A Thread for the Mueller Investigation Results and Outcomes (Part 1)

[running_coach]

@ElvisL1ves

The link says so.

And you believe they didn’t get a meeting at sometime later? They don’t have to meet face-to-face. Phone, Skype, videoconferencing, etc.

[ElvisL1ves]

Mueller would need evidence of that. If he has any, there’s nothing public saying so.

[Gyrate]

@Bayard

Papadopolous’s supervisor, apparently Page,

@GrandWino

“Campaign supervisor” is Sam Clovis.

Seth Abramson says that Sessions was Papadopoulos’ supervisor (but that GP was brought in by Clovis). Not sure on what basis he says that.

@ElvisL1ves

I think so too, but the notification will come via Fox talking heads he respects, not via party leaders he does not.

So… Steve Doocy will be the one to deliver the bad news?

I’m not yet convinced that Trump will be indicted, but I suspect that if he eventually is the path will go through Kushner, who has got to be pretty vulnerable for a number of reasons. OTOH Jared is less likely to flip easily on his father-in-law.

[BlankSlate]

@Gyrate

I’m not yet convinced that Trump will be indicted, but I suspect that if he eventually is the path will go through Kushner, who has got to be pretty vulnerable for a number of reasons. OTOH Jared is less likely to flip easily on his father-in-law.

A soft-looking, rich kid like Jared would sell his mother to stay out of prison

[RTFirefly]

@Fiveyearlurker

Papadopoulus discussed having Trump meet with Putin. With Trump.

@asahi

So what? I’m not sure what’s necessarily wrong about a meeting with a foreign president, assuming things work out that is.

@Fiveyearlurker

If your campaign is actively colluding with them at the time, and you are trying to pretend you have no idea?

Also, the article mentions that Sessions rejected the idea. Sessions who also had no idea.

From the link:

Candidate Donald Trump did not dismiss the idea of arranging a meeting with Russia’s president when it was suggested in a meeting with his campaign foreign policy advisers last year, according to a person in the room.
The idea was raised by George Papadopoulos as he introduced himself at a March 2016 meeting of the Republican candidate’s foreign policy advisers, according to a court filing.
“He didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no,” the official said, declining to be more specific about Trump’s response to Papadopoulos.
But the chairman of Trump’s national security team, then Alabama senator and now attorney general Jeff Sessions, shut down the idea of a Putin meeting at the March 31, 2016, gathering, according to the source. His reaction was confirmed with another source who had discussed Session’s role.

Was that where they decided lower-level meetings between the Trump team and the Russians might be more apropos?

At any rate, one thing these multiple meetings between Trump and Papadopoulos tell us is that Papadopoulos was no mere ‘coffee boy.’ He wasn’t one of the big players, but he was a player at this point.

And of course, it was on account of his interactions with the Russians that Team Trump first found out about the Russian hacking of Hillary’s emails on April 26, 2016, several weeks earlier than had been publicly known before Monday.

[BobLibDem]

@Gyrate

Seth Abramson says that Sessions was Papadopoulos’ supervisor (but that GP was brought in by Clovis). Not sure on what basis he says that.

So… Steve Doocy will be the one to deliver the bad news?

I’m not yet convinced that Trump will be indicted, but I suspect that if he eventually is the path will go through Kushner, who has got to be pretty vulnerable for a number of reasons. OTOH Jared is less likely to flip easily on his father-in-law.

Jared strikes me as a cold fish that would turn Ivanka over to the wolves if it would keep him out of prison. I’m not sure Mueller needs him to flip, there are just so many others quite willing to do it before they even get to Jared.

[Ludovic]

@RickJay

For another, as has been pointed out, at the special election polls, Trumpists win.

For various values of “win” including “barely ekeing out a victory where you had previously won by 20 points”. Even a fraction of such a great Trumpist victory replicated across America would be disastrous at the ballot box.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@RTFirefly

At any rate, one thing these multiple meetings between Trump and Papadopoulos tell us is that Papadopoulos was no mere ‘coffee boy.’

What other meetings?

[RTFirefly]

@RickJay

For one thing, the only poll that matters is the one they hold every second November. For another, as has been pointed out, at the special election polls, Trumpists win.

There are some polls coming up six days from now that matter. (Yeah, VA and NJ have state elections on the odd years, just to make sure nobody gets a breather form electoral politics.) I’m not optimistic that the Dems will take control of the VA House of Delegates, but I bet the polling turns out a good bit more favorably for the Dems than it did in 2013.

[RTFirefly]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

What other meetings?

Not sure what you mean. Which meeting do you already know about, so I don’t have to prove its existence to you?

[k9bfriender]

@BobLibDem

Jared strikes me as a cold fish that would turn Ivanka over to the wolves if it would keep him out of prison. I’m not sure Mueller needs him to flip, there are just so many others quite willing to do it before they even get to Jared.

How much would it suck to be in that position, and decide to flip and offer up testimony to the authorities, only to have them say, “No, we’re good.”

[BobLibDem]

@k9bfriender

How much would it suck to be in that position, and decide to flip and offer up testimony to the authorities, only to have them say, “No, we’re good.”

I think every person in the White House spends all day asking themselves: What do they have on me? Who can I trust? What do I have on someone higher that would help me out? Do they even need what I might have?

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@RTFirefly

Not sure what you mean. Which meeting do you already know about, so I don’t have to prove its existence to you?

I know about the March 31 meeting of Trump’s foreign policy team which Trump attended. When else did GP meet Trump?

[gytalf2000]

@Rick_Kitchen

I saw a tweet the other day from some reporter when she was doing on the street interviews asking people about the sexual assault claims about Weinstein and other people, and she asked one woman about the Trump “grab her by the pussy” statement, and the woman said that was a lie, and she knows it’s a lie because if he had ever said it, she would have seen it reported, and she watched Fox News regularly and they never said anything about it.

Scary stuff!

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

On another note, I see the WSJ is casting doubt on whether GP was wired altogether, and questioning the extent of his cooperation.

@WSJ

But Mr. Papadopoulos’s cooperation with the federal government is unlikely to have included wearing a wire or otherwise surreptitiously recording anyone in Mr. Trump’s orbit, according to court documents and analyses by legal experts.

That is because the conditions that were set on Mr. Papadopoulos following his arrest in July prevented him from contacting people associated with the Trump campaign, and those conditions appeared to remain in place through at least early October.

[…]

Given the limits on his contact, “there are pretty narrow windows about what he could have been tasked to do,” said Ed Kim, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office.

It also is unclear, former prosecutors said, whether Mr. Papadopoulos has been formally signed on as a cooperator. His plea deal refers in several instances to his “efforts to cooperate” and says the government has agreed to bring those efforts to the court’s attention at sentencing, but it doesn’t specify that the government will file a motion that would request that the court reduce his sentence, a common condition in cooperation agreements.

Most such agreements also specify that the prosecutor’s office bring the defendant’s cooperation to the attention of other prosecuting offices, and Mr. Papadopoulos’s plea deal doesn’t include such a provision.

[Steve_MB]

@BobLibDem

I think every person in the White House spends all day asking themselves: What do they have on me? Who can I trust? What do I have on someone higher that would help me out? Do they even need what I might have?

And, most important of all, “Who else has what I have?” and “Are they going to flip before I do and leave me with no bargaining chips?”

[BobLibDem]

This poses a question perhaps better suited for GQ. Let’s say Mueller has a mole in the White House and wants them to wear a wire. Can they get inside with it? Don’t they go through some sort of scanner that would pick up electronic devices? Aren’t sensitive rooms equipped to detect wires/bugs?

[BobLibDem]

@Steve_MB

And, most important of all, “Who else has what I have?” and “Are they going to flip before I do and leave me with no bargaining chips?”

Good point. I can’t see how they can work under these conditions. Every single person with something to hide has plenty to fear. From all accounts, Donald himself is losing his shit over it and making people around him miserable.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Gyrate

Seth Abramson says that Sessions was Papadopoulos’ supervisor (but that GP was brought in by Clovis). Not sure on what basis he says that.

I’ve not read the SA link.

But I assume it’s based on the fact that GP’s official position in the campaign was as a member of Trump’s “national security advisory committee”. GP was appointed to that committee by Clovis. The head of that committee was Sessions. link

If that’s indeed all there was too it, then the claim may be technically correct but has much less to it than meets the eye the way it was presented.

[Morgenstern]

@BobLibDem

This poses a question perhaps better suited for GQ. Let’s say Mueller has a mole in the White House and wants them to wear a wire. Can they get inside with it? Don’t they go through some sort of scanner that would pick up electronic devices? Aren’t sensitive rooms equipped to detect wires/bugs?

Hopefully Trump’s paranoia over this “wire” will send the tangerine turd a little further over the edge of sanity. And that’s using sanity in a really loose way.