Mike Quigley, a Dem on House Intel, tells @JohnBerman he expects Republicans to shut down the panel's Russia investigation within the next month
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/970681043559833600

Wow. Rudy Giuliani got on stage with Trump this weekend at a GOP donor reception... and said this
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/970442200843739136

Scoop: Mueller's hit list

Axios has reviewed a Grand Jury subpoena that Robert Mueller's team sent to a witness last month.

What Mueller is asking for:

Mueller is subpoenaing all communications — meaning emails, texts, handwritten notes, etc. — that this witness sent and received regarding the following people:

Carter Page
Corey Lewandowski
Donald J. Trump
Hope Hicks
Keith Schiller
Michael Cohen
Paul Manafort
Rick Gates
Roger Stone
Steve Bannon

The subpoena asks for all communications from November 1, 2015, to the present. Notably, Trump announced his campaign for president five months earlier — on June 16, 2015.

Bottom line: In December, the president's lawyer Ty Cobb told me the White House would be free of the Mueller investigation "shortly after the first of the year absent some unforeseen delay." We know very little about what's keeping the investigators so busy, but the breadth of this subpoena means Mueller's team could easily stumble into goodies about Trump's inner circle given so many people are coughing up material. (Cobb didn't respond to a request for comment.)

Link: https://www.axios.com/robert-muller-questions-list-trump-russia-54d00d1c-f008-457c-b304-ee601a98d78c.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twsocialshare&utm_campaign=organic

Mueller’s Focus on Adviser to United Arab Emirates Indicates Widening of Inquiry

WASHINGTON — George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, has hovered on the fringes of international diplomacy for three decades. He was a back-channel negotiator with Syria during the Clinton administration, reinvented himself as an adviser to the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, and last year was a frequent visitor to President Trump’s White House.

Mr. Nader is now a focus of the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel. In recent weeks, Mr. Mueller’s investigators have questioned Mr. Nader and have pressed witnesses for information about any possible attempts by the Emiratis to buy political influence by directing money to support Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

The investigators have also asked about Mr. Nader’s role in White House policymaking, those people said, suggesting that the special counsel investigation has broadened beyond Russian election meddling to include Emirati influence on the Trump administration. The focus on Mr. Nader could also prompt an examination of how money from multiple countries has flowed through and influenced Washington during the Trump era.

How much this line of inquiry is connected to Mr. Mueller’s original task of investigating contacts between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia is unclear. The examination of the U.A.E. comes amid a flurry of recent activity by Mr. Mueller.

More: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/us/politics/george-nader-mueller-investigation-united-arab-emirates.html?smid=pl-share

Ivanka Trump: Born to legitimize corruption and make the shoddy look cute

... snip

She has the same magic touch with the multitudes of flesh-and-blood rogues who flock to her for redemption. It's Ivanka who first brought Gen. Michael "Lied to the FBI" Flynn into the administration, according to the New Yorker; she praised him for his "amazing loyalty" and offered him his choice of positions at a transition-team meeting. One person present said, "It was like Princess Ivanka had laid the sword on Flynn's shoulders and said, 'Rise and go forth.'"

The laying on of that princess sword seems to be Ivanka's favorite pastime. In 2006, when she was 25, she toured Moscow with Felix Sater, who in 1998 pleaded guilty to a $40-million stock fraud scheme run by the Russian mafia. She also collaborated with the Soviet-born businessman Tamir Sapir, whose top aide in 2004 pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy with the Gambino crime family.

It's impossible to keep track of all the gangsters Ivanka has palled around with. But what's truly damning are the shady real-estate projects she has made rise and go forth.

In 2006, she oversaw the development of the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama City. The project was connected to a Brazilian money launderer later arrested for fraud and forgery as well as a Russian investor who'd previously been jailed in Israel for kidnapping. On Wednesday, a dispute between Trump's company and the building's owner turned violent. The journalist Marcy Wheeler has suggested the fight concerns records that may show Ivanka knew the property was laundering money. Police in riot gear stormed the hotel that Ivanka once hyped as "exemplary of the grandeur in which we like to enter a market."

More: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-heffernan-ivanka-legitimizing-20180303-story.html

Whoa!: “Hicks has been secretly keeping...a 'diary of her White House work, and her interactions w/Trump.'” If true, belongs to USG not her, must be preserved in WH under Pres Recds Act, raises issues about her handling of classified & WILL be subpoenaed.
https://twitter.com/NormEisen/status/969396784899346432

EXCLUSIVE: Hope Hicks' $10 million payday! The departing coms director is flooded with offers as publishers scramble for a book deal to spill the secrets of Trump's inner sanctum and her affair with wife abuser Rob Porter

*Publishers and producers wasted no time getting offers to the stunning communications director Hope Hicks as she exits the White House
*A publishing executive said: 'Next to Ivanka and Melania, Hope is the woman closest to the president, and knows all the secrets, all the foibles, all the quirks'
*A White House insider says Hicks has been keeping what was described as a 'detailed diary of her White House work, and her interactions with the president'
*High-powered New York literary agent Eric Myers told DailyMail.com that Hicks could easily get a $10 million advance, 'If she really did promise to throw the office doors wide open and tell all
*But as a a longtime Trump confidante she may not be inclined to do that.
*There would undoubtedly be matters of legality and national security to be weighed.
*The 29-year-old White House communications director resigned on Wednesday


No sooner had Hopes Hicks' resignation been announced, a day after her 'white lies' testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, one of New York City's most powerful publishing house editors was in contact.

He had an offer he hoped Hicks wouldn't refuse: $10 million to write what was described exclusively to Daily Mail as a 'candid, truthful, sensitive tell-all about her life in Trump Land—the good, the bad and the ugly.'

Soon after, the 29-year-old White House communications director – one of President Trump's closest and longest serving advisors said to know him better than any other top White House aides – was contacted by a female Hollywood producer-screenwriter with platinum credentials.

More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5451711/Hope-Hicks-10-million-payday-publishers-scramble-sign-her.html

Wow, 7 ongoing investigations into Jared Kushner:

https://twitter.com/ices256/status/969199055481004034

Rick Gates tells judge he's canceling trip due to threat invoking Russian mafia

Washington (CNN)Former Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates told a federal court Thursday afternoon that he and his wife believe it's "not prudent" for them to take their four children on a trip to Boston, after feeling threatened by an online commenter who invoked the Russian mafia.

A Boston Globe report on Gates' scheduled trip, planned for next week and approved by Judge Amy Berman Jackson, "generated comments on the internet, some of which were of a threatening character," Gates' attorney said in a court filing.

Following his guilty plea and agreement to cooperate in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation last Friday, Gates had asked to take his family to Boston for spring break to learn about the Revolutionary War.

He is only allowed outside of the Washington, DC, and Richmond, Virginia, areas, where his lawyers are based and where he lives, with special permission from the judge.

More: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/01/politics/rick-gates-boston-threat/index.html

Senate Intelligence Leaders Say House G.O.P. Leaked a Senator’s Texts

... snip

Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the committee’s Republican chairman, and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat, were so perturbed by the leak that they demanded a rare meeting with Speaker Paul D. Ryan last month to inform him of their findings. They used the meeting with Mr. Ryan to raise broader concerns about the direction of the House Intelligence Committee under its chairman, Representative Devin Nunes of California, the officials said.

... snip

AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan, declined to comment. In his meeting with the senators, Mr. Ryan made clear that he heard their complaints but noted that he did not run the committee himself, the officials briefed on the encounter said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/us/politics/senate-intelligence-nunes-leaks.html?smid=pl-share

Senate Intelligence Leaders Say House G.O.P. Leaked a Senator’s Texts

WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee were behind the leak of private text messages between the Senate panel’s top Democrat and a Russian-connected lawyer, according to two congressional officials briefed on the matter.

Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the committee’s Republican chairman, and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat, were so perturbed by the leak that they demanded a rare meeting with Speaker Paul D. Ryan last month to inform him of their findings. They used the meeting with Mr. Ryan to raise broader concerns about the direction of the House Intelligence Committee under its chairman, Representative Devin Nunes of California, the officials said.

To the senators, who are overseeing what is effectively the last bipartisan investigation on Capitol Hill into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the leak was a serious breach of protocol and a partisan attack by one intelligence committee against the other.

... snip

Copies of the messages were originally submitted by Mr. Waldman to the Senate committee. In January, one of Mr. Nunes’s staff members requested that copies be shared with the House committee as well, according to a person familiar with the request who was not authorized to talk about it publicly. Days later, the messages were published by Fox News, the person said. Fox’s report said that it had obtained the documents from a Republican source it did not name.

More: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/us/politics/senate-intelligence-nunes-leaks.html?smid=pl-share