Watergate 2.0 in Progress

[zeeblofowl_1969]

Vanity Fair :rofl2:

You know Tiny, because of your mental illness and obesity, we’ll cut you some slack. So when Trump is re-elected in 2020 you can go and crawl into the fetal position and suck your thumb for another year like you did the last time. Had the election gone the other way, you would have been running around here on November 9th like a spastic fool. It took you almost a year to pick yourself up off of the floor. Dat military service tho.

At this rate of alienation and desertion I question if he can even get the nomination in 2020. But the soulless have surprised me before.

 

[Jack Davenport]

At this rate of alienation and desertion I question if he can even get the nomination in 2020. But the soulless have surprised me before.

That’s what they said in 2016. His base is not leaving him and anyone that runs against him will not have any better approval numbers.
You better get your mind around it. As someone else said, he’s not going anywhere anytime soon,

Anytime this stuff starts up I just look at Tiny and Supa’s threads and their predictions and I get the Golden schadenboner.

 

[Mayhem]

 

[Johan]

So, what have we got here : An AG caught lying under oath...
I bet Sessions will be ou of the White House before November 10th

That’s what they said in 2016. His base is not leaving him and anyone that runs against him will not have any better approval numbers.
You better get your mind around it. As someone else said, he’s not going anywhere anytime soon,

Anytime this stuff starts up I just look at Tiny and Supa’s threads and their predictions and I get the Golden schadenboner.

He's going down. Sooner or later but he won't finish his mandate.
What happened monday was just the beginning : Muller is just working like they do in the FBI : catch the small fishes first and then get them bigger and bigger, closer and closer tho THE big fish.
And yes, Manafort's arrest and the charges against him are no threat to Trump. But Papadopoulos is a all different story...

 

[xfire]

Trump will leave office with more criminal indictments than any other administration in history.

 

[Mayhem]

Trump breaches boundaries by saying DOJ should be ‘going after’ Democrats

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...dab5a0ab381_story.html?utm_term=.e4f148489a8c

President Trump on Friday repeatedly called on the Department of Justice and FBI to investigate his Democratic political opponents, a breach of the traditional executive branch boundaries designed to prevent the criminal justice system from becoming politicized.

Trump urged federal law enforcement to “do what is right and proper” by launching criminal probes of former presidential rival Hillary Clinton and her party — a surprising use of his bully pulpit considering he acknowledged a day earlier that presidents are not supposed to intervene in such decisions.

In a flurry of accusatory morning tweets, Trump claimed there was mounting public pressure for new Clinton probes, including over her campaign’s joint fundraising agreement with the Democratic National Committee that effectively gave her some control over the party’s finances, strategy and staffing before the primaries began.

Trump invoked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who had said that she believed the Democratic primaries were rigged in Clinton’s favor based on details of the arrangement in a new book by former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile. Using his pejorative nickname for Warren, Trump tweeted: “Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, lead [sic] by the legendary Crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the Primaries! Lets [sic] go FBI & Justice Dept.”

Trump also called for probing the deleted emails from Clinton’s private server while she was secretary of state, as well as the sale of a uranium company to Russia and the international business of Democratic super-lobbyist Tony Podesta, the brother of John D. Podesta, who served as Clinton’s campaign chairman.

“People are angry,” Trump wrote in one tweet. “At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!”

Trump amplified his message later Friday morning, as he spoke to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before he departed for a 12-day trip to Asia.

“I’m really not involved with the Justice Department,” Trump said. “I’d like to let it run itself. But honestly, they should be looking at the Democrats . . . And a lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me.”

Trump has long been irritated, and at times outright angry, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions for refusing to prosecute Clinton and for not better protecting him from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s wide-ranging probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the president’s advisers have said.

Trump made his displeasure clear in a Thursday radio interview on “The Larry O’Connor Show.”

“You know, the saddest thing is, because I am the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI,” Trump said. “I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things I would love to be doing and I am very frustrated by it.”

The president said it was “very discouraging to me” that the Justice Department and FBI were not “going after Hillary Clinton.” He added, “Hopefully they are doing something and at some point, maybe we are going to all have it out.”

The White House offered no explanation for why Trump publicly pressured the Justice Department on Friday. A Justice Department spokesman also declined to comment.

Senior officials at the White House and some key Republican lawmakers have raised concerns in recent days about the level of access the Justice Department has been providing to congressional investigators to review materials.

Some lawmakers have sought more information than the department has provided related to a dossier that contained lurid allegations about Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, in addition to material related to the uranium deal, according to administration and congressional officials.

A White House official said Trump wants the Justice Department, as a general policy, to be transparent and provide Congress with the information it is requesting. A Justice Department official said the White House overtures were not considered inappropriate because they were about the agency’s compliance with congressional oversight. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter on the record.

Friday’s public pressure marks the latest attempt by Trump to use his presidential megaphone to direct the criminal justice process.

Trump delivered off-the-cuff remarks this week recommending punishment for Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect accused of killing eight people with a rental truck in New York City. He at first said he was considering sending Saipov to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but then reversed course and advocated a civilian trial in federal court and the death penalty for the terrorism suspect he called “an animal.”

The president’s comments complicated the work of FBI agents and federal prosecutors as they were investigating the attack and preparing criminal charges.

The Justice Department is a part of the executive branch; the attorney general is nominated by the president, as is the FBI director. So it is normal for the White House to direct the department and bureau on broad policy goals.

But unlike other executive branch agencies, the Justice Department traditionally enjoys a measure of independence, especially when it comes to individual criminal investigations. Government lawyers have long sought to enforce a clear line preventing White House officials from influencing specific investigations or prosecutions to ensure their work is not politicized.

Trump has departed from tradition when it comes to the Justice Department in other ways as well, including by talking with some candidates for some U.S. attorney jobs. Although they are presidential appointees, U.S. attorney candidates have not traditionally had personal interviews with the president before they were selected.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who is not running for reelection and has become an outspoken critic of Trump’s, issued a statement saying that the justice system should be “independent and free of political interference.”

“President Trump’s pressuring of the Justice Department and FBI to pursue cases against his adversaries and calling for punishment before trials take place are totally inappropriate and not only undermine our justice system but erode the American people’s confidence in our institutions,” Corker said.

Matt Axelrod, who served as the principal associate deputy attorney general interacting with the White House during the Obama administration, said Trump’s comments were “a very troubling and shocking departure from the way things are supposed to work and have worked historically through both Democratic and Republican administrations.”

But former attorney general William P. Barr, who served under former Republican president George H.W. Bush, said it would not be automatically inappropriate for a president to ask for possible wrongdoing to be investigated.

“The president is the chief executive and, if he believes there’s an area that requires an investigation, there’s nothing on its face wrong with that, there’s nothing per se wrong about that,” Barr said.

“I don’t think all this stuff about throwing [Clinton] in jail or jumping to the conclusion that she should be prosecuted is appropriate,” Barr added, “but I do think that there are things that should be investigated that haven’t been investigated.”

The president directing a particular investigation — especially of a former political rival — would be viewed by most officials in law enforcement as improper. This, though, is not the first time Trump has suggested putting Clinton in law enforcement’s crosshairs.

During the campaign, Trump repeatedly led rally crowds in chants of “Lock her up!” that were aimed at Clinton. And during a presidential debate, Trump told Clinton he would “instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception.”

Trump’s comment sparked a ******* of criticism, including from former attorney general Michael Mukasey, who worked under former Republican president George W. Bush and was a vocal Clinton critic.

“It would be like a banana republic,” Mukasey, who could not be reached for comment Friday, said at the time. “Putting political opponents in jail for offenses committed in a political setting, even if they are criminal offenses — and they very well may be — is something that we don’t do here.”

 

[Mayhem]

How many 'Democrat campaign donors' on special counsel team probing Trump campaign-Russia ties?

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin...ny-democrat-campaign-donors-special-counsel-/

U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, a northern Wisconsin Republican who has consistently backed Donald Trump, is making Democrat-bias allegations about a man who may pose a threat to Trump’s presidency: special counsel Robert Mueller.

On Oct. 30, 2017, Mueller’s investigation produced its first criminal charges, its first guilty plea and the first public confirmation that an aide to Trump’s campaign sought an allegiance with Russians to gather "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

Duffy made his claim about Mueller the same day on CNN’s "New Day" show. He referred to Clinton, Trump’s Democratic rival in the 2016 election, and the Democratic National Committee, saying:

First of all, I support the investigation; I’m not asking for it to end. But I do have concerns that Mueller’s bringing
in Democrat campaign donors at a very high level …. And I think that’s a mistake on his part. Let’s bring in non-partisan
folks that -- or at least don’t have a partisan record because I think you open yourself up to criticism in making it partisan.

So, how many of Mueller’s lawyers have made campaign contributions to Democrats, and how much?

And is there evidence of a partisan bias on Mueller’s team?

The charges and plea

Duffy’s interview was prompted by the most significant developments for the special counsel, who is investigating possible ties between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business associate, Rick Gates, were indicted on a dozen felony counts, including money laundering. And George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the campaign, pleaded guilty to misleading the FBI about outreach efforts to Russian government officials.

Papadopoulos is accused of falsely telling the FBI he was not part of the Trump campaign when a person described as an "overseas professor" told him that Russians possessed "dirt" on Clinton, in the form of "thousands of emails."

As for Mueller, the special counsel’s office told us that it confirmed that Mueller is a longtime and current Republican. He is a former federal prosecutor who served as the FBI director under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, from 2011 to 2013. He was a partner at the WilmerHale law firm when he was chosen as the special counsel by the U.S. Justice Department in May 2017.

Previous claim about the team

A month after Mueller’s selection, Trump implied the investigation was politically motivated, making a claim more extreme than Duffy’s in saying: "I can say that the people that have been hired (for the independent Russia investigation) are all Hillary Clinton supporters, some of them worked for Hillary Clinton."

PolitiFact National rated Trump’s statement Mostly False.

At that point, the names of eight lawyers on Mueller’s team had been made public. Three had made campaign contributions to Clinton, but none had worked for her. One had defended the Clinton Foundation in court for WilmerHale. And another represented a Clinton aide, also for WilmerHale.

The Justice Department looked into the contributions and employment histories of all of Mueller’s hires and determined them consistent with the rules of professional responsibility.

Duffy's claim is a little more broad.

Mueller’s team and their contributions

Duffy’s office referred us to news reports on campaign contributions made by Mueller team members. The special counsel’s office told us that Mueller has 16 lawyers on his team, but that one of them has not been named publicly. That office provided us figures on how much the lawyers have given in total to Democrats and Republicans in federal campaigns. We also checked Federal Election Commission filings.

Here’s what we found:

• Six of the 15 lawyers have not made campaign contributions to any political campaigns at the federal level.

• Among the lawyers who did make contributions, a total of $62,043 went to Democrats and $2,750 to Republicans, according to the special counsel’s office.

• In terms of Clinton specifically, election filings indicate that three lawyers gave her 2016 presidential campaign a total of $700; and three gave a total of $18,100 to either her 2016 campaign or her 2008 run for the presidential nomination.

As for the implication of Duffy’s claim, here are points worth noting:

• One of the lawyers was a member of the team that won the 2015 conviction on federal corruption charges of Sheldon Silver, a Democrat who had been the longtime speaker of the New York State Assembly.

• The special counsel’s office pointed out to us that the legal standards for Justice Department hiring "prohibit the use of political or ideological affiliations to assess applicants."

On that point, the Washington Post Fact Checker reported, in a June 2017 fact check on this issue:

Federal regulations prohibit the Justice Department from considering the political affiliation or political contributions
of career appointees, including those appointed to the Special Counsel’s Office. So the implication that Mueller is making
politically motivated hires is quite a stretch, as he is legally prohibited from considering their political affiliations.

Our rating

Duffy says Mueller "has brought in Democrat campaign donors at a very high level" on his team of lawyers.

Six of the 15 lawyers who have been publicly identified have not made campaign contributions to any political campaigns at the federal level. But among the lawyers who did make contributions, a total of $62,043 went to Democrats and $2,750 to Republicans, according to the special counsel’s office.

As for a Democratic bias in the investigation, Duffy doesn’t specifically make that charge. But Mueller himself is a longtime Republican. And he is prohibited from choosing lawyers based on political affiliations.

For a statement that is partially accurate, our rating is Half True.

 

[Mayhem]

Mueller reportedly has enough evidence to indict Michael Flynn and his son

http://www.businessinsider.com/mueller-indicting-michael-flynn-and-son-nbc-reports-2017-11

• Special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly has enough evidence to bring charges against Michael Flynn and his son related to their lobbying work last year that benefited the Turkish government.

• Flynn's firm was tasked with lobbying the US government to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania who Erdogan believes is responsible for planning last year's attempted coup.

• Mueller's mandate gives him permission to investigate "any matters" that arise out of his investigation into Russia's election interference.

• Legal experts have speculated that Mueller will try to squeeze Flynn to get him to cooperate in the probe.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly compiled enough evidence to bring charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his son, Michael Flynn Jr., according to NBC News.

The evidence relates to Flynn's lobbying work throughout the latter half of 2016 — while he was a top Trump campaign surrogate — for a businessman with ties to the Turkish government. Flynn did not register with the US Justice Department as a foreign agent until March 2017.

Mueller's mandate gives him permission to investigate "any matters" that arise out of his investigation into Russia's election interference and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow.

Trump waited nearly three weeks to fire Flynn after former acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned him that Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail over his conversations with former Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

Trump also ignored advice by President Barack Obama — who fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 — to steer clear of him entirely.

The president also asked former FBI director James Comey to "let go" of the FBI's investigation into Flynn's activities during a February meeting shortly after Flynn was forced to resign.

Flynn Jr. appears to have been closely associated with his father's work. In addition to co-founding and working for Flynn Intel Group, he joined Flynn during a trip to Moscow in December 2015, NBC News reported, during which Flynn was paid $34,000 to deliver a speech at an event celebrating the state-sponsored news agency RT.

A former business associate of Michael Flynn's told NBC News that Flynn Jr. had a prominent role in Flynn Intel Group's day-to-day operations and served as his father's chief of staff.

Mueller's additional focus on Flynn Jr. is likely an attempt to coerce his father's cooperation in the investigation, legal experts have said. This possibility may be especially significant given that Flynn declined a new request in September to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Jens David Ohlin, a criminal law expert and vice dean at Cornell Law School, told Business Insider in September that while it's difficult to evaluate "the factual or legal strength" of a possible case against Flynn Jr., it's clear that Mueller "is following a classic prosecutorial strategy: start along the perimeter and work your way to the center."

"The weakest link is usually the furthest away from the center of gravity," Ohlin added.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent Vice President Mike Pence a letter on November 18 requesting more information about the potential conflicts of interest posed by Flynn's lobbying work.

But Pence told Fox earlier this year that he first heard about Flynn's undisclosed lobbying work after reports surfaced in March that Flynn had registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department.

Flynn was paid $500,000 last year by the businessman, Ekim Alptekin, who is a member of a Turkish economic-relations board run by an appointee of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Alptekin is also the head of Inovo, a consulting firm.

Flynn's firm was tasked with fomenting dissent inside Turkey, and with lobbying the US government to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania, who Erdogan believes is responsible for planning last year's attempted coup.

Mueller's team also subpoenaed the lobbying firm SGR LLC in August after Flynn Intel Group hired the firm to ostensibly "promote a good business climate in Turkey," The Washington Post reported. Flynn's firm hired SGR as part of its work with Inovo.

Although Flynn's group's initial stated goal in hiring SGR was to foster a stronger business climate in Turkey, it was later forced to indicate that it brought SGR on to "raise concerns" to the US about Gulen.

Flynn raised eyebrows when he wrote an op-ed for The Hill, published on November 8, alleging Gulen helmed a "vast global network" that had "all the right markings to fit the description of a dangerous sleeper terror network."

Flynn's op-ed seemed out of place amid his work with Trump's campaign. His work for Inovo did not come to light until after he registered as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice in March — four months after his contract with Alptekin ended.

Alptekin paid the Flynn Intel Group half a million dollars to produce a documentary about the dangers of Gulen that he had hoped would be "a small, '60 Minutes' kind of a thing, where these conclusions are brought to the public," he told The Wall Street Journal in May. "We thought that might have a good effect."

David Enders, a former Vice News correspondent who was hired to work on the documentary, told The Wall Street Journal earlier this year that he was instructed to conceal Flynn Intel Group's involvement in producing the film.

Enders recalled the head of the firm, Bijan Kian, telling him at the time, "We don't want anyone to know the Flynn Intel Group has anything to do with this." Enders told The Journal that Kian asked him to hide the film equipment from the staff of the hotel in which they were doing interviews.

In his Foreign Agent Registration Act filing, Flynn said his firm had conducted research for Inovo that "focused on" Gulen. But it may have gone further than that: Flynn met with Turkish government ministers in September, where he discussed removing Gulen from US soil, according to former CIA Director James Woolsey, who was at the meeting.

Mueller is investigating Woolsey's account of that meeting, according to NBC.

Price Floyd, who was a spokesman for Flynn, strongly denied that such a discussion ever took place, telling Business Insider at the time that Flynn was contracted by Inovo partly "to gather information on Gulen and turn it over to legal authorities to take action."

The possibility of Flynn indictments suggests Mueller's Russia investigation isn't slowing down anytime soon. Last Monday, Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Manafort's former business associate, Rick Gates, pleaded not guilty after a grand jury indicted them on 12 counts.

 

[zeeblofowl_1969]

Spent 8 years trying to make Obama a criminal only to elect a actual one for yourselves......
Good Job.......

 

[xfire]

Spent 8 years trying to make Obama a criminal only to elect a actual one for yourselves......
Good Job.......

 

[sean miguel]

bump

 

[sean miguel]

7 more years.

2 more Supreme Court justices.

A republican party shaken up.

Record economic growth.

The military restored.

The left still frothing at the mouth and suicidal by that point.



In other words, America great again.

MAGA motherf'n bump

 

[Jack Davenport]

Trump will leave office with more criminal indictments than any other administration in history.

This is correct. By January of 2025 his administration and DOJ will have secured more indictments and convictions than any administration in history.

 

[Jack Davenport]

*loller bump*

 

[Johan]

Laugh while you can, it won't last...

 

[Jack Davenport]

Laugh while you can, it won't last...

Yes, all things must end, like Mueller's career :1orglaugh

 

[Johan]

Yep, in a few monthes, Mueller will enjoy a well deserved retirement and Trump will enjoy a well deserved prison cell

 

[Jack Davenport]

Yep, in a few monthes, Mueller will enjoy a well deserved retirement and Trump will enjoy a well deserved prison cell

Care to point to any evidence of Trump committing a crime? You know since it will be “ well deserved” and all.

The whispers out there right now are that Obama has “ lawyered up” during the past few days.

If any president is going to be charged with anything it will be Barry.

Let’s for the moment assume that your little fantasy of Trump being convicted of something in a criminal court is remotely possible ( I’m laughing out loud as I type this). A Vice President then President Mike Pence would pardon him and he goes and lives in one of his palatial estates for the rest of his life drinking nectar of the gods from Melania’s high heels and laughing at Macron’s old hag of a wife.

But I guess you are still entitled to your dreams.

 

[Johan]

You forgot that, before that, Dems will retake Senat (an maybe even the House). Pence's not stupid as Trump, he know how politics works, he would knowthat, if pardons Trump, he's in for non-stop democrat obstructionism.

And one thing is 100% guaranted : If Pence takes Trump's place in the White House, he won't be re-elected.
You see, there are two kinds of politicians : the ideologues and the messengers. Those who know how to write bills, party platforms, cabdidates, programs, etc. and those who know how to synthetise them in a single sentence, a campaign slogan or a bill name. People such as Mike Pence, Al Gore, Hillary, Joe Biden or Jogn McCain are ideologues. People like Obama, Trump, Bill Clinton or Sarah Palin are messengers.
In national elections messengers always win over ideologues (thhe only exception i can think of in modern history being Johnson winning over Goldwater, but you would agree that the circumstances of the 1964 election were unusual).

 

[Jack Davenport]

You forgot that, before that, Dems will retake Senat (an maybe even the House). Pence's not stupid as Trump, he know how politics works, he would knowthat, if pardons Trump, he's in for non-stop democrat obstructionism.

And one thing is 100% guaranted : If Pence takes Trump's place in the White House, he won't be re-elected.
You see, there are two kinds of politicians : the ideologues and the messengers. Those who know how to write bills, party platforms, cabdidates, programs, etc. and those who know how to synthetise them in a single sentence, a campaign slogan or a bill name. People such as Mike Pence, Al Gore, Hillary, Joe Biden or Jogn McCain are ideologues. People like Obama, Trump, Bill Clinton or Sarah Palin are messengers.
In national elections messengers always win over ideologues (thhe only exception i can think of in modern history being Johnson winning over Goldwater, but you would agree that the circumstances of the 1964 election were unusual).

Democrats must defend over 20 senate seats, Republicans, only 8.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

And after last night, no one wants Pelosi as Speaker again.

The GOP has enough footage from pouting Democrats from last night alone to run campaign ads until 2060.

Hahahaha