Still wildly implausible, IMO. But wonderful to contemplate.
In 2020, when almost the whole family has been indicted, I imagine this clandestine night-time meeting on a pier someplace, with Barron handing a satchel full of cash to Mueller…
Well, I find it quite plausible that DTJ committed crimes and Mueller has enough evidence of this to indict. I guess the only stretch is that they would go ahead with this when it’s the President’s son?
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/11/politics/trump-lawyers-preparing-answers-mueller-questions/
(CNN) - President Donald Trump’s legal team is preparing answers to written questions provided by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The move represents a major development after months of negotiations and signals that the Mueller investigation could be entering a final phase with regard to the President.
The questions are focused on matters related to the investigation of possible collusion between Trump associates and Russians seeking to meddle in the 2016 election, the sources said. Trump’s lawyers are preparing written responses, in part relying on documents previously provided to the special counsel, the sources said.
[…]
Additionally, the two sides have still not come to agreement on whether the President will be interviewed in person by investigators who are also probing whether Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey.Asked on Thursday about answering Mueller’s questions, Trump again signaled his willingness to sit down for an interview with Mueller or provide written responses – the option much preferred by his attorneys.
Please, please let Drumpf sit down for an in person interview with Mueller’s team.
If it’s the lawyers answering the questions, does that mean that if Trump lies/lied to them about what occurred, they are the ones perjuring themselves?
This is a great (but long) piece.
The enigma, for now, remains an enigma.
This is transparently a Trump/Giuliani talking point and not based on reality. (Giuliani has constantly pretended that if Trump answers Mueller’s questions then Mueller either needs to charge Trump immediately afterwards or end his investigation instantly because, ummmmmm …)
God damn it, Ecuador.
Gotta give him internet so he can collude with the Russians again.
Former Trump campaign associate Carter Page filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against the Democratic National Committee and its law firm, which commissioned the infamous Steele dossier.
Page filed the suit in federal court in Oklahoma against the DNC, the law firm, Perkins Coie, and two of its partners, Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann.
Perkins Coie, which also represented the Hillary Clinton campaign, is the firm that hired Fusion GPS, the opposition researcher that investigated Donald Trump’s links to Russia.
Elias was Perkins Coie’s main contact to Fusion GPS, which was founded by three former Wall Street Journal reporters.
Thoughts on the previous two posts:
Why does the “commissioned by the DNC thing continually go unchallenged? Wasn’t it commissioned by a Republican during the primaries and then taken over by the DNC after Trump won the nomination?
As for Cohen, I feel like this goes hand in hand with his whole “I’m a Democrat now,” thing. He’s a criminal and a dummy but it sounds like the latter but is working in Mueller’s favor as he’s throwing himself whole hog into the whole take down Trump thing.
He is a criminal, but he also probably feels betrayed by the guy he covered for his entire life. If there’s any way back to the “good” side, it’s probably through Mueller.
Yes Fusion was originally commissioned by a GOP team in the primaries.
Well, and we need to remember he is likely on the hook for a bunch of charges, and his extraordinary cooperation with the FBI will probably help in his sentencing, or any plea deal he takes.
It really does seem like he feels like Trump threw him under the bus, so he has decided to strap himself in “Cape Fear” style and ride it till the end.
You get the impression, looking at him, that he’s super insecure and craves approval from whoever will give it to him. Now that Trump has cut him off, his new BFF willl be Mueller
No president since Andrew Johnson has so aggressively deployed racial provocation as a political strategy. Woodward has a little more to say on that subject than about corruption, perhaps because Cohn did not appreciate Trump’s racism. But not much more. And zero about Trump’s abuse of women. Although The Wall Street Journal reported the Stormy Daniels nondisclosure agreement as early as January 2018, her name appears nowhere in Fear .
To the very last page of Fear , Woodward disparages the significance of the Trump-Russia connection. Trump’s blurting of high-level U.S. secrets to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office? Not here. Trump’s no-minutes-taken conversations with Vladimir Putin at the G20 meeting in Hamburg in July 2017? Nope. The accelerating exposure of the falsity of the various accounts of the Trump Tower meeting? On that, Woodward acts as stenographer for the Trump defense, as offered by Trump’s then-lawyer John Dowd.
“You guys tell me where the collusion is. And don’t give me that chickenshit meeting in June,” Dowd said, referring to Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower.
“That’s a nothing. There’s no collusion. And the obstruction? It’s a joke. Obstruction’s a joke. Flynn? I mean, Yates and Comey didn’t think he lied.”
Dowd’s characterization goes unrebutted by any other source, and Woodward doesn’t fact-check Dowd’s claims for his readers. Indeed, I count not a single instance in the whole book where a factual claim by a Woodward source is assessed or evaluated in any way. Woodward is scathing about Trump’s own lack of truthfulness. But if a Trump untruth is accepted and repeated by a Woodward source, Woodward will reproduce it in full and without qualm.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-rosenstein-question
The more you read this Bloomberg report on the Mueller probe, the more questions it raises. Mueller may be prepping a report of some sort soon after the midterms. But he’s also not close to being done with the probe. The biggest news, as far as I can see, is the hint that Rod Rosenstein is losing patience with the probe and is pressuring Mueller to wrap it up.
Here’s the paragraph in question.
Rosenstein has made it clear that he wants Mueller to wrap up the investigation as expeditiously as possible, another U.S. official said. The officials gave no indications about the details of Mueller’s conclusions. Mueller’s office declined to comment for this story.
It’s certainly not a terribly detailed report. But we should not ignore the context around it – which comes soon after Rosenstein was apparently on the verge of being fired and then seemingly repaired his relationship with Trump. It also comes in the context of escalating signs that Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be fired soon after the November election. Rosenstein may be too; or maybe that is hanging in the balance. Remember that the right-wing House Republicans who were threatening Rosenstein’s impeachment almost daily have gone quiet.
There’s not a lot here to go on. But we should watch this closely.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/judge-denies-manafort-request-wear-suit
The judge in Paul Manafort’s Virginia trial denied the former Trump campaign chairman’s request to wear a suit for his next hearing on Oct. 19, and “all subsequent hearings,” arguing that Manafort should be treated no differently than other defendants who are in custody.
“Defendants who are in custody post-conviction are, as a matter of course, not entitled to appear for sentencing or any other hearing in street clothing,” Judge T.S. Ellis wrote in the court order on Tuesday. “This defendant should be treated no differently from other defendants who are in custody post-conviction.”