Trump reacts to Manafort Indictment
(He had nothing to do with my campaign)
Trump Tweet Today on Manafort Indictment
(Blame Game (deflection) Heating Up (again)
(*Note: The details
of the indictment are here from DOJ.gov)
They include
tax charges as well as charges of conspiracy, making false statements and
failure to register as foreign agents. The indictment lays out a web of shell
companies that allegedly allowed them to conceal income. No mention is made of
President Trump or the campaign, but some of the alleged wrongdoing continued
“between in and around 2008 and 2017” (see
paragraph 14 of the indictment).
What we do
not know at this stage vastly outstrips what we do know. We know that special
counsel Mueller has moved swiftly and that his investigation is not restricted
to alleged collusion. We can logically infer that the investigation is not
ending, but beginning.
For now, cries that the investigation is a “hoax” or “witch
hunt” ring hollow when those in the top echelon of the Trump campaign face
federal criminal charges.
As a political matter, Trump and his family will need
to explain why
they hired someone whose reputation as a representative of dubious foreign
regimes was already known. The utter recklessness in hiring someone
with overseas clients,
while perhaps not criminal, speaks to Trump and his
inner circle’s utter recklessness.
It was a pattern seen again in hiring Michael Flynn as
NSC Adviser.
Here is what we do not know:
1. Did Trump or anyone in his inner circle know
about Manafort’s dealings with Russian ally Yanukovych?
(Note: Trump
son-in-law Jared Kushner and others who pushed for Manafort’s hiring once again
turn out to be supporters of rotten decision-making that has embroiled the administration
in controversy. Ivanka Trump-Kushner and Jared Kushner both pushed for
then-candidate Trump to hire Trump Tower neighbor Paul Manafort as campaign
manager in the spring 2016, replacing the scatter-shot Corey Lewandowski. Also note: Manafort’s past clients have included
notorious strongmen and former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos and
Angolan military leader Jonas Savimbi – oddly, a fact that Jared and Ivanka
either ignored or somehow found useful.)
2. Did anyone vet Manafort or question him about
his foreign dealings? If so, what did they find out?
3. Did Manafort, as some have alleged, or Gates
push to change the RNC platform at the convention in Cleveland so as to water
down language committing the party to arm Ukraine against Russian and
pro-Russian forces? If so, did Trump know about this?
======================================================
BOMBSHELL
THAT IS RELATED TO ALL THIS:
This critically
important information from the NY Times here – the word
bombshell may be an understatement.
It was also revealed Monday (October 30) that George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy
adviser to Trump, pled guilty to lying to the FBI on October 5.
Papadopoulos told federal investigators that before
he joined the Trump campaign, a source had told him the Russian
government possessed “dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of emails.”
The opposite is true. In fact evidence shows that
Papadopoulos had been told that information after he joined the Trump campaign.
To the point: Trump's former foreign policy
adviser, George Papadopoulos, was charged with
making false statements regarding his contact with a “Russian professor who
claimed he had “dirt on Hillary Clinton during the campaign.”
Papadopoulos was arrested in July, and reportedly has been
cooperating with government officials since.
From the charge sheet: “Defendant Papadopoulos acknowledged
that the professor had told him about the Russians possessing 'dirt' on
then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of
'thousands of emails,' but
stated multiple times that he learned that information prior to joining the
[Trump] campaign.
In truth and in fact, however, defendant Papadopoulos learned he would be an adviser to the campaign
in early March, and he met the
professor on or about March 14, 2016. The Russian professor only took
interest in defendant Papadopoulos because of his status with the campaign.
The Russian professor told defendant Papadopoulos about the ‘thousands
of emails' on or about April 26, 2016, when defendant Papadopoulos had been a
foreign policy adviser to the campaign for over a month.”
More from this summary
from this other fine The Week article:
The fact that so many around Trump are straining this hard to
find distractions is in itself highly suspicious. If
Trump had nothing to hide, he could just be quiet and let the investigation
proceed.
Of course, it's impossible to imagine him behaving that way.
There is simply no way that President Trump will sit quietly as Mueller
methodically issues more indictments, flips more witnesses, and grows ever
closer to Trump. Our president has never shown restraint of any sort. He
certainly won't when his own life and career is at stake.
So what happens if Trump fires Mueller and
issues blanket pardons to all of his associates?
Finding enough Republicans to vote to impeach, much less
convict in the Senate, is not going to happen.
However, it would only take a handful of Republicans — as few
as three senators, or a couple dozen GOP lawmakers in the House — to gum up
Trump's agenda permanently. Such a group of Republicans threatening to stop the
Republican agenda if the investigation doesn't proceed would change the
political calculus for the party as a whole — especially the business wing that
is salivating for tax cuts.
But that would also put these lawmakers under tremendous
pressure from Fox News and the rest of the conservative propaganda apparatus,
which treats any opposition to Trump as blasphemy and treachery. The criticism
of any Republican lawmaker pushing for Mueller's investigation to continue
would be completely unhinged.
It has become virtually impossible to go wrong predicting the
maximum possible level of perfidy, lies, and cowardice from the Republican
Party. Allowing the president to stop an investigation into his possible
criminal past — and just possibly how he colluded with a foreign power to
influence an American election — is, sadly, entirely imaginable.
Robert Mueller better hurry up.
======================================================
My Note: That is very
significant. It ties in with the Trump Jr. meeting in Trump Tower with Russian
lawyer, Natalia Vladimirovna
Veselnitskaya.
Plus, we
can also safely assume that Jr. shared that info with a lot inside-the-Trump campaign
folks.
Background: In June 2016, Donald Trump Jr. and
Jared Kushner along with Paul Manafort met with a female Russian lawyer in
Trump Tower after she told them “I have dirt on Hillary Clinton.”
Trump Jr. in his
response to man who was setting up the meeting in an email said: “If
true, I love it, especially for this summer (2016 summer).”
Then Trump Jr. lied three times about the meeting, the
subject matter (he tried to hide the real purpose and say it was about Russian
adoption sanction), and the actual names and numbers of attendees – which grew
each time he changed the story with another lie.
Good background story from
Slate on that – good reference stuff here.
Note: Lying to Federal officials (i.e.,
the FBI or others in the course of their investigation of any kind) is a crime.
Finally: It is ironic that so many
Republicans – especially their rabid right who is coupled at the hip and lip
with Fox and most RW Talk Radio – are hell bent on saying Hillary Clinton did
this or that along with the DNC should be in jail (even without charges,
indictments, or a fair trial let alone hard evidence).
Yet, they seem to be totally willing to give Trump and
his cohorts a pass on proven indicted evidence and charges just because they
like him and hate Hillary … WTF does that say about them as human beings to see
our entire political system decay like this – I’d have to say if the Russian
disinformation effort strived for and wanted or intended this outcome, then
damnit they did win and we appear to have lost.
Thanks for stopping by and BTW: This is only the first
and early stage of what is expected to be an extensive and long and very
compelling Mueller final report.
Stay tuned.
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