of arkema responded, quote, that he had no indication that the explosion would be bigger than what happened in west, texas. but, of course, we don t know. because we don t know what s in the plant. they won t say. so best guess, the reporter who asked about the chemicals in that plant, matt dempsey of the houston chronicle, an expert journalist on these issues in general, specifically in this part of texas, he s been covering this story aggressively, he s going to be joining us here in just a moment. the arkema chemical plant in crosby is one of the innumerable consequences of harvey, as the effects continue to unfold across texas. towns left along the texas-louisiana border under water. 26 inches of rain fell on beaumont, texas, in 24 hours. one thing to get an inch an hour, it s another thing to get
like alfa bank has been a long-standing client of his or something. he specifically went right to work on this alfa bank clean up the trump tower server story, he went to work on that immediately after leaving the trump transition. but now we know that russian banks may be at the bull s-eye of this scandal. right? the criminal division of the justice department is a huge deal. so are russian banks when it comes to understanding the trump-russia scandal. the senate is about to vote on whether or not those two big deals should be combined by installing the alfa bank-trump tower cleanup server at the justice department in that very critical job. that vote in the senate on his confirmation is due very soon. so i guess stick a flag in that. we ll be right back. my sweetheart s gone sayonara.
trump campaign, that pressure was presumably alleviated by his hope or expectation that president trump would pardon him and render him not touchable by the mueller investigation in terms of federal crimes. that alleviation of pressure doesn t apply to the states. a federal pardon doesn t get you out of state prosecution. if there is a potential state level prosecution, then the flip strategy got all its leverage back, no matter what the president does. joining us is the reporter who broke the story tonight for politico, josh dowsey. thank you for joining us. thanks for having me, rachel. let me ask if i understand the gist of what you ve written. if they are working together, obviously it raises the question of whether or not manafort may not be able to rely on a presidential pardon to get out of prosecution here. but it also means that there s
before he was the head of the fbi, he was head of the criminal division at justice. the current fbi director christopher wrai was head of the criminal division of justice. it means you oversee everything from fraud, to money laundering, computer crime, narcotics, child exploitation, public corruption. trump has nominated for that job the lawyer who has been working up the alfa bank-trump organization server story. and brent s alfa bank connection has been reported before. it was the subject of discussion at his confirmation hearing. that s how we learned it s not like alfa bank has been a long-standing client of his or something. he specifically went right to work on this alfa bank clean up the trump tower server story, he went to work on that immediately after leaving the trump transition. but now we know that russian banks may be at the bull s-eye of this scandal.
the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. that makes the reported involvement of vtb bank in this deal really on the nose important. it s also a very importanting part of the story, because it means that vtb bank is now the first second, third, fourth, fourth russian bank to go streaking naked across this trump-russia scandal. one is interesting. two a fluke. three interesting. but four of them. it s vprtb bank now the project that the president was apparently pursuing well into his presidential campaign, before now it wasn t the vtb bank, it was the veb bank, another gigantic bank, met with whose handpicked chief executive met jared kushner during the presidential transition, which kushner never reported until it made its way into the press. veb is also the bank that had a rank of russian spies out of the new york city office.