This underestimates the wily sociopath. He’ll be on some medication (Imodium?) to tighten his vomit-hole sphincter and will have rehearsed a refusal (“executive secrets” rather than “self-incrimination”).
There are YouTubes of Trump being deposed. In one example, he declines to read a document because he didn’t bring his glasses. (Shouldn’t the judge have said “How stupid must you be not to bring glasses to a deposition? Get your lackey to fetch the glasses but the deposition is extended by however many hours that takes with you paying costs.”?)
Of course, since I don’t think I’ve ever seen Trump wearing glasses, I think that by applying Occam’s Razor we may come up with an even simpler explanation–Trump is barely literate and can’t understand big words any more. :eek:
When it was first suggested, the idea that Manny was afraid of extra-legal forms of retribution from his former bosses seemed far-fetched. Not so sure any more. Explains a lot. And, keep in mind, he knows those people a lot better than we do.
Also, might merely be a figment of his paranoid imagination. Equally effective, a threat need not be real to be effective.
Yeah, he’s not afraid of conviction or jail. He’s afraid of polonium tea and novichok in umbrella tips, for himself AND his family. My money is on “not flipping”, unfortunately.
If Manafort gets convicted, what kind of prison experience is he looking at? Are they going to keep him in a high security, lock down type of place, or a relatively comfortable, low security facility? Not that I think a low security federal prison is a fun place to be. But an acquaintance of mine did 18 months in one, and it sure sounded a lot better than being killed by polonium poisoning.
In my opinion, they’re all safe (from Putin, anyway). Putin seems to reserve his assassinations for those who he sees as a direct danger to his power or as traitors. I don’t think he’s interested so much in keeping Trump in power as in creating the most chaos in the US political system as possible.
You all are ignoring the most important issue. Do I need to change accountants? Is the whole firm tainted if one or more of their accountants testify that they knowingly submitted tax returns and banking loan documents that they assumed were falsified? Will I be audited?
(Yes, of course it’s all about me. I have my priorities.)
Yes. Not everyone at Arthur Anderson was a crook who helped falsify Enron’s financial statements, but enough were and so the firm died.
If your accountant falsified some work for another client, your books may be of increased interest to prosecutors/regulators, etc.
The people who testified, even though they have immunity, will almost certainly lose their license to practice and their immunity deals will only apply to Muellers team and for these transactions. State regulators are still waiting in the wings, unless their lawyers have been working that route. Most likely minimal action is that they will be barred from the industry and have fines imposed.
IANAL, not your lawyer, nor am I a regulator of any sort. My 2 cents.
If you do change accountants, be sure to tell your ex-accountants why you’re leaving them.
In addition to fearing their regulators, if they see the power of the market reacting to one of their bad apples it might help scare them to keep straight in the future.
Looks like the Big Don believes he’s got nothing to worry about, but is very worried about Don Jr.
My hunch - just a hunch and nothing more - is that when Donald reaches the point at which he truly, palpably fears for the survival of himself, his financial ‘empire’, and his family - any or all of those - that would be the point at which he goes after Mueller and the investigation more directly.
I think he’s wanted to stop Mueller from day one but probably didn’t sense any real urgency to do so because he was led to believe - or led himself to believe - that there was nothing to worry about, that it was just another investigation that would be wrapped up with some testimony before committees (despite plenty of evidence to the contrary). He might have believed, too, that he could simply intimidate and bully Mueller in light of what he did to his protege, Comey.
Perhaps this is off-base and maybe nothing would have changed the trajectory of the investigation, but I wonder if Trump’s biggest mistake was the public humiliation of Jeff Sessions, his attorney general. I get the sense now that despite their shared interest in making America great again, there is deep personal animosity between those two, and that Sessions has vowed to remain attorney general just to spite Trump. If Trump wants to make this investigation go away, he’s going to have to hit a 3-run homer: Sessions, then Rosenstein, and then Mueller. It’s asking a lot of the voting public to shrug that off.
These aren’t in the list, but I had a coworker who would not realize he was holding a printed page upside-down, or that he’d been given a document in a language he didn’t know.
The same coworker was at one point confused that he hadn’t been given the Warehouse Foreman promotion despite having seniority over the guy who’d been promoted and who, like everybody else in the factory, knew which side of a document was up.
