487
Despite Trump’s constant assertion of ‘No collusion’ this has not been shown. To the contrary collusion with Russian interference remains very much an open question:
UPDATE: In Chapter A I argue there’s now enough-public- evidence to at least draw a thumbnail sketch of Russian Collusion-Coordination- Conspiracy. I predict that Mueller will find-at least two crimes-on the part of the Trump campaign-that Trump is obviously a major part of to say the least-coordination and conspiracy to commit computer crimes.
FN: Indeed, the Mueller report would show plenty of collusion, coordination, and conspiracy-though to this day the MSM narrative has accepted the basic frame of Bill Barr’s disinformation-there was a great deal of collusion and coordination documented in the report though Mueller didn’t see them as chargeable crimes and a decent amount of conspiracy-though Mueller thought not enough evidence for beyond reasonable doubt-he thought there was less than 90% evidence but certainly there was a considerable amount of such evidence-a good question for Mueller was if he wasn’t 90% confident he could get a conviction with the evidence of Peter Smith”s-Michael Flynn’s others in the campaign’s efforts to obtain Clinton’s deleted emails-including Trump himself; Russia if you’re listening-what percentage was there?
“In a Feb. 16 press conference announcing the indictment, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reiterated that the communications established by the defendants were made with “unwitting Americans.”
“Now, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity,” Rosenstein said. “There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.
Right none in this indictment. There’s nothing in it that says there won’t be allegations that any Americans were knowing participants in future indictments.
UPDATE 2.0: This still remains to be seen though Richard Blumenthal was on Chris Matthews last night and was adamant that ‘There will be more indictments, Mueller is not done.’
What information does he have? As noted in Chapter A Adam Schiff made a very interesting comment after the election-that the Democrats had made ‘good progress’ on Peter Smith despite the obstruction of Nunes and friends. Smith is potentially a very important figure in Russian Coordination and Conspiracy as his stated intent to pay Russian hackers for Clinton’s emails and to coordinate with Wikileaks amounts to conspiracy to commit computer crimes if he can be shown to have actually paid the hackers and worked with the Trump campaign-his emails to top senior Trump staffers suggests the answer is yes.
End of UPDATE 2.0.
UPDATE 3.0: Schiff and Friends teased us way back in 2018-seems like a lifetime ago-but we’ve heard nothing about it since they’ve assumed power. There is some reason to hope based on Pelosi’s recent statements that the Mueller Report will make the articles of impeachment regarding the obstruction of justice piece if not the collusion and conspiracy piece-though Pelosi’s recent language is appreciated-she’s linked Ukraine if you’re listening to Russia if you’re listening.
UPDATE 4. December 10: the good news is that impeachment is finally happening, the bad news is there’s nothing explicit about Mueller in the two articles- abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. I certainly agree with the school of thought that argues impeachment should be broader-and much less rushed.
As far as I’m aware Schiff has still never elaborated on what he was referring to regarding Peter Smith.
OTOH while presumably Pelosi is doing this for the moderates-apparently there will still be a few defections, who think even extorting a foreign power to investigate your opponent is no big deal.
Predictions about some defections come as a core group of centrists from districts Trump won in 2016 are having second thoughts. While many knew impeachment would never be popular in their GOP-leaning districts, some have been surprised that support hasn’t increased despite negative testimony about Trump from a series of blockbuster hearings last month.”
This is the way it’s being framed-that there still isn’t enough support when in fact most polls now show that a plurality of the country-some show a majority-desire Trump’s impeachment and removal from Office. Chris Cillizza-of all people-has noted that this is a real historical outlier for such a large slice of the country to desire Trump’s removal.
The punditry-and apparently some of the ‘Dem centrists’ have been moving the goalposts. six months ago a CNN poll showed 37% support and 59% opposition to impeachment and this was seen as abysmal-though it was actually higher than support for Clinton’s impeachment ever was. Now CNN shows 51% support and 45% opposition and yet they are still talking as if support is meager. What numbers do they want to see?
Even Nixon was not as high as this until the very end-when 57% wanted him out. So 51% is close to where Nixon got at the height.
Let’s just hope Pelosi and Friends read Brian Beutler-and #ImpeachtheIllegitimateMFer multiple times.
Sorry but he’s committed many impeachable offenses-not two. Sometimes it seems that because he’s committed 269 impeachable offenses rather than a couple that this proves we’re just on a fishing expedition. No he’s just committed a great many impeachable offenses. In any case the statements by the Democrats at last night ‘s Judiciary proceedings on impeachment were very moving.
As for the GOP their strategy is not to be moving but quite the opposite-they seek to elicit disgust with the proceedings by yelling and talking real fast about nothing very much.
Kurt Bardella-who used to be on Darrell Issa’s staff.
Indeed, in observing my former House GOP comrades over the many days of contentious House hearings, I am reminded of a scene from the classic Will Ferrell comedy “Anchorman,” where the famed (and fictional) Channel 4 News team angrily confronts its news director over the hiring of a female reporter. In the scene, several of the male journalists take turns yelling their opposition to the addition. Steve Carell’s character, Brick Tamland, isn’t really smart enough to have a critique but wishing to be included, he screams, “I don’t know what we’re yelling about!”
That pretty much sums up Republicans’ defense of their current leader. If they yell loud enough and long enough, what they say about the circumstances of this impeachment inquiry will become truth. Their calculation is that by yelling about anything and everything, the American people will either be convinced or at the very least so annoyed they’ll stop watching. To the GOP, yelling seems to be both a demonstration of strength and a deliberate effort to wear down Democrats and any other Americans who care enough to tune in.
Thus, the outrage that’s been on display these past few weeks hasn’t been spontaneous. This isn’t an indication of passion or righteous anger. It is the manifestation of a decade long marketing strategy that has kept them in the driving seat of Congress for the better part of the Obama and the Trump administrations”
This is the key-some viewers may decide because they’re yelling and feigning indignation that they’re right-they will indeed interpret it as ‘strength.’ Other viewers will be disgusted and change the channel. But that’s a feature not a bug for the GOP-they want to elicit disgust at the process even if their own conduct is what many find most disgusting.
And I do agree with Bardella the Dems still haven’t figured out how to handle GOP misdirection.
Great point by Kurt Bardella: all the yelling and misdirection by the GOP hacks has a purpose-maybe some viewers will believe them because they're yelling; others will be disgusted and turn it off either way they win. Dems still haven't figured out a counter pic.twitter.com/wbhqHVfP7S
— Expand the Court (@ProChoiceMike) December 12, 2019
But then as we noted in Chapter A the Democrats are within the context of American politics the female party that is expected to be nice and nonconfrontational.
End of UPDATE 4.
“The recent indictments of 13 Russian nationals didn’t somehow prove that Trump or anyone in his campaign didn’t collude-in truth the indictment didn’t bear on that question either way. Many suspect that Mueller deliberately focused only on Russians this time to establish collusion as an indictable offense-that even Trump has now accepted-so that in the future it can be used against Trump or members of his campaign if necessary.
Already in this indictment it’s established that there were Americans who were unwitting participants. So all it takes now is to show that there were some who were actually-uh, witting. Stay tuned.
While Trump and his GOP flacks claim that there was no collusion or that it hasn’t been proved, for Mueller himself, clearly, collusion remains very much an open question. He’s been asking witnesses wether Trump knew about the hacked emails before their release.
“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is asking witnesses pointed questions about whether Donald Trump was aware that Democratic emails had been stolen before that was publicly known, and whether he was involved in their strategic release, according to multiple people familiar with the probe.”
“Mueller’s investigators have asked witnesses whether Trump was aware of plans for WikiLeaks to publish the emails. They have also asked about the relationship between GOP operative Roger Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and why Trump took policy positions favorable to Russia.”
“The line of questioning suggests the special counsel, who is tasked with examining whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, is looking into possible coordination between WikiLeaks and Trump associates in disseminating the emails, which U.S. intelligence officials say were stolen by Russia.”
Well what we do know for a matter of publicly attested fact is Papadopoulos was told by that Russian professor that the Russians had emails damaging to Hillary Clinton and that Papadopoulos according to Jason Wilson, he did tell at least Jeff Sessions.
Meanwhile DM messages have now emerged which show that Roger Stone DID-contrary to what he’s said publicly and before Congress-communicate with Wikileaks.
FN: Stone was recently found guilty on all seven counts in his criminal trial-among the charges was the lies he told to Congress.
End FN
Then there’s Trump’s infamous final press conference of the 2016 campaign Russia if you’re listening.
UPDATE 3.0 I initially wrote this chapter on February, 28 2018-over a year later we now have a wealth of information about communications between the Trump campaign and Roger Stone and between Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi that clearly establish coordination and that Trump personally knew in advance. The cherry on top was Cohen’s Congressional testimony where he testified to witnessing Roger Stone tell Trump on speakerphone about the DNC emails in advance.
End of UPDATE 3.0.
Mueller is also interested in that-was that all just a joke as Sean Spicer claimed or did he know something?
“On one line of questioning, investigators have focused on Trump’s public comments in July 2016 asking Russia to find emails that were deleted by his then-opponent Hillary Clinton from a private server she maintained while secretary of state. The comments came at a news conference on July 27, 2016, just days after WikiLeaks began publishing the Democratic National Committee emails. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said.
Then there’s the fact-it’s in the indictment-that the day Trump asked Russia to hack Clinton’s emails-they attempted to hack her office
“Russian spies began trying to hack Hillary Clinton’s personal email server on the very day Donald Trump urged the Russian government to find emails Clinton had erased, prosecutors said on Friday.”
An indictment filed by Robert Mueller, the special counsel, said Russian hackers attempted “for the first time” to break into email accounts used by Clinton’s personal office “after hours” on 27 July 2016.
That day, at an event in Florida, Trump invited the Russian state to search for the approximately 30,000 emails that Clinton was found to have deleted from her private server on the grounds that they were not related to government work.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
No direct link with Trump’s remark was alleged in Mueller’s indictment.”
Hardly think he needs to draw a picture on this one-the facts speak for themselves. Or are we supposed to swallow yet another amazing coincidence?
Back to NBC:
“Witnesses have been asked whether Trump himself knew then that Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, whose emails were released several months later, had already been targeted. They were also asked if Trump was advised to make the statement about Clinton’s emails from someone outside his campaign, and if the witnesses had reason to believe Trump tried to coordinate the release of the DNC emails to do the most damage to Clinton, the people familiar with the matter said”
UPDATE 4.0: We can now answer that question: when Trump asked Russia to hack her emails, at that very moment Corsi had sent Ted Malloch to talk to Assange at the embassy in Britain to see what else he had. The Trump campaign-Manafort?-had asked Roger Stone to find out and Stone had delegated the task to Corsi who then delegated it to Malloch.
The Mueller Report revealed Rick Gates’ testimony that in July of 2016 Trump got a call from Roger Stone on the way to the airport that more email dumps from Wikileaks were coming-Gates repeated this testimony at Roger Stone’s trial,
UPDATE 5.0: Smith’s stated intent on the emails to Flynn-Bannon-Spicer-Kellyann Conway, etc was to find the 30,000-legally-deleted emails from her server. But there’s the email after the election that suggests he paid the hackers behind the Podesta emails. If so there’s your Conspiracy to Commit Computer Crimes. No doubt Team Treason Trump’s defense will be to deny that Smith had any real access to the campaign-he was just another marginal figure-he may have emailed the campaign but nobody answered. But if Seth Abramson’s quite logical assumption is correct-that Smith was actually Joseph Schmitz’s client he got the fake Clinton emails he’d peddled to the FBI and other intel agencies, then you have a clear link between Smith and the campaign.
FN: See Chapter A for more on Abramson’s reasonable conjecture.
In light of the fact that the Russian hackers hacked Clinton’s office the day Trump asked them to-just a coincidence that’s all…-we can also ask if Peter Smith and/or Joseph Schmitz were involved in commissioning these Russian hackers.
“Witnesses have been asked whether Trump himself knew then that Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, whose emails were released several months later, had already been targeted. They were also asked if Trump was advised to make the statement about Clinton’s emails from someone outside his campaign, and if the witnesses had reason to believe Trump tried to coordinate the release of the DNC emails to do the most damage to Clinton, the people familiar with the matter said.
“The White House spokesman at the time, Sean Spicer, would later say that then-candidate Trump had been “joking” when he called on Russia to hack his opponent’s emails.”
“In 2016, the hack of my emails was often treated as a politically interesting event,” said Podesta to NBC News via email. “For the record, it was a crime. Glad Mueller is trying to get to the bottom of everyone involved in that crime.”
And, yes, Mueller and his investigators are also interested in what Roger Stone-who we now know did communicate with Wikileaks-knew and when he knew it.
“Investigators are also asking questions about Trump’s longtime relationship with Stone, the Republican operative, according to witnesses. Investigators have asked about Stone’s contacts with WikiLeaks during the campaign and if he’s ever met with Assange.
“They wanted to see if there was a scheme. Was Stone working on the side for Trump?” after he officially left the campaign, one person interviewed by the special counsel’s office said, adding that it seemed investigators wanted to know, “Was this a big plot?”
They are also asking about Stone’s status with the Trump campaign-publicly he was ‘fired’ in the Summer of 2015 but, Mueller is rightly skeptical:
Investigators have asked witnesses about Stone’s time on the campaign and what his relationship was like with Trump after he left.
“How often did they talk? Who really fired him? Was he really fired?” a witness said, describing the line of questioning.
Stone had no public role with the Trump campaign which doesn’t mean he wasn’t working off books. Indeed, what we’ve seen in case after case-Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, Anthony Scaramucci, etc-is that even when Trump breaks from long time friends and loyalists publicly they continue to have his ear privately.
Indeed, Roger Stone has stated that he still continues to speak with Trump regularly. There’s a sense where someone like Stone is always in some form or another working ‘off books’ for Donald Trump.
Politico points out this same dynamic regarding Trump and the departing Hope Hicks
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/01/hope-hicks-trump-post-white-house-433043?lo=ap_b1