Corn appeared on MSNBC to discuss this.

x YouTube Video

Corn has a followup piece which looks at he likelihood that Trump was spied on while in Russia.

During Trump's stay in Moscow, US intelligence experts note, he would have been a natural and obvious target for Russian intelligence. At the time, Trump was a prominent American, an international businessman, and a celebrity. He was also deeply involved in US politics. He had almost run for president in 2000 and nearly did so again in 2012, and he had been a leading foe of President Barack Obama, having pushed the conspiracy theory that Obama had been born in Kenya. …. James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, points out, "It's safe to assume that high-profile public figures and billionaires attract the attention of the Russian security services, including bugging any hotel rooms." And Malcolm Nance, a terrorism and intelligence expert and author of The Plot to Hack America, says the Russian version of the National Security Agency, the Spetssvyaz, manages specialized technical teams that would have been all over Trump: “These communications intercept units are designated for high-importance personages of political and diplomatic standing, such as Donald Trump. These units would've employed the most advanced intelligence collection systems in the nation. Anything short of a highly encrypted communications suite using military-grade technology would be simple for Russian intelligence to exploit. Donald Trump's mobile phone would be among the easiest to exploit. His mobile phone, Bluetooth, and laptops were most likely not shielded and could have been intercepted and exploited any number of ways. This means virtually everything he said, everything he texted, everything he wrote, and every communication he had in the electronic spectrum would be in the possession of Russian intelligence then and now. His guest rooms in Moscow could have had virtually undetectable voice and video communications intercept devices planted in such a way that nothing could be done by Trump in private and would defy detection. The Spetssvyaz would also employ Russian military intelligence subunits as well as Federal Security Service (FSB) surveillance units which could follow him anywhere that he goes with seemingly normal people and detect, document, and provide a record of anything and anyone he met. Trump could have attempted to take countermeasures to defeat any surveillance. "About the only way to ensure against electronic surveillance," the former CIA official says, "is to use a burner phone—one you're not going to use again—stay off your normal personal email (use a one-time address you will not use again), and keep [communications] on that one to routine, non-sensitive messages…That was my practice in Moscow…during which all I sent were innocuous text messages on a phone I never used again." And Lewis remarks, "If you used a mobile phone with an encrypted app and kept that phone in your possession for the entire trip, you could make it harder for them. A lot of people use Signal or Telegram [for encrypted texting], but the Russians could still have many ways around this when you are in Moscow."

But Trump didn’t use a burner phone, he sent out several tweets from his normal Android phone while in Russia so if he said or did anything compromising — Russian intelligence probably has it.

ln addition to significant ties to the Kremlin and having met with Russian supporters to discuss Syria during the campaign Trump has a brewing problem with various Apprentice tapes which are in the possession of actor/comedian Tom Arnold which also overlap with the Russia issue.

On a Seattle radio program earlier this month, Arnold said that he had access to the footage but decided not to release it because he believed that Trump’s followers would only be emboldened by the offensive remarks. “I think if the people that like him saw him saying the N-word, matter-of-factly saying this stuff, I think they would have liked him more for being politically incorrect,” Arnold explained at the time. … According to Arnold, he received access to the video via a time-limited password to a system that is designed to share work within the entertainment industry while preventing piracy. Things became serious, Arnold said, when “Alt Right nuts” began to threaten his family during the election. But Trump’s connection to Russia and Vladimir Putin made Arnold take his case for exposing the GOP nominee to “7 powerful Hollywood people who have everything.” It appears that those “big shots” refused to release information about Trump. “They hate me now,” Arnold wrote. “Terrible career move but I believe if Russia has something they can blackmail our president with its worth the risk to me. Plus I’m a 57 year old father of 1 & 3 yr olds. I want to do all I can so there’s a safe America for them.”

After Arnold’s initial tweet mentioning the tapes he says he received a call from a lawyer threatening a defamation suit.

On Twitter Wednesday, Arnold claimed to have received a voicemail from someone in Trump’s camp threatening him with a defamation suit over his claims that he has tapes of Trump spewing racial slurs and calling his own son a “retard.”

This is actually a fairly dumb move for Trump because Arnold’s primary defense would be to release the tape which he hadn’t done so far because of a $5 Million NDA that would impact the producers who provided it to him in the first place as reported by the LATimes.

"When the people sent it to me, it was funny," Arnold said, explaining that hundreds of people have seen the footage that was sent around years ago as a Christmas video. "He wasn't going to be president of the United States. It was him sitting in that chair using the N-word, using the C-word, calling his son [intellectually disabled]," Arnold said. Arnold then went on to recount the Sunday before the election, allegedly being called by good friend Arnold Schwarzenegger's CAA agent and Hillary Clinton, asking for him to release the tapes. But at that point, Arnold asserted that the people originally responsible for the distribution of the footage, two editors and an associate producer, were "scared to death." "They were scared of his people. They're scared they'll never work again," said Arnold. "There's a $5-million confidentiality agreement." "If that had gotten released, it absolutely would have finished him," Monson told Arnold.

Now apparently Arnold is gung-ho to release the tape and again, part of the reason is the fact that Trump has lied about Russia and Putin.

x 7. Russian hack happened. That and him lying about releasing his taxes. I knew he'd spoken to Putin 2013 in Moscow during Miss Universe https://t.co/scvnHY836l Ã¢ÂÂ Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) December 26, 2016

x 8. Contest from NBC guy that was with him. I shot a movie "produced" by one of his bus partners & Putin pal. Very chatty. This was 2015 so https://t.co/scvnHY836l Ã¢ÂÂ Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) December 26, 2016

x 9. Of course he didn't think he was telling tales about what happened in 2013 to a US President. You have to see his taxes. These tapes https://t.co/scvnHY836l Ã¢ÂÂ Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) December 26, 2016

x 10. Are disgusting but not illegal. I'm not going to out the little guy but I personally confronted 7 powerful Hollywood people who have https://t.co/scvnHY836l Ã¢ÂÂ Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) December 26, 2016

x 11. Everything. They hate me now. Terrible career move but I believe if Russia has something they can blackmail our president with its worth https://t.co/scvnHY836l Ã¢ÂÂ Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) December 26, 2016

x 12. The risk to me. Plus I'm a 57 year old father of 1 & 3 yr olds. I want to do all I can so there's a safe America for them. Call me & I https://t.co/scvnHY836l Ã¢ÂÂ Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) December 26, 2016

So that’s all bad. And the 2013 timeline is consistent with when Trump took the Miss Universe Contest to Moscow.

Trump has said his understanding of Russia is based in part on the 2013 Miss Universe event in Moscow, where the Manhattan mogul watched 86 contestants don shimmering evening gowns and skimpy swimsuits for what he would call “the world’s biggest and most iconic beauty contest.” “I know Russia well,” Trump told Fox News on May 6. “I had a major event in Russia two or three years ago, which was a big, big incredible event.” Asked whether he had met with Putin there, Trump declined to say, though he added: “I got to meet a lot of people.” … At the heart of the episode is Trump’s relationship with Aras Agalarov, a billionaire Russian real estate mogul with ties to Putin, and Agalarov’s rakish son, Emin, 36, a dance-pop singer with ambitions to international stardom who got Trump to appear in one of his music videos. The father and son are two of several ultra-wealthy Russians to whom Trump is connected and with whom he has pursued real estate deals. “I have always been interested in building in Russia,” he told the New York Post just after his return from Moscow. He also boasted upon his return from the pageant that “almost all of the oligarchs were in the room.”

And yet there’s more bad news, as Trump attempted to shut down his charity Foundation to eliminate “conflicts” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told him not so fast.

Donald Trump cannot move ahead with his plan to dismantle his charitable foundation because state prosecutors are probing whether the president-elect personally benefited from its spending, the New York attorney general's office said Tuesday. "The Trump foundation is still under investigation by this office and cannot legally dissolve until that investigation is complete," said Amy Spitalnick, spokeswoman for state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. … The admissions by the Donald J. Trump Foundation were in a 2015 tax filing made public after a presidential election in which it was revealed that Trump has used the charity to settle lawsuits, make a $25,000 political contribution and purchase items, such as a painting of himself, that was displayed at one of his properties. The 2015 tax filing was posted on the nonprofit monitoring website GuideStar on Nov. 18 by someone using an email address from the foundation's law firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, said GuideStar spokeswoman Jackie Enterline Fekeci. In the tax filing, the foundation acknowledged that it used money or assets in violation of the regulations not only during 2015, but in prior years. But the tax filing doesn't provide details on the violations.

So Trump is apparently being looked at by the FBI, the New York Attorney General and if he and his deplorables keep trying to intimidate Arnold he may find himself spewing the N-word on tape all over a California court room. With all this at stake you might think someone wouldn’t go around poking all these bears with a sharp stick.

Yeah, of course not.

x I gave millions of dollars to DJT Foundation, raised or recieved millions more, ALL of which is given to charity, and media won't report! Ã¢ÂÂ Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 27, 2016

Yeah, the media didn’t report that because it’s not true — this is.

x Backstory on Trump Fdn. It appeared to violate laws by buying portraits of him, paying to settle his biz's lawsuits. https://t.co/MCDKWiTqNx https://t.co/GXlpVgND4T Ã¢ÂÂ David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) December 27, 2016

I’m not sure which of these stories is going to explode in his face first like big black bomb from Acme, but when they finally do — it’s going to be really really ugly.