Why Everyone Should Turn Off Online Movies Until They Finish Reading Proof Of Conspiracy - Plus A Brief Twitter Explanation

OK, it's hard to read Proof of Conspiracy because it doesn't come out until Tuesday September 3.  So you have the weekend to binge view.

I've already posted about Seth Abramson's previous book, Proof of Collusion which was like the background guide for the Mueller Report.

Here's an overview of what you'll get in Proof of Conspiracy from the author via a 15 Tweet thread:   [*For those who don't know a Tweet from a Thread, skip down to the bottom of this post]

Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
Aug 30
1/ Two things are simultaneously true:
(1) PROOF OF CONSPIRACY will shock you and profoundly alter your understanding of what the Trump presidency means for the whole world.
(2) PROOF OF CONSPIRACY is fully sourced: 3,250 endnotes and 4,330 citations are being published online.
2/ In fact, for the first time, I'm going to direct people to the website for the 378 pages (not a typo) of endnotes and citations for PROOF OF CONSPIRACY that are available for free online. All stem from the endnotes in the print book, which is 592 pages: https://static.macmillan.com/static/macmillan/proofofconspiracy/endnotes.pdf

3/ The Trump collusion narrative that lay outside the scope of the Mueller Report is larger by a factor of 5—at least—than what even those who've read the full Report have seen. Mueller focused on 1 crime and 1 country; PROOF OF CONSPIRACY looks at *many* crimes and 10 countries.
4/ Every day, America is rediscovering the narrowness of the Mueller Report. Not merely because the Report says at its beginning that Trumpworld witnesses withheld, hid, and destroyed evidence—making a proper, conclusive investigation impossible—but because the probe ended early.

5/ I'm not criticizing Mueller. I believe there were pressures/anxieties in play in his investigation we will one day discover. But the investigation ended with *all* counterintelligence information—a far greater stock of information than what was in the Report—being farmed out.

6/ The Mueller probe ended with key subpoenas unfulfilled, key witnesses unquestioned, key issues unlitigated, key cooperation deals wantonly broken, key lines of inquiry that lay outside the narrow scope of the investigation wholly—seemingly carelessly—unexplored. That's a fact.
7/ The problem we have is that not only did media do nothing to consider, explore, or reveal to news-watchers the *vast* narrative that lay outside the scope of the Mueller Report, it didn't even educate viewers on the *Mueller Report*.
Not Volume 1, at least. *That* it ignored.
8/ Tell most people that the Mueller Report reveals that Trump's top Russia adviser for the entirety of the 2016 campaign was a Soviet-born man who currently works for the Kremlin in Moscow and who Putin has described as a "friend," and they'll say, "No it doesn't."
But it does.

9/ Tell most people that the Mueller Report reveals that weeks before the 2016 election a Kremlin ally wrote Trump's lawyer to confirm the existence of blackmail videos of Trump, thereby issuing an implicit threat from the Kremlin, and they'll say, "No it doesn't."
But it does.

10/ Tell most people that the Mueller Report proves that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin—and that an indictment undergirded by that collusion couldn't be brought only because Trump convinced Manafort to lie to the feds—and they'll say, "No it doesn't."
But it does.


11/ Media has so ill-prepared us to understand the foundation upon which PROOF OF CONSPIRACY was written that the book must, at points, remind readers of these facts—with citations to the Report and elsewhere—in order to unfold its even-more-terrifying (and fully sourced) story.
10/ Tell most people that the Mueller Report proves that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin—and that an indictment undergirded by that collusion couldn't be brought only because Trump convinced Manafort to lie to the feds—and they'll say, "No it doesn't."
But it does.

11/ Media has so ill-prepared us to understand the foundation upon which PROOF OF CONSPIRACY was written that the book must, at points, remind readers of these facts—with citations to the Report and elsewhere—in order to unfold its even-more-terrifying (and fully sourced) story.

12/ What we've gotten, instead, is 1,000+ Trump propagandists like John Solomon or anyone at Fox News or Chuck Ross who are lying—bald-facedly lying—every day about what Volume 1 does and does not say, likely because they *haven't read it* and they assume no one else has, either.

13/ If you want to know how carefully documented PROOF OF CONSPIRACY is, consider that whereas most in media ignored Vol. 1 of the Mueller Report—and some lied about having read it and what's in it—I publicly live-tweeted my first reading of it in a thread spanning 500 tweets.

14/ What we're getting:
@ChrisCuomo
—a smart, dedicated journalist—arguing with profoundly dishonest Trump cultist
@KayleighMcEnany
.
What we deserve: Deep dives on the Saudi- and Emirati-funded Israeli disinformation campaign that the Trumps knew about and that helped Trump win.

15/ Upshot: I'm a ride-or-die Mueller-Report-Volume-1 nerd who owes nothing to corporate bosses or advertisers and will offer long-form analysis of a national emergency whether some scoff or not. I worked harder on PROOF OF CONSPIRACY than anything I've worked on in my life. /end

I'm thinking of sending this Tweet to my US Senators.  Dan Sullivan has said his staff has been reading the Mueller Report, but he hasn't.  Murkowski says it's slow, but she's plowing through it.    It should be high a priority.

And so should Proof of Conspiracy.  Maybe this author written set of Cliff Notes might help Sullivan.



*Tweets And Threads

Twitter is a kind of social media where members can post mini-blog posts of up to 280 characters. It used to be 140 characters but eventually they doubled it.

https://www.lifewire.com/twitter-slang-and-key-terms-explained-2655399is a post on Twitter.  They look like this:

EARTH TO DAN SULLIVAN @SenDanSullivan
Critically ill Immigrant kids are being cut-off from medical treatment by the Trump Administration! @POTUS
Do you care?@lisamurkowski @DrAlGrossAK @adn @JuneauEmpire @FDNMPolitics

— Elstun (@ElstunL) September 1, 2019

People can add photos and videos.  And people can comment as well.  But you're limited, as I said, to 280 characters.  People can have a Twitter name (here, it's Elstun) and a @elstonL is how you find him.  The @SenDanSullivan in this post will let Sullivan know he's been mentioned in a Tweet.  There's lots more.  Here's a page which explains key Twitter terms.  I mention all this because I know many people never look at Twitter, even though they hear about the President tweeting every day.

A Thread is a series of Tweets all connected.  This is a way to say more than you can with just 280 characters.

I chose not to 'embed' Seth's Twitter Thread (then it would have looked like it does on Twitter) so I could edit out things that you really don't need, including all the comments.  But if you want, here's the same link as in the beginning which will take you to Seth's Twitter Thread on Twitter.  And no, you don't have to be a member of Twitter to read Tweets there.

Time And Space - Looking at the Big Picture And Taking The Long Term View

As I said the other day (actually it was just yesterday) news stories fly by so fast and superficially, that there's hardly time to put all the pieces together.  We get random puzzle pieces, bits of news, then they either disappear or get thrown into a big messy pile.  So no wonder people don't understand much.  Any story that requires remembering sixteen other stories that whizzed past, won't have any more meaning than the headline or talking point used to frame it by whatever news outlet one attends to.


This LA Times opinion piece addresses Time Denial, Most of us are clueless about humanity’s place in the planet's long history. We need to learn 'timefulness'.  The author is Marcia Bjornerud, a professor of geosciences at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.

Antipathy toward time rooted in the very human combination of vanity and existential dread is perhaps the most forgivable type of chronophobia. But more dangerous forms of time denial pervade our society. Fiscal years and congressional terms enforce a blinkered view of the future. Short-term thinkers are rewarded with bonuses and reelection, while those who dare to take seriously our responsibility to future generations find themselves out of office. Even two years of forethought seem beyond the capacity of legislators these days, when stop-gap spending measures have become the norm. Institutions that do aspire to the long view — state and national parks, public libraries and universities — are increasingly seen as taxpayer burdens. . . 

. . . We lack a sense of temporal proportion — the durations of the great chapters in Earth’s history, the rates of change during previous intervals of climate instability, the intrinsic time-scales of “natural capital” like groundwater systems.
We are, in effect, time illiterate, and this ignorance of planetary time undermines any claims we may make to modernity. We are navigating recklessly toward our future using conceptions of time as primitive as the pre-Copernican view of the universe. We think we’re the center of it all, unable to see either the past or future in proper perspective.

Another LA Times story, by Susanne Rust, tries to be timeful, after this year of horrific California fires,  to look at the history of fires and other catastrophic events in California:

In 1860, a young botanist raised in New York and schooled in Connecticut found himself on the payroll of the newly formed California Division of Mines and Geology. His job: Roam the vast, new state, taking samples and observations of plants and animals.
Over four years journeying across California, William Brewer witnessed torrential rains that turned the Central Valley into a vast, white-capped lake; intolerable heat waves that made the “fats of our meats run away in spontaneous gravy;” violent earthquakes; and fires he described as “great sheets of flame, extending over acres.”
He, like explorers, journalists and settlers before him, wondered whether people could permanently settle in California, said David Igler, a professor of history at UC Irvine.
“People were flabbergasted by what was happening,” said Igler, referring to the droughts, floods and quakes of the mid-1800s. “They wondered whether this was a place where we could even really settle and where agriculture could be maintained.”

She writes about how the Indians who inhabited California lived in small groups that moved around and practiced controlled burns until the Spanish outlawed them.  The Spanish.  They were the landlords of California for a while before the US kicked them out through force and violence.  But that's another historical amnesia when we talk about immigration.   

And I began this morning working my way through another chapter of Seth Abramson's Proof of Collusion.  That's a book that tries to put all the pieces together in the Trump-Russia collusion story.  I've posted about that book already. It's an example of taking years of news stories and organizing them into sensible, in depth, cohesive organization of the facts.   In the chapter today he writes about how Michael Cohen was a school boy friend of Felix Sater, who immigrated with his family from the Soviet Union when he was eight.  

Abramson's book averages about five or six footnotes per page, so even Abramson is only telling us part of the story, but surely a lot more than most of us know despite the non-stop reports interspersed with click-bait and stories about the homeless, immigrants, murders, football players, weekly movie box-office earnings, and other relatively random bits of infotainment.  So I checked footnote 78 from that chapter - a September 2017 article in the Nation on Felix Sater, by Bob Dreyfuss.

"Of all the characters caught up in Russiagate, none come close to Sater for having a decades-long record as a larger-than-life, outside-the-law, spy agency-linked wheeler-dealer from the pages of a John le Carré novel. His past record includes a conviction for lacerating a man’s face with a broken margarita glass in a bar brawl and his involvement in a multimillion-dollar stock fraud and money-laundering scheme. Despite that record, which came before he worked with Trump, Sater spent nearly a decade working with the Trump Organization in search of deals in Russia and other former Soviet republics. But on August 28, Sater made the front pages of the Times and The Washington Post, thanks to leaked copies of e-mails that he sent in late 2015 and early 2016 to Cohen, concerning Sater’s efforts to work with a group of Russian investors to set up a flagship Trump property in the Russian capital.
In language that Cohen himself described to the Times as “colorful,” Sater seemed nearly beside himself as he reported on his work in Moscow on behalf of Trump:

“'Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” wrote Sater. “I will get all of [Vladimir] Putins [sic] team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.… I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected.” Echoing a line that would later become Trump’s own description of why he and Putin might get along, Sater wrote that the Russian leader “only wants to deal with a pragmatic leader, and a successful business man is a good candidate for someone who knows how to deal.'”

Netflix and Prime and HBO should be doing these stories now, when they can make a difference.  These characters and their misbehavior are as colorful and bizarre as anything they have up now.  And learning about who all these people are now would help Congress members and voters understand how outrageous the Republic Congress' lack of integrity is.

All the President's Men - the Watergate tale - came out in June 1974 - not quite two months before Nixon resigned.  The movie didn't come out until 1976.

Proof of Collusion came out November 13, 2018.  But the Trump story is much less focused than the Watergate burglary.  Trump's tentacles go out long into the past.  His crimes and corruptions are myriad.  His ties to Russia, Ukraine, and other nations - through his obsessions with putting up giant phallic buildings with with his name on them - require much more patience and attention from readers and viewers.  And Bernstein and Woodward were better known as the two reporters who had been keeping the story alive.

But you can read Proof of Collusion online. There's an audio book.  Simon and Schuster is offering a free book if you sign up for their email list.  (The link takes you to the Proof of Collusion page.  I didn't follow the link to see if PoC is one of the books available free.)

Yes, long term, comprehensive knowledge packaged so that United States consumers of news can make sense of what is happening - in detail - is severely lacking.  Instead of presenting the United States viewers with the picture of the completed puzzle (like on the box of jigsaw puzzles), or even sections of the puzzle as the pieces get pieced together, we get shown on piece at a time and little or none of how it fits into the larger picture.

The optimistic view of all this would be that technology has been changing so fast we haven't yet figured out how to slow down and get decent journalism for most people.  Newspapers, trying to survive, are fighting for survival and clicks, and that eventually we'll figure this all out.  More pessimistically, that hacking and trolling is taking us down the path to a version of  Orwell's 1984. Just a few decades later than Orwell predicted.

You want more?  An obvious part of the problem of getting the big picture is follow up of stories.  So here's a video that was posted two days ago - a talk by Robert Tibbo, Edward Snowden's attorney in Hong Kong who is also the attorney for the refugees in Hong Kong who hid Snowden while he was there.  It seems the Hong Kong bar association has created trumped up charges against Tibbo and are trying to disbar him.  He tells us that they demand information from him, but the complaint against him is from an anonymous source and they refuse to give him any details.



I'd note that I lived in Hong Kong for a year when the British were still in charge.  While it was nominally a democracy, people didn't have a whole lot of power compared to many democracies.  Today  it is part of China and the special protections Hong Kong people thought they'd gotten before they were handed back by the British, have little meaning.  The fact that the bar association is doing what the government wants it to do is hardly surprising.  China doesn't treat lawyers or anyone opposing them with much respect.  Tibbo's arguments here are based on bar association standards in Western countries.  I didn't hear him citing any Hong Kong rules or laws (though I may have missed it.)  That's not to belittle his situation or his valiant efforts on behalf of his clients.  But it suggests this video is aimed at the West, particularly Canada (his home) whose government is also dragging its feet in accepting this refugees.

Here's a Montreal article about Tibbo.  It gives more background on Tibbo's life and legal career in Hong Kong.  I can't figure out the date, but it seems to be much closer to when Snowden was in Hong Kong.

Why The Emirates and Bahrain Are Recognizing Israel? Seth Abramson Outlines Red Sea Meeting in 2015 To Coopt Trump

Today it was announced that Israel and Bahrain have agreed to diplomatic ties.  This follows a similar recent arrangement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.  

I'm sure these deals are happening now, shortly before the election to spruce up Trump's diplomatic victories.  But Seth Abramson has outline a well documented story of how Trump  is being played by those countries rather than Trump arranging these deals.  

So here are a few quotes from Seth Abramson's book, Proof of Conspiracy which begins with this chapter summary:

"In late 2015, after Donald Trump has formally announced his candidacy for president, a geopolitical conspiracy emerges overseas whose key participants are the leaders of Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt.  These six men decide that Trump is the antidote to their ills:  for Russia, U.S sanctions;  for Israel, the lack of Arab allies;  for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt, perceived threats emanating from Iran.  The conspirators commit themselves to doing what is necessary to ensure that Trump is elected.  Trump's presidential campaign is aware of and benefits from this conspiracy both before and after the 2016 election." (p. 1)

Here's a bit more from page 2:

The story of the Red Sea Conspiracy begins with a man named George Nader.  As reported by Hearst in the Middle East Eye, toward the end of 2015 Nader - then an adviser to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zaey al-Nahyan (know as "MBZ") - convened, with his patron's permission, a summit of some of the Middle East's most powerful leaders.4  Gathered on a boat in the Red Sea in the fall of 2015 were Mohammed bin Salman (known as "MBS:), deputy crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who would shortly become the heir apparent to the throne of the Saudi Kingdom;  MBZ himself, by 2015 the de facto ruler of the Unite Arab Emirates;  Abdel Fattah el Sisi, the president of Egypt;  Prince Salman bin Hamad, the crown prince of Bahrain; and King abdullah II of Jordan.  Nader, the improbable maestro of these rulers' clandestine get-together, intended the plan he posed to the men to include the nation of Libya, but no representative from that nation attended the gathering.5 (p.2) 

The intent of MBZ and MBS according to Abramson (and all the claims he makes are well footnoted with reports from various public sources) is to rearrange the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) by replacing Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar with Egypt, Jordan, and Libya,  This would eliminate its association with the Persian Gulf and

"remaking it as, instead, an alliance constituting 'an elite regional group of six countries, which would supplant  [the GCC and] . . .form the nucleus of [a coalition of] pro-U.S. and pro-Israeli states' in the Middle East.9" (p.3) 

 The intent is a Middle East force that would support the US and be a force against the influence of Turkey and Iran.  Libya and Jordan do not end up in this group.

The chapter, in fact the book, goes on to fill in lots of the details of how this took place and how the Trump administration was involved.  

"According to an opinion piece in the Washington Post, 'If you're the Saudis, the nice thing about Trump is that he lacks any subtlety whatsoever, so you don't have to wonder how to approach him.  He has said explicitly that the way to win his favor is to give him money.  He has established means for you do do so - buying Trump properties and staying in Trump hotels.' 39 (p.8)

"...Trump's financial history with the nations of the Red Sea Conspiracy, as well as the two nations the conspirators seek to improve relations with, Israel and Russia, is long and illustrious.  Trump has properties or other assets in two former Soviet republics, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, and Egypt;  he therefore maintains financial ties to three of the four nations involved in the conspiracy and one that stands to directly benefit from its successes."41 (p.9)

Abrahams suggests this is a strong reason for Trump's resistance to releasing his income taxes.  

Part of chapter one is a biography of George Nader - who organized the "Red Sea Summit" and was a key witness in the Mueller investigation and was arrested in 2018 on child pornography charges and was convicted in 2020.

At the end of the chapter Abramson outlines the goals of the 

"Red Sea Conspiracy, variously referred to by its participants and in the media as the 'grand bargain' or the 'Middle East Marshall Plan."

The hope was to a) elect Trump who would then  b) drop sanctions against Russia who would then c) withdraw support for Iran and Syria.  Abramson then lists the post-bargain expectations:

1. Isolate US allies Turkey and Qatar (where news media Al Jazeera is based) from the US
2. Get US assistance against Iran and help Saudi Arabia and UAE become nuclear powers
3. Get US and Russia to do massive infrastructure development in Middle East and deflect from Israeli-Palestinian debate
4. Establish pro-Israeli, pro-US military alignments with Sunni Arabs 
5. Suppression of pro-democracy forces in and out of the US in the face of growing autocracy in Israel and US Arab allies - Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt

Lots of Trump's policies and actions - ignoring the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, scuttling the Iran nuclear deal, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, the obsequious treatment of Putin, pulling out of Syria - are all consistent with this narrative.  

I have no connection with Abramson other than following him on Twitter and having read the first two books in his Proof series:  Proof of Collusion and Proof of Conspiracy.  Both were like in-depth Cliff-Notes on all the scandals surrounding the Trump presidency.  Detailed descriptions of the characters whose names - like George Nader - show up briefly in the headlines then are quickly forgotten as new names replace theirs.  The books also detail the complicated stories of connections and money that the news media only skim the surface of and most Americans are too distracted to study enough to comprehend.  

I would also note that Proof of Conspiracy has so many endnotes that the publisher left them out of the book and set up a website where readers can get to them.  Without the footnotes the book is 569 pages.  So, I've left the endnotes in the quotations and you can look them up at the link.

I wasn't planning on this post, but with both United Arab Emirates and Bahrain announcing diplomatic relations with Israel less than two months before the election, it seems important that Americans understand that Trump is the pawn here, not the chess master.  

I'd also note that Abramson's third book in the series, Proof of Corruption, just came out this week.  

Waiting For The Shoe To Drop: "[Trump's defense] so far is not recognizable to an attorney as any sort of legal defense at all"

I got this email teaser this morning. It's for a book that keeps Trump's lies alive.  (Sure, it's worth someone checking out just to see if there's anything there that can help understand all this, but one person can buy one copy and tell us about it.)

I'm wondering why they are featuring a book by apologists for the president.  I guess that's part of 'being fair' and offering 'both' sides to every argument. I learned long ago - sometimes there is only one right side and the other side is wrong.

Another book came out last week that I started reading.  I'm only into the first chapter, but this book promises to paint in a lot of the missing background to the indictments and other news bits occasionally escaping the Mueller investigation.

The title of Seth Abramson's new book Proof of Collusion:  How Trump Betrayed America  tells us Abramson's conclusion.   But that doesn't necessarily mean the book is biased or hype.  After all a book titled  Charles Manson: Proof of Murder wouldn't be questioned.

As I've written and rewritten this post, I've cut out some quotes that I surely need to share with you, so I'll just drop them in here. I also need something interesting in the title.

"[My work here is made easier] by the almost historic absence  . . . of any exculpatory evidence suggesting the president of the United States did not conspire with our enemies to violate federal law." 

"...the defense he and his team have mounted so far is not recognizable to an attorney as any sort of legal defense at all"

I wonder if the quote about the lack of a legal defense simply reflects Trump's disregard for any rules or laws that confine him and that he believes that he can win this politically.  Or perhaps those pursuing various policies and appointments hope simply to gain as much as they can from him before he crashes.

Now, to the book.

Introduction: A Theory Of The Case 

After pages of background and context, Abramson offers us this:

"In the case of the ongoing Trump-Russia probe, the only plausible theory of the case that coordinates with all the existing evidence is that Donald Trump and a core group of ten to twenty aides, associates, and allies conspired with a hostile foreign power to sell that power control over American's foreign policy in exchange for financial reward and - eventually - covert election assistance.  This theory doesn't contend that anyone in the president's sphere participated in any hacking or even knew about Russia's cyber-intrusions in advance;  it doesn't allege that the conspiracy many members of the Trump team were involved in was finely wrought, as opposed to chaotic, amateurish, and quickly capable of producing a mountain of incriminating evidence;  it doesn't require that all elements of its grand narrative take place in private, as indeed many of them occurred in the plain sight of millions of Americans;  and it doesn't allege that any of the actions involved rose to the level of statutory treason - a federal criminal statue that applies only if America is in a declared state of war.  What this theory of the case  does do is explain decades of suspicious behavior by Donald Trump, his family, and his closest associates, behavior that suggests that these bad actors expected and received a massive financial reward for taking policy positions friendly to the Kremlin and adverse to the interests of the United States.  The theory further maintains that once Trump had sufficient knowledge of Russian crimes to be legally responsible for not aiding and abetting them with promises of policies unilaterally beneficial to the Kremlin - a point Trump reached on August 17, 2016, a the very latests - any additional actions taken to advance Russian interests were criminal."
 

Chapter 1 is in three parts.

1.  The summary - About half a page and it begins like this:

"After fifteen years of financial failures in Russia - failures born not  of a lack of desire to succeed, but a lack of access to the people in Russia who make wealth creation possible - the Trumps discover that the key to making a fortune in real estate in Russia is greasing the skids with influential Russian officials.1  [I've left the footnote in and linked it, because Abramson tacks a source on most every claim.  That doesn't make it true, of course.  Someone else could have made it up.  There are three in this short summary]

2.  The Facts - Eleven pages of specific history, that covers Trump's failed attempts to do business in Russia, how his US businesses were funded by Russian mobsters when banks would no longer take the risk, and how things got better for Trump in Moscow after the Miss Universe contest in 2002 where the Trump picked winner was the girlfriend of a 'Russian gangster' and the object of Putin's 'secret admiration.' (At the bottom of the last page of facts is footnote 92.)

3.  Annotated History - 18 more pages (ending at footnote 193) of excerpts from the fact section, where Abramson expands on the meaning of those facts.



Abramson is like the Vin Scully of the Mueller investigation, giving color and background to the Trump-Russia investigations and other related questionable acts. When (I'm going with when, not if) the Mueller investigation starts becoming public, I suspect Proof of Collusion will be the  program used by many to figure out who all the players are.

So far in the book there's a lot of circumstantial evidence.  A lot of people whose spheres of influence overlap the worlds of Trump and of Putin.  This format results in a fair amount of repetition, but there is so much information, that's repetition is helpful.  And going back to the summary for this post was also helpful - being reminded what Abramson thinks is important.  I'd note that I had intended to focus on Chapter 1, but then the "Theory of the Case" seemed important too.  As an indication of how much is here, I'd forgotten that at the end of the Introduction, Abramson offers us a theory.  And so, I spent unnecessary time trying to reconstruct what his theory was from the first seven pages of the introduction.  His actual theory of the case only shows up on the last two pages.  But the exercise gives me more insight.

And I'd remind everyone that Abramson is not some flake writer simply gathering all the details that others have produced and organizing them.  He's got unique qualifications which you can see  at his wikipedia page.  He's got an interesting educational background.  For starters:

"Abramson is a graduate of Dartmouth College (1998), Harvard Law School (2001), the Iowa Writers' Workshop (2009), and the doctoral program in English at University of Wisconsin-Madison (2010; 2016).[1]"

You can read the Introduction (The Theory of the Case) and Chapter 1 here.

Why It's Easy To Stay A Trump Loyalist

One's political loyalties, are, at base, emotional.  Whether you're for Trump or against him, emotions play a big role.

Trump does a great job of distracting attention from what's really important.  His Twitter ranting keeps the Left occupied with disbelief, outrage, and non-stop explanations of why Trump is wrong, demented, lying, evil, and/or (pick your own adjective.)  Making the Left angry (a too commonly felt emotion these days)  is one of the things Trump supporters love about him.

Meanwhile there are many ways that Trump is using his presidential power to help himself and his financial supporters - from filling his hotels to cutting regulations and on and on.  A few of these are covered briefly and sporadically the media.  They spend much more time covering his tweets or the horse-race aspects of the Democratic nomination processes. (Who's ahead or behind and why.)

Refuting Trump's claims to his followers is hard, not only because of Fox Lies (a better title than News)  and trolls from wherever, but ALSO because the stories are so complicated.

Seth Abramson keeps telling us to pay attention to the details of the Trump shenanigans.

I've been following Seth Abramson  on Twitter for a couple of years now.(I can't figure out how to tell when I started following someone on Twitter, but it's at least before Proof of Collusion came out.)  He's been tracking all the media reports on Trump related activities for his books Proof of Collusion and Proof of Conspiracy.  These are two excellent ways to get the big picture of many of Trump's convoluted intrigues.

IT'S EASY TO STAY A TRUMP LOYALIST BECAUSE  all the intrigue is so complicated.  There are so many players and so many things done clandestinely. Abramson's books are like the program you get at the baseball game or the theater that explains who all the players are.

Abramson has a long Twitter thread today which makes this point.  I'm embedding the thread at the end of this post because I realize lots of my readers don't use Twitter and don't know quite how it works. Tweets can only  be 280 characters.   A thread is a series of linked Tweets so someone can tell a longer story.)

The thread explains the Trump Ukraine history from today, back through the July 24, 2019 phone call through to March 2016.

Here's some of the thread:

Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
2/ The Ukraine scandal is *insanely* complex. My research suggests it's *more* complex than the Russia case—which was already wild as hell...but media *must* find a way to explain it to America during this "lull" in the impeachment story. *Teach* America about the Naftogaz angle.
11:04 AM · Dec 24, 2019·Twitter Web App
520
 Retweets
1.7K
 Likes
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
Dec 24
Replying to
@SethAbramson
3/ Here's the simple version: Trump has been laundering campaign donations using Giuliani and Parnas in exchange for helping the two men do business in Ukraine. All of which is part of a shakedown of Ukraine to politically *and* financially benefit Trump, Putin...and nobody else.
20
729
1.8K
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
Dec 24
4/ The Ukraine scandal begins in *March 2016*. Yes—I'm serious. Trump has been scheming over how to use Ukraine to his benefit for *over four and a half years*. The July 25 Zelensky call was a *minor episode* in a *years-long* course of conduct that was criminal, start to finish.
13
564
1.5K
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
Dec 24
5/ Within *two days* of pro-Kremlin operative-in-Ukraine Paul Manafort joining Trump's campaign in March 2016, Trump—whose only Ukraine policy to that point was "let Russia have Crimea without penalty"—was *directing his national security team* to deep-six all lethal aid to Kyiv.
9
457
1.3K
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
Dec 24
6/ So Kremlin agent Manafort—who signed a deal with Putin lieutenant Deripaska in 2006 to aid Putin in America; Google it—joins Trump's campaign and *immediately* Trump is *proactively* setting up an anti-Ukraine foreign policy that goes *beyond* opposing sanctions on Russia.
5
452
1.3K
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
Dec 24
7/ Within *days* of Russia's hack of the DNC being caught, that same Kremlin agent—Manafort—is telling Trump Ukraine did it, not Russia, and Trump is going on the stump and saying "no one knows" who did the hack. Folks, this... *isn't* rocket science for a criminal investigator.
16
428
1.4K
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
Dec 24
8/ Trump then spends the next two years trying to ensure Manafort doesn't talk to the feds... partly by *threatening Ukraine* out of assisting Mueller. And that includes blocking military aid to Ukraine...*in 2017*. And yet we're pretending this is all about one call in mid-2019?
10
515
1.4K
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
Dec 24
9/ I mean *jeez*, do people realize Mulvaney was only *made* Trump's acting chief of staff in December 2018 (but Trump made *sure* he kept his OMB job!) *because* Mulvaney helped Trump shake down Ukraine in late 2017 and early 2018? That is *how Mulvaney got his damn job*, folks.
12
645
1.6K

Here are a couple more:

15/ The president's personal attorney as recently as 48 hours ago *flew on the private jet* of the chief villain in this whole story, Dmytro Firtash.
That's right: the degrees of separation between Trump and the chief villain of this years-long story is {*checks math*}... *one*.
7
511
1.4K
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
Dec 24
16/ Except it's not! It's *zero*. Because—surprise ending!—it turns out that Donald Trump was going to *go into business with Firtash* in the late 2000s, in a deal that was to be set up by... hmm, let me check my records... someone pretty obscure, surel—
—Paul Manafort.
4
451
1.4K
Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
Dec 24
17/ Is anyone surprised Trump lied about how well he knows Manafort, just like he's lied about how well he knows Felix Sater (that lie was under oath!) or Lev Parnas or even (now that he's saying he never told Giuliani to go to Ukraine, and doesn't know who his clients are) Rudy?

It's so complicated that most Lefties trying to dispute Trumpies don't really have an inkling of all the details and those that do have trouble keeping it all straight.

Here's a link to the whole thread.

And I shouldn't neglect wishing a Merry Christmas to those celebrating.  Tonight is the fourth night of Chanunka.  Some might say that the fact that one of the holiest days of Christianity is a national holiday is proof that Christians hold a privileged role in the US.  But others might argue that Christmas as it's celebrated in the US nowadays is proof of the power of capitalism instead.

Enjoy your life whatever you celebrate.  Find good in every day and everyone.  

Trump's Second Nobel Prize Attempt Blows Up

First, the background - Attempt One - Denuclearizing Korea

In July of this year, Newsweek wrote this about Donald Trump's Nobel Prize hopes:

"Kellyanne Conway has claimed that President Donald Trump is on his way to a Nobel Peace Prize thanks to his diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un."

A year earlier, the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) wrote:

"South Korean President Moon Jae-in said US President Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the stand-off with North Korea over its nuclear weapons programme, a South Korean official said on Monday." 

Think Trump may have suggested that he say that?

The Telegraph, in February 2019 reported that North Korea is pushing Kim Jun Un for a Nobel Prize.

A number of sources reported Trump saying that Japanese Prime Minister Abe had nominated him for a Nobel Prize and The Guardian says that Abe won't deny that.

"The Japanese prime minister has declined to say if he had nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel peace prize, though he emphasised he did not deny doing so.
Trump’s assertion on Friday that Shinzō Abe had nominated him for the honour and sent him a copy of the letter has raised criticism in Japan.

The Guardian goes on to report unidentified Japanese sources claiming  that Abe's nomination of Trump, if there was one, was suggested by Trump himself.

"Citing unidentified government sources, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported on Sunday that Abe had nominated Trump at the US president’s behest."

And they hint that it might be part of a competition with Obama:

"Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2009, his first year in office, for laying out a US commitment to 'seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons'.
Trump complained on Friday that his predecessor was there “for about 15 seconds” before he was awarded the prize."

Attempt 2:  Camp David Accord Revisited 

So when I heard today that there'd been a planned peace talks at Camp David with the president of Afghanistan and the head of the Taliban, I couldn't help but think that this was attempt number two for a Nobel Prize.  After all the 1978 Camp David Accord garnered two Nobel Prizes.

But not for the president - Jimmy Carter - who'd arranged the meeting.  No it was Egyptian President Sadat and Israeli prime minister who got those Nobel prizes.

But not for President Jimmy Carter, who didn't get his Nobel prize until 2002.  If there had been a successful peace talks at Camp David this weekend, Trump might have had to wait 24 years, during which he would have had to do a number of other peace seeking actions.  He'd be 98 by then.  Not impossible.  His dad lived to age 93.  But it's unlikely that Trump will spend his post-presidential years brokering peace deals around the world like Carter has.

Obama didn't seek out the Nobel prize - and the committee really should have waited.  He got it on expectations, not actual deeds.  I'd guess the Nobel Committee is unlikely to rush to hand Trump a peace price.

When Good Things Devolve Into Spin Contests

College admissions boards use grades and test scores and extra curricular activities to evaluate applicants.  At first these were what seemed like good things to look into to separate those admitted from those rejected.

But, as the criteria became known (as they should be) and competition got stiffer, students no longer volunteered because it was their passion or it was the right thing to do, but because it would look good on their application.  They put teachers under great pressure to give them high grades (and we got grade inflation), and if they could afford it, they take exam prep courses and even hire ringers to take the exam for them.

The Academy Awards may once have been sincere efforts to reward great performances. (I suspect that if that's true it didn't last long.)  Now studios spend millions advertising how deserving their films are for awards.

It's also true in some (many?) beauty contests.

As a former owner of the Miss Universe contest, Trump knows that such awards are open to 'purchase.'  I can't find my copy of Proof of Collusion, so I'm quoting here from an earlier blog post where I covered Chapter 1 of Proof of Collusion which included the Miss Universe contest held in Moscow:

"Eleven pages of specific history, that covers Trump's failed attempts to do business in Russia, how his US businesses were funded by Russian mobsters when banks would no longer take the risk, and how things got better for Trump in Moscow after the Miss Universe contest in 2002 where the Trump picked winner was the girlfriend of a 'Russian gangster' and the object of Putin's 'secret admiration.'"

I'm increasingly getting the impression that in Trump's world, being 'good' for the sake of being good, is for sissies.  For Trump, being good is a means to an end.  But like the third grade bully, his lack of understanding of good for good's sake, means that his heavy handed attempts to prove he's good make things that much worse for him.

Deep down, he's craving for approval.  His dad was stingy with approval and parental approval plays a giant role in a person's self-confidence.  A person who was comfortable with himself wouldn't need to constantly Tweet about how great he is.

The Nobel prize would be proof of the world's admiration of him.  Even if he has to purposely try to create prize-worthy events and rig the system so he gets it.

In this case, Trump says he canceled the meeting because the Taliban keep blowing people up.  And I suspect maybe advisors have convinced him that any peace agreement would be short lived once American troops were gone.  See this Guardian article.

Like Vietnam, Afghanistan is proving to be a quagmire for the US.  We knew that the Afghans had kicked out the British in 1842, and with our help kicked out the Soviets in 1988-89, and now  are close to wearing out the US.

 I think trying to bring peace to Afghanistan is a worthy cause, but getting out and staying in both have huge problems. This requires a much larger global shift in how people  think about peace and war.  And a confrontation with the arms industry that piles up money by selling ever more deadly and expensive weapons to all sides.  Sometimes I wonder if this isn't nature's natural selection at work, countering the rise in human population due to human brain power by using that same brain power to reduce the population.

Conclusion

This cancelled Camp David secret peace talks suggests to me that this was just one more attempt, following North Korea, to create something to look good on his Nobel Peace Prize application.

For him, I strongly suspect, going to North Korea and inviting Taliban to Camp David, were less about world peace and more about garnering a prize for Trump.  He's already become president with a massive disinformation campaign and now he wants to garnish his brand with a Nobel Prize.

And here's, something I ran across after getting this post mostly done, Adam Schiff's take:

Negotiations to end America’s longest war are not a reality show, and an ill-prepared summit — as with North Korea — was not the answer. Let the diplomats do their work.

Any peace deal must meaningfully ensure Afghanistan is never again a platform for terrorists who threaten us. https://t.co/sKbMUIvYJI

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) September 8, 2019

To Impeach Or Not To Impeach - Look At Some Of The Basic Questions

Yesterday I replaced this post with a video of then Rep. Lindsey Graham urging the Senate to convict Bill Clinton and explaining the broad array of wrongdoings covered by impeachment.
So let me go back to what I was originally working on.

I've been trying to identify the arguments for and against impeachment.


1.  Has he committed impeachable offenses?     

It seems to me that the Mueller Report offers us enough instances of obstruction of justice that it's clear that there are impeachable offenses.  Committing criminal acts is a much higher standard than is required for impeachment anyway.  If you listen to the Graham tape, lies, perjury, obstructing justice are all fair game.  Clinton had sexual harassment charges and then fighting those charges, which Graham called obstruction of justice.  Trump has various women he's paid to sign NDA's.  He's got unsavory money ties to Russians through Deutsche Bank and directly.  There's all the tales Michael Cohen told.  There's emolument clause issues based on foreign governments patronizing Trump properties.  The list goes on and on.

2.  What is an impeachable offense?

From Article 2, Section IV, we get the terms:  "Treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors."  Again, listen too Graham.  Trump's got lots of acts that fit into the definition he gave of high crimes at the Clinton impeachment.

Some Impeachment Facts

A.  Impeachment is just an indictment for a president.  In non-presidential situations when there appears o be enough evidence to indicate a person has committed a crime, he's indicted.  Then it goes to trial.  In this case there is plenty of evidence.  But impeachment is the process of looking at the evidence and deciding to indict.  Setting up an impeachment process doesn't mean he will be impeached, just that the evidence will be examined.  And the House will have the power to get all the relevant evidence, things the administration is refusing to share.

B.  Then if the House decides to impeach, it goes to the Senate for the trial.

I'd note that there have been three presidential impeachments in American history - Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton.  Johnson and Clinton were acquitted and Nixon resigned before he could be convicted.  So, no president has ever been successfully tried for impeachment.

If there is a lot of evidence of impeachable acts, it's up to the House to investigate and make the President accountable.  It's true that prosecutors also weigh in the likelihood of conviction.  They don't want to lose a case because there isn't enough evidence.  But an impeachable president does more damage than most un-indicted but likely guilty criminals.

3.  Is impeachment politically feasible?

This seems to be the key question Democrats are debating, at least as the media portray things.  So let's look at it closely

A.  That could mean, if the House impeaches him, would the Senate convict?  If Trump and whoever else can keep the Senate Republicans under control like they have so far, the answer would be 'no.'  But if the American public were exposed to hearings that discussed the Mueller findings in detail, not to mention other issues, there's no telling how popular opinion would go.  So far, relatively few people have read to Report.  I confess to having read only some parts of it.  But I did read carefully most of  Seth Abramson's Proof of Collusion which spells out much of what's in the Report.  (A followup book, Proof of Conspiracy comes out soon.

Click Here For The Mueller Report.

The Report is 182 pages plus  Appendix A - Letter of Appointment of Special Counsel (1page) Appendix B - Glossary (14 pages)  Appendix C - Written Questions to be answered by President Trump (12 pages) and Responses from President Trump (12 pages) (total 23 pages)  Appendix D - SPECIAL COUNSEL'S OFFICE TRANSFERRED, REFERRED, AND COMPLETED CASES (6 pages)   There's a total of 226 pages, some blank, some redacted, some just lists.   If you read just ten pages a day,  you could read the whole report by June 23.

B.  Would losing the impeachment battle in the Senate weaken the Democrats before the 2020 election?   Depends on what the American people hear and see of the impeachment hearings and the Senate trial.  And unless Netflix makes a Mueller Report series, without an impeachment, most Americans will never know exactly what's in the Report and how damning it is.  (See Box above with link to report and ten page a day suggestion.)

C.  Will the Democrats be blasted for wasting time on impeachment instead of passing legislation?  The Republicans will accuse them of not passing any legislation no matter what they do.  Very little substantive legislation has been passed in the last few sessions of Congress anyway.  This isn't a reason not to impeach.

D.  Is it too early to start an impeachment because there isn't enough evidence?  Well, part of what you do at an impeachment is gather evidence.  Impeachment won't be quick not matter when it starts.  One could argue that starting now would mean that Congress will be ready with the evidence they need in a timely manner.  If they wait until Nancy Pelosi determines the time is right, then

E.  If the Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, Israelis and others interfere with the election in 2020, impeachment (unless successful) won't matter anyway unless the Democrats are able to fight such interference.  If they don't impeach, they won't have near as much evidence of election tampering than if they impeach and subpoena the evidence.

F.  Balancing doing what's right with doing what's expedient.  Sometimes we make ethical compromises because of the practical consequences.  It's a basic philosophical dilemma.  One could argue that it's a hard decision to make.

There is plenty of evidence that the president has committed impeachable acts. It's Congress' duty to keep the president accountable.  So in a politically neutral world, impeaching the president is the moral and correct thing to do.

But should the Democrats do that if it would guarantee they would lose the next election?  If we could know that for sure, I'd say probably not.

But there's no way of knowing for sure that impeachment would cost the election.  In a situation of uncertainty, then the only right and moral decision is to do the right thing - impeach.   I would argue that, as happened with Nixon, the public airing of all of Trump's wrong doings would help push a comfortable majority over the edge into agreeing that impeachment was the right thing.  Not impeaching would convince the cynical non-voters that they were right to not vote.

G.  Whatever the Democrats do, they have to work hard to make sure that the elections aren't lost because of foreign and domestic propaganda, voter suppression and tampering:

• They expose and prevent and counteract foreign propaganda on social media and elsewhere, as well as far right attacks (like the Swift-Boat attacks on John Kerry.)
• They expose and prevent voter suppression, vote tampering, and hacking of voting machines.  And when these things occur, they are all over them gathering proof and refusing to concede until it is clear the vote was clean.

Sullen Trump, Vaporware Presidency, Nevada Analysis, Health/News/Politics From STAT, And Proof Of Collusion

Things to think about from here and there:

1.  From Eli Stokols, LA Times, "Sullen Trump avoids usual duties"

“He’s furious,” said one administration official. “Most staffers are trying to avoid him.”
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, painted a picture of a brooding president “trying to decide who to blame” for Republicans’ election losses, even as he publicly and implausibly continues to claim victory.

It's hard to move from business to government.  All the politicians touting the need to run government like a business simply show their ignorance about government, at least in a democracy.  In business you can mostly choose the projects you want to be involved in. In government the issues choose you.  In business you have much more unified top down command, but in government, you share power with two other branches.  And your customers have a say in more than buying your product or not.  They can decide on who you have to work with.  And in government, particularly in the higher offices, what you do is much more scrutinized.  You can't get away with serial fraud by hiring lawyers who intimidate competitors or quietly settle with cash and non-disclosure agreements.  

So it's easy to see why this Trump might be angry this week.  He's moved into an arena where his various personality disorders are less tolerated.  

2.  The Weekly Standard's Jonathan V. Last writes a piece called The Vaporware Presidency
Here's an excerpt:

Did you enjoy President Trump’s military parade?
Last winter Trump announced that he was going to stage a military parade in which our glorious armed forces would march down the boulevards of the nation’s capital proudly displaying their firepower and awesome weapons of war. Then we all spent several days bickering about whether or not it was proper for America to throw a military parade. (After all, it’s a totally normal thing that democratic republics do.) The parade was scheduled for November 10. 

Maybe people were taking Trump seriously instead of literally, or diagonally instead of orthogonally, but whatever the case, the walk-backs started soon after the ruckus died down. First, the Pentagon announced that the parade couldn’t include tanks, because they would destroy the streets. Instead, Trump’s parade would be heavy on wheeled vehicles and aircraft, they said. 

Then it was revealed that the parade would cost $12 million. Or, as Axios put it dryly, “just $2 million less than what the now-cancelled military exercises with South Korea would have cost, which Trump has described as ‘tremendously expensive’.” 

But of course, that was just the initial estimate. Eventually the budget ballooned out to $92 million. In August, Trump announced that he was “cancelling” the parade. He then tried to use this pretend cancellation of a make-believe parade that never had any chance of actually marching to attack local Democrats. And in the same breath he suggested that the real parade will really, truly, take place next year.

The article goes on to review the history of the word 'vaporware' coined by a Microsoft employee to describe early announcements of non-existent software.

The reason the nonexistent software was announced so prematurely was to act as an anti-competitive club against other potential entrants to the market. Sometimes the company announcing its vaporware knew it couldn’t deliver the product. Sometimes it didn’t even intend to deliver it.

'Today, when tech people talk about vaporware, they generally mean incompetence. But the roots of the term encompass malice, too.'

Then it lists other Trump initiatives that are vaporware.  I don't think we can be boil down a presidency to just one factor,  but this adds importantly to my own thoughts (influenced, I'm sure by many others):  most of what Trump says has no substance, it is mainly intended to distract from things he doesn't want the media to spend time on.   

3.  Some more probing analysis from the Nevada Independent by Michelle Rindels.  

How Democrat Steve Sisolak defeated conservative rising star Adam Laxalt in bid for governor's mansion

Gives detailed analysis of how The Democratic candidate for governor in Nevada beat the Republican. This piece doesn't focus on just one thing, but takes a wider view of the many little things that collectively matter.  But some things stand out:  focus on and consistency of issues; availability to media and people; and being more of a mensch (my term, not theirs.)  But, of course, lots of candidates who did that - Beto O'Rourke in Texas, Alyse Galvin in Alaska, for example, did all that and still lost.  In Nevada there were more factors - like unionized Latinos - that got Sisolak elected which weren't working in Texas and Alaska.


4.  STAT - A website worth tracking.  Here's how it describes itself:

STAT delivers fast, deep, and tough-minded journalism about life sciences and the fast-moving business of making medicines. We take you inside academic labs, biotech boardrooms, and political backrooms. We cast a critical eye on scientific discoveries, scrutinize corporate strategies, and chronicle roiling battles for talent, money, and market share. We examine controversies and puncture hype. With an award-winning newsroom, STAT gives you indispensable insights and exclusive stories on the technologies, personalities, power brokers, and political forces driving massive changes in the life science industry — and a revolution in human health. These are the stories that matter to us all. 

Some recent STAT pieces:

• 8 burning questions for pharma, as Washington braces for a health policy shakeupHey, 
• NRA: I treat gunshot victims. Advocating about firearms is ‘my lane’
• CDC investigating burst of possible new cases of polio-like paralysis, as mystery persists

5.  Seth Abramson's book Proof Of Collusion: How Donald Trump Betrayed America just came out.  Here's a snipped of  a review by Aaron Gell at Medium:

"It is, as the author concedes, merely a “theory of the case” at this point. But it’s the only plausible theory, he adds, that “coordinates with all the existing evidence” and “explains decades of suspicious behavior by Donald Trump, his family, and his closest associates.”
Incredible as the story of Trump’s Russian entanglements always sounds when stated plainly, the evidence Abramson assembles is compelling, and we don’t know the half of it. Robert Mueller, presumably, knows more.'

[UPDATE Nov 15: I found the Intro and Chapter 1 of this book on the Barnes and Noble site. ]

After seeing Abramson regularly retweeted, I looked him up, and then followed him myself.  

Seth Abramson Outlines How Trump's Coronavirus Response Is Related to His Company's Business In China, Huge Loans He Owes China, And The Trade Deal

(THREAD) This thread summarizes the major-media investigative reporting on the TRUMP-CHINA SCANDAL, a bribery scandal involving Trump's hunt for dirt on Joe Biden in China, his debts to the Chinese government, and his decision to ignore life-saving COVID-19 intel. Please RETWEET. pic.twitter.com/lAe1oxRenV

— Seth Abramson (@🏠) (@SethAbramson) April 24, 2020

It's a long thread, but well worth reading.  Abramson has written two books on Trump - Proof of Collusion and Proof of Conspiracy.  He wrote both by stitching together thousands of news reports, pulling together details into a coherent story about Trump's corruption.

What's A Twitter Thread?
It's a group of Tweets linked together that allow the writer to present a longer story than a single tweet allows

The intro of this Twitter Thread goes over some of those stories to put Trump's current actions with China and the Coronavirus into context.

I guess Trump is trying to demonstrate the maxim that if you commit big enough crimes you don't get caught.




Basically, Abramson outlines when Trump learned of the Coronavirus (in November while working on a trade deal with China), that Trump (or his companies) owes China tens of millions in loans that are coming due tsoon, and how all of this adds up to a conflict of interest and using the office of the presidency for personal gain of such a magnitude that it boggles the mind.

And all his antics at the so-called press conferences are simply diversions to not only shore up his base, but also to divert attention from the most serious, but more complicated abuse of office that's going on.

Abramson's background is in law and journalism.  The story is so stupefyingly huge that Trump might just get away with it, because people aren't ready to take the time to put the pieces together.  That's why we need people like Abramson.  Like everything else he does, it's so outrageous that it seems like has to be made up.

I'll give you some of the tweets in this long thread - here's where you can just read it straight through yourself.   

16/ You can read all about Trump's conflicts of interest in China here—mind you, just a *few* of the ones we know about, as most are hidden within Trump's tax returns. The most obvious piece is scores of valuable trademarks timed to Trump policy decisions. https://t.co/LksWGDDTjb

— Seth Abramson (@🏠) (@SethAbramson) April 24, 2020

36/ But here's the rub: Trump receives intelligence on the novel coronavirus *as he's in the middle of trade negotiations* with the Chinese. And weeks after Trump learns of the virus, he makes the most stunning decision imaginable with respect to those negotiations—and the virus.

— Seth Abramson (@🏠) (@SethAbramson) April 24, 2020

38/ So at a time the Trump administration had received *and rejected* urgent U.S. intelligence on the coronavirus, it received from *China* a request for an exceptional, entirely unexplained "out" clause that would cover a pandemic. And what did Trump do? Nothing—he permitted it.

— Seth Abramson (@🏠) (@SethAbramson) April 24, 2020

42/ But it's more than this: Trump was being told by a cadre of Americans at the World Health Organization in December that there was a virus in China that could come to the U.S. and be devastating—further confirming the intel reports from 2 U.S. agencies. https://t.co/c2pupquEmM

— Seth Abramson (@🏠) (@SethAbramson) April 24, 2020

An Unusual Glimpse At World Of Trump's Guilty Crowd - Sam Patten Writes Long Piece For Wired

Who's Sam Patten you ask.  Good question.  Even though I read Seth Abramson's Proof of Collusion, I didn't remember how Patten fit in.

When you read an article like this by someone who has pled guilty in presidential level political activities, you always have to take it with a grain of salt.  Well, maybe a whole salt shaker.  But while you're reading this with your crap detector turned high, you'll still get a sense of the wild world of international political consulting of a certain persuasion.  And there are lots of names  you'll recognize starting with Paul Manafort, Kilimnik, Yushchenko and Yanukovich,  and others whose names you've heard, but couldn't keep straight, and places like Kiev, Bagdad,  Moscow, and organizations such Cambridge Analytica.

The article offers some background context to the players and the games they play.  It begins in a courtroom where Patten is about to plead guilty.

"WHEN JUDGE AMY Berman Jackson emerged into the courtroom through a door cut seamlessly into the wooden veneer of the wall, she commanded my full attention.
I HAVE SERVED powerful women many times before in my life—senators, secretaries of state, opposition leaders—and knew how to bow before them. Today was a variation on the theme: I was here to plead guilty before Jackson to a federal felony.
I was so transfixed by her that I never stopped to think who was notably absent from the courtroom on that last day of August: my business partner Konstantin V. Kilimnik or, as I knew him, Kostya. In two weeks, his long-time boss Paul Manafort would stand in the very spot I did and do the same thing I was about to do.
Kostya was initially referred to in the American press as “Person A” in the government’s case against Manafort, the former chair of the 2016 Trump campaign. When prosecutors moved in February of this year to nullify Manafort’s cooperation agreement with them—because he violated the deal by lying about his contacts with Kostya—a lead prosecutor told Judge Jackson that Manafort’s lies went “very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating.” In particular, the government asserted, Manafort had shared Trump polling data with Kostya, leaving many to wonder and speculate about why he might have done such a thing."

How many times can a Republican operative have served powerful women - he does mention working for Snow - and why do you have to bow before them?  Sounds, at best, patronizing.  Why is he making such a big deal about the judge being a woman in the first place?   But I don't know him.  Just doesn't sound right to me.

Much later in the article, he returns to Kiev.  In this paragraph he's justifying switching sides.  I can understand this as an earnest belief on his part, but I don't really know enough to do anything other than withhold judgment til I know more.

"This was not the first time I’d embroiled myself in this kind of complexity. In former Soviet Georgia I worked for then-president Mikheil Saakashvili’s party and helped it win a super majority in parliament in 2008, only to return to the country three years later to work for his opponents, who succeeded in ousting him. This was because the situation had changed and Saakashvili had, in my view and in that of a number of others, gone off the rails. My present circumstances might on first glance seem equally contradictory, given that they derive in large part from my involvement with figures close to Donald Trump—even though I voted for his opponent in 2016. Did I abandon my idealism? No. Politics isn’t about making statements, it’s about outcomes."

He's an idealist he says.  He's got a second wife and a son, yet he's traveling all over the world, apparently without them.  The thrill of the intrigue and being close to power seem to be the draw, and if he can justify he's doing it for idealistic reasons, well that makes it all easier, I guess to justify what he's doing.

"Kostya took me to Parus (meaning “sail”), a steel and glass high-rise that had sprung up in central Kyiv since my earlier sojourn, and we shot up to the 19th floor in an elevator that whistled and whined with the wind. A roll-up steel door (not charred, by contrast rather spiffy and high-tech) opened, and Lyovochkin’s security detail waved us into a glistening white conference room hovering like a spaceship high over the capital’s downtown.
Once we were settled in white leather revolving chairs and had been offered tea and chocolates by a secretary, Lyovochkin strode in, wearing a deconstructed blazer that accentuated his athletic frame. I started to introduce myself, but he waved his hand and said, 'No need, I know perfectly well who you are and,' glancing approvingly at Kostya, 'suspect you know why you’re here.'”

He's told us earlier that Lyovochkin was running the opposition bloc in the Ukraine. And what was he good at?

"In preparation, I had scribbled out the basis of a plan that I’d dubbed Operation Claw Back. It outlined a shift in narrative that called out our opponents for being opportunists with little concern for the people. Kostya handed it to him. Smiling, Lyovochkin glanced through it. “Perfect,” he said, “Let’s get to work.”
I immediately started making ads attacking our opponents. All in all I wrote maybe 20 scripts, about half of which were produced."

When we're online, we tend to just hit the surface of stories in the news and then there are six more that vie for our attention.

It's worth shutting down all the other tabs and just going into one area in depth.  Fill in some colors and landscapes and characters and get a sense of the world of intrigue Trump's entourage emerged from to assist him.  And get a sense of all the connections to Russia and Ukraine and other locations.

Here's the link again:  KOSTYA AND ME: HOW SAM PATTEN GOT ENSNARED IN MUELLER’S PROBE

Yes, it's strange that in the title he uses both the first person (me) and the third person (Sam Patten) to refer to himself.  And he's also making it clear in the title that it's not his fault, Kostya made me do it.  While writers usually don't write their headlines, I suspect he had some say in this one.



I'd note too, that Macmillian offers a different perspective of the intrigues around Trump.  Here's a teaser from chapter 8 of Abramson's next book Proof of Conspiriacy.  This is not a first person account.  Abramson works from published stories in the media.  This excerpt has lots of Jared Kushner's relationship with MBS, the Saudi Prince.  I'm sure these two wealthy 30 something young men have lots in common and feel quite at home with each other.

What Are You Going To Do About It?

Who are these people, what do you know about them,  and why should you know?

George Nader Photo CNN	Erik Prinz Photo Bloomberg
Elliott Broidy Photo CNN	Paul Manafort Photo Guardian
Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan (MBZ) (l) Mohammed bin Salman (MBS)  Photo Al Jazeera

Have you hear about "The Grand Bargain" Trump plans for the Middle East?  Seth Abramson's book comes out September 3 (it's still September 2 in Alaska, but it's the 3rd already in NY).  This Twitter Thread of 20 Tweets will chill you, because it isn't a Netflix series, it's how Trump got elected and the international machinations behind his election - what he got from them and what they want from him.  And are getting.  This won't take too much of your time, though it's probably not something you want to know, because then you'll either feel a.  helpless, b. depressed, or c. required to fight.  I hope you pick c.  How can you fight?

• Send the book to your Congressional Reps.
• Copy key passages and post them on social media.
• Suggest the book to your book club.
• Copy pages and post them on bulletin boards and bus stops.
• Give copies of the book, or of chapters, to your Republican friends and challenge them to refute the facts in the book.
• Apply for Canadian citizenship

Know that if Trump is reelected, the United States as we've known it is over.

I've written about this book recently.  Abramson is offering excerpts from the book this time.  Think of it as a preview  of the book (sorry, I'm of the era that knows what's now called  'trailers" - something that comes after - as 'previews' - something that comes before).  As I understand it, he's picked parts from the overview so you get a sense of details but also of the bigger picture in twenty tweets (280 characters per tweet).


Yes, I know Seth Abramson is doing his best to promote his book.  But I've read his previous book - Proof of Collusion.  It's the best guide I've seen to who is who in the Trump swamp. Think of it as a program guide at the theater or baseball game.   He's pulled together everything available on all the players and what they did.

 I expect this book will be the same with more stories.  This is different from getting dribbles daily that are hard to connect.  Abramson connects everything for you.  As you can see in the Twitter feed below. So I don't mind him pushing his book, and I don't feel any doubts about making people aware of it.  This is what all Americans should know about how our president got elected and what he owes Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and others.  These twenty tweets will get you started down this rabbit hole.

(THREAD) Now that Amazon lets readers preview the first 56 pages of the 600-page book PROOF OF CONSPIRACY—which officially launches in under 3 hours—I thought I'd post some key early excerpts. I hope you'll read on and retweet. The purchase link is below: https://t.co/YBrqfTtZ4Q

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) September 3, 2019

[UPDATE Sept. 4, 2019:  I tried to put the whole thread up, but you have to click on the link at the bottom to find out more details of the men pictured above.]

McCabe's Interview With 60 Minutes And Seth Abramson's Explanation

Andrew McCabe's interview with 60 Minutes yesterday offers more evidence of what anyone paying attention knows:  our president is unfit for office and more than likely to be under the influence of Putin.  You can see the interview here:   Andrew McCabe: The full 60 Minutes interview.

But I'm going to add to it a Twitter Thread by Seth Abramson:  

For those who keep a healthy distance from the various social media outlets like Twitter, a thread is a string of tweets all tied together. It's a way to get past the character limit of tweets.  Abramson is the author of Proof of Collusion. It's a book that pulls together all the media sources to spell out Trump's activities relating to Russia, before and after he became a candidate.  It also gives lots of background on who all the players are.

This Thread is Abramson's response to the  Ex-Acting FBI director McCabe's 60 Minutes interview.  Abramson is just a really smart guy who, among other qualifications, graduated from Harvard Law School and practiced as a prosecutor for a while.

So I'm going to highlight a couple of the tweets in the thread.  You can see the whole thread at the link above.

The rogue FBI agents in New York and NYPD, who threatened to leak info about the Clinton emails if Comey didn't go public and who leaked info to the Trump campaign, and whether Trump knew about them (he did.)

3/ I've written of how these rogue agents, in conjunction with rogue NYPD officers—including, it appears, the man running the Weiner investigation, who donated to Trump's campaign in October 2016—leaked false info and/or coordinated false leaks with top Trump adviser Erik Prince.
4/ The question has always been how much Trump knew of what his advisers Giuliani, Prince, and DiGenova were doing to make contact with rogue FBI and NYPD officials, facilitate their illegal pre-election leaks to media, and use those leaks and a threat of more to blackmail Comey.
5/ This was critical because those illegal leaks were, per IG Horowitz, a major consideration in Comey reopening Clinton's case—a decision that, per polling data, gave Trump the presidential election. If Trump knew of these crimes, he was part of a conspiracy that made him POTUS.
6/ In the first minute of CBS's interview, McCabe reveals that Trump *was aware* of a bloc of FBI agents who'd been secretly working against Comey—we now know, by illegally leaking false information about the Clinton case to the media through Trump advisers—and said so to McCabe.
7/ "I heard that you were part of the Resistance," President Trump said to Acting FBI Director Andy McCabe. Trump went on to explain that he knew of a bloc of FBI agents who "did not support Jim Comey...[who] didn't agree with him, and the decisions he made in the Clinton case."

Rosenstein's offer to wear a wire when he talked with the president.

37/ When Rosenstein "absolutely serious[ly]" volunteered, *twice*, to wear a wire into the Oval, it was shocking in its novelty but not its investigative sense. If indeed the FBI had an active counterintel probe open then, which it did, a wire would be *one* investigative method.
38/ Anyone shocked by more than the historic novelty of the act Rosenstein described—who cannot see its investigative sense—simply does not understand or has refused to process how historically serious it is when the FBI and DOJ determine a POTUS could be a witting foreign agent.
39/ If there's one thing *every person America must accept* as a condition of citizenship it's that our Constitution *is* the document from which our laws emanate. *Any* person in the Oval who's a foreign agent *must* be removed *immediately* by impeachment or the 25th Amendment.

Why they didn't invoke the 25th Amendment?

78/ So when DOJ says there's "no basis" to use the 25th, it's saying that until its Russia probe concludes, it is the finding of Main Justice (*and*, I would note, of *McCabe also*) that the threat from Trump is not *so* imminent that the investigation can't be allowed to finish.
79/ And—follow me—once you've said that the potential national security threat is *not* so imminent the investigation can't finish, you're *also* saying that the appropriate remedy once it's finished, if malfeasance is found, is impeachment not the 25th. That's all DOJ is saying.

Trump has no such scruples about calling something an emergency.



Here he discusses McCabe's comment that Trump said he believed Putin over his own intelligence agencies.

81/ So now we come to the scariest part of the McCabe interview—a discussion of which will close this thread. McCabe reveals to CBS that Trump said he believed *Russian intelligence* on North Korea's nuclear capabilities over U.S. intelligence.
That's a national security threat.
82/ Those who say McCabe's statement on what Trump said in a security briefing isn't credible are—excuse me, I don't know how to say this politely—not living in the reality the rest of us are. Trump has *repeatedly* and *publicly* accepted the Kremlin line over U.S. intelligence.
83/ Indeed, McCabe's statement that Trump said "I believe Putin" when confronted with intel that North Korea is still a significant national security risk for America—dismissing what his own intelligence was telling him—is so consistent for Trump it bolsters McCabe's credibility.

Here's a link to the 60 Minutes Interview:  Andrew McCabe: The full 60 Minutes interview.

If you are represented by a Republican US Senator, contact that Senator and ask how s/he continues to tolerate in office a president who believes Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies.  It's easy to send emails to US Senators.  Just go to this link.  The more they hear, the harder it will be to continue to let this disaster continue.

Think about the investigations the Republican Congress pursued with so much less justification.