Indictment-O-Rama Megathread: Mueller indicts 13 Russians

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CNN says :

The charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said. It is unclear what the charges are.

Why wait until Monday to take them into custody ?
Is there not a possible flight risk or some other risk for not taking them immediately ?

I would think they have marshals watching them.

The family car had better go only to a grocery store. And maybe that is tricky.

It will be easy to block the driveway of the "Man-o'-Fraud" residence. 

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Due to it being leaked the indicted will probably have to be taken into custody sooner. Those who were indicted don't know they've been indicted yet. But because it is on CNN Manafort may pack his bags and try flee.

Yeah, I don't really see any advantage to leaking this instead of keeping it a secret until Monday. It's sealed for a reason. Plus, I think there would have been greater political impact were it a surprise on Monday. A hypothesis might be that the Trump crew leaked it on purpose to try and lessen the blow.

Attempted flight when one believes that one might be indicted (and who would better know whether he is a target of prosecutors, other than federal prosecutorial staff and law enforcement, of whether one is to be indicted than the one who knows that he is the subject of the probe?

One last trip to see fall colors in Pennsylvania or West Virginia will not be a valid excuse for heading out of the Washington area. You can bet that there are unmarked cars with federal agents stalking him near his residence, and if a car leaves his residence, then that car will be stopped... even if it is a family member out for grocery shopping.  

...I would be leery of claiming that the Trump Administration would leak this information to lessen any blow. Aiding someone in escaping an arrest is itself a felony offense. An FBI agent who developed a bond with the gangster Whitey Bulger and warned him that he was about to be indicted whereupon Bulger fled the country has been convicted and is spending a long time in prison. The Trump Administration has done some squirrelly things, but that would be itself grounds for impeachment and would be too stupid to imagine.  

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Good article from Lawfare on what we know (not much) and don't know about the indictment(s):

https://lawfareblog.com/seven-frequently-asked-mueller-indictment-questions-which-we-dont-have-answers

Excellent indeed. We do not know. It's a sealed indictment. I suspect that there already are some unmarked cars assigned to the FBI lurking near driveways in case someone on the list of possible targets attempts to take off for a fall foliage trip, or even to a grocery store. You can be sure that the marshals or special agents know by heart what cars the likely suspects own and drive.

We have only bits and pieces. Robert Mueller has done a fine job of keeping secrets. 

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When are they gonna start arresting people?  I'm tired of waiting.

Good police and prosecutors will not let interfere with an offender doing something that  incriminates himself unless the crime is really dangerous (murder, rape, armed robbery, kidnapping, arson, child abuse) or the offender tries to escape. 

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Paul Man-O'-Fraud -- the Benedict Arnold of the 21st century.

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It's telling that FoX Propaganda Channel has Sheppard Smith, who appears largely when FoX News must come clean about conservative politicians, on the air.

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Many 'anti=Trump' Republicans were even more anti-Clinton and anti-Sanders.

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How many people would protest the firing of Mueller?

I would!

I have participated in only one demonstration.

Rule of Law is even more essential to a free society than are elections. Heck, China and Iran have elections, too.

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I guess this should be the de facto Mueller charges megathread. Anyway, I hope these charges come tomorrow, would be great timing.

I concur, and it is time to change the title to recognize that the charges from last week might not be the last. Paul Man-o'-Fraud was simply the lowest-hanging fruit and the highest 'flight risk'. George Papadopoulos was probably more of a hazard to himself than an investigative tool if he continued to wear a wire. Mueller surely wants to keep him from having some suspicious accident that would silence him. To put it into gangland terms, that canary can sing, but he certainly can't fly.

This investigation is being run as if the participants were mobsters.   

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I wonder when Trump and the GOP will begin their push to fire Mueller or somehow seriously restrict his investigation.

They’re sweating like dogs.

Err, I doubt that. If we were talking about your average Republican president, I could believe that, but with Trump, I honestly do not think he can restrain himself. Once the investigation gets closer to his family or maybe some other people he considers important and if they get slapped with their own indictments, it's very easy to see Trump firing Mueller and/or issuing pardons. I mean come on, this is Donald Trump, Grumps. He has spent the past 2+ (or his lifetime?) years breaking rules. I really doubt he can restrain himself, especially when he knows he can insulate himself from real repercussions rather easily.

As for Republicans, or political parties in general, never underestimate their willingness to put party above all else, even if it means shutting down a legitimate investigation just to try and limit damage in the next election(s).

Unless someone named Trump or Kushner is about to be indicted I'm not giving any credence to any Fire Mueller stories.

The fact that Trump would fire Mueller because of who the latter indicted, period, is proof that Trump has absolutely no respect for the rule of law.  It's just as corrupt to fire Mueller for indicting Kushner as it would be to fire him for indicting Manafort.

So I'm guessing Mueller is planning another Monday morning round-up? If he is, it's a 99.8% chance that both Flynn and Junior are going down.

The only surprise here is that Flynn wasn't indicted before Manafort

Why is that surprising?

It is far better, of course, that justice be decided in the unpredictable courts of law with their long-established rules of evidence and centuries (in America, going back to English common law that the colonists brought with them to Virginia and Massachusetts). than that justice be decided in the streets.

Don't fool yourselves:  rule of law is more essential to the quality of your lives than are either free stuff or special tax breaks and subsidies.

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Let's take a moment to consider how awful this is.  The incoming National Security Adviser was allegedly plotting an illegal kidnapping and rendition to a foreign power.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. There are all sorts of possible crimes that this suggests, including violation of the Neutrality Act. Conspiracy to kidnap?

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The name of the most despised senior officer in American history does not escape my mind. I simply need be cautious about mentioning his name with respect to any living persons. 

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The real drama will be in a courthouse. Of course, the news stories are beginning to numb us. Consider this: plumbers eventually get immune to the scent of sewage.

No gold toilet can make the stench from this political sewage any less noxious.

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Dogs don't sweat much. They have sweat glands on their paws, and they rely heavily upon panting to cool off. Or going into water.

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Looks like Flynn is turning:

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Practically definitive. No longer part of the Trump clique. Flynn has much to lose.

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666 Fifth Avenue? Is Beelzebub one of the lessees?

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Man, ABC is getting a lot of heat tonight from some pretty solid people like Haberman, Darcy, and others.

It's journalism 101 to have more than one source confirm. Their inability to do that led to a 350 point drop in stock market.

I'm glad the report was wrong, and it was a monumental retraction.

The same guy who broke this false report also broke the false report that th Aurora theater shooter was a tea party operative.

One qualification: an official source is definitive (death, indictment, conviction, financial transaction, marriage, sporting results).

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Paul Man-o'-Fraud apparently violated bail by having contacts with Russian connections.

LOCK HIM UP!

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Trump says TODAY(!!!) that he still so feels so bad for Flynn, that "it's like lying to the FBI might have even ruined his life"...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-says-he-feels-badly-for-michael-flynn/

As if hitching his star to Donald Trump wouldn't tarnish him.

I wonder what the military thinks of former General Flynn now.

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No, I’m not.  Trump may very well get indicted for obstruction of justice by Mueller, indeed it’s more likely than not at this point, and Mueller will almost certainly recommend impeachment at the very least.  And Trump obviously colluded with Russia.  However, facts are facts.  Collusion is a political term, you’ll never see anyone indicted for “collusion” b/c it’s not a crime.  As for conspiracy, that word doesn’t quite mean the same thing legally as it does in common usage.  It certainly shouldn’t be used interchangeably with collusion although if new information/testimony comes out, they may end up overlapping in this case.

Collusion is not a criminal charge, but you effectively cannot collude without accepting in kind gifts, which is illegal for a campaign to accept from a foreign power.

There may be a difference in that collusion implies that those complicit may be beyond indictment because they are foreigners acting legally because their deeds are licit elsewhere. such as a Russan spymaster operating in Russia violates no laws. On the other hand an American acting in concert with a Russian crime syndicate in the distribution of illegal drugs would  be criminal conspirators because drug trafficking is also illegal in Russia.   

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The Trump playbook is beginning to look much like the playbooks of Ulbricht,  Bierut, Gottwald, Rakosi, Gheorgiu-Dej, and Dimitroff as applied in central and Balkan Europe between 1945 and 1949.

Check those surnames in Wikipedia. Except that the objective is plutocratic dictatorship instead of Commie dictatorship, the methods are much the same. Putin  is an ex-KGB man, a carrier of the traditions of the Cheka, OGPU, and NKVD  as well as the KGB.

First, find power-hungry, but utterly unprincipled and ruthless fanatics. Then corrupt a weakened system (probably because people have chosen to use the political process for personal gain instead of public service). Do demagoguery, making promises to constituencies (like small farmers and industrial laborers) who have little in common; get their support but know that you will never be able to meet the promises because those promises will contradict themselves.    Then make a sham of democracy. Then take command of the media, the electoral process, law enforcement, and the judiciary. Then start killing opponents and rivals, and make sure that the economic system serves first those politically connected and punishes anyone suspect. 

We are in the 'make a sham of democracy' stage.

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How so?  The fact that Mueller immediately removed Strzok makes it clear that he's conducting the investigation in a fair, neutral, partisanship-free manner.

My question is, how come the "deep state" as some 48% of the country believes, is so hell bent on taking down Donald Trump?

I mean, is it some sort of conspiratorial type thing? What I mean by that is, you have people like Jay Carney, who works in Obama's White House, but he's married to Claire Shipman, who is currently the national correspondent for ABC's Good Morning America.

Is it that? Are these people all overly college educated and super politically correct and all marrying and screwing each other and hanging out at the same clubs and stuff? Is it an elite thing? Or do they see their political established globalist agenda in jeopardy? I don't quite understand.

I mean, I detested Obama's politics, and I never voted for him even though most of my family did. But when he won, he won. Now, trying to block something legislatively, that's one thing. But to try and undo the will of the voters, is quite another. Like that idiot Roy Moore not conceding a legitimate election last night.

I don't understand where the vitriol is coming from.

If he won with the aid of a foreign country and is beholden to that country, then the election that got him into the Presidency  (and who knows what else?) might look voidable.

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How so?  The fact that Mueller immediately removed Strzok makes it clear that he's conducting the investigation in a fair, neutral, partisanship-free manner.

My question is, how come the "deep state" as some 48% of the country believes, is so hell bent on taking down Donald Trump?

I mean, is it some sort of conspiratorial type thing? What I mean by that is, you have people like Jay Carney, who works in Obama's White House, but he's married to Claire Shipman, who is currently the national correspondent for ABC's Good Morning America.

Is it that? Are these people all overly college educated and super politically correct and all marrying and screwing each other and hanging out at the same clubs and stuff? Is it an elite thing? Or do they see their political established globalist agenda in jeopardy? I don't quite understand.

I mean, I detested Obama's politics, and I never voted for him even though most of my family did. But when he won, he won. Now, trying to block something legislatively, that's one thing. But to try and undo the will of the voters, is quite another. Like that idiot Roy Moore not conceding a legitimate election last night.

I don't understand where the vitriol is coming from.

If he won with the aid of a foreign country and is beholden to that country, then the election that got him into the Presidency  (and who knows what else?) might look voidable.

You want it to be voidable because you dislike him personally. I disliked Obama personally but I never stooped to the impeachment level, EVER. I called out Republicans who would ever even consider it.

"Voidable" probably means a military coup, something that has never happened in America. I question whether anyone wants that. We could end up with a Pinochet as a leader... and lots of dead bodies of political opponents stashed in spent coal mines put to macabre use. A coup is the only way that I can think of that voids the 2016 election should it be shown to be fraudulent.

I recognize the legitimacy of disliking Barack Obama for his personality and policies -- but nothing that he did came close to a "high crime or misdemeanor" suitable for impeachment and removal. Bill Clinton's sexcapades would... now. For all the smears of Obama, nobody ever claimed that he had any connection to any foreign power with questionable designs on the American political system.

Note well that impeachment is not for unpopularity or incompetence. If we get a disappointing President, then that is our tough luck.  Maybe we had to sort out what worked and what didn't work with Hoover's failed stewardship of the American economy in the 1929-1932 meltdown; maybe we had to stick with Carter during the stagflation and the hostage situation. Carter was not willing to give Americans the harsh medicine of greatly-reduced personal expectations that would compel college grads with liberal arts to take minimum-wage jobs as store clerks and pretend to love those jobs and the low pay. Reagan was willing to do so.

I'm not going to contrast Trump to Obama, as they are very different in ideology.  I am going to contrast Trump to Reagan. Donald Trump is even more reactionary than Reagan. Reagan was willing to take what he wanted in stages, getting what he could while he could with Democrats and Republicans doing some give and take while hoping that Americans could begin to recognize that the Reagan way was right. It worked politically, as shown in the 49-state landslide for Reagan in 1984.

The Trump agenda has been to create a narrative about political successes that he has never had, beginning with the giant crowds applauding him after one of the biggest landslides in American history. (Reagan in 1980 and Obama in 2008, both following failed Presidencies, got similar shares of the popular vote in both years). Donald Trump strikes me as a humorless man unlike Reagan (or Obama), so what he said was more likely a lie than a jest. Worse -- a pointless lie. If you are to lead, then you had better keep your integrity intact. Ronald Reagan quit talking about Carter once he won the election; Donald Trump can't quit denouncing "Crooked Hillary". He has used the Presidency to denounce and punish those who failed to recognize how wonderful he is, as shown in a tax 'reform' that enriches elites at the expense of the educated middle class.  Reagan was always an American patriot; Trump is a toady of Putin. I'll take Reagan's dealings with Gorbachev any day over Trump's shameful submission to Putin at the expense of America's long-time (and more reliable) allies. Every President from FDR to Obama has had the ethos "Do something stupid to us and die" without provoking a potential enemy to strike. Trump has been provoking the erratic King-in-all-but-name of North Korea with language little more advanced than the "Double-dog-dare you" language that you may remember from the school playground.

Like Reagan, Trump may be showing signs of mental deterioration. Reagan at least had good advisors who could cover for him; Trump insists upon yes-men who lack the ability or willingness to keep him from doing something rash.

All in all  I see Obama as one who wanted to be a liberal version of Reagan but ended up with an Eisenhower-like Presidency. Donald Trump  is even less like Ronald Reagan.

After Donald Trump,

"Mister we could use a man like B'rack Obama again"... OK... a woman with similar astuteness and probity.      

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We will have a long, hot, and noisy summer... and 'hot' for reasons other than the global warming that the President denies.

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Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) says that the rumor on Capitol Hill is that Trump will fire Mueller by Christmas.

It does look like the groundwork is getting laid to fire Mueller. It actually has been for a while, but recently it has been getting even more extensive.

Please let him fire Mueller, please let him fire Mueller

If he does, then he looks even more like a dictator.