Unsolved Mysteries of the Trump Years, Vol. 1

221B Baker Street meets 950 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Jun 06, 2023

The hour is nigh, Legal Twitter tells us. Any day now, the criminal FPOTUS Donald John Trump will be indicted for stealing classified documents, lying about stealing classified documents, selling classified documents, lying about selling classified documents, obstructing the investigation into stealing and selling classified documents, or some combination thereof.

Andrew Weissman, who was Robert Mueller’s #2 at the OSC, tweeted yesterday: “A zillion stories about Trump case — but bottom line is he is getting charged and it will be in DC. And this week. Open issues are whether others may be charged and whether they will be in DC or FLA.”

That’s as confident a statement about something that hasn’t yet happened as you can find from someone of Weissman’s stature. I hope he’s right. As we wait for Jack Smith to hurl his Jovian thunderbolts—and I’ll believe it when I see it—let’s review some of the other unsolved mysteries of the Trump years, all of which are worthy of their own Sherlock Holmes novella:

Bombs Away

Someone with inside knowledge of the area around RNC headquarters planted pipe bombs outside the RNC and DNC headquarters. The Secret Service missed the one at the DNC in their sweep of the area; VP-elect Kamala Harris was in the building the morning of January 6. The FBI has been mum about this. The J6 Committee was quiet about it until the final session, when the subject was brought up a few times.

Who made the bombs? Who planted them? At whose bidding? Were they supposed to blow, or was this a red herring? If the former, was the VP-elect the intended target? How was it tied to the events on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021? Was Marjorie Taylor Greene really involved, or is that just people being funny on Twitter? Why, almost two and a half years later, has the FBI not put two and two together?

The Invisible Man

For over seven years now, I’ve written extensively about Jared Kushner. I think plenty of Americans are aware of the fact that Saudi Arabia gave him a $2 billion fund to manage—over the objections of their own finance people. To be fair, that’s not quite the same as the Kingdom flat-out wiring two bill into his personal account. But the optics are terrible, in light of what we know—and have known for many years—about the shady af relationship between Kushner and MbS.

If Kushner is mentioned sparingly in the press, Steve Mnuchin is the Invisible Man. Trump’s Treasury Secretary served in that post for the full four years, but was known, primarily, for 1) obfuscation around the distribution of PPP loans, and, 2) that tacky photo op with his tacky wife at Fort Knox. The guy’s kept a low profile in the press, and it’s worked out for him.

Mnuchin is not some rando. He was a banker at Goldman Sachs, where his father, Robert Mnuchin, headed the arbitrage department. I have a source familiar with that operation when the senior Mnuchin ran it, and he has expressed to me on numerous occasions, and in more colorful and absolute terms than I will repeat here, that said department at said firm is—how shall I put this?—not exactly renowned for its honor. The son’s milking of his government benefits—some might use the word exploiting—is, perhaps, a case of acorn and tree.

As of October 2021, Steve Mnuchin’s new investment firm raised $2.75 billion from various countries in the Middle East—including a cool billion from Saudi Arabia—that he had seemingly cultivated business relationships with while in the Cabinet. As the New York Times dryly put it: “The scale of Mr. Mnuchin’s fund and its investments from countries where he traveled as Treasury secretary have raised questions about whether he used his government role to enrich himself.” Gosh, ya think?

Czech Mate

Did Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, meet with Kremlin operatives in Prague in the summer of 2016, like it says in the so-called Steele dossier? Cohen has repeatedly denied the allegation—under oath, which is not the same as spewing lies on TV. So the answer, most likely, is no.

And yet: two reporters from McClatchy, Greg Gordon and Peter Stone, found evidence to support the claim, independent of the dossier. And in October 2021, in his first public appearance after BuzzFeed released his intelligence reports in January 2016, Christopher Steele doubled down. “I’m prepared to accept that not everything in the dossier is 100 percent accurate,” Steele told CNN. “I have yet to be convinced that that”—the Cohen-Prague entry—“is one of them.”

When asked why Cohen, who has dropped so many truth bombs, would continue to lie about Prague, Steele said: “He might be scared of the consequences.”

Notes from Helsinki

Trump met Putin in the Finnish capital on July 16, 2018. The two leaders famously held a one-on-one meeting in which no notes were taken.

It’s easy to forget, in the swirling maelstrom of shit that was 45’s presidency, but the Helsinki Summit was the all-time most embarrassing showing on the world stage for an American president. (George W. Bush having the shoe thrown at him is a distant second. Dubya at least ducked; Trump stooped—literally and figuratively.) Yet there was the Kremlin lapdog Rand Paul, extoling Trump’s performance. Not only that, Paul joined Trump in seeking the revocation of John O. Brennan’s security clearance after the former CIA director rightly denounced the Helsinki summit as “nothing short of treasonous.”

We still don’t know what the two leaders discussed—or what Trump promised the genocidal Russian despot. Perhaps we should, like, find out?

Our Man in Kharkiv

Ever since he showed up at Four Seasons Total Landscaping with hair dye streaming down his face, Rudy Giuliani has rightly become a target of popular ridicule. But in the early days of the Trump Administration, when he was still respected in certain circles, he was operating in some sort of unofficial “envoy” capacity for Trump, stirring up shit in [checks notes] Ukraine.

As the researcher Portlus Glam explained on these pages in December 2019:

Russia made their goal for militarization clear in December 2016, when Putin released his new doctrine for cyber warfare. Trump created a national upheaval by firing FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. And in June 2017, Russia imploded the U.N.’s 13-year effort to draft new global cybersecurity rules.
This created an influence vacuum and put vulnerable ex-Soviet countries at imminent risk for cyberattack by Russia. That allowed Giuliani to go over and operationalize in Ukraine during May and June 2017 via contracts with Mayors in Kharkiv and Kyiv. . .
Remember—by February 2017, Paul Manafort was out of the Ukraine game. Michael Cohen and Felix Sater’s peace plan hijinks had taken them out too. Rudy probably ended up wearing many more capes than anyone had initially planned. . . So that’s why his goon squad from Giuliani Safety and Security LLC was literally on the ground in Kharkiv the day Comey was fired—May 9, 2017. And that’s why Giuliani was at the White House the day after Comey was fired—May 10—meeting with Tom Bossert to put the finishing touches on the Administration’s first Executive Order on Cybersecurity. Fun fact: that was also the same day Lavrov and Kislyak visited Trump in the Oval Office.
Skipping to early July 2017, Trump held his first meeting with Putin during the G20 Summit in Hamburg—the one where they chatted about a “joint cyber unit.” A week later, Rex Tillerson directed State to shutter its Office of Cyber Issues, pushing out a well-respected global cyber envoy, Christopher Painter. Once again, Giuliani’s goon squad was on the ground in Ukraine for this announcement, meeting with ex-Party of Regions leaders.

Bottom line, Giuliani and his people were active in Ukraine from the very beginning of the Trump years—before Rick Perry got up to whatever he got up to, before Trump attempted to extort President Zelenskyy. In light of recent developments in the region—that is, Putin’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine—this early activity demands greater scrutiny.

Mail Bagged

It sure looks like Trump named his donor buddy Louis DeJoy Postmaster General to fuck with the mail-in ballots—by any means necessary. Anyone installed in such a vital position by that corrupt administration, that late in the game, should be regarded with extreme suspicion, if not outright contempt. But a guy who looks and talks like a bit player on The Sopranos, and who started his lucrative career running a family trucking company in New York City, and who plays fast and loose with the law, was a walking red flag even before he took the job and started to break shit. Bags of mail were literally falling off the backs of trucks, which is Mob 101 stuff.

For a while, it looked like DeJoy might get indicted in North Carolina for allegedly reimbursing his employees who made political donations, which flies in the face of both the letter and the spirit of campaign finance law. But the Wake County DA declined to press changes, saying, “Our office’s authority would be only over any contributions to state candidates or violations of state campaign finance law. Our review of what we believe to be pertinent, state campaign finance reports, did not disclose sufficient information to warrant a criminal investigation.” The investigation was punted to the feds, who have done bupkis. And thanks to the arcane rules of replacing Postmasters General, DeJoy remains in the position—the ultimate junk mail.

The Justice Department has its hands full these days, I realize. Even so, I’d like to see some DOJ sleuths looking in to these enduring mysteries. The Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building needs an infusion of Sherlock Holmes energy.