601
At least that we’re aware of now-but who’s counting? Comey revealed in his new book that Trump was very eager to assure him that the ‘pee tape’ claim in the Steele dossier wasn’t true. He used a few arguments-one that he’s a germaphobe-which doesn’t necessarily cinch it as the allegation was never that pee got anywhere near him.
But Trump has also insisted he never stayed at the Moscow hotel the pee tape was supposed to of happened at. This denial of Trump’s, however, has been contradicted 4 different times that I can think of:
1. In testimony in November, 2017, Trump’s long time bodyguard, Keith Schiller, testified that Trump had in fact stayed over night and furthermore that the Russians per Putin’s orders DID offer him girls but that they said no.
How plausible the idea that Trump with his record with women actually turned this offer down, I’ll leave it to the reader to analyze. But what’s key here is that Trump had told Comey he didn’t stay at the hotel at all and his own very loyal bodyguard contradicted him.
2. This week a Bloomberg article also contradicted Trump’s claim not to have been at the Hotel on November 10, 2013.
President Donald Trump twice gave James Comey an alibi for why a salacious report about the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow couldn’t be true: He never even spent the night in Russia during that trip, Trump told the former FBI director, according to Comey’s memos about the conversations.
“Yet the broad timeline of Trump’s stay, stretching from Friday, Nov. 8, 2013, through the following Sunday morning, has been widely reported. And it’s substantiated by social media posts that show he slept in Moscow the night before the Miss Universe contest.”
This is one of Trump’s tics-lying about things that are very easy to show are lies.
FN: Masha Gessen argues this Putinesque tactic is an assertion of power-I can lie in an outrageous and even absurd way right in your face and you can’t even call me out on it.
“A reconstruction of events shows the future U.S. president’s journey to Moscow began in North Carolina, where he attended a birthday tribute to evangelist Billy Graham on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2013. While flight records show Trump’s own Cessna jet headed back to New York that night from Asheville, North Carolina, Trump himself apparently wasn’t aboard.”
“Instead, Trump flew to Moscow on a Bombardier Global 5000 private jet owned by Phil Ruffin, his partner in the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Las Vegas, the New York Times reported in January 2017. Trump’s use of Ruffin’s jet is also reported in the newly published book, “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.”
“The jet — tail number N443PR — had flown from Las Vegas to Asheville on Nov. 6, according to the flight records that Bloomberg purchased from FlightAware, an aviation data company. The flight records don’t say who was aboard the jet, which took off from Asheville at 9:15 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 7, bound for Moscow’s Vnukovo International Airport.”
“The Bombardier jet landed in Moscow on Friday, Nov. 8, at a time unspecified in the records. From Vnukovo airport, it’s less than an hour’s drive to the Ritz-Carlton hotel, where Trump stayed, according to the pageant’s host, developer Aras Agalarov.”
“Trump surfaced online later that day in a Facebook post by the restaurant Nobu Moscow. That night he attended a birthday party for Agalarov.”
3. And now former Miss Hungary is stating that Trump invited her to his hotel room-at the Moscow Ritz.
“We were in Russia at the final for the Miss Universe, and then a man approached me and grabbed my hand, drew me to himself and asked, ‘Who are you?’” Sarka said, according to a translation by the Daily News, of the interaction, which took place at an afterparty for the pageant. According to the former beauty queen, the man was surrounded by bodyguards.”
“He asked in English and I was so embarrassed, I will tell you shortly who he is, I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t say anything else but, ‘Hungary!’” she said with a laugh, throwing her hands up in mock-defense. Tibor laughed too, and teased Sarka. “Hungary,” he said. “You’re so lame!”
Sarka continued her story, recalling how the man invited her back to his hotel room. “And then he said, ‘And why are you here?’” she said. “And he gave me his business card with his private number and told me in which hotel and which room he is staying in. And his name is Donald Trump.”
4. Then of course, there was David Corn and Michael Isikoff’s book itself Russian Roulette.
https://twitter.com/jeffsgiles/status/988822657981403136
And the abundant evidence of this false claim will likely help Mueller:
“A conscious effort by Trump to mislead the FBI director could lend weight to the allegation—contained in a largely unverified private research dossier compiled by a former British spy in 2016—that Trump engaged in compromising activity during the trip that exposed him to Russian government blackmail.”
“It has also likely caught the eye of special counsel Robert Mueller, legal analysts say. False statements to Comey about the trip could demonstrate that Trump has “consciousness of guilt,” according Pete Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor who worked for special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of national security-related leaks during the George W. Bush administration.”
Yes, it suggests consciousness of guilt and also goes to pattern-he has a pattern of making false statements like the one he concocted about Don Jr’s Russia meeting at Trump Tower in 2016.
That could bolster a legal case against Trump. Although many analysts doubt that Mueller has the legal authority to indict a sitting president, Trump’s assertions could factor into any written report from Mueller that might draw conclusions about whether Trump sought to obstruct justice or colluded with the Kremlin, and which could be transmitted by the Justice Department to Congress.
UPDATE: