Like a series of Homeland, Breaking Bad or House of Cards, I'm finding the the ongoing White House saga a bit too suitable for binge viewing.
One of Trump's old mentors, the rather unsavoury lawyer Roy Cohn, gave advice to Trump along the lines of 'Never leave a paper trail.' Other advice included the formula 'Attack, counterattack and never apologise.'
Paul Manaport, Trump's one-time campaign manager was also good at the 'no paper trail' idea.
That certainly seems to be the case, along with the Cohn formula.
Ironic then, if true, that Manaport's phone was subject to FBI surveillance.
An old 1975 phone routing protocol called Common Channel Signalling (CCS) is still used today as the basis of phone call interception, by re-routing the call (e.g. to a surveillance desk) and then onwards to its real destination. The protocol is supposed to be used for roaming and mast handovers, but the Americans with their Plain Old Telephone Service can also use it for wiretapping.
Now, there's a small group of peopler alleged to have had this wiretapping switched on Manaport ~(frequently at Trump meetings), James Comey (who Trump sacked from leading the FBI) who asked for it to be enabled on his own work phone and (oo-er, via Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
What I can't understand, however, is that if this was true, then where are all the recordings? The basic use of CCS-SS7 can TRACK a phone, the more extensive use would provide fuller surveillance, from which there should thus be recordings.
For Comey, I can understand if there's nothing forthcoming. He's ex-FBI and also writing a show-and- tell book. For Kislyak, it could be immensely embarrassing to be seen to be bugging a foreign diplomat. Manaport could be fair game, but there's nothing in the open.
So, given the scrabble to go to the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and the lack of published files, it somehow suggests that Donny Junior's team were still short of proper information related to ways to assist their election prospects?
The complexities of this all require a proper flow chart or detective crazy wall to join things together.
Add in the curious Trump server (trump-email.com) which seemed to spend most of its life chatting to Alfa Bank in Russia and we start to have quite a three dimensional crossword. Of course, the investigations themselves are now polluting the findings. That server was spammed heavily just before it was taken down, which has helped to cover the tracks.
Incidentally, the server is back online now, but gives out droll error messages, presumably whilst monitoring who has taken a peek at it.
And now I speculate slightly. A combination of, say, a profiling database and a DNC campaign database would make a great start for who to influence. Ring any bells? That huge Facebook hack, plus the DNC database theft? But who to analyse it all? Trump's strategist Steve Bannon is a friend of Cambridge Analytica who could offer such services and - wait- are owned by Alfa Bank.
In the other direction such a server could provide access to funds (suitably laundered) which could then be used, say, by a botnet to create messages to those targeted voters.
I'd suppose I'd base the botnet in Russia although I could offshore it to say, Florida, for the irony.
And to keep things dramatic, Trump Junior has now retained Alan Futerfas as his attorney. "He's a good kid," as Trump Senior describes his 39 year old son, whilst helping him obtain the same veteran New York criminal defence attorney used by mafia crime families.
But. No tapes, no papers, no story?
Here's CCS playing 'tap turns on the water, See the water flow. Acorn makes a forest, see the forest grow.
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