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...we don't know the extent of the transactions Manafort was involved in or who they were with.

AP

It turns out the Obama administration knew the Russians were engaged in bribery, kickbacks and extortion in order to gain control of US atomic resources — yet still OK’d that 2010 deal to give Moscow control of one-fifth of America’s uranium.

Quote:

...we don't know the extent of the transactions Manafort was involved in or who they were with.

But it turns out we do know the extent of the deals between the Clintons and the Russians during the Uranium One deal. Right?

Quote:

AP

It turns out the Obama administration knew the Russians were engaged in bribery, kickbacks and extortion in order to gain control of US atomic resources — yet still OK’d that 2010 deal to give Moscow control of one-fifth of America’s uranium.

source

Another interesting claim:

Code: emptywheel @emptywheel
Note, docket 17-200 almost certainly IS Trump related. Manafort's is listed as Indictment B.

(So maybe Flynn has already flipped) https://twitter.com/BySteveReilly/status/925063641870856192 …
2:27 PM - Oct 30, 2017


The Manafort/Gates indictment, #201, is in fact marked “INDICTMENT (B)” but, again, I defer to lawyers on what that might mean. Does that mean two distinct indictments were filed simultaneously, A and B, or does it just mean that Mueller filed an amended second version of the indictment for whatever reason? Lawyer Ken White, a former assistant U.S. Attorney, seems to think that emptywheel’s suspicion is correct. I bet Tony Podesta, just to take a person totally at random, would be curious to know if she’s right too. Assuming he doesn’t know already.

Speaking of which, righties seem to be treating the looming specter of a Podesta indictment as good news on the theory that criminal activity by a prominent Democrat’s brother will dilute the political pain for Team Trump as this plays out. Eh, I’d think that through before settling on that conclusion. The last thing Trump wants is evidence that Mueller is being evenhanded in this prosecution. His spin all along has been that the Russia probe is a partisan witch hunt concocted by Democrats to delegitimize his presidency. A Democrat, especially one who doesn’t hold office, getting snared in it makes that argument harder without any real benefit to Republicans apart from being able to say, “Well, some of theirs are crooked too.” Of course that’s true but one side has much, much more to lose in this particular investigation of crookedness.

Why is Marxism still taken seriously on college campuses and in the progressive press?

In March 2016, Donald Trump sat down with the editorial board of the Washington Post, and was asked about the team of foreign policy advisers his campaign had assembled. The then-candidate volunteered a handful of names, including Carter Page, who's now a key figure in the Russia scandal, and whom Trump later claimed not to know.

But after mentioning Page, Trump quickly added to his list of advisers, "George Papadopoulos, he's an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy."

Even at the time, this seemed odd. Papadopoulos had only graduated from college seven years earlier, and he listed participation with the "Model United Nations" as one of his credentials. And yet, in March 2016, the then-frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination identified Papadopoulos as one of only a handful of people advising him on foreign policy.

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One of those suspects, Jeremy Corbyn, may be Britain’s next prime minister, in part because a generation of Britons has come of age not knowing that the line running from “progressive social commitments” to catastrophic economic results is short and straight.

This is simply right-wing claptrap. The author is using a false parallel between a completely different set of economic and social production to argue against progressive policies today, even though those policies do not in any way resemble the thing he's describing.

Swamp Things: More Than 50% of President Trump’s Nominees Have Ties to the Industries They’re Supposed to Regulate

Dear Trump supporters
If you don't want the rest of the world perceiving you as dull of mind, you really must stop being dull of mind.

 Why is Marxism still taken seriously on college campuses and in the progressive press? Do the same people who rightly demand the removal of Confederate statues ever feel even a shiver of inner revulsion at hipsters in Lenin or Mao T-shirts?

they will insist that there is an essential difference between Nazism and Communism

In today’s Journal op-ed page, two Republican former Department of Justice staffers, David Rivkin and Lee Casey, who frequently pop up in the media to defend party-line arguments, take the argument to its next step. They urge Trump to issue sweeping pardons to everybody involved in the scandal, himself included, so as to hopefully neuter Mueller’s investigation.

And would it be an overreach of sorts for Trump to quash an investigation into himself and his cronies? No, they argue. Indeed, they insist he can halt any investigation he likes:

Quote:

A president cannot obstruct justice through the exercise of his constitutional and discretionary authority over executive-branch officials like Mr. Comey. If a president can be held to account for “obstruction of justice” by ending an investigation or firing a prosecutor or law-enforcement official — an authority the constitution vests in him as chief executive — then one of the presidency’s most formidable powers is transferred from an elected, accountable official to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats and judges.

Consider the breathtaking scope of this claim. They argue that the president can order any prosecutor or law-enforcement official to halt any investigation or criminal proceeding. What if the president hired some goons to break into and bug the opposing party’s headquarters? He could order the Department of Justice and FBI not to investigate and fire them if they did. What if he hired some goons to beat up or kill reporters or the opposing party? Same answer. The president, they argue, has unlimited right to protect himself and his allies from law enforcement as he sees fit.