monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I wonder what ol Kenny's been up to since he left Baylor?

The obvious answer here is that Clinton wasn't in charge of the deal, which I'm sure you know is true. It's also a boring story with nothing new happening, so there's not much 'news' there.

Cycloptichorn

The Justice Department lifted a gag order that will allow a former FBI informant speak to congressional panels investigating an Obama-era deal in which a Russian-backed company was able to get control of a significant amount of the United States uranium supply.

A DOJ spokesman late Wednesday cleared the way for the informant to disclose to the committees “any information or documents he has concerning alleged corruption or bribery involving transactions in the uranium market, including but not limited to anything related to Vadim Mikerin, Rosatom, Tenex, Uranium One, or the Clinton Foundation.”

A newly unsealed docket in the criminal case against Paul Manafort and his longtime business associate Rick Gates alleged that both men had received "millions of dollars" from Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs that would allow them "to live comfortably abroad" and therefore make them a flight risk.

The government wrote in the documents unsealed on Tuesday, which include arrest warrants and the terms of their release, that Manafort and Gates " have connections to Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, who have provided" them with "millions of dollars."

"Foreign connections of this kind indicate that the defendants would have access to funds and an ability 'to live comfortably' abroad...a consideration that strongly suggests risk of flight," the filings said.

Whereas Gates was released on his own personal recognizance, or a promise that he will return to court, Manafort was released into a "high intensity supervision program."

Both men were placed on house arrest after the government successfully argued that they "pose a risk of flight based on the serious nature of the charges, their history of deceptive and misleading conduct, the potentially significant sentences the defendants face, the strong evidence of guilt, their significant financial resources, and their foreign connections."

Manafort and Gates, who both pleaded not guilty on Monday, were required to turn over their passports to the FBI and notify the bureau of their movements. According to the filing, Manafort currently has three passports with different numbers — and has "submitted ten US passport applications on ten different occasions" over the past decade.

"Manafort and Gates are frequent international travelers, consistent with the nature of their work for foreign entities," the filing read. "Within the last year, Manafort has traveled to Dubai, Cancun, Panama City, Havana, Shanghai, Madrid, Tokyo, and Grand Cayman Island...The investigation has also revealed that Gates and Manafort traveled to Cyprus, the place where many of their foreign accounts are based."

Additionally, Manafort allegedly registered a phone number and email address using an alias, according to the government. He traveled with that phone to "Mexico in June 2017; to China on May 23, 2017; and to Ecuador on May 9, 2017."

The New York Times reported in July, citing financial documents filed in Cyprus, that Manafort was in debt to pro-Russian interests by as much as $17 million by the time he joined President Donald Trump's campaign team in March 2016.

Manafort also has significant business ties to the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who signed a $10 million annual contract with Manafort in 2006, according to the Associated Press, for a lobbying project in the US that Manafort said would "greatly benefit the Putin Government."

That relationship turned sour in 2014, though, when Deripaska's representatives filed legal complaints in the Cayman Islands alleging that Manafort all but disappeared with $19 million Deripaska had given him to invest in a Ukrainian TV company called Black Sea Cable.

In early 2016, Deripaska's representatives "openly accused Manafort of fraud and pledged to recover the money from him," according to The Associated Press. "After Trump earned the nomination [in May], Deripaska’s representatives said they would no longer discuss the case."

In a July 2016 email, Manafort asked his longtime employee Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian-Ukrainian dual citizen, to offer Deripaska "private briefings" about the campaign.

Kilimnik, too, may appear in the newly unsealed docket. According to the government, "Manafort, Gates, and a Russian national—who is a longstanding employee of Davis Manafort Partners, Inc. and DMP International LLC (collectively DMI)—served as the beneficial owners and signatories" on the many offshore accounts they had opened.

"More than $75 million flowed through these overseas accounts," the filings said, "and the government has substantial documentary evidence to support that allegation."

Manafort also represented the value of his assets on loan applications "in divergent amounts, " according to the court filings. The values varied wildly in 2016, when he was serving as Trump's campaign chairman — from $48 million in February 2016 to $136 million in May 2016 to $25 million in November 2016 — suggesting "considerable resources, the full extent of which is unclear," the government wrote.

Gates, meanwhile, "frequently changed banks and opened and closed bank accounts," prosecutors said. He allegedly opened 55 accounts with 13 different banks, some of which were based in England and Cyprus.

And then they came for Robert Mueller.

If there were any remaining hope that Republicans would accept the precise, methodical work of this veteran, highly respected, Republican-appointed law enforcement official — the man Newt Gingrich once called a “superb choice to be special counsel” — it has evaporated in a fog of propaganda and delirious conspiracy theories.

In the real world, Mr. Mueller, appointed as special counsel after President Trump fired the F.B.I. director, James Comey, in May, is doing the job he was hired to do — smoke out any and all links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government officials who assaulted American sovereignty in 2016 in an effort to get Mr. Trump elected. These days, the most serious attacks on American governance are coming not from abroad, but from Mr. Trump’s aides and his allies in the right-wing media and Congress. As ludicrous as these attacks seem, they could yet lead to a constitutional crisis.

Reading the increasingly outlandish theories cooked up by Mr. Trump’s defenders and apologists is like entering an alternate, upside-down universe where Hillary Clinton remains Public Enemy No. 1.

In these irrelevant tales, Mrs. Clinton (or, as Sean Hannity called her on Monday, “President Clinton”) is the real colluder, working stealthily with the Russians to — stay with us here — destroy her own candidacy. Also, she and Bill Clinton once sold American uranium to the Russians. Also, Robert Mueller failed to fully investigate that sale when he led the F.B.I., so he’s complicit in it, too, not to mention he has ties to Mr. Comey, who also led the F.B.I. Also, some of his investigators donated to Democratic candidates.

There’s no bottom to the delusion on display. At this point, investigators could release videotapes of Vladimir Putin personally handing Mr. Trump a uranium-lined briefcase filled with stolen emails, and the right-wing armada would find a way to blame Mrs. Clinton. (This would be followed, of course, by a congressional investigation to identify who leaked the tapes.)

These efforts at obfuscation and misdirection would be laughable, but they are linked to a very real and dangerous move by Trump allies throughout right-wing media and the government to shut down the Russia investigation for good.

It’s no secret that Mr. Trump has been itching to get rid of Mr. Mueller since soon after his appointment as special counsel in May. Mr. Trump’s advisers have told him that would be a terrible idea and have reportedly talked him out of it more than once. But the calls for such a move are now coming from some of the most influential voices in conservative media, as are other equally bad proposals, like urging that Mr. Mueller resign and that Mr. Trump pardon anyone and everyone caught up in the Russia investigation — including himself.

Mr. Trump would be wise to continue to ignore these loony ideas and restrain his own authoritarian reflexes. The president of the United States, no less than any citizen, lives under the law, not above it; Mr. Mueller’s investigation is the embodiment of that fact. Removing him now, after he has already secured two indictments, including one for Mr. Trump’s former campaign chief, and a guilty plea by a foreign-policy adviser, would send the message that Mr. Trump and his aides are accountable to no one.

Over the last several weeks, a few top Republicans have found the courage to say out loud what a majority of Americans have known for a long time: With his erratic behavior and antidemocratic eruptions, Donald Trump is presenting a profound danger to security of the nation and the stability of the world order. So far, these dissidents have beat their chests in a safe space, giving eloquent speeches on their way out the door.

But it will not be hard for them to turn their words into actions if Mr. Trump gives in to an impulse to fire Mr. Mueller. Do the math: Three Republican senators (looking at you, Mr. McCain, Mr. Corker and Mr. Flake), joining with 48 Democrats, could bring the Senate to a halt until Mr. Mueller was reinstated — no tax cuts, no more judges confirmed.

The scenario in which Mr. Mueller loses his job, or Mr. Trump further abuses his pardon power, is hypothetical — and may it remain so — but if it materializes, it will fall to Congress to defend the foundations of American democracy, the separation of powers and the rule of law.

President Trump called the ​Uranium One deal​ Obama’s Watergate.

The question is whether Sekulow will be left with egg on his face.

In November 2005, Legal Times published an article which alleged that Sekulow "through the ACLJ and a string of interconnected nonprofit and for-profit entities, has built a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle—complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia." In the article, former donors and supporters claimed that Sekulow engaged in a pattern of self-dealing to finance his "high-flying lifestyle." According to a ranking by the American Institute of Philanthropy, a charity watchdog group, Sekulow was the 13th highest paid executive of a charitable organization in the United States.[14]

On June 27, 2017, The Washington Post reported that "Jay Sekulow's family has been paid millions from charities they control".[15]

On June 27 and 28, 2017, The Guardian reported, that documents obtained by them confirmed later that "millions in donations" were steered to his family members,[16] that Sekulow "approved plans to push poor and jobless people to donate money to his Christian nonprofit, which since 2000 has steered more than $60m to Sekulow, his family and their businesses",[16] and that attorneys general in New York and North Carolina opened investigations of Jay Sekulow’s group Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE) for possibly using pressure tactics in telemarketer calls to raise money which was allegedly misdirected to Sekulow and his family.[17]