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Thread: Ruskies Blackmailing Trump?

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    Ruskies Blackmailing Trump?

    There’s a Pretty Good Chance President Trump Is Being Blackmailed
    By
    Jonathan Chait
    @jonathanchait

    We have no idea if the wildest and most memorable allegation Christopher Steele picked up in his investigation of Donald Trump — that the future president is vulnerable to Russian blackmail related to his paying Russian prostitutes in 2013 — is true. There are two common grounds for skepticism. One is that Trump, who is known both for his affairs and for grabbing women, would pay for sex. The second is that a man so happily associated with infidelity and vice could be blackmailed at all. We now know neither of these objections holds water.

    Ronan Farrow’s new story shows that Trump habitually pays for sex. He had an affair with former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, and offered her money after sex, which she turned down. At another point in the story, he offered adult entertainer Jessica Drake $10,000 for “her company.”

    Farrow’s reporting also implies, without quite establishing as an absolute certainty, that Trump maintained a system for silencing his sexual partners. A network of sleazy operators, sometimes working in conjunction with National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, Trump’s close friend, would pay off women to prevent their stories from seeing the light of day. In any case, previous reporting by The Wall Street Journal has already established that Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid at least one of his former mistresses to stay quiet.

    So, we know Trump habitually pays for sex, and we also know he is willing to pay to keep embarrassing secrets from going public. That is to say, these secrets could be leveraged against him. One of Pecker’s former employees tells Farrow, “In theory, you would think that Trump has all the power in that relationship, but in fact Pecker has the power — he has the power to run these stories. He knows where the bodies are buried.”

    What else do we know? We know Russia has a decades-old system for gathering compromising sexual secrets on prominent foreign visitors. We also know Trump harbored a burning resentment of President Obama in the wake of Obama’s mocking him at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner. And many reports of Trump’s decision-making suggest that the strongest consideration in any decision is the chance to defile or destroy something associated with Obama.

    Far from being bizarre, imagining Trump paying prostitutes to pee on a bed Obama used as a primitive revenge ritual, and Russians taping the episode, is perfectly consistent with what we know about both parties. That exact scenario may not have happened. Indeed, sex is not the only kind of secret Trump harbors. He endured months of criticism first from Republican candidates, then Democrats, and all along from the media, for refusing to disclose his tax returns. Trump clearly feels protective of his financial information. Some of that information is in the hands of his business partners, many of whom are associated with Russia or are unsavory in some other way. All in all, the odds are disconcertingly high that Russia, or somebody, has blackmail leverage over the president of the United States.

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    Steele is a more reliable source than a lot of people think but I don't think Trump cares enough to be seriously blackmailed over a sex allegation. He'll pay $100k or so to keep things from getting too awkward with the mail order wife but to be seriously blackmailed over this stuff you have to have some shame.

    The real danger to him would be looking into property deals with Russian oligarchs fencing dirty money in deals with him and his son in law but I'm not sure that will come out.
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    Trump's so stupid he probably thought Christopher Steele was Pierce Brosnan's TV spy character from the 1980s.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seshmeister View Post
    Steele is a more reliable source than a lot of people think but I don't think Trump cares enough to be seriously blackmailed over a sex allegation. He'll pay $100k or so to keep things from getting too awkward with the mail order wife but to be seriously blackmailed over this stuff you have to have some shame.

    The real danger to him would be looking into property deals with Russian oligarchs fencing dirty money in deals with him and his son in law but I'm not sure that will come out.
    The latest breaking here is that Mueller is now up Jerod Kushner's ass and investigating his ties to deals with the Chinese and middle-easterners while simultaneously working as a gov't official...

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    Good - his old man can give him tips on surviving rich white man prison.

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    Robert Mueller Has Trump Cornered

    Robert Kuttner
    HuffPost• February 19, 2018

    Special counsel Robert Mueller is methodically, brilliantly filling in pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. When complete, the puzzle will depict a president who is ripe ― overripe ― for impeachment.

    Mueller’s indictment on Friday of Russia’s cyberwarfare against the 2016 election was a tactical and investigative masterstroke. President Donald Trump is now cornered. Mueller’s report makes a total liar out of Trump for his repeated claims that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when Putin says Russia had nothing to do with it, that the hacking could have been “some guy in New Jersey.”

    The indictments do not quite connect the Russian operation to Putin personally, but that’s beside the point. No serious person believes that an operation as sensitive as deliberate disruption of the U.S. election could go forward without Putin’s full knowledge and support in a state as authoritarian as his.

    Trump, having repeatedly denied Russian involvement, has now shifted gears and is insisting that the proper test of wrongdoing is “collusion.” But this is a straw man.

    During the campaign, Trump repeatedly and publicly urged the Russians to come forward with dirt on Hillary Clinton. His top advisers met with Russian operatives to see what they had. That part of Mueller’s investigation is still open.

    What we already know is plenty damning. A conspiracy of interest does not have to include an explicit tit-for-tat deal. It can be based on signaling.

    In this case, Trump and his family relied on massive bailouts of his failing business enterprises from Russian oligarchs close to the Kremlin. When he became a presidential candidate, the Russians treated him as an asset ― a useful idiot, as Stalinists used to put it. And when the campaign finalists turned out to be Trump versus the hard-line Clinton, the Russians sought to destroy her and elect Trump. Trump, meanwhile, became the most pro-Russia president in U.S. history, refusing to breathe a word of criticism of Putin, behaving like the head of a client state. This much of the story is hidden in plain view.
    Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced last week the indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations for meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

    The details ― of Russian financing of Trump’s businesses, and of more campaign contacts ― are likely to be spelled out in further indictments, almost surely including members of Trump’s family, and in Mueller’s final report, which will look very much like a bill of impeachment.

    What’s astonishing ― and devastating ― is that this detailed report on Russian manipulation of a U.S. presidential election had to come from a special counsel. Under a normal administration, evidence of a foreign power meddling in a U.S. election would have prompted a presidential order for a full investigation. Instead, Trump mocked the whole idea and used his influence to block such inquiries by House and Senate panels.

    Rather than looking deeply into Russian interference, the president appointed a commission on election integrity, headed by Vice President Mike Pence and Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state best known for voter suppression, based on the premise that massive voter fraud by immigrants and others not qualified to vote had helped Clinton win the national popular vote. This was so preposterous that the commission collapsed of its own weight.

    First, these disclosures end Trump’s intermittent efforts to fire Mueller. If he were to try that now, it would be an open-and-shut case of obstruction of justice. Congressional Republicans would have no choice but to begin the impeachment process.

    Second, they drive a further wedge between Trump and the Republican leadership in the House and Senate. All key Republicans, whatever their marriage of convenience with Trump on other issues, have expressed outrage at the Russian operations and praised Mueller. Trump, by contrast, has only proclaimed his own lack of complicity, and has said nothing about what documented Russian interference means for American democracy, much less vowed to resist it and punish Putin.

    We also see a further wedge between Trump and the entire intelligence community. Last week, on the eve of the Mueller indictments, the leaders of every major intelligence agency, including Trump appointees, testified unanimously before Congress that there was no doubt that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. Unlike Trump, they are alarmed that Putin tipped a U.S. election to a pro-Kremlin stooge.

    One question is the degree to which Mueller’s 37-page indictment relied on materials from those U.S. intelligence agencies, and what else the government has that it isn’t revealing out of concern for disclosing “sources and methods.” Mueller’s indictment goes into far more detail than anything else that has been made public.

    Two other questions remain. First is Mueller’s timing. When will other indictments come? He could wrap things up in a matter of weeks, or the investigation could drag out beyond November’s midterm elections.

    Second is how the U.S. should punish and deter Russia. The Russian actions to undermine American democracy and tip the election amounted to an act of war. And if those actions were as effective as much reporting and now Mueller’s indictments have suggested they were, it means Trump literally became president in a Russia-sponsored coup d’etat.

    The U.S. and the Russians surely have the capacity to knock out each other’s vital defense and infrastructure systems that rely on the internet. But unlike the nuclear deterrence of Mutually Assured Destruction, there are no bright lines when it comes to self-restraint in cyberwar. If there were, Russia surely crossed one in 2015 and 2016.

    What sort of retaliation makes sense? Mutually assured cyberdestruction would be a catastrophe; that’s why Russia gets away with these incursions. But slaps on the wrist like banning the travel or freezing the bank accounts of a few Russian individuals just makes America look pitiful.

    This is the serious question America needs to take up, once Trump is gone. Thanks to Mueller’s latest revelations and those still to come, that day may not be far off.

    Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His forthcoming book is Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?

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    This is wishful thinking, I don't think Trump is going anywhere.

  8. Thanked Seshmeister for this KICKASS post:

    Terry (02-21-2018)


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    Regardless of if Mueller has "the goods" on Trump - and I tend to doubt ANY media sources know exactly what Mueller has dug up thus far - people forget to mention the REST of the process after Mueller submits the report of his investigation and the conclusions made that is required to remove Trump.

    From the recommendations of the Department of Justice, to the various congressional procedures required, etc. As long as Republicans control both houses (or even just one), it's going to take more than what has been reported so far to persuade Republicans in Congress to actually vote to remove (much less impeach) Trump.

    Trump ISN'T going anywhere. Unlike Nixon, I don't see Trump resigning. Trump doesn't care about his legacy, or anything else beyond the moment.

    And even if Trump DID resign, you've got Pence - a guy who supports restrictive measures with regard to immigration, abortion, social services, minority rights - ready to step in and run a much more competent Executive Branch than Trump ever could, because Pence is far more disciplined in every way (mentally, emotionally, ideologically).

    The best democratic opponents of Trump can hope for is to take back the Congress this year, then take back the White House in 2020. Putting much faith or stock in Trump's removal outside of the ballot box is basically a fantasy.
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    Nixon finally resigned when the BCE had enough and realized he was damaging their "brand", so they brought in Jerry Ford (no relation) as the VP after forcing Agnew out on a tax issue. They already knew Jerry was a BCE team player, because he helped preserve the coverup of "that Bay of Pigs thing" - as Nixon called it - when he chaired the Warren Commission. Ford performed a similar function when Nixon finally stepped down, and Jerry pardoned him while completing his term - and allowing BCE lackeys Cheney & Rummy to work behind the scenes, setting the stage for the future arms race with the USSR which would happen when Team BCE returned again in 1981.

    Of course the BCE isn't running the Cheeto administration, the Koch Brothers are. But the planned abdication is likely scheduled this time around, just as it was then. The Kochs knew going into this that Trump wasn't going to make it one full term, let alone two. And they didn't even need to know about all the Russian bullshit to figure that out, he's simply a big Orange trainwreck. Which is why they arranged with Trump's kids to have their man as VP. They wanted Kasich, but he declined the offer, so they settled for Pence. The Kochs could care less about his religious fanaticism, as long as he keeps their corporate oligarchy in place. And with Kristopher K. Kobach's voter suppression database in place (and electro-fraud machines still used in many states) the Kochs are confident they can have uniterrupted power for 12 years.... if Pence takes over in 2019, and then runs for his own two terms. This is the time limit imposed by the 22nd Amendment, which says a President can serve 10 years, as long as it's no more than two years of somebody else's term. So Pence runs as an "incumbent" in 2020 and can still do so again in 2024.

    So the countdown to ImOrangment is already on. Mark your calendars, exacty 11 months from today, it officially begins. No matter who is running Congress at that time.

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    Interesting that I haven't seen any posts here about the Russian support of Bernie.

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    Maybe because it's mostly Hillbot spin & bullshit?


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