, according to a person close to the White House.
Back at work Monday morning in Washington, Trump told Vice President Pence and several senior aides — Reince Priebus, Stephen K. Bannon and Donald McGahn, among others — that he was ready to move on Comey. First, though, he wanted to talk with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his trusted confidant, and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, to whom Comey reported directly. Trump summoned the two of them to the White House for a meeting, according to a person close to the White House.
The pair quickly fulfilled the boss’s orders, and the next day Trump fired Comey — a breathtaking move that thrust a White House already accustomed to chaos into a new level of tumult, one that has legal as well as political consequences.
Rosenstein threatened to resign after the narrative emerging from the White House on Tuesday evening cast him as a prime mover of the decision to fire Comey and that the president acted only on his recommendation, said the person close to the White House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/politics/how-trumps-anger-and-impatience-prompted-him-to-fire-the-fbi-director/2017/05/10/d9642334-359c-11e7-b373-418f6849a004_story.html
Their excuses are crumbling around them. I'd like to mention here that firing Comey for the apparent reason that he made Trump mad for investigating his campaign, is not ok, and may well be impeachable. Don't get too excited -- we still have a VERY Republican Congress, but it's a start and a step.
Eric Holder tonight (tweet warning ⚠️)
https://twitter.com/EricHolder/status/862155546081845248This gave me hope after reading how upset many were in the FBI tonight.
Trump team marks 6-month election anniversary by vowing to air video of Clinton campaigns concessio
On Tuesday, Dan Scavino, the White House director of social media, celebrated the six-month anniversary of the election by tweeting a screen grab of the late night phone call in which Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called to concede to Republican candidate Donald Trump. Scavino promised to share video of the conversation, which he said came via a Nov. 9 phone call at 2:30 a.m. from longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin to Trump’s then-campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway.
Scavino did not respond to an email asking when he plans to reveal the clip. He posted the message on his personal account rather than his official White House Twitter page. Scavino has previously been attacked by Democrats for using his personal account to call for the defeat of a congressman who criticized Trump. Ethics laws bar government officials from using their position to influence elections.
Conway, who is now a counselor to the president, responded to Scavino on her personal account and suggested there were people who had not yet come to grips with Trump’s victory.
https://twitter.com/KellyannePolls/status/861972774641963009
https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/trump-team-marks-6-month-election-anniversary-vowing-air-video-clinton-campaigns-concession-call-171259646.html
What petty, immature assholes! Way to light a fire under the resistance, jerks!
The ACLU Is Warning Americans That Thanks To Republicans Its Not Safe To Travel In Texas
The ACLU has issued a travel alert warning Americans that they can anticipate having their constitutional rights violated if they travel to Texas.
The ACLU has issued a travel alert warning Americans that they can anticipate having their constitutional rights violated if they travel to Texas.
In a statement provided to PoliticusUSA, the ACLU announced the travel warning:
The American Civil Liberties Union issued a “travel alert” today informing anyone planning to travel to Texas in the near future to anticipate the possible violation of their constitutional rights when stopped by law enforcement.
The alert comes amid the passing of a Texas law known as SB4. The law gives a green light to police officers in the state to investigate a person’s immigration status during a routine traffic stop, leading to widespread racial profiling, baseless scrutiny, and illegal arrests of citizens and non-citizens alike presumed to be “foreign” based on how they look or sound. The travel alert applies to all travelers to Texas, including U.S. travelers from other states and U.S. citizens. In addition, this alert applies to all encounters with federal, state, county law enforcement including local police and sheriffs.
The message is clear. Texas is not a safe place for you and your constitutional liberties to travel.
http://www.politicususa.com/2017/05/09/aclu-warning-americans-republicans-safe-travel-texas.html
https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/861756356352557056
Just took a tough vote? This GOP congressman shows how NOT to conduct yourself back home.
The footage of Rep. Rod Blum (R-Iowa) walking out of an interview with an Iowa reporter is brutal. And it's going viral for a reason: In trying to protect himself from anger in this health-care debate, Blum just made himself a target of it.
Being defensive (and, in Blum's case, dramatic) is pretty much the opposite of what House Republicans who could be vulnerable for supporting the House health-care bill need to be doing right now.
In the political tinderbox that is much of America right now, one impulsive comment or action — like walking out of a TV interview that hadn't even touched on health care — can light a fire that spreads across the nation.
Let's start with the interview in question. KCRG-TV reporter Josh Scheinblum asks Blum, who voted for the controversial House health-care bill last week, why he's checking people's IDs for a town hall later that night. For several months now, Republican lawmakers across the nation have been flooded with constituents — many but not all of them on the left — angry about the proposed changes to health care.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/09/just-took-a-tough-vote-this-gop-congressman-shows-how-to-not-to-conduct-yourself-back-home/
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