a quick poll about Russia and Donald Trump

Done. Wait, Russian babby? Trump babby?

Same difference

http://i3.cpcache.com/product/423928021/stork_baby_russia_usa_tshirt.jpg?width=300&height=300&Filters=%5B%7B%22name%22%3A%22crop%22%2C%22value%22%3A%7B%22x%22%3A25.0%2C%22y%22%3A0.0%2C%22w%22%3A250%2C%22h%22%3A300.0%7D%2C%22sequence%22%3A1%7D%2C%7B%22name%22%3A%22background%22%2C%22value%22%3A%22F2F2F2%22%2C%22sequence%22%3A2%7D%5D

How do I shot marriage, why is Dave Matthews so bad & hated, can I run bass through a guitar amp

Done, done and done.

Is it reasonable to hope that Congress can way instain

I think my major questions be answered until Mueller spits out a report. So, just getting his general impressions based on news leaks to date would be intriguing enough.

OK, here is what I learned:

1) Mueller and his crew recognize the importance of this investigation to a huge degree - several of his people (my friend had applied to be one of them) left very big and/or lucrative jobs to join his team - so anything regarding the investigation that gets leaked or revealed absolutely is not coming from them.

2) White collar crimes are exceptionally hard to prove, since so many require knowing what was in the accused's mind, why they did what they did. So short of a dramatic smoking gun, he thinks Trump himself is very unlikely to be charged with anything. If he is, my friend thinks from what we know so far that obstruction would be the most likely charge. No way to know how Congress would handle that or any other charge.

3) Of the satellites, he says Manafort seems to be in the most trouble, not least because of the foreign agent stuff but also because there is a high bar for approving an FBI raid of his house. He says the Kush has good lawyers, Don Jr., has bad legal counsel, but from their relative silence lately Kush, Flynn, DJTJ, even Manafort seem to be taking this very seriously. He says there is no way Trump's lawyers have not told him how serious this all is, so has no idea why Trump continues to make things worse for himself.

4) When a man and a woman love each other very much, that is how a babby is made. Except for Trump, who can fuck himself.

My friend, btw, told me both of his parents are Trump voters/supporters, but while his dad is a lost cause (a prosperity evangelical who literally believes Trump was chosen by god), his mom seems to be responding to facts and reporting the right way. Generally, my friend thinks the damaging of the press/free press might be the worst thing to come out of this whole mess.

was there any speculation about why bannon hasn't (or doesn't seem to have) lawyered up? if there's dirt, did he get involved too late in the campaign to get smeared?

thx for the summary

xpost Bannon is actually not human so they're not sure how to charge him in court

"Unfortunately, despite a thorough search of the literature, we find that the law has no precise precedent for indicting a collection of gelatinous toxic slime molds. Therefore, Mr Bannon, you are free to go (alas). However, the court strongly requests that you wait to disband into your component parts until after you have left the building."

2) White collar crimes are exceptionally hard to prove, since so many require knowing what was in the accused's mind, why they did what they did. So short of a dramatic smoking gun, he thinks Trump himself is very unlikely to be charged with anything. If he is, my friend thinks from what we know so far that obstruction would be the most likely charge. No way to know how Congress would handle that or any other charge.

this is one of the reasons the DOJ didnt want to go after 2008 financial crisis bad guys, but still. barely even tried.

Yeah, he brought that up. Wasn't the idea of the New Yorker piece on that basically fear of failure on the part of lawyers?

Yeah its also outrageously expensive to prosecute and the FBIs resources are mostly directed to national security/counter-terrorism.

fwiw, other tidbits he told me were that his firm was more or less OK with his talking head appearances as long as he kept up his regular workload and the appearances remained pretty legal/neutral, vs. political, though he's pushed at that a little in published OpEds; there were concerns in particular that firm lobbyists in DC could bear the brunt of any blowback should he piss off the admin. On the work front, he said he's actually losing money being a talking head, since he could be working or generating new jobs for the firm, but that's all relative. He said he mostly does it for fun. He's been on CNN and MSNBC a bunch, from their little remote studios. The one time he was dumped into some right/left crossfire situation for some radio show he found it so unpleasant he doesn't want to go that route again.

Per resources, he noted once back in his federal prosecutor days that it was just him and his second counsel going up against this whole team of bank lawyers, and they felt seriously outgunned, though he pointed out that Mueller and his team should have the resources they need. I asked him what might happen should Mueller turn up other tangentially related stuff, and he said a lot of its use would be proscribed by the terms of the grand jury. That is, if it took a grand jury to get the info, it'll likely stay locked up forever if it doesn't make it into any sort of final report. (I think I'm remembering this correctly.) There's also the matter of statue of limitations for past crimes. He worked on the Dennis Hastert case here, and noted that Hastert was ultimately prosecuted for tax infractions stemming from his payoffs, not for the crimes themselves, which had happened long ago. But he said that kind of thing is usually pretty frowned upon, so if Mueller found some similar sort of past sneakiness he might not pursue it or include it in his investigation, mostly to maintain the reputation of the office. Federal prosecutors and their ilk take their jobs and offices really seriously.

I am relieved to finally know how is babby formed

The details of the deal, which have not previously been disclosed, provide evidence that Trump’s business was actively pursuing significant commercial interests in Russia at the same time he was campaigning to be president — and in a position to determine U.S.-Russia relations.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-business-sought-deal-on-a-trump-tower-in-moscow-while-he-ran-for-president/2017/08/27/d6e95114-8b65-11e7-91d5-ab4e4bb76a3a_story.html?utm_term=.2616a3130ae2

1/ Stunning: Trump failed to disclose a large pending deal in Moscow while he ran for White House via @CarolLeonnig https://t.co/ARkRb5dIAW

— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) August 28, 2017

Apparently questions re: Trump Tower Russia being referred to Cohen's lawyer.

Per your friend's comment:

So short of a dramatic smoking gun, he thinks Trump himself is very unlikely to be charged with anything.

Not saying this was a smoking gun, but perhaps a whiff of grapeshot?

It all sounds bad and messy, but I think my friend's point is it is not necessarily criminal to be friends and associate with criminals. It's a pretty high bar to prove Trump himself knowingly did anything illegal here short a paper trail of explicit contractions and cover-ups. For example, he told me about this one real estate mogul he prosecuted who was giving different PowerPoint presentations with different numbers to different audiences. That's bad. But just getting in bed with sketchy partners is not itself illegal. However, it could lead to the discovery of a legality, and obviously the more people swept into the net increases those odds, assuming there is anything there.

Illegality, not a legality, whoops.

The proposed Moscow project was a licensing deal -- basically independent developers pay Trump to put his name on a building for marketing purposes. I don't think it means much to any of this.

Trump is corrupt, and it's in plain sight. I still fail to understand what the overarching Russia theory amounts to, what the picture is supposed to look like when we finally "connect all the dots."

Yeah, I've kind of lost the thread to this whole Russia thing, too. Who's leading this, anyway? Democrats? I see the investigation happening, but I don't really hear any cases against Trum, for Russia, corruption, or anything, from anyone, really.

Trumpppppp

I think it ultimately still boils down to 'here's damaging info on Hillary in exchange for easing of sanctions' right?

+ evidence of massive amounts of white collar crimes that otherwise would've flown under the radar, which probably won't have any real-world consequences?

Yeah, that's the outline. This 'revelation' is about him not disclosing he had monetary interests in Russia, which if you squint could open him up to blackmail, I guess?

Well, the deal fell through, so I guess technically it wasn't a monetary interest in Russia?

No, the problem is that he didn't disclose it while it happened. Which, conceivably, the Russians could still later leak.

it's treason to collude with a foreign country to win a US election whether or not the foreign country in question is under sanction for annexing other countries iirc

I think it ultimately still boils down to 'here's damaging info on Hillary in exchange for easing of sanctions' right?

― frogbs, Monday, August 28, 2017 10:06 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Doesn't that require Congress?

No, the problem is that he didn't disclose it while it happened. Which, conceivably, the Russians could still later leak.

― Frederik B, Monday, August 28, 2017 10:17 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The deal fell through before the primaries began.

x-post: Yes, which is why the way to do it would be to, for example, include it in the plank at the Republican convention ;)

y'all know there are already people investigating this right

don't know that it *has* to make sense to us

Part of the issue is Russian money saved Trumps ass from the brink of irrelevancy in the 2000s and in return Trump is willing to view Russia and Russians in a more favorable light. Especially in his narcissist land he lives in where 'people who help me = good, people who hurt me = bad and must be destroyed'. Its been on display the entire time.

y'all know there are already people investigating this right

― Neanderthal, 28. august 2017 18:10 (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't know that it *has* to make sense to us

― Neanderthal, 28. august 2017 18:11 (fifty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The problem is kinda that there is so many different people investigating this. There is Mueller, there is congress, and there is a ton of journalists. It's not a bad idea to take a step back and wonder what the story is even supposed to be, imo. Especially because there really are quite a few stories that don't have any relevance to the bigger picture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=51&v=9N5Kun2sJPA

fake news?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-donald-trump-kompromat-nikita-isaev-new-russia-movement-state-tv-us-president-a7929966.html

we need the pee tape more than ever

Like his flock would even flinch. I bet his core would love him better for it.

but I thought all far-right politicians liked each other and wanted the same things

In the "huh, I never thought about that" category, I just saw David Axelrod interviewed and answering questions at the local university. Someone asked him about Russia, and he said he had just been speaking with Adam Schiff, and that Schiff's biggest fear was not necessarily that people in Trump's orbit had cooperated with Russia but that the next time the impact of their meddling could be even greater. As an example, he noted how easy it could be for Russia to, say, slip just five fake pages into a 60,000 page wikileaks dump, and what kind of chaos something that simple might inspire.

Huh, I never thought about that.

didn't the Macron campaign intentionally do something like this so they could discredit them later

sigh

it's on!

Advisory Board:

-neocon blogger
-perjurer
-wonk with no Russia background
-director of When Harry Met Sally
-right-wing talk radio guy pic.twitter.com/u7LA9Ej7K3

— David Klion (@DavidKlion) September 19, 2017

And here I was thinking Reiner would never recapture the hilarious absurdity of a Spinal Tap. Kudos.