Hmm…I’m not so confident about it. Trump has to take the fifth…even someone that ignorant has to have some sense of self-preservation, especially with numerous lawyers unanimously telling him so, politically damaging as it is. So no answers are coming from that avenue.
As for Mueller, no one knows exactly what he’s up to…which I’m very much glad of, actually. It doesn’t allow the Republican shit-flinging machine to twist the info. Theorizing about it is useless…as an ex-CIA man said on CNN earlier, he’s surprised us every time there’s been verifiable public info that comes out through ancillary sources.
Remember that Mueller himself said he didn’t anticipate concluding his investigation until sometime in 2019, so no, Mueller isn’t finished. I think he is finished with his obstruction track only. Mueller seeks to bifurcate his reports into Obstruction and All Else, offering the first “interim” report on Obstruction very soon. Not sure he will be able to do that. If up to Rosenstein, then yes.
As to the “upside” of the questions being given to Trump and his attorneys… really, I think the better question is, what’s the downside? What question is on that list that couldn’t have been crafted by anyone paying attention to this case? Virtually every question is based on information that is already public knowledge. The only surprise was the question about Manafort and Trump’s knowledge of efforts made by the campaign to reach out to the Russians for help in winning the election.
I don’t think Mueller’s team directly leaked the questions, but I think they anticipated that the questions could be leaked. Now that they’re out:
It stops Trump’s public argument that Mueller is trying to trap him. The questions are quite straightforward. What coordinated answers could Trump and his remaining cronies craft that would overcome the evidence/testimony/information Mueller already has? The answer is none – because they don’t know what Mueller knows. And if Mueller knows all, which I expect he does, then Trump is boxed in. If he tells the truth, he admits to criminal acts. If he lies, he’s in the bag for perjury.
Check. Mate.
ETA: Mueller just asked for a continuance of Mike Flynn’s sentencing in order to pursue more evidence. Definitely not done with the All Else track.
It’s worth keeping in mind that the only outcome that matters at all, where Trump himself is concerned, would be impeachment. And impeachment is not a criminal trial. A jury in a criminal trial isn’t allowed to hold taking the Fifth against a defendant, but the Senate is under no such constraint.
Bill Clinton wasn’t charged with adultery. He was charged with perjury. Isn’t that a main goal of deposing Trump — the inevitable charges of perjury that will result?
But are there any state prosecutions that can work out? I assume Trump will pardon all the evil scumbags, including himself and family, of all federal crimes.
Some reason to doubt that Mueller has evidence of collusion between Manafort and Russia:
(Which, mind, doesn’t mean that Manafort wasn’t trying to collude with Russia, just that we may not have captured any of the communications when it was happening.)
That is my reaction to these questions as well. None of them are predicated on information that Mueller may have uncovered and not available to the public. This tells me Mueller has found nothing to support collusion. If Mueller did have information on collusion, it would have be integrated into some of the questions forcing Trump to come up with excuses or answers to possible criminal behavior. These could be questions made up by Trump and not Mueller, but even a highly partisan NY Times would not publish these unless the leaker was a reliable source.
That only follows if 1) these are the actual questions (which they apparently may not be), and 2) these are the only questions. Leading with a broad, basic question and then hitting hard with an unexpected follow-up is fairly standard practice in law and politics. Given that we don’t know where the questions came from and how accurate they are, we can conclude little from them either way (as much fun as speculation is).
Did you just admit that no one associated with Trump can be relied upon to provide truthful information?
At some point, voters except for the obsessed will tire of this story when nothing substantial develops. Mueller needs a smoking gun. Releasing explosive information would prolong interest. If the Democrats don’t get the House back, there will be no impeachment. So Mueller basically has until the November elections to come up with something.
19 indictments and - what are we up to, five? - guilty pleas and convictions qualifies as “something substantial”. It’s a helluva a lot more than 25 years of investigations into Hillary Clinton has produced.
Why wouldn’t he, if he’s got the real shit. The real shit, not the shit that leads up to it, or the shit that suggests it, but the actual shit. Then he doesn’t need the element of surprise, or anything like that. On the other hand, if he really has the shit, no two ways about it, then letting Il Douche’s lawyers know that has no real downside. Might even simplify things on the off chance that he actually listens to his lawyers.
Besides which, sooner or later, he has to tell them anyway. Which he did, sorta kinda. Latest news suggests that the “list of questions” is a derivation of a meeting Mueller had in March, basically telling the lawyers what he was looking at, and one of Trump’s lawyers (Sekulow?) paraphrased the information into a set of anticipated questions. Now, it this latest wrinkle is accurate, Mueller didn’t leak anything, he never produced or possessed that “set of questions”.
Why? Because Trump’s lawyers have no case, and want to start pounding the table about how Mueller is over-reaching, a prosecutor gone berserk. (Remember that bit about Ken Starr threatening to go after Ms Lewinsky’s Mom? Something like that, but much worse…) He can’t win legal points, so his scant hope is a political shitstorm strong enough to close Mueller down and get away with it.
I’d like to believe that isn’t possible. I’d like to, but I don’t. I used to be shocked and horrified, I’m not shocked anymore.
The prosecution might not have been the ones leaking. But if they did, I think that they are giving Trump the weight of the story they have, for him to contemplate, and a cyanide pill, and saying he can do what he wants. IOW trump “may” be able to stay out of jail by pleading the 5th and resigning, the best outcome for the US.
In fact I think it’s been proposed as a possibility to give trump immunity and force him to testify and then presumably resign or be impeached.
I would think the other way around, that obstruction would be the last avenue to be concluded. Whatever contacts/coordination/collusion Trump’s team had with Russia to influence the 2016 election, it ended a year-and-a-half ago. It may take a while to find out what happened, but it’s not still happening. But Trump could have burned documents yesterday or could fire Mueller tomorrow and those would need to be investigated as obstruction.
I very much doubt that Trump personally colluded with the Russians, if for no other reason that a veteran Cagey Bee agent would not enter into a secret conspiracy with a brain-dead blabbermouth. Obstruct justice? Fingerprints are all over it, Col. Mustard, the library…
One possibility, I’ve realized, is that it could be that foreign services captured communications between Manafort and Russia. In that case, Mueller may have asked for them to testify rather than give him documents, so that he wouldn’t have to reveal the materials.
No idea what the odds are on that, obviously. But one can hope.
Fired the person who replaced the person who was investigating him. His underlings refused and so this didn’t actually come to fruition, but the order does seem to have been given. Twice, if I recall correctly.
Threatened to reveal “tapes” of his conversations with the first investigator.
Crafted an untruthful statement about a meeting with Russian persons that his team took part in.
Multiple threatening statements against the DoJ.
Statements to the effect that he expected the Attorney General to act to shut down the investigation when, instead, he recused himself.
Hard to imagine that this would be obstruction in any event, but IIRC Comey was no longer FBI head and thus no longer investigating anything at the time this threat was made.
Mueller seems to be looking into this, but it seems extremely dubious to me. Hard to imagine that political pronouncements aimed at the public at large can be construed as obstruction of justice. That would be like considering Clinton’s statement that “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms Lewinsky” as obstruction. Very bad PR, but not legally actionable.