Tuesday April 3rd. And it’s my 200th blog post!
THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION: TRUMP IS A SUBJECT OF THE INVESTIGATION
Way to kick off my 200th post! President Donald J. Trump is officially a subject in a criminal investigation.
Time for some semantics…
The difference between a subject and a target in a criminal investigation is twofold. First, assuming the prosecutor isn’t lying to keep the person at ease, a subject is someone who hasn’t been charged with a crime yet. If the prosecutor is lying, they’ll tell the person that they’re a subject but not a target to get something out of them, like an interview.
But that’s not the biggest part of this story.
Per the Special Counselor regulations, Mueller’s team is required to submit a report to the Attorney General, or acting Attorney General who appointed the Special Counselor. In this case, that would be Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Mueller wants to interview Trump so he can wrap up the Obstruction part of their report.
The special counsel also told Trump’s lawyers that he is preparing a report about the president’s actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations.
Mueller reiterated the need to interview Trump — both to understand whether he had any corrupt intent to thwart the Russia investigation and to complete this portion of his probe, the people said.
The Mueller team is ready to wrap this up. The interview is the last piece, and they already know the answers to the questions they’re going to ask. They just need to fill in the sections where Trump lies his ass off.
Now, why’s that report so important? Three big reasons why…
First, this answers all of the questions the public has about Trump’s Obstruction of Justice.
Second, it signals the end of a major phase of the investigation. They’ve got all they need to reach their conclusion.
Finally, this report forms the basis of the actions that follow. Let’s assume, for a moment, that Robert Mueller finds something criminal in his investigation against Trump and his retinue (Shocking, I know). Since the decision is still up in the air about whether or not Mueller can directly indict Trump, and the proper course in the Constitution for handling a corrupt President is through Congressional Impeachment, this report would form the basis for Impeachment proceedings.
If, however, Congress refuses to take action on criminal findings, then we’re left in the historic position of the Special Counselor indicting a sitting President.
By the way, this story also explains Trump’s wrath against Amazon for the past week. As noted in the following stories:
- Amazon Caused Donald Trump to Lose $400 Million in Net Worth, Says Forbes
- “Trump Is Like, ‘How Can I F–k with Him?’”: Trump’s War with Amazon (and The Washington Post) Is Personal
- Trump attacks Amazon, applauds Facebook for helping his message get out – Axios
Jeff Bezos owns both Amazon and The Washington Post. Trump can’t shut down WaPo, but he could try to make life miserable for Jeff. The guy so rich that he bought Whole Foods for a price worth 4 times all of Trump’s properties, with his profits from a couple months from Amazon.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein explicitly authorized the Justice Department’s special counsel to investigate allegations that President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman colluded with the Russian government, according to a court filing late Monday night.
Wow.
Here is a link to filing (282 pages!) Rosenstein’s memo is the last two pages.
Something that I caught on Rachel Maddow was a little something on page 42 of the briefing. (Page 50 of the PDF, it includes the Table of Contents.)
As explained above, every key step in this case—including the investigative path and the
Indictment itself—has been authorized by the Acting Attorney General through ongoing
consultation. Additionally, under the applicable rules, the National Security Division (NSD)
approved the charges relating to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and the Tax Division
approved the tax-related charges. See 28 C.F.R. § 600.7(a) (special counsel is to comply with
Department of Justice rules, regulations, procedures, and policies); USAM § 6-4.200 (Tax Division
must approve all criminal tax charges); USAM § 9-90.710 (NSD must approve FARA charges).
And the Senior Assistant Special Counsel in charge of this prosecution is a long time, career
prosecutor with the internal authority to conduct this prosecution, separate and aside from his role
in the Special Counsel’s Office. In light of the ongoing supervision by the Acting Attorney General
and involvement by other career DOJ attorneys, any error claimed by Manafort would be harmless.
So, what does this legalese mean? Two things.
First, the Special Counselor’s team was not working alone. They’re working with other law enforcement groups in the government. NSD is a part of the Main Justice Department. The Tax Division is from the Treasury Department.
Second, and biggest of all, the Senior Assistant Special Counsel has complete authorization to prosecute these cases outside of their role on the Special Counselor’s team.
This is the goddamned dead man’s switch. The poison pill. The Hydra.
We have proof that if Mueller is removed, The Justice League has their marching orders; prosecute the cases, nothing changes, continue the work. The only difference is that instead of 1 Lead Federal Prosecutor, there would be half a dozen or more.
- Mueller Probe Into U.A.E. Influence Broadens
- Jill McCabe: The president attacked my reputation. It’s time to set the record straight.
- Jeff Sessions Quietly Appointed a Prosecutor to Probe POTUS’ Foes. That Could Be an Unprecedented Disaster.
- Lawyer who lied to US about Russian Spy gets 30 day Sentence.
- Dutch attorney gets 30-day sentence after guilty plea in Mueller probe – POLITICO
Alex Van der Zwaan will head to prison for 30 days, get a $20,000 fine, and 3 months probation. He’s allowed to leave the country and return to London after serving his jail time.
Alex was Rick Gates’s lawyer at one point, and tried to delete emails regarding his knowledge of dealings with Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, and Russian GRU officer Konstantin Kiliminik.
Alex is also the son-in-law of German Khan, founder of Alfa Group and a Russian Oligarch with very close ties to Vladimir Putin.
THE PROPAGANDA MACHINES
- Sinclair chairman: Print media is ‘meaningless dribble’ with ‘no credibility’
- Dan Rather rips Sinclair over media bias promos: It’s not journalism, it’s propaganda
- Sinclair station in Oregon tells employees to not talk to press about script: report
- The only information Trump supports is information that makes him look good
- Hannity Blasts Robert Mueller, Warns Of “Civil War” And Other Hyperbolic Nonsense
- A new study suggests fake news might have won Donald Trump the 2016 election
- California Would Require Twitter, Facebook to Disclose Bots
- Chinese billionaire wallops Roger Stone with $100 million defamation suit over his InfoWars screeds
- McCain: Dictators ‘get started by suppressing free press’
- Trump reportedly puts a Fox News host on speakerphone during meetings in the Oval Office
- Kushner: We struck deal with Sinclair for straighter coverage – POLITICO from December 2016
- Authenticity Matters: The IRA Has No Place on Facebook – Facebook Newsroom
#NEVERAGAIN
- No, the March For Our Lives demonstration was not prepared several months in advance of its date
- Guns are now responsible for 75% of killings in America
- Why “Hardening” Schools Won’t Solve Violence
- A 5-year-old looking for candy found a gun instead, then fatally shot his brother
- The Washington Post: Police respond to reports of active shooter at YouTube headquarters in California
TRADE WAR WITH CHINA: SAY GOODBYE TO THE ECONOMY
- U.S. Farmers Say They’re Paying For Trump’s Aggressive Trade Actions : NPR
- The Washington Post: Trump administration targets Chinese electronics, aerospace and machinery goods with $50 billion in tariffs
WHITE HOUSE CHAOS: SCOTT PRUITT GETS THE “VOTE OF CONFIDENCE”, TRUMP HATES BROWN PEOPLE
- Secret use of census info helped send Japanese Americans to internment camps in WWII
- Scott Pruitt Lied to Congress About Using Private Email to Talk to Big Oil as Oklahoma Attorney General
- GOP rep calls for Pruitt to step down or be fired
- Scott Pruitt Bypassed the White House to Give Big Raises to Favorite Aides
- President Trump says he wants to use military to secure US-Mexico border until wall is built, calls it ‘big step’
- 2 Florida Republicans Now Joining Calls For Scott Pruitt To Resign
- Scott Pruitt’s D.C. Lobbyist Landlord Also Funded His Oklahoma Attorney General Campaign
COLD WAR 2.0
- State Department: Expelled diplomats can be replaced
- White House Official Floated Withdrawing U.S. Forces to Please Putin
TRUMP ORG CORRUPTION, FROM THE WATER IS WET DEPARTMENT
- Planned Parenthood CEO Says Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Offered ‘Bribe’ to Stop Abortions
- The Washington Post: Billion-dollar sanctions-busting scheme aided Iran, documents show
CAN WE GET BACK TO POLITICS?
- Conservatives have no solution for the increasingly bleak economics of raising kids
- The U.N. Battens Down the Hatches for Hurricane Bolton
RUMOR MILL
Spicy goes into some more details and speculations about what was redacted in that memo from DAG Rosenstein.
Remember the Florida teacher that was fired for being an Alt Right piece of trash? This article was from March 4th. Earlier today, she resigned from her teaching job after she was outed for hosting a White Supremacists podcast.
Well, while everyone else was focusing on the racism, Louise caught something else. Dayanna, an ethnic Russian, is part of the Russian Troll Army. No one big, just a glorified foot soldier out there pushing Russian Active Measures, pushing Putin’s agenda, whether she knows it or not. More likely than not, she knows what she’s doing.
Not all of the trolls are computer algorithms or neckbeards in Moscow or St. Petersburg. Some of them are here, real people, in America.
That’s it for today. 200 posts on this site, and what better way to hit that milestone than with confirmation that the President of the United State is a subject in a criminal conspiracy.
Because of this, we are officially in historical territory. The only other time that a sitting President was ever the subject of a criminal investigation was Nixon with Watergate, and even that could be debated, as his impeachment was scheduled before the investigation wrapped up.
Also, this interview was a month ago, in early March, when the two teams were negotiating an interview. Daily Check-In 03/15/2018 mentioned Trump’s team being served with a subpoena for documents from Trump Org, and later that month, Jon Dowd quit on Daily Check-In 03/22/2018.
We’re fast approaching the end of the act. Either Trump will agree to an interview, he’ll be summoned before a Grand Jury, or Mueller will decide that he doesn’t need his testimony. Once that occurs, my guess is that we’ll see things get crazy from there on out. I don’t know how or what form exactly things will take, but once the Trump Interview is out of the way, we enter the next phase. The arrest for obstruction and investigate the criminals and traitors phase.
I want to give my sincere thanks to everyone who reads this site, both in real time as this unfolds, and anyone reading from after this clusterfuck unravels.
Muchos gracias, dhanyavad, merci beaucoup, Danke, tack, grazie, domo arigato, shukraan, Dziekuje Ci, dank je.
Thank you, and have a good one.
“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”
– Katy Tur
None of this is Normal 
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