12/4/18: A man has got to tweet; and Trump has got to
tweet stupid sh*t. Tuesday, he refers to himself as “Tariff Man” on Twitter.
Investors, already skeptical of his claim that he has struck an “incredible”
tariff deal at the G-20 Summit with China, react like an attractive young woman
stuck alone in a room with the Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief. The Dow plunges 800
points.
*
C.I.A. DIRECTOR Gina Haspel heads to Capitol Hill to brief a
group of U.S. senators.
What Haspel says behind closed doors leaves them fuming.
____________________
“If he were in front of a jury, he would be convicted of murder in about 30 minutes.”
Sen. Bob Corker
____________________
The tweeting “Tariff Man” has insisted evidence is not clear. Maybe Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Maybe he didn’t. How should he know? He’s just the president.
The senators who listen to Haspel have no misgivings. Sen. Bob Corker tells reporters after the meeting there can be no doubt the prince “ordered, monitored, the killing” of the father of four. “If he were in front of a jury, he would be convicted of murder in about 30 minutes.”
A visibly angry Sen. Lindsey Graham seconds that assessment. “There’s not a smoking gun,” he fumes, “there’s a smoking saw.”
“You have to be willfully blind,” Graham continues, “not to
come to the conclusion that this was orchestrated and organized by people under
the command of MBS and that he was intrinsically involved in the demise of Mr.
Khashoggi.”
*
WELL, AT LAST! Republicans finally uncover the kind of massive voter fraud the president has been railing about for years. The election in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District was rigged.
By Republicans!
An “independent contractor” working for the campaign of Mark Harris, the GOP candidate, helped Harris beat Democratic opponent Dan McCready by 905 votes. Then evidence of widespread fraud surfaced. Absentee ballots had been sent to hundreds of individuals who never requested them. Workers paid by a convicted felon went door-to-door and collected completed ballots. If you are asking yourself, “Hey, isn’t that illegal?” you are not the first to ask.
That is, in fact, flagrantly illegal.
Citing, “claims of numerous irregularities and concerted
fraudulent activities related to absentee mail ballots,” the State Board of
Elections and Ethics Enforcement refused to certify the results in the Ninth
District.
The testimony of Stacy Holcomb, a Ninth District voter, is typical. “A woman wearing a Mark Harris t-shirt came by his apartment asking if he wanted to cast an absentee ballot by mail,” reporters explained. “He accepted her help getting a ballot and gave the woman the marked, sealed ballot after it arrived.”
Who hatched this scheme? That would be the convicted felon,
Leslie McCrae Dowless.
An article in the Charlotte Observer provides the requisite background:
Leslie McCrae Dowless was
convicted of felony fraud in 1992 in Iredell County, according to court
records. Dowless and his wife were accused of taking out an insurance policy on a dead man [emphasis added] and
collecting nearly $165,000 from his death, according to a 1991 Fayetteville
Observer article. He served more than six months of a two-year prison
sentence, according to court records.
Dowless, now 62, was convicted
of felony perjury in 1990, according to court records.
No one knows – but a new election may result.
The GOP still has Rep. Chris Collins.
Well, at least the GOP can still count on Chris Collins to uphold conservative values! Rep. Collins recently eked out a narrow win in New York’s Twenty-Seventh Congressional District. The incumbent defeated his challenger by 2,560 votes, in an election where roughly 277,000 were cast.
Now Collins needs at least one more vote, a jury holdout, since
he’s under indictment on charges of insider trading.
*
OTHER THAN COLLINS’ VICTORY, is there any other good news for Team Trump? Yes and no.
Former Team Trump member and leader of “Lock her up!” chants, General Michael T. Flynn appears in court Tuesday. Special Counsel 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 plead guilty and began cooperating with the investigation. We now learn that he has talked with Mueller’s team on nineteen occasions. “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 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 demands that President Obama produce his birth certificate, Harvard transcripts, hat, pants, and shoe sizes. Tucker Carlson spends an entire show looking perplexed. Liberals, he says, don’t you hate them!
In reality, the folks in the White House must be sweating. No one knows what Flynn told Mueller during those meetings. Jared Kushner has reason to worry. What did Flynn tell investigators about the secret meeting he and Flynn held with a Russian banker in December 2016? Manafort has already been cooked in court. Now the leftovers of his life may end up microwaved for dessert.
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?
How bad could Flynn be for Trump and his gang? First, we have long known that he plead guilty to one charge of lying to the F.B.I. The sentencing document 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 President Trump’s boy.
Secondly, anyone who has ever watched an episode of CSI:
Miami, or CSI: Jaywalking Unit, knows criminal
investigators work their way up, trying to turn small fish against big
fish before the small fish 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 [emphasis added], 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.”
Black lines in a court document, spell trouble for White House.
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.
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