Thread by @gregolear

Yesterday was a big day for democracy, for the rule of law, and for the United States. But with so much breaking news, it's a lot to process. Let's try and keep it straight.

[THREAD]

1/ First and foremost: Trump/Russia is real. It is not a witch hunt. It is not a conspiracy theory. It is not cooked up by a fraudster on 4Chan. It's real. Trump conspired with Russia. He did. That none of yesterday's 16 guilty pleas directly finger Russia is irrelevant.

2/ Anyone who went around yesterday with "But there was no Russia" as a talking point is a desperate Trumpist collaborator, negligently muddying the waters when things should now be clearer. (Looking at you, @LindseyGrahamSC and @mschlapp.)

3/ The first two members of Congress to endorse Trump, Chris Collins and @Rep_Hunter, have both been indicted in the past two weeks. Because they are both hateful, greedy scumbags, and birds of a feather dot dot dot.

4/ The third member of Congress, and first Senator, to endorse Trump was Jeff Sessions. Despite being reinvented as a bulwark against Mueller's firing, Sessions is deeply complicit in Trump/Russia, meeting w/Kislyak, and perjured himself before Congress on the subject.

5/ Sessions is one of the first-tier villains of Trump/Russia, in my view, as I lay out in #DirtyRubles. The others: Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump pere et fils.

6/ Mike Flynn, the disgraced former natsec adviser, was given access to eyes-only secrets by Trump despite multiple high-level warnings, which ALONE warrants impeachment. Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and awaits sentencing.

7/ Manafort is a terrible human being for a thousand reasons. In addition to his basically stealing money from you and me, as a huge tax cheat, he cavorted with dictators. He is PWNED BY PUTIN. Can't stress that enough. More on that will become evident in the weeks to come.

8/ Sidenote: Trump will NOT pardon Manafort. A pardon admits his own guilt, and also, it eliminates Manafort's ability to plead the Fifth. Mueller, or better yet Congress, could immediately summon him to answer questions under oath and he'd HAVE to respond.

9/ Michael Cohen is the linchpin, though. He is a longtime Russian mob associate, and a longtime lawyer/fixer for Trump. How many NDAs has he processed? And worse? He's the guy who threatened violence to the reporter who asked questions about Trump raping Ivana.

10/ The stuff Cohen knows is more than enough to bring down the House of Trump. And it will. And it ain't Mueller driving that particular train, which makes these charges immune to the Mueller/Witch Hunt charge.

11/ Yesterday, in a court of law and under oath, Michael Cohen said that Donald Trump directed him to break the law, to do a felony. This is a HUGE deal, the headline story. This particular felony doesn't directly relate to Russia, it's true. But others do.

12/ Recall that Michael Cohen was a deputy finance chair of the RNC. That implicates that entire entity (hi, @Reince). It also explains, perhaps, why Republicans in Congress have been so slow to boot Trump out. So much criminality!

13/ Cohen also had meetings with Russians during the campaign, and was involved in the sanctions negotiations with Felix Sater and some pro-Putin Ukrainians. That sounds like Trump/Russia to me.

14/ Also, Michael Cohen has three clients, and one of them is @SeanHannity. Sean tried his best to deflect last night, but he must know the gig is up. He is a close adviser to Trump masquerading as an objective journalist. A fraud. Fox should fire him immediately.

15/ So, of the key players I identify in #DirtyRubles: three are now convicted of crimes (Flynn, Manafort, Cohen) and will serve prison sentences. One is likely a Mueller mole (Sessions). The others are members of Trump's extended family.

16/ Second-tier collaborators include Roger Stone and Julian Assange. I expect both to be indicted before Labor Day. So Stone can wear white to court.

17/ On Kushner: back in December, RUMINT was that his indictment was imminent. Kush hired a crisis PR team and a new lawyer. Then: crickets. Word now is that he's been cooperating SINCE then. We'll see if this is true, because the guy is definitely guilty of crimes.

18/ Ivanka likes to pretend to be an above-it-all, friend-of-the-working-woman feminist, but she's just as corrupt as the rest of them. She met those Russians in the lobby of Trump Tower. Are we to believe she didn't know why they were there?

19/ As for Junior, hey, this looks like the face of a guy who's totally relaxed and not at all preparing himself for a long stint in the hoosegow:

20/ We can't forget Mike Pence, as we often do (by design). He was picked by a felon who will likely die in prison. Which means he was approved by Putin. He chaired the Trump Transition Team. He's guilty af and will never be president.

21/ As for Donald Trump, um, spoiler alert: he's guilty. He knew about everything, he signed off on everything, he's been kissing Putin's ass for years, he's a puppet, he sold out his country for a jump in Q rating and some debt forgiveness. He is a stain on our democracy.

22/ There are many more pieces to this Trump/Russia jigsaw puzzle. How they fit will become more evident from here on out. For example: John Bolton was in deep with Cambridge Analytica #CamAnal ...and in deep in a naughtier way with Mariia Butina. He's the WH Chief of Staff!

If you'd like a short primer on the subject, my book, despite being printed in late May, is still quite accurate and dated only insofar as you can now remove the words "almost certainly" from the sentence "Manafort is almost certainly guilty."

[END]

amazon.com/dp/1641849266/…

PS. Bolton is natsec adviser, not chief of staff. Thx for the correction. Coffee not yet fully kicked in.