The Muscovite Candidate

[Lord Jim]

About friggin' time:

Congress Reaches Deal on Russia Sanctions Bill to Punish Moscow

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats announced Saturday that a bipartisan group of House and Senate negotiators have reached an agreement on a sweeping Russia sanctions package to punish Moscow for meddling in the presidential election and its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria.

Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, said lawmakers had settled lingering issues with the bill, which also includes stiff economic penalties against Iran and North Korea. The sanctions targeting Russia, however, have drawn the most attention due to President Donald Trump's persistent push for warmer relations with President Vladimir Putin and ongoing investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign.

The bill ensures that both the Majority & Minority can exercise our oversight role over the Administration’s implementation of sanctions 2/2
— Steny Hoyer (@WhipHoyer) July 22, 2017

Passage of the bill, which could occur before Congress breaks for the August recess, puts Congress on possible collision course with Trump. The White House had objected to a key section of the bill that would mandate a congressional review if Trump attempted to ease or end the sanctions against Moscow. But if Trump were to veto the bill, he risks sparking an outcry from Republicans and Democrats and having his decision overturned. The sanctions review was included in the bill because of wariness among lawmakers from both parties over Trump's affinity for Putin.

The precise mechanics of how involved House Democrats would be in the review process had been a key sticking point, but Hoyer said he was pleased with the outcome.

"The legislation ensures that both the majority and minority are able to exercise our oversight role over the administration's implementation of sanctions," Hoyer said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the sanctions legislation "strong" and he expected the legislation to be passed promptly.

"Given the many transgressions of Russia, and President Trump's seeming inability to deal with them, a strong sanctions bill such as the one Democrats and Republicans have just agreed to is essential," Schumer said

Early Saturday morning, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy posted a legislative business schedule that shows the sanctions bill will be considered Tuesday.

Although there is widespread support for the legislation, the bill stalled after it cleared the Senate over constitutional questions and bickering over technical details. In particular, House Democrats charged that GOP leaders had cut them out of the congressional review that would be triggered if Trump proposed to terminate or suspend the Russia sanctions. But Republicans rejected the complaint and blamed Democrats for holding the bill up.

The review requirement in the sanctions bill is styled after 2015 legislation pushed by Republicans and approved in the Senate that gave Congress a vote on whether then-President Barack Obama could lift sanctions against Iran. That measure reflected Republican complaints that Obama had overstepped the power of the presidency and needed to be checked by Congress.

According to the bill, Trump is required to send Congress a report explaining why he wants to suspend or terminate a particular set of sanctions. Lawmakers would then have 30 days to decide whether to allow the move or reject it.

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congres ... ow-n785576

This is the bill that passed 97-2 in the Senate and will now pass with an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the House, because the vast majority of Republican legislators do not trust the supposedly Republican President to deal appropriately with Russia. (Who would ever have thought the day would come when a Republican President couldn't be trusted to be tough enough on Russia... ) The Administration tried very hard to get the language weakened in the House bill and failed.

This will be far and away the best piece of legislation to be passed to date by this Congress. (admittedly there ain't a stiff competition for that title) I invite Trump to veto it; then he can get yet another civics lesson, this one teaching him how the veto-override procedure works...

Another part of the Constitution that I'm sure he'd like to rip out and throw away...

[Lord Jim]

Obama should have started this much earlier, and it was never supported as strongly as it should have been, but ending it is a disgrace:

Analysis: Trump's cutoff of aid to Syrian rebels marks victory for Assad, Russia and Iran

President Trump's decision to cut off aid to anti-government rebels in Syria marks a victory for President Bashar Assad in his six-year civil war — as well as allies Russia and Iran — and a defeat for U.S. efforts to remove the Syrian dictator.

Trump has decided to end a covert CIA program under President Barack Obama to train moderate rebels to fight Assad, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The report comes two weeks after Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Germany and after the United States and Russia announced a limited cease-fire in southeastern Syria that promised to end Syrian airstrikes on rebel-held areas there.

The CIA training program was approved by Obama, who called for Assad to step down because of brutal oppression by his regime.

The U.S. government has accused Assad of bombing civilians and using banned chemical weapons. Trump ordered airstrikes against a Syrian military airfield in April following reports that Assad used chemical weapons against a rebel-held area that killed women and children.

The program was never big enough to accomplish the goal of Assad's ouster, said Frederic Hof, Obama's special Syria adviser who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, D.C.

"If we’re if going to give this up we should get something in return because it is something of value,” he said. “It did some substantial good with specific (rebel) units and specific individuals, people we were trying to promote in terms of being non-sectarian alternatives to Assad.”

Senators Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John McCain, R-Ariz., both slammed Trump's Syria policy.

Graham wrote on Twitter Wednesday that Trump's move to end the CIA program, if true, “would be a complete capitulation to Assad, Russia, and Iran.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/201 ... 496180001/

[Lord Jim]

As soon as I saw Scaramucci on Sunday tell Jake Tapper that Trump had told him that he had heard that if the Russians had done the hacking, it would never have been detected, I thought:

"Gee, who has Trump been talking to recently who would have told him that Russian hackers were so good that they couldn't possibly be detected by US intelligence services? Must have been good ol' Vlad..."

Vladimir Putin 'told Donald Trump that Russian hackers are too good to get caught'

And Trump is now repeating the same claims, the White House has confirmed

Vladimir Putin reportedly told Donald Trump that if Russian hackers had infiltrated Democratic groups, they would have been too good to have been detected. And now the President is making the same claims, the White House has admitted.

According to the New York Times, Mr Putin told the US President during their G20 meeting that "Moscow’s cyber operators are so good at covert computer-network operations that if they had dipped into the Democratic National Committee’s systems, they would not have been caught."

It is unclear when the was made, but the two leaders held an official meeting over two hours with just two translators, foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson present.

Since then Mr Trump has shared the claims on Russia's hacking capabilities with his team, his communications director Anthony Scaramucci said.

During a CNN interview on Sunday, Mr Scaramucci told Jake Tapper that "someone" had told him Russian hackers were too good to be detected. "You know, somebody said to me yesterday — I won't tell you who — that if the Russians actually hacked this situation and spilled out those e-mails, you would have never seen it," Mr Scaramucci told Mr Tapper.

"You would have never had any evidence of them, meaning that they're super confident in their deception skills and hacking."

When Mr Tapper questioned who his source was, Mr Scaramucci admitted that it was Mr Trump.

"How about it was — how about it was the President, Jake?" Mr Scaramucci said. "I talked to him yesterday. He called me from Air Force One. And he basically said to me, 'Hey, you know, this is - maybe they did it. Maybe they didn't do it'."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 58241.html

So, (and not for the first time) we have this so-called President Of The United States acting as Dissembler-In-Chief for Russian disinformation, and choosing to believe the murderous thug leader of America's number one enemy regime over the unanimous conclusion of US intelligence services...

You really have to wonder why that is...

[Lord Jim]

Come on Donny, veto this bill...

I double dog dare ya...

House overwhelmingly passes Russia sanctions bill

(CNN)The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill giving Congress the power to block any effort by the White House to weaken sanctions on Russia, offering a direct challenge to President Donald Trump's authority.

The vote was 419-3. The legislation moves to the Senate, but it's unclear when the Senate will vote on the measure, which includes new sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Corker indicated Monday he may want to make some tweaks to the bill, which was negotiated between the House and Senate after the initial version he drafted sailed through on a 98-2 vote.
"This is a strong, bipartisan bill that will increase the United States' economic and political leverage," Rep. Ed Royce, who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters Tuesday.

The three votes against the bill came from Republicans -- Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, Rep. Tom Massie of Kentucky and Rep. John Duncan of Tennessee.[Shame on you]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/politics/ ... index.html

[Lord Jim]

Excellent in-depth piece in the New Yorker:

How Jared Kushner Helped the Russians Get Inside Access to the Trump Campaign

http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizz ... p-campaign

Well worth reading in it's entirety. Here's just one excerpt:

Michael Hayden, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, told me that he was convinced the meeting was a classic “soft approach” by Russian intelligence. He cited a recent Washington Post article, by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, that argued that the meeting “is in line with what intelligence analysts would expect an overture in a Russian influence operation to look like,” and that it may have been the “green light Russia was looking for to launch a more aggressive phase of intervention in the U.S. election.”

Hayden told me, “My god, this is just such traditional tradecraft.” He said that he has talked to people in the intelligence community about Mowatt-Larssen’s theory and that “every case officer I’ve pushed on this” agreed with it. “This is how they do it.”

Hayden explained that the Russians would have learned several things from the approach. “Would they take the meeting?” he said. “So, then you get the willingness. No. 2, would they report the meeting?” Hayden suggested that Russian intelligence was sophisticated enough to know whether the Trump campaign reported the meeting to the F.B.I., which it didn’t. So, while Kushner claimed that the meeting was irrelevant, from a Russian intelligence perspective it would have been seen as a clear signal. “At the end, they have established that these guys are willing,” Hayden said, pausing. “How do I put this? They did not reject a relationship.”

[BoSoxGal]

Kushner on potential Russia ties: 'We couldn't even collude with our local offices"

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/01/politics/ ... index.html

[Lord Jim]

Trump Signs Russian Sanctions Into Law, With Caveats

WASHINGTON — President Trump signed legislation on Wednesday imposing sanctions on Russia and limiting his own authority to lift them, but asserted that the measure included “clearly unconstitutional provisions” and left open the possibility that he might choose not to enforce them as lawmakers intended.

The legislation, which also includes sanctions on Iran and North Korea, represented the first time that Congress had forced Mr. Trump to sign a bill over his objections by passing it with bipartisan, veto-proof majorities. Even before he signed it, the Russian government retaliated by seizing two American diplomatic properties and ordering the United States to reduce its embassy staff members in Russia by 755 people.[About which he hasn't said one peep, even though we only expelled 35 Russian personnel]

The measure reflected deep skepticism among lawmakers in both parties about Mr. Trump’s friendly approach to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and an effort to prevent Mr. Trump from letting the Kremlin off the hook for its annexation of Crimea, military intervention in Ukraine and its meddling in last year’s American election. Rather than the rapprochement Mr. Trump once envisioned, the United States and Russia now seem locked in a spiral of increasing tension.

Unlike other bill signings, Mr. Trump did not invite news media photographers to record the event, nor did he say anything about it to reporters. He ignored questions about the legislation at an unrelated event and instead relegated his comments to two written statements, one meant for Congress to describe caveats in his approval of the bill and the other issued to reporters to explain his grudging decision to sign.

As other presidents have in the past, Mr. Trump protested that Congress was improperly interfering with his power to set foreign policy, in this case by imposing waiting periods before he can suspend or remove sanctions first imposed by former President Barack Obama while Congress reviews and potentially blocks such a move.

In the statement to Congress, Mr. Trump said the bill “included a number of clearly unconstitutional provisions.” Although he added that “I nevertheless expect to honor” the waiting periods, he did not commit to it. Moreover, he took issue with other provisions, saying only that he “will give careful and respectful consideration to the preferences expressed by the Congress.”

“This bill remains seriously flawed — particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch’s authority to negotiate,” Mr. Trump said in the separate statement to reporters. “Congress could not even negotiate a health care bill after seven years of talking. By limiting the executive’s flexibility, this bill makes it harder for the United States to strike good deals for the American people and will drive China, Russia and North Korea much closer together.”

“Yet despite its problems,” he added, “I am signing this bill for the sake of national unity. It represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States. We hope there will be cooperation between our two countries on major global issues so that these sanctions will no longer be necessary.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/worl ... tions.html


Il Boobce was really between a ка́мень and a hard place on this one...

Sign the bill and accept becoming the first POTUS whose own congressional party voted overwhelmingly to show that it does not trust him to deal in America's best interests with the nation's number one geopolitical foe...

Or veto the bill, and and set a record for the shortest time in Office it took a new President whose party controlled both houses of Congress to have a veto overridden...

[RayThom]

... Sign the bill and accept becoming the first POTUS whose own congressional party voted overwhelmingly to show that it does not trust him to deal in America's best interests with the nation's number one geopolitical foe...
Or veto the bill, and and set a record for the shortest time in Office it took a new President whose party controlled both houses of Congress to have a veto overridden...

Do you think Lord Dampnut is tired of winning yet?

[Econoline]

[Lord Jim]

Sean Hannity has become the Vladimir Posner (the smooth talking lying pseudo-journalist propagandist for the Soviets in the 1980s) of the Trump Regime...

He should be absolutely ashamed of himself...

ETA:

I was very happy to see this:

Hannity to no longer receive Buckley award after pushback: report

Fox News's Sean Hannity will no longer receive the conservative Media Research Center’s (MRC) William F. Buckley Award for Media Excellence after Buckley's son expressed disapproval, CNN reported on Friday.

Christopher Buckley reportedly called the MRC expressing “great dismay” at the announcement that the award would go to Hannity, who regularly insults conservatives who don't support President Trump.

MRC leadership discussed allowing Hannity to avoid embarrassment by claiming a scheduling conflict prevented him from accepting the award, CNN said.

“Hey Fake News Jake, I was offered an award, I was unable to attend, and I respectfully turned it down,” Hannity tweeted in response to the article.

He added that Buckley's family and other anti-Trump conservatives never told him they opposed him getting the award, saying the only award he truly cares about is serving his audience and "saving the USA." [Excuse me, I think I'm going to be sick...The only "award" Hannity cares about is the fattening effect he has discovered being a Trump propagandist has had on his bank account.]

After the initial announcement that Hannity would receive the media award, many conservative writers expressed disapproval. Conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote a column criticizing the move as evidence of a trend toward anti-intellectualism in the conservative movement.

“If we have reached the point where rank-and-file conservatives see nothing amiss with giving Hannity an award named for Buckley, then surely there’s a Milton Friedman Prize awaiting Steve Bannon for his insights on free trade. And maybe Sean Spicer can receive the Vaclav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent for his role in exposing 'fake news,' " Stephens wrote. “The floor’s the limit. Or, in Hannity’s case, the crawl space beneath it.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... r-pushback

[Lord Jim]

Trump Associate Boasted That Moscow Business Deal ‘Will Get Donald Elected’

WASHINGTON — A business associate of President Trump promised in 2015 to engineer a real estate deal with the aid of the president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, that he said would help Mr. Trump win the presidency.

The associate, Felix Sater, wrote a series of emails to Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, in which he boasted about his ties to Mr. Putin. He predicted that building a Trump Tower in Moscow would highlight Mr. Trump’s savvy negotiating skills and be a political boon to his candidacy.

“Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Mr. Sater wrote in an email. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

The emails show that, from the earliest months of Mr. Trump’s campaign, some of his associates viewed close ties with Moscow as a political advantage. Those ties are now under investigation by the Justice Department and multiple congressional committees.

American intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 presidential election to try to help Mr. Trump. Investigators want to know whether anyone on Mr. Trump’s team was part of that process.

Mr. Sater, a Russian immigrant, said he had lined up financing for the Trump Tower deal with VTB Bank, a Russian bank that was under American sanctions for involvement in Moscow’s efforts to undermine democracy in Ukraine. In another email, Mr. Sater envisioned a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Moscow.

“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Mr. Sater wrote.

Mr. Sater said he was eager to show video clips to his Russian contacts of instances of Mr. Trump speaking glowingly about Russia, and said he would arrange for Mr. Putin to praise Mr. Trump’s business acumen.[Which Putin did in fact do.]

“If he says it we own this election,” Mr. Sater wrote. “Americas most difficult adversary agreeing that Donald is a good guy to negotiate.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/us/p ... ml?mcubz=0

[RayThom]

I'm sticking with "follow the money."

As politicians like to say "at the end of the day," I'm certain that money laundering lies at the heart of Trump's political evil. Of course, the more charges of high crimes and misdemeanors the better.

BTW -- during Monday's joint news conference with the Finnish President, Lord Dampnut had me screaming at the TV. He sounded like a third grader reading his back to school essay “What I did on my summer vacation” and ending it with a feignedly proud "so there" as if to change it from an 'F' to an 'A+.' He's an international embarrassment.

Pleas, dear God, make him stop.

[Econoline]

A very long but *VERRRRY* interesting article (from Politico) on the origins of the KGB's interest in Donald Trump.

The Hidden History of Trump’s First Trip to Moscow

• In 1987, a young real estate developer traveled to the Soviet Union.
  The KGB almost certainly made the trip happen.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Flynn charged with lying to the Feds.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/01/politics/ ... index.html

Lock him up! Lock him up!

[RayThom]

Flynn charged with lying to the Feds...Lock him up! Lock him up!

Well, I wasn't surprised by the guilty plea, only the speed at which it came.

This was so swift I won't be surprised that Flynn gave up the president for a very lenient sentence. C'mon Mueller, do your stuff.

The Kingdom Is Crumbling.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Time for Hillary to be magnanimous. I would like to see her issue the following statement.

General Flynn served his country with distinction; and no useful purpose would be served by a custodial sentence. I hope that, once Director Mueller has finished his investigation, President Pence will find it in his heart to pardon General Flynn.

[RayThom]

Read the charges against and plea deal from former national security adviser Michael Flynn

https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/p ... lynn/2263/

[rubato]

What is especially delightful is that Obama gave Trump good advice by warning him not to hire Flynn.



yrs,
rubato

[RayThom]

What is especially delightful is that Obama gave Trump good advice by warning him not to hire Flynn.
yrs, rubato

That's probably the exact reason why Drumpf hired Flynn. He doesn't take kindly to advice from uppity, no-nothing, foreigners like Obama.

[Econoline]