Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?

[Mongrel]

Shit, he already predicted half of it, IIRC.

[Thad]

Argument being made here is that Manafort continued to lie to Mueller because Trump has promised him a pardon in exchange for being a mole for the Trump team. But Mueller has anticipated that, and not only has pardon-proof indictments and forfeitures (Manafort will have every penny he owns seized and can and will be charged by various State courts), but has also been using Manafort as an unwitting triple-agent dupe to further tighten the ropes around Trump's neck.

Specifically, if Manafort was lying to Mueller, and coordinating his story with Trump, and Mueller knew he was lying, and Trump repeated the same lies...I mean, it may be too much to hope, but that's a big fucking deal right there, quite possibly bigger than any of the other big fucking deals to date.

It could be a coincidence that this comes out right after Trump submitted his written answers to Mueller. After all, the judge has been pushing for a sentencing trial for, what, a month or two now? It could simply be that the Mueller team couldn't play this line out any longer.

At any rate, the NYT quotes Giuliani confirming that Manafort was briefing the White House on what he was telling Mueller.

I feel like conspiracy dude with a corkboard covered in notes linked by red strings.

I'm trying to decide whether Robert A Wilson would have been relieved or disappointed that he missed all of this.

Shit, he already predicted half of it, IIRC.

I remember him saying that, when he and Shea wrote Illuminatus!, the goal had been to include all the most outlandish and implausible conspiracy theories they could conceive -- and then Watergate happened, and it was wilder than any of them.

RAW noted, before he died, that he was ahead of the zeitgeist -- that if the success of The Da Vinci Code and What the Fuck Do We Know? were any indication, he could have been a rich man if only he'd sat on his manuscripts for 30 years or so.

[Mongrel]

[Thad]

Specifically, if Manafort was lying to Mueller, and coordinating his story with Trump, and Mueller knew he was lying, and Trump repeated the same lies...I mean, it may be too much to hope, but that's a big fucking deal right there, quite possibly bigger than any of the other big fucking deals to date.

Ken White and Renato Mariotti don't think much of this theory. (Warning: autoplay audio.)

It is of course possible that Manafort and Trump both lied and coordinated their lies, but not that Mueller arranged it on purpose.

Meanwhile, Cohen has confessed to lying to Congress about Trump's involvement in trying to set up a Trump Tower in Moscow. If he's telling the truth now, then that means Don Jr. also lied to Congress about the project.

[Mongrel]

Even by Trump's standards of idiocy, this is some next-level derp:

[Thad]

More from Renato Mariotti, discussing Cohen's plea.

The gist seems to be that nobody in the Trump Administration ever actually told Cohen to lie to Congress, but he believes he was pressured to do so, and they certainly didn't correct his lies after he told them.

[Mongrel]

[Mongrel]

This is Chicago Alderman Edwin Burke's office.

His firm did tax work for Trump for more than a decade.

Last night trump left the WH Christmas tree lighting ceremony in a big hurry. Allegedly, this is because Whitaker told him the feds were about to raid Burke's office.

[Mongrel]

Uh... what particular stage of brain degeneration is Rudy in right now?

[mharr]

What happened to him generally? Ten years back he was man of the year and an honorary knight after his leadership during the September 11th attack, before that he made his career taking down mafias and goverment corruption. Now he's a yes-man for those things?

[beatbandito]

"Taking Down the Mafia"™ was mostly shutting down strip bars. And cleaning up the city meant taking credit for the long-term positive consequences of roe v. Wade while quietly killing all the homeless.

I can't comment too cynically on 9/11 stuff since that's such a stand alone case, but I can say part of the help he provided was relaxing construction safety oversite to a level it still hasn't recovered from.

[Joxam]

Basically 9/11 turned him into a 'hero' for a while.

Anyone who knows anything about him will tell you that he was at best 'OK' to downright bad at his job pre-9/11 but afterwards people went out of their way to look for shit to congratulate him on during his tenure before 9/11.

Also the nineties were a pretty fucking terrible time for minorities and women and like, people applauding him for being tough on crime and cleaning up the city are basically saying that stop and frisk and broken windows was a good idea.

Also if you want to listen to a Podcast about how shitty the self reported statistics of 'Cleaning up the city' were, listen to both parts of this episode of Reply All. The basic breakdown was that they tied keeping your job for precinct Captains to WEEKLY progress report meetings that got bastardized (because of the self reporting nature of the meetings) into forcing officers to write citations for every stop they made no matter what so that they could prove arrests so that it would look like they were tough on crime.

EDIT: I originally forgot to include the most fucked up thing about this, there are currently lawsuits against the city because of this but as of now its still policy of the NYPD despite their constant claim to not have quotas.

[Mongrel]

Basically, Rudy was always an asshole who simply took credit for things, but after 9/11 his ego ballooned (and he got even more Old Rich White Guy), so any remaining attachment to reality he had basically fell apart.

It's just sort of concerning (for us, not him. Fuck Rudy), how his statements these days aren't even really coherent. He's reaching Trump levels of gibberish and possible dementia.

EDIT: Just a reminder that Giuliani is currently the top executive for cybersecurity! The trump rule of "literal worst possible person for the job" continues.

[Mongrel]

Pretty much all the comments: "What do you mean 'What if'"?

[Thad]

Trump announces John Kelly is leaving

[Yoji]

Mueller Devotional Candles. Huh. Also for sale from the same site: Ginsberg Longevity Candles.

...oh, made in Portland. That explains a bit. Stay weird, you weirdos.

[Z%rø]

Politics in 2018 in a clip



If you think you can stomach it, the whole event was insane

[beatbandito]

I wonder if Trump has already, or will ever, realize that the legislative branch he used to be complaining about dealing with was as "on his side" as it gets.

[Mongrel]

I like how, in the still of the Youtube video, Pence is just eyeing Trump like some kind of ghoul.

Hell, that whole image is some seriously Baroque-era composition (but not lighting, obv) right there.

[Bal]

Pence looks like phase 2 Imhotep from The Mummy (1932)