The Funny Papers

Bill Bramhall, Kevin Siers, Marc Murphy, John Cole, Darrin Bell, Lalo Alcaraz, Pat Byrnes, Nick Anderson, Ed Hall, Mike Luckovich, Jack Ohman, Drew Sheneman, Michael de Adder, 

The Funny Papers

RJ Matson, Dave Whamond, Ed Wexler, Jack Ohman, Phil Hands, Clay Bennett, Nick Anderson, Michael de Adder, Matt Wuerker, David Horsey, Mike Luckovich, Ed Hall, Bill Bramhall, Adam Zyglis, Marc Murphy

Lawyers representing the United States at Julian Assange’s extradition trial in Britain have accepted the claim that the WikiLeaks founder was offered a presidential pardon by GOP Congressman Dana Rohrabacher in exchange for helping cover up Russia’s involvement in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee.

Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer for WikiLeaks, told the court that she had attended a meeting between Assange, Rohrabacher, and pro-_____ troll Charles Johnson at Assange’s hide-out, inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Robinson said the two men claimed to be emissaries from Washington and “wanted us to believe they were acting on behalf of [_____].” She says Rohrabacher and Johnson told Assange that they could help grant him a pardon in exchange for him revealing information about the source of the WikiLeaks information that proved it was not the Russians who hacked Democratic emails.

Assange and his team of lawyers rejected the deal.

While the White House denies that ______ took part in any such plan, Assange’s lawyers previewed the allegation in a pre-trial hearing in February and now Robinson’s testimony has been heard in full. After her testimony, lawyers representing the U.S. accepted the witness statement as accurate and confirmed they had no intention of cross-examining the claim. They did dispute, however, that _____ gave his blessing for the pardon offer, And offered up some lame theory; US attorney James Lewis said:

“The position of the government is we don't contest these things were said. We obviously do not accept the truth of what was said by others.”’

Yes, these things were said, but they aren’t true? Then why accept them at all?

Oh, right … swamp.

The Daily Beast

How Team ____ Helped Putin Conceal His Attack On Our Election

So, we’re all clear on the fact that _____ colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 campaign, right?

I mean, maybe he didn’t know he was doing it, because, as I believe, he’s basically an idiot with the attention span of a fruit fly who surrounds himself with smart people to do the work and take the heat for him.

But, let’s be completely queer, knowing about it or not, _____ aided and abetted Russia’s war on US democracy by continuously ignoring evidence and denying Moscow’s role in the criminal hacking of  the Democratic National Committee and the release of stolen emails.

Basically, as I said, he played dumb, because he is dumb; but even dumb guys go to jail because, as my friend Judge Judy says, “Ignorance is not a defense.”

And now the news last week of Junior’s emails revealing that he, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort joined what they believed was a secret Russian government meeting to get dirt on Hillary Clinton shows that the _____ campaign went far beyond creating a political climate favorable to Putin’s assault on democracy; the _____ team actually protected Russian intelligence while it was hacking computers and stealing information and it’s clear that many in the _____ camp knew it was happening all along and did nothing.

The emails prove that in the first week of June 2016, Junior, Kushner, and Manafort, who the previous month had been named _____’s campaign chairman and chief strategist, learned of a Russian plot to help _____ become president. Each of these men received an email from Rob Goldstone—a talent manager who helped broker the deal for _____’s Miss Universe contest to be held in Moscow in 2013—and the message was clear: ______’s business partner in Russia—and remember _____ has said he has no business dealings with Russia—billionaire developer Aras Agalarov, had been told by Russia’s national prosecutor that the Putin regime wanted to give _____ negative material on Clinton.

Goldstone said:

“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. _____.” 

After the email, came a June 9, 2016, meeting between Junior, Kushner and Manafort and a Russian attorney that Junior now claims yielded no useful information. But how can we believe him when he blatantly lied for months that a meeting with Russians ever took place?

Still, let’s say the meeting was a bust, but _____’s henchmen still learned that Putin was Team _____ and looking to help him win releasing allegedly damaging material about Clinton.  That’s a fact; it was in an email to Junior. And then, five days later, the news broke that the DNC had been hacked and cyber experts, hired by the DNC pointed to Russian intelligence as the culprit.

So, how did _____ respond? With this statement:

 “We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader.”

Think on that ... Junior, Kushner and Manafort had learned days earlier that the Russians were targeting Clinton and when it actually happened, the _____ campaign suggested the hack was a hoax cooked up by the DNC.

On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks released 22,000 hacked DNC emails, causing havoc at Democratic convention. But, with even more cyber experts concluding that Russian intelligence was behind the hack, the DNC and Clinton campaign officials immediately raised the issue that Putin was meddling in the election.

The _____ campaign, however, began spinning the story differently ... two days later Manafort went on ABC’s This Week  and, when asked if there were connections between the _____ campaign and the Putin regime, said:

“No, there are not, and, you know, there’s no basis to it.”

It had been six weeks since he met with the Russians who told him they wanted to help _____ win the election, so clearly, he was lying. But Junior was even angrier; when asked by CNN about the Clinton campaign’s theory that Russia hacked the DNC as part of a plot to benefit his father, he said:

“It’s disgusting. It’s so phony … I can’t think of bigger lies. That exactly goes to show you what the DNC and what the Clinton camp will do. They will lie and do anything to win.”

Again, this was six weeks after being told Russia wanted to help Daddy. Both of these men knew Putin wanted to help _____, and had been to a meeting where they were told they would receive such information, and yet they both lied about it, saying there had been no contacts.

So, what we have is Paul Manafort and Junior, and Kushner by his silence, providing cover for Putin’s operation to steal an election. That’s clear. And the next day, _____ himself did what he does best, Tweet:

“The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me.”

Say what? Putin likes you? You said before you’d never met him, and now you’re saying he likes you? Is that because Junior told you so after his secret meeting? A day later, he tried to spin it differently:

“In order to try and deflect the horror and stupidity of the Wikileakes [sp] disaster, the Dems said maybe it is Russia dealing with _____. Crazy!”

Now, to be fair, as of now, there is no evidence that _____ knew about the June 9 meeting or the email chain that brought it about, though it does seem highly unlikely that no one mentioned it to him even once, especially since we know the meeting had been put in motion by _____’s Russian business partner. So at the time of these Tweets, _____ could have known that the Putin regime had informed his campaign he was on _____’s side and wanted to assist him secretly.

But, again, if _____ didn’t know, those Tweets of his show that Junior, Kushner and Manafort were allowing _____ to make claims that the Russian connection was false when they knew otherwise. Manafort kept up the disinformation campaign on July 27 while appearing on CBS This Morning:

“We have no relationship [with Russia]. The real issue isn’t even the Democratic National Committee’s server being hacked; the real issue is her server.”

And so, in the following months, the _____ campaign stuck to that narrative; in each debate, _____ claimed Russia was not behind the hack and, after the election, he refused to accept the US intelligence community’s finding that Russia had meddled in the election to help him win the White House and that’s where he began his “fake news” mantra.

But, again, Junior’s emails prove that _____’s advisors had direct inside information that Putin was willing to do whatever necessary to ensure a _____ victory. And every time they discounted that idea they were lying, plain and simple.

Now, while it’s unclear, to some, that the _____ team committed any crime, the law maintains that a person who helps a criminal conceal a crime, or who even fails to report a crime, is known as an accessory after the fact.

Another fact? Junior, Kushner, and Manafort helped keep Russia’s operation a secret by not reporting what they knew; they were, and here’s that word again, complicit. And whether _____ knew about the meeting beforehand—and remember it was inside his building in New York and he was in the building at the time—or found out about it later, he, along with Junior, Kushner, and Manafort, held back that information, allowing the Russian interference to continue and the election to be hacked.

That’s clear. That’s collusion. That should be enough to remove this buffoon from office.

Mother Jones

The Russians Had The Help Of The GOP In Stealing The Election

In an effort to cast doubt on someone other than himself in RussiaGate, _____ keeps asking the question ... if President Obama knew that Vladimir Putin interfered in the 2016 election, why didn’t he say something sooner? Good question, I guess ... so let’s see what the answer might be:

One, President Obama was trying to do the right thing and ...

Two, the Republicans stopped that from happening.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testified last week that the Russian activity in the election went beyond just hacking emails, beyond distributing those emails through Wikileaks, and beyond creating a stream of fake-news stories for alt-right websites and wackjobs on social media.

Russia took unprecedented “active measures” to penetrate state databases and alter or delete voter rolls, and many, including Johnson, viewed that as a kind of declaration of war by Russia.

Last August, the hacking information was sent from the CIA to the White House with “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to four people—President Barack Obama and three senior aides—and be returned to the CIA once read.

In fact, the material was so sensitive that CIA Director John Brennan kept it out of the President’s Daily Brief, concerned that even the Brief’s restricted distribution was too broad; to further guard against leaks, subsequent meetings followed the same protocols as the planning sessions for the Osama bin Laden raid.

It was that sensitive. But, it was still early in the hacking story and the White House couldn’t tell the full extent of the Russian attack, and couldn’t tell who in this country might be cooperating with the Russians, but, the intelligence made one thing clear: Putin’s specific instructions on the objective of the operation were to defeat or at least damage Hillary Clinton, and help elect Donald ______.

The intelligence community went to work on the story and Obama kept quiet because if he had revealed the intelligence, and it turned out to be false, he might have been seen as guilty of interfering in the election himself.  So Obama proceeded with caution, working to confirm the CIA’s intelligence and searching for ways to respond to the hack. He had to build a case that would hold up in front of Republican leaders in Congress and the American people.

Only in his final weeks in office did Obama tell the public, in a declassified report, what officials had learned in August: that Putin was working to elect Trump. And today, ______ plays up that delay as “proof” that he is innocent. But then, think of what he might have done if the story was released in August; he’d have Tweeted it, again and again, because he has, before and since, Tweeted the most ridiculous of stories and downright lies without so much as a thought.

Obama didn’t do that; he followed the law, protecting the nation, and trying to ensure his actions didn’t make the situation worse. He did the right thing but then ... The GOP.

Obama instructed aides to seek bipartisan support from members of Congress on a statement condemning Moscow and urging states to accept federal help. But that never happened; some GOP leaders in Congress put off even meeting with intelligence officials, delaying the process by weeks perhaps because they saw this as their shot to take the White House, our elections be damned.

Jeh Johnson then attempted to designate election infrastructure as “critical” in order to give it the same protection provided defense contractors, but Brian Kemp, the GOP secretary of state of Georgia, used Johnson’s call to denounce the proposal as an assault on state’s rights:

“I think it was a politically calculated move by the previous administration.”

To this day Kemp remains unconvinced that Russia waged a campaign to disrupt the 2016 election.

In short: Republicans were—and are—more concerned with hurting Obama, and Hillary, and taking the White House, than they were in stopping Russia.

So, let’s be queer: it’s not just _____ who colluded with Russia to steal an election, it’s the entire Republican Party who sat their fat asses on their fat hands and did nothing while a foreign country stole an election out from under We The People; and  it wasn’t just random state level officials like Brian Kemp, it was also Congressional leaders.

After meeting with the intelligence community for a briefing the Democrats wanted to release the information to the public but the Republicans resisted, arguing that to warn the public that the election was under attack would further Russia’s aim of sapping confidence in the system. Or, you know, allow Hillary to win. Senate Majority Leader Mitch “Chinless Owl”* McConnell actually voiced skepticism that the intelligence supported the White House’s claims because, you know, Obama.

So, there you have it: the information came out, and was investigated, but the GOP tried to block it from being revealed to the public because they put the party, and their own personal interests, over country.

Chew on that.

*Special thanks to The Prairie Home Companion show on Sunday for giving me another apt description of McConnell besides McTurtle.

Daily Kos

_____ Trolls Schumer ... Schumer Wins

Remember last week, when _____ was all pissy about those investigations into his administration’s contacts with Russia and the U.S. election hack? And remember when he said Jeff Sessions would never recuse himself from heading up the investigation and then Sessions recused himself?

Well, when Little Tiny Fisted Tyrants gets their diapers in a snit, they lash out ... stupidly ... as _____ did with this Tweet showing a photo of New York Senator Chuck Schumer with _____’s BFF Vlad Putin:

But then Schumer Tweeted back: 

It’s funny, and sad and scary, because this is what passes for presidential in this country: a pissy little tyrant trying to bully and berate people on social media.

Can you imagine if Obama ... no, you can’t because Obama never would, he was too busy being president.

Towleroad

The Funny Papers

RJ Matson, Adam Zyglis, Nick Anderson, David Horsey, Walt Handelsman, Clay Bennett, Michael Ramirez, Tom Stiglich

The Funny Papers

Jim Morin, Nate Beeler, Mike Smith, John Cole, Darrin Bell, David Horsey, Nick Anderson, Adam Zyglis, Bill Day, Drew Sheneman