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Collusion Is Possible
It has become an article of faith in some quarters on the right – well, most — that the Mueller investigation has found no evidence of collusion with Russia and has accordingly shifted gears to process crimes like lying to the FBI or obstruction of justice. Having decided that this must be true, many have called for Mueller to wrap it up.
But this requires a lot of wishful thinking.
Consider the sentencing memos. Most of the attention has focused on the payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. But the Office of Special Counsel advised a federal judge that Michael Cohen had committed other serious crimes. He “withheld information material to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.” He later came clean. Mueller’s office recommended that Cohen be given some credit for this, and included this wording: Cohen “voluntarily provided the SCO with information about his own conduct and that of others on core topics under investigation by the SCO . . . the information he provided has been credible and consistent with other evidence obtained in the SCO’s continuing investigation.”
The “core topic” under investigation is Russian interference in the election. The “other evidence” is unknown to us at this point, but it’s safe to assume that it’s significant, because Mueller would not rely on Cohen’s word alone.
In the sentencing memo about Michael Flynn, Mueller’s office noted that he was cooperating on three criminal investigations. Three.
This should give pause to those who say “If there were any evidence of collusion with Russia, we would have heard of it by now.” Not necessarily. The Mueller investigation has been the most silent of any in memory. He doesn’t leak. His spokesman is said to have the simplest job in Washington, saying “no comment.”
At least 14 people in Donald Trump’s orbit were approached by Russian agents during the campaign and transition. These included his children, his lawyer, his national security advisor, and business associates. His campaign chairman, Trump had reason to know when he hired him, was up to his eyeballs in oligarchs. Supposedly, when Trump learned of Paul Manafort’s extensive Russia ties in 2016, he said “I’ve got a crook running my campaign.” Today he paints Manafort as a martyr and ostentatiously dangles a pardon, even though we’ve since learned of Manafort’s close ties to an asset of Russian intelligence. And it’s worth asking again: If Mr. Trump was such a keen businessman, why didn’t he question Manafort’s willingness to work for free? Shouldn’t it have alarmed him to have someone so indebted to shady Kremlin associates so close?
President Trump has repeatedly denied any connections to Russia. In July, 2016 he told CBS “I mean I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.” And in September, he told a rally “I have nothing to do with Russia, folks. I’ll give you a written statement.”
You don’t have to credit the lurid gossip in the Steele dossier to know that those statements were lies. It has since come to light that his children and top advisors met at Trump Tower with a Russian peddling dirt on Clinton. Or just check the guilty pleas of Michael Cohen. Cohen now confirms that Trump was pursuing a Moscow tower deal until at least June of 2016. The Trump organization was hoping to get Vladimir Putin’s approval and endorsement of the idea, and were apparently considering doing business the Russian way – offering Putin himself the penthouse, valued at $50 million, as a loss leader. Trump signed a letter of intent to go forward with the project on October 28, 2015, the night of the third Republican presidential primary debate – in the midst of denials that he had anything to do with Russia.
Felix Sater, a Russian-born Trump business colleague, was working on this with Cohen. After the letter of intent was signed, Sater wrote to Cohen saying: “Everything will be negotiated and discussed not with flunkies but with people who will have dinner with Putin and discuss the issues and get a go-ahead. My next steps are very sensitive with Putin’s very, very close people. We can pull this off.”
They didn’t. But not for lack of trying. Roger Stone, a longtime Trump pal and self-styled dirty trickster, boasted of ties to Wikileaks. Others who were weirdly friendly toward the Kremlin included George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, and, of course, Donald Trump, Jr.
The reason so many people of low character are proving problematic to this president is that he has always attracted that sort. If he let them conspire a little against “crooked Hillary,” would that really be a shock?
Published in Law, Politics
I agree with you in that I too want border security which includes more modest wall, more regulatory reform, lower taxes, a stronger military, better trade, an expanding economy and more great judges.
But, I also want an honest and truthful President who leads and doesn’t bully. However, a plurality of the Party, aiding with antiquated “plurality wins all delegates” installed a Nominee who started his campaign with execrable Birtherism, played games with supporters of the Klan, called his opponents names, claimed that Ted Cruz’s father helped kill JFK, stopped delegates from freedom of conscience, and invoked a Cult of Personality at the convention by bellowing that only he could fix it. The evidence is now emerging that Trump and his campaign may have colluded with Russia, paid off a porn star and Playboy Bunny on the eve of voting, and lied about all of it.
Trump is Nixon on steroids. Once Nixon was removed, the Republican Party recovered and elected The Greatest President of the Twentieth Century. Once we remove Trump, we can again work for border security, more regulatory reform, lower taxes, a strong military, better trade, an expanding economy and more great judges.
Reagans dead. He’s not coming back. And news flash, he wasn’t perfect or a saint. He got played by the Democrats on amnesty and raising taxes ( remember ? 3 dollars in cuts that never happened for every dollar in taxes). You are the tiny minority in the party right now. Trump is overwhelmingly popular with Republicans. The Democrats aren’t the party of Scoop Jackson or Tip O’neill. It’s the Insane Clown Party of Pelosi, Ocasio, Waters and Nadler. It means to destroy any semblance of the America I love. And you helped them.
You Nevers are playing with fire. We are going to remember this sabotage and obstruction, and there will be hell to pay in 2020.
If not for the last paragraph I would give this comment a great big “like.” The threats, though, get a great big “don’t like at all.”
Reagan was around when Nixon went down. Which of the clowns on the GOP roster can hold a candle to Reagan? You’re delusional if you think there’s somebody of that caliber waiting in the wings.
What are you going to do? Shoot him?!! Gary is entitled to his thoughts. Why don’t you play nice?
Like Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, or Rand Paul?
Come on. Political hell to pay.
This makes as much sense as anything else you ever write. Gary is not running for anything.
The point is that this is a forum for people to discuss their thoughts on different things. Gary does not deserve the disrespectful comments that come his way, just because he does not think well of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania. If you are able to, why not tell someone why he is wrong, instead of always attacking?
Reagan was a Governor, and was basically untouched by the mess in Congress.
How about Arizona Governor Doug Ducey? He just won by a landslide, while four Trumpy statewide candidates lost.
How about Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, the most popular Governor in the U.S.?
How about Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, its first Republican to win re-Election since 1954?
How about Ohio Governor John Kasich? He beat an incumbent in 2010, and won re-election in 2014 by a 64-33% margin.
How about Nevada’s Brian Sandoval, who just finished two terms, and who was re-elected in 2014 by a 71-24% margin?
How about South Carolina’s Nikki Haley who also has foreign affairs experience from her service at the United Nation?
The winners are out there. They are Governors.
This is true to a point, but people like Cohen were with Trump before he ran for office so we can’t blame the Republican establishment for that one. (I especially despise that guy) However, that certainly was a factor when it came to people like Manafort, etc…
Trump is by most moral standards not a “high character” guy. Trump simply did what he did, doing business and conducting his personal life in a manner which he a billionaire playboy was accustomed for decades, with no idea he would ever run for, much less be elected President of the United States.
So now we have crazy Donald Trump with all his billionaire playboy baggage as our President and everyone is stunned, absolutely stunned Trump’s questionable past is surfacing when a Special Prosecutor is set up to go on an endless search with no probable cause for bad things Trump or those in his orbit have done in the past.
So far we have dubious campaign election contributions associated with NDA agreements with women Trump had affairs over a decade ago …. but give it time there is surely more to come.
Kasich is a bad example because he could not get elected as Governor today. I live in Ohio and Republicans everywhere cannot stand him for his abdication of conservative principles like expanding Medicaid and advocating Obamacare and open borders.
Much of his landslide victory in 2014 was due to having a little-known Democratic opponent who, during the campaign, was caught having sex in a car with a woman who was not his wife.
The response to your second paragraph from the future writes itself. Much of the Democrat’s landslide victory in 2020 was due to having Trump, who just prior to the last campaign, was caught having signed two non-disclosure agreements with a porn star and a Playboy Playmate of the month who were not his wife.
[You might be getting a little ahead of things to declare that there was a landslide Democratic victory in 2020, unless of course you are a time traveler.]
Two things.
#1 Trump’s indiscretions happened something like ten years before he ran for office, as opposed to Kasich’s opponent (during the campaign) or Bill Clinton (during office).
#2 Although I don’t like it either, Trump seems immune from most of the salacious charges because he has simply been accepted as being a morally repugnant guy, hence he is not held to as high a standard as other politicians. His incredibly good qualities tend to counterbalance his bad qualities, but not by much. If it wasn’t for that, he wouldn’t stand a chance, even with conservatives.
???!!
Care to elucidate?
Let’s talk about Karen McDougal, the December 1997 Playboy Playmate of the month, and thereafter “Playmate of the Year,” who had an ongoing affair with Trump for a matter of months.
According to her “Playmate Data Sheet,” she was born in Gary, Indiana on March 23, 1971.
Her ambitions were to model, act, and someday open a hearing center for children.
She writes “I respond to a man who is sensitive to a woman’s needs, a man who is creative romantically, yet who knows how to be wild at the same time.”
She says that her perfect date would be “A candlelight dinner in Paris, then a walk on the beach. At dusk, a hot-air balloon ride looking down at the city lights. Then my man tucks me into bed.”
I will let others detail her “Turn-Ons,” her “Turnoffs,” her height, weight, and, um, “measurements,” which are all on her “Playmate Data Sheet.”
She was a real person, who Trump used and discarded after several months.
Trump is the first politician of any sort to have successfully battled and hobbled the corrupt left-wing Press. He defers to the staunchest conservative sources when naming Federal Judges. He has been rolling back the labyrinth of business regulations implemented by Obama and others. He has been the strongest President to publicly fight back against the U.N.’s vacuous record on human rights. He lets the military do their job without restricting them with passive “rules of engagement” orders. He is an equal to Reagan when it comes to intimidating murderous foreign dictators.
One of his best qualities is simply doing the incredibly obvious (and overwhelmingly popular with Americans) and not backing down under the wailing and gnashing of teeth by his detractors. For instance – Moving the Israeli embassy, cutting taxes, backing out of the Paris Climate Accord, advocating for border control, calling terrorists and thugs what they are, running a transparent White House, and answering Press questions directly and often.
Now I invite you to list Trump’s bad qualities.
See Comments ## 31 & 47.
I am so sorry to hear about this delicate innocent naive woman who was so savagely taken advantage of. Must have been horrible.
Definitely doesn’t know any geography so that you can have a candlelight dinner in Paris followed by a walk on the beach. And sounds like Hefner discarded her faster than Trump.
I got yer collusion and obstruction right here.
Trump-haters will ignore this, because they are devoted to the narrative that Robert Mueller is an angel sent from heaven to save us from the Orange Man.
Mueller probe wiped Strzok phone before giving it to investigators
Probably didn’t even realize that Trump is married. Who was using whom to the tune of approximately $150K?
One could be very economical on that, and just say that he lacks any sort of innate caring about others, preferring instead to lash out at anyone who does not shower him with compliments. In short, he is an amoral men, with little character, and no sense of how he might hurt people, with his over-the-top rhetoric towards people who displease him. I could list many examples of these, but I have a life.
And this, by the way, is what I was getting at. I agree with you on his policies. Many of them, anyway. But I was after personal qualities. I love his moving the embassy, for example. I do not love his rhetoric regarding the press. Many of those people may even deserve it, but that is not his job. He is the President of The United States, for example. Can we stop the childish impulse to get even? I want a man as my president; not some overgrown teenager, who seeks to rebel against his parents! It has not helped anyway. His rants have only made sure that much of the press will continue bashing him.
And it wasn’t even an American-made car.
I would quibble with you on the lines I have bold-faced in your comment.
Since when is it the President’s job to care about others? Caring is an excellent trait, but I thought the President’s job has mostly to do with protecting the country, administration, foreign policy, signing laws, hiring people, firing people, and so on. It is abundantly clear that he does care about the American people in general even if he treats some individuals with contempt. Caring is the job of nurses and social workers. I am reasonably sure that Obama did not particularly care about the American people in general, otherwise he would not have hidden so much from them. He only cared that they should follow his leftist philosophy.
You may think that caring is his job, but you don’t think part of his job should be maligning the Press, even when it is deserved. Isn’t maligning the Press part of the President’s job to protect the country from disinformation?
Karen McDougal won $100,000 as being the Playmate of the Year.
She lives in Phoenix and LA. Should we invite her to the next Arizona Meet-Up?
Those that want us to take the Trump Russian collusion narrative seriously never explain the coincidence of Glen Simpson meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya both the day before and the day after the Trump Tower meeting with Don Jr. There is a lot more going on here than the case Mona is laying out.
There are some very interesting things going on that Mona does not have any curiosity about.
Can you afford her price? If so, go ahead.
Nationwide the GOP looks a lot like the California GOP did 15-20 years ago. On the Cal GOP’s watch, Orange County is now solidly Democrat. There was no effective on the ground effort to counter the Dems’ now legal because California is a supermajority one party state harvesting of votes from a voter pool increasingly registered through the DMV’s flawed system.
Stephen Kruiser wrote at PJM:
What have the Dems wrought?
Guns:
Crime:
Politics:
And which has national name recognition other than Nikki Haley? Reagan was a household name for decades before he got into politics.
And which of them has a firm base of support within the party or within the country?