It’s The Sanctions, Stupid

That is a deliberate conversion from the old Clinton motto about the economy. Underlying and motivating the Russian side is bitter anger and resentment that Hilary’s pressure on the oligarchs close to Putin really work.

They have real limits on their freedom to travel, for fear of arrest in third countries; they are unable to travel to the billionaire’s party in Davos Switzerland among other demeaning infringements of their grandiose pomposity as masters of the universe.

Putin wanted and wants to remove the personal embarrassment to himself and re-ingratiate himself with his personal and political friends by his underhand dealings with Trump to get sanctions dropped.

 The Magnitsky Act is his prime target, a bipartisan bill passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2012, intending to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009.

 Since 2016 the bill,which applies globally, authorises government to sanction human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the U.S. Names are added to the list regularly.

It hurts.

Michael Cohen is attempting to straighten out!

For a wily writhing twisting personal fixer and lawyer to Trump, for over ten years, this is a noteworthy effort and fine entertainment. Of course he is trying to save his arse from some jail time, despite pleading guilty, but turning away from the skills and posture developed over a lifetime shows he knows he has reached the end of the road.

The new revelations this last week (more from Corsi, Stone, Manafort too) show the Russians had ‘kompromat’, compromising material that gave leverage over POTUS, quite astonishing. They knew many times when Trump was lying because they already had knowledge of the truth.

 As it spills out this week it is astonishing, in our time a western democratic leader of the first rank is acting as an agent of an adversarial power. Trying to lift sanctions in their interests is just part of it. Pulling on these strings as Mueller intends to continue doing will doubtless extract further shocking revelations.

 More schadenfreude please.