This Friday Rachel Maddow walked patiently through the Abuse of Power charges that were including in the Articles of Impeachment against Richard Nixon because he had repeatedly attempted to use the IRS to attack his political enemies including Democrats, anti-War protestors and the Chandler family who at the time owned the Los Angeles Times.
She eventually gets to the point at 17:44, which is that Trump’s own attempts to use the power of his office to force the Post Master General to double the rates on Amazon in effort to attack Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos over press reports he doesn't like which exactly mirrors Nixon’s efforts against the LATimes from 50 years ago.
President Trump has personally pushed U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brennan to double the rate the Postal Service charges Amazon.com and other firms to ship packages, according to three people familiar with their conversations, a dramatic move that probably would cost these companies billions of dollars.
Brennan has so far resisted Trump’s demand, explaining in multiple conversations occurring this year and last that these arrangements are bound by contracts and must be reviewed by a regulatory commission, the three people said. She has told the president that the Amazon relationship is beneficial for the Postal Service and gave him a set of slides that showed the variety of companies, in addition to Amazon, that also partner for deliveries.
Despite these presentations, Trump has continued to level criticism at Amazon. And last month, his critiques culminated in the signing of an executive order mandating a government review of the financially strapped Postal Service that could lead to major changes in the way it charges Amazon and others for package delivery.
However, today Trump has doubled down on his abuse of power by “DEMANDING” that the DOJ investigate themselves on the issue of whether the Obama Administration had spied on his campaign using the FBI and their “informant”.
The current reports are that this confidential informant simply managed to get Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis into a set of conversations.
In mid-July 2016, a retired American professor approached an adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign at a symposium about the White House race held at a British university.
The professor took the opportunity to strike up a conversation with Carter Page, whom Trump had named a few months earlier as a foreign policy adviser.
But the professor was more than an academic interested in American politics — he was a longtime U.S. intelligence source. And, at some point in 2016, he began working as a secret informant for the FBI as it investigated Russia’s interference in the campaign, according to people familiar with his activities.
At that point in time Papadopoulos had already been told by Prof. Mifsud that Russia had “thousands of Hillary’s emails” which could only have been gained by criminal and intelligence activities which should have been reported to the FBI.
However Papdopoulos didn’t do that. He shared this information with Jeff Sessions who didn’t tell the FBI either. During that same month Carter Page was also told by Kremlin Official Igor Divyekin that “Russia had compromising materials on Hillary Clinton” but guess who also didn’t tell the FBI?
So the FBI after they had been alerted about this by the Australians had a legitimate reason to begin investing Page and Papadopoulos and indeed use an “informant” to do so.
The FBI even specifically warned the incoming Trump administration that Russian agents may be actively trying to influence them and to report suspicious contacts, but then ignored that advice.
WASHINGTON — In the weeks after he became the Republican nominee on July 19, 2016, Donald Trump was warned that foreign adversaries, including Russia, would probably try to spy on and infiltrate his campaign, according to multiple government officials familiar with the matter.
The warning came in the form of a high-level counterintelligence briefing by senior FBI officials, the officials said. A similar briefing was given to Hillary Clinton, they added. They said the briefings, which are commonly provided to presidential nominees, were designed to educate the candidates and their top aides about potential threats from foreign spies.
The candidates were urged to alert the FBI about any suspicious overtures to their campaigns, the officials said.
Trump of course doesn’t live in the Universe of Facts which includes the point that his own son had a meeting with someone who has admitted she was an informant for the Kremlin, so he’s claiming that the somebody — somewhere — in the Obama Administration sent a “Spy” after his campaign because reasons.
This entire claim his highly ironic considering that in reality the Trump campaign had at the same time hired an Israeli Intelligence operations called Black Cube to spy on members of the Obama Administration in an effort to prove that they had accepted cash benefits in order to setup the Iran Nuclear Deal.
Reporter Ronan Farrow on Monday appeared on CNN to talk about his latest report in the New Yorker about the Israeli private intelligence firm that aides to President Donald Trump allegedly hired to dig up dirt on supporters of the Iran nuclear deal.
Farrow’s report, which piggybacks off a Guardian report from over the weekend that claimed Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube had been hired by Trump aides to spy on former Obama administration officials who were instrumental in pushing the Iran nuclear deal, shows how agents of the firm assumed false identities to try to trick officials into meeting with them.
“Black Cube agents were instructed to try to find damaging information about them, including unsubstantiated claims that [former Obama administration officials Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl] had worked closely with Iran lobbyists and were personally enriched through their policy work on Iran (they denied those claims)… and an allegation that one of the individuals targeted by the campaign had an affair,” Farrow reported.
Speaking with CNN’s Alisyn Camerota, Farrow said that the Black Cube agents used aliases in an effort to contact former Obama officials’ wives in an effort to find damaging information about their husbands that could be used to undermine support for the Iran deal.
Yeah, that’s really funny considering that Qatar apparently just arranged to bail out the Kushner companies through Brookfield Properties over their tragically failing property at 666 5th Avenue only after having been blockaded by the UAE and Saudi Arabia over a report that they were “in cohoots” with Iran and ISIS which had been cooked up the Russian Hackers.
Russian hackers planted a fake news report on Qatar’s state news site that contributed to the breakdown of diplomatic ties among several Gulf states, CNN reported on Tuesday evening.
CNN reported, citing unnamed U.S. officials briefed on the investigation, that the Qatari government reported the breach two weeks ago. The false report in question “attributed false remarks to the nation’s ruler that appeared friendly to Iran and Israel and questioned whether President Donald Trump would last in office,” the Qatari government said, according to the report.
U.S. officials told CNN that the goal of the breach was apparently to “cause rifts among the U.S. and its allies” and said it was unclear whether the hackers were those responsible for attempted interference in the 2016 election.
So suddenly the Kushner companies are nearly flush — cuz Russia Hackers and other bullshit — and we don’t have a call for that to be investigated, we’re instead have the current “Commander and Chief” tweet screaming to have the Obama Administration being investigated for trying to find out how and why the Trump campaign was getting help from Russia and the UAE/Saudi Arabia as they tried to squeeze the UAE for cash?
The latest headlines surround a possible deal whereby Jared Kushner’s family business will sell all or most of its stake in 666 Fifth Ave. to Brookfield Properties, a large Canadian real estate company that is 7 percent owned by Qatar. (According to Bloomberg, Qatar is the largest investor in the company.) Is this corrupt? Who’s to say? After all, large midtown office buildings aren’t exactly fungible commodities; they’re worth whatever someone’s willing to pay for them. Jared Kushner was willing to pay $1.8 billion for the tower in 2007, but that tells us almost nothing about what it’s worth today, with the retail portion having been hived off and with 30 percent of the offices being left deliberately vacant.
The reported terms of the proposed deal are very vague. We don’t know whether it’s a straight deal between the Kushners and Brookfield, or whether the Kushners’ counterparty is going to be some kind of joint venture between Brookfield and Qatar. We certainly don’t know what kind of side deal Brookfield may or may not have with Qatar, or how the ultimate economics are going to break down. And so, there’s almost infinite room for speculation about how this might be an attempt by Qatar to gain influence over the Trump-Kushner dynasty.
Right, sure — that’s not at all Nixonian.
Also it’s fucking bullshit.