Weekly Rundown (Hint: This is a Disaster)

Stop me if you've heard this before, but this was another terrible week for the Trump presidency.

I really don't even know where to start, but I feel like CNN's bombshell reporting this morning is as good a place as any: CNN sources are confirming the NYT story that Trump personally asked DNI Coats and DIRNSA Rogers to publicly knock down the Russia collusion story. We knew this was most likely the case when Coats and Rogers both refused to answer that exact question in open-session during their Senate hearing. They answered openly in closed-session, and being Washington, accounts of that testimony are beginning to leak. Both men said that they found the conversation unusual and uncomfortable, and neither complied with the request. Aside from the firing of James Comey and the confirmation on the Lester Holt interview, this is the strongest public evidence that we've seen for an obstruction of justice case. He knowingly cleared the room to proposition Comey, then he personally picked up the phone and called two of the most powerful intel chiefs in the country and asked THEM to step out of the shadows and "remove the cloud". Mr. President, you put that cloud there - it's going to follow your presidency at LEAST until Mueller's investigation is complete.


Side note on the Mueller investigation that some people might have missed: Notice how slow the process was going in the beginning, and look where we're at now. Mueller spent a week or two just looking at evidence and seeing if he had a case to work with... then he promptly spent the next two hiring some of the most influential experts in the United States. Their fields of expertise? Well... everything: Witness Flipping, RICO / Racketeering, Money Laundering, Criminal Fraud. Oh, the witness flipper is fluent in Russian... and one of the best appellate attorneys on the planet. The GOP is desperately trying to act like this is perfectly normal and there's nothing to see here, but privately they're running around with their hair on fire. You've seen more prominent Senators push back on POTUS this week, telling him to let Mueller work, etc. They see the writing on the wall.



If you paid close attention to the Bloomberg story that I shared yesterday, you would also see that Ivanka and Don Jr. are almost certainly targets of the Russian money laundering probe. They were mentioned several times in account with Felix Sater, a prominent mob informant with ties to Russian intelligence. From Rawstory:

"Trump biographer Tim O’Brien published a detailed report Wednesday on Bloomberg examining the president’s ties to suspected money launderers through the Bayrock Group — often through real estate deals negotiated by his children.
Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. come up several times in the piece, particularly in relationship with former Bayrock employee Felix Sater, a mob informant and felon who claims ties to Russian intelligence.
Bayrock partnered with Trump and his two eldest children on a series of real estate transactions between 2002 and 2011, according to Bloomberg, including the troubled Trump Soho hotel and condominium.
The Russian-born Sater and another Bayrock employee, Jody Kriss, conducted business with the Trump family on behalf of investor Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan native and former Soviet official living in Turkey who seeded the real estate company with a $10 million investment.

Kriss said he met most frequently with Ivanka and Donald Jr., while Sater had access to their father, but Arif was largely sidelined due to his difficulties speaking English.
He said the Trump children were involved in negotiations with Bayrock on those real estate deals, but their father had the final say.
“Donald was always in charge,” Kriss told Bloomberg. “Donald had to agree to every term of every deal and had to sign off on everything. Nothing happened unless he said it was okay to do it. Even if Donald Jr., shook your hand on a deal, he came back downstairs to renegotiate if his father told him to.”
Kriss eventually left Bayrock after coming to suspect the company was a front for a money laundering operation — which Sater was accused of doing for the Mafia from the penthouse at 40 Wall Street, a Trump-owned building in Manhattan.

He has sued Bayrock, alleging money laundering and theft that he claims cheated him out of millions of dollars.
Sater and other Bayrock officials have described Kriss as a disgruntled employee, but a judge allowed the 9-year-old lawsuit against them to proceed as a racketeering case.
Attorneys for Kriss asked a federal judge Monday to unseal Sater’s fraud conviction and other criminal records, because they said the court documents could show possible criminal activity by the president.
“A fellow named Donald Trump is now president, and he had a business associate named [Sater],” attorney Richard Lerner said Monday in a Brooklyn courtroom. “The public needs to know the length of their relationship and the nature of the relationship and what kind of person [Sater] is,. By allowing this regime of secrecy to continue, it’s facilitating what may have been fraud by President Trump.”

More Russian ties, more court trouble, more food for Mueller. This is getting better and better.

On to Syria and air troubles. I just wanted to clarify a couple things in what has been an absolutely crazy week in that region. Three air-to-air engagements by the U.S. and coalition forces (two drones and one manned SU-22), a -really- unprofessional flyby / escort by a Russian fighter on a U.S. RC-135 and an "almost" 2nd manned shoot down by a U.S. fighter.

1. Two drones were engaged by the USAF and coalition allies after they were deemed to be operating in a dangerous manner in regards to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and their U.S. special operations allies.

2. The SU-22 that was shot down was given ample opportunity to leave the area of operations (AO) before it was engaged. We called the Russians on the de-confliction line (which remains open, by the way, despite Russian bluster to the contrary), sent fighters to pop flares and intercept, and even executed a strafing run in front of the column that was advancing on the SDF and our SOF guys. The column retreated, but the one of the SU-22's came back and dropped bombs near our allied forces, at which time it was engaged by two F-18 Super Hornets. This was completely consistent (maybe even too lenient) with our Rules of Engagement (RoE's) and shouldn't be viewed as anything to do with Trump, although it is a sign that the area is heating up again in a bad way. This was the first air-to-air kill by a United States pilot since 1999 in Kosovo.

The next day, another SU-22 attempted something similar, but immediately left the area when it was intercepted by coalition fighters. Smart guy.

3. Lastly, the intercept by the Russian fighter jet on the RC-135 should not be taken lightly. Intercepts are common; they happen several times a day on most days in that region, but this kind of intercept is unprofessional and dangerous, if the reports that the Russian fighter came within 5 feet of the RC-135 are accurate. The Russian media claimed that the RC-135 made a 'dangerous maneuver' towards their fighter jet. Not only is this highly unlikely, it's almost completely impossible. The RC-135 is a huge recon plane and isn't agile at all. Those pilots are trained to stay as far away from other planes as possible. They aren't armed and aren't very maneuverable, so they have little defense without a fighter escort. It's likely the Russian pilot was hot-dogging in response to the Syrian fighter shoot-down, but I would kindly remind him that he's not a member of the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds; even they make mistakes and crash sometimes, and their highly choreographed shows with friendly pilots are about as dissimilar to an intercept over the Baltic as possible. This. Should. Not. Happen.

Aside from the fear that POTUS might be preparing to bomb the hell out of North Korea, not much else is happening this week.