Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

[zaratustra]

That tweet's thread includes interesting tidbits such as $300 for accomodation per person per day and the PR government not being allowed to audit how much profit the company makes.

[Thad]

Haven't had time to keep up on thread. I've got a blog post about Flake queued up for Monday. Gist is: we don't know exactly what's going to happen yet, but the most likely next step is that another establishment Republican enters the race to challenge Ward. Contrary to all the "Flake is a coward; why don't you stay and fight?" talk, dropping out is his best possible move for keeping a Trump-friendly pol out of his seat.

Though of course Flake's objections to Trump were always more about tone than content.

I don't know who the nominees will ultimately be. Sinema and Ward are the frontrunners right now, but the primary's not for another nine months, and again, it's likely that someone more mainstream than Chemtrail Kelli will enter on the Republican side.

Regardless of outcome, I think Sinema (or whoever ends up getting the nomination) has the best odds of winning a Senate race of any Arizona Democrat in 30 years.

[Mongrel]

I love how when you look at this, you just know.

[Thad]

Martha McSally is looking likely to run for Flake's seat.

That's pretty much the best-case scenario. She's as moderate as Arizona Republicans get, and I think she can beat Ward.

The trouble is that she'll likely be a tougher opponent against Sinema than either Ward or Flake. But that's a risk I'm willing to take. "Hope the crazy candidate gets nominated so she'll lose" is not a good strategy in Arizona. (It's obviously not a good strategy at the national level, either.) I'd rather Sinema than McSally, but I'd rather McSally than Ward.

Meanwhile, seeing a lot of rumors today that Hatch will announce his retirement and Romney will run for his seat. That honestly doesn't sound so bad; it's not like Utah is going to elect anyone better than Romney, and there are a lot of options that would be worse.

[Thad]

First charges filed in Mueller investigation. Still under seal, so no confirmation that it's Manafort, but I don't know of anybody else who's been subject to a pre-dawn raid by the FBI.

Flynn and Junior seem like the next lowest-hanging fruit. And Kushner sure "forgot" a lot of contacts with Russians in his paperwork.

[Bal]

As someone from McSally's district, please god no. She's a Trump shill and every single one of her mailers is like a missive from hell.

[Thad]

And as someone from Schweikert's former district, I've got nothing to offer but "well, at least she's not Schweikert."

And as someone from Sinema's current district, well, I don't like her very much but "the most conservative Democrat in the House" is the sort of thing that Arizona voters are likelier to see as a feature than a bug.

And I'm not from Gosar's district, but man, that guy's a dumbass.

[Mongrel]

omg

[Mongrel]

Catfish Whitefish just got shown the dooooooooorrrrrr

Expect retribution from Washington, I guess.

[Thad]

Manafort indicted. Plus his associate Rick Gates and Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos.

[Grath]

[François]

This is a 100+ tweet thread, and ongoing as of this writing, but it's totes worth a read. (Click time/date for a link to the whole thing.)

[Thad]

Ken White has rundowns of the Manafort / Gates indictment and Papadopoulos guilty plea. Notably:

Papadopoulos' cooperation is central to his plea. The plea agreement provides that the government will bring his cooperation to the Court's attention at sentencing and that sentencing will be delayed until his cooperation is complete. It is possible, though not certain, that the Special Counsel used Papadopoulos for "active" cooperation — for instance, by making recorded calls to targets of the investigation, engaging in monitored email exchanges with targets, or even wearing a wire during meetings with targets. Keeping the entire proceeding under seal for a month after his plea is consistent with such cooperation. However, that level of cooperation isn't certain: it could be that they considered using him for such activities but didn't, or that they wanted to keep the nature and direction of the investigation secret until now. But it's clear that they contemplate using him against other targets of the investigation one way or another.

[Mongrel]

This is a 100+ tweet thread, and ongoing as of this writing, but it's totes worth a read. (Click time/date for a link to the whole thing.)

This is amazing by the way. Even my hatred of Twitter threads vanished completely while reading this. This is staggering.

Two questions come to mind

1 - What if the GOP refuse to Impeach? I mean, it's not impossible. On the other hand, if enough of them turn to vote with the Dems to Impeach but the majority refuses, then are we faced with a post-Trump world full of vengeful bitter MAGA voters who refuse to believe the legitimacy of the indictment?

2 - Pence. I've seen news stories in the past that have claimed there's enough connections to nail him too, but I didn't see his name mentioned so much as once in that thread - what's going to happen?

[Mongrel]

Holy shit

Many Are Getting Arrested

I almost ruptured something

[Da_Beerman]

Two questions come to mind

1 - What if the GOP refuse to Impeach? I mean, it's not impossible. On the other hand, if enough of them turn to vote with the Dems to Impeach but the majority refuses, then are we faced with a post-Trump world full of vengeful bitter MAGA voters who refuse to believe the legitimacy of the indictment?

2 - Pence. I've seen news stories in the past that have claimed there's enough connections to nail him too, but I didn't see his name mentioned so much as once in that thread - what's going to happen?

I'm not super optimistic about post impeached trump America. Maybe single issue activists and topics like healthcare reform and money in politics can sway voters to meaningful change.

However while living in the Republic of Korea a return to less threats about nuclear war is a positive.

[Mongrel]

Well, Impeachment is still a big 'IF'... Mueller has to avoid being fired (or even assassinated... it's unlikely, but I sure wouldn't put the chance at 0% that he or someone else dies under mysterious circumstances) and the GOP controlled congress has to have at least a few dorks break ranks to vote for impeachment, which is by no means certain or even likely these days.

The scope of this is really incredible though. This is a scandal and series of crimes of an order of magnitude greater than Watergate, which is frankly staggering, even considering most people figured all along it was true even if they didn't know to what degree it was true.

What a time to be alive. An... interesting time.

[Thad]

Yeah, there are way too many questions to know what'll happen. I think there is a threshold where the Republicans will have to break with Trump, but I don't know where it is or whether Mueller's investigation will get there.

After that, the question is how snarled up Pence is in this. There have been accounts that he was aware of some things he claimed not to be (IIRC the first draft of the memo firing Comey). If Pence goes down, the next person in line is Ryan -- unless this happens after the election and the Democrats gain a majority, in which case it's probably Pelosi.

Though that's not certain either, as the Speaker would only take office if the President and VP were both eliminated at the same time. Other alternatives include a Ford-style situation where the VP is removed first and a new one is selected; Ryan would be a logical choice in that case but not at all a sure thing considering who's making the decisions.

But would the investigation hit Pence before Trump? It depends. Mueller's clearly working his way up from the bottom; if there's more obvious dirt on Pence than Trump, then that will likely come out first, but Pence has probably taken more efforts to maintain plausible deniability than Trump.

And then there's the political question. I've already said "there's a threshold for Republicans to turn on Trump, but I don't know what it is" -- I really don't know what it is with Pence. I could definitely see a scenario in which the Republicans agree to impeach Trump if the Democrats agree to leave Pence alone.

Right now, it's all just cloud talk. We're closer to impeachment than we were two days ago, but we're still pretty far away from it.

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]