"I don't know them. I don't know about them. I don't know what they do. I don't know, maybe they were clients of Rudy, you'll have to ask Rudy. I just don't know."
Donald Trump, after the arrest of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman
Trump looks like he employs crooks to do corrupt things.
Trump is trying to make this about Biden. "Where is Hunter Biden???" Trump asks in fundraising emails that pour into supporters in-boxes. "Sleepy Joe and his friends sold out America," Trump said at his rally in Minnesota.
Trump knows political street fighting. Trump grabs attention and focuses it on an opponent's weak spot, and he is doing it right now.
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| Trump and Igor |
Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to make this all about Trump. Trump was observed, red-handed, encouraging foreign interference on his behalf in an American election, doing it both personally and with agents and surrogates. It was so apparent that Trump doubled down, said it was perfectly appropriate, and then publicly asked China to do the same. His defense is that he didn't actually narrate his actions and say the words "quid pro quo."
Democrats think they have the goods. They don't.
If Trump can keep Hunter Biden in the middle of the story Republican voters and officeholders have a fig leaf to argue that they don't actually see what they are seeing. Biden obscures their vision.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman just made Trump's task harder. They got arrested at an airport before boarding a flight to Frankfort with one-way tickets, on charges of soliciting foreign interference with the election. They have been making big campaign contributions to Trump, using money from a secret origin. They are associates--agents, presumably--of Rudy Giuliani, looking for Ukrainian support in finding anti-Biden material.
They had influence in Ukraine because they played up their Trump/Giuliani ties, which makes it difficult for Trump, and impossible for Giuliani, to distance himself. There is a record.
They were photographed with Rudy Giuliani.
They were photographed with Donald Trump.
They were photographed with Donald Junior.
Cliches right out of Central Casting. They are now in the justice system, and are presumed innocent. But they don't look innocent. They look exactly how one would cast corrupt Eastern European gangsters and fixers in a movie about spies and corruption and influence seekers and peddlers. The photograph here of them at the Beverly Hills Polo Lounge with Donald Junior further muddies the water for Trump, making the parallel comparison of adult sons. What-about Don Junior? The drinks, the open shirts, the Polo Lounge: what better cliche location and look to communicate high life loose money corruption?
First glance body language. The actual details and timeline of Ukrainian corruption are complicated, and that benefitsTrump, because if Trump's actions needed explaining then it isn't smoking gun evidence. But Lev and Igor and one way tickets and indictments and loose mouthed Rudy aren't complicated. It has a Sopranos feel. It looks corrupt.
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| Click: Washington Post |
It wordlessly undermines the Trump fig leaf that he is acting in the national interest.
It looks like he employs Giuliani to hire crooks to carry out something corrupt. It looks like what it is.
2 comments:
QUESTION: "Painting Donald Trump as a criminal should be an easy win. Why are Democrats still fumbling around in the dark?"(Salon)
ANSWER: "The Mueller report shows that bad guys who play dirty, like Trump, always win", (The Guardian)
QUESTION: So why don't Democrats play dirty already?
ANSWER: Huh? We are, but it's not as easy as you might think given our team. We're having to deal with Biden's son who was discharged from the military for drug use going on to make big bucks in Ukraine while his dad was VP, so it's hard to pull off a holier than thou on Trump over Ukraine. We have House committees working overtime as Trump dirt machines, but we look shifty because we will do anything to avoid a House floor vote to legitimate it, so we're not getting solid traction there, especially with our press writing editorials saying it makes us look bad. Then our new front runner Elizabeth Warren is being dogged by reports that her personal narrative has some phony looking pages beyond the Fauxchahantus problem, and 2020 hopeful Tulsi Gabbard is threatening to boycott the next debate on claims that our own Democratic National Committee is corrupt, reviving the exact same claim from Bernie three years ago. Plus Trump won't let go of the FBI lovers story of bending official powers to get him, even though Mueller kicked the guy off his team, it's like these things just seem to stick. And maybe waiting in the wings we still have a Virginia blackface governor in office and we've gone mum on that, so people ask about just how clean we are as a party. What next, Avanati back as the face of the Democratic resistance on CNN if he can take time about from the criminal prosecution against him? Or Cory Booker's fictitious "T-Bone" adviser resurfacing, or Willie Brown bragging again that he made Kamala's Harris' career happen during their in-office affair?
Maybe politics is just a dirty business, and we're playing dirty as best we can.
Michael Avenatti
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