TWGB: The Laptop Conundrum

 

Somehow, someway, we went in the Trump saga from "But her emails" to a story about how someone scanned a classified document onto a laptop and also had a thumb drive and well, that had to be turned over the feds because if it looks bad, I guess it could be bad. Why is Trumpworld so messy?

I mean, it's not like that entirely looks like docs were being prepped to be shared from a device that was not, conveniently, Trump's own. Or does it? Maybe it exactly looks like someone scanned a document because they had a reason to, because why else was it there?

Why? 

The curiosity of what Trump was doing with the documents he had and how they were handled should very well overshadow what docs were found in President's Biden's or VP Pence's possession, because both of these public servants figured out how to respond--thoroughly transparently, even giving the FBI range over their homes. Trump was not this transparent, and needed a warrant served on his premises. 

More than that, he fought to keep documents and had one of his lawyers draft a document that another lawyer signed attesting that all docs had been handed over when they had not been. Both lawyers, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, have now been called before Jack Smith's grand jury.  And good for them, really. Shriving is good for the soul.

TWGB: Kraken Up

 

President Trump is said to have floated appointing a special counsel to investigate voter fraud: A lawyer who spread election conspiracy theories. https://t.co/QYv642y5qw

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 19, 2020

It doesn't even seem that long ago that Sidney Powell was deemed even a little bit too out there for Rudy Giuliani (just short of one whole month, in fact). And now Donald Trump is entertaining the idea of unloosing the Kraken as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud. It's kind of funny because it wasn't even that long ago that Trump had a voting integrity commission that was disbanded because it never found any voting fraud. But on they go, into the (alleged) breach.... 

It should probably be bigger news, however, that Trump also entertained Ms. Powell's client, the recently-pardoned Michael Flynn, who, like Lin Wood or the My Pillow guy, has been arguing in favor of martial law so that Trump can get a do-over in the swing states that he lost. I don't believe there is an armed do-over clause in the Constitution, and Flynn has been singing in the key of batshit for so long it's hard to believe anyone does listen to him--but there are people who do! And Trump is apparently being one of them! 

This almost makes Rudy Giuliani's request for DHS to commandeer the voting machines look sane. I mean, it's not. But it almost does. It's almost as if there are constant and visible reminders of where Trump's priorities lie. 

Has Trump ever shown all that much interest in protecting us from COVID-19--not really, and now that there are vaccines he's just about checked out, except to make sure he gets some kind of credit (as if the existence of the disease itself wasn't a perfectly reasonable motivating factor for vaccine development). He stays in complete and vociferous denial that his good buddy Putin is any threat to the US even after news of an invasive cyberattack. (And who the hell knows what Trump's moves re: the Pentagon have to do with it, or will impact the incoming Biden Administration's ability to respond?) 

Trump may be the last person who will admit that the exact feckless and reckless disregard he is showing right now towards towards the country he was supposed to serve is the exact reason for his loss in the this election. It won't necessarily be because he's the last person to realize it--even now he's considering the possibility of returning to a post-presidency not unlike the life he had before. He'll be the last to admit it because he's still milking the marks. (It's what they've always been there for. Always.) 

Is it madness if it's profitable? If it's profitable, is it still sedition? I think--both. He's not a stable genius, but he knows whose priorities to put first. And if you still think that's America, I don't know how to help you at this point.

TWGB: The Pardoner's Tale

 

President Trump has been discussing the possibility of issuing pardons for his family members and some close associates, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell NBC News. https://t.co/fMlVbecclY

— Breaking News (@BreakingNews) December 2, 2020

I have a funny feeling that there is a good bit of distance between what Trump considers "illegal" and what, say, the law, considers "illegal", so maybe the feeling of being "embattled" that the president has is actually a consideration that people might have the gall to side with the law in the event of his leaving office. He's aware laws might have been broken; he's of a different mind about whom they should apply to.

The idea that he can just issue pre-emptive pardons to his family members that are really broad and not at all about something specific sounds great, and why haven't more presidents done things like that? (After all, close adviser Sean Hannity says Trump should definitely do this, and throw himself in for good measure.) It seems like it might not actually be what the Chief Executive has pardon power for, in other words, but what do I know? 

I know AG Barr during his confirmation hearing indicated that he believed it would be wrong for a president to dangle a pardon in exchange for not ratting him out. Would that apply to something like Trump's willingness to pardon Flynn after it became evident that he was not cooperating with the Mueller investigation? Maybe, maybe not--but if it was a clear as all that (like, he had every right to pardon someone even if it was a matter that traced back to himself), why not just go right to the pardoning regarding Roger Stone instead of all the DOJ business with requesting a reduced sentence before commuting his sentence? 

In TrumpWorld, it has seemed a bit like reality is whatever Trump gets away with. Take the possibility that Giuliani has been looking for a pre-emptive pardon (he says no, and I certainly have no reason not to disbelieve him) regarding the federal investigation into his association with illicit campaign finance schemes and international shenanigans in Ukraine. I've always thought there was a mutual, but fraudulent benefit to Giuliani's relationship as Trump's free personal lawyer, and there's nothing like pardoning Giuliani to basically admit--yeah, it was just like that. (And wouldn't that blast client/attorney privilege to heck?) That sounds to me like something that could pose a difficulty for both of them in the post-Trump presidency.

Eh. As I always say, if something looks bad with this lot, it probably is. Whatever could I make, then, of the news that the DOJ is investigating a White House "bribery for pardon" scheme? I mean, this president, solicit a bribe and abuse power--impossible! (Heh!) You know, unless it was something really good like dirt on a political rival or maybe, at this point, cash money (those notes are coming due, and sadly, the grift only pays for so much).

All I know of is, it's a sad thing that when the names of the lobbyists for this scheme, and the potential recipient of this ill-gotten grace are redacted, there are so many, many possible names of people in the Trump orbit that the mind can go to of genuinely dishonest, unethical, and legally compromised people who might be involved.

There should be a moral to this tale, but it's TrumpWorld, kid. You should know by now morals have little to do with it.

TWGB: What a Day Trump is Having

Trump tells Hannity that he "very recently" "aced" a cognitive test: "I took it at Walter Reed, a medical center, in front of doctors, and they were very surprised" pic.twitter.com/CavfF4BdKB

— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) July 10, 2020

Because Trump speaks in superlatives without any view as to how they might resonate, I just want to ponder for a minute over someone "acing" a cognitive test. He performed baseline mental activities well enough to be considered not impaired (it isn't an IQ test, or the SAT's). And the doctors (plural) were very surprised!

Doctor 1: Say, would you get a load of that: Trump is not actually mentally deficient.

Doctor 2: Well slap my ass and call me a timpani drum.

Doctor 3: I shouldn't have bet the under. Fuck.

Doctor 2: So we're....gonna let him still have the nuclear codes and just scoot on out of here?

Doctor 1: Sadly, yes. It isn't....(puts on sunglasses) brain surgery.

Forgive me, it's been a long day, but maybe not so long for me as for the president, who got a little bit of awkward news in that he doesn't have, contrary to his previous and probably current opinion, absolute immunity regarding subpoenas, in this case for his tax returns, as requested by NY DA Vance. (As for US Congress, they need to clean up their act and figure out why they really want it, but you know. They could probably get them.) Trump took this with his usual grace and equanimity, which is to say: no, he didn't have those things. But Kayleigh McEnany says he actually got a win today. And like, why not? She could have just done a five minute drum solo with a couple of pens and walked away doing finger guns. No one cares.

So, what else happened today--Esper kind of admitted he never got told about "bounties" but like, Russian payments to the Taliban? Yeah, he probably knew about those. (He's pretty concerned this got leaked though, although if it's as much as that it happened, I am super unsure. I know what I'd rather he be concerned about.) Also, he doesn't seem to have protected Lt. Col. Vindman from retaliatory treatment regarding his impeachment testimony at all. (He also says he doesn't know who gave the order to clear Lafayette Park, and you know what? Whatever. Esper knows just about what he should know and makes a job of not knowing what he shouldn't.) Lou Dobbs called Esper "incompetent" today over something quite else, so who knows where Trump will stand regarding that guy's future.

Judge Emmet Sullivan isn't done with Gen Flynn, last seen this holiday weekend pledging to Q, whatever that means. Somehow, the DOJ's determination to not, like, make a federal case out of the actual federal case that Flynn plead guilty to just seems kind of suspect, you know? As if the person running the DOJ was trying to make things comfortable for Trump's associates. So weird!

And while we're so obviously on the topic of Bill Barr (who should be impeached) we also got treated to former US Attorney Geoffrey Berman's take on Barr's really way-out approach to getting his ass fired. It really feels like Barr was using the bait of other job offers as a bribe to get Berman to step down because of possibly some investigation he was involved in (and as I've said, those investigations were considerable and revolved around TrumpWorld).

It's really like Trump doesn't have the best people, but the ones that are around him are covering him like a badly-fitting suit. It's a little like some threads are unraveling. It's a lot like he should be regularly getting a check-up from the neck up if he thinks people don't understand that his White House is corrupted by grift, incompetence and deception. Many of us certainly do.

The revolution against Trump might not be televised on Fox News as being from anyone but "The Left" (and it isn't only us lefties, not anymore), but it will be televised.

TrumpWorld must fall. Orbis Trumpi delenda est.

TWGB: Flynn Was Unmasked!

Wow, are we doing a thing about unmasking again and going back to the beginning regarding why Flynn was so shady that, for example, Obama warned Trump personally about not hiring the guy in the first place? Michael Flynn, who was apparently working for Turkey (and possibly, still, Russian interests) and the Trump campaign all at once? 

Oh, okay. On the face of it, a claim that Obama-era officials including VP Biden requested a person who was in contact with a foreign national under surviellance (Kislyak) be unmasked seems to me like it can't be targeting because I don't know how anyone was supposed to know they were supposedly "targeting" Flynn if they didn't know it was even him until he was unmasked? That sounds wrong. 

But cleverer people on the right than me (because honestly, I never would have come up with this retort) have said of course they had to be targeting Flynn, because of when they were asking for the unmasking and whether the person turned out to be Flynn after the request.  So they were asking about something that looked shady to them and it turned out to be Flynn? 

Hmm. Even if they were playing a hunch that paid off, that still sounds to me like a Flynn problem, not an Obama problem or a Biden problem, doesn't  it? Because he was still the guy on the call. I guess one could ask for transcripts though! I mean, if everyone wants to assume all Flynn's calls were, I dunno, perfect. But since Flynn was fired for lying to VP Pence and the FBI about his phone calls, and that was the official story in 2017, frankly, I don't know if Trump and them should actually be pressing that right now. 

Weird how they backed away from Flynn until Barr waded in and the prosecution decided that they couldn't follow through on a case where the defendant admitted he was guilty previously--and also supposedly substantially assisted with the Mueller investigation? 

That doesn't sound right, does it? (It sounds like Barr might be scuttling the prosecution, maybe in part because Flynn's lawyers could have a bit of reasonable doubt on their side--maybe--because of claims of bias and whatnot, but also because Barr is actually trying to cover Trump's ass like a cheap pair of briefs. Many people who know very well what the deal is feel that Barr should resign for this kind of ethical bullshit.) 

Anyway, Judge Emmett Sullivan doesn't seem to love any of the recent shenanigans to let Flynn off the hook, calling for amicus curiae argumenta as well as asking another judge to investigate whether Flynn should be held in contempt for wasting everybody's goddamn time lying to the court with his original guilty plea.  Flynn isn't yet out of the woods at all, at all. 

But as for the OBAMAGATE! shilling--goodness gracious! Can the mainstream media please recognize flak when shredded tinfoil is thrown up at them? Trump fans and associates are deflecting from Trump's manifest failures regarding the COVID-19 crisis and the attending economic crisis, and we should not forget, oh hell no, that doing a callback to Mueller (which did not exonerate) is a weird way to remind us he was always terrible, not a way to introduce a way that he's less at fault for anything, or that Obama and Biden did a damn thing wrong. 

Don't be played. Flynn lied. Russia certainly interfered (regardless of Trump's regular pronouncements to the contrary). And blaming Obama or Biden for Trump and them being found out is just tacky and unsportsmanlike. 

TWGB: The More Things Change, The More Trump Is the Same

Wow, Donald Trump just got booed out of the building, into his limo, onto Air Force One, and back into the White House residence.

Even the majority bro crowd at #UFC244 hates this guy’s guts.pic.twitter.com/ohI7Cs7opS

— TrumpsTaxes (@TrumpsTaxes) November 3, 2019

Was Trump supposed to not get booed at when he went to MSG for a night of UFC action? Like, did he expect something different from what he experienced at game 5 of the World Series because he was nestled in the bosom of his hometown (of which he no longer considers himself a resident) instead of that ballpark frequented by employees of the Deep State?

Maybe the president doesn't need to take it so personally. Everyone gets booed sometimes. Maybe people just go to sporting events to not think about politics, and feel like Trump is a polarizing presence. Me, I boo Trump for real from the privacy of my home, because unlike normal people I'm writing a TrumpWorld Grab-bag as once again, the news continues to make it pretty damn clear his whole presidency is snake shoes and fish tits.

Like, let's just take the Attorney General and the Secretary of State I mentioned in my last post as a kind of messed-up example of what's up with TrumpWorld. You've got the guy running the US State Department, Mike Pompeo, a department ostensibly about foreign policy, international relations, that kind of thing, with a weird kvetch about a Ukrainian conspiracy theory and a propensity for spending time in Kansas. I mean, when he isn't confusing folks in Italy (as has Bill Barr) or wherever else with his trying to personally track down the mysteries of what happened in 2016. It's very weird that he thinks his job is alienating allies and proving Trump right about debunked things, whilst some part of him clearly wants to click his heels and murmur "There's no place like home." And we also have Barr, who ostensibly runs a Department of Justice, who seems to want to overturn the results of numerous investigations into the Russian hack of the DNC to get a result more favorable to one person--President Trump. As if he was not an officer of the law, but a defense lawyer for Trump.

"Time is out of joint, o cursed spite," but I was ne'er born to set this right, myself--only to serve as your humble reporter. Today's impeachment inquiry has a lot to do with Ukraine, in fact, it has a lot to do with what Trump tried to do and how White House lawyers tried to cover for Trump. It is important to know, however, that Trump has a very odd idea about Ukraine--and appears to loathe the country:

“They are horrible, corrupt people,” Trump told them.

So far, a dozen witnesses have testified before House lawmakers since the closed-door impeachment inquiry began a month ago. One theme that runs through almost all of their accounts is Trump’s unyielding loathing of Ukraine, which dates to his earliest days in the White House.

“We could never quite understand it,” a former senior White House official said of Trump’s view of the former Soviet republic, also saying that much of it stemmed from the president’s embrace of conspiracy theories. “There were accusations that they had somehow worked with the Clinton campaign. There were accusations they’d hurt him. He just hated Ukraine.”

But if you want to get at the genesis of this loathing--you have to go back to 2016. (We never, ever, leave 2016. It is like a Stephen King short story from a collection he demanded be taken off the store shelves that circulates amongst fans of a very particular kind of horror.) Information obtained recently from the Mueller memos by Buzzfeed and CNN enlighten us a little on that score: Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his former NSA Michael Flynn both pushed Ukraine even back when in 2016 as being the source of the hack and the reason for the rumors that would inevitably occur that the campaign was helped by Russia. And even if the involvement of the GRU has since been greatly clarified, Trump is sticking with what his very good and not at all corrupt friends that he would like to pardon one day told him. That he is not at all a loser who got help from a foreign country. (But, if I consider Trump out of the loop on Russia's actual involvement and believing of a sweet-sop cover-story regarding Ukraine corruption, how does one account for Trump's willingness to spout the Russian line on things? Ah, faith--the belief in things unseen! He doesn't look the gift horse in the mouth, but he trepidatiously rides it all the same.)

So Trump believes in a bleak weird thing where 30 thousand emails that were on Hillary Clinton's server (which never were hacked) are on a single server (the entire fuck? a ginormous outfit like DNC has a cloud set-up with like, over a hundred servers) that are somehow in Ukraine because he's fixated on Hillary Clinton's emails (no, really, he was and his mega-fans still are) and even though his campaign and apparently the RNC coordinated with WikiLeaks in dribbling out the DNC emails, he loved them, but didn't actually get that they were two different things. To put it gently, "Pops is confused."

Which is why his "perfect phone call" to Ukraine was so damn confusing, because what in the hell of any of the CrowdStrike shit would have made sense to Zelenskyy? For that matter, for all the folks who want to say random things about whether Ukraine's president felt pressured or not based on what he said sharing a stage with Trump: Really? Go along with you! And would a battered woman standing next to her husband not say she got her black eye from walking into a door? And does that door have four fingers and a class ring? Yes, it was a very complicated door, indeed. Which is why, even if Zelenskyy can't deliver the right investigation outcomes, there are signs some kind of accommodation is in the offing.

I don't know what is worse in all of this, the dishonesty, the cover-up, the sheer incompetence required to get all of this going. and yet, we are only experiencing some information from the closed-door impeachment hearings, about which the transcripts in full will come to light, and open hearings will occur (even though for now, the White House is trying to prevent many key players from talking--and what does that even mean, one might legitimately ask!) There will be more Mueller memos distributed via Buzzfeed and CNN, which seriously means that the Mueller report is not dead, but has powerful new significance because of what it could have, but didn't include (so much obstruction of justice, apparently, though). But why so much obstruction? For what? Why? What is Trump hiding with all the vehemence he reserves for his net worth and the real story of his vital statistics?

The polls and the boos and the news show that something is changing in how Trump is viewed. But for now, he stays the same: in denial, and thinking he is a beloved leader who can survive his multiple scandals by changing address or brazening them out. I don't expect a lot from Trump. I expect a lot from us all, in voting, finally saying the best, most brutal kiss-off "Goodbye" to him. The final, most raucous, boos.

He will never get better from this point on. The worst is yet to come, and will be astonishing. Flynn's ongoing trials and Roger Stone's trials still continue, and more will be revealed.

Bill Barr, Normcore Nihilist

This is something of an ongoing theme I suspect we'll be seeing--the boring normal people who do the worst fucking damage and almost self-effacingly consider it "all in a day's work." You could take a long look at William Barr and suppose he's never cut loose with weird women and wines that foam nor danced with the devil in the pale moonlight, but he's having it eight ways to Sunday with the constitution and giving cover to a wretched excuse for a president. 

The latter is worse. This is a creedal nation, and if we don't have the rule of law, we just have the rule of men, and if the men who rule us suck, we are SOL, friends. But for the historical record, Bill Barr does not give a fuck if he is even pilloried and whatnot because of his temporal toadyism. And do you want to know why?

Because everyone dies. 

I've talked about this nihilism before, the idea that once we're all dead and gone, what was the point of any one person's bullshit. It seems like the real last refuge of a scoundrel. Forget patriotism or religion, although those have certainly been given lip service to in the commission of heinous fuckery most foul. 

But where Barr goes is the heart of dereliction of all responsibility, and the shrugging of Atlas even if a world falls as a result. And not for glory in the halls of Wingnut Valhalla (although he will have that). He does not want the immortality of Homeric hero-song. He's going to tell us (as perhaps he tells himself everyday, as he shaves his face) that this is his job.

He said he knew it would "only be a matter of time" that he would be attacked for what he considers is "behaving responsibly and calling them as I see them." He argued "nowadays, people don't care about the merits and the substance."

"They only care about who it helps, who benefits, whether my side benefits or the other side benefits, everything is gauged by politics. And as I say that's antithetical to the way the department runs and any attorney general in this period is going to end up losing a lot of political capital and I realize that and that's one of the reasons that I ultimately was persuaded that I should take it on because I think at my stage in life, it really doesn't make any difference."

When asked if he had any regrets for taking the job, Barr told Crawford: "No."

"In many ways, I'd rather be back in my old life but I think that I love the Department of Justice, I love the FBI, I think it is important that we not, in this period of intense partisan feeling, destroy our institutions," he added.

So let's "unpack this", as the kids say these days. He says loves the DOJ, and he loves the FBI, and says he does not want to destroy our institutions. He also wants to investigate the investigators and get to the bottom of why the FBI bothered to investigate Russian influence on our elections (which happened) and defends a president who has flouted legal norms and attacked those institutions Barr claims he loves.

He doesn't love these institutions. (Did he ever?) He is doing the job because he has nothing to lose because he is past it and has no political capital to lose, and has drunk deep of the Fox News Lethe waters. He proves himself to himself.

The DOJ under Barr doesn't give a good goddamn about subpoenas or judicial orders.  And even though Barr said once presidential pardons should not be dangled for silence, in light of the recent transcript from former Trump lawyer John Dowd to Michael Flynn's lawyers apparently trying to influence Flynn's terms of testimony, would Barr deny this is even in the ballpark of obstruction?

Here's the funny old thing about evil: Hannah Arendt wrote a very famous thing about the banality of evil. Evil is a commonplace. It really is. Wars. Murders. Shitty government policies. People are ruined by degrees and massacred by inches. They lose their homes because of mere cents' worth of debt. They go to jail because of unrecognizable infractions.  They languish in solitary confinement for reasons of mere identity. The people who carry out shitty actions against other people look so bland and mild and seem so self-effacing. While they watch over women giving birth to stillborn children while in leg-irons, or send drones to an area thick with innocent civilians to stop some supposed terrorists. And they go home and love their families and their pets and are great members of their community and donate to the church jumble.

And there's your Uncle Bill. Bland and not even showy. Just wrong and harmful in his fleece vest and serious expression. If he were your uncle, you'd have unfriended him on Facebook back in 2016 for supporting Trump after the Access Hollywood tape with disparaging comments about the women who said Trump was abusive because it crossed a line you knew always was there. And here he is, running the DOJ for that norm-abusing guy.

Here's why I need Congress to grab Trump by the Article 1, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution; because if you are a co-equal branch of government, they just let you do it. Because there is no respite from DOJ. The Mueller Report was never anything final. Because we need the public to know by seeing on tv the contents of the Mueller report which they did not read.  Because justice should know no Barr. Because there are other reasons besides the Russia investigation that make Trump illegitimate in this office. And because we need to do better for the USA than bland people who believe in nothing, because this country is worth believing in.

Did He Try Listening?

It now seems the General Flynn was under investigation long before was common knowledge. It would have been impossible for me to know this but, if that was the case, and with me being one of two people who would become president, why was I not told so that I could make a change?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2019

Trump seems to be conflating being warned about Flynn being under investigation with being warned about the Russian threat at all (which he also was warned about, and then claimed he wasn't). But--

Obama warned Trump not to hire Flynn.

Sally Yates warned Trump about Flynn (and got fired).

Trump knew well enough that there was a problem and fired Flynn, but still told Comey to go easy on Flynn (and Comey got fired).

He was warned--he just didn't listen. Or he knew what the situation was, and did not care. Trump is mad at the world on Twitter today because he suddenly cares now.

Seems a bit late, I'm just saying.

TWGB: Investigations and Investments

Of all of the astonishingly stupid things I have seen in following the Trump/Russia investigation(s), the above Instagram post from Roger Stone qualifies as, well, pretty up there. He posted a photo of the judge assigned to his case with a caption bollocks-full of paranoid Deep State speculation. Of course, this was not going to go over well regarding his legal jeopardy, and even though his lawyers (probably twisted his arms) persuaded him to sign on to an apology to keep his ass out of further trouble, he is still going to pay the court a visit because yes, he is in further trouble.

I'm of two minds about why Stone made such a singularly dipshit move; it could very well be that Stone has simmered in the right wing fever swamp for so long that signifying to his digital comrades has more importance for him than not fucking up his bail terms. But it also seems possible to me Stone meets the qualifications of "crazy as a fox" and is trolling the court and his followers alike in a race to see who can benefit him--either he thinks fuxxoring any good will with Berman Jackson would result in a recusal (um, no, because that's a little too easy, isn't it, sunshine?) or because he feels fit enough to do a jail stand if his bail is revoked and that would do miracle sympathy-numbers for his legal GoFundHimself. And either way, standing up against the investigation earns him points with He Who Must Not Be Incriminated, the POTUS with the Mostest (ability to issue pardons).

Long story short, Stone has an investment in Trump that he is willing to sink his liability further into. Maybe that's bad money. I have a theory that many of Trump's supporters right now are in a kind of sunk-cost deal with Trump where they think he'll compensate them for the cost of getting him elected, when getting him elected was the only benefit of their output they will ever, ever see.

Now, some folks necessarily thought they did have actual payable on election contracts as far as I can tell. Take Michael Flynn's dealings. He apparently did have a deal that would result in nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. And it now turns out that whistle blowers realize that nuclear know-how is about to be transferred to KSA, even though Flynn is long gone. It's possible this has something to do with Jared Kushner's relationship to Brookfield. Or maybe it just has to do with Trump's odd indifference to the concept of nuclear proliferation at all, as evidenced by his ignoring North Korea's continuing program and the scrapping of our treaty with Russia and also the promotion of the end of the Iran nuclear deal, that basically would result in us having no say or inspection over what they do. There is literally no thing in Trump's foreign policy that does shit at all re: nuclear proliferation except maybe encourage it.

But I tend to believe that most of TrumpWorld does revolve around some kind of quid pro quo, because Trump has gone so far above and beyond to try and shaft an investigation that would turn up nothing, if there wasn't anything amiss to be found.  I'm reading Andrew McCabe's Threat at the mo, and realize he is in a position of giving no fucks. His investment--career-long, was screwed by Trump with caprice or perhaps, a lack of judiciousness. The word that a CI investigation into Trump was accepted by the Gang of Eight, and that maybe Nunes was a little run'n'tell fool, should let everyone know how real the investigation is, regardless of one's investment in Trump as a political figure.

Trump is a tainted investment, and not solely because of the investigations against him, but because of how and why and what he's done to establish his knowledge of guilt and the behaviors he engaged in stemming from that. He is a likelier candidate for impeachment than reelection, in a world where facts counted more than feelings. And the conspiracy or collusion that gave the US this fool probably also hobbled our good ally the UK (although their politics was also pretty fucked and asking for it).

Anyway, we need to learn from this. Now. I would like to see Trump impeached. But the present GOP is too invested to understand why he is simply bad.

TWGB: Everyone's Lying For Some Reason

Special counsel prosecutors say they have communications of Roger Stone with WikiLeaks https://t.co/baHXXYHiMi pic.twitter.com/Z4NTwaa9Sg

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) February 15, 2019

There's a weird common thread that runs through all the Trump World Grab-Bag posts: people just keep lying about things. Michael Flynn lied about contacting Russia. Jeff Session lied about it, too. Michael Cohen seems to have lied about things having to do with Russia because Trump told him to. It hasn't become an issue just yet, but Don Trump Jr. has apparently lied to Congress.


It's been established now that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, lied about certain particulars involving the Trump campaign and this voided his plea agreement. He's now looking at about 20 years or so in prison, which for a man his age, is basically a life sentence. Roger Stone sort of told on himself about contacting Wikileaks, and seemed kind of forthcoming about the depth of his WikiLeaks contacts, but this picture looks to be complicated.

The big, operant question here is, "Why does everyone around Trump lie?" Just recently, two of Trump's other attorneys were openly suspected of having lied about details regarding Michael Cohen's hush money deals, and this sounds pretty much in line with how Trump wants his circle to operate. With "alternative facts".


Pretty much everyone around Trump lies. For some reason.


And even regarding the congressional investigations, we already know Rep. Devin Nunes didn't always tell the truth (actually, he straight up lied) about matters dealing with the Russia investigation. But for that matter, it looks like Senator Richard Burr is also falling short of accuracy, with claims (picked up by the White House) that he sees no evidence of collusion. But Burr is basically lying about how accessible Christopher Steele has been, and Burr, just like Nunes, can be connected to the Trump campaign.

It's not a curiosity or a coincidence when you see this pattern of lying. It looks like a coordinated cover-up, and that means that the parties involved know very well what it is they don't want to be known because it's real and it's bad. It's Manafort is willing to void his plea agreement bad. It's Cohen goes to jail bad. It's Roger Stone's last ratfuck bad. It's respectable people will possibly become anathema bad.

My mantra all along has been "It looks bad because it is bad." Lying can temporarily make things look like they are not bad. But badness will out.

TWGB: Persistent Illegality

There's something indelibly shady about Donald Trump that casts a kind of fug around the people in his orbit and all the things he does. Maybe not for his base, the brain-wormed bastions of MAGA minions who believe Trump's turds can be polished into gold, but for the people who have become increasingly dubious not about Trump's good intent, but whether he's ever capable of it. Take his charity--oh, wait. NY has already taken it. The Trump Foundation has been ordered to shut down and sell off its assets (such as portraits of Trump, purchased with Foundation money and presumably on display at properties he holds) due to "persistent illegality". 

Trump is not a generous man; he is tighter than a flea's withers and about as small about his purse. He once basked in applause for crashing a charity event for which he gave exactly nothing whatsoever. For kids with AIDS.  Washington Post's David Farenthold during the 2016 campaign did a bang up job of trying to track down whether there was even a whiff of the philanthropic about Trump, and found that Trump's foundation was made up of other people's money as of late, distributed to satisfy Trump's own needs. Sometimes the donations out of the fund looked like a reward for doing business with the Trump Organization. And looking at the 990's, I wondered myself if the foundation was being used as a Trump Campaign Kickstarter. He used Trump Foundation funds to donate to the campaign of Florida's AG Pam Bondi, who had settled the Trump University complaint for him. Trump can brag that he never charged his foundation for rents or whatever using his properties, but this is because his "board" (which included his children as fiduciary members) didn't apparently have any meetings. (But is that really so--see the Trump's structuring of their deal for a golf outing for St. Jude. Sad thing is, Eric Trump might have wanted to do better, but that old Donald Trump shadow just fugged him up.)

But this post isn't really about the persistent illegality of the now-defunct Trump Foundation (anyone in the market for a Trump portrait, though?) but rather, what the TrumpWorld aura seems to do to people--take Flynn's sentencing delay. The same day that we heard about the Trump Foundation being kaput, Mike Flynn (having been wished "Good Luck" by the former boss) thought he was going to have a great time at his sentencing because Mueller said he shouldn't have any jail time, and his defense agreed, except for the whining about it. Because the FBI was being meanies asking him questions like he was supposed to be responsible like the head of some kind of intelligence agency and whatnot, you guys. And they wanted him to be truthful which was supposedly amazeballs and tew much. Gah, adulting, amirite?

Now, I outsource my legal opinions these days because I was a literature major which means I should doubt my capacity for close readings, but I have complaints with the reading where Judge Sullivan was incorrect for dropping the T-word. Flynn has a clear violation of FARA in addition to making false statements, plural. There is more redacted in what's up with Mike, and Sullivan has read it. Flynn was given a great deal, and trying to insert some conspiracy theory nonsense in the proceeding was dumb as hell and those supposedly intemperate words were about waking Flynn's ass the hell up and reminding him that to whom a fucking raft has been given, a failure to float equals drowning. Maybe Flynn thinks a pardon is his best bet, but the legal wheels are trying to get him on the cooperating path. Trump's good luck nod is wishful that nothing has been given up. But it would be out of Trump's actual make-up to deliver without seeing the goods. He is not charitable. 

What's fascinating is to see what Trump's recent maneuvers post the terrible day where Flynn's sentencing is postponed (contingent upon his very good cooperation with the Mueller investigation) and the death of his slush fund. Oh, wait--and the revelation that he signed a letter of intent regarding Trump Tower Moscow, because that could be a big thing. See, that--that right there, makes the statement he made about not having an financial interest in Russia during the 2016 campaign a total lie, and also makes Rudy Giuliani, who admitted that maybe there were talks about a Trump Tower Moscow up to November 2016 but that no LOI was signed, a bit of a liar, unless he was just being blindsided by the kind of thing Trump wouldn't necessarily see fit to share with his defense counsel. 

Because he is innately shady. Made of shade. Shadulent. Foggular. Of and pertaining to a thing very much of not clear and clouded with complications. 

Anywho, when his NSA is possibly a little bit treasonous and his charitable foundation is a slush fund and he's been caught with his wee hands in the Moscow Tower cookie jar, of course the next day he is pulling out of Syria and cancelling sanctions on Oleg Deripaska. (I never know where Deripaska really stands in Putin's estimation, do you?) I do know ISIS is probably not really a victory because the Pentagon says it isn't. But since when did Trump trust our nation's best intelligence? (And maybe we know one of his hand-picked intelligence geniuses did a failure to be anti-ISIS because of being on Turkey's payroll.)

Am I saying Trump is making presidential decisions based on his personal animus, his need to deflect, his natural shadiness, his allegiance to foreign powers? I don't even know! But there is a shadow of persistent illegality about things Trump does. We can't just assume his reasons are any good, ever. 

TWBG: Deja vu, all over again

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag post (available wherever TrumpWorld Grab-Bag posts are sold, which is here, for the exact price of "free") is going to be short and sweet, because, honey, I already feel like we've been over this stuff before. 

Take the information that we got from the report recently released by US Senators to the effect that the Russian support of the Trump campaign was waged largely on social media and targeted certain demographics, like African-Americans, with the aim of voter suppression.  That is very interesting, because, for one thing, people realized the presence of "bot" accounts and disinfo in real time back in 2016, but also because this strategy by Russia paralleled the Trump campaign strategy actually discussed publicly by Brad Parscale.  

The same strategy--interesting, right? But I feel like we should have known that by now.

Two associates of Mike Flynn's, Bijan Kian and Ekim Altepkin, were indicted for their involvement in seeking the extradition of Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, which shouldn't feel like a surprise, because that's pretty dodgy, but you know, Flynn was in the room when that was discussed. And it seems like a whole bunch of principals in the Trump Administration knew about it, too, as it was happening. Just like they probably knew he was talking with Kislyak, and they also sounded like they knew the election had received Russian assistance. 

It seems to me like we all should have known this much. Also, the released 302 on Flynn's wee talk with the FBI basically backs up what Mueller was saying in response to Flynn's defense sentencing memo: he had been lying, stuck by his lie, was given reason to know that the FBI knew he was lying, kept lying, and didn't step up until he really had no choice--that's not a perjury trap, that's a bunch of bad life decisions. And his sentencing deal looks like either Mueller is a fool and gave him a featherbed (nah!) or Flynn rolled on somebody well up the chain. 

And both the Flynn and digital strategy stories tie in with the investigation opening up to Wikistrat. The cast of characters here is fascinating. (I am but a poor blogger and there feels like there's a grift in there that hoovers money for vague results, but who knows?) But Don Jr and Flynn mentioned in the same breath with UAE is nothing, because we already know about Erik Prince and George Nader meeting in the Seychelles for...some reason. (From a security standpoint, these folks were talking about nuclear nonproliferation pertaining to the Middle East. From a hustle standpoint, Flynn at least at some point wanted to spread nuclear power plants in the Middle East. I have nothing to say about that, because screaming myself hoarse before bed makes me so wretched to be around the next day, you know?) 

Anyway, for people just tuning in, these are all really interesting developments that would have been great if we knew about them way earlier and in some cases, we could have. I hope we have a nice national discussion about them now. I don't know why I selected the picture above. Maybe recalling a simpler time in the White House, hm?

TWGB: The Messy Things Called "Details"

Even though I'm just a normal person who waits with bated breath for things like surprise indictments of peripheral Trump/Russia figures or who refreshes Twitter threads about secretive federal Grand Jury hearings like a twitchy addicted lab animal looking for a fix (especially on Fridays), I'm also kind of relieved that Saturday was relatively quiet on the news front, so I could finally catch up with some of the hanging news out there. There are times when taking in Trump World news is a little like trying to drink from a fire hose.

On Thursday, Maria Butina plead guilty to engaging in a conspiracy to infiltrate the political sphere of a certain political party with the goal of influencing US/Russia relations as a foreign agent working in hand with Russian billionaire Alexander Torshin. Some people might quibble over whether political folks who met her through the NRA should have been a little suspicious over whether she was just a little...obvious or whether being an agent of Russia or a spy are different things, but I think The Daily Beast article includes a pretty valuable perspective:

John McLaughlin, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, described Butina as an example of Russian “espionage lite,” operating openly but hiding the direction and support she got from the Russian government.

Steve Hall, a former CIA chief of Russian operations, said Thursday, "It's my theory that Butina is not actually a staff officer of any Russian intelligence service. She is somebody who has been co-opted by somebody else in the Russian government to do a job."

So maybe not a spy like a "secret agent"--but some kind of agent, anyway.  I kind of suspect her gun rights org was a cut-out but what do I know? But did US people think this back when she was making friends and influencing people--and did they care?  Eh, details!

In other news, we got a further corroboration of the activities of Individual One with respects to Michael Cohen's activities: Donald Trump was in the room with Cohen and AMI's David Pecker when they discussed what to do about Trump's long and winding road vis a vis horndoggery--in August 2015. So the idea that Trump would be making arrangements regarding the silencing of troublesome wenches was not a spur of the moment post TMZ video thing; it was known to Trump that this would be a problem (how big, though--a real quote from Steve Bannon in Wolff's Fire and Fury suggested Trump's other attorney, Marc Kasowitz, handled maybe "a hundred"). It was a part of Trump's entire campaign strategy to minimize a seedy existence (which may entail snorting Adderall and sleazing on underage beauty contestants--stuff which was known about, but never really addressed, by MSM during 2016 when it might have mattered--thanks!) But eh, details!

It also turns out that Paul Manafort, of the maybe kinda/sort of JDA with the Trump defense even since his plea deal and the being too close to Russia to stay on as campaign manager in 2016, but who still shaped the Trump transition, also gave Trump advice about how to discredit the lawful investigation of his activities by the FBI. Who would have thought? But there was so much suggestion of obstructing justice and lying to create a bad opinion about the FBI's work. And it really seems in retrospect like this is what Trump did--with a will! Take the regular snipes against McCabe (who offended Trump I guess because of the opening of an obstruction of justice investigation that was totally well-deserved?) and the low-hanging fruit of the Strzok/Page relationship, which, while interesting, never resulted in any leaks from their Clinton investigation or from their general distaste for Trump, and never actually resulted in any out of the way cover-up by the FBI of their texts. Some RW pundits are maintaining that the standard resetting of returned electronic devices to factory specs (as is procedural) was somehow a "wiping" (great shades of the "acid-washing" of Hillary Clinton's emails!) of damaging material--but no. Information was recovered because that is how data retention works. But eh, details!

This Seems Ill-Advised

 

Trump refers to this thing called "advice of counsel" but I am reasonably sure this thing does not mean what he thinks it does. This Tweet boomlet is basically here courtesy of "things no lawyer would tell you to Tweet about like this, ever".

UPDATE:  Trump being Trump, he proves that he doesn't entirely get the "advice of counsel" thing pretty much at once during a pretty sympathetic sort of "If you were a tree, would you be the type of tree that leaves?" interview--here's the fun part, via Splinter:

“I never directed him to do anything wrong,” Trump insisted, claiming instead that Cohen:

A) Should have known that he was breaking the law because he’s an attorney;

B) Didn’t actually work for Trump as a lawyer, so much as a low-level PR guy;

C) Only pled guilty to make the president look bad in the first place.

“What [Cohen] did was all unrelated to me except for the two campaign finance charges that are not criminal and shouldn’t have been on there,” Trump claimed, at times waving printed-out articles he said exonerated him from any wrongdoing. “They put that on to embarrass me.”

The president did not reconcile the fact that he’d managed to undercut his own claim that, as his attorney, Cohen was solely at fault, by later adding that Cohen didn’t really do much legal work for him after all.

Beautiful.

TWBG: No One Promised You a Rose Garden

This has been a pretty crappy week for President Trump so far, what with the ongoing search for a replacement for outgoing CoS John Kelly (who Trump blabbed was leaving without giving Kelly himself a chance to so announce, and who will presumably now stay on until the end of the year) going poorly enough that regular CNN commentator and former US Senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum pled out of the job, citing that he has a family, and sort-of front-runner Mark Meadows was let off the hook because Trump needs somebody in the House, and with setting his ownself up to basically own a government shutdown because being Mr. Art of the Deal, Chuck and Nancy got him flustered in front of a camera. And he stayed flustered, got his manhood questioned, and spent Wednesday morning up in his residence, watching cable and presumably still out of sorts.

The night before, Michael Flynn, Trump's top foreign policy advisor and hand-picked NSA until that totally blew up, offered a sentencing memo requesting no time to be served because of his timely cooperation once he understood his situation, and grousing that he sort of thought the FBI done set him up by not telling him to shut up and get a lawyer. This is very much in line with the sort of thing TrumpWorld seems to believe, with peripheral Trumpists sort of saying this one-sided statement from the Flynn defense should let him (and Trump) off the hook.

Let me get this out of the way--I do not know what is worse, assuming that one is so poor of reading comprehension to misunderstand the situation to the effect that a statement that there is a process to call on the White House Counsel actually equals a consultation not to engage an attorney, because then it would be some kind of thing and that a grown man who is not new to this rodeo somehow is receiving compensation from foreign governments (plural, Turkey and Russia) without filing the correct FARA paperwork, knows this to be true, and faces the line of questioning he should certainly expect without for a quick minute thinking of getting either an attorney consult or, maybe, and I'm standing out on a ledge over here--not lying; or being so disingenuous to have grasped these things and then presented them, however dim and unworthy of supposition, as one's best defense for a person who is already in a cooperating agreement and whose best defense in reality is coughing up information that sort of invalidates all pretense at innocence. I am unfamiliar with Byron York's compensation arrangement, but I personally would skip a paycheck before presenting anything this fucking stupid. Or demand a "walk-away" amount. 

But I digress, because the star of the day was clearly Michael Cohen, who was sentenced to 36 months and some fines and restitution. This is less than the 51 to 63 months that was recommended by the sentencing guidelines. Part of his sentencing included the plea regarding campaign finance violations, and before the claim that the Edwards defense might pertain to Trump (even though Edwards was indicted) escaped the lips of Trump defenders, AMI, the parent company of National Enquirer which helped facilitate the McDougal payoff, entirely agreed: this was all about the 2016 presidential campaign of--some guy. 

Now, Trump has a reason to be seething as Cohen maintains he was directed to do much of what he did by Trump (not the tax evasion stuff, and nothing to do with the taxi medallions, but hot damn the bribery things!) And really, who takes out a loan on their house to pay off a person who is only claiming to have had sex with a potential presidential candidate because that certainly sounds like a really great use of your credit rating, unless specifically told to by someone you anticipate will make good on the ask? Only Trump's direction makes sense. And the direction is because the claim is probably good (they did it) and Trump would for some reason, prefer not to have another credible claim against him (among already so many?) during a campaign that he now has to win because?

Not winning queers his deal.

My best guess is Trump is indebted to do the White House thing until he is somehow removed from office, and I think he hates it, and I sort of like the prospect that this makes him suffer a little. As with the Trump Tower Moscow project, maybe doing this POTUS thing was a dream too far, with a serious price. 

But there definitely was a Moscow Trump Tower thing going, and Trump also may have met with people he thought might help him make it happen. Or for sure his son did, more than once. And we now understand that Mueller is looking more closely at these Russia/NRA contacts, especially now that Maria Butina is cooperating. Her boyfriend seems to have already produced interesting leads. 

Now, if his bind is what I think it is, Trump always has resigning and coming correct as a possible out (although being as crooked as a corkscrew and having to wind his pants on each morning makes this a remote possibility). But I really feel like the evidence here indicates that he's up to his orange peel ass in fuckery, and the other alternatives are not going to be pretty. 

TWGB: Ready Individual One?

One way to set the stage for a busy news Friday is to note that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently sort of read President Trump for filth by saying things that Trump critics don't even find surprising:

“So often, the president would say here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it, and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law. It violates treaty,’’ Tillerson said, before reiterating a claim he made before he was ousted on March 13—that “there’s no question” Russia meddled in the 2016 election.

Trump did not take that well, and of course made a Tweet about it. But leaving that specific kind of knee-jerk response to things happening around him, here is a sample of Trump's "Boom" Twitter stylings (the venting Trump seems to do to keep his head from exploding when the pressure is on):

Yeah. I'm not going to bother refuting that hot mess. I'm just pointing it out as a symptom of a person who is not suffering from a case of anything "very legal and very cool" .  This is a person who is actually being sued over his bullshit charity, and over the emoluments clause. New York is also investigating possible tax fraud based on a well-researched report on how Trump got so "rich" (tax evasion, inheritance and super groovy loans!) This is a person who, during the 2016 presidential campaign, settled for millions over Trump University that was an actual scam (a settlement not so long ago approved, by the way).  Even if there is no Trump/Russia collusion, there is the definitely not okay hush money paid to mistresses which are basically illegal campaign donations, and his probably illegal campaign coordination with the NRA. Trump's way of life is experiencing legal jeopardy because of things he does, and then kind of denying that they even happened even though we are looking right at him. It has mostly worked for him, but I don't think he's ever tried to spin so many plates at one time.

Take the response he made to the filings today regarding former lawyer Michael Cohen and former campaign manager Paul Manafort:

I think a Tweet that claims he's totally cleared is pretty weird considering he is basically factually named as "Individual-1" who seems to have suborned perjury and directed campaign fraud, which are crimes. A really good explainer of the Friday filings is laid out at Lawfare. But I'm struck by the idea that  Trump's response to this is a flat-out denial, when we were told by Trump that his lawyer Rudy Giuliani (who apparently occasionally experiences nightmares),  has an 87 page rebuttal to Mueller's claims.  Or, well, maybe there actually isn't anything. 

Tillerson told us Trump doesn't like to read things--is Trump counting on his fan club also not reading the black and white reality that a good part of Trump's 2016 campaign performance was fraudulent and that he really doesn't care what "legal" means even though he gave an oath to uphold the Constitution? 

Well, I guess that is probably close to the truth. As I see it, the unredacted Flynn and Manafort bits of this week's filings are likely disturbing, but the parts that have been made plain as day are well and truly bad enough. And I still think we've only seen the part of the iceberg above water. 

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?