Russian Connection 4: Do Not Congratulate

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

Rudy is telegraphing that Trump will exercise the nuclear option if Mueller goes after Ivanka.  

I have no doubt that Mueller and his team are aware of this. I am wondering if they would actually tighten the noose around Dumpy first, then go after Barbie, Udvay, and Quesay. I figure he'll throw Junior and Eric under the bus gladly if it comes down to them vs. him. He might hesitate about Barbie, but I bet in the end, he'll try to save his own skin over that of his children. I'm also guessing Mueller's team probably has enough to go after the terrible trio, but are keeping that in the back pocket for now, continuing to catalog all the idiotic crap Dumpy and his surrogates keep saying and tweeting to implicate everyone in his orbit.

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[fraurosena]

Rudy Giuliani is simply the gift that keeps on giving.

 

[fraurosena]

Mueller's investigation is circling closer and closer to the presidunce.

Mueller team questions Trump friend Tom Barrack in Russia probe

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Investigators working for special counsel Robert Mueller have interviewed one of President Donald Trump's closest friends and confidants, California real estate investor Tom Barrack, The Associated Press has learned.

Barrack was interviewed as part of the federal investigation of possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

The specific topics covered in questions from Mueller's team were not immediately clear.

One of the people who spoke to AP said the questioning focused entirely on two officials from Trump's campaign who have been indicted by Mueller: Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Manafort's longtime deputy, Rick Gates. Gates agreed to plead guilty to federal conspiracy and false-statement charges in February and began cooperating with investigators.

This person said Barrack was interviewed "months ago" and was asked a few questions about Gates' work on Trump's inaugural committee, which Barrack chaired, and but there were no questions about the money raised by that committee.

A second person with knowledge of the Barrack interview said the questioning was broader and did include financial matters about the campaign, the transition and Trump's inauguration in January 2017.

Barrack's spokeswoman, Lisa Baker, declined comment.

Barrack has rare access and insight into Trump going back decades, since their days developing real estate. Barrack played an integral role in the 2016 campaign as a top fundraiser at a time when many other Republicans were shunning the upstart candidate. Barrack later directed Trump's inauguration.

While the specifics of Barrack's questioning were unclear, Mueller's team has asked several other witnesses about the flow of money related to the campaign.

Investigators have for months been inquiring about the Trump campaign's finances and compliance with federal election law, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors' questions have been wide-ranging, these people said, touching on the campaign's data operations, its relationship with data-mining company Cambridge Analytica, payments to Gates and whether there were arrangements that weren't disclosed in filings to the Federal Election Commission, they said.

The four people familiar with the investigation spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the confidential interviews.

The investigators' questions about the campaign's finances have come up in interviews dating to early fall while prosecutors were preparing the first indictment against Manafort and Gates.

Barrack, a wealthy real estate investor with close ties to several Mideast leaders, met Trump in 1988 when he negotiated the sale of The Plaza Hotel in New York to Trump. Barrack's publicist in 2016 described the men as having since "solidified a lifelong friendship between themselves and their families."

Barrack employed Gates last year, wrapping up operations on the Presidential Inaugural Committee, before Gates was charged by Mueller.

Barrack spoke glowingly of Trump in a CNBC interview in early 2016.

"He's one of the kindest, and actually most humble, friends that I've had," Barrack said. "I have so much respect for him because at this point in his career, wandering into the milieu was not easy, and he's changed the dialogue of the debate."

Barrack also was among the featured speakers at the Republican convention where Trump formally received the nomination.

Days after Trump's victory in November 2016, Barrack told CBS' "This Morning" that Trump was like an ultimate fighter during the campaign who used "whatever tools necessary to convey a really disruptive message." Barrack said America would see "a softer, kinder" Trump now that Trump had won the presidency

Mueller's investigators have interviewed dozens of witnesses in the probe into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. They have also secured the cooperation of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos.

But few witnesses have as much insight into the president's lengthy business career and all facets of his campaign and administration as Barrack.

 

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[fraurosena]

So Gates is still cooperating and meeting regularly with Mueller and both parties have jointly asked for and the judge has agreed to an additional three months delay from sentencing. 

 

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[fraurosena]

Good point this. 

 

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[Cartmann99]

 

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[GreyhoundFan]

Freaking Meadows: "In bid to reveal secret memo, GOP congressman plans to seek federal audit of Mueller probe"

Spoiler

A prominent House Republican plans to ask a federal financial watchdog to audit the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, opening a new front of GOP attack on the secretive probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible ties to President Trump’s campaign.

The pending request — from Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), an outspoken Trump defender who chairs the conservative House Freedom Caucus as well as a House oversight subcommittee — appears to be mainly calibrated to force the disclosure of a three-page Justice Department memo spelling out the authorized scope of Mueller’s investigation.

Meadows, speaking Thursday during a taping of C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” that is to air Sunday, said he believed the audit is required under federal law and could not be completed without an unredacted copy of the memo written in August 2017 by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

“To have some special counsel going on, you know, this particular trail or that particular trail, it’s really not what Congress envisioned, and it’s certainly not what most Americans believe we’re doing,” Meadows said.

A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately comment.

The 2017 “scope memo” has turned into a major flash point between the Justice Department and a cadre of House Republicans — including Meadows and other members of the Freedom Caucus — who say that Mueller has gone outside the bounds of his original charge to investigate possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Meadows and fellow Freedom Caucus member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has pushed for weeks to get unfettered access to the memo, but the Justice Department has so far refused them access. Only a heavily redacted version has been publicly shared as part of the prosecution of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort because, according to people familiar with the Justice Department’s thinking, prosecutors think its full disclosure could compromise Mueller’s probe.

Meadows, Jordan and other pro-Trump lawmakers have taken a much different view, leveling threats to hold Rosenstein in contempt and potentially impeach him over his lack of compliance with their requests.

“We believe that the American people need to know what the scope of the investigation [is],” Meadows said Thursday. “Now some would say, ‘Well, you’re getting involved in an ongoing criminal investigation.’ Well, it is an investigation, but the scope of that investigation is not part of the investigation. It just says, we’re going to look at all of this. We believe because we’re funding it that we should be able to look at that scope.”

The audit request, Meadows said, would be directed to the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress that has wide powers under federal law to examine government spending. Meadows said he was seeking support among other lawmakers for his letter, which could be sent to the GAO as soon as early next week.

The GAO operates pursuant to federal statutes authorizing it to scrutinize federal agencies, but the notion of using that authority to force disclosure of a classified document stands to be a long shot.

A more fruitful effort could come in court: Meadows’s remarks come a week after a federal judge in Virginia questioned whether fraud charges brought by the special counsel’s office against Manafort fell outside the authorized scope of the investigation.

While a Justice Department attorney, Michael Dreeben, told U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III that the parts of the memo relating to Manafort have been already been publicly revealed, Ellis asked Dreeben for an unredacted copy.

During a public appearance last week in Washington, Rosenstein said that the Justice Department was determined to protect the integrity of its pending investigations and that he would not be cowed by threats of contempt or impeachment.

“I think they should understand by now that the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted,” Rosenstein said of the threats from Meadows and others. “We’re going to do what’s required by the rule of law, and any kind of threats that anybody makes are not going to affect the way we do our job.”

On Thursday, Meadows strongly denied that his request for disclosure constituted an attempt to meddle with Mueller’s investigation.

“Most Americans … what they’re saying is, ‘We want to make sure that President Trump didn’t collude with the Russians.’ Now when it gets beyond that, there gets to be a real problem, and you start to lose a whole lot of support by Republicans and Democrats and unaffiliated alike,” he said.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Buckle up’: As Mueller probe enters second year, Trump and allies go on war footing'

Spoiler

The grand jury witnesses arrive one by one at the windowless room in the federal courthouse on Constitution Avenue in downtown Washington. They are struck first by how commonplace the setting feels — more classroom than courtroom, two witnesses said.

One of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s prosecutors stands at a lectern. The jurors, diverse by age and ethnicity, are attentive and take notes. The questioning is polite yet aggressive, surprising witnesses with its precision and often accompanied by evidence — including text messages and emails — displayed on a large old-fashioned overhead projector.

The investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, which hits its one-year mark Thursday, has formed the cloudy backdrop of Donald Trump’s presidency — a rolling fog of controversy, much of it self-inflicted, that is a near-constant distraction for the commander in chief.

The Mueller operation, like the former Marine Corps platoon commander who leads it, is secretive and methodical. Ten blocks west in the White House, President Trump combats the probe with bluster, disarray and defiance as he scrambles for survival.

The president vents to associates about the FBI raids on his personal attorney Michael Cohen — as often as “20 times a day,” in the estimation of one confidant — and they frequently listen in silence, knowing little they say will soothe him. Trump gripes that he needs better “TV lawyers” to defend him on cable news and is impatient to halt the “witch hunt” that he believes undermines his legitimacy as president. And he plots his battle plans with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, his new legal consigliere. 

“We’re on the same wavelength,” Giuliani said. “We’ve gone from defense to offense.”

The probe is a steaming locomotive, already delivering indictments or guilty pleas involving 19 people and three companies, while soliciting interviews with most of the president’s closest aides and outside associates. Players have departed, including most of Trump’s original legal team, while others have joined — including, most recently, Cohen, adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti. 

“This has moved at a lightning speed,” said Christopher Ruddy, a Trump friend and chief executive of Newsmax. “They’re not messing around. They’re going very quickly. The number of indictments, pleas and other moves is just amazing. I think it will come to a head quicker than other investigations.”

This portrait of the president and the special counsel investigation nearing its first anniversary is based on interviews with 22 White House and Justice Department officials, witnesses, Trump confidants and attorneys connected to the probe, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid assessments.

“Everyone seems resigned to just buckle up and get through whatever we’ve got to get through for it to reach its conclusion,” one White House official said.

Many Trump aides and associates say they are confident the president himself will ultimately be exonerated. But they privately express worries that the probe may yet ensnare more figures in Trump’s orbit, including family members. There is particularly worry about Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and a senior adviser.

Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the election and connections to Trump’s campaign and associates already has resulted in a guilty plea from former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who is cooperating, and an indictment of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is scheduled to go on trial in Virginia in July and in Washington in September on conspiracy, bank fraud and tax fraud charges.

The special counsel also is examining whether Trump obstructed justice in a variety of areas, from his request of then-FBI Director James B. Comey to drop the Flynn investigation to his firing of Comey to his role dictating a misleading statement on behalf of Donald Trump Jr. about his 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer.

Mueller and his prosecutors are probing other areas as well, including the relationship between former Trump political adviser Roger Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization released hacked Democratic Party emails, according to people familiar with the probe.

The sprawling investigations amount to a political anchor as Trump leads the Republican Party into the fall midterm elections. Though few candidates see it as a decisive issue, the probe still sows doubt among some voters about the credibility of Trump’s election and about his conduct in office.

Public opinion surveys have found wide support for the Mueller investigation. An April Washington Post-ABC News poll found 69 percent of Americans backing the probe and 25 percent opposing it, though other surveys this spring have shown a modest decline from earlier polls in support of continuing the investigation.

Among the political class, there is a guessing game about whether the special counsel completes its work this summer — sufficiently in advance of the November elections — or presses well past it. The longer Mueller’s work continues, legal analysts said, the more difficult it may be for the special counsel to maintain public confidence, especially with Trump, Vice President Pence and other administration officials calling for the probe to wrap up.

“You don’t have much longer than 18 months to 24 months to get to the heart of the matter and resolve the things that need to be resolved,” said Robert W. Ray, who served as independent counsel toward the end of the Whitewater investigation during the Clinton presidency. “That’s about the length of time that public sentiment is with the investigation.”

The Mueller probe has also brought a national reckoning about the boundaries of presidential power. Trump is at war with the leadership of his own Justice Department and FBI, has threatened to defy a subpoena to testify, and even toyed with ordering the firing of Mueller.

“We want to get the investigation over, done with,” Trump said last month. “Put it behind us.”

‘Like a classroom’

Mueller — the 73-year-old former FBI director with a hangdog visage and rigid bearing — looms over the investigation but is an intermittent presence in the windowless room in the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse. 

Three witnesses who described their experience of being subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury said Mueller was not present for their initial interviews, which instead were conducted by one of his prosecutors standing at a podium — peppering them with questions and presenting the case to members of the jury, who scribbled notes.

The cramped room, complete with inelegant furniture, one witness said, “looked like a classroom from an underfunded junior college in the 1970s.”

The range of witnesses Mueller has called in has been breathtaking. He has interviewed everyone from White House counsel Donald McGahn — at least twice — to Avi Berkowitz, the 29-year-old personal assistant to Kushner.

One prominent witness who was called to appear in front of the grand jury recounted entering through a rear entrance, to avoid the press gathered at the front of the building. But another, former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg, said he was not given that option and, regardless, preferred to enter and exit in full view of reporters.

“If they had asked me to go through a back door, I would have said, ‘No, I prefer to see the paparazzi,’” he said, recalling the phalanx of cameras that swarmed him during his appearance in early March. 

Yet aside from a few witnesses who have shared glimpses of their experiences with Mueller’s team, the exact contours of the investigation remain opaque — even for Trump’s lawyers, who have been in regular contact with Mueller’s investigators. 

Only last week, for instance, did the public learn that Mueller had been probing payments made by Fortune 500 companies to Cohen since at least last fall. 

Mueller and his team seldom issue public statements and speak mainly through indictments and court filings. In pressing for an interview with Trump, investigators would not provide a written list of questions, which could increase the chances of a leak and constrain prosecutors in their inquiries. Instead, investigators verbally provided the president’s lawyers with only the subject areas that prosecutors wished to discuss. A Trump attorney then formulated a list of 49 potential questions the legal team believed Trump might be asked — a list that soon leaked to the New York Times.

“The biggest challenge for the White House is that the special counsel is conducting an investigation properly, which is not commenting publicly, only making known its activities by virtue of bringing cases or executing legal process in a manner that is publicly observable,” said Jacob S. Frenkel, who worked in the independent counsel’s office in late 1990s.

Even Giuliani, who said he was brought in to end the probe and initially predicted it would wrap up within two weeks, now seems uncertain of where Mueller’s investigation will conclude.

Giuliani met with Mueller five days after his hiring, on April 24, to try to understand issues ranging from the scope of a possible Trump interview to whether Mueller believes that Comey, whose firing by Trump triggered the probe, is a credible witness.

“From our point of view, it’s a two-track possibility for what’s next,” Giuliani said, referring to the possibility that Trump may sit for an interview with Mueller or, if he refuses, that Mueller may subpoena him. “But we don’t know which track it’ll end up being.”

‘This Russia thing’

Few achievements make Trump more proud than the 306 electoral college votes he won on Nov. 8, 2016. The president relishes showing off a county-by-county map of the election results — the United States bathed in red — and giving visitors a tour of the trophy he inherited, the Oval Office.

But every time he hears about “this Russia thing,” as he memorably phrased it in an NBC interview last year, he feels the legitimacy of his victory is under attack. He characterizes the Russia probe as a “hoax” orchestrated by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats — a reminder of the majority of voters who didn’t choose him and those who are eager to evict him.

The only option, the president has said, is to hit back.

“Let me tell you, folks, we’re all fighting battles,” Trump bellowed at the National Rifle Association annual convention earlier this month. “But I love fighting these battles.” 

It would be easy to interpret the president’s tweets — and even his behavior — as an admission of guilt. But Trump’s advisers and friends say he believes he has done nothing wrong. What some legal analysts call obstruction of justice, Trump’s associates call punching back.

“His view is, ‘If I’m defending myself, you mean that’s obstructing justice?’ ” Giuliani said. “He’s right. He’s being president, but he’s not going to just sit there.”

Ruddy, who often talks with Trump during the president’s getaways to his Mar-a-Lago estate, said he would counsel him to wall himself off and emotionally disconnect from the investigation.

“People will say he’s acting like he’s guilty,” Ruddy said. “No. This is Donald Trump’s personality. He just has to respond. He’s been so emotional . . . It takes a toll on him, and the way he deals with it is to lash out.”

Trump’s attacks on Mueller and his probe are also helping to undermine the investigation in the court of public opinion, and especially with the president’s base.

“I don’t see any downside at this point for the president and his team to make a full-throated public defense of their situation,” said Mark Corallo, a former adviser on Trump’s legal team. “There are very few outside the Beltway who are in the we-need-to-prosecute-and-impeach-this-guy camp.”

Giuliani’s hiring marked the latest stage of the Russia fight. Already, Trump’s legal team was in flux. Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer dealing with the probe, had repeatedly counseled Trump that if he cooperated fully it would be over soon — first by Thanksgiving, then by Christmas, then early in 2018. But Cobb is now exiting, to be replaced by Emmet Flood, one of Clinton’s former impeachment attorneys. Also gone is John Dowd, who had been Trump’s personal lawyer and grew frustrated with his difficult client.

Trump liked Giuliani’s more aggressive approach, including his earlier television defenses of him. And the president, feeling increasingly isolated in the West Wing, with few true confidants on the staff, saw in Giuliani a loyal contemporary.

But within the White House, Giuliani — who already has a strained relationship with Kelly — has created tensions with other senior staff members, in part over his frequent media appearances, which he does not coordinate with them.

In a freestyling interview earlier this month with Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, Giuliani disclosed that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for a $130,000 payment to Daniels near the end of the 2016 campaign in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. The revelation drove headlines for days, frustrating the president, who told reporters that Giuliani was “a great guy” but needed to “get his facts straight.”

But for now, Trump and Guiliani are inextricably bound.

The two men huddled for five hours May 6 at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, Giuliani said, eating a Cobb salad (Giuliani) and a well-done burger (Trump) with half a bun in service to his health.

“I do that, too, sometimes,” Giuliani said about the half-bun. “It’s a good way to do it.”

That afternoon, the lawyer said he counseled his client to focus on his job as president and leave the legal matters to him. 

But Trump could not be restrained. The next day at 7:27 a.m., he fired off a presidential missive on Twitter: “The Russia Witch Hunt is rapidly losing credibility ...”

Can you imagine being stuck in a room with Dumpy and Rudy for five hours? That sounds like torture.

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[fraurosena]

This is a non-argument if ever there was one.

Troll Farm Lawyers: Russians Didn’t Know Election Meddling Was Illegal

Quote

Lawyers for Russian nationals accused of pushing online propaganda during the 2016 presidential election say Special Counsel Robert Mueller has not shown their clients knew what they were doing was illegal.

The attorneys lay out this somewhat unusual argument in a legal filing posted Monday afternoon. In it, they ask for the judge overseeing the case to review the instructions Mueller’s team gave to the grand jury before it indicted their client, Concord Management and Consulting LLC–which allegedly funded the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency. Mueller’s team failed to show “that the Defendant acted willfully, in this case meaning that Defendant was aware of the FEC and FARA requirements,” attorneys Eric Dubelier, Katherine Seikaly, and Reed Smith wrote.

Additionally, they write, Mueller accused their clients of a “make-believe crime” in order to advance a “political” agenda of prosecuting people for Russian interference in the U.S. election.

“The risk here is acute,” the filing continues, “that is, a foreign corporation with no presence in the United States is indicted in an unprecedented case of a type never before brought by the DOJ for conspiring to defraud the United States purportedly by not complying with certain regulatory requirements that are unknown even to most Americans.”

At issue is the question of mens rea—the mental state of the Russians who put together the social media disinformation campaign that used Facebook and Twitter to spread fake news stories and socially divisive videos and memes. Attorneys for the Russians are saying that Mueller hasn’t shown their clients knew what they were doing could have been against U.S. law.

Mueller’s indictment alleges that the Russians behind the IRA troll farm used fake American identities to masquerade as supporters of now-President Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders. (Many of the schemes were first revealed by The Daily Beast.)

The indictment says the IRA started focusing on the United States in 2014. IRA trolls used Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and other platforms to spread divisive messages and rip into Hillary Clinton. Its monthly budget, per Mueller, was $1.25 million.

It's not up to Mueller, or anyone else for that matter, to show the accused knew what they were doing was illegal or not, because it's completely irrelevant. As every lawyer should know: Ignorantia juris non excusat. (Not knowing about a law doesn't mean you can escape liability for breaking it). As to the the mens rea, anyone who partakes in the activity of meddling in another country's elections is well aware that this is unethical and that it quite possibly might be illegal. Therefore they knowingly and wilfully forewent any due diligence on the matter.

[fraurosena]

If true, keep your fingers crossed he'll actually testify that the Russians were indeed involved.

Ukrainian politician behind controversial peace proposal to appear in Mueller probe

Quote

A Ukrainian politician who communicated with Trump associates about a controversial plan to resolve Ukraine’s conflict with Kremlin-backed rebels said Monday that he has been called to testify before a grand jury connected to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Andrii Artemenko said he could not provide details of his upcoming appearance before the grand jury, which he said is scheduled for Friday. But he said he assumed he would be asked about the peace plan, about which he communicated with Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney, in early 2017.

“I received the subpoena last week,” Artemenko told POLITICO by telephone, adding that he intended to comply with the request. He said he would appear in person.

A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.

The Artemenko case is one of the more unusual developments in the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. The New York Times reported in February 2017 that Artemenko had contacted Felix Sater, a former business associate of Trump’s, to find out how he could make his plan for peace in Ukraine known to the Trump administration. Sater introduced Artemenko to Cohen, who left the plan in the office of then-national security adviser Michael Flynn, the Times reported. (Cohen has denied that, saying he threw the document away.)

When the news broke about the peace plan, it caused a scandal in Ukraine. Among the plan’s proposals was the idea of leasing to Russia the Crimean Peninsula — which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014 — for 50 years, in exchange for ending the ongoing war in Ukraine’s Donbass region. The back-channel effort also sought to have the Trump administration drop sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama White House.

Artemenko was ejected from his political party, and Ukraine's top prosecutor launched an investigation into whether he had committed treason. In May 2017, Ukrainian officials stripped him of his citizenship, ostensibly because he also held a Canadian passport. Artemenko said he was being punished politically for opposing President Petro Poroshenko, whom he also accused of corruption.

Artemenko’s testimony could help Mueller’s team fill in the gaps on the peace plan, which he has been investigating in part because of the roles of Cohen and Sater, who also worked together to try and launch a Trump-branded development in Moscow starting in early 2015.

The plan may also be of interest to Mueller because it reportedly was hatched shortly after Flynn discussed dropping sanctions against Russia in a call with the Russian ambassador that was intercepted by intelligence officials. Flynn was fired from the White House after it became clear that he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations about Russian sanctions.

There have been conflicting stories about whether Russian officials were involved in hatching the peace plan.

Cohen told The Washington Post that Artemenko boasted during their January 2017 meeting that the Russian government “was on board” with the proposal. Artemenko denied that, telling the Post that he had not spoken to any Russian officials and that the proposal came about during consultations with Ukrainian officials.

 

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[Howl]

There's something so wrong with Devin Nunes.  Is there Kompromat?  Is he feckless and misguided?  Have a man crush on Trump? Been co-opted as an errand boy, with zero idea that he's being used? When he's exposed, does he know he'll be thrown under the bus?  Nunes?  Name rings a bell, but no, no, don't really know anything about him.  Nunes is a guy, right?  Maybe an intern?  Good with making fresh coffee covfefe? 

This ass hat is DESPERATE to know what Mueller knows.  Good luck with that, Devin.