The impact of Jim Comey's book and interviews: not much

The quote that will probably linger after this will be Comey's belief he stated that Trump was morally unfit to be president. It probably will have no impact on those who support him because after the Access Hollywood tapes that had little impact on his poll numbers , even the Steele Dossier's salacious and unproved accounts of a night in Moscow and fact checkers blowing whistles on factual lies ,he still was elected. His supporters put other issues above his character profile.

http://abcnews.go.com/Site/transcript-james-comeys-interview-abc-news-chief-anchor/story?id=54488723

Alfa Bank, van der Zwann indictment and how it might relate to President Trump

Since the Steele Dossier came to light, so has a bank mentioned in it with many names and many branches...but the group is known as Alfa Bank. The indictment of a an attorney, Alex van der Zwann,  unconnected with the investigation until now may have far more significance than we might imagine.  The attorney has a family relationship to the bank and the Steele Dossier indicated that  Alfa bank figured in a large loan to the Trump organization.  The Steele Dossier may be considered unverified so far, but it may be in the process of being verified by  Special Counsel Robert Mueller.   Raising further suspicions is that the Mueller staff has a large number of prosecutors experienced in investigating financial crimes. We could say the plot is beginning to thicken a bit and no one outside the Mueller team really knows because they are so tight lipped. However, connecting the dots is still a fascinating exercise.  For the record, I am making note of this for what I suspect will be referred to in the future.

http://www.newsweek.com/paul-manafort-rick-gates-mueller-new-indictment-816955

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mueller-files-new-charge-russia-probe-against-lawyer-accused-lying-n849566

From https://www.gq.com/story/how-muellers-latest-indictment-relates-to-the-steele-dossier

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/22/politics/new-charges-manafort-and-gates/index.html

A Moscow bank keeps popping up in the Trump-Russia affair. Ben Schreckinger reports with the latest.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alex-van-der-zwaan-sentenced-to-30-days-in-prison-for-lying-in-mueller-probe/

On Tuesday, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller made another surprise indictment, this time of a London-based lawyer for allegedly lying to the FBI.

Like two of Mueller’s previous targets, Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, the lawyer—a man named Alex Van Der Zwaan—had done work for Ukraine’s previous, pro-Russia government, which was overthrown in a popular uprising in 2014.

And according to the indictment, the false statements in question were about communications he had in 2016 with Rick Gates and an unnamed “Person A” related to that work.

So on its surface, Tuesday’s indictment relates solely to a single branch of Mueller’s investigation: Paul Manafort’s dealings with the pro-Russia faction in Ukraine.

But search beyond the scant details offered in the two-page indictment and there’s an intriguing link to a whole other branch of Trump-Russia inquiry: the Alfa Bank mystery.

As it so happens, Van Der Zwaan, the lawyer indicted Tuesday, is the son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Khan. Khan is a director and co-owner of Alfa Bank and one of three key leaders of its parent company, the sprawling conglomerate Alfa Group.

From November 11, 2017 posting:
Observations 2/23/18
Note to the reference to the Steele dossier, so far unverified, but it may become verified in the future.
For sometime the rumor has been circulating that Trump had $300 million in loans, debts he owed to the Russian private bank, Alfa, and that the Russians had evidence which was termed “salacious” (with conspiracy theorists thinking there may had been a honey trap involved). That these rumors and allegations made in the agent’s “report “were taken seriously was most likely because many of both sides of the aisle were puzzled why Donald Trump was constantly apologizing or was in sympathy with the policies of Russia. They were trying to find a reason why Donald Trump had made comments supportive of Russia’s territory grabbing in the Ukraine,Crimea, and Georgia, letting Russia finish and dominate the Syrian civil war, weakening NATO’s mutual defense responsibility and endangering the Baltics by failure to be protected from Russian expansionism, or denying of Russian interfering is US elections and hacking.. Sometimes Trump’s Putin bromance was owed to Trump’s vulnerability to flattery, and especially from the Russian president , whose leadership Trump openly admired. It was also owed to political connections and friendship of his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, with the deposed president of the Ukraine and an associate of Putin. The “report’ was called trash by Trump’s surrogates and spokespeople. All media, even the reporting Buzzfeed and CNN , referred to the report as unproven.


It stands in sharp contrast with the GOP presidential candidate himself, Donald Trump, who has been advocating a foreign policy that strangely runs parallel to the same as Russia's, from declaring NATO obsolete, not objecting to the Russian threats and incursions into Eastern Ukraine, and recognizing Russia's grab of the Crimea.  In fact, the mutual comments between Trump and Putin have been so complimentary that it has been timed a "bromance" of mutual admiration.

Not only is this a major issue in foreign policy, but in calls into question whether Trump can even negotiate with Putin in America's and our alliies' security interests without giving away the store to Russia.  Negotiation means give and take and the question remains what Trump would give away to make a deal. "

http://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/trumps-foreign-policy-make-russia-great.html

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/vice-presidential-debate-putin-mike-pence-donald-trump-229147

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/28/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-quotes"

2  14  17
Some background: (Note, the Steele Dossier is may haveen the key, here.)
 For some time, the question has been why has Donald Trump been so cozy with Russia? There has been a great deal of speculation ranging from Trump's debts to Russia oligarchs to blackmail , the connection with  the Russian Alfa Bank, with embarrassing pictures (a victim of a honey trap).  Fingers have been pointed to influencing Trump's views of Russia was his campaign manager, who departed the campaign mid year, Paul Manafort, who was an advisor to the ousted  president of the Ukraine who sought refuge in Moscow after a coup.  Congressional investigations into Russian influence and hacking  in the US elections are just getting underway.  Ukraine is involved. The Russians have conducted a stealth takeover of the eastern parts of that country and the West punished Russia with economic sanctions.  The Flynn issue involves lies about his pre- January conversations with the Russian ambassador over lifting those sanctions. The question arises was this a thank you for the role Russia played in helping Trump win by planting false news stories and by hacking and revealing damaging information regarding Hillary Clinton.


That there are many concerned about why Donald Trump only ever has kind words for Russia and their president Vladimir Putin, while being critical of even our closest allies and even calling NATO, our mutual defense treaty with Europe, obsolete.  It has set our Eastern Europe members of NATO on edge and one of President Obama's departing actions was to announce the placement of US troops in Poland as a signal to Russia not to mess with our Baltic members.  Trump and others, including libertarians, had already expressed concern about going to war to support the small trio of Baltic nations in spite of their NATO membership. Russians have always seen the Baltics, with their ports to the sea, as part of theirs since there is a large number of Russians living in those areas left over from the old Soviet  military occupations days when the Baltics were their satellites.  Russia has a modus operandi of using "saving discrimination against Russian minorities" as an excuse to grab territory and the Baltics are ripe targets.  Their membership in NATO has made Russia think twice. Ukraine, Crimea, and Georgia, recent targets of Russian grabs, are not part of NATO and are not under NATO's protections.  Flynn was Donald Trump's closest campaign adviser on foreign affairs throughout  the campaign.

Blowing the whistle on the games Trump loyalists are playing

A version published in the Sky Hi News February 12, 13. 14
https://www.skyhinews.com/news/muftic-blowing-the-whistle-on-trump-loyalists/

The games President Trump, his White House, and his friends in Congress are playing are two: one, to replace  those involved in the Russian related investigation  he views are  biased against him  with those who are biased in his favor. The second is to to destroy the credibility of prosecutors and  to stop  them before they finish their investigation.  Both  actions threaten the rule of law by subverting the legal system in order  to protect the power of the rule by a person.

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A president, the head of the executive branch, does have  the right to appoint those in charge of carrying out his policies,  but when he manipulates law  enforcement  investigating whether he  possibly violated the  the law, it becomes a game dangerous to a democracy.

Fresh on the minds of the founders of this country was what kind of government they did not want. They constructed a form of government  to avoid the rule of a monarchy. But also in their recent   past was the  bitter experience of  a  religious and populist inspired civil war in  mid  17th century England causing and following  the beheading of Charles I. In the late 18th century the US  Constitution provided  a third way, a form of government  that better protected  the rule of law above the rule by any other force and set up a system that divided power among three branches with checks  over each. That third way is being seriously challenged in 2018.

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Here is how Mr Trump is  attempting to turn law enforcement into an instrument to protect his grip on the White House. Gone are FBI Director James Comey  (fired)) and   Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (pressured to resign), both who failed to swear loyalty or act loyally to  protect President Trump  from investigations into possible misconduct that could lead to impeachment. Mr. Trump’s  view  he openly opined is that the Attorney General’s duty should be to  protect him . When  AG Jeff Sessions recused himself from overseeing investigations into Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign, supervising the investigation  fell to Session’s  deputy,  Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein failed  the Trump loyalty test when he did not reign in the investigation by Special Counsel Mueller. Rosenstein could fire Mueller but he found no grounds and  he  opposed the release of the Nunes memo. To replace him was to be  Associate AG Rachel Brand and she quit Friday. Who fills that vacancy could be a voice more friendly to the Trumpists, clearing the way for firing Rosenstein and Mueller.

The first move  in the current game was a  campaign  coordinated with Trump friendly media and political supporters to destroy the credibility of prosecutors and their findings.They claimed anti Trump texts between two agents painted the entire FBI as biased  even though the  offending agent had been removed from the investigation the summer before. The second salvo was  the Nunes memo concocted by Rep. Devin Nunes, GOP chair of the House Intelligence committee,  and released with the support of the GOP Speaker of the House. The GOP controlled House had become complicit  instead of being a check on the  chief executive.  The Nunes memo lacked credibility itself. Contrary to the memo’s premise, the FBI did disclose to the FISA judge the political funding of the Steele dossier.  Several polls show the campaigns have had a  bit of a  propaganda success, with  growing belief among GOP voters  the FBI is biased against President Trump,  though as a whole American voters still trust the FBI over Mr. Trump.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/373146-poll-most-say-they-believe-fbi-over-trump

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-poll/most-republicans-believe-fbi-justice-dept-trying-to-delegitimize-trump-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1FP2UH

https://www.factcheck.org/2018/02/qa-nunes-memo/