TWGB: Accountability in the Age of Shenanigans

This long list represents the first round of letters requesting documents in an attempt to nail down information that has been previously requested, that pertains to already-existing lines of inquiry, and that shouldn't really surprise a damn soul who has been paying attention. This, despite the grumblings of certain members of the GOP, does not represent a "fishing expedition" because the requested information indicates that Nadler and others in the House know very well what they would like to know more about, and this is because all signs point to specific kinds of fuckery having been afoot. Take requesting docs from Sheri Dillon--who stood in front of stacks of file folders and told us that Trump ad a plan to turn his business interests over to his sons (and I don't know about you, but I think he's still deeply interested) and who claimed Trump was under IRS audit, a notion recently contradicted by Michael Cohen's testimony--it makes sense that these lines of inquiry exist.

It's called "accountability", and USA Today has a very nice and comprehensive opinion piece from Jill Lawrence that details why and how we're finally seeing some accountability from Congress in tracking major discrepancies between what Trump himself and the people who surround him have said, and facts pertaining to actual wrongdoing. The broadness of the requests should not be taken to mean that a "spray and pray" approach is being taken, but rather, there is a wide-ranging pattern of obfuscation, withholding, denial, delay, and, well, shenanigans, that require Congressional oversight so that we can get accountability.

One of the things I've noted about the rise of Trump is that those who support him and whom he has relied upon are actually the world's worst people, and attract even more really bad people. Jerome Corsi, birther conspiracist (as was Trump) is on the list. He recently made an apology of sorts for spreading the unfounded theory that Seth Rich, a DNC staffer who was murdered, may have been responsible for the DNC leak, not Russian hackers. This claim has now been pulled from InfoWars.

But you know who hit that Seth Rich claim pretty heavily--Sean Hannity (who either was a client of Michael Cohen or wasn't, depending upon how Hannity feels about attorney/client privilege on any given day). Julian Assange/WikiLeaks promoted that theory, too--and Assange is obviously on the list. Hannity, of course, is a big star at Fox News, whose relationship with Trump is well documented in Jane Mayer's latest at The New Yorker. Assange, of course, has been contradicted regarding the Seth Rich lie by the indictments procured by the Mueller investigation against a dozen Russian intel officials for that crime.

Roger Stone is also on the list, of course. He's in a bit of trouble because he seems to have violated his little old gag order by posting nonsense on Instagram and by having a book excerpt out where people can see which is not at all the sort of things he was supposed to do.  

And we could go on and on. Trump is subject to, as far as we know, 17 investigations, in many of which evidence of wrongdoing by others is already determined, and implications for Trump and his family are already strongly implied. There are people on this list who have already spoken before either the House or Senate intelligence committees and quite probably lied. Documents are being requested here for good reasons, and this is, truly, just the first round.

TWGB: Roger Stone's Time in the Barrel

You know, if I could save time in a barrel, the first thing that I'd like to do, is to save every email, text, and random Tweet from Roger Stone until eternity passes away, just to give them to Robert Mueller and fuck Stone the way he would fuck unto others. (My deepest apologies to Jim Croce for my appropriation of one of his tenderest songs. I'd like to think he would have understood.)

The Friday morning fortuitously-filmed arrest of Roger Stone was a great start to a very awkward day in Trump World, but in all honesty, Roger Stone had been hinting that his ass was due for an indictment or a half dozen or so for a good long while. I don't doubt the CNN claim that good reporting was the reason they had Stone's Florida abode staked out, because the day before, four indictments were filed after a rare bit of Mueller Grand Jury activity. (This is why my last post indicated that I knew I needed to clear my tabs in advance of Friday news, because I am not a reporter, but neither am I ever unplugged--RW journos claiming a tip-off for CNN exclusively for some reason are just mad they got scooped or trying to neg the Mueller investigation and the FBI for reasons that are not entirely wholesome.)

But let's get down to the barebones details--in August of 2016, Stone was caught bragging on his knowledge about what Wikileaks might drop. Even this little blog wondered if pimping the Wikileaks thing wasn't just meta-ratfucking from a person who only pretended he wasn't still working for the Trump campaign, and there's been good reason to think Roger Stone always was still "on the bus".  We've got glimmers of what folks like Randy Credico, Jerome Corsi, and Steve Bannon might have given up, but in any event, the so far collected private communications of Roger Jason Stone are amazeballs nasty.

Look, you can tell me perjury is bad and suborning perjury in others is bad, but literally going full "Wicked Witch of the West" and telling someone straight up "I will get your little dog too!" is just some crazy witness-tampering obvious almost fictional villain batshit evil. I will tell you right now, you get an entire posse of two dozen or so entirely for-free FBI just for threatening a man's little floofdog if I was running this arrest operation (complete with warrant for assorted whatever collection).

Which is about what happened, and which could be arguably overkill for some piddly "process crimes"--except let's be honest about what Stone has been doing here. Back to referencing the barebones details, if one is threatening violence, and frankly talking about abusing or leveraging other people to get certain results in a legal matter, that doesn't make them look good. To my mind, that says, you have to look at why they are engaging in these sorts of crimes that specifically try to effect the legal outcome of the Mueller investigation.

I think it's hard to say he'd have been doing these things if there wasn't some truth to the connection(s) between Wikileaks and the Trump Campaign, and their apparent foreknowledge that the info WikiLeaks had was from a Russian-sponsored cyber attack.  Although the indictment itself doesn't throw all the info Mueller has out there (and it shouldn't and for obvious reasons) we can nonetheless understand that Stone wouldn't have been indicted unless he was already screwed by what Mueller had in writing regardless of what Stone, a notoriously unreliable witness, might offer.

Which makes Stone's talk about not flipping fascinating--because this is something Trump has stated he really likes about Stone--he isn't gonna talk. But that sort of implies that there is a something he shouldn't be talking about, n'est-ce pas? The more Stone crows on various news outlets about what he will and won't do, the more it looks a bit like he's either pimping himself out for a pardon or trying to make himself look like a martyr for his legal GoFundMe. (And he isn't, based on his real estate, necessarily a poor man. He's just poor in his political choices, morality, and well, everything else that makes one human.)  Also his head is shaped very amusingly and his hair looks to be sewn-in--which probably adds to the sympathy some are wasting on this peculiarly buff-backed Nixon tattoo-sporting reprobate. But when I hear the RW Tweeters go on about poor old Rog, at age 66, the fact that he looks like  Abe Simpson is all about his life choices and he seems to be the reason weirdos like Loomer, Prosobiec and a score of other internet simple trash exist.

Miss me with any sympathy for this devil.

(Although, and to give him his due, his back tattoo is really quite good and the artist should be praised. It's awkwardly placed and sized, which is entirely Stone's choices, and the tattoo artist can't be faulted for that. But photo-representations of human faces are notoriously tricky when rendered as skin art, and entire websites exist of bad tattoo art to prove that. The Nixon tattoo is actually scaled well, and the features are proportioned correctly and do not look like a bad caricature. A piece of art like this would probably be better served on a bicep or, as a back piece, be larger. Located where it is, it's not somehow tattoo-correct. I guess a similarly-sized Nixon tramp-stamp would be far worse, of course. Maybe he could have it elaborated upon with borders of US flags or some shit when he goes to his eventual incarceration--because none of these minions even know how stingy Trump is gonna be with these pardons. He will want proofs of loyalty beyond your wildest indulgence. He's a narcissist. He can't help it.)

TWGB: The Truth Shall Set You Free

The best place to start the post is with Trump's tweetstorm from Monday, wherein he implied that his longtime associate, Michael Cohen, had done terrible things (with Trump's knowledge apparently), and that he should under no circumstances receive any kind of sentencing deal for his cooperation in the Mueller investigation. He also indicated that the better example was set by Roger Stone, who had vowed not to testify against Trump, and also sort of tilted his hat at the peculiar claim by Larry Klayman on behalf of Jerome Corsi, that it was Special Counsel Robert Mueller who was trying to suborn perjury by leaning on witnesses to lie, instead of being engaged in a truthful fact-finding mission, which grasps at the same kind of "conflict of interest" straws as Trump's claim regarding "Angry Democrats".

Well, why wouldn't President Trump echo the ideas of Corsi's defense team? After all, he and Jerome Corsi have a joint defense agreement, almost just like the one Trump has/or had with Paul Manafort, according to Corsi who was told it by Jay Sekulow (who is so a good lawyer, stop that!) with the difference being I think Manafort is more screwed (because state charges)and yet Manafort is the one I've heard more newsiness about getting a pardon. Also--Mueller has Stone/Corsi emails, which might just be enough without Corsi--

Or without Stone, who is pleading the Fifth. (Egads, it only feels like it was a year and half ago, give or take a century, that it was Michael Flynn pleading the Fifth.) He will show up to any opportunity he is subpoenaed to and will say nothing. And he'll be goddamned if you take his papers, either. Also, maybe Mueller could get a warrant. Or grant limited immunity to get him to talk about, you know, other stuff. He is not a dead end, yet.

Anyways, don't worry--based on Tweets like these, the JDAs and some of the "who talks, who walks" stuff all looks like orchestrated obstruction of justice on Trump's part, a little bit. Or so noted conservative lawyer George Conway seems to think:

The statutes being mentioned here are, well, about witness tampering and obstruction--which is, after all, the crux of the Mueller purview: initiated with whether Trump was trying to tamper with Jim Comey and then fired him to stymie the investigation into whether Russia helped Trump (which it pretty ostensibly did). Folks may well grumble about whether the investigation is taking its sweet time--but this is bosh--it's been terribly successful at getting indictments, guilty pleas, and even a few convictions, and it could certainly be shortened: by people telling the truth more! (They could also probably try not continuing to obstruct justice in other ways.) But it is clearly by no means done, yet.

The best reason we have for knowing this is the Michael Flynn sentencing memo we waited so long for this Tuesday.  Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying about his Russia contacts and has now been interviewed 19 times, and has been very forthcoming about more than one investigation (?) with so many details redacted it is not even cute if you are a Trump or related personage sweating it. Because all that "redacted" means there is more truth out there. And Mueller has a pretty good idea of what it is and where to get more.

Michael Flynn is a great case where offering lower sentencing is a good deal for him--he was facing a lot of damage, as Martin Longman points out.

One great resource I have seen about this is Ryan Goodman's perjury chart, which gives a great overview about who, so far, has demonstrably lied about what, and which includes folks like Jared Kushner and Don Trump Jr, who haven't yet been indicted, but potentially could be.

So, it is to be noted, it is Robert Mueller who is sending the message "The truth will set you free". It is Trump who is saying "Keep shtum". Now, "tempus tacendi et tempus loquendi" is a very fine device for the Trump coat of arms, but maybe with applied friction, that "tempus loquendi" will start seeming more desirable?

But why is it Trump demands so much silence? (hush money, NDA's?) It looks like he is always about squashing the bad news that follows him as exhaust follows a bad muffler. He seems allergic to truth--

Maybe because he thinks it will do anything but set him free?

TWGB: Something's Gotta Give

President's lawyers think it was unfair for Mueller to ask questions of the President without first informing the President that he should tell the truth because Mueller might have evidence to show false answers were false. https://t.co/stFyKZjQNB pic.twitter.com/VycHZy6au6

— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) November 29, 2018

Looking over the news contents of a super-busy day in TrumpWorld, this Tweet encapsulates something really "off" about the mindset of Trump and the folks surrounding him: Why would it be "unfair" for Mueller to ask President Trump questions without warning him of the penalties for lying, if not lying was something he should the hell have known not to do anyway? Was telling the truth such an unreasonable expectation?

Apparently! It seems to be taken for granted that Trump does not tell the truth and that people around Trump have reasons not to tell the truth, and frankly, that points to the likelihood that the truth is actually...not good. And it seems like his attorneys (of which he has had several) have never been able to entirely persuade him that the truth isn't bent into some origami abstract subjective performance art by either the frequency of one's lies or the Rashomon-like posting of several versions of the purported event because of an odd set of circumstances called "facts".

This brings us to the plea deal by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, for the charge of making false statements to Congress. In other words, he admits to lying, just as Jerome Corsi, who rejected a plea deal about the lying thing, admits rather publicly on tv to have actually been lying. (which makes it altogether seem to me that Corsi isn't really objecting to the perjury charge, but the cooperation agreement, because he'd like to still have some lies, thanks.) Cohen, on the other hand, wants to get washed, and has banked 70 hours of grilling with Mueller and company. Unlike Paul Manafort, he (like Rick Gates) might have come to the conclusion that he still has enough to live for to recognize the bind that he's in, and just be forthcoming. Because facts are facts, and you can get tripped up by them.

The material issue that was lied about in this instance was the development of a Moscow Trump Towers deal. This is a thing that had been a dream of Donald Trump for some time, and which other members of his family had worked on (with some interesting connections). This could be scoffed at as being a real estate matter only, except that it explicitly does tie into the presidency run, in the words of Felix Sater: "Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it." (I do not know if something like Trump Tower Moscow is what is meant in the cryptic "business deal" with Russia referred to in a recent George Papadopoulos story). 

This is liable to have some real fall-out for Trump. We already have reason to believe that Michael Cohen can point us in the direction of one or more campaign finance violations in the form of hush money to Stormy Daniels (and likely others--wanna bet?). The ongoing story about Trump financial dealing with Russians, which he once heartily disavowed ever having, could have been used by the Putin regime as leverage, even if there had not been any kompromat of the sort alleged by the Steele Dossier. (Buzzfeed, who initially published the dossier, has had some great reporting since that is corroborated by this plea deal, and suggests new questions raised.) But Cohen worked for Trump for a dozen years or so--and in that time, might have known who knows what about other instances of bribery or graft. 

Our estimation of Trump's generally sleaziness is such that when Deutsche Bank was raided just now, folks immediately thought of Trump, because Deutsche Bank was still loaning money to him after other banks weren't interested in the risk. (And even after he defaulted on a loan in 2008.) With Deutsche Bank's history of money laundering, and for that matter, history of money laundering in Trump's immediate vicinity, one could wonder whether he stayed a customer because he was "otherwise profitable". (So was Jared Kushner. Maybe.) Also, oddly, on the same day, Chicago alderman and former Trump Tax attorney Ed Burke got raided. Weird--but Trump got good tax deals, and, uh, so did Jared Kushner. I'm not saying these things are connected, only that Trump's former bagman might have knowledge pertaining to these things. And knowing nothing more about his potential liability (if reporting is correct that Rosenstein is still the man over this investigation, and Whitaker has not yet sought control, I guess nothing is funneling up to Trump,) somebody is sweating Man-Tan into his collar by now. 

And by now, what we know is, Trump doesn't react well to reversals of fortune, surprises, slights real or imagined, rain, random stuff said by celebrities, stairs, bad press, or reminders that he can't control everything and that things like facts and laws exist. So he is going to be a reclusive, surly, and probably fast-exiting omnishambles at G20. 

Which is a damn shame in the midst of a trade war he started, and seems to not understand the fundamentals of. 

Coming up--Manafort sentencing date will be decided. I am glad to be getting my blogging chops back, but I wish these folks would stop aggressively "newsing" at me. How can I follow so many stories? Also, I might think more indictments are forthcoming, and I am not even mad. 

(TWGB is my edgy new way of working "TrumpWorld Grab-Bag" into the title of my blog posts, because I'm easily seeing doing a couple of these a week for the forseeable future and am not going to work that mouthful into the titles all the damn time.)

I Do Not Know What This Is

But I have screen-capped it and am dropping it right here.

All I do know is, I once referred to Trump's 2016 campaign as a "Voltron of suck" and it apparently is still sucking along, even after 2016 is done. Also Jerome Corsi seems to have taken on Larry freaking Klayman as his attorney. Which I think means I am so glad I came back to blogging.

These are all bad characters.