The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[N.E. Brigand]

Again, this pertains to no case or investigation, but it's yet another insight into the Trump presidency from the new book:

Trump's ex-chief of staff told him that "the public will come to your grave and piss on it" if he didn't lower the flag in honor of McCain's death

"This just makes me sad."

Newly released (and mostly redacted) emails reveal how someone in the military chain of command responded when they learned that the White House had requested the USS John McCain be kept out of sight when President Trump was visiting American troops in Japan.

[N.E. Brigand]

I do think it's reasonably likely that some of Danchenko's sub-sources were working for Oleg Deripaska (and thus ultimately for Vladimir Putin, although I also think there should be a deeper look into Deripaska's possible connection to Mitch McConnell) and feeding him disinformation in order to undermine Steele's work. That said, within weeks of Steele's dossier being made public, it was reported that Steele himself was clear-eyed about the "raw" nature of the information he provided and that he estimated only 75% of it would prove to be correct.

Since this was the last reference to the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was a key figure in the Trump-Russia affair, I'll note here that U.S. federal prosecutors today indicted Deripaska and others for evading U.S. sanctions on Russia and on Deripaska himself in 2018-2020, in part by arranging to have Deripaska's girlfriend give birth in the U.S. in order that his child would be a U.S. citizien. The child is thus what Republicans frequently call an "anchor baby."

It's not part of the indictment, but I remember when Republicans in Congress signed off on the Trump administration's approval of a Kentucky industrial project to be managed by a company that Deripaska had formerly owned but dubiously claimed to have divested himself from. I called the office of my state's Republican senator, Rob Portman, to express my displeasure. The young man who answered the phone insisted I was wrong and that everything about the project was on the up and up. I'm still skeptical.

Edited to note that the investigation was underway at least two years ago (there was a grand jury in October 2020). I wonder why the charges took so long.

[N.E. Brigand]

Along the way, the indictment notes that Deripaska arranged for flowers to be delivered to an unidentified "U.S. television host".

[RoseMorninStar]

Since this was the last reference to the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was a key figure in the Trump-Russia affair, I'll note here that U.S. federal prosecutors today indicted Deripaska and others for evading U.S. sanctions on Russia and on Deripaska himself in 2018-2020, in part by arranging to have Deripaska's girlfriend give birth in the U.S. in order that his child would be a U.S. citizien. The child is thus what Republicans frequently call an "anchor baby."

In cases such as this (or anything else) can citizenship ever be revoked?

[Sunsilver]

Newly released (and mostly redacted) emails reveal how someone in the military chain of command responded when they learned that the White House had requested the USS John McCain be kept out of sight when President Trump was visiting American troops in Japan.

It may make you sad, but it makes ME angry!! I would have gone out of my way to make sure Trump saw the ship on his trip to Japan! How CHILDISH!!

Even if I had a personal reason to dislike McCain, I would still respect him as a war hero who went through a very difficult time as a POW.

[N.E. Brigand]

As expected, a federal judge has ruled against Igor Danchenko's motions to dismiss the case brought against him by Special Prosecutor John Durham for allegedly having lied to the FBI. As I understand it, defendants' motions to dismiss in criminal cases usually fail -- judges prefer to let juries decide -- but the judge did say that it was "an extremely close call." Danchenko was a source of information for Christopher Steele's research into Donald Trump's ties to Russia.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump is scheduled to be deposed October 19 in the defamation lawsuit against him by E. Jean Carroll. While President, Trump mocked Carroll's claim that he raped her years earlier. Recently an appeals court ruled that Trump was then an employee of the federal government as covered by the Westfall Act, which generally protects government employees for statements made in the course of their official duties. The appeals court returned the case to the district court to determine whether Trump's statement made while he was a government employee was in fact part of his job.

The date for Trump's deposition was revealed in a new filing in which Carroll asks the court not to pause the discovery process. Carroll claims that as part of this process, she has provided Trump with more than 30,000 pages of material, but Brump has provided her with only eight pages.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump's social media post today about Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao was hideous (and almost criminal), but McConnell has only himself to blame for not making the most of earlier opportunities to stop Trump.

[Sunsilver]

Wow! Just goes to show he will turn on anyone who doesn't support him and his agenda 100%!
But, hey - old news!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Donald Trump's social media post today about Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao was hideous (and almost criminal), but McConnell has only himself to blame for not making the most of earlier opportunities to stop Trump.

[N.E. Brigand]

Yesterday Donald Trump filed a $550 million lawsuit against CNN for having described him "with a series of ever more scandalous, false, and defamatory labels of 'racist,' 'Russian lackey,' 'insurrectionist,' and ultimately, 'Hitler.'" He will lose this suit, because there's a very plausible case to be made that he is a racist, Russian lackey, and insurrectionist, and because everyone knows that Hitler is dead, so any reference to Trump as Hitler is obviously hyperbole and not a statement of fact (and also, when a CNN host compared Trump to Hitler, he explicitly said, "let's be very clear: Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler").

[N.E. Brigand]

The Washington Post has new reporting on how classified documents were routinely mishandled in Donald Trump's administration. Reporters spoke to 14 different people who worked in the Trump White House. Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, says that Trump "rejected the Presidential Records Act entirely."

But her emails!

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Edited to add a tidbit about another case that hadn't appeared to be Trump-related, but:

New reporting from Maggie Haberman's book indicates that after Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested, Donald Trump asked aides: "She say anything about me"?

[N.E. Brigand]

Since this was the last reference to the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was a key figure in the Trump-Russia affair, I'll note here that U.S. federal prosecutors today indicted Deripaska and others for evading U.S. sanctions on Russia and on Deripaska himself in 2018-2020, in part by arranging to have Deripaska's girlfriend give birth in the U.S. in order that his child would be a U.S. citizien. The child is thus what Republicans frequently call an "anchor baby."

In cases such as this (or anything else) can citizenship ever be revoked?

I don't think so.

More Deripaska news: it turns out that even before was indicted, the U.S. Department of Justice filed charges under seal on September 21 against a businessman in the UK, who has now been arrested there (the U.S. will file for extradition), for helping Deripaska avoid sanctions. His name is Graham Bonham-Carter, and I believe he's distantly related to the famous actress with the same last name.

[N.E. Brigand]

Steve Wynn is a Las Vegas casino magnate who was a vice chair of Donald Trump's inaugural committee and the finance chair of the Republican National Committee from January 2017 to January 2018, when he resigned from that role following allegations of sexual harassment and assault at his casinos (claims were made by nine women).

As an aside: the RNC's three deputy finance chairs at the time were Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen (who later pleaded guilty to campaign finance crimes), venture capitalist Elliott Broidy (who pleaded guilty to being a foreign agent of China and Malaysia, for which he later was pardoned by Trump, and who also allegedly paid more than $1 million to his Playboy-model girlfiend to have an abortion, in a deal arranged by Cohen using the same alias for Broidy that Cohen used for Trump in the deal with Stormy Daniels), and shipping magnate Louis DeJoy (who was later named as the director of the U.S. Postal Service, which he seems to have undermined both to help his personal interests and Trump's 2020 election chances; this week, after a long delay, Joe Biden's nominees to the USPS board of directors were finally confirmed, so DeJoy's time may be up).

Today the U.S. Department of Justice announced it is suing Steve Wynn to force him to register retroactively as a foreign agent of the Chinese government. The DOJ has previously alleged that Wynn -- acting in part to protect his business interests in the Chinese district of Macau -- lobbied the Trump administration to suspend the visa of a Chinese businessman seeking asylum in the U.S. For example, after Barrack provided copies of the person's passport photo to Trump's secretary, he was told by that China's President Xi Jinping "appreciate[d]" what Barrack was doing for China.

Wynn had previously been advised by DOJ to so register, but he chose not to do so. This is the first time in more than 30 years the DOJ has taken the additional step of suing to compel someone to register.

A federal judge has dismissed the government's civil suit against Steve Wynn for failing to register as a foreign agent of China. The judge appears to believe that Wynn very likely was a foreign agent of China, lobbying the Trump administration in exchange for favorable treatment of his casino enterprises in Macau, but the judge says that precedent in the D.C. circuit doesn't allow for the government to require a person to register retroactively.

Edited to add: The Dept. of Justice noted in a statement this evening, the judge himself noted in the filing that his ruling is bound by precedent that "frustrates FARA's purpose," and they are considering next steps.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

Noting this Forbes article here because the former Republican congressman in question, John Ratcliffe, was the Director of National Intelligence for the last 19 months of Donald Trump's presidency: "Former Texas Congressman Used Campaign Money To Pay His Wife $43,500."

[N.E. Brigand]

Putting this here due to the explicit reference to Donald Trump's foreign policy, but it might fit as well in other threads.

Pop star and sometime Trump supporter Kanye West, who ran for president in 2020 in an apparent effort to siphon votes from Joe Biden, told Fox News's Tucker Carlson this week that Donald Trump's son-in-law and presidential aide, Jared Kushner, worked to strike a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia solely in order "to make money" and added that "I just think that what they're about is making money. I don't think that they have the ability to make anything on their own; I think they're born into money." Fox News aired that.

But Fox did not air what West had said before that: that he would prefer his kids learn about Hanukkah than Kwanzaa because the former instruction "will come with some financial engineering." (The cut footage was obtained by Vice.) That additional context would appear to make West's comments more clearly anti-Semitic than many people were already interpreting them as, and by cutting out the worst line, Carlson was able to share the rest with a veneer of deniability.

[N.E. Brigand]

The New York Times reports that Donald Trump created a new company, called "Trump Organization II," just a few days before New York attorney general's office announced Trump and his kids were being sued for fraud.

[N.E. Brigand]

The New York Times reports that Donald Trump created a new company, called "Trump Organization II," just a few days before New York attorney general's office announced Trump and his kids were being sued for fraud.

In response to this and other efforts to transfer his assets beyond the reach of New York's justice system, Attorney General Tish James has asked a court to freeze the Trump Organization's assets in that state and to appoint an independent monitor.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile,
Durham rebukes his own witness and slams FBI’s Russia probe after trial setbacks