Cockburn

Tolstoy wrote one of literature’s most famous opening lines, in Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The peculiar unhappiness of Paul Manafort’s family life is described in excruciating detail in 285,000 text messages from an iPhone belonging to one of his daughters. The messages were posted by hackers on the darkweb last year and provided several damaging stories about Manafort. He goes on trial today, charged with evading tax on tens of millions of dollars from his work as a political consultant in Ukraine. Now, the texts have been published in their entirety on the ordinary internet, where they can easily be searched and read.

“A storm’s a coming, baby” the adult film star Stormy Daniels promised during her Saturday Night Live appearance back in May. Judging by the tumult of the months since, she’s made good on her claim – though hardly in the way she envisioned. First, she found herself in handcuffs after Ohio police arrested her and two other women for breaching the state’s ‘no touching’ law. Charges have since been dropped. Then Glendon Crain, her husband and a fellow porn industry veteran who performs under the name Brendan Miller, is filing for divorce, a temporary restraining order, and sole custody of their daughter.

While tens of thousands of demonstrators are expected in central London to protest Donald Trump’s visit this week, the BBC too is laying out its own welcome mat. Its most important current affairs programme, Panorama, tonight broadcasts a film titled ‘Trump: Is the President a Sex Pest?’ The Panorama website says: “Donald Trump has been accused of sexually inappropriate behaviour by more than 20 women, but he has dismissed them all as liars. Now one of those women is suing him for defamation. An American court will have to decide what really happened and whether the President of the United States is a sexual predator.” Trump doesn’t care much about protesters.

The former fact-checker of the New Yorker, Talia Lavin, must have been mystified to receive a cheque from Milo Yiannopoulos, the desperate self-publicist once feted by the alt-right, for the miserly sum of $14.88. We all know Yiannopoulos is short of cash these days. He was dumped by billionaire backer Robert Mercer after BuzzFeed revealed his links to neo-Nazis. Then his prospective saviour, Matthew Mellon, died on him: he succumbed to a suspected drug overdose just hours after (according to Yiannopoulos) the two were hanging out together in Miami. https://www.instagram.com/p/BkZGlzRAUx_/?taken-by=milo.

The Donald Trump phenomenon has coincided with a far more odious trend: the criminalisation of American politics. Whether it’s Hillary’s emails, Watergate, Whitewater or Iran-Contra, politics’ losers have increasingly turned to the courts as recourse for their electoral woes.If you can’t beat ‘em, jail ‘em.If Robert Mueller wishes to threaten the republic itself to sate the secular pieties of America’s legal class (and get a nice cocktail reception in his honor at Bill Kristol’s McLean mcmansion), and if Donald Trump doesn’t fight the inquisition with fire and fury, members of the president’s inner circle may well go to prison.So, who, then? Paul Manafort is already there. Anyone joining him? Cockburn investigates.

There’s no question that America’s most famous white nationalist, Richard Spencer  — the man who coined the term “alt-right” — is a subject worthy of academic study, be that by a sociologist or anyone else. But should an academic sign a non-disclosure agreement with Spencer’s organisation as a condition of access? Sources tell Cockburn that Serena Tarr, a sociology professor at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa, has been seen with him at a number of events in the past year, including a 2017 National Policy Institute Conference, CPAC in Maryland in February, and Spencer’s speech at Michigan State about a week or so after that. She can be seen in this video posted to Twitter during his visit to Michigan: https://twitter.

U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is blocking former Ambassador John Bolton from taking over as National Security Advisor, Cockburn has learned. John Bolton was first reported as heir apparent to McMaster by The National Interest in January. McMaster was nearly ousted from the White House summer of last year, ostensibly by a faction lead by former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon. Though the White House officially denied his political demise on Thursday, this time McMaster’s position is far more precarious. NBC News reported earlier in the day Thursday that McMaster was to be imminently replaced—with Ford executive and Bush 43 alum Stephen Biegun, as Bolton was vetoed by Mattis—sending the American capitol aflutter.