Trump's moral squalor, not impeachment, will remove him from power

Robert Reich

Democrats in Congress and talking heads on television will be consumed in the coming weeks by whether the evidence in the Mueller report, especially of obstruction of justice, merits impeachment.

Meanwhile, the question of “wink-wink” cooperation with Russia still looms. Mueller’s quote of Trump, when first learning a special counsel had been appointed – “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked” – has already become a national tagline. Why, Americans wonder, would Trump be “fucked” if he hadn’t done something so awful as to cause its revelation to “fuck” him?

Added to this will be Mueller’s own testimony before Congress, and Congress’s own investigations of Trump.

But let’s be real. Trump will not be removed by impeachment. No president has been. With a Republican Senate controlled by the most irresponsible political hack ever to be majority leader, the chances are nil.

Which means Trump will have to be removed the old-fashioned way – by voters in an election 19 months away.

The practical question is whether the Mueller report and all that surrounds it will affect that election.

Most Americans hold a low opinion of Trump. He’s the only president in Gallup polling history never to have earned the support of majority for single day of his term.

Yet Mueller’s report probably won’t move any of the 40% who have held tight to Trump regardless.

So how to reach the 11% or 12% who may decide the outcome?

 

• Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. He is also a columnist for Guardian US.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/21/donald-trump-impea...

 

 

Donald Trump is the product of Obama's presidency, like Obama was the result of Bush's presidency. Of the three, Donald is the least hypocritical (though he is moving in this territory at high speed), but the maddest. So what? What Robert Reich is advocating is more crap. Get on with it.

“Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked”... You can say this sentence with fear or with sarcasm... I am guessing Trump used the latter... He is not a person to fear ANYTHING. 

 

If "Russiagate" has been shown to be a figment of the Democrats' imagination, how come the US hasn't lifted its economic sanctions against that wrongly accused party?

Americans are such self-righteous hypocrites ...

 

RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: Happy Easter, Happy Passover and good to be with you. 

WALLACE: You were planning, we were told, to release a counter-report to the Mueller report, about 45 pages. Why haven't you done so and are you still planning to? 

GIULIANI: Number one, we haven't done so because we planned to do it if we needed to. So far, we don't think we need to. That may become necessary. 

There is — whether they go ahead with the hearings or not, whether other issues are raised by different people, there's probably a point at which we will use it. Right now, we think the public debate this playing out about as well as we can. Why confuse with — I mean, it raises a lot of issues that maybe we didn't have to respond to. 

WALLACE: You had said that if you were going to release on the counter report, it was going to focus on obstruction. Here's what the president had to say about that after the Mueller report was released. 

GIULIANI: Right.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They're having a good day. I'm having a good day too. It was called no collusion, no obstruction. 

WALLACE: But, Mayor, that's not true. The Mueller report makes a clear, especially on the issue of collusion that -- 

GIULIANI: Obstruction.

WALLACE: Obstruction rather, that he's leaving it to Congress. And I want to pick up on the report. Volume two, page eight --

Let me put this out here first. 

The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the president's corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances in the principle that no person is above the law.

So, Mueller invites Congress to look into this and the president, in terms of Congress, hasn't been exonerated at all in the issue of the obstruction.

GIULIANI: He doesn't get exonerated. I mean, the standard — first of all, one of the main things that affects that report and makes it a warped report, page two, the standard. You do not apply a standard of exoneration to anyone, whether it's a president in an impeachment or — you can't exonerate. Exoneration means proving a negative. But the law has recognized —

WALLACE: But it's more than that. He is suggesting that — but, sir — He is suggesting that there is a case and evidence that Congress should examine. 

GIULIANI: OK, but let's start with this. The standard he used, his conclusion is: I cannot conclude that the president committed obstruction, but I cannot exonerate him. 

WALLACE: I understand your ideas that he doesn't have to prove him innocent, just not guilty.

 

Read more:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/04/21/

 

In the toon above, I left an ambiguity... Mueller says "I did my best"... He does not say what his best was. Was it to find a way to exonerate or condemn the President? We shall not know... But he did "his best" at whatever...

One of the notable aspects of the Mueller report is just how deeply involved Russian operatives were in making sure that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election.

And yet, in the days since a redacted version of the report was issued, Ms Clinton herself has been nearly silent, and there's been little talk among Democrats of avenging the wrong done to her.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-22/should-democrats-impeach-trump-mu...

 

 

"Avenging?" What a rotten concept, not even worth of Hollywood, though the movie boffins still peddle the sad game of "avenging"...

 

One of the reasons why Hillary might be silent is that she knows a LOT MORE STUFF IS HIDDEN in the mud, including all the emails she "deleted" but would have managed to get into the hands of Assange. Stirring the mud and she is likely to sink in quick sands.

 

The Mueller report made her a "protected species" but she would have as much or more of her own crap to deal with, should the Democrats start shaking the apple tree. With Julian Assange certifying that the emails hack did not come from the Russians, but from within the DNC, she has no choice but remaining quiet...

 

Assange is Wikileaks, Wikileaks is Assange, with a few people manning the fort. But with Assange on the verge of being "disappeared" for political expediency, a lot of people could become nervous. Even if Wikileaks did not have a large cache of information somewhere (which is likely), it would have the cascade of sequence of events and leads that could become exposed (published), should something funny happened to Assange. We don't know where he is, we don't know his status. Should his lawyers not have access to him, the emergency protocol could be activated. Heads will roll. Hillary's included.

 

"how deeply involved Russian operatives were in making sure that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election?" Here we might have a smokescreen, something that is too obvious to be credible... Rupert Murdoch was far more involved in making sure Hillary would lose.

The release of the Mueller report has left Democrats in a dilemma. Consider what Robert Mueller concluded after two years of investigation.

Candidate Donald Trump did not conspire or collude with the Russians to hack the emails of the DNC or John Podesta. Trump did not distribute the fruits of those crimes nor did anyone on his campaign. On collusion and conspiracy, said Mueller, Trump is innocent.

Mueller did not say that Trump did not consider interfering with his investigation. But that investigation nonetheless went on unimpeded. Mueller’s document demands were all met. And Mueller did not conclude that Trump obstructed justice.

On obstruction, then, not guilty, by reason of no indictment.

We are told that Trump ranted to subordinates about firing Mueller. Yet as Attorney General Bill Barr pointed out, Trump had excellent reasons to be enraged. He was pilloried for two and a half years over a crime he not only did not commit but that never took place.

From the fall of 2016 to the spring of 2019, Trump was subjected to scurrilous attacks. It was alleged that his victory had been stolen for him by the Russians, that he was an illegitimate president guilty of treason and an agent of the Kremlin, that he was being blackmailed, and that he rewrote the Republican platform on Vladimir Putin’s instructions.

All bull hockey, and Mueller all but said so.

Yet the false charges did serious damage to his presidency and the nation.

Answering them has consumed much of Trump’s tenure and ruined his plans to repair our dangerously damaged relations with the world’s other great nuclear power.

Yet it is the Trump haters who are now in something of a box.

Their goal had been to use “Russiagate” to bring down their detested antagonist, overturn his election, and put him in the history books as a stooge of Putin who, had the truth be known, would never have won the White House.

Mueller failed to sustain their indictment. Indeed, he all but threw it out.

Yet Trump’s enemies will not quit now. To do so would be to concede that Trump’s defenders had been right all along, and that they had not only done a grave injustice to Trump but damaged their country with their manic pursuit.

And admitting they were wrong would instantly raise follow-up questions.

If two years of investigation by Mueller, his lawyers, and his FBI agents could not unearth hard evidence to prove that Trump and his campaign conspired with the Russians, what was the original evidence that justified launching this historic and massive assault on a presidential campaign and the presidency of the United States?

If there was no collusion, when did Mueller learn this? Did it take two and a half years to discover there was no conspiracy?

The names tossed out as justifying the original investigation are George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. The latter was subjected to four consecutive secret FISA court surveillance warrants.

Yet neither man was ever charged with conspiring with Russia.

Was “Russiagate” a nothingburger to begin with, a concocted excuse for “deep state” agencies to rampage through Trump’s campaign and personal history to destroy him and his presidency?

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a presidential candidate, has called for impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee. But her call seems less tied to evidence of high crimes in the Mueller report than to her own anemic poll ratings and fundraising performance in the first quarter.

It is difficult to see how those Democrats and their media allies, who have invested so much prestige and so many hopes in the Mueller report, can now pack it in and concede that they were wrong. Their interests will not permit it; their reputations could not sustain it.

So where are we headed?

The anti-Trump media and second-tier candidates for the Democratic nomination will press the frontrunners to join their call for impeachment. Some will capitulate to the clamor.

But can Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg, or Kamala Harris, each of whom has an agenda to advance, accept becoming just another voice crying out for Trump’s impeachment?

The credibility of the Democratic Party is now at issue.

If Mueller could not find collusion, what reason is there to believe that Congressman Jerry Nadler’s Judiciary Committee will find it? And then convince the country they have discovered what ex-FBI director Mueller could not?

With conspiracy and collusion off the table, and Mueller saying the case for obstruction is unproven, the renewed attack on Trump takes on the aspect of a naked and desperate “deep state”-media coup against a president they fear they cannot defeat at the ballot box.

 

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/mueller-raises-more-que...

 

 

Read from top.

From C J Hopkins, award-winning American playwright...

I owe the corporate media an apology. For the last few years, I’ve been writing all these essays explaining how they were perpetrating an enormous psyop on the American public … a psyop designed to convince the public that Donald Trump “colluded” with Russia to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton. Up until a few days ago, I would have sworn that they had published literally thousands of articles and editorials, and broadcast countless TV segments, more or less accusing him of treason, and being a “Russian intelligence asset,” and other ridiculous stuff like that. Also, and I’m still not sure how this happened, I somehow got the idea in my head that the investigation that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was meticulously conducting had something to do with Donald Trump conspiring or “colluding” with Russia, or being some kind of “Manchurian president,” or being blackmailed by Putin with a pee-tape, or something.

In any event, the publication of the Mueller report has cleared things up for me. I get it now. The investigation was never about Trump colluding with Russia. It was always about Trump obstructing the investigation of the collusion with Russia that the investigation was not about. Mueller was never looking for collusion. It was not his job to look for collusion. His job was to look for obstruction of his investigation of alleged obstruction of his investigation of non-collusion, which he found, and detailed at length in his report, and which qualifies as an impeachable offense.

Not that he proved that there was no collusion! On the contrary, as professional hermeneuticists have been repeatedly pointing out on Twitter, given that Mueller wasn’t looking for collusion, and that collusion could never have been legally established, and isn’t even a legal term, Mueller’s failure to find any actual evidence of collusion is evidence of collusion, notwithstanding the fact that he couldn’t prove it, and wasn’t even looking for it, except to the extent it allowed him to establish a case for the obstruction he was actually investigating.

In other words, his investigation was launched in order to investigate the obstruction of his investigation. And, on those terms, it was a huge success. The fact that it didn’t prove “collusion” means nothing — that’s just a straw man argument that Trump and his Russian handlers make. The goal all along was to prove that Trump obstructed an investigation of his obstruction of that investigation, not that he was “colluding” with Putin, or any of the other paranoid nonsense that the corporate media were forced to report on, once an investigation into his obstruction of the investigation was launched.

See, and this is why I owe the media an apology. All those thousands of hysterical articles, editorials, and TV segments accusing Donald Trump of treason, and of literally being a Russian agent, and probably Putin’s homosexual lover, were not just ridiculous propaganda. The corporate media were not engaged in a concerted campaign to convince the public that Trump conspired with a foreign adversary to brainwash millions of African Americans into refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton with some emails and a handful of Facebook posts. No, the media were simply covering the story of his obstruction of the investigation of the made-up facts the intelligence agencies got them to relentlessly disseminate to generate the appearance of a story, which, once it was out there, had to be reported on, regardless of how it came into being, or whose nefarious purposes it served.

Moreover, regardless of whether Mueller did or did not establish obstruction (or attempted obstruction, which is just as impeachable) of his non-investigation of collusion, he absolutely established that Russia attacked us by brainwashing all those African Americans who were definitely going to vote for Clinton until they saw those divisive Facebook ads and those DNC emails that Putin personally ordered Trump to order Paul Manafort to personally deliver to Julian Assange, who was hunkered down in the Ecuadorean embassy poking holes in King-size condoms, abusing his cat, and smearing invisible poo all over the walls of his kitchen.

Now, these are all indisputable facts, which Mueller establishes in his report by referencing the repeated assertions of a consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies, and the corporate media’s relentless repetition of those agencies’ assertions, and the feeling a lot of people have that they must be factual to some extent, given how often they have been repeated, and referenced, and authoritatively asserted, and how familiar they sound when they hear them, again. The fact that there exists no evidence whatsoever of any “Russian attack,” and that all we’re actually talking about is the publication of a bunch of emails that DNC members actually wrote, and some ridiculous social media posts, should not in any way detract from the fact that the Russians launched a totally devastating, virtually Pearl Harbor-scale attack on the fabric of American democracy, which Trump obstructed an investigation of, or attempted to obstruct an investigation of, or conspired to attempt to obstruct an investigation of obstruction of.

Or whatever. The point is, now they’ve got him! His justice obstructing days are numbered! Break out the pussyhats and vuvuzelas, because next stop is Impeachment City! So what if he’s not a Russian agent and didn’t conspire or collude with anyone? He got elected without permission, and insulted a lot of powerful people, and … well, who cares what they impeach him for, as long as they impeach him for something!

They kind of have to do it, at this point, don’t they? They just spent most of the last three years rolling out an official narrative in which the Russians are running around attacking democracy, poisoning ducks with Novichok perfume, fomenting populist uprisings in France, and just generally being the evil enemies that the Islamic terrorists used to be, before they turned into freedom fighters and helped us try to take over Syria.

If the Democrats don’t impeach Donald Trump, that official narrative might fall apart. Liberals might have to face the fact that Americans elected Donald Trump president, not because they were brainwashed by Russians, or had any illusions about what a thuggish, self-aggrandizing buffoon he is, but because they were so disgusted with the neoliberal Washington establishment, and the global capitalist elites that own it, that they leapt at the chance to vote against it, and probably would have elected anyone who promised to even marginally disrupt it … but there I go drifting off into my crazy conspiracist thinking again.

Anyway … I’m really sorry about all that stuff I wrote about the corporate media. Rest assured, that won’t happen again. Admittedly, I blew the Russiagate thing, but I promise to do better with Obstructiongate, or Tax-Returnsgate, or Whatevergate. It doesn’t really matter what we call it, right? The important thing is to teach the masses what happens when they vote for unauthorized candidates. We’re only halfway through that lesson. Stay tuned … there’s much, much more to come!

 

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/04/26/obstructiongate/

 

Read from top.

Trump sought out loyalist to curtail special counsel — and drew Mueller’s glare

President Trump’s efforts to enlist Corey Lewandowski as a back channel were read by some legal observers as one of the clearest cases for potential obstruction of justice laid out in Robert S. Mueller III's report.

• By Ashley Parker, Rosalind S. Helderman and Matt Zapotosky

Read from top.

15 Questions Robert Mueller Must Answer

Why the cryptic wording on the Steele Dossier? Why wasn't Trump given an opportunity to defend himself in court?

You know that movie with Bruce Willis and the kid who says “I see dead people”? In the end, it turns out everyone is already dead. Now imagine there are people who don’t believe that. They insist the story ends some other way. Spoiler alert: the Mueller Report ends with no collusion. No one is going to prosecute anyone for obstruction. That stuff is all dead. We all saw the same movie.

Yet there seem to still be questions from those who don’t get it. And while it’s doubtful that the stoic Robert Mueller will ever write a tell-all book, or sit next to Seth Meyers and Trevor Noah to dish, he may be called in front of Congress. If he is, here’s some of what he should be asked.

1) You didn’t charge President Donald Trump with “collusion,” obstruction, or any other new crime. Tell us why. If the answer is “the evidence did not support it,” please say so.

2) Your Report did not refer any crimes to Congress, the SDNY, or anyone else. Again, tell us why. If the answer is “the evidence did not support it,” please say so again.

3) Despite making no specific referrals, the Report does state, “The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of the office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.” Why did you include such a restating of a known fact? Many have read that line to mean you could not indict a sitting president and so you wanted to leave a clue to Congress. Yet you could have just spelled it out—”this is beyond my and the attorney general’s constitutional roles and must/can only be resolved by Congress.” Why didn’t you?

4) Similarly, many believe they see clues (a footnote looms as the grassy knoll of your work) that the only reason you did not indict Trump was because of Department of Justice and Office of Legal Counsel guidance against indicting a sitting president. Absent that, would you have indicted? If so, why didn’t you say so unambiguously and trigger what would be the obvious next steps?

5) When did you conclude there was no collusion, conspiracy, or coordination between Trump and the Russians such that you would make no indictments? You must have closed at least some of the subplots—the Trump Tower meeting, the Moscow Hotel project—months ago. Did you consider announcing key findings as they occurred? You were clearly aware that there was inaccurate reporting, damaging to the public trust. Yet you allowed that to happen. Why?

6) But before you answer that question, answer this one. You made a pre-Report public statement saying Buzzfeed’s story that claimed Trump ordered Michael Cohen to lie to Congress was false. You restated that in the Report, where you also mentioned that you privately told Jeff Sessions’ lawyer in March 2018 that Sessions would not be charged. Since your work confirmed that nearly all bombshell reporting on Russiagate was wrong (Cohen was never in Prague, nothing criminal happened in the Seychelles, and so on), why was it only that single instance that caused you to speak out publicly? And as with Sessions, did you privately inform any others prior to the release of the Report that they would not be charged? What standard did you apply to those decisions?

7) A cardinal rule for prosecutors is to not publicize negative information that does not lead them to indict someone—”the decision does the talking.” James Comey was criticized for doing this to Hillary Clinton during the campaign. Yet most of your Report’s Volume II is just that, descriptions of actions by Trump that contain elements of obstruction but that you ultimately did not charge. Why did you include this information so prominently? Some say it was because you wanted to draw a “road map” for impeachment. Why didn’t you just say that? You had no reason to speak in riddles.

8) There is a lot of lying documented in the Report. But you seemed to only charge people with perjury (traps) early in your investigation. Was that aimed more at pressuring them to “flip” than at justice per se? Is one of the reasons several of the people in the Report who lied did not get charged with perjury later in the investigation because by then you knew they had nothing to flip on?

9) In regard to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where derogatory information on Hillary Clinton was offered (but never given), you declined prosecution. You cited in part questions over whether such information constituted the necessary “thing of value” that would have to exist, inter alia, to make its proffering a campaign finance violation. You don’t answer the question in the Report, but you do believe information could be a “thing of value” (the thing of value must exceed $2,000 for a misdemeanor and $25,000 for a felony). What about withholding information? Could someone saying they would not offer information publicly be a “thing of value” and thus potentially part of a campaign finance law violation? Of course I’m talking about Stormy Daniels, who received money not to offer information. Would you make the claim that silence itself, non-information, is a “thing” of value?

10) You spend the entire first half of your Report, Volume I, explaining that “the Russians” sought to manipulate our 2016 election via social media and by hacking the Democratic National Committee. Though there is a lot of redacted material, at no point in the clear text is there information on whether the Russians actually did influence the election. Even trying was a crime, but given the importance of all this (some still claim the president is illegitimate) and the potential impact on future elections, did you look into the actual effects of Russian meddling? If not, why not?

11) Everything the Russians did, according to Volume I, they did on Obama’s watch. Did you investigate anyone in the Obama administration in regard to Russian meddling? Did you look at what they did, what was missed, whether it could have been stopped, and how the response was formed? Given that Trump’s actions towards Russia followed on steps Obama took, this seems relevant. Did you look? If not, why not?

12) Some of the information gathered about Michael Flynn was picked up inadvertently under existing surveillance of the Russian ambassador. As an American, Flynn’s name would have been routinely masked in the reporting on those intercepts in order to protect his privacy. The number of people with access to those intercepts is small, and the number inside the Obama White House with the authority to unmask names is even smaller. Yet details were leaked to the press and ended Flynn’s career. Given that the leak may have exposed U.S. intelligence methods, that it had to have been done at a very high level inside the Obama White House, and that the leak violated Flynn’s constitutional rights, did you investigate? If not, why not?

13) The New York Times wrote that “some of the most sensational claims in the [Steele] dossier appeared to be false, and others were impossible to prove. Your report contained over a dozen passing references to the document’s claims but no overall assessment of why so much did not check out.” Given the central role the Steele Dossier played in your work, and certainly in the investigation that commenced as Crossfire Hurricane in summer 2016, why did you not include any overall assessment of why so much did not check out inside such a key document?

14) Prosecutors do not issue certificates of exoneration. The job is to charge or drop a case. That’s what constitutes exoneration in any practical sense. Yet you have as your final line that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Why did you include that, and so prominently?

15) You also wrote, “if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.” You argue elsewhere in the Report that because Trump is a sitting president, he cannot be indicted, so therefore it would be unjust to accuse him of something he could not go to court and defend himself over. But didn’t you do just that? Why did you leave the taint of guilt without giving Trump the means of defending himself in court? You must have understood that such wording would be raw meat to Democrats, and would force Trump to defend himself not in a court with legal protections, but in an often hostile media. Was that your intention?

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People and Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan.

US Special Counsel Robert Mueller has said charging President Donald Trump with a crime was not an option, in his first comments on the Russia inquiry.

He reiterated that his report did not exonerate the president and that legal guidelines prevent the indictment of a sitting president. 

Mr Mueller did not rule out testifying in Congress but said he would not give information that was not in his report.

Reacting to the remarks, Mr Trump said: "The case is closed! Thank you."

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48450534

 

 

Read from top.

Mueller Dragnet Snags Ex-Clintonista, Obama Lawyer

Greg Craig took money from a pro-Russian regime, just like jailed ex-Trump aide Paul Manafort. Welcome to the swamp.

By BARBARA BOLAND • August 15, 2019

 

Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election has snagged its first high-profile Democrat: Gregory Craig, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton during his impeachment and Barack Obama’s first White House counsel.

In a trial expected to last two weeks, a jury will hear how the former partner of the prestigious Washington firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP allegedly made false statements to the U.S. government and concealed the extent of his work for the pro-Russian Ukrainian regime. Due to a delay over jury selection, opening arguments are expected to begin Friday.

The case against Craig is the latest in a series of prosecutions arising from the Department of Justice’s revamped enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires people to make fairly extensive disclosures if they engage in political or quasi-political activities on behalf of foreign governments or officials. Almost all high-profile cases against unregistered foreign agents in the last two years have stemmed from Mueller’s investigation. Previously, the law had been lightly enforced.

Mueller’s probe led to FARA charges against Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates. The charges against Manafort stem from work he did on behalf of President Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Russia party. Mueller’s team convicted Manafort, Gates, and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. Manafort received a seven and a half year sentence for conspiracy and financial crimes, some of it related to his work for Yanukovych.

 

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/mueller-dragnet-snags-e...

 

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35488

 

Read from top.

8. Trump loves a street fight

He prospers by the enemies he can goad. And he will continue to enjoy the benefits of the US presidency even as the impeachment net closes around him. He will set the agenda and play the victim. He is a master at this.

Democrats, even armed with morality and law, may find themselves not up to this task.

Impeachment is what Trump wants the Democrats to do. It will provide his often chaotic and inchoate administration with a focus and purpose.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-26/reasons-why-impeaching-donald-tru...

 

---------------------------

 

Imagine for a second that Donald trump is not as mad as he looks.

My first question in this affair of "asking the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden son's connections with Ukraine" is would Trump be silly enough to open himself to give the democrats another opportunity to impeach him — especially after Russiagate that went nowhere?

My second question is in regard to "in politics never start something you don't know the end result of". Thus the question would be does Trump know the answers to the questions he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. I would say he does but he can't reveal directly the source of this knowledge  — CIA, etc. Please don't tell me that the CIA does not know the full extend of the Biden saga...

My third question is would Donald trump leave himself to the vagaries of a whistleblower in this affair? I would suspect that, though he does not care one way or the other (because he has the numbers in his favour in the Capitol) he does not mind — or may have incited — such a leak. Why?

Is it just for the pleasure to have a fight and distract the Democrats with something that has no real legs?

 

Is Trump's action — which he would have had to know would be controversial, part of a deceptive game in which "you tar yourself with a misdemeanour, in order to expose the dirty dealings of others"? Joe Biden is no angel. He was in favour of the war against Iraq, but soon changed his tune — and became mostly anti-war with no firm input. He was part of the US influence in Ukraine's change of government. He should have known that his son becoming involved in a firm then investigated for fraud or whatever in Ukraine would lead to some unsavoury troubles... To demand the sacking of the "investigator" under the pretence of corruption and with the threat of holding back promised cash to Ukraine if this was not enacted sounds a bit suspicious... 

 

 

Read from top.

Obama team’s response to Russian election interference fell short, Senate report says
The Senate Intelligence Committee published its findings detailing why the previous administration did not respond more forcefully in 2016.
-----------------------------
The Senate Intelligence Committee is still trying to "get Trump" through a "Russian connection"... despite knowing fully well that THERE WAS NO INTERFERENCE FROM THE RUSSIANS in the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA. There was plenty of support from the media magnate Rupert Murdoch who is still laughing his head off...
Why don't they stop doing stupid investigations despite the Mueller report and many other evidence showing there was NO RUSSIAN interference in the US elections? Anwser: they justify their employ...

Read from top.