Worst prison gang ever!

From CNBC:

It’s difficult to imagine a worse day in the presidency of Donald Trump than Tuesday, when two gripping legal dramas, one involving his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and the other embroiling his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, collided in a surreal split screen crescendo.

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Rep. Cam’s Dad (R-Swamp)

From CNBC:

Rep. Chris Collins‘ son and his son’s fiancee bought shares of an Australian biotech company just days before dumping the shares after the New York Republican allegedly tipped his son off about a failed clinical drug trial in a phone call from the White House lawn, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a complaint.

Collins’ son, Cameron Collins, and the son’s accountant fiancee, Lauren Zarsky, had purchased the stock of Innate Immunotherapeutics in June 2017 because they believed — mistakenly, it turned out — that the trial of the company’s multiple sclerosis treatment would yield positive results, the SEC said in its complaint.

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RICO Suave

From THINK PROGRESS:

During an interview on Sunday’s edition of This Week, Jay Sekulow — one of President Trump’s lawyers — admitted he was wrong last year when he claimed Trump “wasn’t involved” in dictating a misleading statement for his son about the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his campaign and Kremlin-connected Russians who offered political dirt on Hillary Clinton.

 

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A Camera-shy Politician?

From HUFFPOST:

WASHINGTON ― Rep. Greg Gianforte, the Montana Republican who pleaded guilty to assaulting a reporter the day before his election, does not want to be treated like a common criminal ― for more than a month, he has been quietly fighting a court order requiring him to get fingerprinted and photographed at a local jail.

The lawmaker was charged with misdemeanor assault for “body-slamming” The Guardian’s Ben Jacobs after the reporter asked a routine policy question. Gianforte was not arrested for the May 24 assault ― law enforcement officials cited him for it a few hours later. Montanans the next day elected the wealthy tech entrepreneur to the House seat Republican Ryan Zinke had vacated to become President Donald Trump’s Interior Department secretary.

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When the Bats Come Home to Roost

From KARE:

WASHINGTON — Rep. Michele Bachmann, who had more than $2 million in her congressional campaign account at the end of November, is embroiled in a dispute with a former presidential campaign aide over back pay of $916.

In what had been a private matter that has now become a nasty public squabble, Peter Waldron, who served as Bachmann for President national field coordinator, contends he is among five former Iowa staffers whom Bachmann has refused to pay unless they sign a non-disclosure agreement regarding campaign activity in Iowa.

 

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End of the Innocence

(Reuters) – News Corp agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to an early phone-hacking victim because it recognized that evidence from the case was ‘fatal’ to its claims of innocence, new details released on Tuesday showed.

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Herman Cain’s Blockhead

From POWERWALL at MSNBC:

Although he’s suddenly the most talked-about man in politics — at least for a day — Mark Block was quick to return a reporter’s request for comment.

“I’m standing outside smoking a cigarette. What else was I supposed to do?” he quips between puffs.

…snip…

Block is Herman Cain’s chief operating officer and chief of staff — equivalent to campaign manager on other campaigns — and in a web video released Monday night, addressed Cain’s supporters. “Tomorrow is one day closer to the White House … We’ve run a campaign like nobody’s ever seen, but then America’s never seen a candidate like Herman Cain,” Block said, looking straight into the camera. “We need you to get involved.” And then, without breaking his gaze, he takes a drag off a cigarette, transforming an ordinary video into a viral sensation.

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Just Put Your Lips Together and Blow

From THINK PROGRESS ECONOMY:

A new Stop Snitchin campaign to deter would-be informants, in this case against people speaking up against crimes on Wall Street, is quietly taking shape, this time far from the media’s eye.

Financial experts and academics agree that strong whistleblower regulations could have prevented the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme and indeed much of the financial crisis if employees at firms engaged in fraudulent activity had spoken up early or had reported complex crimes to the appropriate authorities. Employees at firms at the center for the financial crisis, including troubled lender Countrywide, have cited intimidation and other illicit tactics as the reason few people spoke up as whistleblowers. Since the old whistleblower laws provided for weak legal protections for informants and relatively rare rewards, the Dodd-Frank financial reform law passed last year revamped the system with new rights for informants blowing the whistle on financial crimes.

Bank lobbyists and Fox News, however, have made such protections enemy number one.

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