July 31, 2017: Foreign Policy Gibberish from Donald, D.C.'s Wizard of Oz

 

7/31/17: As not predicted by Anthony Scaramucci, new White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly fires Anthony Scaramucci. (See 7/28/17.) 

____________________ 

“We’ll handle North Korea. We’ll be able to handle North Korea. It will be handled. We handle everything.”  

President Trump

____________________ 

 

A Rasmussen opinion poll has Trump’s approval rating at 39%, his disapproval rating at 61%. In Trumpistan, of course, this qualifies as “Fake News” because no one who voted for Trump likes it. 

Again, those of us who possess semi-adequate reasoning skills might note: four days after Trump’s inauguration, Rasmussen was the one poll that had him rated most favorably: 57% approval, 43% disapproval. 

A Gallup poll on July 31 also shows Trump down, 37%-59%. 

In other words: more and more Americans are coming to realize Trump is the D.C. equivalent of the Wizard of Oz. 

Speaking of frauds, during an afternoon cabinet meeting, the president tells reporters not to worry about North Korea. In his usual lucid fashion, he explains, “We’ll handle North Korea. We’ll be able to handle North Korea. It will be handled. We handle everything.” 

Who says this man can’t handle complicated policy!

 

* 

LAST, BUT DEFINITELY NOT LEAST, the Washington Post cites several sources aboard Air Force One when discussion turned to how to handle revelations about Don Jr.’s meeting with the Russian lawyer. Aides, the Post reports, wanted to release a truthful statement, to get out in front of the story. 

No dice said the Liar-in-Chief. 

Trump personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children” when they met in June 2016. This is according to multiple individuals with knowledge of the deliberations. 

That false statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared an article, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was “not a campaign issue at the time.” 

According to the Post top advisers are worried that the president’s actions leave him vulnerable to allegations of a cover-up. 

 “This was…unnecessary,” said one of the president’s advisers, who like most other people interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations. “Now someone can claim he’s the one who attempted to mislead. Somebody can argue the president is saying he doesn’t want you to say the whole truth.”

 

Think Watergate.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (6/28/22): See: 7/7/18 for initial developments related to the story, and 7/8/17 for the first denial. Also, keep in mind that when Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer in the meeting was indicted on unrelated charges, she fled to Russia. She’s never coming back. Unless Trump gets reelected in 2024. 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE #2 (July 5, 2022): It’s fun to go back and look at what Trump first said about people he hired – and what he said after they realized he was in way over his head and offered up criticism. In the clip on North Korea, he predicts that General Kelly, “will go down, in terms of the position of chief-of-staff, as one of the greats ever.”

 

Honorable men and women, like Gen. Kelly soon ran afoul
of a boss with no other guiding principle than self-interest.

After Gen. Kelly stepped down from his post, Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham went to bat for the president. “I worked with John Kelly,” she told reporters, “and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great President.” (See: 10/26/19.) 

Gen. Kelly spoke up again during Trump’s first impeachment, defending Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who had testified that the president placed personal interest ahead of U.S. national security, in demanding Ukraine investigate the Biden family. We teach young officers “to always tell the truth, to tell truth to power,” Kelly said. Col. Vindman “ did exactly what we teach them to do from cradle to grave.” 

When Vindman heard Trump tell President Zelensky he wanted to see the Biden family investigated, that was like hearing “an illegal order.” “We teach them, ‘Don’t follow an illegal order. And if you’re ever given one, you’ll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order, and then tell your boss.’”

 

Now it was Kelly’s turn to face President Trump’s wrath. “When I terminated John Kelly, which I couldn’t do fast enough, he knew full well that he was way over his head. Being Chief of Staff just wasn’t for him,” the president tweeted. Kelly, he continued, “came in with a bang, went out with a whimper, but like so many X’s, he misses the action & just can’t keep his mouth shut, which he actually has a military and legal obligation to do.” 

It’s interesting to note that the president claims he couldn’t get rid of the general “fast enough.” Kelly took the White House job on July 31, 2017. He remained in his position until January 2, 2019. None of Trump’s three other chiefs-of-staff (Reince Priebus, Mick Mulvaney, and Mark Meadows) lasted even a year. (See: 2/13/20.)

September 15, 2018: If Manafort Breaks Trump Is Toast

 

9/15/18: The president wakes to grim reality Saturday. Hurricane Paul is bearing down on Washington D.C. 

 

As innocent as O.J. Simpson in a cutlery factory. 

Friday, with Hurricane Florence lashing the Carolinas, and Trump angrily tweeting about Barack Obama’s twenty-four second slip of the tongue in 2008, Cat 3 winds battered the White House. 

Paul Manafort, a man the president insisted would never “break,” a “brave man,” with a “wonderful family,” finally succumbed. 

For over a year, Manafort insisted that he was as innocent as O.J. Simpson in a cutlery factory. Then a Virginia jury convicted him on eight felony counts. Having been lodged in jail since June 16 (after a judge ruled him a serious flight risk), Manafort, 69, was staring harsh reality between the eyes. If he went to trial again, on a fresh battery of charges, and lost again, he was never going to live in a penthouse bought with laundered Russian money again. 

For three long months, Manafort pined for a pardon from the president. President Twitter Thumbs was busy. Besides, if the president awarded him a pardon before the midterms it would look, even to many Trump fans, as if Donald had something to hide. 

So, the “good man” broke.

Manafort would be one slice, Cohen another.

 

Manafort, who ran the Trump 2016 campaign for several critical months, copped to another pair of felonies, catapulting himself into the lead among Trump campaign operatives with a total of ten. Under a general charge of “conspiracy,” he admitted in court on Friday that ten more felony counts with which he had previously been charged – yeah – he also committed those. 

A jury in his first trial had deadlocked 11-1 for conviction on those charges. But that had been enough of a hook for the president to hang his hat upon. “A large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the Paul Manafort case,” Trump noted on August 22. That could mean only one thing: “Witch Hunt!” he added. 

Now even that consolation was gone. 

 

Trump knows Manafort knows. 

Hurricane Paul began gaining strength. What might have been a Category 1 storm a month ago is now a Cat 3. Manafort agreed to a plea deal which requires him to cooperate “fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly…in any and all matters” with the Russia investigation. 

So, what would bother the totally innocent, orange-colored man in the White House on a fine September morn? What kept the president tossing and turning and tangling his sheets last night? First, Trump understands that Manafort attended a June 2016 meeting when agents of the Russian government offered campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton. Second, Trump knows Manafort knows if he approved the meeting beforehand or received a briefing after it was over. 

Don Jr. and Dad for sure, and former White House Babe Hicks, have already lied about what went on behind Trump Tower’s closed doors. Immediately after the meeting ended, Don Jr. made an 11-minute call to a blocked number. He forgets who he called. But Don Jr. and Dad must know by now, how thorough the Mueller investigators have been. They have to think that Mueller has Don Jr.’s phone records. 

Now the witch hunters have a witch from that meeting who is willing to reveal a few of the spells.

 

Trump knows plenty for once because this is a subject he cares about – namely himself. He knows the door to a useful pardon, one that shuts Manafort up, is closing. Several charges to which Manafort has pled could, if he were pardoned on federal charges, be revived in state courts. Trump knows Manafort knows he’s going to spend a long time in jail. The question is how long. Three years? Ten? Or the rest of his life? Trump knows Manafort agreed to work for his campaign for free. He can only hope his fans don’t realize how bizarre this was, since Manafort was dealing with spiraling debts at the time. Trump knows that Manafort offered to provide “private briefings” to a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, during the 2016 campaign.

____________________ 

“I don’t separate myself from the state. I have no other interests.” 

Oleg Deripaska

____________________ 

 

For purposes of discussion let’s point out that Deripaska is a bosom buddy of Vladimir Putin and himself under sanction by the U.S. government. Why? Deripaska is a money-laundering outlaw. He has ties to the Russian mob and may be complicit in at least one murder. Deripaska once told a reporter that he understood he controlled the aluminum business in Russia only so long as Putin allowed it. “If the state says we need to give it up, we’ll give it up,” the billionaire said. “I don’t separate myself from the state. I have no other interests.” 

How close was Manafort to Deripaska? Close enough to do the oligarch’s bidding for years, to get a $10 million annual contract, and to put in place a secret plan “to greatly benefit the Putin government.” Close enough – and shady enough – to fall millions of dollars into debt to Deripaska. Close enough, once he took over the Trump campaign, to see a way forward, to get out of that debt and maybe cash in big. 

We already know Manafort was cooking up some get-rich-quick scheme with a Russian friend, Konstantin Kilimnik. “I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage, right?” Manafort emailed him that summer. 

“Absolutely,” replied Kilimnik. “Every article.” So, the Russians knew they had an ally inside the Trump camp.

 

Trump now knows that the courts can seize assets if those assets were obtained through illegal means. Manafort has, agreed to forfeit three houses and two apartments, one in Trump Tower. He must also cough up funds he had hidden in several secret bank accounts, investment funds, and even a life insurance policy. His five properties alone are worth an estimated $22 million. 

So, if nothing else, Old Twitter Thumbs can stop tweeting about how much money the Mueller investigation is costing taxpayers. As recently as June 18, Trump said the “scam investigation” had cost $17 million. Now, Mueller’s team has paid all its bills and they’re in the black. 

 

Was the pardon offer an attempt to obstruct justice? 

Finally, due to climate change in Washington, conditions are ripe, and Hurricane Paul may strengthen to a Category 5. This past March, The New York Times reported that John Dowd, then the president’s lawyer, had floated the idea of presidential pardons in front of lawyers for Manafort and another confessed witch, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. 

Trump and Trump fans might call it “Fake News,” but Manafort and Flynn are in perfect position to tell the truth. 

Was this offer really an attempt to obstruct justice? 

The president tossed and turned Friday night, into Saturday morning, because he heard Manafort’s legal team had already made two “proffers” to Special Counsel Mueller. That means they have twice approached investigators with proposed offers: “Here is what our client knows and what he is willing to say.” 

So, Trump knows Manafort has something of value he’d like to share, and Mueller wants him to share it.

 

* 

MICHAEL COHEN, Trump’s former personal lawyer, has also reportedly been in talks with the Special Counsel. According to one reporter, Cohen has expressed a desire to “be on the right side of history.” 

More bad news for Trump.

BLOGGER’S NOTE (5/30/22): If you would liked to see how seriously Trump took the threat of Manafort talking, consider text messages sent from Sean Hannity to Manafort over the course of several months, when it seemed he might break in the face of a long prison sentence. 

If you don’t think Hannity is almost promising a pardon – without saying so, which would be a felony – you probably need reading glasses. (See: 6/22/19.)

November 29-30, 2018: The Trump Tower Moscow Deal - and a Bribe for Vladimir Putin

 

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

Mueller apparently has documents!!! 

____________________ 

“Because I think that would be a conflict.” 

President-elect Trump

____________________ 

 

Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, who worked for Trump for many years, opens a Pandora’s Box brimming with legal and ethical questions when he admits lying in court about the Trump Tower Moscow deal. 

Cohen lied, he says, to ensure his story meshed with the tall tale Candidate Trump was telling at the time. 

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.

When you kick over a rock in Trumpistan, a felon is exposed to the light.

Felix Sater, left.

 

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 that contacts with Russian officials continued into June. 

In other words, Cohen was trying to cover up the fact that Team Trump was working on a lucrative deal with Russians while Candidate Trump was deep into a campaign to become the next President of the United States. 

How lucrative? Some experts say it could have been Trump’s biggest deal ever. The deal was big enough to convince Cohen and other Trump associates to offer to sweeten it by gifting 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.” 

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. 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. 

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.” 

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. 

Second, here’s the fundamental truth. Trump is aware that efforts to land a deal in Moscow while running for office would have been a conflict.

 

* 

TODAY, WE KNOW that a confluence of events occurred in June 2016. The “Fake News” people and investigators have slowly laid this out. George Papadopoulos, a campaign aide, met in March and April with a man he believed could provide dirt on Clinton. Papadopoulos lied about it later and the man he met disappeared. Roger Stone met with a Russian in May and later told Congress he didn’t. The Russians knew Trump and his team were open to cutting a deal. In June, the two sides – Trump campaign and Russians – came to an understanding of some sort. 

Mueller is still working to find out what that understanding was. But he’s gathering documents. 

That month, the Trump campaign/Russian support starts to mesh: 

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

(BLOGGER’S NOTE 5/23/22: This particular meeting has never been proven.)

 

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 in our own country than our great citizens. 

(See: Trump Tower deal in Moscow!)

 

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 an attack of mass amnesia. No one in the meeting the day before remembers having had the meeting, discussing it beforehand, talking about it after, having dreams and/or nightmares about it, what was discussed by participants, or who participants were.

 

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

June 14: It’s Flag Day. Members of the Trump campaign seem confused about which flag they serve. 

According to the latest 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.

 

* 

AS TRUMP FLIES OFF to Argentina he has to understand something ominous is brewing. Mueller has documents – he’s 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 Trump. 

Could this raid be related to the president’s burgeoning legal problems? We don’t know. We do know Cohen did the dirty work for Trump for years and knows where the rotting corpses are interred. 

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 Trump; but if you don’t think the people he hangs with and does business with aren’t willing to commit every imaginable crime to reap fortunes, you’re watching more Fox News than is good for your mental health. Seek counseling at once. 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 been fined before for failing to monitor transactions that involved cash going to terrorists. 

Does Trump do business with Deutsche – known for working with money-launderers? Of course! This past May it was reported that Mueller subpoenaed bank records related to our fearless 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 highest office in the land.

 

* 

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

 

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PLEA AGREEMENT 

If you want to understand which witches investigators 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. 

The sad fig leaf of denial Trump has been trying to position to shield his orange 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 plead guilty to an array of crimes and started cooperating with investigators, Trump tried to downgrade their ties even further. Suddenly, all the president’s sycophants began clamoring, “Cohen is a liar!” Trump said nobody should hire Cohen for legal work, he was a terrible lawyer, and only worked for him for a very short decade. If you listened to Trump, he would hardly have recognized Cohen if he walked into the Oval Office and said, “Hey, Boss, do you want me to pay off the porn star or not?” 

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, couldn’t have found a Russian if Nunes and the other 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, testified, “I determined that the proposal was not feasible for a variety of business reasons and should not be pursued further.” 

Cohen had provided a legal shield for his boss. “To the best of my knowledge,” he 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 Moscow 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.) 

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, he testified, he did send Russian officials several 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, 2016, 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 shady 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 [emphasis added] 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 had the discussion. 

 

Russians willing to cooperate with the campaign. 

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 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 know, Don Jr., Jared Kushner and now-convicted-felon Paul Manafort agree to meet with Russians in Trump Tower, offering anti-Clinton 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, at last? Or does it mean the people at the top of the Trump campaign know an even better deal has been placed on the table? 

That is: do they realize the Russians are willing to offer direct assistance to help defeat Hillary Clinton? 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. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: By the time Trump hired Sater, the latter had been convicted of multiple felonies, including participation in a $40 million securities fraud scheme. He stayed out of jail in that matter only by turning informant for the F.B.I. 

Naturally, any thoughtful individual would be inclined to ask: “What kind of businessman would hire this kind of guy?”