"MAGA Bomber" Terrorist Busted For Mail Bombs: Will The Right's Degenerates Now Crawl Out Of The Land of Denial?

The Trumper mutt - Cesar Sayoc- in MAGA cap at Trump rally. Now known as the "MAGA Bomber" after his mass assassination threat.

The jig was up today at about 1:00 p.m. MT when the FBI and DOJ released details of the mail ("MAGA") bomber: a confirmed Trumpie by the name of Cesar Sayoc. Investigators found Sayoc after finding a latent fingerprint on the envelope sent to California Rep. Maxine Waters, which has been confirmed to belong to him,  FBI chief Chris Wray said. They also believe there is DNA on other packages.

Sayoc has been charged with five federal crimes, including interstate transportation of an explosive, illegal mailing of an explosive, threats against former presidents, threatening interstate commerce, and assaulting current and former federal officers, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said at a press conference.. He faces up to 58 years in prison.

We also now know this domestic terrorist is no "leftist". He's a 56-year old registered Republican, has Trump designs festooned all over his van (including one with a Hillary Clinton image and a sniper's cross hairs overlaid). An image of the van is shown below:


His Twitter account is also loaded with pro-Trump B.S. and hate for Trump's political opponents, almost fully reflecting the hate displayed on his van..

In fact, Sayoc is an open and outspoken Trump supporter with a long trail on social media. He posted memes attacking some of the targets of the bombs, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and promoting conspiracy theories about them. And he posted fervent support for Trump, including images of himself at a Trump rally and in a Make America Great Again hat. Authorities also seized a white van covered in political decals.He also has an extensive criminal record, with at least 8 arrests. One was for threatening to bomb a utility company. 

 The busted perp has been arrested nearly a dozen times in Florida, including a 2002 arrest for making a bomb threat. His criminal record in the state extends to the early 1990s, starting with his arrest for larceny at the age of 29, according to state records. Other charges of larceny, grand theft and fraud would soon follow across the southern part of the state.

In the 2002 bomb threat case, Sayoc pleaded guilty to the felony without a trial and was sentenced to probation, the records show.

Of course, there will now be reams of deflections in the wake to try and make this asshole seem as innocuous as Saint Francis of Assissi. Even his lawyer, Daniel Aaronson,  gushed:

"None of my clients were as polite and as courteous and as respectful to me."

Ever heard of putting on an act, bub?   But see, in the end it doesn't matter one whit how "courteous" this slime ball was to a lawyer, but rather the amount of harm he might have potentially inflicted on his targets. And, no,I do not buy the codswallop he peddled that "all of those were harmless" referring to the mail bombs.  As FBI Director Chris Wray made clear: "None of these were hoax bombs".   

The reason is that NY and federal  investigators all made it clear they were damned dangerous, even equating them to IEDs. The one that ended up at Robert DeNiro's place, for example, could have blown his eyes out or fatally injured him had the mail not been intercepted by a former NYPD detective.  (Give that guy an extra raise, Robert!)

According to a Washington Post account:

"Social media profiles that apparently belonged to Sayoc were filled with conspiracy theories and antipathy toward liberals. "

Let's correct that: His assorted twaddle did not have conspiracy theories but rather paranoid conspiracy ideations. (See my previous post).

We will wait now to see if the Right's liars and fomenters finally admit their guy is one of them and not a "leftist plant" or "secret FBI agent".  I am not sanguine about any of them becoming mental changelings because they have already taken the Trump kool aid - as disastrous for their brains as Jim Jones' cyanide-laced purple mix was for his followers at Jonestown, Guyana in  August, 1978.

Besides, even Trump is more concerned with the effects of the arrest on "GOP momentum" according to a tweet this morning, not the lives that could have been snuffed out or bodies permanently maimed. He also still spouts hollow bollocks about stopping political violence but don't believe it for a second.  The words are empty,  totally detached from any heart felt investment.  The man possessed the moral capacity of a slug before and that hasn't changed.  The toxins destroying this nation will not and cannot be diluted or removed until Trump is out. As in gone. 

I can fully understand the Right's millions of Reddit, 4Chan, Gateway Pundit, FOX and other trolls wanting to bolt from this character, but eventually they will have to suck up reality- especially after the midterm elections and voters finally declare with their ballots they've had about enough of Donald J. Trump running amuck and Trumpie lunatics providing cover for his crimes.

Enough? You bet after a rally last night, where his shrieking cultists kept on with "CNN sucks!" while the maggot-in-chief did nothing to tone it down though he yapped through his ass again about "civility".  Meanwhile invoking the tired false equivalence trope that "when a Bernie Sanders supporter tried to murder congressional Republicans and a great man named Steve Scalise and others we did not use that heinous attempt at mass murder for political gain."

Except there's a world of difference, you fucktard!  Bernie Sanders, unlike fucktard Dotard has NEVER incited or called for violence at ANY rallies he's ever held.  By contrast, fucktard Dotard has regularly called reporters "enemies of the people" and encouraged his zombies to "knock the crap out of protesters" and recently praised a congressman (Greg Gianforte) for body slamming a Guardian reporter.  So don't even go near any such false equivalence.

Trump is a blight and cancer on this nation and the sooner he's removed from office, the more quickly we have a chance of regaining some semblance of sanity.

Update:  10/ 27

Of course, realizing ordinary false equivalence might not work, the WSJ's editors decided to try a different ploy today ('After The Mail Bombs', p. A12), insisting:

"We cite the Hodgkinson (Scalise) shooting not for the purpose of establishing moral equivalence  between these two events, but to make clear both came from the country's extreme lunatic fringe."

Nice try, but you'd have done better to admit the Right's lunatic fringe is 100 times the size of the Left's with its "Q" Anon conspiracy bunkum, and massive online enclaves of dregs like 4Chan, Reddit, Gateway Pundit etc. where Trumper zombies gather and trade lies and hate by the millions. There is no comparable social media wasteland on the Left, hate to break it to you.

See also:

Broad-Daylight Fascism and the Bombs of October

And:

Laura Flanders

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Donald Trump

Is Donald Trump Responsible for Violence? Yes.

As The Right Spins Its "False Flag" Flatus Let's Not Conflate Conspiracy Crackpots With Actual Conspiracy Theorists -Researchers

Alex Jones (left) is a conspiracy kook, while Mark Lane is a conspiracy analyst. It's time the scribes in the mainstream media began to learn the difference!

As noted in my post of Oct. 24, it was mere hours after the news broke that explosive devices had been sent to George Soros, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and other prominent Democrats, that  deranged conspiracy ideation  (I refuse to dignify it with the term 'theory') was spawned in certain corners of conservative media.  The bombs, according to this hogswill, were not actually part of a plot to harm Democrats, but were a “false flag” operation concocted by leftists in order to paint conservatives as violent radicals ahead of the elections next month.  As Matt Miller put it last night ('Last Word', MSNBC) "This is coming from conservative circles that this was somehow a liberal plot to distract from the caravan  which they believe is what the election ought to be about. So again, you have this idea that because they were Democratic targets it's not a national crisis, but something we can again fight over - which is obviously a really reprehensible idea."

Sound familiar? If it does you might recall it comes right out of the playbook of  über -kook Alex Jones who fabricated the false flag bunkum that the Sandy Hook/Newtown massacre was a federal "false flag" operation. Those twenty  kids weren't really slain, they were merely child actors- as well as the teachers- in an elaborate script to befuddle the public and make them demand gun confiscation across the land. (Jones was also one of the nitwits who confected the cockeyed conspiracy codswallop that the Parkland shooting victims, who became gun control activists-  were all actors.)

Many of these lowbrow kooks, which is what they are, were  also foursquare behind helping to spread Michael Flynn's  Pizzagate conspiracy, i.e. that Hillary Clinton was keeping child sex slaves in the basement of a D.C. pizza parlor and exploiting them.

So no one need be a Mensa brainiac to know the template for this latest false flag conspiracy B.S. has been in existence from the Right's stooges and trolls for some time. Hence, it ought to have been of minimal surprise to learn this latest iteration shares the same deranged heritage, or "DNA" if you will. In this case, a wacko named  Jacob Wohl-   a pro-Trump twit who writes for Gateway Pundit (a Right wing troll farm)-   tweeted  the  refuse that the assorted pipe bombs were props, planted by Democratic operatives and amplified by a biased liberal media.  In other words, all a ruse to drive voters to the Dems. No, folks, you cannot make this shit up, this is real and happening in Rightist Trump World.

One is led to inquire what engenders this degenerate crap.  What defects in the brains of these losers causes them to spawn such bollocks, say instead of applying what gray matter they have to researching real conspiracies?  Well, one answer is that researching the real ones - like the JFK assassination  - actually takes hundreds of man hours of real work.  Just plowing through Oswald's CIA files - e.g. the  OS-351- 164 file from his  201- 289 248 CI/SIG file or his 74-500 file. as reported in the Appendices of  John Newman’s book, ‘Oswald and the CIA’- can take hours.   It's a damned sight more exacting than merely scribbling  an imbecilic text on 4 Chan, Reddit or Gateway Pundit.

Sadly, columnist Kevin Roose, in a recent  NY  Times piece : ' False Flag Theory on Pipe Bombs Zooms From Right-Wing Fringe to Mainstream',  appeared not to be able to distinguish this latest right wing baloney from serious conspiracy research. That is the nature of the work done by Mark Lane  - who would be called a REAL conspiracy theorist or better, conspiracy analyst.  (The analyst having often shown facts, evidence, data beyond the conjectures of theorists.)

 As articulated by Dr. Pat Bannister, the conspiracy research community is the province of mature, rational, educated adults. Serious people possessing some measure of intellect who bring their scientific, mathematical and other aptitudes to the investigation of multiple aspects of a putative real conspiracies - whether the BCCI banking conspiracy, Iran-Contra or the JFK assassination. These people put in real man hours and actually published their work in authoritative media and respected forums as opposed to spreading bunkum through the lowest dreg regions of the net.

Lane, for example, was the first to expose the misdirection and artifice to do with Lee Harvey Oswald's USMC rifle test scores. This was in conjunction with the Warren Commission's questioning of Major Eugene D. Anderson in reference to Commission Exhibit No. 239.  Thus, the WC simply published Anderson's ambivalent speculations on what  weather conditions  for May 6, 1959 might have been, i.e. at first asserting "it was an ideal day".   But it was Lane who pointed out, 'Rush To Judgment', p. 124:

"Although the Commission adopted and published the major's speculation on what the weather 'might well have been'  there was no need for imprecision on this point. Whenever weather is a factor in a court case in the United States, the records of the United States Weather Bureau are subpoenaed and presented as a matter of course.  ... The Weather Bureau records show that the day was not 'windy, rainy, dark', it was sunny and bright and no rain fell."

 That, I submit, is the work of a serious researcher, not a wacko like  Jacob Wohl, Michael Flynn or Alex Jones.   Alas, Mr. Roose - unable to make any critical distinction between genuine theorists-analysts like Mark Lane and ignorant poppets such as Alex Jones, Jacob Wohl et al, writes:

"Conspiratorial thinking has always been with us — the grassy knoll, the moon landing, the Freemasons. But it has been turbocharged in the Trump era..."

Thereby conflating conspiracy thinking and analysis with paranoid ideations and blatant nonsense.  This occurred as soon as he dragged in "the grassy knoll".  Following on from his book 'Rush To Judgement', Lane prepared a video with eponymous title, in which actual assassination witnesses were interviewed including: S.M. Holland, Lee Bowers, Aquilla Clemmons,  Orville Nix and others. In the case of S. M. Holland, e.g.

Lane escorted him to the top of the Triple Underpass overlooking Dealey Plaza to assess the full layout including the grassy knoll, and the curve of Elm Street around the Texas School Book Depository. Subsequently,  Lane actually walked with Holland  to the picket fence on the grassy knoll, clearly revealing its height would have concealed an assassin. Holland also recounted for Lane the questions never asked him by the Commission.

The interview with railroad worker Lee Bowers (later found dead in a suspicious car accident) disclosed the movement of men and a vehicle ('58 or '59 Chevy, tires covered with mud) behind the picket fence on the knoll just before the assassination.

Lane's preliminary work in many ways set the stage for the research of D.B. Thomas (published in the journal Science and Justice, Vol. 41, p. 21, 2001) which showed the putative origin of the kill shot in the assassination, traced to the grassy knoll using echo correlation analysis. This was based on the inferred geometry:

Thomas incorporated  both the original acoustic data (in dictabelt recordings) from Nov 22, 1963 and  more recent evidence from August 1978, when a test shot was fired in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza to provide a fiducial mark for the putative Grassy Knoll shot.   This integration was such that the test shot could be compared with the impulse record obtained on Nov. 22, 1963, e.g.

 This enabled the  fiducial mark to be lined up to events recorded on the Zapruder film. Thus, the test evidence (mainly in terms of echoes and echo delay times received via an echogram from a test shot (See Fig. 1) was essentially used to confirm the microphone recording & positions for the shots made on the actual date, by resort to microphones placed at the same (or approximately so) locations.

The hypergeometric p-function was then used for differing weighting factor distribution sets, H{M..N, n, i} to assess significance or likelihood of occurrence. It's based on the number of echo  'windows'  M,  with each spanning 190msec (total time)  at 2msec width per window and n for assigned impulses in the evidence pattern, with 'i' the "coincident impulses" or those matching the original (11/22/63)evidence and the test result. 

The question was whether a succession of first impulses of given amplitude could be manifesting a signal or was merely random noise. Thomas found that for a given configuration for 2 motorcycles at designated locations, 1 for (Grassy knoll) shooter location and one for alignment of muzzle blasts with one pair of echoes, the p -value is 0.000012 or about 1 in 100,000 against the null hypothesis, i.e. that the impulses were from random noise. An alternative way to put this is that the odds are 100.000 to 1 against being random noise. Hence  in favor of the impulses comprising actual rifle shots.

For the test shot, using Thomas' sonar model and the muzzle velocity for a Norma 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano (which is very doubtful that the GK shooter used), one arrives at a 171 msec time for the shock wave to take the defined path to the microphone, from a distance of 28.3m.  (See geometry diagram above)  One must then add the time taken for the putative bullet to travel the distance to the time for the shock wave. In this case: 126 msec + 45 msec. The first parameter is relatively fixed since the distance from bullet to test microphone is fixed at 44.2m and the speed of sound defined for the sonar model was 350 m/s.

The second component changes depending on the muzzle velocity. A German Mauser, with muzzle velocity not much greater than 760 m/s will have its bullet traverse the 28.3 m distance in 37 msec, so that the time will now be: 126 msec + 37 msec or 163 msec, which is some 8 msec shorter. If the rifle used was a Remington Fireball with muzzle velocity 825 m/s then we have a total time: t1 + t2 = 126 msec + 34 msec = 160 msec, or 3 msec shorter.

In the “analytically determined” schema (e.g. actual data obtained on 11/22/63), all the above values change slightly. For example, the distance to Kennedy (from the GK shooter) becomes 30.5 m, and the speed of sound is 342 m/s given the air temperature was 18  C (64.4 F)  at the time of the assassination. The distance from the (GK) assassin to the nearest motorcycle was 67 m leading to the muzzle blast arriving at the motorcycle some D t = [67m/ 342 m/s] = 196 msec, after the shot. When air resistance is corrected for by + 11.5% (from the shooter location) the muzzle velocity resulting becomes 748 m/s (using a starting assumed bullet speed of 672 m/s). Because of a shooter “location uncertainty” of +/- 1.5 m (A<-> A') the muzzle velocity uncertainty is at least +/- 32m/s, so one is left with a range of: 748 +/- 32 m/s. Assuming Thomas’ parameters are correct, then this excludes a Remington Fireball as a possible candidate weapon, but it does permit either a German Mauser or a .30-30 Winchester.

The bottom line is that Thomas' investigation soundly reconfirmed the original acoustic tests and that the kill shot came from the grassy knoll.

My point in writing this post and undertaking this exercise is to show the need for more scrupulous attention to details, as opposed to recklessly and lazily employing throwaway terms like "the grassy knoll"- to conflate one of the few genuine conspiracies with current wacko ideations.  The  latter referring to the false flag idiocy spewed by the Right's parade of morons, paper patriots  and shameless knuckledraggers.

By also showing more perception, intelligence and insight, writers like Roose will command more respect, especially in being able to discern poppycock from actual events that merit close analysis and research of the type I have shown.  Writers like Roose thereby emerge as more competent and informed when they write pieces on claptrap, paranoid conspiracy ideations - such as circulated by Jacob Wohl and Alex Jones.  The takeaway for serious journalists?  Do not insert "grassy knoll"  phrases or references as a kind of cheap homage to "conspiratorial thinking"  when criticizing today's incarnations of paranoid bunkum.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2018/08/research-into-conspiracism-undermined.html

And:
Here Are 5 of the Worst Far-Right and White Supremacist Terrorist Attacks of Recent Years

Skewering Another Right Wing Conspiracy Ideation: "The Dems DID It!"

Kimberly Strassel: Is helping to pump the idiotic "theory" that the Dems, Hillary, Loretta Lynch and others ginned up the Steele dossier to "dig up dirt on Trump" and upend his nutso (p)residency. Now we know she - like her Reich cohort - are playing with 52 cards short of a full deck.

As the screws tighten on the Trump-Russia associations and the Mueller probe into undermining of the 2016 election by the same Russkies, it was expected the Right would at some point go batshit nuts and try to contest the facts.   That time appears to be now, as across the Reich fake news spectrum (Breitbart, FOX, Drudge Report etc.) they are peddling the nonsense conspiracy that Dems and the Left are the REAL culprits in a "Russiagate"  scenario - to take down Trump!

Writing in yesterday's WSJ, we read this codswallop from Kimberly Strassel (p. A13, 'Who Paid for the Trump Dossier?'):

"Here's a thought: What if it was the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton's campaign (who did not sign letters asserting the hiring of Fusion GPS)?  What if that money flowed from some  political entity on the left, to a private law firm, to Fusion, to a British spook, and then to Russian sources?....What if they specifically made up claims to dupe Mr. Steele, to trick him into writing his dossier?"

Nice try, but you rival Alex Jones (with his Sandy Hook false flag bunkum) and Michael Flynn's  pizzagate conspiracy - with this abysmal dreck. Basically, lazily grabbing at any possible "event" and coincidence to attempt to parlay some combination into a conspiracy.

For example, 90 percent of this bull pockey got started when some right wing nitwit  (Michael Weiss) found a video or image of Russkie lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, e.g.

Sitting at a hearing (from June 14, 2014) behind then Ambassador Michael McFaul. Weiss - who we can designate as "Dolt Zero", yapped in a "Eureka!"- style tweet:

"Hey, look what I found. Veselnitskaya sitting behind @McFaul at a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Russia, June 14, 2014"

As if it was some huge discovery of a nefarious link, as opposed to simple seating coincidence. But this is the nature of egregious conspiracy ideation (can't really dignify it with 'theory'): it grabs isolated events and imagery and tries to stitch these disparate spots into a coherent whole - using all manner of irrational backflips, non sequiturs and hasty conclusions to arrive at some half-cocked rubbish. We've seen it before with Mike Flynn's 'Pizzagate' refuse.

Sure enough, as with all mind virus infections, Weiss' garbage was then picked up by Gateway Pundit - which we shall designate "Dolt Zero + 1".    These morons handle a website often known for inaccurate information.   Once again, following the playbook of conspiracy ideationists - notorious for jumping to conclusions with zero substantiation - the image was presented as evidence of a connection between Veselnitskaya and the Obama administration. (Based on the fictitious claim Veselnitskaya was "sitting with" McFaul, despite the fact she was doing no such thing. She was seated BEHIND him. BEHIND him is NOT seated with him.  If I attend a concert with wifey and our rabid right wing congress critter Doug Lamborn is seated behind us, that doesn't mean we are "seated with" him!  Doh!)

The spread of the mind virus then leapt again to "Dolt ZERO + 2" in the guise of the guttersnipes known as the "Sludge ....errrr..... Drudge Report".  WikiLeaks - which is now a pathetic shadow of what it once was when it released the Bradley Manning files (in 2011) then became the next victim (or accomplice) on Wednesday , further spreading this nonsense, re-tweeting the image with this:

Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at hearing on Russia left of Obama's @McFaul eight days after @donaldjtrumpjr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMJkgSPSb0o …

 This fantasy conspiracy then jumped the shark - infecting  the usual stable of half-assed, right wing media personalities (e.g. Hannity, Limburger etc.) who then regurgitated this offal.

They suggested that Veselnitskaya was "hanging out" with Obama administration officials just days after the meeting with Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort.   And VOILA! We have the perfect false equivalence: "How can you media types howl about the Trump Jr., Manafort, Kusher meeting with the Russians when Dems were doing it too!"

Of course this is total horse shit. The proximate seating position of a Russkie lawyer to an Obama official (McFaul) can only be contorted into being "seated with" by a brain devoid of critical thinking and prone to making mountains out of ant hills. But let's not be too surprised as this is the noxious frequent tactic used by the pro-Trump media to try to discredit reporting from credible news outlets  It's a tactic we've come to expect from the Trump media mobocracy when faced with political peril. So they try to upend the latest political firestorm facing the Trump administration.  (Never mind much of the firestorm is created by Trump and his own hirelings, e.g. "Mooch")

Let's not forget there's another piece of this conspiracy "theory" which evidently originated with Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Trump's outside legal counsel. He said the Russian attorney was linked to Fusion GPS, a DC-based opposition research firm known for commissioning the Steele dossier. This is also clearly what has Kimberly Strassel's dander up. Veselnitskaya was representing Prevezon — a Cyprus company owned by a Russian national that is accused in the US of laundering money — at the same time Fusion GPS was doing work for a law firm that did work for Prevezon, according to the Washington Post.   Again, all this really shows is that Fusion was an "equal opportunity" business - happy to work with anyone who'd pay real money.  It doesn't prove that there is some nefarious connection or conspiracy, i.e. to slime Trump. (Hell, he doesn't need any help on that score!)

Corallo insisted  Fusion “was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the president.” But what he and his cohort ignore is the fact that Fusion GPS was initially hired in October 2015 by unnamed Republican clients in order to develop opposition research on Trump to be used during the GOP primary.  These Republicans were part of the old (e.g. pro-Jeb Bush) order who respected norms and traditions. They detested the fact that a two bit Queens real estate weasel and lowlife like Trump could possibly become President. So they wanted "oppo" research on him. That is the hard fact.  Once Trump won the nomination, the research was continued by Democrats. That proves nothing more than Fusion GPS is a firm that is happy to be employed by either side.  If you want, call them a bipartisan oppo research outfit. But don't call them conspirators.

None of this proves a conspiracy or even near conspiracy other than in the deranged brains of the out of  control Rightist nuts.  Hence, Strassel's claim of Fusion as "the oppo research outfit behind the infamous and discredited Trump dossier ginned up by a former British spook" is false. In fact, all the evidence suggests that the dossier was completed by Steele ca. 2015 or while Fusion was still cooperating with the Republicans on the oppo.  Also, all these conspiracy nabobs on the right appear to forget that before going underground, the material gathered in memos was considered so explosive that Steele turned it over to contacts he had in the FBI last summer. This was without informing the opposition research group for which he'd initially begun his project.  If  Christopher Steele was indeed working with the Dems or Reeps why would he not inform them?

Christopher Steele, as I've written before, is no clown or stooge or even a "spook" likely to be fooled as Kimberly Strassel claims.  According to one Financial Times account (Feb. 16) , Steele was the "UK intelligence expert on Russia".  It is, therefore, highly unlikely he'd be 'fooled" by any kind of false intel or disinformation as Strsassel seems to believe.  James Nixey, the head of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia program, informed the AP that sections of the dossier document created by Steele "read exactly as reports from the secret services".

Let's also reference the other case being made about Veselnitskaya having ties to Democrats which has the Right's  pseudo conspiracy mavens questioning why she got a visa to be in the country on June 9, 2016, i.e.  for the meeting with the Trump campaign.  The true fact is Veselnitskaya was initially refused entry to the United States when she applied for a visa for herself and her children for the end of 2015. According to court files, she said she was granted a temporary “parole letter” allowing her into the country to assist her client Katsyv, who was facing a trial in the U.S. linked to his alleged part in the $230 million fraud uncovered by Magnitsky.  She applied in the Southern District of New York for that temporary access to be extended beyond Jan. 6, 2016, when it was due to expire. Court transcripts show that prosecutors were reluctant to give Veselnitskaya a blank check to remain in the U.S. while the case stalled. Then subsequently, a NY judge ordered an extension, with the expectation that trial would start soon.

Again, nothing mysterious, nothing nefarious - other than in the febrile brains of the Right's idiot conspiracy allies of Alex Jones.  Again,  none of this matters a whit because ultimately Donald Jr. was happy to have a meeting with someone who told him they represented the Russian government and had dirt to share about Hillary Clinton.

Was this a "nothing burger' because nothing came of it? Maybe, but that's irrelevant.  The point is legally the intent was there to dig up dirt using a high profile Russian lawyer, irrespective of it not succeeding. Just because a wife hires a hitman to whack her hubby and he doesn't succeed doesn't let her off the hook. 

While the Right media has tried desperately to shift the Russia spotlight to the DNC, Hillary and Loretta Lynch - the incontestable fact is that it has always been Trump in up to his eyeballs with the Russkies - including to save his no good, bankruptcy- filing ass.  As noted in The New Republic (Aug./Sept. p. 29):

"A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, or even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money .....Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics....It's entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters."

Of course, this very background helps explain why Trump is hyper paranoid now about Bob Mueller digging into his money trail, including leading right through his family finances. This is why, indeed, he's already telegraphed his guilt - first in firing James Comey, then in his recent obsession with Bob Mueller's probe - even warning Mueller not to veer into his "family finances" which would be taken as "crossing a red line".  Why? What's so all-fired important about them? What has Trump got to hide? Why has Trump released no recent tax returns?   All of this bespeaks a guy loaded with guilt and committed to obstruction of justice.

Thus, Strassel's blabber that:

"If Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Democrats and the media really want answers about Russian meddling, this (dossier)  is a far deeper well than the scant case against Trump"

Is pure horse hockey.  Those more in the know than Strassel -  concerning the integrity of sources and what the intel really shows -  acknowledge that what Steele compiled is very likely true, at least in part.  In addition to which the whole shtick fits the modus operandi ("Kompromat") of videoing any one who comes to Moscow and stays at a hotel- perhaps to engage in illicit sexual activities with Russkie "honey pots".  Kimberly may revolt at the thought of Russian whores jubilantly pissing all over her master, but there it is. Trump (and his loopy defenders) then may have more to worry about than where Bob Mueller is going. They better worry that if Trump signs the recently passed "sanctions" legislation Putin will go ahead and release the piss video.

The most laughable aspect of this whole farce? The Reich wingers trying to claim that Veselnitskaya was brought on by Democrats because there's no proof that she wasn't.  Wow. Great argumentum ad ignorantium.

Methinks we need to send all of these conspiracy hustlers and hucksters  back to  courses in logic 101 along with critical thinking 100.