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These Clues Suggest Mueller Isn’t Done Yet — and May Have Bigger Russian Spy Bombshells

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Special counsel Robert Mueller might not be done with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who still is the subject of unanswered questions about his ties to Russian intelligence.

“Court documents and pre-sentence hearings that dealt with the breach of Manafort’s plea deal suggest that prosecutors might have more ammunition to go after the 69-year-old on matters that go directly to the question of a conspiracy with Russia, rather than the financial crimes and violations of foreign-agent laws that he’s been charged with to date,” The Atlantic’s Natasha Bertrand wrote Friday.

After pleading guilty to tax fraud and failing to register for a foreign agent, US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Manafort also lied “intentionally” to the FBI, Mueller and the grand jury “concerning matters that were material to the investigation: his interactions and communications” with suspected Russian intelligence agent Konstantin Kilimnik, Bertrand noted.

A statement made by top Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann earlier in March offers the first clue that the Manafort saga has not reached its end.

In that closed-door hearing, Weissmann argued that a meeting Manafort had with Kilimnik in August 2016 “goes very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating,” the reporter noted.

That meeting, however, was “conspicuously absent” from the government’s 800-page sentencing memo for the former Trump campaign chairman. Jackson added in her sentencing hearing earlier in the week that Manafort’s lies about the meeting were just one part of “several matters he lied about with regard to Mr. Kilimnik.”

The known details about the Manafort-Kilimnik meeting may be the closest the public has to a “smoking gun” on Russian collusion, Bertrand wrote, noting that the former Trump campaign chair had his deputy Rick Gates send 75 pages of polling data to the suspected Russian spy.

“The content of the 2016 meeting was only revealed by accident due to a redaction error by Manafort’s lawyers,” she added, “and the significance of the episode to Mueller’s main probe, while hinted at by Weissmann, has yet to be fully explained.”

Read the entire analysis via The Atlantic.

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‘Someone’s Got to Run the Deportation Camps’: Prison Stocks Soar as Trump Agenda Unfolds

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Several private prison stocks have been skyrocketing since Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election. Trump has vowed mass deportations, and his campaign spokesperson on Wednesday said “millions” would be deported on day one.

“One HUGE winner from Trump’s win: Private prison companies GEO Group Inc. and CoreCivic Inc.,” observed Bloomberg News reporter Steven Dennis on Wednesday. “Their stocks, which could benefit from Trump’s plans for rounding up millions of immigrants, rocketed higher today 41% and 29% respectively.”

Thomson Reuters Foundation journalist Avi Asher-Schapiro also on Wednesday, posted the stock’s performance over the past five days, which shows it jumped over 26%. He writes: “Private prison giant Geo Group —which already has over a billion dollars in ICE contracts to manage immigration detention facilities—sees its stock soar on Trump’s win.”

Pointing to an earnings call transcript from August, he notes the company “also administers the ‘Intensive Supervision Appearance Program’ which is GPS monitoring of migrants.”

READ MORE: ‘Under Attack’: Newsom Preps to Protect California From Trump

“Now, it’s 175,000 people. If the GOP-backed House Bill becomes law, that could expand to 7 million.”

Ohio Capitol Journal Editor-in-Chief David DeWitt noted, “To deport 20 million people [a number Trump has claimed], they need to build massive camps – deportation, detention…camps where people are concentrated… to handle such massive numbers. Brokers are speculating a nice windfall for a private prison giant on the backs of millions of families being put in camps”

At Thompson Reuters’ Context, Asher-Schapiro co-wrote an article last week explaining how Geo has donated over a half-million dollars to support Trump’s re-election efforts.

“GEO Group’s political action committee moved early this year to donate a maximum $5,000 to the Trump campaign, in addition to a $500,000 donation from a GEO subsidiary to a pro-Trump group, according to an analysis from CREW’s [Robert] Maguire and Lauren White.”

CREW is the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

READ MORE: The List of Who Donald Trump Has ‘Pledged to Punish,’ According to One of His Targets

“The company also not only donated to his 2017 inauguration, but moved its annual corporate event to one of his properties, White said.”

“They have not only been fuelling Trump’s political aspirations, but they have been putting money directly in Trump’s pocket by using his businesses in a pretty conspicuous way,” White also said.

The Atlantic’s David Frum is a Never-Trump Republican who announced Wednesday he “De-registered as a Republican today.”

Responding to the chart of Geo Group’s stock skyrocketing, he remarked sardonically: “Someone’s got to run the deportation camps.”

On Wednesday, NBC News explored how Trump may execute his deportation plan, and highlight one of his recent quotes about immigrants: “We’re like a garbage can for the world.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Dire Implications’: Trump’s Possible Vaccine Ban Could Spark US, Global Health Crisis

 

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‘Under Attack’: Newsom Preps to Protect California From Trump

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California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is preparing on multiple fronts to protect his state from the impending Donald Trump presidency.

“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won’t sit idle,” Newsom said in a statement, the LA Times reports. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond. We are prepared to fight in the courts, and we will do everything necessary to ensure Californians have the support and resources they need to thrive.”

“California is ready to fight,” Newsom added, via social media. “Whether it be our fundamental civil rights, reproductive freedom, or climate action — we refuse to turn back the clock and allow our values and laws to be attacked.”

The 57-year old with reported presidential aspirations has called the state legislature back into session to provide additional funding for litigation against the Trump administration.

READ MORE: Marco Rubio to State? Ken Paxton to DOJ? Trump Administration Contenders Emerge

“California anticipates that Trump could seek to limit access to abortion, dismantle environmental protections and withhold federal disaster response funding,” The Times adds, along with repealing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

“The new special session provides an early look at the governor’s plan to wage an aggressive and highly visible campaign to shield California from the Trump White House.”

The governor sees the need “to increase legal funding to defend civil rights, climate change, access to abortion, disaster funding and other California policies from a conservative federal agenda before the inauguration in January.”

“Newsom’s preemptive strike signals the return of the hostile relationship between Democratic-controlled California and the Trump administration that was a hallmark of the Republican’s first term.”

RELATED: Day One: Trump Planning ‘Largest Mass Deportation Operation’

The governor’s additional preparations for the impending Trump presidency include having performed an analysis of Project 2025, the extremist playbook created by the far-right Heritage Foundation, and a review of the more than 100 lawsuits California filed against the first Trump administration.

Ezra Levin, who co-founded the progressive organization Indivisible in response to the first Trump presidency, commented on Newsom’s actions: “This is a good move and Dem leaders in trifecta states across the country should be taking similar action. If you’re a leader in this moment, go lead.”

READ MORE: The List of Who Donald Trump Has ‘Pledged to Punish,’ According to One of His Targets

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license

 

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Marco Rubio to State? Ken Paxton to DOJ? Trump Administration Contenders Emerge

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Donald Trump in 2016 reportedly did not want to be president and did not expect to win the White House. He got off to a slow and rocky start forming his administration, including just days after the election was finally called, when he inflicted a “Stalinesque purge” of his transition team, delaying even further his government’s formation.

That is not expected to happen this time.

Trump has Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s extremist blueprint for presidential transition that entirely transforms the executive branch of the federal government into one built on a Christian nationalism foundation. Some Trump loyalists are now—post-Election Day—gleefully declaring it actually is his agenda, after a month of Trump and his campaign’s efforts to distance themselves from its toxicity. (On the left and right Project 2025 has a single-digit approval rating.)

RELATED: Day One: Trump Planning ‘Largest Mass Deportation Operation’

Trump has an abundance of MAGA allies rushing to be picked to serve in the second Trump administration, which will be needed since, as  The New Republic’s Greg Sargent reports, a Trump ally is already “hinting persecution of enemies,” and that the “purging of [government] will begin immediately.”

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who infamously vowed to never run for another office if he lost the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 (which he did, to Trump), only to rescind that promise and win re-election, is reportedly on Trump’s short list for Secretary of State. Rubio, frequently spoke at Trump rallies and wasted no time after the election, in talking about foreign policy, and especially ending Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

“Texas is positioned better than any state to help Trump carry out his ambitious anti-immigration agenda, and some of its top politicians are using that to their advantage,” The Texas Tribune reports. “The state is home to an estimated 1.6 million undocumented persons — the second-most in the country after California. It is also led by Republican elected officials who are politically in lock-step with Trump.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a far-right Republican who took office in 2015, and was indicted under state criminal felony charges months later, appears to also have been under federal investigation at least as recently as May. After nearly a decade of delays, Paxton agreed to perform 100 hours of community service to avoid trial on state fraud charges.

Paxton also was central to the Republican attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election that Trump lost.

READ MORE: The List of Who Donald Trump Has ‘Pledged to Punish,’ According to One of His Targets

CBS affiliate KENS5 in Texas reports Thursday that Paxton’s “name has been floated for the U.S. Department of Justice, and if this happens, it could help Paxton in a legal and professional manner. He’s being investigated by the FBI for alleged corruption.”

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller “told reporters that he’s acknowledged the rumor that he may be asked to serve on the National Department of Agriculture under President-elect Trump,” KENS5 also reports.

As NCRM reported, Miller has called for the atomic bombing of “the Muslim world,” compared Syrian refugees to venomous rattlesnakes and threatened violence against people who say “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

Miller was also under investigation for using taxpayer funds to pay for personal out-of-state trips, including one to obtain a so-called “Jesus shot.”

Other names being floated for Trump’s administration, including at the Cabernet level include his former GOP presidential candidate opponents, Vivek Ramaswamy and Doug Burgum. Also, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Elon Musk, U.S. Senator Mike Lee, and Trump’s architect of child separation, Stephen Miller.

READ MORE: ‘Be the Guardrails of Democracy’: Liz Cheney and Other Never-Trumpers Suggest Path Forward

 

 

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