Thread by @HoarseWisperer

Okay, politikids. Grab thyselves a beverage and settle in.

I just careened through 180-pages of House Intel Committee testimony by Fusion GPS and it was just chockablock with tasty bits.

Let's hit the buffet.

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Before diving in, standard disclaimer:

Written super fast, in one pass, sans proofreading.

Be gentle about typos, missing words and such.

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Alright! Let's get started.

First, this testimony was a stark contrast to the Senate version.

The Senate transcript read like The Obstructionists vs. The Truth Seekers.

This one reads like The Mailing-It-In Gang vs. The Truth Seekers.

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I mean, while this is snarky and out of context, whereas Dems were asking open-ended questions aimed at eliciting information, Republican Trey Gowdy opened with this... umm... probing question.

"What do you mean by facts?"

Ugh. Not a grt start to a 170-page read.

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I'm going to skip all the material that was duplicative of what was covered in the Senate testimony and my thread on that one.

That cuts out 75% of the material. You're welcome.

Please DM me a beer as thanks. Any beer. I need one.

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As setup/reminder, Fusion GPS is the firm that compiled "the dossier". The primary actors were Glenn Simpson and a British spy named Christopher Steele.

Simpson is an ex-journalist. As it turns out, Steele is much like a journalist himself...

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So, their investigative work on Trump, his associates and Russia was much like a deep, spy-assisted act of investigative journalism...

...and, oh, the things they discovered.

As Simpson put it, they hooked a Moby.

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A big part of the Moby Dick tale centers on Trump's apparent dirty real estate dealings... and it includes some fascinating new info.

As we know, Trump sells a lot of properties to dirty players.

Those buyers even live in places like Trump Tower...

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...and those dirty money buyers don't just write checks and disappear. They tend to pop up alongside Trump time and time again.

Take the Trump Tower mobster for example... lo and behold, he was a VIP at a Trump event in Russia. What a coincidence.

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...and these mobsters and crooks aren't street corner guys like in Ye Olde New York Cosa Nostra days.

They're players with a direct connection to Vladi Putin.

Putin is the Godfatherski of this syndicate.

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As it turns out, some of these players used to have really big mouths about their ties to Donald Trump...

They not only didn't do backroom deals with Dirty Don; they bragged about their book of business.

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...and on the American side of these big-mouthed operators was an equally dimwitted accomplice: Trump's atty, Michael Cohen.

These geniuses did things like deny they knew each other... while forgetting to delete their public comments to each other on Twitter and Insta.

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While we already know this, Cohen is dirty up the wazoo. He's got Russian ties six ways to Sunday and may very well be a central orchestrator of Trump's pre-election dirty dealings in Russia and the Ukraine.

This man is going to prison. Bank on it.

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...and running in the background is the recurrent theme of the motive for all this:

Trump is just not that good at actually making money by any legal means. His actual business operations tend to suck.

Barring unexplained inflows, there ain't much money being made.

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In fact, Simpson came to conclude that Trump is hiding a REALLY embarrassing secret:

Not only is he not that wealthy; he's still heavily reliant on money trickling down from his daddy's legacy.

Now THAT would be a reputation killer - and a reason to hide his tax returns.

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...and as Simpson was dishing the dirt, there was Dem rockstar, Rep. Adam Schiff, thinking like a prosecutor and going hard at the investigation.

Schiff brought his A-game with questions like this one (paraphrased)...

"We can drop subpoenas, bro... Who oughta get one?"

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I mean.. just savor that one...

Glenn Simpson is sitting there serving up bread crumbs to the goods and there's Adam Schiff saying "Great work, ace... We've got more firepower than you though, so help us aim our weapons..."

Deeeelicious.

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Simpson started with an answer that I just loved seeing hit the Family Feud board.

Jared Kushner... and specifically, Kushner's involvement in selling expensive properties as a way to backdoor Russian operatives into the country through a visa program exploit.

Boomski!

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Fun-fact: the Kushners are ethnic Russians.

I don't know how I didn't know that but I didn't...

That's... interesting.

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But let's get back to Donnie... and the most interesting reveal in this testimony.

To me, this is fascinating and it entirely pulls together the picture of Trump's Russian ties and the big "why?" behind his entanglements.

Bear with me here. It's worth the read...

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As we know, Trump builds buildings... but is entirely uncreditworthy. No one will lend the guy money.

His days of getting unsecured loans for big projects have been over since the 90's...

...but he has found a work-around.

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The racket works like this:

Trump lines up "buyers" for units in building projects before construction has even begun (called "pre-sales") and then takes those "pre-sales" to lenders to talk them into writing loans.

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...and that's where his Russian friends come in...

They tend to be those magical pre-sale buyers who give Trump the leverage he needs to get loans.

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Like all mob rackets, this scheme seems to have gotten even more flagrant over time.

In the early days, Trump got the pre-sales he needed to get loans and the money launderers got a perfect vehicle for funneling dirty money out of Russia into Trump properties.

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...but then the scheme got even more brazen.

Not only were the buyers dirty; they never followed through. They were just the bait to lure in real buyers... who then got entirely fleeced when the dirty birds flew south which sent the projects into bankruptcy.

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So, basically, it was a symbiotic fraud initially.

Trump needed dirty money as defacto collateral to get financing for buildings... and the launderers needed ways to turn dirty cash into clean assets like real estate.

...but then they added fleecing bystanders to the mix.
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Most maddening, Fusion GPS not only knew all of this; they had "read in" the FBI on what they had learned...

...and then Comey tanked the election anyway...

...and then the whistle-blowers went public.

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When the FBI torpedoed only Clinton, Fusion GPS briefed media outlets including the NY Times and prompted them to go ask the FBI if Trump was under investigation...

...and as we know, outlets like the NY Times reported just the opposite of the real answer.

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...and we're only even learning of this now because House Intel Committee members like Adam Schiff fought through an effort by Devin Nunes to torpedo this entire hearing and its testimony.

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While there are more little nuggets, I am going to wrap this up here with a little waxing philosophic.

This was a much less painful read than the Senate transcript. That one was an agonizing battle between treasonous enemies of the state and seekers of truth.

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This one was more like watching the good students do the hard work while the slackers stared out the window.

The Republicans in the room asked weak questions with little intensity or energy and seemed to be barely doing more than mailing it in (IMHO).

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I came away both proud of and inspired by Adam Schiff, et al, and gratified by all of the work they've done to advance an investigation that would have otherwise died.

We owe Rep. Schiff profound thanks.

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...and finally, I came out of understanding the root of Trump's Russian love affair... and it is far simpler than it has sometimes seemed.

Their role as buyers of Trump properties made them the sugar daddies he desperately needed to get the money no one else would give him.

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For a failed tycoon toddler like Donald J. Trump, there is no more powerful kompromat than having the ability to lock the bank vault.

Trump needed Russia. They needed each other actually...

...but they're far smarter and parlayed that into owning him outright.

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