Hey?
Have you noticed that, despite the fact that Rudy Giuliani, former top prosecutor in the Department of Justice, together with Trump’s boy in Congress, Nuness (and now McConnell) keep whining – as so perfectly put in the column alongside mine –Â this Robert Mueller guy keeps rolling up “wins”?
You have?
Yeah, me, too.
Indeed, just hours after Trump triumphantly went on the south lawn (shoulda used the balcony, been more “Kim-like”) and pronounced that the IG report totally exonerated him, Robert Mueller’s team jailed the former campaign manager of the president of the frigging United States of America, for …conspiring with Russian operatives to tamper with witnesses and obstruct justice, all in a conspiracy against the United States. Give it to me straight, does it sound like anything exonerated anything today? Correct, and only partly because the report itself had absolutely nothing to do with the merits of the investigation into Trump.
In fact, if the report applied to Trump at all, it demonstrated just how huge an advantage the FBI provided Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. The report did note just how arrogant and audacious James Comey acted in his decision that the Department needed to look wholly “above board,” politically, with respect to Trump (i.e. don’t say shit about the fact that the FBI has serious evidence that not only are the Russians meddling in the campaign, but they’re doing so on behalf of Trump, and the Trump campaign seems quite willing to deal, even desperate), while at the same time, wholly violating FBI procedure TWICE to cut Hillary off at the knees. First, by taking 90 minutes out of his day to render judgment upon Hillary (while ironically using his own personal Google account), calling her every name in the book except “criminal” (because she isn’t a criminal) in total violation of FBI policy, and then, the “thing that swung the election” – the letter involving Clinton’s emails, exquisitely timed to come out with enough time to do maximum damage, and not enough time to do any repair, repairs such as “nothing wrong here.” Also done in total violation of Department policy. FBI political score on election Trump 2, Hillary 0, and why Trump ought to shut-up about “insurance policies.” The FBI did literally all it could to assure a Trump victory.
But that’s the report that didn’t exonerate Trump. Let’s get back to Robert Mueller not giving a care about who calls for what with respect to his investigation. I cannot repeat this enough, he has the president’s former campaign manager in jail, that means he’s convinced a neutral judge that something very wrong has occurred.
Wholly unrelated to that case, Mueller referred a matter regarding the president’s “personal fixer” to the SDNY U.S. Attorney’s office, which is about to bring down massive charges against Michael Cohen, who – surprise – like everyone in the Trump orbit, doesn’t seem to have the money around they claim when it comes time to actually pay people like attorneys. (Ever notice that the Trump’s never like to pay other people? They don’t mind paying money for things, it is paying people for things they’ve done that they have trouble with.). Running out of money for attorneys is a bad thing when the prosecutor just found 700 pages of encrypted documents and 16 pages of “re-taped” formerly shredded documents. Personally, I doubt he’s really out of money. I suspect he has property he can sell, he just figures that the OJ Dream Team couldn’t get him out of this one. So, why throw good money after bad?? Offer up all he’s got against the big dog and watch his criminal problems disappear, worry about ending up in the bottom of the Volga some other time.
More winning? Sure, Mueller also has spoken to enough people and gathered enough evidence that Trump is too chicken-shit (or smart, I’m going with chicken-shit) to go sit down with Mueller, which says a mountain of something to anyone wanting to listen. The president won’t cooperate with an investigation? Friggin unheard of until now. Mueller has also secured convictions against Trump’s former National Security Advisor, which doesn’t get enough attention because it is a “lying to the FBI conviction,” and some don’t see that as a “real crime.” What Trump supporters refuse to consider is what was the offer to get Flynn to plead to that crime? Was it “in exchange for dropping the “conspiring with a foreign power against the United States to win an election” charge that might’ve been filed had Mike Flynn not agreed to plead guilty and assist the investigation? We can’t know. There are also sealed indictments, and oh so much more we don’t know.
That’s just a shit-load of “winning” and “winning fast” in any prosecutor’s book. Of course, Rudy’s not whining because of the length of the investigation, McConnell’s not whining because of the length of the investigation, they’re whining because we’re hearing about the role of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They’re whining because everyone knows where the Seychelles islands are now. Hell, everyone knows how to spell Seychelles now, and that’s not a good thing if you’re an incoming president who sent a representative there to meet with a Russian oligarch close to Putin and the soon to be Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to have a meeting no one would notice.Â
And the report isn’t even out yet! We don’t even really know what Mueller knows. We just sort of know. Trump is counting upon his Hannity-Rudy propaganda machine to destroy Mueller’s credibility. That is working a little too well, for now. But, ultimately, there is going to come a time when Mueller releases documents, documents which show transactions between Trump and Russians, money crossing hands, and they will be unambiguous. It will not be the type of evidence that “Democrats planted” or the product of a political witch hunt. The evidence will show: “Money ended up here, from there, that’s not legal.”
And they know that, which is why they’re so desperate to close down the investigation prior to Mueller showing his evidence.
Rudy Giuliani today said, speaking of Manafort: “There may be a chance to fix some of this with pardons down the road.” Pardons for what? Being a bad guy who got caught? Can I point something out? Donald J. Trump FIRED Paul Manafort for the EXACT SAME ISSUES upon which Mueller is currently prosecuting Manafort! WHY is Trump not in front of a microphone saying; “Hey, I fired the guy the moment I heard about any of this, so you can’t tie me to this”?
Reason (1): Because it would validate that Mueller follows evidence, acts with integrity on problematic behavior that got Manafort fired. It demonstrates that Mueller isn’t just on some witch hunt.
Reason (2): Trump knows that he didn’t actually fire Mueller the moment he found out. In fact, Trump likely knew of Manafort’s Eastern European “issues” before he hired him, and only fired Manafort when word of Manafort’s mob ties with Russians and Ukranians hit the news. Trump likely suspect that Mueller has evidence just to that fact. Therefore, Trump must slam the case against Manafort, because he has to slam all bad news for Trump.
In Trump’s world nothing has ever gone wrong, he has never done anything wrong, everything bad that has ever happened came about directly because bad people did something to perfect Trump – always. And the Trumpists buy it, they don’t actually believe it, they just WANT to believe it, and that’s infinitely worse. But it is not insurmountable, we only need to pick off 20% of Trump’s supporters, max.
To bring this all together, admittedly a somewhat meandering column, there is a ton of “winning” happening on the side of Mueller’s investigation, and precious little by Trump. That is why we hear the whining, the excuses, the wails, the unfairness of it all, “what about crooked Hillary and Comey?” Come up with a fking crime they committed, jackass and then ask the same question, until then, act like a president and keep your trap shut about an ongoing investigation.
Mueller soldiers on, and so long as he’s on the job, there’s hope. Even if he were denied a chance to finish the job, we can be sure there are “doomsday scenarios” in place, sealed indictments, packages of evidence with State A.G. addresses on them, stuffed with evidence pertaining to crimes touching upon their state. And even without that, so long as we keep up the hope, we the majority, we the people that voted in greater numbers for someone else, we can still steer our country in the direction it need go. The arc of the universe is damn long right now, but it still bends. That’s why Trump, Rudy, Roger, Nunes, McConnell, can all just, well, get bent.
P.S. Oh, we didn’t even mention that the NY AG Civil complaint was a civil complaint that was stuffed with criminal violations of the law, all referred to the IRS and FBI. Bad bad bad.
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