(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)

I think this may be my favorite line in all the filings that fell like radioactive Christmas snow in federal courtrooms on Friday.

In 2015, Cohen made approximately $30,000 in profit from the sale of a rare and highly valuable French handbag.

Yes, dear friends, the bagman made 30-large by selling...a bag.

I can only imagine the bottomless well of cool, sweet schadenfreude being savored at the moment by all those people against whom Michael Cohen's tough-guy act was employed during his years of service as hoodlum cabana boy to Individual No. 1. All that kissing up and punching down, and you wind up doing four-to-12 because it turned out that you weren't smarter than everyone else after all, and that your boss was even dumber than you are.

Jamie Squire Getty Images

The Southern District prosecutors were tougher on Cohen than Mueller's people were. It was they who linked the presid...er...Individual No. 1 directly to a campaign finance felony regarding the payoffs through Cohen to Stormy Daniels and others who crossed paths with the preside...er...Individual No. 1. It was they who recommended the Cohen receive a "substantial" prison sentence, writing:

After cheating the IRS for years, lying to banks and to Congress, and seeking to criminally influence the Presidential election, Cohen's decision to plead guilty—rather than seek a pardon for his manifold crimes—does not make him a hero.

But it was Mueller's filing that blew away a great deal of the murk surrounding the relationship between the Trump campaign—and the Trump presidency—and the murderous regime of Vladimir Putin. From CNN:

The special counsel memo states that Cohen's false statements to investigators about the Trump Tower Moscow project "obscured the fact that the Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government." Mueller's office said the fact that Cohen continued to work on the Trump Tower Moscow project -- and discuss it with Trump -- was material to both the ongoing congressional and special counsel investigations, noting in particular that "it occurred at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the U.S. presidential election."

Drew Angerer Getty Images

Mueller argues that the false timeline that Cohen laid out publicly and in his testimony — that the Trump Tower Moscow discussions ended in January 2016 — was a deliberate effort to limit the investigations into Russia's election interference. In pleading guilty, Cohen disclosed that talks about the proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow had extended through June 2016, after Trump had become the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and that both Trump and his family members had been briefed on the discussions. Cohen also acknowledged pursuing plans to send Trump and himself to Russia in service of the project and discussing the proposed development directly with a representative of the Kremlin.

And then, there's Paul Manafort, who may be sentenced to serve his time under the jail. Mueller's using his balls for castanets now because Manafort, it appears, thought he was even smarter than Cohen thought he was, playing a double-game with Mueller and with the administration* as recently as last May. From The Atlantic:

Mueller also filed a separate memo on Friday detailing the alleged lies Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort told prosecutors in violation of his plea agreement. They concerned Manafort’s contacts with Trump administration officials, a suspected Russian spy named Konstantin Kilimnik, a separate Justice Department investigation, and a wire transfer. Much of the document was redacted, but Mueller said text messages show that Manafort was interacting with a “senior administration official” into May 2018.

Even though the Manafort document was heavily redacted, it's clear that your ostrich-skin jacket won't get you into heaven any more. It sounds very much like Manafort was fishing around for a pardon while he was allegedly cooperating with Mueller. Genius, I tells ya!

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI Getty Images

In addition, as regards to Manafort's contact with a Russian intelligence operative named Konstantin Kilimnik while Manafort was putatively running the president*'s campaign, through all the redactions, Mueller plainly would like the world to know that he has the receipts. From CNN:

Mueller said on Friday that Manafort lied to investigators about his interactions with Kilimnik, his former business associate who has ties to Russian intelligence. Specifically, prosecutors discussed with Manafort more than one meeting he had with Kilimnik.

There are very few public details about their interactions. But questions of collusion have swirled around Kilimnik, given his longtime closeness to Manafort and his links to Russian intelligence agencies that were aggressively meddling in the election. Mueller's team said earlier this year that the FBI believes Kilimnik had active ties to Russian spies in 2016. Prosecutors said they caught Manafort in lies about Kilimnik because they have "electronic communications" and "travel records."

Mueller's team said they confronted Manafort with this evidence and he acknowledged his lies. But besides these breadcrumbs, critical parts from Friday's filing about Kilimnik were heavily redacted by Mueller's office.

In short, we got tapes, motherfcker. Boy, are you ever stupid.



The Washington Post Getty Images

A criminal campaign produced a criminal presidency* run by criminal actors. That is the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from what we know right now, and we don't know anywhere close to all of it. The documentary evidence produced on Friday by both Robert Mueller's office, and by the prosecutors for the Southern District of New York, is proof enough already that, in 2016, a criminal conspiracy with links to a foreign dictator managed to help elect a president* of the United States.

That is the reality with which we must decide as a self-governing people we will choose to live. We can live with it, or not, but the reality is right there in our laps, and there's more of it coming. It's all crooks, all the way down.

Here's an idiot British Tory politician who'd like to engage in some cosplay commemorating one of history's most monumental atrocities. From the The Times of London (via thejournal.ie):

At a Brexit event for local authorities held in Dublin this week, economist Dan O’Brien echoed those sentiments, adding that the threat of food shortages and supplies in a no-deal scenario shouldn’t be underestimated. According to today’s article, the UK government report has indicated that there would be a 7% drop in GDP for Ireland, while the equivalent for the UK would be a drop of 5%. Tory MP Priti Patel has told the paper that these warnings should have been used as leverage against Ireland to encourage them to drop the backstop. “This paper appears to show the government were well aware Ireland will face significant issues in a no-deal scenario. Why hasn’t this point been pressed home during negotiations? There is still time to go back to Brussels and get a better deal.”

Great idea, Ms. Patel. After all, there's never been any problem at all with Great Britain using Irish food shortage for domestic political purposes before. Jaysus.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Rain and Snow" (Dilliard Chandler): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here is a video of a mock attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese military a year before the actual assault. The Japanese imitation of an American radio broadcast is of particular note—especially when the guy playing the American radio host starts gloating about the effectiveness of the "Japanese air armada." History, while brutal, is so cool.

For years, the people who have been running down the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church have been talking about the motherlode of crimes that probably exists within the church's mission work in parts of the world far from any media spotlight. The New York Times brought us one of these stories this week, from the outlying areas of the Philippines.

The suspect, Rev. Kenneth Bernard Hendricks, 77, was arrested Wednesday in the town of Naval, an impoverished community in Biliran Province, said Dana Krizia Sandoval, a spokeswoman for the immigration bureau of the Philippines. “We received information from U.S. authorities regarding the alleged sexual exploitation of multiple minor Filipino boys by Hendricks,” Ms. Sandoval said. “Several of his victims have come forward with their statements.”

Mr. Hendricks has been living in the Philippines for 37 years, mostly in the same area, working first as a Franciscan brother before he was ordained into the priesthood, according to people who knew him. “The allegations came as a surprise,” said Rolando Borrinaga, a local historian, who once worked as an altar boy and knew the priest. “I was saddened because all the time that I have known him he has been a good friend and priest.”

Naturally, this case has drawn the attention of our president*'s favorite bloodthirsty lunatic.

Mr. Duterte, who says he was molested by a priest when he was a child, seized on the arrest Wednesday to resume his frequent attacks on the church. He asserted that such abuses were common in the religion. “The most hypocritical institution in the entire Philippines is the Catholic Church and the pope knows that,” he told labor officials during a speech at the presidential palace in the capital, Manila, in which he assailed local bishops.

Rodrigo Duterte (2nd-left) listens to Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi (left) in November. LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA Getty Images

The Philippines is predominantly Catholic and the church retains strong influence in the country. It has led anti-Duterte protests calling for a halt to his war on drugs, which has left thousands dead. Mr. Duterte’s attacks on the church come as priests in the country have come under at times violent attacks. At least three Catholic priests have been killed by unknown gunmen since early this year after having spoken out against extrajudicial killings carried out in the name of the drug war.

Great. Now not only does HMC have priests in the hinterlands behaving like a pedophiliac Colonel Kurtz, it's putting its clergy in general harm's way. This scandal never stops growing, and never stops getting worse.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Independent? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

The fossil is from a dog-sized reptile, which lived in the Cretaceous Period, about 100 million years ago and is part of a group of plant-eating dinosaurs called ornithopods. Discovered near Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, this group had beaks with serrated teeth, walked on two legs and were particularly abundant on the ancient floodplains which covered the region at the time. It has been named Weewarrasaurus pobeni in recognition of the fossil’s location, at Wee Warra opal field and in reference to Mike Poben, the Adelaide-based Opal buyer who spotted the jaw bone and donated it for research. “I was sorting some rough opal when, astonishingly, I saw two fan-like ridges protruding from the dirt around one oddly-shaped piece,” he said. “Time froze. If these were teeth, then this was an opalised jawbone fragment.”

Opalization sounds like a very lovely way to go. But, really now, I've rather made peace with the fact that dinosaurs had colorful plumage, but the name of this one—Weewarrasaurus—sounds like something discovered in a tar pit in Mr. Rogers's Neighborhood. On the other hand, cretaceous nursery rhymes are another way dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

The Committee is always persuaded by Top Commenters who pull the old double-switcheroo in their Top Comments. Hence, The Committee handed 77.23 Beckhams to Top Commenter Randall Holbrook for this sharply breaking curveball thrown to Senator Lindsey Graham.

If that man's nose were any browner, nervous suburbanites would be calling the police on him.

I'll be back on Monday to make the rubble bounce as best I can. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and hope for the best. Again.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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