B-Man Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Quote The Daily BeastVerified account @thedailybeast 1h1 hour ago Mueller probe appears to hit Democratic powerhouses, too Multiple lobbyists say they are confident the Podesta Group & Mercury LLC are the two firms the indictment refers to. “Manafort & Tony [Podesta] were inseparable and driving the same train,” a person familiar with Mueller probe said Not sure what MAGA land is upset about today. Manafort indicted, Podesta stepping down. Mueller doing serious swamp draining............... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiberius Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Quote Multiple lobbyists say they are confident the Podesta Group & Mercury LLC are the two firms the indictment refers to. “Manafort & Tony [Podesta] were inseparable and driving the same train,” a person familiar with Mueller probe said Not sure what MAGA land is upset about today. Manafort indicted, Podesta stepping down. Mueller doing serious swamp draining............... Can't say Mueller is running a partisan witch hunt! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grinreaper Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Republicans must be so frustrated. After decades of living up inside Hillary's butt investigating her for Travelgate, WhiteWater, Butthurt Gate, Ben-By-Gazi, using emails and BJ gate they end up with Trump as President. And boom. I see all that stuff is still pretty funny to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B-Man Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Friendly reminder from CBS: Manafort indictment “not even close” to Trump-Putin collusion allegations THE MANAFORT INDICTMENTby Paul Mirengoff I can think of no one better than Andy McCarthy to evaluate the indictment of Paul Manafort. In McCarthy’s view, the indictment “is much ado about nothing . . . except as a vehicle to squeeze Manafort, which is special counsel Robert Mueller’s objective.” That sounds right. McCarthy explains: This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call “the attack on our democracy” (i.e., the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election, supposedly in “collusion” with the Trump campaign). Essentially, Manafort and his associate, Richard W. Gates, are charged with (a) conspiring to conceal from the U.S. government about $75 million they made as unregistered foreign agents for Ukraine, years before the 2016 election (mainly, from 2006 through 2014), and (b) a money-laundering conspiracy. The Manafort indictment contains two main counts, and ten others. The grandiose sounding “Conspiracy against the United States,” Count One, mainly involves Manafort’s and Gates’s alleged failure to file Treasury Department forms required by the Bank Secrecy Act. The other main count, a money-laundering conspiracy, alleges that Manafort and Gates moved money in and out of the United States with the intent to promote “specified unlawful activity.” That activity is said to have been their acting as unregistered foreign agents. On first viewing, McCarthy finds these counts as “shaky and overcharged,” “at least in part.” Since the charges themselves aren’t earth-shaking (did we really need a special counsel to bring them)? Andy concludes: From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt. More at the link: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logic Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 (edited) From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt. It's not the Manafort indictment that has so many people's attention regarding collusion, in my opinion. It's the Papadapolous guilty plea. https://www.vox.com/world/2017/10/30/16570826/george-papadopoulos-russia-trump-mueller According to the special counsel’s statement of the offense, Papadopoulos joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 as a foreign policy adviser. That month, he met with a Kremlin-linked professor in London who also introduced him to a woman possibly close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. When the FBI interviewed Papadopoulos as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the document says, he lied to FBI agents. Papadopoulos was arrested on July 27 and pleaded guilty, and a special counsel document dated October 5 says he agreed to plead guilty. However, special counsel Robert Mueller asked the court to keep all of that secret until now because, in Mueller’s words, the “[d]efendant has indicated that he is willing to cooperate with the government in its ongoing investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.” Edited October 30, 2017 by Logic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Where have I seen this wishful thinking before? Oh, yeah...Whitewater. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiberius Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 Friendly reminder from CBS: Manafort indictment “not even close” to Trump-Putin collusion allegations THE MANAFORT INDICTMENT by Paul Mirengoff I can think of no one better than Andy McCarthy to evaluate the indictment of Paul Manafort. In McCarthy’s view, the indictment “is much ado about nothing . . . except as a vehicle to squeeze Manafort, which is special counsel Robert Mueller’s objective.” That sounds right. McCarthy explains: This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call “the attack on our democracy” (i.e., the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election, supposedly in “collusion” with the Trump campaign). Essentially, Manafort and his associate, Richard W. Gates, are charged with (a) conspiring to conceal from the U.S. government about $75 million they made as unregistered foreign agents for Ukraine, years before the 2016 election (mainly, from 2006 through 2014), and (b) a money-laundering conspiracy. The Manafort indictment contains two main counts, and ten others. The grandiose sounding “Conspiracy against the United States,” Count One, mainly involves Manafort’s and Gates’s alleged failure to file Treasury Department forms required by the Bank Secrecy Act. The other main count, a money-laundering conspiracy, alleges that Manafort and Gates moved money in and out of the United States with the intent to promote “specified unlawful activity.” That activity is said to have been their acting as unregistered foreign agents. On first viewing, McCarthy finds these counts as “shaky and overcharged,” “at least in part.” Since the charges themselves aren’t earth-shaking (did we really need a special counsel to bring them)?[/size] Andy concludes: From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt. More at the link: That's not CBS, it's one of the hack websites you post all the time. Manafort was at the Trump Tower meeting, the collusion meeting. He is now being threatened to talk with a huge jail sentence over his head. Judge Sirica knew how this worked when he sentenced some third rate burglars to forty years in jail Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiberius Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 It's not the Manafort indictment that has so many people's attention regarding collusion, in my opinion. It's the Papadapolous guilty plea.https://www.vox.com/world/2017/10/30/16570826/george-papadopoulos-russia-trump-mueller According to the special counsel’s statement of the offense, Papadopoulos joined the Trump campaign in March 2016 as a foreign policy adviser. That month, he met with a Kremlin-linked professor in London who also introduced him to a woman possibly close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. When the FBI interviewed Papadopoulos as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the document says, he lied to FBI agents. Papadopoulos was arrested on July 27 and pleaded guilty, and a special counsel document dated October 5 says he agreed to plead guilty. However, special counsel Robert Mueller asked the court to keep all of that secret until now because, in Mueller’s words, the “[d]efendant has indicated that he is willing to cooperate with the government in its ongoing investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.” Interesting! So he may have been talking to Trump people within the last three months! Oops! I wonder if he was wearing a wire? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boyst Posted October 30, 2017 Share Posted October 30, 2017 When's the !@#$ gonna say drip drip drip? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pine Barrens Mafia Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Oh please, PLEASE get podesta on kiddy-diddling too. I'd like to see him shanked in prison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
row_33 Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Everyone in DC is lobbying on behalf of foreign governments? DUH... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fadingpain Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Well...we don't know about that. A president cannot be indicted and the Republicans might never impeach him no matter what he did The Republicans will turn on Trump when the time to do so is right. It's a balancing act. We are already seeing some of them turn now. The political will to impeach will be available, once the dirt is fully out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tiberius Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 (edited) The Republicans will turn on Trump when the time to do so is right. It's a balancing act. We are already seeing some of them turn now. The political will to impeach will be available, once the dirt is fully out. The Watergate impeachment proceedings ramped up as the mid-term elections of 1974 were right on the horizon, so you might be right there. Nixon resigned in August, right before the fall campaign started. Here is a really interesting article on Manafort: https://www.theatlantic.com/ As an international political consultant, Manafort built a career trying to soften the reputation of corrupt rulers. He spent decades shuttling to the palaces of exploitative dictators (Ferdinand Marcos, Sani Abacha, Mobuto Sese Seko) and then presenting them to the press and lawmakers as friends of western democracy, perfectly acceptable citizens of the global order. And, today’s indictment alleges, Manafort also attempted to make his fortune by joining the heist. Edited October 31, 2017 by Tiberius Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B-Man Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Mueller’s first moves aren’t what Trump-haters hoped for Manafort, Gates Indicted - But Not For Russian Shenanigans by Matthew Vadum Original Article . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dorkington Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Personally, I'm glad they are taking their time. Anyone they find involved, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise, should be "drained" from the swamp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B-Man Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Anyone they find involved, Republican, Democrat, or otherwise, should be "drained" from the swamp. Amen. PAPADOPOULOS? WHODAT?by Scott Johnson FTA: The description of what Papadopoulos did that got him in hot water makes it clear that he essentially wasted the FBI’s time. But not that much, because it’s also clear that they were asking him questions the answers to which they already knew. Thanks to FISA, which is to say, in effect, thanks ultimately to the Clinton Campaign. In any event, it’s hard to take this business of wasting the FBI’s time terribly seriously when they seem to have been doing so well at wasting their own time. Did Papadopoulos wear a wire? Who knows? One thing we do know is that if he did that didn’t start until after he was arrested, 7/27/2017, six months after the FBI interviewed him and even longer after he was no longer part of the campaign. Given that timeline, and the fact that his Russia initiatives were resolutely rejected during his days with the campaign, one wonders who in the Trump administration would feel they had no better use for their time than to chat with this sad sack. Certainly no one of importance. The impression one gets is that this was a rather desperate throw of the dice. Overall, this episode is likely to go down as a public marker of the futility of Mueller’s investigation: is this really the best they could come up with in the way of “cooperation”? And note, there is no suggestion by Team Mueller’s Jeannie Rhee that Papadopoulos’s cooperation produced anything of value (“to provide information and answer questions”), as might be the case when a prosecutor is seeking to persuade a judge to accept a plea agreement. The pathetic nature of the offense pretty much guarantees that the judge will accept the deal. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/10/papadopoulos-whodat-2.php Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 PAPADOPOULOS? WHODAT? Wasn't he the "worm guy" from the 1998 Godzilla movie? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K-9 Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 (edited) Low level campaign aide my ass. Even if Trump wasn't recorded praising him or he wasn't photographed sitting at the table during a meeting with Trump, Pence, and Sessions among others, etc., who he references in the court papers as whom he shared emails with makes it clear he was anything but a low level staffer. Hard to believe Sam Clovis would OK sending a low level employee to Europe to meet with a Russian about getting dirt on Clinton. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/whos-who-in-the-george-papadopoulos-court-documents/2017/10/30/e131158c-bdb3-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html?utm_term=.2f0019ec9ddb Edited October 31, 2017 by K-9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Hard to believe Sam Clovis would OK sending a low level employee to Europe to meet with a Russian about getting dirt on Clinton. Rather easy to believe, actually. You don't send someone high-level if you want it to be a secret. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K-9 Posted October 31, 2017 Share Posted October 31, 2017 Hannity and Fox still pushing lies to deflect. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/10/31/trump-and-his-allies-are-laying-the-groundwork-for-a-saturday-night-massacre/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_3_na&utm_term=.2f20fc5f751f Rather easy to believe, actually. You don't send someone high-level if you want it to be a secret. Right. I'm sure all low level employees were asked to sit at the table with Trump, Pence, Sessions, etc, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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