Trump Is Surrounded by Criminals

Not since Richard Nixon has an occupant of the White House proven to have surrounded himself with criminals than Donald Trump.  This, of course, should come as no surprise if one has followed Trump's mob boss like business conduct over the years in New York City and elsewhere where many believe Trump facilitated money laundering by the Russian mob and other undesirables. Criminals tend to surround themselves with other criminals.  With yesterday's conviction on all counts of long time Trump confident Roger Stone, we now have a half dozen convicted criminals who made up part of the Trump/Pence campaign and/or regime.  A piece in Politico looks at Stone's conviction (note the references to Trump lying to Mueller as well): 

A federal jury on Friday found the longtime Republican provocateur guilty on all charges for thwarting a House investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference, opening up a political pandora’s box for a president already facing pressure from his conservative base to issue a pardon.

Stone’s fate was sealed after a trial that spanned just over a week, which concluded with unanimous guilty verdicts against Stone on five felony counts of lying to investigators, one count of obstructing a congressional probe and one count of witness tampering.

Friday’s guilty verdicts represent the biggest victory for prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe since former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted on eight felony charges at a trial in Northern Virginia over a year ago. In the courtroom for Stone’s trial, there were ample signs of the case’s origins.

Trump told Mueller’s investigators they spoke from “time to time during the campaign.” Prosecutors introduced evidence collected from phone records during Stone’s trial showing about 60 separate communications between the two men from February to November 2016.

A second piece in New York Magazine looks at Trump's larger circle of criminal associates.  Here are highlights:  

The legal ring surrounding him [Trump] is collectively producing a historic indictment of his endemic corruption and criminality.

Day two of the House impeachment hearings, featuring Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, may have appeared on the surface to focus on a sideshow. Yovanovitch was not directly involved in Trump’s efforts to extort Ukraine for political advantage, the main charge he faces. What her testimony instead accomplished was to put the lie to Trump’s ludicrous defense that he was pursuing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine — that his demands that Kiev investigate his rivals were simply about cleaning the country up.

Her testimony was devoted to proving the hypocrisy of Trump’s claim. She testified how she had worked in Ukraine to promote reform, how her efforts to do so alienated corrupt oligarchs there, and how those oligarchs then worked in tandem with Rudy Giuliani to foment a backlash against her. She explained that the fired Ukrainian prosecutor that Trump praised to Ukraine’s president in a July phone call was in fact totally corrupt.

Trump fired Yovanovitch because she stood in the way of the corruption he and his allies were promoting. To the extent corruption motivated Trump’s diplomatic posture in Ukraine, it was that he wanted to encourage more of it.

During Yovanovitch’s testimony, a federal court registered a guilty verdict on all seven counts for Trump’s adviser Roger Stone. Stone’s crimes involved lying and covering up Trump’s awareness of Democratic emails stolen by Russians. Rick Gates, Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, told investigators that he personally witnessed a July 31, 2016, phone call between Trump and Stone shortly after WikiLeaks published a tranche of stolen emails. After hanging up with Stone, Trump announced more information was on its way.

The two figures in his campaign who most directly colluded with Russia, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, both refused to cooperate with Mueller. Whatever they know about Trump’s full collusion with Russia’s campaign hacking will remain secret, probably forever.

And yet, even if he pardons Manafort and Stone, and all his other loyalists, the plain fact will remain that his inner circle is marked by endemic criminality. In addition to his close adviser Stone, his campaign manager (Manafort), his deputy campaign manager (Gates), his lawyer (Michael Cohen), and his national security adviser (Michael Flynn) have all been convicted of felonies. Trump may have persuaded his hard-core base that all these convictions represent a fraudulent witch hunt. But outside the Trump cult, which is not by itself large enough to win the election, being surrounded by criminals is not an admired quality.

In all probability, the parade of charges is probably not over. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is reportedly being investigated for a number of alleged federal crimes, including bribing foreign officials, conspiracy, violating federal campaign-finance laws, and failing to register as a foreign agent. The Wall Street Journal reports today that federal prosecutors are investigating whether Giuliani personally stood to profit from a natural-gas shakedown run by his partners, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.

Parnas and Fruman, two figures linked to the Russian mob who have been arrested, were helping Giuliani run his off-the-books diplomatic work in Ukraine. 

If Rudy himself was involved in the gas shakedown, as the Journal story suggests, it would be an even deeper form of corruption. Trump’s lawyer and personal representative would have sent gangsters to extort Ukraine for Trump’s political gain and his own profit. The false accusations Trump has hurled against Biden are pale versions of the very real crimes Trump’s cronies have tried to carry out.

[T]he full scale of his betrayal is staggering. Trump will probably not become the first president to be impeached and removed from office, but he will go down in history as the most criminal president in American history.

One can only hope that indictments against Giuliani come soon. 

Why Paul Manafort's Information Sharing With Russian Agents is a Big Deal

Thanks to a redaction error by Paul Manafort’s legal counsel in a filing in the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference we now know that Manafort shared highly confidential internal polling data about the 2016 campaign with a Russian-linked operative.  Driving to work today Republican Senator James Langford of Oklahoma – who seeming loves every right wing cause and conspiracy theory – waived off this bombshell as nothing, trying to say that since Manafort had know the Russia-linked operative for years, the disclosure was just old friends talking. Sadly, Lankford embodies just how far Vichy Republicans are willing to close their eyes and more or less lie and betray the country.  A piece in CNN argues why this new information is a big deal.  Here are highlights: 

On Tuesday we learned -- thanks to a redaction error in a filing in the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference -- that Paul Manafort met with a Russian-linked operative named Konstantin Kilimnik during the course of the 2016 campaign. And in that meeting, according to special counsel Robert Mueller's office, Manafort discussed policies related to the Russia-Ukraine relationship and shared polling data about the 2016 campaign with Kilimnik.

That. Is. Huge. You'll remember that President Donald Trump's constant refrain when it comes to Manafort, who has already been convicted of a series of financial crimes related to his dealing with the Ukrainian government, is that any and all charges against him happened well before he entered Trump's orbit. . . . . Which, until we got a look at the accidentally unredacted material on Tuesday, was true! Except, not now. Manafort, according to the filings, had conversations with Kilimnik, who is suspected to be a member of the Russian intelligence organization, while he was serving as the head of Trump's campaign. (Manafort's official title was "campaign chairman" but functioned as campaign manager during his time with Trump.) Those conversations apparently came even as Russian officials were hacking into the email servers at the Democratic National Committee -- which led to a series of damaging leaks via the website WikiLeaks later in 2016.
 Not only that, but Manafort's legal team also acknowledges that he shared polling information with Kilimnik in those conversations, a fact that seems to make clear -- as if it needed to be made any more clear -- that this wasn't simply a social call between two old friends. House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff told CNN Wednesday that the revelation raises "profound questions about why all the secrecy, why all the lies. And most seriously, why is a campaign manager of a US presidential candidate providing campaign polling data to someone linked to a foreign adversary's intelligence agency?'' [M]ake no mistake: The Manafort filings on Tuesday do matter in a major way -- in that they rebut two central claims that Trump makes ad nauseam: 1)      All of Manafort's criminal activity and wrongdoing came years before he was formally involved in the Trump campaign
2)        There wasn't even the whiff of collusion between anyone in his campaign and the Russians.
 On that second point, it's not clear from the filings whether or not Mueller believes that the meetings and conversations between Manafort and Kilimnik constitute collusion to aid Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton between the Russians and Manafort. But given Manafort's role in the campaign, the timing of the meetings and the Russia hacking and the unanimous conclusion of the US intelligence community that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton, there's a whole lot of reasons to suspect at least the possibility of collusion. [Trump’s] constant lamentations about the probe's lack of material evidence are belied seemingly on a weekly basis these days by release -- accidental or purposeful -- of details of the Mueller investigation we didn't know before. What we learned on Tuesday puts Manafort back at the very center of all of this. Which is a very big deal given not only his prominent place in the Trump campaign but the fact that he was one of three top Trump aides in that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting in which Russians had promised dirt on Clinton. Put simply: This latest Manafort news is a very big deal.

Did the Special Counsel Mueller Set Manafort/Trump Up?

As Donald Trump increasingly appears to be committing obstruction of justice in plain view by dangling a possible pardon before Paul Manafort and likely lying in his written responses to special prosecutor Robert Mueller, some are speculating that Mueller may have planned to allow Trump and Manafort to figuratively hang themselves.  Trump is incapable of telling the truth and thinks (i) he's smarter than anyone else and (ii) thinks he's above the law.  Combine this with Manaforts sleazy history and it's a recipe for obstruction charges - not to mention additional charges against Manafort for lying to the FBI.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at whether Mueller set this trap or if it's the natural result of two despicable and utterly dishonest men, i.e., Trump and Manafort.  Here are excerpts:

It is the kind of fine print to which lawyers devote many billable hours crafting and reviewing. Rick Gates’s plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller includes this line: “The defendant agrees not to reveal his cooperation, or any information derived therefrom, to any third party without prior consent of the Office.” The language of Paul Manafort’s cooperation deal is almost identical—with the exception of that sentence about disclosing information to third parties. “The absence of that gag order is not an oversight,” says Katya Jestin, a former federal prosecutor. “This could be part of a larger strategic play by Mueller. Which gives this a John le Carré aspect.” 

On Monday, Mueller went to court to take the rare step of invalidating a plea deal, accusing Manafort of lying after agreeing to cooperate with the government; Manafort maintains that he told the special counsel the truth. The stunning collapse of Manafort’s deal raises a bigger and more intriguing question: who created that loophole about talking to third parties, and is it part of a sophisticated game Mueller is playing? Or did President Donald Trump just blunder into incriminating himself? The greatest likelihood is that the special counsel agreed to leave out the prohibition on talking to third parties because Manafort had little rational incentive for doing so—and could be punished for bad behavior. Indeed, Mueller is now asking the court to sentence Manafort immediately, and will probably ask for a longer prison term. Yet Mueller’s team has always thought strategically about how to deal with Trump—for instance, farming out portions of the investigation to other jurisdictions who couldn’t be shut down by [Trump] the president. Did they agree to omit the third-party clause as a way to test Manafort and Trump? The tantalizing possibility is that Trump, basing his answers on what he was hearing from Manafort, lied in those written answers and has now stumbled into strengthening the obstruction of justice case against him. “Mueller built the plea agreement to permit Kevin Downing to continue to share information with Rudy Giuliani,” says Marcy Wheeler, a national security expert who blogs under the name Emptywheel. “So in the eventuality Manafort lied and Mueller didn’t tell them what evidence they had that he was lying, then that would in a sense be negative reinforcement for Trump. He would think that he was going to get away with it, just like Manafort was.” “Andrew Weissmann is a chess player, for sure,” says Jestin, who is a former colleague of Weissmann, Mueller’s top adjutant. “So maybe that was lurking in the back of their minds: ‘Manafort doesn’t want a gag order? Fine. Let’s not give them a gag order. If they screw up, they’re facing potential obstruction.’ Sam Buell worked alongside Weissmann in 2003, constructing the government’s case against Enron. “Why was it left out of the agreement? They are so darn careful, it had to have been deliberate,” Buell says. “I’m at a loss. But nobody wants to create obstruction, especially a careful, by-the-book guy like Mueller. Obstruction is bad from the prosecutor’s standpoint. In an ideal world, you would like the president and the White House to be completely out of this: Shut up, sit on the sidelines, don’t meddle, let them do their job.”

We are a long way from an ideal world, though, and Trump is pathologically incapable of shutting up. If [Trump] the president and his former campaign manager colluded to try to deceive Mueller, Wheeler says, it’s clear where the blame belongs. “If these two men, Manafort and Trump, chose to continue to share notes through a period when they’re both being questioned by the special counsel,” she says, “and they don’t understand that Mueller isn’t telling either one of them how much evidence he has, that’s their own damn fault, not Mueller’s.”

Manafort’s Lawyer Said to Brief Trump Attorneys

Trump attorney Kevin Downing - guilty of ethical violations/obstructing justice?

In what at first glance appears to be a possible ethical violation worthy of disbarment not to mention possible obstruction of justice, the New York Times is reporting that one of convicted felon Paul Manafort's attorneys has been briefing Trump's on what evidence special prosecutor Robert Mueller has on Manafort and possibly other Trump co-conspirators.  This after Mueller revoked Manafort's plea deal since Manafort has been lying to federal investigators rather than fully cooperating with investigators.  That Manafort has been lying should come as no surprise given his sleazy activities in the past for four individuals and nations. What is a surprise is that a member of the bar would be working to subvert a federal investigation.  One can only hope that bar complaints are immediately filed against this individual and that they lose their law license.  Here are excerpts from the Times piece: 

A lawyer for Paul Manafort, [Trump’s] the president’s onetime campaign chairman, repeatedly briefed President Trump’s lawyers on his client’s discussions with federal investigators after Mr. Manafort agreed to cooperate with the special counsel, according to one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers and two other people familiar with the conversations.

The arrangement was highly unusual and inflamed tensions with the special counsel’s office when prosecutors discovered it after Mr. Manafort began cooperating two months ago, the people said. Some legal experts speculated that it was a bid by Mr. Manafort for a presidential pardon even as he worked with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, in hopes of a lighter sentence.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of [Trump’s] the president’s personal lawyers [who was forced out of a prominent law firm because of his own unseemly/unethical behavior], acknowledged the arrangement on Tuesday and defended it as a source of valuable insights into the special counsel’s inquiry and where it was headed. Mr. Manafort’s lawyer Kevin M. Downing told him that prosecutors hammered away at whether [Trump] the president knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting where Russians promised to deliver damaging information on Hillary Clinton to his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. [Trump] The president has long denied knowing about the meeting in advance. “He wants Manafort to incriminate Trump,” Mr. Giuliani declared of Mr. Mueller. While Mr. Downing’s discussions with the president’s team violated no laws [but may have violated bar rules of ethics], they helped contribute to a deteriorating relationship between lawyers for Mr. Manafort and Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors, . . . . That conflict spilled into public view on Monday when the prosecutors took the rare step of declaring that Mr. Manafort had breached his plea agreement by lying to them about a variety of subjects.

Mr. Manafort will now face sentencing on two conspiracy charges and eight counts of financial fraud — crimes that could put him behind bars for at least 10 years.

Mr. Downing did not respond to a request for comment. Though it was unclear how frequently he spoke to Mr. Trump’s lawyers or how much he revealed, his updates helped reassure Mr. Trump’s legal team that Mr. Manafort had not implicated the president in any possible wrongdoing.

Mr. Giuliani, who has taken an aggressive posture against the Russia investigation since Mr. Trump hired him in April, seized on Mr. Downing’s information to unleash lines of attack onto the special counsel. In his own recent Twitter attacks on the special counsel, [Trump] the president seemed to imply that he had inside information about the prosecutors’ lines of inquiry and frustrations. “Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie,” Mr. Trump wrote on Tuesday. [W]hen one defendant decides to cooperate with the government in a plea deal, that defense lawyer typically pulls out rather than antagonize the prosecutors who can influence the client’s sentence. For instance, a lawyer for [Trump’s] the president’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn withdrew last year from such an agreement with Mr. Trump’s lawyers before pleading guilty to a felony offense and agreeing to help the special counsel.

[L]aw enforcement experts said it was still highly unusual for Mr. Manafort’s lawyers to keep up such contacts once their client had pledged to help the prosecutors in hope of a lighter punishment for his crimes.

Mr. Manafort must have wanted to keep a line open to [Trump] the president in hope of a pardon, said Barbara McQuade, a former United States attorney who now teaches law at University of Michigan. “I’m not able to think of another reason,” she said.

If Mr. Manafort wanted to stay on the prosecutors’ good side, “it would make no sense for him to continue to share information with other subjects of the investigation,” said Chuck Rosenberg, a former United States attorney and senior F.B.I. official. He added: “He is either all in or all out with respect to cooperation. Typically, there is no middle ground.”

In another development on Tuesday, Mr. Manafort categorically denied a report in The Guardian claiming that he met with Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, around the time he joined the Trump campaign in the spring of 2016. Mr. Mueller’s team has been investigating whether any associates of Mr. Trump conspired with Moscow’s operation to influence the presidential election with documents stolen from Democratic computers and distributed by WikiLeaks. Some defense lawyers have suggested that prosecutors deliberately fashioned Mr. Manafort’s plea agreement to counter a possible pardon. In forcing Mr. Manafort to forfeit almost all of his wealth — including five homes, various bank accounts and an insurance policy — prosecutors specified that they could seize his assets under civil procedures “without regard to the status of his criminal conviction.”

Harry Litman, a University of California, San Diego, law professor and a former deputy assistant attorney general, said that he had seen similar provisions in other cases. But other legal experts said it seemed tailor-made to ensure Mr. Manafort would lose much of his wealth, no matter what Mr. Trump did.

It should be noted that Trump has had difficulty attracting top, ethical legal counsel since most top law firms want nothing to do with him.  

Mueller Ready to Deliver Key Findings

With all of the other news occupying the media, the Russiagate investigation has fallen below the radar screen.  But that does not mean that Robert Mueller and his team have been idle.  As Bloomberg reports, it is expected that Mueller will unveil key findings shortly after the 2018 midterm elections.  The big question, of course, is to what lengths Donald Trump and Vichy Republicans will go to bury the report and keep it from the public.  Many predict that Trump will fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after the midterms and seek to appoint a replacement who will do Trump's bidding and close down the investigation which has seen numerous indictments and a number of guilty pleas from Trump campaign officials.  The investigation has proven itself to be anything but a "witch hunt" as screeched by Der Trumpenführer and his 1930's German-like supporters. Here are highlights from Bloomberg on where the matter stands currently:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is expected to issue findings on core aspects of his Russia probe soon after the November midterm elections as he faces intensifying pressure to produce more indictments or shut down his investigation, according to two U.S. officials.

Specifically, Mueller is close to rendering judgment on two of the most explosive aspects of his inquiry: whether there were clear incidents of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and whether the president took any actions that constitute obstruction of justice, according to one of the officials, who asked not to be identified speaking about the investigation.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Mueller’s findings would be made public if he doesn’t secure unsealed indictments. The regulations governing Mueller’s probe stipulate that he can present his findings only to his boss, who is currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The regulations give a special counsel’s supervisor some discretion in deciding what is relayed to Congress and what is publicly released.

The question of timing is critical. Mueller’s work won’t be concluded ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, when Democrats hope to take control of the House and end Trump’s one-party hold on Washington.

But this timeline also raises questions about the future of the probe itself. Trump has signaled he may replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the election, a move that could bring in a new boss for Mueller. Rosenstein also might resign or be fired by Trump after the election.

With three weeks to go before the midterm elections, it’s unlikely Mueller will take any overt action that could be turned into a campaign issue. Justice Department guidelines say prosecutors should avoid any major steps close to an election that could be seen as influencing the outcome.

That suggests the days and weeks immediately after the Nov. 6 election may be the most pivotal time since Mueller took over the Russia investigation almost a year and a half ago. So far, Mueller has secured more than two dozen indictments or guilty pleas.

Several matters could keep the probe going, such as another significant prosecution or new lines of inquiry. And because Mueller’s investigation has been proceeding quietly, out of the public eye, it’s possible there have been other major developments behind the scenes.

Mueller’s prosecutors also have met with Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer. Cohen pleaded guilty in New York in August to tax evasion, bank fraud and violations of campaign finance laws. That separate investigation, headed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, is one of several New York probes involving the Trump Organization, and could ultimately prove to be more damaging to [Trump] the president than Mueller’s work.

Manafort is also key to understanding a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russians who had promised damaging information concerning Clinton, the former official said.

Manafort appears to have good material to offer, said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Duke University School of Law. “He’s not going to get that deal unless he can help Mueller make a case against one or more people,” Buell said. Cooperators can’t expect leniency unless they provide "substantial assistance in the prosecution of others," Buell added, citing sentencing guidelines.

Even if Mueller’s probe stretched through 2019, the timeline wouldn’t be unprecedented. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr spent four years investigating President Bill Clinton before releasing his report on the Monica Lewinsky affair, which spun out of a probe into an Arkansas land deal known as Whitewater.

It took almost two years for Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to indict Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, for lying to investigators and obstruction of justice in October 2005 in the investigation into the public outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

What Manafort's Plea Deal May Mean

Some - including Der Trumpenführer - claimed that Paul Manafort would never enter into a plead deal with Robert Mueller's investigation.  Today, those claims crashed and burned as Manafort plead guilty to two charges and agreed to cooperate with Mueller's team in exchange for avoiding a second lengthy and costly trial.   The speculation now, of course, is what goods does Manafort have to offer Mueller in exchange for the plea deal.  If there was nothing of value, Mueller would not have accepted the deal.  Odds are Trump will be issuing twitter attacks on both Manafort and the Russiagate investigation.  A column in the Washington Post by former Republican, Jennifer Rubin, looks at the development.  Here are highlights:

The Post reports:

President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded guilty Friday to two criminal charges under terms of a plea deal that includes his cooperation as a potential witness for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. . . . .

That’s the news Trump never wanted to hear. The prospect of just such a deal is why his lawyers reportedly dangled the promise of a pardon in front of Manafort’s lawyers. A plea deal that could put the Russians inside Trump’s campaign blows to smithereens the notion that only low-level, non-players or those distantly related to the campaign had Russian connections. Trump, who was praising Manafort to the heavens just weeks ago, will find it hard (but not impossible) to now smear him as a liar.

“The relentless Mueller push continues — as does that of the rule of law,” observes former White House ethics counsel Norman Eisen. “The reported cooperation agreement could be devastating to the president — and those around him. Manafort for example could  implicate not only the president in the Trump Tower meeting — but also others who were involved such as Don Jr. or [Jared] Kushner. The same is true on the mysterious [RNC] platform change, and indeed on all the possible collision offenses.”

The plea certainly explodes Trump’s claim that Mueller is engaged in a “witch hunt.” The only “hoax” here is the pretense that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on inside the Trump campaign or that it was too disorganized to have spent time colluding with Russians.
Trump also loses the argument that Mueller is wasting taxpayer money. As part of the plea deal, Manafort is going to cough up $46 million in forfeited assets, according to news reports.
What we will find out in the days and weeks ahead is just how much Manafort knows and how much he can tell us about what Trump knew regarding Russian interference on his behalf. For Republicans who have been carrying water for the president, it might be time to put down the buckets and run for their political lives. Frankly, voting for impeachment and removal might be a good option for Republicans at some point. Before we get there, however, there are the midterms, which are shaping up to be a wipeout for the GOP.

How Will The Trump/Pence Nightmare End

As Andrew Sullivan notes "There was a sense among some this week that we had at last reached that golden “inflection point” when all of Trump’s lies, scams, cons, and crimes finally sink in with Republicans, and the cult begins to crack."  A piece in The Atlantic notes a similar feeling but then cautions "This is an inflection point. And yet an equally well-informed friend insists, “I no longer believe in political inflection points and neither should you.”  How the national nightmare ends - and I include Mike Pence who once misused campaign funds in the past along lines that now has GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter under multiple federal indictment - is unclear.   Were we back in the Watergate era, when Republicans put the rule of law and the nation above continued self-enrichment and political power, the end game would be clear and the optimism of some that Trump is going to go down would be justified.  Now, most Republicans are little better than Trump and his base is truly the "basket of depolarables" that Hillary Clinton aptly called them even if her honesty was not politically correct.  Sullivan takes a darker view of where America might be headed given the hatred of others that motivates the Trump/Pence base and the lawlessness of Trump (Pence stands by and quietly applauds him).  Here's a portion of what Sullivan warns could happen:

I tend to think something else is happening: that we are entering the most dangerous phase of Donald Trump’s presidency. We always knew this would happen — that the rule of law and Trump would at some point be unable to coexist — but we had no idea how it would specifically play out. Now we see the lay of the land a little more clearly.

Trump has also revealed himself this week to regard Watergate hero John Dean as a “rat” for defending the rule of law under Nixon, a view that even Nixon never expressed in public. And he holds the views of a mob boss when it comes to the idea of plea bargains as a way of shutting down organized crime: “I know all about flipping. For 30, 40 years, I’ve been watching flippers. Everything is wonderful and then they get ten years in jail and they flip on whoever the next highest one is or as high as you can go … It’s called ‘flipping’ and it almost ought to be illegal.” Almost.

Who else, by the way, do you know has spent four decades of his life “watching” the intricacies of mob round-ups? Yes, I know Trump made his fortune in part through the mob. They were regulars at his Taj Mahal casino, which was found to have “willfully violated” the money-laundering rules of the Bank Secrecy Act, was the subject of four separate IRS investigations for “repeated and significant” deviations from money-laundering laws, and was forced to pay what was then an industry record for the largest money-laundering fine. The Russian mob was critical to buying his real estate in secret as well. This is a president who has surrounded himself with criminals, especially Russian criminals, for decades. But still: the man who took an oath to enforce the laws of the land is openly touting the logic of mobsters in their battle with law enforcement. Before this presidency, that would have been inconceivable.

A republic cannot be governed by a man who acts like a mafia boss, following mafia rules. The minute that happens, the corrosion begins. Every day such a crook holds the highest office in the land represents yet another crack in the law of the land. If this figure decides to wage an actual war on the rule of law, and retains the solid support of his own party, all bets are off. And it is a staggering fact that in the wake of this week’s verdicts and Trump’s responses, no Republican leaders have yet decisively called their president out, and no right-wing media outlet has sounded any kind of alarm. It has fallen to Jeff Sessions to issue a statement defending the DOJ.
 [T]his is the beginning, not the end. Everything we know about Trump would lead you to believe he will defend himself, like every other mafia boss, to the bitter end. His current strategy is to dismiss the recent convictions as nothing to do with him, and nothing to do with collusion with Russia. “NO COLLUSION.” And that may well work with his base — unless evidence does emerge of a knowing conspiracy with Russia, giving Mueller the goods without any serious doubt. Or unless we discover that Trump himself obviously used his constitutional powers to obstruct justice.

But if the evidence for one or both does come to light, that’s also when the implicit danger becomes explicit. At that point, Trump would have several options. He could fire Sessions and Rosenstein and others until he found someone who would fire Mueller. (And he has just signaled that that is exactly what he will do.) He could pardon everyone implicated by Mueller and declare the entire affair a travesty of justice.

But Trump could also launch a political campaign to purge the government of those he views as global elitists who have been trying to overturn the result of a democratic election since November 2016. He could perform, in other words, a mini-Erdogan, go to the country in 2020, and appeal for mass support against the “swamp.” He could double down on the populism. If impeached, he would encourage and foment what Rudy Giuliani called this week a “people’s revolt.”

He could also ratchet up the foul white-nationalist rhetoric he has been spouting for so long, seizing on events, such as the awful murder of Mollie Tibbetts, to generate anti-immigrant hysteria. Newt Gingrich, one of the most sinister figures in modern American politics, has openly mused about running a midterm campaign on fears of violence by brown illegal immigrants. Trump could tweet out scare stories about land reform in South Africa, raising classic fears of black violence against whites, in order to rally his base. He could openly allow Russia to interfere again with the elections, this time the midterms, and indeed his administration just blocked a vital new bill to provide support for election security.

And in all this, he will have a completely shameless state propaganda network [Fox News] to amplify the message, and legitimize it.

I would like to believe that Trump would fail, and be removed from office, or, better still, voted decisively out of it. That would actually strengthen our liberal democracy. But it’s impossible to view the tribalism now defining our culture and the despicable character of this president and find this conclusion inevitable. The good news this week is that a poll shows growing support for the Mueller investigation, and a Democratic wave this November could force even this putrefying version of what was once the GOP to reconsider its options.

As Salena Zito noted this week: “Right now the value of Trump to the Trump voter is he is all that stands between them and handing the keys to Washington back over to the people inside Washington. That’s it. He’s their only option. You’ve got to pick the insiders or him.”

But what if picking him over the insiders means picking autocracy over the rule of law? The next few months will tell us if enough Americans prefer a criminal president to a Democratic one. I’m genuinely afraid of what the answer may be.

Frighteningly, Sullivan's assessment is, to me, on point.  I have no faith in today's GOP or the hideous GOP base to opt for the rule of law and democracy. 

The piece in The Atlantic is less dark and cautionary and hopes for a better end.  But it too notes the current foul state of the GOP and its knuckle dragging base (for Fox News viewers, Mussolini was an Italian dictator aligned with Hitler who was ultimate hanged by his people):

A tyrant is unloved, and although the laws and institutions of the United States have proven a brake on Trump, his spirit remains tyrannical—that is, utterly self-absorbed and self-concerned, indifferent to the suffering of others, knowing no moral restraint. He expects fealty and gives none. Such people can exert power for a long time, by playing on the fear and cupidity, the gullibility and the hatreds of those around them. Ideological fervor can substitute for personal affection and attachment for a time, and so too can blind terror and sheer stupidity, but in the end, these fall away as well.

And thus their courtiers abandon even monumental tyrants like Mussolini—who at least had his mistress, Claretta Petacci, with him at his ignominious end. (Melania’s affections are considerably less certain.) The normal course of events is sudden, epic desertion, in which an all-powerful political figure who loomed over everything is suddenly left shrunken and pitiful, a wretched little figure in gaudy robes absurdly too big for him, a figure of ridicule as much as, and even more than, hatred.

This is going to happen to Trump at some point. Of the Republicans in Congress it may be said of most of them: Those he commands move only in command, nothing in love. For now, admittedly, there are those who still court his favor—Senator Lindsey Graham, for example, once the trusty vassal of Senator John McCain, the bravest of warriors and noblest of dukes, seems to have switched his allegiance from his dying lord to the swaggering upstart aged prince. But that is about ambition, not affection.

For the moment, the Republicans will not turn on Trump. They fear a peasant revolt, many of them; they still crave favors; they may think his castle impregnable, although less so if they believe what the polls tell them about some of its tottering walls. But if they suffer a medieval-style slaughter on Election Day, the remnants of the knights of the GOP will know a greater fear than that of being primaried. And at the moment when they no longer fear being swept away in 2020, when the economy may be in recession and Robert Mueller’s probe is complete with revelations whose ghastliness would delight the three witches of the Scottish play, they will suddenly turn on Trump. Act V of this play will also have a nonlinear finish.

And what of Trump himself? In this respect he will be like Macbeth. Where Nixon, who was a statesman, saw the inevitable and resigned, this president is more likely to go down spitting defiance.

And so it will likely be, as Americans gaze back and wonder how on earth this rare monster, now deposed, ended up as their president.

How do we insure a good end?  Make sure you and everyone you know is registered to vote and that you and all of them vote Democrat in November.  Only an electoral massacre will push today's Republicans to do what those of 1974 did with Nixon. 

What the Manafort Guilty Verdict Means

Even with yesterday's guilty plea by Michael Cohne, Trump's long time fixer and consigliere, and the federal jury conviction of Trump campaign chair, publicly, Trump continues to bleat and shout that the entire Russiagate investigation is a "witch hunt" and that there is no proof of "collusion" with Russia.  The growing list of indictments, guilty pleas and now Manafort conviction underscore that the investigation is anything but a witch hunt and on the issue of collusion, its a case of "not yet," but the trend in that direction is growing.  Cohen  has already implied that Trump had prior knowledge of the hacking of the DNC and Hillary Clinton's emails.  If he can provide documentation and/or audio tapes, Trump's goose could well be cooked.  Meanwhile, one cannot help but wonder what is wrong with Trump's base.  Is their racial hatred and terror over perceived loss of white privilege that they will continue to believe Trump's lies simply because he stokes their resentments and hate? Trump has operated for years as little better than a crime boss, yet evangelical Christians remain his strongest supporters.  What is wrong with them.  What does Mike Pence know and when did he learn it?  An article in the New York Times looks at what the Manafort guilty plea means and where Trump's legal woes may be headed.  Here rare excerpts:

With Tuesday’s convictions in the criminal trial of President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has struck another blow in his investigation: five guilty pleas, 32 indicted individuals, 187 charges revealing startling evidence of Russia’s 2016 attack on our democracy, and now the conviction of one of the top operators in the Trump campaign orbit. Mr. Manafort’s conviction on eight separate counts means he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

The conviction conclusively and publicly demonstrates what many of us have said since the start of the investigation: This is no “witch hunt.” It instead is one of the most successful special counsel investigations in history. Coming alongside the guilty plea by Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, implicating the president in campaign finance violations, it was a very bad day for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Manafort’s conviction cannot be diminished by arguing, as Mr. Trump and his coterie are fond of doing, that the misconduct was unrelated to the Trump campaign or Russian “collusion.” On the contrary, the trial evidence included Mr. Manafort’s close ties to pro-Russia forces and his desperate financial straits as he “volunteered” his time for the next president. The trial revealed how willing Mr. Manafort was to corruptly leverage his position of influence over Mr. Trump during the campaign for his own personal benefit. He offered briefings to a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch and dangled a position in the Trump administration in front of a banker who provided him a loan for which he would not otherwise have qualified.

The conviction also shows the caliber of the foe that President Trump is facing as he decides whether or not to sit for an interview with Mr. Mueller focusing on obstruction of justice. While we had already believed that Mr. Trump was unlikely to voluntarily sit for an interview, Tuesday’s verdict makes that interview even less probable.

[Mueller’s] win in the Manafort case sends Mr. Trump the message that the special counsel and his team have the will and the ability to win a battle over a subpoena. Like in the Manafort case, the law is on their side. In United States v. Nixon, the Supreme Court unanimously held that a president cannot use executive privilege to withhold tape recordings of his words. There is no reason that the same principle should not also apply to their live utterance.

Mr. Manafort’s conviction should also send chills down the spines of other potential defendants, possibly including the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and his informal adviser Roger Stone. . . . They would be wise to study the Manafort trial as a preview of the prosecutions that could emerge next. As the legal pressure builds on these major figures, there could well be a corresponding increase in their desire to cooperate with the investigation. This pressure has already paid dividends to Mr. Mueller's investigation: Mr. Cohen entered a plea agreement on Tuesday afternoon on charges related to campaign-finance violations and bank and tax fraud.

The conviction is also bad news for [Trump] the president because it increases the pressure on Mr. Manafort to cooperate with investigators. He has a second trial coming shortly in Washington, D.C., which could add even more time to what will likely be a substantial sentence — and Mr. Mueller reportedly has much more evidence to present to jurors in that trial than he did in the trial that just concluded.

Nor can Mr. Manafort simply wait for a presidential pardon.  . . . But should Mr. Trump pardon him, Mr. Manafort should expect state attorneys general to pick up under applicable state laws the threads of corruption and tax fraud that Mr. Mueller has already woven together. Unlike the federal crimes for which he has been convicted, state crimes cannot be wiped away with a presidential pardon. The risk of state charges maintains the pressure on Mr. Manafort to cooperate — especially after Tuesday’s conviction revealed what jurors think of his questionable business practices and other activities.

A pardon for Mr. Manafort could also end up inflicting more harm on the Trump presidency than any of the other allegedly obstructive acts Mr. Trump has so far undertaken. The Constitution and the laws of our country do not allow Mr. Trump to dangle the possibility of, or explicitly offer, pardons with corrupt intent. . . . . If he or his representatives had gone further and actually promised or offered pardons to Mr. Manafort or other potential Mueller witnesses to prevent or change their testimony, as some reports suggest, that could support bribery charges as well.

I find Trump morally disgusting.  I look forward to the day when his supporters will be forced to face that they have supported a foul and dangerous individual and that their pretense of patriotism through their support of him is nothing more than bullshit masking their own foul motivations.

Cohen Guilty Plea: He Paid Hush Money at Trump’s Direction

Today was not a good day for Donald Trump, a/k/a Trumpenführer, as a Virginia federal jury found former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty on eight 8 counts of tax evasion, bank fraud, etc. (Manafort still has another trial on additional charges in Washington, DC, on charges much closer to the Russiagate investigation). Worse yet, however, was Michael Cohen's plea deal in which he plead guilty to eight counts, including two counts of violation of federal campaign finance laws.  Indeed, Cohen stated that he paid hush money in violation of federal campaign laws at the direction of Trump with an aim of influencing the 2016 presidential election.   To many, Manafort's conviction and Cohen's plea deal merely confirmed what they had already known: Trump and his circle largely akin to a Mafia crime syndicate. For Trump's base, one has to wonder what mental contortions they will need to engage in to continue believing Trump's lie that the Mueller investigation is a "witch hunt."  An growing number of witches have either been indicted, plead guilty and, now convicted in the case of Manfort.  A piece in Politico looks at Cohen's statement that directly implicate Trump in illegal actions.  Here are highlights:

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s combative former personal lawyer, on Tuesday implicated the president in hush money payments he said were designed to sway the election, as part of a plea deal he struck with federal prosecutors on fraud charges.

Cohen, who once stated he would take a bullet for Trump, flipped on his former boss in a dramatic courtroom appearance that went down just as news emerged that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort had been found guilty in his own fraud trial.

“I participated in the conduct for the purposes of influencing the election” Cohen said about his payments to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal, two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump in the past. Trump denies the claims.

The statement came as Cohen formally entered his plea at a Manhattan federal court, in which he admitted guilt to a slate of eight tax evasion, financial fraud and campaign finance charges.

It represented a bombshell moment — and the most politically and potentially legally damaging for Trump, who had previously denied knowledge of the payments.

Cohen said one payment, for $150,000, was made during "summer of 2016, in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office."

The second payment, for $130,000, was made around "October of 2016, at the direction of the same candidate."

Some legal experts speculated that because the Cohen plea included campaign finance violations based on payoffs, it is possible that Trump could be listed as an unindicted co-conspirator.

“It’s certainly possible, and I emphasis possible, that the president could be treated as a co-conspirator,” said the lawyer representing a senior Trump aide in the Russia probe.

“If Cohen broke the law by making these payments, then folks knew about it and agreed with it and assisted with it also broke the law. It’s that simple,” the lawyer added.

And Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, didn't shy away from directly calling out the president.  "If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump?” he asked in a statement.

Notably, the documents leave unanswered the question of whether Cohen has agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the election — and any potential coordination with Trump's campaign on those efforts.

The crimes carry a maximum sentence of 65 years, but sentencing guidelines recommend 46-63 months of prison time.  A source close to Cohen said prior to the plea that Cohen agreed to a plea deal “to save millions of dollars, protect his family, and limit his exposure,” the source said.

Cohen’s plea brings the investigation squarely into the realm of the president’s private life and family, and it marks the most formal break yet between the president and one of his most vocal, visible and forceful defenders.

Campaign finance violations are very hard to prove, and require a lot of mental evidence, or evidence of intent — not just that you know you are doing something wrong, but that you know you are doing something illegal,” Brennan said. “So to get a plea to that charge is a huge win for the government, and for the whole series of investigations.”

Cohen’s willingness to enter into the cooperation agreement “is hugely damaging on two levels,” Brennan added.  On the political level, Cohen can offer investigators and prosecutors critically important details about hush money payments and other potentially damaging information “about willful violations of the law to support the presidential campaign.”

And on the legal front, Cohen’s cooperation could spell trouble for Trump even if Mueller continues to believe a sitting president cannot be indicted. “If you sign a cooperation agreement, you essentially agree to share information with the FBI about any criminal wrongdoing you are aware of,” Brennan said.

Trump's Damaging Trump Tower Admission

I have noted before how Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, is a defense attorney's worse nightmare. He runs his mouth incessantly - changing his lies each time he opens his mouth - and will not listen to advisers, and believes that he is smarter than anyone else (much as Hitler viewed himself as smarter than his top generals).  As a result, Trump has had great difficulty in securing top legal talent and has found himself at times represented solely by Rudy Giuliani - who was kicked out of his own top tier firm because of his representation of Trump - and Jay Sekulow whose main career path has been representing extreme right wing Christian causes and ties to Pat Robertson.  Now, in a tweet Sunday morning, Trump has seemingly admitted that the June, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower was aimed at conspiring with Russian and accepting things of value from foreign nationals - all things that violate federal election laws and raise frightening national security concerns.  Here are excerpts from a piece in The Atlantic:

In an attempt to defend his son Donald Trump Jr. on Sunday, President Donald Trump may instead have incriminated him—and himself.

Responding to a Washington Post report that he is increasingly concerned about his eldest son’s legal exposure, [Trump] the president denied that claim in a tweet Sunday morning: Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!

Both Trump and Trump Jr. have at times in the past denied that the purpose of the June 9, 2016, meeting was to get damaging information about Hillary Clinton, but [Trump] the president has now flatly acknowledged it. Despite the limitations of the medium, [Trump] the president packed a great deal of potential trouble into less than 280 characters.

First, he seems to proceed from the assumption that by declaring the purpose legal, that makes it so, when in fact the acknowledgement points to the ways the meeting may have broken federal laws.

Second, by contradicting his earlier claims, the president again underscores his prior dishonesty. This is not just a matter of public trust: The changing accounts also get at accusations that the president obstructed justice.

Finally, the tweet is riddled with internal contradictions. If the president is unconcerned about his son, why is he tweeting angrily about the story? And if what happened was entirely legal, why is he so quick to deny that he knew about the meeting?
When The New York Times first reported on the existence of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, in July of last year, Trump Jr. issued a statement insisting it had been focused only on Russian adoptions. Faced with emails that showed Trump Jr. had been told to expect dirt on Clinton, he was forced to concede that that was not true.

Sunday’s tweet is the most direct statement yet that the purpose of the June 2016 meeting was to get damaging information from Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who has deep ties to the Kremlin. Trump Jr. had also been told in an email ahead of the meeting that the government of President Vladimir Putin supported his father’s candidacy. But declaring the meeting legal does not make it so. Over the last week, the president and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani have focused on the claim that “collusion” with the Russians, or anyone else, is not a crime per se.

That may be true, but as Bob Bauer explains in Lawfare, accepting anything of value from Russians could easily fall afoul of laws that ban accepting electoral assistance from foreign nationals.

[Trump] has tweeted out an apparent admission that his son intended to break campaign-finance laws.

Sunday’s tweet connects with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump obstructed justice, too. Roughly three weeks after the Times initially revealed the June 2016 meeting, the Post reported that the president had dictated his son’s initial, false denial while flying home from Europe on Air Force One. That lie has created a cascading series of problems.

His flip-flop raises further questions about whether he intended to misdirect investigators.

More broadly, the president’s repeated dishonesty about the June 2016 meeting undermines the credibility of every statement he makes about the meeting. Although the president and his son—the latter under penalty of perjury—have both said that Trump Sr. only learned of the June 2016 meeting last year, Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen last week claimed that the president was aware of the meeting before it happened. Why should anyone give Trump the benefit of the doubt now?

The implication is that the president wasn’t even honest with his attorneys about his role in dictating the statement. Has Trump withheld any other damaging information from his attorneys? Meanwhile, even as Mueller is reportedly poring over Trump’s Twitter feed as part of the obstruction inquiry, the president continues to provide new fodder. Tweets like Sunday’s seem intended to dig out of a hole, but in practice they threaten to dig deeper.

[Trump's] The president’s admission about the Trump Tower meeting comes at a moment of high tension, even by the standards of this administration.

Trump’s public appearances and utterances give an impression of a man who is increasingly agitated and concerned about the Mueller inquiry. And for good reason: Several of Trump’s legal troubles are converging at the moment. The trial of Paul Manafort continues this week in northern Virginia.

Cohen’s legal troubles threaten Trump as well. The former aide has not been charged with any crimes, but he’s embroiled in controversy over payments to two women who allegedly had affairs with Trump. Not only has Cohen signaled a willingness to offer damaging information about Trump, but prosecutors in New York have also subpoenaed the longtime Trump Organization moneyman Allen Weisselberg.

For Trump to even address the threat to his “wonderful son” is an unusual show of vulnerability for a man who tries to project unstinting strength. Yet whenever he has tried to shield Trump Jr., it has only caused grief. The statement [Trump] the president dictated aboard Air Force One has become a piece of the obstruction investigation, while Sunday’s tweet could incriminate Trump Jr. It’s said that a man who represents himself has a fool for a client. A son who allows Donald Trump to be his advocate may be in even worse shape.

Collusion With Russia Happened

The Hill recently reported that 59% of Americans do not believe that the Mueller investigation has revealed any crimes.  In light of the over a dozen indictments handed down and multiple guilty pleas that have occurred, that percentage is shocking.  Obviously, far too many Americans are too lazy and/or stupid and bigoted to keep themselves politically informed - it baffles me how men in particular can talk about sports teams yet know nothing about activities in Congress or the General Assembly.  Add to this laziness/idiocy the constant bellowing of Der Trumpenführer that no collusion occurred despite facts to the contrary that resonates all too well with his base that eats up every racist taunt Trump throws out or the Christofascists thrilled by every anti-LGBT action taken by the Trump/Pence regime.  Indeed, a piece in The Atlantic lays out why Trump's claims of "no collusion" are lies, just like so much of what comes out of his braying mouth.   Here are article highlights:

Trump aides colluded with foreign governments.  This is a simple, straightforward statement, and by this point, it ought to be an uncontroversial one. There’s ample evidence on many fronts, from legal documents to reliable reporting. . . . . it  . . . . mean that attempts to dismiss the Russia investigation as a witch hunt that lacks any evidence are not merely disingenuous—they’re simply wrong.

What do we mean by collusion? As the Columbia Journalism Review explored last year, there are a range of meanings, but a clean synthesis would be a secret compact or conspiracy with an illegal or deceitful aim. The examples of such cooperation, between Trump aides and agents of foreign governments, abound. So far, three people have pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about it. The unresolved question, at this stage of the investigation, is not whether such cooperation was attempted; it’s how successful it proved, how large an impact it actually had, who was involved, and whether they broke any laws.

There is, most prominently, the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, where Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer they believed had damaging information to offer about Hillary Clinton. In another meeting in August 2016, also at Trump Tower, former Blackwater chief Erik Prince (the brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos) brought together an Israeli social-media specialist and an emissary who said the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi wanted to aid the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos carried on conversations with at least two people he believed had substantial connections to the Russian government. Roger Stone, an on-again, off-again Trump adviser, exchanged messages with the hacker Guccifer 2.0, a Russian intelligence agent who released emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee.

This leaves out plenty of other examples of peculiar but less fleshed-out stories, including Trump campaign aide Carter Page’s mysterious trips to Russia and Hungary; fired National-Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s post-election discussions with Russia; and Jared Kushner’s reported attempt to establish a “back channel” to allow the Trump transition team to communicate with Russia outside of standard channels. There may be other examples that are not yet known to the public.

In June 2016, for example, publicist Rob Goldstone wrote to Donald Trump Jr.:

The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump—helped along by Aras and Emin.

Trump Jr. infamously replied, “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

Yet despite the evidence, and despite people like Steve Bannon acknowledging it, the question of whether or not collusion occurred persists well past its expiration date, lingering like a flat-earth theory. That there is still a debate is a testament to [Trump's] the president’s persistence in saying that no collusion occurred loudly and repeatedly, and in his strongest supporters’ willingness to believe him and take up the banner.

Giuliani, who joined Trump’s legal team about a month ago, is taking a different line of argument: instead of denying that the Trump campaign colluded, saying it simply doesn’t matter because that didn’t break the law.

This is all actually a replay of last summer’s arguments. The emails that Trump Jr. released about the June 2016 meeting made clear that the Trump campaign was perfectly willing to collude, and was in fact frustrated that Veselnitskaya couldn’t deliver the goods Goldstone had implied.

[T]here were a couple of flaws with the claim. First, it wasn’t clear that everyone would react that way. Former campaign staffers of both parties expressed shock that the Trump team had gone forward with the meeting, bringing up concrete examples where campaigns had gone to law enforcement in less egregious circumstances. Furthermore, although there is no crime of “collusion” per se, it is quite possible that a campaign-finance law could have been violated. Despite what Giuliani says about the source of the information not mattering, foreign nationals are prohibited from contributing to campaigns, and opposition research could represent an in-kind contribution.

This week, Trump is in a tizzy over the revelation that there was an informant passing information to the FBI about the ties between some Trump campaign staffers and Russia.Trump contends that there was no collusion, and that his campaign was being spied upon by President Barack Obama’s Justice Department for political reasons. The accusation of political spying has no evidence to back it up.

If there was no collusion, and not even any evidence of collusion, it would be strange and disturbing for the FBI to be interested in what was going on inside the Trump campaign.

Yet we know that isn’t the case, because there was collusion. There was the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, the August 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Papadopoulos’s contacts (which triggered the FBI’s investigation) and more. . . . . it gives a plausible reason why the FBI was interested in the Trump campaign.

There are many questions about Russian interference in the 2016 election that remain unanswered. Whether there was collusion between Trump aides and foreign governments is not one of them.