New York state prosecutors have put together a criminal case against Paul Manafort that they could file quickly if the former chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign receives a presidential pardon.
New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is ready to file an array of tax and other charges against Manafort, according to two people familiar with the matter, something seen as an insurance policy should the president exercise his power to free the former aide.
I’m not so sure. He might redact stuff even if he’s completely written his final report, on the basis that there should be a DoJ review of material before it is made public. He is the ultimate by-the-book guy, and if the book says he should redact something, he will redact it.
I don’t know anything about anything, but if if they can make a case on other crimes Manafort committed, why aren’t they doing so? He should be hit with those charges no matter the outcome of his current issues. They’re still crimes, and he should still be held accountable for them.
If he’s already spending the rest of his life in jail - spend those resources on other criminals. Like, you know, the Trump Organization.
Yesterday, on the PBS Newshour McCabe was interviewed
- Judy Woodruff:
You do write extensively in the book, Andrew McCabe, about after you became the acting director of the FBI, after the president had fired James Comey, that the president was aggressively seeking assurances of personal loyalty from you.
And you also write he is the most prolific liar you have ever encountered.
That is saying something from somebody like you, who spent your career dealing with notorious criminals and terrorists.
- Andrew McCabe:
It is.
It’s remarkable. It’s the kind of thing I think that people should think about more often as they — as they reassess and evaluate where we are as a nation. The fact that the president himself stands before this country on a daily basis and says things that many of us know are not true is just — I don’t remember ever living through a time like this.
It’s — it’s just incredible.
He has surrounded himself with the most prolific liars in the country.
Not only that the President and his entire team lies on a daily basis, but the Republican political machine feverishly supports him anyways. It’s just baffling. If Clinton or Obama had literally lied every day, all day long, about everything then I’d be railing against them. It’s just absurd.
Yeah, I expect some of the sources and the like are going to be classified if nothing else.
This piece from Marcy Wheeler is very interesting and seems to be flying more or less under the radar.
Summary: Evidence suggests Russia paid Trump a $300m bribe via an investment fund, maybe one owned by Qatar. Mueller has subpoenaed the company, and they have in turn appealed to SCOTUS on the grounds that they’re a sovereign government. The Solicitor General has taken the lead on fighting the appeal and is the sole signatory on their filing. This is unusual — him being the sole signatory — which suggests he’s running interference to protect the Mueller investigation.
Should be fun day on twitter. Or hell. Probably hell.
Holy shit. Here you go. (Not sure if this was posted in another thread…)
(Cohen’s opening statement testimony, apparently, to be given tomorrow. Grab some popcorn.)
And to be very clear, Michael Cohen is going to enter into evidence documentation in the form of a check signed by the President of the United States implicating that president in felony campaign finance fraud, a crime for which Michael Cohen will be going to jail. Let’s re-state that: Cohen’s 36-month prison sentence was assigned to him on the basis of campaign finance law violations. His convictions for tax evasion and lying to congress resulted in a two-month sentence to be served simultaneously.
7 pages in… and… wow…
Yeah. There’s all kinds of stuff in there. Trump knowing in advance that Wikileaks was going to dump a bunch of Clinton emails, Trump working the Trump Tower Moscow project throughout the campaign…
Exciting, but I don’t see how a check from Trump to Cohen proves anything. Trump surely didn’t write “for Stormy payoff” in the note area.
It’s August of 2017. The President has his own counselors and the WH Counsel office.
Why’s he writing a check for $35,000 to Michael Cohen? And especially a check in the amount that matches reimbursements made earlier in the year to Cohen for the same purpose?
Also part of this: they’ve got Cohen’s bank statements on all of his accounts. If this was just a routine check being written, there will be others like it from Trump. I’m guessing that Cohen doesn’t have a lot of lump sum $35,000 deposits on a checking account controlled by the President of the United States in his financial statements. Maybe he does…but it seems pretty unlikely to me.
FWIW, Hasen also thinks there are legal explanations for the check that Trump can use.
Thread here:
Just an FYI, in the open hearing Cohen cannot answer questions on any Russian conspiracy. This is about all the other trump shit (which is likely more a legal threat to trump than Russia.) Cohen did testify behind closed doors on Tuesday.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/431732-cohen-grilled-by-senate-intelligence-panel
In cryptic comments shortly before re-entering the room around 5:30 p.m., Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the committee’s top Democrat, said that nothing he heard from Cohen “dissuades” him from his view of the investigation’s gravity.
“When this investigation started, I said it may be the most important thing that I’m involved in in my public life in the Senate,” Warner told reporters. “Nothing I have heard today dissuades me from that view.”
I wish people like this would stop with the legal baloney.
Impeachment is a political process. They can impeach him at any time that they want, and the evidence against Trump and his organization is so massive that any other President in the history of the US would have retired by now (or faced impeachment). It’s only Trump’s shamelessness - and the GOP’s open embrace of authoritarianism - that has stopped President Pence.
The flip side of this is that the evidence against Trump doesn’t matter; as long as the base holds firm, the GOP will refuse to impeach.
Because the core issue is still Russia. Working with the GRU has been confirmed for multiple people publicly, and this appears to indicate Trump was in full knowledge of that.
Impeachment may be political, but is treason?