monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

WASHINGTON — The Russian lawyer who met with the Trump team after a promise of compromising material on Hillary Clinton was accompanied by a Russian-American lobbyist — a former Soviet counter intelligence officer who is suspected by some U.S. officials of having ongoing ties to Russian intelligence, NBC News has learned.

NBC News is not naming the lobbyist, who denies any current ties to Russian spy agencies. He accompanied the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, to the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower attended by Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. The Russian-born American lobbyist served in the Soviet military and emigrated to the U.S., where he holds dual citizenship.

Veselnitskaya acknowledged to NBC News that she was accompanied by at least one other man, though she declined to identify him. The presence at the meeting of a Russian-American with suspected intelligence ties is likely to be of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller and the House and Senate panels investigating the Russian election interference campaign.

Contacted by NBC News, representatives for Kushner and Manafort declined to comment. A lawyer for Trump Jr. did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Veselnitskaya, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, denied having any connection to the Kremlin and insisted the meeting was to discuss sanctions, not the presidential campaign.

Face tattoo inked in jail proves a tricky sell for employers

Mark Cropp wants to get off the dole, get a job and put food on the table for his family.

But there's one small problem - a giant tattoo saying "DEVAST8" that covers half of his face is proving off-putting for prospective employers.

He was locked up in 2015, aged 17, for aggravated robbery, after he and a friend pulled a knife on a tourist in Nelson.

He says he was kicked out of school aged 11.

Look, this is a murky, complicated issue. But this much we know: Kushner attended a secret meeting whose stated purpose was to advance a Kremlin effort to interfere in the U.S. election, he then failed to report it, and finally he sought a secret channel to communicate with the Kremlin.

One next step is clear: Take away Jared Kushner’s security clearance immediately.

the smug elites

using an offbeat example

Bungled collusion is still collusion
...The evidence is now shown. This is not hearsay, not fake news, not unsourced leaks. This is an email chain released by Donald Trump Jr. himself. A British go-between writes that there’s a Russian government effort to help Trump Sr. win the election, and as part of that effort he proposes a meeting with a “Russian government attorney” possessing damaging information on Hillary Clinton. Moreover, the Kremlin is willing to share troves of incriminating documents from the Crown Prosecutor. (Error: Britain has a Crown Prosecutor. Russia has a Prosecutor General.)

Donald Jr. emails back. “I love it.” Fatal words.

Once you’ve said “I’m in,” it makes no difference that the meeting was a bust, that the intermediary brought no such goods. What matters is what Donald Jr. thought going into the meeting, as well as Jared Kushner and then-campaign manager Paul Manafort, who were forwarded the correspondence, invited to the meeting, and attended.

Neither Trump nor the GOP will recover anytime soon

When, over the past fortnight, President Trump’s ludicrous suggestion — since walked back — that the United States should form a cybersecurity operation with Russia is not the top story and the continued discombobulation of the GOP hardly makes the top five stories, one grasps the degree to which this presidency is crumbling before our eyes.

Forget achieving its pipe dream of repealing and replacing Obamacare. Never mind the silly insistence from Trump advisers Gary Cohn and H.R. McMaster that the United States really isn’t suffering from the worst decline in international prestige and power since the end of the Vietnam War. The pressing issue is now under what circumstances the presidency will collapse and whether — in layman’s, if not legal, terms — his family and campaign behaved treacherously in seeking help from a hostile foreign power.

We are now down to arguing about whether the president’s son was independently attempting to collude in secret with Russians or whether his father was in on the scam as well.

...Republicans’ willingness to accept even national betrayal — that’s what Trump Jr. was willing to undertake, after all — will disgrace the party and its leaders for years, if not permanently. It is a party no longer capable of defending our national interests and Constitution from foreign enemies.

As an aside, the view of America from across the Atlantic is a brew of dumbfoundedness and disgust, a creeping sense that the world’s greatest democracy is in a tailspin led by a malicious crackpot. At least Americans and our European friends can agree on that.

We folks on the left ought to acknowledge when conservative voices like Krauthammer, Kristol, French and others swim against the partisan tide and speak out as above.

And you think Trump has substance?

It would be nice if those on the right who usually agree with Krauthammer would also take notice when he "swims against the tide".

List of Hillary Clinton presidential campaign political endorsements, 2016

Current Heads of state and government

Czech Republic
Bohuslav Sobotka, 11th Prime Minister of the Czech Republic (Social Democratic Party)[567]
Ecuador
Rafael Correa,* 43rd President of Ecuador (PAIS Alliance)[568]
France
François Hollande,* 24th President of France (Socialist Party)[569]
Manuel Valls, 169th Prime Minister of France (Socialist Party)[570]
Italy
Matteo Renzi, 56th Prime Minister of Italy (Democratic Party)[571]
New Zealand
John Key, 38th Prime Minister of New Zealand (National Party)[572]
Scotland
Nicola Sturgeon, 5th First Minister of Scotland (Scottish National Party)[573]
Sweden
Stefan Löfven,* 33rd Prime Minister of Sweden (Social Democrats)[574]

Perhaps Trump had liked the French military band playing a Daft Punk medley better if there hadn't been the news about the former Soviet Union Intelligence Officer who says he was in a meeting with Donald Trump Jr.

Are Republicans prepared to help prevent the next Russian attack?
...All Republican officials have to do is agree to a bipartisan partnership before the next attack. As of yesterday, however, that appears unlikely.


An NRCC spokesperson told NBC News yesterday, in response to a question about the Democrats’ outreach, “The fact that this letter was delivered by an intern and immediately leaked to the press shows what an unserious political stunt it is.”

I’m not at all sure why it would matter to Republicans who delivered the letter – if Tom Perez had dropped it off, would they have been more impressed? – but the response suggests a cooperative, protect-our-democracy approach is unlikely.

This is, alas, a familiar outcome. When the Obama White House dispatched a high-level team of intelligence officials to Capitol Hill last fall, looking for a united front against the Russian attack while it was ongoing, congressional Republican leaders refused bipartisan cooperation then, too.

A White House official on Thursday said the administration had to "move on" from Russia's 2016 election interference, allowing for the possibility that the United States could return two compounds on US soil to the Russian government.

The move would reverse a significant Obama administration rebuke for election meddling.
Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, said in an interview on CNN's "The Lead" with Jake Tapper that the White House was considering a number of actions in the spirit of "cooperation."

There are few more perilous lines of work than being an ally of Donald Trump. Vouch for him one minute, usually by insisting that the latest accusation against him is bogus, and the next you’ll be left looking like a fool – as he or his family confirm that the very charge you dismissed as fake is, in fact, true.

It’s happened again, this time via the Fredo Corleone of the Trump saga, Donald Trump Jr.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus dutifully went on TV on Sunday calling Donny’s meeting with a Russian lawyer “a big nothing-burger”, a harmless chat about adoption. But then along came the boy prince himself, releasing an email chain showing that in fact he took the meeting in anticipation of receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton, and on the explicit understanding that this was part of a Russian government effort to tilt the election towards his father. Rather a lot of meat in that nothing-burger.

So, as Priebus and dozens of others in Trumpworld have learned, there’s danger in defending these discount-store Corleones, whose shadiness is matched only by their gormless ineptitude. (Imagine the IQ of Trump Jr, who not only handled this negotiation with the Russian lawyer by email but declared in writing, of the offer of intel on Clinton: “If it’s what you say, I love it.”)

No wonder Susan Hennessey, a former attorney in the National Security Agency, tweeted this advice on Tuesday: “I cannot say this strongly or sincerely enough. If you work in the White House, you need to have a plan in place for retaining a lawyer.”

But there is one ally of the US president whom no lawyer can help. Her problems run far too deep for that. Her name is Theresa May.
She tied herself to Trump when he had been president for a single week, rushing to Washington to win the race to be his first foreign visitor. She held his hand and offered him the shiniest bauble in the UK prime minister’s gift bag: an invitation for a state visit. While Trump’s predecessors had had to wait years for the offer of a royal red carpet (rather than just a regular working trip), and some never got one at all, May bowed early.

That looked embarrassingly eager at the time, especially when, just a few hours after he had stood with May, Trump turned himself into a global pariah with his travel ban targeting seven mainly Muslim countries. Angela Merkel had made future ties conditional on Trump’s adherence to basic international norms, such as human rights. May, by contrast, was supine in her neediness.

And that mortifying posture has continued. When Germany, France and Italy issued a joint condemnation of Trump’s break from the Paris agreement on climate change, May pointedly refused to sign. The PM promised instead that she would raise the subject when she sat down for formal talks with Trump at last week’s G20 meeting in Hamburg – only to admit afterwards that she had done no such thing. There wasn’t enough time, Downing Street said, even though the Trump-May session overran by 20 minutes. (Officials said the pair discussed the issue informally, after the meeting.)

It was also at the G20 that May once again stood at Trump’s metaphorical side, defending his decision to have his daughter Ivanka take the US seat at the talks, putting this unelected designer of handbags between May and President Xi of China. To most observers that looked like an act of regal presumption, Trump confirming that he sees the US presidency as a throne stamped “Property of the Trump Family”. Not May, though: she thought it “entirely reasonable”.

Received wisdom says May has no choice – that cravenness to Trump is the necessary consequence of Brexit: we need to grovel if we are to get that all-important trade deal. It is quite true that one of the multiple absurdities of turning our back on our nearest neighbours is an increased reliance on those much further away. Even so, that did not compel May to hitch her wagon to a Trump star that was always likely to explode.

Given how long such agreements take to broker and seal, she could have made clear that Britain’s relationship is with the US in its broadest sense, cultivating ties with the Congress, which will have to ratify any final deal, rather than with a president whose longevity was open to question from the very start.

We don’t yet know whether Don Jr’s emails will prove to be the smoking gun in this affair; worse may be yet to come. But the prudent approach, clear even before Trump took office, was to wait and see, rather than rushing headlong to be the new and volatile president’s best foreign friend.

In an admittedly crowded field, it stands out as one of Theresa May’s most severe misjudgments. Already reduced by Brexit and her failed election, this diminishes May further – and it diminishes Britain too.