Wishful Thinking, or Will Mike Pence Be Indicted?

As much as I want Donald Trump out of the White House, I do not want him replaced by Mike Pence.  All that would accomplish is replacing a mentally unstable crook with a mentally unstable religious zealot.  Both need to go down in the Russiagate probe.  A piece in The Advocate looks at whether it is merely a liberal dream that Pence will end up indicted or whether just perhaps Pence is up to his eyeballs in lying to Congress and the FBI like Michel Flynn.  Throughout my years involved in politics and monitoring right wing "Christian" organizations, I have learned one thing:  No one - other than perhaps Trump - lies more often that the falsely pious "godly folk" like Pence.  Here are article highlights:

It could be wishful thinking — but a few liberal pundits and activists are predicting that virulently anti-LGBTQ Vice President Mike Pence will be charged with wrongdoing in connection with the 2016 presidential election. 

Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who’s investigating Russian interference in the election and possible collusion by Donald Trump’s campaign, released a heavily redacted sentencing memo Tuesday regarding former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. “The memo clearly states that the Trump transition team was heavily involved in Flynn’s illegal dealings with Russia,” writes PoliticusUSA commentator Leo Vidal. “And, as everyone now remembers, the person in charge of that transition team was none other than vice president-elect Mike Pence.”

“Michael Flynn committed numerous crimes, and Mike Pence did everything possible to cover up those crimes, possibly because he was implicated in them also,” Vidal continues. “In fact, Pence could face the same criminal charges that Mueller brought against Flynn.” Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian officials and is cooperating with Mueller in the investigation.

Pence, Vidal writes, lied while defending Flynn to the public, and also probably lied to law enforcement. “It is very likely that the redacted portions of Mueller’s memo mention the name Mike Pence, and not in a good way,” he says.

Jon Cooper, chairman of the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, also predicts Pence will face criminal charges, as he expressed in a recent tweet.

[N]o one on the outside really knows what’s going to come out of Mueller’s probe. Documents Mueller’s team released Friday concerning former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and lawyer Michael Cohen allege that both lied about Russia contacts, The Washington Post reports. Also, Cohen has implicated the president in campaign finance violations regarding a payment made to keep adult-film star Stormy Daniels silent about a sexual encounter with Trump. “The plot thickened for Trump just a little bit,” the Post notes.

If it’s thickened for Trump, it may likewise thicken for Pence. . . . . . the Mueller investigation has been full of surprises, none of them good for Trump and his inner circle. We’ll be eagerly waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Trump Is Compromised by Russia

Today has been a busy news day in the context of the Russiagate investigation ranging from a new plea deal by Michael Cohen, this time in the realm of the Russiagate investigation and Cohen's testimony at hearings before Congress, and what appear to be increasingly desperate lies from Der Trumpenführer himself,  Meanwhile, the Feds have raided the office of Trump's former tax attorney and Germany has raided the offices of Deutsche Bank, the last bank that was willing to make loans for Trump projects (former Justice Anthony Kennedy's son over saw the bank's real estate lending).  These raids may be unrelated and coincidentally happened on the same day as Cohen's new guilty plea.  Nonetheless, some commentators have even indicated that in retrospect today might indeed be looked back upon as the beginning of the end of Trump's time in the White House.  Trump will not go down quietly and one big worry is to what extent he is willing to do severe damage to the nation as he desperately tries to save himself.  Here are highlights from a column in the New York Times: 

One of the chief questions in the Trump-Russia scandal has been whether Vladimir Putin has leverage over the president of the United States, and, if so, what that leverage looks like. The significance of the fabled “pee tape,” after all, is not that it would reveal Donald Trump to be a pervert bent on defiling the place where Barack Obama slept. Rather, the tape matters because, if real, it would show the president to be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

That’s also why evidence of Trump’s business involvement with Russia would be significant, as Trump himself acknowledged shortly before his inauguration, when he tweeted, “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”

We still don’t know for certain if Russia has used leverage over Trump. But there should no longer be any doubt that Russia has leverage over him.

On Thursday morning, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen — the former executive vice president of the Trump Organization — pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress about efforts to build a Trump-branded property in Moscow that extended into the 2016 presidential campaign.

In an August 2017 letter to the House and Senate intelligence committees, Cohen said that the Moscow project ended in January 2016. He claimed not to recall contacts with Russian government officials about a potential deal. Cohen told Congress that he spoke about the project with Trump — identified as “Individual 1” in the criminal information document that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, filed on Thursday — only three times. He said he never briefed Trump’s family.

According to Mueller’s filing, all of this was false. Efforts to obtain Russian government approval for a Trump-branded development in Moscow went on until “approximately June 2016,” after Trump had effectively secured the Republican nomination for president. Cohen, Mueller’s document said, “discussed the status and progress of the Moscow project with Individual 1” more than three times. He also “briefed family members of Individual 1 within the company about the project.”

In January 2016, according to Mueller’s document, Cohen had a 20-minute conversation with the assistant to a Russian official in which he sought Russia’s help moving the project forward. The next day, Felix Sater, a Trump associate identified in the court filing as “Individual 2,” wrote Cohen to tell him he’d heard from Putin’s office. Cohen made plans to travel to Russia, calling them off only on June 14, which happened to be the day that The Washington Post first reported that Russian government hackers had penetrated Democratic National Committee computers. At one point, Cohen and Sater were also coordinating with figures in Moscow about a potential Trump visit in connection with the project.

So we now know that Trump lied to the American people about at least one part of his business relationship with Russia, a geopolitical foe that interfered in our election process on his behalf.

In a Jan. 11, 2017, news conference, Trump said that the “closest I came to Russia” was in selling a Palm Beach mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008. While we’re just learning precisely how dishonest this was, Putin has known it all along. That means that throughout Trump’s campaign and presidency, Putin has had the power to plunge him into political crisis.

“If the Russians are aware that senior American officials are publicly stating things that are not true, it’s a counterintelligence nightmare,” Adam Schiff, the California Democrat in line to take over the House Intelligence Committee, told me.

Speaking to reporters before flying to Argentina on Thursday, Trump justified his pursuit of a Moscow project this way: “There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?” This could be read as a confession of motive. In the 2016 campaign, Russia wanted to humiliate Hillary Clinton and delegitimize America’s election. Trump wanted help building his brand.

Personally, I suspect that Cohen's new guilty plea and what it is revealing is only the tip of the ice berg.  Moreover, it's a safe bet that Mueller has emails, text messages, and a great deal of documentation to back up the fact that Cohen's previous false testimony was all untrue.  They may well show that Trump was deeply involved in the multiple conspiracies. 

Congress/FBI Investigating Another Possible Undisclosed Sessions-Kislyak Meeting

Prior posts have made it very clear that I view Attorney General Jeff Sessions as a miserable excuse for a human being.  My feelings date all the way back to my days in Mobile, Alabama when Sessions refused to prosecute KKK members who lynched a young black man in Mobile.  Combine  Sessions' flaming racism with his homophobia and apparent constant lying to Congress and it ought to be obvious to anyone other than a white supremacist and/or Christofascists - my "friends" who voted for Trump and support Sessions can pick which of these two best describes them - that Sessions is unfit for the office of Attorney General of the United States of America.  Now, on top of all of this, it appears that Sessions may have had another secret meetings with the Russian ambassador - a meeting that he never disclosed to Congress even in his "corrected" disclosure.  Here are highlights from CNN:

Congressional investigators are examining whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions had an additional private meeting with Russia's ambassador during the presidential campaign, according to Republican and Democratic Hill sources and intelligence officials briefed on the investigation.

Investigators on the Hill are requesting additional information, including schedules from Sessions, a source with knowledge tells CNN. They are focusing on whether such a meeting took place April 27, 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, where then-candidate Donald Trump was delivering his first major foreign policy address. Prior to the speech, then-Sen. Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak attended a small VIP reception with organizers, diplomats and others. In addition to congressional investigators, the FBI is seeking to determine the extent of interactions the Trump campaign team may have had with Russia's ambassador during the event as part of its broader counterintelligence investigation of Russian interference in the election. The FBI is looking into whether there was an additional private meeting at the Mayflower the same day, sources said.
 Sessions has previously failed to disclose meetings with Russian officials. During his confirmation hearing on January 10, Sessions testified that he "did not have any communications with the Russians" during the campaign. He also said in a written statement submitted to the Senate judiciary committee that he was not in contact with anyone linked to the Russian government during the election. Those answers became problematic for Sessions when reports emerged in March that he did have two meetings with Kislyak during the campaign -- one at the Republican National Convention in July and one in his Senate office in September.
 [W]hen Sessions updated his sworn testimony to the Senate judiciary committee, he acknowledged the two meetings with Kislyak but did not mention any encounter at the Mayflower Hotel. Russia was already trying to help Trump before the Mayflower Hotel speech, according to a US intelligence community assessment released in January. The report concluded that by March 2016, Kremlin-backed news outlets began supporting Trump and Russian military intelligence had kicked off its election-related cyber operations.

Sessions needs to resign immediately.  Prosecution for perjury and contempt of Congress are also in order.