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

The Russia 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 the count of proven lies told by Trump and Co. in regard to the Russian investigation, as of February 28, 2019, that count stands at:

158.

That’s proven lies; and I try to be very conservative in my count. President Trump has definitely contributed his share.

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.

This post covers events from the end of October to the end of February, 2019. Part IV begins March 1, 2019.

***

If you can’t keep all the crooks and associated sleazebags in the story straight, scroll to the bottom for a look at the helpful (and extensive) Rogues’ Gallery.

THE TRUMP ARCHIVE

10/31/18: Once the midterms pass, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team may kick their investigation into overdrive.

For some odd reason, this makes Don Jr. nervous. Newsweek notes that the president’s eldest son is telling reporters he’s not worried.

Then again, he is.

“I know that I’m not worried about anything I actually did,” he insists to all who care to listen. “That doesn’t mean they don’t totally fabricate all of this stuff at this point.”

This is similar to what Jr. said a month ago in an interview with Good Morning America. Newsweek sums up:

“I’m not [worried about the investigation], because I know what I did, and I’m not worried about any of that,” the president’s eldest son said. “That doesn’t mean they won’t try to create something. I mean, we’ve seen that happen with everything. But, again, I’m not.”

Trump Jr. in that same interview admitted that Mueller’s probe “has been very difficult” for him but that he has been able to separate it from the rest of his life.

“In the end, I know what I’ve done and I’m not worried about that at all, because you know, I’ve done nothing that anyone else wouldn’t do in that position, in my opinion,” he said.

He also downplayed the indictments and plea deals that Trump campaign associates have been hit with in the investigation.

“I understand that they are trying to get my father, and they’ll do anything they can to get that,” Trump Jr. said.

Yes, investigators will do anything—to stop Russians from interfering in U.S. elections—by indicting 25 Russians. They will do anything to secure 34 felony convictions (current total) from members of the Trump 2016 campaign. And, yes, they may indict your sorry ass, since you met with Russian agents in June 2016 and somehow “forgot” about the meeting, what the meeting was about and who you told about the meeting. 

Then you wrote a letter lying about the topic of discussion. And your father helped you write that letter and then he lied, too.

Good old Dad weighed in on Jr.’s concerns this past August—naturally—in a tweet:

Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!

Yes, totally legal and everyone would do it; and that’s why all the participants from the campaign “forgot” about it for more than a year, until The New York Times started digging up evidence.

And why the president is at pains to say, just to be safe and cover his orange butt, “I did not know about it!”

That was a lie; but it has been counted already.

11/7/18: At a post-midterm election news conference reporters ask the president about a number of issues.

First, Trump claims a great victory because his party only lost about 40 seats in the House of Representatives.

Then reporters ask him if he’s worried about the Mueller investigation.

It’s “a hoax,” he replies.

Is he going to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions?

Trump says we’ll find out later.

Does he have any concerns about Russia?

The only real problem was President Obama.

Trump says he had great time with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki this past summer. The only real problem between the two nations, he grumbles, was President Obama!

Here’s the transcript of his remarks:

THE PRESIDENT: But the fact is that I had a very, very good meeting—a very, very good meeting with President Putin, and a lot was discussed about security, about Syria, about Ukraine, about the fact that President Obama allowed a very large part of Ukraine to be taken. Right now, you have submarines off that particular parcel that we’re talking about. You know what I’m talking about.

Q: That was President Putin who annexed Crimea, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: That was President Obama’s regime. That was during President Obama. Right? That was not during me. No, that was President Obama —

Q: But it was President Putin who did the annexation.

THE PRESIDENT: No, no. It was President Obama that allowed it to happen. It had nothing to do with me.

In other words, one American president blames his predecessor because the Russians invaded the Crimea and because the Russians still remain there with the current president sitting like a fat lump in the White House.

A reasonable individual might think Putin has something on our president. But…no… that couldn’t be! (See: 1/13/19.)

*

MULTIPLE SOURCES tell Vanity Fair the president is “very depressed.” In private, they say, he’s furious about the midterms. He also knows Don Jr. may soon be indicted.

This explains why Don Sr. fires Attorney General Jeff Sessions less than 24 hours after the people cast their ballots.

Vanity Fair captures the mood in the White House:

Trump’s move against Sessions today arrives at a moment when Trump allies are increasingly concerned about Donald Trump Jr.’s legal exposure. In recent days, according to three sources, Don Jr. has been telling friends he is worried about being indicted as early as this week. One person close to Don Jr. speculated that Mueller could indict him for making false statements to Congress and the F.B.I. about whether he had told his father about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians to gather “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. This source had heard that the case could revolve around Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, Rick Gates, who’s cooperating with Mueller and who was deeply involved in the campaign at the time of the meeting. Trump, this person continued, is “very upset” about the risks Don Jr. faces. “The president is very depressed,” this person said.

In any case, the new acting Attorney General, who can legally fill that post for no more than 210 days without Senate approval, is Matt Whitaker. A consensus quickly forms: Matt Who?

Whitaker is an unqualified hack.

11/9/18: President Trump heads for France to mark the 100th anniversary of the ending of World War I.

As Trump walked out of the White House residence to board the Marine One helicopter on Friday morning [on the way to the airport for the flight to France], he paused to answer questions from the press corps and snapped when CNN correspondent Abby Phillip asked whether he wanted Whitaker to rein in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

“What a stupid question that is,” Trump said. “What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions.”

For once, if we ignore the president’s rudeness, he’s right. Of course he wants to rein in Robert Mueller.

The free press, doing what the free press does best.

The free press, doing what the free press does best, has had 48 hours to dig up dirt on Matt Whitaker, Trump’s pick for Acting Attorney General. And there’s dirt to be dug. Reporters point out that by the summer of 2017 Whitaker already knew everything he wanted to know about the Russia investigation. That is, he didn’t want to know anything at all. The investigation, he said, was “crazy.” There was no collusion. It might be possible for a new Attorney General (if Trump dumped Jeff Sessions) to starve the Mueller team by cutting funding.

Whitaker had his mind made up fourteen months ago. That was before Manafort was convicted by a jury—before Cohen decided to cop a plea and start cooperating—before Gates did the same—all three of them, now-convicted felons, leading figures in the Trump campaign.

The free press keeps shoveling.  President Trump is caught in a flat-footed lie, saying he didn’t know Whitaker when he tapped him for the job. Who called our president a liar this time? It was the ghost of Donald Trump Past. In an October interview on Fox & Friends, Mr. Trump assured the three hosts: “I can tell you Matt Whitaker’s a great guy. I mean, I know Matt Whitaker.”

(Oddly enough, Fox News did not point out this incongruity. Other media outlets had to do the deed.)

Newsweek then reported that Trump was claiming he didn’t know Whitaker despite having met with him “more than a dozen times” according to one senior official within the Trump administration.

Vox learned that Whitaker had advised Trump last year on how to push the Department of Justice to investigate Hillary Clinton.

LIE #146: Trump knows Whitaker well.

Fresh reports surfaced that Mr. Whitaker once called the federal judiciary “the inferior branch” of government. Whitaker had made it clear he considered the decision in Marbury v. Madison in error. Yeah, who ever thought the courts should be allowed to rule a law unconstitutional!

What kind of dumb “checks and balances” idea is that?

Even better, in the “drain the swamp” world of Donald J. Trump and all his alligator pals, Whitaker once served on the board of, and touted the entrepreneurial virtues of, World Patent Marketing, a Miami company that was shut down and fined $26 million for scamming customers.

11/12/18: Any news in regard to the Mueller investigation? There is. Noted conspiracy-theorist Jerome Corsi, an ally of Roger Stone, admits he expects to be indicted.

Corsi, one of the first promoters of birtherism, was served a subpoena at his home on August 28.

Since then, he has had several conversations with investigators. According to Corsi, he got confused and stepped into a “perjury trap” and Robert Mueller and all the prosecutors were mean!

Probable lies told by Corsi; not yet proven.

11/15/18: Clearly, the president is losing whatever marbles he has left. He appears to realize something bad is coming.

Does he know, perhaps because his Acting Hack, Matt Whitaker now in charge at the Department of Justice, has been fully briefed on the Russia inquiry, that a new batch of indictments is coming?

Three days formulating answers for Special Counsel Mueller.

Recently, Trump and his lawyers spent three days trying to formulate written answers to questions posed by Special Counsel Mueller. Experts wonder if Twitter Thumbs might now understand how hard it’s going to be to craft a story that keeps him out of trouble without pitching him headlong into the realm of perjury and obstruction of justice.

When Trump is in a foul mood we know what’s coming. A Twitter typhoon blows in at 7:14 a.m.:

The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess. They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want. They are a disgrace to our Nation [emphasis added]and don’t... 

There’s a pause for eighteen minutes. Then:

....care how many lives the ruin. These are Angry People, including the highly conflicted Bob Mueller, who worked for Obama for 8 years. They won’t even look at all of the bad acts and crimes on the other side. A TOTAL WITCH HUNT LIKE NO OTHER IN AMERICAN HISTORY! 

Trump is still incensed at 9:49 a. m.:

Universities will someday study what highly conflicted (and NOT Senate approved) Bob Mueller and his gang of Democrat thugs [emphasis added] have done to destroy people. Why is he protecting Crooked Hillary, Comey, McCabe, Lisa Page & her lover, Peter S, and all of his friends on the other side?

*

WHAT EXACTLY is bothering the president? Is it that Democrats have gained a total of 35 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and may end up gaining 40? Does he realize that starting in January they’re going to subpoena the shit out of his family and members of his administration?

A window on the id of Trump.

Trump’s Twitter feed is, says pundit and writer Eugene Robinson, “A window on the id” of this president.

A quick refresher may be in order. As the website Simply Psychiatry reminds us the human psyche has three parts:

…the id is the primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives and hidden memories, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.

Trump seems wracked by fear and anger. He feels cornered and he’s lashing out. His super ego has always been stunted.

His id is in total control.

Politico reports:

Lawyers for President Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. insist they aren’t worried about special counsel Robert Mueller.

But half a dozen people in contact with the White House and other Trump officials say a deep anxiety has started to set in that Mueller is about to pounce after his self-imposed quiet period [in weeks leading up to the midterms], and that any number of Trump’s allies and family members may soon be staring down the barrel of an indictment.

  

*

IF YOU DON’T THINK we might be facing a constitutional crisis in the weeks ahead, you need to pay much closer attention.

“A threat to constitutional democracy.”

Even members of the Federalist Society, which helped Trump stack the federal bench with a fresh crop of conservative jurists, are growing restless. A dozen members have formed a group called “Checks and Balances.” They believe Trump is undermining the rule of law. The group includes George T. Conway III, husband of White House aide and fulltime Trump apologist Kellyanne Conway, and John B. Bellinger III, former White House lawyer under George W. Bush.

“Conservative lawyers are not doing enough to protect constitutional principles that are being undermined by the statements and actions of this president,” Bellinger explains.

Peter D. Keisler, former Acting Attorney General adds this:

“It’s important that people from across the political spectrum speak out about the country’s commitment to the rule of law and the core values underlying it—that the criminal justice system should be nonpartisan and independent, that a free press and public criticism should be encouraged and not attacked. These are values that might once have been thought so basic and universally accepted that they didn’t need defending, but that’s no longer clearly the case.

A similar article in the Washington Post adds fair warning:

Having three functioning branches of government is the healthiest way for a democracy to work, said Marisa Maleck, a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas [and member of the Federalist Society]. Since Trump took office, he has repeatedly attempted to consolidate the power of those branches himself, she said.

“The worst part about it is that he normalizes it. Most people don’t realize what he’s doing poses a threat to a constitutional democracy,” she said.

“We believe in the rule of law, the power of truth, the independence of the criminal justice system, the imperative of individual rights and the necessity of civil discourse,” the group says in a statement. “We believe these principles apply regardless of the party or persons in power.”

11/16/18: There’s more bad news for Trump. A court filing reveals (by mistake) that Julian Assange may soon be indicted. If Assange is indicted and the indictment has to do with the Russia investigation it can’t be good for Trump and his misfit band. Roger Stone has to be choking on his Egg McMuffin. Don Jr. might want to start checking Booking.com for one-way flights to Moscow.

The president puts on a good face and assures reporters he’s been finishing up his written answers to questions from the Mueller team. He’s not even a teensy little bit worried about being indicted.

“I’ve answered them very easily. I’m working on them,” he says. “My lawyers aren’t working on that, I’m working on that.”

“My lawyers don’t write answers, I write answers. I was asked a series of questions. I answered them very easily…very easily. I’m sure they’re tricked up because they like to catch people with the, gee, ‘was the weather sunny or was it rainy.’ Oh, he said it may have been a good day. It was rainy, therefore he told a lie. He perjured himself.”

So Trump is being very careful about any questions related to raindrops.

“You always have to be careful answering questions from people who probably have bad intentions,” Trump continues. “I haven’t submitted them yet. I just finished them.” Anyway, 

he’s getting ready to submit his take home test.

The process has been such a snap he and his lawyers have only been puzzling over the matter since April. (See: 11/18/18.)

11/25/18: Trump can sit back and relax after the holidays, knowing he and his lawyers have turned in his answers to questions posed by Special Counsel Mueller and his team.

Also, he can relax a little because he now has Matt Whitaker, a lackey, in charge at the Department of Justice.

“We’ve wasted enough time on this witch hunt.”

In an interview with Chris Wallace, Trump has also made it plain. He’s not about to sit down for an interview with investigators, barring a subpoena. Wallace wonders why? Why not sit down, tell the truth, and get the investigation over with? Trump, a man who has spent more than 160 days as president hunkered down at various golf resorts he owns, replies, “We’ve wasted enough time on this witch hunt and the answer is, probably, we’re finished.”

Trump also made it clear during that interview that even when his answers were complete and he turned them in he wasn’t going to answer questions related to obstruction of justice.

Why not?

“There was no obstruction of justice,” he said.

Just how ludicrous did he sound? Trump further claimed he had no idea that Matt Whitaker, his surprise choice to take over as Acting Attorney General, had ever expressed opinions on the Mueller investigation.

It just so happens, that Whittaker—entirely unknown to the president, or so Twitter Thumbs claimed—had already said the investigation was a hoax and a witch hunt and Robert Mueller was probably a transvestite.

The New York Times picks up the story:

When Mr. Wallace pointed out to Mr. Trump that Mr. Whitaker had predetermined that there was no collusion in his public commentary over the last two years, Mr. Trump said: “He’s right. What do you do when a person’s right? There is no collusion. He happened to be right. I mean, he said it. So if he said there is collusion, I’m supposed to be taking somebody that says there is?”

Not necessarily. But you should select someone who actually believes in the rule of law.

11/27-28/18: For the President of the United States these are terrible days, even if witness tampering is kind of fun.

Late Monday, news breaks that Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team will terminate a plea agreement with Paul Manafort. Manafort, prosecutors claim, has continued to lie even after a deal was reached.

For some odd reason this development in the investigation infuriates the President of the United States. (Trump may be the first and only president ever to call an eight-time convicted felon—Manafort—“brave” for refusing to cooperate with an ongoing investigation.) Tuesday morning he’s still steaming when he wakes and the tweets start flying.

Mueller is the exact opposite of a saint.

His id is loose and at 7:30 a.m. he’s worked himself up into a rage:

The Phony Witch Hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of Angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other. Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie. Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue....

And this:

....The Fake News Media builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other. Heroes will come of this, and it won’t be Mueller and his...

And this:

....terrible Gang of Angry Democrats. Look at their past, and look where they come from. The now $30,000,000 Witch Hunt continues and they’ve got nothing but ruined lives. Where is the Server? Let these terrible people go back to the Clinton Foundation and “Justice” Department!

The obvious question, if Trump is innocent, is why this unusual legal move incenses the president? Does he really care about poor Paul Manafort—who has already plead guilty to eight felony counts? Or is the President of the United States only worried about his own orange hide?

The president’s foul funk does not improve when The New York Times adds fresh detail to the story. It turns out that a lawyer for Manafort has been visiting the White House regularly to keep Trump’s legal team abreast on what investigators have been asking and what they already seem to know. Is it legal for lawyers of a convicted criminal and lawyers of a potential criminal suspect to confer? It is. Is it unusual? It is. Is it especially unusual and possibly illegal when one potential criminal suspect (Trump) has the power to pardon the criminal (Manafort)?

It indubitably is.

So, working quietly behind the scenes, Mueller and his team withdraw the plea agreement. And poor Mr. Manafort is headed back to solitary confinement in an Alexandria, Virginia jail.

Authorities say he’s in solitary confinement for his safety-but right-wing pundits and nuts are horrified by such treatment. Black guy gunned down under questionable circumstances by police? Probably deserved it. Children separated from parents along the border and locked in cages?

Hey, they’re only Hondurans!

Rich white guy parked in solitary—what a damnable un-American outrage!

(Anyway, you can read about the “terrible” conditions Manafort is facing in an excellent article by Vox. Perks for Paul include a separate bathroom, a laptop and phone use 12 hours every day.)

Trump is an existential threat to the rule of law.

Pundits left and right spend the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday arguing about what this all means. On Fox News the consensus forms that Mueller is somehow a dangerous man. In reality, of course, Trump is an existential threat to the rule of law. His behavior clearly shows us that the president is badly rattled at this point. There has been a cascade of warning signs for him. He knows there are reports that Manafort secretly met with Julian Assange shortly before he joined the Trump 2016 campaign. Assange and WikiLeaks played a critical role in delivering stolen Clinton emails to the press, emails that were stolen by Russians in an effort to help Trump. The president knows that Mueller has evidence that Roger Stone, a campaign adviser at the time, was pushing Assange to release those emails at just the right time.

The question then—and it has to keep President Trump up late at night—is can Mueller put these separate arcs, and many more, together and form a complete circle, showing Trump and his pals colluded with Russians?

Legally, the operative term is “conspired,” not “colluded,” and no matter how many times Trump tweets, “No Collusion”  (81 tweets, so far) conspiracy is still going to be a crime.

I’m an evidence-based kind of guy. So I’m not ready to start shouting, a lá your typical Trump rally crowd: “Lock him up!” But if I was a betting man (and I am), I’d wager a jar of Costco Macadamia Clusters, milk chocolate, salted caramel, that Trump finally grasps deep in his soul that he’s in serious legal jeopardy. Is there enough evidence to start impeachment processes today? Not that I can tell. It is even remotely possible that Mueller’s final report will clear Trump’s good name, if not exactly highlighting his good judgment or sterling morals. But it should be obvious to all that Mueller may already have some of the goods on Donald J. Trump.

Have we mentioned witness tampering yet?

Mueller waited until after Trump submitted his written answers.

The most likely explanation for the president’s fury is that he knows Mueller knows plenty and Mueller is building a stronger and stronger case against him—and keeping most of what he knows secret. Mueller knew, for example, two weeks ago that he was going to tear up the plea agreement with Manafort. He held fire and waited to make that known until after the president had submitted his written answers to a series of questions his team had presented to the White House back in April. In other words, Mueller may have waited to spring a “perjury trap.” That is: He waited for Trump to commit perjury, not because he set a trap, but because the president might be willing to commit perjury in an effort to save his ass.

That Manafort is a sleazy crook is undeniable at this point. He’s a tax cheat, a liar, a money-launderer, and (until recently) an expensively-dressed buffoon. He spent his career serving the interests of and an array of Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin, too, and he’s a convicted felon.

Yet, for some bizarre reason, he continues to garner the sympathy of the President of the United States. There have already been multiple reports that Trump surrogates floated possible pardons to lawyers for General Michael T. Flynn (another convicted felon) and Manafort last March.

In recent days, however, if we care to open our eyes and turn off Fox News, we can see witness tampering in plain view. On Wednesday, Trump says in an interview with the New York Post that he hasn’t ruled out a pardon for Manafort. “It was never discussed,” he is quick to point out (that would be patently illegal), “but I wouldn’t take it off the table. Why would I take it off the table?” 

Um…because you sound like you’re engaged in a criminal conspiracy? Other than that: no particular reason.

Trump complains that the Mueller investigation has gone on for far too long, and may continue for the “rest of his life.” And it’s just terrible what prosecutors are doing to all the great criminal suspects.

The Post has this exchange:

“You know this flipping stuff [cooperating with prosecutors] is terrible. You flip and you lie and you get—the prosecutors will tell you 99 percent of the time they can get people to flip. It’s rare that they can’t,” Trump said.

“But I had three people: Manafort, Corsi — I don’t know Corsi, but he refuses to say what they demanded. Manafort, Corsi and Roger Stone.”

“It’s actually very brave,” he said of the trio. “And I’m telling you, this is McCarthyism. We are in the McCarthy era. This is no better than McCarthy. And that was a bad situation for the country. But this is where we are. And it’s a terrible thing,” 

If you think you might be seeing obstruction of justice play out in plain view, you wouldn’t be wrong. Manafort is a potential cooperating witness—or at least was—in an investigation into Russian collusion involving Trump  and his 2016 campaign. Trump is saying, publicly, that he might pardon Manafort, assuming that he does right by his old boss. This is witness tampering, of the most brazen kind, and if the president can pull it off, it’s goodbye rule of law.

*

WHAT WE KNOW today for sure is that the plea deal Mueller offered is off and poor Paul is likely headed back to solitary and then back to court.

Clam up and gain a pardon?

Boiling it all down, what can we deduce in the end? For Manafort there seemed to be no way to win if he failed to cooperate with investigators. He was convicted by a jury on eight felony counts at his last trial and only a lone jury holdout saved him from an additional ten counts. He already faces decades behind bars, and at 68, he can hardly relish that fate. So we have to ask. Was he angling for a pardon when he sent his lawyers to the White House for friendly chats with Trump’s legal team? What has the president’s legal team promised behind closed doors if this “brave” felon stays the course? Have they made it clear that if he clams up he’s guaranteed a pardon in 2020, if Trump isn’t reelected, or somewhere father down the line, perhaps in 2021, if he is?

The next question is: What does Manafort know about Trump and any illegal activities he might have been engaged in during the campaign—and what does Trump know Manafort knows about him?

The gravest implications are in view. Trump and his lawyers may be trying to keep Manafort from helping Mueller close the fated conspiracy circle. We already have numerous arcs proven beyond all doubt. We know Manafort participated in the infamous Trump Tower meeting in the summer of 2016. The free press has clearly shown us that the three participants from the Trump campaign (Don Jr. and Jared Kushner being the other two) knew full well the Russians coming to that meeting were offering dirt on Hillary Clinton to help swing the election. Don Jr. may have already perjured himself in that regard. But did Candidate Trump know about the meeting—before it occurred—or after it was held—and did he lie about knowing?

In plain English (Russian) did Trump conspire (сговариваться) to win the election with Vladimir Putin’s help?

And has he, as president, tried to obstruct justice (препятствовать правосудию) in any way?

Manafort could be in a position to help answer both those questions. So witness tampering (подделка свидетелей) could very well appear to the criminally-inclined president to be worth the risk.

Certainly, on Tuesday and again today, it was clear the president was unnerved. His furious attacks on the integrity of Mueller continued into Tuesday evening. With darkness falling over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Trump plumped up the cushions on his favorite White House sofa and plunked down to see how the special runoff election in Mississippi would turn out.

He was still fuming about the Mueller probe and it showed. Almost exactly twelve hours after his morning tweet-storm broke he posted again:

The Mueller Witch Hunt is a total disgrace. They are looking at supposedly stolen Crooked Hillary Clinton Emails (even though they don’t want to look at the DNC Server), but have no interest in the Emails that Hillary DELETED & acid washed AFTER getting a Congressional Subpoena! 

If Trump felt any better on Wednesday it didn’t show. His first tweet of the day came at 8:39 a.m. and continued the same furious theme:

While the disgusting Fake News is doing everything within their power not to report it that way, at least 3 major players are intimating that the Angry Mueller Gang of Dems is viciously telling witnesses to lie about facts & they will get relief. This is our Joseph McCarthy Era!

Even more frustrating for the president, his best-laid plans to protect himself kept running afoul of the law (so far). A number of Republicans in Congress seem increasingly concerned with his threats to fire Special Counsel Mueller. Sen. Ben Sasse, for one, says the president should quickly nominate a new Attorney General and bring that nomination forward so the Senate can perform its constitutional duty to “advise and consent,” to accept or reject his choice. At this point, let’s be honest, if Trump could get away with it, he’d just put his son Eric in charge and shut the whole Russia investigation down. Meanwhile, there are increasing calls for Matt Whitaker, the lackey Trump hand-picked to head the Department of Justice on an acting basis, to recuse himself from the Russia probe; and pressure is building to make sure he does. 

Day in, day out, Mueller keeps chip, chip, chipping away and the incessant chipping sound is unnerving the suspect in the Oval Office. Last week George Papadopoulos lost a court skirmish and was sent packing to prison for two weeks, meaning a presidential pardon will no longer do him any good. Manafort might receive a federal pardon in the end but he’s nearly broke, having agreed to forfeit millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains under his plea deal; and likely for two years, unless Trump is totally nuts (and sometimes it seems he is), he’s going to sit in jail and rot before the president risks a pardon. Roger Stone’s legal woes continue to mount and his protestations of innocence are not bolstered by his admission in June that he did meet with at least one Russian individual offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. But that individual wanted $2 million in return. And then, well, Roger just forgot he ever had that meeting—till he got wind Mueller’s investigators were wise. We also learn that Jerome Corsi is prepared to say in a new book that Stone asked him to press Assange to get the damaging emails on Clinton out at just the right time and that he and Stone concocted a “cover story” to obscure their tracks. Stone, in turn, calls Corsi’s soon-to-be-released story “pure, unadulterated, unmitigated BS.” 

Former Trump campaign manager Cory Lewandowski doesn’t exactly bolster the positions of either Stone of the President of the United States. On Wednesday he sits down for a talk on CNN. “I don’t know Mueller,” he tells John Berman, the host, “but he seems to be a man of character. And I hope he has a truthful and honest investigation.” “When that investigation comes out,” he adds, “I hope it’s made public.” (We should note, Lewandowski also says he hopes Mueller will be investigating the “other side”—Clinton, he means—but that’s an entirely different story to cover.)

As for the veracity of what Stone says now, Lewandowski is blunt.

“He said he met with Julian Assange. This is what he wrote in emails. This is his own words only when pressed on them, did he say, ‘Well, what I said and what I did were actually two separate things, so I don’t know.’ But if you take Roger at his own words, which is difficult to do, because most of the time he is lying when he’s talking, I don’t know what the truth is.”

The circle comes closer to completion.

So it is: that with each passing week, bits and pieces of arc are fitted in their rightful place. The circle comes closer to completion. Trump knows it too. Rick Gates, Michael Cohen and General Flynn have flipped and the president can’t be sure what they’ve told investigators so far.

In the meantime, it’s clear. Trump isn’t acting like an innocent man. He’s acting like a crook who fears that his goose may soon be cooking on a legal spit.

I’m not alone in that assessment. Professor Allan Dershowitz, normally an apologist for the president, says he expects Mueller to release a report that will be “devastating” for Trump. On Sunday morning, he appeared on ABC’s “This Week.” Mueller’s team, he told George Stephanopoulos, the host, will soon release its final report. “I think the report is going to be devastating to the president and I know that the president’s team is already working on a response.

“When I say devastating, I mean it’s going to paint a picture that’s going to be politically very devastating,” Dershowitz adds. “I still don’t think it’s going to make a criminal case.”

That is: a criminal case against Trump. Several other members of his administration will probably not be so lucky.

On MSNBC, one recent afternoon, a liberal commentator offered up an interesting theory. Trump, he explained, may have actually insulated himself from indictment because he has surrounded himself with so many liars and shady characters—people like Manafort, Cohen, Corsi, Gates and Stone, who have shown an impressive aptitude for lying in all places and at all times. The whole sorry crew would be less than credible witnesses in court, liars facing off with the Big Orange Liar himself. So the President of the United States still might manage to skate.

As for Don Jr., he probably knows he has already perjured himself—and his only real hope is that Mueller’s team won’t be able to prove it.

As for good old Dad, Don Sr. has to wonder if he’s about to or already has stepped in a perjury trap.

In any case, a little witness tampering might help!

11/29-30/18: President Trump departs for the G-20 Summit in Argentina on Thursday. You wonder if he’ll ever come back.

And what do we learn: Mueller has documents!!!

Meshing with the tall tale told by Trump.

Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, who worked for Trump for twelve years, opens up a Pandora’s Box brimming with legal and ethical questions when he admits lying in court about the Trump Tower deal in Moscow. (Did we mention that Mueller has documents!) Cohen lied, he now admits, to insure his story meshed with the tall tale Candidate Trump was then telling.

And it won’t be just a case of, “Cohen said, the president said.” Mueller has documents to back up what Trump’s fixer said.

First the lies: Cohen previously testified before Congress that efforts to win a contract for a Trump Tower in Moscow ended in January 2016. Thursday he admitted and documents prove contacts with Russian officials continued into June.

This is Lie #147 related to the Russia investigation.

A $50,000,000 apartment for Vladimir Putin.

Technically, Cohen admits to lying on multiple occasions; but we’ll lump the assorted lies together and call them one, since the purpose is the same. He was covering up for the fact Team Trump was working on a lucrative deal with Russians while Candidate Trump was standing for president.

How lucrative? Some experts say it could have been Trump’s biggest deal ever. We do know this. The deal was big enough to convince Cohen and other Trump associates to offer to sweeten it on the Moscow end by giving Vladimir Putin a penthouse worth $50 million.

“NO COLLUSION,” Trump loves to tweet. Well, then, how about a $50 million bribe, offered to the leader of a hostile foreign power?

At the same time we know Candidate Trump was telling anyone who would listen, that he did not have financial ties with Russia. “How many times do I have to say that?” he asked at a news conference in July 2016. “I have nothing to do with Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia.”

Mueller can now show—including with documents—that Trump and his team were working on a deal as late as June 14.

(Flag Day, ironically.)

With Trump, of course, the lying continued. In a presidential debate on October 16 he responded to Hillary Clinton’s claim that Russia was interfering in the election, in hopes he’d win:

I notice, anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say the Russians are—she doesn’t know if it’s the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia. And the reason they blame Russia because they think they’re trying to tarnish me with Russia. I know nothing about Russia. I know—I know about Russia, but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia. I don’t deal there [emphasis added]. I have no businesses there. I have no loans from Russia.

That statement, read today, obviously includes a series of brazen lies: By then his advisers already knew the Russians were doing at least some of the hacking; his campaign had already been offered dirt on Clinton by Russians; and he had been dealing in Russia, just not with success.

Lies #148-150.

 

As president-elect, Trump continued lying. At a press conference on January 11, 2017 he told reporters, “So I have no deals, I have no loans and I have no dealings. We could make deals in Russia very easily if we wanted to, I just don’t want to because I think that would be a conflict. So I have no loans, no dealings, and no current pending deals.

“Because I think that would be a conflict.” Donald J. Trump

That statement contains an additional falsehood and a fundamental truth. First, he’s lying when he says he doesn’t want to make a deal.

This is the fundamental truth: Trump is well aware that his efforts to land a deal in Moscow would be a conflict.

Lie #151: Trump knows dealing with the Russians is a conflict; so he lies about it.

*

The Trump campaign/Russian support begins to come together.

TODAY, WE KNOW that a confluence of events occurred in June 2016. The “Fake News” people and investigators have slowly laid this all out. George Papadopoulos, a campaign aide met in April with a man he believed could provide dirt on Clinton. Papadopoulos later lied about it. Roger Stone met with a Russian man in May and was offered dirt on Clinton. But the man wanted $2 million. Stone didn’t reject the idea of accepting the dirt; he told the Russian the price was too steep. So the Russians knew Trump and his team were open to working with a hostile foreign power. Finally, in June, the two sides came to an understanding of some sort. Mueller is still working to find out what that understanding was. But he’s gathering documents. In June, the Trump campaign/Russian support begins to come together:

June 3: Rob Goldstone, the agent for the singer Emin Agalarov, who Don Sr. and Don Jr. know from working with Emin and his father on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, sends Don Jr. an email.

Goldstone says an official high in the ranks of the Putin government is “offering material that will incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”

Don Jr. doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t notify the F.B.I. He responds within hours: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

June 6: Trump knocks out his last remaining opponent in the Republican primaries: “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz.

Cohen claims that top campaign officials and Don Jr. held a strategy meeting that day to discuss plans to meet with the Russians and see what dirt they could provide; and Don Sr. was aware of and green-lighted the meeting.

June 7: Candidate Trump announces to the nation:

“I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week [June 13] and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.

“I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting. I wonder if the press will want to attend. Who knows? Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into her private hedge fund. The Russians, the Saudis, the Chinese all gave money to Bill and Hillary and got favorable treatment in return. It’s a sad day in America when foreign governments with deep pockets have more influence [emphasis added] in our own country than our great citizens.”

(See: Trump Tower deal in Moscow! See: free $50 million apartment.)

June 9: Don Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort meet secretly at Trump Tower in New York City with Russians they believe are bearing gifts—frankincense, myrrh and dirt on Hillary.

June 10: Leaders of the campaign suffer from mass amnesia. No one in the meeting on June 9 remembers ever having had the meeting, discussing it beforehand, talking about it after, having dreams and/or nightmares about it, or recalls what was discussed by participants, or who all the participants were. Don Jr. can’t even remember who he called and spoke with at a blocked number for four minutes before the meeting, who he spoke with briefly at a blocked number during the meeting, or who he spoke to at a blocked number for eleven minutes that evening.

Don Sr. has a blocked number.

June 13: Monday comes and goes. The major speech promised by Candidate Trump on Hillary Clinton fails to materialize.

June 14: It’s Flag Day. But members of the Trump campaign seem confused about which flag they’re honoring.

The Washington Post breaks the first story about Russian involvement in the hacking and release of damaging emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee. These emails do immediate damage to the Democratic Party, driving a wedge between Clinton and Bernie Sanders and his supporters.

According to the Mueller indictment revealed this week it is then, on June 14, that Trump and his people finally pull the plug on the Moscow deal. Suddenly, they realize Trump could be elected.

The Russians know a victory is a longshot but they’re more than happy to help, because Putin hates Hillary. And they know Trump and his lackeys are willing to accept any aid they can provide.

For the next thirteen months (until July 2017) no one in the Trump campaign utters a word about the meeting in Trump Tower (New York City, not Moscow) until the free press starts jogging their memories in a series of articles by the New York Times and Washington Post.

In response to a barrage of damaging stories President Trump helps write a misleading letter about the purpose of the meeting, which everyone forgot, but which has now been revealed by the free press.

Then he forgets until June 2018 that he wrote that letter.)

*

SINCE OUR FOCUS is sleazy, money-grubbing leaders, we might point out that it is never a good idea to associate with convicted felons, which is definitely an ongoing problem for Donald J. Trump.

On the U.S. end of the line during the negotiations for a Trump Tower deal in Moscow in 2015-2016, you had Cohen (now a convicted felon) and Felix Sater working the phones. Sater had already been convicted of multiple felonies, including participation in a $40 million securities fraud case. He stayed out of jail in that matter by becoming an F.B.I. informant.

On the Russian end of the line you had General Evgeny Smykov, not known to have been convicted of any felonies, but definitely known to have worked for Russian intelligence. So you can see why this story raised investigators’ eyebrows back in 2016 and still raises them today. You can also see why Candidate Trump/President Trump would want to cover up any connections for the last two years. (Well, there’s good news, at least: No porn stars are involved in this episode.) Indeed, as late as January 2017, President-Elect Trump was insisting during a press conference, “I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away.”

That’s like telling your wife. “I’m not having an affair, I’m keeping away from my hot young secretary!” without mentioning you just ended your affair two days before. And, frankly, if you were being honest, you’d say you already regret breaking it off and you’re not sure you won’t sleep with her again.

*

AS TRUMP FLIES OFF to Argentina he has to understand something ominous is brewing. Mueller has documents—he’s surely gathering more—and the president knows it. On Thursday, F.B.I. agents raid the Chicago offices of Ed Burke, a man the Chicago Sun-Times describes as having “dodged dozens of federal investigations over five decades in Chicago politics.”  Agents “kicked everyone out and papered over the windows.” Later they debarked with boxes of documents and computers in hand.

Burke has previously done property-tax-appeal work for Donald J. Trump.

Could this raid be related to the president’s burgeoning legal problems? We don’t know. But we know Cohen did the dirty work for Trump for years and he knows where the rotting corpses are interred. We know he’s cooperating with Mueller, having talked for 70 hours with investigators.

And we’re still not done listing suspicious characters and corporations. In Germany a wave of police, prosecutors and tax authorities descends on the Frankfurt headquarters of Deutsche Bank. Electronic records and documents are seized at five locations as part of an investigation “into whether the lender helped criminals launder money through offshore tax havens.”

Greed drives everyone in this story.

Again, we can’t know if this has anything to do with President Trump; but if you don’t think the people he hangs with and does business with aren’t willing to commit every imaginable crime you can think of to reap their fortunes, you’re watching more Fox News than is good for you and you should seek therapy. Deutsche Bank was fined $425 million last year “for helping clients of its Moscow office illegally move $10 billion out of Russia.” The bank has also been fined for failing to monitor financial transactions that involved cash going to terrorists.

Does Trump do business with Deutsche—known for working with money-launderers? Of course he does. This past May it was reported that Mueller had subpoenaed bank records related to our fearless, fat, fool leader’s finances. Market Watch reported that the president had liabilities (basically: outstanding loans) totaling between $356 million and $480 million, including $175 million owed to Deutsche.

Here’s what we do know. None of these developments prove that the President of the United States is a gigundous crook. But we know greed drives him and everyone in this story.

If all else had failed, and Clinton had defeated him, Trump could still hope to land a huge financial windfall in Moscow by building his hotel.

Or: with Russian help, he could win the presidency.

What could the Russians gain in return?

What could the Russians gain in return? If the deal went through Putin would get a free $50 million penthouse. If Trump won, he might end sanctions imposed on Russia after Putin invaded Crimea. That would allow Russian oligarchs to get their mitts on billions of laundered dollars stashed in Western banks and invested in real estate in places like Florida and New York City, those assets currently under sanction. As a bonus, Trump would be their tool in the White House, possibly subject to blackmail.

If he lost, he would help blacken the reputation of a President Hillary Clinton, whom Putin already hated.

*

WE DEFINITELY KNOW that Special Counsel Mueller takes Cohen’s plea deal seriously. Mueller signed it himself, a first during the investigation.

We know several committees in Congress will be cranking up their investigations starting in January, this time with Democrats in control of the House of Representatives, and wielding subpoena power. We know Don Jr. and Felix Sater and other witnesses, who got the gentlest possible treatment when the GOP ran the committees, will be called back and their past testimony will be reexamined. And we know Mueller has all kinds of documents. I’m willing to bet we’re going to find out that several members of this administration have already perjured themselves.

We also know that the Senate Judiciary Committee is going to revisit testimony given previously—that panel led by a Republican, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina. Burr has already shown the kind of spine standing up to Trump you’d never see from Milksop Mitch McConnell. “This is why you shouldn’t lie to Congress,” Burr replied in answer to a reporter’s question about what steps his committee might take once Congress is back in session.

Finally, we know Trump is badly rattled. If Twitter is, as one pundit said, really the president’s id on display, we know Trump is furious. His Twitter howls have reached new decibel levels.

Thursday morning, early, we heard him shriek:

Did you ever see an investigation more in search of a crime? At the same time Mueller and the Angry Democrats aren’t even looking at the atrocious, and perhaps subversive, crimes that were committed by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. A total disgrace!

Seven minutes later Trump let out a primal scream:

When will this illegal Joseph McCarthy style Witch Hunt, one that has shattered so many innocent lives, ever end-or will it just go on forever? After wasting more than $40,000,000 (is that possible?), it has proven only one thing-there was NO Collusion with Russia. So Ridiculous!

Then, after flying to Buenos Aires for the G-20 Summit, and just before bedding down for the night, the president exploded:

“This demonstrates the Robert Mueller and his partisans have no evidence, not a whiff of collusion, between Trump and the Russians. Russian project legal. Trump Tower meeting (son Don), perfectly legal. He wasn’t involved with hacking.” Gregg Jarrett. A total Witch Hunt!

Nothing is more convincing than when Trump quotes someone from Fox News as “evidence” of his innocence.

When Trump rises again, Friday morning, we have two more yelps, the first at 4:52 a.m.—when you might hope the Orange Fool was busy preparing for talks with other world leaders:

Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail...

...Lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia. Put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn’t do the project. Witch Hunt

Trump may insist he’s innocent; but he’s sleeping poorly, like a criminal who hears distant sirens in the night.

Highlights from the plea agreement.

If you want to understand which witches Special Counsel Mueller’s team might be hunting, you need go no further than the first sentence of the charging document recently revealed in Cohen’s latest plea agreement.

The case laid out in United States v. Michael Cohen begins:

“From in or around 2007 through in or around January 2017, MICHAEL COHEN, the defendant, was an attorney and employee of a Manhattan-based real estate company (the “Company”). COHEN held the title of “Executive Vice President” and “Special Counsel” to the owner of the Company (“Individual 1”).

For months now, “Individual 1” has been firing shots at Mueller and his team, if nothing else in hundreds of tweets.

Here you have the first fire returned by Mueller, directed at “Individual 1,” Donald J. Trump, President of the United States.

And it draws blood. The sad fig leaf of denial Trump has been trying to position to shield his fat, orange, presidential privates is stripped away. Last April, when evidence—again including documents—of Cohen’s role in payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal began to blow up, Trump tried to downgrade his relationship with Cohen. In an interview with Fox News, he insisted, “This doesn’t have to do with me. Michael is a businessman. He’s got a business. He also practices law. And they’re looking at something having to do with his business. I have nothing to do with his business.”

Asked how much legal work Cohen did for him, Trump claimed, “As a percentage of my overall legal work, a tiny, tiny little fraction.”

In August, when Cohen pled guilty to an array of crimes and started cooperating with investigators, Trump tried to downgrade their ties even further. Suddenly, all of the president’s sycophants began clamoring, “Cohen is a liar!” Trump himself said nobody should hire Cohen for legal work, he was a terrible lawyer, and only worked for him for a very short decade. In fact, if you listened to Trump he would hardly have known Cohen if he walked into the Oval Office and said, “Hey, Boss, do you want me to pay off the porn star or not?”

So, Mueller starts off the latest charging document by blasting that fantasy defense to bits.

Cohen was a Trump guy.

The legal meat of the matter is easy to explain. In January 2017 the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (“SSCI”) and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“HPSCI”) in the U.S. House of Representatives began to investigate possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign. The Senate panel managed to develop a level of bipartisan cooperation. The House panel, led by Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican, couldn’t have found a Russian if all the Republicans on the committee jetted to Moscow and roamed the streets for a month.

“Individual 1.”

Mueller now makes it plain. Cohen lied to both committees. Cohen had testified that the project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow was ended in January 2016. Cohen, himself, said, “I determined that the proposal was not feasible for a variety of business reasons and should not be pursued further.”

In that way, Cohen offered a legal shield for his Boss. “To the best of my knowledge,” Cohen said at the time, “[Individual 1] was never in contact with anyone about this proposal other than me on three occasions. . . . I did not ask or brief [Individual 1], or any of his family, before I made the decision to terminate further work on the proposal.”

Cohen further claimed that he never agreed to travel to Russia in connection with the Tower project. He “never considered” asking “Individual 1” if he should go. Instead, he claimed he “primarily communicated” with a Moscow-based company “through a U.S. citizen third-party intermediary, [Individual 2].”

Individual 2 would be Felix Sater, the convicted felon.

Sater asked Cohen to travel to Moscow to push the deal forward. Cohen claimed he “never agreed to make a trip to Russia.” He never asked Individual 1 “to travel to Russia in connection with this proposal.” Yes, Cohen testified, he did send Russian officials a number of emails about the project; but there was little interest. So, in January 2016, “I decided to abandon the proposal… [and from that time forward] do not recall any response to my email, nor any other contacts by me with [Russian Official 1] or other Russian government officials about the proposal.”

By the time of the Iowa caucuses, in February, the story was, Trump had terminated all contacts with Russians about building business ties in that country. Cohen issued a public statement to that effect in September 2016. On October 25 he so testified before Rep. Nunes’ GOP-controlled committee.

Mueller’s team now has documents and can lay out all kinds of lies. If you’re the president or one of his many sleazy friends, you immediately start to perspire. It’s not just Cohen agreeing to cooperate that represents a threat. Investigators have documentation. Mueller makes the case:

In truth and in fact, and as COHEN well knew, COHEN’s representations about the Moscow Project he made to SSCI and HPSCI were false and misleading. COHEN made the false statements to

1.    minimize links between the Moscow Project and Individual 1 and

(2) give the false impression that the Moscow Project ended before “the Iowa caucus and . . . the very first primary,” in hopes of limiting the ongoing Russia investigations. COHEN attempted to conceal or minimize through his false statements the following facts:

a. The Moscow Project was discussed multiple times within the Company and did not end in January 2016.

“Instead, as late as approximately June 2016,” investigators know, Cohen and Sater were still discussing efforts to obtain Russian government assistance with the project, and Cohen “briefed family members of Individual 1” about the proposal. Cohen made plans to travel to Moscow to pursue the deal—and he and Individual 1—by then the presumptive nominee for president—discussed plans for Individual 1 to travel to Russia.

It only gets “better” as you continue to dig through the evidence. Cohen asks “a senior campaign official about potential business travel to Russia.” The official is not named; but like every other member of Team Trump, that official apparently forgets ever having this discussion.

Russians willing to cooperate with the campaign on any subject.

In fact, as late as May 2016, the project seems more on than off. Sater writes to Cohen on May 4:

“I had a chat with Moscow. ASSUMING the trip does happen the question is before or after the convention . . . Obviously the pre-meeting trip (you only) can happen anytime you want but the 2 big guys where [sic] the question. I said I would confirm and revert.” COHEN responded, “My trip before Cleveland. [Individual 1] once he becomes the nominee after the convention.”

The next day, Sater writes Cohen again, assuring him that,

“[Russian Official 1] would like to invite you as his guest to the St. Petersburg Forum which is Russia’s Davos it’s June 16-19. He wants to meet there with you and possibly introduce you to either [the President of Russia] or [the Prime Minister of Russia], as they are not sure if 1 or both will be there. . . . He said anything you want to discuss including dates and subjects [emphasis added] are on the table to discuss.”

Note that last line—the willingness of the Russians to cooperate with the campaign on any subject they might introduce.

On May 6, Sater asks Trump’s lawyer to confirm those dates, if they would work for him to travel. Cohen replies, “Works for me.”

On June 9, we now know, Don Jr., Jared Kushner and convicted-felon Paul Manafort agree to meet with Russians in Trump Tower, offering those gifts. Mueller’s investigators have proof that

From on or about June 9 to June 14, 2016, Individual 2 sent numerous messages to COHEN about the travel, including forms for COHEN to complete. However, on or about June 14, 2016, COHEN met Individual 2 in the lobby of the Company’s headquarters to inform Individual 2 he would not be traveling at that time.

Does that mean the Moscow project is on hold, or even dead, finally? Or does it mean the people at the top of the Trump campaign know an even better deal has now been placed on the table?

That is: do they now know the Russians are willing to offer direct assistance in an effort to defeat Hillary? This would be a switch from the mad pursuit of cash to what would, in wartime, amount to treason. If Trump and Cohen and other top aides know Russia is willing to help them—and they’re now willing to jump into bed with a hostile power—you can understand why they’ve been fighting so hard for more than two years to wipe out their tracks.

12/3/18: Trump is ALIVE!!! He returns to Washington and gets back to his regular job of tweeting insults and tampering with witnesses. Clearly, he realizes the Mueller investigation is closing in.

Melania’s not coming to visit him in jail.

He knows, if he ends up in jail, Melania is not coming to visit.

First, he attacks Michael Cohen, his former fixer and personal lawyer, for pleading guilty and fingering him in the process. According to Trump the rat should go to jail forever. His wife and parents ought to go to jail too—and his children—and his dog and his three goldfish! Trump is judge, jury and asshole rolled into one. Trial by tweet! It takes the president two shots to lay out his “case:” 

“Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time.” You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term? He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself, and get.....

 ....his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free. He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.

Next, we have a little not-so-subtle witness tampering! Trump tried this gambit with Cohen back in April, insisting he’d never turn against him. (Wink, wink: Michael, hold out and you can expect a pardon!)

But Cohen flipped. Now, Trump says, Cohen is “weak.”

Knowing the circle is being closed around him, Trump flails away again. This time he’s hinting at a pardon for a different underling:

“I will never testify against Trump.” This statement was recently made by Roger Stone, essentially stating that he will not be forced by a rogue and out of control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about “President Trump.” Nice to know that some people still have “guts!”

Stone is a man, who, “if he’s talking, he’s lying,” according to former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. (See: 11/27-28/18.)

Stone said he never met with any Russians. Not even one.

Stone is the guy who testified in front of Congress that he never met with any Russians during the campaign. Then he had to amend his testimony and admit he did (after the “Fake News” people uncovered the details). Stone said he forgot meeting with the Russian—and forgot the Russian was offering dirt on Hillary Clinton—and forgot the guy asked for $2 million to share it with the Trump campaign.

Finally, Trump lashes out at Special Counsel Mueller: “Bob Mueller (who is a much different man than people think and his out of control band of Angry Democrats, don’t want the truth, they only want lies,” Trump tweets. “The truth is very bad for their mission!”

In other words, Stone has “guts” because he’ll lie to protect Trump. Mueller is not the man people think he is.

Coming from Trump, there’s a bit of irony in what he tweets. Mueller had the “guts” to protect this country. He joined the Marines and went to fight in Vietnam. When Trump’s feet hurt too much to serve, Mueller was bleeding for our nation. As a Marine officer he was caught in a firefight and awarded a Bronze Star with “V” for valor.

In a second firefight, on 22 April 1969, Mueller was “seriously wounded.”  For his actions that day he was awarded the Navy Commendation Medal with “V” for valor. A squad-size patrol under his command came under heavy fire from a large enemy force in ambush. “Completely disregarding his own safety,” the commendation reads,

First Lieutenant Mueller led the remainder of his platoon in an attempt to relieve the beleaguered squad…By his courage, aggressive leadership and steadfast devotion to duty in the face of great personal danger, First Lieutenant Mueller inspired all who observed him and upheld the finest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the United States Naval Service.

Stone had “guts,” like Trump had “guts.” He managed to avoid serving in the U.S. military. Born in 1952, he was the perfect age to enlist in 1970 if he desired. Instead, he desired to head off to college, where he remained safe and sound and un-punctured by enemy fire. In 1972 he did go to work for the Nixon campaign—making him part of the most corrupt administration (until now) in U.S. history.

In 1976 Stone was elected president of the Young Republicans. His campaign manager was Paul Manafort.

In 1980 the two men formed a lobbying partnership with a third individual; and because they lobbied for a number of brutal dictators, the firm won the nickname, “The Torturers’ Lobby.”

Stone is Trump’s kind of guy. He’ll do anything for money.

 $$$$$$$$$$

12/4/18: Former Team Trump member and leader of “Lock her up!” chants, General Michael T. Flynn appears in court Tuesday. And Special Counsel Robert Mueller recommends 0 days behind bars for Flynn!

Cue the chant from the Oval Office, “Don’t lock him up!” It’s party time for Trump and all his aides and Don Jr.

Or not.

General Flynn is likely to avoid spending time in jail not because he’s innocent but because he quickly pled guilty and began cooperating with the investigation. We now learn that he has sat down nineteen times for talks with Mueller’s team. “Given the defendant’s substantial assistance and other considerations set forth below,” the court filing reads, “a sentence at the low end of the guideline range—including a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration—is appropriate and warranted.”

On Fox News, Trump’s cheerleaders insist this court filing proves Mueller and his team are coming up empty-handed and Trump should be re-elected in 2020, even if he loses the popular vote by twenty-six million! Lou Dobbs angrily demands that President Obama produce his birth certificate, Harvard transcripts, and his hat and shoe sizes. Tucker Carlson spends an entire show looking perplexed. Liberals, he basically says, don’t you just hate ‘em!

In reality, the White House has to be boiling. No one knows what Flynn told investigators during those nineteen meetings. Don Jr. has to hope Flynn knew nothing about his June 2016 meeting with Russians in Trump Tower. Jared has to wonder. What did Flynn tell investigators about the secret meeting he and Flynn had with a Russian banker in December 2016? Paul Manafort has already been cooked in court. Now the leftovers of his career may end up microwaved for a snack. Roger Stone? He has to hope Flynn didn’t mention him in any way, shape or form, because nothing Stone did during the campaign was ever legit.

“Multiple false statements…on multiple occasions.”

We already knew that Flynn and his son flew to Russia in December 2015 and stayed in a luxury hotel for several days, at Russian expense. We know General Flynn plunked down beside Vladimir Putin at dinner—and then gave a speech for which he was handsomely paid ($45,000). So: What did Flynn tell Mueller and his team about efforts inside the Trump campaign in 2016, including offers to end crippling financial sanctions, to curry favor with the Russians?

And did he finger the president himself?

How bad could Flynn be for Trump and his gang? First, we have long known that he pled guilty to one charge of lying to the F.B.I. The sentencing document, however, notes, “As described in the Statement of Offense, the defendant made multiple false statements, to multiple Department of Justice (“DOJ”) entities, on multiple occasions.”

That means there was plenty Flynn felt he needed to lie about. And Flynn was definitely President Trump’s boy.

Secondly, anyone who has ever watched an episode of CSI: Miami, or CSI: Special Victims Unit, or CSI: Jaywalking Unit, knows criminal investigators work their way up, trying to turn small fish against big fish before they are eaten.

A heavily redacted supplemental document leaves court reporters, pundits and ordinary Americans guessing. On page one we learn, “The defendant has assisted with several ongoing investigations, a criminal investigation [REDACTED].” Flynn has “provided documents and communications” that have to do with “links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald J. Trump” [REDACTED].

On page two we learn that Flynn has provided “substantial assistance,” but that some of the benefits “may not be fully realized at this time because the investigations in which he has provided assistance are ongoing.”

Every member of Team Trump has to hope they're not mentioned behind those lines.

An entire section of the document is [REDACTED] including the name of the investigation itself.

On page four, prosecutors note that “several senior members” of the Trump transition team repeated false statements Flynn made about contacts with Russia. “The defendant also provided useful information concerning” [REDACTED]. And another full page is reduced to heavy black lines.

Black lines in a court filing mean black days and nights of doubt and confusion in the White House.

12/6/18: Want to understand how grave a threat President Trump is to the rule of law? Consider the open letter signed by 400 former officials at the Department of Justice. In it veterans of both Democratic and Republican administrations call upon him to remove Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker from his post.

Every American, including the president, is subject to the law.

The letter reads in part:

Because of our respect for our oaths of office and our personal experiences carrying out the Department’s mission, we are disturbed by the President’s appointment of Matthew Whitaker to serve as Acting Attorney General. We know that overseeing the Department of Justice is one of the most important roles in our government. The Attorney General is responsible for ensuring that we are a nation of laws and that every citizen and every government official — including the President himself — is equally subject to those laws. Because of the profound responsibilities the position entails and the independence it requires, it can only be filled by someone who has been subjected to the strictest scrutiny under the process required by the Constitution.

Whitaker, of course, has not been confirmed by the Senate. In fact, Whitaker’s main qualifications seem to be: his former work shilling for World Patent, a company fined $26 million for scamming customers; his comments—going back a year—that the Mueller probe was a “witch hunt,” a “hoax” and a potpourri of fishy legal antics by investigators who kept tripping up suspects who then had to confess; and his complete and utter lack of principles.

In any case, Whitaker is still on the job today; and the president has to be sweating orange, knowing his former National Security Adviser, General Flynn, has been talking at length to Mueller and his team.

As in, 19 meetings “at length.”

This cannot be good for Trump or top aides and officials in his administration. But defense lawyer and one-man clown show Rudy Giuliani insists investigators, not the confessed felons, are “sick puppies.” Flynn was convicted of a crime no more serious than “spitting on the sidewalk.”

Actually—and even the dimmest Trump fan can look this all up—Flynn lied multiple times in meetings with the F.B.I. and other authorities. Not to mention taking $530,000 from the Turkish government—when he was supposedly working for the good of our country.

Mueller and his team don’t have “bupkis,” Rudy says, perhaps the first time in history anyone has ever shrugged off more than half-a-million dollars as nothing.

12/7-10/18: President Trump’s terrible no good weekend/week/month/presidency continues to spiral downward.

First, the president announces that White House chief of staff General John Kelly is leaving; but everything at 1600 Pennsylvania is just ducky. Then we learn Nick Ayers will be taking the job.

Then we learn Ayers won’t be taking the job.

Then we learn the president is pissed.

Why not pick a Russian?

As for me, I would like to offer this helpful suggestion: Why not pick a Russian for the job and cut out the middle men?

And we haven’t even got to the biggest news yet. A series of ominous developments in the Russia investigation have taken place in the last few days. General Michael T. Flynn, the first member of Team Trump to be proven in a lie about dealing with Russians has his day in court. Prosecutors recommend no jail time at all! Yea, Team Trump! Your boy is going to walk!

Or not.

It turns out Flynn has been cooperating for over a year with Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team.

Still, there’s semi-positive news for Team Trump in regard to at least one of several current investigations. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, has been chastised by prosecutors from the Southern District of New York for his less than completely truthful cooperation.

So who’s going to believe that guy in court—when he says his old Boss is a crook?

He acted in coordination with Individual 1.

In fact, Trump tweets on Friday that recent developments in the Russian investigation have totally cleared his name. “Totally clears the President,” he tweets at one point. “Thank you!” he adds.

In reality, of course, prosecutors note that while Cohen paid off a pair of women who had dirt on his Boss: “with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of [Individual 1].”

In other words, Cohen is admitting to a pair of felonies—and prosecutors believe he committed both at then-Candidate Trump’s request.

It gets worse, if you are a fan of Donald J. Trump. Court papers filed on Cohen and Flynn, and a third filing on Paul Manafort this past Friday hardly clear the president or any other man, woman or child who has ever been part of his team.

First, consider what Cohen’s plea deal really means. Trump likes to insist that Mueller and his team of 10,000 “Angry Democrats” are out to get him at any cost. So his base should not believe prosecutors no matter how much compelling evidence they can pile up. But the problem for Trump, when it comes to trying to convince supporters to discount cases originating in the Southern District of New York, is that the man in charge is a Republican and an appointee of Donald J. Trump. And while the court filings in Cohen’s case in New York recommend he serve up to four years in jail, and question his full cooperation, in another filing, by Mueller and his team, prosecutors also note that Cohen has provided what may well be “useful information about matters relating to ongoing investigations being carried out by this office.” In these matters, prosecutors “assessed Cohen to be forthright and credible, and the information he provided was largely consistent with other evidence gathered.”

You don’t have to be smarter than a rock to understand the danger lurking in those simple sentences for Team Trump.

Other evidence gathered.

There are other investigations continuing, related to Cohen and his work for then Candidate Trump.

And investigators have “other evidence” they can use.

Records show, for example, that the Trump Organization itself paid Cohen back $130,000, after he paid off a porn star to keep her quite during the campaign. Then Cohen was paid an extra $60,000 to “gross up” his take—that is, enough to also pay any taxes he’d owe. In all, Cohen received $420,000 during the 2016 campaign and all payments were labeled “legal fees.” That would seem to indicate a conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws and cover it up.

We already know that Adam Weisselberg, Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization, has been granted immunity to testify. So what would he be likely to testify about? A person “not authorized to speak” told reporters that Weisselberg might not have known these payments, including another to silence a Playboy Bunny who also had a story about Trump she wanted to sell, were illegal. He might not have known what they were for and that would mean he, Weisselberg, had done nothing illegal. But The New York Times quoted this person as saying, in effect: “Mr. Cohen often did personal legal work for the president and his family. That kind of work was generally performed with few, if any, questions asked.”

In other words, Cohen was close enough to Trump to do the dirty work, no questions asked.

“Core topics under investigation.”

For Trump, it only gets worse when we consider the sentencing recommendation filed in a separate matter by Mueller and his team. Prosecutors say Cohen has been forthright and has provided valuable information “on core topics under investigation.”

What topics? Team Trump doesn’t know.

Finally, court filings in the case of Paul Manafort hint at additional minefields Trump and members of his administration will soon have to cross. Investigators say Manafort lied even after signing a plea agreement.

Currently residing in jail, Manafort has, nevertheless, repeatedly contacted members of the administration not currently in jail, during this time, while insisting he had not. How do investigators know? They have written and electronic communications in their hands.

That means:

A)   Any member of Team Trump that has talked to Cohen about Russian outreach to the campaign could be in jeopardy.

B)    Anyone who urged Flynn to cover up contacts with Russia could soon be hurting, legally.

C)   Anyone at the White House who talked to Manafort recently, including floating the possibility of a pardon, could be involved in a criminal conspiracy and would surely be indicted.

And Mueller’s team already has documentation.

The pressure is obviously getting to the president. Sunday, he tweet-blasted James Comey, who testified before Congress on Friday:

On 245 occasions, former FBI Director James Comey told House investigators he didn’t know, didn’t recall, or couldn’t remember things when asked. Opened investigations on 4 Americans (not 2) - didn’t know who signed off and didn’t know Christopher Steele. All lies!

Leakin’ James Comey must have set a record for who lied the most to Congress in one day. His Friday testimony was so untruthful! This whole deal is a Rigged Fraud headed up by dishonest people who would do anything so that I could not become President. They are now exposed!

Then, feeling sorry for himself, he decided he had to brag about himself and, second, attack the free press:

The Trump Administration has accomplished more than any other U.S. Administration in its first two (not even) years of existence, & we are having a great time doing it! All of this despite the Fake News Media, which has gone totally out of its mind-truly the Enemy of the People!

Monday he rose again early and kept on tweet-screaming. The first yowl came at 6:46 a.m., the second fourteen minutes later:

“Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun...No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,...

....which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s - but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!

Let’s dissect that last pair of tweets. Is the President of the United States finally losing it? He had fourteen minutes to look at his first tweet and didn’t have the sense to fix “smoking,” not once, but twice.

As for Comey, he manages to shrug off Trump’s attacks. The usual right-wing outlets claim he covered himself in shame after testifying in front of Congress about the decision of the F.B.I. to end the investigation of Hillary Clinton and open an investigation into the Trump campaign.

First, his testimony before a Republican-controlled panel on Friday showed a man who was relaxed.

Last September, for example, Trump told a reporter Mueller and Comey were “best friends…And I could give you 100 pictures of him and Comey hugging and kissing each other.”

Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), a member of the House panel, asked Mr. Comey: “Are you best friends with Robert Mueller?”

“I am not,” Comey said. “I admire the heck out of the man, but I don’t know his phone number, I’ve never been to his house, I don’t know his children’s names. I think I had a meal once alone with him in a restaurant. I like him.”

Nadler reassured Comey he’d not ask “whether he had ever hugged and kissed him.”

“A relief to my wife,” Comey smiled.

As usual, Republicans on the panel tried—again, again, again—to prove that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two F.B.I. agents who had shared highly critical emails about Candidate Trump, were secretly involved in a plot during the 2016 campaign to insure Trump would never be elected.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) quoted a text from March 2016, which read, “Hillary should win 100 million to zero.”

Comey and Strzok never revealed the investigation.

Didn’t that sound nefarious, he inquired? Comey said no. Then he pointed out the obvious for the forty-fifth time. He and Strzok and a handful of others knew well before the election that members of the Trump campaign were under investigation because of contacts with Russians.

And they said not a word to the public.

They could have easily derailed his candidacy. They did not.

12/11/18: In Russia-investigation news, Maria Butina, the hot young Russian redhead who infiltrated the N.R.A. and spent the last presidential campaign hanging out with leading conservatives, has agreed to a plea deal and will cooperate with prosecutors. That includes testifying in front of a grand jury.

Her crime: conspiring to act as a Russian agent without registering with the Justice Department, a felony.

Now we may find out how it happened she was called on during a campaign rally in 2015 to ask Candidate Trump what he thought about sanctions on Russia. He said he didn’t think we needed them—which would be sweet music to Putin’s ears.

Butina may spill a whole new can of beans.

We might learn a great deal. We might learn what Paul Erickson, a much older conservative leader who had spoken publically in favor of warmer relations with Russia (and with whom Butina was sleeping) was up to behind the scenes, when not fostering warmer relations with Butina between the sheets. We might learn whether or not the N.R.A. accepted Russian money and funneled it to the Trump campaign, as at least one U.S. senator has wondered. We might get to the bottom of odd connections between the N.R.A., Alexander Torshin, a Russian placed under sanctions earlier this year, and Ms. Butina, his protégé. We might learn how the young redhead maneuvered in close for a picture with Don Jr. (and pictures with an assortment of lecherous old Republicans), why an N.R.A. delegation traveled to Russia in 2015, and why Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), the leading suck-up to Russia in Congress, spent four hours chatting with Torshin and Butina at a prayer breakfast gathering in Washington D.C. in 2017.

This Russian investigation—actually several investigations now—isn’t going to end any time soon.

LIE # 152: Butina pleads guilty to lying about her links to the Russian government.

Butina and the come hither look at sucked in conservatives.

12/13-14/18: Trump lovers and Trump haters can’t agree on much but I believe all Americans can agree on this: Lawyers are experiencing boom times since the Orange Teletubby donned the mantle of President of the United States. In two years of fighting to end the “War on Coal,” Trump and his warrior band have managed to put about 2,500 miners back to work. I believe the president, alone, has put at least that many lawyers in new jobs.

The Orange Teletubby says crimes are not crimes.

Of course, we need to subtract one lawyer’s job, first. Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal fixer for more than a decade, is now unemployed (except for talking to investigators) and soon headed to jail. According to Trump, of course, Cohen didn’t really commit any crimes. Yes, prosecutors charged him with two felonies in regard to campaign finance violations. Yes, Cohen pled guilty to two felonies in that regard. Yes, the judge sentenced him to jail in part because of commission of those felonies and six others. But the Orange Teletubby insists crimes are not crimes.

Oddly enough, Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, says Trump knew all about illegal payments to two women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, to keep their salacious tales out of the news. The president insists he never. He says Cohen is a liar.

We can tell the president is telling the truth because his propaganda pals at Fox News say he is. But he and they are hoping you won’t remember that moment last April, when Trump, aboard Air Force One, enjoyed this chat with reporters:

Question: 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 never answered that last question, choosing instead to talk about E.P.A. head Scott Pruitt, who he said was a “good man,” doing a “fantastic job.”

And here we should give a shout out to Pruitt for his role in helping bring the legal profession back to full employment. Pruitt resigned as head of the E.P.A. in July. At the time, even Fox News had to admit Pruitt was implicated in all kinds of swampy deeds: including using E.P.A. funds—taxpayer money—to hire a GOP media firm to “praise Scott Pruitt.” By the time Pruitt quit and crawled out of the D.C. swamp, he was the subject of “13 federal inquiries into his spending and management practices.”

But—Cohen—we were talking about Cohen!

Trump’s personal lawyer eventually managed to produce a tape of Trump talking about illegal payments to the second woman, Karen McDougal. You could listen as Cohen said he was going to set up a company to disguise the source of the payment. He mentions “David.” “I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with…” Cohen continues.

“So what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” Trump interrupts.

Trump doesn’t interrupt to say, “I never boinked that Playboy Bunny and I’m not paying $150,000 through a shell company to keep her story out of the news to protect my campaign. You know me, Michael. I never bend or break or completely ignore the law.” The two men then discuss how to make the payment, cash or check.

Trump really said, “Don’t pay!”

The tape seems damning from first word to last. So you need more lawyers to do some fast talking. Rudy Giuliani tells reporters Trump really said Cohen shouldn’t pay. But that claim makes no sense if you listen to the conversation. Rudy sticks with it and keeps sending Trump the legal bills. (For a similar play on words, see: 7/17/18.)

Once the tape leaks, the president rage-tweets about what a terrible, creepy skunk Cohen has always been! (For a different view, expressed by Trump, see: 4/19/18.)

Unfortunately for Trump and his enablers, federal prosecutors revealed in court this week that “David” and his company, David Pecker and American Media, Inc., had signed an immunity deal and ratted out Trump. Pecker, Cohen and then-Candidate Trump had in fact met in August 2015 to discuss ways to silence the women—and protect the campaign—meaning campaign finance violations were committed and laws were broken.

And Trump knew about the payments all along!

Trump and Cohen—with the aid of AMI—had conspired to create a fake company to hide payments they knew were probably illegal; and then the Trump Organization, likely with the approval of Allen Weisselberg, disguised repayments to Cohen under the guise of “legal fees.”

So—again—these are boom times for the legal profession. In fact, we learn this week that the Trump inauguration committee, which raised $107 million, more than twice as much as any other presidential campaign, is also under investigation.

According to a report by Reuters, based on a story in the Wall Street Journal:

The early-stage investigation by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office is examining whether some of the committee’s donors gave money in exchange for policy concessions, influencing administration positions or access to the incoming administration, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Naturally, Rudy and Press Secretary Pinocchio were at pains to point out that the president wasn’t involved with any crooked deals related to his inaugural committee. Rudy claimed Trump was too busy getting ready to be president at the time to worry about fund-raising.

Just for fun, of course, I would like to point out that the highest paid vendor for the committee happened to be Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who happened to be a close friend of the First Lady. And Wolkoff happened to to cash in and take home $25.8 million for organizing the festivities.

And who else shows up in the story? Cohen! Cohen has a tape of Wolkoff discussing the committee payments. For some odd reason, she’s expresses concern about a possible audit.

Reuters continues:

The Journal said prosecutors are also seeking documents from Franklin Haney, a Tennessee developer who gave $1 million to the inaugural committee and later hired Cohen to help him obtain a $5 billion U.S Department of Energy loan. A loan application by Haney’s company is still pending with the department, the Journal reported.

Haney has now hired more attorneys!

Paul Manafort—on a yacht—with a very rich Arab.

If that wasn’t bad enough, on Friday, The New York Times reported that prosecutors were investigating whether or not illegal payments were made by foreign donors to both the Trump inaugural committee and a Trump Super PAC, Rebuilding America Now. At a time in the summer of 2016, when Trump’s campaign looked like it was doomed and campaign donations had dried up, Rebuilding America Now went to work and raised $23 million.

As the Times notes:

The inquiry focuses on whether people from Middle Eastern nations — including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — used straw donors [emphasis added] to disguise their donations to the two funds. Federal law prohibits foreign contributions to federal campaigns, political action committees and inaugural funds.

Thomas Barrack, a close friend of the president, raised money for both groups and he too has now hired a fresh set of lawyers.

(Am I the only one who worries that this great nation may soon face a critical lawyer shortage?)

Even better, Paul Manafort pops up in this story. After he gets axed by the Trump campaign (because of dicey involvement with Russian organized crime figures), we spot him cruising the Mediterranean Sea on Barrack’s fabulous yacht. There, he and Barrack meet with “one of the world’s richest men, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, the former prime minister of Qatar.” 

Investigators soon started asking for information from a businessman, Rashid Al Malik, “an associate of Mr. Barrack’s, who heads a private investment firm in the United Arab Emirates.” Mr. Malik also has a lawyer, but that lawyer did not respond to a request for comment from the Times.

If you are trying to keep track of all the lawyers on your fingers and toes, I realize you are already short a few toes. We already know that Sam Patten, a well-connected Republican fund raiser, pleaded guilty to arranging for a Ukrainian oligarch and another foreigner to buy $50,000 worth of tickets to one of the Trump inaugural events, using an American as a straw purchaser.

In addition, ProPublica, reports that there are warning signs that the Trump inaugural committee was overpaying for services provided by—good grief—the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Who handled the payments? The Trump Organization!

ProPublica picks up the story:

The inauguration paid the Trump Organization for rooms, meals and event space at the company’s Washington hotel, according to interviews as well as internal emails and receipts reviewed by WNYC and ProPublica.

During the planning, Ivanka Trump, the president-elect’s eldest daughter and a senior executive with the Trump Organization, was involved in negotiating the price the hotel charged the 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee for venue rentals. A top inaugural planner emailed Ivanka and others at the company to “express my concern” that the hotel was overcharging for its event spaces, worrying of what would happen “when this is audited.”

When ProPublica asked various lawyers for various individuals to comment on this facet of the story, pretty much all the lawyers decided they did not really feel up to commenting at this time.

We do know from emails that several individuals working on inaugural festivities were nervous because they felt the Trump hotel was overcharging the Trump committee. So Ivanka Trump became involved. Eventually, the hotel agreed to cut the price (the original price is not known) for use of its Presidential Ballroom and meeting facilities to $700,000 for four days.

In an email to Ivanka Trump and Gates [Rick Gates, another now-convicted felon in the story], Wolkoff, who had previously managed the Metropolitan Museum’s annual gala and fashion shows at Lincoln Center, expressed discomfort with the price.

“I wanted to follow up on our conversation and express my concern,” Wolkoff wrote in the December email.

“These events are in PE’s [the president-elect’s] honor at his hotel and one of them is for family and close friends. Please take into consideration that when this is audited it will become public knowledge,” she wrote, noting that other locations would be provided to the inaugural committee for free.

“I understand that compared to the original pricing this is great but we should look at the whole context,” Wolkoff wrote, suggesting a day rate of $85,000, less than half of the Trump hotel’s offer.

In fact, in just a twelve-month period, the Trump Foundation has been hauled into court, as have the Trump Organization, the Trump 2016 campaign, the Trump Inaugural Committee and the Trump administration. Since a two-year investigation into the Trump Foundation, based on “allegations of misused charitable assets, self-dealing and campaign finance violations during the 2016 presidential campaign” is ongoing, 2019 promises to be another banner year for barristers. That last investigation names the president and his children, Ivanka and Eric, as defendants.

Or, to put it another way, the only adult in the family not likely to usher in the New Year under investigation is Tiffany.

Possible lies, but not yet proven: about a hundred.

*

WITH TRUMP AND HIS CREW there’s always more legal news and Special Counsel Mueller has been making plenty recently. Last Thursday, lawyers for convicted felon General Flynn, filed court papers insisting that even though their client had pled guilty to one charge of lying to the F.B.I. he hadn’t really been lying.

Crimes are not crimes with this bunch.

Trump tweets support for lying to the F.B.I.

Flynn, his lawyers said, had been tricked into lying when F.B.I. agents interviewed him about contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign. Flynn, they insisted, did not know it was a crime to lie to F.B.I. agents.

Naturally, Trump heard the news and had to tweet support for lying which was not, apparently, lying:

They [prosecutors] gave General Flynn a great deal because they were embarrassed by the way he was treated - the FBI said he didn’t lie and they [Mueller’s team] overrode the FBI. They want to scare everybody into making up stories that are not true by catching them in the smallest of misstatements. Sad!...... 

And, of course, we had a second pithy tweet to sum it up: “WITCH HUNT!”

On Friday Mueller’s team filed a blistering rebuttal in court. Prosecutors pointed out that Flynn lied to Vice President Jesus and several White House officials about this same matter—secret contacts with Russians during the transition period—long before he talked to agents from the F.B.I.

Flynn was already committed to a set of lies and F.B.I. agents didn’t need to “trick” him into repeating them. In fact, Flynn lied multiple times during multiple interviews (see: 12/6/18). Investigators reminded anyone who cared to get to the bottom of this mess that Flynn covered up more than half a million dollars he received from the government of Turkey, that he pled guilty to one felony because his son was also implicated in taking money from the Turks, that both father and son failed to report such income, and that was this was the best deal the father could get, when he might have been charged with a half-dozen felonies.

Mueller may have subpoenaed President Trump.

In our final court-related story for today, we would note that in a most unusual development on Friday, the entire fifth floor of the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. was closed to reporters and onlookers.

Sniffing out hints that a case filed by Special Counsel Mueller was on the docket, a number of media types staked out spots outside the courtroom, hoping to glean hints about what was being discussed inside, based on who entered and exited. It was clear something odd was afoot, because the case, known only as “In re: Grand Jury Subpoena,” has been sealed in the public records.

“To this day,” national security lawyer Bradley Moss told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “ I can’t fathom what the heck it could be that would move this fast [through the court system] and get this much secrecy.”

I, for one, as humble blogger, can fathom what the heck it might be. In fact, I am ready to venture a guess. I am predicting that Mueller has already filed a subpoena for President Donald J. Trump.

If so, we know Trump’s defense team will fight it to the death. There’s probably not a lawyer in America by now who doesn’t realize that the current President of the United States can’t possibly testify under oath without lying about everything, from his current weight, to payoffs to women, to business ties with Russians, and any other topic prosecutors might ask about, including his favorite foods and color.

(Author’s note, 1/1/2009: I was in error it appears. It turns out to be a foreign company fighting a demand for records from the Mueller team. Legal experts now wonder if it might be Deutsche Bank trying to evade the subpoena—which might also have bearing on Trump and the whole Russia investigation.)

12/15/18: On her Fox News evening show Judge Jeanine Pirro does her best to bolster a president sagging on the national and international stage. Railing against the Mueller investigation, Pirro promises viewers that Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, presiding over a sentencing hearing for General Michael T. Flynn the following Tuesday, will put Mueller in his place.

“We are in a dark and dangerous place in America tonight,” Pirro begins, “where politics is driving our system of justice, instead of Lady Justice being blind to politics. At its core,” she says of the Flynn case, “this is a story of injustice.”

With her poor viewers now thoroughly terrified, she continues. It is our system of justice, she points out, that distinguishes us from other countries. “No one is above our law and no one is beneath it.”

(Meanwhile, in its regular programming, Fox continues to advance the argument that Trump can pardon himself.)

Flynn is the victim; top F.B.I. officials are crooks.

The people going after General Flynn, Pirro yowls, are “leakers,” “liars” and they are “corrupt.”

She’s emphatic. She’s loud. She’s sure of her position. She’s in the know. And her audience loves it.

The real target of investigators, Pirro says, has always been Trump; but Mueller and his bunch are not going to get Trump. In fact, the conversation Flynn had with the Russian ambassador during the transition period—the one which he lied about to Vice President Pence, and for which lie he was convicted of a felony, “was legal, perfectly legal. Take that one to the bank.”

Yes, take that to the bank!

As Pirro paints the picture, the F.B.I. assured Flynn that when they asked to talk no lawyers were necessary. It would be a friendly chat. This, she thunders, was “a clear violation of his constitutional rights.”

Fortunately, Judge Sullivan was demanding all the documents explaining why Flynn was charged and why he was about to be sentenced. The documents arrived late, Pirro sneered, “incomplete and redacted.” Still, they showed that the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. “hatched a plan” to “deliberately entrap” Flynn. Or so Pirro claims. Director James Comey, head of the F.B.I. at the time, was scum. Pirro insists he “prided himself on what any other decent man of honor would have been horrified to admit, that the rules, the law and the Constitution matter not.”

Yes, Flynn lied, she admits. He should have known better. “But what is a lie?” she asks. Did Flynn have “intent” to tell an untruth? He had no reason to lie, she says, pounding her desk to emphasize the point. “Even more compelling,” two F.B.I. agents “who interviewed Flynn say he did not lie!”

“Quote,” she says, “‘both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying and [they] did not think he was lying.’”

“They even said he was ‘unguarded and friendly,’” Pirro sneered once more. The judge sneers a lot.

Pirro is pissed and if she’s doing her job her viewers are going to be pissed too. According to the Fox playbook, poor Flynn was a man who served his country for 33 years, an “honorable man.” The opposite of Comey, in other words. “You’re probably asking yourself, Why would Flynn even plead guilty to lying, when he wasn’t lying?” Pirro adds. Maybe he pled guilty because he was running out of money, she suggests, noting that he’d had to sell his house to pay his legal fees. Perhaps he pled guilty to protect his son, “also in the crosshairs of these people.”

“These people!” They made Pirro sick. And she wanted them to make her loyal viewers sick, too.

For those of you who think the FBI was just trying to get to the truth, you’re wrong. If they wanted information, if they wanted the truth, they could have shown Flynn his transcript of his conversation to refresh his recollection to get at the truth. But, no, they didn’t want the truth. They wanted to take down a bit player to get to the big player. 

“A jurist unafraid of the Swamp.”

But don’t worry, she concluded. They’re not going to get “the big player,” they’re not going to get Donald J. Trump! Even General Flynn would be saved! All parties are set to appear in court Tuesday, December 18, in front of Sullivan, “a jurist unafraid of the Swamp, a judge who has a track record of calling out prosecutorial misconduct, a man who does not tolerate injustice or abuse of power.”

Sullivan, Pirro says finally, “can throw out this guilty plea” if he concludes Flynn has been framed. (See: 12/17-21/18.)

Pirro’s not quite lying; she just works for Fox News. Events will prove she could not be further off if she predicted President Trump would win the gold medal in the men’s 100 meters in the 2020 Olympics.

12/17-21/18: We all know the cliché about the wheels coming off the bus. This week, the bus is headed for the cliff and the terrified children are screaming for the driver to hit the brakes.

Remember what Judge Jeanine said on Fox News on Saturday night? Well, Mueller was going to get put in his place. She could hardly wait!!!! (See: 12/15/18.)

Well, all the parties in the Flynn sentencing did show up for court on Tuesday. Judge Sullivan did study all the documents, including the portions redacted, that neither you, nor I, nor the furious Ms. Pirro had seen. He looked at everything the F.B.I. presented. He looked at it all.

He was, as Pirro said, “unafraid of the Swamp.”

He was, in fact, a judge who did “not tolerate injustice or abuse of power.”

Judge Sullivan studied the evidence the F.B.I. had. If you are a fan of Judge Jeanine’s show you know with certitude what’s about to happen. He’s going to bang his gavel. He’s going to bang it so hard the head will break off and fly across the courtroom and knock some prosecutor out. Because he’s that mad. “Mr. Flynn,” he’s going to say, “You are the victim of injustice. I’m throwing your case out! You are a free to go. And say ‘hello,’ to President Trump and any Russians you meet.”

Judge Sullivan: “Arguably, you sold your country out.”

Only that’s not what Sullivan says. He glares at Flynn and explains, “There’s a great deal of non-public information in this case.” He’s going to be careful about what he says. He tells the principals in court that if he begins to reveal non-public information, they should not be shy in reminding him to refrain. Then he tells Flynn, “I am not hiding my disgust, my disdain for your criminal offense…Arguably, that undermines everything that this flag over here stands for,” the judge says, gesturing toward an American flag behind the bench. “Arguably, you sold your country out.” 

And if Pirro is watching, she probably passes out.

Whatever Sullivan had seen in the redacted portions of the filings, it had to be bad. And if it was bad for Flynn—and it was apparently very bad—it almost certainly had to be very bad for Trump.

Certainly, recent developments in the Mueller probe cannot be soothing to the president’s jangled nerves. In the course of five days, Rudy Giuliani goes on TV to offer the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” defense of his Boss. If Michael Cohen says Trump directed him to make illegal hush money payments and to lie during testimony before Congress, Rudy insists you can’t believe a guy like Cohen! Cohen’s going to “sing” as loud as he has to, Horndog Rudy says, in order to avoid spending three years in jail. He can’t be trusted. “He’s changed his story four or five times.”

George Stephanopoulos, hosting the show on which Rudy is appearing, replies: “So has the president.”

“The President’s not under oath,” Rudy smiles and shrugs. Then, to make his position clear, he adds that he’s not about to let his client testify under oath. “Over my dead body,” he says.

So let’s recap. According to Rudy:

A)   The president can’t lie as long as he’s not under oath.

B)    The president is never going to testify under oath if Rudy can stop him.

C)   And if Trump does lie under oath, and Trump does get caught, he can pardon himself.

Still, it’s clear the president is unnerved and he spends much of his time tweeting angrily about the investigation and how unfair it is. In one tweet—which raises legal experts’ eyebrows—he refers to Cohen as a “rat” because Cohen is cooperating with both state and federal prosecutors.

Yeah. What president would ever want a suspect to cooperate with prosecutors! Am I right, Trump fans!

Stop a moment and consider the matter of who has changed his story most often, Cohen or Trump. Originally, the president told everyone, including the First Lady, that he didn’t know anything about hush money payments to two women during his campaign, even if Cohen testified under oath that he did. When it was revealed that documents backed Cohen up, the President of the United States admitted he did know, but insisted payments had nothing to do with his 2016 campaign. So they weren’t campaign violations! Then David Pecker, head of American Media Inc., who has an immunity deal from prosecutors, testified that Trump knew about the payments all along and asked Pecker to hide them to protect his campaign.

With each passing day, the story spun more and more out of control. Cohen had once claimed that any deal to get a Trump Tower built in Moscow was ended by January 2016. Now he admitted, and documents in the hands of prosecutors supported his testimony, that the deal was in the works as late as the summer of 2016.

That would be around the time Don Jr. and Jared and now-convicted-felon Paul Manafort held a secret meeting in Trump Tower—New York, not Moscow—to get dirt from the Russians on Hillary.

The fishy story became even fishier after Giuliani appeared on TV again and admitted, well—come to think of it—Trump and his pirate pals were pursuing the deal up until November 2016. Possibly that business deal—with the Russians—was in the works up to Election Day.

Rudy says Trump never signed the letter.

Even Trump has admitted that working on deal would be a conflict (see: 11/29-30/18), and so he had never pursued it, Giuliani had no other recourse than to argue that there where there is no harm there is no foul. A presidential candidate trying to cash in big with the Russians? That candidate perhaps having worked secretly with Russians hoping to swing the U.S. election? Where’s the harm in that?

So what if the “Fake News” people said there was a letter of intent, dated 10/28/15, to go forward with the deal. Trump said repeatedly during the campaign and later as president, that he had no dealings in Russia. Now, Rudy admitted, “There was a letter of intent to go forward, but no one signed it.”

Almost as soon as that line of BS spewed from his lips, CNN revealed it had in fact obtained a signed contract.

Okay, Rudy admitted lamely, Trump signed it after all. What are you going to do? Rudy wasn’t under oath.

LIES #154-156: At least one additional lie by Flynn, redacted in court papers; the deal in Moscow was being pursued until June 2016, or maybe November 2016; no one signed the contract.

If you counted all the times Trump said he had no dealings in Russia, you’d have to add at least 50 lies. (We don’t count duplicates. We’d need a calculator.)

  

*

IN A RECENT POLL 62% of Americans say they don’t believe the president is being honest about his dealings with Russia.

Only 34% think he is.

That 34% needs to read my blog.

12/27/18: Nineteen months ago, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to lead an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

And today a possible bombshell exploded.

Cell phone signals allegedly put Cohen in Prague—with Russians.

Just hours ago, McClatchy reported that cell phone records in the hands of Mueller’s team show signals from a phone number registered to Michael Cohen were bounced off a tower near Prague in August 2016.

To understand the explosive nature of this development—if proved true—you have to go back to the famous Steele dossier, which first came to light in January 2017. The handiwork of Christopher Steele, a former British spy, the most salacious revelations involved Donald Trump—in a Moscow hotel in 2013—with Russian prostitutes peeing—a kind of nightmare version of Clue. That story, of course, has never been proven and the president has labeled the dossier “a pile of garbage” ever since.

Nevertheless, a number of other allegations have since proven true. Keith Schiller, Trump’s bodyguard has admitted that while he and Trump were staying in Moscow, the Russians did offer to send five prostitutes up to the Boss’s room. Schiller claims Trump never took them up on the offer. But nothing we have learned about Trump in the last few years would incline us to believe he wouldn’t accept such an offer. We do know General Flynn visited Moscow and was paid by the Russians to give a speech. Steele reported that first. Steele claimed the Russians were involved in a sophisticated internet campaign to harm Hillary Clinton and boost Trump. Again, Steele’s sources and conclusions were correct. Steele was right again when he reported that Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser, met with Russian officials in Moscow in the summer of 2016.

Hackers working under the Kremlin’s direction.

More recently, we learned that the dossier was spot on again. “The Kremlin’s cultivation operation on TRUMP also comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia,” Steele reported. Michael Cohen—who also figures in the dossier—has now admitted negotiations  related to building a Trump Tower in Moscow continued until at least June 2016. And Rudy Giuliani let slip that business negotiations for the deal continued right up to Election Day, when for obvious reasons the deal had to be killed.

And covered up?

Now, today’s revelation threatens to drive one of the last nails required to seal up the Trump coffin. Steele’s sources told him two years ago that Cohen had traveled to Prague in the summer of 2016.  Cohen was there “to clean up the mess” created by media reports about Paul Manafort’s “corrupt relationship” with Russian oligarchs and Page’s suspicious Moscow trip. According to Steele, “Kremlin officials” were going to help Cohen with a cover up if they could.

Here’s how he put it in the dossier:

“The agenda [for the meeting/s] comprised questions on how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the CLINTON campaign and various contingencies for covering up these operations and Moscow’s secret liaison with the TRUMP team more generally.”

In other words, Cohen’s meeting with Russians, if it can be proved, would be the very essence of collusion, or what would legally be “conspiracy,” beyond any doubt.

The question is what is Cohen saying behind closed doors?

Can we be sure? We do know Cohen has always waved his passport at reporters when asked about any such trip, showing that it had never been stamped for a visit to the Czech Republic. And for a long time the trail—if there was a trail—appeared to end there. Last April, however, McClatchy reported that sources were saying Mueller could prove Cohen traveled to Germany and then hopped a train to Prague. Since he never left the confines of the European Union, his passport would never have been stamped and he could cross the border into the Czech Republic without notice.

Cohen has denied this latest report, too. Since he has been cooperating with Mueller’s team, a denial, at first glance, seems to put the rumor to rest. “Why would he lie now?” the logic goes.  The question is what is Cohen saying behind closed doors? If he admits, or has already admitted, that as representative of the Trump campaign he and the Russians were working on a cover up, this would be akin to the Watergate moment when it was revealed Nixon liked to make tapes.

We do know this. Investigators have been gathering all kinds of evidence against suspects in the Russia probe. At every step of the way, Mueller has shown in court that he has bank records, emails, electronic intercepts and corroborating witnesses, too. For that reason, I would suspect that prosecutors might want Cohen to issue a denial. If he’s cooperating in this instance—and he’s been cooperating extensively, we know—Mueller would not want as-yet unindicted subjects of the investigation to know. And if you’re Don Jr., or Jared Kushner, or Roger Stone, or especially President Trump, you have yet more reason to sweat.

(Author’s note: this is supposition; I am not ready to bet my house on the question of what Cohen has already said. I do try to stick to the facts.)

1/9/18: The president’s big, beautiful, best Oval Office speech ever [on the need for a border wall] lands with a Trump Thud. No one is really moved by what he says and most Americans know he’s lying to begin. He doesn’t even have the nerve to mention terrorists pouring across the border—because the “Fake News” folks have been catching him and his surrogates lying about the numbers. Was it 3,000 terrorists pouring in from Mexico? Or maybe 40,000? Or 100,000,000? Trump and his toadies couldn’t make up their minds.

It was a lot, though!!!!

Meanwhile, if you were hiding in your Safe Room, loading your weapons to repel dark-skinned lepers—many carrying smallpox—because you binge on Fox News, you may have missed a number of critical developments in the Russia probe. First, the Grand Jury empaneled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been extended for six more months. That means when Trump sticks his head out of the White House on February 2, he’s going to see his fat shadow and know there’s six more months of Mueller coming.

The Big Orange Enchilada.

Second, we learn that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has decided to step down once a new Attorney General is in place. We also know that William Barr, Trump’s choice to take over at Justice, is scheduled for Senate confirmation hearings next week. At first blush, the president has to be excited to know that another top nemesis is bowing out of the Russia fight. Yet, before the Big Orange Enchilda (see: Watergate, for reference) breaks out the champagne he might want to puzzle out what this likely means. It’s a distinct possibility that Rosenstein knows the investigation is now guaranteed to draw Trump blood—and copious amounts—and he sees the chance to be a stronger voice in defense of the rule of law on the outside of the government than in, giving us warnings about what he, Mueller and many others already know.

In fact, the bullets keep flying by the president’s head—and just missing. But the law of averages says, metaphorically, that Trump can’t dodge them all. For example, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have just announced that the very first witness they plan to call back—and place under oath before testifying—is Donald J. Trump, Jr.

We can expect the president’s surrogates to start whining again about “perjury traps” in which poor Jr. might inadvertently plant an expensively-shod foot. The problem in that case is that Jr. almost certainly already has both feet in traps and maybe two or three other valuable appendages, plus at least one ear caught.

Look for televised hearings soon—and watch live as the president’s son takes the Fifth. (I’ll take a couple of friendly bets from my conservative friends that Don Jr. gets indicted before the year is out.)

Second participant in Trump Tower meeting indicted.

Why might Don Jr. be sweating profusely these days? We need to go back to the infamous Trump Tower meeting (June 2016), which he and everyone else kept secret until the “Fake News” folks broke the mystery a year later. One participant, Paul Manafort, has already been convicted on eight felony counts. Now a second participant, Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended the meeting—and that would be the Russian lawyer with ties to top Russian government officials—has been indicted.

If you’re a Trump lover, keep in mind, before you turn in to Fox News to hear Sean Hannity make excuses for Don Jr., this isn’t Mueller’s call. This investigation comes out of the Southern District of New York, a federal attorney’s office headed up by a Trump appointee.

There are no “17 angry Democrats” here to bitch about.

The Russian lawyer’s case may not be directly tied to the Mueller probe, but it hints at where Mueller is clearly going. Veselnitskaya is accused of obstructing justice. Why? She was covering up a trail of Russian money-laundering.

(Since she is currently residing in Russia, you figure Veselnitskaya isn’t going to go to jail anytime soon.)

Ah, the money-laundering! Of course! A highly-secret court challenge—believed to be related to a demand for documents filed by Mueller and his team—has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The case involves a “mysterious foreign-owned company” that has so far refused to comply with a subpoena for documents. The lower courts have said that a fine of $50,000 per day shall be imposed, so long as the company remains in contempt. So the company appealed.

And now the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected that appeal—without a single dissenting vote.

I try to be realistic in my assessments. I still don’t see evidence to impeach the Enchilada. (But I’m getting the feeling Mueller may have more than enough.)  So I am going to venture an educated guess. I suspect the company is Deutsche Bank. But it could be the Bank of Cyprus, where Paul Manafort and Russian oligarchs used to hide their loot. Or it could be any number of Russian money-laundering fronts.

Get your senses checked: You may be dead.

I am definitely going to say this new development is NOT good news for President Trump and his pals.

That brings us back to Manafort yet again. In a filing blunder this week, his lawyers failed to redact portions of a court document that offers another window into what Mueller and his team already know. And if you don’t read the court documents—and I do, because I’m kind of obsessed—you don’t realize Mueller always knows way more than the targets of his investigation think he knows. Now, we know (by mistake) that Manafort shared polling data with the Russians, while leading the Trump 2016 campaign. We already knew he was deeply in debt at the time—to a Russian oligarch. Mueller apparently has evidence that puts Manafort in a secret meeting with Konstantin Kilimnick, a former Russian intelligence officer, in August 2016 and in another secret meeting in Madrid in early 2017. This kind of passing of data would likely have been meant to aid the Russians in refining their efforts to disrupt the election.

I know, I know. “NO COLLUSION,” as the Big Orange Enchilada likes to tweet. But if you don’t sense 

CONSPIRACY,

you had better have your eyes, ears, nose, taste and sense of touch checked. In fact, you may already be dead.

1/10/19: Mark your calendars. Set your alarm clock. Schedule a day of vacation. Shit’s about to get real.

Donald Trump’s former fixer, and longtime lawyer Michael Cohen, has agreed to testify voluntarily, under oath, before the House Oversight Committee. Cohen, who will appear on February 7, has already plead guilty to lying to Congress in a previous session and will now return, knowing he’s headed for jail in March, facing a three-year sentence for multiple felonies.

And here we should note: If this were North Korea under Kim Jong-un or Iraq under Saddam or Russia under Putin, Cohen would already be dead. This might explain why President Trump is always eager to praise authoritarian rulers. You figure, he’s jealous of the powers they possess.

You know how he is. Trump said he admired the way Saddam took care of terrorists (actually: gassing 5,000 Kurds). He said he and Kim, who heads the most repressive regime in the world, “fell in love” and that Kim “really cares about his people” (120,000 political prisoners in his own gulag). He sent Putin congratulations after he won his last election (by banning other leading candidates and ordering critics beaten to death or poisoned for fun). In fact, Trump used to be a fan of Najib Razak of Malaysia—but then Najib got into a jam (for stealing an estimated $1.7 billion from his people), got booted out of office and ended up in jail.

Wait, we were talking about Cohen!

What does Trump have to fear if his former fixer spills some beans before Congress? First, we know Cohen has tapes of conversations (a lawyer may legally tape a client without his or her consent in the State of New York). Second, we know investigators in the Southern District of New York (the U.S. Attorney in charge for the district is a Trump appointee) seized hundreds of thousands of pages of documents in raids on Cohen’s home, office and safe deposit box. Third, Cohen knows where the many fiscal bodies are buried. He can testify about hush money payments during the 2016 campaign and how Trump wanted those payments made, about the secret company they decided to set up and the legal documents filled with pseudonyms they used. There are rumors of additional hush money settlements, as yet unknown, too.

We also know that Cohen lied about the Trump campaign and continuing efforts to pursue a mega-million deal to build a Trump Tower Moscow. Way back when, when collusion was only a glimmer in James Comey’s eye, Cohen insisted negotiations for a deal ended in January 2016. Trump didn’t come forward at the time to correct his fixer. He said he had no dealings in Russia—and told reporters he wouldn’t think of having such dealings because—well—that would clearly be a conflict for a man running for president. (You can have fun and go back and listen to the “Fake News” story from CNN, which we now know was very accurate and very real.). Now we know that Cohen and even the president’s current lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, agree. Negotiations were continuing right up till Election Day.

Cohen once said the deal could be worth “hundreds of millions” to Mr. Trump if it ever went through.

So what potential torpedoes can Cohen put through the hull of the U.S.S. Trump? (I am assuming someday the Navy might name a garbage scow after the 45^th President of the United States.)

Cohen admits he lied to Congress. Trump surrogates are going to go all out, claiming we can’t believe Cohen at all—because he’s an admitted liar. But what if Cohen can prove he lied to Congress because Trump ordered him too?

That’s one torpedo, right to the boiler room.

Cohen has hinted that he knows about a planning meeting—prior to the secret Trump Tower New York meeting with Russians—has hinted that Candidate Trump knew all about that meeting—and if he can prove that Candidate Trump lied, that’s a torpedo that blows off the rudder.

Like a U-boat striking from the depths, Cohen can potentially sink the U.S.S. Trump with a shot to the bow if he reveals tax cheating (Cohen has been convicted of tax cheating himself) by Candidate Trump.

In fact, on February 7, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee might just want to ask, “Mr. Cohen, are there any matters of illegality you would like to tell us about, involving Mr. Trump or the Trump campaign?”

Then they can sit back and listen to the torpedoes explode.

*

IF YOU DON’T THINK the president is worried about submarines, compare his initial reaction, when Cohen’s office was raided to his reaction once he realized Cohen was going to flip. When investigators first served a warrant on Cohen, Trump said it was an outrage that they “broke into” his office. It was an “attack on our country.”  Cohen was “a good man.” (You can watch Trump on Fox News.) Then Cohen began to cooperate and the president’s tune suddenly changed. Now Cohen was a “serial liar.” No one should ever hire him again.

In fact, when he really thought about it, Trump realized Cohen was a “rat.”

Now we know why the president was so upset. Cohen may be in a position to prove that the “collusion” was real, that the collusion was a “conspiracy,” and that the whole foundation of the 2016 campaign, up until the moment they realized they were going to win, was to make as much money—with the help of Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin pals—as they possibly could. All it would require was helping the Russians undermine our presidential election and damage the future president, widely assumed to be Hillary Clinton, as they went along.

1/11/19: The New York Times reports that F.B.I. agents were so concerned by all the Trump campaign contacts with Russia that they launched an investigation into whether or not the candidate and then president was operating as an agent of Vladimir Putin.

1/12/19: The U.S. government remains partially shut down, marking Day 22 of the Trump Tantrum Shutdown.

That means the president can sit around in his underwear and randomly tweet. At 5:36 a.m. he’s already running amok on Twitter. Apparently he just read The New York Times article from the previous day, which carries the headline: “F.B.I. Investigated if Trump Worked for the Russians.”

We’ll come back to that in a few moments; but Trump’s first tweet of the day (he deletes the post at 5:36 but repeats it at 6:05) reads,

Wow, just learned in the Failing New York Times that the corrupt former leaders of the FBI, almost all fired or forced to leave the agency for some very bad reasons, opened up an investigation on me, for no reason & with no proof, after I fired Lyin’ James Comey, a total sleaze!

Three hours later, he’s still tweeting madly about Comey and Mueller and all the law enforcement officials out to get him.

*

TRUMP SPENDS A GOOD PART of the rest of the day arguing about his unlimited power to declare a national emergency whenever he wants. But while we’re on the topic of unlimited executive power, let’s consider what caused the president to flip out earlier in the day. As mentioned, he got off to a rousing start, before the sun was up, labeling former F.B.I. Director James Comey a “sleaze.”

So let’s pause periodically as we proceed and consider these matters rationally, whether we like James Comey or not. Comey was a top law enforcement official for many, many years, not someone you would think lied with regularity. By contrast, Trump’s personal lawyer is a nine-time convicted felon and Trump’s former campaign manager has ten felonies—so far—to his name.

Did Trump say Comey was a “sleaze?” Did Comey cheat on three wives in a row—or was that Trump?

Clearly as investigators close in on his inner circle, Trump feels he has no choice but to keep laying down a smokescreen of furious tweets. By the time he’s done (after nearly four hours on Twitter) this morning, Trump has howled about “the rigged & botched Crooked Hillary investigation.” He has complained again that Clinton was guilty of the “Real Collusion,” even though he constantly tells supporters that “COLLUSION” is no crime. He has insisted that, “My firing of James Comey was a great day for America.” Then he called him “a Crooked Cop.” Finally, the president screamed about how Comey had been protected by his “best friend, Bob Mueller, & the 13 Angry Democrats,” and tried to brand that entire crew as “leaking machines.”

Here, again, it’s important to pause and think rationally. Mueller is a decorated combat veteran. He was once so highly respected that the U.S. Senate confirmed his appointment to head the F.B.I. by a vote of 100-0. The “13 Angry Democrats,” which Trump sometimes calls the “17 Angry Democrats,” when he’s particularly enraged, are 13 or 17 top legal minds at the Department of Justice.

They aren’t people who make a habit of lies.

How about Trump? He was a serial bankruptcy artist before he became president, the man who paid off a porn star, paid off a Playboy Bunny, and bragged about grabbing women by the pussy whenever he wished. He was the guy who said for many months that he did not believe the Russians even hacked the election—because good old Vladimir Putin told him they did not.

Still, in another tweet, the Big Orange Enchilada claimed, “I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President.” That’s almost too absurd to require comment; but we must respond rationally again. This is the guy who told a young Russian woman (since indicted on a felony count) at one campaign event that he didn’t think we’d need the sanctions Obama had slapped on Russia for invading Crimea once he took charge. He was the guy who praised Putin’s leadership—the guy who said Putin wasn’t such a killer—and, finally, the guy who had a deal cooking which would have provided Putin a free $50 million apartment if, in turn, Trump got to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

You know: what sounds like a bribe.

Yet, in one final morning tweet, the president summed up his week case by blasting “Lyin’ James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter S [Strzok] and his lover, agent Lisa Page, & more” and called them just “some of the losers that tried to do a number on your President.”

You can argue that all of those named F.B.I. leaders and agents made mistakes of judgment in handling this whole sordid affair; but none of them have been convicted of felonies or accused of colluding with a hostile foreign power, possibly for the purpose of raking in piles of rubles.

Do you see a pattern yet? Because: you should.

Rationally, let’s consider “some of the losers” that actually figure prominently in the Russia investigation, so far:

You have Cohen, of course, who worked for Trump for a decade, and who now faces three years in jail.

You have Felix Sater—a twice-convicted felon when he went to work for Trump—and, with Cohen, most directly involved on the Russian end in trying to broker the Trump Tower Moscow deal.

Then throw in General Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s first choice for National Security Adviser, a gentleman who took a $45,000 paycheck for giving a speech in Russia, who lied to Vice President Pence about his contacts with Russians and lied to the F.B.I., too. General Flynn could have been nailed on multiple felonies, including taking $530,000 from the Turkish government while also theoretically working for the government of the United States.

Flynn’s only salvation came when he agreed to cooperate with Mueller and his team and got off with a single felony count.

Add in two more Trump campaign associates. We know George Papadopoulos, who Trump listed as a foreign policy adviser, also lied about contacts with Russian agents. He pled guilty to a single felony even though F.B.I. agents noted that he had lied repeatedly and on multiple occasions. Then we include Rick Gates, who worked for the campaign up through Inauguration Day, who has pled guilty to multiple felony counts.

Do you see a pattern yet? Because: you should.

And we’re still not done. You have Roger Stone (who says he expects to be indicted soon). Stone initially told a congressional panel that he had never met with any Russians or even anyone who sounded Russian during the campaign. Once he got wind that investigators were closing in he suddenly remembered! He did meet with a Russian—who wanted $2 million to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton. He was going to “amend” his previous testimony, he said.

Nor should we forget Carter Page, the first man in the campaign to raise eyebrows at the C.I.A. and F.B.I., related to suspicious contacts in Russia. Page first claimed he never met with top Russian officials during a visit to Moscow in 2016. Then, well, what do you know, he remembered.

He did!

All three upstanding American citizens forgot.

We would certainly be remiss if we failed to mention Don Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, who took a secret meeting with agents of the Russian Federation in June 2016. We should point out again that for thirteen months all three of these fine American citizens forgot they ever laid eyes on any Russians during the campaign. Then The New York Times revealed the tale and they had admitted they had. And then Don Jr. and Don Sr. lied about the purpose of the meeting. 7/9/19

And The New York Times caught them lying again.

That’s the same paper, of course, whose story touched off the latest tweet blizzard from inside the White House today. The opening lines of the article should give any loyal American pause; and if you are one who likes Trump, you have to pray the Times isn’t right, as it has been before.  

Reporters explain:

In the days after President Trump fired James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, law enforcement officials became so concerned by the president’s behavior that they began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests, according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the investigation.

The inquiry carried explosive implications. Counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president’s own actions constituted a possible threat to national security. Agents also sought to determine whether Mr. Trump was knowingly working for Russia or had unwittingly fallen under Moscow’s influence.

Who exactly provided this information to the Times remains unclear—so Trump can’t really know who the “leaking machines” are. In fact, much of the article rests on testimony before Congress.

So: Nancy Pelosi, perhaps?

One iron fact remains.

It’s not the sourcing that matters if what the sources say proves correct in the end. And it may not. The Times, itself, is careful to say as much. It’s unclear, they report, whether or not Mueller and his team are still pursuing the “counterintelligence matter.” The story also notes that some critics feel law enforcement officials “overstepped” their bounds in opening the investigation to begin. One iron fact remains. The potential danger to our country was clear and law enforcement agents had to try to make sure that a president would not shut down an investigation in order to protect himself.

If that happened,

“Not only would it be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done, and that is what would be the threat to national security [emphasis added],” Mr. [James A.] Baker [former F.B.I. general counsel] said in his testimony, portions of which were read to The New York Times. Mr. Baker did not explicitly acknowledge the existence of the investigation of Mr. Trump to congressional investigators.

Additional testimony by Lisa Page (who did indeed leave the F.B.I. under a cloud, primarily because of emails she wrote denigrating Candidate Trump) also is quoted, outlining the danger:

“In the Russian Federation and in President Putin himself, you have an individual whose aim is to disrupt the Western alliance and whose aim is to make Western democracy more fractious in order to weaken our ability, America’s ability and the West’s ability to spread our democratic ideals,” Lisa Page, a former bureau lawyer, told House investigators in private testimony reviewed by The Times.

“That’s the goal, to make us less of a moral authority to spread democratic values,” she added. Parts of her testimony were first reported by The Epoch Times [another multi-lingual publication in New York City].

If you’re a Trump supporter you can read what Rudy Giuliani says in response. “The fact that it [the investigation] goes back a year and a half and nothing came of it that showed a breach of national security means they found nothing.” 

You can believe that and move on.

Or you can think rationally about all of this. Why wouldn’t Page criticize Trump in a raft of emails—if she and other agents had cause to believe the candidate might be working to advance Russia’s interests and not our nation’s own? I don’t know about you. I’d criticize anyone I thought was doing the same.

A better than even bet, he’s not.

What do we know for sure by the time we reach the last sentence of this latest story in the Times? We know we know only a small fraction of what investigators already know. We don’t know yet what Candidate/President Trump did or what he knew about what all his surrogates knew. But we know the F.B.I. had real reason, from the start, first about his campaign, and later, about the integrity of the president himself. We know that “four of Mr. Trump’s associates” were under investigation before he was elected. We know those four all lied about contacts with Russians.

We know, then, that Giuliani is whistling “The Hymn of the Russian Federation,” when he says investigators have “found nothing.”

We know they’ve found plenty so far.

And we know the search must continue, whether or not it proves in the end that the president was innocent himself. At this point, we have to know.

So far, it’s a better than even bet, he’s not.

Benedict Arnold even looks like Trump. Check out those jowls.

1/13/19: Late last night, while one evil entity in America was being vanquished (Satan’s team, the Dallas Cowboys), the Washington Post broke another damning story about the best president Russia’s ever had, Donald J. Trump.

The story boils down to this. Trump has met with Vladimir Putin on five occasions since taking office. On each occasion he has gone to “extraordinary lengths” to keep records of their conversations secret. After meeting with the Russian strongman in Hamburg in July 2017, for example, Trump confiscated his interpreter’s notes. He also warned the linguist not to reveal what had been discussed to other top administration officials. Trump did allow then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to sit in on that meeting; but there is still no official record of what Trump and Putin said.

The secrecy was even more profound when Trump and Putin met again in Helsinki last summer.  This time the only other American allowed in the room was Marina Gross, a veteran translator.

To this day, there seem to be few in the Trump administration who actually know what Trump said in that last big meeting (or what he said in three other brief meetings with Putin, including one with only Putin’s translator present).

The meeting in July 2017 in Hamburg was odd enough; but Trump’s interpreter later told reporters that the president did, in fact, ask Putin if the Russians had interfered during the 2016 election. Putin said “no.” The interpreter said the President of the United States responded, “I believe you.”

Trump then went in front of reporters and repeated that line. He asked Putin about the interference. Putin denied it.

Trump said he believed him.

Two buds: July 7, 2107.

Trump said he believed Putin. He knew Russians had interfered.

So why does this all ring new bells eighteen months later? Only now do we learn, by way of the Post, that Trump was destroying or taking possession of notes from meetings with Putin. That first long meeting in Hamburg took place on July 7, 2017. On Air Force One, returning to the United States that same day, Trump and several top aides went to work crafting a letter to explain a secret meeting Don Jr. had with Russians in Trump Tower in June 2016.

The president knew The New York Times was about to break the story of the meeting and he and his staff wanted to have an explanation ready. So they put together a cover story about the purpose of the meeting.

The meeting was “primarily” about adoption.

Only The New York Times would prove within days that the primary purpose of the meeting wasn’t adoption. The primary purpose—and the Times had emails to prove it—was for Don Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort to gather dirt—from the Russians—on Mrs. Hillary Clinton.

That means that the president was lying when he said he believed Putin when he said the Russians didn’t interfere in the election.

Trump knew they did.

In response to this latest revelation, Press Secretary Pinocchio insisted this week that this unusual behavior by the president was simply a function of his desire to avoid “leaks.” She went on to trot out the same old line. Oh, Trump has been harder on the Russians, even, than Napoleon Bonaparte.

But why did Trump lie—about the purpose of the meeting (we’ve already counted that lie)—and why did he lie about believing Putin?

And why has he been grabbing up all the pertinent notes?

LIE #157: Trump already knew the Russians had interfered in the election.

He told reporters he believed Putin’s denial.

1/15/19: If you weren’t able to find time to watch the confirmation hearings for William Barr, the president’s nominee for Attorney General, the sound you heard was the repeated bitch slapping Barr was delivering to the president.

We already knew Trump was having a hard week/month/year/first (and only) term in office. It couldn’t have felt any better if he was listening to Barr answer questions before a Senate panel.

Nope! Not a witch hunt. Sorry.

Not all experts agree that Barr had managed to put to rest the deepest concerns of Democrat senators and informed citizens. But only the greatest suck ups could possibly be telling the president tonight that what Barr said during the hearings offered validation of his basic positions.

Barr was asked, for example, if he believed Robert Mueller was engaged in a “witch hunt.” Trump has ranted about a “witch hunt” a thousand times since he took office and one can assume talks about the “witch hunt” in his sleep.

Barr replied that he didn’t believe that Mueller was the type of man who “would be involved in a witch hunt.”

SLAP!!

Barr informed the panel that he had met with Trump in the summer of 2017, to discuss a role with the president’s legal defense team. He said the meeting was brief. He declined the invitation. Trump asked him what Mueller was like. “I said,” Barr told the senators, “Bob is a straight shooter and should be dealt with as such.” He and Mueller were “good friends,” he added. He and his wife “would be good friends” with Mueller and his wife long after the Russia investigation ended.

Slap! Slap!

If Trump’s orange cheeks weren’t already stinging, Barr was asked about former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to recuse himself. Trump kept howling about that until, finally, he fired Barr’s predecessor. Barr offered the opinion that Sessions “probably did the right thing.”

SLAP!!

Well, then, senators wondered, did the nominee think Trump’s current lawyer, Horndog Rudy, was correct in insisting that any report from Mueller should be handed over to the White House “for correction” before it was submitted?

“That’s not going to happen,” Barr responded, not even bothering to elaborate.

SLAP!!!

The sharp sound of open hand to fat presidential cheek could be heard again and again. Barr said Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—a Trump nemesis—was an honorable man. He said it was “vitally important” that Special Counsel Mueller be allowed to complete his investigation. Would it be a problem, a Democratic senator inquired, if the president offered a pardon in return for silence from a witness? Barr said that would be “obstruction of justice.” Would he ever carry out an order to fire Robert Mueller without good cause? “If any president attempts to intervene in a matter he has a stake in to protect himself that should first be looked at as a breach of his constitutional duties,” Barr responded. He even posed what he said was an “easy” hypothetical to answer. If a president intervened to halt an investigation into his family or business—not that any of us think Trump would ever—“That would be a breach of his obligation under the Constitution to faithfully execute the law.” Finally, what would Barr do if ordered to remove Mueller in order to shut down a legitimate investigation?

Barr said without hesitation, he would resign.

Slap! Slap! SLAP! SLAP! SLAPPITY SLAP!!

SLAP!

We can’t know for sure, but I suspect, if Trump was listening at that point, that he fainted dead away. We do know, for the next twenty hours not a creature was heard stirring in the White House.

Trump’s Twitter feed went silent.

*

IN RELATED NEWS, Special Counsel Mueller—who is definitely not conducting a witch hunt—filed a fresh set of court documents. Rick Gates, former Trump campaign adviser, is still cooperating in “several investigations.”

That’s right: Several!

A soap opera and a spy novel.

Finally, the Wall Street Journal reports that former Trump confidant Michael Cohen plans to testify in front of Congress and air all the dirty laundry he has ever helped wash, dry and fold.  Sources tell the paper, Cohen will relate “the story of what it’s like to work for a madman.”

“He’s going to say things,” a Cohen ally says, “that will give you chills.”

Or, as one liberal pundit puts it, there are now two parallel stories playing out related to the president.

Cohen’s story is a soap opera.

Mueller’s is a spy novel.

1/17/19: Day 27: The federal government remains partially closed and the president’s approval ratings are cratering.

Those approval numbers aren’t likely to rise once Americans awake Thursday and listen to the news. During an evening appearance on Chris Cuomo’s CNN show, Rudy Giuliani got riled up about recent news coverage of his boss. “The amount of false reporting about this case,” he shouted, referencing new revelations in the Russia investigation, “is despicable.” Rudy was ready to spit, he was so mad, now that reporters were saying the F.B.I. had opened a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump 2016 campaign. And Rudy was steaming because reporters had also said that Trump had gone to extremes to keep secret his communications with Putin.

Cuomo disagreed with Rudy’s definition of “false reporting,” noting that Rudy hadn’t always been a fount of accurate information, himself. “‘False reporting,’” the host replied, “is saying nobody in the campaign had any contact with Russia. ‘False reporting’ is saying that there has been no suggestion of any type of collusion between the campaign and Russians. Now you have Paul Manafort giving data to…”

Rudy exploded. “You just misstated my position. I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign. I have not. I said the president of the United States.”

Cuomo raised an eyebrow like Rudy had just claimed he had X-ray vision and could always tell what color underwear supermodels were wearing.

Yes, you did,” he rejoined.

Maybe others did collude, Rudy says.

Rudy was too busy wagging his finger to notice. “There is not a single bit of evidence that the President of the United States committed the only crime he could have committed here, conspired with the Russians to hack the DNC,” he shouted.

So there you had it—and almost every news outlet noticed—except Fox News, where the topic for discussion all day was the next caravan headed for the southern border.

While viewers of Fox were looking south in horror—and loading up their AR-15s in preparation to repel an imaginary invasion, Horndog Rudy was retreating. Where Trump and his sycophants had been claiming for almost three years that no one on the campaign ever met with any Russians, and, no, they hadn’t been working on a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the campaign, and, oh, the F.B.I. was biased and mean, and, how sad that members of the Trump team kept sticking their feet in perjury traps, and, collusion wasn’t even a crime—now Rudy was abandoning almost all of these defensive positions.

He wasn’t saying people working for Trump during the campaign didn’t collude with Russians (which by the way = conspiracy).

He was only saying the president didn’t.

Cuomo and Giuliani then began arguing about what Trump has previously said. Cuomo said Trump had said no one in his campaign colluded. Rudy said, Nu uh. Trump never said that.

Cuomo wondered how it wouldn’t be collusion (conspiracy) if Manafort handed over polling data to the Russians, as Mueller’s investigators now allege. Rudy said it wouldn’t be collusion because all campaigns share polling data.

Um…with Russians?

Cuomo looked stunned again.

Anyway, Rudy goes “blah, blah, if this was bad there would have been a counterterrorism investigation, blah, blah, blah, they found nothing, blah, blah, blah, blah, Trump had no idea what Manafort was doing.

Or to sum what may be President Trump’s final line of defense: Manafort might have colluded; but Trump didn’t know it. Cohen might have colluded. Trump didn’t know it. Same with Flynn and Gates and that “coffee boy” fellow. Maybe they all colluded; but the guy running the campaign had no idea. And it doesn’t matter. Collusion isn’t a crime—unless Hillary Clinton does it.

You know, listening to Rudy yammer, that he knows Mueller is closing in on his boss. So it’s time to throw a few campaign aides to the wolves and try to satiate their hunger for human flesh. 

Sitting in his jail cell, if Manafort is listening, he might want to start thinking again about cooperating fully with Mr. Mueller.

1/25/19: Day 35 of the Tantrum Shutdown starts with a bang when F.B.I. agents raid the home of former Trump adviser Roger Stone.

“F.B.I. Open the door!”

At 6:00 a.m. a caravan of law enforcement vehicles pulls up in front of Mr. Stone’s Fort Lauderdale abode. It’s dark and dozens of officers, some heavily armed and wearing tactical vests fan out to cover the entrances, guns drawn.

An officer knocks at the front door. “F.B.I.,” he shouts. “Open the door.” (Too bad he didn’t add, “You dirty rat!”)

Still no light inside—and the agent shouts again, “F.B.I. Warrant!”

Moments later, Stone opens the door, is placed under arrest, and led away in handcuffs.

Stone in palmier days.

*

A THOUSAND MILES to the north, in Washington, D.C., the president is either sleeping late or hiding under his bed, because when I check his Twitter feed at 8:07 a.m. he still hasn’t posted.

This is a rarity for a man who typically tweets before the sun has peeked over the eastern horizon.

Once the president does catch up to the story, you know he’s going to lose his shit. First, Stone has been indicted on seven felony counts. You have obstruction of justice for the appetizer, five counts of making false statements for the main course, and a count of witness tampering for desert.

Even worse for Trump and his pals, the indictment makes clear that while Stone was allegedly breaking the law senior officials in the Trump 2016 campaign allegedly urged him to continue. If you dive into the indictment—which “Fake News” CNN was kind enough to provide—you quickly realize that this is major bad news for Old Twitter Thumbs. From page 2, forward, we see land mines that could explode as Trump and his top aides try to cross an increasingly complex legal minefield without blowing themselves to tiny Trump bits.

For example, a senior campaign official “was directed” by an unnamed person to contact Stone and find out if WikiLeaks (“Organization 1” in the filing) was planning to dump more stolen emails to harm the Clinton campaign.

Press Secretary Pinocchio will claim later in the day that, “The charges brought against Mr. Stone have nothing to do with this president.” But with that, Sanders’ nose only grows another inch. Reading between the lines, the entire court filing is aimed at the president and his campaign.

Who in that campaign could have directed a senior official—save a more important personage? The suspicion falls immediately on Donald J. Trump. (There’s an outside chance that Stone might have been directed by Don Jr. or Jared Kushner or some other shady character, like Steve Bannon.) And for whose benefit was Stone doing all this dirty work? Everything described in the indictment was done to further the campaign.

In the summer of 2016, for example, the indictment notes, “Stone was contacted by senior Trump Campaign officials to inquire about future releases [of stolen emails] by Organization 1.”

Note the plural: “officials.”

As noted, “Organization 1” is WikiLeaks, proud possessor that summer of thousands of stolen Clinton and Democratic National Committee emails. These emails were hacked (as we now know) by Russians and passed on to do harm to her campaign.

In other words: Russian interference in a U.S. election.

Trump and top aides knew who was helping them out.

We know today how much of the rest of the story unfolded. In those days, Stone could claim that he had no idea the Russians were behind the hack. Yet, days after the first dump of damaging emails, Trump could go on stage and say, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” a reference to Mrs. Clinton’s now closed private email account.

Trump didn’t call for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks to find the emails, which would have made sense if he didn’t know the Russians were at work. He called on the Russians for help.

Soon after Trump took office, the story of Russian interference finally broke. Yet, the president insisted for more than a year that there was no evidence the Russians interfered. Now, this indictment comes ever closer to proving that Trump and his aides knew all along who was helping them out. (See: false cover letter issued about the Trump Tower meeting with Russians; 1/13/19.)

Eventually, Congress set to work. The Senate conducted a fairly serious investigation. Mr. Stone was called to appear before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes. (Nunes would later be labeled “Trump’s stooge” by his hometown paper.)

During testimony, Stone was asked about any contacts he had had with WikiLeaks or any Russian hackers. According to the indictment, Stone “made multiple false statements” in an effort to obstruct justice. He “denied possessing records that contained evidence” of interactions involving WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign—and those records he still possessed.

Stone asks for specific emails damaging to Clinton.

The indictment is damning in multiple ways:

After the July 22, 2016, release of stolen (Democratic National Committee) emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE [emphasis added] about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.

In other words, people close to Trump—and possibly Trump, himself—knew what Stone was up to and urged him to keep up the good work.

It is worth remembering, too, that a secret meeting in Trump Tower with agents of the Russian government had occurred just one month prior. It is also worth noting that in May 2016, Stone had met with a Russian agent offering dirt on Clinton; but that Russian wanted $2 million. We also know that Trump’s personal lawyer was working on a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow all that summer. So there’s no doubt Candidate Trump knew the Russians were willing to help him.

“On or about August 2, 2016,” prosecutors now allege,

Person 1 emailed STONE. Person 1 wrote that he was in Europe and planned to return about mid-August. Person 1 stated in part, “Word is friend in embassy [Julian Assange of WikiLeaks] plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.”

(Jerome Corsi, a right-wing conspiracy theorist has admitted he is “Person 1” and says that the information contained in the indictment is substantially correct as far as his role is concerned.)

At one point, according to the indictment, Stone goes so far as to request “Person 2” to contact the head of “Organization 1” and ask him to provide “any State [Department] or HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] e-mail from August 10 to August 30—particularly on August 20, 2011,” to support a damaging narrative related to the Democratic presidential candidate.

In other words, Stone is putting in an order for specific stolen emails. He and “Person 2,” now known to be Randy Credico, exchange a series of emails and text messages and sometimes speak by phone. According to the indictment, on or about October 2, 2016, Person 2 assures Stone, “big news Wednesday….now pretend u don’t know me.” Assange is about to drop another load of stolen emails. Two days later, Stone is communicating with a “supporter involved in the Trump campaign.” That supporter wants to know about other damaging info that might be coming. Stone replies, “Yes - want to talk on a secure line - got Whatsapp?”

These guys know they’re up to no good—and, from what we can tell—worry they’re breaking the law.

It will take months before the free press can start digging up the truth. But by the spring of 2017, both the House and Senate will have started investigations into Russian meddling in our election. Nunes’ panel will ask Stone for any records “that reasonably could lead to the discovery of facts within the investigation’s publicly-announced parameters.”

On May 22, Mr. Stone notifies Nunes and HPSCI that he has “no documents, records, or electronically stored information, regardless of form” that might help in any way. Happy to hear this wonderful news, Chairman Nunes—who has zero interest in actually uncovering any info damaging to Trump or his crew—wishes Stone a good day and prepares to send him on his way.

“You have no emails, no texts, no documents whatsoever?”

Sadly, for Mr. Stone, before he can dash for the exit, a Democratic member of the panel asks if he has any information about WikiLeaks, the timing of the email dumps, or the stolen Clinton emails. “You have no emails, no texts, no documents whatsoever, any kind of that nature?” his questioner asks.

“That is correct,” Stone responds. “Not to my recollection.”

The indictment alleges that Stone was lying at that point and would continue to do so for months:

In truth and in fact, STONE had sent and received numerous emails and text messages during the campaign, in which he discussed Organization 1, its head, and its possession of hacked emails. At the time of his false testimony, STONE was in possession of many of these emails and text messages…

Stone didn’t lie once or twice. He was asked if he had ever communicated by email or text with Person 2. “He’s not an email guy,” Stone explained. “No,” he added, there were no texts.

Mueller’s team includes a raft of emails and texts between Stone and “Person 2” in the indictment.

Stone was asked by investigators if he had discussed his conversations with “an intermediary” to Organization 1 “with anyone involved in the Trump campaign?”

The indictment notes: “Stone falsely and misleadingly answered, ‘I did not.’ In truth and in fact…STONE spoke to multiple individuals in the Trump campaign about what he claimed to have learned from his intermediary to Organization 1[.]”

Stone knew when he testified before Congress that there were witnesses who might reveal his trail. For that reason, on or about October 19, 2017, he began “urging Person 2…to falsely confirm” parts of his testimony. Person 2 “repeatedly told STONE that his testimony was false and told him to correct his testimony to HPSCI. STONE did not do so. STONE then engaged in a prolonged effort to prevent Person 2 from contradicting STONE’s false statements to HPSCI.”

In November, “Person 2” was invited to testify. Stone and Credico talked and emailed frequently in days ahead. Stone suggested that Credico say he “could not remember what he had told STONE,” or “alternatively…invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination” when called before the panel. On November 19, Credico notified Stone that his lawyer wanted to talk.

Stone channels Richard Nixon.

According to the indictment, Stone made it clear he wanted his friend to cover their tracks. Stone responded by quoting that pillar of rectitude, Richard Nixon, from the worst days of the Watergate Affair. “Stonewall it.” Stone suggested. “Plead the Fifth. Anything to save the plan.”

As if citing Nixon wasn’t bad enough, in December 2017, Stone and Credico repeatedly discussed the latter’s coming testimony. Stone channeled a character from The Godfather: Part II. Credico, he said, should pull a “Frank Pentangeli.” That is, like the movie character, he should tell the House panel he did not know “critical information that he does in fact know.”

Stone was clear. If Credico turned anything over to the F.B.I., he was “a fool.” Credico advised Stone, again, to correct his own testimony before it was too late. Stone responded, “Because of tromp [Trump?] I could never get away with a certain [sic] my Fifth Amendment rights but you can. I guarantee you you are the one who gets indicted for perjury if you’re stupid enough to testify.”

As events transpire, when called before Congress, “Person 2” does assert a Fifth Amendment right. Still, Stone and Credico realize they remain in danger and continue to discuss how to deal with ongoing investigations.

On December 24, Stone writes again to Credico, “I’m not talking to the FBI and if your [sic] smart you won’t either.”

By the spring of 2018, Credico has weakened. When he finally begins opening up to investigators Stone goes bonkers. “You are a rat. A stoolie. You back-stab your friends,” Stone howls. He threatens “to take that dog away from you,” a threat to Credico’s furry best friend.

“Prepare to die [expletive],” Stone adds to hammer home the point.

Your little dog gets it, too.

A central theme in all six indictments.

And so, Friday, there it was. A sixth member of the Trump 2016 campaign had been indicted; and a central theme ran through all six indictments. Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen, and Stone, had all been convicted of or accused of lying about contacts with Russian agents. The obvious question was: Why?

What were all six trying to hide?

In summary, this latest indictment alleges that from May at least through December 2017, “the defendant, ROGER JASON STONE JR., corruptly influenced, obstructed, impeded, and endeavored to influence, obstruct, and impede the due and proper exercise of the power of the inquiry” of congressional oversight panels.

That meant seven felony counts for Stone.

Naturally, Pinocchio the Press Secretary was trotted out early Friday morning to deny to reporters that the indictment had anything at all to do with the “White House” and, no, no, no, there was no collusion and…

Roger Stone?

Sanders hardly recognized his name.

The President of the United States remained notably silent—not tweeting once, till 11:16 a.m.

Then we got this: “Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?”

In reality, the president’s problem was clear. It wasn’t a matter of how CNN knew to be there when law enforcement officers rolled up to Stone’s dark home. The problem was that Stone had been caught with a Book of Spells in his mitts.

The next question investigators must answer is profound: Was the author of that book Donald J. Trump?

1/27/19: While you were busy watching Roger Stone get arrested at dawn and then try to explain away seven felony counts, you may have missed several other important stories. Before moving on, however, we should note that there are a lot of felons and accused felons in the orbit of President Trump. If we count only those who had contact with Russians during his 2016 campaign, we have:

Michael Cohen

Michael Flynn

Rick Gates

Paul Manafort

George Papdopoulos

Felix Sater (to be fair his felony convictions predate the campaign)

…and Roger Stone.

1/29/19: Testifying before a Senate panel, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray says he expects the Russians to interfere in the 2020 election. This is probably the best news the president hears all day.

1/31/19: New filings in the case of Roger Stone show that federal prosecutors have a vast trove of information seized in the raid on his home, offices and discovered on computers and other electronic devices.

Stone won’t be going to trial anytime soon and the Mueller investigation is far from over.

First, prosecutors will have to produce copies of any legally pertinent information they find to Stone’s defense team, a process called “discovery.” Second, they will have to examine the material they have and exclude any “privileged” information, such as client-attorney communications.

Finally, Mueller and his team will have to build up their case against Mr. Stone, and potentially others, as may be revealed:

This discovery is both voluminous and complex.  It is composed of multiple hard drives containing several terabytes of information consisting of, among other things, FBI case reports, search warrant applications and results (e.g., Apple iCloud accounts and email accounts), bank and financial records, and the contents of numerous physical devices (e.g., cellular phones, computers, and hard drives). The communications contained in the iCloud accounts, email accounts, and physical devices span several years. The government also intends to produce to the defense the contents of physical devices recently seized from his home, apartment, and office.

Those devices are currently undergoing a filter review by the FBI for potentially privileged communications.

To keep this development in perspective, a single terabyte is equivalent to 75 million pages like the one you are (hopefully) reading.

*

IF WE GO BACK a few weeks, to November 2018, we already knew that an unusually high number of sealed indictments (as many as 36), had been filed with the federal courts in Washington, D.C. It was inadvertently revealed that one of those 36 listed Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

Several legal analysts have suggested that Robert Mueller’s team, knowing the president might move to interfere with their work after the midterm election, filed the necessary papers in advance. In other words, the “winning” names would be revealed only when investigators finished their work—or whenever Trump and his minions moved to shut the show down.

Sealed indictments could not be revoked.

We know now that one of the 36 was filed in Stone’s name. We can be fairly sure another was aimed at Jerome Corsi, or so Corsi believed; but Corsi has since been cooperating with investigators. (See: 1/25/19.)

Axios also has an excellent story out this week, highlighting the granular detail revealed in earlier court filings. For example, on July 27, 2016, we know Candidate Trump issued his famous call, “Russia, if you’re listening…” It was that day he expressed the hope that the Russians would try to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

The very next day, Mueller’s team knows (as revealed in an earlier indictment of 12 Russian hackers), “the Conspirators ... attempted after hours to spear-phish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provider and used by Clinton’s personal office.”

Mueller has remarkable...unexplained visibility.

As Axios explains, “That shows Mueller has access to much more intelligence than is publicly known. Remember, these are Russian government employees. So Mueller has remarkable and thus far unexplained visibility.”

Mueller has also hinted he has far more information than those outside the investigation imagine. In a court filing aimed at members of a Russian troll factory, his team reported that three employees of the Internet Research Agency—the troll factory—had traveled to the U.S. in 2014. Two have since been indicted.

But not the third.

Mueller has indicated in court filings, “that he knows the precise IRA official to whom this unnamed [third] male traveler filed his Atlanta expenses after the trip.”

As Axios notes, “The information could have come from U.S. intelligence or another country. But Mueller leaves the impression he may have a cooperator inside the troll factory.”

To put it plainly, then, Mueller knows way more than we know he does; and the more he knows the worse it is for Trump and his crew.

*

IN A POLL RELEASED TODAY, 62 percent of Americans believe the president knew that his associates, Cohen, Manafort, Stone, and others, were purposely misleading investigators and Congress.

Only 32 percent think he didn’t.

Possible lies told by Stone: too many to count; not yet proven in court.

2/4/19: No one has seen Rudy Giuliani in public for days, leading to wild rumors. Trump has fired him after a series of “misquotations” that make it sound like Trump is a liar, just because he is. Rudy has quit, having told friends that working for Trump is impossible because the president is a pathological liar. Old Horndog has run off with another mistress, having tired of his current mistress, for whom he left his third wife, who happened to be his mistress when he was cheating on his second wife.

Anyway, no one has seen Rudy, just when the president is going to need every lawyer he can find.

We learn today that federal prosecutors have subpoenaed documents from Trump’s inaugural committee.

The reason given in court is an interest in possible money-laundering and illegal gifts from foreign powers, funneled through the committee. Only one individual is named specifically in the subpoena: Imaad Suberi, described by The New York Times as “a former fund-raiser for President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”

So you know if Fox News covers the story they’re going to highlight that phrase and milk it for a month.

Unfortunately, for Trump fans, the Times adds that Suberi “was seeking inroads with Trump” and his company donated $900,000 to the inaugural committee.

Another entity that the subpoena seeks documents on is Stripe, which created technology to help process credit card transactions. According to published reports, the company counts Josh Kushner, the brother of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, among its investors. Josh Kushner is not named in the subpoena, and a spokesman for him declined to comment.

Follow the money again.

Since we know Josh and Jared’s dad has spent time in prison for financial misdeeds, and we know Jared has had shady backdoor meetings with Russian bankers, and we know leaked records in the hands of the Times show that Jared has managed to avoid paying federal income taxes in at least five years during a stretch of eight, from 2009 to 2017, despite being worth an estimated $324 million, you can see why a liberal blogger might smell a number of rotting fish.

Once again, in the story of the Trump presidency, we need to follow the money and see where we go.

Among other questions authorities are trying to answer: Was the list of donors the committee submitted to the Federal Election Committee complete and accurate, or was it knowingly fraudulent. Thomas Barrack, who chaired the committee, is a longtime pal of President Trump. And if you follow the legal threads obsessively, as this blogger does, you know Barrack is “famous” for having been named by Italian authorities in an investigation into a possible criminal conspiracy, after he was accused of orchestrating a scheme to evade $190 million in taxes.

This evasion involved Barrack’s real estate company—selling a seaside resort in Sardinia—to interests in Qatar—for $670 million. According to The Guardian, a British newspaper, the investigation included “wiretaps,” never a good sign for those suspected of wrongdoing. Investigators were trying to follow a trail of money which wended its way north, through Luxembourg (a notorious tax haven), east to the State of Delaware (where you can charter any kind of shell company you like and no one will look too carefully into what your company actually does), and back again to Europe where Deutsche Bank (the favorite bank of money-launderers, worldwide), gave advice on the Sardinia deal.

Among other interesting details to the story, we learn that Paul Manafort is “a longtime friend” of Mr. Barrack and the two enjoyed yachting in the Mediterranean even after Manafort was booted from the Trump 2016 campaign.

Barrack was also the first major business figure to endorse Trump in his run for president. He called the candidate “intrinsically and academically first class” and described him as “kind, compassionate,” and “empathetic.” “Donald’s natural alliance is with the little guy,” Barrack added--accurately, I suppose, if we assume the “little guy” has the clout to purchase a seaside resort in Sardinia. Barrack has also worked closely with the Saudi royal family, and has argued that the only way to solve the crisis in Syria is to work “with Russia and not against them.”

Anyway, if Barrack sounds like the kind of guy who might rig financial records for an inaugural committee, we shouldn’t be surprised. Because these are the kinds of characters you always turn up in stories about Donald J. Trump and his business and financial ties. (See: 5/5/18.)

We know Rick Gates, who has already admitted to a high number of felonies, is cooperating with investigators. We know he worked for the inaugural committee. We know he worked after that for Barrack, right up until the day he was indicted. So we can assume, I think, that Mr. Barrack is sweating a little.

Of course, President Trump may start screaming again about Mueller and “thugs” on his investigation team; but we should note that federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York—again, led by a Trump appointee—are separately studying whether or not the inaugural committee helped foreign donors illegally funnel donations to the Trump group, using straw donors.

Possible lies by Thomas Barrack: numerous; not yet proven in court.

*

NOW UNDER DEMOCRATIC CONTROL, the House Intelligence Committee has sent the transcripts of some fifty witnesses who testified previously before Congress in the Russia probe, to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. We already know two Trump buddies, Roger Stone and ex-buddy Michael Cohen have been indicted for lying to Congress. So look for there to be others.

Among those whose transcripts are being delivered and who should probably be sweating profusely: Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Brad Parascale and Alexander Nix, who helped run digital operations during the 2016 campaign, and Hope Hicks, who helped put together a thoroughly misleading letter about a key meeting with agents of the Russian government—with Don Jr. and Jared. All five individuals are hot candidates to have committed perjury.

The president reacts to the news by labeling Rep. Schiff “a political hack,” and tells reporters that efforts to investigate potential violations of the law are nothing less than “presidential harassment.”

The next day this leads to a series of self-pitying, early-morning tweets:

So now Congressman Adam Schiff announces, after having found zero Russian Collusion, that he is going to be looking at every aspect of my life, both financial and personal, even though there is no reason to be doing so. Never happened before! Unlimited Presidential Harassment....

....The Dems and their committees are going “nuts.” The Republicans never did this to President Obama, there would be no time left to run government. I hear other committee heads will do the same thing. Even stealing people who work at White House! A continuation of Witch Hunt!

PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT! It should never be allowed to happen again!

*

ONCE AGAIN, WE FIND MONEY at the heart of the story of Trump, his grifter pals and the Russians and others who love them.

Federal investigators have questions they hope to put to heads of three powerhouse D.C. lobbying firms. All three firms, including two run by individuals with ties primarily to top Democrats, were originally recruited by Paul Manafort for the job in question.

Their lucrative work—albeit of questionable morality—involved burnishing the dark image of the Ukrainian government, which at the time of their work was pro-Russian and essentially anti-Ukrainian people. Since this thousands of Ukrainians were dying in the fighting with Russia, and since this kind of work was shady at best, and the firms didn’t want their efforts to be known, court records indicate they lied about how much money they were paid, back-dated payments to try to obscure their significance, and that a mysterious $150,000 check from one Ukrainian oligarch ended up in the hands of the Trump charitable foundation.

There have been hints, so far unsubstantiated, that this money was used to pay off  Karen McDougal, the Playboy Bunny, who eventually got a check for…$150,000.

*

HAVE WE MENTIONED MONEY as a driving motivation lately? Republican fund-raiser Paul Erickson was indicted this week on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. I’m going to assume you don’t recognize his name, since one recent poll found 12% of adults didn’t know who Mike Pence was.

The indictment charges Erickson with bilking investors, beginning in 1998 and continuing through 2016. Erickson claimed he was building assisted living facilities across the U.S.A. In reality, it appears likely he was pocketing investors’ money and building a first class Ponzi scheme.

Now, let’s bring some Russians into the story! Evidence suggests that $30,000 in laundered cash, courtesy of Mr. Erickson, was used to pay for Ms. Maria Butina’s college tuition. Butina is a hot young Russian redhead who pled guilty recently to acting as an agent of the Russian Federation during the 2016 campaign. And Butina was shacking up with Erickson at the time.

We now know that in May 2016, Erickson sent an email with the subject line, “Kremlin connection,” to Trump campaign adviser Rick Dearborn. According to an article in The New York Times, Erickson wrote that Russia was “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.”

An attempt would be made, he said, to use the N.R.A.’s annual convention in Louisville, Kentucky, to make “‘first contact.’”

Trump’s answer could be worth tens of billions.

By some freak of chance—or plotting—Butina had appeared at the N.R.A. convention in 2015. There she managed to be picked to ask Trump, who was speaking at the gathering, a question. If elected, would he continue with the economic sanctions aimed at Russia by President Obama, following the invasion and annexation of Crimea? His answer could be worth tens of billions to Russian oligarchs whose funds had been frozen overseas as a result.

Yes: tens of billions.

And probably more.

“I wouldn’t think you’d need the sanctions,” Trump replied. Not once he was in charge and the United States was “respected” again.

In Moscow, they had to love that answer.

$$$$$

Possible lies by about twenty different people: too numerous to count; yet to be proven in court.

With the arrival of the weekend Rudy Giuliani remains conspicuous by his absence. He hasn’t been seen in public since January 20, when he told The New York Times that the president informed him negotiations on a Trump Tower Moscow deal were “going on from the day I announced to the day I won.” 

A deal in return for dropping economic sanctions?

As the Times explained after that bombshell dropped:

The new timetable means that Mr. Trump was seeking a deal at the time he was calling for an end to economic sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama administration. He was seeking a deal when he gave interviews questioning the legitimacy of NATO, a favorite talking point of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. And he was seeking a deal when, in July 2016, he called on Russia to release hacked Democratic emails that Mr. Putin’s government was rumored at the time to have stolen.

Rudy quickly woke up to his mistake—or the president started screaming at him again—and tried to walk his comments back.

No one has seen him since, kind of like Jamal Khashoggi walking into that Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October.

Trump probably lied; Rudy probably lied when he walked back the truth; yet to be proven.

*

THE COURT NEWS keeps coming. On Friday, U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III denied media requests for release of all court records in the case of Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer.

Judge Pauley ruled that documents related to Cohen’s financial crimes could be released. But documents related to two other felonies had to remain sealed or could be released only in redacted form.

Other subjects of the investigation.

An observer in court explained:

The judge said prosecutors had opposed the media requests, saying disclosure “would jeopardize an ongoing investigation and prejudice the privacy rights of uncharged third parties.”

…He said the search warrant applications and affidavits supporting them “catalogue an assortment of uncharged individuals and detail their involvement in communications and transactions connected to the campaign finance charges to which Cohen pled guilty.”

Pauley said prosecutors revealed to him that “these individuals include those cooperating with the Government, those who have provided information to the Government, and other subjects of the investigation.”

He said the search warrants do not detail the Government’s ongoing investigation as much as other documents including affidavits, but they “enumerate topics of inquiry relating to the campaign finance charges.”

The judge added: “At this stage, wholesale disclosure of the materials would reveal the scope and direction of the Government's ongoing investigation. It would also unveil subjects of the investigation and the potential conduct under scrutiny, the full volume and nature of the evidence gathered thus far, and the sources of information provided to the Government.”

In a separate story on the same matter, Politico added:

“At this stage, wholesale disclosure of the materials would reveal the scope and direction of the Government’s ongoing investigation,” [Judge] Pauley wrote. “It would also unveil subjects of the investigation and the potential conduct under scrutiny, the full volume and nature of the evidence gathered thus far, and the sources of information provided to the Government.”

“And if the past is any prologue, unmasking those who are cooperating with the Government’s investigation or who have otherwise provided information to the Government could deter further cooperation with the investigation by ‘subject[ing] those individuals to witness tampering, harassment, or retaliation,’” the judge added.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out who might be doing the harassing, and the witness tampering, and who might be the subject of the continuing investigation.

Hint: his or her initials are DJT.

*

BUT WAIT!!!! There’s more. In separate court proceedings in Washington, D.C., federal prosecutors tell a judge that Paul Manafort may have lied to them, despite a plea agreement that was already in place, about “an extremely sensitive issue” in hopes of goosing his chances of getting a pardon.

Hint: the person with power to pardon Manafort has the same initials as the individual hinted at two paragraphs above.

DJT.

Prosecutors also tell Judge Amy Berman Jackson that they believe Manafort lied about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, a business buddy, and a man with deep connections to Russian intelligence. Those interactions, prosecutors assure Judge Jackson, go “very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating.”

Jackson chastises Manafort at one point, making it clear she believe he tried to cover up the truth that he used $125,000 from a pro-Trump political action committee to pay legal bills.

Andrew Weissman, speaking for the prosecutor’s office, describes that cozy arrangement as, “to put it charitably, a scheme.”

As The New York Times reports, Weissman “stressed that information about that element of the case, apparently involving suspected kickbacks from the political action committee, was being kept secret—a hint that a criminal inquiry is continuing.”

Hint, hint:

DJT!!!!!

2/13/19: Recent reports from Sen. Richard Burr, in charge of the Senate Intelligence Committee, indicate that no direct evidence to support a collusion conclusion between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia has been found. Trump turns immediately to Twitter and declares his name cleared and says we should re-elect him for sure. 

In fact, we should just make him a king.

In grim reality, which is where a majority of Americans now live, the president’s legal headaches are far from over. Don Jr. remains a favorite to get indicted for perjury before Special Counsel Mueller finishes his work. There are also signs that both Mueller and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York suspect money-laundering in the Trump family past. Sprinkle in serious hints that the Trump Inauguration Committee took illegal foreign donations and that the Trump administration shaped foreign policy in a “pay to play” way. And don’t forget. Roger Stone is complaining about how mean law enforcement agents were to come to his house in the morning darkness and lead him away in cuffs. Complain as he may, Stone will almost surely be the next Trump adviser to get convicted at trial and sent to jail.

Last, but not least, in fresh court filings today, a new secret meeting with Trump campaign people and Russians is revealed.

On August 2, 2016, we learn (more than two years after it happened) that Paul Manafort, then Trump’s campaign manager, and his right-hand man Rick Gates, met for dinner with a third party at the Grand Havana Room, a Manhattan cigar bar. That third party: Konstantin Kilimnick, has connections with Russian intelligence and he, too, is under indictment in the Russia probe.

Getting rid of sanctions could be worth hundreds of billions.

The filing today was heavily redacted, as all court filings from the Special Counsel have been. A lead prosecutor, however, assured the judge that redactions were necessary because the meeting in question goes “very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating.”

Among other topics Manafort, Gates (now cooperating with Mueller’s team) and Kilimnick (now fled to Russia) discussed: a possible peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Ukraine. It was, in fact, the invasion of the Crimea by Russian forces, and a continuing low-level war along the Ukrainian/Russian border that led to the Obama administration slapping Russia with crippling sanctions in 2014.

Getting rid of those sanctions could be worth hundreds of billions to Putin and his oligarch pals.

Lie #158: Manafort lied about having attended this meeting; Gates has told prosecutors he did.

They have other evidence to show he did.

At this same meeting, it is alleged, Manafort turned over valuable polling data to Kilimnick. This data would, it is now alleged, help Russian hackers target U.S. social media sites with success. Manafort allegedly expected to be paid $2.4 million for the trove. After the trio finished dinner, chatted, and smoked cigars, they decided it would be nice to leave by three separate doors, just like any set of friends out for dinner and plotting collusion to win an election.

Something else interesting had happened just the day before. Candidate Trump told George Stephanopoulos, host of This Week on ABC that, “The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were [emphasis added].” Then he blamed the problem in the Ukraine on the Obama administration, not on the invaders from Russia.

So, while I would still argue we have not seen evidence yet that would merit the president’s removal from office via impeachment, I would argue the case for impeachment is beginning to take shape. Let’s try this analogy. If a gang of eight men is suspected of robbing a bank, and five gang members (namely, Flynn, Gates, Manafort, Papadopoulos and Cohen), lie about where they were on the night the bank was robbed, you begin to believe, yes, the gang robbed that bank. If two other alleged accomplices (Don Jr. and Stone) are caught with burglary tools in their car, you realize there is growing evidence the gang robbed the bank. Does that prove the head of the gang, President Trump, gave the orders, or that he was directly involved?

Not yet. But at this point I’m beginning to think police are going to find marked $100 bills, covered in red dye, hidden under his bed.

We already knew that Manafort had a plea deal which might have won him a greatly-reduced prison sentence. But that deal has now been revoked. Even Fox News has to report on the story.

Judge Amy Jackson has ruled that even after signing an agreement to cooperate with prosecutors, Manafort “made multiple false statements to the FBI, the OSC [Office of Special Counsel] and the grand jury concerning matters that were material to the investigation.” 

The growing question is what is Manafort still trying to hide—and why is he risking hiding it—and you can guess why Trump hasn’t ruled out pardoning a man who is probably an accomplice.

There may be no direct evidence of collusion yet, as Sen. Richard Burr said this week. But the circumstantial evidence continues to pile up.

2/27/19: As we hunker down to watch Michael Cohen’s testimony unfold today here’s the question all of us should ask: “Do you feel lucky, punk?”

Wait. That’s not the question.

We have to ask: Is Cohen (a “disgraced felon” as the White House now describes him) more believable than the President of the United States?

Do you believe Cohen, who is definitely headed for jail? 

Or do you believe the guy who says, conveniently, that he has the power to pardon himself? Do you believe the pussy-grabbing, lies-to-three-wives-in-succession, Trump U.-scamming, bankruptcy-double dealing, tax returns-hiding guy who likes to hire future disgraced felons? 

Trump thought that was a fine lie to tell.

In an effort to help your thought processes along, I would like to remind you that as long as Trump believed Cohen wouldn’t flip, Cohen was his guy. When Cohen lied to Congress about how long negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow lasted, the president didn’t mind at all. If Cohen said those negotiations ended before the campaign began, Trump didn’t feel any need to correct him. 

And as late as February 2018, when Cohen insisted he had paid a hush money settlement to a porn star to protect Candidate Trump out of his own pocket Trump thought that was a fine lie to tell.

When law enforcement officials finally raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room in April 2018, the president was appalled. But he wasn’t appalled to discover that his personal lawyer was a crook. He knew that. The president still believed Lawyer Cohen wouldn’t flip; so he reacted with fury, telling reporters:

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. 

According to one White House source, behind the scenes the president was acting like a loon. Asked by reporters on April 11, if he intended to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller and bring all investigations to a halt, Trump responded, “We’ll see what happens. …Many people have said ‘you should fire him,’” he claimed. 

Then he went with the clincher: “Again, they [the investigators] found nothing and in finding nothing, that’s a big statement.” 

Among other oddities, however, the raid on Cohen’s office shook loose the tale of a second hush money payment to protect Trump. This time, $30,000 was dished out to keep a doorman quiet about Trump’s fathering of a child by a house maid. 

Or: cheating again on his wife.

Speaking of liars, we learned next that Cohen helped kill a third story when Donald Trump, Jr. was cheating on his wife!

Then we found out that Cohen had helped work out a deal to cover up another affair, the third involving Don Sr. This time it was a lengthy one, involving a Playboy Bunny, lasting for ten months, during the early years of Trump’s marriage to his current wife and the First Lady of the United States.

Next, we learned that Cohen had helped Elliot Broidy, the finance chair of the Republican National Committee. Broidy had impregnated still another Playboy Bunny and Cohen helped shut her up with a deal worth $1.6 million, Broidy being, of course, a friend of President Trump.

“A fine person with a wonderful family.”

As long as Cohen was lying for the president, the president thought he was a most excellent man. It was terrible, Trump insisted, what the “Fake News” New York Times was doing to this poor lawyer. Cohen was “a fine person with a wonderful family…who I have always liked & respected,” the president wailed.

Last May, Rudy Giuliani was added to the Trump legal defense team. Rudy promptly went to bat for Trump’s aggrieved lawyer pal. It was unclear whether or not Cohen would flip. So Rudy was all roses and chocolates.

Cohen, he said, was an “honest, honorable lawyer.”

On July 8, Giuliani chimed in again. Would Cohen flip on his boss, a reporter wondered? No sweat, Rudy responded, “I have no concern that Michael Cohen is going to do anything but tell the truth.” 

The basic story remained unchanged for many months. If Cohen was lying, Trump already knew it; but Trump loved Cohen just so long as the lies helped his case. Then, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Cohen, who had long insisted he’d take a bullet for the president hinted that on second thought he might duck.

“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen explained. “I put family and country first.”

Apparently, he was about to squawk.

On July 21, Trump learned that Cohen had made tapes of some of their talks. So Trump got the urge to tweet:

Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong! 

  

(It is, in fact, legal in the State of New York for one party in a phone conversation to tape another without that party’s consent; and that includes a lawyer taping a client.)

In an almost laughable interview on CNN soon after, Giuliani now set out to trash Lawyer Cohen’s reputation. Horndog Rudy, famous himself for cheating on all his wives, said the rat had been “lying for years.” Cohen was a “pathological liar.” He was “not creditable.” He had put out “a string of lies.” Cohen was “an incredible liar.” And this time you could totally believe Rudy G., a man of his word.

Cohen was no longer going to be lying to protect him.

Four days later, we learned that one tape included Trump talking openly about paying off the Playboy Bunny. And, with that, Cohen was no longer Trump’s guy. The president wasn’t mad because he knew Cohen had been lying to Congress all along about how long the Trump Tower Moscow deal was in the works, or because Cohen paid to bury a bunch of sleazy stories. He was mad because Cohen was no longer going to keep lying to protect him.

In fact, when it comes to “disgraced felons” you can readily see that some “disgraced felons” are better in President Trump’s eyes than others. Last August, two major shoes in the Russian probe dropped. Both Cohen and Manafort were conclusively tagged as felons. Cohen pled guilty to eight felony counts. Manafort rolled the dice in front of a jury, got convicted of eight counts himself, later tried to cut a plea deal, admitted to ten more counts, and pled to two.

So the president had to ponder the fates of the two disgraced felons who had both worked for him. First, he slammed one felon in a tweet: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!”

Okay, got it: bad felon!

Cohen was going to flip.

As for Manafort, he garnered the president’s deepest sympathy in a double play of heartfelt tweets: 

I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. “Justice” took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” - make up stories in order to get a “deal.” Such respect for a brave man!

A large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the Paul Manafort case. Witch Hunt!

Yes. Good felon. Manafort still might not flip.

In fact, we know as of February 27, 2019, that both men—and Trump once defended them both—are “disgraced felons.”

And he hired them both.

Trump has known for three years that Cohen was lying to protect his orange skin. All that changed in the end was that Cohen realized he’d have to try to protect himself. As for Cohen and Trump and Manafort and Trump, there’s plenty of disgrace you can spread all around.

2/17/19: The president has the whole day to relax at Mar-a-Lago and contemplate his next emergency moves.

If he has nothing better to do—and the way the man tweets every day you know he has time on his hands, he could pick up the latest copy of National Geographic. In a new story, scientists warn that by 2080 the city you live in will have a climate similar to what a city 500 miles to the south has today. Baltimore will be like Jacksonville, Florida. Montreal will be like Charlottesville, Virginia. Louisville, Kentucky will feel like Pensacola, only without the cool beaches.

And if 2080 sounds like a long way away, let’s shrink our time frame for discussion to 19-24 years.

We learned Friday that prosecutors have recommended a term of imprisonment for Paul Manafort to run till at least 2038 and possibly 2043. Since Manafort is already 69, this is essentially a life sentence.

The road to a successful impeachment is clear.

Why such a harsh sentence for a man who specialized in Russian-friendly, white collar crimes? Special Counsel Mueller clearly believes he has evidence that goes to the heart of the investigation. If he can shake it loose, President Trump is almost certainly doomed. Should Manafort break, the road to a successful impeachment is clear. And I don’t mean if he breaks because prosecutors are using unfair Gestapo tactics. I mean: Manafort simply spills what he knows.

Manafort knows if Candidate Trump knew about and conspired to hide the outreach to Russians that we now know occurred.

Consider a few of the key facts that have been pried loose in the last two years, either by the free press or investigators doing their jobs. They don’t hang the president yet but the rope has been thrown over the branch.

Then consider just a few of the scores of denials. On July 24, 2016, George Stephanopoulos asked Manafort, “Are there any ties between Mr. Trump, you or your campaign and Putin and his regime?”

“No, there are not,” he replied. “That’s absurd.”

By that time, the secret June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower had been held and Manafort had attended. Eight days later, we just learned, he headed for the Manhattan cigar bar to talk with his Russian friends again.

On November 11, 2016, just days after Trump’s surprise election win, spokeswoman Hope Hicks told reporters, “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.”

The short list of those who knew at that very instant that this was a lie would include: Manafort, Gates, Jared Kushner, Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, General Flynn and Don Jr., if not the President-Elect himself.

No one coughed loudly and corrected Ms. Hicks.

At a press conference on January 11, 2017, nine days before taking office, President Trump assured reporters that he had had no business dealings with Russia during the campaign. He made it clear, he could easily have done business in Russia if he wanted, but he knew it would have been a conflict. He said that himself.

The president made similar denials on February 7, 2017 and May 11, 2017. In fact, he insisted in a tweet that “the haters were going crazy” and making wild claims because they couldn’t accept the results of the election.

Cohen knew that was a lie. Trump knew Cohen was lying.

Today we know his business dealings with the Russians continued until at least June 2016. We know because last November, prosecutors nailed his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, on an array of felony counts.

Cohen had been lying to investigators for two years, saying that all business dealings with Trump and the Russians ended in January 2016. That would have been before the Iowa caucuses, before Trump was a serious candidate.

Cohen knew that was a lie. Trump knew Cohen was lying.

Why wouldn’t Trump correct him, publicly, or admit the truth himself, way back in January 2017?

On January 15, 2017, Chris Wallace asked the future VP if there were any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“Of course not,” Mike Pence replied. “Why would there be?”

Yes. Good question, Mr. Pence.

All you can say in Mr. Pence’s defense is that he was probably not lying, because Flynn—and possibly others—had been lying to him.

Pence was probably nothing more than a dupe. Not exactly a good look, but not indictable, at least.

In terms of the first proven Russian-related lie, that honor goes to General Flynn, who in the days leading up to the Inauguration lied to Pence about talks he had had with Russians about sanctions. That first lie was revealed by the Department of Justice just days after Trump and Pence took office.

Why would Flynn lie? What was he hiding from the VP?

We soon found out that Jared Kushner had a secret meeting with a Russian banker and during that meeting suggested setting up a back channel—using Russian facilities—between the two sides.

Jared later claimed he “forgot” about that meeting, what with all the other important matters he had on his plate.

In fact, he only “remembered” when the free press broke the story.

George Papadopoulos was called in by the F.B.I. just days after Trump moved into the Oval Office. Agents wanted to ask the young foreign policy adviser about meetings he had in April 2016 with a mysterious professor and a young woman he believed was a relative of Vladimir Putin. Papadopoulos lied multiple times during multiple talks with agents about his meetings.

Later, the professor disappeared and has not been seen since. Papadopoulos got indicted and pled guilty.

Roger Stone—now under indictment—testified before Congress that he had never met with any Russians, or anyone who even sounded Russian, during the entire 2016 campaign. Not until last summer was he forced to admit (because the free press got the goods on him) that he did meet in May 2016 with one Russian—but only one—who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton, but wanted $2 million to share it.

Stone claimed he “forgot” about that meeting. He even forgot when testifying before Congress.

So did Michael Caputo, a Trump campaign adviser, who helped set up the meeting with Stone and the Russian.

In June 2016 Manafort, Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. all met secretly with agents of the Russian government. And they knew going in that those agents were going to offer dirt on Mrs. Clinton.

A blatant lie and no one ever corrected that statement.

In other words, it was a blatant lie, for anyone associated with this campaign to say that no one had ever met with any Russians. Yet, no one ever corrected that statement, except when they got caught. As for that June meeting all three representatives of the Trump campaign “forgot” having had it for the next thirteen months. Only in July 2017, when The New York Times and Washington Post broke the story did we learn that such a meeting had been held.

Now that the meeting was revealed, Don Jr., for sure, decided to lie. He claimed that the meeting was about adoption policy.

The New York Times politely informed him that the paper had emails to show that that was not the case.

At the time, President Trump was in Europe—where sucking up to Putin was at the top of his “To Do” List. On the trip home, aboard Air Force One, he helped draft a misleading letter about the June 2016 meeting. That letter stated that the meeting was “primarily about adoption.”

That was a lie.

The Times dropped the emails soon after—proving that the claims in the letter were false. Press Secretary Sanders was forced to march out and tell reporters that the president had no real role in drafting the letter. On August 1, she insisted,

“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. [The letter was of] no consequence.”

‘There was no follow-up. It was a disclosed to the proper parties. The Democrats want to continue to use this as a PR stunt and are doing everything they can to keep this story alive and in the papers every single day. The President, the American people, they voted America first, not Russia first, and that’s the focus of our administration.”

Witness tampering added to all the lies.

Much later, a Trump lawyer admitted, yes, the president had dictated that letter. Sanders had to march back out in front of the cameras and admit that what she had said before was a lie—except that she didn’t know it was a lie because all she did was provide the best information she had been given and move her pouty red lips. But the question should have been clear to all but the most loyal Trump-loving dunces. Why had no one who knew the truth bothered to correct her story?

Why were so many so consistently lying about one topic: namely contacts between the campaign and all kinds of Russians?

Were there contacts? Clearly there were. So, as Pence once asked, we must also ask, “Why would there be?”

Eventually, Mueller’s investigators assembled extensive evidence of crimes and charged Manafort and his right-hand man, Rick Gates, with a wide array of felonies. Gates quickly pled out and agreed to cooperate with Mueller and his team. He even admitted that he and Manafort knew a man they were communicating with during the campaign had ties to Russian intelligence. That man, of course, was Konstantin Kilimnick, once again in the news this week. (See: 2/13/19.)

Manafort decided to go to trial and see how he’d fare. A jury convicted him on eight felony counts, and a lone holdout kept him from being convicted on ten more. Facing a long, long time in jail, Manafort agreed to a plea deal. He would cooperate, he promised, with the Mueller team.

Only he didn’t—as we have recently learned. He added witness tampering to his crimes—and prosecutors caught him again.

Now he faces life in jail. And the question arises for what seems like the hundredth time? What is Manafort hiding? What were his connections—what were the connections of the Trump team—with Russians?

We certainly have motive for every man, woman and child involved in this sordid tale: money. It might be a payoff for dirt on Clinton, or a payday for polling data the Russians could use, or a Trump Tower Moscow deal, or relief from crippling sanctions for Putin and his pals.

What secret could be so damning—to President Trump—that Manafort would risk the rest of his days behind bars? It would seem all but certain that what he continues to hide is so damaging that Manafort, a ten-time convicted felon, is banking on withholding it and gaining a pardon if he keeps his mouth shut.

Read any of the court filings in any of the recent filings and you see prosecutors have all kinds of evidence to back up the indictments they’ve filed.

Expect other indictments soon and expect other Trump surrogates to begin to break as the charges pile up.

All the lies in this section have already been counted before.

*

SO, HOW IS TRUMP HOLDING UP under the strain of the Russia investigation and now the national emergency down on the border with Mexico.

We can go to his tweets to see what’s on his mind. At 7:41 a.m. he tweeted happily about his 52% approval rating.

A quick glance at all the polls shows he has an average approval rating of 43.5%, which is, at least, up a couple of points in the last week.

Eleven minutes, and fifteen minutes later, in a pair of unhinged tweets we get fresh evidence that the current occupant of the White House/Mar-a-Lago Club would crush his critics and strangle the free press if he dared. Clearly a comic skit from the night before is under his skin: 

Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!

THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! 

Let me pause a moment now to scratch my head. I can’t remember any reporters who have lied about contacts with Russians.

Can you?

2/18/19: Historians will surely note someday that stupidity was one of the defining features of the Trump administration.

On Monday, Roger Stone—the latest Trump adviser indicted in the Russia investigation and a gentleman currently free on bail—decided it would be amusing to post a message and picture on Instagram. It tickled Stone, for example, to label the Special Counsel as “Deep State hitman Robert Mueller.”

Stone surely chortled to himself. So far, so good: This would class as free expression. Then he posted a photo of the judge who will be handling his case, who had released him Friday on bail, but under a partial gag order. In the corner crosshairs showed beside the head of District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson.

Internet sleuths soon discovered that this same picture could be found on—among others—a conspiracy website with an anti-Semitic perspective and a pro-Russian site called, “Russia News Now.”

Russians!! Again?!?

In any case, Stone soon realized his mistake—or at least his alarmed defense lawyers did. First, he photo shopped the cross hairs out of the picture. Then he freaked and deleted the picture.

Judge Jackson, however, had been notified and Stone has been ordered to grace her court again Thursday.

Stone is probably facing a total gag order; but he might have his bail revoked and end up in jail.

Judge Jackson in court, Stone right.

In other “proof-of-stupid” news, Trump spent the morning at Trump National Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Including Presidents’ Day he has spent 172 days since taking office at various golf clubs, most of which he owns.

This, at least, is not criminal stupidity. But it is gratuitous stupidity. Mr. Trump used to hate it when President Barack Obama played golf all the time. Now Trump plays way more often.

When not busy lining up putts, the president tended to focus his attention on tweeting, early, often and late. One particular topic had him stewing: former acting F.B.I. Director Andrew McCabe, who was popping up all over cable news.

(Not on Fox News, of course.)

For that reason, at 7:15 a.m., in the president’s second tweet of the day, we had this:

Wow, so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged. He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught.....

Fifteen hours later, having spent the afternoon hinting that he’d enjoy attacking Venezuela and making himself look more presidential, Trump still had the red ass about what McCabe was saying. So, in Tweet #17 for the day, Trump turned to juvenile stupidity: “Remember this, Andrew McCabe didn’t go to the bathroom without the approval of Leakin’ James Comey!”

See what he did! “Bathroom.” “Leakin’.” It’s like we have a 14-year-old boy in the Oval Office.

As for Mr. McCabe, he spent a good part of Monday talking about his new book: The Threat: How the F.B.I. Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. First sentence: “Between the world of chaos and the world of order stands the rule of law.”

There’s nothing juvenile (or humorous) about that line.

2/19/19: If you’re following the Russia investigation, and you happen to be an avid Trump fan, Tuesday was not a good day.

Then again, if you are an avid Trump fan you’re not following the investigation or if you are you get your facts through the filter of Fox News. On Fox News, if Trump was caught naked in bed with Sen. Lindsey Graham snuggling up on one side and Vladimir Putin snuggling up on the other, and piles of rubles scattered about, Sean Hannity would help you forget by running a scary story about caravans of dark-skinned people storming our borders or how the Green New Deal is going to make it impossible to own farting cows and we’re going to end up exactly like Venezuela.

The problem with focusing on cow farts, however, is increasingly clear, because real news intrudes.

A counterintelligence investigation centered on Trump.

Start with McCabe, repeatedly labeled by Trump and his sycophants as a “liar,” and try to think logically. McCabe built a career in the F.B.I. He spent part of that career fighting the Russian mob. McCabe was a lifelong Republican. Now one ever called him a liar until he crossed Trump—a man whose businesses model rested on a foundation of lies. But here’s what McCabe’s now saying, since he was fired.

Leaving aside any errors of judgment he may have made and perhaps one or two lies about contacts with reporters, McCabe is telling the American people that by the summer of 2016 top officials at the F.B.I. were so concerned about suspicious contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russians that an investigation had to be launched.

You can explain this a thousand times to Trump fans—but it never seems to make any dent in their cult-like love for the President Donald J. Trump. But here we go again. McCabe could have killed the Trump campaign that summer had he revealed the existence of this investigation, which began in June 2016. He did not. Nor did F.B.I. Director James Comey, who gave the okay. The alarming contacts involving Trump aides and Russians did not end once Trump won the presidency. General Flynn, his choice for National Security Adviser, was soon caught lying to the Vice President. The Department of Justice notified the White House. It took eighteen days to fire Flynn, much longer than it took to fire Sally Flynn, who delivered the warning.

On February 14, 2017, Trump called in F.B.I. Director Comey for a talk. Comey says the president asked him at that time to “go easy” on Flynn. Comey says he was alarmed enough by what sounded like a desire to obstruct justice, to start taking notes on his laptop on ride back to F.B.I. headquarters. He eventually testified before Congress that he kept notes on all conversations with Mr. Trump afterwards.

Trump later said he didn’t believe Comey took contemporaneous notes. Then he hinted that he, Trump, had tapes of their talks, to back up his version of any story. Then he admitted he did not. 

Comey had testified under oath.

Trump was just slinging his usual bullshit.

At any rate, McCabe is now saying—including in his book—that upon the firing of Director Comey—which Trump said had to do with the Russia investigation—F.B.I. officials decided to open a counterintelligence investigation aimed at the president himself. Top law enforcement officers had to know “if the president committed obstruction of justice.” Evidence suggested, McCabe explained, that Trump “might” be working for a foreign power. McCabe didn’t say the president was. He did say that he and others had to consider the possibility that Trump was “a double agent” helping “our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia.”

“If we failed to open an investigation in those circumstances,” McCabe added in one interview, “we wouldn’t be doing our jobs.”

Like anyone else, McCabe has his own axes to grind; but in interviews he comes across as thoughtful, sober, even self-deprecating and funny, not as a man prone to making wild claims. He says he has contemporaneous notes that might be useful in court. And almost every time he shares a new anecdote there are witnesses who, if need be, could someday verify his account.

At one point he and F.B.I. intelligence experts met with President Trump. They were there to brief him on the situation with North Korea and warn that Kim Jong-un had missiles that could strike the USA. Trump said he didn’t believe the intelligence. He didn’t believe the North could hit us. “He said he knew this,” McCabe says, “because Vladimir Putin had told him so.”

McCabe says he and all the experts were stunned—and he says he has witnesses.

The right-wing news wants us to believe McCabe is the liar.

On right-wing news, of course, the focus is not on this “holy shit” moment. No one at Fox News seems to notice that top law enforcement officers had to wonder if the president was a Russian asset. Instead, there is furious talk about a “palace coup” that McCabe and Comey and others were supposedly brewing up. McCabe says, yes, he and other top officials were deeply alarmed. And today we now know they had ample cause. The counterintelligence probe aimed at Mr. Trump was opened in May 2017. In the last two years we have learned beyond all doubt that Trump campaign officials met with Russians in April, May, June and July, 2016. We know that these Trump aides all lied about meetings with Russians: Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and Michael Cohen (all now convicted felons). And yet, on right-wing news, we’re supposed to believe that McCabe is the liar.

McCabe said it was a chaotic time when they realized Trump might be a Russian asset. On Steven Colbert's show, he was asked what that looked like at the F.B.I.? "Because that's a terrifying image.
McCabe responded with dry humor: "Our ties were slightly askew."

*

WE CAN ASSUME the president’s mood did not improve once he picked up his copy of The New York Times—or had the news explained to him, since he hates to read. In a scathing article, the Times tried to tie together the varied threads of Trump’s two-year-long battle to thwart investigators. Naturally, you knew Trump would start tweeting about “Fake News” as soon as he caught wind of the story. So let’s start with sources. According to reporters for the Times, “Interviews with dozens of current and former government officials and others close to Mr. Trump, as well as a review of confidential White House documents, reveal numerous unreported episodes in a two-year drama.”

Keep this detail in mind: “confidential White House documents.”

The Times has a reputation to uphold as the nation’s “newspaper of record.” And whether you like their editorial policies or the types of articles they choose to run they do have to have solid sources. Insiders at the Justice Department, for example, told them that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, now replaced, had told other officials that his job at DOJ was to “jump on a grenade” for the president. That’s bad enough—and helps us understand why a hack like Whitaker was given the job in the first place.

But sources also tell the Times that President Trump called Whitaker at least once to inquire about the investigation involving his former fixer and personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. Could Whitaker figure out a way to put Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of New York, back in charge? A Trump-appointee, Berman had rightly recused himself from having any role in that investigation—but Trump wanted Whitaker to step in.

And if that doesn’t sound like “obstruction of justice” to you, you need to grab a dictionary and puzzle out the words.

The Times article continues, with this update included later:

On Tuesday, after The Times article published, Mr. Trump denied that he had asked Mr. Whitaker if Mr. Berman could be put in charge of the investigation. “No, I don’t know who gave you that, that’s more fake news,” Mr. Trump said. “There’s a lot of fake news out there. No, I didn’t.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday that the White House had not asked Mr. Whitaker to interfere in the investigations. “Under oath to the House Judiciary Committee, then-Acting Attorney General Whitaker stated that ‘at no time has the White House asked for nor have I provided any promises or commitments concerning the special counsel’s investigation or any other investigation,’” said the spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec. “Mr. Whitaker stands by his testimony.”

Whitaker could be telling the truth, of course; but a man who said his reason for being at DOJ was to jump on a grenade might also be jumping on a grenade; and multiple sources were telling reporters a story different from Whitaker’s.

If your knee-jerk reaction is to believe the president and his defenders, remember that Trump is the guy who lied to all three of his wives about multiple affairs and attempted affairs. And Whitaker was once a board member for World Patent Marketing. When customers began complaining about being scammed, Whitaker knew about the complaints but took no action. World Patent had to shut down after prosecutors charged the company with ripping off customers to the tune of $26 million.

The Times article notes that Trump’s many attacks on investigators, his public threats against witnesses, and hints at possible pardons are well known. “But fusing the strands reveals an extraordinary story of a president who has attacked the law enforcement apparatus of his own government like no other president in history, and who has turned the effort into an obsession.”

For the first time, we learn that less than a month after taking office, on February 14, 2017, the president and his top advisers were already facing fallout regarding the campaign and contacts with Russians. All those contacts were still being denied at that time—and dozens have been verified since.

(Again, you can form an educated judgment about who might be lying, if you do nothing more than think logically.)

On that particular day, Press Secretary Sean Spicer was preparing to go out and brief the press about the firing of General Flynn. A group of advisers had gathered in the Oval Office to discuss strategy.

The Times explains:

As the group in the Oval Office talked, one of Mr. Trump’s advisers mentioned in passing what Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, then the speaker of the House, had told reporters — that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Flynn to resign.

It was unclear where Mr. Ryan had gotten that information, but Mr. Trump seized on Mr. Ryan’s words. “That sounds better,” the president said, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. Trump turned to the White House press secretary at the time, Sean Spicer, who was preparing to brief the news media.

“Say that,” Mr. Trump ordered.

But was that true? Mr. Spicer pressed.

“Say that I asked for his resignation,” Mr. Trump repeated.

Once Spicer stepped to the podium, lawyers for the White House Counsel’s Office began listened with interest as he outlined “what was a sensitive national security investigation” for reporters. “But when Mr. Spicer’s briefing began, the lawyers started hearing numerous misstatements —some bigger than others—and ended up compiling them all in a memo.” That memo is apparently now in reporters’ hands, and based on my knowledge of the case, I would expect that the man who placed it there was Donald McGahn II, former White House Chief Counsel.

At any rate, by the summer of 2017, President Trump and his top advisers seem to have flirting dangerously with obstruction of justice. The president humiliated Attorney General Jeff Sessions, hoping he would quit, so a new man could be put in charge of the burgeoning investigation.

The very essence of obstruction of justice.

In a second damning revelation, the Times describes what if it can be proven would be the very essence of obstruction of justice:

One of Mr. Trump’s lawyers also reached out that summer to the lawyers for two of his former aides—Paul Manafort and Mr. Flynn—to discuss possible pardons. The discussions raised questions about whether the president was willing to offer pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the Mueller investigation.

There were also those working in the White House who came to believe the president had nefarious motives. The Times continues:

The president even tried to fire Mr. Mueller himself, a move that could have brought an end to the investigation. Just weeks after Mr. Mueller’s appointment, the president insisted that he ought to be fired because of perceived conflicts of interest. Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, who would have been responsible for carrying out the order, refused and threatened to quit.

The president eventually backed off.

A good chunk of the rest of the story focuses on Republican lawmakers’ efforts to shield the president from investigators. Then there’s a change in strategy on the part of the White House. In April 2018, a new legal team takes over, including Rudy Giuliani, and a public relations battle erupts. Rudy heads up a scorched-earth approach, attacking the investigators at every turn.

Right-wing news joins the fray, siding at every turn with the president. But a drumbeat of bad news continues. More and more contacts between campaign officials and Russians are revealed. Flynn pleads guilty. Papadopoulos gets indicted and takes a plea deal. Manafort and Gates get indicted in tandem. Gates takes a plea deal and starts cooperating. Manafort give it a shot in a jury trial and gets convicted on eight felony counts. He agrees to a plea deal, pleads guilty to two additional felonies, and tells prosecutors he’s going to start cooperating.

The Times explains what happened next, as Rudy and his pals continued working on the president’s legal defenses.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Giuliani was getting help from a curious source: Kevin Downing, a lawyer for Mr. Manafort. Mr. Manafort, who had been Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, had agreed to cooperate with the special counsel after being convicted of financial crimes in an attempt to lessen a potentially lengthy prison sentence. Mr. Downing shared details about prosecutors’ lines of questioning, Mr. Giuliani admitted late last year.

It was a highly unusual arrangement—the lawyer for a cooperating witness providing valuable information to the president’s lawyer at a time when his client remained in the sights of the special counsel’s prosecutors. The arrangement angered Mr. Mueller’s investigators, who questioned what Mr. Manafort was trying to gain from the arrangement.

Cough. Cough. PARDON!

Yet, the president’s best efforts to contain the damage faltered. Cohen was indicted and pled guilty soon after. He, too, agreed to testify against the president. Trump switched from calling Cohen a man he “liked and respected” to labeling him, mafia-style, as “a rat.” Rudy, who had said Cohen was “an honest man,” suddenly decided he was a “pathological liar.”

When Trump finally hinted in a tweet that members of Mr. Cohen’s family might soon be in legal trouble themselves, almost anyone with a basic understanding of English and a grip on how the courts work knew this was tantamount to witness intimidation. The president responded to criticism by saying of his former lawyer, “He’s only been threatened by the truth.”

On Wednesday, the President of the United States did what he always does at such times. He lashed out.  “The New York Times reporting is false,” he hate-tweeted. “They are a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

*

ALL DAY WEDNESDAY, McCabe kept reappearing on cable news to add new details to his story and continue to raise serious questions about the president. Several times, he told interviewers that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were so alarmed by the president’s behavior, particularly after he fired Director Comey in May 2017, that Mr. Rosenstein broached the subject of wearing a wire to the White House to gather evidence of corrupt intent. McCabe says he approached the F.B.I. General Counsel about the idea. After the General Counsel “picked himself up off the floor” he told McCabe “we’re not there yet. That’s a bridge too far.”

On Sean Hannity’s nightly program, of course, this was evidence of a planned “palace coup.” To a rational person, however, it sounds exactly like top law enforcement officials dealing with the shocking possibility that the new president was a witting or unwitting puppet of Vladimir Putin.

Again, McCabe has made it clear in every interview: There are witnesses to these discussions.

Rosenstein, he says, brought up the 25^th Amendment, which allows for removal of a president unfit to serve. Discussing that possibility—that it might be necessary to remove a Russian agent from the Oval Office—is not evidence of a “palace coup.” It does show, however, how deeply concerned Rosenstein, like McCabe a lifelong Republican, and others at the top of the F.B.I. were.

Indeed, there could be no “Deep State” coup to remove Trump, launched by McCabe and Comey, or the Girl Scouts, or anyone else. The vice president must initiate the process to put the 25^th Amendment into action. A majority of cabinet members, all appointees of the president, and Congressional leaders, half Democrats, half Republicans, would have to concur.

There could be no “coup.”

In fact, the concerns of top law enforcement officials were made crystal clear to leaders in Congress. This counterintelligence investigation wasn’t launched in the dark. McCabe sat down with “The Gang of Eight”—four top Democratic leaders in Congress, and four Republicans. For the Democrats you had Sen. Chuck Schumer, Sen. Mark Warner, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff. For the Republicans you had Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. Richard Burr, Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Devin Nunes. McCabe says he shared the F.B.I.’s fears and told them an investigation had been launched.

“No one objected,” McCabe said during an interview on NBC. “Not on legal grounds, not on constitutional grounds and not based on the facts.”

“Opening a case of this nature [is] not something that an F.B.I. director, not something that an acting F.B.I. director would do by yourself, right?” he asked his host, Samantha Guthrie, rhetorically. “This was a recommendation that came to me from my team. I reviewed it with our lawyers. I discussed it at length with the deputy attorney general, and I told Congress what we had done.”

He wasn’t hiding anything.

In a telling aside—if you want to consider who is most likely lying about these matters—McCabe told Guthrie that in a call with the president, Trump referred to McCabe’s wife as “a loser.”

McCabe said it was hard to stifle his anger and the urge to defend his wife—but he didn’t have the luxury. He had to do his job.

Reporters asked the president about that claim Wednesday. He assured them that this was another lie being peddled by McCabe and insisted he would never call anyone’s wife “a loser.”

The problem of course, if you want to defend Trump, is that it doesn’t take any effort at all to search his Twitter feed to bolster the foundation for McCabe’s claim. The president has tweeted about Mr. McCabe, Lyin’ James Comey, “Peter S. and his lover, agent Lisa Page & more” as “some of the losers that tried to do a number on your President.” On Twitter he has labeled Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Jeb Bush, and writers Frank Bruni, Bill Kristol and Michael Wolff and “the Phony Club for Growth” as “losers.” Rep. Trey Gowdy was “the Benghazi loser.” “Boring anti-Trump [debate] panelists, mostly losers in life” were a special category.

And there’s this revealing use of the term “loser” in the first of three themed April 21, 2018 tweets.

They appeared in rapid succession at 8:10 a.m. and distill the president’s way of thinking (and lying) in 112 words:

The New York Times and a third rate reporter named Maggie Haberman, known as a Crooked H flunkie who I don’t speak to and have nothing to do with, are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will “flip.” They use.... 

....non-existent “sources” and a drunk/drugged up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family. Michael is a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected. Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if....

....it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media! 

The true Trump, his words preserved like insects in amber.

Here we have the true Trump, his words preserved like insects in amber. There are the juvenile insults: “Crooked H flunkie,” “drunk/drugged up loser.” You have the claim of “non-existence ‘sources’” and the heart-rending, oft-repeated howl about a diabolical “Witch Hunt.”

But as has so often been true, Trump was quickly proven wrong and the free press was quickly proven right. The Times had impeccable sources. Investigators used evidence found in a raid on Cohen’s home, office and hotel room to charge the man the president had said he “always liked & respected” with multiple felony counts.

Cohen did flip.

And the real “loser” was Trump.

*

IT IS ONLY FAIR TO ADD before we continue, that Mr. McCabe is not claiming that Trump is a double agent for the Russians. He’s not saying definitively that the president obstructed justice or tried to derail a legitimate investigation. He’s saying that top law enforcement officials had reason to be concerned. And we know the arc of the story since May 2017.

The president’s defenders would like you to focus on mistakes of judgment McCabe made, on unflattering emails about Trump that various F.B.I. agents shared with each other. They like to focus on the Steele dossier, and how it was a “Hillary Clinton hit job” (by the way, you should read it; because a number of allegations therein have since been conclusively proven). They would like you to think that several lifelong Republicans at the top of the F.B.I. were really angry Democrats in elephant’s clothing all along. They would like you to believe that judges appointed by Democratic presidents can’t be trusted but judges appointed by Trump could. They would like you to ignore the 34 felony convictions racked up in the Russia/and Russia-related investigations, so far. They would like you to believe that Trump and his team had nothing to hide and that McCabe and top law enforcement officials did.

But that story becomes harder and harder to believe. The president knows it, too, and has to lash out.

And the damage for the day was not done. When asked to comment on The New York Times’s story, Judge Andrew Napolitano, a top legal commentator on Fox News sensed trouble brewing.

Fox News judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano on Tuesday considered a New York Times report that claimed President Trump tried to interfere in an investigation into his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, and the analyst said if the report is accurate Trump could be implicated in attempted obstruction.

The New York Times report claims that Trump called Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker last year to ask if Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and a Trump ally, could be put in charge of the investigation into [Michael] Cohen.

Berman, who was appointed by Trump, has recused himself from the Cohen investigation. In December, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to numerous crimes while cooperating with federal prosecutors.

“If the Times reporting is accurate, the phone call would be evidence of what?” Fox News anchor Shepard Smith asked.

“Corrupt intent,” Napolitano replied. “That is an effort to use the levers of power of the government for a corrupt purpose: to deflect an investigation into himself or his allies.”

The Fox News story rightly included a denial from Rudy Giuliani, on the president’s behalf, calling the Times story “a regurgitation of previously refuted obstruction theories.” But Napolitano saw it differently, calling the report “dynamite, lengthy and well-documented.”

“If you try to interfere with a criminal prosecution that may knock at your own door by putting your ally in there, that is clearly an attempt to obstruct justice,” Napolitano said. “Where it goes from here, I don’t know. But I tell you who is reading it as we speak: Bob Mueller and team.”

*

SPEAKING OF TRUMP LOYALISTS, there’s good news and bad for the president and his fans. First, the good: There are rumors that the Mueller probe is wrapping up its work. The Washington Post notes that only 12 of 17 top prosecutors are still on the job and several have contacted old bosses about future moves.

Now, for the bad: We don’t know what the final report will say, but the Post explains, “An adviser to President Trump said there is palpable concern among the president’s inner circle that the report might contain information about Trump and his team that is politically damaging, but not criminal conduct.”

Unfortunately for Team Trump, we know that as lawyers leave the investigation they may be assigned to prosecute cases against individuals who have been identified by the probe as having criminal liability. For example, two prosecutors who left the Mueller office are pursuing the case against Roger Stone.

According to the Post, Mueller has always viewed his job as that of an investigator not a prosecutor. That means evidence he and his team have gathered may be handed to other federal authorities for continuing action. Or, as Churchill once said, “This is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.”

In addition, we found out today that two more potential witnesses in the Russia/Trump saga, whether a story of felonious behavior or financial sleaze, have been identified (to the public). As CNN explains, Senate investigators have been seeking for months to question a Moscow-based American businessman whose ties to President Trump go back as far as 1996. For some odd reason, that businessman, David Geovanis, is not anxious to return to the U.S.

So senators have been unable to pose any questions.

The facts are straightforward, the bizarre possibilities many. Geovanis helped organize a 1996 trip to Moscow by Trump, when Trump was not yet tinted orange, but already dreaming of building a Trump Tower Moscow. Later Geovanis worked for the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whose ties to Trump's 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort have intrigued investigators.

What makes the story even more fun is that witnesses called to testify before the Senate Judicial Committee told CNN they were asked about a photograph from that period in which Geovanis is seen posing with three scantily clad women. “The portrait, once displayed in a Russian gallery under the title ‘The Capitalist,’ depicts the subjects in front of a picture of the former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. It’s not clear whether the portrait is a single photograph or a composite,” CNN notes.

A third witness “has alleged in written testimony, seen by CNN, that Geovanis may be valuable in the mystery of whether Russia has material on Trump that could be personally embarrassing to him.”

Trump's kind of guy: Geovanis.

Geovanis was born in Brockton, Massachusetts. Like Trump he went to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He soon landed in Moscow and went to work for a Russian outfit called Brooke Group, which owned land earmarked for the site of a proposed Trump Tower. “When Trump came to town to promote the project, sources say, it was Geovanis’ job to show him around.”

You know—show him the World War II monuments—take him to the zoo—maybe line up some hookers?

A mysterious call that went to Howard Lorber.

That “hookers” part is just a liberal blogger’s joke. But it’s interesting to note that the owners of Brooke Group were Bennett LeBow and Howard Lorber. Both were big donors to Trump’s 2016 campaign and Lorber became a person of interest in the investigation recently when it was revealed that a mysterious phone call had actually gone to his number. That call was one of three Don Jr. made before, during and after a secret meeting with Russians at Trump Tower in June 2016.

So, let’s just say: Wow!

Here’s the photo that Senate investigators wanted to know about—and just for fun, I think you should imagine Donald J. Trump standing there, himself, “The Capitalist” in every sense of the word.

Then imagine the sultry Russian women cavorting with a younger, less jowly version of our president under the sheets.

Or, imagine there’s really a pee-pee tape. If there is, I’m going to let law enforcement officials watch it.

2/23/19: On Saturday we saw the sentencing documents in the case of Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager, and ten-time convicted felon. Prosecutors are calling for Manafort to spend a minimum of 17 ½ years in prison for his crimes. And that doesn’t include charges filed against him in a separate venue.

You can read a summary of Manafort’s misdeeds if you like and ponder the fact that federal prosecutors filed an 800-page document outlining the evidence against him. Then you might remember what the president said about this felonious fellow. “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family,” Trump tweeted last August. “‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break.’”

“Such respect for a brave man!” Trump added—which seemed to be a hint that he might one day pardon poor Manafort.

Assuming he kept his mouth shut.

So let’s end with the idea that by a person’s friends one can tell a great deal about that person himself. Manafort has an extensive history of working with shady international figures. He had longstanding ties to Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs when Trump hired him to begin; and you’d think Trump might have checked that out. He’s been convicted of money laundering and tax fraud. And his crimes aren’t all old. He’s accused of witness tampering last year, in an attempt to keep secret the story of his all his contacts—with Russians—during the 2016 campaign.

In court filings Saturday, prosecutors charged that Manafort had shattered a plea agreement and “brazenly violated the law.”

The sentencing document further stated:

Manafort chose repeatedly and knowingly to violate the law—whether the laws proscribed garden-variety crimes such as tax fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and bank fraud, or more esoteric laws that he nevertheless was intimately familiar with, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Manafort, the man the president called “brave,” had shown a “hardened adherence to committing crimes….His criminal actions were bold, some of which were committed while under a spotlight due to his work as the campaign chairman and, later, while he was on bail from this Court.”

So, will the right kind of wall help us with Manafort, Kraft, Epstein, Smollett and several other suspects from the Trump 2016 campaign? Yes. Yes, they will. As Don Jr. recently said, “Walls work.”

This is particularly true when those walls have bars on all windows.

2/25/19: President Trump heads for Vietnam this afternoon, in preparation for a second summit meeting with Kim Jong-un, the dictator of North Korea.

In an effort to get ready, he tweets twenty times in one day and then we find out, sought advice on dealing with North Korea from…

Oh, for fuck sakes…Russia!

2/27/19: “Disgraced felon” Michael D. Cohen is set to testify publicly on Wednesday in front of the House Oversite Committee.

It’s interesting to note that the term “disgraced felon” is coming from Press Secretary Pinocchio and other White House aides. And that makes me wonder? Aren’t all felons “disgraced?”

Or: just the felons who might have dirt on President Trump, both before he took office and after?

We know Paul Manafort, who ran the Trump 2016 campaign for several months is now a felon. So is Rick Gates, who helped steer the Trump Inaugural Committee. And, yes, Cohen, his longtime personal lawyer, is a felon for sure. Mike Flynn, Trump’s first pick for National Security Adviser is a felon. George Papadopoulos, a campaign adviser, is a felon. Elliot Broidy, who met with Trump in the White House and worked out a deal with the United Arab Emirates worth hundreds of millions, has been a felon for years. Felix Sater, who worked on the Trump Tower Moscow deal during 2016, yeah, he was a felon long ago when Trump hired him for the job.

Usually, you don’t find this many “disgraced felons” in one place unless there are high walls, barbed wire and bars.

POSTSCRIPT: Roger Stone, close Trump adviser and friend, is likely to join the “disgraced felon” club soon.