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skates like Eck
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2007
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Happy Birthday, Bob Mueller!
August 7, 1944
August 7, 1944
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On her Saturday night show, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro introduced a bonkers new theory about special prosecutor Bob Mueller being a criminal who took pay-offs from a Russian oligarch and who will soon need his own attorney.
“Bob, I really think it’s time to give up your phony investigation and get yourself your own criminal defense attorney,” Pirro said.
Pirro’s monologue began with her normal talking points, such as claiming that the Mueller investigation, which has already led to a bevy of criminal charges against people close to Trump, was a fraud.
“Are you using the Christopher Steele fake dossier as the basis of your investigation?” Pirro asked, apparently forgetting about the emails in which Donald Trump Jr. discussed getting “dirt” on Hillary Clinton through a Kremlin spy.
It was unclear what Pirro was talking about during the bonkers rant.
There are crazy theories about everything and anything. Those are just idiots; this doesn't say anything about the Republicans in general. Should you pay attention to every weirdo on the world?
White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II has “cooperated extensively” with special counsel Robert Mueller, The New York Times reported Saturday.
McGahn has spent over 30 hours in voluntary interviews with special counsel investigators over the last nine months.
The White House counsel reportedly shared information that investigators would not have otherwise learned.
“For a lawyer to share so much with investigators scrutinizing his client is unusual,” The Times explained. “Lawyers are rarely so open with investigators, not only because they are advocating on behalf of their clients but also because their conversations with clients are potentially shielded by attorney-client privilege, and in the case of presidents, executive privilege.”
What Trump is doing by yanking their security clearances or threatening to do so isn’t punishing them. He’s cutting them loose, and it’s going to backfire on him.
Rachel Maddow did a brilliant job on her show on Thursday night showing several of those on Trump’s enemies list testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee in May of 2017. She was making another point, that pulling their security clearances will end the ability of any of Trump’s enemies to consult their personal papers and notes from their time in government service when preparing to give testimony before either congress or Mueller’s grand jury because their notes and papers contain secrets.
But the tape of those hearings also showed something else. It showed that the “secrets” Brennan, and Comey, and Yates and Clapper and the rest of them learned were actually knowledge of crimes that were committed by the Trump campaign. They were secrets only because of their official positions and security clearances. But the knowledge they had was real.
Lawyers for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort sought a plea deal from special counsel Robert Mueller to avoid trial in D.C. in September — but the talks reportedly “broke down.”
Sources close to the talks told the Wall Street Journal that the talks stalled after unspecified issues were raised by Mueller.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is in plea deal talks with special counsel Robert Mueller as his second trial looms.
The Washington Post reported that two people close to the discussions said the talks “indicate a possible shift in strategy for Manafort” and don’t necessarily mean Mueller will give him a plea.
Manafort on Friday pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy against the United States and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice brought by Mueller’s team. Other counts were dropped.
"[Manafort] and his lawyers have visited Mueller's office in Washington at least nine times in the last four weeks, a strong indication that the special counsel is moving at a steady clip."
Manafort is in the Mueller offices for around six hours at each visit. That's more than 50 hours that we know Manafort has spent in Mueller's offices in just the past 28 days!
On Thursday, President Donald Trump went on Twitter to rant about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Even though Trump often releases his fury on the social media platform, this latest attack against Mueller could be revealing.
“The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess. They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want. They are a disgrace to our Nation,” the president tweeted.
Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor said that Trump’s Twitter tirade “could just be another rant,” or that “that prosecutors had some sort of ‘time to get real’ conversation with someone implicated in the investigation, which was then relayed to Trump by defense attorneys.”
Federal prosecutor Dan Goldman suggested that Trump’s anxiety is growing because of the coming indictments.
“Indictments are coming, probably tomorrow,” Goldman said.
CNN’s John King was aghast on Thursday after President Trump launched another unhinged tweet storm this morning, saying it was nothing but “taxpayer-funded lies.”
“Is he as detached from reality as he sometimes appears?” wondered King, questioning the president’s mental competency. “Does he have things in his head that simply aren’t true?”
Apologizing to any Trump supporters watching, the typically bland CNN host launched into a full bore attack on the president’s truthfulness.
“We have the tax funded lies all the time,” he said. “Read his Twitter feed: it’s not true.”
The invisible hand of the market and the iron fist of the state combine and complement each other to make the lower classes accept desocialized wage labor and the social instability it brings in its wake. After a long eclipse, the prison thus returns to the frontline of institutions entrusted with maintaining the social order.
—Loïc Wacquant[135]
Several scholars have linked the rise of neoliberalism to unprecedented levels of mass incarceration of the poor in the United States.[2]:3, 346[136][137][138][139] Sociologist Loïc Wacquant argues that neoliberal policy for dealing with social instability among economically marginalized populations following the implementation of other neoliberal policies, which have allowed for the retrenchment of the social welfare state and the rise of punitive workfare and have increased gentrification of urban areas, privatization of public functions, the shrinking of collective protections for the working class via economic deregulation and the rise of underpaid, precarious wage labor, is the criminalization of poverty and mass incarceration.[137]:53–54[140]
By contrast, it is extremely lenient in dealing with those in the upper echelons of society, in particular when it comes to economic crimes of the privileged classes and corporations such as fraud, embezzlement, insider trading, credit and insurance fraud, money laundering and violation of commerce and labor codes.[137][141]
According to Wacquant, neoliberalism does not shrink government, but instead sets up a "centaur state" with little governmental oversight for those at the top and strict control of those at the bottom.[137][142]
“The court where Mueller has brought most of his prosecutions is the federal court in D.C. — there are 36 sealed indictments pending right now in that federal court,” he revealed. “They may be from Mueller’s team, they may not be, they’re secret so we don’t know.”
“We know 18 sealed indictments have been filed since August,” he continued. “August is the time that the Mueller team went on radio silence because of the upcoming midterm elections.”
“It could be — everybody knew that after the midterm elections Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions was on the way out, Trump would be able to install his own inside man, as he’s done with Matt Whitaker,” he noted. “Mueller — crafty prosecutor — he may have anticipated this and filed all of these sealed indictments in this event, in the event Trump would install an attorney general who would impede the investigation.”
A former federal prosecutor explained why some Trump associates — including the president’s eldest son — should be especially worried about special counsel Robert Mueller.
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He explained why that silence should concern Stone and Assange — and Donald Trump Jr., who also has not been contacted by the special prosecutor.
“Anyone who is the subject of an investigation should worry if prosecutors don’t want to talk to them, because that means that they are circling around you,” Goldman said. “That’s pretty well accepted.”
It’s been axiomatic from the start of the Russia investigation that it is different from Watergate in one important way: the crimes that Nixon committed behind closed doors in the White House secretly, Trump is committing out in the open. Repeatedly lying to the American public? Every time Trump tweets or opens his mouth. Obstruction of justice? Firing Comey. Firing Sessions. Calling Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt” and calling for its end. Tampering with witnesses? Dangling pardons. Engaging in a cover-up of a crime? As he lives and breathes.