Mueller Investigation!

[formergothardite]

Kelly knows better than to lie under oath to Mueller. The fact that the White House didn't want him interviewed makes it clear that they knew he knew a lot and wasn't going to lie for them. 

[fraurosena]

Here's a link to Mueller's memo on Manafort:

Special Counsel's Office Files Submission in Support of Breach Determination in Manafort Case

Factual material concerning pending investigations or uncharged individuals will be submitted under seal.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Mueller investigation has been a series of drips. It’s about to turn into a flood."

Spoiler

Earlier this week, there was yet another drip in the special counsel investigation. This time, Robert S. Mueller III’s team recommended no prison time for President Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, because he was so cooperative in several ongoing investigations.

That revelation, which came in the form of a heavily redacted court filing, provided some crucial new pieces of information. Flynn sat down for 19 separate interviews with investigators at the Department of Justice. It doesn’t take a D.C. insider to realize that if investigators ask you to meet them 19 different times, you’re providing them with crucial evidence. That’s bad news for Trump. But how bad? We don’t know, and we won’t know, until the next tantalizing detail emerges.

The Flynn filing reflects how the Mueller investigation has relentlessly percolated, providing information to the public with methodical precision rather than releasing it in a single deluge. In the age of Trump, every news story competes for attention against the latest outrageous Trump tweet, lie or bizarre statement. Each drip of the Mueller investigation recaptures the public’s attention. But it’ll take a flood to sweep Trump out of office.

Today, it’s clear that the waters are rising. Trump’s chief of staff, John F. Kelly, was reportedly questioned as part of Mueller’s probe into alleged obstruction of justice. A new filing is expected to outline how Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, continued to lie and deceive investigators even after he had previously agreed to cooperate. Of particular interest are reports that Manafort deceived investigators about his ties to Konstantin Kilimnik, a shady figure that the FBI has said is linked to Russian intelligence services. And separately, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York will file a sentencing memo, which may reveal whether investigators deem Michael Cohen’s cooperation to be valuable enough to warrant a reduced sentence.

We all know what comes next. As it always does, Trump’s Fox News protection racket will follow its playbook: downplay and distract. Sean Hannity and his fellow misinformation agents in the prime-time “news” slots will repeat the same tired act: Defend the president, insist that Mueller is on a “witch hunt,” and then attack Hillary Clinton. It works because, in isolation, any individual drip can be wiped away. But it’s getting old.

Likewise, Trump’s unhinged stream of tweets about the investigation are already so worn out and predictable that they sometimes seem to be randomly plucked out of a red MAGA hat that only contains the phrases “witch hunt!”; “James Comey!”; “Hillary Clinton”; and “NO COLLUSION!” They are surely only convincing to the already converted who proudly sport their own red hats.

For those who have not been initiated into the Trumpian cult of personality or who are outside the cheerleading media vortex that is Fox News, the drips are really starting to add up. Trump’s campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, foreign policy adviser, former national security adviser and personal lawyer are all now felons who were either convicted of crimes or pleaded guilty to them. Moreover, those crimes and their related disqualifying behaviors are serious. They include conspiracy against the United States, campaign finance violations that may have had a decisive impact on the 2016 election, and acting as an unregistered foreign agent of a foreign authoritarian regime.

And while it remains unclear, it is certainly plausible that Trump himself was directly involved in those criminal schemes. After all, Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer, directly implicated his former boss in directing the campaign finance criminal conspiracy.

Now, after the midterm elections, Mueller can be more active without being accused of trying to influence voters. Eventually, Mueller will produce his team’s final report — the full incriminating picture, all at once.

The Mueller report will be harder for Trumpian sycophants to shrug off. It’ll be harder for Trump’s supporters and surrogates to ignore the mounting evidence of criminality that, at best, surrounds the president and the now-convicted felons he hired for top jobs and, at worst, directly implicates Trump himself.

Moreover, the report will likely be supplemented by findings from the criminal investigations into Trump’s secret payments to alleged mistresses and the investigations that House Democrats launch come January.

If Trump’s presidency is going to end prematurely, it will require a flood. Mueller’s activities this week — and the activities of the other investigations swirling around the president — make clear that he would be wise to prepare for one.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Mueller flashes some cards in Russia probe, but hides his hand"

Spoiler

A 55-page flurry of court filings shows just how deeply the investigations surrounding President Trump have gone, scrutinizing secret Russian contacts, hush money meetings and a tangle of lies designed to conceal those activities.

But for all the cards special counsel Robert S. Mueller III played Friday, it’s still not clear what else he holds, or when he will put them on the table.

“The recent court filings by Mueller’s team are more revealing by what they did not include than by what they did,” said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice.

On Saturday morning, Trump again seized on the lack of public conclusions about his conduct to declare his innocence.

“NO COLLUSION!” he tweeted. “Time for the Witch Hunt to END!”

Mueller’s continued silence on the big question that he still must answer — whether any Trump associates conspired with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 election — does not mean Trump and those who were around him are in the clear.

“Like any skilled prosecutor, Mueller is playing out his hand very strategically, showing only those cards that he needs to reveal to take the investigation to the next step,” Mintz said.

While Mueller has repeatedly encountered lying witnesses — Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos — the court cases of those defendants keep pointing to an underlying strength of the special counsel’s investigation: the ability to get incriminating emails, documents and bank records.

In that sense, Mueller’s probe to date has operated more like a complex financial fraud investigation than a racketeering probe or a counterintelligence operation because, even when a witness lies to him, Mueller has the receipts to win convictions.

Over three court filings submitted in two federal courts Friday in Trump-related cases, Mueller and prosecutors in New York and Washington offered tantalizing glimpses into what they have found.

Two of the filings were made in advance of Cohen’s sentencing, scheduled for Wednesday in New York. The third filing came in the case of Manafort, whom prosecutors have accused of breaking the terms of a plea deal by lying to them about key details, including his interactions with unidentified Trump administration officials as recently as this year.

In one of the filings, the Justice Department formally said Trump coordinated and directed Cohen to violate campaign finance laws. Cohen has admitted arranging hush money payments during the 2016 election for two women who had claimed to have had trysts with Trump.

The court filings describe an August 2014 meeting between Trump, Cohen and the head of a national tabloid in which they discussed buying the stories of any women who might come forward to describe sexual relationships with Trump, so the rights to those stories “could be purchased and ‘killed.’ ” The unidentified head of the tabloid, identified as “Chairman 1,” is David Pecker of the National Enquirer, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

Cohen also admitted, according to the court papers, to previously undisclosed attempts to forge a political relationship with Russia during the election — though, in those instances, the efforts do not appear to have come to fruition.

In September 2015, Cohen suggested in a radio interview that Trump might meet with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin. Though Cohen once said that suggestion was spontaneous and unplanned, he “admitted that this account was false and that he had in fact conferred with (Trump) about contacting the Russian government before reaching out to gauge Russia’s interest in such a meeting,” according to one filing.

Then, in November 2015, “Cohen received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a ‘trusted person’ in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level,’ ” according to a filing from Mueller’s office. The person repeatedly tried to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin, but Cohen “did not follow up on the invitation,” because he was working at the time on a potential real estate deal in Moscow with another intermediary with contacts in the Russian government.

Former federal prosecutor Randall D. Eliason said the filings were notable for “the increasing evidence of ties to Russia and possible coverups.” While it is impossible to say yet whether those will amount to a larger criminal conspiracy, Eliason said, they could at the very least form the basis of a politically damaging report, or produce other charges against key people in Trump’s orbit for lying to investigators.

“I think it’s entirely possible that Mueller ends up concluding that there were all these contacts with Russia that were some combination of unwise or naive or reckless or unpatriotic, but maybe not criminal, so that’s in a report, and then the crimes are the cover ups,” Eliason said. “Then you’ve got political implications. Even if the stuff wasn’t criminal, then presumably there are political implications for all the Russian ties. But who knows? Mueller is running such a tight ship, until something happens you don’t know it’s going to happen.”

Former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said she was struck by federal prosecutors in New York accusing Trump of directing Cohen to pay women for their silence about their alleged affairs. Cohen has admitted the payments violated campaign finance laws.

“They’re not going to say that unless they believe it to be corroborated,” McQuade said. “That’s only a crime if you can show that President Trump knew that was unlawful, but I don’t know that it takes too many steps to get there.”

McQuade said she was also intrigued by the details Mueller revealed about Cohen’s cooperation.

Mueller’s memo, for example, said Cohen “described the circumstances of preparing and circulating” his false congressional testimony about a Trump Tower project in Moscow.

“With whom did he circulate it and, if it was false, was he working with others to coordinate their stories?” McQuade asked.

By leaving all these clues in public, Mueller is ensuring that everything he has found will one day be revealed by increasing the pressure on the attorney general or Congress to release details when the probe is complete, McQuade said.

“This does cause the public, I would hope, to demand to know the whole story at some point,” McQuade said.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Siege warfare’: Republican anxiety spikes as Trump faces growing legal and political perils"

Spoiler

A growing number of Republicans fear that a battery of new revelations in the far-reaching Russia investigation has dramatically heightened the legal and political danger to Donald Trump’s presidency — and threatens to consume the rest of the party as well.

President Trump added to the tumult Saturday by announcing the abrupt exit of his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, whom he sees as lacking the political judgment and finesse to steer the White House through the treacherous months to come.

Trump remains headstrong in his belief that he can outsmart adversaries and weather any threats, according to advisers. In the Russia probe, he continues to roar denials, dubiously proclaiming that the latest allegations of wrongdoing by his former associates “totally clear” him.

But anxiety is spiking among Republican allies, who complain that Trump and the White House have no real plan for dealing with the Russia crisis while confronting a host of other troubles at home and abroad.

Facing the dawn of his third year in office and his bid for reelection, Trump is stepping into a political hailstorm. Democrats are preparing to seize control of the House in January with subpoena power to investigate corruption. Global markets are reeling from his trade war. The United States is isolated from its traditional partners. The investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference is intensifying. And court filings Friday in a separate federal case implicated Trump in a felony.

The White House is adopting what one official termed a “shrugged shoulders” strategy for the Mueller findings, calculating that most GOP base voters will believe whatever the president tells them to believe.

But some allies fret that the president’s coalition could crack apart under the growing pressure. Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump strategist who helped him navigate the most arduous phase of his 2016 campaign, predicted 2019 would be a year of “siege warfare” and cast the president’s inner circle as naively optimistic and unsophisticated.

“The Democrats are going to weaponize the Mueller report and the president needs a team that can go to the mattresses,” Bannon said. “The president can’t trust the GOP to be there when it counts . . . They don’t feel any sense of duty or responsibility to stand with Trump.”

This portrait of the Trump White House at a precarious juncture is based on interviews with 14 administration officials, presidential confidants and allies, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss private exchanges.

Rather than building a war room to manage the intersecting crises as past administrations have done, the Trump White House is understaffed, stuck in a bunker mentality and largely resigned to a plan to wing it. Political and communications operatives are mostly taking their cues from the president and letting him drive the message with his spontaneous broadsides.

“A war room? You serious?” one former White House official said when asked about internal preparations. “They’ve never had one, will never have one. They don’t know how to do one.”

Trump’s decision to change his chief of staff, however, appears to be a recognition that he needs a strong political team in place for the remainder of his first term. The leading candidate for the job is Nick Ayers, Vice President Pence’s chief of staff and an experienced campaign operative known for his political acumen and deep network in the party.

Throughout the 18-month special counsel investigation, Trump has single-handedly spun his own deceptive reality, seeking to sully the reputations of Mueller’s operation and federal law enforcement in an attempt to preemptively discredit their eventual conclusions.

The president has been telling friends that he believes the special counsel is flailing and has found nothing meaningful. “It’s all games and trying to connect dots that don’t really make sense,” one friend said in describing Trump’s view of Mueller’s progress. “Trump is angry, but he’s not really worried.”

But Mueller’s latest court filings offer new evidence of Russian efforts to forge a political alliance with Trump before he became president and detail the extent to which his former aides are cooperating with prosecutors.

Some GOP senators were particularly shaken by this week’s revelation that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had met with Mueller’s team 19 separate times — a distressing signal to them that the probe may be more serious than they had been led to assume, according to senior Republican officials.

Even in the friendliest quarters, there are fresh hints of trouble. Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson, a reliable prime-time booster of the president, faulted Trump in an interview this week for failing to keep his main campaign promises, understand the legislative process and learn how to govern effectively.

For now, Republicans on Capitol Hill are still inclined to stand by Trump and give the president the benefit of the doubt. But one pro-Trump senator said privately that a breaking point would be if Mueller documents conspiracy with Russians.

“Then they’ve lost me,” said the senator, noting that several Republican lawmakers have been willing to publicly break with Trump when they believe it is in their interests — as many did over Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s role in the brutal killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), an outspoken Trump critic and a frequent subject of his ire, said, “The president’s situation is fraught with mounting peril, and that’s apparent to everyone who’s paying any attention, which is all of my Republican colleagues.”

Another possible breaking point could come if Trump pardons his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who has elicited the president’s sympathy as he sits in solitary confinement in a Virginia prison following the collapse of his plea agreement with Mueller’s team, White House aides and Republican lawmakers said. Trump advisers said they understand that a pardon of Manafort could be difficult to defend and could prompt rebukes from Republican allies.

The special counsel on Friday accused Manafort of telling “multiple dis­cern­ible lies” during interviews with prosecutors. Manafort was convicted of tax and bank fraud crimes and has pleaded guilty to additional charges as well, including conspiring to defraud the United States by hiding years of income and failing to disclose lobbying work for a pro-Russian political party and politician in Ukraine.

Trump’s legal team, meanwhile, is bracing not only for new Mueller developments, but also for an onslaught of congressional requests. New White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his associate, Emmet T. Flood, are the leaders inside, although both have taken pains to stay out of the spotlight.

Cipollone has been scouring the resumes of congressional Republican staffers with experience handling investigations and trying to recruit them to the White House, officials said. Meanwhile, Flood, who advised former president Bill Clinton during his impeachment, has been prepping for months to forcefully exert executive privilege once House Democrats assume the majority.

Yet hiring remains difficult as potential staffers worry about whether they will need to hire a personal lawyer if they join and express uncertainty about the constant turmoil within the White House hierarchy, as illustrated by Kelly’s announced departure Saturday.

Bannon said he and others were urging contacts in the White House to enlist David N. Bossie, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager and a former congressional investigator who was known for his hard-edge tactics.

Trump’s lead outside attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said he and his team are busy writing a defiant “counter report” to Mueller, which the president boasted this week was 87 pages long. Giuliani described the effort as a collaboration in which he, Jay Sekulow, Jane Raskin and other lawyers draft different sections and then trade them among the group, debating how to frame various passages on the president’s conduct and Russian interference.

“We’re writing out a lot and will pick and choose what to include. We’re trying to think through every possibility,” Giuliani said. “I’m sure we’ll take the lead in defending [Trump] publicly, if he needs defense, like we always do.”

Some of Trump’s allies have been encouraging him to bolster his legal team. One confidant recalled telling the president, “You need to get you an army of lawyers who know what the hell they’re doing.”

So far, Trump’s public relations strategy mostly has been to attack Mueller as opposed to countering the facts of his investigation. But Lanny Davis, a former Clinton lawyer, said that approach has limits.

“No matter what your client says, if you’re not ready with factual messages to rebut charges, you’ll fail,” said Davis, who now advises former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who faces possible prison time for crimes including lying to Congress about his Russia contacts. “Even if you think the Trump strategy of attacking the messenger can continue to work, it will not work once the Mueller report is done.”

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich said Clinton’s experience in 1998, when the embattled president questioned the special prosecutor and warned of GOP overreach, is instructive for Trump and Republicans, showing them how to be both combative and confident amid chaos.

“You can’t have that many smart lawyers, with the full power of the government, and not have something bad come out,” Gingrich said of the special counsel’s team. “Mueller has to find something, like Trump jaywalked 11 times. The media will go crazy for three days, screaming, ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’”

But, Gingrich said, “This isn’t a crisis moment for Trump or the party. Remember, we thought we had Clinton on the ropes, but Clinton kept smiling and his popularity went up.”

The White House is looking to its hard-right supporters on Capitol Hill to serve as its political flank, in particular House Republicans such as Mark Meadows (N.C.), Jim Jordan (Ohio), and Devin Nunes (Calif.), who are frequent guests on Fox News Channel. In January, Jordan and Nunes will be the top-ranking Republicans on the House Oversight Committee and the House Select Committee on Intelligence respectively, positioning them as public faces of the Trump defense and antagonists of the Justice Department’s leadership.

Republicans close to incoming House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said there is an implicit understanding that Jordan and Meadows and others in their orbit will be most vocal, but many rank-and-file Republicans, looking to hold onto their seats, will attempt to avoid becoming swept up in the standoff over the probe, as they have for over a year.

“Among most House Republicans, the feeling is, ‘We’re ready for this to be over with. We’re not nervous, but we’re having Mueller fatigue,’” Meadows said.

But Democrats say they are determined not to let the investigation end prematurely. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who sits on the intelligence committee as well as the House Judiciary Committee, said, “Our job is to protect the investigation from the president — whether it’s firing Mueller, intimidating witnesses or obstructing the investigation.”

Trump critics, like retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz) — who has sponsored legislation that would protect Mueller but has been largely ignored by his colleagues — warned that the drumbeat of Trump loyalists in Congress, along with the president’s relentless clashes with Mueller, have lulled Republicans into a dangerous place.

“It’s like the party is a frog slowly boiling in water, being conditioned to not be worried, to not think too hard about what’s happening around them,” Flake said. “They feel at a loss about what to do because it’s the president’s party, without any doubt. So, there’s a lot of whistling by the graveyard these days.”

Giuliani dismissed Flake’s criticism in much the same way he and the president have taken on Mueller — with a barbed character attack rather than a measured rebuttal.

“He’s a bitter, bitter man,” Giuliani said of Flake. “It’s sick. Nobody likes him and they would like him gone.”

 

[formergothardite]

10 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The White House is adopting what one official termed a “shrugged shoulders” strategy for the Mueller findings, calculating that most GOP base voters will believe whatever the president tells them to believe

They will. At this point they can have a video of Trump telling Putin he will hand him America and his base will brush it off as not a big deal. But that base is getting smaller each year. And a report that shows corruption will ignite the rest of the country to go out and vote, at least hopefully it will. 

[47of74]

I noticed a lot of the individual one related domains have been claimed. D’oh.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

Just a reminder on how this all began:

 

[AmazonGrace]

Papa's out and tweeting again. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Klansman seems slightly sloppy. 

 

Butina has a hearing 

 

[fraurosena]

The thought of this makes me giggle gleefully.

Robert Mueller Has 2 Years of Recorded Surveillance that Doesn’t Look Good For Mike Pence

Quote

The news surrounding Paul Manafort being wiretapped under secret FISA surveillance both during and after the 2016 election affects a lot more people than just Manafort himself.

It’s been widely speculated that Trump could be in trouble for his dealings with Manafort throughout 2016 and 2017, and it turns out, Vice President Mike Pence may also be in some hot water as well.

If you’ll recall, after Chris Christie was forced out of his leadership position in the Trump transition team, it was taken over by vice president-elect Mike Pence. It’s been reported that during this time, Mike Pence and Paul Manafort regularly communicated.

“I think he’s weighing in on everything,” the former official said, “I think he still talks to Trump every day. I mean, Pence? That was all Manafort. Pence is on the phone with Manafort regularly.”

The interesting part here is that Manafort had already left the Trump campaign long before Pence took over the transition, so why were they regularly communicating? There was no reason whatsoever that they should have been.

This is where it gets worse for Mike Pence.

Palmer Report explains:

These regular transition-period conversations between Pence and Manafort have long stood out as suspicious, particularly in light of Manafort’s well publicized role in steering Trump toward picking Pence as his running mate to begin with. MSNBC is now reporting that the second FISA surveillance warrant on Manafort began in late 2016, meaning that the Feds were eavesdropping on Manafort’s transition team phone calls to Pence. So we know with certainty that Pence was caught up in the Manafort surveillance.

Of course, we still have no idea what Mike Pence and Paul Manafort were talking about during their conversations in 2016 and 2017, but you can bet Robert Mueller knows.

If it’s true that Manafort and Pence discussed anything illegal during their communications, Pence is also in the hot seat along with Manafort.

 

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

The thought of this makes me giggle gleefully.

Robert Mueller Has 2 Years of Recorded Surveillance that Doesn’t Look Good For Mike Pence

 

Might be why Pence's chief of staff got the bloody hell out of Dodge. There must be a butt load of praying and document burning going on at the National Observatory right now.

[47of74]

Klansman seems slightly sloppy. 
  

That typo is the kind of mistake a law student would make who was rushing to get homework turned in before the deadline. You would think an attorney would know better.

[Cartmann99]

4 hours ago, 47of74 said:

That typo is the kind of mistake a law student would make who was rushing to get homework turned in before the deadline. You would think an attorney would know better.

 

He's the sort of attorney you find in the 75% off bin at the thrift store. Grab that old stained flannel top sheet to make a warm lining for some winter pants, but leave Klayman there to rot.

[Howl]

Flynn is being sentenced for lying about Russia, sanctions and who the hell knows what else.

However, this isn't the end of his problems.  My understanding is that he is  potentially implicated in a plot to kidnap and exfiltrate cleric Fethullah Gulen back to Turkey...for 15 million. 

The New York Times (Dec. 5, 2018) states that Mueller referred this back to Virginia and a grand jury has been empaneled.  As Flynn Case Winds Down, Investigation of Turkish Lobbying Persists

It's behind a paywall, but here's the gist: 

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in Virginia are investigating a secret Turkish lobbying effort that once involved Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, even as Mr. Flynn’s role in the special counsel’s investigation winds down, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, had been handling the case and at some point referred it back to prosecutors in Alexandria, Va., who had originally opened the investigation, the people said. A veteran national security prosecutor is overseeing the case, and a grand jury has been empaneled to hear evidence.

An NBC article from Dec. 5, 2018 doesn't mention the grand jury in Virginia. 

NBC: Mueller gives new details on Flynn's secretive work for Turkey  Prosecutors for special counsel Robert Mueller say that Flynn’s lies "impeded the ability of the public" to know the extent of Turkey's efforts to influence public opinion.

Interesting times.  I'm interested in knowing if Flynn's son is implicated in any of the Fethullah Gulen wheeling and dealing and if he might be going down as well.  Feeling kind of mean, because Flynn's son is such a complete and unrepentant ass on social media, and yes, including tweeting conspiracy theories. 

Also, Flynn was incredibly careless with some of his phone communications.  If IC was monitoring Turkish interests.....

[AmazonGrace]

Flynn complains that he was trapped because FBI didn't tell him that it's illegal to lie to them.

Can you be a national security advisor without being aware of that fact? 

[fraurosena]

 

[formergothardite]

For all he did that is a pretty light sentence! I bet he turned over a whole lot of shit to get off this easily. 

[fraurosena]

14 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

For all he did that is a pretty light sentence! I bet he turned over a whole lot of shit to get off this easily. 

Seth Abramson has this to say on the sentence:

 

[onekidanddone]

6 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Seth Abramson has this to say on the sentence:

 

Let's hope he is in protective custody and none of guards or fellow inmates are on the take. 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Mueller targets may spend more time in prison than Trump does in White House"

Spoiler

The sentencing of President Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen to three years in prison on Wednesday followed his admission of guilt in August on eight felony counts brought by U.S. attorneys from the Southern District of New York. Given that we’ve expected Cohen to face punishment for months, that sentence by itself wasn’t particularly surprising.

What is surprising, upon stepping back from the news of the day, is that the longtime personal attorney for the president of the United States is going to jail for three years — nearly as long as Trump himself will serve following his 2016 election. In fact, including the three other individuals who’ve already been sentenced to or served prison time, the cumulative sentences obtained by SDNY or the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III makes up 90 percent of Trump’s term in office.

(Cohen’s sentence included two months to be served concurrent with the rest of his sentence for his guilty plea on charges of lying to Congress brought by the special counsel’s office.)

And that’s with at least three sentences outstanding. In order to extend longer than Trump’s term in office, the sentences for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates need only extend beyond months in total. Manafort alone, it seems safe to assume, could face a longer sentence than that, given his existing conviction on fraud charges.

But we should again step back. The following people face or have served prison time:

• Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney for more than a decade who also acted as a surrogate for his campaign (3 years)
• Manafort, the chairman of Trump’s campaign for several months (TBD)
• Gates, his deputy, who went on to serve on the Trump transition team (TBD)
• Flynn, an early endorser who went on to advise his campaign and serve as national security adviser (TBD)
• George Papadopoulos, an adviser to the campaign who, like Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to investigators (14 days)
• Richard Pinedo, who pleaded guilty to providing Russian nationals with fraudulent bank account numbers that were then allegedly used to facilitate their interference efforts (6 months)
• Alex van der Zwaan, who worked with Manafort and Gates in their consulting business (30 days)

For the most part, the charges faced by these individuals don’t involve Trump or the campaign, something that the president will be sure to note. It’s also the case that Trump could move to block individuals from having to serve by pardoning them or commuting their sentences.

But, stepping back: The most serious sentence issued so far is Cohen’s, and among the charges on which he’s being sentenced are two that do directly implicate Trump. Those, of course, are the efforts to pay two women to keep quiet about alleged affairs before the 2016 election in violation of federal campaign finance laws. Government attorneys went out of their way to indicate Trump’s link to those charges in a court filing late last week.

The duration of the prison time faced by people swept up in Mueller’s probe or who are in Trump’s orbit is about the same amount of time that Trump will serve following the campaign on which many of them served. And there appear to be more shoes yet to drop.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I found this perspective interesting: "Mueller should try to indict Trump. It would guarantee his report goes public."

Spoiler

Now that Michael Cohen has placed President Trump squarely in criminal crosshairs, a constitutional crisis appears to be looming: If there is evidence that Trump committed a crime, can he be indicted while in office?

This isn’t settled law, though most legal analysts conclude that an indictment is unlikely — the Justice Department has had an internal policy since 1973 that sitting presidents cannot be indicted. But there is another policy that can use the 1973 Office of Legal Counsel opinion to its advantage and achieve the same effect as an indictment without having to issue one: the special counsel regulations under which Robert S. Mueller III is appointed.

The special counsel does not act independently; he is supervised by the attorney general (or, under the current circumstances, presumably the acting attorney general — though that itself has raised some problematic legal questions). Specifically, while Mueller does not have to report day to day to the attorney general, he or she has the power to approve any “significant steps” taken in the investigation or to overrule them. This authority has received intense scrutiny ever since Mueller’s appointment because of the power it can wield over the scope and effect of the special counsel’s investigation.

Importantly, the attorney general cannot deny the special counsel’s requests based on a mere whim. The regulations state that the attorney general must give “great weight to the views of the Special Counsel,” and only if the attorney general concludes “that the action is so inappropriate or unwarranted under established Departmental practices that it should not be pursued” may the latter’s request be denied. If this happens, the attorney general is required to report a description and explanation of the denied actions to the House and Senate judiciary committees, including their ranking members, at the conclusion of the special counsel’s investigation.

And there is the rub. If, at the end of his inquiry, Mueller believes that he has gathered enough evidence that would warrant charging Trump with one or more crimes, he can provide that evidence in his final report to the attorney general, along with a recommendation that the president be indicted. The attorney general could approve that recommendation, in which case such an indictment would become public (with its constitutionality litigated in court). But the attorney general could just as legitimately deny the requests based on the internal 1973 policy that suggests an indictment is “inappropriate and unwarranted under established Departmental practices.”

But this action would automatically trigger the reporting requirement to Congress.

In fact, that might be the only way to guarantee a report goes to Capitol Hill. There is no other requirement for the attorney general to provide Mueller’s final report to Congress — the regulations only require reports on requests that are denied. If Mueller does not recommend indicting the president and the attorney general agrees with that decision, there is no guaranteed mechanism for that information to become public.

That might happen. Because of the 1973 opinion, Mueller, as someone who operates “by the book,” may not recommend an indictment, even if he believed one was warranted. But Mueller is also a career prosecutor who believes in justice and accountability. Cohen’s plea, and the language used by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in its sentencing memo for Cohen, makes clear that there is enough evidence to directly implicate Trump in at least one crime — a campaign finance felony. Depending on what Mueller has gathered in his obstruction investigation and in the Russia collusion inquiry, there may be others. But if the Justice Department chooses not to indict Trump and the evidence Mueller has turned up doesn’t reach Congress the president would effectively receive immunity for his crimes as long as he remains in office.

By contrast, in creating a conduit under the Justice Department’s existing rules for his findings to reach Congress, Mueller would open the door to several alternatives besides a criminal indictment. Once the House Judiciary Committee is under Democratic control in January, for example, it could release the report of Mueller’s findings to the public. It could also call Mueller to publicly testify to his findings — and specifically what he believes would be indictable offenses — upon the conclusion of his investigation. At that point, members of Congress and the American public could make their own judgments about whether the evidence is enough to render Trump unfit for office.

Precisely because the only remedy might ultimately be a political one — impeachment and removal by Congress — Mueller must ensure that the fruits of his investigation don’t get buried. In 1974, Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski faced a similar predicament when he uncovered evidence of crimes committed by then-President Richard M. Nixon. His solution was to pass off his findings to Congress and create a “road map” for potential impeachment proceedings. By recommending an indictment that will be overruled, Mueller could likewise automatically pass the baton to Congress and allow the political process to pick up when the criminal process can go no further.

 

[GreyhoundFan]