Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[kenberg]

Nate Silver's McCain Punditry Mini-Rant:

 

 

Silver's generational divide observation is interesting. We saw this here in differences of opinion about racism in America by two highly regarded WC posters.

 

Trump is the prototypical con man who doesn't have any illusions and who seems to understand what Chicago Trib art critic Chris Jones calls the new radical democratization of culture aka the exuberant expression of self which, I think, is an unfathomable concept for 99 percent of people born before 1945 and maybe even before 1975.

 

McCain, about whom David Foster Wallace wrote the following, seems to have spent the last 20+ years conning himself and anyone else who would listen.

 

 

This is the guy who picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.

 

This post is primarily about McCain, I understand that, but I found the Chris Jones column perhaps provocative, I am not sure what the right word is. He speaks of taking his son to a play:

 

The young understand what is going on better than the old.

 

To wit: I took my 12-year-old son to see "Pass Over," the intense play by Antoinette Nwandu at the Steppenwolf Theatre about young African-American men dodging bullets on street corners and the catalyst for protests against Weiss. I'd decided that his fortunate young self needed a lesson in how many of his fellow Chicagoans could not walk the dog with the same level of safety as with which he walks the dog on the North Side. I figured we were in for a rough ride in terms of language — and we sure were — but I also know he hears that same language on his headphones and I knew I could trust Steppenwolf to employ it with democratic purpose. After the play I asked him what he thought.

 

 

If he wants to explore contrasts, then and now, this is a place to start. For one thing, my father never took me to a play, to the best of my knowledge he never saw a play. But, and this is my main point, if he ever had taken me to a play it would have been for the same reason he took me fishing, hunting, to boxing matches and so on. He would have done so because he enjoyed these things and he thought/hoped that I would also. If he felt I needed instruction on race relations he would have said what he thought. Short and to the point, saves time and money, and if we ever got to a play we would go for the enjoyment. I recall that he took me to some movies: Bambi, "Your mother can't be with you and more", Key Largo "Rocco wants more" and Salome, for which I can't recall any dialogue but there was this dance by Ms. Hayworth. None of this was for instructional purposes.

 

To me, this seems like one of the major then and now changes. I saw No Exit and I saw Pirates of Penzance when I was young. If either was supposed to instruct me in anything, that was up to me to figure out if I felt like it. And nobody had to take me.

 

Jones makes us all sound passive back then. I don't think so. We saw what we wanted, thought about it however we thought about it. I quit going to church for moral instruction when I was quite young, again this was my choice, and I have never wanted to go to plays for moral instruction.

Despite disagreement, I read the whole column and I may well see what Tepper has to say, I had never heard of him. There are differences then and now, many of them I think are pretty easy to spot, but worth thinking about.

 

[Winstonm]

Clinton said 1/2 Trump supporters were deplorables; I said they were stupid. Turns out we were both wrong.

 

Roughly half of voters who said they voted for Donald Trump last November, 49 percent, believe Trump won the popular vote, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

 

They are stuplorables. :P

 

 

But seriously, how can there be a meaningful discussion with people this far removed from reality? After all, I signed up for an argument and all I'm getting is contradiction.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

[y66]

From A Trump Tower of Absolute Folly by Conservative columnist Ross Douthat:

 

Donald Trump’s campaign against his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, in which he is seemingly attempting to insult and humiliate and tweet-shame Sessions into resignation, is an insanely stupid exercise. It is a multitiered tower of political idiocy, a sublime monument to the moronic, a gaudy, gleaming, Ozymandian folly that leaves many of the president’s prior efforts in its shade.

 

Let us walk through the levels of stupidity one by one. First there is the policy level — generally the lowest, least important in Trumpworld, but still worth exploring.

 

To the extent that any figure in the Trump administration both embodies “Trumpism” and seems capable of executing its policy ambitions, it is Sessions, who is using his office to strictly enforce immigration laws and pursue an old-school law-and-order agenda.

 

You may hate his agenda (as most liberals do) or dislike parts of it (as I do), but it is clearly the agenda that Trump ran on, and the attorney general’s office is one of the few places where it is being effectively pursued. So cashiering Sessions would be a remarkable statement (though hardly the first) that the president cares almost nothing for his own alleged platform and governing philosophy.

 

Next in our tower of folly is the institutional level. Trump has had difficulty staffing his administration, his secretary of state is muttering about leaving, and his White House is riven by factionalism and paranoia. Meanwhile, he is both under investigation by Senate Republicans and dependent on their good will to keep the investigations contained to just the Russia business.

 

Trying to defenestrate Sessions, the lone Republican senator in Trump’s corner during the primary campaign and a popular figure among his former Senate colleagues, will make things worse for the president on both fronts. It demonstrates a level of disloyalty that should send sane people running from Trump’s service, it tells other cabinet members to get out while the getting’s good (and to leak and undermine like crazy on their way), and it further alienates Republican senators whom Trump needs to confirm appointees (including any Sessions replacement) and to go easy on his scandals.

 

Next on our tour is the level of mass politics, where Trump’s war on Sessions is one of the few things short of a recession that could hurt him with his base — which he needs to hold, since he isn’t doing anything to persuade anyone outside it.

 

Of course many Trump supporters will side with him no matter what and lots don’t care about Sessions one way or another. But the Trumpian core also includes conservatives who like Sessions for ideological reasons, who trust Trump in part because Sessions vouched for him, and who don’t like or trust very many other people (the family, the New Yorkers, the ex-Democrats) in Trump’s inner circle. Which is why Trump’s campaign against Sessions has already brought him negative coverage from Breitbart, Tucker Carlson and various pro-Trump or anti-anti-Trump pundits — making it an extraordinary act of political malpractice from a White House that lacks a cushion for such follies.

 

Next there is the legal level. By his own admission, Trump’s beef with Sessions centers on the attorney general’s recusal from the Russia investigation, which from Trump’s perspective led to the appointment of a special counsel he now obviously yearns to fire.

 

This blame-Sessions perspective is warped, since it was Trump’s decision to fire James Comey (an earlier monumental folly) that was actually decisive in putting Robert Mueller on the case. But regardless of whether he has his facts straight, Trump’s logic is a straightforward admission that he wants to eject his attorney general because Sessions has not adequately protected him from legal scrutiny — an argument that at once reveals Trump’s usual contempt for laws and norms and also suggests (not for the first time) that he has something so substantial to hide that only omertà-style loyalty will do.

 

Which, of course — now we’ve reached the peak of the tower of folly — he probably will not get if Sessions goes, because no hatchet man will win easy confirmation, and until Sessions is replaced the acting attorney general will be Rod Rosenstein, the man who appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel in the first place!

 

So it’s basically madness all the way to the top: bad policy, bad strategy, bad politics, bad legal maneuvering, bad optics, a self-defeating venture carried out via deranged-as-usual tweets and public insults.

 

And if it were any other president behaving like this — well, rather than repeat arguments I’ve made before, I’ll quote Bloomberg View’s Megan McArdle, writing a few months ago in response to my admittedly extreme suggestion that Trump’s behavior might justify removal under the 25th Amendment:

 

Imagine, if you will, that George W. Bush had started acting like Donald Trump partway into his second term …. Is there any question that people would be talking about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him? Not for political reasons, but because it would be obvious that some tragic mental impairment had befallen the commander in chief.

 

Adults of mature years know not to engage in histrionic self-pity in public, not necessarily because they avoid self-pity, but because outside of high school parties, this is a singularly ineffective way to make people like and support you. Competent leaders do not preside over staff who are leaking what is essentially one long and anguished primal scream to any reporter they can get to hold still. Seasoned professionals do not, suddenly and for no apparent reason, say things in public that make them better targets for legal investigations …

And so the only possible explanation for such a quick succession of stunning lapses in judgment would be a severe stroke, an aggressive brain tumor or some other neurological disaster that had rendered him unfit to continue in office, at least until it could be treated. I don’t even think this would be controversial, even among his supporters. “Poor fellow,” they’d murmur, “the strain of the office has destroyed his health. He has given more than his life for his country.” Time to let him rest and heal while someone else shoulders his Sisyphean burdens.

 

Trump hasn’t had a stroke or suffered a neurological disaster, and his behavior in the White House is no different from the behavior he manifested consistently while winning enough votes to take the presidency.

 

But he is nonetheless clearly impaired, gravely deficient somewhere at the intersection of reason and judgment and conscience and self-control. Pointing this out is wearying and repetitive, but still it must be pointed out.

 

You can be as loyal as Jeff Sessions and still suffer the consequences of that plain and inescapable truth: This president should not be the president, and the sooner he is not, the better.

Indeed.

[kenberg]

I select a part of the above:

Trump hasn't had a stroke or suffered a neurological disaster, and his behavior in the White House is no different from the behavior he manifested consistently while winning enough votes to take the presidency. But he is nonetheless clearly impaired, gravely deficient somewhere at the intersection of reason and judgment and conscience and self-control. Pointing this out is wearying and repetitive, but still it must be pointed out.

 

This is how I, and quite a few others, thought of him from the beginning. He is worse than I expected, but it's a matter of degree. I expected awful, we got whatever is worse than awful.

 

Ken Starr, yes that Ken Starr, has a column in the WaPo this morning telling Trump to cut it out. But I quote his closing paragraph.

 

Mr. President, for the sake of the country, and for your own legacy, please listen to the growing chorus of voices who want you to succeed — by being faithful to the oath of office you took on Jan. 20 and by upholding the traditions of a nation of laws, not of men.

 

 

Succeed at what? I general wish for a successful presidency, regardless of whether he (maybe someday she) was my choice or not. But with this president, any wish for success brings the immediate question "at what?". This stuff with Sessions is not an anomaly in an otherwise carefully thought out agenda, this stuff is Trump being Trump.

 

We have a serious problem here.

[Winstonm]

I select a part of the above:

[/color]

 

This is how I, and quite a few others, thought of him from the beginning. He is worse than I expected, but it's a matter of degree. I expected awful, we got whatever is worse than awful.

 

Ken Starr, yes that Ken Starr, has a column in the WaPo this morning telling Trump to cut it out. But I quote his closing paragraph.

 

[/font]

 

 

Succeed at what? I general wish for a successful presidency, regardless of whether he (maybe someday she) was my choice or not. But with this president, any wish for success brings the immediate question "at what?". This stuff with Sessions is not an anomaly in an otherwise carefully thought out agenda, this stuff is Trump being Trump.

 

We have a serious problem here.

 

 

Even in my 30s and 40s, I would have scoffed at the idea of a true crisis of our way of governance, that a nation of laws could be dangerously challenged to ignore law and become in essence a banaba republic following the whims of men, But now that 61 million people cast their vote for an ignorant lawless demagogue to lead the nation, that threat is real.

 

In the last few days, Newt Gingrich went on NPR and attacked the DOJ as a bastion of liberal bias - using the same playbook of liberal-bashing accusation that worked so well to turn so many against the free press. Anthony Scaramucci, the new WH communication director is threatening Reince Prebus, the chief of staff, with an FBI investigation for leaking Scaramucci's financial records (non-classified), and the president himself has been on a crusade to disparage the Attorney General for not protecting him but using the power of the federal government to persecute a political rival who has been defeated. The president's continued attacks on the free press have a cumulative effect - just yesterday there was a poll that claimed 1/3 of Republicans polled wanted Congress to shut down press that published "false stories".

 

If the object was to shake up the establishment, mission accomplished. Now it's time to move on and rid ourselves of this administration. The sooner the better and with the least damage to the country as possible.

 

This means Republicans have to step up and oppose lawlessness, corruption, and nepotism. I can't see this happening.

[mike777]

Even in my 30s and 40s, I would have scoffed at the idea of a true crisis of our way of governance, that a nation of laws could be dangerously challenged to ignore law and become in essence a banaba republic following the whims of men, But now that 61 million people cast their vote for an ignorant lawless demagogue to lead the nation, that threat is real.

 

In the last few days, Newt Gingrich went on NPR and attacked the DOJ as a bastion of liberal bias - using the same playbook of liberal-bashing accusation that worked so well to turn so many against the free press. Anthony Scaramucci, the new WH communication director is threatening Reince Prebus, the chief of staff, with an FBI investigation for leaking Scaramucci's financial records (non-classified), and the president himself has been on a crusade to disparage the Attorney General for not protecting him but using the power of the federal government to persecute a political rival who has been defeated. The president's continued attacks on the free press have a cumulative effect - just yesterday there was a poll that claimed 1/3 of Republicans polled wanted Congress to shut down press that published "false stories".

 

If the object was to shake up the establishment, mission accomplished. Now it's time to move on and rid ourselves of this administration. The sooner the better and with the least damage to the country as possible.

 

This means Republicans have to step up and oppose lawlessness, corruption, and nepotism. I can't see this happening.

 

An argument for smaller government. An argument for more local government over local issues. An argument for regional government over local regions. An argument for more inactivity by the federal government which forces all of us to make more of an effort to try and solve our own problems. Just like our kids are better off if we force them to try and solve their own problems without running to mommy and daddy to solve them. You express the fear of conservatives, the fear of the rise of tyranny in a powerful central government. A central government that more and more people become dependent on to solve their problems.

 

There is a role for a strong federal government in issues such as Defense or criminal activity that spreads beyond a local.

[awm]

The belief in local government over federal is common and might've been valid years ago, but in the modern world I have doubts.

 

All Americans know who the president is. Most can name their US senator and state governor. How many know the name of their county commissioner? School board members? State legislature rep? I'd bet most folks cannot name these people! Voting for these offices is also pretty random -- you vote by party or based on a short statement or something; hard to believe you're more informed than on a presidential vote, where you saw three debates, endless news coverage and paid ads, etc.

 

Also, much of the worst and most indefensible over regulation is at the local level. Why? Easier for a business to bribe a small time local politician, less likely for the press to pick up on a local issue, etc. Most of the regulation small business owners hate is local stuff.

 

So I dunno why local government is supposed to be better, they seem in general less accountable.

[Winstonm]

An argument for smaller government. An argument for more local government over local issues. An argument for regional government over local regions. An argument for more inactivity by the federal government which forces all of us to make more of an effort to try and solve our own problems. Just like our kids are better off if we force them to try and solve their own problems without running to mommy and daddy to solve them. You express the fear of conservatives, the fear of the rise of tyranny in a powerful central government. A central government that more and more people become dependent on to solve their problems.

 

There is a role for a strong federal government in issues such as Defense or criminal activity that spreads beyond a local.

 

Then why not break apart into nation states? City states?

 

Might it be that most humans have moved past the Dark Ages into The Enlightenment and realize that cooperation among many solves more problems than hunkering inside a bunker and throwing stones?

An argument for more inactivity by the federal government which forces all of us to make more of an effort to try and solve our own problems. Just like our kids are better off if we force them to try and solve their own problems without running to mommy and daddy to solve them.

 

And here you make the assumption so readily accepted by the right wingers that all people have situations as cozy and comfy as their own children.

[Winstonm]

I think Donald Trump has an affinity for Vladimir Putin as he finds him a kindred spirit, someone willing to do anything to promote his personal wealth and power. This, from The Atlantic, about the Magnitsky Act may help explain why Trump and Putin met at dinner to talk about "adoptions".

 

In all of the drama over the Russian interference in America’s 2016 election, it’s easy to forget just how corrupt Russia is, and how much corruption and money flows still determine the official course of action. The Magnitsky Act so angered the Russians because it targeted what really mattered to them; it went after Russian elites’ raison d’être. It’s why Senator John McCain called it a “pro-Russia” law, and many in the Russian opposition agreed: it went after not the Russian people, but the elites who stole from them with brazen impunity. The law hit the mark so precisely and painfully that the elite lashed out fiercely enough to do what neither the Magnitsky Act nor the 2014 sanctions did: They targeted their own, most vulnerable citizens—as if they haven’t stolen from them enough.

 

This interview helps explain the association between the trumps and Russia.

Seva Gunitsky

Again, this doesn't start with the election; it starts with Russian oligarch money pouring into Trump's real estate and casino businesses. Many of them Trump has been working with for years, well before he developed any serious political ambitions. And we’re not talking about small change here; we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. Possibly even enough to keep Trump out of another bankruptcy.

[y66]

From the archives:

 

And even the most flagrant sinners can repent. In 1991, Lee Atwater apologized for what he had done to Dukakis and other Democratic “enemies.” Dying from a brain tumor, he published an extended mea culpa in Life. “Long before I was struck with cancer, I felt something stirring in American society,” he wrote. “It was a sense among the people of the country—Republicans and Democrats alike—that something was missing from their lives, something crucial. I was trying to position the Republican Party to take advantage of it. But I wasn’t exactly sure what ‘it’ was. My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood.” With forgivable grandiosity, he called for the leaders of the nineties to “speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.” Atwater’s vision is unfulfilled, but it looks a lot like what these candidates claim they want for the country.

Senate Rejects Slimmed-Down Obamacare Repeal as McCain Votes No

[Winstonm]

I think this from WaPo is the most accurate assessment of Trump's motivations I have read:

 

For Trump, this has never been about improving our health-care system. Trump, who visibly had no idea how the ACA works or what was in the various GOP replacements, and who openly said he would sign whatever Republicans put in front of him, just wanted to boast of a “win” while triumphantly using Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement as his own personal toilet paper roll.

 

Trump seems so small and inconsequential that he simply wants spiteful revenge for the black man who poked fun at him at a Correspondence dinner

. He cares nothing about the country or its citizens but seem all-encompassed with destroying anything Barrack Obama accomplished or stood for.

[jjbrr]

So long, Shouty Spice. You lost your integrity, became a national joke, and received immeasurable abuse for 6 months of employment. Good look opening that Dippin' Dots stand!

 

Goodnight, sweet Preince.

[Al_U_Card]

Goodnight, sweet Preince.

Will experience in the Trump administration become a "resume stain" ?

[jjbrr]

Association with the trump administration is already some kind of stain, without a doubt.

 

"Your Sessions has ended" is obviously going to be low hanging fruit. I'd like to not think about a farewell if Mueller or Murkowski turn up dead of "mysterious causes".

 

Shouty Coked Out MOOCH is an unbelievable caricature of a caricature of a caricature. I suppose Melania is staring at the TV at MRS MOOCH longingly before sobbing uncontrollably for hours on end.

 

What a time to be alive in the internet age.

[Winstonm]

Here is the reason the USA Today sees as why the Russia investigation will take a long time.

[ldrews]

Here is the reason the USA Today sees as why the Russia investigation will take a long time.

 

Yeah, but I think the Fusion GPS case, the extensive unmasking of US Citizens by the Obama Administration staff, the Awan brothers apparent fraud and who knows what else with Debbie Wasserman and other legislators, and the alleged leaking by the FBI Counsel are more interesting stories.

 

And now one of the intelligence committees is calling for Special Counsel to investigate the Hillary Clinton email/Comey/Loretta Lynch episodes.

 

I hope you have several years supply of popcorn.

[rmnka447]

Here is link to William Browder's opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee during their hearing on the renewal of the FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act).

 

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/bill-browders-testimony-to-the-senate-judiciary-committee-on-russia-magnitsky-act-full-text/article/2629846

 

It is fascinating reading.

 

In the follow up questioning, he was asked if the Russians would try to gain access to both campaigns and he strongly affirmed that they would. He said their objective would be to sow discord or do anything they could to weaken or compromise our system of government. So they would play both sides against the middle.

 

He firmly asserted that the Russian government indirectly funded a Fusion GPS smear campaign against Magnitsky and him to prevent passage of the Magnitsky act. He stated in his testimony that Fusion and a number of other Washington lobbying organizations should have been registered as agents of a foreign government under the FARA Act. But in a subsequent interview on FOX, he stated that he didn't have any knowledge about whether there were any further dealings between Russia and Fusion. Fusion GPS was working with the Dems on "opposition research" about Donald Trump during the campaign.

 

(Hey, Winnie, remember when I asked about possible Russian attempts to infiltrate the Clinton campaign and you vehemently denied they'd let that happen. Welcome to the real world of cloak and dagger!)

[Winstonm]

Yeah, but I think the Fusion GPS case, the extensive unmasking of US Citizens by the Obama Administration staff, the Awan brothers apparent fraud and who knows what else with Debbie Wasserman and other legislators, and the alleged leaking by the FBI Counsel are more interesting stories.

 

And now one of the intelligence committees is calling for Special Counsel to investigate the Hillary Clinton email/Comey/Loretta Lynch episodes.

 

I hope you have several years supply of popcorn.

 

Just by regurgitating the "unmasking" BS I can tell you are trolling. The rest of your post is about idiotic sideshows designed to infatuate idiots.

[Winstonm]

Here is link to William Browder's opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee during their hearing on the renewal of the FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act).

 

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/bill-browders-testimony-to-the-senate-judiciary-committee-on-russia-magnitsky-act-full-text/article/2629846

 

It is fascinating reading.

 

In the follow up questioning, he was asked if the Russians would try to gain access to both campaigns and he strongly affirmed that they would. He said their objective would be to sow discord or do anything they could to weaken or compromise our system of government. So they would play both sides against the middle.

 

He firmly asserted that the Russian government indirectly funded a Fusion GPS smear campaign against Magnitsky and him to prevent passage of the Magnitsky act. He stated in his testimony that Fusion and a number of other Washington lobbying organizations should have been registered as agents of a foreign government under the FARA Act. But in a subsequent interview on FOX, he stated that he didn't have any knowledge about whether there were any further dealings between Russia and Fusion. Fusion GPS was working with the Dems on "opposition research" about Donald Trump during the campaign.

 

(Hey, Winnie, remember when I asked about possible Russian attempts to infiltrate the Clinton campaign and you vehemently denied they'd let that happen. Welcome to the real world of cloak and dagger!)

 

I read this at The Atlantic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/bill-browders-testimony-to-the-senate-judiciary-committee/534864/

[ldrews]

Just by regurgitating the "unmasking" BS I can tell you are trolling. The rest of your post is about idiotic sideshows designed to infatuate idiots.

 

Let me regugitate this: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/interactive/2017/07/27/letter-from-nunes-to-coats-on-unmasking.html

[PassedOut]

Conservative columnist George F. Will sees a bright side in the presidency of Donald J. Trump: Trump is something the nation did not know it needed

 

Sessions serves at the pleasure of the president, who does not seem pleased. Still, sympathy for Sessions is in order: What is he to do? If dignity concerned him, he would resign; but if it did, he would not occupy a Trump-bestowed office from which to resign. Such are the conundrums of current politics. Concerning which, there is excessive gloom.

 

To see what is in front of ones nose, George Orwell wrote, needs a constant struggle. An unnoticed reason for cheerfulness is that in one, if only one, particular, Trump is something the nation did not know it needed: a feeble president whose manner can cure the nations excessive fixation with the presidency.

Still, it's hard to forget that Will is the columnist who "bet his reputation" on a landslide Romney victory -- with Romney carrying even Minnesota -- just before Romney's unsurprising loss to Obama. Maybe, though, Trump's incompetence and feebleness will indeed force a more bipartisan congress, as we saw this week when both democrats and republicans worked together to stop the Trumpcare bill in the senate.

[PassedOut]

duplicate

[Winstonm]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/04/04/what-unmasking-how-intelligence-agencies-treat-us-citizens/100026368/

 

A factual description of the unmasking process.

[Winstonm]

WaPo reports about the Fusion GPS/Steele dossier:

 

Fusion GPS has said that it was working for the law firm BakerHostetler, which was representing Prevezon, a Russian holding company based in Cyprus, in its defense against Justice Department allegations that Prevezon laundered money stolen in the fraud Magnitsky uncovered. Veselnitskaya was Prevezon’s lawyer. Fusion GPS started working on the case in 2013 and the case settled in May with no admission of guilt by Prevezon.

 

Fusion GPS told me its work on the Prevezon case had nothing to do with the 2016 presidential election and they were not involved in the outreach to the Trump campaign.

 

“Fusion GPS learned about this meeting from news reports and had no prior knowledge of it,” the company told me in a statement. “Any claim that Fusion GPS arranged or facilitated this meeting in any way is false.”

 

As a subcontractor for BakerHostetler, Fusion GPS would not have been required to register under FARA. Senators may want to know why BakerHostetler decided that it did not need to register. Neither Veselnitskaya nor Mark Cymrot of BakerHostetler, who handled the Prevezon case, responded to requests for comment.

 

 

Regardless, senators on the committee may now use the FARA hearing to press Justice Department officials on what they know about Veselnitskaya, Prevezon, Fusion GPS and their connections to both the Trump campaign or the Russian government.

 

Prevezon is owned by Russian businessman Denis Katsyv. His father, Pyotr Katsyv, was vice premier and minister of transport of Moscow region from 2004 to 2012. Katsyv’s deputy minister was Alexander Mitusov, Veselnitskaya’s ex husband.

 

Fusion GPS began its separate work on the Trump-Russia connections in October 2015, working for unnamed Republican clients. After Trump won the primary, Democratic funders continued to push the effort. Christopher Steele, the former MI6 officer who compiled the dossier, was brought on in May 2016.

 

There’s no evidence that the work Fusion GPS did for BakerHostetler on behalf of Prevezon and their work on the Trump dossier were connected. In fact, the former seems to advance Russian interests while the latter is hugely problematic for the Russian government. It’s entirely possible that the firm was working on two separate Russia-related projects for clients who had opposing interests, roughly at the same time.

 

If the Trump team continues to allege the two cases are related, the congressional and perhaps federal inquiries into the firm could be just getting started. And Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Donald Trump Jr. is not mentioned in the dossier the firm produced for its American political clients.

[ldrews]

WaPo reports about the Fusion GPS/Steele dossier:

 

I no longer consider the Washington Post a reliable source of news.