The bottom of the swamp.

The trump crime family is shrinking more and more with each passing day. Today, two more of his cronies felt the sting of justice, as prosecutors get closer and closer to the Don himself, Mr. trump.

"A federal jury in Virginia convicted Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, on eight felony counts on Tuesday, but the judge declared a mistrial on the 10 other charges he faced.

Manafort, a fixture in Republican politics for decades, was convicted of five counts of tax fraud, one count of failure to file a report of foreign bank and financial accounts and two counts of bank fraud. A mistrial was declared in three counts of failing to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts, and seven counts of bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy.

Prosecutors built a case that Manafort for years hid millions from U.S. tax authorities in overseas accounts, spending the money to maintain a lavish lifestyle and lying to banks to generate more cash.
The trial was the first public test of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, and while the special counsel was vindicated, the victory wasn't total." [Source]

They are right, it wasn't "total", but it was more than enough. Manafort was found guilty on eight counts of the charges, and even though mistrials were declared on the other ten (he can be retried on all of them), he is still looking at eighty years in the big house with the charges that he was found guilty of.

And then there is Mr. trump's long time fixer and bag man, Michael Cohen. He pleaded guilty to a variety of crimes today, and he joins a long list of folks in trump's orbit who are now felons.

" Longtime Trump personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen agreed to a plea deal with the Southern District of New York in which he admitted guilt on eight charges and acknowledged that he had discussed or made hush payments to two women alleging affairs with Trump in order to keep damaging information from becoming public, at the direction of and in coordination with a candidate for federal office. That candidate, although Cohen didn't name him, is obviously Donald Trump.

Either of these developments could make for a disastrous week for the President of the United States, who has watched special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian 2016 election interference draw ever closer to him as it has gone along. But for both Manafort to be found guilty and Cohen to not only plead guilty but to implicate Trump in a payoff that violates campaign finance law is, literally, catastrophic for the Trump White House.

While both stories are very big deals, the Cohen plea is more important in terms of its direct impact on Trump." [Source]

Remember when all those trump supporters were shouting "lock her up" about Hillary Clinton? Well somewhere in upstate New York Hillary Clinton is laughing her ass off. 

Memo to Mr. trump: Be careful what you wish for. You wanted to be president, and now you (and those around you) must live with the consequences.    

*Pic from rollingstone.com

A hot mess.

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This Michael Cohen Donald trump fiasco is just getting crazier and crazier.

I don't know where this is all going to end, but I think we can all agree that we are now in uncharted waters. One thing we do know though is this: trump's minions will stick with him no matter what.

 "So let’s review: Stormy Daniels‘ lawyer Michael Avenatti put out a document with multiple new allegations about Michael Cohen. One of them concerned $500,000 Cohen received from a company run by a Russian oligarch.

CNN subsequently reported this oligarch was questioned by Mueller’s team over payments to Cohen, and The Daily Beast followed up with its own report confirming the payment.

Another allegation in the document Avenatti shared is multiple payments from AT&T to Cohen’s Essential Consultants, LLC.

Now AT&T has confirmed the payment:" [Source]

Wow! Half a million big ones from a Russian oligarch to trump's personal lawyer and we are supposed to believe that there was no collusion? I don't think so.

But that's not all. Apparently there is more to that story about the GOP fundraiser and the Playboy model than we were led to believe.

Here is John Ziegler's take on it:

"If a story doesn’t add up, there is almost always a major problem with that narrative. And often, the biggest lies are both obvious and right out in the open. These are two basic principles of understanding humanity which the modern media has seemingly forgotten, especially when it comes to covering President Donald Trump.

There is no better evidence of this reality than the amazing piece posted today by New York Magazine which outlines a very convincing theory that the media recently bought into an obvious myth in a way which may have inadvertently protected Trump from perhaps his biggest scandal yet.

Recently we were told that a previously little-known GOP fundraiser named Elliott Broidy was immediately forced to resign from his position in the party because it was revealed that he had paid, through Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen, former Playboy model Shera Bechard $1.6 million to cover up an affair and possible abortion. My “blink” reaction on Twitter to this story was that it did not add up, though even I did not immediately conclude, as Paul Campos has in this piece, that Broidy was actually taking the fall for Trump himself.

After reading Campos’ in-depth analysis, we should all be embarrassed that we ever gave Broidy’s narrative even the slightest bit of credibility. Campos systematically decimates every aspect of the original unrealistic storyline like it was an episode of Sharknado. Quite literally, there is not one aspect of the current “plot” which makes sense, and only one element which doesn’t totally fit Campos’ alternative theory that it was really Trump, and not Broidy, who impregnated a Playboy model.

I always start at the most basic human level when evaluating the plausibility of any narrative which doesn’t at least pass the smell test. What struck me first here was that it seemed impossible that Broidy, and older, non-famous, long-married man would have had found himself in a situation in which he impregnated a top Playboy model to begin with.

Then there was also the issue of why he would pay so much money to cover up something which would not have had that much impact on his life if it had somehow come out naturally. It is important to note that there is no current evidence that his wife has even left him over this “revelation.”
But Campos goes far deeper in deconstructing the absurd current conventional wisdom about what supposedly happened here. When you look at the details (things which the modern media all-to-often has neither the time nor the wisdom to fully evaluate) of the business/legal aspects, it is actually laughable that it has taken this long for a mainstream media outlet to seriously question Broidy’s narrative.

Specifically, when you look at the motives of everyone involved in this, it all makes far more sense for Trump to have had the affair and possibly facilitated an abortion, Cohen to turn the super-rich Briody to pay Bechard off, and for Briody to take the blame to protect Trump while also obtaining huge leverage over the president of the United States, which was theoretically worth far more than $1.6 million to him." [Source]

Today, knowing that it would blow up the news cycle, Donald trump announced that he is pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal. He did it because he wanted us to talk about something else besides his distasteful and reckless behavior. He could care less about foreign policy and the impact on his decisions on the safety of the American people who elected him.   

Sadly, looking at the way that the media has been covering the story, it looks like he might have gotten his wish. 

*Pic from dailykos.com

The heat is on.

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"just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys,” praising Cohen as a “good man” and saying this is a “disgraceful situation.”

I"It's an attack on our country,....It's an attack on what we all stand for."

The President said he’s been cooperating with the special counsel and he wants to tackle serious issues but there’s this “witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now”

“It’s a disgrace,”  It’s frankly a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country, in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for… A whole new level of unfairness.”

Extraordinary stuff! Think about this. The office of the personal lawyer to the president of the United Sates was raided by federal agents today. This will not end well.

And FYI Mr. trump, they did not "break" into your attorney's office. They had a warrant, and in order to get that warrant they had to go to a Judge.  Apparently the Judge found that there was enough probable cause to believe that there is something there.  And it's not a "witch hunt"; it's a crook hunt, and I hope that they catch the biggest crook to sit in the office of the president since Richard Nixon.  

Shamefully, the president also tried to make this a partisan matter, and he made some dangerous and extraordinary statements in front of his military leaders. Of course there is nothing partisan about what is happening to trump and his lawyer. Why do I say this? Because almost all of the major players in trump's nightmare are republicans, and his own appointees have their prints all over this matter.

"It's an attack on our country" 

No it's not. It's the chickens coming home to roost, and Mr Mueller and company getting closer to the truth. The fact that Mr. trump is in full panic mode should tell us all something.

During the campaign against Hilary Clinton, trump and his supporters were chanting "lock her up".
Of course no one is laughing harder than Hillary Clinton these days.

Someone will be definitely locked up soon, but it won't be Hillary Clinton.

*Pic from liberalsamerica.org

Stay away from "shiny objects".

To quote Uncle Joe Biden, this Russian story with the trump administration is "kind of a big deal".

Now comes word that the president's lawyer, Michael Cohen, hand delivered a peace plan for Russia and Ukraine to former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. and in it he outlined a plan to ease the sanctions against Russia. It's scary stuff. From all accounts the twitter in chief did not even know about this "plan".

Throw in the fact that James Comey, the FBI director, delivered a classified briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday, and now there is a call for a bipartisan investigation into the administration's Russian problem.

Still don't think it's a "big deal"?

Well on Friday that same Senate Intelligence Committeee sent letters to a dozen agencies and individuals and they directed them to preserve records related to the investigation of Russia trying to influence the 2016 elections.  (In other words, do not delete the e-mails.)

I am hoping that we won't continue to get caught up with the "shiny object" strategy of Herr trump. His constant screeching and twitter outbursts about things such as crowd sizes and who is--- or isn't showing him love shouldn't let us lose sight of the real serious issues facing his administration.

They are issues that could derail this presidency and put the I word on the table.

It's President's Day, so it's a good time to remind ourselves that not all presidents are created equal, and that some of them, history will now show, were not even meant for the job.