Devin Nunes Implicated in Trump Ukraine Effort

Nunes and Parnas.

I have long viewed Rep. Devin Nunes (R) as little better than an agent of Vladimir Putin and someone utterly unfit for office. Like Donald Trump, Nunes uses lies, deceptions and the undermining of political norms to further causes destructive to American democracy and acts like one of Trump's crime syndicate "soldiers." Now, as CNN is reporting, it appears that Nunes was part of the effort to blackmail Ukraine and fabricate dirt on Joe Biden - all of which was/is a criminal conspiracy. Meanwhile, the slimy, amoral Nunes is striving to protect Trump in the ongoing impeachment inquiry.  Nunes needs to be forced from the House Intelligence Committee now investigating improper actions of which he was/is a part.  The GOP increasingly looks to be little more than one large criminal operation. Here are highlights from CNN:  

A lawyer for an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani tells CNN that his client is willing to tell Congress about meetings the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee had in Vienna last year with a former Ukrainian prosecutor to discuss digging up dirt on Joe Biden.

The attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, represents Lev Parnas, the recently indicted Soviet-born American who worked with Giuliani to push claims of Democratic corruption in Ukraine. Bondy said that Parnas was told directly by the former Ukrainian official that he met last year in Vienna with Rep. Devin Nunes.
 Nunes is one of President Donald Trump's key allies in Congress and has emerged as a staunch defender of [Trump] the President during the impeachment inquiry, which he has frequently labeled as a "circus." Nunes declined repeated requests for comment.
 Bondy tells CNN that his client and Nunes began communicating around the time of the Vienna trip. Parnas says he worked to put Nunes in touch with Ukrainians who could help Nunes dig up dirt on Biden and Democrats in Ukraine, according to Bondy.
 That information would likely be of great interest to House Democrats given its overlap with the current impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and could put Nunes in a difficult spot.

Bondy tells CNN his client is willing to comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents and testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry in a manner that would allow him to protect his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
 Parnas' claims that Nunes met with Shokin, which has not been previously reported, add further context to a Daily Beast report that Parnas helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Nunes last year, citing another Parnas' lawyer, Ed McMahon.
 Those revelations came to a head on Thursday when Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell raised the Daily Beast story publicly during the impeachment hearing. Parnas, who was indicted on federal campaign finance charges last month, worked with Shokin and Giuliani to push a pair of unfounded claims: that Ukrainians interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats, and that Biden was acting corruptly in Ukraine on behalf of his son Hunter, who sat on the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings.
 "Nunes had told Shokin of the urgent need to launch investigations into Burisma, Joe and Hunter Biden, and any purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election," Bondy told CNN.
 There is no evidence that the Bidens acted inappropriately. Nor is there evidence to support the conspiracy theory that Ukraine worked with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 election.
 Yet these claims have been a key part of the public defense of [Trump] the President put forth by Nunes and other Republicans during the impeachment hearings this month.
 Bondy tells CNN that Parnas is also willing to tell Congress about a series of regular meetings he says he took part in at the Trump International Hotel in Washington that concerned Ukraine. According to Bondy, Parnas became part of what he described as a "team" that met several times a week in a private room at the BLT restaurant on the second floor of the Trump Hotel. In addition to giving the group access to key people in Ukraine who could help their cause, Parnas translated their conversations, Bondy said. In the weeks since his arrest, Parnas has become disenchanted with Trump and Giuliani, according to Bondy as well as other sources who spoke to CNN. Parnas, these sources say, was particularly upset when Trump denied knowing him the day after Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman were arrested in October. . . . "He believes he has put himself out there for [Trump] the President and now he's been completely hung out to dry," a person close to Parnas told CNN. On Thursday, Bondy promoted the hashtag #LetLevSpeak on Twitter in response to a number of questions about whether Parnas would testify in front of Congress. Bondy tweeted directly at Republican California Rep. Kevin McCarthy Thursday night after McCarthy accused Schiff of blocking important witnesses from testifying, saying "I don't agree with your premise, but please, if you mean what you say, call my client, Lev Parnas. #LetLevSpeak."

Mueller Filing Connects Roger Stone To Wikileaks

While Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, has declared a bogus national emergency to improperly secure funding for his border wall to thrill his knuckle-dragging, racist base, it now appears that Trump's real emergency is that special counsel Robert Mueller is close to connecting the dots to document a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.  Loud mouth braggart Roger Stone is, per new court fillings looking more and more like he was the Trump-Russia-Wikileaks go between.  Expect more shrieks of "witch hunt" as Mueller finds more and more witches and draws his noose closer and closer around Trump. The take away is that when Trump asked Russia to "find Hillary's 30,000 emails" during one of the debates, he was in active communication with Russian operatives through Stone and perhaps others.  A piece in The Hill looks at this new development which should shut up some of the blathering talking heads who say that Mueller has found not hints of direct collusion with an enemy power.  Here are excerpts:

Special counsel Robert Mueller said in a new court filing that search warrants have uncovered communications between longtime GOP operative Roger Stone and "Organization 1,” which is widely believed to be WikiLeaks.

Mueller made the disclosure in a filing Friday arguing that Stone’s case is related to the one involving Russian military hackers who are alleged to have breached the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and personal account of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The communications were uncovered in search warrants executed on accounts in the investigation into Russian hackers, Mueller said.

The hacked emails were given to WikiLeaks, which later released them, in what U.S. intelligence officials say was part of a broader plot by the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Mueller’s prosecutors wrote Friday that in the course of investigating the email hacking “the government obtained and executed dozens of search warrants on various accounts used to facilitate the transfer of stolen documents for release, as well as to discuss the timing and promotion of their release.”

“Several of those search warrants were executed on accounts that contained Stone’s communications with Guccifer 2.0 and with Organization 1,” the filing states.

The special counsel said the search warrants would be produced to Stone’s defense attorneys in discovery and included in a sealed addendum to Friday’s filing.

A longtime friend of President Trump, Stone was indicted in Washington, D.C., late last month for lying to Congress about his communications regarding WikiLeaks, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional investigation. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Stone has said he never directly communicated with WikiLeaks but instead used a backchannel. Stone, who made public statements that appeared to forecast WikiLeaks releases before the 2016 election, has maintained that he had no inside knowledge of the hacked emails before WikiLeaks released them.

They [prosecutors] said that during his [Stone’s] testimony before the House Intelligence Committee he claimed that former New York radio host Randy Credico was his backchannel to the organization. Stone also allegedly testified that he did not ask any other individual to contact the group.

Credico has repeatedly denied being Stone’s source. Emails exchanged between Stone and another individual, believed to be conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, allegedly show Stone had asked Corsi to get in touch with WikiLeaks about any damaging Democratic emails the group might have in its possession.

Last July’s indictment against the Russian hackers cited communications between Guccifer 2.0, who is identified as a Russian GRU officer, and “a person who was in regular contact with senior members” of Trump’s campaign. Stone has acknowledged that he is likely the person referred to in the indictment.

Trump has denied any collusion between his campaign and Moscow and regularly derides the investigation as a “witch hunt.”

Stone’s case is expected to go to trial later this year; prosecutors and his attorneys have asked for extra time to prepare, given the amount of evidence in the case.

On Friday, Jackson issued a gag order restricting Stone and his attorneys from discussing the case publicly.

Giuliani’s Meltdown Foreshadows Another Russia Bombshell

Rudy Giuliani's latest episode of diarrhea of the mouth during an interview with Chris Cuomo makes me wonder whether (i) Giuliani is suffering from growing dementia, or (ii) Giuliani belatedly realizes that his client, Donald Trump, has been lying to him and is in fact guilty of conspiring with Russia against the United States and its electoral process. If it is the later, Giuliani has a couple of options, one of which is to resign and run as far away from Trump as quickly as possible.  The other is to try to spin the situation and lower public shock when Robert Mueller's report shows comprehensive conspiring by the Trump/Pence campaign with a hostile foreign power. Part of that spin will be that Trump knew nothing about what his campaign was doing.  The problem is that this spin confirms one of two things: Trump is incompetent or he;s lying yet again.   A piece in Vanity Fair looks at what Giuliani may be up to.  Here are highlights:

Watching Rudy Giuliani’s latest televised confessional on Wednesday, one Washington defense attorney called to express his astonishment at the spectacle of Donald Trump’s personal attorney intimating that perhaps the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, after all. “I think it is long past due that we disregard anything he says about the law because I think he is confused,” the attorney said of Giuliani. “If he ever knew anything about it, he doesn’t remember.”

The interview was indeed baffling: over the course of a prolonged, heated exchange with Chris Cuomo on CNN, Giuliani claimed that he “never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign”; that if there was any collusion, “it happened a long time ago”; and argued that the “only crime you could commit here” would have been if the president had “conspired with the Russians to hack the D.N.C.”

“Whatever Giuliani‘s motives for going on a show with Chris Cuomo, he’s clearly looking to sharply redefine the issue in the Russia collusion case,” said Bob Bauer, former White House general counsel to Barack Obama. During the campaign through the first several months of the Mueller probe, Trump and his allies were insistent that there had been “no contact” with any Russians and certainly “no collusion” to influence the 2016 election. Over the past year, however, those claims have broken down in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. . . . . Court filings in federal cases involving Trump’s former campaign chairman, former lawyer, and national security adviser, among many others, all paint a portrait of a sweeping Russian influence campaign. On Thursday, Giuliani appeared to concede that some Trump associates might have coordinated their efforts with Russian agents, telling CNN: “Neither he nor I can possibly know what everyone on the campaign was doing.”

Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, suggested that Giuliani’s prime-time interview—while rambling and inarticulate—represented a calculated shift in Trump’s legal strategy: “He had no choice. . . . . he’s pivoting to a different fallback argument: ‘O.K., even if there was collusion, Trump didn’t know about it.’”

There’s two problems with that claim, Katyal said. “First, it means the whole ‘witch hunt’ story Trump has been saying for years is false—if it is a witch hunt, Mueller found a coven. And second, since the Trump defense was entirely wrong on ‘no collusion,’ what is there to give us confidence about the accuracy of the Trump defense that he didn’t know about it?”

Eric Columbus, a former top-ranking attorney in the Justice Department, zeroed in on Giuliani’s perplexing remark about hacking. “To me, the biggest goalpost shift is Giuliani saying that there’s no evidence that Trump ‘committed the only crime you could commit here—conspired with the Russians to hack the D.N.C.,’” he told told me. “That’s far from the only possible crime, and it raises questions about whether Giuliani is trying to get out in front of new and damaging revelations about his client’s actions.”

Giuliani has previously admitted that his cable-news appearances are for “public opinion, because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach, not impeach.” To that end, Giuliani’s most recent on-air meltdown might be seen as the latest in a series of efforts to reset expectations for the president, continually lowering the bar for what might be perceived as unethical behavior.

Cuomo, on Wednesday, was not having it. “Crime is not the bar of accountability for a president,” he protested when Giuliani made that point. “It’s about what you knew, what was right and what was wrong, and what did you deceive about.” But Trump’s legal team seems to think that differentiation will be enough to save him from impeachment.

Those are “bogus talking points to the base,” not a legal argument, said former U.S. attorney and deputy assistant attorney general Harry Litman. “It has nothing to do with the law and even nothing to do with a persuasive rhetorical strategy to anybody who for instance remembers the things he said last week.”

But even bogus assurances for the base may come back to haunt Giuliani and his client, once Mueller delivers his final report. “If anything, I think that he is hurting the president’s defense, because now the president’s defense is ‘he didn’t know.’ Well, what happens if that falls apart?” the D.C. defense attorney told me. “It is like Bill Clinton. I will never forget when Bill Clinton wagged his finger in a press conference and said I never had sex with that woman. And then we all know what happened after that.”

Virginia AG Launches Investigation of Sexual Abuse by Catholic Clergy

As long time readers know, I was raised Roman Catholic and once was a member of the Knights of Columbus and achieved the 4th Degree.  After the Boston Globe blew open the systemic, worldwide sex abuse scandal in 2002, I decided that I could be longer in good conscience be a part of such a corrupt and morally bankrupt institution.  In February 2002 I did a guest editorial in the Virginian Pilot in response a letter to the editor by then Bishop Richmond, Walter Sullivan's January 30, 2002, decrying a January 21 2002, editorial cartoon and claiming that the stories about the Church were "pure bigotry against the Catholic Church.''  The cartoon in question focused on the Catholic Church's track record in respect to pedophile clergy. 

Subsequently, I was attacked in letters to the editor, including a letter from a subordinate of Bishop Sullivan.  Time has proven the accuracy of the Globe story and sex abuse cover ups have been exposed virtually worldwide as numerous blog posts have reported.  Moreover, the cynical and dishonest hypocrisy of Bishop Sullivan was made clear when  Sullivan himself was implicated in the cover up of sexual abuse by a diocesan priest in the Diocese of Richmond that was among Sullivan's favorites.   The tenaciousness of a personal friend of mine and other victims of the priest in question finally resulted in a criminal prosecution against the priest and a plea deal.  

It would be nice to believe that this one priest was an anomaly, but given what has been seen in dioceses literally across the globe, such is likely wishful thinking.  Thus, in the wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury report and the launching of investigations of the Catholic Church by the U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia and the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring has launched an investigation of the Catholic dioceses in Virginia.  The Virginian Pilot looks at this development.  Here are article highlights:

Attorney General Mark Herring announced Wednesday he is launching a hotline dedicated to "rooting out" possible clergy abuse in the commonwealth.

It's "part of an ongoing investigation into whether criminal sexual abuse of children may have occurred in Virginia’s Catholic dioceses, and whether leadership in the dioceses may have covered up or abetted any such crimes," according to a news release. 

The announcement comes a day after the District of Columbia's attorney general said his office will open an investigation into sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in the local archdiocese. 

Virginia is now one of at least 13 states that launched investigations after a shocking grand jury report out of Pennsylvania this summer. That report identified thousands of victims and their abusers following a two-year investigation of Catholic dioceses in that state. It also revealed that leaders of the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania helped cover up the child sexual abuse going back several decades.

Herring said at a press conference Wednesday that his office started the probe a few days after the Pennsylvania report came out.

"Like so many Americans, I read the grand jury report on clergy abuse in the Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania, and I felt sick," Herring said in a statement. "It made me sick to see the extent of the damage done, the efforts to cover it up, and the complicity and enabling that went on by powerful people who should have known better and should have done more to protect vulnerable children."

"It's certainly an unusual step (in law enforcement) to announce an ongoing investigation," he said, "but in this instance ... we need the public's help to get to the truth."

People can report incidents of clergy or faith leader abuse anonymously through the new Virginia Clergy Abuse Hotline at 1-833-454-9064 and www.VirginiaClergyHotline.com at any hour of the day. It will be staffed by Virginia State Police investigators during business hours, according to the release.

Virginia is home to two Catholic dioceses: Richmond, which includes 153 parishes statewide, and Arlington, which includes 69 in Northern Virginia. Hampton Roads is part of the Richmond diocese.

Herring said the dioceses have been "cooperative at this point" and the investigation will "take as long as it needs to ... no matter how long it takes."

I will not be surprised to learn that Virginia's dioceses were no different that others around the world where crimes against children and youths were routinely covered up and predator priests protected.  We know for certain that Sullivan protected at least one predator priest.  I suspect many more may be revealed.  Kudos to Herring.

John Brennan: Trump’s Claims of No Collusion Are Hogwash

Yesterday in a peevish temper tantrum akin to something one would have expected from Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, or tin pot African dictator, Donald Trump revoked the security clearance for former CIA Director, John Brennan.  Why?  Simply because Brennan has been criticizing Der Trumpenführer and telling the truth, including the truth about Trump's betrayal of America.   Others are on Trump's target list for the same reason that they are challenging Trumps perpetual lies and placing country - and I would argue decency and morality - above party loyalty.  In a column in the New York Times Brennan assails Trump's action and calls on loyal, truly patriotic Americans to demand answers and support the Robert Mueller through to its logical conclusion, which, I believe, with document Trump/Pence criminal conspiracies with Russia/Vladimir Putin and, likely, treason.  Here are column excerpts:

When Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s internal security service, told me during an early August 2016 phone call that Russia wasn’t interfering in our presidential election, I knew he was lying. Over the previous several years I had grown weary of Mr. Bortnikov’s denials of Russia’s perfidy — about its mistreatment of American diplomats and citizens in Moscow, its repeated failure to adhere to cease-fire agreements in Syria and its paramilitary intervention in eastern Ukraine, to name just a few issues.

When I warned Mr. Bortnikov that Russian interference in our election was intolerable and would roil United States-Russia relations for many years, he denied Russian involvement in any election, in America or elsewhere, with a feigned sincerity that I had heard many times before. President Vladimir Putin of Russia reiterated those denials numerous times over the past two years, often to Donald Trump’s seeming approval.
Russian denials are, in a word, hogwash.

Before, during and after its now infamous meddling in our last presidential election, Russia practiced the art of shaping political events abroad through its well-honed active measures program, which employs an array of technical capabilities, information operations and old-fashioned human intelligence spycraft. Electoral politics in Western democracies presents an especially inviting target, as a variety of politicians, political parties, media outlets, think tanks and influencers are readily manipulated, wittingly and unwittingly, or even bought outright by Russian intelligence operatives. The very freedoms and liberties that liberal Western democracies cherish and that autocracies fear have been exploited by Russian intelligence services not only to collect sensitive information but also to distribute propaganda and disinformation, increasingly via the growing number of social media platforms.

Having worked closely with the F.B.I. over many years on counterintelligence investigations, I was well aware of Russia’s ability to work surreptitiously within the United States, cultivating relationships with individuals who wield actual or potential power. . . . . They troll political, business and cultural waters in search of gullible or unprincipled individuals who become pliant in the hands of their Russian puppet masters. Too often, those puppets are found.

We knew that Russian intelligence services would do all they could to achieve their objectives, which the United States intelligence community publicly assessed a few short months later were to undermine public faith in the American democratic process, harm the electability of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, and show preference for Mr. Trump. We also publicly assessed that Mr. Putin’s intelligence services were following his orders.

The already challenging work of the American intelligence and law enforcement communities was made more difficult in late July 2016, however, when Mr. Trump, then a presidential candidate, publicly called upon Russia to find the missing emails of Mrs. Clinton. By issuing such a statement, Mr. Trump was not only encouraging a foreign nation to collect intelligence against a United States citizen, but also openly authorizing his followers to work with our primary global adversary against his political opponent.

While I had deep insight into Russian activities during the 2016 election, I now am aware — thanks to the reporting of an open and free press — of many more of the highly suspicious dalliances of some American citizens with people affiliated with the Russian intelligence services.

Mr. Trump’s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash.

The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of “Trump Incorporated” attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets.

Mr. Trump clearly has become more desperate to protect himself and those close to him, which is why he made the politically motivated decision to revoke my security clearance in an attempt to scare into silence others who might dare to challenge him.

Now more than ever, it is critically important that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and his team of investigators be allowed to complete their work without interference — from Mr. Trump or anyone else — so that all Americans can get the answers they so rightly deserve.

I remain amazed at how many Republican "friends" refuse to open their eyes to reality.  Are they so driven by racial animosity and/or fear of loss of white privilege that they will ignore treason and conspiring with a hostile foreign power?  The moral bankruptcy and willingness to support a man who operates like a Mafia crime boss is mind-numbing.

Collusion - a/k/a Conspiracy - Is a Crime

Donald Trump and his sycophants are running about claiming that collusion is not a crime.  Like much of what comes out of Trump's mouth - and those of his enablers -  the claim under analysis is untrue. Indeed, collusion is simply another term for conspiracy and numerous federal statutes confirm that, if Trump and his campaign are guilty of what is claimed, then crimes did indeed occur and Trump is guilty of crimes.  A piece in The Atlantic by former Republican David Frum, lays out why saying "collusion is not a crime" is simply untrue and lying.  Indeed, Trump is a national security threat (as is Mike Pence, in my opinion since he was Trump's lackey throughout the 2016 presidential campaign).  Here are article excerpts:

It’s a crime for a U.S. presidential campaign knowingly to receive—or even solicit—anything of value from any foreign entity. It’s a crime for anyone, campaign or not, to knowingly receive stolen data. In fact, receiving stolen data triggers a complex nexus of crimes, both state and federal. Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and other top Trump aides met with a lawyer who identified herself as an agent of the Russian government offering damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Lying to Congress is a crime, albeit one seldom prosecuted. Trump Jr. was under oath when he testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 17, 2017, that he did not tell his father about the Trump Tower meeting with the lawyer. “I wouldn’t have wasted his time with it,” he said. Should that testimony prove untrue, the younger Trump could also face perjury charges.

Money laundering is a crime. Tax evasion is a crime. Obstruction of justice is a crime. Lying to federal investigators is a crime.

It’s true, as Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani keeps insisting, that you will not find the word collusion in the federal criminal code. You will not find the word hacking there either. But that does not mean that hacking is legal, only that lawyers speak differently from other people.

The kernel of truth in the “collusion is not a crime” defense is this: If the Trump campaign avoided tripping over federal election law and computer fraud in the course of a hypothetical collaboration with the Russian GRU, then it is very possible it did not violate any criminal statutes. I wrote about such a possibility here last May. But the predicate for that possibility is that there be no direct contact between the Trump campaign and the Russian state . . .
 But Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s second indictment of Russians claimed that voter analytic data was stolen by Russian hackers from Democratic servers. If those analytics were shared by the Russians with the Trump campaign, that would be a straightforward crime, just as much as the Watergate burglary of the Democratic National Committee in 1972.

The crucial context for assessing the claim that “collusion is not a crime” is the way the Trump-Russia story has emerged into the light, denial after denial collapsing into dust.

Trump, his campaign, and the White House have denied the campaign had Russia contacts. The campaign met with Russian agents.  They denied that the meeting discussed stolen email. The meeting discussed stolen email.

They denied that the Russian intervention was intended to help elect Trump. At the Helsinki summit of the two leaders, Vladimir Putin said, plainly, that he had wished to see Trump elected.

Only this year, and only thanks to the Mueller investigation, have Americans begun to learn the full industrial scale of the Russian intrusion into the 2016 election. Only last month, and again only thanks to the Mueller investigation, was it confirmed that the hackers of the Democratic Party were indeed agents of the Russian state—a truth that Trump still will not unequivocally accept.

Yet there is one way in which the “collusion is not a crime” talking point actually directs attention in the right direction. The Trump presidency’s connections to Russia are a national-security issue first, a criminal-justice issue only second.

Donald Trump owes his presidency at least in considerable part to the illegal assistance of the Russian state: hacking, data theft, prohibited election advertising. This compromised president has in office launched himself against U.S. alliances and trade arrangements built by administrations of both parties over the past three-quarters of a century. The president describes the European Union as a “foe,” quarrels with Canada and Germany, and enters into agreements with Putin that he seems not to have shared even with his own secretary of state and national-security adviser. He blabs vital secrets to the Russian foreign minister, resists holding Russia to account for nerve-agent attacks on British soil, and refuses to implement sanctions voted almost unanimously by Congress.

Meanwhile, the single data point that supposedly proves how tough he is on Russia—the provision of lethal aid to Ukraine—may actually prove something very different. Ukraine halted its cooperation with the Mueller probe ahead of the sale, to “avoid irritating the top American officials.”

It was—or should have been—obvious to anyone paying attention on voting day 2016 that Donald Trump was not an honest businessman. What has come further and further into the light since Election Day is something much more dangerous even than dishonesty.

For Trump, Obstruction of Justice Is Probably Just the Tip of the Iceberg

As Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, becomes more hysterical and launches attacks over Robert Mueller's Russiagate investigation - leaving even some Vichy Republicans wondering why Trump is acting guilty when he claims innocence - a piece in New York Magazine looks at where the investigation may be headed and why Trump's hysteria is on the rise.  It bears remembering that (i) Trump has a long history of dealing with American mobsters and unsavory Russian oligarchs, and (ii) Trump knows what was done by his campaign and some of his former minions who have already entered guilty pleas.  One can only hope that ALL of the dirty and conspiracy efforts come to light and that Trump, Pence and any senior Republicans who may have joined in the effort - think Mitch McConnell and his efforts to delay release about Russian activities - are taken down and, with luck, see time in a federal prison.  Here are article highlights:

One takeaway from Donald Trump’s unhinged Twitter meltdown over the Robert Mueller investigation this past weekend — aside from indications that the president is increasingly isolated, under siege, and out of sorts — is that his legal team is in disarray and can’t seem to put him at ease, despite repeated assurances that he will be vindicated in the end.

Trump has been getting more and more aggressive against the special counsel, and according to the New York Times, he may drop his lawyer Ty Cobb, who’s advocated for cooperating with Mueller.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that his lawyers have turned over to Mueller a report that is the equivalent of a connect-the-dots coloring book: a blueprint of key events under investigation. The purpose of these White House “summaries” is to limit the breadth of Mueller’s questioning should Trump sit down for an interview — a major minefield that, as I have written before, no sensible lawyer would allow a client like Trump to step onto.

This is clearly damage control. As the Post indicates, these written materials zero in on the dismissals of FBI Director James Comey and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, which suggests that the special counsel has an interest in the president’s state of mind during these events — the thing that matters to a prosecutor who is looking at the potential obstruction of an ongoing investigation.

Comey, as you may recall, was fired before the true extent of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference (which Mueller took over) was publicly known. Andrew McCabe’s dismissal last Friday, on the other hand, happened after “this Russia thing,” as Trump once called it, had already yielded several indictments, guilty pleas, and cooperation agreements with a number of the president’s men. That McCabe was caught in the undertow of Trump’s vindictiveness was only a function of his proximity to Comey. . . .

Besmirching McCabe, in Trump’s mind, serves to besmirch the testimony of Mueller’s star witness on obstruction. This may yet be another miscalculation on Trump’s part, as that public trial will almost certainly never happen.

Mueller’s prospective obstruction case, captivating though it may be to political reporters and those who yearn for the president’s downfall, is still only a tiny slice of the special counsel’s mandate. You can count me among the skeptics who doubt that Mueller will ever make such a case in a court of law — even in the face of reports, like one from Axios on Monday, suggesting the opposite. If Mueller’s probe is to retain its legitimacy, which it has in spades, it will be by charging ahead with what it’s already done so well: uncovering the extent to which Russia worked alone or in tandem with Trump campaign operatives to boost Trump’s chances at the presidency.

The word that’s been used and abused to describe this synergy between the Kremlin and the Trump camp is collusion, but Mueller has given us a better, more legally grounded term: conspiracy. Last month, Rick Gates, Trump’s deputy campaign manager and a longtime associate of Paul Manafort, became the first person in Mueller’s crosshairs to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. This curious, catchall offense also appeared in the February indictment of 13 Russian trolls . . . .

Which brings us to this past weekend’s revelations about the role Cambridge Analytica, the data-analytics firm closely associated with Steve Bannon and the Trump campaign, played during the presidential election. Twin reports in the New York Times and The Guardian shed light on a staggering data-mining operation that resulted in the firm improperly obtaining tens of millions of Facebook profiles, which it then exploited for political micro-targeting.

While the substance of Mr. Mueller’s interest is a closely guarded secret, documents viewed by the Times indicate that the firm’s British affiliate claims to have worked in Russia and Ukraine.” Mueller, for his part, has already asked the firm for the emails of any employees who did work on behalf of the Trump campaign.

[B]ased on the precedent Mueller has already set, it wouldn’t be a stretch to expect his office to bring a fresh round of federal conspiracy charges against actors — whether that be Assange, executives at Cambridge Analytica, or other intermediaries — who attempted to impair the lawful functions of the government by concealing activities that they should’ve disclosed to, say, the Federal Election Commission or the Justice Department. “A method that makes uses of innocent individuals or businesses to reach and defraud the United States is not, for that reason, beyond the scope” of the law of conspiracy, the Supreme Court said some 30 years ago.

Unlike collusion, which makes for good sound bites but not real cases, conspiracy has deep roots in American law. As independent journalist Marcy Wheeler has laid out, even Jared Kushner may be on the hook for it. If the last ten months or so of the Mueller investigation have shown us anything, it is the tangled web of lies and cover-ups the Trump campaign weaved to hide its dealings with Russia. Don’t be surprised if Mueller untangles yet more of this mess and presents us with more indictments against conspirators in the U.S. or abroad.

Likewise, don't be surprised if Trump's hysterical and lashing out increases and perhaps pushes America toward a full blown constitutional crisis.  

Russiagate: Will the Crime Be Worse Than the Cover-Up?

With the Russiagate investigation much of the media attention has focused on the obstruction of justice issues that swirl around the firing of former FBI director James Comey.  Perhaps the inclination is natural given the fact that the original crime in Watergate was a "third rate burglary" and it was the cover up that took down Richard Nixon.  In Russiagate, the obstruction of justice efforts by Trump/his campaign  and his Republican accomplices - think Devin Nunes - are concening, but the actual underlying crime or crimes far out weigh the crime that Richard Nixon foolishly tried to cover up after the fact.  A somewhat lengthy piece in The Daily Beast looks at what is known to date and puts together a telling time line for the possible - in my view, very likely - crimes that took place during 2016.  Here are article highlights:

Recall the Watergate cliché that the cover-up is worse than the crime. That may have been true then. While it was never established that President Nixon knew in advance about the break-in at the Watergate complex, he was forced to resign after proof emerged that he used the CIA to obstruct the FBI investigation.

In the Russia scandal, special counsel Robert Mueller has credible proof of obstruction of justice—i.e., the cover-up. But in a highly politicized climate, where “memos” and insults are weapons of distraction, that won’t likely be enough. 

The fragmentary and often disconnected nature of those reports obscures the reasonable supposition that Mueller is well on his way to detailing conspiracy, wire fraud, illegal foreign campaign contributions, or all three. During Watergate, the special prosecutor had most of the evidence that doomed Nixon at least nine months before his August 9, 1974 resignation. Mueller, too, likely has the goods already, even without “smoking gun” tapes.

One tip-off was in Michael Flynn’s December 1 “allocution”—his signed submission to the court as part of his guilty plea to making false statements to the FBI on January 24, 2017. It received almost no media attention but suggested the nature of the criminal conspiracy that would likely be at the heart of Mueller’s prosecution.

Flynn didn’t just vaguely admit he lied. The law doesn’t allow that. He admitted in writing that his lie “had a material impact” on the FBI’s probe “into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the [Trump] Campaign and Russia’s efforts to intervene in the 2016 election.”

The conspiracy case--the heart of Mueller’s efforts-- almost certainly boils down to an old-fashioned quid pro quo. Flynn’s “quid”—the substance of his recorded conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak— was lifting the sanctions that President Obama imposed on Russia in late 2016 and the earlier sanctions related to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. The “quo” was collusion (“conspiracy” in legal terms) with Russians to harm Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, which Flynn effectively admitted was “material” to his lies after the election. Anyone associated with this deal is in deep legal trouble.

The conspiracy started with Russians violating the federal computer crime statute, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, by hacking into the computers at the Democratic National Committee and stealing emails that were then distributed publicly by Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks—both linked to Russians— in ways that hurt Clinton. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Russia also tried to penetrate the voting systems of 21 states.

These actions would also violate the federal criminal statute that bars foreign nationals from offering anything of value in a presidential campaign. Every party to such illegal acts is criminally liable.

There are also potential violations of the federal wire fraud statute. The evidence of a scheme to defraud? We know that Russia’s “active measures” included creating thousands of fictitious Twitter and Facebook accounts to generate fake news targeted to suppress the Clinton vote. Campaign officials are criminally liable if Mueller and his team prove an overlap between the illegal Russian fake news posts and the Trump campaign’s routine micro-targeted negative messages--a painstaking but manageable set of data comparisons.

In addition, the special counsel is examining whether a Russian politician with connections to organized crime, Alexander Torshin, routed an illegal campaign contribution to Trump through the NRA, which is relatively easy to trace.

Conspiracy is a much broader crime than is generally understood. The guidelines for judges who instruct juries say that the prosecution need only prove that there was “a mutual understanding, either spoken or unspoken, [Emphasis added] between two or more people to cooperate with each other to accomplish an unlawful act.”

It doesn’t matter whether the “mutual understanding” was before, during or after the crime was committed. “It is not necessary that a defendant be fully informed of all the details of the conspiracy, or all of its participants,” the model jury instructions continue. “You need not find that the alleged members of the conspiracy met together and entered into any express or formal agreement.”

Under the so-called “doctrine of willful blindness,” reinforced by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in a majority opinion in 2011, juries are instructed to “consider whether the defendant deliberately closed his eyes to what would otherwise be obvious to him.”

Don Jr.’s excitement over receiving Russian dirt on Clinton, Jared Kushner’s interactions with Cambridge Analytica and thus with Wikileaks, and Trump’s knowledge of these or other ties to Russians and his use of that knowledge in the campaign, all suggest such “awareness.”

Two other legal concepts are relevant. Much of the obstruction case—from Trump interfering with the FBI probe to re-writing his son’s statement aboard Air Force One after revelations about Don Jr.’s meeting with the Russians--revolves around the president’s concern that he had something to hide, also known as “consciousness of guilt.” He also might be charged as “an accessory after the fact,” which requires only that the defendant “receives, relieves, comforts or assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension.”  

Now consider just a bit of what has emerged about “mutual understanding,” “willful blindness,” “awareness,” “assists” and “consciousness of guilt” in the Trump-Russia case, which is in turn a fraction of what Mueller knows. As in any criminal case, the timeline is critical:

April 26, 2016: George Papadopoulos, whom Trump named as one of his “top five” foreign policy advisers, learns that the Russians had possession of the DNC emails. He passes word of this to others in the campaign. Because of a “mutual understanding,” no one calls the FBI.

Mid-May: Papadopoulos tells an Australian diplomat in London that the Russians have compromising emails on Clinton. The diplomat properly informs his superiors, who--unlike Trump campaign officials--recognizes his legal responsibilities under American law to notify U.S. authorities.  

June 9: At a meeting at Trump Tower previewed for the campaign as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” Donald Trump Jr. listens as well-connected Russians offer damaging information about Clinton. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort both say they left early, suggesting “awareness” of, or “willful blindness” to, crimes that were underway. Again, no one contacts the FBI.

Mid-June: Kushner—assuming control of the campaign’s digital operations— hires Cambridge Analytica, which coordinates with Wikileaks, suggesting a possible “mutual understanding” of what Wikileaks will do.

July 14: At the Republican National Convention, the Trump campaign deletes a plank in the party platform that condemns Russia for invading Ukraine, and rejects a proposal for increased sanctions, bolstering the case for the quid pro quo that is the crux of the case.

July 22: On the eve of the Democratic Convention, Wikileaks releases damaging Democratic emails received from the Russians, implicating Wikileaks in the criminal conspiracy.

July 27: In a speech, Trump says, "By the way, if they [Russians] hacked, they probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do.” Trump later said he was joking but it reinforces his “awareness” of an unlawful act.

August 21: Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser to Trump, shows knowledge of the conspiracy by tweeting, "Trust me, it will soon be Podesta's time in the barrel. 

October 7: Within hours of the release of the Access Hollywood tape, which dealt a serious blow to the Trump campaign, Wikileaks releases the first in a series of 60,000 emails belonging to Podesta. Wikileaks effectively acts as an arm of the Trump campaign in a “mutual understanding” to deflect attention away from the sex scandal.

December 29: Deputy National Security Adviser-designate K.T. McFarland emails a colleague about the aftermath of outgoing President Obama’s implementation of sanctions: “If there is a tit-for-tat escalation, Trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia, which has just thrown USA election to him.”

Even without knowing any of what Mueller has learned from the many witnesses he has secretly brought before the grand jury, this timeline—and the jury instructions that would accompany it at trial— already offer a strong roadmap for prosecutors. The conspiracy charges that arise from it will likely send some of Trump’s friends and relatives to jail. And they won’t look so good for the president, either, if presented next year at his impeachment trial in the Senate.

Trump, Putin and Russiagate's Growing Web

On Wednesday we learned that special counsel Robert Mueller is now working with the Attorney General of New York with a likely plan to force Trump sycophant Paul Manafort to go state's evidence on Trump given the reality that Trump cannot pardon Manafort of a state law conviction that could send him to prison for many years.  Then last night, we learn Mueller is also working with the IRS's financial crimes unit particularly on the issue of money laundering, something that Trump's real estate projects could have served to further. Follow the money and the wire transfers and often what was obscure becomes very clear. But there are other aspects to the growing Russiagate web as we learn of Trump's efforts to build a Trump Tower Moscow during the 2016 presidential election campaign - something some told him would help him  win the election. Never in my life time has there been a president so mired in scandal and likely illegal activities.  Only by sticking one's head in the sand can anyone pretend that Trump isn't toxic - 56% of respondents in a Fox News poll believed Trump was tearing the nation apart.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the growing web. Here are excerpts:

Just so there’s no confusion: Donald Trump’s longtime personal lawyer emailed Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman? Seeking help from the Kremlin on a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow? During the presidential campaign?

Yes, this really happened. While most attention was rightly focused on the devastating flood in Houston, there was quite a bit of news on the Russia front — all of it, from President Trump’s perspective, quite bad.

The revelations begin with a Trump business associate named Felix Sater . A Russian émigré who bragged about his Kremlin connections, Sater was a principal figure in development of the Trump Soho hotel and condominium project in lower Manhattan. Sater wrote a series of emails to Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, touting the Moscow Trump Tower project as a way to help Trump win the presidency.

 

In November 2015 — five months after Trump had entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination — Sater wrote to Cohen that he had “arranged” for Trump’s daughter Ivanka, during a 2006 visit to Moscow, “to sit in Putins private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin.”

 

The email went on, “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected. We both know no one else knows how to pull this off without stupidity or greed getting in the way. I know how to play it and we will get this done. Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this.”

 

There is no evidence that Cohen, one of Trump’s closest associates, found anything improper in Sater’s pledge to get Putin “on this program.” Nor did Cohen or anyone in the Trump Organization bother to disclose the emails — or the Trump firm’s effort, even during the campaign, to profitably emblazon the Trump name on the Moscow skyline — until the correspondence was turned over to the House Intelligence Committee on Monday.

 

And there’s more: In January 2016, with the Moscow project apparently stalled, Cohen went straight to the top to get it back on track — or at least tried to. He sent an email to Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s longtime personal spokesman, “hereby requesting your assistance.”

 

So Trump was lying when he tweeted, shortly before his inauguration, that “I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” The truth is that in October 2015, on the same day he participated in a GOP candidates’ debate, he signed a letter of intent for the Moscow Trump Tower project.

 

That is a “deal,” and Trump’s hunger to keep it alive may explain his reluctance to say anything critical about Putin. Or it may tell just part of the story.

The other part involves the whole question of collusion between Russian officials and the Trump campaign to meddle with the election and boost Trump’s chances. Sater’s boasts, by themselves, are hardly definitive. But of course there is the larger context, which includes the infamous meeting that Donald Trump Jr. convened in New York at which he hoped to receive dirt, courtesy of the Russian government, on Hillary Clinton.

Thus far we have the president’s son, son-in-law Jared Kushner (who was at that meeting), then-campaign manager Paul Manafort (also at the meeting) and now his personal lawyer all seemingly eager for Russian help in the election. Who in the campaign wasn’t willing to collude?

Some have suggested that Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio, the unrepentant “birther” and racial profiler, might have been a message to Trump associates facing heat from prosecutors: Hang tough and don’t worry, you’ll get pardons.

But there was more bad news for the president: Politico reported that Mueller is now cooperating and sharing information with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Presidents can only issue pardons for federal offenses, not state crimes. Uh-oh.

To understand Trump, one must think in terms of a Mafia don willing to use any illegality to further the crime family's business.  The only difference is that Trump is more amoral than the worst Mafia don.  That Trump occupies the White House is truly frightening.

Official Specializing In Fraud, Foreign Bribery Joins Mueller Team

As Donald Trump panders to his racist, Christofascist base, his approval rating has fallen to 33% which more or less corresponds to the percentage of Americans who see themselves as evangelical/fundamentalist Christians?  A coincidence?  I think not, especially since the majority of the Trump supporting "family values" hate groups have strong ties to white Supremacy.  Here in Virginia, if one traces back the roots of The Family Foundation, you find the supporters of "Massive Resistance" who closed public schools rather than integrate.  The irony, of course is that these people who feign piety and religiosity are supporting a man devoid of morality and decency.  Worse yet, he may be an outright criminal.  Hopefully, we will soon find out more on this later issue as special prosecutor Robert Mueller adds Greg Andres, who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division, overseeing the fraud unit and program that targeted illegal foreign bribery, to his staff.   A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the development:

A former Justice Department official specializing in fraud and illegal foreign bribery cases has become the sixteenth lawyer on the special counsel team investigating into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, Reuters reported Tuesday. 

Josh Stueve, a spokesperson for special counsel Robert Mueller, confirmed the hiring of attorney Greg Andres to Reuters.

During his two-year tenure at the DOJ, Andres served as deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division, overseeing the fraud unit and program that targeted illegal foreign bribery. Prior to joining to DOJ in 2010, he was chief of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, where he prosecuted several members of the Bonanno organized crime family.

Andres will add his expertise to a team with years of experience in national security, money laundering, cybercrime, and public corruption cases.

As for Trump's collapsing poll numbers, Talking Points Memo has this:

Just 33 percent of Americans approve of President Donald Trump nationwide, the lowest approval numbers that have been seen since his inauguration, according to a new Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday. Sixty-one percent of American voters disapprove of Trump, according to the poll. White men were the most split on their opinions about the President, with 47 percent approving of Trump and 48 percent disapproving. Republicans are still standing by their party’s pick, though, with 76 percent of those who identify with the GOP saying they’re happy with Trump. Even Trump’s main base of supporters — white people with no college degree — are losing faith in the President. They disapprove of his job performance 50 percent to 43 percent.

The majority of the registered voters surveyed said the President is not levelheaded — 71 to 26 percent — and 54 percent indicated they were embarrassed, not proud, that Trump is President.

Sixty-two percent of those surveyed said he is not honest; 63 percent said he does not have good leadership skills; and 59 percent said he does no care about average Americans. Multiple intelligence agencies have confirmed that Russia interfered with the 2016 election, and 63 percent of those interviewed believe it happened, while 58 percent think the President was involved.

This weekend the husband and I head to London for a week - the Ralph Northam campaign staffer living with us will watch the house and babysit the dogs - and I will be inclined to find a shirt to wear that says "Not My President" or "Don't Blame Me, I voted for Hillary."