Today in the NY Times, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch of Fusion GPS hit back at congressional Republicans attacking them and selectively leaking their testimony to far right propaganda outlets.   Who’s Fusion GPS?  They are a political research firm who engaged former British spy Christopher Steele to research Trump’s business ties.  The principals of this firm have become the punching bag of right wing media and congressional Republicans, and they’ve now had enough of it.  In their op-ed today, Simpson and Fritsch are demanding that Congress release their testimony to the public.

In the piece, they talk about how they testified that Steele ran across multiple occasions of Trump’s ties to dubious Russian characters that likely involved money laundering.  They also talk about how Congress has ignored their advice to subpoena Deutschbank records of Trump’s transactions, but the only bank records that have been subpoenaed are their own.  Congress has done nothing to advance an investigation of Trump and have only sought to shoot the messenger, seek to discredit Fusion GPS.

They claim their testimony to Congress included details of Paul Manafort’s cozy relationship with the Russians and evidence they discovered of the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russian to get His Orangeness elected as president.  The fact that the Republican controlled houses of Congress have not released this testimony is all you need to know about the content of those transcripts.

Republicans have been actively covering up the reality of Trump’s collusion with the Russians and clear corruption.  Clearly they are putting party and self-interest before the needs of the American people, and their actions have destabilized our own government and damaged our reputation worldwide.

Congress must release these transcripts immediately.  Our democracy, or what’s left of it, hangs in the balance.

Yesterday, the New York Times published a blockbuster article that fingered the guy who triggered the Russia-Trump investigation.  That guy?  He’s George Papadopoulos, a then 28 year old kid who was “advising” the Trump campaign on energy and international issues.  As early as April of 2016, Papadopoulos was aware that the Russians had hacked into Hillary’s and the DNC’s emails due to his contacts with Russian operatives.  In May of that year, during a drinking session with an Australian diplomat, Papadopoulos bragged that the Russians had dirt on Hillary.  Two months later, Australian intelligence alerted US intelligence of the hacking.

This chain of events is what kicked off the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign and its contacts with Russian operative.  Papadopoulos, who planned to ride Mike Flynn’s coattails into the NSA, ended up riding his coattails into a guilty plea of lying to the FBI.  He’s now, along with Flynn, fully cooperating with the investigation.

Tick, Tick, Tick

NBC News has broken the story that Trump was personally warned by counterintelligence agents of the FBI in JULY of 2016 that the Russians would try to infiltrate his campaign.  He and senior campaign officials were told to communicate to the FBI about ANY attempt by the Russians to contact them.  There is NO evidence that any Trump official did so.  Instead of taking the warning, Trump cronies were actively communicating with the Russians on multiple levels.

Just when you thought the sleaze was all out of the tube, here comes Deutsche Bank.

One month before Election Day, Jared Kushner’s real estate company finalized a $285 million loan as part of a refinancing package for its property near Times Square in Manhattan.

The lender, Deutsche Bank, was negotiating to settle a federal mortgage fraud case and charges from New York state regulators that it aided a possible Russian money-laundering scheme. The cases were settled in December and January.

I am becoming increasingly suspicion that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are Boris and Natasha. I don’t know who is Bullwinkle in this whole mess, but I do know someone with the same IQ.

Bullwinkle: I’d like to apply for a job as an usher.
Boris: What experience have you had?
Bullwinkle: I’ve been in the dark for most of my life.

Rocky is obviously Mueller.  Or, if you want to fill the entire Bullwinkle cast – Dudley Doright.

I mean, if we’re gonna have a cartoon, at least let’s have a funny one.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

The NY Times is now reporting that Trump boasted to the Russians in the Oval Office about firing “nut job” James Comey, and that the investigation would be relaxed.  Quote:

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

This clown is unhinged.

Where to start, where to start – In the last 24 hours it’s come to light, despite the frantic efforts of the WH to spin the story differently, that Trump was outraged at Comey’s investigation of his ties to Russia. His impatience with Comey boiled over when, while testifying before the Congress Comey said that he was “mildly nauseous” to think that he had a hand in electing Trump. He then decided to fire Comey, and ordered the letter from Rosenstein to make a case against him.  When the letter was finished, Jeff Sessions, who had supposedly recused himself from the Russia investigation, was called to the Oval Office where Trump told him he was using the letter as justification to fire Comey.

That evening and yesterday morning, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway went on national television and lied on every network that Rosenstein had acted on his own when, in fact, he was ordered to write the letter.  The evening of the firing, a clearly rattled Sean Spicer was cornered by the press apparently hiding from reporters behind the bushes on the north lawn of the WH.  When discovered, he reluctantly gave an interview in the dark, insisting he didn’t want to be on camera.

THEN, the next day, Trump was played by the Russians when foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and ambassador Sergey Kislyak were invited to the Oval Office for a closed door meeting.  The only photographs of the meeting were from an agent of Tass, the Russian state news agency who tweeted them out live.  That’s correct, US press photographers were blocked from the meeting, while the Trump WH allowed a Russian propaganda agent into the Oval Office who live tweeted the meeting through the Tass website.   No breach of security there, eh?

This morning, the aftershocks of this latest disaster are actually getting worse.  The NY Times has published an open letter to Rosenstein urging him to appoint an independent counsel from outside the FBI and DOJ to run a fully independent investigation of the Trump-Russia connection, telling him that is his only choice.  The talking heads on MoJo are exploding today.

We may be closer to the end that even the most optimistic among us can imagine.  Reports of Trump sitting in the residence shouting at his television are common, and I can imagine that most WH staff are preparing resumes to get the hell out of there.  The Republicans on the Hill will reluctantly begin to acknowledge that they’re being herded over the cliff as part of this slow motion catastrophe and begin to move against him.

I see no scenario where this presidency doesn’t end disastrously, and it can’t come soon enough.