Amazon has announced that their plans to build their headquarters in New York City will be cancelled after sustained backlash from New Yorkers as reported by CNN. The news comes as a surprise to many since New York City was chosen over all other major urban areas in a lengthy deliberation process. Last years, many …

A former US Air Force intelligence specialist has just been charged with spying for the Iranian government. The story which broke today has shaken the American intelligence world, reported by The Guardian and all major outlets. Monica Elfriede Witt, a 39-year old counterintelligence agent for the US Air Force, has been accused of delivering highly …

According to Reuters, congressional negotiators have come up with a plan to avoid another government shutdown this month but it seems unlikely Trump will support the move. The newly-negotiated deal does not grant border wall funding, but instead funds a “fence” for a fraction of the $6 billion or so originally requested by the President. …

Stocks opened higher today on Monday as optimism for a U.S.-China trade deal grows. The deal will strike an end to an ongoing tariff war between the two countries which has caused investors significant worry and uncertainty. The Dow Jones stock index climbed 84 points today as the S&P 500 grew 0.26 percent. The industrial …

A Redditor posted the gif below, saying (accurately) that this is what the Mueller investigation feels like.

This is so painfully accurate, especially to those who hope that the investigation will reveal some major massive corruption or conspiracy. One has to wonder whether this is how Americans felt during Nixon’s presidency, or if the twenty-four-hour news cycle and social media make the sense of an impending political catastrophe feel more impending than it is. That being said, the slow and steady march of Mueller’s investigation continues to suggest that members of the Trump administration, and perhaps even Trump himself, have been involved in questionable practices (to say the least). 

House Intelligence Committee’s Democratic leadership will vote on whether to send Donald Trump Jr.’s closed testimony before that body to Mueller. This is significant because some Democrats have hinted that Don Junior was untruthful in his testimony. If that turns out to be the case, Don Junior––like others who have been untruthful before Congress––could face criminal charges. This would, in turn, give Mueller a potentially explosive source of information from deep within the Trump camp––a source that Mueller has leverage on. It is also possible that the Committee will turn over the testimony of other Trump insiders, including Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon.

Democrats are also suspicious of some of Donald Trump’s real estate holdings. Maryland prosecutors have subpoenaed the  company that owns President Donald Trump’s Scotland golf courses for its financial filings. Some Democrats believe that the funding for these golf courses may have come from Russian sources. If this turns out to be the case, it would lend further credence to the connection between Trump and the Russians. 

A recent Buzzfeed article revealed that a Russian-born lobbyist received half a million dollars of suspicious payments just before the controversial June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. This meeting has become a focal point for the possibility of potential Russia-Trump collusion to influence the 2016 election. 

One of Trump’s former campaign aides, Sam Nunberg, believes that the Mueller team has a “strong case of conspiracy” against Trump. 

Aside from the various speculations––which will never be fully resolved until the Mueller investigation is finished, if Trump even makes it public––there is one law that Trump has definitively broken, but you probably missed it. According to the law, “On or after the first Monday in January but not later than the first Monday in February of each year, the president shall submit a budget of the United States government for the following fiscal year.” But if you are hoping that this violation will lead to impeachment, don’t get too excited. This deadline has been missed several times throughout history, and besides, there are no penalties for missing it anyway. 

Overall, it seems that there is one clear narrative emerging from the Mueller investigation: Trump was probably involved in something sketchy with the Russians. The continued avenues of inquiry from the Mueller investigation hint at that, and the events covered in this article support it. 

More politics.

According to a recent complaint filed by Robert Mueller, Russians are using his discovery materials as part of a disinformation campaign. The goal of this campaign, Mueller suggests, is to discredit his investigation into possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. Mueller hopes that his complaint will enable him to stop sharing information with the Russian company Concord Management. 

Concord Management is run by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, known as President Vladimir Putin’s “chef.” Concord Management is also one of the companies behind the social media election tampering campaigns in 2016. 

In the latest disinformation campaign––the one designed to discredit Mueller’s investigation––hackers released some of the nonsensitive materials from Mueller’s investigation. The information was released through a twitter account based in Russia claiming to have hacked the Mueller investigation, which has subsequently been suspended. The release was designed to make readers believe that this information was all Mueller had. There is no evidence that the material was obtained through a hack. As a result, Mueller concluded that the material was leaked by Concord Management. 

The fact that the Russians accused of tampering with the 2016 presidential campaign are now tampering with the investigation to that tampering suggests that Mueller is indeed onto something. It’s also significant that the company under investigation is run by someone close to Putin. Although circumstantial, this does point to some ties between the current administration and Russia. 

This conclusion is supported by the fact that Trump has, for the second time, met with Vladimir Putin with none of his aides or notetakers. According to a report by the Washington Post, 

President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said.

The ties between Americans and Russians go deeper than even these connections suggest. This hacked emails reveal that: “revealed that a senior figure in the Bradley Foundation, a prominent financier of right-wing groups in the US, attended a gala alongside Russian oligarchs and officials shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014.”

I think it’s an overstatement to suggest that the entire Republican Party is somehow in cahoots with Russia, as some critiques are suggesting. But the evidence is mounting that extremely wealthy Russians and extremely wealthy Americans are working together to align political circumstances in ways that work best for both groups. 

While this is happening, Donald Trump’s campaign promises are crumbling. He caved on the Wall––and long gone was the promise that Mexico would pay for it. The economy isn’t as fantastic as Trump says. Oh, and that $10,000,000 factory that would bring 13,000 jobs to Wisconsin? Foxconn is reconsidering their plans to build that plant. So much of what Trump promised is not happening. But the business ties between Trump and Russia could be a potential gold mine. Time will if these speculations are true. 

More news.