1. With Trump pardoning Stone & Manafort tonight, here's a thread. Remember the GOP-led Senate intel comm report said Manafort was in cahoots with a Russian intelligence officer during the 2016 campaign—while Putin was attacking the election to help Trump. motherjones.com/politics/2020/…
2. This finding and many others proved the Trump-Russia scandal was no hoax. US intelligence had real reasons to worry about the Trump campaign, its interactions with Russians, and its response to Moscow's attack on an American election.
3. The Senate intel comm report also stated plainly that Trump aided and abetted the Russian attack by denying it was happening—while Trump sought to exploit the attack. That is, Trump sided with a foreign adversary as it was assaulting the US and provided cover for it. Betrayal?
4. Back to Stone: the same report concluded that Trump and his campaign covertly used Stone, his longtime adviser, to try to get inside information on the Russia-WikiLeaks operation they could exploit during the 2016 campaign.
5. It gets worse for Trump. The report notes that Trump likely lied about using Stone to Mueller—which could be a crime. Reminder: the committee report, was approved by Republicans and Democrats. And it essentially accused Trump of criminal action to obstruct the investigation.
6. Stone lied to Congress about his attempts to communicate with WikiLeaks. That's what he was prosecuted for. He was trying to cover-up what had happened to protect Trump. Stone has said that he refused to roll over on Trump. And now he has his pardon. It's a corrupt pardon.
7. Manafort, too, did not fully cooperate with Mueller. He obviously hid information. Now he has also been rewarded by Trump. Don't let Trump's disinformation distract from this key fact: his campaign manager was secretly in league with a Russian intel officer. That's a scandal.
8. There's plenty more. These two men are only slices of Trump's very real Russia scandal. There's the Trump Tower meeting that Don Jr. lied about, Trump's secret Moscow deal that he hid from voters, and many other angles.
9. Here's one of those other pieces. George Papadopoulos, too, received a Trump pardon. In the summer of 2016—when the Russia attack was publicly known or suspected—he was trying to set up a back channel between the campaign & Putin's office. What signal did that send to Moscow?
10. Trump can try to blot out the Mueller probe. But there is overwhelming evidence of the Russian attack and Trump's own involvement and wrongdoing. The scoundrels may be getting off. But the record remains—and it will forever stain Trump's presidency.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
#JohnLeCarre was a brilliant story teller & a master writer. If you haven't read his work, do so & marvel at his ability to marshal the English language. He was more than a spy novelist. He illuminated the fundamental tensions of human interaction. Thank you, David Cornwall. RIP.
And damn 2020 for taking from us, one of our best (and one of our my favorite) authors. It is sad to contemplate that there will be no more #JohnLeCarre novels. No one crafted a tale or played with verb tense better than he did.
In its suit trying to throw out the votes of GA, WI, PA & MI, the state of Texas claims the odds of Biden winning those states is "less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power." That's crazy. BTW, Charles Cicchetti, who came up with that stat, and his wife are Trump donors.
Oh, @JennaEllisEsq, remember when you said Trump's values were "not American" & linked to a post calling him an "American fascist." Now you say there was a massive conspiracy to steal an election from him. What to believe? Who's running this conspiracy? Rudy can't name a perp.
1. I was at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2011 when @obama lacerated @realDonaldTrump, and the entire crowd laughed *at* Trump. It was akin to a bully being humiliated in the schoolyard in front of everyone.
2. The moment seemed a total repudiation of Trump. He seethed. And people who know him have said that his 2016 presidential bid was motivated in part by a desire for revenge.
3. He did get his vengeance when he beat HRC in 2016 (with the help of Vladimir Putin). And he must have loved that—and assaulting Obama’s legacy. After all, nothing fuels Trump more than spite.
1. It's been overshadowed by other matters (the pandemic, impeachment), but @realDonaldTrump's betrayal of the United States related to Putin's attack on American democracy should not be overlooked or forgotten on this Election Day. Here is a thread with some basics.
2. In 2016, Putin mounted a covert op to sow discord, hurt Clinton & help Trump. When this plot became public—when WikiLeaks dumped DNC emails and documents stolen by Russian hackers—the Trump campaign (inc. Paul Manafort & @DonasldJTrumpJr) denied the Russian attack.
3. The Trump campaign aided & abetted the Russian attack by providing cover for Moscow and by echoing Putin's false denials. The campaign did this even though it had tried to collude with a Kremlin operative as part of what it was told was a secret Moscow plot to help Trump.
I just spoke with John Paul Isaac, the Wilmington computer repair store owner who ended up with Hunter Biden's laptop and gave it to the FBI and Giuliani. He would not explain how a copy of the hard drive was passed to Rudy Giuliani. "No comment," he said.
Isaac said he first went to the FBI and there were "many, many steps" between the laptop going to the bureau and the copy of the hard drive being sent to Giuliani: "I don't feel like talking about it now."
Did he want to see this become a big story? "The outcome I wanted was the FBI doing the right thing. Confiscating the equipment—that was the right thing to do….I gave it to them and expected them to do something. They sounded like they wanted it for an investigation...."