Confirmed secretary of defense and nobody would know. Right . It is amazing enough that the white house had been reckless enough to put somebody who was in that kind of a compromised position at the pentagon at all as acting defense secretary for six months, let alone that they nominated him to try to confirm him for that position on a permanent basis. I mean, whatever you think about the circumstances of what had happened in his family, the fact that he was trying to keep it secret . I mean, thats the danger, right . Thats the potential liability to blackmail or somebody trying to leverage that secret against him while hes running the Defense Department. It emerged after usa today and the Washington Post broke that story yesterday and Patrick Shanahan withdrew his nomination to be defense secretary. It emerged that u. S. Senators on the Armed Services committee were especially aggrieved that they had never been notified about that very serious situation in shanahans background that he was trying to keep under wraps. Senator is why angry because shanahan had gone through the Senate Confirmation process actually for a lowerlevel job at the Defense Department in 2017. As part of that confirmation process, the administration should have turned over vetting materials and background check information that provided senators with that kind of information about that nominee before they held his confirmation hearings and voted on him. So in the Patrick Shanahan baseball bat beating grim history involving his wife and his son and his own involvement after the fact and trying to manage the consequences of that crime, when that all came out yesterday, senators were mad. That they were learning about that, like all the rest of us were, for first time in the pages of the Washington Post. They were mad about that because they had just gone through Senate Confirmation with that guy as a nominee the previous year. None of that stuff had ever been flagged for them. So thats what we were working our way through in terms of the news this time last night. That was just yesterday. Well, now i see your acting secretary of defense vetting disaster conflagration, and i raise you Vice President pences National Security adviser. Okay. This is maria butina. See the redhaired woman asking a question . Reading off her notes . Thats maria butina. This is a conservative confab that happened in las vegas summer of 2015. The very first time any president ial candidate running in the 20 skaection election weighed in on the issue of russian sanctions was when this redhaired woman, maria butina, walked up to a microphone at an audience q a thing with then candidate donald trump, and she asked candidate donald trump about sanctions on russia. And trump responded with this long soliloquy about how he liked Vladimir Putin very much and he didnt think he would need the sanctions and he was against u. S. Sanctions on russia, hed get rid of them. So that was july 2015. Very early on in the 2016 race. And of course over time the odd dynamic between trump and putin and trump and russia and the Trump Campaign as secret discussions with russia about dropping sanctions on them, that would all end up becoming a huge deal. It became such a big deal we still havent sorted it all out. Were still not over it. But the very first time the whole idea of russia sanctions came up in the campaign for any candidate, it was through that question. At that conservative confab in las vegas in july 2015, a question from the floor for candidate trump that elicits the statement from him, i am against the u. S. Government having sanctions on russia. It turns out that woman who asked that question, who injected the whole russia sanctions thing in the campaign in the first place, turns out she would later be indicted as a secret Foreign Agent running an influence operation in this country on behalf of the russian federation. The maria butina story is just nuts, right . When she was ultimately arrested and indicted and put in jail, she was described by prosecutors as a secret agent, basically working on behalf of the russian government, regularly reporting home to her kremlin handler about how things were going and her efforts to make contacts and meet influential people inside the Republican Party, particularly through conservative organizations like the nra. But in the charging documents in her case, an fbi affidavit filed with the court, the government also described a different person who was involved in the scheme. A person who was named by prosecutors as u. S. Person 1. And if you piece it together through various documents and reporting, u. S. Person 1 in the butina case appears to be her american boyfriend, who according to the government worked closely with her throughout the duration of her influence operation to try to influence the Republican Party in a way that would quote advance the interests of the russian federation. Theres also just been a ton of public facing reporting about maria butina and her american boyfriend, including this seminal New York Times piece which broke the news that Paul Erickson, the boyfriend, had, during the campaign, in may 2016, he had sent the Trump Campaign an email that literally had the subject line kremlin connection. He was offering in that email to set up a connection to donald trump with an emissary from Vladimir Putins office. He said he could set donald trump up in a meeting with somebody sent as an emissary with putin, and he could do it at an upcoming nra event. So today maria butina is still in jail. She pled guilty. Its expected shes going to be deported back to russia as soon as she finally gets released from prison. Her boyfriend, u. S. Person 1, according to prosecutors, he helped her throughout with her illegal influence operation she was running on behalf of the russian government, he has meanwhile been indicted himself on financial fraud charges in his home state of south dakota. Hes facing federal charges there. Hes pled not guilty. Hes awaiting trial. But the saga of those two, right, the sorry of these two, even before their indictments, its been like the made for tv technicolor spy movie dramatic subplot in this whole scandal and the whole investigation and all of it, right . I mean, of all the stuff around the russia scandal, its interesting to a certain degree, its all incredible that were looking at russian influence in a u. S. Election and potential leverage over the campaign and the candidate i mean, its all pretty cinematic. But when it comes to maria butina and Paul Erickson, her american boyfriend, thats the stuff that definitely makes the trailer for the movie, right . What are all these russians doing with the nra . Why did all those nra people end up in moscow at the same time that Michael Flynn was there doing that gala dinner celebrating the russian propaganda tv channel where he sat with Vladimir Putin. Is that jill stein, the green party candidate, there too . What . Maria butina literally sends a message to her kremlin handler, i am ready for further orders. She immediately sends word to her handler that she has heard that a specific person is going to be nominated by trump to be secretary of state. She sends word who that person is because she tells her handler, basically, our im in russia should have a headsup about that choice, the russian governments opinion on that choice will be taken into consideration, please circulate the name and let me know what i should tell people here about it. This is crazy stuff. The russian government being consulted on who trumps going to pick as secretary of state . What . I mean, butina and erickson stuff is the most sparky, most lurid, and therefore i think some of the most heavily covered part of this whole scandal. Well, josh rogen at the Washington Post reports tonight that maria butina also turned up at the wedding of mike pences National Security adviser. What . Yeah. This was june 2017. Mike pences National Security adviser, a woman named Andrea Thompson, she got married that summer of 2017, first summer of the Trump Administration. Shes got that awesome new job. Shes getting married. Maria butina was at the wedding. Why was maria butina at that wedding . Because u. S. Person 1, her boyfriend, Paul Erickson, he was officiating the wedding. Oh. It also turns out the man who mike pences National Security adviser, the man who Andrea Thompson was marrying at their wedding that day, he had recently given Paul Erickson 100,000. Now just quick looky lou at the timeline. Trump administration comes into Office Beginning 2017. The summer of 2017, Vice President pences National Security adviser gets married and her wedding is officiated by Maria Butinas boyfriend. By the end of 2017, theres these news reports about maria butina and her boyfriend, including her boyfriend offering to be the kremlin connection setting up secret back channel meetings for trump with people from putins office. This news is like the front page of the New York Times in december 2017. December 2017, thats the front page of the times. Thereafter, in the spring of 2018, mike pences National Security adviser gets put up for a big new job. So the Senate Holds Confirmation Hearings for her to decide whether Andrea Thompson will become the new u. S. Under secretary of state for arms control and interNational Security affairs. She goes through that whole confirmation process in the spring of 2018 knowing that her new husband had given 100,000 to Maria Butinas boyfriend and Maria Butinas boyfriend officiated their wedding and hes since been named as one of the people secretly trying to set up back channels between putin and trump, then understood, known to be the subject of a major fbi inquiry, a special counsel investigativi, a country having its hair on fire over what happened between russia and trump in the campaign, what were guys like erickson doing, she knew all of that. When she was being put up for this top job at the department of state. Going out for Senate Confirmation. But apparently none of it came up. Did not mention it. None of the senators who voted on her confirmation had any idea of any of that, because she didnt say and nobody told them. Do you want to know what that job she was up for is really like . What you actually have to do on a daytoday basis if you, in fact, are Senate Confirmed as she was, to be under secretary of state for arms control and interNational Security affairs . You want to know what that job actually is, what you actually do when you have that job . You negotiate with russia. You negotiate with russians on arms control treaties. Thats your job. So josh rogen spoke with a Senior Trump Administration official in response to this scoop today. That senior Administration Official told mr. Rogen, quote, when the person who marries you gets into trouble with the russians and your job is to negotiate with the russians, you have to disclose that. Everybody with an intelligence clearance knows that. But as josh rogen reports today at the post, not only did Andrea Thompson not report any of this stuff to the senate when she was up for confirmation to be the top arms control negotiator with moscow, not oshl did she not disclose it when she was up to that job, shes never disclosed it to anyone inside the government. Thompson never disclosed these ties to her superiors until approached this week by this columnist. So thats whats going on in the Trump Administration tonight. I mean, were trying to get our heads around new and unprecedented stuff from them all the time. But it is remarkable, right . I mean, now in the space of 24 hours weve got these twin revelations, that the guy who they had working as acting defense secretary for the last six months, he the whole time was sitting on an incredibly potent, disturbing family secret that he was trying desperately to keep anyone from knowing about while he was running the pentagon. That is a National Security intelligence risk in terms of his vulnerability to blackmail and leverage. That is almost impossible to overstate. Now tonight you can add to that the chief highranking official negotiating on arms issues with russia had a really big russiarelated secret that she had been sitting on as well. Not disclosing it to her supervisors, not disclosing it to the fbi for her background checks or clearances, we can surmise that because it was not disclosed to the senate when they voted to confirm her to this post norman a year ago. This is atmosphere like a plot you would event in a novel. Highlevel u. S. Government negotiator secretly linked to russias undercover agent russia knows it but the American Public doesnt what can russia do with this information now that theyve got this top official over a barrel . Theyre heading into arms negotiations and they know that she knows and its just insane. And that news breaking tonight as Russian Military intelligence is being called out internationally for this catastrophe which happened five years ago next month. If you think back to the summer of 2014, you will remember this. This was the shootdown of mh17, Malaysia Flight 17. This was not the plane that disappeared, this was the commercial airliner full of civilians that was shot out of the sky. 298 souls aboard, most of them dutch citizens. The flight originated in amsterdam, was heading to kuala lumpur, the capital of malaysia. As the plane was flying over eastern ukraine, where russia was waging basically an undeclared war at the time, that passenger plane was hit with a sophisticated military antiaircraft missile. Everybody on board was killed. 298 people killed. Their bodies and debris from that crash strewn over a large area of rural eastern ukraine. Investigators from the netherlands and malaysia and ukraine, also from australia and belgium, who had citizens on board, they formed an International Group to jointly investigate this. They have diligently and aggressively investigated the circumstances of that crash. How could it be that 300 civilians could be shot out of the sky on a wellmarked commercial plane, on a civilian passenger airliner on a normal, not offtrack flight . What they determined over the course of this five years of investigating is that the plane was definitely shot down by a russianmade surfacetoair missile. They figured out where it was fired from, they figured out which russian antiaircraft missile brigade it could be traced to. That kind of missile is shot from a big, bulky, unmistakable antiaircraft system that is not a little thing that you cover up in the back of the truck. You cant move it in any subtle way. As Andrew Cramer reports for the New York Times, western analysts said it was improbable that anyone other than a senior Russian Military commander, if not president putin himself, could have ordered the bulky antiaircraft system mounted on a tracked vehicle to be deployed across an international border. Well, today the dutchled International InvestigativeTeam Announced charges, criminal charges, against four suspects in these 298 murders. The suspects announced today, charged today, include a colonel from the fsb, the russian spy service, and two officers from the gru, the same military Intelligence Agency that ran the russian attack on our 2016 election. Same Russian Military allege thats alleged to have carried out the nerve agent poisoning in salisbury in the uk. Russia, of course, still denies having anything to do with the shootdown of mh17. But in addition to these charges announced today, the International Prosecutors also named and implicated a senior aide to putin himself for having been involved at the highest level in organizing the transfer of military equipment that made this shootdown possible. And so russia doesnt want to admit it. They do not want to have to answer for this and they think their denials are good enough. This has been im sure an emotional day for the families of the victims of that disaster five years ago. It is astonishing that russia is still denying all responsibility for it. But now these guys are going to get charged. And im sure russia will not extradite them, so they will be charged in absentia when their trial starts in the spring. Prosecutors say theyre