Another Year of Robert Mueller (Part IV of the Russia Investigation)

ONCE MORE WE PICK UP THE TRAIL OF DONALD J. TRUMP AND THE MANY RUSSIANS. 

ACCORDING TO THE PRESIDENT, THE SUMMARY OF THE MUELLER REPORT, ISSUED ON MARCH 24 (AND ALL OF FOUR PAGES LONG) HAS TOTALLY EXONERATED HIM.

RIGHT-WINGERS REJOICED AT THE NEWS. THEN RIGHT-WINGERS REALIZED THE REPORT COULD STILL BE TERRIBLE. 

LET THE BITCHING BEGIN ANEW!

3/24/19: Party time for President Donald J. Trump. The summary of the Mueller report, all of four pages long, totally exonerates him.

So Trump says.

“Fuck Robert Mueller,” I think he wants to add.

Quoting a mere 73 words from the report.

According to the summary prepared by Attorney General William Barr—which includes 73 actual words from the Mueller report—that’s not what it says. It says Mueller was unable to find evidence of conspiracy between members of Trump’s campaign and the Russian government. 

As Barr notes, “The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’”

So: not exonerated.

Plain as the orange tint on Donald J. Trump’s face.

3/25/19: Still party time!!! Trump says he’s been totally exonerated. “Christmas came early this week,” he tweets.

Now, the sky is the limit. He’s going to be the best president ever. Better than Abe and George and that Kenyan guy, for sure. He’s going to be voted People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” for 2019. He’s going to get Kim Jong-un to give up all his nukes—even though, so far, he hasn’t given up any. He’s even going to get Mexico to pay for the wall.

And he’s going to bang another porn star.

Only this time, he’s not going to get caught.

3/29/19: We learn that the full Mueller report, excluding tables and appendixes, was almost 400 pages long. So AG Barr’s almost-four-page-long “summary” probably left a little detail out.

Manafort didn’t break: A pardon awaits.

As for your humble blogger, I was wrong in my assessment of some of the possibilities the Russia probe represented, although the facts I have cited hold up quite nicely. I said, for example, I’d be willing to bet Don Jr. got indicted; but in fact, it looks like he may only end up being a liar and a sleaze.

I did say, all along, I thought evidence for impeachment was insufficient—unless Manafort broke.

Manafort didn’t break.

A pardon awaits.

3/31/19: While President Trump has been bragging about how the Mueller report has provided him “total exoneration,” a new poll shows that only three in ten Americans believe he’s in the clear. Four of ten say he’s not; and the other three aren’t sure. Trump’s overall numbers are boosted in large part by the 64% of Republicans who think Mueller cleared his name. Most of them wouldn’t believe Trump colluded with Russians even if Mueller had evidence that Trump campaign aides held secret meetings with agents of the Russian Federation offering dirt on Hillary Clinton—that another aide met with a Russian offering dirt on Hillary but wanting $2 million to share it—that the president lied when he said his son met with Russian agents to talk about “adoption”—and that other campaign advisers suggesting sealing a Trump Tower Moscow deal by offering a free penthouse worth $50 million to Vladimir Putin.

Oh, wait, Mueller already has all that evidence.

4/4/19: Republicans react to news that Democrats in the House of Representatives are subpoenaing the president’s tax returns.

“The Democrat agenda is still strictly focused on harassing the president,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise whines.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy labels the request “a waste of time.” He warns that Democrats want to “use the power of government, the fear that every American has the government has become so strong they go after you because they don’t politically agree with you. It’s wrong.”

There are a significant number of flaws in his complaint—including the fact McCarthy once told a gathering of Republicans that he thought Trump was one of two people the Russians paid.

4/6/19: You can tell the president and his toadies are starting to worry about what the Mueller report will reveal once it’s out. Trump, of course, has claimed that the report “totally exonerates” him. He didn’t collude with Russians. He didn’t conspire. He didn’t even fart.

Hillary smelt it. She dealt it!

That’s about the level of maturity we see from this president.

Less than two weeks ago, Republicans were so excited to have their main man cleared that they went along with Democrats in the House of Representatives and voted 420-0 to have the full Mueller report released.

The halcyon days passed and the propagandists on Fox News shouted in triumph! Still, Republican hands grew clammy.

When Chairman Jerry Nadler, head of the House Judiciary Committee, moved this week to issue a subpoena for the full report, all seventeen Republicans on the panel decided that—on second thought—they really didn’t want to see what Mueller had to offer. The vote went against them, 24-17, with all Democrats on the committee still in favor of releasing the report.

The Mueller Report: Rep. Nunes wants to “burn it up.”

Rep. Devin Nunes, who used to run the committee before Republicans got clobbered in the midterms, and couldn’t have found a Russian if a Russian hooker was seated in President Trump’s lap, appeared on Fox & Friends and went his colleagues one better. He said he didn’t care what the nearly 400-page long report said. He didn’t care about Mueller’s findings. Nor did he have any desire to study appendices and supporting documentation, which might double or triple the length of the report. “You know, we can just burn it up. It is a partisan document,” Nunes claimed.

He hadn’t read it. He was merely using his totally non-partisan, clairvoyant powers to make his point.

Nunes told his hosts he thought the four-page summary released by Attorney General William Barr was just great, all that any red-blooded patriot could ask from his or her government. But in one poll only 18% of Americans believed the summary sufficed, whereas 75% said they would like to see the full report.

A second poll was even more definitive, with 84% of Americans saying they wanted to see the report.

*

The same day, we are treated to the latest Trump Twitter Tirade. Apparently, the president is losing his nerve, now that the full report may come out. He knows it can’t exonerate him and knows enough about what he and his aides were up to realize it will make him look like a tool and fool of the Russians at best.

That means time to tweet.

At 8:41 a.m. the president starts by quoting someone from Fox News: “Collusion was a Hoax from day one.” @dbongino @foxandfriends

At 9:22 a.m. he admits:

I have not read the Mueller Report yet, even though I have every right to do so. Only know the conclusions, and on the big one, No Collusion. Likewise, recommendations made to our great A.G. who found No Obstruction. 13 Angry Trump hating Dems (later brought to 18) given two.....

Trump is forced to stop and think before he taps away again. Nine minutes later we have what passes for cogitation:

.....years and $30 million, and they found No Collusion, No Obstruction. But the Democrats, no matter what we give them, will NEVER be satisfied. A total waste of time. As @FrankLuntz has just stated, “Enough, America has had enough. What have you accomplished. Public is fed up.”

Trump is still riled up an hour and a half later. At 10:52 and 10:57 a.m. we get a pair of self-pitying tweets:

So, let’s get this straight! There was No Collusion and in fact the Phony Dossier was a Con Job that was paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC. So the 13 Angry Democrats were investigating an event that never happened and that was in fact a made up Fraud. I just fought back....

.... against something I knew never existed, Collusion with Russia (so ridiculous!) - No Obstruction. This Russia Hoax must never happen to another President, and Law Enforcement must find out, HOW DID IT START?

That last question is easy to answer if you take time to sit down and read. If we get to see the full Mueller report even Trump’s blindest supporters might get the kind of answer they don’t wish to see.

4/8/19: Trump is still somehow worried about what the Mueller report might reveal—even though he’s been “totally exonerated.”

Also, he can’t show anyone his taxes! His taxes are under Eternal Audit and even if he could show them, he wouldn’t, even if often promised he would.

You can always tell what goblins of thought are cavorting in Trump’s head, because you know he’s going to tweet. His first offering of the day, a quote from Fox News contributor Charles Hurt, comes at 6:39 a.m. Trump quoting from Fox is pretty much the same as Hitler quoting Joseph Goebbels, his Minister of Propaganda, but here it is: “‘The reason the whole process [the Russian investigation] seems so politicized is that Democrats made up this complete lie about Collusion ....and none of it happened.’ Charles Hurt. The Russian Hoax never happened, it was a fraud on the American people!”

The president’s second tweet features another quote from another Fox contributor. “‘Jerry Nadler is not entitled to this information [Trump’s tax returns]. He is doing this to get it to the Democrat 2020 nominee.’ @KatiePavlich”

Did Trump cheat on his taxes? Rep. Jordan doesn’t care.

Next come a trio of tweets, quoting Rep. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who neither cares to see, hear of, speak of, taste with his tongue or touch with his fingertips the tax returns of Donald J. Trump. “Dems want President’s tax returns for purely political purposes!” Jordan insists.

“There’s no law that says they have to be public.”

This is true as far as it goes. But the public does have a right to know if the tax laws of the United States are written in such a way that a bragging billionaire might pay nothing to fund the government he runs. The American people need to see if Trump has cash stashed in offshore bank accounts. (We know cabinet members like Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin and several others do.) We want to be sure there’s no money laundering to be found in Trump’s financial documents—in particular, money laundering involving various and sundry Russians. Finally, we want to know if Trump has ever cheated state and local governments, for example, by claiming low valuations on assets he owns to reduce property taxes.

Because, you know, everything we’ve learned about President Trump in the last three years trends in the same basic direction. If he can get away with cheating on the rules—of matrimony—of golf—of having aides meet with a hundred different Russians—you know he will.

Then again, you could just tell yourself—if you were an idiot—that Trump has nothing to hide! Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, he of previous Tea Party fame, has insisted that Democrats will “never” see the president’s tax returns.

Also: let’s be sure to bury the Mueller report!

4/10/19: The president’s justifiable fear of what the Mueller report might reveal once released is growing. 

That means it’s time to lash out and juice the hate one group of Americans (his most rabid fans) feels toward the rest of us (those of us who oppose him for a multitude of reasons, not least, his use of hate to motivate his base).

In a pair of crazy tweets, Trump insists that duly-appointed investigators were enemies of the state: “So, it has now been determined, by 18 people that truly hate President Trump, that there was No Collusion with Russia. In fact, it was an illegal investigation that should never have been allowed to start. I fought back hard against this Phony & Treasonous Hoax!”

This tweet represents another clash of cymbals in the authoritarian symphony now led by the man in the Oval Office. Those who investigate him—or even oppose him—are guilty of treason.

And the punishment for treason is death.

POSTSCRIPT: Later, Trump expands his list of those who he believes are committing treason. At 9:31 p.m., we get this: “I think what the Democrats are doing with the Border is TREASONOUS. Their Open Border mindset is putting our Country at risk. Will not let this happen!”

“Will not let this happen?” How, exactly, does this man of true fascist instincts propose to put an end to the Democrat’s treason?

His comments earlier in the week, about letting the U.S. military “get a little rough,” might in his warped mind apply.

4/11/19: Judge Maryanne Trump Berry, the president’s sister, officially retires as a federal judge. This is apparently done in hopes of insulating herself from an investigation into possible tax fraud. (See: 4/8/19.)

An earlier story in The New York Times cited documentary evidence that could lay grounds for a case against her. The Times reported:

Judge Barry had been a co-owner of a shell company — All County Building Supply & Maintenance — created by the [Trump] family to siphon cash from their father’s empire by marking up purchases already made by his employees, The Times investigation found. Judge Barry, her siblings and a cousin split the markup, free of gift and estate taxes, which at the time were levied at a much higher rate than income taxes.

Others allegedly involved in the scheme: the current President of the United States, of course.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

As the tax filing deadline approaches for all of us, the wait for the full Mueller report continues.

PREVIOUS DEVELOPMENTS

March 1, 2019: I’m going to assume you didn’t have seven hours to devote to watching Michael Cohen testify before the House Oversight Committee. I am retired. So I watched till my eyes bugged out of my skull.

To wit, a few helpful observations:

First, it was hard not to think Republicans on the committee were suffering from some kind of group hysteria. They were boiling mad to learn that Cohen had lied to Congress in September 2017, even though they controlled both House and Senate at the time and could have investigated thoroughly had they desired. 

Then again, in those glory days, Cohen was lying for Trump.

*

Let’s pick up the thread of the day’s testimony with the first Republican speaking and/or yelling:

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): Admit it, Mr. Cohen, YOU ARE A LIAR! Did anyone ever tell you that?

Cohen: Yes.

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI.): You are a COLOSSAL LIAR!

Cohen: I did lie.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-VA): Admit it! You lied to CONGRESS?

Cohen: I just admitted that. Duh.

At that point, Foxx “yielded back” her time (each representative had five minutes) to Rep. Jordan, who started shouting again. Jordan looked like he wanted to leap over the dais and throttle the witness. And you got the feeling Jordan was the kind of guy who could strangle a puppy and not feel remorse.

So I decided to pause the TV and look up what Cohen said back on September 19, 2017, when he testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 

That’s when he lied.

In those days Republicans and the president himself were thrilled with what Cohen said under oath: 

Given my own proximity to the President of the United States as a candidate, let me also say that I never saw anything - not a hint of anything - that demonstrated his involvement in Russian interference in our election or any form of Russian collusion.

I assume we will discuss the rejected proposal to build a Trump property in Moscow that was terminated in January of 2016; which occurred before the Iowa caucus and months before the very first primary. This was solely a real estate deal and nothing more. I was doing my job. I would ask that the two-page statement about the Moscow proposal that I sent to the Committee in August be incorporated into and attached to this transcript.

I hit the pause again, to restart the hearings.

Jordan (still yelling at Cohen): You snake! You are a humongous liar!!!

Me (thinking): Cohen knew in September 2017 about a secret June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort with agents of the Russian Federation. That was the meeting all three “forgot.” Then the truth came out because the “enemies of the people,” in the free press were digging to find it. Then the president lied about the purpose of the meeting. Next, Press Secretary Pinocchio lied and said her boss never lied about that purpose. Later the president’s lawyer admitted, “Okay, he did.”

My reverie was interrupted by another shouting Republican, Rep. Bob Gibbs of Ohio. He called Cohen a liar too.

Lies shielding the president were fine.

Me (still thinking): Cohen lied again when he claimed negotiations to build a Trump property in Moscow ended in January 2016. Those lies served to shield Mr. Trump. Surely, the next GOP lawmaker to speak is going to…

Mark Meadows (R-NC): I hope you rot in jail for 5,000 years, Mr. Cohen. You are a liar. Have we not asked if you are?

Cohen: I lied. So did the presi…..

Meadows: SILENCE!!

Me: Cohen lied about payments to keep a porn star’s story out of the news. Those lies also benefited Trump. Someone on the Republican side is sure to bring this up.

Mark Green (R-TN): Liar, liar, pants on fire! Look up here, sir, we have a cool poster to make our only real point!

(He gestures toward it.) 

Me: If Cohen lied to Congress the President of the United States knew it. The president still had a tongue that wagged and Twitter thumbs to tap out correction. Even the greatest idiot ever elected to Congress should be able…

Thomas Massie (R-KY): I’m not going to ask you again, Mr. Cohen. You fraud, you fake, you falsifier? You LIED, DIDN’T YOU!

Cohen: Yep.

Massie (beaming): I knew it!!!!!

Me: Maybe I should mute the TV when Jordan talks next and just watch facial expressions….

Jordan: -----

Me:  I never knew veins on a neck could stick out that far. Okay, next is this Democratic guy; I’ll unmute the TV.

Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD): I wonder……………if…………..Mr. Cohen…………

Me: This guy is phrasing his question so deliberately I don’t think he’s going to get it out before his five minutes are up.

I take a quick bathroom break. When I return Sarbanes is done but I have no idea what he said. Another Republican is shouting at Cohen:

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ): You are a THUG, MR. COHEN. Also, has anyone mentioned that you are a cheat, a phony and a swindler? And if President Trump was a liar, a cheat and a racist, as you claim, why did you work for him for TEN YEARS!”

Gosar gets so fired up, because he thinks he has Cohen trapped, that he blathers on and when he tries to launch into a quotation he says he loves, his five minutes are up and he’s left mumbling incomprehensibly into a dead microphone.

Me (pondering the obvious): If Cohen was a thug and a liar, why was Trump happy to keep him around for a decade?

RNC deputy finance chairman till he crossed Trump.

The hearings continued. I was amused when GOP lawmakers acted like they couldn’t believe what a sleazebag Cohen always was—what with cheating on his taxes, which Cohen also admitted he did. Fortunately, I had a vestige of a memory and knew Cohen had been the deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee until June 2018, and only lost that post after it became clear he might turn on President Trump and, shall we say, spill some baked beans.

I’m sure no one on the GOP side wanted viewers to recall that Elliot Broidy, another RNC deputy finance chair, had employed Cohen to arrange a secret hush money payment. In that case, Broidy had to fork over $1.6 million to shut up another Playboy Bunny—as opposed to the hush money payment Cohen helped arrange to shut up the other Playboy Bunny with whom Trump had had an affair.

So, yeah, Cohen, what a thug!

Or was it a “rat.” Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) seemed interested in the fact that the President of the United States had labeled Cohen a “rat” on Twitter, after it became clear he was going to cooperate with prosecutors. This seemed odd, because until it became clear Cohen might turn, Trump had tweeted, calling Cohen a “good man” and someone “I always liked & respected.”

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) spoke next. Higgins proved unique in that he was clearly baffled by the simplest facts. At one point Cohen produced evidence—a signed check for $35,000, indicating President Trump was paying him as late as August 1, 2017, for his role in covering up the porn queen story and violating campaign finance laws in the process.

Higgins: By thunderation, sir, where is this treasure trove of documents of which you speak? Why are you hiding evidence, good sir?

Cohen: These documents are in a storage locker. They were seized last April in a raid on my office and home. They aren’t “hidden.” They were returned to me by investigators after they gathered all the evidence they wanted.

Higgins: What kind of monster would hide boxes of evidence, by God and all the 12 Commandments!!!

Cohen: Uh…

There was some good news for President Trump. Cohen said that he had never been to Prague. A potentially devastating allegation, included in the Steele dossier, was that Cohen flew there in the summer of 2016 to work out payments to Russian hackers so they could keep up their good work.

A Democratic member asked Cohen about other stories he might have helped “capture and kill” to protect Trump. Was there an elevator tape that might show him striking Mrs. Trump, as had been rumored? Mr. Cohen was adamant in stating that he did not believe the president would ever strike his wife. He also said he did not believe a tape of hookers urinating on a Moscow hotel bed for the viewing pleasure of Donald J. Trump existed.

  

False testimony vetted by Trump defense team and president.

That was it for the good news. Cohen pointed out that his false testimony in September 2017 had been vetted by defense lawyers for Mr. Trump. He said he discussed his testimony with the president himself.

Me: So, if that testimony was false…..

Meadows: Why are we listening to THIS DECEIVER, THIS DISSEMBLER?

Me: ….Trump must have wanted him to lie…

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY): “When was the last time you had contact with Mr. Trump in regard to possible testimony before Congress or cooperation with investigators?”

Cohen: I think…about June 2018. I cannot comment further because the matter is part of an ongoing investigation in the Southern District of New York. I am in constant contact with prosecutors.

Rep. Jordan gets five minutes “yielded back” by a GOP colleague and uses them up calling Cohen a liar.

Eleanor Norton (D-DC): Mr. Cohen, are there other crimes involving Mr. Trump which this panel should know about?

Cohen: Yes. But I cannot comment further because investigations are…

Rep. Meadows:  Mr. Cohen, I would like you to look up here. Behind me, we have Lynn Patton, an actual African American woman! She has worked for Donald J. Trump for years and now holds a real government job. She says Trump is not a racist. How dare you say Mr. Trump is a racist, now that we can show he has a black friend?”

(Ms. Patton stands there, not opening her mouth, looking like a hostage who might want to try blinking in Morse code.)

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI): The fact that my colleague would use an African American as a prop is, in itself, a racist ploy.

Meadows (looking like he might be suffering a stroke): How dare you call me a racist!!!

Tlaib: Mr. Cohen, do you believe the president and others have been trying to intimidate you, to convince you not to correct the record before Congress?

Cohen: I do. I worry. I never walk with my wife and children in public anymore. I send them ahead. I’m afraid one of Trump’s 62 million Twitter followers—or even Rep. Matt Gaetz might attack the people I love.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez finally has a turn to question the witness. The young Democrat from New York gets straight to the point. She has learned, she says, that Trump often overvalued assets—golf courses and the like—if he wanted to win favorable loan treatment from large money-laundering, international banks. To avoid paying property taxes he would then order lawyers and accountants to undervalue the properties. Was this an accurate assessment, she asked?

Cohen: Yes.

Ocasio-Cortez: Would anyone else know about such practices?

Cohen: Allen Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman and Matthew Calamari.

Ocasio-Cortez: A recent article in The New York Times notes that taxpayers spent $127 million to help build Trump Links, a Trump property in the Bronx, my district. This deal allowed Mr. Trump to keep almost every dollar the golf club made. Is it possible he undervalued Trump Links for tax purposes? On financial disclosure forms the president claimed Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida was worth $50 million. Yet he reported to local tax authorities that the property was worth no more than $5 million.

Cohen: That is identical to what Mr. Trump did with Briarcliff Manor, another private golf club.

Ocasio-Cortez: Would it help for the committee to obtain federal and state tax returns from the president and his companies to address that discrepancy?

Cohen: I believe so.

That was the moment I decided to click off the TV and go pour myself a stiff drink. 

A coveted “Grand Ruskie” goes to GOP members of the House Oversight Committee who couldn’t find a Russian if Vladimir Putin sat down on Jim Jordan’s lap.

3/5/19: Trump unleashes a tweet storm, nineteen tweets in one day. Starting at 8:14 a.m., he complains about all the investigations now targeting him and his administration, saying that the “only Collusion with Russia was done by Crooked Hillary Clinton & the Democrats.”

At 9:11 a.m. he whines: “The Dems are obstructing justice and will not get anything done. A big, fat, fishing expedition desperately in search of a crime.”

A minute later he posts: “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s former defense lawyer, Ty Cobb does an interview with ABC. In it, he defends Special Counsel Mueller:

I think Bob Mueller’s an American hero…I think Bob Mueller’s a guy that, you know, even though he came from an arguably privileged background, you know, has a backbone of steel. He walked into a firefight in Vietnam to pull out one of his injured colleagues and was appropriately honored for that. . . . He is a very deliberate guy. And he—but he’s also a class act. And a very justice-oriented person.

Cobb is asked. Is Mueller leading a team of “angry Democrats” in an illegitimate investigation?

He replies:

You know, I don’t feel the same way about Mueller. I don’t feel the investigation is a witch hunt. I wish it had happened on a quicker timetable. But it didn’t. And that’s, you know, and that’s unfortunate. But at the same time, it’s not a real criticism of the special counsel, that on the timing, because there were a lot of surprises.

So: not a witch hunt.

3/6/19: Michael Cohen spends another day on Capitol Hill, this time testifying in closed session before the House Intelligence Committee. This time he brings suitcases filled with documents.

A series of fat checks.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports on a series of fat checks made out to Cohen, all signed by the president or Don Jr., his son. These checks are part of a scheme to cover up the story of Stormy Daniels, for which (in part) Cohen will soon be camped in jail. In fact, the Southern District of New York in its filings on the case named “Individual 1,” the president himself, as an “unindicted co-conspirator”—which based on the latest revelations—is kind of fun.

The first check to Mr. Cohen was signed February 14, 2017 by the newly sworn President of the United States. The day before Trump had to fire his National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn, for lying to Vice President Jesus about contacts with Russians.

Now Trump was signing that fat check. Afterwards he would celebrate Valentine’s Day by calling in F.B.I. Director James Comey and asking him to go easy on the Flynn investigation.

So keep all of this in mind when you hear the president insist that Comey lies and not him.

Or Cohen lies and not him.

There was another check to his personal lawyer for $35,000 in March, one in April (not yet been found), then one in May, drawn on the president’s personal bank account. The June and July checks are still missing. Then we have one for $35,000, signed on August 1, 2017.

On that very day, Press Secretary Pinocchio confirmed that the president had “weighed in” on a letter Don Jr. wrote about a secret meeting held in June 2016 with a group of Russian agents.

In retrospect, you can see how ridiculous the lies told by Trump and his sycophants have been. Sanders insisted then:

Look, the statement that Don Jr. issued is true. There’s no inaccuracy in the statement.

The president weighed in as any father would, based on the limited information that he had.

This is all discussion, frankly, of no consequence. There was no follow up. It was disclosed to the proper parties, which is how The New York Times found out about it to begin with.

But that statement itself was shot through with untruth. The meeting itself was never “disclosed.” The New York Times broke the story thirteen months after the meeting was held. Don Jr. initially denied there was discussion with Russian agents about receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Later, Don Jr. issued the aforementioned letter, saying the meeting was primarily about “adoption.”

Emails—evidence dug up by the free press—quickly proved that was a lie.

Then Sanders claimed the president simply helped his boy—and that also turned out to be a lie. Don Sr. drafted the misleading letter.

Meanwhile, the checks to Cohen kept coming: September 12, October 18 and November 21. The last of a dozen came on December 5, 2017, meaning that the president had been part of a scheme to cover up felony campaign law violations for almost a year. 

The evidence builds. Yet, in GOP La La Land it makes no dent. As the Times reports:

“I think it’s news we knew about,” Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee and one of the president’s staunchest allies, told reporters during a break in last week’s hearing.

The payments, he said, could have been for services based on a retainer, although Mr. Cohen said there was no such retainer.

Trump claims to know nothing about the payments.

Nor should anyone—including Rep. Jordan—forget. In April 2018, Trump could still insist to reporters aboard Air Force One that he knew nothing at all about payments to Stormy Daniels.

The guy really knows how to lie.

Q: Mr. President, did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?

THE PRESIDENT: No. No. What else?

Q: Then why did Michael Cohen make those if there was no truth to her allegations?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. And you’ll have to ask Michael Cohen.

Q: Do you know where he got the money to make that payment?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I don’t know. No.

Q: Did you ever set up a fund of money that he could draw from?

Trump ignored that question, took another on a new topic, answered briefly, thanked reporters and disappeared to the front of the plane.

*

Sadly, the president isn’t done tweet-ranting for the day. At 6:56 p.m. on March 6, 2019, he sums up his legal predicament this way. He didn’t do anything wrong. No, the Democrats are out to get him on anything, even “a punctuation mistake in a document.”

Sure: that’s all they’ll find.

POSTSCRIPT: Judge Andrew Napolitano, perhaps Fox News’s top legal commentator, explained the hidden dangers of Cohen’s testimony in an editorial in the Washington Examiner:

Hidden in the Cohen testimony was an oblique reference to alleged bank and tax fraud that Cohen claimed he helped Mr. Trump commit, contributed to Mr. Trump’s wealth and has the present interest of federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Many of these events took place more than five years ago and thus are not subject to federal prosecution, so why would prosecutors be interested in them?

Here is where RICO comes in. RICO is the acronym for a Nixon-era federal statute, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, originally enacted to target the mob. It permits federal prosecutors to reach back 10 years to find any two criminal acts, which need not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt; prosecutors need only demonstrate that they were more likely than not to have occurred. Then the feds can seize three times the wealth that the perpetrators of these schemes amassed. That could bankrupt Mr. Trump.

The president has serious and powerful tormentors whom he cannot overcome by mockery alone. He needs to do more than demean them with acerbic tweets, because many of those tormentors can legally cause him real harm. He needs to address these issues soberly, directly and maturely. Can President Trump survive all this? Yes — but not if he has another week like the last one.

First of all, it’s never going to be a good week for anyone who opens a newspaper and sees his or her name attached to a sentence about the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

Secondly, Napolitano is warning that Trump can only address his problems in a sober, direct, mature fashion.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahaahahahahahah!

Never gonna happen!

3/7/19: Party time at the White House! Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is sentenced to only 47 months in jail!

It’s like he’s almost innocent in Trumpistan! Manafort even gets credit for eight months already served!

In Donald Trump’s mind this unexpectedly light sentence proves that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russians. Speaking to reporters gathered on the White House lawn, he explains:

I feel very badly for Paul Manafort…uh… I think it’s been a very, very tough time for him, but if you notice, both his lawyer, a highly respected man and a very highly respected judge said that there was no collusion with Russia, this had nothing to do with collusion with Russia, because there was no collusion. It’s a collusion hoax, a collusion witch hunt.

Trump goes on to describe the whole Russia investigation as a “Witch Hunt Hoax.” “So bad for our country,” he adds with a wave of an orange hand and a spritz of self-pity.

Hint of a pardon might influence Manafort to keep yap closed.

A reporter asks if the president has ever discussed a pardon for Manafort—because, you know, the hope of a pardon might influence Manafort to keep his yap closed if he did know about collusion.

“I don’t even discuss it,” the president insists. “The only one discussing it is you.”

Only we know that’s not true. Trump has said repeatedly he won’t take a pardon for Manafort off the table.

Wink. Wink.

Rudy Giuliani has now admitted that lawyers for “several people” under investigation by Special Counsel Mueller have approached to ask if the president might someday grant them pardons, which we know are not off the table! You know, depending on what they might say in court. Rudy says he always tells them he can’t promise them anything and they leave “disappointed.”

Then again, pardons are not off the table!

Wink. Wink. Wink-wink!

For now, Manafort knows he caught a break. Next week he faces additional sentencing in a Virginia court for another series of crimes. He’s going to learn how much more time he might be serving for additional felonies committed. This time the charges definitely hint at collusion with Russia. One felony involves witness tampering, related to Mr. Manafort’s efforts to sync testimony with Konstantin Kilimnick, a Russian operative. Kilimnick used to hang in Washington, D.C., but recently fled to Russia.

And has anyone mentioned pardon’s lately?

POSTSCRIPT: Allow me to clarify: A pardon is out for one of six convicted felons from the Trump campaign.

That would be Michael Cohen.

Cohen, the president has said, is a “rat.” Cohen has been coughing up evidence damaging to Mr. Trump.

There will be no pardon for him.

3/8/19: Recent polls have Trump in a bit of a hole, with only 43.4% of Americans approving of the job he’s doing. Part of his problem is that most Americans believe he’s a liar.

His former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is a convicted felon, headed for jail. But when asked in a Quinnipiac poll, who they believed more, after Cohen’s testimony before Congress, 50% of Americans said Cohen

Only 35% said Trump.

In fact, 65% of Americans said they believed Trump is not honest, and 64% think he committed crimes before taking office; 45% believe he has committed crimes since being elected.

3/13/19: Paul Manafort appears in court again and is sentenced to an additional 43 months in jail.

This gives him a total of seven-and-a-half years to ponder his crimes, wonder what ever happened to his python skin jacket, and pray for a pardon from Trump. (See: 3/7/19 for Manafort’s first sentencing.)

Expensive snake skin for a snake.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson roasts the defendant thoroughly before handing down her sentencing decision. His lobbying work for Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, which he kept secret for years, “infects our policymaking,” Jackson says. “What you were doing was lying to Congress and the American public,” she adds, noting that Manafort made a “deliberate effort to obscure the facts.”

“If the people don’t have the facts, democracy can’t work,” she says; and “court is one of those places where facts still matter.”

You could take that as a veiled slap at Donald J. Trump.

For his part, Manafort made an effort to appear contrite. “I know it was my conduct that brought me here today,” he said. “For these mistakes, I am remorseful. I will be 70 years old in a few weeks. My wife is 66. She needs me. I need her. I ask you to think of this and our need for each other. Please do not take us away from each other. Please let me and my wife be together.” 

Jackson was in no mood to spare the defendant, who appeared in a wheelchair, wearing a green prison jumpsuit. She noted that one of the crimes for which he was being sentenced involved witness tampering. That tampering in 2018 involved a Russian, Konstantin Kilimnik, also under investigation by Special Counsel Mueller. Mr. Kilimnik wasn’t about to stick around and take his chances in court. When last seen he was hopping a getaway flight for Moscow.

The conclusion on collusion did not follow from facts.

Finally, Jackson

chided the defense for using the [last court documents filed] to disprove any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians in Moscow’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, which is Muller’s chief mandate.

“The ‘no collusion’ refrain that runs through the entire defense memo is entirely unrelated to the matters at hand,” she said. “The ‘no collusion’ mantra is simply a non sequitur.”

That is: the conclusion his lawyers had been trying to draw, that these convictions did not prove collusion with Russians, did not follow from the facts. 

“The ‘no collusion’ mantra is also not accurate because the investigation is still ongoing,” Judge Jackson added.

To put it bluntly, she was acknowledging the big Orange Elephant in the courtroom and the Oval Office. She knows full well that Manafort and his team are angling for a presidential pardon. She wanted it to be clear she didn’t believe he was deserving.

So, how did the president react once he heard the news? “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort,” Trump told reporters. Naturally, they asked: had he given any thought to a pardon for the money-laundering, tax-evading, witness-tampering tool of Russian oligarchs who used to run his campaign?

Oh, no, President Trump claimed.

He did add that Judge Jackson had found that there was no collusion with Russians involved in the case.

That was the exact opposite of what she said. So, we have to advance our count of proven lies by one. Jackson all but said Manafort’s entire defense was a flawed ploy to win the president’s heart. That is: hey, look at me! I keep my mouth shut about what I know. When the coast is clear, you slap me with a pardon.

Manafort’s lawyer exited the courtroom Wednesday and made the same claim: that Judge Jackson had found that in his client’s case it had been proven there was no collusion with Russians.

  

So we have two new lies.

*

The Pardon Door may have slammed shut even before Trump reached for the handle. Minutes after Judge Jackson’s ruling was entered, New York State prosecutors filed 16 additional felony charges against Manafort, which could mean ten more years behind bars if convicted. 

More to the point, a presidential pardon would not get Trump’s former campaign manager off the hook for state crimes.

*

By day’s end we had fresh news regarding  pardons. Emails between Michael Cohen and lawyers for Mr. Trump surfaced.

Before diving into this story, it helps to go back to April 9, 2018. That was the day federal law enforcement officers raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel suite and confiscated all his electronic devices. From that moment on, it was clear authorities believed the president’s lawyer was involved in some kind of criminal enterprise. Prosecutors charged Cohen with eight felonies while also listing President Trump as an unindicted coconspirator, or “Individual 1.”

Cohen now had to know: Was he going to be protected by his longtime boss and top client, the President of the United States?

And his longtime boss had to find out. Would his former fixer still take a bullet for him and keep his mouth shut?

What made this unlike any garden variety criminal case was the president’s ability to grant pardons. So Cohen had to be pondering his future. And lawyers for Trump had to be wondering, too. How could he, Cohen, make it clear he’d keep quiet if a pardon was coming? How could Trump’s lawyers hint to Mr. Cohen that a pardon would be forthcoming, and how could they make it clear what they expected in return? There has been a good deal of arguing in recent weeks about whether Cohen asked for a pardon first, or whether the president and his lawyers were all but guaranteeing a pardon in return for sealed lips.

What is not in dispute is that the president has repeatedly said he would not take pardons off the table for former aides (at least as long as they continue to protect him). That means any discussions related to pardons could quickly devolve into obstruction of justice.

Initially, the president was all in on his support for Cohen. (See: Manafort above.) Trump made this clear while speaking to reporters from the Oval Office just hours after the Cohen raids. Again, we repeat:

So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, a good man and it’s a disgraceful situation. It’s a total witch-hunt. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I’ve wanted to keep it down. We’ve given I believe over a million pages worth of documents to the special counsel. They continue to just go forward and here we are talking about Syria, we’re talking about a lot of serious things with the greatest fighting force ever and I have this witch-hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now and actually much more than that. You could say it was right after I won the nomination it started. And it’s a disgrace, it’s a real disgrace. It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. 

In fact, on April 21, 2018, Trump made it clear where he stood in regard to Mr. Cohen when he tweeted:

So what were Trump’s defense lawyers—and Cohen and his team—discussing in those days?

Recently-revealed emails allow us to see.

“Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.”

“I just spoke to Rudy Giuliani and told him I was on your team,” Robert Costello wrote in the first email we see. When was that email sent? It was one of two that popped up in Cohen’s email inbox on April 21, 2018. Costello was a longtime friend and associate of Giuliani, serving as intermediary between the president’s old lawyer, now in serious legal jeopardy, and his new lawyer, Horndog Rudy. Rudy’s entire job was keeping the president out of similar jeopardy. “He asked me to tell you,” Costello wrote to Mr. Cohen, “that he knows how tough this is on you and your family and he will make (sure) to tell the President. He said thank you for opening this back channel of communication and asked me to keep in touch.”

We don’t know now if Cohen responded. CNN has seen a second, follow-up email later that same day. This time, Costello assured Cohen he had spoken with Giuliani and their conversation was “very very positive.”

“There was never a doubt and they are in our corner [emphasis added],” Costello continued. “Rudy said this communication channel must be maintained. He called it crucial and noted how reassured they were that they had someone like me whom Rudy has known for so many years in this role.” 

Finally, Costello closed: “Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.”

So, was this a veiled hint to Cohen—keep your lips clamped tight and you can expect a pardon? If you have an ounce of objectivity in your entire body you know it sounds exactly like that.

Costello, however, told CNN that interpretation was “utter nonsense.” 

Well, had a pardon been dangled in front of Cohen, or not?

Costello scoffed: “Does dangled mean that he raised it and I mentioned it to Giuliani, and Giuliani said the President is not going to discuss pardons with anybody? If that’s dangling it, that’s dangling it for about 15 seconds. The first time I kind of danced around the issue because Michael brought it up with me and I told him, ‘Look, this is way too premature.... But if you want me to bring it up, I will bring it up.’ And I did.”

Premature, yes. Definitely: on the table.

Wink!! WINK!!!!

CNN tracked down Mr. Giuliani for this story and inquired: What about the “friends in high places,” comment?

What exactly could these friends in high places do for Mr. Cohen and who might those friends be?

“That was about Michael Cohen thinking that the President was mad at him,” Giuliani told CNN. “I called (Costello) to reassure him that the President was not mad. It wasn’t long after the raid and the President felt bad for him.”

Yes, the president felt bad for him—just like the president feels bad for Paul Manafort, as of now.

Trump feels bad for you as long as you remain on his team. And to remain on his team you have to clam up.

POSTSCRIPT: A fresh sign of trouble for Team Trump may have been missed in all the flash and bang of recent news. Officials from the Department of Justice ask a judge’s permission to delay turning over 302’s to General Michael Flynn’s lawyers, preparatory to his final sentencing.

Flynn, of course, has been cooperating with the Mueller investigation for two years. The 302’s in question (official F.B.I. documents detailing Flynn’s interviews with agents) are still important in open cases. DOJ lawyers explain: “The 302s of General Flynn’s interviews relating entirely to matters other than the pending charges against the defendant [emphasis added] contain information concerning a number of sensitive matters, including ongoing investigations.”

Where rule of law lives any and all revelations will soon be seen.

We now know the General fingered two individuals who, as the DOJ officially noted, were indicted last December 17:

An indictment was unsealed today. Bijan Rafiekian, aka Bijan Kian, 66, of San Juan Capistrano, California, and Kamil Ekim Alptekin, 41, of Istanbul, and a Turkish national, were charged with conspiracy, acting on U.S. soil as illegal agents of the government of Turkey, and making false statements to the F.B.I.

What other treasures Flynn might have revealed to investigators in the last two years remain to be seen. 

And in a nation where the rule of law still lives any and all revelations will soon be seen.

3/14/19: Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigating team have been funded, going forward, till September 2019. 

Clearly, this is not good news for President Twitter Thumbs.

*

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives votes in favor of a measure put forward by Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) of the House Judiciary Committee by a count of 420-0. That measure calls for Special Counsel Mueller to release his report to the public once it is finished.

A quartet of Republicans takes the heroic step of voting “present.” They are Justin Amash of Michigan, Paul Gosar of Arizona (even his siblings don’t like him), Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Matt Gaetz of Florida.

We save Gaetz for last because we know from a previous indictment of a dozen Russians in the Mueller investigation that at least one congressional candidate in 2016 asked Guccifer 2.0, an internet front run by the Russian hackers, for dirt on his or her opponent.

Three names that best fit the parameters revealed in that indictment: Reps. Brian Mast, Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis, all Florida Republicans.

Each Russian flag (or “Ruskie”) in theses posts represents one proven lie—although in this case it’s not clear which candidate was lying.

Someone was.

Gaetz with Li Yang, who may have been involved in human trafficking.

3/15/19: Trump gets his weekend off to a flying start, tweeting angrily about the Mueller investigation. It takes one hour, forty-one minutes and four tweets to get all the bile out of his system.

He still sounds like a moron:

“New evidence that the Obama era team of the FBI, DOJ & CIA were working together to Spy on (and take out) President Trump, all the way back in 2015.” A transcript of Peter Strzok’s testimony is devastating. Hopefully the Mueller Report will be covering this. @OANN @foxandfriends

So, if there was knowingly & acknowledged to be “zero” crime when the Special Counsel was appointed, and if the appointment was made based on the Fake Dossier (paid for by Crooked Hillary) and now disgraced Andrew McCabe (he & all stated no crime), then the Special Counsel.......

....should never have been appointed and there should be no Mueller Report. This was an illegal & conflicted investigation in search of a crime. Russian Collusion was nothing more than an excuse by the Democrats for losing an Election that they thought they were going to win.....

.....THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO A PRESIDENT AGAIN!

The level of thinking on Trump’s Twitter feed is made clear when he closes a busy day as president with a final tweet at 10:56 p.m. This time, he’s retweeting a link to Lou Dobbs, on Fox Business, so that we know he started his morning and ended his evening bingeing on Fox shows.

Dobbs’ guests are those modern day minstrels, Diamond and Silk.

A taste of the ladies for your edification.

3/16/19: Perhaps realizing that he sounded desperate on Friday, Trump wakes early at Mar-a-Lago, and starts tweeting like a man possessed. Before night falls over his private club, he has unleashed a score of Twitter blasts, more than one bordering on the unbalanced and hysterical.

This one was simply bizarre—or perhaps Trump was just banking on his unique ability to pardon himself:

3/17/19: If Saturday was a busy day of tweeting at Mar-a-Lago, Sunday was a marathon for the President of the United States. Rumor has it, by nightfall Trump had to ice his Twitter thumbs.

He started tapping away at 6:59 a.m. with a fresh attack on the First Amendment. In fact, like Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the autocratic ruler of Egypt, Trump was ready to lock up a few comedians:

It’s truly incredible that shows like Saturday Night Live, not funny/no talent, can spend all of their time knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of “the other side.” Like an advertisement without consequences. Same with Late Night Shows......

....Should Federal Election Commission and/or FCC look into this? There must be Collusion with the Democrats and, of course, Russia! Such one sided media coverage, most of it Fake News. Hard to believe I won and am winning. Approval Rating 52%, 93% with Republicans. Sorry! #MAGA

It was both a dangerous and delusional tweet and the latter half of that equation was easily checked. On that particular day, Trump had an average approval rating in all polls of about 42.6%. In fact, at no time since he took office has Trump ever had an average approval rating of even 45%.

  

Still, the president was mad and when the president is mad the tweets explode like lava out of the caldera of his mind. He ranted again about the Steele dossier and ranted about Hillary Clinton, marking the 965^th time he had mentioned Hillary in a tweet:

Report: Christopher Steele backed up his Democrat & Crooked Hillary paid for Fake & Unverified Dossier with information he got from “send in watchers” of low ratings CNN. This is the info that got us the Witch Hunt!

And then he just couldn’t resist an attack on John McCain, now deceased:

So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) “last in his class” (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!

He liked that tweet so much, and had so little to do he resent it again five minutes later, just to be sure.

Then he got one right for a change, mentioning the holiday without insulting immigrants for once:

For once, Trump doesn't insult immigrants (of course they're white).

After that, he was off again on an angry Twitter tangent. Even Fox News had him all riled up. Having tuned in Saturday night to watch Judge Jeanine Pirro, his favorite nutty judge, Trump was outraged to find she was off the air—just because she made a little mistake and warned viewers that a Muslim could never really be a member of Congress or follow the Constitution in any way.

So we needed three tweets:

Bring back @JudgeJeanine Pirro. The Radical Left Democrats, working closely with their beloved partner, the Fake News Media, is using every trick in the book to SILENCE a majority of our Country. They have all out campaigns against @FoxNews hosts who are doing too well. Fox .....

...must stay strong and fight back with vigor. Stop working soooo hard on being politically correct, which will only bring you down, and continue to fight for our Country. The losers all want what you have, don’t give it to them. Be strong & prosper, be weak & die! Stay true....

....to the people that got you there. Keep fighting for Tucker, and fight hard for @JudgeJeanine. Your competitors are jealous - they all want what you’ve got - NUMBER ONE. Don’t hand it to them on a silver platter. They can’t beat you, you can only beat yourselves! 

Trump had fury to burn. So he attacked “Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green” who had criticized his approach to the G.M. closing of a plant in Lordstown, Ohio. “G.M. let our Country down,” Trump added, sounding a little like Benito Mussolini in 1924. Then he bragged that “other much better car companies are coming into the U.S. in droves.”

He got in a few more punches at the free press, going after the few Fox News anchors and hosts who had not shown him proper respect. He wondered aloud if “@FoxNews weekend anchors, @ArthelNeville and @LelandVittert” had been trained by CNN “prior to their ratings collapse?” They should be working, the president added, with “their lowest rated anchor, Shepard Smith!”

By the time Trump’s thumbs began to throb and give out, he had tweeted 32 times, including a heroic outburst of fifteen posts in a half an hour, starting at 4:22 p.m. And those tweets were nuts. He argued with Megan McCain, via retweet, about whether or not he was truly loved. He was still furious about the Mueller probe, retweeting this from a fan at The Daily Caller: “Andrew Weissmann — The Kingpin Of Prosecutorial Misconduct — Leaves Mueller’s Squad.” At 6:16 p.m. we had this: “What the Democrats have done in trying to steal a Presidential Election, first at the ‘ballot box’ and then, after that failed, with the ‘Insurance Policy,’ is the biggest Scandal in the history of our Country!”

Finally, at 9:04 p.m., the president signed off for the day with a random but favorite tweet: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

3/19/19: Today, President Trump received a double dose of bad news. First, he learned that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, his nemesis at the DOJ, would not be stepping down “for a little longer.”

Second, he had fresh insights which indicated where the Mueller investigation might be headed next.

First search warrant aimed at Cohen came in July 2017.

Once again Mueller’s team reveals that they already have far more evidence than pundits on cable news can ever guess. Only now do we learn that the first search warrant, asking for Michael Cohen’s emails (dating to January 1, 2016), was filed on July 18, 2017. Two more warrants followed, one for cloud backup files on his phone, the other for emails dating to June 2015.

We know now that Mr. Cohen is going to jail for what Judge William H. Pauley III has called “a veritable smorgasbord of criminal conduct.” But these filings hint that Trump’s old lawyer wasn’t the only one sitting down at the meal. We now know, for example, that F.B.I. agents received permission to collect “historical location data for two AT&T cellphones, from October 1 to November 8, 2016. This could be highly important, because there have been rumors Cohen traveled to Prague sometime before the election and met with Russian hackers to discuss how to cover up ties to the Trump campaign.

In all, the court filings total 895 pages, often duplicated in multiple applications for search warrants. But when we come to page 38, we find a section 18 ½ pages long, headed “The Illegal Campaign Contribution Scheme.” This entire section is redacted. What crimes and accomplices are listed beneath those pages, we cannot know. But in Trump World there has to be intense fear.

The court records include a number of clues. In early 2018 we learn Cohen and his wife took a three month rental on Room 1728, an expensive suite at the Loews Regency Hotel in New York. Authorities decided to include a search of that suite in a fresh warrant. Agents made it clear they were after two cellphones they had been tracking, using a “triggerfish” device, and believed would be found at the hotel. These phones they believed would contain evidence of “bank fraud,” “wire fraud,” “illegal campaign contributions” and “conspiracy as it pertains to other Subject Offenses.”

Most of the 895 pages relate to crimes committed by Cohen. Still, the depth and detail of information prosecutors have assembled must terrify any Trump aides or family members who may have committed crimes of their own—and that could be just about every other Trump aide and family member, save Barron, that we know. We learn, for example, that “on or about October 26, 2016, Cohen opened a new bank account for Essential Consulting L.L. C., ostensibly to allow him to operate a real estate investment consulting firm. On January 31, 2017, Cohen’s account received the first of seven checks totaling $583.332.98 from a holding company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian national, and based in Switzerland.

That’s right. Another Russian!

The lies here are numerous; but we’ll only award one “Ruskie” for now. The lies have continued to flow like a mighty river; but recent lies have not yet been proven in court.

Even before they raided Cohen home, office and hotel investigators probably had him dead to rights. They knew Cohen used “encrypted communications applications,” including, “but not limited to, WhatsApp, Signal and Dust.” On page 81 of the filings, even the name of the F.B.I. Special Agent involved is redacted. Another section is redacted after an agent claims “there is probable cause to believe that Subject Premises-3 [Cohen’s offices] will contain evidence of the Bank Fraud Offenses.”

In a warrant application filed on February 28, 2018, a judge agreed to a grant of a “non-disclosure order” for a search of an email account owned by Mr. Cohen. The Court ruled that if the search was revealed it might lead to “destruction of or tampering with evidence or flight from prosecution, or otherwise…seriously jeopardize an ongoing investigation.” Therefore, the warrant should not be disclosed for up to 180 days, “subject to extension” if required.

The last warrant was issued on April 7, 2018, for permission to search “A Device containing the Results of Three Email Searches.” But that line was crossed out and replaced by hand with “Three Electronic Devices.” An agent, name and title redacted again, explained that based on “conversations with witnesses” and reviews of other testimonies he or she was asking to expand the search, in particular because “there is probable cause to believe that the Subject Devices contain evidence of violations” of federal statutes related to “illegal campaign contributions.”

Another warrant, this one to obtain information from Cohen’s cellphones, notes:

Cellphone service providers have technical capabilities that allow them to collect at least two kinds of information about the locations of cellphones to which they provide service (a) precision location information, also known as E-911 Phase II Data, or latitude-longitude data, and (b) cell site data, also known as ‘tower/face’ or ‘tower/sector’ information.”

Then, a few pages later, a seventeen page section is redacted once more. In fact, in one section we learn that “Michael Cohen, a lawyer who holds himself out as the personal attorney of President Donald J. Trump” is under investigation for “violation of the campaign finance laws.”

Then we have this:

We can’t read between the lines, because there are no lines to read. We can guess that the name of the President of the United States may be currently hidden from view.

3/20/19: President Twitter Thumbs gets a bracing dose of bad news when it is learned Hope Hicks, who he once affectionately referred to as “Hopee” and “the Hopester,” will turn over requested documents to Congress and cooperate with any investigations.

Her hometown newspaper explains the importance of this development:

WASHINGTON — Greenwich native Hope Hicks has agreed to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee’s wide-ranging probe of alleged misconduct in office by President Donald Trump.

Hicks was as close to Trump as any of his deputies, both prior to the election and afterwards up to her departure from the White House last year. The document request sent to Hicks earlier this month ran four pages long, asking the 30-year-old former model and Greenwich High School lacrosse team co-captain for information on a multitude of controversies involving her former boss.

Most crucial, perhaps, will be what Hicks reveals about a wildly misleading letter drafted in the summer of 2017, with her involvement, and that of President Trump and his son, Don Jr.

That letter was designed to obscure the purpose of the infamous June 2016 meeting between Trump campaign officers and agents of the Russian Federation. In other words: the one meeting that looks and feels, and smells, and if you listen, sounds like the essence of COLLUSION.

And that would potentially mean a false letter drafted to obscure the purpose would be the very stuff of OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE.

(We are capitalizing like President Trump, of course.)

There are reports that Hicks kept a detailed diary of her work in the Trump White House, which could prove valuable for investigators. It is also rumored that Hicks, sometimes described as Trump’s “surrogate daughter,” has been offered as much as $10 million to write a tell-all.)

We know Hicks has already been interviewed by the Special Counsel’s Office. So she needs to be very careful not to commit perjury.

Hope Hicks, Trump "media handler," in 2014.

You can follow the entire investigation, starting from day one in these posts:

“A Year of Robert Mueller”

“Another Year of Robert Mueller (Part II of the Russia Investigation)”

“Another Year of Robert Mueller (Part III of the Russia Investigation)”

And developments starting on March 1 (below)

*****

THE RUSSIAN SCORECARD: At last count the number of felonies racked up by members of the Trump campaign and or administration (and associated scumbags), related to investigations into Russian interference stood at:

34.

Paul Manafort (10), Michael Cohen (9), Rick Gates (8), Michael T. Flynn (1), Maria Butina (1), George Papadopoulos (1), W. Samuel Patten (1), Richard Pinedo (1), Jeffrey Yohai (1) and Alex van der Zwaan (1).

This count does not include 25 indicted Russians, since they will likely remain beyond the reach of U.S. law.

As for a count of proven lies told by Trump and his pals in regard to the Russia probe, as of March 21, 2019, that count stands at:

194.

METHODIGY (not entirely scientific): This total includes one lie per indicted Russian since none of those 25 individuals is every likely to appear on U.S. soil again.

Perhaps a dozen more proven lies, not directly related to the Russian investigation, have been counted. These lies—often egregious—help us ascertain the veracity of key figures, as, for example, when we must judge between the word of President Trump and former F.B.I. Director James Comey.

Then Trump’s proven lies to three wives in succession seem to weigh heavy in the balance.

Two or three of the rare “Grand Ruskies” have been awarded not for specific lies but for sustained disregard for the truth, as, for example, the Grand Ruskie awarded to Press Secretary Pinocchio.

*****

I have been chronicling the Russia investigation from the start. If you are interested, you can read about the first year of the investigation (including brief background from 2011 to 2015) by following the link to “A Year of Robert Mueller.” That post ends with events of May 16, 2018.

“Another Year of Robert Mueller (Part II of the Investigation)” covers developments 

from May 17 to October 22, 2018.

Part III carries us to the end of February 2019.

If you can’t keep all the crooks and associated sleazebags straight, scroll to the very bottom of this massive post for a look at the helpful ROGUE’S GALLERY.

  

The Rogues’ Gallery

Group #1

convicted and/or cooperating with investigators

Maria Butina, unregistered agent of the Russian Federation; worked to gain access to top conservatives, N.R.A. leadership

General Michael T. Flynn, key campaign adviser; first National Security Adviser in Trump administration; lied to Vice President Pence (a.k.a. “Vice President Jesus”)

Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer; pled guilty to eight felonies, including two implicating Trump as a likely co-conspirator

Rick Gates, right-hand man to Paul Manafort; remained part of the Trump team through the Inauguration; pled guilty to eight felonies

Paul Manafort, one-time campaign manager for Trump; up to his eyebrows in shady ties to Russians; found guilty on eight felony counts; pled guilty to two more; now cooperating

George Nader, Lebanese-American businessman (cooperating; not indicted); involved in secret meeting in Seychelles, with a Russian oligarch and close friend of Vladimir Putin

George Papadopoulos, worked for Trump campaign; thought he was meeting with Vladimir Putin’s niece

W. Samuel Patten, Republican lobbyist; pled guilty to one felony; now cooperating

Richard Pinedo, low level figure; sold stolen electronic data to Russians; recently sentenced to six months in jail

Jeffrey Yohai, former son-in-law and business partner of Paul Manafort 

Natalia Veselnitskaya, Russian lawyer; attended infamous Trump Tower meeting 

Alex van der Zwaan, London lawyer; made false statements to the F.B.I. about contacts with Rick Gates; son-in-law of Russian oligarch; served one month in jail.

Group #2

indicted

Paul Erickson, tangentially related to Mueller probe; may have been aiding and abetting Maria Butina; indicted for fraud and money laundering

Konstantin Kilimnik, longtime business associate of Manafort, called his “Russian brain;” has fled to Russia

Roger Stone, Trump campaign operative; alleged to have worked with Russian interests to get Hillary Clinton emails; met with representative of Russian government but forgot all about it

12 Russian military officers involved in the massive campaign to affect the U.S. election in 2016; ran major hacking operation

13 assorted Russians: Mikhail Bystrov, Mikhail Burchik, Aleksandra Krylova, Anna Bogacheva, Sergey Polozov, Maria Bovda, Robert Bovda, Dzheykhun Ogly, Vadim Podkopaev, Gleb Vasilchenko, Irina Kaverzina, Vladimir Venkov and the head of several indicted Russian companies, Yevgeny Prigozhin

Group #3

may be indicted

Arron Banks, British financier, Brexit supporter, may have colluded with Russians; could be indicted in Britain

Stephen Calk, Chicago banker, gave Manafort a $16 million loan; prosecutors named him as an unindicted co-conspirator

Cambridge Analytica, data-mining company located in Great Britain, provided Trump campaign with extensive help; now bankrupt

Also: assorted individuals who worked for Cambridge Analytica in the U.S.

Jerome Corsi: right-wing conspiracy nut and ally of Roger Stone

Jared Kushner; forgot meeting with Russians; forgot pretty much everything that might be questionable involving Russians

Joseph Mifsud, professor who first offered dirt on Hillary Clinton to the Trump campaign; whereabouts unknown

Alexander Nix, CEO of Strategic Communications Laboratories Group, SCL, British parent company of Cambridge Analytic

 Carter Page, Trump campaign operative; met with top Russian officials in Moscow during the 2016 campaign; denied it; now admits it

Felix H. Sater, shady businessman, convicted felon, friend of Trump; pushed hard for deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow

Donald J. Trump Jr., invited to meet with Russians; forgot he had the meeting; lied about the purpose of the meeting; (as best I can judge, likely to be indicted)

Group #4

legal jeopardy and/or possible witnesses

Thomas Barrack, Trump friend and fund-raiser; chairman of Inaugural Committee; employed Rick Gates till Gates was indicted

George Birnbaum, Republican consultant; allegedly floated idea of Trump campaign working with an Israeli firm to influence the 2016 election

Elliott Broidy, GOP fund raiser, may have boinked a Playboy Bunny; paid a $1.6 million hush money settlement

Michael Caputo, former Trump campaign adviser; recently “remembered” setting up a meeting between Roger Stone and a Russian agent

Sam Clovis, co-chair of the 2016 campaign

Kristin Davis (a.k.a. “The Manhattan Madam”); has worked for Roger Stone for nearly a decade

Rick Dearborn, Trump campaign adviser

David Geovanis, showed Trump around Moscow in 1996

Rick Gerson, friend of Jared Kushner; may know about secret meetings where Arab countries offered to help Trump win the election

Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime gatekeeper secretary

Hope Hicks, former White House Communications Director; allegedly involved in drafting a false statement to cover up the meeting of Don Jr. and others with Russians

Dylan Howard, chief content officer of American Media, granted immunity to testify

Andrew Intrater, American businessman; cousin of Russian oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, has been interviewed twice by Mueller investigators

Bennett LeBow, major contributor to Trump campaign; worked on Trump Tower Moscow deal in 1996

Corey Lewandowski, former Trump campaign manager

Howard Lorber, showed Trump around Moscow in 1996, when the idea of a Trump Tower in Russia was first hatched

Ted Malloch, low-level policy wonk

Andrew Miller, aide to Roger Stone; recently held in contempt of court after refusing to appear before the Grand Jury

Andrew Nevins, Republican operative, not named in the most recent Mueller indictment; but described as a “state lobbyist and online source of political news,” who communicated with Guccifer 2.0 (now know to be a Russian hacking group)

Brad Parscale, head of campaign digital operations (see Cambridge Analytica)

Eckart Sager, was asked to perjure himself by Paul Manafort; seems to have received suspicious payments in the past from Azebajani money launderers

Keith Schiller, longtime Trump bodyguard; traveled to Russia during the 2013 Miss Universe pageant; may know about prostitutes, porn stars and other women in Trump’s past

Lee Stranahan, reporter for Breitbart News and Sputnik, a Russian government-controlled media outlet; communicated with Guccifer 2.0

Jason Sullivan, Roger Stone’s media assistant

Unnamed “candidate for U.S. Congress” who asked Guccifer 2.0 for dirt on a Democratic opponent in the 2016 race; reporters for Vanity Fair note that this candidate remains unnamed in the Mueller probe; speculation centers on four Florida Republicans: Carlos Curbelo, Brian Mast, Matt Gaetz and Ron DeSantis.

Group #5

may be cooperating with Mueller

Gary Cohn, former White House economic adviser

Mark Corallo, former Trump legal team spokesman; resigned after false statement to cover up the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting was drafted

Don McGahn, Chief White House Counsel; has spoken to the Mueller team three times, for a total of 30 hours

Omarosa, hell hath no fury, like a reality star scorned; may have dirt on the president; has tape recordings

David Pecker, head of American Media; involved in illegal hush money payments; granted immunity

Rob Porter, former White House staffer

Reince Priebus, former White House Chief of Staff; never a Trump loyalist; may possess damaging info

Josh Raffel, former senior communications official in the White House; rumored to know about drafting of false letter designed to cover up the purpose of the Trump Tower meeting with Russians

Jeff Sessions, frequent target of Trump’s attacks; may be sticking around to redeem his reputation; may know plenty about attempts to obstruct justice

Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization; may have been involved in illegal hush money payments; has limited immunity

Other witnesses, the Mueller team is keeping a tight lid on the workings of the Grand Jury (for comparison: Watergate investigators interviewed more than 1,500 possible witnesses)

(Watergate investigators interviewed 1,500 possible witnesses)

One example of what Trump and his pals have to fear now might be the secretary working for Nixon who was charged with typing up phone intercepts. She quickly realized that she was looking at transcripts of calls into and out of the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building.

She was one of the first to tip off investigators about what she suspected.