Next Stop: Jared
This morning at 8, I was on Democracy Now talking about how then reported and now completed Flynn plea agreement would focus attention directly on Jared.
Since then, Mike Flynn indeed pled guilty to one charge of false statements to the FBI about various conversations with Sergei Kislyak, promising he’d fully cooperate with Mueller’s inquiry. Reports describe that Flynn spoke with an unnamed senior advisor who was at Mar A Lago at the time about his December 29 conversations with Kislyak, which pertained to Russian sanctions. They also say Flynn will testify against Trump and members, plural, of his family, particularly regarding the orders he had to reach out to Russia.
The other lie charged about conversations with Kislyak involves a request that Russia try to delay or shut down a vote on condemning Israel’s illegal settlements.
That’s a key lie, because we know who was pushing that: Jared Kushner (though the court filing suggests it might be someone even more senior).
Robert Mueller’s investigators are asking questions about Jared Kushner’s interactions with foreign leaders during the presidential transition, including his involvement in a dispute at the United Nations in December, in a sign of the expansive nature of the special counsel’s probe of Russia’s alleged meddling in the election, according to people familiar with the matter.
The investigators have asked witnesses questions about the involvement of Mr. Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, in a controversy over a U.N. resolution passed Dec. 23, before Mr. Trump took office, that condemned Israel’s construction of settlements in disputed territories, these people said.
Israeli officials had asked the incoming Trump administration to intervene to help block it. Mr. Trump posted a Facebook message the day before the U.N. vote—after he had been elected but before he had assumed office—saying the resolution put the Israelis in a difficult position and should be vetoed.
[snip]
Israeli officials said at the time that they began reaching out to senior leaders in Mr. Trump’s transition team. Among those involved were Mr. Kushner and political strategist Stephen Bannon, according to people briefed on the exchanges.
So that second lie — and almost certainly the first — involves Kushner directing Flynn.
I noted yesterday CNN’s report that in the last few weeks — so during the window when Mueller was in close discussions about Flynn flipping — Mueller’s team interviewed Kushner asking if he had any exonerating information on Flynn.
Mueller’s team specifically asked Kushner about former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who is under investigation by the special counsel, two sources said. Flynn was the dominant topic of the conversation, one of the sources said.
[snip]
The conversation lasted less than 90 minutes, one person familiar with the meeting said, adding that Mueller’s team asked Kushner to clear up some questions he was asked by lawmakers and details that emerged through media reports. One source said the nature of this conversation was principally to make sure Kushner doesn’t have information that exonerates Flynn.
The meeting took place around the same time the special counsel asked witnesses about Kushner’s role in the firing of former FBI Director James Comey and his relationship with Flynn, these people said.
Mueller was, effectively, locking in Kushner’s testimony before Flynn flipped. As I said this morning, speaking of that meeting,
The Kushner meeting was reported as kind of one of the last things that Mueller had to put into place before this plea agreement that people have been talking about with Mike Flynn. And that suggests that there is more news about to drop regarding Mike Flynn that I think is going to really dramatically change how Republicans take the Russian investigation.
Flynn had been avoiding discussing plea agreements for months and months and months, and then really in the last two weeks, all of a sudden it seems like it’s about to happen. Mueller has more leverage over Flynn in the last couple of weeks. It may be Turkey, because a key witness in New York has turned state’s evidence and apparently has information on Flynn. I think there’s some other information.
And so, Flynn, we expect, is moving towards a plea agreement. We expect, or I expect, that’s going to add a lot more pressure on Trump. And I have been saying for months that the way to get to Kushner is through Flynn. Because a lot of the events in which Flynn was involved, such as meeting with Sergei Kislyak in December, they connect very closely with activities that Kushner is known to be involved with.
Kushner may now be hoping he’ll be in a he-said he-said with Flynn, except it’s unlikely Mueller would give Flynn this easy plea without a whole lot more to know that Flynn would be telling the truth. Remember, Kushner is one of the few people aside from Flynn himself who has a very appropriate lawyer for this kind of issue.
Oh my. Fitzmas is in the air…
*waving to punaise* December 1st of our Indictments Advent Calendar!
Let’s hope Mueller turns up with more cash than Fitz did. How about “Happy Mueller Days”?
*waiving back* to my old Firedoglake buds…
You can bet Trump is spewing all over his lawyers at the moment, raging at their advice to play nice instead of firing Mueller a month ago. If he had, Flynn would never have had to make a deal and in Trump’s mind, he would have been home free — because, of course, Republicans would never have grown a spine and appointed an independent prosecutor, at least not before they’d passed their tax cut abomination. Now with that miserable bill assured of passage and Flynn’s confession locked in, it will be lots more difficult to fire Mueller and shut down the investigation without triggering the appointment of a prosecutor Trump can’t fire.
I imagine that Mueller and Co. will now move con brio to the more public phase of the investigation. How much time do they have before Pops fires the SC? I’ll put $5 in and take Dec. 13.
This is the greatest day of the Trump Presidency
Fox, strangely enough, has probably the best write up about this plea
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/01/michael-flynn-pleads-guilty-to-false-statements-charge-in-russia-probe.html
My guess is that Mueller is toying with Trump and will see what he posts on twitter, and maybe who he calls and subpoena all that next. Or maybe Trump fires Mueller today. Interesting times
I would just like to point out that the “see what Trump posts on twitter” call was pretty fucking good
Curiously anticipating the rat fucking of these shitwipes. I assume I shall not be banned here…
You won’t get banned, but the grammar police are after you: the technical term is ratfuck one word. We like precision in our obscenity.
Marcy, i wish i could work with you
Great job!!
A suggestion to bmaz for this weekend’s trash talk: “When the truth is found to be lies…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EdLasOrG6c
What’s left for drumpf to do when faced with a losing situation but file for yet another bankruptcy — the analog for bankruptcy here: maybe resign?
Maybe Trumpty Dumpty will be saved the cost of bankruptcy and Mueller will get a RICO indictment and take the entire rotten mess down.
Three topics, all tied together, plus snark:
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/jared-kushner-cant-pass-his-security-clearance-probe/
I wonder why….
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-faces-new-obstruction-allegations-russia-scandal
and this:
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/trump-has-urged-seven-officials-to-end-the-russia-probe/
Call Captain Renault!
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/white-house-lawyer-ty-cobb-describes-mike-flynn-as-a-former-obama-official-after-guilty-plea/
Only thing missing now is something against Mueller. Of course President Obama fired Flynn for cause, Trump tried to cover for him and I guess until recently still talked to him. Of course if he was wearing a wire like Papadopoulos did…. In the statement today, the decision to cop to the plea came in the last 24 hours, which I find oddly specific given that the announcement last week was that Flynn’s lawyers weren’t talking to Trump’s lawyers any longer, so why do that if Flynn was presumably still fighting back?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/mike-flynn-mueller-probe-witness
This is why Donnie needs a pallet or two of Depends (h/t our noble Earl). It may not be enough.
Of course the sad part is that the Trump cult members still will not turf him out.
Not to belabor the point but one writer says, in response to Flynn’s statement:
“You can’t call them “false accusations” of treason in the same statement in which you are admitting the truth of those accusations. Make no mistake, what Flynn did was to conspire against the United States of America. ‘Traitor’ is the best thing you can call him.”
I rest my case, and will refrain from any more comments about the word “traitor”– subject to my plea arrangement with Bmaz , et al.
God save the Commonwealth!
yeah, he is falling on his sword for israel.. lol… never seen that before in american politicans… oh geezz.. this is the hate trump/russia blog.. i forgot..
Is there any hope that pence will be implicated? And why is it generally assumed that flynn lied to the v.p? Is there any evidence of that other than the word of that vomitatious vice? Of course if we are so lucky that both mf#1 and mf#2 go down, we then have ayn rand ryan as prez.
The “lied to Pence” rationale for Flynn’s ejection was bullshit from the start. This becomes a philosophical question. Even if Pence created an exclusion zone around himself for plausible deniability, he knew exactly what he needed to know nothing about. If you choose not to go down to the basement even though you can hear muffled screams, saying “well, I never went down to the basement” doesn’t really exonerate you.
@gedouttahear,
Maybe.
Jed Handelsman Shugerman has something on that, and much more (with trailheads) over at Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/12/robert_mueller_s_deal_with_michael_flynn_neutralizes_trump_s_pardon_power.html
Best,
well, the picture i am glimpsing now is of a senior cabal of trumpsters close to the prez directing less senior (like flynn) officials to do this or that, perhaps in an effort to “repay” the russians for their help.
i believe jared kushner was in charge of any computer/demographic attacks for the trump campaign. thus he could conceiveably be liable not only for breaking u. s. sanctions against russia, but also for directing russian attacks within the u. s. no wonder trump wanted comey and the cia, and the nsa, and burr and the senate intelligence comm to promise lay off.
in any event, the glimpse i get is of a small group of top trump advisors plus the big cheese himself puppeteering lesser campaign and then presidential staff.
There were not many more senior than Flynn: Crown Prince Jared, Pence, maybe Beauregard, and er….
In the statement of facts, you have to treat “senior” as Flynn’s peers, and “very senior” as maybe a thumbless handful of people. Flynn was “senior” but also following orders.
Pence was quickly iknownoth-ing today. That’s what he’s been doing from the start.
thumbless handful :)
i was thinking of trump’s propensity to hold business matters close and rely on family. whether correct or not, i can imagine kushner, bannon, ivanka, maybe sessions, and the big cheese as running the show. flynn i imagine as a hopeful, hence helpful, courtier.
with more knights yielding their swords to mueller we will have more opportunity to study the pecking order of the campaign, the transition, and the early days of the administration.
as for pence, he is slicker than goose shit and a far greater political threat than the preternaturally irritable trump can ever be. i hope, and believe it possible, that pence may go down too. but the man has been quietly preparing himself to be king by soliciting vip republican support.
I really hope they can get Pence.
I don’t think the Republicans otherwise give a crap as long as they push through this tax bill. I don’t think any of them care whether they get elected again, they can all become lobbyists and make some real money, instead of just the small time grifting they do in congress. McConnell is busy shoveling as many right wing nutjob judges through the system as he can and the rest of them are dismantling the rest of the government.
And, yes, it could be a good for Dem takeback in 2018 but so what? They’re not going to put Humpty Dumpty back together again anytime soon.
This could be the day Trump decides to nuke North Korea to “change the conversation.”
Prince Erik was a guest on MSNBC’s Velshi and Ruhle today – I had to run it twice in a browser window and still missed a lot, but I’m always in a state of mild shock at the ability of dangerous people to dissemble.
Nothing is ever going to be Prince’s fault, and having to answer Congressional questions was evidently an inconvenience. He seemed to completely dismiss what House Committee’s Eric Sahwell (sp?) said on 11/30 about Prince’s refusing to answer questions, and he attributed his leaving the hearing early to ‘time for dinner’. Apparently, Prince has never had a dinner meeting. Pity.
I have little regard for Congress myself, but to see Prince’s offhanded dismissal of the House Intel Committee was still jolting.
I concluded that Prince went onto that tv show in order to help disperse a new meme that ‘the Russian investigation is mostly about internal US intel conflicts’, which is exactly the kind of ‘messaging’ that probably roils the alt-righters. I wonder whether Bannon helped him with the ‘messaging’… because it seems exceptionally strange that a man under scrutiny, who seems to disdain all other humans – and particularly the media – would agree to be interviewed on tv.
I leave to others here to give a more perceptive interpretation of the why and what of Prince’s interview 12/1 on MSNBC, but my best guesstimate is that it is part of a larger disinformation campaign that now needs to jolt into a new phase in response to the latest news.
I’d keep in mind that the U.S. is not the only audience Prince Erik is playing to during any public statements, whether on broadcast/cable or in front of Congress. Who else needs to hear Trump-Russia is really just a domestic problem of ‘internal US intel conflicts’?
Nice /delurk
to help disperse a new meme that ‘the Russian investigation is mostly about internal US intel conflicts’
Such is the case. Perhaps Prince has bought a vowel?
Flip early, and flip often.
The Putin/Bannon plan to destroy Amerika includes increasing civil strife here. All those “discriminated against” because they are white males think they “won” in 2016 and feel the “neos” are attempting a coup through Mueller. There is talk of “peaceful” but armed march if the Senate ever got to 67 votes. The stock market has not even blinked so there is no change in sentiment that Trump will survive all this.
I came across an October New Yorker article involving Ivanka and Flynn:
According to the AP, Israel is rather high on Trump’s radar right now. Note that this was written before the Pence news broke:
Bibi has to be rather miffed to see that December UN resolution in the middle of the Flynn story. If Trump goes ahead with this recognition of Jerusalem, it will only heighten attention on Flynn’s behavior last December (as well as light a match under the gasoline-soaked tinder lying all over the Middle East).
i think trump’s behavior both domestically and in foreign affairs is of a politician who knows he is viewed very, very negatively by a lot of groups and their members, and is desperately searching out supporters whereever – in alabama, among white supremacists, nra-types, american hyper-patriots, israel, saudi arabia, or russia.
desperately searching for support.
leaders behaving this way are dangerous leaders.
Since the tax bill monstrosity is going to pass I see no reason why Trump won’t fire Muller. My logic is that all resistance from within the GOP is gone. Sessions will then no longer feel the need to keep his fingers off the scale of justice. To me the Muller firing is now a matter of when not if. Sorry to be so apoplectic but to me the tax bill is a sort of analog to the Enabling Act. I will be more than happy to be proven wrong.
Okay — not enough people are directly linking, or quoting the Flynn agreed statement of offense just made public, so I will:
“…Here is the ten page plea agreement, and here is the six-page statement of the offense. The latter is particularly devastating, to 45’s chances — of holding on to his office, in my opinion. [That is, no sane person who knows of 45’s micro-managing, mercurial ways — does any of this without direct orders from 45 hisself.] Who precisely is the “PTT official” described (but not named) therein? Is it our boy Kushner? Or our boy. . . Donnie, Jr.? Will that PTT official also flip — on 45? Time will tell.….”
Keep up the great work, Marcy and BMaz!
Let’s use “Condor” as my continuing handle.
Have an early Fitzmas weekened, one and all!
Namaste
Hopefully you can see the links.
Go to Mother Jones, it is embedded here:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/12/why-the-flynn-indictment-is-bad-news-for-pence-and-other-senior-trump-officials/#
At least we know one after Flynn plead guilty: The whole ‘Russian collusion’ thing is dead. They’re not looking at Candidate Trump but President-elect Trump.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. The plea agreement only reveals what charge prosecutors and Flynn settled on, not the potential charges they’ve used as leverage. Let’s not forget the 13 total charges to date against Papadopoulos, Gates and Manafort, which imply there was much more going on within the campaign: conspiracy against the United States; conspiracy to launder money; unregistered agent of a foreign principal; false and misleading FARA statements; false statements; seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. If I were prosecuting this, I certainly wouldn’t reveal all my cards until every co-conspirator was rolled up.
It’s certainly not true. There’s still the death of Peter Smith, who was looking for Russian hackers and then killed himself after he got caught.
Flynn will give details of that op, or his son will go to jail.
So why would ‘collusion’ disappear post election?
To me, that makes the ‘collusion’ argument stronger.
Pre-election, it’s just business.
Wishful thinking. Some conduct prohibited to a private citizen would be allowed a president. But who thinks Trump is smart enough to glide through the slalom course without knocking down most of the gates? Any criminal conduct starting or continuing past inauguration could well involve President Trump, even if prosecution is deferred until after he leaves office. The pardon lawyers must be looking forward to a lot of work.
Dream of Jared having worn a wire for last 2 months.
A prosecutors fondest fantasy.
A dream but what a pleasent one.
Thinking almost all year. Comey.
No ‘wire’ needed.
however long coming or short-lived it may be, justice is sweet when it occurs in its fullness.
james comey had a chance to savor that sweetness today.
here is his comment, a biblical favorite of the student of religion and former fbi director:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/12/01/let-justice-roll-down-james-comey-is-subtweeting-michael-flynn-with-the-bible/?
you know where else that quote appears?
on the civil rights memorial in montgomery alabama, a memorial sponsored by the southern poverty law center.
from wikipedia:
“… The names included in the memorial belong to those who died between 1954 and 1968. Those dates were chosen because in 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in schools was unlawful and 1968 is the year of the assassination of Martin Luther King… The Civil Rights Memorial was dedicated in 1989.[1]
The… design is based on the soothing and healing effect of water. It was inspired by a paraphrase from King: “…we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream….” It is from the “I Have a Dream” speech, which was delivered at the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963.[2] The passage in King’s speech is a direct reference to Amos 5:24, …”
https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/southern-poverty-law-center-montgomery?
Well, I just wrote a very long comment, and it got trashed.
403 Forbidden
A potentially unsafe operation has been detected in your request to this site.
Generated by Wordfence at Sat, 2 Dec 2017 0:02:48 GMT.
Your computer’s time: Sat, 02 Dec 2017 00:02:48 GMT.
It had two links.
So much for me trying to comment at the EW site.
don’t give up
and
don’t assume you broke some rule and are being “reprimanded” by software.
i have problems with internet reaching this site all the time. who knows why.
lately
– it has taken an unusually long time to connect (10-20 secs) or
– the site has dropped just as i hit “post” – but somehow the comment got posted anyway.
give it another try. maybe in pieces.
i should add that i am confident that neither of the problems i mentioned has anything to do with the emptywheel website. they are the consequences of problems with the device i use and problems with the isp.
Howdy, VG! Nice to see you! I don’t know what happened to your comment; I’ve checked all the bins in the site’s backend and it didn’t end up in pending. I have problems with commenting from time to time, even when I’m logged in to the site’s backend, not certain what trips me up. I’ve made it a practice to draft comments in Notepad then cut-and-paste into the comment text field so as not to lose the only draft.
If you have links which might have triggered kickout, try reposting but this time add the links as plain text and add spaces on either side of punctuation so that the site doesn’t see them as active. Example: [ https :// www . emptywheel . com ]
Thanks for trying!
Write your comment in a text document and then copy and paste into the window. Also confirm that the site you are on is https://www.emptywheel.net Evidently there are some attack vectors can misdirect your connection to a unsecure man in the middle.
Good point about the MiTM. Haven’t run into that yet but there’s always a first time and this site is quite likely to draw them.
Nice harmonic convergence!
How about Ned Lamont…
For Governor!!
http://www.courant.com/politics/capitol-watch/hc-pol-ned-lamont-governor-20171128-story.html
Speaking of ShortRide, this news is contextual…
(Follow the breadcrumbs…)
“Robert Mueller’s team is requesting a special hearing in its case against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates due to a potential conflict posed by a lawyer who represents both Gates and a movie producer in a separate New York fraud case.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article185702333.html
“They also used spent some of the funds on a politically-oriented nonprofit called the Bipartisan Coalition for American Security that was co-chaired by former U.S. Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and whose advisory board was led by Elliot Broidy, a national deputy finance chair for the Republican National Committe.”
(Unfortunately, the editors failed to recognize the sham “Bipartisan” label and referred to him as (D-Conn) not (I-Conn)). :(
Do you suppose Trump ordered Flynn to lie to the FBI?
If he did, that’s on Trump. As a longtime officer, Flynn would know that one of his duties is to disobey an illegal order. If Flynn lied, it’s on him. But that wouldn’t excuse Trump from obstruction charges. Mueller and his team will also be well aware that Ollie North skated on his conviction arising out of the Iran-Contra scandal. They will not repeat those errors.
The trouble here is to verify statements Flynn might make that would incriminate others. Otherwise, it’s a he said-she said problem that would be hard to prosecute.
In that vein, Kushner knows vicariously what prison time is. His roommates and shower mates are unlikely to be as pretty as his wife. If he’s in jeopardy, that fate would tend to focus the mind wonderfully, particularly as Trump is so mercurial that any promises he makes could not reasonably be relied upon. Giving up daddy, however, is also likely to end up in divorce court..
Reminds me of that moment in Gosford Park, where the servants become self-aware enough to stop talking about their lordly masters and start wondering about their own lives. Speaking of which, forget the damn Yankees, how about that tax bill?
Restructuring America from top to bottom, making our elite permanent, stealing our government, our health, and the futures of our children and theirs. What’s not to like?
It’s possible, just possible, that measly thanks from the Kochs, Mercers, Friedmans and McCains might not be sufficient to save the GOP from their well-deserved political fate. I suspect that seven levels won’t provide sufficient space in which to find a place for the honorable John McCain.
So how does any of this pertain to the still unproven allegations of Russian meddling with or without collusion in the election? It seems to me the plea by Flynn undermines the very basis for those claims–as it’s clear Trump had to reach out clumsily to the Russians post election. And because Trump fired Flynn for the same crime he’s pled to (lying to the FBI), the most damaging thing Trump could be charged with is collusion with Israel, not Russia, to undermine Obama’s interesting and one-off decision to allow a U.N. resolution to be passed against Israel. Is it Russia we should be afraid of, or Israel?! Lol. Nobody is going to want to pursue that angle, I am willing to bet.
quoting robert parry – “In other words, both of the Flynn-Kislyak conversations appear rather unsurprising, if not inconsequential. One was taken at the behest of Israel (which proved ineffective) and the other urged the Kremlin to show restraint in its response to a last-minute slap from President Obama (which simply delayed Russian retaliation by several months).”
i especially liked this line from his article : ” there is this deepening pattern of using criminal law to settle political differences, a process more common in authoritarian states.” it seems some of the ew crowd are down with that..
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/01/the-scalp-taking-of-gen-flynn/
Did Flynn break the law — specifically, did he make false statements? Yes or no? If he made false statements, why did he make them if he was not hiding other illegal activity? Did he have adequate legal counsel to guide his responses to investigators? It’s not like Flynn’s an unarmed American black man at an unnecessary police traffic stop in a majority white city and unable to avail himself of his Constitutional rights. He was a problematic part of the increasingly authoritarian state and knew how to play it well, managing a rebound with Trump’s campaign and administration after a rather too-quiet termination. He had been warned on his retirement of prohibited and banned activities; he could have validated any additional laws and regulations using Google pretty easily over that private internet service he had installed in defiance of military regulations.
“it seems some of the ew crowd are down with that…” With ~400 approved comments you’re not overly invested in this ‘ew crowd’ and probably won’t miss us. You do know how to use your browser’s back or home icons, yes?
obviously he is stupid to compete with nsa transcripts on everything he said, even if he couldn’t remember without the support of some crack lawyer.. score one for stupidity on his part, and one for snoop usa/nsa…
bottom line – none of this has a shred to do with russia, but since it is a witch hunt to get rid of trump – who cares? lol…
From 10-FEB-2017 (three days before Flynn resigned): Why are NINE sources coming forward now on Flynn’s conversations with Russia?
Please. Either do the homework or go play in the street.
no one is saying he didn’t talk with russia.. holy fuck! are countries allowed to talk to other countries, or is there a special cold war list of who you can and can’t talk to? please share it..
i forgot i was talking to the mutual admiration society coming here.. of course flynn talked with russia – the question over what remains open to conjecture, but what i would draw yours and others attention to is the fact that cold war 2 restarted long before trump got in office.. even as recently as ukraine, one can add the dots and see the borg are gunning for a war with russia.. blaming russia on stealing the clinton win is just more of the same as i see it..
please tell us who is allowed to speak to who, as i am mystified by the idea that politicians in power aren’t supposed to talk to other countries (like russia) when involved on the international stage… has the usa now put in some crazy ass law that says usa politicians can only talk with israel or euro-poodle nations? i missed that, if so.. one day maybe all the nsa transcripts will be public knowledge, lol..
A little homework to learn how flipping a target into cooperation (pdf) is called for. The plea agreements for both George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn will not reflect all the charges that could have been filed against them; they only represent a lesser charge(s) agreed to in exchange for full cooperation to give testimony or obtain evidence against others under investigation. And like Al Capone’s prosecution for tax evasion or Scooter Libby’s for false statements/obstruction/perjury, the final charges may for the caporegime or capo di tutti capi of the unfolding criminal conspiracy may not be what you personally expect.
As for your weak sauce “Trump had to reach out clumsily to the Russians post election” — hah. Trump has had ties to Russians for decades and his family, too. Trump Tower has been filled with Russian occupants. You make it sound like Trump would have had to flail around to salvage a nascent relationship with Russia. Again, hah.
Now up your game and do your homework, Mr. One-Approved-Comment. This isn’t kindergarten.
having ties to russia is very bad, but having ties to israel – is A okay… don’t relate to those terrible ruskies… practice cold war ad nauseam.. it is the patriotic thing to do!
Clearly you haven’t bothered to read the scope of Mueller’s authorization. You should find a different hobby, or don’t they have them in your country?
no – we are saturated with usa stupidity 24/7… it becomes a passing hobby as a consequence…
[Your last comment has been pulled back. Seriously, find a different amusement. /R]
In answer to your question, apparently not.
Does anyone have thoughts about the Gulen plot? Were reports about the conspiracy misleading if Flynn is being let off the hook for that?
Yes, It would seem that Mr. Flynn’s Turkish toffee is sticking to him.
No, he’s trading the Gulen plot for Trump and Kushner, ostensibly.
If the reports were true, it’s disturbing they let him off so lightly.
At this point, people that were wrong on Russia all along are pulling out all kinds of “what about” bullshit to cover their asses. What about Israel?
Shhhhhhhhhh
It will be interesting to find out how much of this attempt to use the Russians to win an election that Mueller knows about and can prove. My guess is he knows a lot, and he needs Flynn to corroborate the testimony of the minor witnesses.
Is Mueller going to go after any Russians if he can get them on money laundering charges he might be able to flip them and get them to admit, Paul Manafort, Trump, probably Jared all laundered Russian Money.
Get the right Russian and you might get testimony from a Russian that they funneled money, intelligence what ever to the Trump campaign on orders from Putin.
Glad Mueller’s team has Flynn’s guilty plea for lying to the FBI.
Now how does Mueller use Flynn’s testimony in some hopefully not so future court room case? Won’t a defendant’s defense counsel try to undermine Flynn’s credibility by pointing out the fact that ‘Flynn lied to the FBI so why don’t we assume he is lying now?’
I assume this defense strategy plays out in courtrooms everyday when there is a less than squeaky clean/cooperating witness, but is more than just verbal testimony needed to overcome a witness’s defect?
If Mueller has corroborating evidence (phone records, tape recordings) to back up Flynn’s statements then why does Mueller even need Flynn’s cooperation in the first place?
What sort of additional evidence aside from his testimony can Flynn provide as part of his plea deal?
BTW, Trump restated again today that he fired Flynn, because Flynn misled Pence (and the FBI). Got me wondering. Has PENCE ever stated to the press that ‘Flynn lied to Pence/misled Pence’?
If not, then what’s Pence waiting for? Why is a cut out making statements for Pence?
“Since then, Mike Flynn indeed pled guilty to one charge of false statements to the FBI about various conversations with Sergei Kislyak, promising he’d fully cooperate with Mueller’s inquiry. Reports describe that Flynn spoke with an unnamed senior advisor who was at Mar A Lago at the time about his December 29 conversations with Kislyak, which pertained to Russian sanctions. They also say Flynn will testify against Trump and members, plural, of his family, particularly regarding the orders he had to reach out to Russia.”
Why only this one charge of lying maybe Trump, Pence instructed Flynn to lie to the FBI about his contacts with Sergei Kislyak about Russian sanctions.
After all the impeachment of Trump investigation is looking into Russian collusion before the presidential election the pro quo is well established Russia hackers on Facebook suddenly became pro Trump. The Quid would likely be ending Russian sanctions did Flynn arrange the deal for the Trump campaign? Will he testify to this?
I should have seen this sooner I’m out of practice.
What if the only charge Flynn plead guilty to is lying because Trump, Pence told him to lie to protect the President that would certainly explain why Trump tried so hard to kill the investigation of Flynn and not Manafort.