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The nomination of the Donald Trump hyper loyalist Kash Patel to serve as FBI director is unusual.

First, the job is currently occupied, by one Christopher Wray — himself a Trump appointee — who technically has three years left on his 10-year term of service. On Wednesday, however, Wray preemptively capitulated to Trump by committing to resign at the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, saying he wished “to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray,” politically.

Stranger still — and likely unprecedented — is that Patel has sued the man he hopes to replace,...

As he fills out his incoming administration, Donald Trump’s nominees have ranged from absolutely unqualified to ideological nightmares. But he might have just made his scariest hire yet.

On Saturday night, Trump announced he’s selected Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Patel is one of Trump’s most loyal enforcers and a conspiracy theorist — a 2020 election denier who wants to purge the so-called “Deep State.” He recently publicly pledged to investigate and prosecute Trump’s enemies in the media and government.

For years, Trump had personally promised that...

In the final days of the Cold War, a young diplomat arrived at the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco. Agents in the FBI’s San Francisco field office kept a close eye on the personnel coming and going from the consulate. The six-story building in one of the city’s toniest neighborhoods long served as a hub of espionage activity. The newly-arrived Soviet diplomat in his twenties, Evgeny Fokin, soon raised suspicions that he was a Kgb officer operating under diplomatic cover on his first overseas posting. “I do remember he was an intelligence officer.

Donald Trump in the final days of his presidency repeatedly threatened to out government sources involved in the Trump-Russia investigation, an anti-Deep State revenge fantasy he still obsesses over to this day, according to two former senior Trump aides and another person familiar with the matter.

One of these sources tells Rolling Stone that in the days after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the then-president, sometimes while brandishing pieces of paper, would loudly complain that none of the identifying facts in the highly sensitive Russia documents should be blacked-out. Trump would insist,...

HBO has the fix for television viewers with an insatiable appetite for insight on Russia’s interference with the United States’ 2016 presidential election.

That fix is titled “Agents of Chaos,” an upcoming two-part documentary from Alex Gibney that will premiere on September 23. HBO unveiled the trailer for the documentary on Monday and though the project covers well-trod territory, “Agents of Chaos” promises to shine a new light on the political controversy.

Per HBO, “Agents of Chaos” is a product of years of reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election. With never-before-seen footage inside the Russian troll farms and videos unearthed from the Russian deep web, the film digs deep into the sophisticated plans to undermine democracy, raising the alarm for the American public, but also proving that these “agents of chaos” weren’t Russians alone; they were also key players in the United States who, through venality, corruption or circumstance,...

Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election is examined in the new trailer for Agents of Chaos, Alex Gibney’s two-part HBO documentary out September 23rd.

Ahead of the upcoming 2020 election, the film aims to interpret what really happened in 2016, untangling all the conspiracies, confusion and public reaction. In the trailer, Russian President Vladimir Putin is asked if his country is attempting to influence the 2016 election. “Here, I’ll tell you a secret,” he says. “Yes, we will absolutely be doing that.”

The film features previously unseen footage captured inside...

Alex Gibney, the Emmy and Oscar winning documentary filmmaker who has previously investigated everything from Scientology to Theranos, will pull back the curtain on Russian collusion in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Dubbed “Agents of Chaos,” the two-part film will debut on HBO on Sept. 23 in advance of the 2020 presidential contest. The second installment will air on Sept. 24. Gibney previously collaborated with HBO on the likes of “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief” and “The Inventor: Out For Blood in Silicon Valley.”

“The was a Herculean effort that was reminiscent of the cleaning of the Augean stables in terms of difficulty,” Gibney told Variety. “While a lot has been written about certain aspects of this story, much of it was done in such a superficial way that it was hard for people to penetrate. We felt there was value in presenting this as one all-encompassing narrative.”

The resulting film...

Washington — Clocking in at nearly 1,000 pages and drawing on three-and-a-half years of work and more than a million documents, the latest report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is perhaps the most complete accounting yet of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election to damage Hillary Clinton and help elect Donald Trump.

The report is the fifth and final volume of the Senate intelligence committee’s attempt to understand what the Russian government did, what the Trump campaign did, the actions taken by each side’s representatives, and why.

The latest act in the comedy began Friday, just before voting opened in the Nevada Democratic caucus. The Washington Post ran a story — sourced, I’m not joking, to “people familiar with the matter” — explaining that Bernie Sanders had been briefed that “Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest.”

Sanders was quick to see through the gambit. “I’ll let you guess about one day before the Nevada caucus. Why do you think it came out?” He pointed...

As 2019 wound down, well-known press figures sounded alarms about the “erosion of truth.” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd spoke to our own Peter Wade about the “epidemic” of “disinformation.” Washington Post editor Marty Baron and New York Times editor Dean Baquet joined Todd on Meet The Press to talk about how the Internet and Donald Trump and Russia are all combining to create an era in which “crazy conspiracy theories” and “absolute falsehoods and lies” can proliferate.

This isn’t a new idea. Since 2016 especially, a wide array of American politicians...

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz created waves in Washington last week with the release of a lengthy report about the origins of the “Crossfire Hurricane” Trump-Russia investigation.

Pundits focused on his finding of no “political bias” in the decision to investigate Donald Trump, while conservatives focused on abuses of the Fisa process. Horowitz left a lot of key questions about the Russia investigation unanswered, however, including:

Who is Joseph Mifsud?

A congressional source last week said, “I don’t see any way the investigation can be aboveboard if Mifsud isn’t a Russian agent.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper that President Donald Trump should not be impeached because Trump is dedicated to rooting out corruption, and his motives for holding up the military funding to Ukraine were centered around those concerns. In his response, however, Tapper schooled the congressman in the facts.

Tapper asked Paul, “So you’re saying that you think that President Trump was actually doing this because he was combating corruption?”

Paul replied, “Well, yes, there are all kinds of accusations that Burisma and Hunter Biden...

Fox News Sunday has landed to guests for Sunday’s show who are frequent targets of Team Trump and the channel’s primetime hosts: former FBI director James Comey and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-ca).

They will appear in separate segments with Chris Wallace, who has a record of aggressive questioning of figures on both sides of the impeachment debate.

Comey will discuss the recently release Justice Department inspector general report, which found no evidence of political bias in the decision in 2016 to launch a probe of the Trump campaign’s connections to Russian sources. The Ig did conclude that there were significant errors in the way that the FBI sought warrants for electronic surveillance of a former Trump campaign official, Carter Page.

Schiff will appear just as Democrats are poised to vote next week on articles of impeachment against Trump over his effort to get Ukraine to...

The Guardian headline reads: “DOJ Internal watchdog report clears FBI of illegal surveillance of Trump adviser.”

If the report released Monday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz constitutes a “clearing” of the FBI, never clear me of anything. Holy God, what a clown show the Trump-Russia investigation was.

Like the much-ballyhooed report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the Horowitz report is a Rorschach test, in which partisans will find what they want to find.

Much of the press is concentrating on Horowitz’s conclusion that there was no evidence...

Donald Trump gave his first extended interview following this week’s impeachment inquiry hearings to Fox & Friends, and it was what would be expected: A lengthy attack, even a tirade at times, on Democrats, the news media and Ukraine.

The hosts at times questioned some of Trump’s assertions.

Trump advanced a debunked conspiracy theory that the hacked Democratic National Committee server was somehow given to the Ukrainians to hide the country’s role – not Russia’s – in meddling in the 2016 election.

“The FBI went in and said, ‘We’re not giving it to you.’ They gave the server to Crowdstrike, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian. And I still want to see that server. You know the FBI has still never gotten that server. That is a big part of this whole thing. Why did they give it to a Ukrainian company?”

Host Steve Doocy interjected,...

From The Guardian this Monday, November 4:

Fresh evidence has also emerged of attempts by the Kremlin to infiltrate the Conservatives by a senior Russian diplomat suspected of espionage, who spent five years in London cultivating leading Tories including Johnson himself…

The committee’s report is based on analysis from Britain’s intelligence agencies, as well as third-party experts such as the former MI6 officer Christopher Steele…

Christopher Steele became famous in the United States as the author of a “dossier” that claimed Russians had been “cultivating, supporting, and assisting...

At a rally in Ohio this week, President Donald Trump went after a familiar target: the late Senator John McCain. “I have to be honest, I never liked him much,” the president told his crowd at the General Dynamics plant in Lima. “Probably never will.” (Trump seemed particularly galled that he never got a “thank you” for giving McCain “the kind of funeral that he wanted.”)

Baffling as the attack might seem to someone who wasn’t conditioned to years of Trump’s rambling, extemporaneous grievance-airings, the attack barely registered in Washington.

Just days after being indicted, Roger Stone continued his media blitz Sunday appearing on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos asked Stone about possibly cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, as Mueller has not asked to speak with Stone to date: “Are you prepared to tell the truth about your dealings with him to the special counsel, the truth about your dealings with the campaign?”

Stone’s answer contradicts itself. He first said that he would speak with Mueller about wrongdoing by people that he knows about.

Former foreign policy advisor to President Donald Trump, George “Coffee Boy” Papadopoulos, says he plans to run for Congress only days after he was released from a 12-day prison stay. Papadopoulos was sentenced for lying to the FBI when he was questioned regarding his contacts with foreign officials in the Russian government during the election.

Papadopoulos first told The Daily Telegraph of his intentions Friday and later confirmed the news in a tweet.

New: George Papadopoulos, the Trump adviser jailed over Russia meddling probe, wants to run for Congress in...

During the busiest week in New York City’s comedy calendar, five comics spent a Saturday afternoon at Sony Hall in Times Square to talk about making jokes in a fraught political moment.

The diverse panel included Wyatt Cenac (The Daily Show, Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas), Jordan Klepper (The Daily Show, The Opposition), Sabrina Jalees (The Comedy Lineup), Mo Amer (The Vagabond, Late Show with Stephen Colbert) and David Cross (Arrested Development, Mr. Show). Moderated by Rolling Stone senior editor David Fear, the midday panel drew an attentive crowd...

President Trump may have a hard time focusing on a host of issues relevant to running the world’s most powerful nation, but there’s one topic from which his attention never deviates: the Russia investigation. His tweets about the subject have increased dramatically as former confidants like Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort have reportedly offered to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Not even the anniversary of 9/11 prevented Trump from rousing himself out of bed to complain about the investigation, and his rants continued last week as Hurricane Florence...

It’s a holiday weekend in the Us, and while many people are letting go of their usual responsibilities, President Donald Trump is turning up the heat.

Starting late on Friday night, the Commander-in-Tweet unleashed a torrent against some of the usual suspects, but found time for some new targets. After some throat-clearing cheerleading for the Rasmussen poll, which indicated a 48% approval rating for his presidency – “higher than President Obama” – Trump went into attack mode.

The Washington Post/ABC poll, an apparent Bloomberg breach of confidentiality, the news system in general, Canada, the Fisa court, the Dept. of Justice, and the dossier were all on the menu.

So far, the President has stayed well away from commenting on The major event in town – the funeral of Sen. John McCain.

Today’s tweetstorm as of this morning:

….Remember, Nafta was one of...

A Justice Department lawyer learned from Christopher Steele, the author of the salacious Trump kompromat dossier, that Russian intelligence had Trump “over a barrel” in the summer of 2016, according to a scoop from the Associated Press.

The Doj lawyer, Bruce Ohr, worked in the office of then-deputy attorney general Sally Yates. Ohr and the author of the dossier, Steele, were long-standing buddies who bonded years earlier over an interest in defanging organized crime.

The pair met repeatedly during the 2016 campaign, according to the AP, including after Steele had approached reporters with his dossier,...

A group of 11 Republican lawmakers on Wednesday introduced articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Led by Reps. Mark Meadows (R-nc) and Jim Jordan (R-oh), the resolution accuses Rosenstein of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” alleging that he has been withholding information from Congress regarding Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election — which Rosenstein oversees — as well as the FBI’s closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

I just filed a resolution with @Jim_Jordan and several colleagues to impeach Rod Rosenstein.

It’s Sunday, which means it’s the traditional time for President Trump to get a few things off his chest via Twitter.

The Commander-in-Tweet was busy earlier today, taking on such topics as Carter Page, “Crooked” Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, and his perennial favorite, the ongoing Mueller “witch hunt.”

Naturally, the President had a different take on things than his mainstream media foes.

The Sunday selections:

I had a Great meeting with Putin and the Fake News used every bit of their energy to try and disparage it. So bad for our country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 22, 2018

.@PeteHegseth on @FoxNews “Source #1 was the (Fake) Dossier. Yes, the Dirty Dossier, paid for by Democrats as a hit piece against Trump, and looking for information that could discredit Candidate #1 Trump. Carter Page was just the foot to surveil the Trump campaign…...

One of the wildest weeks of all of the wild weeks of Donald Trump’s 15-and-a-half months as president — yes, it really has only been that long — continued on Wednesday and Thursday with Trump’s new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, telling anyone who would listen, including interview spots on Hannity and “Fox and Friends,” that Trump totally knew about Michael Cohen paying Stormy Daniels off after Trump spent the last couple months denying that. And in a new edition of “A Closer Look” on Thursday, Seth Meyers was exasperated by the whole thing.

“So now the president’s lawyer has admitted that the president lied when he said he had nothing to do with the Stormy Daniels hush payment. And yet, Trump supporters have been twisting themselves in knots to justify his lies,” Meyers said. “For example, right after that [‘Fox and Friends’] interview aired, Arizona Republican congressman Andy Biggs had this to say about Giuliani’s admission.”

“Late Night” then played a clip from Fox News in which Biggs made the following strange assertion: “I don’t think somebody with President Trump’s income level actually maybe writes all his checks, you know what I mean? It would not surprise me if, yes, he authorized the payment and, you know, it just gets kind of lost in the shuffle. I know that sounds crazy perhaps on a certain level.”

Also Read: Colbert Has High Praise for Rudy Giuliani: 'There's Something Kind of Admirable About Being That Bad of a Liar' (Video)

“No, it sounds crazy on every level,” Meyers said. “And it begs the question: if a $130,000 payment to a porn star can get lost in the shuffle, what else is in the shuffle? Seriously, how do you lose track of a hush payment to a porn star? Can you imagine Trump with a green visor trying to balance his checkbook?”

After trying to imagine just how that scenario might go (it involves Trump marking the hush payment as “fun stuff”), Meyers presented a theory on why it is that Trump surrogates keep doing this kind of thing on live TV.

“The question still stands: why did Giuliani do this? And here’s what I think is going on every time someone in Trump’s orbit gets a close up look at the Mueller investigation, they freak out. Remember Sam Nunberg or Carter Page? Once they saw how serious Mueller’s team was they went on TV and had meltdowns,” Meyers said. Nunberg famously spent nearly an entire day on CNN, smelling of alcohol according to CNN anchor Erin Burnett, trash talking everyone associated with Trump after being served with a subpoena by Mueller’s team.

Also Read: Jimmy Kimmel: 'By the End of the Week, Rudy Giuliani Is Gonna Implicate Trump in the Lincoln Assassination' (Video)

“And the same thing is happening with Giuliani because it’s finally dawning on them that this investigation is not going away any time soon. Just last night another former trump aide, Michael Caputo, went on CNN after being interviewed by Mueller’s team and stressed repeatedly how tenacious the investigators were.”

Caputo said in the clip Meyers mentioned that “I think the Mueller team knew more about what I did in 2016 than I knew myself. And I think they know more about the Trump campaign than anyone that ever worked there.” Caputo also compared the whole thing to “a proctology appointment.”

That makes sense. Because Trump is definitely pulling his answers out of his a–,” Meyers said.

Also Read: Seth Meyers Wants to Remind You That Mike Pence Sucks Just as Much as Trump Does (Video)

“So Trump’s own lawyer is now telling us that he lied about a hush payment to a porn star. Which raises the question: what else is he lying about? At this point, we should just assume the answer is everything.”

You can watch all of the “A Closer Look” segment from Thursday’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” in the video embedded at the top of this post.

Read original story Seth Meyers: At This Point We Should Just Assume Trump Is Lying About Everything (Video) At TheWrap...

Sometimes there’s so much news crammed into a single day of The Donald Trump Show that you aren’t sure where Stephen Colbert will start. That was not the case today. Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg was on cable news more often than Big Pharma ads, talking — and talking and talking and talking — about how he plans to thumb his nose at a subpoena from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Dude was going all Carter Page, to the point where some MSNBC and CNN anchors simply…...

CNN's Erin Burnett's interview with ex-Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg ended with a bang ... Burnett saying she smelled booze on him after a wild live broadcast. Nunberg made the rounds on all the major networks Monday after making a big stink about a subpoena he'd been issued by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in connection to the Trump-Russia investigation -- saying he wouldn't comply and basically daring Mueller to arrest him. Meltdown complete. Here's...

Faced with formidable competition from the likes of Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”) and Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”), “Get Out” writer-director Jordan Peele took home Original Screenplay honors tonight at the 2018 Writers Guild Awards. “I just want to say thank you and everyone in this room that is a writer, to keep taking chances, to take big risks, put your love into it,” Peele said. “It does pay off, it is the hardest fucking thing, and it can take a long time, but our voices really do matter.”

Read More: Writers Guild of America 2018 Film Nominations: ‘Get Out,’ ‘Logan,’ and ‘Lady Bird’ All Score

Following a victory at the February 10 USC Libraries Scripter Awards, veteran director James Ivory — the 89-year-old screenwriter of “Call Me by Your Name” — received a standing ovation when, as expected, he accepted the adapted Screenplay award for his first solo script. “I just wanted...

Bill Maher wondered on Friday night’s “Real Time” who, exactly, Rep. Devin Nunes is… and answered his own question. Most people know Nunes as the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee that made waves earlier this month with a memo that alleged “surveillance abuses by law enforcement against former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.” But the Gop representative from California seemed to come out of nowhere. Maher said he persuaded his friends at Us Weekly to share next week’s regular column “25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me,” which happened to spotlight the talked-about Congressman. (Note: Yes, Us Weekly does have...

As is the case every week these days, this news cycle has been dominated by something related to President Donald Trump and the Gop, and “SNL” Weekend Update hosts Michael Che and Colin Jost had plenty to say about it out of the gate. That thing is, of course, the Republican-backed memo from House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes accusing the FBI of abusing its authority in surveilling Trump campaign advisor, Carter Page. You can watch all of this week’s edition of Weekend Update in the videos embedded below. “First of all, you know damn well Donald Trump didn’t read this...

The controversial "Nunes Memo" has been released by House Republicans with the approval and at the urging of President Donald Trump. The memo, which Democrats and the FBI say the document is misleading in its allegations of FBI surveillance abuse, claims that the FBI and Department of Justice officials were aware that the author of the so-called Steele dossier, used to secure a Fisa warrant to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, had a strong anti-Trump bias. Trump…...

On the eve of President Donald Trump’s release of the so-called “Nunes Memo,” late-night host Jimmy Kimmel took off his gloves. “This is a memo written by Devin Nunes, a Republican Congressman from California that claims the FBI overstepped their surveillance of Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page in a very obvious attempt to paint the FBI as biased against Trump and to discredit the work of Special Counsel Mueller,” Kimmel told viewers. “This is how our government…...

Carter Page, man of a thousand MSNBC promos, just added to his year’s already stuffed stocking of loony moments. In a 15-page letter to the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence’s Dianne Feinstein, the former Trump advisor explains his reluctance to submit personal emails and other documents by comparing himself to sexual harassment victims of Al Franken. “I believe that if you surveyed Senator Franken’s harassment victims, a vast majority of them would most likely…...

The usually staid set of CNN’s “New Day” took a fiery turn on Tuesday as co-host Chris Cuomo welcomed former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to the set. In a lengthy and often testy debate, the two sparred about the extent and relevance of Team Trump’s Russia ties during the 2016 campaign. Specifically, the discussion focused on the extent of involvement of Russian-connected Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos and how much Lewandowski personally knew about their activities. “You said there were no contacts,” said Cuomo. “There are now many contacts and you are part of it,...

The revelation that Carter Page -- a former campaign advisor to President Donald Trump -- testified that he gave Attorney General Jeff Sessions a heads-up before taking a trip to Russia in 2016 carries potentially grave implications for the nation's top cop. Page's account directly contradicted the under oath account from Sessions, who denied knowledge of such a trip while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

On his MSNBC program last night, Chris Hayes welcomed a familiar guest, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. In a season where “former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser” is not the safest title to have, Hayes opened the segment with a cutting “joke.” “Congratulations for not being indicted,” said Hayes at the opening of his interview. Also Read: MSNBC's Chris Hayes Slams Trump: He 'Doesn't Have Any Principles' (Video) “Of course not,” said Page, who probably didn’t think the remark was very funny. “You’re a free man,” added Hayes. The interview then launched into Page’s...

Stephen Colbert connected the dots between the Trump campaign and Russia on Tuesday's Late Show. Using his handy "Figure-It-Out-a-Tron" device – a run-of-the-mill chalkboard – he linked reports that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer offering information intended to hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential bid.

On the top half of the chalkboard, Colbert drew a straight line linking four Trump officials – advisor Carter Page, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, campaign manager Paul Manafort and senior advisor Jared Kushner – who have admitted to meeting with Russian ambassadors during the campaign. On the bottom half,...

Saturday Night Live mocked Donald Trump's interview with NBC's Lester Holt as Alec Baldwin's president stumbled his way through questions about James Comey's firing and comparisons to Richard Nixon.

Regarding the controversial firing of the FBI director, Trump accidentally negated the explanations doled out by his press secretaries during the NBC interview, a mistake that SNL seized on.

"I fired him because of Russia. I thought 'I don't like that. I should fire him,'" Baldwin's Trump said in the cold open. Michael Che's Holt then pointed...

The FBI got a warrant from a secret court last summer to monitor the communications of former Donald Trump adviser Carter Page, which was part of an investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. According to law enforcement and other government officials, the Post spoke with, the FBI and Justice Department were able to secure the warrant after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause that Page was acting as a Russian agent. The 90-day warrant was renewed more than once since it was initially granted, the Post reported.

A former adviser on the Trump presidential campaign met with and passed on documents to a Russian intelligence operative in 2013, BuzzFeed News reported on Monday. Carter Page met with Victor Podobnyy — who was later charged by the U.S. government for acting as unregistered agent of a foreign government along with three other men in a Cold War-style spy ring — according to 2015 court documents. Page, who was an energy consultant working in NYC at the time, is referred to in the filing as Male-1, which states that Podobnyy tried to recruit him. Also Read: Jared Kushner to Be Questioned by Senate Committee.

Kate McKinnon expanded her menagerie of masterful political impressions by recasting Attorney General Jeff Sessions as Forrest Gump in Saturday Night Live's latest cold open.

Like that 1994 film, the dim-witted "Sessions" sits on a bus stop bench, eating from a box of chocolate and commiserating with strangers about his troubles, which includes lying to Congress about meeting with Russian officials.

"I always say life is like a box of chocolates… Sure are a lot of brown ones in there," "Sessions" says.

"Sessions" then compared that photo of Kellyanne Conway...

This review was written for the festival review of "The Walker".BERLIN -- Paul Schrader's careerlong meditation on the outsider continues in "The Walker", a cool and calculated look at a "superficial" man who drifts through Washington politics while trying not to get his tailored cuffs dirty. Carter Page III is, as Schrader has said, an update on his "American Gigolo" character. Car, played by Woody Harrelson in an eye-catching performance, is an older and more refined hustler who works as a society "walker," a gay man who escorts the wives of politicians and lobbyists to events that don't interest their husbands.

The film, which is screening Out of Competition here, goes against mainstream Hollywood currents. While it can be labeled a thriller or a murder mystery, the film is talky, unhurried, contains little action and shows more interest in how characters think and behave than in its plot. It should do very well in Europe and with careful marketing could perform above average with North American adult audiences thanks to the smart, against-type casting of Harrelson.

Like its protagonist, the movie keeps its distance from the bare-knuckled world of D.C. politics. Car and the movie stick to the world of the wives. They play canasta every Wednesday, attend operas and put in appearances in the husbands' world only when required.

Despite a political pedigree -- his father was a U.S. senator and Virginia governor -- Car feels more at home with women and gossip. His late daddy still casts a long shadow, so he operates beyond its reach. Yet he can't shake a morbid fascination with the world of wealth and power.

Part of his outsider status stems from his homosexuality, a condition never fully accepted in D.C. society, and partly, the movie gradually makes clear, from his own deep reservations about the supposed greatness of his forbearers. When that legacy includes slave owning and tobacco farming, you understand his embrace of the role of a "black sheep."

His three main clients are Lynn Kristin Scott Thomas), the wife of a liberal senator (Willem Dafoe), Abby (Lily Tomlin), the wife of a crafty power broker (Ned Beatty) and Natalie (Lauren Bacall), the grande dame of the set who speaks in the voice of dearly earned wisdom.

When Lynn finds the body of her murdered lover, Carter agrees to be the one who "finds" the body in order to shield her and her husband from political embarrassment. But a politically ambitious right-wing D.A. (William Hope) spins a web of suspicion and innuendo in hopes of catching both Lynn and Carter.

As the doors to D.C.'s inner circle close to Car, he and his paparazzi boyfriend, Emek Yoglu (German actor Moritz Bleibtreu), launch their own investigation, which leads to threats and the beating of Emek by a mysterious thug.

Harrelson digs deep for this portrait of shallowness. The Southern loquaciousness, polished charm and studied mannerisms of his walker represent a cartoon of old-fashioned gentlemanliness. It's a facade that reveals itself with every pirouette.

But it does allow him to disappear from himself. In reality, he's a man of considerable depth who takes pains to hide that side. Only in his scenes with Emek does Car display his cunning and intelligence. With his life literally on the line, Car finally must reach out for Emek -- and may have to re-invent himself one more time.

Schrader's direction is smooth and richly detailed but mostly in service of his screenplay. It's unclear whether he needed to make this a murder mystery, or whether he couldn't find another way to sketch this character and tell his story without resorting to melodrama. The murder does serve though to put Carter into a crisis and watch him unravel in a cool, almost bemused way that befits a Southern gentleman.

Not enough is really done with the trio of women friends, who are all cut from the same bolt of cloth. Only Emek stands out among the men, and even here you would like to know more about how these two men fit in with each other.

The production, shot mostly in the U.K. with D.C. exteriors, benefits greatly from James Merifield's well-upholstered sets, Chris Seager's prowling camera and, given its importance to most of the characters, Nic Ede's chic costumes.

THE WALKER

Pathe International presents a Kintop Pictures/Ingenious Film Partners/Asia Pacific Films/ Isle of Man film

Credits:

Screenwriter-director: Paul Schrader

Producers: Deepak Nayar, Willi Baer, Steve Christian, James Clayton, Parseghian Planco, Duncan Reid

Director of photography: Chris Seager

Production designer: James Merifield

Music: Anne Dudley

Costume designer: Nic Ede

Editor: Julian Rodd

Cast:

Carter Page III: Woody Harrelson

Lynn Lockner: Kristin Scott Thomas

Natalie Van Miter: Lauren Bacall

Jack Delorean: Ned Beatty

Emek Yoglu: Moritz Bleibtreu

Chrissie Morgan: Mary Beth Hurt

Abigail Delorean: Lily Tomlin

Larry Lockner: Willem Dafoe

Running time -- 112 minutes

No MPAA rating...

BERLIN -- Paul Schrader's careerlong meditation on the outsider continues in "The Walker", a cool and calculated look at a "superficial" man who drifts through Washington politics while trying not to get his tailored cuffs dirty. Carter Page III is, as Schrader has said, an update on his "American Gigolo" character. Car, played by Woody Harrelson in an eye-catching performance, is an older and more refined hustler who works as a society "walker," a gay man who escorts the wives of politicians and lobbyists to events that don't interest their husbands.

The film, which is screening Out of Competition here, goes against mainstream Hollywood currents. While it can be labeled a thriller or a murder mystery, the film is talky, unhurried, contains little action and shows more interest in how characters think and behave than in its plot. It should do very well in Europe and with careful marketing could perform above average with North American adult audiences thanks to the smart, against-type casting of Harrelson.

Like its protagonist, the movie keeps its distance from the bare-knuckled world of D.C. politics. Car and the movie stick to the world of the wives. They play canasta every Wednesday, attend operas and put in appearances in the husbands' world only when required.

Despite a political pedigree -- his father was a U.S. senator and Virginia governor -- Car feels more at home with women and gossip. His late daddy still casts a long shadow, so he operates beyond its reach. Yet he can't shake a morbid fascination with the world of wealth and power.

Part of his outsider status stems from his homosexuality, a condition never fully accepted in D.C. society, and partly, the movie gradually makes clear, from his own deep reservations about the supposed greatness of his forbearers. When that legacy includes slave owning and tobacco farming, you understand his embrace of the role of a "black sheep."

His three main clients are Lynn Kristin Scott Thomas), the wife of a liberal senator (Willem Dafoe), Abby (Lily Tomlin), the wife of a crafty power broker (Ned Beatty) and Natalie (Lauren Bacall), the grande dame of the set who speaks in the voice of dearly earned wisdom.

When Lynn finds the body of her murdered lover, Carter agrees to be the one who "finds" the body in order to shield her and her husband from political embarrassment. But a politically ambitious right-wing D.A. (William Hope) spins a web of suspicion and innuendo in hopes of catching both Lynn and Carter.

As the doors to D.C.'s inner circle close to Car, he and his paparazzi boyfriend, Emek Yoglu (German actor Moritz Bleibtreu), launch their own investigation, which leads to threats and the beating of Emek by a mysterious thug.

Harrelson digs deep for this portrait of shallowness. The Southern loquaciousness, polished charm and studied mannerisms of his walker represent a cartoon of old-fashioned gentlemanliness. It's a facade that reveals itself with every pirouette.

But it does allow him to disappear from himself. In reality, he's a man of considerable depth who takes pains to hide that side. Only in his scenes with Emek does Car display his cunning and intelligence. With his life literally on the line, Car finally must reach out for Emek -- and may have to re-invent himself one more time.

Schrader's direction is smooth and richly detailed but mostly in service of his screenplay. It's unclear whether he needed to make this a murder mystery, or whether he couldn't find another way to sketch this character and tell his story without resorting to melodrama. The murder does serve though to put Carter into a crisis and watch him unravel in a cool, almost bemused way that befits a Southern gentleman.

Not enough is really done with the trio of women friends, who are all cut from the same bolt of cloth. Only Emek stands out among the men, and even here you would like to know more about how these two men fit in with each other.

The production, shot mostly in the U.K. with D.C. exteriors, benefits greatly from James Merifield's well-upholstered sets, Chris Seager's prowling camera and, given its importance to most of the characters, Nic Ede's chic costumes.

THE WALKER

Pathe International presents a Kintop Pictures/Ingenious Film Partners/Asia Pacific Films/ Isle of Man film

Credits:

Screenwriter-director: Paul Schrader

Producers: Deepak Nayar, Willi Baer, Steve Christian, James Clayton, Parseghian Planco, Duncan Reid

Director of photography: Chris Seager

Production designer: James Merifield

Music: Anne Dudley

Costume designer: Nic Ede

Editor: Julian Rodd

Cast:

Carter Page III: Woody Harrelson

Lynn Lockner: Kristin Scott Thomas

Natalie Van Miter: Lauren Bacall

Jack Delorean: Ned Beatty

Emek Yoglu: Moritz Bleibtreu

Chrissie Morgan: Mary Beth Hurt

Abigail Delorean: Lily Tomlin

Larry Lockner: Willem Dafoe

Running time -- 112 minutes

No MPAA rating...