And here we were looking for McGahn to play Sean. Oops! It’s actually Cohen. Or better yet, a split roll!*
I’ve been saying for a couple weeks that signs have had given me the feeling of something big brewing. There was the story about how Mueller loves surprise attacks, the increased fevor from Rudy and Trump’s Twitter feed and other small things.
They could be nothing, they could have been pointing at yesterday’s “quasi-expected” Cohen news.
But if I were Bob Mueller, and I had everything I needed ready and I needed to do it before Sept 1 to avoid “effecting the election” and I wanted to play this out as a massive surprise offensive…
I’d pick this week to do it. Indictments for all…
Intentional nod to the banner in Manafort’s case and his list of desired cabinet “rolls”.
The Manafort and Cohen affairs will have no effect on Trump’s support at all.
Republicans in Congress will do nothing, inasmuch as a remarkable number of the,m appear to be compromised by Russia and have to prop up Trump to stay out of prison. Guys like Paul, Rohrabacher, and Nunes are all in. They HAVE to keep Trump in power, get Mueller fired, and get past all this or they’ll be sent to prison for life.
Trumpists at large just don’t see the world as you do. Where you see a remarkably evil man convicted of 8 out of 18 counts and facing another trial, Trumpists see a good, wonderful man who’s been done in by the Deep State. Where you see a vile grifter cutting a deal with the attorney general, Trumpists see a deep state plant, or liar, or whatever narrative explains it all away.
Duncan Hunter? Good man done in by deep state; Huillary is likely behind it. Jim Jordan is a pervert-enabler? Nope, it’s all Fake News to Trumpists. Rand Paul is openly, almost comically working for Russia? Deep state, fake news.
You think people are convinced by facts. That’s wrong.
Easily said when you have not yet actually spent a few nights in the big house.
Judge Ellis had a 24/7 protection detail from the Marshalls’ office for the last week or so because he was receiving threats over this trial. He refused to release the names of the jurors because he didn’t want them subjected to the same. Mind you, he *could *(and probably should) have sequestered them if he was that worried.
I am wondering if the threats will continue or disappear now that the trial has finished.
I’d say the majority of Trumpists are irredeemable, but Trumpists were never a majority to begin with. I’m not suffering from delusions; I know that the most committed Trump voters will never abandon him, but it’s entirely possible that enough do abandon him to make a political difference. Just dampening their enthusiasm can do damage at the ballot box.
Obviously there’s a long way to go yet. I’m still the same old pessimistic asahi that I’ve always been, but I don’t think yesterday’s events were insignificant.
Well, I’d like to think so, although that assumes he, or maybe his closest family, have some vestigial sense of shame, and I recognize that impeachment is pretty much a non-starter, but a boy can dream, can’t he?
Actually, having Trump spend the rest of his term emitting futile Tweets in response to a tsunami of increasingly embarrassing indictments, one hopes including a couple of the aforementioned family members, followed by a crushing defeat in 2020, would do just fine.
I took one for the team, and watched a few minutes of Fox last night. The day’s talking points (other than Illegal Immigrant Commits Horrible Crime) seem to be:
Manafort: who cares. It had nothing to do with Trump.
Cohen: facing jail for tax evasion, he pleaded guilty to some campaign nonsense that aren’t even really crimes – throwing Trump under the bus to save his worthless hide.
IANAL…but isn’t there a step in the arraignment process where they confirm that the crime the accused is charged with is actually a real crime?
I don’t know which show I watched on Fox last night, but it was more nuanced. However, part of the nuance seemed to be We already knew Trump was corrupt when we elected him, so this doesn’t change anything.
Quoting myself to add: Trump’s tweet today makes the same point re: Cohen’s non-crimes. So this meme has gone through the Fox-Trump echo chamber, which makes it official Trumpian policy now.
Collins talks like an independent but when things shake out, she inevitably votes the Party line. Look at her hinting that she’s going to vote for Kavanaugh because he PromiseD her he wouldn’t overturn Roe v. Wade.
They were pals for 20+ years and had a number of business dealings together, so it seems unlikely that Trump never noticed that his business partner had a pretty low standard of respect for the law.
Stephen Calk, the head of the Federal Savings Bank andlisted as a co-conspirator, testified against Manafort for filing bogus documentation to his company. Calk approved the documentation as part of a deal to get into the White House. But, notably, Calk was someone introduced to Manafort by Trump - likely as a banker who was “understanding of financial irregularities”. So, if he’s cooperating with the Feds, there are decent odds that it will wrap back to the President.
The more that Manafort looks like he’s going to be spending the rest of his life behind bars, the greater the odds are that he’ll flip.
Reports from the trial and the verdict both point to the Mueller team having been professional and correct in their estimation of the case. This flies against the idea that they’re off-their-meds witch hunters.
The more that Manafort looks liable to flip, the greater the odds that Trump will act to pardon him, which will strongly add into the Obstruction of Justice heading, and likelihood of impeachment proceedings. Republicans in Congress are warning him, today, that there will be repercussions if he tries to do so.
Kinda like “We already know that Fox News is merely a sleazy propaganda outlet for Trump & Republicans, so catching them lying on their behalf doesn’t change anything”?
He didn’t quite do that. He just called it settled law. Well, every law is settled until the Supremes take it on, as Schumer has pointed out. Kavanaugh didn’t promise not to unsettle it.