More Shoes Keep Dropping….
Mueller just charged Manafort & his cohort Rick Gates with lots more charges, bringing a 32-count indictment including bank & tax fraud (late word has it Gates is about to plead guilty, looks like he agreed to flip.) These are serious charges with the potential to bring serious jail time, featuring $30 million in loans to Manafort in a money laundering scheme, with a promise to a Chicago banker of a high-level defense job. Mueller is presumably putting the squeeze on these two to flip on targets like Trump & his family members. A reported Gates deal to cooperate with Mueller last week apparently fell through for the time being. The charges aren’t directly related to the Trump campaign, probably by design so as to not tip off future witnesses, but the money trail did have Russian hands all over it. So check out the links below with several stories about these new Paul Manafort charges. Today I’ll reserve my longer commentaries for parts 2 & 3. The Russian scandal & Mueller probe keep rolling merrily along, which I’ve selected a few opinion pieces from the related articles to highlight.
Inside the link two-really-bad-defenses-f
Moreover, while special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is still hard at work, we know that an unusual number of people on the campaign — including the president — have disguised (or “forgotten”) contacts with the Russians. Trump himself drafted a misleading memo to explain the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower. I suppose they could have done this because they were entirely innocent, but that strains credulity. We should know from the indictments that what we see in public is a fraction of what Mueller is uncovering, but even what we know suggests the links between the campaign and Russia were far more extensive than the Trump team has let on.
In any event, Mueller’s methodical and swift investigation will, I have confidence, uncover whatever evidence there is of conscious cooperation between Trump (or any of his family members) and Russian operatives. Trump’s premature trumpeting that no collusion has been found is both inaccurate (depending on how one defines collusion) and premature. The other argument Trump likes to make is that the Russian plot didn’t change the outcome. Let’s be clear: When the investigation is done, we will never know the answer because it is unknowable. How many Clinton voters were compelled to stay home when Trump reminded them daily of the hacked emails? How many Trump voters either directly or indirectly saw Russian bot messages — some of which were retweeted by Trump and Trump Jr., among others?
Of course, we should all reserve final judgment until Mueller has completed his work. By the same token, however, we should not ignore what we already know — including unseemly and unprecedented interaction between the Trump and Russia For Trump campaigns. The distressing reality for Trump, Clinton and the country is that we will never know whether it made a difference. And that, in and of itself, was an “accomplishment” for Russian counterintelligence.
From the link it-is-time-to-stop-
By indicting the Russians for conspiracy to break American laws, the Mueller investigation and prosecution leaves open the question of who else conspired to break these laws. Any Americans with whom the Russians made contact can be charged with conspiracy to break these laws simply because they made contact with the Russians named in the indictment or had knowledge of the conspiracy. That is what is meant by “collusion,” and the indictments mean it’s illegal. The other thing missing were indictments of the Russians who hacked into and stole the emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. If Mueller’s past performance is a guide, these will be forthcoming soon. Now Mueller has charged a lawyer by the name of Alex van der Zwaan with lying to the FBI about his contacts with Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. The lawyer, who worked for the white-shoe law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP, has pled guilty and is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. He worked with Gates and Manafort in the Ukraine during the time they were in the employ of Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine who fled to protection in Moscow by his pal Putin after he was defeated. But van der Zwaan isn’t just any lawyer. He is also the son-in-law of German Kahn, a Russian oligarch and friend of Putin who owns Alfa Bank, the outfit that during the 2016 campaign continually contacted a server located in Trump Tower one floor below the Trump campaign headquarters. What this server was doing “talking” to a Russian bank connected to Putin has never been established, but you can bet that Mueller has his sights set on figuring that out.
A week has passed since Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein walked into the Oval Office and informed President Trump of this Russian conspiracy to influence the presidential election of 2016. More than two years have passed since the conspiracy was actually hatched. The FBI, the Department of Justice, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency have known since the summer of 2016 that the Russians engaged in a conspiracy to influence the presidential election and defraud the United States. Trump has denied that such a conspiracy existed for more than a year and has yet to convene a single cabinet meeting or meeting of his National Security Council to address the crime that has already been committed and the threat Russia represents to the elections this year and in 2020. Nor has he directly accused Putin of interfering with our election, or taken a single action to stop him from doing it again in the future. Gee, I wonder why, don’t you?
Get a load of this guy’s act in an interview fmr-trump-aide-donal
President Trump and his staff mislead and flat-out lie more often than any administration in our lifetimes. In the case of Russia, the administration’s lies are so audacious that one can only marvel at its ability to insist that black is white and up is down. Press Secretary Sanders said “He has been tougher on Russia in the first year than Obama was in eight years combined.” What?! To be clear, while we did not think President Barack Obama went far enough, he did call out Russia for interference in our election and did expel 35 diplomats. Trump, on the other hand, has refused to institute new sanctions, has denied Russian interference until the most recent indictments and has not organized a game plan to prevent election interference in 2018. He also gave code-word-protected intelligence in the Oval Office to Russia’s foreign minister and its ambassador. If only Trump were not president, it might actually be possible to have an objectively tougher policy than we had in the Obama years. With him there, however, Russia has a sympathetic ear and a rhetorical helper who will attack the FBI, the free press and Democrats rather than Putin.
I pulled this short blurb from the article trump-begins-to-face-t
There can be no more debate about whether it (Russian interference) happened. The only question now is what effect it had on the exceedingly close outcome. That’s a debate that will never be truly resolved, although there are experts who make a pretty convincing case that the effect of Russian meddling was substantial.
Inside putins-useful-idiots, it explains how the Russians have been playing Trump-world for fools:
“The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!” President Trump proclaimed in one of his saner tweets of the past four days. In fact, the Mueller investigation is ongoing and has offered no such conclusions. But what Mueller did expose last week should sicken us all: Vladimir Putin has played Americans across the political spectrum for suckers. In particular, the Russian dictator has turned Trump supporters into the useful idiots of the 21st century. The phrase “useful idiots,” often attributed to an earlier Vladimir, referred to Westerners who had been successfully manipulated by Soviet propaganda. But even Lenin would have to smile at the way Putin exploited Americans in 2016 to support Trump, or at least to oppose Hillary Clinton. Mueller’s indictment is full of nauseating detail about how Putin made fools of Americans.
Putin’s meddling, now exposed, should shame us and unify us in a response. But that won’t happen, because the most useful idiot of all happens to be the president, who is focused only on himself. In his fit of self-absolution over the holiday weekend, Trump pointed fingers in every direction except Moscow. He went after Barack Obama, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), Clinton, his own national security adviser, the FBI, CNN — even Oprah Winfrey. He used foul language. He made up facts. He retweeted a cartoon from a now-suspended account already famous for a racist cartoon during the election. Rather than condemning or countering what the Russians themselves called “information warfare against the United States,” Trump decided to respond with his own pro-Trump information warfare. Upon hearing that there had been a Russian “troll farm” sowing crops in America, he reacted by reminding everybody that he is the Cargill of troll farming. Thanks to Mueller, they are now witting. Trump, in his refusal to respond to this Russian attack, continues to play the useful idiot, because it suits his selfish purposes. Will his supporters also continue to let Putin play them for fools?
The very next link for-an-innocent-man-
Trump’s furious claims of spotless innocence could be entirely consistent with the truth. But as Queen Gertrude observed to Hamlet, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Surprising as this is in a veteran of showbiz, Trump seems not to understand how a close-up magnifies every gesture. His jumpiness around the subject of Russia; his hand-wringing over ways to end the investigation; his rhetorical flop-sweat at the mention of the letters F, B and I — all these and more have his audience thinking: Gee, for an innocent man he sure does act guilty.
So check out these various Russian links, including with all these new Paul Manafort charges, will he play ball or hope for a pardon, since otherwise he’s facing a life sentence. Other link groups show articles where Trump does nothing as our democracy is being attacked by Russia, along with reports of his mental instability & continuing sex scandals. And there was also this Kentucky district Trump had won by nearly 50 points! Think a big swing is taking place? You betcha! See democrats-just-won-a-repub
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