By Dan Peak
The Commoner Call (8/21/17)
Dear Fellow Readers,
Charlottesville, Boston, New York, Bannon’s resignation, business and arts councils ended – Trump should not be our president. Some have predicted he will resign, including “Art of the Deal” author Tony Schwartz. That would be great, the sooner the better. Even though his legislative agenda is compromised his administration continues to do damage daily across many fronts.
Personally, I don’t think he will go quietly – his nature is to double-down and attack; he is doing all of that and will do more, much more. Michael Moore predicted Trump as president and says he could win reelection. He also says Resist in any way. Feel free to Google his latest remarks, Moore pulls no punches.
Trump-Russia is our solution.
Have no fear – he will be removed from office. Will he be charged with obstruction of justice? Charged with collusion with Russians to affect the outcome of the election?
He will be charged with money laundering, corruption, racketeering – his business practices stink to high heaven, and have for decades and he is in serious trouble.
Even if he resigns he can’t hide from Mueller’s investigation.
Don’t take my word for it, let Trump’s business partner Felix Sater explain his view: Longtime Trump business partner ‘told family he knows he and POTUS are going to prison’: report
A simple enough statement from Sater who has been covered here regularly:
Felix Sater, one of Donald Trump’s shadiest former business partners, is reportedly preparing for prison time — and he says the president will be joining him behind bars.
Don’t take my word for it, let Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow explain it: Trump’s Business of Corruption
Adam Davidson has written a number of columns about Trump for The New Yorker. This is his latest and he frames the Trump – Special Counsel Robert Mueller confrontation in his first few paragraphs:
“President Donald Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow recently told me that the investigation being led by Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, should focus on one question: whether there was “coördination between the Russian government and people on the Trump campaign.” Sekulow went on, “I want to be really specific. A real-estate deal would be outside the scope of legitimate inquiry.” If he senses “drift” in Mueller’s investigation, he said, he will warn the special counsel’s office that it is exceeding its mandate. The issue will first be raised “informally,” he noted. But if Mueller and his team persist, Sekulow said, he might lodge a formal objection with the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, who has the power to dismiss Mueller and end the inquiry. President Trump has been more blunt, hinting to the Times that he might fire Mueller if the investigation looks too closely at his business dealings.
Several news accounts have confirmed that Mueller has indeed begun to examine Trump’s real-estate deals and other business dealings, including some that have no obvious link to Russia. But this is hardly wayward. It would be impossible to gain a full understanding of the various points of contact between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign without scrutinizing many of the deals that Trump has made in the past decade. Trump-branded buildings in Toronto and the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan were developed in association with people who have connections to the Kremlin. Other real-estate partners of the Trump Organization—in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and elsewhere—are now caught up in corruption probes, and, collectively, they suggest that the company had a pattern of working with partners who exploited their proximity to political power.
There is no legal basis for Trump or Sekulow defining or limiting Mueller’s investigation – and he is blowing right past any of these meritless warnings. By the way, the SoHo project referenced by Davidson is a Sater-Trump project.
Davidson’s article is long, but perfectly representative.
*****
Another long piece, consider the recent arrest of Jared Kushner business partner Benny Steinmetz who prior to his arrest was under investigation in four countries for bribery and money laundering – when these are your business partners, it’s only a matter of time: Bribe Cases, A Jared Kushner Partner and Potential Conflicts
Sater, Steinmetz, Manafort, Deutsche Bank
Here is a great summary of Trumpism: Rich CEOs Are The Big Winners Of Trump’s Race War.
Trumpism, in short, is fundamentally a hustle. It’s essentially a bet that if you punch nonwhite America in the face, white America will be so busy gawking they won’t notice their pockets are being picked too. And history teaches that it might work.
For recent examples of Trump-Russia, feel free to ponder the FBI’s raid of former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s home in Virginia.
This surprise raid came one day after Manafort appeared before the Senate Judiciary committee in a closed hearing. The raid is a clear message of lack of trust of cooperation by Manafort and he subsequently changed his legal team. And so did Mueller: Mueller Is Squeezing Manafort
Or consider Deutsche Bank which has been linked to money laundering and Trump/Kushner for months. It’s not a small issue though it is familiar: Deutsche Bank Expects Subpoenas Over Trump-Russia Investigation
“The Guardian reported in February that the bank launched a review of Trump’s account earlier this year in order to gauge whether there were any suspicious connections to Russia and did not discover anything suspicious.
“Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and White House advise; her husband, Jared Kushner, who is also a presidential adviser; and Kushner’s mother, Seryl Stadtmauer, are all clients of Deutsche Bank.”
And here’s the issue:
“Any move by Mueller’s team to pursue Trump’s personal financial records comes as the bank continues to negotiate a settlement with the Department of Justice over its so-called mirror trading scheme, in which the bank’s former Moscow branch is alleged to have allowed $10bn to flow out of Russia. Democrats on Capitol Hill have been demanding answers about who might have benefited from the scheme.”
I will wrap up with two odd news items.
Neo-Nazi blog The Daily Stormer tries to move to Russian domain
An American neo-Nazi website has taken a cue from Donald Trump Jr. by looking to Russians for help.
Less than a day after The Daily Stormer went dark, Ars Technica reported the notorious hate-centric website was up and running again Wednesday, this time using the Russia-based domain dailystormer.ru.
Russia – friend of Trump, friend of The Daily Stormer.
Photo of the Day: GOP Rep. Rohrabacher Poses With Holocaust Denier Chuck C. Johnson at Assange Meeting
I will end with the strangest news of the cycle. You might remember congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). Sen. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made news by telling Paul Ryan (R-WI) and a room full of Republicans, “there’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump”. I can’t quite get my head around Rohrabacher in London posing with white supremacist Chuck Johnson ahead of a meeting with Julian Assange, the pictures and more telling than anything I can say. Link here .
What does it take for the GOP to turn on Trump? There are a lot of deals with the devil and skeletons in closets that are the history leading to Trump in the White House.