Mueller Closes in on White House, Pence Makes Himself Scarce

Lest Fox News viewers forget (assuming Fox is even covering Russiagate), Mike Pence was actively involved in the Trump campaign and he was the head of the Trump transition team.  Yet, as noted before, he has steadfastly acted like Sergeant Schultz in the old Hogan's Heroes, television show: he claims he saw nothing, heard nothing and knew nothing.  Recent revelations, including emails discussing Mike Flynn's Russian contacts, however, suggest that Pence - who claims to be a devout evangelical Christian - is perhaps lying.  As regular readers know, in my view from years of tracking them, other than perhaps Trump himself, few elements of American society lie more often or more viciously than the self-congratulatory "godly folk." A piece in Vanity Fair looks at Pence's efforts to fade into the woodwork as he no doubt hopes that if and when Trump is driven from office, he can step in and claim the mantle of the presidency.  Here are article highlights:

It is extraordinary, in retrospect, that Mike Pence wouldn’t have known about Michael Flynn’s conversations with Sergey Kislyak or his foreign lobbying ties. As we now know, multiple members of the Trump campaign were aware that the man who would become Donald Trump’s national security adviser was in communication with the Russian ambassador at a senior campaign official’s behest. Yet Pence, who was in charge of Trump’s White House transition team—directing staffing, organizing agency “landing teams,” and vetting administration candidates—was conveniently out of the loop. (Flynn was ostensibly fired for misleading the vice president about those contacts.) Pence went radio silent again last week, when Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about those conversations. And he was nowhere to be found in the aftermath, as Trump’s legal team raced to contain the fallout after the president potentially implicated himself in obstruction of justice on Twitter. The former Indiana governor has, on the one hand, secured Trump’s trust by serving as an unflappable, unquestionably ideological defender of the president’s agenda. But his blissful ignorance on all things Russia has also raised eyebrows in Washington among insiders who see him as the obvious back-up candidate if Trump doesn’t pan out. Indeed, Pence has a curious pattern of alibis whenever controversy strikes the West Wing. While Flynn and Jared Kushner were ensnared in back-channel brokering over a United Nations resolution during the transition, Politico notes, Pence was volunteering at a homeless shelter in his home state of Indiana. When Flynn was gabbing with Kislyak about lifting sanctions against Moscow, Pence was at his son’s wedding. As Donald Trump Jr. was fending off headlines about his Trump Tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, his father’s right-hand man insisted that was the first he’d heard of it.

Rumors of Pence’s presidential ambitions seem to resurface whenever Trump’s political prospects look weakest. . . . . Others noted the existence of an unspoken agreement among Republicans to keep Pence above the fray. “He’s not stupid about the fact that there could be some very bad outcomes for Donald Trump here,” Rick Wilson, another Republican strategist, added.

There is no vice president who takes the job without the expectation of advancement. But Pence, it seems, glimpsed the possibility of a promotion early on. According to The Atlantic, amid the tumult after the Access Hollywood tape was made public, Pence briefly came within spitting distance of the top of the Republican ticket.

It is a grand irony that Donald Trump might, unintentionally, slingshot Mike Pence to the presidency. While Pence’s name emerged as a potential presidential contender for 2016 in the wake of his 2012 gubernatorial victory, the Indiana governor’s political career was on a downward trajectory when he unexpectedly hitched his wagon to Trump’s star.

Pence has repeatedly denied that he has any designs on the presidency. . . . Still, the signs are there. In May, he filed paperwork with the F.E.C. to launch his own PAC, the Great America Committee. Reports that he was cozying up to Republican mega-donors fanned speculation that he was in drape-measuring mode. According to the Times story, “multiple advisers” to Pence have “already intimated to party donors that he would plan to run if Mr. Trump did not.”

Pence’s ascendance could come sooner than later. . . . The latest argument from Trump’s legal team—that there “is no crime of collusion” and that the “president cannot obstruct justice”—appears to anticipate the worst. Meanwhile, Pence boosters are waiting quietly in the wing.

The country does not need another conniving liar in the White House.  If - and hopefully soon - Trump goes down he will reach out and take Pence with him.  If Trump has any sense, he ought to see the signs that Pence will knife him in the back as soon as he sees it to be in his own self-interest.  I despise Paul Ryan, but he'd be far less dangerous to the country and civil rights of its citizenry than either Trump or Pence.

Down Playing Russia, the GOP's Most Dangerous Game

In some ways one of the most baffling things we are witnessing in the wake of the 2016 Presidential election and the Electoral College's election of Donald Trump in contempt for the popular vote is the Republican Party's continued efforts to down play and/or totally dismiss possible - or, in my view, likely - collusion of the Trump campaign with Russian intelligence and other Russian operatives to throw the election to Trump.  Now, even faced with emails released by Donald Trump, Jr., himself demonstrating an eagerness to collude with Russian and to accept help from the Russian government, the official GOP response is to strive to look the other way.  Of course all of this began back in September, 2016, when Mitch McConnell sought to silence the Obama administration efforts to expose the Russian hacking effort to harm the Clinton campaign.  A piece in Slate ponders how long this GOP effort can continue and at what cost the GOP may ultimately have to pay for deliberate acquiescence to campaign interference by a hostile foreign government.   Here are article excerpts:

Last September, in a classified briefing, the CIA told senior lawmakers that Russia was working to elect Donald Trump president. In that meeting, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed skepticism of the intelligence and questioned its veracity. And he made a threat of sorts. At the time, the Washington Post reported that McConnell “made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.” Put simply, if President Obama spoke out on Russian interference, McConnell would turn it into a partisan football. The president kept quiet. Of the turning points that brought us to our present crisis, this is among the most consequential. McConnell’s stance in that briefing didn’t just enable Russian hacking, it precluded official scrutiny and criticism of that hacking and effectively gave cover to key members of Team Trump as they sought information to use against Hillary Clinton. McConnell downplayed Russian interference for what were likely partisan reasons, with little knowledge of the scope of and even less fear for the far-ranging implications of what he was covering up. And in that, he presaged the response of the entire Republican Party, which didn’t just utilize the hacked and leaked information but has looked the other way at every sign of something untoward involving Donald Trump and the Russian government.

Republicans are still looking the other way, even as that stance becomes more and more untenable. And they are looking away—as well as downplaying the seriousness of the issue—despite the real chance that the truth is more damning than what we know at the present, and that it may damage our country more than we want to believe. This “see no evil” response is especially egregious given recent revelations around Donald Trump Jr. and his efforts to obtain favorable information for his father’s campaign. We now know Trump Jr. responded enthusiastically to what was communicated as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” . . .

There is a response to this, increasingly popular among Trump’s defenders: Collusion isn’t illegal. But that’s almost beside the point. Democracy is only possible if there is confidence in the process, and foreign intervention—potentially solicited by one campaign—is deeply damaging to that confidence. It threatens the legitimacy of the entire enterprise. For our system of government, the question of Russian interference—and the extent of Trump’s awareness and involvement—is existential.

For our system of government, the question of Russian interference—and the extent of Trump’s awareness and involvement—is existential.   But that fact, and the steady stream of damning revelations, has not kept GOP lawmakers from giving Trump and his team the benefit of the doubt.

[W]hile other Republicans, like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, used harsher language when referring to Team Trump’s dalliances with Russia, there’s no indication that any Republicans have wavered in their overall support for the Trump administration. There have been no calls for an even deeper investigation, no sense from GOP lawmakers that this is an urgent affair. Republicans are playing a dangerous game: covering up a scandal, without knowing the full scope of the offense.

What if future revelations detail actual collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government? Though there is currently no proof, do Republicans really believe the chances are zero that this or even worse possibilities—are true? . . . . By allowing the collapse of trust, the Republican Party will have abetted a wholesale subversion of American democracy.

[T]he institutional indifference to foreign intervention is something different. It signals a dangerously zero-sum attitude, where any price—including subversion from outside forces—is worth paying if it clears a path to partisan and ideological victory. Perhaps the worm will turn and Republicans will join Democrats in demanding real answers from President Trump and his associates. For now, at least, we have a Republican Party that values its success above the integrity of our system.

Trump, Jr. Hands Over the Trump-Russia Smoking Gun

As numerous legitimate news outlets, such as Politico, New York Magazine, New York Times, and the Washington Post and others, are reporting - which excludes Fox News, a/k/a Faux News - Donald Trump, Jr., an arrogant cretin it would seem, released copies of e-mails today that many see as providing special prosecutor Robert Mueller, the "smoking gun" proving collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. While Donny, Jr., claims he released the e-mails for the sake of "transparency,"the reality is that the New York Times was about to disclose the e-mails' contents.   To paraphrase the Times, the emails make it crystal clear that one of Donald Trump's former Russian business partners had been contacted by a senior Russian government official and was offering to provide the Trump campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton which "would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”  The email, also noted that “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”  Vanity Fair looks at what Trump, Jr. has handed to Robert Mueller.  Here are excerpts:

For more than a year, Donald Trump and his associates have pushed back against allegations that his campaign colluded with the Russian government, which the president has called a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” orchestrated by Clintonworld. But a series of e-mails exchanged between the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid journalist linked to the Trump family through the Miss Universe pageant, suggests that the eldest Trump son not only sought compromising information on Hillary Clinton from a Kremlin-backed lawyer but was aware since at least June 2016 that the Russian government was working to help elect his father.

Trump Jr. received an e-mail from Goldstone informing him that one of his family’s former Russian business partners had received “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.” The e-mail chain, which began June 3, was also addressed to the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort. “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

Trump Jr. responded, “if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” In a series of follow-up e-mails, he agreed to meet with the “Russian government attorney”—presumably Natalia Veselnitskaya, who later met with Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort at Trump Tower on June 9.

The e-mails between Trump Jr. and Goldstone are the first concrete evidence that the Trump campaign was aware of Russian government effort to help elect Donald Trump—months before the Obama administration made the Russian campaign known, and long before Trump himself acknowledged Russian interference. “The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me,” Trump tweeted on July 25. The day before, Donald Trump Jr. had gone on CNN to decry the Clinton campaign’s claims that the Russians were helping Trump as “disgusting” and “phony.”

The president’s son released the e-mail exchange Tuesday after learning that The New York Times was about to publish a story containing parts of his conversation with Goldstone, which the paper published minutes later. The acknowledgement that he was aware of Kremlin efforts to help his father become president, and his eagerness to meet with a Russian intermediary to solicit the promised information, follows a series of incremental reports from the Times, to which Trump Jr. has responded with ever-shifting explanations [lies].

On Monday, Trump Jr. hired New York-based lawyer Alan Futerfas, who has defended members of several major mob families. Collusion between Russia and members of the Trump campaign is one of several allegations being investigated by the F.B.I., under special counsel Robert Mueller, as well as by parallel inquiries by the intelligence committees in the House and Senate. Trump Jr. has said he would be “happy to work with the committee to pass on what I know,” in reference to the Senate panel.

In light of all of Trump, Jr.'s series of lies, ,  Trump, Jr., and Der  Trumpenführer himself now want us to believe that Trump senior knew nothing of the meeting that took place in Trump Tower that just happened to include his oldest son and his son-in-law.  As in Watergate, the questions become: what did the president know and when did he know it.  I suspect that he knew about all of it.