Trump-Russia investigation

As if it were not enough that one of the leading agents conducting the HRC & Trump Russia investigations held a deep hatred for The Donald so as to taint the entire process...

Now - get ready for this - his freaking wife worked for the firm that created the fake dossier that started the entire Trump/Russia investigation!

www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/11/wife-demoted-doj-official-worked-for-firm-behind-anti-trump-dossier.html

Look for the lawyers to be reconsidering any plea deals and/or cooperation with the DOJ and perhaps even seeking higher court opinions on any deals made.

At this point, there is a good chance this entire investigation is so corrupt that some on the Mueller Team might be looking for lawyers to protect themselves.

To the leftists who look at this "investigation" as their last remaining hope to overturn an election, this is now over.

I would question why the DOJ's Ohr was not conflicted under the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

I would be surprised if any charges held and liberals better hope there are no paw prints on here from the radical operatives of the BHO Regime.

.>O

Another day and more disgusting corruption uncovered in the Mueller "Russia Investigation".

www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/16/trump-lawyer-mueller-improperly-obtained-transition-documents-in-russia-probe.html

"Investigation" here essentially means the radical extremist left hates Trump & cannot believe the entire country utterly rejected HRC & her freakish liberal ideology in 2016.

I repeat - this whole "investigation" should be OVER.  You cannot use tainted evidence whatsoever - even to obtain legal evidence.

At a minimum, Mueller and his staff knew some documents contained privileged attorney/client communications & potentially some materials were subject to executive privilege.

www.politico.com/story/2017/12/16/mueller-trump-transition-emails-lawyer-299577
www.politico.com/f/?id=00000160-616c-dcd4-a96b-756de2a90000 (Letter detailing special counsel corruption)

People on the left should be getting fired and/or incarcerated and pardons should come for charges filed by the Mueller team.

Truly foul & shameful stuff the leftist D.C. political establishment (of both parties) has employed to protect their kingdom.

>O

Impossible.  I can never be a Trumpster.

If any politician is fine with the size & scope of the federal government (Trump essentially is) then I can never fully be on their side.

If you recall, I said this about Cruz & Paul as well...  I do not want to hear about streamlining federal programs - I want to hear about their elimination.

Like Rick Perry - who fumbled on number three - when I could have listed 25 off the top of my head.

That being said, your President has made incredible & amazing progress for our nation on the environment, endangered species & global warming.

Can you think of any politician who has done more to advance the environmental concerns of moderate mainstream working Americans in such a short time?

>O

What gb said. If you defend Trump, you're a Trumpster. Sorry, but when you lie down with pigs you soon smell like them, and you've been wallowing all year.

I'm so sorry! I had no idea you were blind. 

Not sure you can have this both ways at this moment - the independent counsel is collecting evidence and, while working quickly, is not done. There sure as sh!t is an awful lot of smoke (noting all of that would be a pretty long post) for there not to be a fire. If you are referring to evidence in court then it is clearly too early to know. So far we have a guilty plea from a campaign associate and an indicted campaign manager. Independent counsel is still working. We shall see...

With regard to ignoring evidentiary procedures, perhaps you should apply the just a fraction your legal standards to the claims of Trump's lawyers.

The counsel is a Republican decorated Marine former FBI Director who enjoyed wide bipartisan support when he was appointed. He is as good as it gets. Nobody of note (or in this forum) had an issue with him until he started finding things.

"The Senate Intelligence Committee is looking at the presidential campaign of the Green Party’s Jill Stein for potential “collusion with the Russians.” link

I wonder when they're going to look at whether the Russians helped Sanders, too? My suspicion long has been that the Russians did anything and everything they could to prevent Hillary from winning. We know from Russian documents that Putin sees her as "irredeemable" in her opposition to his aims for re-establishing, or even expanding, Russia's sphere of influence in Europe. And we know that the Russians actively helped the Trump campaign. I have little doubt part of that was getting Sanders voters to pick Stein in the general election (she got enough votes in Wisconsin to throw the state to Trump, quadruple the number she got in 2012). Putin's hands are all over the election, whatever Trump says. Note the three people at the center of this photo:

Well, letś review.
What we do know: 1. After well over a year and many millions of dollars invested in finding some shred of evidence that Trump or anyone central to his campaign or transition team had any inappropriate contact (or collusion, whatever that is) with Russia there is absolutely no evidence at all. Given more years and more millions, perhaps the corrupt Mueller can entrap a couple more people on irrelevant charges. 2. Hillary's campaign and the DNC did fund the phony ¨Russian Dossier¨ and there is every reason to believe that the corrupt Obama FBI, with collusion from other Obama agencies and John McCain, knowingly took false evidence to the FISA court to spy on American citizens.

What is not yet certain but very strongly supported by a huge pile of evidence: Political (dem) corruption in the FBI and several intelligence under Obama has been pervasive and likely the worst America has ever had. But the phony Russia, Russia, Russia lies do distract from the obvious FBI protection of Hillary & her crew in the vast illegal email scandal. And uranium one, which, if truly examined very likely leads to criminality by numerous FBI leaders, when Mueller was in charge, plus Holder & Obama. And that does not begin to touch the scandal of unmasking by Rice, Powers, et al.

It remains a possibility that Mueller is honest , though if so he suffers massively poor judgement and susceptibility to being very easily mislead. Much more likely, he is devoted to covering up corruption in the FBI for which he and his buddy Comey were responsible. BTW, despite all the media hype about Mueller's infalibility, millions of people were extremely disappointed that Comey by admittedly leaking confidential FBI information (a crime) for political purposes was able to get his friend appointed to do a witch hunt on the guy who fired him. Even if Mueller were the saint his supporters claim (watch that change when he admits he can find nothing on Trump) the gross conflict of interest was apparent from the beginning. If he really were an honorable man, he would have closed down the witch hunt when he was made aware---if he did not know from the start---of the actions by his carefully hand-picked team and their intense conflicts of interest. The only reason so many leftists have to believe in his sainthood is that the media has promoted the legend.

Of course those who rely on the NYT & WP know little if any of the truth. Ignorance is bliss, so it is said, though even so it is not common to see a happy leftist these days.

How Shocking!  Leftists are still entrenched at every branch of government after 8 years of the Obama Regime.

Who would believe that?  Would a radical Chicago Saul Alinsky-Style Community Organizer really do such a thing!

Now the DOJ & FBI just cannot seem to find records relating to the Anti-Trump Dossier that started this entire ridiculous Trump/Russia witch hunt.

The anti-Trump bureaucrats just suddenly get reassigned whenever records of the Democrat-financed fake dossier are sought.

Awww...  So sorry you lost the records...  So sorry that public servant moved along...  We just should hug, listen to Pete Seeger, and talk about it...

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nunes-blasts-doj-fbi-for-failure-to-produce-records-relating-to-anti-trump-dossier/ar-BBHsJHY?li=BBnb7Kz

Even mainstream moderate California Congressman Devin Nunes has had enough of the stonewalling.

As I said previously - people should be getting fired & going to jail in this probe - and they do not include Donald Trump.

>O

The WH, backed by some in Congress and the usual panoply of crazies (Fox, Breitbart, etc.) has been trying to discredit the Mueller investigation but their favorite tactic: the Big Lie. "It all stems from a dossier paid for by Hillary," they claim. But they know this is a lie because they know that if this were a game of Clue they'd have the cards in the envelope memorized: Papadopoulos, in the bar, with a big mouth:

"During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.  About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign.  Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said that night at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear. But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role. The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired."

Yes, this guy was bragging to an official of a foreign government that the Russian security agencies had hacked into Hillary's emails. Of course the FBI began to investigate. Here was a member of a US presidential campaign who had inside knowledge about what information Russian spies had concerning the other candidate. How could he have known that, unless there had been contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians? What other activities were the Russians engaging in to affect our elections? And what did he or other campaign staff know about that? Most important: were members of the Trump campaign actively working with Russian spies to win the election? Of course the FBI opened an investigation; how could it not?

Now, some in the GOP are trying to undermine the legitimacy not only of the Mueller investigation, but of the FBI as an institution. Like the Paternoistas in State College, they are going after the hall monitor instead of the perps. And it's creating yet another rift in the Republican Party: "A growing campaign by President Trump’s most ardent supporters to discredit the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and the law enforcement agencies assisting his investigation is opening new fissures in the Republican Party, with some lawmakers questioning the damage being done to federal law enforcement and to a political party that has long championed law and order." It's hard to pose as the defenders of law and order--a GOP theme since the 1960s--when you are attacking law enforcement officers. So there's a lot of pushback to this nutty crusade, but in the end it's just further evidence that the GOP is not a party that is prepared to govern.

When the Fox-Hounds report that "nothing has come out" that implicates Trump it will be well to remember this statement from one of the witnesses.  When they talk about "stonewalling" remember that it's Nunes and the GOP that's doing the stonewalling. When they try to deflect to Hillary or Comey or Mueller, remember that this is a typical legal tactic in a conspiracy case: "Don't blame you, don't blame me, blame the guy under the apple tree" is the game being played here.

While 'basser digs himself deeper into Denial Cave on this, as on climate change, two news stories reveal what may really have Trump both cowed (by Putin) and scared (of Mueller), leading to his whacko outbursts:

"Bannon also identifies money laundering as a key area of vulnerability for the Trump family, which is indeed one of the prime areas of focus for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation. When they start asking about money, 'They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,' Bannon told Wolff.

"Money laundering also comes up in the second fascinating piece out today, an op-ed in the New York Times by Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, the founders of Fusion GPS. Their firm was hired first by a conservative website to do opposition research on Trump, and when he became the Republican nominee, the research was picked up by the Clinton campaign. They’ve already testified before Congress and seem frustrated by the fact that the Republicans who control the congressional investigations don’t want to pursue evidence of money laundering:

'We told Congress that from Manhattan to Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., and from Toronto to Panama, we found widespread evidence that Mr. Trump and his organization had worked with a wide array of dubious Russians in arrangements that often raised questions about money laundering. Likewise, those deals don’t seem to interest Congress.'"

Money-laundering is a classic trap used by the FSB (formerly Checka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD, NKGB, MGB, KGB) to ensnare potential sources into their networks, providing both positive (cash) and negative (exposure) incentives to play along. Either Trump & Family are in bed with Putin or they're stupid chumps; the jury's out on this one.

Finally, "something else Bannon told Michael Wolff, about the meeting with the Russians:  'The chance that Don Jr. did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero.'” In other words, even Bannon doesn't believe the ludicrous claim that these people took a meeting with the whole inner circle of the campaign, but the candidate didn't know anything about it, much less participate in the meeting. If Bannon doesn't believe Trump, why do 'basser, LL, and jon, I wonder?

Well, here we go, Mueller is seeking to interview Trump. 

"With the possibility now looming that the president himself could be subject to an interview by the FBI or Mueller’s investigators, Trump’s legal team has been debating whether it would be possible to simply avoid it. One individual familiar with the strategy said those internal discussions within Trump’s legal team began shortly after the president’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was indicted in late October for money laundering in connection with his business dealings with Ukraine."

Declarations of being a "stable genius" aside, imagine the panic in the WH at the idea of Trump being interviewed. I mean, the guy basically admitted to obstruction of justice on national TV (with Lester Holt) and routinely spews demonstrable lies. Unless he's totally innocent, it is hard to imagine that he wouldn't further compromise himself and those around him.

While Trump fulminates and congressional Republicans dither and hinder, Mueller continues to move forward with his investigation:

"Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has added a veteran cyber prosecutor to his team, filling what has long been a gap in expertise and potentially signaling a recent focus on computer crimes.  Ryan K. Dickey was assigned to Mueller’s team in early November from the Justice Department’s computer crime and intellectual-property section, said a spokesman for the special counsel’s office...Dickey’s addition is particularly notable because he is the first publicly known member of the team specializing solely in cyber issues...Legal analysts have said that one charge Mueller might pursue would be a conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, if he can demonstrate that members of Trump’s team conspired in Russia’s hacking effort to influence the election."

The Republicans trying to wish away this investigation are delusional. Mueller will finish this, and then we'll see what comes out. Expect no final report before the 2018 election.