“We’re starting in Wisconsin because, as you remember, there wasn’t a lot of campaigning in Wisconsin in 2016. With me, that changes… I’m going to be there a lot.”
— Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), quoted by the Washington Post, on her first presidential campaign stops.
“I will not vote for Donald Trump. Ever.”
— Erick Erickson, writing for The Resurgent, February 22, 2016.
“I’ll be voting for President Trump and Vice President Pence in 2020”
— Erickson, writing for The Resurgent, February 11, 2019.
“Those who think the Mueller investigation will die out with a whimper are dreaming. This is a pretext to allow them to remove both Trump and Pence and replace them with Leather Face—I mean, Nancy Pelosi—and then she can appoint Hillary Clinton as V.P. That’s been the agenda from the beginning.”
— Roger Stone, in an interview with the New Yorker.
ABC News: “On the copy of Stone’s indictment filed to the official docket for his case, a marking from the U.S. district court clerk’s office reveals it has a ‘related case’ — the July 13 indictment against a dozen Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.”
“The seven charges against Stone are for allegedly lying to lawmakers and attempting to intimidate a witness. Legal experts said the assertion that the hacking case is ‘related’ means the prosecutors consider both cases to be part of a larger story.”
“The marking indicates prosecutors see a ‘common nucleus of facts’ in the cases.”
Garrett Graff: “The one thing that remains clear is just how much Mueller knows: He’s uncovered ‘track changes’ in individual Microsoft Word documents, he’s referenced what specific words Russian military intelligence officers Googled three years ago, and even what the hired trolls inside the Internet Research Agency wrote to family members. Long before the House Intelligence Committee today kicked over a few dozen transcripts, Mueller amassed some 290,000 documents from Michael Cohen, tons more from the Trump transition team, and what the White House says is 1.4 million documents it turned over voluntarily, among countless other files, documents, reports, and classified raw intelligence.”
“Given that foundation of knowledge, it’s worth examining some of the ‘known unknowns,’ places where Mueller has been silent but where he presumably knows far more than he’s chosen to say.”
Sergei Millian, a Belarus-born businessman who was the source of the “pee-tape” allegations in the infamous Steele dossier, built a close relationship with Trump aide George Papadopoulos in 2016 and offered to serve as a go-between for the Trump campaign and an author with connections to the Russian government, the Washington Post reports.
The new report suggests Millian was closer to Trump’s campaign than was previously known.
“House Democrats plan to move quickly to protect special counsel Robert Mueller and ensure his findings are made public, in their first move since taking power to confront the White House over the Russia investigation,” Politico reports.
“Still undetermined, however, is whether Democrats would pass a combined package or one measure to prevent President Trump from firing Mueller and another to ensure the release of his final report.”
BuzzFeed News published a cache of internal Trump Organization documents that “lay bare the secret negotiations” to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, long after Michael Cohen claimed the deal had been abandoned.
“The documents, many of which have been exclusively obtained by BuzzFeed News, reveal that — despite Trump’s claim that the development was never more than a passing notion — the effort to get the tower built was long-running, detail-oriented and directly entwined with the ups and downs of his campaign.”
“As Trump went from rally to rally, vociferously denying any dealings in Russia, his representatives, Michael Cohen and his associate Felix Sater, worked with Trump Organization lawyers and even Ivanka Trump to push forward negotiations to build a 100-story edifice just miles from the Kremlin. The fixers believed they needed Putin’s support to pull off the lucrative deal, and they planned to use Trump’s public praise for him to help secure it. At the same time, they plotted to persuade Putin to openly declare his support for Trump’s candidacy.”
Nate Silver: “We do see, however, that it is a natural group for independent or third-party candidates to pursue. On average between the various issue combinations, 8 percent of socially-liberal-but-fiscally-conservative voters went for candidates other than Clinton and Trump in 2016, a bit larger than the overall third-party vote in 2016, which was around 6 percent.”
“But the headline is that, when choosing between the major-party candidates, these voters were more likely to go for Trump than Clinton. Among the 25 combinations of socially liberal and fiscally conservative views, Trump won the most votes 19 times, Clinton did so five times, and there was one draw. And on average between the 25 combinations, Trump won 52 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 40 percent. That’s not a huge margin: a 12-point edge among 16 percent of the electorate. But it adds up to enough voters that, if all of them had gone for a third party instead, Clinton would have won Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida, and therefore the Electoral College.”
“A Russian-born lobbyist who attended the controversial Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 received a series of suspicious payments totaling half a million dollars before and after the encounter,” BuzzFeed News reports.
“Documents show that Rinat Akhmetshin, a Soviet military officer turned Washington lobbyist, deposited large, round-number amounts of cash in the months preceding and following the meeting, where a Russian lawyer offered senior Trump campaign officials dirt on Hillary Clinton.”
“The lobbyist also received a large payment that bank investigators deemed suspicious from Denis Katsyv, whose company Prevezon Holdings was accused by the US Justice Department of laundering the proceeds of a $230 million Russian tax fraud.”
“The federal judge who must decide whether Paul Manafort lied to investigators after pledging to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe began a hearing Monday in a sealed courtroom to discuss secret evidence gathered by the government,” Bloomberg reports.
New York Times: “Mr. Trump’s loan request, which has not been previously reported, set off a fight that reached the top of the German bank, according to three people familiar with the request. In the end, Deutsche Bank did something unexpected. It said no.”
“Senior officials at the bank, including its future chief executive, believed that Mr. Trump’s divisive candidacy made such a loan too risky, the people said. Among their concerns was that if Mr. Trump won the election and then defaulted, Deutsche Bank would have to choose between not collecting on the debt or seizing the assets of the president of the United States.”
“Roger Stone made multiple media appearances in Washington on Thursday, talking freely with reporters before he was set to appear in court on Friday and likely face a gag order from a judge,” Reuters reports.
“Senate investigators have obtained new information showing Donald Trump Jr.’s mysterious phone calls ahead of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting were not with his father,” CNN reports.
“Records provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee show the calls were between Trump Jr. and two of his business associates, the sources said, and appear to contradict Democrats’ long-held suspicions that the blocked number was from then-candidate Donald Trump.”
“CNN has not confirmed the identity of the business associates who spoke with Trump Jr. nor what they discussed on the calls. The purpose of the calls and their relevance to the Trump Tower meeting and the Russia investigation is still unclear.”
Federal investigators probing Roger Stone “have seized multiple hard drives containing years of communication records from cellphones and email accounts,” NBC News reports.
“Robert Mueller’s prosecutors, in a new court filing, described the evidence as ‘voluminous and complex’ in asking a judge to delay his trial to give them more time to sift through the seized devices.”
Former Gov. Chris Christie writes in Let Me Finish that Gov. John Kasich called him after the New Hampshire primary in 2016:
He asked how I was doing. I told him, okay, considering. “You know what happened to you, don’t you, Chris?” he said.
I told him I didn’t.
“God wanted you to play right field, and you insisted on playing shortstop. No matter how many times God told you to play right field, you insisted on playing shortstop. And last night, you went out to shortstop, and the ball went through your legs.”
Right there, I understood why so many people in politics despised John Kasich.
“I hardly think that they were organized enough to put together a Tom Clancy-type operation with Russia. Now, I could be proven wrong on that because, as I said, I was not there most of the time from, I’d say about June or so going through all the way to the election because I was spending my time in the transition.”
— Former Gov. Chris Christie (R), when asked by NPR whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.
“After a publicity-filled weekend spent asserting his innocence and slamming investigators, Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone will appear before a federal judge who may look to muzzle him as the case moves forward,” the AP reports.
“Stone faces a Tuesday morning arraignment in Washington and is expected to plead not guilty to charges that he lied to lawmakers, engaged in witness tampering and obstructed a congressional investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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