Retard Paul Manafort Jeopardizes Bail By Ghost-Writing Op-Ed With Russian Guy

Paul Manafort is apparently retarded…

Special counsel Robert Mueller objected Monday to a tentative “agreed-upon bail package” reached with Manafort last week, after they caught the lobbyist ghost-writing a draft of an op-ed with an associate in Russia allegedly tied to Russian intelligence, according to court filings.  Prosecutors argued that Manafort’s collaboration with the “Russian intelligence” colleague – as recently as last week – would violate the sweeping gag-order issued last month by U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson.

“Even if the ghost-written op-ed were entirely accurate, fair and balanced, it would be violation of this court’s Nov. 8 order if it had been published,” prosecutors said. “The editorial clearly was undertaken to influence the public’s opinion of defendant Manafort, or else there would be no reason to seek its publication – much less for Manafort and his long-time associate to ghostwrite it in another’s name.”

“Because Manafort has now taken actions that reflect an intention to violate or circumvent the court’s existing orders, at a time one would expect particularly scrupulous adherence, the government submits that the proposed bail package is insufficient reasonably to assure his appearance required,” wrote the prosecution, adding “Because bail is substantially about trust – in particular, whether the Court can trust that a defendant will abide by the combination of conditions designed to assure his appearance as required, and because the newly discovered facts cast doubt on Manafort’s willingness to comply with this Court’s Orders, Manafort’s proposed bail package does not provide the reasonable assurance required by the Bail Reform Act.”

Investigators also argued that if Judge Jackson decides to go ahead with Manafort’s bail arrangement which would free him from house arrest, he be required to wear a full-time GPS monitor and post additional assets for bail.

Manafort and his longtime aide, Rick Gates, were arraigned in late November on money laundering and other charges – including false statements and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts in regards to the work on behalf of the Ukranian government, prior to working for the Trump campaign.

What a fucking idiot… 

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Former assistant FBI Director Jim Kallstrom says Bob Mueller has a huge conflict of interest and never should have taken the case, reports Breitbart. 

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36 year old e-commerce entrepreneur Yusuke Mitsumoto had an idea: “what if I pay people instantly for their used goods and then trust them to give them to me?”

Mitsumoto launched an app in June to test the idea, quickly realizing that that people – surprise – went for the money, putting him on the hook for $3.2 million (360 million yen).

“after 16 hours, he was stunned to discover he was on the hook for 360 million yen ($3.2 million) and shut the service down. A day later, truckloads of clothes and electronics gadgets started to arrive, with his startup’s employees forming a bucket line to move packages into his company’s tiny office in Tokyo.” –Bloomberg

Holy shit – people took the money and then brought their stuff as promised! At the end of the day, only 1 out of 10 second-hand-sellers didn’t deliver.

In August, Mitsumoto relaunched the service called Cash, as a new way to gather inventory for an online flea market. Total daily purchases are capped at 10 million yen – and must be comprised of items on a list including; smartphones, luxury apparel, watches, clothing, and other specific items on a list of several thousand.

Customers can also snap pictures of their items and shoot over a non-negotiable offer.

Via Bloomberg: 

“It was a social experiment,” said Mitsumoto, who started selling goods on the web in 1996. He later launched Stores.jp, Japan’s version of Shopify, which he sold and then bought back. “Of course, I believed that good people would outnumber the bad, but the question was by how much. That’s not something you can find out without trying.”

Big business

The market for second-hand godos is strong in Japan, valued at over 1.6 trillion yen ($14 billion USD). Yahoo Japan Corp. operates the country’s largest online auction site, Mercari, which became the first Japanese startup to be valued over $1 billion.

So when Keishi Kameyama – one of Japan’s richest entrepreneurs and founder of DMM.com came along, Mitsumoto agreed to sell Cash to DMM for 7 billion yen ($62 million USD) and continue running the business.

“For people doing internet businesses in Japan, DMM is a scary presence,” Mitsumoto said. “You never know when they may launch their own business and become a tough rival. I figured it’s best to at least meet.”

Indeed, a week after the deal was announced, Mercari launched an identical offering. The move by Cash proved that there was a need for such a service, said Takeo Iyo, the vice president in charge of Mercari Now. –Bloomberg

So – what do you think, would a thrift shop app work outside of an honor-based society like Japan? Would eager sellers from, say, Compton show up with their used goods after taking the money?

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Officials from Hong Kong’s flagship Cathay Pacific airline confirmed that the crew of a flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong reported seeing what they believed to be North Korea’s recent test of its most powerful ICBM conducted last Wednesday, according to the South China Morning Post.

According to flight trackers, flight CX893 was over Japan when the missile was launched on November 29 at approximately 2:18 a.m. Hong Kong time. A spokeswoman from the airline said that the crew made a report of the suspected re-entry of the North Korean missile after the incident.

“Be advised, we witnessed the DPRK missile blow up and fall apart near our current location.” –Mark Hoey, GM of operations, Cathay

“Though the flight was far from the event location, the crew advised Japan ATC [air traffic control] according to procedure,” said the spokeswoman, adding that the sighting did not affect operations, and that while the airline will remain alert and review the situation with North Korea as it evolves, there are no plans to change any routes or operating procedures.

 

Rerouting affected routes is always an option, says Hong Kong lawmaker and former Cathay pilot Jeremy Tam Man-ho, adding that virtually no passenger planes are equipped with military-grade radar, making them susceptible to missile threats in the event a rogue nation targets them.

As Asia Times notes, A passenger jet has a very “slim” chance of escape if targeted by a missile, as seen in multiple past incidents, including Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down by a surface-to-air missile while en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in 2014, as well as a Korean Airlines plane that was downed by a Soviet fighter after it deviated from its original route in 1983.

Such incidents fall under the purview of Hong Kong’s Security Bureau and Civil Aviation Department, which Tam Man-ho says should establish a panel to coordinate intelligence sharing efforts with their counterparts in the region, including Russia, Japan and South Korea.

According to a leaked memo Mark Hoey, Cathay airlines will start providing satellite phones for crews on its flights bound for South Korea, Canada and the United States.

Via Asia Times:

Several Hong Kong newspapers reported this Monday that satellite phones, among others, have been allocated to crews operating flights to and from South Korea in the event that if normal communication is rendered dysfunctional within the Seoul Flight Information Region should there be an attack from the north, Cathay pilots can still contact the airline’s Hong Kong headquarters.

A Cathay Pacific cargo flight from Hong Kong to Anchorage was also over Japan during the launch, and could have been quite a bit closer.

“Looking at the actual plots, CX096 may have been the closest, at a few hundred miles laterally,” Hoey wrote.

 

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Following last week’s launch of North Korea’s most advanced ICBM which has a theoretical 8,080 mile range – allowing it to hit anywhere in the U.S., Little Rocket Man (LRM) Kim Jong Un’s government said the U.S. is “begging” for a nuclear war by planning the “largest-ever” joint aerial drill in South Korea, according to Bloomberg.

“Should the Korean peninsula and the world be embroiled in the crucible of nuclear war because of the reckless nuclear war mania of the U.S., the U.S. will have to accept full responsibility for it,” North Korea’s state-run KCNA said Saturday, citing a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The statement came after Yonhap News reported that six U.S. Raptor stealth fighters planes arrived in South Korea on Saturday for a joint air drill named “Vigilant Ace 18” scheduled for Dec. 4 to 8. The F-22s flew into South Korea together in a show of force. The stealth fighters, however, were just a small part of the upcoming show of force: according to local media, some 230 aircraft and up to 16,000 soldiers and airmen are taking part in the drill, which is one of the biggest ever of its kind.

Hawaii on alert

In response to North Korea’s new threat, the U.S. is beefing up West Coast security. Last week the New York Times reported that Hawaii bringing back its Cold War-era early missile warning system designed to warn residents of an impending nuclear attack.

The Attack Warning Tone, described as a “wailing tone,” will be heard for about 50 seconds on the first business day of every month, beginning on Dec. 1. It will sound after the regular monthly test of the sirens that warn residents of hurricanes or tsunamis, the Emergency Management Agency said –NYT

Furthermore, the Pentagon is exploring locations on the West Coast for anti-missile hardware, according to Congressmen Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Adam Smith (D-WA).

Rogers and Smith said the Pentagon is looking to distribute the THAAD anti-missile system made by Lockheed Martin Corp ($LMT) at west coast sites.

“It’s just a matter of the location, and the MDA making a recommendation as to which site meets their criteria for location, but also the environmental impact,” the Alabama Congressman and Republican told Reuters during an interview on the sidelines of the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in southern California.

How good is THAAD?

As ZeroHedge reported in September, the THAAD ground-based regional missile defense system has a 100 percent success rate in test interceptions according to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency as of May 2017, hitting 13 out of 13 targets – whereas the new SM-3 Block IIA missile developed jointly by the US and Japan failed its first test in June. 

Reuters elaborates:

THAAD is a ground-based regional missile defense system designed to shoot down short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles and takes only a matter of weeks to install.

In addition to the two THAAD systems deployed in South Korea and Guam in the Pacific, the U.S. has seven other THAAD systems. While some of the existing missiles are based in Fort Bliss, Texas, the system is highly mobile and current locations are not disclosed.

A Lockheed Martin representative declined to comment on specific THAAD deployments, but added that the company “is ready to support the Missile Defense Agency and the United States government in their ballistic missile defense efforts.” He added that testing and deployment of assets is a government decision.

The addition of the West Coast THAAD locations will significantly beef up the existing ground-based Midcourse Defense System (GMD) located in Alaska and California, along with the ship-mounted Aegis system deplyed on U.S. Navy vessels. The THAAD system has a much higher success rate than the GMD.

The Missile Defense Agency also told Congress in June that it planned to deliver 52 more THAAD interceptors to the U.S. Army between October, 2017 and September 2018, bringing total deliveries to 210 since May 2011, Reuters reports.

There is a bit of conflicting information on the plan, however, as Missile Defense Agency deputy director, Rear Admiral Jon Hill, stated “The Missile Defense Agency has received no tasking to site the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense System on the West Coast,” directly contradicting reps Mike Rogers and (R-AL) and Adam Smith (D-WA).

Perhaps loose lips sink ships, but I’m gonna go with Rogers and Smith, who sit on the House Armed Services Committee.

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James Comey has been quite the chatterbox on Twitter since revealing his new handle in early November (@Comey) – firing off tweets about nature scenes, bible quotes, social gatherings, and most recently quoting himself – proclaiming how ‘honest’ and ‘strong’ the FBI is amid revelations that he put an anti-Trump / pro-Hillary agent in charge of both the Clinton email investigation and the early Trump-Russia probe – for which the FBI is now facing a contempt action over their anti-Trump bias during the election.

“I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.” -Me (June 8, 2017)

“I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.”
Me (June 8, 2017) pic.twitter.com/OZ1ZiBrMNL

— James Comey (@Comey) December 3, 2017

 

Comey is quite the deep thinker. To be honest, you have to have a pretty high IQ to understand:

Goodbye Iowa. On the road home. Gotta get back to writing. Will try to tweet in useful ways. pic.twitter.com/DCbu3Yvqt3

— James Comey (@Comey) October 23, 2017

“If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly; it is light as a feather and a breath will carry it.” Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1855). pic.twitter.com/YZf4q88wyi

— James Comey (@Comey) November 11, 2017

And look – Comey and his wife Patrice Failor love making onion rings!

Happy Birthday to the love of my life. Nothing goes together like onion rings and a cosmo (it IS her day, after all). pic.twitter.com/538fGuotNN

— James Comey (@Comey) November 10, 2017

Then Gorka shows up…

Comey’s PR campaign then attempted to appeal to the religious demographic, quoting a bible verse (after quoting Churchill but before his Messiah complex kicked in and he quoted himself):

“But justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” Amos 5:24 https://t.co/o89PSY1YBd

— James Comey (@Comey) December 1, 2017

Oh man, throwing Amos 5:24 around like he owns the joint… until former Trump advisor, new Fox commentator, and all around badass Dr. Sebastian Gorka shows up to call James out over exonerating Hillary Clinton in the email investigation before the anti-Trump / pro-Clinton agent in charge, Peter Strzok, was finished looking at the evidence. 

Curious @Comey:

What's the right Bible verse for u precooking an innocent verdict for Hillary's #ServerGate before investigation was over? https://t.co/KeMx9Yzxej

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) December 2, 2017

I'd offer Psalm 82:2 as a response to @Comey: "How long will you judge unjustly, And show partiality to the wicked?" https://t.co/r4vkc10AYt

— Ned Ryun (@nedryun) December 2, 2017

Hours before, Gorka dinged Comey for buring the investigation into Tony Podesta – brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisor, John Podesta, “influence-peddling for Uranium 1 with Hillary?” 

Curious @Comey:

What's the right Bible verse for you burying investigation into Podesta influence-peddling for Uranium 1 with Hillary? https://t.co/KeMx9Yzxej

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) December 2, 2017

Tony Podesta is of course the disgraced co-founder of the Podesta group, who left his firm in late October when he reportedly became a central focus in Robert Mueller’s FBI Special Counsel investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

As a former long-time Podesta Group executive who was “extensively” interviewed by Robert Mueller’s special counsel told Tucker Carlson Tonight, Tony Podesta and Paul Manafort were bringing a “parade” of Russian oligarchs into Washington D.C. through a shell corporation operating as a pro-Russia Ukrainian think tank.

The former exec also said that in 2013, John Podesta recommended that Tony hire David Adams, Hillary Clinton’s chief adviser at the State Department, giving them a “direct liaison” between the group’s Russian clients and Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and that Tony Podesta regularly met with the Clinton Foundation while lobbying for Uranium One – the Canadian mining company bought by the Russia’s state-owned Rosatom after obtaining approval from the Obama administration.

Former Podesta Group Exec: Paul Manafort was in PG offices "all the time" representing Russian political and business interests. #RussiaGate pic.twitter.com/6dFB1MJRdP

— ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) October 25, 2017

And on Friday, Gorka posed the question as to how Comey got to head the FBI after only 12 years in the field: 

1st Question:

How did Comey get to head the @FBI, the most important & powerful law enforcement agency, with just 12 years in the field?? https://t.co/OPOUKMmXJ6

— Sebastian Gorka DrG (@SebGorka) December 1, 2017

Maybe it’s because Comey has had deep ties to Democrat / Clinton interests for years; earning $6 Million dollars in one year as Lockheed’s top lawyer – the same year the egregiously overbudget F-35 manufacturer made a huge donation to the Clinton Foundation. Comey was also a board member at HSBC shortly after NY AG at the time Loretta “tarmac” Lynch let the Clinton Foundation partner slide with a slap on the wrist for laundering drug money.

So as James “hand of the devil” Comey continues to tweet like everything’s normal – letting everyone know the FBI is “honest” and “strong,” while the noose is tightening, enjoy the white-hot phosphorous Dr. Gorka drops to illuminate the target.

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Billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones is closing his firm’s Discretionary Macro fund, allowing investors to shift funds into his flagship BVI fund as of Jan. 1, according to an investor letter seen by Bloomberg News.

Co-chief investment managers Andrew Bound and Aadarsh Malde have been canned after the Discretionary Macro fund lost 1.6 eprcent through Nov 3. The S&P 500, meanwhile, was up over 18% during the same period.

Meanwhile, Tudor Investment Corp has had a rough year of withdrawals, losing $500 million from Tudor in the third quarter, leaving the firm’s assets at $7 billion – half the assets under management from just just two years ago.

Tudor Jones will take more of an active role in his remaining BVI fund:

“I will be the largest risk taker and will manage a notional capital account equal to the AUM of the Tudor BVI strategy itself,” Jones said in the letter, referencing assets under management. “This means that my results will have a one-for-one performance impact on Tudor BVI. I relish this challenge.” –Bloomberg

Jones also launched a new $300 million macro fund in October that uses machine-learning algorithms to help with trading decisions.

Low volatility to blame

Jones says “years of central bank monetary easing has suppressed market volatility, hurting macro fund returns and spurring investor withdrawals.”

The low volatility market environment has been an “anathema” to traditional macro funds and is becoming a “dangerous place,” lulling investors into a false sense of complacency, Jones wrote in a separate Nov. 30 market note.

“In the face of a shock, investors may be surprised to find themselves jammed running for the exit,” he wrote. The amount and quality of liquidity is lower than people recognize, and hidden leverage in the market will make a mass exit even more challenging, he said. –Bloomberg

Tudor opened his Discretionary Macro fund in 2012 with $500 million. It had 14 managers who expected to benefit from things such as the European sovereign debt crisis.

Unfortunately, the strategy sucked wind along with other Macro funds, which only gained an average of 3.8% through October – ranking as the worst strategy globally according to Hedge Fund Research, Inc.

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A rabidly anti-Trump FBI agent who was fired from Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation relied on claims made in a largely unsubstantiated and highly salacious dossier provided by Washington DC-based opposition research firm, Fusion GPS – which paid former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to assemble the 34-page ‘Dirty Dossier’ in mid-2016.

Veteran FBI agent Peter Strzok – who headed up the Hillary Clinton email investigation, was dismissed from Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe in mid-August and relegated to the FBI’s Human Resources department, after the DOJ opened an inquiry into anti-Trump / pro-Clinton text messages Strzok sent to his Trump-hating mistress – FBI lawyer Lisa Page, while the two were working together on the Clinton probe. Page was also fired from the Mueller investigation into Russian meddling earlier this year.

Strzok’s conduct in the Clinton investigation is now under review by the Justice Department, along with his role in a number of other politically sensitive cases, according to Fox News.

“While Strzok’s removal from the Mueller team had been publicly reported in August, the Justice Department never disclosed the anti-Trump texts to the House investigators.“

“Responding to the revelations about Strzok’s texts on Saturday, Nunes said he has now directed his staff to draft contempt-of-Congress citations against Rosenstein and the new FBI director, Christopher Wray.” –Fox News

Of relevance – Strzok concluded that Hillary Clinton was “careless,” in her mishandling of classified information, yet found “no proof of intent,” an opinion which former FBI director James Comey based his recommendation not to prosecute. Comey, as it turns out, drafted Clinton’s exoneration letter long before the FBI had finished reviewing evidence in the case.

Strzok’s team and the Trump-Russia dossier…

In August, 2016 – nine months before Trump fired Comey which led to the creation of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel, the New York Times reported that Strzok was hand picked by FBI brass to supervise an investigation into allegations of Trump-Russia collusion.

The FBI investigation grew legs after they received the infamous anti-Trump “dossier” and decided to act on its salacious and largely unproven claims, According to Fox News:

House investigators told Fox News they have long regarded Strzok as a key figure in the chain of events when the bureau, in 2016, received the infamous anti-Trump “dossier” and launched a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the election that ultimately came to encompass FISA surveillance of a Trump campaign associate.

The “dossier” was a compendium of salacious and largely unverified allegations about then-candidate Trump and others around him that was compiled by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. The firm’s bank records, obtained by House investigators, revealed that the project was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. –Fox News

Dead ends

Weeks before the 2016 Presidential election, Strzok’s team agreed to pay former MI6 agent and Fusion GPS operative Christopher Steele $50,000 if he could verify his claims that the agency had already used to take action. Of note, Fusion separately paid Steele $168,000 to assemble the dossier which had the cooperation of two senior Kremlin officials.

The agent said that if Mr. Steele could get solid corroboration of his reports, the F.B.I. would pay him $50,000 for his efforts, according to two people familiar with the offer.

One report, filled with references to secret meetings, spoke ominously of Mr. Trump’s “compromising relationship with the Kremlin” and threats of “blackmail.”

He [Steele] provided the documents to an F.B.I. contact in Europe on the same day as Mr. Comey’s news conference about Mrs. Clinton. It took weeks for this information to land with Mr. Strzok and his team. –NYT

After meeting with the FBI in October to deliver a ‘stack of new intelligence reports,’ the agency ultimately decided not to pay Steele because he could not corroborate the information he had provided.

Never let a dodgy dossier get in the way of a good witch hunt! 

Despite such a low level of confidence in Steele’s dossier that they didn’t pay him, the FBI used the document to obtain a FISA surveillance warrant on one-time Trump foreign-policy advisor Carter Page – who was described as having a “secret meeting” with Putin associate Igor Sechin and Deputy Chief for International Policy, Igor Diveykin during a July 2016 trip to Moscow to deliver a commencement speech.

Not true according to Page

While Page did travel to Moscow to deliver a commencement speech, he told the House Intelligence Committee that he’s never heard of Diveykin nor met with any of the men mentioned in the dossier. 

Page did testify that he spoke with Russia’s deputy prime minister, Arkadiy Dvorkovich, who was in attendance at the commencement ceremony. Upon his return, Page relayed their meeting in a memo to the Trump campaign, writing “In a private conversation, Dvorkovich expressed strong support for Mr. Trump and a desire to work together toward devising better solutions in response to the vast range of current international problems.”

Page claimed he hadn’t spoken more than a few words to Dvorkovich, and had instead gained insight into the Russian’s opinion from listening to the Russian’s speeches.

Back on point

We now know that the original, pre-Mueller FBI investigation into Trump-Russia collusion was spearheaded by Peter Strzok – an anti-Trump senior FBI agent who was fired for sending anti-Trump / pro-Clinton text messages to his mistress during their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information. 

We also know that the FBI probe led by Strzok relied on the salacious 34-page Steele dossier, paid for in part by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, to launch their Trump-Russia investigation and obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page.

This raises a multitude of questions about Strzok, the Clinton email investigation, and any other politically charged cases he’s worked on – which are now under review by the DOJ’s Office of Personnel Management. 

And while Strzok is stapling cover sheets on TPS reports in the FBI’s HR department, it is of particular interest that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes is also honing in on Rod Rosenstein and the new FBI director, Christopher Wray for their roles in the decision to withhold the reasons for Strzok’s dismissal in August.

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The S&P 500 has staged a sharp recovery after this morning’s announcement that Michael Flynn has plead guilty to lying to the FBI on January 24th about his contact with the Russian ambassador.

To summarize the plea agreement from the FBI Special Counsel’s “Statement of the Offense”

• On December 29, 2016, Flynn called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team to discuss whether or not to talk to the Russians about recent U.S. sanctions imposed by Obama.
• Flynn got the go-ahead from someone (does not name Trump) and called the Russian Ambassador, requesting that Russia not escalate the situation – asking that they only respond to the U.S. sanctions in a reciprocal manner.
• On or about December 30 – the next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to U.S. sanctions.
• Flynn lied about this on January 24 in a voluntary interview with the FBI
• Flynn also lied to the FBI about calls he made to the Russian Ambassador and other countries to try and influence a UN resolution submitted by Egypt regarding Israeli settlements, stating he only asked the countries’ positions on the vote

ABC news takes it a step further, reporting from an anonymous source that “Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians, initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria.”

Observation and takeaways

• The fact that Flynn spoke with the Russians in December, well after the election, has been known since February.
• Mueller’s “Statement of Offense” establishes is that there wasn’t an existing backchannel between the Trump campaign and Russia – at least through Flynn, as it pertains to pre-election collusion. 
• It’s perfectly reasonable to expect an incoming President to instruct his incoming National Security Advisor to establish a dialogue with a country like Russia over recent and contentious sanctions, as well as fighting ISIS in Syria.
• If Flynn’s contact with Russia was related to “collusion” in regards to election meddling, he would be pleading guilty to an espionage conspiracy, not the “process crime” of lying to the FBI.

As Andrew McCarthy of the National Review points out;

“when a prosecutor has a cooperator who was an accomplice in a major criminal scheme, the cooperator is made to plead guilty to the scheme. This is critical because it proves the existence of the scheme. In his guilty-plea allocution (the part of a plea proceeding in which the defendant admits what he did that makes him guilty), the accomplice explains the scheme and the actions taken by himself and his co-conspirators to carry it out. This goes a long way toward proving the case against all of the subjects of the investigation. That is not happening in Flynn’s situation. Instead, like Papadopoulos, he is being permitted to plead guilty to a mere process crime.

So why lie?

Why would Flynn lie about his contact with the Russians in late January, five days after the Inauguration? Was it because the nation had been whipped into an anti-Russia frenzy? Or, as some have suggested, does the rabbit hole go much deeper and there are aspects of the Trump-Russia story that haven’t been made public yet? Again, if that were known, Flynn would be pleading guilty to a much more serious crime.

That said, Flynn is facing a whopping six months in prison and a fine of up to $9,500 for lying to the Special Counsel.

Who’s next?

President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he asked Russia’s Ambassador whether the Trump transition team could use Russia’s embassy to communicate with Moscow about Syria.

The meeting with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, “occurred in Trump Tower, where we had our transition office, and lasted twenty [to] thirty minutes,” Kushner wrote in an 11-page statement detailing his contacts with Russian nationals during the election and transition period.

“Lt. General Michael Flynn (Ret.), who became the President’s National Security Advisor, also attended … I stated our desire for a fresh start in relations.”

Kushner said Kislyak, whose tenure in the US ended this past weekend, asked whether there was “a secure line in the transition office to conduct a conversation” about the US’s Syria policy.

“General Flynn or I explained that there were no such lines,” Kushner wrote. But he said he went on to ask whether the Russian Embassy “had an existing communications channel … we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn.” –Business Insider

And now it emerges that Kushner allegedly asked Flynn to contact the Russian Ambassador…

BREAKING: Jared Kushner is the “very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team” mentioned in the statement of offense against Michael Flynn, two people familiar with the matter tell @NBCNews https://t.co/4ZLASVAX9b

— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 1, 2017

So – unless there’s more than meets the eye, it appears that the coverup is far greater than the crime in regards to Flynn’s decision to lie to the FBI. And whatever the outcome, the hard bounce in the S&P 500 would seem to suggest this is perhaps another nothingburger and not quite the end of Drumpf.

Where were you when it happened?

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JP Morgan has called for investors to short electric-car maker Tesla over concerns that the company is going to need to dillute its stock by raising more capital, and that competition from other automakers will take a big bite out of Elon Musk’s pie, says analyst Ryan Brinkman.

Brinkman is calling for a 40% decline in $TSLA shares, with a $185 price target.

“Tesla will face several milestones in 2018 relative to the ramping of production of the Model 3, which we believe will be difficult for the company to meet, particularly if its substantial miss to volume targets in 2017 are to be any guide,” wrote Brinkman on Friday.

“Competition for electric vehicles will increase in 2018 even as the regulatory environment in the United States may become less of a tailwind, including possible tax law changes and exhaustion of the $7,500 US federal tax credit available to buyers,” he wrote.

Production woes and short calls

Tesla has been under pressure from short sellers for a while, with some pointing to Tesla’s struggle to bring its mid-priced Model 3 to full production after falling far short of expectations, while others have pointed towards the auto industry’s steady shift toward and electric and autonomous future.

“One of our principal concerns relates to how Tesla is going to be able to earn even an industry average EBIT margin if it must compete against competitors that are pricing electric vehicles without even the intention to make money, but rather to subsidize the rest of their lucrative internal combustion engine portfolios from a legal and regulatory compliance perspective,” added Brinkman.

Germany cuts subsidies

As ZeroHedge reports,

Apparently German government officials have finally woken up to the realization that it’s utterly ridiculous to use tax revenue generated primarily from middle and low-income households to fund subsidy payments to rich people buying $100,000 luxury sports cars. As Business Standard notes this morning, the German Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Controls announced that it will no longer subsidize the Tesla Model S as it can not be delivered in a configuration that meets the 60,000 euro price limit.

A German government agency has removed Tesla’s Model S from the list of electric cars eligible for subsidies because it is not available in a version that falls within a 60,000 euro ($71,448) price limit.

Tesla customers could not order the Model S without extra features that pushed the price of the car above the limit, a spokesman for the German Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Controls (BAFA) said on Friday.

German magazine Auto Bild had reported that BAFA was looking into the issue and could take Tesla off the eligibility list.

Reuters notes that Germany launched their 1 billion Euro subsidy scheme last year in an effort to boost electric car purchases, whereby new owners of electric vehicles get 4,000 Euros off fully electric cars and 3,000 Euros off plug-in hybrids.

A price cap was included to exempt premium models, which Tesla has claimed doesn’t apply to the Model S.

Tesla has replied with a vigorous defense:

“This is a completely false accusation. Anyone in Germany can order a Tesla Model S base version without the comfort package, and we have delivered such cars to customers,” Tesla said in a statement.

”If a sales person told a customer they could not buy the Model S base version without the comfort package, this is not accurate and clearly outside our policies and procedures and we will investigate and take appropriate action as necessary.”

As ZeroHedge also notes – On the bright side, Tesla’s new Model 3 should meet German subsidy price caps…if only they could figure out how to weld them together…

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