In this weekly update to the still ongoing Trump Russia Corruption Timeline we wait out the last few days of the countdown in the bowdlerized highly redacted version of the Mueller report is released to Congress and the public, it seems that the people that are most worried about what it may contain are those who work for the Trump administration and unlike Papadopoulos, Flynn, Roger Stone and Michael Cohen, may have actually had the temerity to tell Mueller the truth. That’s what former DOJ spokesman Matt Miller says:
“The obstruction piece is where I think you would see the least amount of redactions,” Miller said. “A number of White House staffers went in and gave voluntary interviews, they turned over documents voluntarily. The grand jury wasn’t used to gather any of that information, meaning there shouldn’t be any redactions.”
“The strange thing about this report, that people in the White House are worried that the president will be angry or retaliate against White House staffers that went and did these interview — the White House authorized the staff to do that,” Miller went on.
“If the president is mad now, it raises the alternative that what he expected staff to go in and do is lie for him,” he continued. “Because otherwise if they went in and told the truth, you can’t be angry about the information that they shared now.”
“It raises the question that what the president really expected them to do was go in, do this interview and lie on his behalf,” he repeated. “Obviously that’s an untenable position for a White House staffer that wants to have a career and wants to not go to jail at the end of this investigation.”
So the question is, is what they said severely damaging to Trump and then they’ll have to backpedal and try and rationalize and justify what they said, or will they just do a massive house cleaning, yet again, to purge the “disloyal” who actually said what was really going on — and how fast are they going to have to dance to tamp all this down?
WaPo opinion writer Paul Waldman echoes that sentiment about Trump being ready to blow up at his staff for not lying for him and their deep-seated hopes that Bill Barr will rescue them.
“At this point, [Trump aides] wait for Attorney General Barr to save them,” Waldman wrote, “and he well might, because by now there’s almost no question that the redactions Barr makes will be designed to minimize the political damage to Trump.”
Given that Barr got his job after writing an unsolicited 19-page memo for the White House trashing Mueller’s investigation, released a four-page summary of the special counsel’s report that was publicly rebuked by members of Mueller’s tight-lipped teamand told Congress that he believes the Obama DOJ may have been “spying” on the Trump campaign, the likelihood of him redacting damaging information is high, the writer mused.
“The Trump staffers worried that their unwillingness to perjure themselves might cost them their jobs don’t exactly have nothing at all to worry about; we won’t know for sure until the redacted report is released,” Waldman concluded. “But they can at least take comfort in the knowledge that every attempt is being made to ensure that as little as possible of the damaging information in the Mueller report ever sees the light of day.”
It is telling that they’re more worried about potentially losing their White House jobs than they are worried about the American public discovering what they may have done for Trump and what Trump may have done to the American people.
In the area of Barr giving them a great CYA — they may be in luck as some former FBI counter-intel Chief Frank Figliuzzi believes as much as 50-70% of the original Mueller report may ultimately be redacted.
“We should be looking back at [the attorney general’s] statements that give us a clue as to what we’re in for,” Figliuzzi explained during an MSNBC panel discussion. “He has used the phrase, this first pass in reference to what he is going to first give Congress. That implies this will not be a good faith first effort. He is prepped for a kind of battle of back and forth negotiations.”
“Let’s look for what percentage of the so-called 400-page report has actual redactions through it,” he added. “Experts have been saying look for anywhere from 50% to 70% to be redacted.”
This means that this upcoming Thursday release of the report is likely to be disappointing on all sides. The Congress and the public are likely to have plenty of unanswered questions, probably even more than we have now and Trump and Devin Nunes will likely hype of their mad Jihad against the Obama DOJ and FBI for starting the inquiry in the first place, even though there was absolutely good reason to do so.
According to a report from Politico, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is making plans to meet behind the scenes with newly appointed Attorney General Bill Barr to set the stage for launching investigations into Justice Department officials who took part into the inquiry into President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The report states Democrats are furious with the GOP lawmaker who ran interference for the president when Republicans controlled the House.
According to the report, “Nunes’ accusations of misconduct are aimed at a slew of former FBI and Justice Department officials, who he alleges committed crimes in their pursuit of allegations that President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russians to influence the election.”
Meanwhile Democrats are not sitting back, they’ve already voted to allow Chairman Nadler to subpoena the full unredacted report if necessary, are continuing to pursue Trump’s tax returns as well as issuing subpoena’s to his financial institutions and advisers, and also starting an inquiry into stories that Trump dangled a pardon for the CBP Commissioner if he would violate asylum laws and reject and immediately deport all refugees who delivered themselves at the border.
All of this tells me that Thursday is going to be big hum dinger.
The daily details for this past week are as follows:
April 10th —
April 11th —
April 12th —
April 13th —
April 14th —
April 15th —
-
NYTimes reports that people close to Trump have told them that he brought up the proposal to send refugees to sanctuary cities as part of an effort to distract from the release of the redacted Mueller report this week, which is now scheduled for Thursday (4/18).
-
WSJ reports that the the Trump admin is planning to begin threatening countries such as Chad, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Eritrea who have citizens who tend to overstay their visas by making those visa harder to obtain or shortening their length. [Somehow I don't think those are the worse offenders since the DHS report indicates that countries with the highest overstay rates(over 1.0%) for business and vacations are Germany, Chile, Brunei, Lithuania, Greece, Hungary, Spain and Portugal, top overstays rates (over 12.0%) for air and sea visitors excluding Mexico and Canada are from Bhutan, Burking Faso, Barundi, Cabo Verde, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Liberia, Soloman Islands, and South Sudan.]
-
House Dems request WH Docs related to the Sanctuary City refugee plan.
-
LA Black Church Arsonist charged with Hate Crimes. [But not domestic terrorism because that isn’t a crime, yet .]
-
Dem ready for a legal fight over Trump’s tax returns.
-
The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris catches fire, reports are that the cause was accidental.
-
Trump tells his personal accountant firm Mazars USA to ignore subpeonas from Dems for his financial records and threatens to sue them if they comply.
-
Schiff and Nunes both seek a Counter-Intel briefing on the Mueller investigation— which shouldn’t be redacted.
-
Trump predicts Notre Dame will “Burn to the ground" but it doesn't, it mostly loses it's roof. He also says the Firemen need to “hurry up” — which I think they know already.
-
House Republicans object to Dems probing state level voting rights issues.
-
An FBI affidavit indicates the government is not certain if Assange’s hacking attempts with Manning were successful.
-
Ana Navarro slams Trump for his bigoted attacks on Rep. Omar exploiting 9/11 “For his own gain.” So does Jeffrey Toobin: “He’s always after people of color.”
-
Trump says he “doesn’t mind” if Omar gets death threats, attacking her is a “political winner.”
-
Jerome Corsi submits another bonkers court filing which accuses Roger Stone of violating the Judge’s gag order.
-
Rep. Cummings issues his subpoena to Trump’s accountant, that Trump already told him to ignore.
-
WH is preparing a 140 Page rebuttal to the Mueller report which supposedly already “exonerated” Trump.
-
MSNBC’s Frank Figliuzzi says that Barr will redact 50-70% of Mueller's report.
-
House Dems on Intelligence and oversight subpeona financial records from Deutsche Bank (whom Trump owes about $300 Million) as well as Citigroup, JPMorgan, Chase, BofA and also Mazars USA.
-
Just Security notes that Bill Barr previously misled Congress with a “summary” report about the OLC's decision making process on the arrest of Manuel Noriega in 1989 which omitted that they had determined that the arrest violated UN rules.
April 16th —
April 17th —