Likewise, I learned long ago when someone says, “trust me on this,” you want to look at the statement that follows with at best a jaundiced eye, and do your research. This is a lesson apparently a large chunk of American voters never had.
There will certainly be interesting developments in coming days because of upcoming deadlines relating to Manafort:
Trump is going to want to pardon Manafort to keep him from cooperating with the investigation. Mueller knows that Congress will do exactly nothing about a pardon. Will Mueller wait passively to see what happens, or will he…do some indicting?
Maddow had a great segment last night on the probable outcome if Trump tries the pardons route; it’s 23 minutes but worth a look. The key is that set of indictments of Russians that Mueller handed down in February:
The link is to the show in general; click on the “Trump pardon strategy” option to get the segment. Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC | Watch Rachel Maddow Live
Based on an earlier report of the FBI wiretaps on Cohen, it sounded like he never emailed Trump about anything nor received emails from Trump about anything. Other things that I have read about Trump lead me to believe that he picked up one good habit from dealing with the mafia, which is to do all of your business in person, where you can’t fall prey to wiretaps.
Despite the lack of privilege on most of Cohen’s documents, it’s possible that Trump may come out clean - depending on how faithful he was at maintaining the above doctrine. And, of course, that’s all moot if Cohen was recording their conversations. And, of course, his banking records may implicate Trump in various things. But the public seems to be hoping for a tape of Trump saying, “Hey, the Russians have blackmail material on me. Work with their people to figure out a plan to give the Ukraine to them.” It’s not super likely that such a tape exists and bank records put people to sleep.
As to the Russian pardons thing…well, maybe? To the extent that we have been told anything to date, it’s that there’s no evidence that Trump campaigns officials were aware that any of the Russians were Russians (excluding Veselnitskaya). That story would need to change for us to believe that, that prosecution could be tied back to Trump in some way.
George Nader is probably a better subject than the Russian troll farms. He’s a convicted pedophile, so the optics on pardoning him might be bad enough to give Trump second thoughts. Though, that said, it’s plausible that Nader was only involved with Trump after he’d already won the election - which makes any deals with Russia or the UAE sort of “okay” in a sense, so long as they can’t be proved to be corrupt.
From Rob Goldstone’s email to Junior:
*"The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information **but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump – helped along *by Aras and Emin." (bolding mine)
to which Junior replied less than half an hour later:
“Thanks Rob I appreciate that. I am on the road at the moment but perhaps I just speak to Emin first. Seems we have some time and if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer. Could we do a call first thing next week when I am back?”
Seems to me like they knew who they were dealing with.
In addition to Don Jr. straight being told that the people he was meeting were Russians representing Russia we have…
George Papadopoulos certainly knew he was meeting with Russians representing Russia.
Carter Page certainly knew he was meeting with Russians representing Russia.
I’m not sure how I wrote that post so poorly (I think I had just woken up).
What I meant to say was that there’s currently no reason to believe that the Troll Farm leads back to the Trump Campaign in any way, so if that’s the great bastion of hope, it’s not that strong.
Granted, there could well be some things that they aren’t telling us, but based on what information exists in the public sphere, Nader may be the better bet.
Trump would be foolish to preemptively pardon Manafort. Manafort loses fifth amendment protection if he’s pardoned ahead of his hearing, so there’s no legal basis not to answer Mueller’s questions. Not everything can be answered with “I do not recall.”
You’re right: pardoning Manafort in the hopes of stopping him from talking would be extraordinarily foolish of Trump. But: this is Trump. Anyone want to bet that he won’t do it?
I think what Maddow was getting at was that regardless of the details of the ties between those already-indicted Russians and the Trump campaign, a) it will be necessary for Trump to pardon them all if he wants to stop Mueller from mining information that could lead to legal trouble* for Trump and his family and his associates, and b) it will look amazingly bad for Trump to pardon a bunch of Russians who were demonstrably working to interfere with US elections.
It’s more the bad PR of it that could come back to bite Trump, than it is the likelihood of strong, documented-on-video, easy-to-understand ties between the Russians and the campaign.
*The Russians are all (I think) overseas and not likely to be placed in US custody, but they do have incentives to cooperate as the indictments restrict their abilities to move about and work in nations they’d probably like to move about and work in. So information they might be motivated to give up could, potentially, put Trump and his family and associates in legal peril.
I think you missed a trick, there, hoss. Can’t blame you, had to listen twice before I really got it.
I also tried to figure why the Russians were named. Not like Putin’s gonna hand them over, so why bother? So I guessed maybe it was a precaution, so that if one of them showed up at NY International House of Pancakes, they could be got. But Ms Smarty Pants suggests it was much more subtle and prescient.
Trump can’t pardon the Russians, they are Russians. If he pardons those he can, if he pardons all of them preemptively…there’s still the Russians. The investigation can proceed even if several of the persons of interest become unindictable co-conspirators. To simplify, even if Cohen is secure from any legal trouble, the Russians who helped him are still on the bill. And when Mueller has all the facts, all the ducks lined up, he releases his report…and, presumably, the trajectory of the shit will intersect the locus of the fan.
Now, if this is the case, then Mueller was thinking ten moves ahead way back when. He put this in place suspecting that Trump might pull some bullshit like this, and he was ready for him.
(As a personality type, I have little use for the rigidly correct iron-ass. An iron-ass Marine makes it iron-ass with ranch sauce. But let the record show my respect and admiration for this particular IA(M). Situation calls for a bulldog, and Bobby Mueller only bites once, but he never lets go…)
Assuming I understand what you’re saying through all the fog, I disagree with you.
Mueller doesn’t need a single indictable person to keep the investigation going and release his report. His job is not to “indict people”. His job is to get to the bottom of what was going on, and to indict any criminals he finds along the way. Whether there’s still someone left to indict or not is irrelevant for this purpose.
[Which is even leaving aside that his report can also be used as the basis for impeachment.]
I think he can. The Constitution doesn’t specify that those pardoned must be US citizens:
So I still think the smart thing Mueller did was to force Trump to pardon foreign nationals who were working to subvert the USA–which is inherently bad publicity for Trump. No way to spin it.
(We both agree that Mueller did a smart thing, anyway.)
But, again, there’s currently no reason to believe that the Troll Farms lead to Trump, Cohen, Manafort, or anyone else. Whether Mueller investigates them or not, if they don’t lead to the President, is sort of irrelevant.
One of the main strains of ‘Russian collusion’ is presumed to be the social-media campaigns against Clinton and for Trump, and way those campaigns were targeted at likely voters via information about those voters. There is already information about coordination or help provided to the Russian effort from entities such as Cambridge Analytica.
If you are assuming that the one and only way that cooperation could be proven is for Donald to have visited the St. Petersburg troll factory (“Internet Research Agency”) and stated for the cameras that he was willing to give whatever information his people could access, so that the trolls’ work could be more fruitful…then, yeah, I guess it all might look like a nothingburger to you. Because there probably isn’t video of such a thing.
But if you allow for the possibility of a network of ties—coordination, aid, information-sharing, etc.—that stretches between the campaign and the Russians via intermediaries such as C.A. and Don, Jr. and Assange and Roger Stone & Guccifer and Jared and Rob Goldstone and who knows who that we haven’t yet heard of—then the outlook looks less rosy for Trump and his associates.
You’re ignoring what I’m saying. We’ve been told that there is no such coordination.
What are you talking about? In the sense of ‘please link and/or explain WHO has told us WHAT.’
Both Rosenstein and the Troll Factory indictment specified that there was no evidence that anyone in the campaign were witting accomplices.
Now, Rosenstein is quite specific that there’s no accusation in that indictment that any Americans were witting accomplices, which leaves open the possibility that there’s some other indictment or indictment-in-potentia. But, as I said, there’s currently no evidence that the Trump campaign did coordinate with them wittingly, and the indictment specifies that “without revealing their Russian association, [they] communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign.” The evidence in the public sphere is that we’d rather not be in a position where we have to rely on the Troll Farm indictment leading back to Trump.
Sage.
Are you not even paying attention?
Let me shout it so you’re clear: DONALD TRUMP JR ADMITTED, AT 11AM EST ON JULY 2017, VIA TWITTER, THAT HE “WITTINGLY” MET WITH A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT REGARDING GETTING DIRT ON HILLARY. HE EVEN PUBLISHED THE VERY EMAIL EXCHANGE IN WHICH THESE MEETINGS WERE “COORDINATED”.
In case you further doubt me, here is Dotard Jr himself: https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/884789418455953413
Are the people he talked with part of the Troll Farm indictment?
The House Judiciary has scheduled to grill the FBI and DOJ on their 2016 undertakings to keep watch on the Trump campaign.
It’ll start on the 19th:
