THERE'S MORE TO THE PICTURE THAN MEETS THE EYE

It’s easy to overlook bits of good news in the aftermath of the awful NRA-inspired terrorist attack in Florida, but for the record, here are some positive developments related to the Russo-Republican election rigging investigation.

CNN has confirmed something I speculated about a couple of weeks ago – that former Trump campaign advisor Rick Gates is working on a plea deal with Mueller.  As Paul Manafort’s lieutenant, Gates knows stuff that would damage Donald J. Trump, and put Manafort in prison for life.  Win-win.

Last week also brought news that real estate tycoon Jared Kushner was in hock up to his ears.  Jared and Ivanka had claimed in July that their debt amounted to between $1-5 million.  That’s not a big deal.  Who among us hasn’t been $5 million in debt at one time or another? 

But now they’ve revised their estimated debt upwards – way upwards – to somewhere between $31 million and $155 million.  First of all, that’s quite a range.  If they’re reduced to taking wild guesses, they must really be screwed.  But more importantly, how the hell did the genius tasked by Donald J. Trump with bringing peace to the Middle East and solving the opioid crisis manage to lose so much money? 

Of course, his father-in-law also gave Jared another little assignment – to run the government like a business.  That would explain why the Trump-Ryan tax cuts left us with a trillion dollar increase in our national debt.  It begs the question – is Jared Kushner good at anything?  No wonder the FBI refuses to approve Kushner’s security clearance.   

But perhaps the biggest news came on Friday, when Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians for interfering with the 2016 election.  As usual when Mueller hands down an indictment, Donald Trump and his supporters immediately declared victory, because none of them were named in the indictment.  And as usual, they’ve underestimated Mueller.

First of all, these indictments mean that a grand jury has affirmed what Trump spent the past year trying to deny.  When our national intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that Russia was behind the election hacks, Trump said it could have been “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 lbs.”  Maybe one of the Russians weighs 400 lbs. and worked from his bedroom, but there’s no longer any reason to doubt that Russians did the dirty work.  Mueller’s indictment describes what they did and how they did it in detail.

Remember also that Mueller never gives away his whole hand.  This indictment contains hints of more to come.  In particular, there is, in item 81, a fascinating reference to “over 100 real U.S. persons” who were being manipulated by these 13 Russians, as well as to “activities they had been asked to perform by Defendants and their co-conspirators.” 

I hope we find out who those real U.S. persons are, and what each of them did.  They need to know that they were working for Russia.  I also hope we learn the identities of those mysterious co-conspirators. 

The “fake news” crowd will go into their usual song and dance, but the truth is emerging despite their best efforts.