# A Thread for the Mueller Investigation Results and Outcomes (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 28, 2017, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093 "2017-10-28T20:14:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 448
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2019, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8943 "2019-01-13T23:26:11Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Sadly, I don’t know if that is a joke or not. It was, and there is. > [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Even if they’re all under the direct orders of Robert Mueller, and ready to tackle Trump if he does even the slightest thing to worry them, it’s just a matter of reality that humans are fallible and Trump, now with two years of knowledge on how they operate and what routines they follow, would know how to sneak through the cracks. I was with you right up until this bit. I can’t see Trump bothering to notice the staff, or their routines. > [@susan](#): > > I hear the Ecuadorian embassy is homey. There’s even a cat! ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2019, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8944 "2019-01-13T23:26:48Z")
At this point it’s not a joke. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8945 "2019-01-14T00:26:04Z")
> [@Dacien](#): > > I can’t tell if people are joking about Trump defecting to another country or not. Defecting, no. Running, yes. It’s a time-proven strategy for state heads who have pissed everyone off. Trump has, in fact, sold property to one of them, to the annoyance of Haiti, so he knows exactly how it works: > **[FACT CHECK: Donald Trump Sold an Apartment to a Brutal Haitian Dictator?](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-sold-an-apartment-haitian-dictator/)** > > He sold the Trump Tower apartment to Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier through a Panamanian shell corporation in 1983. I mean, remember that whatever Trump may want you to believe, it is not collusion or bust. If you haven’t read through the Trump Foundation suit, for example, you really need to do so. The Trump family has operated a wide variety of crimes over the course of the man’s adult life, and it’s likely that even before he became president that he was under investigation for various misdeeds. Remember how Preet Bharara refused to quit his job? There was probably a reason for that. Remember how the President’s personal attorney had a broad and deep warrant executed against him? And how Cohen had a wiretap on his phone? They don’t bug the President’s lawyer’s phone. Full stop. The FBI do not bug their boss’s lawyer’s phone. The only way that you get to that point is if there was already a large, open, criminal case against the guy from before the FBI’s boss became their boss and the evidence from that was so compelling and obvious that regardless of who the lawyer works for that even the most cautious and corrupt judge in the world can’t do otherwise than to approve further warrants. If Cohen was being wiretapped by the FBI, during the Trump presidency, then that means that they already had enough to arrest him before Trump became President. And if they weren’t arresting Cohen, and Preet Bharara was refusing to step down, then that’s because they were trying to haul in a whole bunch of fish, not just the one fish. Trump was under RICO investigation at the time he became President. There is literally almost no doubt on that. And that was when he was just a little baby failed property developer and daytime TV host. He then proceeded to earn and necessitate the full and complete attention of every single person in the Federal government who cares about the rule of law - which is all of the FBI and most of the CIA and NSA - and the governments of several other nations, to dive into his person shit and winnow out every single sleazy and criminal thing that he or his family have ever done. This is a man who currently stands accused of molesting 20 women, was friends with a guy who worked for Russia to disrupt the functioning of another country (the Ukraine) and owned multiple passports and cellphones registered under a variety of names, and sat around for 20 years noticing that another of his friends liked his girls “on the young side” and didn’t give a crap and just kept being that guy’s friend. Mueller may come through and tell us that he couldn’t find a damn thing to prove that Trump knew anything about Russia - it was all just Manafort and Trump doing a bunch of stupid things that looked suspicious because his political positions are nutty - but Trump’s still going to go to jail the instant he gets out of office, if not sooner. If Mueller clears him on Russia, then he still has to win in 2020. If he loses, then he will need to skip out of the country in December 2020. If he wins, then he’ll need to leave in December of 2024. If he doesn’t, he goes straight from the White House to the jailhouse. He has committed crimes. By this point in time, SDNY already has at least a few cases they could indict him for already waiting, and I’m betting they have even more still under investigation, and that the rest of the FBI has a bunch more pending as well. The only paths for Trump are jail or “someplace that won’t trade for him”. And because this is Trump, he probably won’t be willing to go to North Korea - he’ll want a big tall building with his name on it nearby. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8946 "2019-01-14T01:25:41Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Here is a preview of what you’re going to miss: > > [Cohen is prepared to discuss topics related to hush money payments and aspects of the Trump Organization, including the roles of the President and his children, according to a source familiar with the matter.](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/01/11/politics/michael-cohen-oversight-testimony-russia/index.html) > > “… and his children.” Thinking about this, and in my continuing to hope that somehow what I say will end up in the ears of someone in Congress, I would strongly suggest that they prep Cohen on talking about the victims. I think everyone knows - even Trump’s supporters - that he’s criminal. But saying that someone is criminal and laying out a list of crimes just isn’t what moves people. Plenty of super-corrupt politicians have continued to get elected and re-elected because the people liked him and just didn’t give a shit. If most people were law-and-order types, then most people would try to go into policing, not psychology and communications. But it’s different to say “Lo, since these many years ago, he has defrauded banks and government officials of numerous kinds.” and “He has stolen money from dying, starving, needy children. He opened a charity to veterans - disabled veterans - and he went out and he collected money so that these men and women, back from Afghanistan, could buy homes, start families, heal wounds, etc. and then he stole all of that money and bought paintings of himself.” To get Trump, you need to remove his political protection of holding the support of the Republican base. And to do that, you need to make them feel like louts for supporting the guy - not in the abstract, but in the reality. You need to be able to say, “I don’t like Trump because I support the troops and Trump stole money from people who fought in the war, and used it to buy paintings of himself. Why do you support him? Because if you do, you disgrace our flag and everyone who has served under it.” When people question Cohen, they need to ask him about the effects of Trump’s crimes. It’s better to find out more about fewer crimes that hurt people, than to get a full and complete listing, that’s nicely put into alphabetical order. That Trump stole from his own charity for veterans should have been one of those things that everyone was posting as a bombshell. No one did because the Right were suppressing it and the Left doesn’t understand the Right and they’ve allowed themselves to get sucked into the “collusion or bust” narrative - which was never the issue to begin with, it was concern over blackmail-ability. Prep Cohen to start thinking back over victims, and ask him about them. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8947 "2019-01-14T01:27:27Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > My expectation would be that the Secret Service agents who are appointed to protect the President are the types who will watch the President drunkenly molest a group of tween girls, while smoking crack, and yet refuse to answer anything at a Congressional hearing or will even be willing help to come up with a cover story and false documentary alibis to protect him. > > I mean, maybe I’m wrong or maybe they’ve decided to be a little less lenient in the case of Trump, but I’m not strongly optimistic about the Secret Service. To be fair, their job is to protect the life of the president, and any indication that they’ll happily spill what said president does out of the public eye adds a degree of unnecessary difficulty to their task, now and in the future. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8948 "2019-01-14T04:01:45Z")
> [@Dacien](#): > > I can’t tell if people are joking about Trump defecting to another country or not. That was my call, as soon as election night was over. My bet is that he sees the walls closing in (on him and his family) and decides that staying in the USofA would be too embarrassing and costly. So long before we see what charges are levied, he slips off to a cheap rental on Patara Beach in Turkey. ---
**Author:** ![galen\_ubal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/galen_ubal/32/4440_2.png) [@galen\_ubal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galen_ubal)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8949 "2019-01-14T04:07:51Z")
I suspect he’ll hang on until he feels cornered, and then he’ll try to nuke somebody. I hope whoever’s carrying the ‘football’ knows when to disobey orders, and doesn’t let him… ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8950 "2019-01-14T05:06:58Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > …and the Left doesn’t understand the Right… Dude, the Left doesn’t understand the Left. That’s part of the problem. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8951 "2019-01-14T06:47:14Z")
This guy is on the Left, this other guy is a radical-assed moonbat. Me? I’m Spartacus. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8952 "2019-01-14T14:09:27Z")
> [@kambuckta](#): > > Wildly musing here, but once Trump runs away from the US, Putin would have no further use for him, right? > > So Trump applies for asylum in Russia and promptly gets knocked back, can’t go back to the US thus forcing him to roam the world endlessly looking for a safe space. > > Well, a girl can dream can’t she? > > 😃 “Call me [Phillip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Without_a_Country).” ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8953 "2019-01-14T14:12:59Z")
Or "[The Shah in Exile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi#Exile). ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8954 "2019-01-14T15:48:13Z")
I’l going with the Saudi theory. Trump will self-style himself as a king, and wants to live in an opulent palace with gold plated fixtures. Saudi Arabia is perfect for him. I’m sure the Royal family would love to have a pet president on display, along with the other zoo animals. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8955 "2019-01-14T16:03:00Z")
Idi Amin’s old digs are available, aren’t they? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8956 "2019-01-14T16:10:23Z")
I find it hard to believe Trump would want to live in some of these countries, seeing as how they’re full of people who aren’t white. ---
**Author:** ![dasmoocher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8957 "2019-01-14T16:13:54Z")
> [@The\_Tooth](#): > > I find it hard to believe Trump would want to live in some of these countries, seeing as how they’re full of people who aren’t white. So are US prisons. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8958 "2019-01-14T16:15:33Z")
Don’t think he’d want to live in one of those either. ---
**Author:** ![dasmoocher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dbc845/32.png) [@dasmoocher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dasmoocher)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8959 "2019-01-14T16:23:09Z")
> [@The\_Tooth](#): > > Don’t think he’d want to live in one of those either. One can hope, though. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8960 "2019-01-14T16:49:29Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Technically, I think he’ll go to Turkey, not Russia. > > Russia won’t want him because they will want to retain plausible deniability in order for them to not completely get shitcanned by the rest of the world. It’s like after 9/11, whatever the laws of the planet may be, no one would have said word one if the US decided to obliterate any particular country that they thought might be involved. If Trump goes to Russia, the US will command all the good will of every country outside of North Korea and Iran, to try and make Russia’s life suck and continue to suck until Trump is handed back or proved to have been melted in a vat of acid in the middle of the Red Square, on live stream. > > And Trump wouldn’t want to go to Russia, because he knows that they care about the sanctions a lot more than they care about their ability to continue to troll the US. They boot Putin and trade Trump back in a heartbeat once the wall of misery and despair is built around their borders. Turkey is much more likely to crumble to US pressure though. And though Putin is much less likely to let his ego run away with him, he does have that thing about Russia standing up to the West like the Soviet Union. In the end though, its Trumps decision where he goes first. And this is not something he can get advice on, it’ll have to come from his own brain. Which is why I think Putins the most likely. He loves Putin so, and Putin may well have made promises. Also, Trumps brain is not a normal brain, and he may be too ignorant to make it look like a head of state going into exile, and just defect like any other spy. ---
**Author:** ![flip-68](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e99b99/32.png) [@flip-68](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flip-68)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8961 "2019-01-14T17:08:54Z")
it could play out like the original House of Cards - where an assassination is ordered by a loved one (Putin) as the only un-messy end. wouldn’t be great - I’d like to see him go to jail ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2019, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093/8962 "2019-01-14T19:56:55Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > If you were an interpreter and were in the room when they were discussing conspiring together, wouldn’t you inform someone? I assume there is some sort of interpreter code or something. But still, wouldn’t you? Trump may be so stupid, but not Putin. Their conversation would have been reminiscing, speaking in generalities, and laying hints about mutual acquaintances who could be useful cut-outs. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093.md?page=447) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-thread-for-the-mueller-investigation-results-and-outcomes-part-1/800093.md?page=449)