To conservatives, Trump seems to have always been the band-aid or wart remover that had to be ripped off quickly to achieve long-run healing.
So many more covert meetings documented by the IC are becoming part of the story. The Steele dossier is only one key, but the problem as always is how much classified intelligence can become part of the record until executive privilege gets invoked and perhaps someone gets fired as a delaying tactic.
The cost of keeping Trump in office is rising for the GOP but the tipping point is a ways away … only more stupidity like firing Mueller will hasten the exit.
Much like Bush Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Sessions will get caught lying and since he had to recuse himself, much to the displeasure of Trump because Sessions realized too late that he’d be betrayed, perhaps because he didn’t know about or decided to ignore the Russian hacking operations. With Kislyak off the table, ready to have a heart attack in the back of his car, Sessions has been hemmed in between Flynn’s probable continued plea bargaining and Manafort’s greater knowledge of the Russian-Ukraine cyber-hankypanky. And then there’s the money laundering.
Kislyak also reported having a conversation with Sessions in April at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where then-candidate Trump delivered his first major foreign policy address, according to the officials familiar with intelligence on Kislyak.
Sessions has said he does not remember any encounter with Kislyak at that event. In his June testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sessions said, “I do not recall any conversations with any Russian official at the Mayflower Hotel.”
Later in that hearing, Sessions said that “it’s conceivable that that occurred. I just don’t remember it.”
Kislyak was also a key figure in the departure of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced to leave that job after The Post revealed that he had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with Kislyak even while telling others in the Trump administration that he had not done so.
In that case, however, Flynn’s phone conversations with Kislyak were intercepted by U.S. intelligence, providing irrefutable evidence. The intelligence on Sessions, by contrast, is based on Kislyak’s accounts and not corroborated by other sources.
Trump and his allies have emphasized that there’s nothing inherently wrong with meeting with foreign officials, especially not ones representing a country with which Trump apparently believes he can make advantageous deals for America. And for a few of the meetings noted here, there are plenty of perfectly good explanations for the encounters themselves.
What, then, is the reason for not talking about any of them?
A source familiar with the committee's thinking says there was incentive among the committee to make the agreement with Manafort and Trump Jr. because there was a recognition that they were unlikely to appear in a public session.
The threat of subpoenas for the two is still very real, two sources familiar with the committee's thinking say.