Even without indictments, at least Laura Ingraham is now gone from broadcast radio, as if podcasts are a step up.
Stuff is churning however systematically for Mueller, but will Trump pardon turkeys.
The next indictment should be “Assange, who coordinated with Junior and with Stone and possibly Hannity during the campaign.”
Former deputy US attorney and MSNBC legal analyst Harry Litman said Friday that the new revelations about charges facing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange suggest that if Roger Stone is indicted, special counsel Robert Mueller will be “within a 15-foot putt” of President Trump.
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“We have several charges against people in Russia for hacking against Podesta, for mischief, possibly the Russia meeting. But it hasn’t been tied up domestically,” Litman said. “Stone, there’s really good reason to think, knew about the WikiLeaks hacking in advance, touted and crowed about it.” Litman also pointed out that the legendary political dirty trickster had been in “regular communication” with Trump throughout the 2016 presidential campaign.
“If Stone is actually charged it seems to me it puts Mueller within a 15-foot putt of the president himself,” he said, adding that the special counsel’s request for an “extremely short” continuance showed “that Mueller knows what move is afoot in the very near future.”
www.rawstory.com/...
More than three dozen sealed criminal indictments have been added to the federal court docket in Washington, D.C. since the start of 2018.
Sealed criminal court files are assigned a case number, but do not indicate the identity of the parties or the nature of the charges, so it is impossible for the public to discern what those sealed cases contain.
But several legal experts told ABC News the number of sealed cases awaiting action right now is unusual. Fourteen were added to the docket since late August alone, a review by ABC News has found, just as the midterm elections were drawing near and longstanding Justice Department policy precluded prosecutors from taking any public action that could appear to be aimed at influencing political outcomes.
abc7news.com/...
“At the hearing on September 14, 2018, the Court ordered the parties to submit a joint status report on November 16, 2018. The parties have been meeting since the hearing date,” the filing says.
Alright, so Manafort and Mueller have been meeting. That’s not really anything new, as Manafort’s cooperation was the key element of the plea deal he struck with the special counsel to avoid a second trial.
Then comes the next line: “The parties believe a brief extension of the status report date, until November 26, 2018, will allow them to provide the Court with a report that will be of greater assistance in the Court’s management of this matter.”
All Mueller needs is a week and a half to iron some things out that will be “of greater assistance” to the court. This is a very interesting development and legal experts are in agreement that something big is brewing.
Attorney and CNN legal analyst Ross Garber suggested that it “[s]eems like Mueller and Manafort’s lawyers expect something significant to happen in the next 2 weeks.”
lawandcrime.com/...
A federal judge on Thursday upheld an indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller against a Russian troll farm charged with using social media to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Judge Dabney Friedrich rejected Concord Management and Consulting’s request to dismiss the Mueller indictment, according to court documents. The Russian firm has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government and interfering in the 2016 presidential election.
Friedrich in part rejected the firm’s argument that the indictment should be tossed out because there is no U.S. law that prohibits interfering in an election.
The judge argued that the question is not whether underlying laws that pertain to foreign agents or political spending in elections were violated, but whether the company's actions were "deceptive and intended to frustrate the lawful government functions" of the Federal Election Commission, Department of Justice or Department of State.
“The difficulty for the government, however, is not identifying deceit — of which there is plenty — but connecting that deceit to the lawful government function of ‘administering federal requirements for disclosure,’ which the defendants allegedly conspired to impair,” Friedrich wrote in a 32 page opinion memorandum, which pointed to past legal precedents.
Scattered reports plus President Donald Trump’s clearly increasing agitation have led observers to believe that Mueller is readying a new batch of indictments.
Adding fuel to the fire, this week Mueller’s team sent a judge a statement about former Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates’ continued cooperation, adding that he was not ready for sentencing. Mueller’s lawyers also joined former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s attorneys in filing joint motions that confirm his cooperation as well.
In addition, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was reportedly spotted with his attorneys in Union Station, causing some to wonder if he was in town to meet with Mueller’s lawyers.
talkingpointsmemo.com/...
At least one thing went well today:
Fox News host Laura Ingraham, "the most-listened-to woman in America on political talk radio," is ending her daily, three-hour-long radio show and launching an "original series" for podcast network PodcastOne.
www.hollywoodreporter.com/...