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Mueller Investigation pt4

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According to an NBC News exclusive that first aired during the 10 o’clock hour of Tuesday morning’s MSNBC Live, both Republican and Democratic sources on the Senate Intelligence Committee admitted they had not found any direct evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Despite the fact the exclusive was filed by NBC News intelligence and national security reporter Ken Dilanian, NBC Nightly News hid it from viewers. Meanwhile, ABC’s World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News also turned a blind eye.
 
smartcooky said:
Because of the fact that he has lied, that changes everything. The prosecutors in both NY and VA can, if they wish, re-present the changes they dropped against him and those changes on which the jury was hung. They can take their own sweet time to do that so long as the SoL (if applicable) hasn't run out.

Provided Trump does not get re-elected next year, then if those prosecutors are cunning enough, they can stretch this out and hold any trial over until such time as Trump no longer has the power to pardon him (AIUI he can only pardon a convicted person, not an indicted person.
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Not sure about the last line. Ford pardoned Nixon and Nixon wasn't even indicted.
 
https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell/status/1095754587368292353

THREAD: Let's talk about direct vs circumstantial evidence. The law treats them the same. @SenatorBurr says there's no "direct evidence of collusion" b/w Trump & Russians. Put aside the fact that @MarkWarner doesn't agree w/ this. What matters is if there's evidence of collusion.

2/ Every juror in America is told "Both direct and circumstantial evidence are acceptable types of evidence to prove or disprove the elements of a charge...and neither is necessarily more reliable than the other. NEITHER is entitled to any greater weight than the other."

3/ What is circumstantial evidence? Suppose I’m trying to prove that my son Nelson ate some freshly baked brownies that we made together. When I turned away, all of the brownies were out. When I turned back, one was gone...

4/ I didn't see Nelson eat a brownie -- that would be direct evidence. But when I returned, he had crumbs on his shirt, and chocolate on his lips and fingers. That would be considered circumstantial evidence that Nelson ate a brownie.

5/ It's not direct, but that doesn't matter. The law says it's treated exactly the same way. So, @SenatorBurr, have you seen any circumstantial evidence of collusion? #RussiaInvestigation
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https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1095791959220932609

Chuck Rosenberg gave me another example: you wake up with snow on your front lawn. Do you have direct evidence that it snowed? No. But the circumstantial evidence is strong, and far more likely than someone driving up to your house and throwing snow on your lawn.
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https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1095806910299848704

Juries are often charged (for laypeople, "charged" here means "given instructions by a judge on how to responsibly be jurors") using this example or the one with rain/wet grass.
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Can we drop this red herring, now?
 
applecorped said:
According to an NBC News exclusive that first aired during the 10 o’clock hour of Tuesday morning’s MSNBC Live, both Republican and Democratic sources on the Senate Intelligence Committee admitted they had not found any direct evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Despite the fact the exclusive was filed by NBC News intelligence and national security reporter Ken Dilanian, NBC Nightly News hid it from viewers. Meanwhile, ABC’s World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News also turned a blind eye.
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"We didn't look and haven't found anything"

House democrats are going to start throwing around some subpoena power. I think their investigation will be more fruitful.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
"We didn't look and haven't found anything"

House democrats are going to start throwing around some subpoena power. I think their investigation will be more fruitful.
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There might not exist direct evidence of collusion if there was collusion. To quote an incredulous stringer bell, "are you taking notes at a criminal conspiracy?"
 
smartcooky said:
<snip>

Provided Trump does not get re-elected next year, then if those prosecutors are cunning enough, they can stretch this out and hold any trial over until such time as Trump no longer has the power to pardon him (AIUI he can only pardon a convicted person, not an indicted person.
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Not quite.

A President can (and has, see below) pardon someone for crimes they have not even been charged with, much less indicted or convicted for.

From President Ford's Proclamation pardoning Richard Nixon;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.
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Nothing there about indictments or convictions. A full and blanket pardon for anything he even might have done.
 
//Slight hijack//

I do ever so love how vague Ford's pardon of Nixon was. Technically if it came out years later that on August 8, 1974 Nixon had beat a hooker to death on the Oval Office desk it would have been unprosecutable.
 
Was listening to "All the President's Lawyers" podcast this morning and Ken White said something I found very interesting.

It is very possible that individual examples of corrupt behavior will not lead to Trump. In the example of Manafort, it is very possible that he was conniving with his Ukrainian/Russian benefactors for corrupt purposes totally without Trump's knowledge or approval.

This is not to say that Trump has not committed crimes, nor that he does not engage in corrupt actions for his own benefit that would be impeachable.

I think it's becoming increasingly clear that the Trump white house is a rudderless ship with an absentee leader. The white house is awash in unprincipled, power hungry people, each with their own constellation of conflicts of interest, often in direct opposition with each other. I could easily people like Kushner, Manafort, and others taking advantage of the total chaos and lack of oversight to run their own personal grifts and cons.

Of all the many, many crimes that have been committed, is think it's very likely that many don't reach Trump personally, simply for the fact that he's such a crappy leader that his subordinates are running side-cons when they should be working to advance the Trump org's own cons.

The trump org is a criminal enterprise, but a badly run one where the employees are regularly stealing company time for their own ends.
 
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applecorped said:
According to an NBC News exclusive that first aired during the 10 o’clock hour of Tuesday morning’s MSNBC Live, both Republican and Democratic sources on the Senate Intelligence Committee admitted they had not found any direct evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Despite the fact the exclusive was filed by NBC News intelligence and national security reporter Ken Dilanian, NBC Nightly News hid it from viewers. Meanwhile, ABC’s World News Tonight and the CBS Evening News also turned a blind eye.
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If you are quoting material from a website, it is customary to provide a link, and to put this material that you did not write into a quote box.


https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/n...-own-exclusive-senate-probe-found-no-evidence
 
Okay I want to make sure I word this very, very carefully.

The idea that Trump is a... victim (hear me out...victim in a very specific sense of the term...) in this is an interesting one. It's not completely impossible to imagine a scenario where Trump got elected and a bunch of old school Washington players saw him as someone they could start really pulling all the dirty and back alley tricks no that he's in charge and too clueless to do anything. Questions of how bad it is that the President might just be criminally incompetent at controlling his administration instead of actively involved not withstanding.
 
After Trump fired Comey:

@ScottPelley on what McCabe told @60Minutes: "There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment."

That is what is called a coup, and given that it comes from McCabe who deliberately delayed the Clinton email investigation to help her (and ended up blowing it all up anyway) that is very concerning to say the least.

Shut it down
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Was listening to "All the President's Lawyers" podcast this morning and Ken White said something I found very interesting.

It is very possible that individual examples of corrupt behavior will not lead to Trump. In the example of Manafort, it is very possible that he was conniving with his Ukrainian/Russian benefactors for corrupt purposes totally without Trump's knowledge or approval.

This is not to say that Trump has not committed crimes, nor that he does not engage in corrupt actions for his own benefit that would be impeachable.

I think it's becoming increasingly clear that the Trump white house is a rudderless ship with an absentee leader. The white house is awash in unprincipled, power hungry people, each with their own constellation of conflicts of interest, often in direct opposition with each other. I could easily people like Kushner, Manafort, and others taking advantage of the total chaos and lack of oversight to run their own personal grifts and cons.

Of all the many, many crimes that have been committed, is think it's very likely that many don't reach Trump personally, simply for the fact that he's such a crappy leader that his subordinates are running side-cons when they should be working to advance the Trump org's own cons.

The trump org is a criminal enterprise, but a badly run one where the employees are regularly stealing company time for their own ends.
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Thanks much! This is well said indeed.

From what I can understand about Trump is that he has always been the sort of supervisor who allows his subordinates a great deal of latitude in just how they carry out their various job duties provided that the subordinates do their job duties well and that the subordinates do not do anything which could actually hurt Trump himself.

And considering that Trump has spent his entire life being a lying, double-dealing, swindling POS in order to get what he wants, then one should not be surprised to learn that his subordinates are also a group of a lying, double-dealing, swindling POSs in order to get what they want.

Therefore, even if Trump himself is not actually guilty of Russian collusion but several members of his key staff are guilty of Russian collusion, then such an eventuality does not automatically exonerate Trump of this crime since Trump is morally and legally responsible for everything that his staff does in his name.
 
Trump Tweets

Disgraced FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe pretends to be a “poor little Angel” when in fact he was a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax - a puppet for Leakin’ James Comey. I.G. report on McCabe was devastating. Part of “insurance policy” in case I won....

....Many of the top FBI brass were fired, forced to leave, or left. McCabe’s wife received BIG DOLLARS from Clinton people for her campaign - he gave Hillary a pass. McCabe is a disgrace to the FBI and a disgrace to our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Was listening to "All the President's Lawyers" podcast this morning and Ken White said something I found very interesting.

It is very possible that individual examples of corrupt behavior will not lead to Trump. In the example of Manafort, it is very possible that he was conniving with his Ukrainian/Russian benefactors for corrupt purposes totally without Trump's knowledge or approval.

This is not to say that Trump has not committed crimes, nor that he does not engage in corrupt actions for his own benefit that would be impeachable.

I think it's becoming increasingly clear that the Trump white house is a rudderless ship with an absentee leader. The white house is awash in unprincipled, power hungry people, each with their own constellation of conflicts of interest, often in direct opposition with each other. I could easily people like Kushner, Manafort, and others taking advantage of the total chaos and lack of oversight to run their own personal grifts and cons.

Of all the many, many crimes that have been committed, is think it's very likely that many don't reach Trump personally, simply for the fact that he's such a crappy leader that his subordinates are running side-cons when they should be working to advance the Trump org's own cons.

The trump org is a criminal enterprise, but a badly run one where the employees are regularly stealing company time for their own ends.
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This is all plausible but DoJo and The Kush appear to be at least up to their eyeballs in it. How is he going to react if they're indicted?
 
The Big Dog said:
After Trump fired Comey:

@ScottPelley on what McCabe told @60Minutes: "There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment."

That is what is called a coup, and given that it comes from McCabe who deliberately delayed the Clinton email investigation to help her (and ended up blowing it all up anyway) that is very concerning to say the least.

Shut it down
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A "coup" as in;

coup

Dictionary result for coup

/ko͞o/Submit
noun

1. a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government.
"he was overthrown in an army coup"
synonyms: seizure of power, overthrow, takeover, ousting, deposition, regime change
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... or as in;

2. a notable or successful stroke or move.
"it was a major coup to get such a prestigious contract"
synonyms: success, triumph, feat, successful maneuver, stunt, accomplishment, achievement, attainment, stroke, master stroke, stroke of genius
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Since a Constitutionally provided for removal from office followed by a Constitutionally mandated progression of officeholders can in no way be described as either "sudden", or "violent", or "illegal", I am forced to believe that you are referring to the second commonly accepted definition.

In other words, you would view such a circumstance with respect and admiration.
 
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