President Trump claims Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is being mistreated in just the way Brett Kavanaugh was, being denied the presumption of innocence.
The Lt Gov. of Alaska Byron Mallott has resigned out of the blue over what Gov. Bill Walker calls “inappropriate comments.” But if you want to read on to see what the “inappropriate comments” were, you’re out of luck. Because they were apparently so inappropriate that all involved refuse to say what the comments were. Read More
As we evaluate the Trump administration’s reaction to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi and the President’s heavy reliance on the value of his $110 billion arms deal, it is very important to understand that that deal doesn’t even exist. Does not exist. It’s a mix of old proposals, new proposals, letters of intent and smoke – with a heavy emphasis on smoke. Here are the details.
The Mueller probe seems so far-flung and all-encompassing, with so many elements of the investigation still apparently on-going, it can be hard to imagine it coming to an end. But Mueller’s investigators are apparently preparing to render critical judgments on the collusion and obstruction fronts soon after the midterms.
The more you read this Bloomberg report on the Mueller probe, the more questions it raises. Mueller may be prepping a report of some sort soon after the midterms. But he’s also not close to being done with the probe. The biggest news, as far as I can see, is the hint that Rod Rosenstein is losing patience with the probe and is pressuring Mueller to wrap it up. Read More
Here is a story about an on-going lawsuit by a group of advertisers against Facebook. It all seems fairly technical and distant from most of our concerns. But it’s actually something that has had a huge impact on the evolution of the news publishing industry over the last few years, and something that seems to have been based in large measure on Facebook’s fraud. Read More
TPM Reader JL is right. This is a big deal.
Based on 538’s forecast which just got posted, if every race goes the way 538 is calling it (insert caveats here), the following states among others will have a Democratic governor: WI, MI, PA, FL. That’s a whopping 75 electoral votes right there.
We did some software upgrades overnight. As part of that, a setting got changed so that some Prime members are now seeing an alert about ad blockers. That was unintentional and we are working to roll back that change this morning. Thanks for being members.
We’ve seen months of clues that Roger Stone is in the crosshairs of the Mueller investigation. We heard yesterday that Mueller may be preparing a report and a new round of indictments for soon after the election. Now we hear that Stone is high on the list of what Mueller’s investigators have wanted to know about in their post-cooperation agreement meetings with Manafort. Read More
This is a brief note and is in no way a defense of the Saudis. But I think we can see another common pattern between our relationship with the Saudis and the Russians. In both cases, because President Trump is not only resistant to taking action against Saudi Arabia but apparently under some kind of corrupt influence by Saudis there is a tendency to propose more and more extreme responses. This is a manageable but dangerous tendency we should all be mindful of, with both countries. Read More