Saturday, August 25, 2018

Looks like Trumpie finna gittin' ready to whack ol' Jeff Session. Readin' the tea leaves, Lindsey Graham's remarks, couple Trumpie tweets this mornin', it not lookin' good for ol' Jeff. Saw this in similar vein just a few minutes ago:

Rohrabacher says Sessions should resign if he won't bend to Trump's will

(LaTi)

No, not lookin' good for ol' Jeff. Know Rohrabachrer, been  a right-wing congressman from Cal for forever. Read the whole article.

Dana Rohrabacher, the embattled Orange County congressman known for his close ties to the Kremlin, said Friday that Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions should resign after showing disloyalty to President Trump by refusing to shut down the Russia investigation.

Excusez-fuckin'-moi? Embattled? Rohrabacher? "KNOWN FOR HIS CLOSE TIES TO THE KREMLIN"? ROHRABACHER?! Could feel my brow furrow in concentration and read on:

For a Republican incumbent already in danger of losing his seat in a district that favored Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, the remarks carried the risk of serious political damage.

Rohrabacher's district went for Hillary?! JEEZUS. Didn't know that. Rohrabacher in a HEAP o' trouble then.

...Rohrabacher’s friendly posture toward Russian President Vladimir Putin has caused trouble in his run for reelection.

Are ALL of these mother-fuckers Russian agents?

Rohrabacher attacked the media’s coverage of the Russia scandal, saying it has made it politically impossible for Trump to fire Sessions.

“The fake news has created the situation where if the president does what’s right, so that he can assume his authority as president, there would be an avalanche saying, ‘Oh, it’s part of the cover-up,’” he said. “They’ve been looking for collusion.”

They are all reading right out of Moscow's playbook.

The congressman’s remarks drew a scalding attack from his Democratic challenger, Harley Rouda, who cast Rohrabacher as a tool of Putin.

Ladies and gentlemen of Cal's 48th CD, YOUR next Congressman Harley Rouda!

"The truth — that Dana can’t or won’t comprehend — is that justice in America and the enforcement of our nation’s laws are not based on a loyalty test. That’s the way things work in dictatorships, not in the greatest democracy the world has ever known.”

That's true Dana.

...Rohrabacher’s friendliness toward Russia has become a big political liability as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III prosecutes a growing circle of Trump advisors. Rohrabacher has long called for closer U.S. ties to Russia. Critics call him Putin’s favorite congressman.

In a private meeting with GOP colleagues last year, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) was caught on tape saying he suspected Rohrabacher and Trump were on Putin’s payroll, the Washington Post reported.

“The guy who’s mistakenly handling it so that every bit of the procedure isn’t correct, he’s not the villain,” Rohrabacher said of the president. “The villain is the person blackmailing him.”

He added, “Sometimes people make mistakes when they’re a little bit desperate.”

...[S]aid Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ attorney. “Who is this disgusting pig who knows nothing about the facts of our case?”

That's you Dana.


I did not know ANY of that shit. Piqued my curiosity, LaTi's article did, so I googled "Dana Rohrabacher Kremlin." FIRST story:

He’s a Member of Congress. The Kremlin Likes Him So Much It Gave Him a Code Name.


What's his code name, "Disgusting Pig-ski"?

For two decades, Representative Dana Rohrabacher has been of value to the Kremlin, so valuable in recent years that the F.B.I. warned him in 2012 that Russia regarded him as an intelligence source worthy of a Kremlin code name.

En passant, pardon this digression, I then googled "Dana Rohrabacher Russian code name." Of course there is a Wikipedia entry for Rohrabacher. I haven't found the code name yet because Wik's page is jam-packed with intel on the Disgusting Russian Pigski. Here is McCarthy's quote mentioned above:

Kevin McCarthy told a group of Republicans, "There's two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump. Swear to God." Paul Ryan ended the conversation, saying "No leaks. This is how we know we're a real family here."[12]

We are family сем-ья
Dana, Trumpie, Paulie and me
Ev'ryone can see we're together                                              
As we walk on by
(Hey) and we fly just like birds of a feather
I won't tell no lie
(ALL!) all of the people around us they say
Can they be that close
Just let me state for the record
We're giving love in a сем-ья dose


In April 2014, he tweeted that "If majority of people legally residing in Alaska want to be part of Russia then its OK with me."[48][49]

It was not reported for another year that around [the time of McCarthy's statement], Rohrabacher had planned, in his capacity as chair of the Europe subcommittee, to hold a hearing on the Magnitsky Act, which bars certain Russian officials from entering the United States or holding any financial assets in American banks. At the hearing Bill Browder, the American-born investor who had lobbied for the act's passage after what he claims was the illegal appropriation of his hedge fund's assets and the subsequent murder of his Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky after he discovered this, was to testify. Rohrabacher planned to subject him to what was described as a "show trial", where in addition to questioning Browder closely and skeptically about his claims, a feature-length documentary film critical of the Magnitsky claims directed by Andrei Nekrasov was to be shown in its entirety. Among the other witnesses scheduled to testify were Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, a longtime lobbyist against the Magnitsky Act who had around the same time attended a meeting with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Trump's then-campaign manager Paul Manafort at which the Russians purportedly offered to share negative information about Hillary Clinton, Trump's opponent in that year's election.[52]

When Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce learned of the plans, he canceled the hearing and forbade Rohrabacher from showing the film. 

I know, I know, I still have not gotten to the code name. Tres inn-teresting though, no?

After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Rohrabacher defended his approach to improve Russian–American relations. He had previously met at least twice to discuss Russian sanctions with Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet spy, who was later revealed to be present at the June 2016 meeting.[53]

The one at Trump-ski Tower-ski.

In a May 2017 interview with CNN, Rohrabacher...stated that interference by the Russian intelligence services' in the 2016 U.S. election was the same as the NSA bugging German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone.[54]

In October 2017, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs placed restrictions on Rohrabacher's ability to use committee money to pay for foreign travel due to concerns over his interest in Russia.[55]

Okay, lemme skim the rest of this to see if I can find the code name and then get back to the Times article...No. Damn it. Still tres inn-teresting, no?

The Times article is from November 21, 2017:

[In 2013] the California Republican became even more valuable, [to the Russians] assuming the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee that oversees Russia policy. 

Well! Isn't that special? Sounds like the right post for Dana!

Then came President Trump.

As revelations of Russia’s campaign to influence American politics consume Washington, Mr. Rohrabacher, 70, who had no known role in the Trump election campaign, has come under political and investigative scrutiny. The F.B.I. and the Senate Intelligence Committee are each seeking to interview him about an August meeting with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, Mr. Rohrabacher said. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is said to be interested in a meeting he had last year with Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s short-lived national security adviser.

At the same time, fellow Republicans — questioning his judgment and intentions — have moved to curtail his power as chairman of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats. 

I have an Emerging Threat for them.

The story of Mr. Rohrabacher’s transformation from Cold Warrior to pro-Putinist is well worn.(1) A vocal Young Republican in the 1960s, he latched onto Ronald Reagan, California’s Republican governor, and followed him to Washington and a speechwriting job in the White House. Then came the fall of the Soviet Union and a détente in relations with the former superpower. For Mr. Rohrabacher, who claims to have lost a drunken arm-wrestling match to Mr. Putin in the 1990s,(2)the era of good feelings never really ended.

(1) The undersigned is chagrined to admit that he did not wear it.
(2) Stoli I bet.

The F.B.I. and the senior members of the House Intelligence Committee sat Mr. Rohrabacher down in the Capitol in 2012 to warn him that Russian spies were trying to recruit him, according to two former intelligence officials.

“I remember them telling me, ‘You have been targeted to be recruited as an agent,’” he said. “How stupid is that?”

Uh...I don't know Dana, how stupid is that?

And yet, as investigators in Washington scrutinize the Russian interference campaign, Mr. Rohrabacher, like an extra in a spy thriller, just keeps showing up — if not quite at the scene of the action, then just off camera.

In April 2016, he was in Moscow, accepting a copy of a “confidential” memo containing accusations against prominent Democratic donors that would, months later, reappear in Trump Tower when a Russian lawyer who had reported those allegations to the Russian government, Natalia V. Veselnitskaya, sat down with Donald Trump Jr. to deliver a similar document.

It does not sound stupid at ALL, Dana...How stupid is what, Dana. The notion that you'd be a Russian agent or that the FBI told you that? THAT would be pretty stupid, right?!

Last August he was in London on a quick diversion from an anniversary trip to the Iberian Peninsula to meet Mr. Assange at the fugitive’s sanctuary in the Ecuadorean Embassy. American intelligence agencies believe Mr. Assange acted as a conduit for Russian operatives seeking to release a trove of hacked Democratic emails. Mr. Assange denies the accusation, and Mr. Rohrabacher hoped to broker a meeting with Mr. Trump to allow him to make his case.

Then earlier this year, [2017] this time on Capitol Hill, Mr. Rohrabacher dined with Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Russian central bank who has been linked both to Russia’s security services and organized crime. During Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, Mr. Torshin tried to set up a “backdoor” meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin.
...

NBC News reported this month [Jan., 2017] that Mr. Mueller’s investigators are looking at a 2016 meeting between Mr. Rohrabacher and Mr. Flynn, whose lobbying for foreign powers has come under scrutiny by the special counsel.
...
Mr. Rohrabacher may shrug off such scrutiny, but on the Foreign Affairs Committee, fellow Republicans have had enough. The committee’s chairman, Representative Ed Royce of California, pushed out Mr. Rohrabacher’s top committee aide, Paul Behrends, in July amid stories about his ties to pro-Russian lobbyists.
...
“What happens with our committee is, if there is anything positive to say about Russia, it is trash-canned,” [Rohrabacher] said.

That is rude.

“We’ve got a Russian-tainted congressman,” [Hans] Keirstead [Hans is one of those looking to trash-can Dana's congressional career] said in an interview, adding “Why should the constituents of the 48th District vote for an individual whose interests are elsewhere?”

Hans makes a strong point, Dana.


And thus this well-worn story which will come to a close I betcha in November.
Posted by BENJAMIN HARRIS at 6:11 PM