I spent a bit of Friday afternoon watching an interview the Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin did with Randall Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T. I was watching because of my deep interest in what is happening with the Trump Justice Department and AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner. Stephenson was very careful not to touch Trump’s potential role in this – unsurprisingly. Ross Sorkin wasn’t that aggressive in pressing. The weirdness confirms me in what I wrote here (sub req).

But there’s something else that came up that I wanted to flag. Read More

Celebrate TPM’s 17th Anniversary by signing up for TPM Prime. No, really! Sign up. And yes, it’s our 17th anniversary, which is somewhat amazing. Another great way to celebrate is checking out our four current job listings: Senior Editor, Prime Editor, Assistant Editor and Investigations Desk Reporter.

Fascinating piece here in the Times applying some Times level sleuthing to shed more light on those Papadopoulos court documents from last week. We get some idea of the backstory of Joseph Mifsud, apparently a failing and shambling academic career that was on its final skid when Russians showed up in 2014 with money and newfound respectability, an old story. Other gaps of the story are filled in. But the big one is Stephen Miller. Read More

I’m getting a lot of new information about the AT&T/Time Warner acquisition and what the Trump White House is up to. If you know things, please contact me at our comment email address under our logo. I can also provide secure means of communication.

A lot of Flynn threads are emerging in rapid succession that suggests a much broader and wilder universe of criminal wrongdoing. Here’s my backgrounder (sub req) on what might be coming.

As I mentioned Thursday, we have four open positions we are currently hiring for at TPM, one an existing but vacant position and three new positions: Senior Editor, Prime Editor, Assistant Editor and a third reporter to join our Investigations Desk team. Today we’re posting our listing for our Assistant Editor position.

Listing after the jump. Read More

This new story about Michael Flynn possibly negotiating to kidnap a legal American resident and exfiltrate him to Turkey is wild and really requires close attention. We had heard some time ago that this idea of kidnapping Fetullah Gulen had been discussed or perhaps hypothesized. But now we are hearing that Michael Flynn and perhaps his son were actively negotiating with Turkish interests about doing this during the transition. Read More

Jim Zeigler is the Alabama State Auditor who has recast the core narratives of the Gospels as a sort of barely legal dime novel as a way to justify the alleged actions of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. “Zechariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth and they became the parents of John the Baptist. Also take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.” Read More

Hannity and Fox Legal Analyst Mercedes Colwin discuss harassment and assault and money.

“Few and Far Between” … this is quite a segment. Watch pic.twitter.com/rN9PPZYBH5

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 10, 2017

CNN is now reporting that Robert Mueller’s Russia probe has now interviewed young White House advisor Stephen Miller. The focus seems to be on Miller’s knowledge of and possible involvement in the firing of James Comey. With this news, I want to remind everyone of Miller’s role on that pivotal weekend with Trump before the Comey firing and that still unexplained Air Force One incident on the Sunday night flight back to Washington. Here’s my report.