Hard to say whether that qualifies as a thought or a prayer. But Flake is noted for bringing out both of those big guns when pressed.
I don’t think Trump or a single person in his closest inner circle (including Don Jr.) will be indicted based on anything in the probe.
I don’t think obstruction or Russian collusion will be found in the inner circle.
I think a few more patsy’s will probably get indicted.
Maybe some questionable stuff will be brought to light that will prompt the house to seek impeachment but my guess is that it will go nowhere and would be squashed in the Senate.
In short, I think it will be a big nothingburger.
I believe that the closer Mueller comes to Trump and/or his kin (the only people he has any loyalty to whatsoever, and all are as crooked as he is), the stranger Trump is going to act. First, he certainly has a narcissistic personality disorder, and that mental illness has nowhere to go when faced with humiliation. Failure, even indictment, can be waved away as the actions of enemies, but not humiliation. For Trump, his image is everything in this world. There is nothing else.
Second, he also is measurably failing mentally. It is very noticeable. With a lifelong mental disorder and increasing dementia, I believe we will see Trump really unravel as Mueller closes in. He will start holing up and refusing to come out, he will rave with ever more obvious lunacy, and it is perfectly possible he will do something very very bizarre, like shoot himself, leave the country, or in some other way collapse. He could also resign, declare martial law, or any number of options. Game is wide open when you have a lunatic at large.
I can’t predict what Trump himself will do, or who has culpability.
Regarding the so-called collusion charges, I believe these happened, but I’m not sure they can be proven.
I do fully expect the investigation will uncover some massive money-laundering with a quid-pro-quo of funnelling money to the Trump organization in exchange for making certain foreign policy concessions. What’s already publicly known about Trump’s business dealings suggests corruption on an eye-watering scale. With Mueller being able to subpoena banking records, and with the witnesses he’s already flipped, someone’s got serious exposure to criminal charges.
The only interesting question is exactly how serious, and who gets caught holding the bag. I doubt it will be Trump Sr. but who knows.
I predict that the report will go into significant detail about Russian meddling in U.S. politics, but all references to Trump and his administration will be couched in language like, ‘troubling closeness to…’, or ‘financial ties to Russians creates appearance of potential corruption…’ and language like that. Language that criticizes Trump and his team without being legally actionable.
The prime focus will be on Russia’s behaviour, and not Trump’s other than as an example of potential conflicts of interest and vulnerabilities that Russians tend to exploit.
No one is going to jail or be removed from office other than those who have already been indicted.
One reason I believe this is because if Mueller had hard evidence that Trump was in Russia’s pocket there is no way he would have held that for two years while Trump is President. If you have actionable intelligence that the President is being unduly controlled by a foreign power, you need to notify Congressional leaders immediately.
There is a chance that there will be evidence framed in a way that although not legally actionable could be used to bolster the case for impeachment. But that’s about it. I don’t expect Trump to be ‘cleared’ or ‘vindicated’, either. Harsh talk about Trump’s behaviour, which is bad but does not rise to the level of a federal crime.
Based on reports of how Mueller acts, I don’t see him issuing a report with any form of moralistic statement. Either someone broke the law or they didn’t.
If the President has broken the law, the report will basically be a request for impeachment so that legal prosecution can be started without delay.
If he hasn’t, then Mueller will either say nothing at all, assuming that Trump is not a listed investigative target in Rosenstein’s special counsel mandate, or he’ll say that the President has been cleared or that insufficient evidence of criminal activity was discovered. I don’t expect him to write more than that.
Could be. I guess I was describing mord of a best-case scenario for Mueller providing Trump’s critics with ammo. The report could also focus on Ruusian activity alone, if they have nothing legally actionable on the Trump administration.
Oh yeah. Definitely notify Devin Nunes who is definitely not trying to undermine the Mueller probe to cover his own sorry ass. Absolutely notify Mitch McConnell who has shown he’s in the tank for Trump no matter what. Let’s tip off Lindsey Graham who seems to be hiding something huge in his closet.
Mueller wasn’t born yesterday, he understands how political context determines the meaning of ‘actionable’.
I agree with this. Mueller will present a shit ton of facts, which the left will see as overwhelming evidence of various crimes and the right will see as no big deal, or at least not worth messing up the grift they have going and the promise of another total chucklehead on the Supreme Court. A few more administration officials get indicted, Trump survives, and the Democrats somehow manage to lose the election in 2020.
I’ve been wrong about everything since 2015, and I hope I’m wrong yet again.
I’m pretty certain that Congressional leaders already know. There’s a reason that they brought in Robert Mueller. That wasn’t Rosenstein getting clever on his own. Rosenstein appointed Mueller after consulting with Burr, Warner, Ryan, and McConnell. And they did so on the basis of the intel they’d already seen, and realized how necessary it was to get an unassailable investigation. And then they all voted for sanctions, blocked Trump from messing with the DoJ, etc. tying his hands.
We know that Trump looked amazingly guilty on the basis of how the Republican ruled Congress acted. To be sure, they’ve supported him in public, and made some moves like they were chasing down the Carter Page/Dirty Dossier conspiracy, but they’ve never actually done a thing but tie Trump down and stay out of Mueller’s way.
I for one will be very surprised if Mueller’s investigation does not turn up evidence that the Trump Org laundered a billion dollars in Russian money, and that Trump’s net worth isn’t even in the hundred million dollar club. His base will turn if it can be shown he’s Vlads puppet and he ain’t close to being a billionaire.
Taking Trump down will have to based on proving egregious criminality. Run of the mill tax cheating ain’t gonna do it.
Trump prolly realizes he made a giant mistake going from spoiler to President, and he somehow hopes his dictatorial powers protect him and his family. But especially him.
Obstruction seems laughably obvious from his firing of Comney, spilling secrets to the Russians in the White House, the bromance with Putin, to Jeff Sessions.
Spot - on.
If you want to find Trump’s Achilles heel, go after his sham wealth and expose the fact that he’s a fake billionaire. Mueller doesn’t need to prosecute this orangutan; he just needs to demonstrate to at least some of Trump’s voters that this guy is a fraud. It’s the political equivalent of pulling his pants down and letting everyone see just how small his weenie really is.
I don’t think the cult of Trump cares much about how wealthy he is. He could blow Putin on live TV and his fans would ask if they could blow Putin too.
No matter what the report says, Democrats will start new investigations into what it did find and what it didn’t. Hopefully that will keep them busy enough that they can’t fuck up anything else.
Nothing of substance is going to be achieved over the next two years, except to jack up the deficit and blame the other party for it.
Regards,
Shodan
Poverty would be evidence of his generous philanthropy. Shoulda seen how rich he was before he gave all his money away to poor orphans and puppy shelters!
I agree. Unfortunately there is NOTHING that can bring thump down in the eyes of the MAGAbots. They are lost. But other Pubbies are subject to being shocked and disgusted by finding out the truth about him.
Shocked and disgusted? I’d lean more toward “troubled and concerned”.
How about shocked, disgusted, troubled, AND concerned? Let’s not split orange hairs.
So far as an actual prediction goes, I’m reminded of the assertions that the IPCC reports on Climate Change are predicting X value to happen by Y date, and how that’s ludicrous. And then you go into the IPCC report and they don’t make any prediction at all, they just run simulations of different scenarios and say what might happen under those scenarios, to try and give a sense of the range of outcomes.
I think that there are options that we can fairly well rule out. Mueller isn’t going to ride into the White House on a Harley, carrying a chainsaw, and go into a one-on-one cage match to the death with Trump (unfortunately). Maybe we’ll see that in a film one day, but it’s not within the realm of real eventualities.
But there’s a wide range of possibilities for what will actually happen, ranging from nothing to Congress suddenly being forced to consider the “punishable by death” provision for treason in the Constitution.
About the only relatively safe prediction that I think can be made is that Trump and all of those around him are going to be slowly brought up on charges of financial crimes - bank fraud, failing to pay taxes, etc.
It’s possibly safe to say that Don Jr. violated 11 CFR 110.20, but I wouldn’t bet a million dollars on it. Outside of that, I don’t know that we can strongly expect anything to come to the Trump family, or even any more of the core group (Stone, Page, Calk, etc.)
But I’d say that we can expect things to fall into three buckets:
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Mueller will simply issue indictments as they become possible, without much concern for chess. If he thinks Jr. committed 11 CFR 110.20, he’ll file it immediately, and let Trump pardon it. The rest is up to the legal system. He’ll go this route if he decides that the Trump family were idiots and that there are enough financial crimes pending on them, from other outlets, that are easier to prosecute and it’s not worth his time to file a redundant case that’s harder to prove around foreign espionage.
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Mueller will play chess. He’ll grab up everyone that Trump won’t protect - Russians and people outside of the family - and file sealed indictments against the main Trump family, to reveal when Trump leaves office so that he doesn’t have to deal with pardons. I probably don’t expect Mueller to go this route.
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Mueller builds a RICO-like case and moves in and indicts Junior, Kushner, Ivanka, etc. and files a request to Congress asking for Trump to be impeached so that criminal proceedings can begin against him.
If Trump did something real bad, then it will be 3. If not, then I’d bet on 1. 2 isn’t out of the realm of reason, but I think that Mueller’s not going to play around too much. I don’t think his spinning out the financial crimes to other groups had anything to do with him playing chess, it just wasn’t part of his mandate.
I do think that it will be #3, as the most likely of the three outcomes. And I say that because he should have spun Manafort off, once it became an issue principally of bank fraud and such. The only reason to keep it all in-house is because he wanted the leverage for something else and didn’t want to have to coordinate with an outside team.
JFC, massive tax cuts to corporates to reduce government income combined with inflation igniting owing to the asinine tariff war = jacking up the deficit so as to justify why entitlements need to be cut instead or reinstating corporate taxes.
Both sides equivalency thankuverymuch.