Russiagate is looking almost like a Watergate copycat, only worse…We’ll save the Watergate comparisons for the bottom here in part 1, as the long inevitable slide into impeachment/resignation is now coming clearer into view. Most Americans can no longer trust nor respect the President, let alone even like the guy. Trump is so caught up in mayhem & scandal, nothing ever sticks to him for long. We lose our outrage when every regularly-occurring inexplicable calamity blends into the scenery when the next one comes along. With any other president operating such a circus from inside the White House, we’d all be uniformly panicked, but the GOP is giving this current prez a pass, dismissing it as Trump being Trump. So it results in an entire major political party looking the other way as their leader is driving the ship straight towards a national emergency & constitutional crisis! But the weight & fatigue from unrelenting misdeeds & chaos are starting to catch up to him, as his support is slowly beginning to crumble.
We have plenty of recent polling at the bottom of part 3 just above our song, but at least one poll now shows a majority of Americans now view the President as unfit to serve. Despite Trump’s obvious & now well-established mental instability, I’m leery if internal forces within the White House could effectively pull off removal through the 25th Amendment. Since the echo is so protective of Trump & his base is still solidly behind him, seemingly spellbound by his cult-like aura, they would be up in arms over what they’d call a deep-state coup, which their angry maniacal response could literally spark a civil war. Alternatively, our best hope for restoring sanity in the White House with minimal collateral damage would likely come from Mueller finding conclusive evidence of crimes, which constitutionally would justify the president’s impeachment & removal. Let’s just hope it comes about before Trump can do something disastrous.
As we’ve seen the incredible levels of chaos & dirty laundry aired the past few weeks which is abnormally high even for a Trump White House, it looks like the mechanisms of his administration are under strain to the point of hitting a breaking point: white-house-donald-
George P.
I just used the letter P since that’s much easier than spelling out his full name, who’s the first one within the Trump campaign to go to jail over circumstances stemming from the Russian collusion case. For more signs of collusion between the Trump campaign & the Russians, these excerpts quoting George P. are seen inside papadopoulos-campaign-
Convicted former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos said on Sunday that the president’s team was “fully aware” he was “actively” seeking to set up a meeting between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I actively sought to leverage my contacts with the professor to host this meeting. The campaign was fully aware of what I was doing, including Corey Lewandowski and Sam Clovis,” Papadopoulos, who was a foreign policy adviser, said on ABC’s This Week, naming senior members of the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos added that Clovis in particular noted that he was doing “excellent work” after telling a group of campaign staffers he was speaking with a Maltese professor who could potentially organize a Trump-Putin meeting during the campaign. That professor, Joseph Mifsud, is suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence. Papadopoulos says Mifsud told him that the Russians had obtained “thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails.” Papadopoulos was sentenced on Friday to 14 days in jail for lying to the FBI about his conversations with Mifsud. He pleaded guilty last year and has been cooperating with prosecutors from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office. Trump, according to Papadopoulos, was “open to this idea [of meeting with Putin], and he deferred, of course, to then-senior Sen. Jeff Sessions, who I remember being quite enthusiastic.”
If these accounts by George P. can be corroborated by Mueller’s team as seen in sessions-liked-trump-putin-
Stormy Weather
And it’s not just that monster hurricane heading towards the Carolinas. Stormy says there’s a 50/50 chance of her inside story taking down the prez, while her lawyer says the odds are even better than that if they can get Trump under oath, which could disclose evidence implicating Trump for campaign finance violations & threats on Stormy. See these excerpts from stormy-daniels-interview-
“All I will say is that there is a lot of information that has yet to come out and I think a lot of it is going to very shocking and it will make sense as to why they were so desperate to come after me,” Daniels said. The host, Twan Huys, pressed further. “Is there something you know now that we will know soon that could bring down this presidency?” Huys asked. “Yes, there is stuff that I know, and I would say it’s a 50-50 shot at this point,” Daniels responded. “Which is pretty scary odds if you’re the president.”
Another sex case
Trump has been ordered to testify under oath in a couple weeks to written questions in a separate case, this one being another highly-publicized lawsuit where he’s accused of sexual assault, as seen in trump-to-provide-written-
President Donald Trump’s legal troubles are mounting. He will now have to answer questions under oath in regards to a defamation lawsuit that Summer Zervos, a former contestant on his reality television show The Apprentice, brought against him. Zervos sued Trump over how he responded to her allegations he sexually assaulted her. Attorneys for both sides signed a stipulation agreement on Friday stating that Zervos and Trump would submit written answers and objections to questions by September 28, under oath, Law & Crime reported. If Trump or Zervos make false statements, they could face perjury charges. The development is a stride forward for Zervos. Her lawyer, Mariann Wang, said in court on Friday that Trump’s business, the Trump Organization, would not hand over discovery materials as both parties had agreed, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Important article on bumbling our international diplomacy
Our imbecile-in-chief who has no idea what he’s doing & routinely resorts to his authoritarian instincts, is giving comfort to our enemies while terrifying our allies, all the while surrendering our leadership position in the world. The whole article from trump-chaos-dangerously-
This week had to be one of the worst so far for President Donald Trump, but it has not been great for our allies either. Leaked details from Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book came just before the New York Times published an op-ed written by an anonymous senior administration official. Both painted a clear picture of an unhinged and dangerous president with a circle of advisers who know he should not be in office, but are working to blunt the impact of his actions — or at least the most damaging ones. America may own this political circus but we are certainly not the only ones closely watching it, because instability in the White House has global implications. While advance Woodward excerpts were nothing but damning, the op-ed appears to have been meant to provide some comfort to the American people. “There are adults in the room,” the author said. “We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.”
Global foes welcome, exploit our disarray…This is consistent with the administration’s ongoing two-track foreign policy in which the president says whatever he wants and senior officials sweep up after him. The “steady state,” as the op-ed calls these insiders, told our NATO allies to trust that the U.S. will come to their defense after the president questioned the entire purpose of the transatlantic alliance. The “steady state” tells them to ignore the president’s Twitter rants. Privately, the “steady state” also reassures our foreign intelligence partners that we will still protect their most classified intelligence sources and methods even as the Republican Party majority releases intelligence for political purposes, and Trump’s loose lips, unpredictable temper, and poor security practices suggest he cannot be counted on. But a two-track approach comes with no guarantees and our allies can only be so trusting when the White House is a virtual revolving door and even the “steady state” has not been able to prevent the president from waging damaging trade wars, for example, or spilling sensitive intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office. The author of the op-ed admitted Trump cabinet officials at one time had discussed the possibility of removing him from office under the 25th amendment.
For our allies, particularly our European ones, these new revelations drive home what many of them have already said publicly — that they cannot depend on U.S. leadership anymore. In the past year alone, Europeans have increased economic ties with China and launched new defense initiatives that do not include the U.S. We can expect that to continue. For other countries that benefit from a distracted U.S., or even a chaotic one, the revelations of this week are welcome. More than perhaps any other president, Trump has shown in many ways that his personal style leans more toward the authoritarian than democratic. His administration’s foreign policies reflect that, with the noticeable absence of talking points on topics like human rights when he meets with world leaders. If there were any hopes that a presidency almost two years in might remember it is supposed to be pushing democratic values worldwide, they have been thoroughly squashed. Leaders in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia are increasingly clamping down on the rights of their own citizens, knowing there is no risk of the U.S. making a policy U-turn when it is consumed with simply keeping the trains from coming off the tracks and the executive branch from imploding. The Syrian government was preparing to wage an all-out assault against 3 million civilians in Idlib who have nowhere else to go, knowing the American president is more likely to spend his time railing on Twitter against “traitors” and the “failing New York Times” than watching what Bashar Assad is doing to his own people.
A White House distracted by loyalty tests…Our adversaries and emerging world leaders benefit from a U.S. that is nearing, if not already, in a constitutional crisis. Countries like China are already working to fill the global leadership vacuum the U.S. has left behind because of our own internal chaos and isolationist policies. Russia has long worked to destroy the liberal world order and the goal of its covert influence campaign during the U.S. presidential election in 2016 was in part to undermine faith in U.S institutions, like the executive branch. We also know countries like Russia, China and Iran are continuing cyberattacks, disinformation, and other covert attacks against the U.S. — and the revelations this week will only encourage them. In what feels a little like loyalty tests foreign authoritarian leaders sometimes make their own inner circle go through, a long line of senior government officials has released public statements either denying they wrote the op-ed or denying they said certain reported quotes from Woodward. The time they spend pointing the finger away from themselves is time they are not doing their real jobs. For our enemies, all of this is great news.
Following the money
It’s likely Mueller may crack the Russian conspiracy case wide open by following the money trail around the world: opinion-urgent-
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating whether anyone in the Trump Organization violated campaign-finance laws, in a follow-up to their conviction last month of Michael Cohen, according to a person familiar with the matter. The inquiry, not previously reported, shows that the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office doesn’t intend to stand down following the guilty plea from Trump’s longtime personal lawyer. Manhattan prosecutors are working on a parallel track to U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is tasked with examining Russian interference in the presidential election and who is referring other matters as they arise to appropriate sections of the Justice Department.
The Trump Organization is a stable of private companies heavily invested in real estate that’s been run by the president’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, since he took office. Central to the inquiry will be longtime Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who has already provided narrow cooperation with authorities over Cohen’s activities and hush agreements, according to the person. It’s not clear whether Weisselberg is a focus of the continuing inquiry. Weisselberg didn’t respond to emails and phones calls seeking comment. Last month, prosecutors said in indicting Cohen that two Trump company executives — one of whom is believed to be Weisselberg — approved the improper payments to Cohen in violation of campaign-finance laws. Investigators are looking at those people and others who may have been aware of the activities, according to the person.
Watergate revisited with the Trump presidency
There are so many parallels between Watergate & Russiagate, the similarities are stunning! Even some of the exact same figures are playing a part in both, such as Woodward (see a section on his book in part 2), Carl Bernstein & John Dean, as seen inside these links which allude to a different type of “echo” than what I commonly refer to with the far-right media: Echoes-of-Watergate-in-
Almost everything that has occurred during the Trump presidency – his refusal to release tax returns, his praise for authoritarian leaders, his nasty tweets – has been a departure from precedent. Last week, we had another departure: an unsigned op-ed in the New York Times, supposedly written by a senior administration official. It describes the Trump White House as a war zone in which “unsung heroes” are secretly averting multiple disasters that would otherwise be caused by their unhinged and unfit boss. At the same time, the media is buzzing with excerpts from journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear. It includes on-the-record interviews with senior officials, many named, who paint a similar picture of mismanagement and mayhem in the Oval Office. Again, the world is wondering whether Trump’s long career of getting away with just about anything is finally over.
As I learned when I wrote a book on the Trump family, there’s never been a shortage of explanations for Donald Trump’s seemingly endless series of triumphs. His father’s political and financial clout, his own branding savvy and unsavoury connections, dumb luck, you name it. Each of these factors played a role. But what I noticed above all was his skill at making problems go away. Whether it was subcontractors he shortchanged or banks he never fully repaid, a wife he allegedly cheated on or facing his multiple corporate bankruptcies, he made a persuasive case that, regardless of the harm he’d caused, they’d be better off if he remained a going concern. What’s different now is that, in the White House, Trump is exposed to a degree he’s never experienced. His staff are leaking like crazy, and the press is full of accounts of Trump behaving in a fashion that’s anything but stone-faced. Further, he’s facing a Congress and an executive branch filled with people who see themselves as worse off if he remains in office. Not enough – so far – to topple him, but it’s getting harder and harder for him to rely on the punch-back, double-down, blame-others strategy he’s used with those he couldn’t get to see things his way.
From an attorney who saw Watergate up close & personal, he offers these predictions in excepts from trump-impeachment-robert-
Andrew Hall watched from within the courtroom as four of Richard Nixon’s top advisers were sentenced to prison for their roles in the Watergate coverup. He had been hired as counsel by John D Ehrlichman, the former president’s senior adviser for domestic affairs, who was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury. Ehrlichman created “The Plumbers”, a covert special investigations unit inside of the White House that began conducting illegal operations under his watch, leading to one of America’s most extraordinary political scandals. Now, Mr Hall says he’s watching history repeat itself, with Donald Trump and his associates awaiting a similar fate in the days and weeks ahead. “The coverup is always worse than the crime,” the attorney said in an interview with The Independent. “And this one is very shady. We have a sitting president who will undoubtedly be impeached.”
Explosive reports from inside the White House have recently arrived in the form of an anonymous New York Times op-ed penned by a senior administration official, as well as a 448-page book by Bob Woodward, one of the journalists famous for exposing critical information in the Watergate scandal. Both describe an administration in disorder, complete with an aloof president in Mr Trump who appears incapable of leading the nation. Aides are reportedly swiping documents from his desk. Several have allegedly formed a “steady resistance” to thwart his worst inclinations. Meanwhile, the underlying question of whether or not Mr Trump’s campaign conspired with Russian officials to impact the 2016 election remains at the heart of a federal investigation spearheaded by special counsel Robert Mueller, who, aping Mr Nixon, the president has threatened to fire. In a scene from Mr Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House, the president’s former attorney John Dowd told Mr Mueller he worried the president would perjure himself after conducting a mock cross-examination.
Mr Woodward, who exposed major gaps in Ehrlichman’s story and other crucial information in the Watergate scandal, can certainly be expected to deliver more bombshells when his book hits shelves next week. Some of those revelations could lead to Mr Trump’s impeachment – an historic event that will “undoubtedly” occur in the president’s first term, according to Mr Hall. “The November elections have an enormous impact on how this plays out,” he said. “If the Democrats take the Senate, or enough Republicans switch over, there will be a successful impeachment.” Still, the attorney doesn’t foresee impeachment proceedings removing Mr Trump from office. “He will resign,” Mr Hall said in the event of impeachment proceedings beginning after the 2018 midterm elections. However, the end of the Trump presidency doesn’t mark the end of his associates’ legal troubles, just like that of Mr Nixon’s tenure. In fact, those who remain in the president’s inner circle could soon find themselves in even greater jeopardy if Mr Trump were to lie to the special counsel. “Rudy Giuliani is in worse trouble if the president lies to Mueller,” Mr Hall said. “Giuliani can be indicted. The president cannot while sitting.”
Already, several associates to Mr Trump have faced a bevy of convictions, from his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to his longtime attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen. The president has suggested he would be willing to pardon Manafort, and possibly other aides who refuse to cooperate with investigators. Whether or not he follows through with pardoning his associates appears to be the one event Mr Hall cannot predict. In Mr Nixon’s case, the former president promised his aides pardons, before eventually reneging that vow. “Trump may pardon them as his final act,” he said. “In Watergate, Nixon’s top advisers – all of them – were facing jail time. In this case, I think the president’s top advisers will, too. And they should. If you are a top adviser to the president you should know better.”
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