Rachel Maddow connects the dots between a billionaire Russian oligarch and a bizarre Donald Trump deal

Date Aircraft Origin Destination Departure Arrival Duration
2017-Feb-10 Unknown Marseille Provence (MRS / LFML) Miami Intl (KMIA) 09:14PM CET 01:13AM EST (+1) 9:59
2016-Nov-26 Unknown Cyril E King (STT / TIST) Miami Intl (KMIA) 04:37PM AST 06:20PM EST 2:43
2016-Nov-14 Unknown Bob Hope (KBUR) Chicago Midway Intl (KMDW) 01:24AM PST 07:04AM CST 3:40

Unfortunately, November 3rd seems to be over the free history horizon. Also, it’s quite possible that he owns more than one plane. Do they have UberPlane for super-rich?

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But that’s how it comes off, unfortunately. Do you have a substantive issue with the reporting or the information presented, or did you just not like Maddow’s tone? Her presentation? Then state it and skip the caterwauling.

Made me laugh!

On reflection, however, I would call it “a dramatic weapon for a more swashbuckling age.”

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To be clear, yeah, her long-form pieces don’t hold my interest; her schoolteacher style drills the information home but feels like she’s talking down to me a bit. Her shorter-form pieces are much more engaging. I actually like her style and presentation quite a lot – she doesn’t work herself into a lather like Keith Olbermann tends to.

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I’m surprised no-one’s posted this yet

https://youtu.be/LFuYIi5-igc

I wonder how much of it is about including the lowest common denominator, as far as news consumers go. If she was delivering her show exclusively to highly engaged and educated people, I wonder how differently it would come across.

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The flight records I believe, even though, yeah, it’s not free to get them at this point. There are screenshots, also this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/shuttle-election-diplomacy-dmitry-rybolovlevs-plane_us_58a7651ae4b026a89a7a2acb

I tend to be really skeptical of conspiratorial stories that look like bad-movie plot points, but I just can’t shake this one. It nearly has me convinced.

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Is his other plane called ASHLEY? Did you know that the Olsen sisters’ memoir, Mary-Kate & Ashley: Our Story, ended with the sentence “To Russia With Love?” And are you aware that Elizabeth Olsen (their younger sister) spent a semester at the Moscow Art Theatre School?

How deep does this rabbit hole go?!??!!?!?

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I believe the M in M-KATE stands for Monaco.

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Pshhhsh. Believe what you want, sheeple. MARY KATE OLSEN IS BEHIND EVERYTHING!

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It’s also a tempting target - what if the Ukrainians or Georgians reduced that bank to ash?

It doesn’t exist physically, none of them do. It’s a piece of paper in a dusty file-cabinet, all the rest is in computers scattered all over the world. Torch the file-cabinet and they just mail in a certified copy of the original to re-establish the legality.

I’ve liked Maddow in interviews and generally agree with her viewpoints, but I mostly stopped watching her clips on YouTube for this. They’re thorough, but seem to go off on tangents and take a while to get to the point.

"A month before the November elections, Donald Trump Jr. attended a meeting in Paris to discuss the Syrian conflict and possible U.S.-Russian cooperation in the region. The Wall Street Journal now reports he was paid at least $50,000 to attend that meeting.

Donald Trump Jr. addressed a dinner on Oct. 11 at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, hosted by the Center of Political and Foreign Affairs. Its president, Fabien Baussart, and his Syrian-born wife, Randa Kassis, have cooperated with Russia in its drive to end the Syrian civil war, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. […]
Mrs. Kassis heads a political party, the Movement for a Pluralistic Society, which is part of a faction endorsed by Russia in international negotiations aimed at ending the six-year Syrian conflict. She regularly visits Moscow to coordinate policy with Russia’s Foreign Ministry, said Arab and European officials, and portrayed in Russian state media."

And new reporting that Sessions travel for meeting with the Russian Ambassador was paid by the campaign- so was clearly in his role as a campaign surrogate.

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If you’re talking about Bank of Cyprus, it’s the biggest bank in Cyprus by market capitalization…

I’d imagine it would be a propaganda coup - hitting Putin’s personal cash horde.

And would certainly disrupt access to funds and provide opportunities for other grifters to scoop some of it up.

But, like Switzerland in WEII - it will never happen as all the grifters use the service.

They even have a physical storefront, color me impressed! Of course the other 121 branches in the article would probably continue operating unperturbed if the home office went up in flames, but as @KathyPartdeux points out it would be an interesting news piece.

Yay journalism!

Connects the dots, like, connects the dots:

or connects the dots

JK. but I can imagine Trumpers pouting and saying “You didn’t listen when Glenn did it, why should we listen to you?!”

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