U.S. Politics 2017 (split fm US Election: 2016)

[tomahawk6]

Manafort and his associate Rick Gates have been told to turn themselves in today,although the exact charge is unknown.

 

[Blackadder1916]

Manafort and his associate Rick Gates have been told to turn themselves in today,although the exact charge is unknown.

There were 12 counts in the indictment:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/30/heres-the-indictment-against-ex-trump-campaign-chair-paul-manafort.html

•One count of conspiracy to defraud the United States
•One count of conspiracy to launder money
•Manafort faces four counts of failure to report foreign bank and financial accounts. Gates separately faces three counts of failure to report foreign bank and financial accounts.
•One count of acting as unregistered foreign agents of the Ukrainian government, the Party of Regions and former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych
•One count of making false and misleading statement related to the foreign agents registration act
•One count of making false statements in submissions to the Department of Justice

And the full indictment
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000015f-6d73-d751-af7f-7f735cc70000

 

[mariomike]

QUOTE

Former Trump adviser Papadopoulos pleads guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russians
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/10/30/former-trump-adviser-papadopoulos-pleads-guilty-to-lying-to-the-fbi-about-contacts-with-russians.html
"Papadopoulos’s plea indicates he is co-operating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller."

END QUOTE

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Well I guess both sides are going to have to lay cards on the table, if this fails to result in convictions, it's going to look like political meddling using law enforcement. If there are convictions, I hope the evidence is overwhelming to remove any doubt of the former.

 

[ModlrMike]

From what little I've heard on the subject so far, the activities in question span 2006-2015. It might be challenging to tie them to the actual campaign.

 

[kkwd]

Did the White House snitch on Papadopoulos? Looks like they did. His troubles come form his actions after his FBI interview where he lied. As for what he knows, probably not much.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-campaign-emails-russia-20170814-story.html

Three days after Donald Trump named his campaign foreign policy team in March 2016, the youngest of the new advisers sent an email to seven campaign officials with the subject line: "Meeting with Russian Leadership — Including Putin."

The adviser, George Papadopoulos, offered to set up "a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump," telling them his Russian contacts welcomed the opportunity, according to internal campaign emails read to The Washington Post.

The proposal sent a ripple of concern through campaign headquarters in Trump Tower. Campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis wrote that he thought NATO allies should be consulted before any plans were made. Another Trump adviser, retired Navy Rear Adm. Charles Kubic, cited legal concerns, including a possible violation of U.S. sanctions against Russia and of the Logan Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from unauthorized negotiation with foreign governments.

But Papadopoulos, a campaign volunteer with scant foreign policy experience, persisted. Between March and September, the self-described energy consultant sent at least a half-dozen requests for Trump, as he turned from primary candidate to party nominee, or for members of his team to meet with Russian officials. Among those to express concern about the effort was then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who rejected in May 2016 a proposal from Papadopoulos for Trump to do so.
Paid Post Learn more

The exchanges are among more than 20,000 pages of documents the Trump campaign turned over to congressional committees this month after review by White House and defense lawyers. The selection of Papadopoulos' emails were read to The Post by a person with access to them. Two other people with access to the emails confirmed the general tone of the exchanges and some specific passages within them.

 

[Old Sweat]

From what little I've heard on the subject so far, the activities in question span 2006-2015. It might be challenging to tie them to the actual campaign.

Just like posting a second lieutenant to the G3 shop.

:sarcasm:

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Well I guess both sides are going to have to lay cards on the table, if this fails to result in convictions, it's going to look like political meddling using law enforcement. If there are convictions, I hope the evidence is overwhelming to remove any doubt of the former.

Well, the indictment is pretty detailed, but as always it will be how the evidence is presented, and holds up in a court that will determine what happens to Manafort and Gates.

From what little I've heard on the subject so far, the activities in question span 2006-2015. It might be challenging to tie them to the actual campaign.

From Para 1. " ..... In order to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities, from approximately 2006 through at least 2016, MANAFORT and GATES laundered the money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships, and bank accounts." 
         
"14. Between in or around 2008 and 2017, both dates being approximate and inclusive, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, MANAFORT and GATES devised and intended to devise, and executed and attempted to execute, a scheme and artifice to defraud, and to obtain money and property by means of false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises from the United States, banks, and other financial institutions. As part of the scheme, MANAFORT and GATES repeatedly provided false information to financial bookkeepers, tax accountants, and legal counsel, among others."

"38. From in or about and between 2006 and 2017, both dates being approximate and inclusive, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, the defendants PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR., and RICHARD W. GATES Ill, together with others, knowingly and intentionally conspired to defraud the United States by impeding, impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of a government agency, namely the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury, and to commit offenses against the United States ......"

There are more examples included in the indictment that Manafort and Gates that show allegedly committed crimes beyond the 2015 time frame. But you are right, it looks like a lot of the charges Manafort and Gates are being indicated for have nothing to do with the election campaign and appear to be for money laundering and tax evasion.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

For further reading, a copy of the 05 Oct 2017 transcript where George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI:

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Readers can consider the source of the article posted.

Most of the events have been reported elsewhere by more credible organizations.  I suppose if I cared enough I could verify many of the remaining few I hadn't already read about.  Weighing sources' credibility is only useful if they are the only sources of an item.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Of course this is not going on in a vacuum, regardless of the result, people are going to try to use it one way or another. It will likely be difficult to keep the factually bits separate from theories and accusations that will abound from it.

 

[a_majoor]

Journalism dies in darkness. Media sources "covering" the investigation themselves have ties to Fusion GPS. And the media wonder why their invention of the term "Fake News" boomeranged back to hit them in the face so hard:

http://thefederalist.com/2017/11/01/politico-hides-fusion-gps-employment-of-key-source/

Politico Hides Fusion GPS Employment Of Key Source
There's just one approach you have to take if you're a member of the media: undying fealty to Robert Mueller, no questions asked. Democracy dies in darkness, as we all know.
By Mollie Hemingway
NOVEMBER 1, 2017

On Monday, Politico ran a story criticizing the Wall Street Journal for failing to adopt the political groupthink that pervades most of the media elite.

It’s not enough that the vast majority of mainstream media operate as the communications arm of the Democratic Party. Any deviation from this approach results in strong criticism by other journalists. One media writer even criticized Fox News for mentioning the conclusion of a corruption and bribery trial of sitting U.S. Senator Bob Menendez this week. Apparently they were supposed to spend the entire day spreading hysteria about Trump’s criminal collusion with Russia to steal an election that was Hillary Clinton’s birthright — nevermind the lack of evidence — to the exclusion of all other news.

So Politico runs “Murdoch-owned outlets bash Mueller, seemingly in unison.” As stupid as the headline is, the subhed gets stupider: “After resisting opportunities to take Trump’s line on Russia, the Wall Street Journal editorial page goes all in.”

Yes, the entire Democratic media complex bashes Trump, seemingly in unison, going all in on the Hillary Clinton campaign narrative of collusion with Russia, and the problem is that some media outlets #resist. Politico “media reporter” Jason Schwartz is upset that the Wall Street Journal doesn’t follow the media herd.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page has in the past been a stern critic of Donald Trump, but in recent days has come under fire for pieces that critics say shift attention away from the president — with many people, including former staffers, left to wonder why.

After having generally avoided Trump’s efforts to de-legitimize democratic institutions, the Journal last week wrote an editorial calling for special counsel Robert Mueller to resign and featured a contributor op-ed Sunday afternoon that said Trump should issue a blanket pardon in the Russian scandal, including of himself.

The Journal has also called for an investigation into Democratic Party collusion with Russia, a conservative talking point in the wake of a Washington Post report that Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid for some of the opposition research that led to the infamous “dossier” of anti-Trump information – but which made no suggestion of any collusion with Russia.

It’s almost funny how much this question-begging reads like Democratic media talking points. See, it’s not that anyone might legitimately view Robert Mueller’s handling of the Russia probe as inappropriate or heavy-handed. It’s not that anyone might have a problem with the criminalization of political differences. It’s not that anyone might not trust Mueller’s ability to investigate an issue directly related to his longtime buddy and protege James Comey.

No, there’s just one approach you have to take if you’re a member of the media: undying fealty to Robert Mueller, no questions asked. Democracy dies in darkness, as we all know. But did you know journalism dies if you in any way question powerful government officials with unlimited prosecutorial power?

Maybe Jason Schwartz Should Read Some Russia Reporting

Schwartz’s understanding of the dossier appears limited. The outfit that ran the dossier operation is Fusion GPS. Critics are accusing it of being an unregistered agent of Russia. It worked on behalf of Russian interests to fight Magnitsky Act sanctions. The dossier’s sources were, according to the dossier itself, Russians at high levels of the government. And the foreign spy contracted to run the dossier operation allegedly paid middlemen in Russia to secure this information. Let’s just say that if Team Trump had run this operation, there would be widespread heart failure at CNN.

But note that Schwarz appeals to “former staffers” of the Wall Street Journal to bash the page. In addition to people who now work for competing outlets, Schwarz ends his piece with “former Journal editor Neil King” saying “I don’t know a single WSJ alum who’s not agog at where that edit page is heading.”

Politico’s media reporter didn’t mention that King works for … Fusion GPS. In fact, Fusion GPS has several former Wall Street Journal staffers. And Fusion GPS is known for pitching smear operations to friendly journalists.

Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller broke the news that CNN’s reporter covering the Russian dossier story is a very close friend of Fusion GPS principals. Here’s CNN reporter Evan Perez kicking back with Fusion GPS folks, including Neil King and Peter Fritsch.(picture at link)

CNN has not disclosed Perez’s close ties to the group he’s covering.

Politico didn’t mention that the journalist it quoted smearing the Wall Street Journal works for Fusion GPS. That seems a curious admission for a piece criticizing the media outlet for not following everyone else’s lead in downplaying the group’s significance.

The media have also done a very poor job of explaining that Fusion GPS’ King is married to Shailagh Murray, also a former Journal reporter, who was a top communications advisor to President Barack Obama. NB: King omits his connection to Fusion GPS from his Twitter bio.

As the Politico article demonstrates, the problem with the media is that too many outlets express servile devotion to Democratic talking points, and are not skeptical enough of prosecutorial overreach. It’s fine that the media woke up from their eight-year hibernation to critique the president, though the manner in which they’re critiquing leaves much to be desired. But it’s not fine that they are unwilling to even tolerate criticism of other powerful figures and entities, such as Mueller and the Justice Department. And their curious lack of journalistic interest in a Russia-connected outfit that feeds them stories and narratives is telling. Perhaps media reporters should look into it.

 

[a_majoor]

Conrad Black weighs in:

http://www.nysun.com/national/mueller-at-a-time-for-truth-focus-of-russia-probe/90107/

Mueller at a Time for Truth:
Focus of Russia Probe
Needs To Be on Clintons
By CONRAD BLACK, Special to the Sun | October 31, 2017

The pretense of the Democrats to derive some pleasure from the Manafort and Gates indictments and the guilty plea of George Papadopoulos is one of the more challenging attempts at moralistic theatrics Senator Schumer has attempted in the last year.

It doesn’t quite measure up to bursting into tears on the Senate floor over a slightly restricted right of people from a few terrorism-afflicted or -sponsoring countries to visit America. But he did chin himself on the almost impeachable significance of the fact that someone has been charged with financial offenses and false sworn statements who, years after the actions objected to, was, for three months, the director of the Trump presidential campaign.

Dream on, Senator, and be comforted by the Trump-hating press’s portentous references to “walls” that “are closing in” (the Washington Post, quoting an anonymous Republican) and to the “darkest day” (C[linton]NN) . Mr. Manafort’s lawyer declared on the courthouse steps that President Trump was correct — that there was absolutely no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia — and went on to debunk the thought that his client had laundered money and evaded taxes by collecting it for patriation to the United States.

The fact that, on the same day as the Manafort and Gates indictments, Tony Podesta — who was intimately connected with the Uranium One dealings that were contemporaneous with extraordinarily large pledges to the Clinton Foundation and the celebrated $500,000 speech-making payment to the former president, Bill Clinton — retired as head of the firm that bears his name — may indicate that Special Counsel Mueller is shifting gears with the evidence and broadening his attack, conducted by his largely Clintonian lawyer group. Mr. Gates had so little notice of what was coming that he had not even hired a criminal lawyer; he had a public defender enter his plea.

I presume Mr. Mueller raced out with the Manafort-Gates charges in the hope that, if there were anything Mr. Manafort could say that would be damaging to Trump, an indictment such as this — the usual U.S. prosecutorial technique of throwing all the spaghetti at the wall (“conspiracy against the United States” is one of the more extreme charges) — will bring him to the standard plea bargain: giving extorted and false but incriminating testimony against the big target (Mr. Trump), in exchange for a reduced sentence with an immunity for perjured testimony. Mr. Mueller and his protégé, James Comey, are superstars in the firmament of this profoundly rotten system, but Mr. Manafort’s lawyer gave them clear notice that it won’t work.

At the same time, to shake Mr. Podesta out of his own company, and incite rumors in the Democratic press that the Podestas are being investigated (Tony Podesta’s brother, John Podesta, was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager), means that Mr. Mueller is already much closer to lifting the rock all the way on the Clintons and President Obama than he is to finding anything vulnerable around President Trump or his campaign.

Mr. Mueller is at the bifurcation of the road. After more than a year, there is not much more to try to find about the Trump campaign and Russia, since nothing happened and Russia’s contribution was to release a number of emails it had illegally hacked, which embarrassed but did not convict any Democrat, and to contribute $6,500 in Facebook advertisements decrying chaos in the country without supporting a candidate, in an election where the two main candidates spent $1,850,000,000 between them.

Comey said in his appearance before the House Intelligence Committee that he had assured President Trump three times, starting on January 27, that Trump was not a target or suspect in the investigation of Russian collusion. This was three months after the FBI had taken over the so-called Steele dossier, which is now declared by the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to be the only remaining element of the Trump-collusion argument that could furnish proof of Trump-Kremlin collusion.

The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet backed by distinguished Republican financier Paul Singer, engaged Fusion GPS, the normally left-wing special-services firm that assisted Democrats in political campaigns with destructive and questionable research, to investigate Mr. Trump’s financial background and other controversial matters. The Free Beacon had abandoned Fusion as a researcher when Mr. Trump clinched the Republican nomination.

The account was shopped to and taken over by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee: Christopher Steele, a retired British spy, was engaged only when the Clinton campaign and the DNC were paymasters (they paid Fusion over $9 million). Mr. Steele was paid to engage others to solicit and pay for nasty reports about Trump from Kremlin officials, who, completely unaccountable, were incentivized to produce scandalous allegations.

This is the lowest-quality intelligence, the sleaziest political sandbag job, and Mr. Comey took over the file for the FBI after the election. We do not know whether the FBI paid any more for the salacious gossip of Kremlin low-lives recruited and paid by Steele, but this dodgy information from unidentified Kremlin-gremlins is the cornerstone of the entire mighty smear job against the elected president of the United States, and it has been under FBI ownership for almost a year.

Not only is there almost certainly nothing there; the dossier has been floating around in the public domain for almost all of this year, and no respectable news organization would touch it until BuzzFeed (so partisan it won’t accept Republican advertisements) ran it and CNN took up the hue and cry. There is nothing in the Steele dossier that any reasonable person would take seriously, and it was generated by Mrs. Clinton and her closest collaborators, all of whom have unctuously lied that they knew nothing about it.

Now the authors of this outrage, which is a desecration of the entire American political process, are trying to pretend that there is still something to investigate in the Republican campaign. The congressman from the immense political pustule of HollyWeinsteinwood, Adam Schiff, says it doesn’t matter who paid for the Steele dossier; we have to chase down its allegations.

The FBI has done so; there’s nothing there. The ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, who you know is not telling it straight when he stammers and smiles compulsively like Katie Couric but with larger teeth, warns that there will be bipartisan challenges if the president pardons his supporters. This must be the last rhetorical refuge of a prosecutor with no case.

With the disclosures that the Clintons and Democrats paid Kremlin scoundrels for a file of malicious and defamatory bile about Donald Trump, and lied about it for many months; that the FBI took it over and has used it as the basis for continued investigation; that the Obama White House might have used it for the unmasking of individuals in the Trump campaign after improper surveillance in the Trump Tower; and that this is all Mr. Comey had and Mr. Mueller now has on Trump-Kremlin collusion, we have finally come to the time for truth.

Mr. Mueller must soon acknowledge that he has no evidence of Trump-Kremlin collusion and move on with his mandate to investigate the Russian attempt to influence the election in more promising areas (e.g., the Democrats; he might be doing this with the Podestas), and he must, with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, show cause why they should be allowed to continue at all, given their role in prosecution of part of the Uranium One affair.

If they do not do that, the president should avoid the opprobrium and controversy of firing the attorney general, Jeff Sessions — who has been unspeakably ineffectual in this most important matter after recusing himself when he had misinformed Congress about speaking with Russians, but has his moments otherwise — and nominate him instead to replace General Kelly as secretary of homeland security, and name Rudolph Giuliani or someone of approximately his stature as attorney general.

The new attorney general should require that Messrs. Mueller and Rosenstein give adequate assurance of their reliable non-partisanship. They, or their replacements, must certainly see whether there were any inappropriate contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, almost inconceivable though that now is. But the murky depths of the Clinton pay-to-play casino, Fusion-Steele campaign dirty tricks, and Obama surveillance and smearing of Trump must be plumbed.

If all are found guiltless, all should rejoice. If American public life was dangerously abased and undermined by all this possible skullduggery for no valid reason, the nation must know it, and its lawmakers must take enhanced preventive measures, even as the courts punish those who would so brazenly undermine the republic.

 

[jollyjacktar]

Oh, is he still alive?

 

[Kirkhill]

Donna Brazile on the wholly owned Hillary subsidiary formerly known as the DNC.

Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC
When I was asked to run the Democratic Party after the Russians hacked our emails, I stumbled onto a shocking truth about the Clinton campaign.
By DONNA BRAZILE November 02, 2017

Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call.

I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.


So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.

Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn’t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was. How much control Brooklyn had and for how long was still something I had been trying to uncover for the last few weeks.

By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart.

***

The Saturday morning after the convention in July, I called Gary Gensler, the chief financial officer of Hillary’s campaign. He wasted no words. He told me the Democratic Party was broke and $2 million in debt.

“What?” I screamed. “I am an officer of the party and they’ve been telling us everything is fine and they were raising money with no problems.”

That wasn’t true, he said. Officials from Hillary’s campaign had taken a look at the DNC’s books. Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign—and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama’s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the campaign) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the party on an allowance.

If I didn’t know about this, I assumed that none of the other officers knew about it, either. That was just Debbie’s way. In my experience she didn’t come to the officers of the DNC for advice and counsel. She seemed to make decisions on her own and let us know at the last minute what she had decided, as she had done when she told us about the hacking only minutes before the Washington Post broke the news.

On the phone Gary told me the DNC had needed a $2 million loan, which the campaign had arranged.

“No! That can’t be true!” I said. “The party cannot take out a loan without the unanimous agreement of all of the officers.”

“Gary, how did they do this without me knowing?” I asked. “I don’t know how Debbie relates to the officers,” Gary said. He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary’s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party’s national committee.

Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $10,000 to each of the 32 states’ parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.

“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”

Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.

“That was the deal that Robby struck with Debbie,” he explained, referring to campaign manager Robby Mook. “It was to sustain the DNC. We sent the party nearly $20 million from September until the convention, and more to prepare for the election.”

“What’s the burn rate, Gary?” I asked. “How much money do we need every month to fund the party?”

The burn rate was $3.5 million to $4 million a month, he said.

I gasped. I had a pretty good sense of the DNC’s operations after having served as interim chair five years earlier. Back then the monthly expenses were half that. What had happened? The party chair usually shrinks the staff between presidential election campaigns, but Debbie had chosen not to do that. She had stuck lots of consultants on the DNC payroll, and Obama’s consultants were being financed by the DNC, too.

When we hung up, I was livid. Not at Gary, but at this mess I had inherited. I knew that Debbie had outsourced a lot of the management of the party and had not been the greatest at fundraising. I would not be that kind of chair, even if I was only an interim chair. Did they think I would just be a surrogate for them, get on the road and rouse up the crowds? I was going to manage this party the best I could and try to make it better, even if Brooklyn did not like this. It would be weeks before I would fully understand the financial shenanigans that were keeping the party on life support.

***
Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races. A Politico story published on May 2, 2016, described the big fund-raising vehicle she had launched through the states the summer before, quoting a vow she had made to rebuild “the party from the ground up … when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”

Yet the states kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary’s campaign was holding, just as Gary had described to me when he and I talked in August. When the Politico story described this arrangement as “essentially … money laundering” for the Clinton campaign, Hillary’s people were outraged at being accused of doing something shady. Bernie’s people were angry for their own reasons, saying this was part of a calculated strategy to throw the nomination to Hillary.

I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way.

When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.

When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996 or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party already is under the control of the president. When you have an open contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I was manager of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.

I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none. Then I found this agreement.

The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.

***

I had to keep my promise to Bernie. I was in agony as I dialed him. Keeping this secret was against everything that I stood for, all that I valued as a woman and as a public servant.

“Hello, senator. I’ve completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer,” I said. “But I will not kill the patient.”

By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.
I discussed the fundraising agreement that each of the candidates had signed. Bernie was familiar with it, but he and his staff ignored it. They had their own way of raising money through small donations. I described how Hillary’s campaign had taken it another step.

I told Bernie I had found Hillary’s Joint Fundraising Agreement. I explained that the cancer was that she had exerted this control of the party long before she became its nominee. Had I known this, I never would have accepted the interim chair position, but here we were with only weeks before the election.

Bernie took this stoically. He did not yell or express outrage. Instead he asked me what I thought Hillary’s chances were. The polls were unanimous in her winning but what, he wanted to know, was my own assessment?

I had to be frank with him. I did not trust the polls, I said. I told him I had visited states around the country and I found a lack of enthusiasm for her everywhere. I was concerned about the Obama coalition and about millennials.

I urged Bernie to work as hard as he could to bring his supporters into the fold with Hillary, and to campaign with all the heart and hope he could muster. He might find some of her positions too centrist, and her coziness with the financial elites distasteful, but he knew and I knew that the alternative was a person who would put the very future of the country in peril. I knew he heard me. I knew he agreed with me, but I never in my life had felt so tiny and powerless as I did making that call.

When I hung up the call to Bernie, I started to cry, not out of guilt, but out of anger. We would go forward. We had to.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Saw that, the Dems and the GOP are fundamentally broken as parties, not sure if there is a will to fix them. To be fair to the GOP they ran an actually leadership race, but I sure various games were played within.

 

[FJAG]

The GOP Tax Plan Tells Us Everything About Who Matters In American Democracy

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-tax-plan-who-matters_us_59fc8ed4e4b0b0c7fa39d222?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

:cheers:

 

[kkwd]

The GOP Tax Plan Tells Us Everything About Who Matters In American Democracy

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gop-tax-plan-who-matters_us_59fc8ed4e4b0b0c7fa39d222?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

:cheers:

And we don’t need to tax anyone, rich or poor, in order to afford these fine things. The wealth — the fruits of our labor — already exists. Taxes are a way of managing the bookkeeping system, of setting national priorities for the distribution of wealth created by good ideas and hard work.

Hold on, I thought all that wealth out there doesn't belong to the government, it belongs to the people who earned it.

That’s key: Our country’s wealth is created by everybody. It’s not created by rich people. Rich people are what happen when the bookkeeping units we use to keep track of that wealth — the dollars ― get stuck on particular individuals. Sometimes these people fall into the world possessing such accounting anomalies in the form of inheritances. Sometimes they siphon them from other people through the daily operations of commerce. Sometimes Washington decides to hand them more.

Hand somebody more? Of their own money? Does that sound right to anybody out there? Can anybody on these means say that the money they are paid is just government money that they are allowing you to keep?

 

[FJAG]

Trump is hyping a uranium scandal about Hillary Clinton. Here's why some observers call it 'bogus'
Complex tale about 2010 Uranium One deal revived as Trump camp fends off Mueller probe

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-bogus-clinton-uranium-one-deal-conspiracy-1.4383957

:cheers:

 

[kkwd]

Trump is hyping a uranium scandal about Hillary Clinton. Here's why some observers call it 'bogus'
Complex tale about 2010 Uranium One deal revived as Trump camp fends off Mueller probe

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-bogus-clinton-uranium-one-deal-conspiracy-1.4383957

:cheers:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/26/politics/doj-fbi-informant-uranium-congress/index.html
This FBI informant got clearance to tell what he knows. Then it may come out who knew what and when. The observer mentioned in the cbc story is a former Obama security adviser, not exactly a non biased source. As for a underling of the state department signing off on the deal that makes no difference, the Secretary Of State still is responsible.