Robert Mueller is getting close. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates' indictments are just the breaking of the seal. The real head-turner in this saga is the guilty
plea of George Papadopoulos, who admitted to lying to the FBI during the grand jury investigation, and admitting that he approached Trump and his team about his
ability to get Trump a meeting with Putin, an attempt confirmed by JD Gordon, who is sitting next to Papadopoulos in the March 31, 2016 National Security meeting
that
Trump himself tweeted the photo of.
Gordon recalled the conversation, that Jeff Sessions' was disinterested in the possibility of Trump meeting Putin, but also that Trump himself was interested.
Trump, as recently as Friday before he left for Asia, tried to downplay the meeting itself, calling it "unimportant," and claiming that he doesn't even remember
it - a hilariously dumb assertion, coming from "one of the great memories of all time" (direct quote).
But one of the more damning elements of this is that Papadopoulos claims to have tried to have this conversation because a Russian professor he communicated with had emails of Hillary Clinton and John Podesta. This flies square in the face of Trump and his team claiming they didn't know about the email hack until much later. If what Papadopoulos is claiming is true, it not only shows that Trump and his team knew about it, but raises questions of whether they were involved in the retrieval and release. This may not be the case, of course, but they can't avoid the position they've put themselves in by continuously lying at every turn, about even the most benign things. And worse, the timeline puts Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey squarely in the cross-hairs, because now that firing could be argued as federal obstruction of justice, a felony.
Mueller also did the wisest thing he could have done, which is to release the indictments and Papadopoulos' plea deal as early as he could, because Trump has ratcheted up his complaints about Mueller in recent weeks, and many were wondering if he would finally pull the trigger and fire him. This release makes that possibility all the more difficult to do. And while the administration has tried to claim Papadopoulos was a "low-level volunteer," and a "liar," (but Trump calls everyone a liar...), Trump himself named Papadopoulos to his Foreign Policy team, publicly mentioning him in an interview. Papadopoulos also represented the Trump campaign at the RNC, sitting on a foreign policy panel for a discussion on US foreign policy for the American Jewish Committee.
Interestingly, while some hard-liners have encouraged Trump to fire Mueller, many Republican politicians have widely warned the Trump administration against doing so. It's becoming clear that their fates in re-election could be tied to whatever Trump does in response to the investigation, and they want no part of that kind of fallout. Many are also holding their breath in anticipation of Trump doing something even dumber, like professing a plan to pardon everyone Mueller indicts. Trump has discussed this before, and has seemed unflinching about the optics of doing such a thing, as evidenced my the move he's already made for Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. If he pre-emptively pardons Manafort, Gates and - in amnesty-type fashion - anyone else that the Mueller investigation eventually uncovers, the rule of law in this country will unravel. No politician wants to be seen as being a party to one of the most serious abdications of responsibility and accountability in presidential history.
However this plays out, Mueller is just getting started. And the microscope he is under assures that he wouldn't be issuing indictments and making plea deals if he didn't have at least some of the evidence he needs to uphold the charges. The question now is: Does Donald Trump have the testicular fortitude to NOT be himself, and let Mueller do his job without interference? I wouldn't put Vegas odd on it...
But one of the more damning elements of this is that Papadopoulos claims to have tried to have this conversation because a Russian professor he communicated with had emails of Hillary Clinton and John Podesta. This flies square in the face of Trump and his team claiming they didn't know about the email hack until much later. If what Papadopoulos is claiming is true, it not only shows that Trump and his team knew about it, but raises questions of whether they were involved in the retrieval and release. This may not be the case, of course, but they can't avoid the position they've put themselves in by continuously lying at every turn, about even the most benign things. And worse, the timeline puts Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey squarely in the cross-hairs, because now that firing could be argued as federal obstruction of justice, a felony.
Mueller also did the wisest thing he could have done, which is to release the indictments and Papadopoulos' plea deal as early as he could, because Trump has ratcheted up his complaints about Mueller in recent weeks, and many were wondering if he would finally pull the trigger and fire him. This release makes that possibility all the more difficult to do. And while the administration has tried to claim Papadopoulos was a "low-level volunteer," and a "liar," (but Trump calls everyone a liar...), Trump himself named Papadopoulos to his Foreign Policy team, publicly mentioning him in an interview. Papadopoulos also represented the Trump campaign at the RNC, sitting on a foreign policy panel for a discussion on US foreign policy for the American Jewish Committee.
Interestingly, while some hard-liners have encouraged Trump to fire Mueller, many Republican politicians have widely warned the Trump administration against doing so. It's becoming clear that their fates in re-election could be tied to whatever Trump does in response to the investigation, and they want no part of that kind of fallout. Many are also holding their breath in anticipation of Trump doing something even dumber, like professing a plan to pardon everyone Mueller indicts. Trump has discussed this before, and has seemed unflinching about the optics of doing such a thing, as evidenced my the move he's already made for Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. If he pre-emptively pardons Manafort, Gates and - in amnesty-type fashion - anyone else that the Mueller investigation eventually uncovers, the rule of law in this country will unravel. No politician wants to be seen as being a party to one of the most serious abdications of responsibility and accountability in presidential history.
However this plays out, Mueller is just getting started. And the microscope he is under assures that he wouldn't be issuing indictments and making plea deals if he didn't have at least some of the evidence he needs to uphold the charges. The question now is: Does Donald Trump have the testicular fortitude to NOT be himself, and let Mueller do his job without interference? I wouldn't put Vegas odd on it...
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