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Josh Marshall's "Team on the Field:" Putting GOP on Defense Over Russia Requires Reversing Their Offense

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emptywheel
People believe that Biden is weak on Ukraine not just because Democrats aren't screaming about how complicit Trump and his enablers are. They believe it because Trump has seeded two screaming conspiracy theories that have filled that void with false denials that all the suspicions about Trump turned out to be true, and virtually no reporters are countering those conspiracy theories.
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Bannon's One-Time Co-Conspirators Admit They Cheated Trump Supporters in the Conspiracy Trump Pardoned Bannon For

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emptywheel
The Build the Wall fraud -- where Trump allowed close associates to cheat his supporters, only to have Trump selectively pardon the single important person accused in the fraud in seeming exchange for his role in an even bigger fraud -- perfectly captures Trump's parasitic relationship with the cult he has created. It's a pyramid scheme of abuse in which, thus far, the little guys at the bottom are the ones who pay the biggest price. 
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Three Things: Dead, Deader, Deadest

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Rayne
There's a heck of a lot of death and dying related to Russia and the invasion of Ukraine. Not all of it is on the battlefield; some death needs to be encouraged, like death to fossil fuels.
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The Posture of the Michael Sussmann Case

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emptywheel
There have been a slew of developments in the Michael Sussmann case, and in advance of two of them, I wanted to lay out what the posture of the case is. One thing that those swooping in for the conspiracy theories seem to miss is that what happens…
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Steve Bannon's "Alleged" Non-Contemptuous Behavior

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emptywheel
DOJ chose to call the claim by Steve Bannon's lawyer that he had not acted contemptuously in the past "alleged," rather than "bullshit." That suggests they may still plan on using his 2019 mostly-truthful testimony to a grand jury.
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Open Thread: Spring Has Sprung

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Rayne
Whatever benchmark or holiday you observe, with family or by yourself, feel free to shout out here in this open thread.
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"professional embarassment" [sic]: Michael Sussmann Catches John Durham Accusing First and Investigating Later, Again

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emptywheel
Almost six months after charging Michael Sussmann with lying to James Baker, John Durham finally asked Baker for the evidence that proves Sussmann was not lying to hide the existence of a client. Yet Durham accuses Sussmann of taking steps to hide "professional embarassment." [sic]
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John Durham Continues to Hide How Michael Sussmann Helped Kill the NYT Story

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emptywheel
John Durham wants to submit a bunch of email conversations with journalists to which Michael Sussmann was not a party as proof against him. Meanwhile, he's hiding the role Sussmann and Rodney Joffe had in the FBI's extensive effort to kill the NYT Alfa Bank story in 2016, claiming that is not exculpatory.
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Matryoshka Doll: The Aleksandr Babakov Indictment

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emptywheel
The indictment against Deputy Chairman of the Russian Duma, Aleksandr Babakov, describes how he used cut-outs to recruit an American based off their interest in Cuba to come to parrot the Russian line on Ukraine.
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Tom Barrack Appears to Claim Trump Knew Barrack Was Catering US Foreign Policy to the Emirates

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emptywheel
As part of a discovery dispute, Tom Barrack has argued that rather than betraying Trump by ensuring that Trump would cater US foreign policy to rich Gulf Arab states, Trump knew (and apparently, approved) of his actions.
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Sedition Is the Foundation on Which the Trump Associate Investigation Builds

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emptywheel
My hypothesis is that the January 6 investigation hasn't so much moved onto a new focus as it is using the proof obtained by the January 8 grand jury that Trump wielded the weapon of the mob to then establish who conspired to shoot that weapon at democracy.
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Where Was Doug Jensen Radicalized? Russia's 2016 Election Tampering

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emptywheel
The self-described poster boy of the January 6 insurrection got there, he told the FBI, as a result of four years of information operations, starting with Russia's attack on American democracy in 2016.
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Two Possible End Games in Ukraine

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Peterr
How does it end? A limited Russian victory in the Donbas? A negotiated cease fire of some kind? Perhaps, but there are two other possible end games that appear increasingly likely to me, though I don't see anyone publicly talking about them.
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The Valentine's Day Massacre: How DOJ Lost Lucas Denney and Found Enrique Tarrio

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emptywheel
It appears that DOJ lost militia defendant Lucas Denney during the period when they were transitioning from their January 8, 2021 grand jury to a new February 14, 2022 grand jury.
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Bill Barr's Legal Exposure May Lead Him to Lie about the Hunter Biden Laptop

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emptywheel
Bill Barr is out claiming that the media should have reported credulously about a hard drive that still cannot be proven to be Hunter Biden's. That's important, because steps he took at DOJ may have protected Rudy Giuliani's efforts to obtain it.
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Back Was Stood, And By Was Stood: The Passive Voice Behind the Top Down Structure of the Charles Donohoe Statement of Offense

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emptywheel
The Charles Donohoe Statement of Offense puts Donald Trump at the top of a strict top-down hierarchy that intentionally assaulted the Capitol on January 6 with the intent of stopping the vote certification.
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Six Investigative Files from the Mueller Investigation Durham May Have Just Committed to Providing Michael Sussmann

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emptywheel
John Durham wants to make Michael Sussmann's trial into a test of whether suspicions about Trump's close associates, Oligarchs, money laundering, back channels with the Kremlin, and German Khan's son-in-law were merited in 2016. That means he better start shoveling over all the evidence that it was.
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Open Thread: The Case of Fake Federal Personnel in the Navy Yard [UPDATE-1]

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Rayne
Two men were arrested for impersonating federal employees after the U.S. Postal Inspection Service began an investigation into the alleged assault of a postal carrier in/near a D.C. building raided yesterday. What the heck is going on?
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John Durham Unveils His Post-Putin Puppet Strategy

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emptywheel
I first complained publicly about the Alfa Bank allegations on November 1, 2016. I raised questions about the provenance of the Steele dossier the day after it was released, on January 11, 2017. I started raising concerns that Russia had succeeded…
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On EDNY's Ongoing Investigation into Tom Barrack and His Not-Yet Indicted Co-Conspirators

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emptywheel
A filing in the Tom Barrack case makes it clear that EDNY may supersede Barrack's indictment to add not-yet indicted co-conspirators, the most obvious of whom might be Steve Bannon.
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