This morning, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, flipped his shit on Twitter. And we don’t mean like when other lib blogs say he flipped his shit and then it turns out he called someone a loser and then said “Sad!” We mean like
President Trump, it seems, is very upset that President Obama did a “wire tapp” (sic) to him, that, apparently, he is just finding out about. (He might want to broaden his media diet.)
But what’s this about then? Let’s begin at the Beginning Place.
Oh hey, do you remember that weird story about the servers pinging back and forth from Trump Tower to Russia’s Alfa Bank?
We remember it clearly. It was Halloween, and we were sitting in the Wonkebago in a deserted RV park outside Salt Lake, and our heads were SCANNERS SPLODING from reading two stories in a row: one by David Corn at Mother Jones that first introduced The Dossier, and one by Franklin Foer at Slate about these two mysterious servers pinging each other — and each other only — back and forth from Moscow to Trump Tower.
Yes. We’re back to private email servers. Fucking AGAIN.
Additionally
Lichtblau’s reporting has not aged well. In fact, it has aged as badly as Trump adviser Alex Jones, who we recently learned is 43.
Whoops it turns out the FBI got a FISA warrant for the Trump Org and Alfa Bank and all ‘US persons’ emailing each other therein
So, Eric Lichtblau’s “law enforcement” source, who we surmised was FBI Director James Comey, may he rot in hell, may have been a tad premature! Or a little bit lie-y! Because at 10 p.m. the night before Election Day, the Rupert Murdoch-owned conservative rag “Heat Street” published a little bit of a scoopty about how, after being denied for a FISA warrant naming Donald Trump, the FBI had in October resubmitted a more narrowly drawn warrant, which was granted.
Nobody really saw the story; it was the night before Election Day, there was rather a lot of other stuff going on, and Heat Street, and its editor Louise Mensch, weren’t particularly known quantities as far as national security reporting. Mensch, 45, a former Conservative MP and ’90s party girl, had married Metallica’s manager and become a Big Hater Of Russia and Big Lover Of British And American Spies — and, apparently, they return the favor!
It would be two months before BBC and McClatchy were able to confirm Mensch’s reporting about the FISA warrant, which McClatchy wrote had been granted Oct. 15.
Mensch left Heat Street and posts crazy shit on her own blog, Patribotics.wordpress.com. We’ll come back to that.
It’s now four months later, and Breitbart is pissed. As goes Breitbart …
Since early January, McClatchy, the New York Times and others have been reporting there are actually many (many) investigations into Trump’s Russia ties. (The New York Times’s mea culpa on its own whitewash was hilariously lacking.)Here is a short list of Trump associates who have ties to the Russian government:
- Donald Trump
- Everyone Donald Trump has ever met
Over the past few days, there’s been a firehose of stories about various Trump campaign officials meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. We don’t know what was said in any of these meetings, and some of them may very well have been “getting to know you.” But in the context of what was happening the same week as Jeff Sessions’s meeting with Kislyak, at least, “we didn’t discuss the campaign” smells like a raging case of the world’s worst vaginitis.
They also lied about every single one of their meetings, over and over, until they were caught. It’s all been getting very hott in herre!
Yesterday (Friday), Breitbart posted a screed about President Obama’s “police state tactics” against Trump’s candidacy, and yowled
Radio host Mark Levin used his Thursday evening show to outline the known steps taken by President Barack Obama’s administration in its last months to undermine Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and, later, his new administration.
Levin called Obama’s effort “police state” tactics, and suggested that Obama’s actions, rather than conspiracy theories about alleged Russian interference in the presidential election to help Trump, should be the target of congressional investigation.
The “police state tactics” they are VERY GRRRR about are … the Department of Justice applying for and receiving a FISA warrant to monitor communications between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.
It’s almost as if investigating collusion between a hostile foreign power and a candidate for president of the United States to (hypothetically!) traffic in stolen information and use it to injure a second candidate for president of the United States is worse than actually colluding to do so! At least if you are Breitbart. And, say, Donald Trump! Let us remember what Donald Trump tweeted this morning, let’s see, “add media, media library, trump fisa tweet,” PRESTO!
“Is it legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election?” Only if they have evidence, my dude, and if a FISA judge agrees!
You’ll note that President Trump himself complains that their previous request was denied. Almost as if it wasn’t just rubberstamped, but the FBI actually had to show probable cause why a wire tap against a party’s nominee for president was called for … and that it succeeded!
The previous denial doesn’t clear you, Mr. P. Very much the opposite.Remember when we wrote this in October and we were like “ARE WE CRAZY NO YOU ARE CRAZY?” It turns out you are crazy.
No, but really, what are some of the Russian ties to Trump and his campaign
Sorry, we honestly can’t go through them all, they’re fucking nuts. It basically comes down to “every person Donald Trump has ever met is diving into swimming pools of dirty stolen Russian money.” After the collapse of the Soviet Union, well-placed Russians started stealing many billions of dollars worth of Russia’s assets, from its natural resources to its hard cash. Looking for places to park their money, a whole lot of them decided on condos in Trump Tower, buying like 10 each for made up amounts of money, because who can determine what real estate is “really” worth?
His personal attorney, Michael Cohen, owns an ethanol company in Ukraine.
He partnered for years with a convicted felon (a dude who stabbed another dude in the face with the broken stem of a margarita glass!) who was mobbed up DEEP in both Russia and Little Italy — and then, once Russian investments had saved him from bankruptcy (again), said he barely knew him.
And his entire cabinet, with the possible exception of Ben Carson, has bizarre ties to Russian banks (new Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, for instance, was until today the vice-chair of the Bank of Cyprus, which launders Russian money) and Russian oil companies. Jeff Sessions was hosting dinners for and having white papers written for him by a fellow named Richard Burt, who was lobbying for Gazprom and sits on the board of … Alfa Bank.
Even Betsy DeVos, that nice dumb lady ready to dismantle public education in the US, has weird ties to Alfa Bank (though that one seems thin!) — AND the rogue elements in the FBI who were leaking to her brother, Erik Prince (yes, of Blackwater), that Anthony Weiner was going to be arrested before the election, right before Anthony Weiner’s computer got turned over to the FBI.
Oh shit, are we back to Anthony Weiner’s dick? Yes, we are back to Anthony Weiner’s dick
Here’s where Louise Mensch loses us. She reports that North Carolina hackers, in conjunction with a Russian hacker arrested in Prague, planted Hillary’s emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer and then made up the 15-year-old girl he thought he was sexting with. Jeff Sessions’s number two at Justice, Dana Boente (the guy who happily succeeded Sally Yates as acting Attorney General when she was fired abruptly for telling Trump his Muslim ban was illegal), was reportedly the prosecutor on the North Carolina hackers (who actually called themselves “Crackas With Attitude” — that one made my mom, who taught in South Central for 25 years, laugh and laugh!). And … I mean, maybe? I’m not saying no? And Barack Obama did a weird thing where he signed Boente out of the order of succession at Justice right before his administration ended (because that was an important thing to spend his final weeks on why?) and then Donald Trump did a weird thing where he quietly signed Boente back in, shortly before Sessions had to recuse himself from any investigation into Trump’s Russia ties? MORE INFO NECESSARY, because !!!!! whaaaat???
I will say this, though: when Anthony Weiner complains he’s been hoaxed, not a single person in the world (including your Wonkette!) is going to believe him. So that’s pretty clever, right there!
In conclusion?
Haha, Scanners! No but really, in conclusion?
No, President Trump. The Department of Justice getting a FISA court to agree to let it look at your computer traffic with Alfa Bank, while you and every person you have ever met are doing weird Russia stuff, is not “a police state” “worse than Watergate.” It’s how a country of laws works.
Oh, also, we almost forgot: You know how we have been REALLY MEAN to poor James Comey? According to Mensch, he’s every bit the “man of integrity” all those people kept claiming he was while we pooh poohed them and tore our own hair out, and his insistence on not signing on to the Intelligence Community’s conclusion on Russia hacking the election was because he wasn’t going to fuck up his case like a common Law & Order cop by looking at the intel until every i was crossed and t was dotted on his warrants. If that turns out to be the case, we will owe him a really nice fruit basket.Wonkette has no dirty stolen Russian money. Wonkette has no dirty stolen money at all, and is supported solely by Readers Like You. Please consider throwing us a buck, five, 10, 25, or ONE HUNDRED! Or five.
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