Remember When Hillary And James Comey Conspired To Steal Election From Herself? Trump LOLsuit Remembers!
How will he dirty up the House 1/6 Committee report? How won't he?
To call the pile of conspiratorial gibberish Donald Trump excreted onto the federal docket yesterday a "lawsuit" is to miss the point. Sure, he ponied up the $402 fee so he could file a case in Florida captioned Trump v. Clinton,suing his nemesis for doing THE RICO by "orchestrat[ing] a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election."
But no one believes that 108 pages of 8chan-level nutbaggery alleging that Hillary Clinton presided over a vast conspiracy to weaponize the Democratic National Committee and the FBI to ruin Donald Trump's life is going to lead to a $74 million payout. Because this isn't really a lawsuit. It's counterprogramming for the upcoming report from the House January 6 Select Committee, and the parallels to the House's project are uncanny.
The committee subpoenas upwards of a hundred witnesses, many of whom are well-known figures in the Republican movement? Trump drops a suit on 24 defendants, including Hillary Clinton, Andy McCabe, and Fusion GPS, as well as 20 "fictious" [sic] unnamed defendants. (Watch your back, Harry Potter!)
The committee accuses Trump of presiding over a vast conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election? Trump accuses Clinton of deploying "agents to act on her behalf to carry out the plot against Trump to assure that he would be falsely implicated as colluding with a hostile foreign sovereignty," even going so far as to suggest that he got booted off Twitter "due to the misinformation campaign waged by Hillary Clinton, whereby truth was deemed false and lies were deemed to be truth."
The committee says Trumpland lawyers Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and John Eastman carried out an attack on democracy and privilege is unavailing because of the crime-fraud exception? Trump sues election lawyers Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann, as well as their former law firm Perkins Coie, alleging a criminal plot to feed the Steele Dossier and allegations about the Alfa Bank server in the basement of Trump Tower to the FBI.
The committee says former assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark tried to weaponize the Justice Department to chase down bogus allegations of election fraud as a pretext for swing states to claw back their electors and recast them for Trump? Trump claims that Clinton's "public denigration of Trump and his campaign" led to a "large-scale investigation and expended precious time, resources and taxpayer dollars looking into the spurious allegation that the Trump Campaign had colluded with the Russian Government" thanks to "a small faction of Clinton loyalists who were well-positioned within the Department of Justice and the FBI." So he sues Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and of course James Comey — the biggest Clinton loyalist of them all!
The committee asks Reps. Jim Jordan and Scott Perry in to discuss their role in spreading lies about election fraud and convincing Trump that Mike Pence had the right to unilaterally reject electors? Trump sues Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, because she was head of the DNC and said mean words about him, which is CONSPIRACY!
The committee subpoenas the RNC? Trump sues the DNC.
The committee subpoenas former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn? Trump sues current NSA Jake Sullivan.
The committee subpoenas Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows? Trump sues former Bill Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, as well as Philippe Reines, Hillary Clinton's senior advisor at the State Department.
The committee subpoenas Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon? Trump sues Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. (Podesta was also Clinton's campaign chair.)
The committee subpoenas the leaders of Women for America First about its role in organizing the January 6 rally cum insurrection? Trump sues Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele.
It ain't subtle. Trump is hoping to leverage this lawsuit into discovery he can use to "balance" whatever damning shit is going to come out of the Select Committee. The problem with this plan, though, is that the lawsuit is complete garbage.
It's garbage from a factual standpoint, alleging a Jenga stack conspiracy where Charles Dolan Jr. (the sub-source for the pee tape story) feeds bad info to Igor Danchenko (the primary source), who feeds it to Chris Steele, who feeds it to Michael Sussmann, who feeds it to Nellie Ohr, who feeds it to Bruce Ohr, who feeds it to Andy McCabe, who feeds it to James Comey, who feeds it to Robert Mueller. And if they were all in on it, then everyone along this chain must have known that the information was false — well everyone but Mueller, who hasn't been sued yet, although perhaps he's one of the "fictious" parties. Anyway, all of this was part of a plan cooked up by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, because there was just nothing else to throw at Donald Trump, noted upstanding citizen, philanthropist, and churchgoing family man.
It's garbage from a procedural standpoint, since there's no Florida jurisdiction over half these people. And not for nothing, but the statute of limitations on RICO is four years, and Trump has been shouting "NO COLLUSION!" since 2017.
It's garbage because FFS, IT'S NEVER CIVIL RICO. And if it were, theft of trade secrets wouldn't be a predicate act, even if the DNS data legally collected from the Trump Tower server were a "trade secret," which it most certainly is not. And even if it were true that Democrats fed false info to the FBI, that's not obstruction of justice. Which is a lucky thing for Rudy Giuliani!
And it's garbage because it's full of outright lies and wild extrapolations. No, the DNC wasn't hacked by "an individual" named "Guccifer 2.0" — that was a front for the Russian GRU. No, Robert Mueller didn't "exonerate Donald Trump and his campaign" — he literally called a press conference to say that his report did not exculpate the president, but that any punishment had to be meted out by Congress. No, the Justice Department Inspector General’s Report didn't conclude that "the scheme was conceived, coordinated and carried out by top-level officials at the Clinton Campaign and the DNC—including ‘the candidate’ herself—who attempted to shield her involvement behind a wall of third parties": It found that the investigation was appropriately opened after Trump's idiot coffee boy George Papadopoulos bragged to an Australian diplomat that Russia was about to release damaging info on Hillary Clinton. And speculating that "it seems all but certain that additional indictments are forthcoming" in the Durham investigation is wholly inappropriate to put in a federal pleading.
In short, this is the equivalent of a citizens arrest masquerading as a federal lawsuit. It will be dismissed before it ever gets to discovery, and the lawyers who filed this piece of shit — the infamous Alina Habba, and some personal injury lawyer in Florida who happens to have been Trump's boarding school roommate in 1964 — will be lucky to get out of this without getting sanctioned.
Are we done here?
Yeah, I think we're done.
[Trump v. Clinton, Docket via Court Listener]
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Tucker Should Probably Just Give His Monologues In Russian From Now On
Tucker's drumbeat on behalf of Mother Russia's war continues.
In technical geopolitical terms, things this week are getting stressy with the Russia/Ukraine situation. Around 8,500 American troops have been put on "heightened alert," and everybody's as worried as ever that Russia is going to invade. So of course, Tucker Carlson, the most popular spokesmodel for Russian propaganda on the Fox News network, put on a slinky thing last night and showed us some more Russian propaganda.
This was pretty impressive, because in order to do this, he had to take a break from the most important issue in America, which is explaining how his masculinity is threatened if he can't separate his M&Ms by color so he doesn't inadvertently eat a male M&M and accidentally get hard-shelled candy cock in his mouth. (What? Isn't that what he's been complaining about? It's something about M&Ms and his shriveled masculinity.)
It seems like Tucker's beating the drums of war almost every night, but in support of an American enemy that wants to invade and steal our ally. Here's just a smidge from last night:
Tucker: Why is it disloyal to side with Russia but loyal to side with Ukraine?pic.twitter.com/SX8GtYjDPO— Acyn (@Acyn) 1643072631
"They're both foreign countries that don't care anything about the United States. Kind of strange," said Tucker, trusting that his viewers are completely pig-ignorant about foreign policy in lands further away than the Ryan's Family Steakhouse they go to when the Ryan's Family Steakhouse they usually go to is closed for buffet renovations.
Ukraine cares about the United States a whole lot, especially as the US and NATO have been crucial to Ukraine's efforts not to get completely blown up by Russian enemy invaders. Donald Trump got impeached (the first time) for using military aid Ukraine desperately needs for protection from Russia as a tool of extortion to try to force Ukraine to help him steal the 2020 election.
Ukraine cares.
Russia cares too. Russia cares so much it attacked the 2016 election to install a physically repulsive braindead puppet strongman that would help get rid of the sanctions the previous administration imposed for attacking Ukraine. Then Russia tried it again in 2020, but their attacks were too weak to overcome the blistering hatred America feels for the loser they installed in 2016.
They care. They both care.
Tucker loves to innocently ask these questions, as if he's just pulled his dick out of a green M&M and is observing global politics for the first time. Why is it disloyal to side with Russia? Why shouldn't we be on Russia's side?
And Tucker is on Russia's side, as he's made clear, just like he sides with the terrorists who attacked the US Capitol. He's writing op-eds about it on the Fox News website, adapted from his monologues. "I'm totally confused," Tucker said recently to GOP Rep. Mike Turner. "I guess," Tucker said, when Turner said traditionally we like to take the side of democracies.
None of this is by accident. Russia is an authoritarian white supremacist Christian wet dream wonderland. Ukraine is a struggling democracy. Which one do you think Tucker would feel safer in? Which one is more likely to protect him from the things he fears the most?
And because Tucker is right about his audience's general lack of awareness about how to find their ass with both hands and a compass — or maybe because some of them are further down Tucker's authoritarian white supremacist road than we like to imagine — all of this is having its intended effect. Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski said this week that he's getting calls in his office from outraged Tucker viewers demanding to know why we're not standing up for our beloved ally Russia against Ukraine and its tyrannical wishes not to be invaded.
My office is now getting calls from folks who say they watch Tucker Carlson and are upset that we're not siding with Russia in its threats to invade Ukraine, and who want me to support Russia's "reasonable" positions.— Tom Malinowski (@Tom Malinowski) 1643049387
Aaron Rupar has a long piece today at his Substack about Tucker's escalation on behalf of Russia, and it highlights just the sheer number of lies and Kremlin propaganda Tucker is spewing to make a Russian invasion of Ukraine seem like literally self-defense, and to paint the Biden administration's and NATO's attempts to prevent a war as militaristic aggression. That's right, the REAL military aggression would be if we protected our ally from a military invasion, instead of letting our enemy run roughshod over it.
For instance:
Carlson’s excuse-making for Putin basically boils down to the idea that Putin is right to perceive Ukraine’s interest in joining NATO as a threat. On January 18, Carlson tried to make this point with a thought experiment, asking his viewers to “imagine if Mexico fell under the direct military control of China. We would see that as a threat.”
“Well that’s how Russia views NATO control of Ukraine, and why wouldn’t they?” he added.
Tucker: Imagine if Mexico fell under the direct military control of China. We would see that as a threat. There would be no reason for that. That\u2019s how Russia views NATO control of Ukraine and why wouldn\u2019t they?pic.twitter.com/uHMmJ9h3m1— Acyn (@Acyn) 1642555805
Wait, did we miss the announcement that Ukraine was going to be able to join NATO? No, that wouldn't happen for many years, if it ever happened. Has NATO threatened to invade Russia from the new bases it's going to build in Ukraine? No, NATO exists to defend member nations from Russian aggression, not the other way around.
Is Putin just very stupid and confused? No. Why do you think Putin has always had such a hard-on to kill NATO? Oh yeah, because it's in the way of Putin's real goal, which is to bring all the former Soviet bloc nations back under his control, in a pathetic attempt to restore the Soviet Union to its previous "glory."
Is Tucker just very stupid and confused? Nah. He's sitting in exactly the laps he wants to be sitting in right now. This is where a big part of the white supremacist American right wing is now, and they're only going to get worse from here.
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Republicans Suddenly 'Very Interested' In 'Helping' to 'Reform' The Electoral Count Act
Oh, sure, you bet.
Last night Axios cheerfully reported that reforms to the Electoral Count Act are picking up "growing bipartisan support," as the GOP warms to the idea of clarifying ambiguities in the law that governs Electoral College tabulation. Because apparently this is Axios's first rodeo.
Just a year ago Republicans were pretending Mike Pence had the unilateral authority to reject 18 million votes from five swing states. And now we're supposed to accept that they want to help reform the process? You bet!
Surely this has nothing to do with the fact that the Republican party -- which hasn't won a majority of the popular vote in a presidential election since 2004 -- is planning to allow Republican legislatures to seize control of the electoral process to ensure that their preferred candidate takes their states' electoral votes? Heaven forfend!
It's not even like they're being subtle about it. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell clutches his pearls over Democrats' "ridiculous" insinuations that "we're not gonna honor the outcome of an election," Georgia Republicans are moving to take over elections in Fulton County, and Arizona Republicans floated a bill that would allow the legislature to recast the state's electoral votes at will.
And yet those babes in the woods at Axios hail a statement from Rep. Jim Banks, head of the Republican Study Committee, as if it might be a good faith effort at Electoral College reform.
"It's a muddled, flawed [act] and Congress must clarify the essential process of certifying elections," said the Indiana congressman who voted to reject electors from Pennsylvania and Arizona and joined in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's preposterous lawsuit demanding to toss out the ballots in Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin as well.
Then Banks added that he's certainly not signing on to some "Trojan horse" for voting rights reform. LOL!
Friends, there is a reason Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected Banks's nomination to the January 6 Select Committee, and it is that he is a partisan hack. There is no way on God's green earth that Banks is interested in reforming the law that governs the official tabulation of electoral votes because he cares about the efficient transition of power. This sumbitch is worried Vice President Kamala Harris might take it into her head on January 6, 2025 to reject electors from states where Republicans rigged them — or stole them outright — particularly since the GOP has now suggested that that's a real thing.
Meanwhile, Democrats have proposed a whole raft of reforms inspired by the the clusterfuckery Republicans unleashed last year as they filed insane lawsuits and drafted batshit memos in their effort to overturn the election. Lest we forget, Rep. Louie Gohmert actually sued Mike Pence to stop him certifying the "defective" swing state electoral votes.
Among the proposed changes, Democrats suggest raising the threshold to object to any state's electoral votes beyond the current one senator and one representative, clarifying the safe harbor provision, and making it more difficult for legislators to seize the electoral votes. Safe bet Banks isn't going to go for that last one.
And not for nothing, but Democrats might want to give a little more thought to their plan to give the Senate president pro tempore responsibility for presiding over the tabulation of electoral votes. In some sense it makes sense to take responsibility away from the vice president, who is quite likely to be on the ballot him- or herself. But if Republicans take back the Senate, that would put Senator Chuck Grassley in charge of rejecting ballots at will, an outcome that is ... not great.
In summary and in conclusion, do not trust Jim Banks. Do not trust the GOP. Ditch the filibuster and pass real voting rights legislation. The end.
[Axios]
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Paul Manafort Wants A Redemption Tour? F*ck Off, Let's Talk About His Russian Spy BFF Some More
Really, we can just copy/paste this every time he gives an interview.
Oh good, it's time for a redemption tour from Paul Manafort. Is anyone interested in that? Is there some constituency out there for Manafort? Are MAGA mouthbreathers dying to sound out the words in his forthcoming book, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but not Silenced — LOL — which reportedly comes out in August? (By the way, fuck Simon & Schuster for publishing that dogshit. Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann notes that if Manafort receives dollars for this book, he could be in violation of his plea deal, which doesn't go away just because he was pardoned.)
Manafort went on "Hannity" last night looking like a sickly cartoon character televangelist Liberace fuck-clown, and oh boy, what Kremlin-pleasing bullshit.
During the interview there was this hilarious moment when Manafort talked about how weird it was in the fall of 2016 when the media started reporting on alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. (Remember that it is now gospel in the North Korean news lady world of Fox News that all Russian collusion allegations have been proven to be a hoax, even though the then-Republican led Senate Intelligence Committee released a report in 2020 that revealed massive collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian actors.)
Manafort: I didn\u2019t take it very seriously because I know how ridiculous it was to even say there was Russian collusion with the Trump campaignpic.twitter.com/TqYOCQwDxz— Acyn (@Acyn) 1642041106
Manafort said he "didn't take it very seriously" in "August of 2016" when the "false narrative" of Russian collusion started, because he knew how "ridiculous" that was. He had to start taking it seriously later, obviously, because the Deep State was after him.
This is very funny because ... shall we go to that Senate Intel Committee report?
Because it was literally "August of 2016" — the second day of that month, to be exact — when Paul Manafort met with his associate Konstantin Kilimnik at the Grand Havana Room in Manhattan to discuss a "peace plan" for Ukraine, which always was code for finding a way to lift the sanctions off Russia, which that nation earned when it invaded Ukraine in 2014. (And oh look where we are again!) Kilimnik, the report explains, "is a Russian intelligence officer." Or in layman's terms, a fuckin' spy.
The report explains that Manafort "sought to secretly share internal Campaign information with Kilimnik" — a Russian spy — on "numerous occasions." That internal campaign information? It was about the Rust Belt, where Trump "won" just months later, even while being soundly rejected by the vote of the American people. The report said, "The Committee obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU's hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election." Their evidence? Redacted. And: "Two pieces of information [...] raise the possibility of Manafort's potential connection to the hack-and-leak operation." Also redacted.
And who had a history of being connected to hacking operations? Why that's just Oleg Deripaska, Putin's favorite oligarch who also used to be Manafort's and Kilimnik's boss. The one Manafort owed fuckin' bigtime. And when did the hacking actually happen in 2016, according to the report? Around March, when Manafort was very bizarrely getting hired to chair the Trump campaign for a salary of zero dollars.
The Committee assesses that Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services, and that those services likely sought to exploit Manafort's access to gain insight info the Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort's high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik, represented a grave counterintelligence threat.
When President Joe Biden's Treasury Department announced sanctions on Kilimnik last April, they came right out and said it:
During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy. Additionally, Kilimnik sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In 2018, Kilimnik was indicted on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice regarding unregistered lobbying work.
Yes, we imagine Manafort "didn't take it very seriously" in August 2016 when a narrative was forming that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia, just as he was literally handing Trump campaign polling data — Rust Belt polling data — to a Russian spy who somehow got it to Russian intelligence, which clearly wasn't hard, since he works for Russian intelligence.
Sean Hannity didn't note any of these facts because he's not here to tell the truth or do journalism.
Elsewhere in the interview, Hannity lied to his audience when he said this:
“You really — in many ways, you, Roger Stone, [George] Papadopoulos, General [Michael] Flynn and Carter Page, the president himself,” Hannity said, referring to various targets of the Russia investigation — “all of this stems from a false, phony narrative based on a false dossier and phony FISA warrants.”
Nope. The Russia investigation did not come from the Steele Dossier or Carter Page's FISA warrants. It started when George Papadopoulos drunk-creamed himself all over an Australian diplomat in public about how he had the secret skinny on Russia ratfucking the election against Hillary Clinton.
As Philip Bump explains at the Washington Post, soundingas exasperated as we are, other parts of the investigation got going at different times, like for instance the Michael Flynn part got going when he lied to FBI agents' faces about his secret dealings with the Russian government and the NSA picked it up — not because they were spying on Flynn, but because they were spying on Russia, you traitorous fuckwits.
Oh yeah, and as Bump notes, Manafort himself had been on the FBI's radar for yearsfuckingyears related to his foreign work.
So yeah, this is all bullshit. And if Paul Manafort wants to be on the news again and Sean Hannity wants to give him reacharounds to help him with his redemption tour, then we'll type this story out each and every time we see his face.
In summary and in conclusion, if you want to watch Laura Ingraham during the handover from Hannity talking about how skinny and amaaaaaaazing Paul Manafort looked, you'll have to click here, because this Wonkette post is over.
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