Important new reporting from CNN that special counsel Robert Mueller has referred several cases of failure to register as a foreign agent to federal prosecutors in Manhattan:
For Prime subscribers, Tierney Sneed’s account of a remarkably fast first day of trial for a high profile case: jury selection, opening statements, and the first witness all in under eight hours!
Good Lord, watch this. We're going to be at "Collusion is Awesome!" by next week. pic.twitter.com/U2w52YvAxk
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 1, 2018
I’m not sure whether or not it’s prejudicial as a technical matter. But I agree with the larger point from TPM Reader NB …
I read Tierney Sneed’s account of judge Ellis arguing that the term oligarch was derogatory and he didn’t want it used in front of the jury with some shock and dismay.
“We’re not going to have this case tried that he associated with despicable people,” Ellis said, referring to Manafort.
“That’s not the American way,” Ellis added.
Caitlin MacNeal sends in this dispatch from the Manafort trial. The next witnesses expected to take the stand are Maximillian Katzman (an NYC menswear retailer), Ronald Wall (presumably a vendor Manafort used) and Daniel Opsut (comptroller of the Alexandria, Virginia Mercedes Benz).
More to come this afternoon.
2018 has been a year with constant new innovations in the field of politician revenge porn. First Missouri Governor Eric Greitens. Later St. Paul Minnesota City Council candidate David Martinez posted a semi-nude photo of his estranged wife to his campaign website after she got a restraining order against him. He then got arrested. But this new story out of Illinois makes these other incidents sound almost run-of-the-mill by comparison. Meet rising star State Rep. Nick Sauer from Illinois.
Two years ago Illinois state Rep. Nick Sauer began a relationship with a California woman who he met on the dating app Tinder. It was at first a long distance relationship. But she eventually moved to Illinois to be closer to him. The two broke up in March of this year when the girlfriend Kate Kelly found out Sauer was dating other women behind her back. So far, it’s your average story of a rotten boyfriend.
But there’s more. Read More
It’s easy to see President Trump’s tweet today, which says Jeff Sessions should fire Bob Mueller, as yet more of the cacophony of mania and aggression that spews forth from his Twitter account daily like water flowing over a waterfall. But I fear that may not be the case. President Trump has criticized Jeff Sessions many times. His anger at him is notorious. But I don’t think he has ever so clearly in public told Sessions to fire Mueller or given him such a specific “cause” for doing so. I do not think this is an accident or a random escalation. Read More
People are either surprised, incredulous or laughing about President Trump defending his former campaign manager Paul Manafort by comparing him to the notorious gangland killer Al Capone. They shouldn’t. To Trump, Capone was a winner. He was rich. Everybody gave him respect. But he was brought down on BS charges, mundane financial crimes. He was treated very unfairly, to use the President’s signature phrase. This isn’t hyperbole or a mere attack. Over a forty-plus year career, Trump was deep in business with some of the most notorious and violent mobsters of the late 20th century. Trump managed not to get in to trouble first because he had the right friends but just as much because he kept the relationships largely passive. He laundered their money. His main overt act was willful obliviousness. Trump Tower itself was a notorious haven for all sorts of organized crime figures, mostly from other countries. Mostly from Russia and the former Soviet Union.
If you want to learn more about this I strongly recommend reading Seth Hettena’s Trump/Russia: A Definitive History. As the title suggests it’s mainly about the backstory of the Trump’s relationship with Russia. But that story is inseparable from his ties to organized crime. If you want to hear more before buying it you can listen to my conversation with the author here.
This afternoon ABC published a story which purports to explain what was going on in the background (as I speculated here) that made President Trump dramatically up the ante in his push to end the Mueller investigation. According to ABC, within the last day President Trump had learned that Mueller had agreed to limit the scope of the questions he would ask Trump in an investigatory interview but would focus his questions on obstruction of justice.
I don’t buy this. Read More