General Trump Administration F**kery Thread
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Fast Money & Foreign Objects
Loose Ends as the Stone Trial Moves to Closing Arguments | emptywheel
But I wanted to capture a number of loose threads from the trial (and this is based off live tweeting, so it’s more vague than I would wish):
- Prosecutors made sure to get Steve Bannon to explain the relationship between Ted Malloch and Erik Prince and the campaign, yet Prince did not testify and Malloch’s testimony wasn’t entered. So why include that detail?
- The government tried to enter Bannon’s grand jury testimony, unsuccessfully, after he had to be held to his prior testimony. Was there a discrepancy or a different articulation prosecutors were trying to hold him to?
- Footnote 989 of Volume I of the Mueller Report seems to suggest that Bannon’s testimony came in under a proffer agreement (and his first interview clearly stretched the truth). But that proffer did not get introduced into evidence. Why not?
- The defense did not raise the most obvious challenge to Gates’ testimony, that his claim Stone knew of hacked emails in April 2016 might represent a confusion with Hillary’s FOIAed emails. Since they could only make this argument with Gates’ testimony, I’m curious why they didn’t raise it.
- The defense spent a lot of time talking to Gates about Stone’s role in compiling voter rolls. Why?
- Prosecutors named a bunch of Stone’s flunkies as witnesses, and subpoenaed and flew in Andrew Miller. They seem to have first informed Miller he’d be testifying at what would be the end of a full week trial (what they initially said they expected), then held him through Stone’s defense, suggesting they might use him as a rebuttal witness. But he never testified. Why not?
- The government never presented something they had planned to as 404b information — that Stone also lied about whether the campaign knew of his campaign finance shenanigans. They didn’t do so. Why not? (This may related to the Miller question.)
- Prosecutors made a point of having Gates describe Stone asking for Jared Kushner’s contact so he could brief him on stolen emails. But that point was dropped. That loose end is particularly interesting given that they had Bannon testify about the July 18 email Stone sent him, which probably pertains to an investigation that was ongoing in March.
The Persistence of Jared in the WikiLeaks Operation | emptywheel
The Persistence of Jared in the WikiLeaks Operation
November 19, 2019/1 Comment/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
As I noted repeatedly (one, two), there were a number of provocative loose threads left in Roger Stone’s trial. I want to look at one more: Roger Stone’s effort to involve Kushner in WikiLeaks related stuff.
Rick Gates testified that in the weeks before WikiLeaks dropped the DNC emails in July 2016, a group including Stephen Miller, Jason Miller, Paul Manafort, and him brainstormed how they would respond to emails that — according to Roger Stone (as well as other public reporting) — would soon be released.
Jared Kushner was pointedly not named as participating in that group.
That’s interesting because, just before 10PM on June 14, 2016 — the day that the DNC first announced it had been hacked — Stone had two phone calls with Trump on his home line, lasting a total of 4:18 minutes. The government admits they don’t know what happened on that call, but for some reason they seem to be certain it had to do with the DNC emails. Late afternoon the next day, after Guccifer 2.0 first released documents billed as DNC documents, Stone wrote Gates asking first for his contact info, then his email. There were also a number of texts that day (the trial exhibit doesn’t clarify whether these are ET or UTC, so it’s unclear whether they happen around 4 and 12 PM, which is most likely, or 8PM and 4AM the next day).
Stone: Call me. Important
Gates: On con call but will call right after. Thanks.
Stone: Please
Stone: Awake ?
Gates: Yep.
Stone: Call me?
Gates: On con call but will call right after. Thanks.
Stone: Please
Stone: Awake ?
Gates: Yep.
Stone: Call me?
Gates said that Stone wanted Jared’s contact info to debrief him on the hacked materials. Which is one reason it’s weird that Kushner was not named in the group that prepared for new emails to drop.
Especially since, late in the campaign, Kushner is the one Paul Manafort advised on who to capitalize on WikiLeaks’ releases. On October 21, for example, Manafort told him to use WikiLeaks to demonstrate Hillary’s alleged corruption.
For example, on October 21, 2016, Manafort sent Kushner an email and attached a strategy memorandum proposing that the Campaign make the case against Clinton “as the failed and corrupt champion of the establishment” and that “Wikileaks provides the Trump campaign the ability to make the case in a very credible way – by using the words of Clinton, its campaign officials and DNC members.”936
When, on November 5, Manafort sent Kushner an email warning that Hillary would blame any win on hacked voting machines, Steve Bannon responded by linking Manafort, Russia, and the WikiLeaks releases. (PDF 258)
We need to avoid this guy like the plague
They are going to try and say the Russian worked with wiki leaks to give this victory to us
Paul is nice guy but can’t let word out he is advising us
They are going to try and say the Russian worked with wiki leaks to give this victory to us
Paul is nice guy but can’t let word out he is advising us
That suggests that Bannon was a lot warier of continuing to accept Manafort’s counsel than Kushner was — and Bannon was wary because it linked a campaign win to Russia’s help.
When Bannon was asked about this in an early, not entirely truthful, interview, he in turn linked Manafort to someone else who, given the name length and redaction purpose, is likely Stone.
Candidate Trump never said to Bannon that he was in contact with [5 letter name redacted for ongoing proceeding] or Manafort. Bannon knew they were going to win, and in this email he wanted to avoid Manafort because Bannon believed that if people could link them to Manafort, they could then try to link them to Russia.
Now go back to something else introduced in the trial. On August 18, the day after Bannon was first hired onto the campaign (but the day before Manafort would resign), Stone emailed him and explained, “I do know how to win this but it ain’t pretty.”
That appears to be the “other investigation” that Paul Manafort was supposed to, but reneged, on helping DOJ investigate last year, one where Manafort first implicated (to get his plea deal), then tried to exonerate (after he got it) someone with a seven-letter name. Even at the time, a different part of DOJ was investigating it.
Finally, consider one other detail. Back in March 2018, when Sean Hannity was grilling Paul Manafort about whether he might flip, Manafort explained that he would be expected to give up Kushner.
These are just data points.
But they are consistent with there being two strands of WikiLeaks discussions on the campaign. One — involving Gates, Stephen Miller, and Jason Miller — doing little more than optimizing the releases. And another — involving Manafort and Kushner, one that Bannon didn’t want any tie to — involving something more.
nbcnews.com
Stephen Miller planted anti-Rubio stories in Breitbart during 2016 campaign, leaked emails show
Ben CollinsBen Collins covers disinformation, extremism and the internet for NBC News.
6-7 minutes
White House senior adviser Stephen Miller had more editorial influence over the right-wing news website Breitbart during the 2016 presidential campaign than previously known and attempted to push articles attacking then-presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., according to a new batch of leaked emails shared with NBC News.
The emails, which were first given to the Southern Poverty Law Center by former Breitbart writer Katie McHugh, reveal that Breitbart published an article in October 2015 about immigration levels with the byline “Breitbart News” under the direction of Miller while he was working for then-Sen. Jeff Sessions.
The emails offer a window into just how closely Miller coordinated with Breitbart, a publication that backed President Donald Trump early in his campaign. Its former chief executive, Steve Bannon, later served as an adviser to Trump.
On Oct. 3, 2015, Miller sent a chart that claimed that “For Every 1 New American Added to the Population, Immigration Will Add 7 More” to McHugh, Breitbart’s Washington political editor Matthew Boyle and Bannon.
“Also how should we run this? Under Senator Sessions’ byline? Or under ‘Breitbart News’ byline?” Boyle asked in a reply.
Miller responded that the chart and the accompanying article should be run under a Breitbart News byline, in effect disguising his involvement.
“This exclusive should provide an inescapably powerful visual and analysis designed to appeal to voters of all stripes,” Miller wrote.
It is not unusual for politicians or aides to publish opinion articles in news outlets, but those articles are usually clearly marked as coming from a particular person and are not disguised as part of the editorial operation of the news outlet.
In an emailed statement, a Breitbart spokesperson said it is “not exactly a newsflash that political staffers pitch stories to journalists — sometimes those pitches are successful, sometimes not.”
Asked for comment, Hogan Gidley, a spokesperson for the White House, did not address the SPLC report or the emails but instead suggested that criticism of Miller was anti-Semitic, because Miller is Jewish.
“Mr. Miller condemns racism and bigotry in all forms, but what deeply concerns me is how so many on the left are allowed to spread vile anti-Semitism and consistently attack proud Jewish members of this administration,” Gidley said in an emailed statement.
The SPLC’s coverage did not include any references to Miller’s religion.
Miller, Bannon, Boyle and Sessions did not respond to requests for comment.
The new batch of emails, released by Michael E. Hayden at the SPLC on Tuesday, also show that Miller repeatedly sent McHugh editorial guidance from his personal email address when he was working for the Trump campaign from 2015 to 2016. In one email highlighting Trump’s stances on crime, Miller implores McHugh to “make sure this is put in [the] lede,” which is a journalism term for the first paragraph of the article.
The first batch of emails, released last week, included correspondence in which Miller pointed McHugh to white nationalist websites that have been categorized as hate groups by the SPLC, including the white supremacist websites VDare and American Renaissance.
VDare and American Renaissance repeatedly push the “great replacement” and “white genocide” conspiracy theory, which posits that a shadowy group is attempting to eliminate white majorities in the United States through immigration and encouraging mixed-race families.
Miller, who joined Trump’s campaign in early 2016 and currently works as a senior adviser in the White House, is credited as an architect and advocate for the Trump administration’s child separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border.
More than 80 members of Congress, all Democrats, have called for Miller to resign since his emails to McHugh were first published last week. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., first called for Miller to resign last week, attaching an online petition to her tweet. That petition now has collected more than 50,000 signatures.
The new emails also show Miller repeatedly attempted to direct McHugh’s coverage about Rubio in 2015 and 2016.
“Stephen Miller is an extremist and, for some reason, he had this pathological determination to tank Rubio’s campaign,” McHugh told NBC News on Monday.
Rubio has been considered a right-leaning moderate on immigration and sought to find a bipartisan compromise on the issue as a part of the “Gang of Eight” group of senators working on the topic. His track record on the issue became fodder for attacks during his run for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
In December 2015, Miller sent McHugh a blog post from a local New Rochelle, New York, website about an undocumented immigrant who was arrested for allegedly raping a child. McHugh said she’d cover the story, and would “send you a link once it’s up.”
“Can you work in a reminder that Rubio’s bill — which he was pushing for Obama — legalized alien sex offenders, ensuring more such rapes would occur?” Miller wrote in one email. “[Rubio] invents facts to hurt Americans, seems to be the trend.”
In several other emails to McHugh, Miller called Rubio “pathological” and said he is “an extremist who wants unlimited immigration. The American people are moderate and want to hit pause after the deluge.”
McHugh has since disavowed her career at Breitbart and admitted she used to subscribe to white nationalist beliefs.
“Stephen Miller is a very intense and obsessive person,” McHugh said. “He’s one of those white nationalists who puts a veneer of intellectualism on things, so he was able to get away with them.”
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The Fire Rises 2023
So wait if north korea and china are good, and south korea and china are good, and north korea and south korea are good or at the very least not beefing, and all three of these countries view japan as a threat. Did the us just basically lose east asia today? Lmaoooo wow donny
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