Let's revisit this whole Sean Hannity is Michael's Cohen's secret client debacle.

Fox News star Sean Hannity was just revealed to be a secret client of Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen. Here are basically all the times Hannity has defended Cohen on his show since the FBI raid last week. https://t.co/XFdnAQ965T pic.twitter.com/tWuMagPtqv

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) April 17, 2018

Okay the above is video of Hannity essentially freaking out after the FBI raided Michael Cohen's office and homes.

At the time it seemed a little weird, but now it sort of makes a certain kind of sense.

Here is how CNN's Brian Stelter addressed this issue: 

Something isn't adding up in the case of Michael Cohen and Sean Hannity. 

For now Hannity's employer, Fox News, isn't commenting on the issue, but even some fellow Fox hosts are raising questions. 

There were audible gasps in court on Monday when it was revealed that Hannity was the mystery third client that Cohen was trying to keep secret. Stormy Daniels' attorney Michael Avenatti, who was in the room, said it was like "a bomb went off." 

Hannity scrambled to respond -- first on his radio show, then with tweets, then on his TV show. On Monday evening, Hannity downplayed the legal relationship, saying, "Cohen never represented me in any legal matter." 

He said the two men chatted occasionally, and his questions "focused almost exclusively" on real estate. 

Hannity said "I never retained his services, I never received an invoice. I never paid Michael Cohen for legal fees." 

But if that's true, why did Cohen's lawyer identify Hannity as a client in federal court?

On his radio show Hannity downplayed the crap out of this, suggesting that he might have handed Cohen ten bucks for shits and giggles, but that he was never an actual client.

But here's the thing, Cohen's attorney identified Hannity as a client while in a courtroom standing before a judge. where lying is a punishable offense.

Hannity denied the whole thing on this radio show and on Fox News, where lying is a way of life.

And if Hannity used the services of Michael Cohen, "The Fixer," what did he need them for?

This might be a clue:

Sean Hannity is the latest Fox News personality facing allegations of inappropriate behavior after he was accused of propositioning a guest on his show. 

This article came out almost exactly a year ago during the same time that Bill O'Reilly was facing scrutiny for paying off women who accused him of sexual misconduct.

In Hannity's case the allegations seemed to simply fade away.

And making THAT happen is Michael Cohen's specialty.

Right now there is no evidence that this is the reason that Hannity was named as a Cohen client, but there was certainly SOME reason that they both did not want his name identified in court.

Here was the Daily Show's take yesterday:

Sneak peek of 'Hannity' tonight... pic.twitter.com/qud8et2cba

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) April 16, 2018

So much truth in comedy.

Conversion therapy is dying across the country, and oddly enough this is happening on Trump's watch.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

It’s hard to imagine the Trump presidency going down in history as a fantastic time for LGBT rights. And yet LGBT people have been scoring several successive victories on the state and local level on a particularly critical issue: making conversion therapy a crime. 

Since Donald Trump and Mike Pence took office, five states—New Mexico, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Nevada, Washington—have banned the medically condemned practice of trying to change a minor’s sexual orientation and gender identity, bringing the total number of U.S. states with such bans up to 10. 

Several Florida municipalities, major cities like Philadelphia and New York, and other smaller cities have also now banned conversion therapy during the Trump-Pence administration. 

These bans on conversion or “reparative,” therapy are still coming with seemingly accelerated momentum: As Amber Phillips noted in her recent Washington Post appraisal of state-level LGBT victories, it seems “likely” that over a dozen states and D.C. will have made it illegal to subject a minor to this ostensibly therapeutic but demonstrably cruel practice by the end of the legislative session.

To be clear this is happening DESPITE the fact that Trump and Mike Pence are in office, not BECAUSE they are in office.

I think it is far more appropriate to give President Obama the credit for moving things forward for the LGBTQ community, than to assign credit to Trump/Pence.

Still good news is good news, and this is indeed good news.

What the hell happened to Ed Schultz?

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Speaking this week in a National Review podcast, hosted by Jamie Weinstein and published Friday, the TV host refused to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin for his troubling human-rights record, instead declaring that Putin is “viewed as a progressive Democrat” by the Russian people. 

When confronted with his own past comments acknowledging Putin had a “nasty human rights record,” Schultz focused on the “tremendous friction” between the U.S. and Russia, and claimed that his previous remarks about Putin “might have been overboard.” 

“Does he have a nasty human rights record?” Weinstein pressed further. “I think the United States has a nasty human-rights record,” Schultz replied. 

“I do think that every super power on the globe has a very poor record on human rights.” 

While his former home MSNBC has hit ratings gold—due, in part, to its extensive coverage of the ongoing probe into Russian ties to the Trump campaign—the famously bombastic progressive Schultz has gone in the opposite direction since departing the network in 2015. 

As The New Republic noted in 2017, since joining Russia’s state-owned television network, Schultz has repeatedly praised Trump’s political acumen while downplaying accusations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Schultz also brushed off Russia's annexation of Crimea, and defended Vladimir Putin as working to improve Russia.

Yeah, apparently by robbing the country blind, and subjugating it's people.

True confession time, Ed Schultz was NEVER among my favorite MSNBC hosts.

In fact I typically skipped his show, and when I was invited to meet him when he came up here I said I couldn't cause I was washing my hair.

But still I thought that he had some integrity, with his whole defend the middle class shtick.

But now that looks like it was all bullshit.

Hey I understand having to make a living (I've done some shit to make money that we are not going to discuss here.), but to completely sell out like this is pathetic.

At least when Keith Olbermann left MSNBC he managed to maintain his ideological credibility. 

One of the oldest white supremacist sites on the internet is going broke. I know, sad right?

Courtesy of The Daily Beast:  

Stormfront.org has been an internet hate hub since it launched in 1996. Its owner, former Ku Klux Klan leader Don Black, said last week that donations had plummeted and that the site was scaling back operations. But longtime Stormfront posters suggested Black’s wife had been paying the bills, and that she was finally checking out. 

“Our contributions have once again totaled less than $2,000, which is not enough to cover our basic server and radio bills, and this month we no longer have enough personal money to make up the difference,” Black wrote last week in a post first spotted by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The plunge in donations follows a decline in web traffic to the site. 

Though popular with an older generation of KKK members and white supremacists, Stormfront’s outdated design has fallen out of favor with younger neo-Nazis who tend toward sites like the right-wing Twitter clone Gab, and semi-private messaging platforms like Discord. 

So far in 2018, Stormfront has fallen more than 5,000 places in the global ranking of most-viewed websites, according to web traffic tracker Alexa.

I guess it's hard to compete for traffic against the famous white supremacist who now occupies the White House. 

I mean let's face it, if you want more bang for your racist buck you donate to Donald Trump.

Stormy Daniels fully cooperating with federal investigators, while the Summer Zervos defamation case pushes forward. Update!

Stormy Daniels is cooperating with federal investigators probing 2016 non-disclosure agreement and $130,000 payment she received from Pres. Trump’s longtime personal attorney. https://t.co/gJagoFny4S - @NBCInvestigates

— NBC News (@NBCNews) April 10, 2018

Courtesy of NBC News: 

Adult film actress Stormy Daniels is cooperating with federal investigators looking into a $130,000 payment she received from President Donald Trump's personal attorney, multiple sources familiar with the proceedings told NBC News. 

The cooperation is in connection with a broader federal probe of the attorney, Michael Cohen, which triggered a raid on his office and hotel room on Monday.

Oh I bet Daniels is cooperating, and probably with a giant smile on her face.

It should also be noted that the investigation is focused on just on the $130,000 dollar payment to Daniels, but also the payoff that Playmate Karen McDougal received.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

The FBI agents who raided Michael Cohen’s office were reportedly looking for “records about payments to two women who claim they had affairs with Mr. Trump,” and materials related to the "National Enquirer’s role in silencing" former Playboy model Karen McDougal, according to The New York Times. The raid—which sought materials related to Cohen’s $130,000 payout to Stormy Daniels and the $150,000 payment made to McDougal from the parent company of the Enquirer—was carried out by the public corruption unit of the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan. 

Ans while all of this is going on Summer Zervos is attempting to move forward with HER defamation lawsuit.

Courtesy of CNN: 

The lawyer representing former "Apprentice" contestant Summer Zervos in her defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump filed a memorandum opposing Trump's attempt to have the case temporarily suspended until his appeal, which is pending, has been decided. 

In one of the exhibits attached to Tuesday's filing, Zervos details the harassment and threats she received after Trump denied her claims that he sexually assaulted her. 

"Immediately after he made each derogatory statement, I would get calls and people coming to my restaurant threatening me or my business," said Zervos, who runs a restaurant in California. 

"They would shout 'lying c--t' or 'lying b--tch' into the phone and say I should die, or say that they would drive us out of business," she said. "Several customers told me specifically that they would no longer come to my restaurant because I had lied. Other people called and placed fake take-out orders to hurt my business. I worried constantly for my safety, the safety of my family and the people I work with." 

"Because I'm a Republican and small-business owner and live among many supporters of Defendant [Trump], it was especially bad," Zervos said.

You know Donald Trump can fire Mueller, and bomb Syria until the cows come home, but clearly that is not going to make any of this go away.

Update: We are now learning that during that FBI raids of Cohen's office and residence, that they were also searching for evidence linking back to the Access Hollywood tape.

Courtesy of the NYT: 

The F.B.I. agents who raided the office and hotel of President Trump’s lawyer on Monday were seeking all records related to the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Mr. Trump was heard making vulgar comments about women, according to three people who have been briefed on the contents of a federal search warrant. 

The search warrant also sought evidence of whether the lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, tried to suppress damaging information about Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

It is not clear what role, if any, Mr. Cohen played regarding the tape, which was made public a month before the election. But the fact that the agents were seeking documents related to the tape reveals a new front in the investigation into Mr. Cohen that is being led by the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan.

Well isn't THAT interesting?

Search warrants reveal that Robert Mueller's interest in Paul Manafort is related to his time as the Trump campaign chairman, despite attempts by White House to say otherwise.

Courtesy of CNN:

The documents, used to obtain a search warrant in building the case against Manafort, were revealed in a court filing late Monday night. Manafort has pleaded not guilty in two federal cases, and the charges he faces do not include allegations about his time on the campaign. 

The search warrant makes clear that Mueller is also focused on Manafort's actions connected to the campaign. The White House and others have repeatedly said that the investigation into Manafort concerns his activities before he joined Trump's team in 2016.

Investigators in a search warrant application last July told a judge in Virginia that they sought evidence related to Manafort's interactions with a Russian real estate magnate and were suspicious of possible campaign finance violations. 

Specifically, the investigators sought from Manafort's apartment records "involving any of the attendees of the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower" and anything involving Aras and Emin Agalarov, an Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire and his son tied to the meeting, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and to a possible earlier unsuccessful attempt to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

So much for the argument that this investigation of Paul Manafort is only focused on activities that took place BEFORE he became the head of Trump's campaign.

And in other bad news for Paul Manafort it appears that yet another employee has sold him down the river.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort has trouble in his own house. According to court documents, one of Manafort’s former employees led an FBI agent to a storage locker filled with paperwork on Manafort’s businesses and finances. The person’s name is redacted from the filings. But he’s now at the center of a fight over evidence that could play a significant role in the government’s case against Manafort. 

“People do strange things when confronted with authoritative FBI agents,” said Sol Wisenberg, a criminal defense attorney with Nelson Mullins. 

This makes the second Manafort associate known to have aided the government in the sprawling investigation into foreign influence in U.S. politics. Rick Gates, Manafort’s long-time right hand, began cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in February.

Currently Manafort's attorneys are fighting tooth and nail to get this evidence thrown out of court, which means that it is definitely something that Mueller does not want thrown out. 

Donald Trump patches Fox News host Lou Dobbs in on "senior level calls" White House.

Courtesy of The Daily Beast:  

It’s not just that President Donald Trump loves Dobbs’ show and his on-air style. It’s not just that the president asks West Wing aides and confidants if they’ve seen specific, recent segments of Dobbs’ program, or that Trump calls the cable-news personality semi-regularly to gossip or solicit counsel, or that he’s boosted Dobbs on his Twitter account. It’s not just that the president has sat for a friendly interview with Dobbs or that he is on a first name basis with “Lou.” 

Indeed, much of this can describe Trump’s relationships with various other television personalities. What sets Dobbs apart is the degree to which the president views him as a political and populism godfather, the #MAGA Socrates to Trump’s Plato. 

As such, Dobbs doesn’t get to just interview and socialize with the president, he is involved in some of the administration’s more sensitive discussions. During the first year of the Trump era, the president has patched Dobbs in via speakerphone to multiple meetings in the Oval Office so that he could offer his two cents, according to three sources familiar with these conversations. Trump will ask Dobbs for his opinion before and after his senior aides or Cabinet members have spoken. Occasionally, he will cut off an official so the Fox Business host can jump in. 

Dobbs, these sources all independently recounted, has been patched in to senior-level meetings on issues such as trade and tax policy—meetings that featured officials such as senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, former top economic adviser Gary Cohn, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, trade adviser Peter Navarro, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

I'm sorry, when did Lou Dobbs receive his security clearance again?

You would think that a reality show guy would know that just because somebody acts like a know it all on TV, that does NOT mean that they know it all.

Lou Dobbs is at least as dangerous as John Bolton, and now both of them, as well as those idiots on the Fox and Friends couch, are guiding this lunatic's decision making.

Donald Trump invited Vladimir Putin, who is still orchestrating hacks of our power grid, to the White House.

So wen I visit I will take you room. You can have the couch, understood?

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

President Trump has reportedly invited Vladimir Putin to the White House for a visit, according to a statement from the Kremlin. Putin aide Yury Ushakov told reporters Monday that during a March 20 phone conversation, Trump “suggested that the first meeting could be held in Washington” between the two leaders. “If everything goes well, I hope that the American side would not refuse its proposal to discuss the possibility of organizing the summit talks.” According to an Agence France-Presse reporter, a senior U.S. official did “not deny” that Trump “floated the idea of a White House summit,” noting that “no planning has begun as yet.” According to a TASS state media report, Ushakov told journalists that since the U.S. and Russia has expelled their respective diplomats from their countries, “there have been no specific discussions of a possible meeting.” He also said Russia “would like to believe that preparations for such a meeting will begin.” The news follows reports Trump congratulated Putin on his re-election over the phone on that call after his staff told him explicitly not to—as well as a suspected poisoning of a former Russian spy on British soil and amid special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. 

I have said this before, but let me say it again, Donald Trump does not work for the American people.

Donald Trump works for the Kremlin.

And and by way of proof do you remember when Trump kicked out those 60 Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of that former spy in Britain?

Yeah well that was only for show, because he is allowing all of them to be replaced by new Russian diplomats who will also be spying for the Kremlin.

Like I said, Trump does not work for us. ANY of us.

So guess who is now more or less advising Donald Trump.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

At a time when President Donald Trump is eager to surround himself with supportive television personalities, he’s taken a particular liking to a pair of YouTube stars known for, among other things, a pro-Trump, anti-Eminem rap song titled “Trump’s Yo President.” 

Diamond & Silk are not your prototypical Trump boosters. They are African-American women who have relied on the internet for their rise to fame (or infamy, depending on your political posture). They are known, predominantly, for their direct-to-camera, impassioned defenses of the president—and acid-tongued takedowns of his critics. But in recent weeks, the two have had a growing presence on Fox News, which has, in turn, put their commentary squarely on Trump’s radar. And, according to White House officials, he’s impressed. 

Within the halls of the White House, Trump has repeatedly commented to aides over the past several months about how much he enjoys catching Diamond & Silk on TV, referencing specific clips and interviews they’ve done on shows such as Fox & Friends or Hannity, two West Wing officials and an outside Trump ally tell The Daily Beast. 

According to those close to the president, Trump finds their unabashedly loyalty, as well as their style and flair, “fantastic.”

Yeah I guess we should have anticipated this after Diamond and Silk were photographed with the Wasilla Wendigo at Mar-a-Lago.

I wonder how much longer it will be before these two get joint appointed to run the newly created "Dark Skinned People Outreach Program" that Trump will surely create in order to convince the black folks that he loves their votes almost as much as he loves white people votes?

As the Robert Mueller Russia probe moves forward Donald Trump's legal team is in tatters.

Jay Sekulow

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

As President Trump heads into one of the most critical phases of the special counsel’s investigation, his personal legal team has shrunk to essentially just one member, and he is struggling to find any top lawyers willing to represent him. 

Working for a president is usually seen as a dream job. But leading white-collar lawyers in Washington and New York have repeatedly spurned overtures to take over the defense of Mr. Trump, a mercurial client who often ignores his advisers’ guidance. In some cases, lawyers’ firms have blocked any talks, fearing a backlash that would hurt business. 

The president lost two lawyers in just the past four days, including one who had been on board for less than a week.

That one remaining lawyer is Jay Sekulow who is essentially a legal spokesperson more than a lawyer at this point, and is wholly unqualified to handle such a complicated and important case.

However Trump's attempts to hire more legal muscle is simply not working out too well.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

Two more high-power attorneys have had to turn down President Donald Trump. Tom Buchanan and Dan Webb confirmed to The Daily Beast that Trump reached out to them about representing him, and that they couldn’t do it. 

“President Trump reached out to Dan Webb and Tom Buchanan to provide legal representation,” they said in a statement. “They were unable to take on the representation due to business conflicts. However they consider the opportunity to represent the President to be the highest honor and they sincerely regret that they cannot do so. They wish the president the best and believe he has excellent representation in Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow.”

 Actually Ty Cobb's work to produce legal documentation for the Mueller team is essentially finished and there are questions concerning his ability, or his desire to continue to help defend Trump as the walls start closing in.

Remember it was Cobb who said that this investigation would have ended by Thanksgiving 2016.

I actually think that at some point Trump will find a lawyer or two to defend him in this Russia case, but they will likely be one step up from ambulance chasers who will be quickly ground to dust by Mueller's top notch legal eagles.

One of America's oldest gun manufacturers has filed for Chapter 11.

Courtesy of Daily Beast:

Remington Outdoor Co., one of America’s oldest gunmakers, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to CNN Money. The company announced that it was planning to file for bankruptcy in February, and has officially begun the process of restructuring its debt. Remington, which will remain in business during the bankruptcy, plans on reducing its debt by $700 million and contributing "$145 million to its subsidiaries." Its current owner, Cerberus Capital Management, will give up ownership of the company once the bankruptcy process is over. Remington makes the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle that was used in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. Family members of the 26 Sandy Hook victims sued the company in the wake of the massacre. This comes as the parent company of Smith & Wesson reported low earnings in March, and Sturm Ruger’s gun sales fell 27 percent at the end of 2017.

Gee without the Obama boogeyman in the White House I guess frightening people into buying unnecessary weapons is a whole lot harder. 

And with all of this negative attention being directed at guns in America, I imagine that there are going to be a number of gun manufacturers who will be forced to tighten their belts a little.

Or possible quite a lot.

Donald Trump is thinking of publicly fighting the Stormy Daniels allegations. Yes please.

Courtesy of TPM: 

President Donald Trump is reportedly mulling over whether to maintain his silence on his alleged pre-presidency affairs with porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, according to a Wall Street Journal report Friday. 

WSJ reports that Trump, who has previously denied the allegations, privately discussed with his advisers about the possibility of “publicly” fighting the allegations “on Twitter or elsewhere.”

Trump’s advisers reportedly assured him that “there is no sign the allegations are hurting him with voters” and that fighting back publicly “would look inappropriate for the President to engage in a public spat with.”

Please, what do lawyers know?

They should just let Trump be Trump.  Right?

Trump is also apparently telling people behind the scenes that this whole Stormy Daniels thing is nothing more than a political hoax. 

For his part Daniels' attorney is ready to throw down hard.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

“The president may be able to fire Mr. [Robert] Mueller and others who may challenge him, but he cannot fire me, or my client. We will not be going away any time soon,” Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ attorney, told The Daily Beast. “If they [in Trumpworld] are upset about what has transpired over the last two weeks, they are really going to be upset when they see what is going to transpire over the next few months—because the last two weeks haven’t been a warm-up lap.”

And Trump is actually very worried.

Inside the chronically chaos-driven Trump White House, Stormy Daniels is a high-profile hassle and headache that now must be managed on a daily basis. According to two sources familiar with the situation, the White House press operation has at least one person whose job it is to monitor the latest developments on the Daniels front.

As well he should be.

Note: (a) not all of our evidence will be mentioned/displayed tonight – that would be foolish; (b) we are not sure what CBS will include but we know a lot from the full interview will have to be cut bc of the time allowed; (c) tonight is not the end – it’s the beginning. #basta

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) March 25, 2018

Now THAT is the kind of lawyer Trump wishes he could get on his Russia legal team.

Still if Trump is such a bad ass then let him tackle this thing head on.

After all if he is going to be such a pussy about it then perhaps he will have to start grabbing himself.

All I know is that at around 6:00 PM Alaska time, I am going to be watching a certain porn star screw the president of the United States on national television.

If you do not want to wait that long here is a transcript of what she will say.

Figuratively speaking of course.

Here is a key portion:  

Anderson Cooper: He was showing you his own picture on the cover of a magazine. 

Stormy Daniels: Right, right. And so I was like, "Does this-- does this normally work for you?" And he looked very taken-- taken back, like, he didn't really understand what I was saying. Like, I was-- does, just, you know, talking about yourself normally work?" And I was like, "Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it." (LAUGH) And I'll never forget the look on his face. He was like-- 

Anderson Cooper: What-- what was his look? 

Stormy Daniels: Just, I don't think anyone's ever spoken to him like that, especially, you know, a young woman who looked like me. And I said, you know, "Give me that," and I just remember him going, "You wouldn't." "Hand it over." And-- so he did, and I was like, turn around, drop 'em." 

Anderson Cooper: You-- you told Donald Trump to turn around and take off his pants. 

Stormy Daniels: Yes. 

Anderson Cooper: And did he? 

Stormy Daniels: Yes. So he turned around and pulled his pants down a little -- you know had underwear on and stuff and I just gave him a couple swats.

Oh that is not going to go over very well with his base. 

Hey remember Guccifer 2.0, the guy who distributed those stolen DNC emails to Wikileaks? Turns out that dude was an agent for Russian intelligence.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Guccifer 2.0, the “lone hacker” who took credit for providing WikiLeaks with stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, was in fact an officer of Russia’s military intelligence directorate (GRU), The Daily Beast has learned. It’s an attribution that resulted from a fleeting but critical slip-up in GRU tradecraft. 

That forensic determination has substantial implications for the criminal probe into potential collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia. The Daily Beast has learned that the special counsel in that investigation, Robert Mueller, has taken over the probe into Guccifer and brought the FBI agents who worked to track the persona onto his team. 

While it’s unclear what Mueller plans to do with Guccifer, his last round of indictments charged 13 Russians tied to the Internet Research Agency troll farm with a conspiracy “for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.” It was Mueller’s first move establishing Russian interference in the election within a criminal context, but it stopped short of directly implicating the Putin regime. 

Mueller’s office declined to comment for this story. But the attribution of Guccifer 2.0 as an officer of Russia’s largest foreign intelligence agency would cross the Kremlin threshold—and move the investigation closer to Trump himself.

If you did not already suspect that this was the case you need to give yourself at least five demerits.

I think a lot of us were fairly certain about this way back before the election, but there was not any proof back then.

Now there is.

And now that we know this we also know that Roger Stone was promoting the stolen information that was being provided by the Kremlin to interfere in our election, and that Donald Trump was helping to disseminate that information.

We also know this:

Russian hacker Guccifer sent DNC data ➔ FL GOP operative, whose analysis he sent to Roger Stone#Trumprussia #maddow https://t.co/mBaUh2nNIQ pic.twitter.com/4iquR7uOtu

— Polly Sigh (@dcpoll) May 25, 2017

"Nevins also received from Guccifer internal details re congressional districts in KY, PA, TX, VA, & WV. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC closely tied to Paul Ryan, used the stolen info in attack ads against Dems."#Maddow https://t.co/7c1zfXN7Td

— Polly Sigh (@dcpoll) December 28, 2017

Mueller could actually make the case that the entire GOP was simply working as a propaganda arm of the Russian government in an attempt to destroy Hillary Clinton's campaign and help elect Putin's Manchurian candidate.

That's at least one way to look at it.

Actually, in my mind that is the ONLY way to look at it. 

With Andrew McCabe's scalp now prominently displayed for all to see, Donald Trump goes on Twitter rant directed at Robert Mueller.

The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime. It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC, and improperly used in FISA COURT for surveillance of my campaign. WITCH HUNT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

This was from last night.

I think everybody here already knows that the initial FBI investigation was NOT launched due to the Steel dossier, but instead inspired by a drunken chat that George Papadopoulos had with an Australian diplomat.

Trump is just hoping that nobody remembers that.

Here are today's tweets.

Wow, watch Comey lie under oath to Senator G when asked “have you ever been an anonymous source...or known someone else to be an anonymous source...?” He said strongly “never, no.” He lied as shown clearly on @foxandfriends.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

Ah, Trump's "executive time" has inspired yet another tweet based on fake news from the Fox News entertainment division.

Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me. I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added...does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

It should be noted yet again that Robert Mueller himself is in fact a Republican, as is his boss Rod Rosenstein.

Not that it should matter since investigators do not allow their political points of view to shape their investigations.

Now some of this could be dismissed as Trump simply blowing off steam on Twitter if it were not for this.

Courtesy of the The Daily Beast: 

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, John Dowd, told The Daily Beast on Saturday morning that he hopes Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will shut down special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s election interference.

“I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd then wrote.

After that was reported by a number of news outlets along with the assumption that Dowd was speaking on behalf of the president, he tried to walk it back: 

Woodruff called into MSNBC to speak with Joy Reid about the report, but at one point shared this: 

“He just emailed me to say that he hopes I will share with you all that he was speaking in his personal capacity and was not speaking on behalf of the President… When he initially emailed me this morning, I asked him, ‘Are you giving me this quote on behalf of the President?’ He replied, ‘Yes, speaking as his counsel’… Now he’s emailing me to walk that back.”

It has been beyond clear for a few weeks now that Trump is trying to find some way to fire Robert Mueller,  and that has now become clearer than ever.

I think everybody is prepared for that eventuality and in the history books it will likely be noted as the day that the Trump presidency started to unravel completely.

Keep in mind that three Arkansas students received corporal punishment for protesting gun violence in schools on Wednesday. Just let that soak in.

My kid and two other students walked out of their rural, very conservative, public school for 17 minutes today. They were given two punishment options. They chose corporal punishment. This generation is not playing around. #walkout

— Jerusalem Greer (@JerusalemGreer) March 14, 2018

Courtesy of the Daily Beast: 

Three students in a rural part of Arkansas have allegedly been smacked for participating in Wednesday’s national walkout protesting against gun violence. 

Despite that drastic punishment, one student’s mother, Jerusalem J. Greer, applauded her son and the other students at Greenbrier Public School for their defiant protest following the deadly shooting that killed 15 students and two adults at Stoneman Douglas High School last month in Parkland, Florida. 

“My kid and two other students walked out of their rural, very conservative, public school for 17 minutes today,” Greer wrote on Twitter. “They were given two punishment options. They chose corporal punishment. This generation is not playing around.”

According to Greenbrier Public School’s official policy, the school board “authorizes the use of corporal punishment to be administered in accordance with this policy by the Superintendent or his/her designated staff members who are required to have a state-issued license as a condition of their employment.” 

The handbook says that before students are smacked they are to be “given an explanation of the reasons for the punishment and be given an opportunity to refute the charges. administered privately, i.e. out of the sight and hearing of other students.”

This has to be the most tone deaf response to these protests imaginable.

Think about it.

These children take to the streets to protest that fact that they do not feel safe in their own schools, and the response is to physically abuse them? 

And in 2018 no less.

Donald Trump invites his favorite Fox News personalities because "he couldn't get enough of them on TV."

pic.twitter.com/OPbT6nXIvk

— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) March 9, 2018

Courtesy of Daily Beast: 

On Monday night, President Donald Trump welcomed Seb Gorka back into the White House—not for a job, but for a meal. 

The president was joined for dinner in the White House residence by Fox News personalities, including host Jesse Watters and Gorka, a former White House official and aide to former chief strategist Steve Bannon. According to a White House official and two other sources familiar with the meeting, President Trump invited Gorka and Watters because “he couldn’t get enough of them on TV,” as one source put it, and wanted to confab with them about what he’d seen on Fox News, politics, gossip, and his administration. 

On Thursday night, Watters tweeted out an image of a menu—which includes a dessert of milk chocolate mousse—signed by Donald J. Trump, reading, “To Jesse[,] You are great!” 

“It was so lit,” another source added, referring to the Trump-Gorka-Watters summit. The source said the president joked that he “missed” Gorka.

Watters and Gorka on left. On the right Gorka with Trump's main squeeze.

Now if you have been unfortunate enough to have ever seen either Watters or Gorka on cable news you would realize that these are two of the most egregious examples of the infamous "fake news" that you could find.

Watters is an arrogant little prick who seems to be competing with Martin Skrelli for the most punchable face on TV, while Gorka is a seething cauldron of racist bullshit.

Now that alone could explain why Trump is such a fan boy, however in the case of Wattters there is a added quality that Trump probably admires.

Adultery.

Courtesy of the New York Daily News: 

The network’s prominent host Jesse Watters — who dined on Monday with President Trump — is in the midst of divorce due to an affair with a 25-year-old associate producer. 

Watters’ wife, Noelle Watters, filed for divorce in October. The couple has twin girls. 

Sources said the 39-year-old host informed the network of his adulterous relationship with Emma DiGiovine shortly after Noelle filed divorce papers.

DiGiovine was transferred to “The Ingraham Angle.” 

DiGiovine and Watters are still dating, sources said. A woman at DiGiovine’s home in Cranford, N.J., declined to comment.

Emma DiGiovine

 How could Trump resist a sleaze merchant who also bangs his hot coworker behind his wife's back?

The Russians also infiltrated Reddit, one of the most popular websites on the internet.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Reddit admitted it has “found and removed a few hundred accounts” associated with Russian propaganda, one week after The Daily Beast confirmed the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency, or Troll Farm, used the platform during the 2016 presidential campaign. Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman, writing under the username Spez, outlined both direct propaganda, such as troll accounts using the platform, and indirect propaganda, like subreddits such as r/The_Donald repeatedly linking to Russian Twitter troll account @TEN_GOP. “Given the recent news, we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned,” he wrote. 

If you are a frequent visitor to Reddit this is not really news, since this was being called out during the election, but nothing was ever really done about it.

Like Facebook the moderators of Reddit seemed to ignore the problem altogether.

And that has really pissed off a number of Reddit users: 

Reddit users rebelled en masse against the site’s CEO for concealing Russian troll activity the site now admits it knew about, and for not working fast enough to ban dangerous and extremist communities. 

Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman admitted the site has been targeted by at least “a few hundred” troll accounts in an announcement to Reddit users on Monday, four days after a Daily Beast investigation confirmed for the first time that Russia’s troll farm used the platform. 

Reddit has not responded to repeated requests by The Daily Beast for comment about The Daily Beast’s investigation, which showed Russia’s Internet Research Agency used American proxies to access the site. 

Based on that reporting, Senate investigators are looking into opening up probes on the troll farm’s use of Reddit and Tumblr, according to The Washington Post.

I only visited that r/The Donald subreddit a few times, but the stuff that was posted on there was outrageous, misleading, and consistently pro-Donald Trump.

Many of the talking points that you may have seen defending Trump during the election, or minimizing news stories about him, originated on these subreddits and then spread far and wide on Facebook, Twitter, and various other social media outlets.

By the way as of this post r/The Donald is still up and has over half a million subscribers.

So did the Russian hackers get hacked? Maybe.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

The Kremlin-backed troll farm at the center of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election has quietly suffered a catastrophic security breach, The Daily Beast has confirmed, in a leak that spilled new details of its operations onto obscure corners of the internet. 

The Russian “information exchange” Joker.Buzz, which auctions off often stolen or confidential information, advertised a leak for a large cache of the Internet Research Agency’s (IRA) internal documents. It includes names of Americans, activists in particular, whom the organization specifically targeted; American-based proxies used to access Reddit and the viral meme site 9Gag; and login information for troll farm accounts. 

Even the advertisement for the document dump provides a trove of previously unknown information about the breadth of Russia’s disinformation effort in the United States, including rallies pushed by IRA social media accounts that turned violent.

What the Daily Beast was able to confirm:  

While the date of the auction could not be independently confirmed, the authenticity of the leak can. The leaked documents list screen names connected to a number of American citizens who were used as unwitting proxies by the Russians. The Daily Beast was able to track down four of those citizens, whose names have not been previously revealed. The leak contains precise dates in 2016 in which the IRA-created account Blacktivist reached out to those U.S. citizens, plus a short description of the conversations. The Daily Beast spoke to those citizens, and confirmed they interacted with the Blacktivist account in the ways described by the IRA in the document. In one case, the American even provided screenshots of his interactions with the Russian troll trying to dupe him. 

In short, the leaked document contains details of the Russian disinformation campaign that have not been previously made public—details which The Daily Beast was able to confirm. 

The leak shows that even as the Russian trolls were able to influence and manipulate American political discourse online, they were less equipped to keep their own secrets. While The Daily Beast does not possess anything close to a comprehensive trove of the IRA’s internal operations, it is now likely that substantial amounts of the troll farm’s files are waiting to be discovered online.

This data treasure trove also reveals how the troll farm utilized social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, and even Tumblr to spread their divisive propaganda and promote the Donald Trump campaign. 

It is also more proof that the investigations in Russian interference is not a "witch hunt" but rather a very important, and necessary step in protecting ourselves from future manipulation and interference.

The FBI is now assessing a second Russia dossier.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

The FBI inquiry into alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 US presidential election has been given a second memo that independently set out some of the same allegations made in a dossier by Christopher Steele, the British former spy.

The second memo was written by Cody Shearer, a controversial political activist and former journalist who was close to the Clinton White House in the 1990s. 

Unlike Steele, Shearer does not have a background in espionage, and his memo was initially viewed with scepticism, not least because he had shared it with select media organisations before the election. 

However, the Guardian has been told the FBI investigation is still assessing details in the “Shearer memo” and is pursuing intriguing leads. 

One source with knowledge of the inquiry said the fact the FBI was still working on it suggested investigators had taken an aspect of it seriously. 

It raises the possibility that parts of the Steele dossier, which has been derided by Trump’s supporters, may have been corroborated by Shearer’s research, or could still be.

Well that is some interesting news.

I would imagine that Mueller has also read through this second dossier, which is not going to make a certain orange tinged Russian agent very happy.

Which brings me to another thing that we learned yesterday.

Courtesy of NBC News:   

He keeps telling some in his circle that Mueller — any day now — will tell him he is off the hook for any charge of collusion with the Russians or obstruction of justice. 

But Trump — who trusts no one, or at least no one for long — has now decided that he must have an alternative strategy that does not involve having Justice Department officials fire Mueller. 

"I think he's been convinced that firing Mueller would not only create a firestorm, it would play right into Mueller's hands," said another friend, "because it would give Mueller the moral high ground." 

Instead, as is now becoming plain, the Trump strategy is to discredit the investigation and the FBI without officially removing the leadership. Trump is even talking to friends about the possibility of asking Attorney General Jeff Sessions to consider prosecuting Mueller and his team. 

"Here's how it would work: 'We're sorry, Mr. Mueller, you won't be able to run the federal grand jury today because he has to go testify to another federal grand jury,'" said one Trump adviser.

Launching an investigation against the person investigating you sounds like an act of absolute desperation, but with top level FBI agents dropping like flies, and Rod Rosenstein under constant attack, it could happen.

Which is likely why Senate Democrats are working desperately to protect Mueller and his investigation: 

Senate Democrats are plotting aggressive tactics to force Republicans to consider legislation that would effectively shield special counsel Robert Mueller from presidential interference. 

The party’s Senate leaders have been internally discussing the prospects of tying legislation to a must-pass government funding bill that must be considered by Feb. 8. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Tuesday that he would “very much like to” merge those two efforts. And the appetite among the rest of the caucus for doing so is surprisingly strong, aides and lawmakers say.. 

“I’m keenly supporting those pieces of legislation and I think the continued arrows shot at the department and the knowledge that they took one run at Mueller already is a sign that we need to find a way to get this done,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told The Daily Beast. “I agree with any strategy that helps get it done. That’s the prime goal.”

I have to say that with these new revelations I have stopped eating popcorn and am chewing on my fingernails instead.

Things are getting seriously tense.

Every day yet another reason to feel shame that this man is leading our country.

This man is our president pic.twitter.com/sqMS7uhN1W

— Todd Dracula (@ToddDracula) January 19, 2018

Courtesy of People:  

President Donald Trump flubbed a key word in his address to the March for Life rally on Friday, mistakenly telling anti-abortion protesters that it’s wrong for babies to be “born” in the ninth month of a pregnancy. 

“Right now, a number of state laws allow a baby to be born from his or her mother’s womb in the ninth month. It is wrong. It has to change,” he said. 

As the Daily Beast pointed out, Trump’s prepared remarks showed that he meant to say “torn,” rather than “born,” in a reference to late-term abortion.

Come on, we know that if this HAD NOT been written out for him that he would have made even less sense.

But hey, let us not forget that according to a 10 minute cognitive test Donald Trump is like the smartest president ever!