Ta-Nehisi Coates did a systematic take-down of John Kelly after he presented a revisionist history of the Civil War on Laura Ingraham’s new show on Fox last night. You can see that here. Kelly’s key points were that the cause (and for us the lesson) of the Civil War was an unwillingness to compromise and that Robert E. Lee was an “honorable” man. Read More
While the world was marveling at Trump’s crowd size fetish during that fateful first week of his presidency, George Papadopoulos and allegedly Mike Flynn were lying to the FBI, Sally Yates was scrambling to warn the White House, and Donald Trump himself was pressing Jim Comey for personal loyalty in a private dinner. Notably, the seeds of what would become the first charges in the special counsel probe came four months before Robert Mueller arrived on the scene. Sam Thielman reviews the newly updated timeline for the last week of January.
This is just what I was thinking (from the Post) …
Away from the podium, Trump staffers fretted privately over whether Manafort or Gates might share with Mueller’s team damaging information about other colleagues. They expressed concern in particular about Gates because he has a young family, may be more stretched financially than Manafort, and continued to be involved in Trump’s political operation and had access to the White House, including attending West Wing meetings after Trump was sworn in.
Rick Gates is 45, 23 years younger than Manafort. He was also with Trump much longer than Manafort. Any guesses about whether he saw anything bad when he was in the Trump orbit? Read More
Will Fischer is a nationally recognized progressive leader. A decorated Marine Corps veteran of the war in Iraq, he is the director of government affairs for VoteVets, which, with more than 500,000 members, is the largest progressive veterans organization in America (and was also blocked on Twitter by President Donald Trump in June). Prior to his work at VoteVets, Will spent nearly a decade working at the national AFL-CIO and in a variety of political, legislative, and organizing campaigns across the country.
Will will be in the Hive to discuss veterans, military, and foreign policy. Post your questions and join us on Thursday! If you’d like to participate but don’t have TPM Prime, sign up here.
TPM’s iDesk reporter Tierney Sneed was inside the court room today after the Manafort indictment dropped. Here’s her report.
Here’s a short backgrounder on what I think is the major revelation of the day (sub req).
Here are some other points to note in the Papadopoulos plea deal … Read More
From a TPM Reader …
As a former federal prosecutor, it seems to me that there are several angles to Mueller’s strategy with the timing of these announcements.
We can’t know these things for sure. But it certainly seems like Mueller was sending a message and sending a shock to the Trump White House by releasing the Papadopoulos charges mid-morning. The Manafort/Gates charges are very serious as crimes and bring heavy punishments. They’re a big deal. But they do not connect directly to the campaign’s ties with Russia or even the campaign itself. The White House can accurately say that these are crimes that do not relate to them, as they have. (Set aside for the moment that they are serious crimes undertaken by the campaign chairman while the campaign was underway and that they provide Mueller with immense leverage to extract more information from Manafort.) Read More
George Papadopoulos, another of those first five campaign advisors announced in March 2016 (Carter Page was another), pleaded guilty on Oct. 5, 2017, to making false statements to FBI. Unsealed this morning.
More soon.
Remember, days after being appointed, Papadopoulos went to work trying to set up meetings between the Trump campaign and “Russian Leadership – Including Putin.”
We’re reading through the Papadopoulos charges now. They are pretty bad and go directly to the Russia issue. More soon.