Thursday was a rough day for Donald Trump on the legal front.
Just after lunchtime, the Wall Street Journal reported that longtime money man and Trump Foundation CFO Allen Weisselberg has been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury as part of the Michael Cohen criminal probe. “Allen” was mentioned several times in the leaked recording of Cohen’s conversation with Trump about the planned payoff to Playmate Karen McDougal. Weisselberg was also deposed last year in connection with the investigation into alleged shenanigans at the Trump Foundation.
That’s a real problem for the President. Timothy O’Brien (who interviewed Weisselberg for a 2016 book called “TrumpNation: The Art Of Being The Donald” and who has written extensively on this) was out on Friday calling the Weisselberg subpoena “a momentous turn“:
Weisselberg has extensive knowledge of the Trump Organization’s operations. Trump’s trust in him was deep enough that he regularly had Weisselberg prepare his personal tax returns and sign off on the financial details of the company’s deals. He also had a prominent position inside the president’s troubled charitable foundation. And he, along with the president’s two eldest sons, oversees the trust that Trump set up to manage his interests in the Trump Organization while he’s in the White House.
Hours after the Weisselberg news hit, CNN reported that Cohen is prepared to tell Robert Mueller that the President knew ahead of time about the infamous Trump Tower meeting during which his son, his son-in-law and Paul Manafort met with Russians promising political dirt on Hillary Clinton. If true, that would contract more than a dozen explicit denials from Trump, his lawyers and his surrogates and would also appear to suggest that Don Jr. lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee last year.
As all of this news was hitting the wires, Trump was busy shrieking about imaginary economic miracles in Granite City, Illinois, where he spoke to a sad looking bunch of steel workers who have unfortunately been duped into believing that Trump’s policies can revive what is, in fact, a relic of America’s industrial past.
On Friday morning, Trump described that speech as “very emotional”, but as you can see from the following tweets, what the President is actually in his feelings about is the fact that Cohen (a man who Trump has variously insisted would never flip) is now prepared to talk to Robert Mueller.
Arrived back in Washington last night from a very emotional reopening of a major U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, Illinois, only to be greeted with the ridiculous news that the highly conflicted Robert Mueller and his gang of 13 Angry Democrats obviously cannot find Collusion…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2018
….,the only Collusion with Russia was with the Democrats, so now they are looking at my Tweets (along with 53 million other people) – the rigged Witch Hunt continues! How stupid and unfair to our Country….And so the Fake News doesn’t waste my time with dumb questions, NO,….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2018
…..I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr. Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?). He even retained Bill and Crooked Hillary’s lawyer. Gee, I wonder if they helped him make the choice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2018
The reference to the tweets there is an allusion to a New York Times piece out Thursday that indicated the special counsel is now considering whether to cite Trump’s tweets as evidence of witness tampering.
In case you were wondering whether the President is inclined to take questions from the media about the Trump Tower meeting, the answer is apparently “no”, because according to him, that’s “a waste of time”. Fortunately, prosecutors do not concur with that assessment and are going to keep “wasting time” on it for the foreseeable future, now with the help of Michael Cohen who at this point is probably angling to see how much time he can get knocked off of a potentially lengthy prison sentence. One certainly imagines that implicating a sitting U.S. president in collusion and obstruction would go a long way towards currying favor with the state.
Obviously, it is a terrible idea for Trump to be tweeting about this and the irony of castigating Mueller for looking at his tweets for evidence of obstruction and collusion in a three-tweet harangue about that very same obstruction and collusion is entirely lost on this president.
The reference to “taxi cabs” is an allusion to Yasya Shtayner, whose family owns Chicago Medallion Management Corp., which manages nearly 400 taxicabs. Cohen’s father-in-law loaned Shtayner millions of dollars over the past year and along with her husband Semyon, Yasya was identified in the warrant the FBI used in the April raid on Cohen’s offices and home.
One certainly imagines Trump is going to run out of excuses eventually.
So many prosecutors, so many sovereigns, so many venues, so many investigations, so many witnesses, so many crimes, just too much of all it for Trump to fire, pardon and tweet his way out of it.
Anyone familiar with investigations of this depth and breath and can look at this Trump hot mess and infer and deduce that there are crimes, evidence and witnesses out there that you and I have never heard of or conceived. There is evidence gathered by Western intelligence agencies that Mueller has and will use. There is evidence gathered by US intelligence agencies that Mueller has and will use. There have been and are more deep throats in the White House and Trump’s circle than you can imagine. There are wire intercepts that Mueller’s investigators have had and have in place that have yielded valuable evidence. That’s just the beginning.
The Mueller investigation has spawned, awakened and brought into the fore of its jurisdiction countless prosecutors and US Attorneys from DOJ, PA, NY, VA and NJ, the Attorneys General of NY, NJ, PA and VA, the DA of NYC, countless Grand Juries, and to date the indictments we have seen have been intentionally limited in scope so as to carve out any criminal accusations or involvement with Trump, his family or his businesses.
Why is that? Obvious and simple. Because any and all indictments of Trump and his clan or offers to Trump to resign and walk, etc., will come on the same day. That’s the day that Mueller will have completed all of his work and would be ready to be fired. And if Mueller is fired, all hell will break loose, because indictments will be filed in venues and by prosecutors that Trump had never imagined!!
Mueller, et al., have remained silent the entire time. You have only heard from the criminals and their supporters. After a while the silence let’s the mind wander from the obvious. The obvious is clear to me. That’s how I see it and I’m sticking to it.
And then you have Guilfoyle sharing his son’s dick pics https://www.theroot.com/donald-trump-jr-s-bae-kimberly-guilfoyle-left-fox-news-1827926271 that basically makes it a week.
“If Hillary Clinton were to be elected, it would create an unprecedented and protracted constitutional crisis. Haven’t we just been through a lot with the Clintons, right?”
November 2 in Orlando, FL
“Hillary is likely to be under investigation for many years, probably concluding in a criminal trial.”
November 4 in Atkinson, NH
“She’ll be under investigation for years. She’ll be with trials. Our country, we have to get back to work.”
November 4 in Wilmington, OH
“Hillary has engaged in a criminal massive enterprise and cover-ups like probably nobody ever before.”
November 5 in Reno, NV
“There’s virtually no doubt that FBI Director Comey and the great, great special agents of the FBI will be able to collect more than enough evidence to garner indictments against Hillary Clinton and her inner circle, despite her efforts to disparage them and to discredit them. If she were to win this election, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis. In that situation, we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial.”
November 5 in Denver, CO
“Her current scandals and controversies will continue throughout her presidency and we will make it honestly, look, it’s gonna be virtually impossible for her to govern. Now, the Republicans have talked very tough and the Democrats. It’s gonna be just another mess for another four years, folks. A mess. We’ve got to get back to work, right? I mean, we have to get back to work.”
November 6 in Minneapolis, MN
“First thing you should do is get rid of Clinton. Hillary Clinton will be under investigation for a long, long time for her many crimes against our nation, our people, our democracy, likely concluding in a criminal trial.”
November 6 in Moon Township, PA
Glad she isn’t POTUS we would be…………………..