This weekend, the Washington Post reported that Roger Stone met in May 2016 with a Russian man offering to sell the Trump campaign damaging information on Hillary Clinton. There’s no evidence that Stone consummated the transaction. But there is plenty of significance in the revelation. The first is that the story confirms Stone’s functionally active status as a surrogate for the Trump campaign. Stone officially left his role in August 2015. But he continued to speak regularly with Trump, while supporting him fervently. There is abundant evidence that Stone communicated privately with WikiLeaks during the campaign. Stone turned down the latest offer because, as he told fellow Trump adviser Michael Caputo at the time, the self-styled Russian intermediary was demanding too much money in return for goods that seemed to promise little. He turned the deal down because it was a bad deal, and claims he now believes the man was an FBI planting trying to entrap him, but there is no dispute he was negotiating on Trump’s behalf. This tells us that any contacts Stone had with WikiLeaks were also done in his unofficial capacity as Trump surrogate. Stone was colluding with the publicity arm of Russian intelligence as a functional member of the Trump campaign. Second, it matters that Stone and Caputo have been caught in another lie. Both men told congressional investigators they had no contact with Russians or people identifying themselves as Russian. “I’ve never been to Russia. I didn’t talk to anybody who was identifiably Russian during the two-year run-up to this campaign,” he explained to the Washington Post. “I very definitely can’t think of anybody who might have been a Russian without my knowledge.”
Stone now says he forgot all about this meeting. “I just didn’t remember, 2016 was a pretty busy year,” he tells ABC. It would be fairly surprising for Stone to have forgotten all about an approach from a Russian man offering dirt on Clinton given that Stone says he had zero contacts with Russians. You never forget your first time, as they say. It would be plausible that he forgot this contact with the Russians if he had a lot of contacts with Russians. Even if Stone’s unsupported charge that he was being set up is true, it would not explain why he failed to disclose the meeting and lied about it. In either case, “I forgot” is not usually a compelling defense against charges of perjury. And the broader point is that Trump and his campaign keep lying, over and over, about the extent of their contacts with Russia. It is conceivable that one or two members of Trump’s campaign might forget an incidental contact with a purported Russian agent, especially if that person had a legitimate role as well. But the scores of lies tell us something different. They are not coming clean in the belief they did nothing wrong. They are denying everything, and when their lies are disproven, they simply retreat to a new categorical defense, and keep doing it. At every moment they insist that the only Russian contacts that occurred are the ones publicly known, but the list just keeps growing. The assumption that the list of known contacts is the entire list rests upon an assumption of innocence that, at some point we long ago passed, is forfeit.
Trump claimed Manafort was with the campaign for 49 days while implying he only played a minor role: trump-manafort-distance-
There are three other ways in which Manafort’s incarceration may make life harder for Trump. First, it is a reminder that far from a “hoax” or a waste of time, Manafort is one of 20 indicted individuals (five of whom pled guilty). He was, at a critical time in the race, running the president’s campaign. If he alone is convicted of a raft of serious financial crimes, the investigation would still be meaningful. Trump’s former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and a former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos have already pled guilty. That’s an astounding treasure trove of criminals, and one has to believe Mueller isn’t nearly done with his investigation. If, for example, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe, his deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand, his national security adviser Thomas Donilon and a campaign foreign policy adviser (say, Samantha Power or Denis McDonough) all pleaded guilty to crimes, the GOP would have long ago started screaming for the president to resign.
Second, Manafort is also a key player in the clearest example of cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Manafort, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. all attended the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-linked characters. Trump, he has acknowledged, drafted an explanation of that meeting although he did not attend. Trump’s explanation was false. Each time Trump hollers “No Collusion!” the appropriate follow-up should be, “What about the Trump Tower meeting?” (The Moscow Project has documented “80 contacts between Trump’s team and Russia linked operatives, including at least 23 meetings. And we know that at least 24 high-ranking campaign officials and Trump advisors were aware of contacts with Russia-linked operatives during the campaign and transition.”) In short, the highest ranked campaign official documented to have met with Russian operatives promising dirt on Hillary Clinton is now in a jail cell.
Third, Manafort sits in jail because he suggested untrue testimony to witnesses. One has to wonder what conversations, if any, Trump had with potential witnesses and whether he suggested a false version of events that would be helpful to him. We don’t know that such conversations took place, but Trump is not one to hold back in the company of sympathetic listeners. Given Trump’s propensity to say and even believe things that simply are not true, Mueller no doubt has been asking every witness who had contact with Trump what they discussed with Trump and whether he suggested any untrue “facts.” Witness tampering is a serious crime and there is no argument that such conduct would be permitted for the head of the executive branch, who is charged with implementing the laws.
Trump’s Con Man Ways
Trump has a documented history of cheating contractors & ripping off customers as we saw with Trump University, so we shouldn’t be that surprised for selfish gains he would also stoop so low as to rob worthy charitable organizations & their donors who contributed in good faith. So let’s review some of the details of the civil suit brought against the Trump family foundation by the NY Attorney General, since the charges are alarming. His presidency could soon collapse under the weight of the cumulation of multiple scandals. Here are excerpts from donald-trump-foundation-
It’s long been clear that Donald Trump’s family foundation, the Trump Foundation, is not a generous and ethical charity, but just another of his grifts. He branded it the way he brands his buildings, using his name to generate income that he then has used largely for his own benefit. In 2016, The Washington Post reported that many of Mr. Trump’s boasts about his charitable giving could not be verified. Those that could be were often gifts to himself. For instance, the largest reported donation the foundation has made — $264,631 — was used to refurbish the fountain in front of Mr. Trump’s Plaza Hotel in New York. He has not given any of his own supposed fortune to the foundation since 2008, relying instead on the beneficence of others, whether pro-wrestling mavens or simply Americans who thought they were supporting, say, veterans. And yet the Trump Foundation was repeatedly compared with the Clinton Foundation, which, despite justifiable concern about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s dual roles as philanthropic boosters and politicians, is a credible charitable enterprise that focuses on global health and has saved perhaps millions of lives.
A lawsuit filed by the New York State attorney general, Barbara Underwood, on Thursday morning confirms many of these facts and adds a few new ones, alleging that “the Trump Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his businesses to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality,” Ms. Underwood said in a statement. In precise and damning detail, the suit catalogs Mr. Trump’s repeated violation of both state and federal laws by tapping the foundation’s funds for his own personal purposes, including paying out legal settlements, making political contributions and purchasing a portrait of himself to hang in one of his golf clubs. The Trump Foundation is “an empty shell,” the suit says, with no employees and no oversight by its board of directors, which has not met for nearly 20 years. This has allowed Mr. Trump to run it “according to his whim, rather than the law.”
A couple of examples: In 2013, the foundation gave $25,000 to “And Justice for All,” a political organization supporting the re-election of Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi. But on its federal tax form, the foundation claimed that it did not contribute money to any political campaign, and that it had donated $25,000 to a Kansas-based nonprofit, Justice for All, even though it had not. The foundation later attributed the false report to an accounting error. Days before the 2016 Iowa caucuses, Mr. Trump held a fund-raiser on behalf of military veterans, raising about $5.6 million, half of which went directly to his foundation. The money was then managed not by philanthropists but by top Trump campaign staff members, who handed it out to veterans’ organizations across Iowa just before the caucus — converting the donations into illegal campaign contributions. “This is not how private foundations should function,” said Ms. Underwood in her statement about the suit. That’s the understatement of the day.
Mr. Trump lashed out at the lawsuit on Twitter, attacking “sleazy New York Democrats” and, in particular, Eric Schneiderman, the former state attorney general who aggressively pursued Mr. Trump but who resigned last month following reports that he had physically abused several women. Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, the suit was brought by Mr. Schneiderman’s replacement, Ms. Underwood, who is not a politician but a career prosecutor with sterling credentials. Ms. Underwood’s office has asked the court to order the Trump Foundation to pay $2.8 million in restitution and to bar Mr. Trump from serving as a director, officer or trustee of any nonprofit for 10 years. The lawsuit also seeks to bar Mr. Trump’s three eldest children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric, from the boards of nonprofits based in New York or that operate in New York for one year.
That’s a start. But Ms. Underwood only has jurisdiction to file civil lawsuits in cases involving charities like the Trump Foundation. She cannot bring criminal charges against them for, say, violating campaign finance laws. So she also sent lengthy referral letters to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission, detailing extensive conduct that could, and clearly should, trigger further investigation. In other words, Mr. Trump, who is already dealing with multiple federal inquiries into his campaign’s involvement with Russian efforts to swing the 2016 election as well as into possible crimes by his personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, may soon find himself in even deeper trouble. Though they were fantasies in so many other ways, most of Donald Trump’s scams — from bankrupt casinos to phony universities — never really pretended to be in the public interest. But his foundation, like his presidency, does. And like everything else with the Trump name slapped on it, neither is remotely what it purports to be.
As to what might happen next, if the evidence presented holds up, it will not be good for the prez. It does look like this charity may have been operating as a Trump family foundation con game. There’s a real possibility it could advance from a civil suit into a criminal case. Inside
analysis-new-york-attorney-gen
are these details:
The New York attorney general filed a lawsuit against President Trump and the Donald J. Trump Foundation on Thursday, alleging that Trump violated both federal and state law in the mismanagement of his charitable organization. The New York attorney general’s petition is essentially a civil — not a criminal — complaint. Most defendants would prefer being sued than being prosecuted. But for the presidency, a civil action potentially can do more damage than an indictment.
That’s because — while it remains an open question whether a president is immune from indictment, arrest, or prosecution while in office — there is less debate about presidential immunity from a civil suit. The 1997 Supreme Court case of Clinton v. Jones affirmed broad, absolute presidential immunity, but limited that immunity to acts “taken in an official capacity” — holding that a president’s conduct before he became president was not an official act entitled to that absolute immunity. Therefore, the president is likely less immune to a state attorney general’s petition that is civil in nature than he would be if that same attorney general tried to prosecute him. If forced to defend against this petition, the president will have come up with answers for some very serious allegations about his charitable organization, the Trump Foundation.
The petition alleges the foundation was “little more than a checkbook” for payments to not-for-profits. Trump allegedly used charitable assets to pay off the legal obligations of other entities he controlled, to promote Trump hotels (which are obviously not charitable organizations), to purchase personal items, and to support his presidential election campaign. The petition charges a number of specific instances, such as misusing foundation funds to settle legal disputes for his golf club, and to purchase a $10,000 portrait of himself.
Charities get tax and other benefits, which can be easily abused for personal gain, even when the charity runs at a net loss. The other reason the president should be concerned is that many of these allegations could be established by the Trump Foundation’s own bookkeeping — or lack thereof. Some of Trump’s other legal battles depend on the testimony and credibility of potential witnesses. The New York attorney general’s petition follows the money — not the stories. It’s likely Trump and the other defendants will have to answer this petition, one way or another. If forced to engage in discovery or answer questions under oath, they will possibly lock themselves into a story which either flatly denies, or offers a benign explanation for, the attorney general’s allegations.
Finally, the biggest threat posed by the petition is external. The New York attorney general has referred the case over to federal agencies, including the Federal Election Commission and the Internal Revenue Service. Should they investigate the Trump Foundation for violations of federal election and tax laws, then this petition could quickly mushroom into yet another federal investigation of the president and those close to him.
There Really Was FBI Bias!
Not just the warning from Comey a week before the election that Hillary was still under a federal investigation, while hiding the fact the Trump campaign was also under investigation. That statement did sway the momentum, deflating the Hillary campaign, infusing energy in the Trump campaign, while raising doubts in voters’ minds. But now we’re hearing of clues there was a widespread anti-Hillary attitude running rampant throughout the FBI:podesta_absolutely_true_
Two of the sycophants taking the lead role for Trump in fighting back against the Mueller probe are TV lawyer Rudy, & the sickening congressional lapdog Devin Nunes. But there’s evidence their involvement goes beyond protecting the prez, as their blatant over-the-top lying & concocting conspiracy theories may also be trying to protect themselves. Check out the articles below where Nunes & Rudy may have both gotten involved in FBI leaks during the campaign, with the original source of the leaks likely coming from the WikiLeaks-Russian partnership. Nunes even just confessed he received those leaks from good FBI agents (meaning corrupt agents): nunes-says-good-fbi-agents-
I sense lots of people in Trump’s orbit will eventually be caught up in similar accusations. I’m guessing it will number into the dozens (more). Including Russians, Mueller is already up to 20. But as always, Trump blames the wrong people, basing his judgments only by who has blind loyalty in willing to bow & worship him. Those who don’t he attacks: donald-trump-wrong-fbi-agent-p
The Republicans have been working the refs hard, and it’s fair to conclude they may have worked Horowitz too. He focused on all the specious accusations of an anti-Trump conspiracy and left the more damning evidence of the FBI’s successful sabotage of the Clinton campaign hovering between the lines. Naturally, all this information about the FBI agents scheming to sabotage the Clinton campaign is being ignored in the press in favor of the sensational text message from Peter Strzok to his girlfriend Lisa Page after she lamented that Donald Trump might become president: “We will stop him.” As Yogi Berra said, it’s like déjà vu all over again. Once again the Trump team’s actual misconduct is downplayed while petty misdeeds that feed the Trump narrative of grievance and victimization are emphasized.
A cabal of FBI agents in the New York office loyal to Rudy Giuliani apparently hectored their bosses, leaked to the press and urged former agents to go on television to put the Department of Justice and the FBI under pressure to act harshly against Hillary Clinton, even when if was outside the norms, rules and laws of the department. They were successful beyond their wildest dreams. The Republicans will be happy to spoon feed the press buckets of “oppo” to fill journalists’ desire to be even-handed as soon as the next presidential campaign begins. The end result will be just as much a distortion of the facts as this inane narrative that poor Donald Trump was the victim of an FBI plot to deny him the presidency when the truth is that he won the election at least in part because the FBI sabotaged his opponent. It’s enough to give you a migraine. That’s the idea.
Foreign Dangers
As far as the overall basic international threats we face, there are bad actors everywhere in the form of nation states & terrorist organizations. We must enforce the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, plus realize based on what we’ve seen of them over time, Russia & China cannot be trusted. And we know North Korea can’t be trusted. They need to prove it to us whether they’re serious about denuclearization. Mattis lays out the threats & our important responsibilities in mattis-us-must-remain-
Defense Secretary James Mattis on Friday warned that the United States must “remain vigilant” toward other countries seeking nuclear weapons. Mattis praised this week’s historic summit in Singapore between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a “possible new avenue to peace,” but cautioned against possible threats. The summit proves “the past does not have to define the future,” Mattis said during a sprawling speech at the Naval War College graduation ceremony in Rhode Island, drawing from Trump’s comments at the meeting. “But while a possible new avenue to peace now exists with North Korea, we remain vigilant regarding pursuit of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world,” Mattis added.
Mattis used his address Friday to also caution against Russian President Vladimir Putin, who he says “seeks to shatter NATO” and “attempts to undermine America’s moral authority.” “His actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point, but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals,” the Defense chief said. Russia has “proven willing to use conventional and irregular power in violation of international norms,” Mattis added, pointing to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. “For the first time since World War II, Russia has been the nation that has redrawn international borders by force of arms in Georgia and Ukraine while pursuing veto authority over their neighbors’ diplomatic, economic and security decisions,” he said. Mattis’s address Friday also hit on China, with the retired four-star general saying the nation is “harboring long-term designs to rewrite the existing global order.” “The Ming Dynasty appears to be their model, albeit in a more muscular manner, demanding other nations become tribute states kowtowing to Beijing,” Mattis said. He also accused Beijing of “militarizing South China Sea features while using predatory economics, piling massive debt” on nearby countries.
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