Trump and Putin, behind the scenes

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And his war against Google and other social media supposed bias..

Axios said Trump may also be hijacking next week's Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, during which Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and potentially Google cofounder Larry Page, will give evidence on foreign influence operations. The theory is that Trump wants to angle the hearing toward an issue that resonates with his support base.

Trump's anger at the perceived bias of big tech is getting conservatives fired up - Business Insider

Another deflection, and another result:

And it appears that Silicon Valley is resigned to a rumbling war with the President. Writing in The New York Times, Recode Editor-At-Large Kara Swisher said social media platforms have become such a "toxic swamp" that a clean-up job is now nearly impossible — particularly when they're in the crosshairs of competing liberal and conservative demands. A tech exec source told her: "For one set, we can't take enough down; for another set, we can't leave up enough. One side thinks social media enabled populism, while the other thinks the opposite. There will be no fixing this."

Trump's anger at the perceived bias of big tech is getting conservatives fired up - Business Insider

So leave the social media as they are, a swamp, which suits the right-wing populist best, just as it suits them that Russia keeps meddling and make the swamp of the social media still worse..

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Trump is going wild but the story (as usual) is much more complicated..

CNN, meanwhile, came under increasing criticism from conservatives and some mainstream media reporters for running the story in the first place. However, on Tuesday, Sciutto and Bernstein filed a follow-up CNN report essentially criticizing Davis for changing his story, while saying they stood by their initial report, which had “more than one source.” However, it’s important to note that CNN is not saying — and has never said — that they’re vouching for Cohen’s story as true. The initial report only purported to describe Cohen’s “claims.” Obviously, it is possible for Cohen to be making false claims. Still, there’s an understandable debate about whether CNN should have been more skeptical here, and whether they were used by Cohen and Davis — and, especially, there’s criticism that their sentence saying Davis declined to comment was very misleading, since he actually did comment anonymously (as Glenn Greenwald and others have argued). 

To hear Lanny Davis tell it, he’s the goat. “I should not be talking to reporters on background about something I’m not certain about,” he told Fox News Tuesday. “If I had a redo in life, I wouldn’t have said anything about the subject.” Yet as the timeline above shows, Cohen’s hints that he knew something about the Trump Tower meeting predated Davis’s hiring. Furthermore, there were so many such hints, over such a long period of time, that it was surely no isolated mistake. It was evidently part of a deliberate strategy, approved by Cohen, to convince the media that he had bombshell Russia scandal information — true or not.

Cohen has pleaded guilty. In doing so, he went out of his way to implicate Trump in campaign finance violations. Hours after Cohen’s plea, Davis was telling MSNBC that Cohen “has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest” to Mueller — including, he said, “about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime.” But all of a sudden, Davis changed his tune dramatically, saying that actually, Cohen may not know anything about the Trump Tower meeting, he’s not really sure.

There are a few possibilities as to why. First, there’s the perjury problem. Cohen, it turns out, had testified to Congress last year that he personally did not know anything about Don Jr.’s Trump Tower meeting beforehand, and that he had no idea whether Trump did. If this was in fact a lie, Cohen could be charged for lying to Congress. So some have speculated that Davis’s original claim was accurate but that he’s now walking it back to protect Cohen. Second, there’s the possibility that Cohen is finally shutting up and cooperating. Maybe, at long last, Cohen has decided to rein in his weird PR play and start giving whatever information he does have to investigators (perhaps stopping the leaks at their request). However, his plea agreement conspicuously did not mention any cooperation and there’s no evidence that this is the case so far. Finally, there’s the possibility that Cohen was lying all along about having important Trump-Russia information — that he was bluffing to try to get Trump cash, and that now that the bluff has failed, he’s just decided to stop putting out these false stories.

Michael Cohen, CNN, Trump-Russia: the controversy, explained - Vox

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Now Trump claims that the tape of an interview where he admits firing Comey because of the Russia investigation was doctored...

President Trump on Thursday falsely suggested NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt had manipulated his comments about former FBI Director James Comey during an interview in May this year, shortly after Comey’s dismissal.

“What’s going on at @CNN is happening, to different degrees, at other networks – with @NBCNews being the worst,” Trump tweeted, citing a tweet he had posted minutes earlier, in which he criticized CNN’s news coverage as “extreme[ly] biased.”

Referring to rumors of NBC News Chairman Andy Lack’s impending departure, over his handling of the Matt Lauer sexual harassment controversy and a slew of other scandals, Trump added, “The good news is that Andy Lack(y) is about to be fired(?) for incompetence, and much worse. When Lester Holt got caught fudging my tape on Russia, they were hurt badly!” Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump What’s going on at @CNN is happening, to different degrees, at other networks - with @NBCNews being the worst. The good news is that Andy Lack(y) is about to be fired(?) for incompetence, and much worse. When Lester Holt got caught fudging my tape on Russia, they were hurt badly! 8:02 AM - Aug 30, 2018 66.8K 45.4K people are talking about this Twitter 

As many have since noted, there is no evidence to suggest Holt or NBC News in any way “fudged” the tape of that interview, which took place on May 11, 2017. Instead, the president appeared to be sowing skepticism about the details surrounding Comey’s dismissal, in an attempt to further undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference and allegations of presidential obstruction.

Trump says 2017 Lester Holt interview was doctored and it was a big scandal. This never happened. – ThinkProgress

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What is it with these Trump people and Russia..

Scottie Nell Hughes, a prominent surrogate for President Donald Trump, will anchor her own show on the American arm of the Russian state TV network RT. Hughes has previously appeared as a regular conservative contributor on CNN and Fox News, the latter of which she is currently suing for blacklisting her following sexual assault allegations she made. The US intelligence community describes RT America as a Kremlin-funded Russian propaganda outfit, and it was required to register with the State Department as a foreign agent.

Pro-Trump commentator Scottie Nell Hughes anchors on Russian state TV - Business Insider

These are people who have just murdered people in Great Britain with chemical weapons, shot a passenger plane full of Dutch people down, invaded another country to annex part of their territory, and are the brutal mercenaries for a brutal dictatorship in Syria, among other things.

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Longtime journalist Craig Unger opens his new book, House of Trump, House of Putin, with this anecdote. The book is an impressive attempt to gather up all the evidence we have of Trump’s numerous connections to the Russian mafia and government and lay it all out in a clear, comprehensive narrative. The book claims to unpack an “untold story,” but it’s not entirely clear how much of it is new. One of the hardest things to accept about the Trump-Russia saga is how transparent it is. So much of the evidence is hiding in plain sight, and somehow that has made it harder to accept. But make no mistake: Trump’s ties to shady Russian figures stretch back decades, and Unger diligently pieces them together in one place. Although Unger doesn’t provide any evidence that Trump gave the Russians anything concrete in return for their help, the case he makes for how much potential leverage the Russians had over Trump is pretty damning. I spoke to Unger recently about what he learned, how he learned it, and why he thinks Russia’s use of Trump constitutes “one of the greatest intelligence operations in history,” as he puts it in the book. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Trump and the Russian mob: why the relationship is deeper than you think - Vox

Check the article for an interview with the author of the book.

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Shortly after news of the deal broke, Giuliani released a statement indicating President isn’t sweating it, because even if Manafort tells Mueller the whole truth, Trump has done nothing wrong. “Once again an investigation has concluded with a plea having nothing to do with President Trump or the Trump campaign,” the statement said. “The reason: the President did nothing wrong and Paul Manafort will tell the truth.”

But it didn’t take long for Giuliani to have second thoughts about his assertion that Manafort “will tell the truth.” About an hour after the first statement hit the internet, Giuliani distributed a revised version that removed the last seven words.

The revised statement leaves open the possibility that Trump and his legal team will ultimately dispute the information Manafort shares with Mueller — and he’s reportedly already started sharing some. It suggests the president’s team is bracing for the possibility that they will have to try and assassinate Manafort’s character, as they’ve done to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen after he reached a similar agreement with Mueller.

Trump praised Manafort’s character on Twitter as recently as three weeks ago.

Giuliani has already demonstrated a willingness to move the goalposts. Though team Trump initially denied any campaign contacts with Russians whatsoever, by July Giuliani was going on Fox News and arguing that even if collusion with Russia occurred, it wouldn’t be a big deal because collusion isn’t a crime.

Giuliani has also repeatedly expressed concern that Trump will ultimately be “framed” by his own Department of Justice. Suffice it to say that sort of talking point is not usually invoked by people who believe the evidence will ultimately exonerate them or their client.

Trump’s lawyer gives up the game by revising statement about Manafort’s Mueller deal – ThinkProgress

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From 2003 to 2008, Manafort and his firm worked for Deripaska across Europe—in Montenegro, Georgia, and Ukraine. Over that time, the consultant and the client also became business partners. Deripaska invested millions in a private-equity fund that Manafort established, with the intent of buying assets across the former Soviet Union. Based on various court filings and lawsuits, we know that the relationship went very badly. In these documents, Deripaska suggests that Manafort might have stolen his money. And based on the special counsel’s filings, we also know that Manafort owed Deripaska even more money in the form of unpaid loans. Instead of making an effort to settle these large debts, Deripaska says that Manafort simply stopped returning his messages.

Manafort finally reached out to Deripaska, just after he joined Donald Trump’s campaign. In emails obtained by The Atlantic that Paul Manafort traded with an aide, Manafort proposed giving Deripaska special access to the campaign, with the apparent hope of making his debts disappear. We don’t know what became of Manafort’s outreach to Deripaska. Perhaps it yielded nothing. Deripaska claims that he never received messages from Manafort in 2016. But it’s also worth watching hidden video footage of Deripaska sitting on his yacht with a top Putin official, procured by the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The video captured a meeting held in August 2016, two weeks before Manafort resigned as campaign chair. According to Navalny, the video lends credibility to the theory that Deripaska might have been a crucial intermediary between Manafort and the Kremlin..

Manafort Is Cooperating With Mueller. Now What? - The Atlantic

There are lots of other lines of inquiry that Manafort can shed light on, see article..

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Mueller has won 35 indictments and six convictions — including of Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn, campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates. You can make that 37 indictments and eight convictions if you count Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, and Sam Patten, a lobbyist linked to Manafort, who pleaded guilty in other jurisdictions to charges arising from Mueller’s work. Cohen’s plea deal was particularly significant, because he implicated the president in a conspiracy to violate federal campaign-finance laws. Even if Mueller were to end his probe tomorrow, he already would be judged one of the most successful special counsels in history.

Mueller’s latest triumph came last week when Manafort, having already been convicted of eight felony counts, agreed to plead guilty to two more counts to avoid another trial. In return for having the other charges dropped, Manafort pledged to cooperate with the special counsel. Trump and his lawyers have adopted a mantra of “no collusion,” as if that were the only crime of which he could possibly be guilty, but Manafort represents collusion in the flesh: He is a longtime agent for Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs who worked closely with a suspected Russian intelligence operative.

As Mueller’s investigation advances, methodically and relentlessly, Trump is acting as rattled as Butch and Sundance — minus, of course, the charm, wit and good looks of Redford and Newman. Trump’s Twitter feed is a primal scream against the “Rigged Witch Hunt” and the “17 Angry Democrats.” On Tuesday, he even called the FBI a “cancer in our country.” He must be wondering “Who are those guys?” because none of his ploys are working. Mueller is still on his tail, and the public, according to a recent CNN poll, is far more supportive of the special counsel’s conduct (50 percent) than of the president’s (30 percent).

Butch and Sundance were driven in their desperation to jump off a cliff into a raging river and then flee to Bolivia to escape the superposse. In his desperation, Trump is being driven to obstruct justice. The latest example: His demand that the FBI declassify top-secret files relating to the investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. election. Former acting CIA director John McLaughlin calls this “the President’s most serious assault on the Justice system yet,” and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) quotes FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein as telling him that the release of these documents would be “a red line that must not be crossed as they may compromise sources and methods.”

Here’s the worst part, from Trump’s standpoint: The release of these documents is unlikely to help him any more than the release of a memo from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) or of a redacted version of the surveillance warrant for former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page helped him. The more facts that come out, the more damning they look for the president.

Mueller and his superposse just keep on coming - The Washington Post

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Hasn't gotten the attention it deserves..

As I said, most of the tariffs are on inputs into business — and some businesses are getting special treatment. Thus, there are now substantial tariffs on imported steel, but some steel users — including the U.S. subsidiary of a sanctioned Russian company — were granted the right to import steel tariff-free. (The Russian subsidiary’s exemption was reversed after it became public knowledge, with officials claiming that it was a “clerical error.”)

Opinion | Making Tariffs Corrupt Again - The New York Times

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More than 80 percent of the Twitter accounts associated with spreading disinformation during the 2016 presidential campaign are still active, a new study found. A Knight Foundation study that reviewed the spread of "fake news," disinformation and influence campaigns on Twitter found that accounts associated with those issues on Twitter continue to publish more than 1 million tweets in a typical day, despite efforts from officials to rid the platform of such accounts. "The persistence of so many easily identified abusive accounts is difficult to square with any effective crackdown," study authors Matthew Hindman and Vlad Barash wrote..

More than 80 percent of 2016 disinformation Twitter accounts still active: report | TheHill