Charles P. Pierce: The 3 Truest Words in Journalism: Follow the Money

[babylonsister]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a55048/trump-russia-finances/

The 3 Truest Words in Journalism: Follow the Money
Even in the era of cheap clicks and fake news.

By Charles P. Pierce
May 12, 2017



What fresh hell greeted the sun on Friday?

There is no question in my mind that Richard Nixon is now and forever history's yard waste. But, at the very least, he tried to bury the White House tapes. He didn't go on CBS and do a half-hour with Walter Cronkite to explain how he'd erased the 18-and-a-half minutes. And it's impossible to imagine the old crook's capping off a week in which his primary descriptor was "Nixonian" by adding another count to the indictments—Witness Intimidation? Obstruction of Justice?—with a tweet like this one.

Link to tweet

At 8:30 a.m.? Is somebody running the country?

The more I think about it—and I've been thinking about it a lot—the more I think that the hard criminal core of this whole episode may have something to do with money laundering or something like it. On May 9, the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a request to the Treasury Department's criminal division for documents relating to the president*, his campaign aides, and various hangers-on. From CNN:

The news comes just a few days after the revelation that Senate investigators sent broad-based requests for documents to four key potential witnesses in their probe: former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former adviser Roger Stone and former foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Warner added that until the Treasury Department responds with documents, that he will withhold his support for Trump's nominee to oversee terrorism and financial at the Treasury Department, Sigal Mandelker. "Chairman Burr and I requested that information -- until we get it, I'm not going to support the administration's nominee for undersecretary of Treasury finance, for terrorism and finance, because they owe us these documents first," Warner said.

snip//


Here's what I think. The president* needed money. The Russians oligarchs needed a laundromat. There is an obvious common interest here. That the Russians could gain more leverage over him than he had over them in this arrangement should be obvious. I think that he will always value his dreams of financial empire more than the national interest, and that he would do anything to keep those dreams alive, even demolish the institutions of free government along the way.

His alleged subordination of the national interest by means of helping undermine the presidential election simply was a means to keep his businesses afloat and his own inflated self-image intact. That's what he's fighting so hard, and so clumsily now. I think Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is in it to fasten his outraged-saltine sense of law and order onto the nation. It is my opinion that Donald Trump is in it to hang on to every buck. Democracy is fluffed and folded along the way.

UPDATE: And yes, this is entirely convincing.

With a few exceptions, I'm a vegan. (Jeffrey Dahmer).

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[sharedvalues]

2. Lavrov accused of being Trump's _handler_

Lavrov visited the president in person after Comey firing
Lavrov was accused by Steele of being the president's spy handler. In other words - Putin controlled Trump and Lavrov was the intermediary.


Problematic yet?

[dhol82]

5. Not surprising.

[Mme. Defarge]

3. It is no coincidence that Comey

was fired on the day that this information came out, IMO.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/05/09/politics/senate-russia-investigation-donald-trump/index.html

[Feathery Scout]

4. Didn't Manafort buy Trump Real Estate for Cash?