Garland Let Trump Skate on Egypt’s $10 Million
The statute of limitations has expired, but other steps can be taken
Aug. 5: $10-million questions … Atlantic currents … Global stock freakout … Veep pick imminent …
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We’ve actually known about Egypt’s suspected $10 million payoff to Donald Trump for almost four years.
Forgot about that, didja? Just like me? Join me in this comfy memory hole, won’t you?
In October 2020, less than a month before the election, CNN revealed that Trump had been investigated for years for suspicion that his campaign took $10 million from Egypt in 2016.
Trump won the 2016 election after injecting $10 million of his own cash into the campaign. In the form of a “loan.” That’s what Trump called it. But the was never paid back. Or was it?!?
Campaign leaders had been begging for the money to run ads about how Hillary Clinton was crooked.
The investigation, CNN reported, was closed in July 2020. By the Justice Department then being run by Attorney General Bill Barr.
On Friday, the Washington Post dragged the case out of the memory hole, revealing new details that prosecutors had when the case was dropped. Details like how, on Jan. 15, 2017, five days before Trump’s inauguration, Egypt’s Research and Studies Center withdrew $9.998 million in U.S. cash from an Egyptian bank.
Bonus fun facts about the Research and Studies Center!
Its address was an apartment building
It didn’t exist
Despite not existing, it was connected to Egypt’s equivalent of the CIA
The non-existent center and very-existent Egyptian CIA shared the same bank
Its management of funds smelled like money-laundering to U.S. investigators
Bonus fun facts about Egyptian Pres. Abdel Fatah El-Sisi!
A dictator
Trump’s “favorite dictator”
Got a closed-door meeting with Trump in Sept. 2016, after which
Trump said Sisi assured him Egypt would be a “loyal friend” if Trump were elected.
Was one of the first guests at the Trump White House, ending the diplomatic freeze-out under Pres. Barack Obama
Bonus fun facts about Egypt:
Involved in that whole Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) thing
Trump ultimately unfroze $1.4 billion in Egyptian military aid that had been frozen over human-rights concerns
In early 2017, practically in real time, a confidential informant who’d given good intel before, told the CIA that Sisi tried to send Trump money.
So who was investigating the new president? Special Counsel Robert “I don’t prosecute presidents” Mueller.
Mueller, the Post reports, kept his focus narrow to avoid catching Trump in crimes. When the Mueller semi-investigation closed, another prosecutor took over. Trump appointee Jessie Liu.
Barr then told fellow Trump appointee FBI Director Chris Wray that FBI agents were “hell-bent” on investigating Trump. The way they’re supposed to be hell-bent when they’re investigating crimes by non-presidents.
Barr told Wray to impose “adult supervision” on the agents.
After Liu approved a wide-ranging subpoena for Trump’s bank records, Barr told her to re-review the CIA’s intel. She did. Then met with Barr again. And no longer supported the subpoena.
Liu reportedly was now concerned that it would look like a fishing expedition, a time-tested method for catching fish and one that law enforcement never ever use against non-presidential suspects.
But Liu said she was open to going fishing if more evidence turned up of anything, uh, fishy. Then, in December 2019, Trump nominated Liu to a position at Treasury. Which is not the Justice Department.
Instead of letting Liu finish her investigation as the confirmation process unfolded — as usually happens — Barr told her to step down. The White House ultimately withdrew Liu’s nomination. Sucker!
Liu’s replacement then froze the investigation while he got up to speed.
But then Liu’s replacement pissed off Barr by recommending a tough sentence for Trump worshiper Roger Stone. So he was gone.
Liu’s replacement’s replacement, Michael Sherwin, told investigators they couldn’t look for more evidence because they didn’t have more evidence. Even though they said they had more avenues to pursue to find more evidence.
With their hands tied, the newly hell-straightened-out FBI agents failed to come up with enough evidence to satisfy Sherwin and he closed the case.
When Attorney General Merrick Garland came in, he wasn’t briefed on the (former) case. Which of course he didn’t need to be since CNN reported on it in 2020. And he could have re-opened it in 2021.
But the statute of limitations for taking bribes to help steal the presidential election expired in 2022.
As the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch point out, that doesn’t have to be the end of it. Barr is now known to have placed three of his thumbs on the scales of justice: The Egypt case, the Stormy Daniels case, and the obstruction/coverup in Mueller’s Russia probe.
That, Bunch argues, merits a congressional investigation. Civil suits can be filed. And Justice Department officials can be subpoenaed to testify about how justice was subverted.
No rush.
Warranty on Atlantic Ocean Could Expire in 2030s
The global transformation of our climate could shift from incremental to radical as soon as the next decade, according to a new study/Hollywood pitch.
Atlantic Ocean currents are a key part of global climate stability. For now.
The system of currents is known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. And it could collapse as early as 2037, causing our weather to go amok.
Currently, AMOC pulls warm surface water from the southern hemisphere, cools it in the north, and then funnels it back south, stabilizing temperatures on both sides and, not incidentally, moving nutrients where ocean life need them.
Courtesy of CNN, here’s the part where the special-effects houses make their money and overwork their people trying to finish by the premiere:
“In the decades after a collapse, Arctic ice would start creeping south, and after 100 years, would extend all the way down to the southern coast of England. Europe’s average temperature would plunge, as would North America’s — including parts of the US. The Amazon rainforest would see a complete reversal in its seasons; the current dry season would become the rainy months, and vice versa.”
The study hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet, but seems like the kind of thing we want an early heads-up on! Ironically, one of the things not factored into it is that Greenland’s melting ice could offset salt levels, potentially staving off the AMOC collapse.
No, I don’t understand it, either. But it sure would be swell if all the weird-ass results of Big Oil fucking up our atmosphere somehow magically canceled each other out, right, Jesus?!?
Global Economy May or May Not Blow Up Today Based on Things
The Japanese stock market today had its worst day in almost 40 years. And with a global sell-off under way today, there’s a strong chance it won’t be great on Wall Street, either.
How come?
Reasons!
Fears of a weakening U.S. economy based on weaker-than-expected jobs numbers? Maybe.
Or maybe it’s the collapse of yen carry trading, which as far as I can understand it basically relies on a strong yen to exploit national differences in interest rates to blah blah honestly I’m just making it up at this point and don’t know how to explain it without using the word “arbitrage,” which I would never do.
Either way, we’re as usual talking about the fee fees of Wall Street bros, rather than real underlying fundamentals. Last week’s jobs report was one data point, which still showed growth! Just not as robust as the previous bro-guessing thought it would.
For markets to tank based on Wall Street bros being wrong about a guess is crazier than a football bat because being wrong about guesses is literally what Wall Street bros do all day every day.
Especially when the one (1) data point we’re talking about Wall Street bros guessing wrong about — monthly jobs numbers — is itself an educated guess, and one that the Labor Department also has a history of being wrong about.
Either way, if Wall Street bros panic today because they’re babies, they could drag us over a financial cliff that only Represident Donald Trump can save us from.
Or, with luck, cooler heads will prevail and Wall Street bros will fix this shit today by remembering that they get more of our money when cooler heads prevail.
Campaign Watch
VEEP Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to announce her running mate today or tomorrow. Reportedly, she met with three potential candidates yesterday: Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).
Walz seems to have all the mojo lately, so it’s probably not gonna be him. Shapiro has been the subject of one depressing revived story after another and even Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) reportedly tried to put the kibosh on Shapiro.
Anyway, fun as this is, tea leaves are for making tea. We’ll know when we know!
Crime Watch
MUSK KILLS AGAIN The Washington State Patrol determined last week that a 28-year-old motorcyclist named Jeffrey Nissen was killed by a Tesla being operated in “Full [sic] Self [sic] Driving [sic]” mode.
CEO Elon Musk has promised a fleet of self-driving robo-taxis utilizing his innovative Tesla “Full [sic] Self [sic] Driving [sic]” mode, which pioneered new technology enabling Tesalas to not be able to fully self-drive itself fully by itself. Musk was apparently inspired by demonstrations of robotic law-enforcement technology known as the ED-209 in the movie Robocop.
Nissen was killed in April by a driver stupid enough to believe Musk’s marketing and stupid enough to then tell a trooper at the scene of the crash that he was looking at his phone while trusting Musk’s technology not to kill 28-year-old motorcyclists.
Musk has killed before using his cars and his self-driving mouth. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports 75 previous crashes, one of them fatal, involving Musk’s fake system.
Officials have not yet decided whether to charge the driver with Felony Believing Elon Musk. Of course, Musk himself will not be charged since the Supreme Court ruled that laws don’t apply to people who are bad at their jobs.
Three Quickies
The head of the House Freedom Caucus just got beheaded. Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) was freed from the House by a recount of primary votes. Good is gone for good after losing to state Sen. John McGuire, who got Donald Trump’s endorsement after Good wasn’t good enough to Trump. Good lost Trump’s support after differing sharply on important policy issues endorsing Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for president.
My former colleague Andy Hirschfeld reports for Al Jazeera that WinRed, the biggest GOP donation-funneler, is still scamming Republican donors by getting them unwittingly to make recurring donations. At least four state attorneys general are looking at WinRed, which could be forced to end the practice by 2046.
Here’s that totally unneeded story about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., planting the carcass of a bear cub in Central Park like a normal person. Here he is like a normal person in a video with fellow normie Roseanne Barr explaining that he wanted to skin it and was just trying to frame a bicyclist. And here he is in the same kind of photo most normal people have, goofing around with a bear-cub carbass like a normal person:
TCB
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Go get ‘em, kids!
Garland again demonstrates why he’s the Federalist Society’s favorite Democrat.
https://fedsoc.org/contributors/merrick-garland
Maybe the tech bubble will start to burst? With the billions dumped into AI with no actual profit in sight, the jig possibly being up for the crypto scammers, and a an anti-trust win against the Googles, will we finally see a reordering in the grifter universe?
Garland has been such a milquetoast AG. We needed an AG that would come out with guns blazing after all the 1/6 insanity. Let alone all the criming done by the orange oaf and his gang of morons. Thank Dog that the state and local jurisdictions weren’t afraid to do their jobs.