Donald Trump is the President Mark IV (Read Mod Warning in OP)

swampgas

Of the three powers in the US system (the President, Congress and Justice) two are now compromised, leaving the DOJ as the only pillar preventing the whole of the US becoming a completely corrupt autocracy. If Trump and the GOP find a way to capture the DOJ, it sets a very dangerous precedent for the US, as there will no longer be effective checks and balances.

IMO if Mueller's investigation is successfully deflected and shut down, the long term implications for the US as a democracy are very scary indeed.

everlast75

Leroy42 wrote: »

How do you figure that?

Nixon went because the GOP turned on him and no longer willing to support him. Graham has indicated that the GOP would be perfectly happy for Trump to get rid of Sessions.

And at no point in this saga have they any shown any inclination to be after the truth. The only thing that will effect Trump is the economy and his ability to get votes. If the economy continues as it currently is going then the GOP will continue to stand behind him regardless of what happens.

amandstu wrote: »

Given the levels of outrageous behaviour already accepted by the GOP and his base why would this be a step to far?

Is the only leverage they have over him the promise of a pardon for himself after office if he resigns?(not sure about his family if it is NY State related)

I may be wrong, but I genuinely feel that the Reps are starting to smell blood in the water. The Dems are starting to stand up more too - opposing Kavanaugh far more vocally now. Trump is cornered like never before. You can almost sense the panic. Tweeting at 1:10am "RIGGED WITCH HUNT" does not strike me as a guy safe in the knowledge of his certainty.

Of course, you will always have the likes of Graham who will talk out of both sides of his mouth, but I think the reps will have less and less plausible deniability as more scandals come out. Reporters walked beside McConnell on his way out yesterday and he kept his mouth shut and said absolutely nothing! I have not seen that before.

I believe him being named as a co-conspirator was a watershed moment. Everyone knows its only going to get worse. I understand as much as anyone else who has watched it as closely as I have over the last 18 months the frustration that he should have been hauled out of there far sooner than now. I called him a "snake-oil salesman" from the get-go. There should have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back before now, but it will come.

I could be wrong, but I think it will, and soon, and everyone apart from the hardest supporters will dump him right in it. And if he decides to shut the Russia Investigation down, that won't save it. It might not cause revolt, but it also might.

Captain Obvious

I don't know if anyone saw Kellyann Conway being interviewed on Cuomo but it was a real revelation as to how the President and his supporters are thinking and panicking. It was hard to watch all the way through. Not a single question answered. Nothing but "what abouts" and "not illegal".

everlast75

Captain Obvious wrote: »

I don't know if anyone saw Kellyann Conway being interviewed on Cuomo but it was a real revelation as to how the President and his supporters are thinking and panicking. It was hard to watch all the way through. Not a single question answered. Nothing but "what abouts" and "not illegal".

Yep. And CNN influenced the election by releasing the access hollywood tapes. Unbelievable really.

And one other thing.

Not one anchor I have seen so far has been up to the challenge of dealing with her and other surrogates. Here is how you handle them

1) Never shout. You have lost if you do.
2) Every single sentence you utter needs to be backed up with a quote by the person you are interviewing and the date when they said it.
3) Do not let them state a lie and walk away from it.
4) When you catch them out in a contradiction, state it for the record and move on.

A lot of anchors make the mistake of having someone like her, or Paris Dennard, or Corey L, or Gulliani or SHS on and think "I'm going to show them what a real interview is" and every time they fail to adhere to any of the above.

Leroy42

I watched a bit of it, but yet again the likes of CNN etc are so easily manipulated by KAC. His 1st question was about the POTUS lying and KAC went on a speel about Russia collusion not being proven. He tried to bring it back but ler her away too easily.

This is pretty basic stuff. The evidence is so much that Trump is a liar then the interviewer should be hitting a home run everytime. It is very frustrating that the continue to let the interviewee lead the interview.

UsedToWait

swampgas wrote: »

IMO if Mueller's investigation is successfully deflected and shut down, the long term implications for the US as a democracy are very scary indeed.

Rachel Maddow pointed out last night that Mueller has handed over everything so far to other teams of prosecutors, except for Manafort.


This is in keeping with his brief:
1. Russian Interference / Collusion
2. any other crimes uncovered in the investigation


Mueller's core team is only dealing with the first part.


The co-defendants in the upcoming second case:
Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik.- Mueller has described in court filings his 'ties to a Russian intelligence service'.


Hopefully the judge in this case will sequester the jury where the defendant is already in jail for witness tampering.


I can't see Trump being able to shut this down without serious civil unrest at this stage.

demfad

The first real COLLUSION indictment is going to be a bazooka blow for Trump.
We finally heard the terms 'unindicted co-conspirator" and in Cohen's prosecution "candidate 1". We will be hearing a lot more of this from now on.

What is coming will shake the world: That the Kremlin succeeded installing a full Russian asset as President of the United States.

How did this come about?
Short answer: Imagine if in the midst of the coldest part of the cold war the US suddenly decided to completely drop all defenses extending ALL Russian intelligence, overt and covert access against and inside the US for twenty years.
A lot of damage right?


Add also Russian potential to corrupt wealthy individuals, banks etc. willing to look the other way as laundered money poisoned the system, willing to profit as active measures enriched disaster and fluctuation capitalists, hedge funds. Creating swarms of cockroach criminal businessmen, and businessmen criminals.
Establishing these men in power.

Now add the potential to push propaganda and manipulate society and electorates via disinformation and puppetry using mass media, mass social media, cyber operations. Potential that was fully tested and tweaked on Russia's own population by Surkov and his 'sovereign democracy' and latterly by Rykov via the social media operations.

I still fully believe when the indictments are done they will be well into the hundreds.
Remember also that Cambridge Analytica, Wikileaks and those bad bad boys of Brexit are still under Muellers direct remit. Vote Leave paid CAs sister company AIQ over half it's allowable £7 million Finance. See where that strand is going?

UsedToWait

^demfad, I know you haven't been posting as much lately, but you were on of the first posters on here to consistently have insight into this whole Putin operation from the start.


It's scary how much of it has turned out to be true, and it's horrifying, but fascinating, to watch the denouement unfolding.

Edit, hope you don't mind me quoting this post, from December 2016

demfad wrote: »

https://thinkprogress.org/russian-interference-in-elections-around-the-world-is-spreading-a6b1e3c78c8#.63n4svnl4
U.S intelligence agencies believe the Kremlin may have influenced the recent U.S presidential election by hacking the DNCs email system.
The same phenomenon is occuring in Europe with German and Italian leaders now having to fight off fake news and wikileaks hacks. In Italy little has been done to disguise the fact that anti Renzi and pro 5 star fake news was originating on Sputnik and other pro Russian propaganda sites.

In France, Juppe who was hot favourite to top Sarko and Fillon for the right nomination slumped in the final week after a fake news story linking him to the Muslim brotherhood from 2014 re-emerged embellished. The result was that in a major European nuclear power the presidential election will be between Fillon who is hugely pro Putin and social conservative and Marine Le Pen.

In the US there is evidence of a tsunami of pre Trump fake news facebook sites originating from the same town in Macedonia. Source

On Twitter non human and human Russian bots were significantly involved in trending popular stories and posters during the U.S. election. Key hashtags were retweeted by self deleting accounts until they were picked up by a high profile alt-right poster and then trended. The St Petersburg human troll factory were majorly involved also.
Source. These trolls were active during Brexit also.

That brings us to alt-right influence:
In Europe Putin has funded almost every ultra-right group on the continent including La Front Nationale to the tune of over €10 million. Since Marine Le Pen endorsed the Crimean plebiscite she has been in Moscow several times. These right wing groups set up 'election' organisations to validate the Crimean result. Farage has been offered a slow on RT (formerly Russia Today).

The money and influence behind Trumps campaign is Rebekah Mercer. Source: Kelly Anne Conway and particularly Steve Bannon are long time associates. Her Father Robert Mercer made his fortune using algorythms to make money on and for hedge funds. They were a big donor to Breitbart news. R Mercer sponsored Bannon and co to produce Clintons cash by a company in the same building as Breitbart. A Mercer company 'Cambridge Analytic' was the pollng company for Trumps campaign and crunched Facebooks habits of millions of users. Bannon is on the board of Cambridge Analytica. Farage is a long time frind and acquantance of Baonnon. Cambridge did the polling for the Leave.eu campaign. Raheem Kassam Farage's chief advisor was editor for Breitbart news London. He went for UKIPs leadership recently. Breitbart France is neing stup to help Marine Le Pen. No doubt Cambridge analytica will make an appearance there, as will the half truths, fake news and troll army that the Kremlin/Alt-right seem to employ.
The common ideology between Putin/Alt-right is proclaimed to be anti-globalisation but is really anti-liberalism. You see it in Putins/Russian Orthodox attacks on the LGBT community and women. The White house cabinet set up by Trump/Mercer/Bannon is similar.
The EU is the prize and it can only be taken down by targetting individual countries to leave.
Do you agree that this subversion of democratic election exists? What can the EU, governments, concerned citizens do to fight it?
This is not an attack on any ideology, rather the methods some ideologies are using to subvert elections.

Edit: Method of Russian twitter bots in US election and to a lesser extend Brexit.
http://heatst.com/world/how-russias-twitter-bots-and-trolls-work-with-donald-trump-campaign-accounts/

Gbear

swampgas wrote: »

Of the three powers in the US system (the President, Congress and Justice) two are now compromised, leaving the DOJ as the only pillar preventing the whole of the US becoming a completely corrupt autocracy. If Trump and the GOP find a way to capture the DOJ, it sets a very dangerous precedent for the US, as there will no longer be effective checks and balances.

IMO if Mueller's investigation is successfully deflected and shut down, the long term implications for the US as a democracy are very scary indeed.

Surely what this really means is that the checks and balances were never effective and have always run not on the basis of an effective system, but based on the actors involved being willing to behave in a manner you would expect of a public servant.

The institutions need huge revamping to address campaigning, voter suppression, gerrymandering, independence of the SCOTUS, obstructive actions like filibustering and most of all breaking up the duopoly.

Unfortunately, even the Democrats don't have any interest in addressing many of those because they benefit as well.

everlast75

demfad wrote: »

The first real COLLUSION indictment is going to be a bazooka blow for Trump.
We finally heard the terms 'unindicted co-conspirator" and in Cohen's prosecution "candidate 1". We will be hearing a lot more of this from now on.

What is coming will shake the world: That the Kremlin succeeded installing a full Russian asset as President of the United States.

How did this come about?
Short answer: Imagine if in the midst of the coldest part of the cold war the US suddenly decided to completely drop all defenses extending ALL Russian intelligence, overt and covert access against and inside the US for twenty years.
A lot of damage right?


Add also Russian potential to corrupt wealthy individuals, banks etc. willing to look the other way as laundered money poisoned the system, willing to profit as active measures enriched disaster and fluctuation capitalists, hedge funds. Creating swarms of cockroach criminal businessmen, and businessmen criminals.
Establishing these men in power.

Now add the potential to push propaganda and manipulate society and electorates via disinformation and puppetry using mass media, mass social media, cyber operations. Potential that was fully tested and tweaked on Russia's own population by Surkov and his 'sovereign democracy' and latterly by Rykov via the social media operations.

I still fully believe when the indictments are done they will be well into the hundreds.
Remember also that Cambridge Analytica, Wikileaks and those bad bad boys of Brexit are still under Muellers direct remit. Vote Leave paid CAs sister company AIQ over half it's allowable £7 million Finance. See where that strand is going?

So if all that is true, and it does sound plausible, what way will Manafort go?

He has 30 days to appeal the guilty on 8 charges plea.
But his trial in DC will start before then.
His lawyers thanked the jury for a fair trial, and said he was "exploring all options".
That trial in Virginia could be considered a dry run, and the prosecutors in DC can hone their evidence and nail him on all counts.
There is more evidence in the DC case too.
He is 69 years of age.
And remember, he does not appear to be stellar under pressure when being asked questions...

https://twitter.com/funder/status/895489484598280192

demfad

everlast75 wrote: »

So if all that is true, and it does sound plausible, what way will Manafort go?

He has 30 days to appeal the guilty on 8 charges plea.
But his trial in DC will start before then.
His lawyers thanked the jury for a fair trial, and said he was "exploring all options".
That trial in Virginia could be considered a dry run, and the prosecutors in DC can hone their evidence and nail him on all counts.
There is more evidence in the DC case too.
He is 69 years of age.
And remember, he does not appear to be stellar under pressure when being asked questions...

https://twitter.com/funder/status/895489484598280192

If Cohen was Trump's 'Consigliere' then in Trump/Russia Manafort is a 'Capo' under Trump.

Manafort will be convicted again. I actually think Trump will pardon him. Manaforts behaviour indicates he has been cast iron promised a pardon. Trump has privately revealed (apparently) that Manafort can hurt him over Russia, which is a massive understatement.
The legals around this is tricky. Ive read an opinion that Cohen's lawyer is offering Cohen's testominy to Muller (that Trump central to Russian collusion and KNEW IN ADVANCE/APROVED of DNC hack) because that would make a pardon illegal and Cohen's input more useful (he'd get more time off).
So if Cohen testifimony established Manafort and Trump as coconspirators then a pardon would be illegal as you cannot commit a crime via a pardon (this is one opinion I saw).
Mueller's manipulating of Helsinki (indicting Russian hackers a few days before thus pointing the the world spotlight on Trumps subservience to Putin) was strategic which encourages me that Trump is badly outmanoevred and will be ripped apart. Indicting those hackers early may also mean that he already has enough on Trump (aiding and abetting computer crimes) and doesn't need Cohen or Manafort.
I also have a feeling that they have Manafort on a lot lot more, and are leaving the Russian stuff for later after Trump is impotent.

20Cent

David Peckers spokesperson has said Mr Pecker does not appreciate the jokes about his name. Her name is Fanny Goblincock.

demfad

Gbear wrote: »

Surely what this really means is that the checks and balances were never effective and have always run not on the basis of an effective system, but based on the actors involved being willing to behave in a manner you would expect of a public servant.

The institutions need huge revamping to address campaigning, voter suppression, gerrymandering, independence of the SCOTUS, obstructive actions like filibustering and most of all breaking up the duopoly.

Unfortunately, even the Democrats don't have any interest in addressing many of those because they benefit as well.

The Greens and Independents should leverage their 100% support for Dems this Nov against breaking the duopoly. Greens were manipulated by Russian active members in the 2016 election. (In Fact Jill Stein sat at Putin's table with criminal Mike Flynn in 2015. She has claimed with Trump that Russian probe is with hunt )
To be honest, if any nation needed coalition now it is the USA. Corruption more difficult in coalition.

Pelvis

Allen Weisselberg, CFO of the Trump Organization, has been granted immunity according to the WSJ.

RobertKK

Looking bad for Trump, if the CFO of the Trump org has info that says the money was not Trump's money to pay off the sex workers.

everlast75

Pelvis wrote: »

Allen Weisselberg, CFO of the Trump Organization, has been granted immunity according to the WSJ.

This is massive!!!

Mueller is 4 months plus ahead of what we know. Can you imagine what he knows?

AW had to give up an awful lot to get immunity.

Trump is absolutely screwed now, and he will be paying a lot more than 130k for the pleasure.

Captain Obvious

I wouldn't be surprised to see Pence and Sessions come out against Trump with some other big players. Try and take the presidency.

jooksavage

everlast75 wrote: »

This is massive!!!

Mueller is 4 months plus ahead of what we know. Can you imagine what he knows?

AW had to give up an awful lot to get immunity.

Trump is absolutely screwed now, and he will be paying a lot more than 130k for the pleasure.

It feels like things are moving very very fast all of a sudden. This news is huge. I recall Tim O'Brien (who had a very high profile scrape in court with Trump) saying some months ago that while Cohens arrest was big, he'd know Trump was irredeemably screwed if Weisselberg was ever pulled in.

everlast75

RobertKK wrote: »

Looking bad for Trump, if the CFO of the Trump org has info that says the money was not Trump's money to pay off the sex workers.

I think that is the least of Trump's exposure re Cohen.

I mean, I know he has immunity in connection with the Cohen case, but they didn't give AW immunity to go after Cohen, but moreover to absolutely bury Trump.

everlast75

jooksavage wrote: »

It feels like things are moving very very fast all of a sudden. This news is huge. I recall Tim O'Brien (who had a very high profile scrape in court with Trump) saying some months ago that while Cohens arrest was big, he'd know Trump was irredeemably screwed if Weisselberg was ever pulled in.

Agreed.

I remember (but can't pin down when - time is relative when it comes to Trump's presidency - could be a month, could be 2 days) when AW was subpoenaed. At that point the writing was on the wall. Immunity means his evidence and cooperation is lethal to Trump IMHO

Leroy42

And to be granted immunity, the feds (or I guess Mueller in this case) have been on your back for a while and have plenty of info already. They don't just grant you immunity on the spot.

They would come down hard, then offer the deal in return for something, and then look for at least part of it before signing off.

So Mueller already knows that this guy has some charges to face, has shown him he basically has him to rights, and then dangle the deal in front. The drowning man grabs the lifevest.

Stallingrad

Please let all this momentum lead somewhere. Please.

I'm not a religious man but I'll be in the Phoenix park on Sunday praying!

UsedToWait

NYT reporting John McCain's family are gathering at his side - not long now.

Under no circumstances should this lying narcissist be allowed to even comment on his passing, never mind anywhere near the funeral.

His disgusting comments about how he prefers his war-heroes not to be captured are the mark of the man.

Itssoeasy

Very sad news on John McCain.you might not have agreed with him on lots of issues but it's fair to say that he at least showed class at times.

everlast75

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Very sad news on John McCain.you might not have agreed with him on lots of issues but it's fair to say that he aleast showed class at times.

100%. I disagreed with him on numerous issues, but I'll always remember him for this. Class you would never, ever see from Trump.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwRWpOEmMCQ

everlast75

Stallingrad wrote: »

Please let all this momentum lead somewhere. Please.

I'm not a religious man but I'll be in the Phoenix park on Sunday praying!

When DJT goes down in flames, I hereby offer to meet up and will buy all the regular contributors here a pint to discuss his downfall.

Leroy42

It is somewhat ironic that the only thing now protecting Trump is the Swamp that he said he was going to drain. If it wasn't for the GOP he would already be toast.

circadian

everlast75 wrote: »

When DJT goes down in flames, I hereby offer to meet up and will buy all the regular contributors here a pint to discuss his downfall.

You'd need a lock in to get enough time for that!

BabyCheeses

For a man who gets undying devotion from his followers those who work with him are quick to jump ship.

Itssoeasy

The CFO of the trump organisation being granted immunity is huge news. Up till now trump could use the "he only worked for me for a short period of time etc" he can't use this excuse with the CFO who has worked there for decades. He's not getting immunity to discuss holiday plans with them. And this may not bring his presidency down on it's own, but he was a member of the company which the manhattan DA(I think I said New York AG yesterday) is going to make life very hard for his family.