The announcements usually happen on Friday afternoons, so today might have a bit more attention because of the preliminary messages from those thinking that they will be indicted, including Roger Stone and his contacts.
But today may be filled with surprises, considering that if there are indictments today, they will be building off the February indictments of numerous Russians who trafficked in hacked emails, or at least the promise of them.
This is the next building block, those non-Russians who may have been involved on the other side of the proffered loot from hacking, as the Trumpian food chain is being climbed, more likely slowly, until the New Congress begins.
(February 2018)
“The conspiracy had as its object impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable the Defendants to interfere with U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” the indictment states. There are 16 defendants, including three organizations and 13 individuals, who are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing enforcement of election law as well as wire fraud and bank fraud.
The document is the most complete set of allegations offered by the government yet about one subset of Russian interference, going far beyond an intelligence-community report released in early 2017. At its peak, the alleged conspiracy had a budget of more than $1.25 million per month for activities in the U.S. and elsewhere.
The indictment also stands as an implicit rebuke to President Trump, who has repeatedly refused to acknowledge the Russian role in the election, saying many actors may have been involved. He has also rejected the idea that any interference might have aided him. His rejection puts him at odds with the entire American intelligence establishment, which has concluded that Russia interfered. On Tuesday, top officials, many of them Trump appointees, reaffirmed that stance and said Russia would also seek to meddle in the 2018 election.
- The allegations contained in this indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., do not reach the most politically contentious questions in Mueller’s view.
- They do not concern the hacking of emails from the Democratic National Committee, Clinton campaign officials, and the Republican National Committee.
- They don’t address questions of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia; indeed, this indictment states that Russians had some contact with Trump officials, but Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Friday that “there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant” in law-breaking. He added, “There is no allegation in the indictment that the charge conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.”
- Neither does this indictment touch on whether Trump obstructed justice.
www.theatlantic.com/...
Today, even without an indictment, would be a good day for the Mueller folks to have another meeting with Sam Clovis, if only because some heads might explode, since there’s the hint of an interesting overlap among the RNC and the Ukraine convention plank, Paul Manafort’s tenure as Trump campaign chair, Carter Page, and acting AG Hot-Tub Whitaker.
There has been a persistent disbelief among many observers throughout the Trump presidency that the underlying reality is as bad as it appears on the surface. But the scumminess of the arrangement is increasingly naked. Here, lying about in plain sight, is Trump’s response yesterday to a question from the conservative Daily Caller, which asked, “Could you tell us where your thinking is currently on the attorney general position? I know you’re happy with Matthew Whitaker, do you have any names? Chris Christie?”
In response Trump embarked on a rant about the Mueller investigation:
I knew [Whitaker] only as he pertained, you know, as he was with Jeff Sessions. And, um, you know, look, as far as I’m concerned this is an investigation that should have never been brought. It should have never been had.
It’s something that should have never been brought. It’s an illegal investigation. And you know, it’s very interesting because when you talk about not Senate confirmed, well, Mueller’s not Senate confirmed.
Trump is all but confessing that he hired Whitaker to stop the “illegal” Mueller probe.
Whitaker may not have the opportunity to squelch the Mueller probe. He has to clear two legal hurdles:
First, the constitutionality of his appointment is being challenged — it is not clear whether a president has the authority to install an acting attorney general without Senate confirmation.
Second, Whitaker might be required to recuse himself from the Russia investigation, since he knew and worked closely with Sam Clovis, a member of the campaign and a subject the of the investigation.
Another view is that we’re getting close to “____day night massacre” time:
But it's not just this development bringing tensions to a head. (Rachel Maddow) laid out an intricate case suggesting that we are very close to a dramatic new chapter in the investigation and in Trump's presidency.
"There is now reason to seriously question whether, in his new role as acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker is already feeding inside information about the investigation to the White House and to the president. In federal court right now, some unknown defendant, who is being treated with incredible deference by the federal court system, appears to have entered into a hard-fought endgame secret negotiation with Mueller's team as to whether or not he or she must, I guess, testify or hand over whatever Mueller is demanding," Maddow explained.
"We know that the president this week since he returned from his disastrous overseas trip, he has been having long meetings, hours-long daily meetings with his personal lawyers related to the Mueller investigation," she continued. "They say they have been specifically meeting on the question of collusion between his campaign and Russia. And in the middle of all of this, we have the president bragging that he now has access to inside information about what's going inside the investigation."
She concluded: "In other words: This is probably the moment we've been waiting for. This is what presidential historians like Michael Beschloss was probably barreling down the tracks at us. A second Saturday Night Massacre. Which of course, became the beginning of the end for President Nixon in Watergate. When a president tries to control the Justice Department in order to make an investigation that dooms him go away by corruptly influencing the course of the investigation, that's usually the end."
www.alternet.org/...