Ignorance of the law is NOT a defense. Wouldn’t work for me or you.
I would settle for a rubber room for Trump instead of bars.
“Mr. Bossert forwarded Ms. McFarland’s Dec. 29 email exchange about the sanctions to six other Trump advisers, including Mr. Flynn; Reince Priebus, who had been named as chief of staff; Stephen K. Bannon, the senior strategist; and Sean Spicer, who would become the press secretary.”
Covfefe boys, the lot of them.
I read recently that Mueller is a fellow who enjoys throwing the element of surprise into his cases. He’s certainly done it in this one. I imagine one of the reasons is, it rattles the prey.
Works on Trump every single time.
Too easy to argue, “The President was trying to say that he fired Mr. Flynn for the proven dishonesty with the Vice President. The President was not aware of the lies to the FBI until the day he made his tweet, and simply included the mention in the sense that he is not surprised by the general pattern of dishonesty, and included both examples because they were both on his mind and he was still waking up. It was a brain fart.”
That’s what a normal person would say, Sage Rat. There’s no way that Donald will ever admit to brain farting, even if that’s what happens every time he opens his yap. He’s got the best brain, haven’t you heard?
The president clearly obstructed justice, and I doubt we needed Flynn’s help to know that, though it probably helps Mueller to have someone deep inside the White House with knowledge of the president’s state of mind to corroborate what James Comey has already told congress.
The big question now is, can a sitting president be prosecuted criminally for criminal conduct? I’m not a lawyer, but what limited amount I do know about constitutional law would lead me to believe that he probably can’t. The Founders wanted, expected congress to act as a check on the president, and probably assumed that the general public, with the help of a curious and free press of partisans and non-partisans, could apply pressure to congress to ensure that they didn’t leave the executive in the hands of a complete loon. Perhaps an even bigger question is…did the founding fathers make incorrect assumptions?
You know, on December 29, 2016, Sean Spicer & Reince Priebus were still employed by the RNC (although, presumably, everyone was on holiday.)
While I was looking up the dates, I was reminded that on February 19, 2017, Priebus told Chris Wallace that “intelligence experts” had cleared the Trump campaign of any contact with Russia and that the whole collusion thing was “bogus”.
Additionally, Priebus had requested that the FBI talk to reporters and tell them that the Feb 14th NYT story that Trump associates had had contacts with Russia was fake.
So even though Priebus had been CC’d on an email that casual refered to Russia throwing the election to Trump and also discussed how Trump planned to ease up on Russian sanctions, he tried to get the FBI to downplay the investigation into Trump associates & Russian contacts.
Sounds like it’s Reince’s turn to play, “Guess who’s lying to the FBI?”
From his court testimony that I have read, it seems like even Donald Trump understands the value of admitting ignorance and otherwise letting his lawyer do the talking, once he’s put in a legal setting. I assume that it’s a skill that he developed before reaching senility.
Trump’s lawyer (John Dowd) wrote the tweet
Well…that’s surprising.
I don’t know that I’d expect a lawyer to jump on a grenade like that (even accepting that there’s probably no real damage that comes from this revelation beyond looking stupid). But it seemed like something stupid enough to say that only Trump himself would have written it.
Guess he’s got himself one hell of a crack team working for him.
Considering that it took over a more than one and a half centuries to come up with the 25th Amendment, yeah, it’s pretty likely that made a few.
Reince doesn’t seem like the kind of fella who is gonna hold up to interrogation very well.
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This quote from Trump rather bothers me:
[
](http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/362882-the-memo-team-trump-in-shock-as-flynn-flips)
The phrasing is like he’s talking about a 3rd party. Like, maybe Jill did something, but I wasn’t sure, so I’m glad to find out that Jill didn’t do it.
Except, in this case, “Jill” is me.
If Jill comes out saying, “Wow, I’m so happy that that crime that Jill is accused of didn’t happen!” Like…uh…didn’t you already know whether you did commit that crime or not? Why are you talking in the third person?
Either the person has so disassociated themselves mentally from their previous self that they don’t even recognize who they’re talking about, or they’re basically just giving a wink and a nod that the crime did in fact happen so nyah.
In Trump’s case, I could genuinely go either direction.
So, if Trumps lawyer did write that tweet (I’ll eat my hat) would that be some sort of mis-representation of the CIC. Would that be actionable at all? Is he saying that the lawyer wrote it and he approved? Or did he steal his phone.
Will we see Trump fire him? Give him a pat on the back? What would a normal president do (besides not twitter).
This is all just so fucked up. Trump the kid with his hand in the cookie jar and crumbs on his face “me, nuh uh”. I hope that the UK cancels his trip and no foreign leaders agree to meet with him. Same for governors and mayors in the US. It may push that imbecile over the edge and he may make a big mess but at least the world will see that we won’t stand for this crap either.
The man is a menace and morally bankrupt. We need to push congress to pull out the 25th. Or perhaps Muller will be able to bring that entire traitorous excuse of an administration down.
Yeaaaaah … I can’t help pointing out that the fingers being pointed at John Dowd are coming from “two people close to the administration”, according to the WaPo -
I haven’t been able to find any actual quote from John Dowd himself. With this Whitehouse, I can’t help thinking that this came as a surprise to him, too.
I have seen more than one person pointing out that if a lawyer had written the controversial tweet, he would have known that it’s, “pleaded”, not “pled”.
I’m not sure that works. I’ve been watching a lawyer on YouTube, and legal stuff also will use things such as “myriad of.” And I’ve seen plenty of typos and misused words.
Do you argue that “myriad of” is now accepted English? So is “pled.”
“Myriad of …” has always been accepted English. Myriad is a synonym of “multitude”. So you would say, “a myriad of choices” if you were trying to say, “a multitude of choices”.
Many of the examples demonstrating the use of “myriad” in a sentance include examples with “myriad of …”.
Here’s Merriam which provides a - oh, let’s say, “plethora” - of examples of the construct “myriad of …”, including mentions of Thoreau, Milton & Steinbeck, to name a few.
Having said all that, I personally have no idea if the correct form of the legal term which appeared in Donald's tweet is "pleaded", not "pled". Donald wrote, "He [Flynn] has pled..." I merely note that I've seen lawyers - here, for example -
https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/937107791717814272
saying that they find it unlikely that John Dowd, a lawyer, would have got that wrong if he'd written the tweet that he is being accused of writing by "sources" at the Whitehouse.He is rage tweeting against the FBI this morning. Stuff seems to be getting quite real.
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This Trumpster fire tweet caught my attention.
Pretty damn ominous if you ask me.
As I’ve been saying repeatedly, he’s going to try to shut this entire thing down. He just needs an excuse to do it, and he needs political cover. Anyone who thinks the republicans are gonna jettison Trump now that they’ve got tax reform done is wrong; it’s just the opposite: they can’t get rid of him now. He is taking over their party, and he wants to take out his enemies. And it’s going to be hard for the weaklings in the GOP to stop him.
That’s exactly why they have to get rid of him. He is taking over the party and they are his enemies to be taken out. They can handle losing Congress or the Presidency for a term or two, it’s pretty much expected, and just the way of things now with 1/3 independents. But losing the party wholesale that quickly is uncharted territory. The Republicans will always fall in line behind the R. In the last 30 years they have mindlessly and wholeheartedly supported Fiscal-conservationism, Reaganism, Neo-con, Tea-Party, Trumpism etc. Completely inconsistent ideologies, but as long as it has the R they will preach it and and vote it, and the GOP establishment won’t give up the fight to keep in their hands instead of Trump’s.