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UPDATE: Add to bottom:

 

 

After the release of the 49 questions Mueller wants Trump to answer, Trump and his loyalists claimed this shows its a ‘witch hunt’ as there were no questions about collusion-‘just obstruction’-as if obstruction of justice is not a serious offense. Indeed, the strange Trump team narrative seems to be that to get someone on obstruction you have to first get them on the underlying crime-or it’s a ‘witch hunt.’

This is a strange idea; it seems to amount to it’s ok to obstruct justice as long as you’re innocent of the underlying offense. What this flawed premise begs is: why would an innocent person obstruct justice? In any case, a number of the questions do deal with collusion, including, notably a question about Manafort: does Trump know of any outreach by Manafort to the Russians for help with the campaign?

UPDATE: Mueller confirms in his report what’s self evident-that obstruction of justice obstructs justice regardless of motive. (Find link for quotes Mike).

Trump and his GOP co-conspirators have continued to sell the canard that obstruction of justice and perjury are fine if you can’t prove the underlying crime-ignoring the fact that if there was obstruction and perjury it’s less likely you’ll be able to conclusively prove the crime-this is the case with Manafort’s part in Russian collusion-Corsi destroying his emails prior to October 7, 2016; Bannon and Erik Prince also destroyed their emails regarding the setting up of Seychelles, etc.

Not surprising that they’d lie and dissemble and totally contradict their old position-Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction. Clearly their level of shamelessness and hypocrisy has no bottom-now they’re claiming to be aghast that Pelosi says she wants Trump to go to prison. Even Hannity is now pretending to be indignant-when earlier this week he was still saying Clinton should be in prison.

But for the GOP to be dishonest and shameful hypocrites is nothing new-fish got to swim… What is pretty sad is that much of the MSM-like Ari Melber-talks the same way-‘Yes but they didn’t prove collusion…’

To say such a thing is doubly false as there was a great deal of collusion but Mueller didn’t focus on it besides which any lawyer on Melber’s level should realize that what Mueller says about obstruction-it’s bad for justice whatever the motive. If obstruction were only a crime if you could prove the underlying crime obstruction wouldn’t be a crime-or there’d be no reason to charge it just charge the underlying crime.

Then you could obstruct without limit realizing that the more successful you were the less likely you’d be charged with anything-talk about perverse incentives.

End of UPDATE.

Speaking of Manafort he goes way back with Roger Stone-who is a major locus for the investigation into collusion. .Stone himself has hung his hat on the fact that Mueller has not interviewed him-clearly, he reasons, this means he’s not in serious trouble.

 

To be sure, this may well show the opposite: when a witness’s interview is held back until the end this may well mean that they are a serious subject of the investigation. And when Sam Nunberg was interviewed by Mueller he stated that Mueller put a major focus on Stone’s many statements of having spoking to Wikileaks-wether directly or via an intermediary.

UPDATE: In retrospect that was obviously the case-he shifted from that dubious argument to admitting it was likely he would be indicted-though he insisted it was just a ‘witch hunt’ unrelated to Russian collusion-he falsely suggested it could be financial corruption-as if that’s ok.

Of course, it turned out to be perjury regarding his part in Russian collusion-he was finally charged in January, 2019. While he and his fellow GOP co-conspirators argue that perjury is a mere process crime in fact-beyond the hypocrisy after they impeached Clinton for perjury-the perjury in question may have prevented Mueller from charging direct coordination and conspiracy-those crimes may also by definition be harder to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

End of UPDATE

Then you have Manafort’s deputy, Richard Gates. who was recently indicted. It turns out that Gates also has a relationship with Roger Stone and this is a major point of focus for Mueller.

“Special counsel Robert Mueller is focusing intensely on alleged interactions between former top Trump campaign official Rick Gates and political operative Roger Stone, one of President Donald Trump‘s closest confidants, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter.”

“Stone, a longtime advisor to Trump, is apparently one of the top subjects of the Mueller investigation into potential collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, sources told CNBC on condition of anonymity.”

“The questions have been largely about what was discussed at meetings, including dinners, between Stone and Gates, before and during the campaign, said the sources, who have knowledge of the substance of the recent interviews”

This shows an additional focus for Mueller beyond his communications with Wikileaks:

“The new developments indicate that Mueller’s team is interested in Stone beyond his interactions with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange during the campaign.”

“An attorney for Stone, Robert Buschel, did not deny discussions took place between his client and Gates, but sought to downplay their importance.”

“Roger Stone did not have any substantive or meaningful interaction with Rick Gates during or leading up to the 2016 campaign,” Buschel told CNBC in a statement.”

How does Buschel define ‘substantive’ or ‘meaningful?’ Stone had claimed his conversations with Guccifer 2.0 were trivial-little more than about the weather. Yet when you look at those conversations, he asked G2 to RT an article he published at Breitbart that the election would be ‘rigged’ against Trump.

UPDATE:  In classic Trumpworld speak Stone says ‘I barely know the guy’

Until now we haven’t heard much about Stone’s relationship to Gates-after all, Gates was Manafort’s deputy. But the tie goes back to Stone and Manafort’s own joint consulting firm where Gates interned 30 years ago.

“The firm, called Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly, was known for its work to help improve the image of controversial politicians, including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Russian-aligned former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.”

“Gates joined the Trump campaign in the spring of 2016 and became Manafort’s deputy. It was there where he became close to many of Trump’s confidants. He remained with the campaign even after Manafort’s ouster. Gates then worked on Trump’s inaugural committee and co-founded the pro-Trump nonprofit group America First Policies.”

“In March, Gates was pulled into the Mueller inquiry when the special counsel’s office filed a motion that claimed the former campaign aide had contact with a former agent of the Russian intelligence service in 2016. This came after Gates pleaded guilty to lying and conspiring against the United States, which could lead to possibly six years in prison. A sentencing date has yet to be announced.”

Sam Nunberg makes the same point I did above: the fact Stone has not been interviewed yet strongly suggests he’s a subject of the probe:

“For Stone, this is another potential hurdle in an ongoing investigation that continues to focus on him, among others.”

“Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign advisor, also said he was asked about Stone’s involvement with Wikileaks during his interview before Mueller’s grand jury in March.”

“Roger is certainly a subject,” Nunberg said. “The fact that Roger hasn’t been called in and the special counsel continues to ask questions about Roger’s possible activities during the election shows that at the very least he’s a subject.”

UPDATE:  Regarding the importance of the relationship between Stone and Gates the Roger Stone trial was mentioned in Gates’ first status report-his cooperation is far from done-post Mueller handing in his report.

“But prosecutors also mention Roger Stone’s November trial (though none of Stone’s prosecutors are on this filing).

another trial, United States v. Stone, 19-CR-18 (ABJ), to begin November 5, 2019

That’s interesting given the way the very redacted passages treating Stone’s charges in the Mueller Report flesh out Gates’ role as a liaison between Trump and Stone in the effort to optimize the WikiLeaks releases. Stone’s indictment had been coy on this point (so much so, I’ve wondered whether Big Dick Toilet Salesman told Mueller to stop mentioning Trump in charging documents after the Michael Cohen plea). It describes senior members of the campaign contacting Stone to find out what WikiLeaks had coming.”

Indeed the Mueller Report detailed how when Gates and Trump were on the way to LaGuardia Airport Gates surprised him by telling Gates that there was more damaging information coming:

The report quotes Rick Gates, the former deputy chairman of the Trump campaign, as saying that “by the late summer of 2016, the Trump campaign was planning a press strategy, a communications campaign and messaging based on the possible release of Clinton emails by WikiLeaks”.

The relevant section of the report has been heavily redacted by the justice department but one partially retained sentence says: “… while Trump and Gates were driving to LaGuardia Airport, [redacted], shortly after the call candidate Trump told Gates that more releases of damaging information would be coming.”

The report also states: “Within the Trump campaign, aides reacted with enthusiasm to reports of the hacks. Some witnesses said that Trump himself discussed the possibility of upcoming releases.”

It also says Mueller’s office “cannot rule out that stolen documents were transferred to WikiLeaks through intermediaries who visited during the summer of 2016”.

Which would add up to not just collusion and coordination but conspiracy-the most serious potential crime Trump and Friends have been accused of. (Find Mueller’s definition of conspiracy Mike)

In addition we now know that Manafort told Gates not to cooperate with Mueller because #TeamTreasonTrump would protect them. 

To paraphrase Michael Flynn’s lawyer way back in March 2017 Gates certainly has a story to tell.

Of course Flynn has now fired his lawyers prior to sentencing-presumably in the segue to him becoming a Fox News host.

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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