Having A Very Aggressive Posture With Trump Legal Strategy & NATO….Both the combative Trump legal strategy & potshots at NATO are unhinged to the point of scary, as we’ll offer opinions & news articles on that & more here in part 1. As an overall mission here at TheVoracs, we have the type of objective political updates people just don’t get from the far-right, pro-Trump echo chamber (echo for short). On the Russia probe, it looks like Trump’s lawyer of PR, Rudy Giuliani, is stringing along Mueller’s request to have the prez testify, which it seems quite clear they have no intention of voluntarily submitting to an interview. That probably speaks to Trump’s guilt & inability to tell the truth. Mueller can decide to issue his reports without Trump’s interview, or subpoena him which could get bogged down in the courts. Rudy requests proof of criminal evidence before permitting his client to testify, but when you’re the subject of an investigation, even if you’re the President, such a request is out of line. A prosecutor is not required to show his cards in advance & a president is not above the law!
Rudy even admits the Trump legal strategy is based on turning public opinion against Mueller, which suggests Trump’s defense has no answers for the incriminating evidence that will soon be released. But such a strategy of mounting a propaganda campaign & attacking the investigators work fine for their base, so the more they can keep low-information Trumpeters on their side, the more aggressive they’ve become in pushing back against Mueller. The PR has somewhat swayed public opinion against Mueller while the special counsel works secretly out of public view, not responding to Team Trump’s criticisms, but public opinion can turn on a dime at whatever point a Mueller report produces hard evidence of crimes. Check out these excerpts on this news story as seen inside giuliani-mueller-trump-
Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, is again playing hardball with special counsel Robert Mueller — and it’s looking even less likely that the president will sit down for an interview with Mueller’s team. The New York Times’s Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman reported that Giuliani is setting new terms for the interview: Mueller must show evidence that Donald Trump committed a crime and that an interview is necessary, or forget it. Trump’s legal team is also insisting Mueller prove that he exhausted all other avenues and that he has no choice but to interview the president. “If they can come to us and show us the basis and that it’s legitimate and that they have uncovered something, we can go from there and assess their objectivity,” Giuliani told the Times.
The prospect of sitting for an interview with Robert Mueller has gotten increasingly fraught since the president shook up his legal team months ago, bringing on former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Emmet T. Flood, who represented Bill Clinton in his impeachment. Both embarked on a more combative, aggressive approach toward the Russia investigation compared to the more cooperative stance favored by his former attorneys. Giuliani has shifted the terms (and deadline) of a Trump-Mueller interview more than once since joining Trump’s legal team. Giuliani had said in May that he was working with the special counsel to narrow the scope of the investigation, and that no decisions would be made until after Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The summit came and went, and the deadline was pushed to July 4.
As the back-and-forth over the Trump interview continues, Giuliani is waging a PR campaign against Mueller and the investigation that’s been echoed in his boss’s Twitter feed. According to the latest Times report, this seems to be the crux of the strategy — delay until the midterms and damage the investigation’s credibility. (It may also force Mueller to subpoena Trump — which will set off a protracted, likely messy, court battle.) Trump’s lawyers have suggested Mueller will abide by Department of Justice guidance that says a sitting president can’t be indicted — which would mean Mueller’s most likely option is a written report, which could make its way to Congress. If such a report is damning against Trump, and if Democrats retake the House of Representatives in the fall, the chance of impeachment increases. But if the public can be convinced, that, as the president says, that the special counsel’s investigation is a total “WITCH HUNT,” lawmakers might be more leery of taking on the president.
“Nobody is going to consider impeachment if public opinion has concluded this is an unfair investigation, and that’s why public opinion is so important,” Giuliani told the Times. Giuliani, Trump, and his allies in Congress have done their best to discredit Mueller. Giuliani played up the debunked “Spygate” conspiracy — that the FBI planted a spy on the Trump campaign — admitting last month that the drama was conjured up “for public opinion.” The House of Representatives is waging war against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — Mueller’s boss — sanctioning him on the House floor for failing to turn over requested documented about the investigation. The war against Mueller has shown some signs of working.
Lashing Out In Fear
Trump would be aware of whatever crimes he may have committed, which could explain his frequent lashing out of late with the first Mueller report on obstruction expected out soon. Inside this next link weaves a long tale, but their speculation is based on a strong case the illegal collaborations between Trump & the Russians goes back 3 decades!: trump-putin-russia-collusion. If there is even an element of truth to all that, no wonder Trump is so worried! Here is also a brief analysis of that article: media/2018-07-09/what-if. We can just sense the fear inside the White House which is prompting this very aggressive tone against special counsel, as seen in these excerpts from opinion/trump-reeks-of-fe
I can smell Donald Trump’s fear from here. His panic. His anxiety. And yet, I don’t have a full picture of what is causing it. The only people who know what has been discovered in the Russian election meddling probe are Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team, and they aren’t talking. But President Trump no doubt knows far more about it than the rest of us, and what he knows — or what he fears — appears to be a consuming preoccupation. He tweets about the investigation constantly. Part of this is an overt play to bend public opinion, to besmirch whatever conclusions the investigation might reach and to ward off any attempt at a possible impeachment. As The New York Times reported last week about the president and his legal team: “They have come to believe that, if the Democrats win control of the House in November, the chamber will vote on whether to begin the impeachment process no matter the outcome of Mr. Mueller’s investigation. So they want to sway Americans — and by extension, lawmakers.”
The Times quoted Rudy Giuliani, one of the president’s lawyers, as saying, “Nobody is going to consider impeachment if public opinion has concluded this is an unfair investigation, and that’s why public opinion is so important.” Politico reported on this strategy in May, writing: “President Donald Trump and his lawyers have made a strategic calculation that their fight against Special Counsel Robert Mueller is more political than it is legal. They’re banking that the lead Russia investigator will follow longstanding Justice Department practice that a sitting president can’t be indicted, and that the only real threat to Trump’s survival is impeachment.” Politico continued: “So long as that theory holds, Trump’s plan is to forcefully challenge Mueller in the arena he knows best — not the courtroom but the media, with a public campaign aimed at the special counsel’s credibility, especially among Republican voters and G.O.P. members of Congress.”
In May, CNN’s Dana Bash interviewed Giuliani, and she posited that the “Spygate” saga was “an intentional strategy to undermine the investigation, knowing that they, the investigators, the special counsel, it’s their policy not to talk. But you are very free to and are very aggressive about doing so.” Giuliani responded in part: “Of course, we have to do it in defending the president. We are defending — to a large extent, remember, Dana, we are defending here, it is for public opinion, because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach, not impeach. Members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, are going to be informed a lot by their constituents. So, our jury is the American — as it should be — is the American people.”
Yes, there is some impeachment fervor on the left, some that party leaders have tried to tamp down, fervor even in advance of Mueller’s findings. But there also appears to be very real impeachment fear in the Trump inner circle. One has to ask: Why exactly is impeachment front of mind for these people? If they were as innocent as they publicly proclaim, they would know that impeachment would be out of the question as a matter of fact and law. But that is apparently not the case. Do they believe that Democrats would take the politically disastrous step of moving to impeach Trump even if Mueller fully exonerated him? I don’t believe so. I believe that Trump is conducting himself as only a guilty man would, one who has a very real and well-founded fear that he is in imminent jeopardy.
Spinmeister Rudy
Spun by lead spinster Rudy, all this false bravado on the Sunday talk shows claiming they’re not worried about Cohen flipping, is just another attempt to fool their base into keeping them on their side (there are hints Cohen even fashions himself as the next John Dean who cracked open the Watergate case). And hardcore Trumpeters remain solidly in Trump’s camp, since they keep drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid. When that drink turns even more toxic as concrete evidence comes out from Mueller, we’ll find out how many keep drinking. More on Rudy’s shameless & ridiculous requests directed at Mueller are posted here from rudy-giuliani-reveals-dem
Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s lead defense attorney in the Russia investigation, set new terms for his client’s cooperation in the Russia probe. Before Trump agrees to testify under oath, Giuliani says he wants special counsel Robert Mueller to show evidence that Trump committed a crime, and that the president’s testimony is essential for Mueller to complete his investigation. The new stance reflects a shifting legal strategy in Trump’s camp, The New York Times reported on Friday night. The president’s lawyers had been cooperating with Mueller behind the scenes, despite Trump’s frequent public broadsides against the special counsel and the career prosecutors investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 US election. As part of that inquiry, investigators are looking into whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. Separately, Trump is also the focus of an obstruction-of-justice probe related to his actions while in office.
Still reporting on the Trump legal strategy, inside this next link report-trumps-lawyers-give-mue
President Trump’s legal team is now demanding that special counsel Robert Mueller provide proof that the president committed a crime before he’ll agree to sit down for an interview, The New York Times reports. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lead lawyer for the Russia investigation, reportedly said Mueller would also have to prove that the president’s testimony is crucial to wrapping up the investigation. Though Trump had previously vowed to cooperate with the probe, the ultimatum appears to be just the latest effort by his legal team to undermine it. Giuliani conceded that Mueller will probably not agree to the latest demands. “If they can come to us and show us the basis and that it’s legitimate and that they have uncovered something, we can go from there and assess their objectivity,” Giuliani told the Times. Behind the scenes, Trump’s legal team has also reportedly blocked Mueller’s team from interviewing White House chief of staff John Kelly, who is said to be willing to testify.
Great Article The GOP Should Take To Heart
This next article from a former GOP leader inside the-senate-i-led-put-country-o
(Bill Frist is a heart and lung transplant surgeon, former U.S. Senate majority leader and senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center.)
When I retired from the U.S. Senate in 2007 as its majority leader, my parting words were a prayer for my colleagues to rise above the passions of the moment and protect the institution as a bulwark for our country’s enduring values. The Senate I served in was not devoid of partisanship, nor should it be, but my hope was that patriotism would always take priority over party. It is with some trepidation that I offer thoughts on how the good people still serving in the Senate should address a current crisis, but staying silent is no longer an option. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is under assault, and that is wrong. No matter who is in the White House, we Republicans must stand up for the sanctity of our democracy and the rule of law.
Certainly, my former colleagues face difficult pressures. They go to work in a Washington that is divided. They want to ensure a Supreme Court that, like most of our citizens, understands that government power must be limited. They want a fair tax code that supports a growing economy. They want less regulation. By those measures, President Trump is a great partner at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. But we can’t look the other way as, tweet by tweet, with each new assault on the Justice Department’s independence, the bedrock principles of our party crumble.
I’m a Republican because I stand for small government and also, as a physician, for the dignity of every life. But I am also a Republican because I believe in the rule of law. Republicans must fight for that principle today — even if it means pushing back against a Republican administration. As a party, we can’t let the president or his allies erode the independence of the Justice Department or public trust in the vital work of law enforcement. That would be true even if the stakes were much lower, but it is overwhelmingly so when it comes to investigating foreign interference in our elections. Congress must ensure that Mueller is able to do his job without interference or intimidation.
Nobody knows what the special counsel’s investigation will conclude. I, for one, do not think the president colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 election. But I do believe Putin purposely tried to undermine our democratic process. It isn’t easy to tell a president of your own party that he is wrong. But the assault on Mueller’s investigation does not help the president or his party. When Trump talks about firing the special counsel or his power to pardon himself, he makes it seem as though he has something to hide. The president must remember that only Mueller’s exoneration can lift the cloud hanging over the White House.
The special counsel’s investigation is not about Trump. It is about our national security. Every American should be rooting for Mueller’s success in determining precisely how Russia interfered in our fundamental democratic process. I had no illusions about the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and I have none about Putin now. Mueller’s most recent court filings indicate that Putin is seeking to meddle in this year’s elections. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray — all Trump appointees confirmed by the Republican-led Senate — have also warned of foreign interference. We should heed these warnings and empower Mueller to see his important work through to its conclusion.
I have worried over the years about runaway legal authority, and I’ve battled against activist judges. I don’t worry about Robert Mueller. He is a lifelong Republican with a career of distinguished service running the Criminal Division of the Justice Department for President Ronald Reagan and serving as President George W. Bush’s FBI director, twice unanimously confirmed by the Senate. And his investigation is getting results: By any objective standard, he has moved swiftly, obtaining 23 indictments and five guilty pleas in just more than a year.
Congress must never abandon its role as an equal branch of government. In this moment, that means protecting Mueller’s investigation. We’re at our best as senators and Republicans when we defend our institutions. But more than that, it’s our best face as Americans. People around the world admire not just the material well-being of the United States but our values, too. The rule of law is something many die trying to secure for their countries. We can’t afford to squander it at home.
Manafort Update
One of Manafort’s court trials is scheduled to begin later this month. A couple positives the trial could produce is in restoring credibility to Mueller’s professional image, while also possibly offering the optics some Manafort crimes could easily extrapolate to Trump. While possible Trump campaign collusion with the Russians is not the focus of this trial, we did see filings suggesting possible coordination as seen in the start to the article manafort-trial-does-have-trump
Prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller intend to present evidence at the trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort that a banking executive allegedly helped Manafort obtain loans of approximately $16 million while the banker sought a role in the Trump campaign. Manafort faces trial on bank fraud and other financial charges in the Eastern District of Virginia beginning July 25. Until now, there had been no indication that his role in the Trump campaign would become part of the trial, and he had asked the judge to keep details about his ties to President Donald Trump out of the trial. Prosecutors say any alleged collusion with the Russian government won’t come up at the trial. The allegation of a possible quid pro quo came amid several court filings Friday as both sides count down the remaining weeks until the trial.
Trump’s Summits This Week May Again Bash Friends & Praise Enemies
The Putin summit could become a copycat of what happened with Jong Un in Singapore, giving away things for nothing in return, then spin the optics so Trumpeters back home will think the talks were a great success. As seen in the North Korea section below, Trump allowed the North Korean dictator to be seen on the world stage on equal footing with an American president, while signing a brief document Jong Un shows no signs of honoring. Meanwhile, Trump agreed to suspend military exercises with South Korea, while all the happy talk coming out of Singapore encouraged China to relax some of the strict sanctions, negating the dire urgency for North Korea to even need an agreement. The naive Trump might likewise give away the store with Putin, as these excerpts from trump-is-hinting-at-conce
Rumors of what kind of deal might be on the table are proliferating nevertheless. Some of them involve Ukraine. Trump and his national security adviser have both hinted that recognition of the Russian occupation of Crimea is on the table; Trump even repeats Russian propaganda about Crimea’s ethnicity and politics. Another was laid out in The Post by David Ignatius a few days ago: Trump may be planning to cede Syria to Putin, abandon U.S. allies on the ground and allow Russia’s client, the dictator, Bashar al-Assad, to reestablish control across the country, inflicting massive civilian casualties along the way.
In neither case is it clear what the United States would get in exchange for these major concessions. One version says Putin would promise to withdraw the Russian troops whose presence he denies from eastern Ukraine. Another says Putin would promise, somehow, to contain Iran, a country with which, in Syria, he is allied. Talk of this latter deal dates to the earliest days of the administration, back when Jared Kushner, all those months ago, sought a secret channel of communication with the Russian government.
In both Ukraine and Syria, the situation is extremely odd: The United States — still, in theory, the stronger power — appears to be negotiating to give up quite a lot in exchange for very little. The only explanation for U.S. determination to make a lopsided deal is Trump himself. Perhaps he has learned from his experience negotiating with North Korea: In Singapore he endorsed a dictator, got nothing except unenforceable promises and then came home to a hero’s welcome from Fox News. Or perhaps he still feels he owes something, after all, to the man who helped him win the presidency.
There is plenty at stake in the meetings starting this week, first with our NATO allies & then with Russia. These could be pivotal talks & we can only hope Trump is not manipulated & persuaded by a known adversary. His tweet-storm just distanced us from our NATO allies while playing right into Putin’s hands. Based on what we’ve consistently seen from our president, it doesn’t seem he has any clue who our friends are & who’s not. The situation is so head-scratching, we’re left to wonder if he’s been compromised by the Russians, so all we can do is wait for Mueller to tell us. But in the meantime, the critical NATO alliance is being threatened. Yes, it would be very helpful for NATO nations to up their share of spending on defense, but Trump’s animus goes beyond reason. These articles preview the meetings, as seen intrump-nato-putin_us & these excerpts from trump-summit-nato-russia:
President Trump’s next two summits, first with NATO allies in Brussels, then with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, will either restore American global leadership or kill it off, depending on how he plays our hand. Unity at NATO, followed by a firm encounter with Mr. Putin, would demonstrate American resolve to stand with allies and stand up to strategic competitors. Or Mr. Trump could squander all the power and leverage of the United States by abusing and dividing our allies, then lavishing praise and freebies on an autocrat he admires who is set on undermining our democracy and global position. It all depends which President Trump shows up in Brussels and Helsinki — the one his national security adviser says wants a strong NATO, or the man who regularly calls NATO “obsolete.”
Traditionally, an American president gains when he meets a Kremlin boss with the wind of allied unity at his back. If he uses the NATO meeting to coordinate his message to Moscow, he multiplies the impact by speaking for dozens of free countries, not just America. And a Trump-Putin summit is overdue. The mountain of problems we have with Russia requires leader-to-leader talks because Mr. Putin has neutered decision-making at all other levels of his government.
The leverage NATO gives Mr. Trump at the Putin summit will be wasted, however, if the message from Brussels mirrors the president’s presentation at the Group of 7 meeting last month: Allies are feckless free-riders, America doesn’t need them and it’s the planet’s autocrats who deserve our respect. Mr. Putin, the biggest winner from any disunity in NATO, is counting on the second outcome. The only additional thing he needs to make his Helsinki meeting a success is money. Here, Mr. Trump is holding a hand nearly as strong as Ronald Reagan’s in 1982 — if he plays it right. Mr. Putin survives on a governance model that requires $60-per-barrel oil, total political control of his citizenry and a kleptocratic stranglehold on the economy. The reform Russia needs is impossible without more power-sharing than he will allow.
This gives Mr. Trump considerable leverage in Helsinki if he plays our hand strongly, as Reagan would have. Rather than ceding Crimea, forgiving Mr. Putin’s interference in our elections and offering sanctions relief free, Mr. Trump — with NATO at his back — can make American diplomacy great again if he demonstrates to Mr. Putin that normal relations with us require civilized global behavior by Russia. The alternative — a NATO in tatters and a re-energized Mr. Putin — would leave America weaker and Mr. Trump the loser in the great power competition he himself has declared.
On a more humorous note, the creators of this baby blimp for the London protests also plan to take their helium-filled creature on a world tour: trump-baby-blimp-snowflake-rig
On Crimea, which Trump may not have heard of before 2014, his motivation is opaque. Perhaps special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will eventually provide an explanation. What’s striking, for now, is the degree to which Trump, as he converts the Republican Party into a cult of personality, has begun to turn around even such one-sided questions. Last week, just over a year after the Senate passed that bill writing Crimean sanctions into law — so that it would be harder for Trump to lift them — seven of its Republican members were in Moscow to express hope for “a new day” coming out of the Putin-Trump meeting, as Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) put it. What changed? Surely not the U.S. national interest.
North Korea Not Playing Along
It looks like Jong Un is stringing us along & pushing back on that vague document signed in Singapore. North Korea calls the U.S. attitude “regrettable” after Sec. of State Pompeo went over there for talks, so when Pompeo called those same talks “productive,” there’s an obvious difference of opinion between the two sides. It looks clear North Korea never intended to keep their denuclearization pledge, based on them beefing up their nuclear facilities since the Singapore talks & an established history of reneging on deals from 3 generations of Jong Un rule. And Pompeo putting a flowery spin on things makes the Trump administration seem desperate for positive talking points. Recall how Trump as soon as he got off the plane arriving home from Singapore, he actually had the gall to say North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat. Well, these articles below say otherwise, including north-korea-calls-u-
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo finished two days of talks with senior North Korean officials in Pyongyang on Saturday, telling reporters that the two countries agreed to continue discussions on denuclearization and the repatriation of the remains of Americans killed during the Korean War. The talks came amid growing concern among nuclear experts that North Korea is not taking steps toward denuclearization and uncertainty as to what President Trump and Kim Jong Un meant when they committed to it in Singapore last month.
Following Pompeo’s remarks before departing Pyongyang, North Korea’s foreign ministry said the talks with Pompeo were “regrettable” and accused the U.S. of making unilateral demands for denuclearization, The Associated Press reports. “We expected that the U.S. side would come with productive measures conducive to building trust in line with the spirit of the North-U.S. summit and [we] considered providing something that would correspond to them,” an unnamed foreign ministry spokesman said, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap. “The U.S. just came out with such unilateral and robber-like denuclearization demands as [complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization], declaration and verification that go against the spirit of the North-U.S. summit meeting.”
But Pompeo had said that his conversations with senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol were “productive” and that he had made progress “on almost all of the central issues.” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Pompeo did not meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as he has done on two previous visits to North Korea this year.
So it looks increasingly like the Singapore talks between Rocket Man & Dotard may have been more of a staged fraud. More reports on the chasm between the two sides come from north-korea-calls-denucle
President Donald Trump’s Nobel Prize talk may have been a bit premature. This week, the Trump administration pushed forward in its attempt to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula. Coming off an unprecedented summit in June, during which the president met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump sent a delegation to Pyonyang on Thursday to discuss denuclearization. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who led the tense negotiations on the U.S. side, insisted the talks were productive as he departed the North Korean capitol on Saturday. North Korea did not have the same experience, apparently. In a statement released Saturday, North Korea said its negotiations were “regrettable” and accused the U.S. of pressuring the country into a “unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearisation.”
The North Korean dictator is a brutal murderer & abuser of human rights, so how could our prez be so gullible as to think he’d keep his word. See another article on the dire status of the North Korean talks in excerpts from north-korea-calls-latest-
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came away from a two-day visit to North Korea on Saturday without meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un or securing a breakthrough in efforts to implement the denuclearization agreement signed by Washington and Pyongyang in Singapore last month….[He said the talks] were “productive” and he claimed progress on “central issues” between the two longtime adversaries. His rosy outlook was almost immediately rejected by North Korea’s foreign ministry, which called the U.S. attitude to the talks “regrettable” and accused the United States of making unilateral demands for denuclearization. Pompeo just hours earlier said the two sides engaged in “good-faith negotiations.” So North Korea is stalling on even the simplest promise made last month. Needless to say, this gives them more and more time to build out their nuclear program while the United States engages in endless futile talks over trivia.
Just for the sake of context, it’s worth noting that this is why treaty talks usually start at lower levels and only turn into presidential-level meetings toward the end, when the basics have been settled and the top guys can make decisions on a few remaining hard issues. Trump did it the other way around because it made good TV, but the result is that none of the basics have even been discussed, let alone settled, and even if the talks are done in good faith it will take years to do this. Unfortunately, there’s every reason to think they aren’t being held in good faith. You see, Kim Jong Un likes good TV too.
Who’s The Most Corrupt Member of Congress, Devin Nunes or Jim Jordan?
We’ll let the investigators & courts ultimately decide whether Jim Jordan deserves to land in jail. But we should all hope this most corrupt of all congressmen (or maybe he finishes a close second to Devin Nunes) gets booted out of Congress. This new sex scandal in the headlines probably gives Jordan the edge on Nunes in their race to the bottom. Based on the Jordan Rules on how the congressman is handling the Russian investigation, we should expect the same type of aggressive probe into this sex scandal emanating from the actions of a former Ohio State University athletic doctor, which are revealed inside jim-jordans-wrestling-d
We all knew Trump would immediately defend his congressional henchman. As a suspected sexual predator himself, with up to 20 women having accused him of abuse, Trump so easily dismisses the #MeToo movement & is quick to defend those like Jordan & Shine who may have been prominent enablers of sexual abuse. Those points are brought up inside to-the-president-metoo-
In April, the university announced that it was ordering an independent investigation into former sports physician Richard Strauss, who has been accused of groping athletes during appointments. Jordan said Friday that he will meet with investigators affiliated with Ohio State this week. As of Sunday evening, seven wrestlers had said that Jordan knew or must have known about Strauss’s alleged behavior or other sexually inappropriate conduct in the showers at Ohio State’s Larkins Hall. David Range, who wrestled for Ohio State in the late 1980s, said Jordan had to have known about the alleged misconduct because wrestlers discussed it frequently in the locker room when Jordan was present.
“Jordan definitely knew that these things were happening — yes, most definitely,” Range told The Washington Post on Saturday. “It was there. He knew about it because it was an everyday occurrence. . . . Everybody joked about it and talked about it all the time.” One of the most direct charges that Jordan knew came from Dunyasha Yetts, another former wrestler at the university, who told Politico on Friday that he once asked Jordan and head wrestling coach Russ Hellickson to accompany him to an examination with Strauss so the doctor wouldn’t touch him inappropriately. Democratic critics included Rep. Sean Maloney (D-N.Y.), who is running for New York attorney general. “This is the same Jim Jordan who as a Congressman has self-righteously demanded investigations of anything and everything under the sun,” Maloney tweeted Saturday. “Well, times’s up, Jim. We need to hear these victims and investigate Jim Jordan now.”
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