No fucking shit. I’ve grown to hate news and social media speculation so much in the last couple years.
Think of it this way. If they keep claiming that the investigation is winding down and it’ll come out tomorrow, sooner or later they will be proven right.
Seems there is a lot revealed-by-being-redacted in the newly unsealed Cohen search warrants. Likely to make a certain prolific tweeter nervous.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/19/politics/michael-cohen-warrant-documents/index.html
The materials related to the campaign finance contribution scheme are entirely redacted in the documents, and there does not appear to be extensive justification that prosecutors have made visible to the public that describes their reasoning for looking at Cohen’s phone and email communications.
Instead, in describing to a federal judge the probable cause they had to investigate Cohen’s campaign-finance scheme, investigators write almost 20 pages of detail that are all redacted.
The Manhattan US Attorney’s Office and FBI “are investigating a criminal violation of the campaign finance laws by Michael Cohen, a lawyer who holds himself out as the personal attorney for President Donald J. Trump. As detailed, there is probable cause to believe that REDACTED,” they wrote to the judge.
Uh oh. Time for an orange shitstain with a 2nd grade education to retweet a bunch of racists again.
Interesting wrinkle (from one of those continually updating pages at cnn.com):
Prosecutors used a new law Trump signed to get data from Cohen’s Gmail
From CNN’s Marshall Cohen
Federal prosecutors used a new law signed by Trump to go after his former fixer Michael Cohen, court filings reveal.
Investigators in the Southern District of New York obtained a search warrant to access Cohen’s Gmail account in February 2018. Google turned over some documents, but the tech giant “declined to produce data that it stored on computer servers located outside of the United States,” according to an affidavit submitted to the court by an FBI agent working on Cohen’s case.
Weeks later, Trump signed the CLOUD Act into law, which gave US law enforcement more legal pathways to pursue data stories overseas. The provision was tucked into the $1.3 trillion spending bill Trump signed to avoid a federal government shutdown.
With the new law on the books, federal prosecutors went back to court in and asked for another warrant to get the materials that Google refused to turn over.
In an April 2018 affidavit, the FBI agent argued that “providers are required to disclose data even if it is stored abroad” under the new law. The judge approved the new search warrant later that day, giving investigators access to additional information from Google, including Cohen’s emails, attachments, address book and files stored on Google Drive.
Meanwhile…
You don’t say…
I wonder if maybe Barr is surprised by what has happened, now that he’s been briefed on the actual status of the Mueller investigation so far.
My guess, as well. Barr evidently does not want to be directly in charge of Mueller, which will drive Trump crazy. Barr must have a good reason for this.
Despite Barr being a partisan, I do not believe that he is a totally corrupt lackey. The dude has a fairly extensive history with the DOJ. He’s not a traitor to America.
I’m not as close with him as you are, but he’s a Trump appointee. So fuck him until he proves he’s anything but a stooge.
The fact he also knows and likely respects Mueller probably plays a role too.
I hope you’re right, but this sounds a little like counting our chickens already.
Perhaps.
Barr may indeed not be a traitor. And he’s pretty competent, too. But he is not a nice guy, either.
As GTE general counsel (while I was at GTE Labs), he exploited his connections with the government as former attorney general to utterly crush the nascent CLEC industry through a combination of litigation and regulation changes, preserving the profitability of ILECs like GTE from competition.
Ehh…
Disagreements regarding executive authority to issue emergency declarations isn’t the same thing as actual treason.
It’s problematic to suggest that it is, because it gives cover to people like Trump who actually are betraying the country.
He put on his #MAGA hat and perpetuated the gas-lighting that there’s a crisis at the border. Does perpetuating a lie to the American people to promote a racist agenda make him a traitor to America?
Ehh…
No, it’s not the same. It’s troubling that you don’t see the difference.
You’re so cute sometimes…
Deliberately promoting or implementing policies destructive to the commonwealth isn’t treason. It can be a lot worse than treason, because many acts of treason have less severe consequences.