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First of all, at a minimum, Trump is clearly emerging as MBS’ co-conspirator. Trump and his Russia House are blatantly stating the goal is not to get at the truth of this vile, violent murder of a Washington Post reporter living on American soil who the Saudis brazenly executed in the most disgusting way possible in the Turkish diplomatic compound but to come up with a cover story for public consumption. In other words, he’s at the minimum engaging in a coverup-he’s a co-conspirator after the fact.

Trump despicably hand waves him away as ‘he’s not an American citizen.’

UPDATE: You can never possibly plume the bottom of Trump’s moral depths as he’s now defending another murderous dictator, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un-for the murder of American college student Otto Warbler.

“In those prisons and camps, you have a lot of people, and some really bad things happened to Otto,” Trump told reporters during a press conference following the abrupt end of his summit with Kim in Hanoi, Vietnam, after the Washington Post’s David Nakamura asked the president if he’d confronted Kim about Warmbier’s death. “Some really, really bad things. But [Kim] tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.”

On this he’s despicably consistent-he believes the denials of murderous dictators-McCabe reveals he said ‘I believe Putin’ regarding North Korea’s ballistic weapon capability; he believed Putin’s denials of interfering in our election; when Trump likely knew this was a lie as he coordinated with Putin; he took MBS’ word on Kashoggi. President Trump said Thursday he spoke to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un about the death of American college student Otto Warmbier following his imprisonment in North Korea but does not believe Kim was aware of Warmbier’s captivity and ill treatment.

Whenever you’re trying to figure out the motivation of Trump’s latest dumpster fire foreign policy move the first question to ask is who gave him this terrible idea-Putin? Or maybe MBS or Erdogan? Again, we must never lose sight of the fact that the FBI continues to investigate the question of wether Trump is a national security threat-as Mueller revealed at his July 23 testimony.

End of UPDATE:

Many have argued this figures as Kashoggi wasn’t White. And true enough, in Trump’s warped mind only White lives matter. Still I don’t believe this is at the heart of the matter in this case.

UPDATE 2.0: But Warbler was White proving that what’s key here isn’t Trump’s-very real racism; good on Kamala Harris for not flinching from calling him a racist-

-but rather his love and reverence for dictators-they’re the kind of ‘leaders’ he wishes he could be.

What’s even more decisive here is Trump’s relationship with the Saudis and his complicity. But more on this below.

Beyond that Trump’s IC knew beforehand of the plan to kidnap Kahshoggi. 

Ie, there was a clear duty to warn Khashoggi and that didn’t happen. 

The key question is why? For one thing Jared Kushner is very close to MBS-he and MBS are these two spoiled princes who had everything handed to them in life. Indeed, MBS notoriously bragged he has Kushner in his back pocket. 

And MBS is being proved right as Kushner is pushing Trump to stand behind the authoritarian Saudi prince. 

Kushner still believes this will all blow over. 

When talking about the reason Trump is not just defending MBS but helping him work on a fake narrative to take the heat off, clearly he’s close to the family and brings a lot of business to Trump hotels, etc. Trump has also talked about all the money from arm sales to the Saudis. The noxious Reverend Pat Roberston chimes in wondering why risk $100 billion worth of arms sales over one murdered Washington Post journalist living on US soil as a dissident?

Meanwhile Trump is now denying making all this money from the Saudis he used to brag about. 

In other words, he’s literally done a 180

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that “I have no financial interests in Saudi Arabia” — but in fact he has boasted in the past that “I make a lot of money with them.”

“Trump has sold apartments and a yacht for millions of dollars to Saudis, and recent decreases in bookings in his New York and Chicago properties since he has been president have been offset, to some extent, by business from Saudi customers.”

Still, while I don’t think Trump’s-very real-toxic racism is the heart of the matter, I also don’t think it’s simply a matter that he gets a lot of money from Saudi Arabia, though he does, and this is part of the larger picture.

The point to start with is why Kashoggi was living in the U.S. in the first place? Because his writing was banned by the Saudis for criticizing Trump. 

“Missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi was often critical of Saudi Arabia’s government, but this wasn’t what earned him a writing ban in the country two years ago. Rather, it was criticism of President Trump.”

So this fact alone has to make you pretty skeptical that Trump would care about getting to the truth of who killed Khashoggi, much less hold those responsible-clearly MBS.

We know his hatred for the press when it criticizes him, he’s criticized the Washington Post many times; he probably wishes he could do this to journalists who criticize him here. So one obvious reason why he’s protecting MBS is he approves in principle-even more in this case as this journalist was criticizing him. 

But it’s even deeper than that. As Seth Abramson notes, the media has chalked up what was done to Khashoggi as simply because of his love and fight for press freedom. But what was decisive here is not his abstract belief in press freedom but specifically how he used it here.

Chris Hayes touched on the issue the other night without entirely putting it together when he said ‘I don’t believe Russia interference was the only interference in the election.’

It certainly wasn’t- and this isn’t a ‘conspiracy theory’ we have public knowledge of this. For this you have to recall the second Trump Tower meeting. Abramson always argues that while the June 9, 2016 meeting with the Russians gets all the attention the key meeting regarding collusion was the second Trump Tower meeting in August of that year where foreign assistance for the Trump campaign-not only Russian-was discussed in detail. 

The first meeting in June was just something of a dry run to see if the Trump campaign would bite-they did.

“Three months before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr, the president’s eldest son. One was an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another was an emissary for two wealthy Arab princes. The third was a Republican donor with a controversial past in the Middle East as a private security contractor.”

“The meeting was convened primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months — past the election and well into President Trump’s first year in office, according to several people with knowledge of their encounters.”

Erik Prince, the private security contractor and the former head of Blackwater, arranged the meeting, which took place on Aug. 3, 2016. The emissary, George Nader, told Donald Trump Jr. that the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win election as president. The social media specialist, Joel Zamel, extolled his company’s ability to give an edge to a political campaign; by that time, the firm had already drawn up a multimillion-dollar proposal for a social media manipulation effort to help elect Mr. Trump.”

“The company, which employed several Israeli former intelligence officers, specialized in collecting information and shaping opinion through social media.”

Let’s not put too fine a point on it-if this story is accurate then it’s collusion-coordination and conspiracy. Full stop. Of course, it tends to give you a little whiplash as it refers to Israeli and Arab assistance rather than Russia-which is what we’ve been talking about for two years. This is because Chris Hayes is right-Russia wasn’t the only foreign country interfering in the U.S. election in Trump’s behalf. Indeed, there were a number of countries.

UPDATE 3.0: Regarding Qatar, they apparently lost the Trumps’ goodwill after not approving a sweetheart loan for Jared Kushner’s Dad-that they badly needed after Jared’s disastrous handling of the well named 666 5th Avenue property back in 2009. In yet another total coincidence after the Qataris approved the loan the blockade came to an end. 

End of UPDATE 3.0.

UPDATE 4:

https://twitter.com/Budz442Bud/status/1200411658847473668

“It is unclear whether such a proposal was executed, and the details of who commissioned it remain in dispute. But Donald Trump Jr. responded approvingly, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting, and after those initial offers of help, Mr. Nader was quickly embraced as a close ally by Trump campaign advisers — meeting frequently with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, and Michael T. Flynn, who became the president’s first national security adviser. At the time, Mr. Nader was also promoting a secret plan to use private contractors to destabilize Iran, the regional nemesis of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.”

Don Jr’s response to the second Trump Tower collusion meeting was the same as the first: if it’s what you say I love it! 

This is why while wether or not the proposal was executed is a crucial question, we already-just like in the first Trump Tower collusion meeting-have a clear intent to collude if it’s what you say I love it! 

As for Nader, he paid Zamel a very handsome payment after the election for what must have been some pretty valuable services rendered. Back to the NY Times:

“After Mr. Trump was elected, Mr. Nader paid Mr. Zamel a large sum of money, described by one associate as up to $2 million. There are conflicting accounts of the reason for the payment, but among other things, a company linked to Mr. Zamel provided Mr. Nader with an elaborate presentation about the significance of social media campaigning to Mr. Trump’s victory.”

That strongly hints that something pretty major must have been executed on behalf of the campaign.

And Nader is someone who’s name we started to hear a lot about in 2018 with news reports that he’s now cooperating with Mueller. 

“George Nader, a mysterious business executive with links to the United Arab Emirates and a key figure in Trumpworld, seems to be popping up more and more in reports about the Russia investigation.”

“Nader, a Lebanese American who has acted as a mediator and back-channel diplomat in Middle Eastern affairs for decades, has reportedly agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in exchange for immunity.”

“It’s possible that Nader has valuable information on the Trump transition team’s meetings with foreign officials that have puzzled investigators for months. And Mueller’s investigators are looking into how he may have funneled Emirati money to a top Trump fundraiser to influence the White House’s Middle East policy.”

“As the Associated Press reports, the Mueller probe is especially interested in two meetings in particular that occurred while Nader was serving as an adviser to the UAE. The first is a meeting he attended in Trump Tower in New York in December 2016 with Jared Kushner; Steve Bannon, who was then Trump’s chief strategist; and Mohammed bin Zayed, the UAE’s de facto ruler.”

UPDATE 4.0: This December 2016 meeting in Trump Tower was soon after the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) purchased a 1/5 stake in Rosnet-the Steele dossier had alleged that during Carter Page’s trip to Moscow in July, 2016-presumably this was the trip that Papadopoulos had been pushing for months going back to the March 31, 2016 foreign policy meeting with Trump himself in attendance.

When Rosnet sold the 19.5% stake in December it tried to obscure the buyer who turned out to be QIA. As for Carter Page, he was in Rosnet’s corporate building the day of the sale. As noted in Chapter A, the MSM has wrongly presumed that it turns out there is no there there regarding Page’s place in all this as-the MSM hasn’t reported on it in many months. This is the mainstream press’ Ostrich Theory of the Russia investigation-if they aren’t reporting on something it’s not important to the investigation. Or they point out that Mueller hasn’t said anything about Carter Page either-ignoring that Mueller may have his own big picture, strategic reasons for being silent-there has been a huge swarth of redactions in all these sentencing memos.

Yet the MSM-a la the Ken Dilaniains of the world-tends to presume that we know 95% of what Mueller knows, ‘but no collusion like President Trump says’-thereby making the fight over the Mueller report moot.

End of UPDATE  4.0 and back to the NYTimes:

“The second event was in January 2017 in Seychelles, a collection of islands in the Indian Ocean. That meeting included Nader; bin Zayed; Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian fund manager with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin; and Erik Prince, the founder of the private security firm Blackwater and an informal adviser to the Trump transition team.”

“The Mueller probe is also investigating how Nader might have helped the UAE buy political influence in the Trump White House by striking huge business deals with a top Trump fundraiser. That raises the question of whether Mueller’s probe is casting a wider net to track the possible influence of countries other than Russia on Trumpworld.”

Note that the Trump Tower meeting in December, 2016, was a followup to the August meeting when explicit assistance was offered to the Trump campaign and clear interest was expressed.

This also underscores the important place in election interference and collusion coordination and conspiracy of Bannon and Erik Prince we discussed in other chapters in this book.

So apparently Mueller is on to the fact that there were more countries involved in election interference than Russia.

UPDATE 5.0: As noted above the MSM tends to go by the Ostrich Theory on the Mueller probe so as we haven’t heard much about Nader and Zamel they just totally discount that as part of collusion coordination and conspiracy.

“The Mueller probe is also investigating how Nader might have helped the UAE buy political influence in the Trump White House by striking huge business deals with a top Trump fundraiser. That raises the question of whether Mueller’s probe is casting a wider net to track the possible influence of countries other than Russia on Trumpworld.”

Of course, the response to this kind of headline is always for Trump and his GOP co-conspirators to declare ‘buying influence in the WH has nothing to do with collusion’ with the MSM sagely nodding in agreement. It’s as if Trump has some sort of blanket immunity to any crime not directly linked to Russia collusion coordination and conspiracy. If you investigate a defendant for murder and in the course of it you also discover he’s a rapist and arsonist does this disprove he committed the murder or make it more likely that he did?

FN: However as it happens there remain a lot of unanswered questions about that second Trump Tower collusion meeting in August 2016  at least based on the unredacted Mueller Report-George Nader is an integral part of some ongoing cases and after some court victories Congress may be seeing some grand jury testimony soon.As I’ve argued elsewhere the Democrats should not be rushing impeachment-there is talk about them finishing up before Christmas-if true this is a real mistake.

They should push for the testimony of John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, etc. I understand the point they make that they can’t just wait for the courts. Very true but in the meantime they shouldn’t wait they should be looking at more impeachable conduct-if you look at all Trump’s impeachable offenses-or at least as much as you can fit in until, say, next Summer you won’t run out of material.

End of UPDATE 5.0:

This makes sense as there were more countries involved in the 1980 rigging of the election besides Iran-Israel also assisted the Reagan campaign.

As Abramson argues, you have to understand the cold blooded murder of Khashoggi in this larger context of this 5 nation grand bargain of election interference and collusion.

If anything, the reason the fact that other countries were involved in interference and collusion hasn’t really broken through is that the discussion about Israeli and Arab election assistance gives whiplash as it seems to be another story. It’s not.

Like when Maggie Haberman wrongly bought the idea that the revelations of Rick Gates and Israeli election assistance  had nothing to do with the larger Russia story-because the Trump team told her so as we saw in (chapter K)

FN: I have the honorable distinction of having been blocked on Twitter by both Maggie Haberman-aka Trumps’ court stenographer-as well as Ken Dilianian-‘the Mueller report will end in late February, won’t prove collusion but you won’t get to see it anyway as that’s totally William Barr’s right and the law is on his side.’

I never swore at either of them nor did I tweet them very much but when I did criticize blocking was swift. With Haberman I think it was something about the Hillary coverage-it was at least two years ago and she never let it go-still blocked to this day. I had never tweeted Dilanian much-nothing previously critical-but I did criticize his attempt at unfalsifiable predictions on when the Mueller report ends-for two years MSMers have been saying it will ‘end soon.’ To be this vague, of course one day they will be right for busted clock reasons.

With Dilanian I think the exact occasion was I criticized an MSNBC appearance of his-was it Nicole Wallace?-where he argued rather surreally I thought that Cohen’s testimony likely showed that there was no collusion. His reasoning was ‘if Trump’s fixer can’t prove it there’s probably no there there.’

Dilanian’s premise is one no doubt shared with many MSM journalists-even liberal ones who I like and agree with like Joy Reid. At least in the past Reid has bought into the canard that Trump is Al Capone not Julius Rosenberg. 

In other words maybe he’s guilty of small bore financial crimes and campaign violations but ‘Russian collusion’ still just sounds too farfetched for them based on their puny priors-prior preconceptions.

As for Reid, it’s surprising-and I’m not sure if she still feels this way-as she has Malcom Nance’s analysis to absorb.

FN: Reid did express the-mistaken view-in 2018-that Trump is Capone not Rosenberg-but she has since done a lot of great analysis of both Russia if you’re listening and Ukraine if you’re listening.

As for Dilanian there are so many flawed premises in the idea that Cohen’s testimony in any way proved there was no collusion it’s daunting to know where to start.

Let’s start from the fact that it’s possible that collusion, coordination and conspiracy happened but that Cohen wasn’t a point man on that side of it-his job was the fixer stuff-threats, bribes, hush money payments, etc. Although the Steele dossier-none of which has been disproven and many claims have in fact been corroborated-does assert Cohen went to Prague-or possibly some other former Soviet satellite-to pay off the Russian hackers.

True Cohen testified under oath in front of Congress this week that he didn’t go to Prague-in fact he said something that’s clearly false, he  yet again stated ‘I’ve never been to Prague’-and we know he did go at least in 2002. Now if he didn’t go in 2016-if the dossier is wrong-then the fact that he did go in 2002 may be immaterial but it’s still false of him to say he never went to Prague-as he did at least in the past.

So does this mean Cohen committed perjury? Maybe not-if Mueller has asked him to continue to offer up these denials-as he’s not done. For more on Cohen and this enigmatic question of if he went to Prague-in 2016-see Chapter A.

 

It’s true that Cohen testified that he has no ‘direct evidence’ of ‘Russia collusion’ he did say that he has his own suspicions based on the character of the man-but again, as noted above, it’s possible that either:

A. Cohen wasn’t in the loop on the Russian conspiracy

OR

B. He actually was but at Mueller’s direction is keeping that hidden for now.

FN: In retrospect I’ve come to agree with EmptyWheel that much of the info in the Dossier about Cohen was deliberately misleading-Russian disinformation. The Dossier conjectures that Cohen was a point man on collusion when that’s clearly not true it was Manafort-Chapter A.

End FN

But to conclude no collusion even based on what Cohen did reveal-Stone gave Trump advance knowledge of the DNC email dump is a strange conclusion. While this is not by itself direct evidence it’s actually at least an element of coordination-having prior knowledge. Again-another MSM canard is that only direct evidence is legitimate-unless, of course, the subject is Hillary Clinton and then you can insinuate to your hearts content over the thinnest reed-right Dean Baquet? 

But as any legal expert-like Seth Abramson-will tell you, much evidence is circumstantial-and while one piece by itself may not be enough for full substantiation the hundreds of strands of Trump-Russia Conspiracy together is a very powerful case. Then again-remember the erroneous Ostrich Theory of Journalism: wether or not we have direct evidence of conspiracy-and those who say we don’t would help their case if they would define what they think direct evidence is-doesn’t mean Mueller doesn’t either have it or well into building it.ions

FN: Again, though, as noted above, the  unredacted Mueller Report left many open questions.

So much for MSM pundits who can’t take the sort of ‘constructive criticism’-they were levying at Hillary Clinton for 25 years-still today they are demanding she demand her husband somehow retroactively resign-while keeping silent as church mice on the allegations that Trump forcibly kissed a campaign aide in 2016. 

Dilanian for his part has taken umbrage at Seth Abramson but it’s his claims the Mueller investigation would end at the end of February that have been falsified-as Abramson persuasively argues Dilanian like many MSMers is desperate for Russian Collusion-Conspiracy to end.

Abramson has pointed out that whenever Mueller’s investigation meets its technical conclusion there will be plenty more to follow-starting with Roger Stone’s grand jury trial that’s not till the Fall.

John Schindler formerly of the NSA-who obviously has the kind of sources you and I could only dream about-argues that Mueller has secret intelligence on Trump’s Russia Collusion-Conspiracy that will sink his  ‘Presidency.’

FN: Mueller did reveal on July 23 that the FBI has an ongoing investigation into the question of wether Trump is a national security threat-last we’ve heard Schiff and the HSPCI Democrats were attempting to obtain the info-Schiff revealed earlier this year that they hadn’t seen any intel from the FBI regarding the Russia investigation since Christopher Wray replaced James Comey as FBI Director.

 

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