Donald Trump's day so far:
- Michael Cohen sells him out on Trump Tower Moscow
- Trump has meltdown on White House lawn
- Trump panics, cancels Putin meeting
- Deutsche Bank raided
- Trump's former tax attorney raided
- Cohen also sells out Trump's kids
- It's still only noon— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) November 29, 2018
Rachel Maddow, "Cohen plea shocker exposes Trump camp lies about Russia dealings":
So today, the president's longtime personal lawyer, longtime executive at his business, pled guilty to a cover-up, a criminal cover-up. He pled guilty of lying to Congress about the extent of the real estate dealings that President Trump and his business ere engaged in and pursuing in Russia while Trump was running for president, and while the Kremlin was simultaneously mounting an international military intelligence operation to skew our election in order to tilt it toward Trump.
Allegra Kirkland and Tierney Sneed, "New Michael Cohen Plea Draws Mueller Probe Ever Closer To Trump":
In a major development in that probe, Cohen's criminal information linked Trump's foreign business interests with his 2016 campaign for president. It puts Cohen in touch with Trump, Trump's family and high-level Russian government officials about efforts to develop a new project in Moscow just months before Election Day.
Harry Litman, "The stunning implications of the Manafort-Trump pipeline":
Even more than the president’s potential criminal liability, there is a set of burning questions about exactly what happened in 2016, the extent to which Russian efforts to influence the presidential election found purchase in the United States, and what part was played by high-level Trump campaign officials or the president himself. It is intolerable to consider that the truth of these consequential matters would be smothered and kept from the American people indefinitely. But that's exactly what the president’s overall strategy aims to do, and with the support, at least tacitly, of a complicit still-Republican-majority — for now — Congress. Is there no one in the GOP with the guts to stand up to the president and the resolve to see that the truth will out?
David Kurtz, "A LOT Here":
Read the new Michael Cohen plea agreement and criminal information, which implicates both President Trump and his family.
BREAKING: Republican lobbyist just told me White House staffers are “in shock,” saying they weren’t aware Mueller or the FBI could indict witnesses who lied to Congress. A lot of them also never believed Trump had Russian business ties, until Michael Cohen’s plea deal today.— Scott Dworkin (@funder) November 29, 2018
Sophia Tesfaye, "Trump Tower trifecta of bad news: Michael Cohen, Deutsche Bank and Trump’s former tax lawyer":
Donald Trump ran into a trifecta of bad news before noon on Thursday, all seemingly related to his Trump Tower business ventures….One close confidante raided by law enforcement is bad; three is a trifecta of awful. When the law raids, it pours.
Brad Reed, "Federal agents raid office of attorney who handled Trump Organization taxes for 12 years: report":
Federal agents on Thursday raided the office of an attorney who in the past has handled the Trump Organization’s taxes.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that "federal agents showed up unannounced at the City Hall office of Finance Committee Chairman Ed Burke, kicked everyone out and papered over the windows Thursday morning."
170 officials were involved in the raid of Deutsche Bank's headquarters in Frankfurt this morning. This is not a minor deal by any stretch.— Amy Siskind 🏳️🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) November 29, 2018
Rachel Maddow via Steve Benen, "Trump Org eyed penthouse gift for Putin during 2016 campaign":
Oh, I don't know. Doesn’t every presidential candidate in every election offer a $50 million gift to a foreign leader who at that time is running a military intelligence operation to help that candidate become president in the United States? Don't they all do this?
Noor Al-Sibai, "'Most of the GOP Leadership Has Been Compromised' by Russian Money Says Trump Biographer":
"I believe most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by" Russian money, the author [i.e., Trump biographer Craig Unger] added. "The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee run by Mitch McConnell got millions from [Soviet-born businessman] Leonard Blavatnik."
Donny Deutsch via Matthew Chapman, "'The money was coming from Russia': Friend of Michael Cohen predicts 'the beginning of the end' of Trump's presidency — and it won't stop there":
This is the tip of the iceberg. I've said this all along. Donald Trump could not get money once he was bankrupted in the 90s, other than Deutsche Bank. The money was coming from Russia. Once he's out of office, this is not gonna stop either. Every ambitious U.S. Attorney in New York is not gonna stop until they take this empire apart. This is not just the beginning of the end of his presidency — I think he will not re-run, I don't think he'll get impeached — but once that's done, you're going to see his entire organization, his entire life, his entire fortune picked apart, because nobody is bigger than the house. He tried to play the house, he tried to say 'our judicial system doesn't matter, our intelligence system doesn't matter, the media doesn't matter, the military doesn't matter.' Nobody beats the house.
Putin’s leverage over Trump, deliberately hidden from voters who would never have voted for someone whose balls they knew were in a hostile leader’s hands, can no longer be denied. The jig is up. https://t.co/nRUdXEJ7yw— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) November 30, 2018
Josh Marshall, "They All Lied. They’re All Guilty.":
Sometimes it's worth stepping back and stating the obvious. Over the course of these thirty months of cover-ups, every player in the Trump/Russia story has lied about their role in the conspiracy. And not hedging and spinning fibs but straight up lies about the core nature of their involvement, their overt acts. Most – though here what we know is a bit more tentative – seem to have lied under oath, whether to congressional committees or a grand jury. Not a single one of them told a story that wasn’t eventually contradicted and disproved. Not a single one.
Charles Pierce, "Trump Can't Control the Process Anymore. It's Unraveling on Him.":
It always was about the money. The president* always defined himself by it. It was the comforting myth of his public existence, the fairytale he told himself so he could sleep at night through all the failure and bankruptcy and the whoring after cash, dirty or laundered, all over the world. Take away the money—or, more accurately, the perception of the money—and there simply is nothing left of the man. Take away the money, and he can't see himself in the mirror. So he would do anything, including imperil his presidency and, therefore, the country, to save himself from the horrible realization that the money was all there was to him and there wasn't any money anymore.
What the hell? What was the presidency to him but another mirror in which he still could see a man made of money?
So comes now Michael Cohen to talk about the money, and to lie to Congress about the money, and now to tell the Court, and Robert Mueller, the truth about the money. And we discover that Robert Mueller is no fool, and that he has known, all along, that it was about the money and that it always was about the money.
Ed Kilgore, "White Evangelicals Keep Standing Up for Their (Grand Old) Party":
On electoral Tuesdays more than church-service Sundays, white Evangelicals live in their own world, and Donald Trump and his allies rule it.
Even this ridiculous tweet is good today. The many negative comments are proof that people are waking up. The truth is coming out. (This is a screenshot, because I don't want to give this Twitter account an engagement boost.) pic.twitter.com/n5DA3jb6cc— ConsistentLifeEthic (@ProLifeAll) November 29, 2018
(Thanks to Fred Clark at Slacktivist for the link to the Ed Kilgore article cited above.)
