Donald Trump is going to go ahead and double down in the face of a Mueller investigation that is likely to get more aggressive going forward.
Hours after Trump’s former campaign chairman and a long-time associate were indicted on 12 counts including “conspiracy against the United States,” the President said this:
Mr. President, with all due respect (and that’s a misnomer because you are due absolutely nothing in the way of respect from America), your associates are being indicted for conspiring against the country you run. That’s called “treason.” And the best you can come up with is a tweet about “Crooked Hillary and the Dems”?
Give me a break. And he went further:
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”
Trump has a decision to make. In all likelihood, this is going to get worse and you’ve got to think that Michael Flynn is next. After that, the dominos really start to fall and the walls start to close in.
He’s either going to have to fire Mueller and risk a constitutional crisis or sit idly by and tweet while Mueller indicts associate after associate after associate. It has no doubt occurred to the President that when faced with charges of conspiring against America, one of these people is going to flip. That’s inevitable.
In what looks like the first example of just that, moments ago we learned that George Papadopolous, a former campaign adviser to Trump, secretly pleaded guilty October 5 to making false claims to the FBI.
BREAKING: Former Trump campaign advisor George Papadopolous has pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI agents. pic.twitter.com/VXZKTOmK8m
— ABC News (@ABC) October 30, 2017
Specifically, according to Bloomberg, Papadopoulos “told investigators he learned Russians possessed thousands of emails about Hillary Clinton prior to joining President Trump’s campaign, when in fact he learned of them after being told he would become a Trump adviser”, according to Justice Department document.
Special Counsel Mueller appears to have a cooperating witness, George Papadopoulos. That is significant. Time will tell how significant.
— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) October 30, 2017
So who the hell is Papadopoulos? Well here’s a reminder from WaPo and do note that I have stripped any semblance of bias from these excerpts (i.e. this is just who the guy is and what he did):
Three days after Donald Trump named his campaign foreign policy team in March 2016, the youngest of the new advisers sent an email to seven campaign officials with the subject line: “Meeting with Russian Leadership – Including Putin.”
The adviser, George Papadopoulos, offered to set up “a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump,” telling them his Russian contacts welcomed the opportunity, according to internal campaign emails read to The Washington Post.
Campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis wrote that he thought NATO allies should be consulted before any plans were made. Another Trump adviser, retired Navy Rear Adm. Charles Kubic, cited legal concerns, including a possible violation of U.S. sanctions against Russia and of the Logan Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from unauthorized negotiation with foreign governments.
[…]
Undeterred, Papadopoulos alerted then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in an April email that he was receiving “a lot of calls over the past month” about arranging a Russia meeting.
“Putin wants to host the Trump team when the time is right,” he wrote on April 27.
The only other option is for Trump to start pardoning people, but remember, pardon power is supposed to be an act of mercy, not a tool to be used to insulate the presidency from criminal charges. If he starts pardoning people, it’s difficult to imagine that it won’t create the same kind of turmoil that firing Mueller would invariably create.
Lock him up, lock him up.
Of course Trump cannot fire Mueller to get out from under the Russian Interference investigation. When Nixon fired Archibald Cox as special prosecutor in the Watergate investigation, the resulting backlash quickly ended Nixon’s defense by even his most avid supporters.
Trump is a survivor of hundreds of lawsuits, a number of bankruptcies, and failed marriages. He will huff and puff, and tweet, for effect, but will carefully work out a strategic retreat. His failures throughout his middle aged years left him with a trophy wife and the Presidency of the U.S. at age 70.
He can pardon Manarfort and Gates, but what good will that do? Money laundering and tax evasion took place in VA and NYS. in both states willful tax evasion are serious felonies. Both states have democrats serving as AG, and we already know that the NY AG is working with Mueller, as well as the Manhattan DA, Cyrus Vance, Jr. (who already has gotten his besmirched because of the Trumps and could use this opportunity to level that field). Those same counterbalances may be present to criminally expose Ivanka and Don Jr., have with regard to actions they took involving real estate deals that occurred in NYC in 2012. Finally, Trump himself is alleged to be exposed to criminal charges in NYS and NYC involving money laundering and tax evasion, that both Vance and the NY AG, Schneiderman, have jurisdiction over.
This is in the early stages of this story, i.e., perhaps the 10 yard line, which Mueller got to quite quickly, and I bet he could have brought more to it if he wanted to.
Patience and patience is required. It’ll be well worth it.
So the politics of the AG in NY is why the wicked, crooked Hillary (and the NY banksters) go scot-free? Oh well, she’ll get what’s coming later as there’s a place in hell reserved for her.
Here’s my thoughts, maybe a little weird but it’s how I roll (my kids will laugh at that!). What if all these smart guys who commit crimes like that convoluted money laundering scheme of Manafart and Gates and they are hooked up with other smart guys who have a much bigger desire, like Putin wants world domination. All those people also have links to other smart ones that run large Russian banks. Then along comes dumbass who just wants everyone to like him, to applaud him, to make him rich rich richer so people are completely fooled into how he must be successful to have so much money and such a world traveler.
Now, smart group #1 sees dumbass for what he is — a pretender, a con who can be conned, even easier if you just tell him how great he is…so they make him president and he is so enamored with himself that he truly believes he won the election and no one helped him because he did not need their help because he is smart and knows good words and always wins. He is easily fooled and used, controlled by Putin and not even realize what is happening to him and is defiant and angry when accused of collusion.
You would have to believe that trump is really a smart guy to conceal all the corruption and collusion — I don’t think he is smart enough. His achievements are simply taking advantage of people, cheating and lying and financially beating them into submission — tactics of a bully not a stealth criminal genius. Hell, he isn’t even afraid of being accused of deeply corrupt tactics but is raving angry that people don’t envy or adore him.
So, think about that. In his mind, he did not collude with Russia and everyone lies about him except those guys at Fox News. He is not as corrupt as he would need to be to play with group #1. He is simply more incompetent, ignorant and delusional that anyone realizes (anyone except Putin).
Tax evasion is a noble, honorable thing. Starve the beast! It’s the last best hope against bloated, out-of-control government. A tax revolution a la the boston tea party.
It’s not even a crime where I am. Rather, tax evasion is categorized as political. Try extraditing someone for tax evasion; ain’t gonna happen.
Irb, “where you am” and tax evasion seems to be optional, it sounds like magicians conjure up your public libraries, roads, fire departments, police departments, public schools, public hospitals, bridges, tunnels, sewers, water systems, fire hydrants, public airports, and the like. Must be great having magicians.