Jump to content

The Robert Mueller Investigation


Hugo Stiglitz

Recommended Posts

16 minutes ago, Goredho said:

Thanks for the advice, but still would like any meta article covering the big picture suggested by recent events from a mainstream news source if someone has one.  

We may just not quite be there yet from a MSM perspective?  For all the calls of TDS from Shaggy/Surly’s conservative denizens, this thread has been pretty solid at forecasting what’s coming down the pipe.

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2017/politics/russia-investigations/#/investigations/specialCounsel/all

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, SquishMitten said:

So if Trump's team is telling the truth about their answer on that deal... that could mean Mueller used Trump's answers against Cohen to prove he had lied to Congress, thus forcing him to accept the most recent plea deal. Which then results in Cohen being even more cooperative in the case. So, it's quite possible that Trump's "honest" answer may be equally as damaging in the big picture. 

Perhaps we need to review Cohen’s situation.  

He flipped hard on Trump long ago.  

No one forced him into a plea deal.  He came to Mueller looking for one to avoid the more serious charges Mueller was going to hit him with.  

Mueller likely waited until Trump answered the questions first so there wouldn’t be any complications with Cohen’s plea agreement. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Chad Fuck said:

I realize that, but they do have a pretty good running summary of everything.

Yeah, I have a feeling a lot of what’s being talked about here, today, will show up as a cluster of events on that timeline soon but nothing there yet about recent events with Manafort, the alderman raid, douchebank, etc...  Just Trump submits answers and Cohen pleads guilty.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Goredho said:

Yeah, I have a feeling a lot of what’s being talked about here, today, will show up as a cluster of events on that timeline soon but nothing there yet about recent events with Manafort, the alderman raid, douchebank, etc...  Just Trump submits answers and Cohen pleads guilty.

nobody outside of twitter has really put the story together. 

it's a massive failure on the part of news media, frankly. but that's to be expected. hell, even the daily mail, which is normally pretty good at aggregating news items has nothing at present.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, hayden_horn said:

nobody outside of twitter has really put the story together. 

it's a massive failure on the part of news media, frankly. but that's to be expected. hell, even the daily mail, which is normally pretty good at aggregating news items has nothing at present.

The problem is there are multiple storylines and conspiracies going on at the same time that aren’t necessarily connected.

You have Cohen/Sater/Trump Tower

You have Stone/Wikileaks/Assange 

You have Manafort/Deripaska/Putin back channel

You have Torshin/Don Jr/NRA/Butina

You have the Trump Tower conspiracy meeting

You have Internet Research Agency/Cambridge Analytica/Facebook 

You have Papadopoulus/Misfund

You have Flynn/Peter Smith/Kislyack 

I could keep going...

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The problem is there are multiple storylines and conspiracies going on at the same time that aren’t necessarily connected.

You have Cohen/Sater/Trump Tower

You have Stone/Wikileaks/Assange 

You have Manafort/Deripaska/Putin back channel

You have Torshin/Don Jr/NRA/Butina

You have the Trump Tower conspiracy meeting

You have Internet Research Agency/Cambridge Analytica/Facebook 

You have Papadopoulus/Misfund

You have Flynn/Peter Smith/Kislyack 

I could keep going...

but all these are connected.

don't forget deutsche bank

or the alderman law firm getting overrun by the feds today.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

but all these are connected.

don't forget deutsche bank

or the alderman law firm getting overrun by the feds today.

There’s plenty more.  The point is the thing is so fucking enormous, no MSM outlet could do the story justice in a reasonable amount of time and expect the average person to absorb the implications. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, ChiTownDoc said:

They say only the good die young...I know several old out of shape pieces of shit that refuse to kill over...so?

But I've got a war chest full of the world's best bourbon that I'm going to tear into the minute this asshole dies.  As I've said before, any Surly comrades are invited over.

I had to quit drinking, but I went up to Wisconsin last weekend to buy a couple of $150 fireworks to (metaphorically) take the place of the bottles of Champagne I would otherwise be chilling in anticipation. 

If I'm in town at the time, I may take you up on your offer and bring along a Red, White, and Bluetiful to light off... 

Edited by Prepuce of Doom
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Hugo Stiglitz said:

There’s plenty more.  The point is the thing is so fucking enormous, no MSM outlet could do the story justice in a reasonable amount of time and expect the average person to absorb the implications. 

hell, i think it would be interesting to see an analysis about only today's events. i think that's digestible. the cohen plea, how it could be connected to the alderman law firm who handled real estate transactions until midyear, and the DB raid, for russian (et al) money laundering, and how that could affect all of this, because DB was the only conduit through which trump received money. all of this can be directly tied to the moscow trump tower. then you have the quid pro quo things that you could point out with the wikileaks, assange, etc. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The problem is there are multiple storylines and conspiracies going on at the same time that aren’t necessarily connected.

You have Cohen/Sater/Trump Tower

You have Stone/Wikileaks/Assange 

You have Manafort/Deripaska/Putin back channel

You have Torshin/Don Jr/NRA/Butina

You have the Trump Tower conspiracy meeting

You have Internet Research Agency/Cambridge Analytica/Facebook 

You have Papadopoulus/Misfund

You have Flynn/Peter Smith/Kislyack 

I could keep going...

2nrqdr.jpg

Your list brings back to mind Brisket’s post about how difficult its going to be for a historian to capture everything that’s gone on with the trump presidency.  Your list is just the criminal fraction of the chaos, dysfunction and discord surrounding it.

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Goredho said:

2nrqdr.jpg

Your list brings back to mind Brisket’s post about how difficult its going to be for a historian to capture everything that’s gone on with the trump presidency.  Your list is just the criminal fraction of the chaos, dysfunction and discord surrounding it.

It's also actually part of the genius about being part of a complex, top-to-bottom, multi-multi-party criminal conspiracy.  It makes the story very hard to tell in a linear fashion.  It starts to look like a Mexican telenovela: "Now this is important because he used to be married to her twin sister, but it wasn't really him, it was his twin, who murdered her father, but was never charged, but the first twin (not the murderer) was also sleeping with her mother, and got her pregnant, so her young half-brother is also the son of the man marrying her sister and the nephew of the man who murdered her father.  And the twins also have a long-lost sister who nobody knows is their sister, and she is her best friend, but she's only doing that to get closer to control of the family coconut farm...."  Most people glaze over in the first 10 seconds.  So, they don't catch the full and hideous criminality of the whole enterprise.

Also, I needed to lose weight.  So I went on a diet of eating only Mueller's nothingburgers.  I now look like this guy:

fat-guy-on-scooter.jpg

Edited by Brisketexan
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

It's also actually part of the genius about being part of a complex, top-to-bottom, multi-multi-party criminal conspiracy.  It makes the story very hard to tell in a linear fashion.  It starts to look like a Mexican telenovela: "Now this is important because he used to be married to her twin sister, but it wasn't really him, it was his twin, who murdered her father, but was never charged, but the first twin (not the murderer) was also sleeping with her mother, and got her pregnant, so her young half-brother is also the son of the man marrying her sister and the nephew of the man who murdered her father.  And the twins also have a long-lost sister who nobody knows is their sister, and she is her best friend, but she's only doing that to get closer to control of the family coconut farm...."  Most people glaze over in the first 10 seconds.  So, they don't catch the full and hideous criminality of the whole enterprise.

The best job I’ve seen so far trying to tell the whole story is the Active Measures documentary and it was missing stuff like the NRA angle. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Tuco said:

 


Manafort is proper fucked, and can still deal to improve his situation. I think Team Trump still has every reason to be concerned about Manafort.

 

Manafort put a lot of his eggs in the Trump Pardon basket.  Trump may not even be in position to pardon dipshit once all this hits and finally gets to court.  So I'd agree with you...if Manafort had a brain.  He doesn't.  His own kids think he's a dumb piece of shit.  He will go down with the ship.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Gil Bang said:
  • Nov. 29, 2018
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  
    •  

President Trump’s recollection of discussions about building a Trump Tower in Moscow aligned with those of his longtime fixer Michael D. Cohen, the president’s lawyers said on Thursday after Mr. Cohen admitted in court that he had pursued the project as Mr. Trump secured the Republican nomination for president.

The president knew about the deal and discussed it with Mr. Cohen before it fell apart, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said. Mr. Trump detailed those conversations last week in written responses to investigators for the special counsel investigating Russia’s 2016 election interference, Robert S. Mueller III. Prosecutors had sought to question Mr. Trump for months and eventually agreed to accept written answers for some queries.

“The president said there was a proposal, it was discussed with Cohen, there was a nonbinding letter of intent and it didn’t go beyond that,” said one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Mr. Cohen admitted in court on Thursday that he had lied to congressional investigators about the length of the negotiations over the Trump Tower Moscow project and the extent of Mr. Trump’s involvement. He said that he discussed the deal with Mr. Trump several times and that Mr. Cohen continued to work on a potential deal until at least June 2016, court documents showed — months later than Mr. Cohen had told Congress that the deal fell apart.

ADVERTISEMENT

Mr. Giuliani said that Mr. Mueller’s office did not ask the president about the timing of his discussions with Mr. Cohen about the project.

The fact that Mr. Cohen’s admission in a deal with prosecutors came so soon after Mr. Trump returned his responses to Mr. Mueller’s questions raised concerns among the president’s legal team that Mr. Mueller was laying a perjury trap — waiting for the president to explain his understanding of events before presenting evidence to the contrary to show that he lied, according to people close to the president’s legal team.

 

Explore the issues from both sides of the aisle.

Subscribe to The Times
 
 

Mr. Giuliani said that the president and the Trump Organization, the umbrella company for his family’s businesses, have been forthcoming with Mr. Mueller’s investigators for months about the deal. The company, he added, voluntarily provided investigators with documents related to the Moscow deal.

 

“We have provided them with every document about this from the beginning — that’s the only reason they know about it,” Mr. Giuliani said.

ADVERTISEMENT

Mr. Giuliani declined to provide the wording of Mr. Mueller’s questions about the deal or Mr. Trump’s answers. Mr. Mueller’s investigators told Mr. Trump’s lawyers earlier this year that they had several questions for the president about the deal.

“What interaction and communication did you have with Michael Cohen, Felix Sater and others, including foreign nationals, regarding real estate developments in Russia during the period of the campaign?” the investigators wanted to ask the president, according to notes Mr. Trump’s lawyers took during a meeting with Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors.

Though his lawyers said his statements to Mr. Mueller lined up with Mr. Cohen’s, the president attacked Mr. Cohen’s credibility on Thursday. The president called Mr. Cohen “weak” and accused him of lying to investigators to reduce his prison sentence.

“So he’s lying very simply in order to get a reduced sentence, O.K.?” Mr. Trump said while leaving the White House for the Group of 20 meeting in Buenos Aires.

Mr. Giuliani sought to explain why Mr. Trump would attack Mr. Cohen even if they had the same understanding of the facts.

“He has so many different versions of the same stories, so by definition he is a liar and we can’t trust him,” Mr. Giuliani said of Mr. Cohen. “He has lied, so how can we believe him?”

He added: “Cohen has just told us he’s a liar. Given the fact that he’s a liar, I can’t tell you what he’s lying about.”

 

 
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
 

Let me get this straight.

Rudy: We gave the same answers to the Special Counsel as Cohen.

Trump: Cohen is lying.

QED: Trump lied to the Special Counsel?

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, ChiTownDoc said:

Manafort put a lot of his eggs in the Trump Pardon basket.  Trump may not even be in position to pardon dipshit once all this hits and finally gets to court.  So I'd agree with you...if Manafort had a brain.  He doesn't.  His own kids think he's a dumb piece of shit.  He will go down with the ship.  

Manafort was always fucked.  He is a career criminal mastermind that managed to get away with everything up until now so it makes sense he would swing for the fences with the pardon path.  It also helps that his co-conspirator is the President of the United States.

 His biggest mistake was not fleeing the country when he had the chance. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, kevwun said:

All he has to do it delay it until January.

There’s an argument to be made that Comey is setting a bad precedent here by refusing a congressional subpoena.  He’s creating a path for Trump folks to refuse a congressional subpoena when the democrats take over. 

Once again, Comey manages to inadvertently fuck things up.

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

He wants public testimony.  The majority wants it closed to the public so their shenanigans aren't broadcast to the world.  I don't have a problem with him fighting it because the Republicans just want to be able to leak carefully selected parts of his testimony to score political points.

Edited by kevwun
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Hugo Stiglitz said:

There’s an argument to be made that Comey is setting a bad precedent here for refusing a congressional subpoena.  He’s creating a path for Trump folks to refuse a congressional subpoena when the democrats take over. 

Once again, Comey manages to inadvertently fuck things up.

I think it does the opposite. He is lobbying for open and public hearings, not this closed-door shit they're trying to pull off now. 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

There’s an argument to be made that Comey is setting a bad precedent here by refusing a congressional subpoena.  He’s creating a path for Trump folks to refuse a congressional subpoena when the democrats take over. 

 Once again, Comey manages to inadvertently fuck things up.

he's not refusing anything.  he wants a ruling on a legal issue.  so he's asking the right court to rule on that legal issue.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's also actually part of the genius about being part of a complex, top-to-bottom, multi-multi-party criminal conspiracy.  It makes the story very hard to tell in a linear fashion.  It starts to look like a Mexican telenovela: "Now this is important because he used to be married to her twin sister, but it wasn't really him, it was his twin, who murdered her father, but was never charged, but the first twin (not the murderer) was also sleeping with her mother, and got her pregnant, so her young half-brother is also the son of the man marrying her sister and the nephew of the man who murdered her father.  And the twins also have a long-lost sister who nobody knows is their sister, and she is her best friend, but she's only doing that to get closer to control of the family coconut farm...."

Next, on: “El Gordo Malo y Sus Mujeres”
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the whole thing is somewhat digestible if you look at it in terms of fundamental principles.

1. Trump is greedy and amoral

2. Putin controls lots of money

It was always about the money, because that's the key to Trump. The Russians found a number of ways to compromise him by dangling dollars in front of him, and also pursued a number of avenues that weren't originally aimed at Trump, and he went after the bait every single time, either personally or through his equally amoral minions. Some of his minions had side gigs - Manafort, Flynn, Kushner - but the dimmer bulbs, like Cohen, just carried out the boss's orders to the best of their limited ability. There are many threads, but there's one thing tying all of them together.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, Bat Guano said:

I think the whole thing is somewhat digestible if you look at it in terms of fundamental principles.

1. Trump is greedy and amoral

2. Putin controls lots of money

It was always about the money, because that's the key to Trump. The Russians found a number of ways to compromise him by dangling dollars in front of him, and also pursued a number of avenues that weren't originally aimed at Trump, and he went after the bait every single time, either personally or through his equally amoral minions. Some of his minions had side gigs - Manafort, Flynn, Kushner - but the dimmer bulbs, like Cohen, just carried out the boss's orders to the best of their limited ability. There are many threads, but there's one thing tying all of them together.

I get what you are saying, but to be as woke as most in this thread are you have to have a very high level of investment in this topic. You have to be tuned in to information as it streams in from multiple sources and platforms.  Only then can you have a big picture view of how all the events big and small coalesce into what looks like is a conspiracy of massive scale and effect.

Rightly or wrongly, most Americans won’t have that level of interest or commitment to keep abreast of all the developments.  It would be nice if there was an aggregate view of events, the relationships between them and the implications of it all that was updated in a timely fashion and thus approachable by the average person.

Edited by Goredho
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, hayden_horn said:

nobody outside of twitter has really put the story together. 

it's a massive failure on the part of news media, frankly. but that's to be expected. hell, even the daily mail, which is normally pretty good at aggregating news items has nothing at present.

Media didn't fail.  It served it's masters as intended.  Unfortunately the media's and American peoples' interest diverged some time ago - which eventually gave buoyancy to the "MSM" narrative.  Enter corporate and/or foreign owned media and the populace eventually consumes the beholdings of distant autocrats.  

We  Americans collectively are overdue for a cultural enema.  I'm just afraid to see what'll come out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, Bat Guano said:

I think the whole thing is somewhat digestible if you look at it in terms of fundamental principles.

1. Trump is greedy and amoral

2. Putin controls lots of money

It was always about the money, because that's the key to Trump. The Russians found a number of ways to compromise him by dangling dollars in front of him, and also pursued a number of avenues that weren't originally aimed at Trump, and he went after the bait every single time, either personally or through his equally amoral minions. Some of his minions had side gigs - Manafort, Flynn, Kushner - but the dimmer bulbs, like Cohen, just carried out the boss's orders to the best of their limited ability. There are many threads, but there's one thing tying all of them together.

Agree - it was always about the filthy lucre. Which is now not so filthy b/c of the Prosperity Gospel!!?!!!!11!!

I think this will come down to a money laundering charge. Kind of like how Al Capone went down.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

By Carol E. Lee, Kasie Hunt, Ken Dilanian and Garrett Haake

WASHINGTON — Senate committees investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election are combing through witness testimony for possible misleading or untruthful statements, according to three people familiar with the effort.

The review of testimony to Senate intelligence and judiciary committees comes as President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty Thursday to a charge brought by special counsel Robert Mueller that he lied to Congress to cover up efforts during the presidential campaign to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

 
 

The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, said Thursday that the committee had made multiple criminal referrals to Mueller, but added "we're not going to talk about any individuals." 

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the intelligence committee "made referrals where appropriate. I am very glad the special counsel is pursuing those who mislead members of congress."

The committee's chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., had a stern warning Thursday for witnesses appearing before Congress.

"This is a reason people shouldn't lie when they're in front of a congressional investigation," Burr said.

 

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who serves on the judiciary committee, said, "I wish we lived in a world where people always told the truth but that's not necessarily the case." He said he didn't want to "speculate" about who specifically may have been untruthful before the committee.

 

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said it was "possible" that other witnesses had lied. "I think there probably will be some efforts to reinterview some people as a result of what happened today."

Some Democrats on the Senate intelligence and judiciary committees, including Chris Coons of Delaware and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, have said publicly that they suspect that some witnesses, including the oldest president's son, may have given misleading or false statements in testimony.

"My impression from watching Donald Trump Jr. in that meeting is that he evaded and contradicted himself in many of his answers," Blumenthal said on the day the transcript was released. "I have no confidence that he has told the whole truth."

Trump Jr.'s lawyer has denied the allegation.

 

Image:Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle arrive ahead of President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump for the lighting of the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony at the Ellipse near the White House on Nov. 28, 2018.Andrew Harnik / AP

At least one witness, longtime Trump associate Roger Stone, has amended his original testimony.

 

More than 200 witnesses have appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee alone as it seeks to learn about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

 
 
 

Recommended

1x1.png
 
 

f_mo_lon_steer_181128.focal-60x60.jpg

1x1.png
 
 

1074072220.focal-60x60.jpg

The special counsel does have access to a select number of transcripts from witness interviews conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee, though Warner would not specify which ones or how many.

Mueller's office reviewed the transcript of Cohen's testimony with the consent of Cohen's lawyer, according to a Senate Intelligence Committee official familiar with the process.

Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee blocked a Democratic effort in September to make all of its interview materials available to the special counsel. But most of those interview transcripts will be released publicly in a redacted state as early as December.

 

Democrats on the committee tell NBC News that one of the committee's first acts in the new Congress will be to send the special counsel all unredacted transcripts of interviews the panel conducted in 2017 and 2018.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that his panel intends in the new Congress to look at "witnesses we think were untruthful before our committee and committed perjury." He specifically cited Stone as one witness for whom he has "serious questions about whether he committed perjury."

Cohen's guilty plea to a single count of making false statements to Congress about discussions, including with Trump, about a building project in Moscow was the latest twist in a special counsel investigation that has resulted in charges against 33 people.

Federal prosecutors said Cohen lied in order to minimize links between Trump and a possible Trump Tower in Moscow and to obscure the timing of the discussions about it.

 

Trump responded by accusing Cohen of "lying about a project that everybody knew about."

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

41 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Maybe Ken Burns could take a shot at it. I'd watch the hell out of that.

That was my first thought, but then after running through a list of the characters, Trumps, Stone, Corsi, Page, Spicer, The Mooch, Hannity, Dobbs, Sessions, Cohen, papadopoulos, etc,...  seems like Mike Judge would be the best person to produce it. 

  • Like 4
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, Ten Bears said:

The resident trumptards sure are quiet these last few days.

DIdn’t Hayden IP ban someone for having multiple handles? Its not out of the realm of possibility that one or two guys are responsible for the multiple trollling handles on this forum and the previous one. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

That was my first thought, but then after running through a list of the characters, Trumps, Stone, Corsi, Page, Spicer, The Mooch, Hannity, Dobbs, Sessions, Cohen, papadopoulos, etc,...  seems like Mike Judge would be the best person to produce it

Or the Coens.

Or Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

It's such a fertile field to plow.  

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

That was my first thought, but then after running through a list of the characters, Trumps, Stone, Corsi, Page, Spicer, The Mooch, Hannity, Dobbs, Sessions, Cohen, papadopoulos, etc,...  seems like Mike Judge would be the best person to produce it. 

e8ff2253-3da4-41ba-86bd-1623138b28b5_tex

  • Like 3
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites



×
×
  • Create New...