A word omission keeps this from making sense to me.
I think he meant to start #3 with If.
Yep, sorry. “if”…
But honestly, Chris Christie made a good point on the Chris Hayes show tonight on MSNBC. Mueller’s purview here is kind of limited too. So it also makes sense that he’s handing off other stuff he finds to the SDNY, because the Southern District can do whatever they want and go wherever things take them.
So it may be that Mueller’s team is trying to stay focused on a very narrow range – even if that range really doesn’t end up being the blockbuster I think we’ve hoped it might be. But he can pass on stuff like this kind of felonious corruption and they can go nuts with it if they like.
Yeah, this is important. Unlike Ken Starr, Mueller seems to be pretty intent on sticking to the spirit of his commission. If in the course of his investigation he finds evidence of a crime that doesn’t fall into his (fairly broad) purview, he hands it off to someone else to deal with.
Smart… which is a word you typically associate with Mueller.
Buzzfeed News today published a bunch of Trump Moscow (the tower) documents plus a timeline
Maybe interesting (of course, also maybe not) in relation to all the sealed stuff now in the hands of the Supreme Court related to an un-named ‘state-owned business’ - 60.9% of VTB is owned by a division of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development
From: Felix Sater
To: Michael CohenSubject: Please call me
Please call me I have [REDACTED] on the other line.
He needs a copy of your and Donald’s passports they need a scan of every page of the passports. Invitations & Visas will be issued this week by VTB Bank to discuss financing for Trump Tower Moscow. Politically neither Putins office nor Ministry of Foreign Affairs cannot issue invite, so they are inviting commercially/business. VTB is Russia’s 2 biggest bank and VTB Bank CEO Andrey Kostin, will be at all meetings with Putin so that it is a business meeting not political. We will be invited to Russian consulate this week to receive invite & have visa issued.
Have some more.
The threat has been growing for months and months. When will it finally hit a nice comfortable size for smacking his ass? Over the past two years we’ve had literally dozens of indicators that things are building up and seem to show an intense level of corruption and criminal activity. Ready for this to finally be over, with the whole family rotting in jail where they belong. Lock them up!
So a hypothetical question. If Trump is removed from office and then prosecuted, and has to serve jail time (highly unlikely to happen), would the Secret Service have to offer him protection in jail?
I would imagine they would come to some kind of security arrangement like that.
Still, I don’t think we should imprison any US President, even if it turns out he deserves it. That just puts us one step closer to permanent political chaos. We need to stay on this side of that Rubicon.
Honestly, I hope Pence/ Harriss/ Warren/ Whoever pardons him. I also hope he ends up bankrupt.
I used to think this.
I have revised my belief.
This is just wrong. The reason the Reagan team broke the law (Iran / Contra) was because Nixon got away with it. The reason the Bush team broke the law (warrantless wiretapping, torture) is because the Reagan team got away with it. The reason the Trump team breaks the law now is because we looked forward, not backward, instead of prosecuting members of the Bush team. At some point people in power have to be held to the same legal standard as everyone else, or they become lawless.
I don’t understand this sentiment at all.
No one should be above the law. Just because someone has once served as a US President, shouldn’t give them immunity from serving time for the crimes they’ve committed.
If you believe this, you might as well go back to the monarchy that your forefathers fought a long war to be rid off, because the only difference then is that your monarch is elected. And honestly, inherited monarchs under a constitutional system seem to work a lot better at this point than the corrupt doofuses that get elected to the Presidential posts around the world.
That’s all folks.
What if I believe in diplomatic immunity?
Even if it is nominally for “national unity” or to promote some ideal of democratic virtue, creating a de-facto chief executive above the law will create a strong perverse incentive for the worst people and the most criminal enterprises to capture that role.
That is essentially what happened to Russia: it is not just another enemy nation, it is a country with a leader and government which has been completely captured by it’s own internal mafia enterprise. Mafia-ocracy? We are only a few constitutional checks away from that ourselves now.
I’m not fan of diplomatic immunity, but it’s is an unfortunate necessity to maintain the diplomatic system between hostile states (was needed during the cold war and may soon become a necessity again, seeing as how we’re entering a period with renewed tensions).
So I agree with the intent of diplomatic immunity (because hostile states talking together is better than those two states not talking), but think the current implementation is flawed and way too open to abuse.
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law– Hamlet, Act III, Scene III
That is the most maddening thing of all – the idea that you can commit a crime to attain political office, and then that office itself insulates you from the consequences of that crime.
Once we start jailing leaders, it’s not going to stop. The GOP will follow right along.
And what happens when the guy commanding the most powerful military in history is told that he faces jail when he leaves office? You want to roll those dice?
This is maddening and unjust, yes. But justice is not the most important priority.