Indictment-O-Rama 2: The Lying Game

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Um, because Trump and his companies have a history of doing everything within their power to avoid such requests?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Yeah, he's probably getting ready to fire Mueller:

https://www.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/975163071361683456

This is the first time Trump has EVER tweeted something using Mueller's name specifically

So, given Trump's relationship with reality in the past, I think it's safe to say:

There is a basis for the investigation, Trump conspired with some Russian entities (which we already knew), Trump has been informed by people he trusts that said conspiracy was felony, and Trump believes there's more than enough evidence to send him to jail.

Great news!


And for bonus irony, the reason 'the Mueller probe' exists is because of Trump's own actions in firing Comey.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

If Trump was going to fire Mueller, why hasn't he done it already? He could have terminated this months ago before any indictments were issued.

You're speaking as if Trump was a rational human being. He isn't. Between his grievous personal flaws and mental illness, he's not going to take the actions most people would in his place.


-Up until this year, he was convinced the investigation was going to end around Christmas and exonerate him. (Even now, has he truly given up on the 'Mueller should be investigating Hillary' angle?)

-He's easily distractable and unmotivated. How often has Fox News been reminding him of the investigation?

-He's functionally insane. He probably thinks that: a) nothing he did could possibly be illegal, b) even if it was, they certainly can't prove it, and c) even if they can, nothing of consequence will happen to him. After all that's how his world has always worked before. It takes a lot to crack the shell, although I think it's finally happening.


-He's a bully and a coward. Firing Mueller is going to provoke a firestorm that he won't be able to ignore or wish-away. Even if he thinks he's going to survive it, he'll lash out at 'safe' targets and throw tantrums before being forced into a tough fight.

Eventually he'll try, of course. Because he's stupid and he's guilty.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Holy Piss Tape Batman!

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/975813554610860032

This would be the same firm that was very recently caught lying to the British Parliment about its contacts with Russians.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-academic-trawling-facebook-had-links-to-russian-university

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Russiagate is becoming a slow motion version of Snowden's leaks. Everyone but the complete paranoid nuts told themselves something like, "yeah, I suppose that they could do that, but there's really no way they'd actually do it" only it turned out they had, and then some. The truth was both worse and more fantastic than believable.

For, a long time I thought Trump would be found guilty of shady finance and some minor not-so-covert Russian help, possibly due to his own awful judgement, rather than deliberate ill intent. But there is so much high temperature smoke. A preponderance of evidence, much but not all of it circumstantial,  would seem to lead to a scenario where Trump really is some sort of ManchurianKremlin candidate.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Whew lads.... tomorrow is gonna be nuts

https://www.twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/975818564652486656

I'm reserving judgement, but this sounds awfully Operation Veritas to me.

Well, that depends on whether the footage is a mix of faked and heavily edited or not. But yes, we will have to wait and see.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Thinking that Drumpf will last to 2020 at this point is laughable.

Nothing that has been revealed so far is going to produce 67 votes for conviction in the Senate.

Seriously people! Remember that this has to happen for him to be removed! It's never going to happen. The best we could hope for is if Trump is somehow convinced to resign due to political pressure. But that's not happening either. The man's ego is too big and he doesn't listen to anyone unless he agrees with them.

He'll resign, grudgingly, if it's a deal to get out of prosecution and confiscation of his assets and his yes-men browbeat him into it. (And then he'll turn around and insist that he never 'really' resigned and that he's still President.)

For impeachment... I can see impeachment getting 67 votes in the Senate if there's a huge wave AND Trump keeps on his flaming garbage ride downhill. I don't think even multiple major disasters directly at Trump's hands would be enough to turn the Republican rank and file against him to the point where the whole party would turn on him. But if the GOP gets smashed in November, and Trump looks to be getting even worse then I think it has a shot. Especially if he fumbles something major. (And lets' face it, by now it's obvious that he's incapable of anything else.) In such circumstances, I can see the GOP in the Senate deciding to read the giant flaming letters written in the sky, and decide that backing Trump isn't worth it anyone more. There are 20 GOP seats up in 2020, plus the Presidency and a lot of state legislatures. And if they have a rock solid indictment from Mueller to hide behind, I think you could get 15-20 Republicans on board, from a mix of honest dislike of Trump, and opportunistic desire to stay in office.

He could also go stark raving mad and get deposed by Pence and the Cabinet, although I think that's even less likely.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Cambridge Analytica coordinated between Trump campaign and SuperPACs

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

At some point...Mueller's going to get canned

Outgoing lawyer says Trump approved statement calling for end to Mueller probe

Start planning for our Constitutional Crisis now.

My (hardly novel) predictions:

-Muller gets fired as part of a massacre
-The GOP will make noise, but not actually do anything
-Trump will continue to get worse
-Trump starts a war when he gets desperate (probably this year, but maybe next year)
-The Dems will win big in Nov, but not big enough
-After winning, the Dems put the brakes on, but don't play hardball like they should
-2019 and 2020 are disastrous for the United States

I think it's basically a coin flip on whether the GOP establishment turns on Trump in 2019 and then campaigns on trying to walk a line that appeals to both crazies and centrists, or whether they stick with him and try to blame all the disasters in 2019 and 2020 on the Democrats in Congress (and Hillary Clinton's emails).

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Hopefully the same thing happens w/ Bolton

Trump always nominates someone worse after he fires someone though. But to be fair, I can't think of a worse National Security Adviser than Bolton.

Kushner

Ivanka

Anna Chapman

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This has to be satire, right? Right?

Of course it is. But there's still truth in it or it wouldn't be funny. In particular, I have to wonder if the bit about compensation isn't a big part of why Trump is having so much trouble finding more defense lawyers.

Being someone whose most liquid assets are likely to be frozen and who has a long history of publicly bragging about not paying his bills could make those who would otherwise accept him as a client decide otherwise.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

DOJ Inspector General reviews alleged FISA abuses by DOJ, FBI

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I'm sure the timing is a total coincidence.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Just a thought. What if he fired Mueller and state AGs pursued him and got felony indictments on him? And say they grant no bail.

Obstruction is a federal crime.

There have been strong suggestions of financial improprieties that could be state-level crimes.

I thought he meant Donald Trump specifically.  We don't know what Mueller knows and I wouldn't be surprised if there were state-level financial crimes, but from what we do know so far, I'm not seeing a case against Trump for much other than obstruction of justice.  Obviously that could easily change, but I don't want to assume things we don't know.

Given what we have publicly seen about Trump's finances, how he does business and who he does business with, it seems near-certain that he was engaged in improper dealings. Whether those rise to the level of felonies or not I don't know, but the makeup of Mueller's staff seems to show that he considered it likely.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Just a thought. What if he fired Mueller and state AGs pursued him and got felony indictments on him? And say they grant no bail.

Obstruction is a federal crime.

There have been strong suggestions of financial improprieties that could be state-level crimes.

I thought he meant Donald Trump specifically.  We don't know what Mueller knows and I wouldn't be surprised if there were state-level financial crimes, but from what we do know so far, I'm not seeing a case against Trump for much other than obstruction of justice.  Obviously that could easily change, but I don't want to assume things we don't know.

Given what we have publicly seen about Trump's finances, how he does business and who he does business with, it seems near-certain that he was engaged in improper dealings. Whether those rise to the level of felonies or not I don't know, but the makeup of Mueller's staff seems to show that he considered it likely.

I mean, sure it’s possible, but I’ve seen nothing to make me think Trump is being investigated for anything other than obstruction of justice.  Also, Mueller would only bring charges if he was confident he could prove them beyond reasonable doubt.

Um, two weeks ago:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Wow, Mueller is not screwing around fam.

London-based academic and Donald Trump ally Ted Malloch was detained and interrogated by the FBI as he flew into Boston’s Logan International Airport.

https://www.rt.com/usa/422798-trump-ally-detained-by-fbi/

This may not necessarily have anything to do with the special counsel’s probe.

A 'significant figure' linked to Roger Stone has been compelled to testify in the Russia probe as Mueller homes in on the DNC hack

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Also, amusingly, there's this, too,

You must be logged in to read this quote.

The caliber of defender Trump attracts is very revealing. (That Team Trump is going all-in on the 'there's a secret Illuminati conspiracy to destroy me' Big Lie is just one more indicator that he is guilty, to me.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Oh my...

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I can only imagine how many hoops they had to jump through to get approval to do this to the President's personal lawyer. Including getting approval from Trump appointed officials: Director of the FBI, U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York, etc.

Which in turn implies that whever Mueller gave them was very solid.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

NYT: Trump tried to fire Mueller (again) in December after reports came out that the Special Council had subpoenaed info from Deutsche Bank. He changed his mind after Mueller assured him that the reports were false. So there's two interesting headlines - both that the president seems to be serious about his "red line in the sand" and that Mueller appears to not have crossed it yet.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Just more evidence that Trump is a crook, as well as unfit to hold office (and likely a traitor). 

The longer Trump's impeachment is delayed, the more everyone - not just liberal or Democrats - is eventually going to regret leaving him in office.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/984236740297797632

(That old bearded guy is Whitey Bulger - really)

Fox News' greatest achievement is convincing a large portion of the Boomer/Silent generations that hyper-partisan conspiratorial tabloid nonsense is actual news.

The "Mueller Crime Family" thing fits Trump's MO to a T. He always accuses others of what he is guilty of himself. (Probably because he doesn't have much imagination.)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Drumpf having a mental breakdown as we speak

https://www.twitter.com/brianstelter/status/984849328899436544

Is Melania going to wake up one morning and go into the bathroom and see Trump slouched over on the toilet with a bucket of KFC and watching Fox News on the bathroom TV Elvis style?

Or find Trump dead of a heart-attack. 

Which I don't want to have happen -I want him to face the music. 

His cultists would turn him into a martyr. Deep state assassination for the nuttiest of the nuts, killed by the stress of an unjust conspiracy against him for those who think they're not in a cult

He needs to survive, so that our society can demonstrate it is functional enough to reject him.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Its probably been decades since Giuliani practiced law. Not a great choice.

Unless Trump's plan is to use a big terror attack as an excuse to stay in office past the end of his term. Then Giuliani is perfect.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Apparently Reince was in the room, trying to talk about something else, but Trump kept talking about Russian hookers.

I see a future where the former head of the RNC (and former White House Chief of Staff) is called to testify, under oath, about how many times the President of the United States returned to the topic of the attractiveness of Russian prostitutes. Because that is the reeking open sewer the GOP is trying to drown our country in.

"Thanks", "Republicans"!

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

So when is Trump indicting Trump on obstruction of justice or collusion? I thought it was imminent?

Surely you've realized by now that there is nothing negative he would actually take responsibility for.

Despite his repeated public confessions of wrongdoing, Trump is going to need to be dragged whining and raving from the White House, no matter how he is removed from office.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Natalia V. Veselnitskay reverses course, admits to direct connection with Russian government

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I've said for over a year that everyone involved, Republicans and Democrats alike, would all come to regret not impeaching Trump sooner. I still think that's true, but there's also a silver lining. When Trump is taken down, it's going to be with such a mountain of evidence that only his insane cultists will be able to stand by him. And standing by Trump as part of the cult, the GOP is going to do a great deal of well-deserved damage to itself.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Now I'm waiting for Trumpy to claim that the Kremlin was so perceptive that they knew he'd be President one day, so they spent years setting up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of shady financial deals just to make future President Trump look bad.



(Fake tweet. I need a disclaimer because nothing is beneath this so-called "President".)

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Giuliani’s DoJ career is legendary. In addition to his Mafia prosecutions, he also used to perpwalk Wall Street crooks across their firms’ trading floors to send a message to their colleaguesget himself publicity.

FIFY.

Honestly, that was just my impression from what I've seen of him. But just a little googling produced this from 1989:
Giuliani's Powerful Image Under Campaign Scrutiny

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It just stands to reason that anyone who has a decades-long friendship with Trump would be a scumbag themselves.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Whelp, there's a long rambling denial from Trumpy on Twitter than no campaign funds were used. Given Trumpy's history and pathological lying, it seems certain that he used campaign funds to pay off at least Ms. Cliffords / Daniels, and possibly more women he'd had affairs with. What's the legal penalty for doing that, anways?