California Gov. Jerry Brown taunts Sessions and Trump, says ‘Mueller is closing in’
NY Times is reporting that Trump has been questioning witnesses about their testimony to Mueller.
Mueller seems to have reason to believe that the Trump campaign was attempting to set up a secret back channel to the Kremlin. Coming up empty on a legitimate reason for this.
And it looks as though Eric Prince may have lied to the FBI about it. Good. A federal charge couldn’t happen to a nicer person.
My favorite parts are the parts where it alleges that Erik Prince lied to the FBI, because I hope he did. 
ETA: Had my post window open for so long that EE posted the sentiment before I did.
Jesus. It’s impossible to keep up with all the subplots in this story. It’s all just fucking insane.
Add my wishes for this to be true, and it’s very possible he did.
Don’t know if you’ve caught his responses to media interviewers, but Prince stammers and flutters like an obvious liar. Sounds a lot like Manafort when he lied to an interviewer on CBS who asked him if he was aware of any financial relationship between Trump and Russian oligarchs. It’s painful to watch. Right around the 2-minute mark.
Mr. Prince is aptly named.
Here’s the interview I had in mind of Erik Prince on MSNBC the day after Prince testified to the House Intelligence Committee. We realize lying to the House Intelligence Committee won’t result in any consequences for Prince. But if he told the same song and dance story to Mueller’s team, well…
At 10:45 he says: “Having been through many investigations in proctology, I can tell you that these things, um, dig deep…”
As expected, Sam Nunberg actually showed up to testify before the Mueller’s grand jury. So much for self-destructive meltdowns.
Well, public ones anyway. He *did *show up to the grand jury.
Wasn’t Kushner also caught trying to set up a back channel to Moscow? Or are these one in the same?
In any case, Cadet Bone Spurs needed a direct line to his boss because hiding it wasn’t working well. Only inept criminals were willing to do it and side conversations at summit meetings were to infrequent.
I don’t believe the Trump Tower meeting was a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Clinton. I believe it was an actual, high-level coordination meeting discussing everything from how and when Russian intelligence would help in the election to what exactly they were expecting in return.
You know, I can still easily believe that Trump is actually innocent of intentionally colluding. He’s a profoundly silly man, and people with any manipulation skills could easily take advantage of his flaws.
That said, holy shit some of these stories are eye popping. And holy shit, the Trump team could not have handled his actual innocence worse, if innocent he is.
The thing I find most worrisome is that I don’t have a sense now of what’s plausible and what isn’t. Articles this week were talking about all the people who have mysteriously died (related to Russia, not Trump specifically), and I thought “I can’t tell if this is reality or Vince Foster-esque nuttiness or something in between.” My bullshit filters have been completely swamped.
I don’t think you can blame “the Trump team”. It’s Trump himself. (One exception is the Comey firing, which had the involvement of a broader group, if not all.)
I don’t believe there’s any team in the world which could have successfully dealt with this type of situation with a guy like Trump as president.
Two separate attempts. One by Kushner, one by Prince.
Exactly as intended. The truth is out there, but it’s intentionally being made very hard to discern.
Trump is a silly man, but more than silly, he is corrupt to the bone. There’s nothing innocent about his many, many attempts to obstruct, obfuscate, frustrate and muddy the waters of Mueller’s investigation. Nothing innocent about actively crafting a false narrative about the purpose of the meeting in Trump Tower. Nothing innocent about his failure to impose lawful Russian sanctions or to condemn Russian interference in the 2016 election, against all unequivocal findings of every single American intelligence agency.
Personally, I am gobsmacked that anyone still doubts his guilt. When you study and understand all the Russian connections involved and realize that every single one of them leads back to Trump, it’s impossible, in my view, to see anything but a man who is guilty as fuck. I’ll allow he may have been initially co-opted as an unwitting co-conspirator. But that’s far from the case any longer.
Stupid Watergate:
Michael Cohen used his Trump.org email address to arrange payment to Stormy Daniels.
Of course there could be. He’s a fucking moron who thinks he should be immune from investigation and questioning because he’s the president. He thinks that whatever he says should go. When you are as incredibly limited as he is intellectually, you can do the most ridiculous things in reaction to slights, and he could easily be viewing the entire line of investigation into a slight on his ability to garner votes.
That doesn’t mean that I think he should be immune from the fallout, including prosecution. But I still think it’s completely plausible that he’s just the fucking idiot in the center who has no real grasp on anything that anyone has been doing. Instead of 11 dimensional chess, he’s playing Twister by smearing shit all over the mat and declaring himself the winner.
Fortunately, “fucking moron” never flies as a defense to the charges that are likely to be laid against him. He won’t be found not guilty just because he carries out his crimes inartfully.
Even if he didn’t know, it was his responsibility to know, and failing to act on that responsibility can be a crime.
I highly doubt if that’s true.
Perhaps you can give an example of someone prosecuted for something that was his responsibility to know but that he didn’t.