As horrific as I find the administration, I am still doubtful that there’s a criminal case to be established from the meetings. An intelligence intercept of what Russian officials told each other about the meeting(s) isn’t really going to be seen as evidence. They need more than just the fact that a meeting took place.
Even the email chain of Donny Jr…so what? Russians supposedly had dirt on the Clintons and he wanted to check it out. I know that some legal experts have opined that this violates campaign finance law but it’s not airtight. Is oppo research that’s given to someone really something of value? I actually used to work with a small PAC years ago and unless things have changed, “things of value” typically referred to more concrete things like goods and services that are donated rather than paid for - like free dinners at a restaurant, free nights at a hotel, a Rolex watch as a present…things like that. A person could make the argument that Donny would have had to pay for oppo research, but that could also be considered just a friendly insider tip said over a few beers at a private bar, I would think.
If there’s anything concrete that implicates the Trump’s it will probably have to do with money laundering and financial crimes. I suspect that’s where Mueller’s going with this and now the Trump’s seem acutely aware of it and are now desperate to try and stop it. In fact, Trump’s worst fear might not even be an actual criminal case going forward; for Trump his worst nightmare might be the public realizing that his financial empire is a house of cards a la Enron and that the only thing holding it up are illegitimate sources of financing. Trump is like a Ponzi scheme artist: his strength is largely holographic. Once the auto mechanic in Toledo and the plumber in Allentown figure out that they’re probably wealthier than he is…it’s over.
For what it’s worth, Republican Senators Collins and Reed were caught on a hot mic discussing Trump as being “crazy”.
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“Yes,” Reed replies. “I think — I think he’s crazy,” apparently referring to the president. “I mean, I don’t say that lightly and as a kind of a goofy guy.”*
Hey, you know, maybe you all should do something about that. If only there were some mechanism to remove a president that is described by his own party as “crazy”.
Let’s assume that Collins agrees. What exactly is that mechanism for removing a president whom one Senator thinks is “crazy”? Keeping in mind, of course, that “crazy” can mean just about anything.
If the President and leader of the Republican party is “crazy”, then I would hope that the Republican party would remove him via impeachment or support a 25th Amendment solution. That Trump is now attacking his most loyal cabinet member should be a wakeup call to the others for the latter option.
They convince some cabinet members that he is crazy, or they convince enough of the representatives that he is crazy to get an impeachment, and then convince enough (roughly 2/3rds) colleagues in the senate that he is crazy to confirm that impeachment.
Well, this poll of registered voters which I linked in the other thread says that 41% of voters support Trump, and of those supporters, 45% would still support him if he literally shot someone on Fifth Avenue. Another 26% were uncertain.
So, depending on how we count the undecideds, it appears that between 18% and 29% of the voters are completely beyond the reach of rationality or common decency. So 25% hardcore deplorables seems like a reasonable estimate.
As a general rule, people who don’t follow politics closely and aren’t well informed are much more likely to get caught up in the excitement of a Presidential election than they are to vote in a boring old midterm. I’m guessing that most diehard Trumpists fall squarely into that category, so that would bode well for 2018. But I have no data to support that.
How is doing opposition research not a “good or service”? “Research” indicates labor. Presumably, the government of Russia put man-hours into creating the intel, and even in Russia labor costs money.
We’re not talking about something that someone just happened to know of, and mentioned off the cuff. This is the product of an express, paid investigation. Maybe it was just a small investigation, but still it was probably more expensive in total than buying someone a Rolex. If legal fees are anything like American ones in Russia, just getting the lawyer to deliver the folder of intel was probably already a quarter the cost of a full Rolex.
Do you have case law that says it’s the labor content of the “thing” as opposed to the actual value? Suppose they Russians spent 500 man-hours putting together stuff that is in the public domain? That stuff is free, and so has no value. Or if they put together a bunch of “fake news”. Or, do we even know that the Trump campaign took the alleged stuff?
That is to say, without knowing what this “thing” was, we can’t determine if it has value.
So we went from “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” to “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘value’ is.” Who knew etymologists would be so important to the modern presidency?
If the value is associated with the gain sought, and acquired, we will have to wait til the goldfish is out of office and add up the grift and plunder, that is if we have the computational power to do it, and if it will permitted under the new laws.
Putting it into the public domain is, indeed, a pretty quick and easy way to circumvent the laws. It seems that they realised that this was a better method.