CNN is reporting that last year, during the campaign, Paul Manafort was the target of a FISA warrant. The FISA warrant was active before and after the November election. President Trump and Manafort apparently continued to be in contact in the early part of 2017, when the warrant was still active.

From CNN …

The conversations between Manafort and Trump continued after the President took office, long after the FBI investigation into Manafort was publicly known, the sources told CNN. They went on until lawyers for the President and Manafort insisted that they stop, according to the sources.

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It is hard to know precisely what to make of tonight’s revelation that Paul Manafort was the subject of a FISA warrant before and after the 2016 election. Just when the FISA warrant was granted is not clear from the report. But the precise date would tell us a lot. Read More

This may be too obscure and low energy to hold the commanding heights of our attention. But the Republican Governors Association has launched a ‘news’ publication dubbed the Free Telegraph which will publish praise for Republican governors and negative portrayals of Democratic governors.

President Trump has signaled he would like to hold a military parade on Pennsylvania Avenue out front of the White House next July 4th to show off American military might. The parade would include tanks, jet fighters and other heavy armaments for public display through the streets of the national capital. “So we’re actually thinking about 4th of July, Pennsylvania Avenue, having a really great parade to show our military strength,” said the President. Read more here.

Here’s another perspective on last night’s Manafort news. I explained last night that at least two members of Trump’s team were being surveilled last year under FISA warrants over ties to suspected Russian intelligence operatives. But there’s another dimension of this. Read More

Following up on my post below, let me add one more point. Below I noted that having two members of Trump’s campaign the subjects of active counter-intelligence investigations must have set off alarm bells in the US intelligence world. But of course it wasn’t just that. Law enforcement and US intelligence had known for years that Trump was heavily reliant on money from countries of the former Soviet Union, with much of that money coming from dubious sources. I discussed just how much they knew here. Read More

These tactics from Trump ‘lawyer’ Michael Cohen probably work better with New York City real estate goons than Senate Committees.

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When the weak or the marginalized are defiant or even threatening, there is a self-regulating dynamic which limits the danger or renders it minimal. We can see this on both the domestic and international fronts. Chants of “black power” may be superficially comparable to chants of “white power”. But most of us intuitively understand they are very different. The defiance and demand of the marginalized or disempowered is inherently defensive in nature whereas the defiance and demand of the powerful is inherently aggressive and menacing. Read More