Trump enters the stage

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to bring legislation that would protect special counsel Robert Mueller up for a vote.

Rep. Adam Schiff — along with “Crooked Hillary Clinton,” “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” and “Crazy Maxine Waters” — has long been a target of mockery on Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. But in a post Sunday, the president may have coined his crudest nickname yet for a political rival.

“So funny to see little Adam Schitt (D-CA) talking about the fact that Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker was not approved by the Senate,” the president wrote online, “but not mentioning the fact that Bob Mueller (who is highly conflicted) was not approved by the Senate!”

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Schiff fired back 35 minutes later, quoting the president’s post and writing on Twitter: “Wow, Mr. President, that’s a good one. Was that like your answers to Mr. Mueller’s questions, or did you write this one yourself?”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the president’s misspelling of Schiff’s name was intentional. The office of first lady Melania Trump, who has championed anti-cyberbullying efforts through her “Be Best” initiative, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Schiff, who is poised to take the helm of the powerful House Intelligence Committee after Democrats recaptured the chamber from Republicans in the midterm elections, appeared Sunday morning on ABC’s “This Week.” The California congressman spoke about Trump’s decision to appoint former U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker to lead the Justice Department after Attorney General Jeff Sessions was ousted earlier this month.

Whitaker, who most recently worked as Sessions’ chief of staff, has previously criticized special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential collusion with the Kremlin by the Trump campaign. In his new role as acting attorney general, Whitaker is charged with overseeing that probe.

“The biggest flaw from my point of view is that he was chosen for the purpose of interfering with the Mueller investigation,” Schiff told journalist Martha Raddatz of Whitaker’s appointment, which he called “unconstitutional.”

“He auditioned for the part by going on TV and saying he could hobble the investigation,” Schiff said, adding: “We will expose any involvement he has in it. He needs to know that if he takes any action to curb what Mr. Mueller does, we’re going to find out about it.”

Trump has been known to delete some tweets with typos or obvious factual errors, firing off amended posts within minutes. But since referencing Schiff just after 1 p.m., the president has not corrected the spelling of the congressman’s name, and has gone on to tweet about South American migrants and rebroadcasts of his Sunday interview with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace.

The president’s apparent dig at one of the top Democratic lawmakers in Congress comes as the White House has complained about a lack of civility among members of the media — specifically CNN’s Jim Acosta, whose security pass was yanked by Secret Service personnel following a dispute involving a news conference earlier this month.

Story Continued Below

When a federal judge on Friday ordered the White House to reinstate Acosta’s pass, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement: “There must be decorum at the White House.”

In an interview later Friday on Fox News, Sanders said that “if certain reporters like Jim Acosta can’t be adults, then CNN needs to send somebody in there who can be.”

Trump, in his interview with Fox News’ Wallace on Sunday, said the White House was in the process of drafting new protocols for conduct by reporters at news conferences.

“We’re writing them now,” the president said. “We’ll have rules of decorum.”

And this:

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Architect of bin Laden raid: Trump ‘threatens the Constitution’ when he attacks the media
By Jake Tapper and Devan Cole, CNN
Updated 5:29 PM EST, Sun November 18, 2018

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Washington (CNN) Retired Adm. William McRaven on Sunday stood by his previous statement that President Donald Trump’s attacks on the news media represent “the greatest threat to democracy” after the President dismissed him as a “Hillary Clinton backer” in an interview that aired on Fox News.

“I did not back Hillary Clinton or anyone else,” McRaven, who oversaw the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, told CNN. “I am a fan of President Obama and President George W. Bush, both of whom I worked for. I admire all presidents, regardless of their political party, who uphold the dignity of the office and who use that office to bring the nation together in challenging times.”

“I stand by my comment that the President’s attack on the media is the greatest threat to our democracy in my lifetime,” McRaven said, referencing remarks he made about Trump last year. “When you undermine the people’s right to a free press and freedom of speech and expression, then you threaten the Constitution and all for which it stands.”

McRaven’s comment came just hours after “Fox News Sunday” aired an interview with Trump in which the President dismissed McRaven and criticized the military for having not killed bin Laden sooner.

Trump made the remarks during a tense exchange with Fox News’ Chris Wallace after the host brought up McRaven, a vocal Trump critic who led the bin Laden operation in 2011 during former President Barack Obama’s administration.

“Bill McRaven, retired admiral, Navy SEAL, 37 years, former head of US Special Operations…” Wallace started.

“Hillary Clinton fan,” Trump said, cutting off Wallace.

“Special Operations …” Wallace continued.

“Excuse me, Hillary Clinton fan,” Trump said.

“Who led the operations,” Wallace added, “commanded the operations that took down Saddam Hussein and that killed Osama bin Laden, says that your sentiment is the greatest threat to democracy in his lifetime.”

“OK, he’s a Hilary Clinton backer and an Obama-backer, and frankly … wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that? Wouldn’t it have been nice? You know, living – think of this – living in Pakistan, beautifully in Pakistan.”

After Wallace asked if the President would give McRaven any credit for taking down bin Laden, Trump said “they took him down” but quickly shifted to talking about US aid to Pakistan, where bin Laden was killed.

In August, McRaven issued a stunning rebuke of Trump in an op-ed published in the Washington Post, writing that through his actions, Trump has “embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper and Zachary Cohen contributed to this report.
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Trump masters his dangerous game
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 9:08 AM EDT, Wed October 24, 2018

(CNN) Donald Trump fixed reporters with a hard gaze and declared: “I’m a very nonpolitical person, and that’s why I got elected President.”

Like much of what Trump says, his comment required a large helping of salt, since it came in a session in which his considerable, instinctive and often cynical political prowess was on full display 14 days before the midterm elections.

With reporters and lawmakers huddled around his Oval Office desk Tuesday, Trump floated conspiracy theories, boasted about his achievements, bent facts, teased future announcements and dipped into a well of racial and cultural prejudice.

Such behavior is more often displayed by autocratic leaders who rule in personality cults than by more cautious and conventional politicians who operate in democratic systems, but it also explains how Trump has bullied much of Washington into submission.

With a chatty intimacy that tempted his audience into his confidence, Trump dominated the Oval Office, coming across as a president increasingly bullish about himself and at ease in wielding his power.

“I’m not worried about anything,” he said.

Including a later photo-op at a meeting with military leaders, Trump has now chewed the fat with reporters 12 times in 11 days, and conducted a blizzard of interviews with radio and television stations.

With his spokeswoman Sarah Sanders and political strategists confined to the wings, the President has seized control of the midterm election campaign, and it looks as if the GOP will rise or fall depending on how voters react.

Trump’s virtuoso flexing of his significant but often diabolical political skills came on a day when he had no campaign rally. So he just manufactured a moment to add more fuel to the rhetorical blaze he has ignited over immigration.

‘No proof of anything’
The caravan of desperate migrants from Central America might be more than 1,000 miles and many days from the US border in Mexico, but that is not stopping the President from whipping it into the perfect political storm.

The caravan could be weeks away from the US border
The now-famous column is becoming the 2018 equivalent of then-FBI director James Comey’s late reopening of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, which dominated the final few weeks of the 2016 presidential race.

Then, Trump used the issue to hammer home his theme – that his Democratic foe was corrupt, a liar and unfit for office – in the process papering over his own character liabilities and drowning out her attacks.

Two years on, Trump is using the caravan in a similar shock and awe assault on the airwaves, bolstering his dark claims that a human tide of outsiders from Central America is laying siege to US borders, bringing crime, violence and even terrorism.

Pictures of massing migrants bolster his theme, even though he rips them out of context and ignores reporters on the ground who are able to show that his claims that the column includes “Middle Easterners” are likely false.

Many in Clinton’s camp believe, in retrospect, that the blanket coverage of the email issue stalled her momentum and helped Trump’s late surge to victory.

It’s unclear if the caravan holds the same potential for Trump this time around. But it helps him reach voters who sincerely believe that other politicians have done nothing as their wages are undercut by undocumented migrants and their jobs have disappeared.

And the spectacle of the march means the President will likely have the opportunity to loudly tout his extreme take on immigration, an issue on which he has built his political career, every day until the midterms November 6.

It also allows him to fold in other themes that animate the Republican base, which he needs to come out in near 2016 numbers to stave off Democratic gains.

That’s one reason why he has stoked fear and played into prejudice about “Middle Easterners” – code for Muslims – who he hints, without providing evidence, are in the crowd, coming America’s way and may be bent on terrorism.

Ever eager to please, Vice President Mike Pence appeared at the President’s shoulder, explaining that it was “inconceivable” that such people were not in the column, placing the burden of proof on those who doubt the claim.

But pressed by CNN’s Jim Acosta, Pence was not quite as adept at shading truth as the President, who jumped in and said some “real bad ones” from the Middle East had been intercepted at the border recently.

Pence, who has spent the last two days defending Trump’s claims on the caravan, then got a reminder of how treacherous life can be on the President’s team. The vice president was promptly crushed as Trump reversed a rhetorical bus over him.

“There’s no proof of anything. There’s no proof of anything. But they could very well be,” Trump said, before deftly switching the conversation to a debate about the size of his crowd at a rally in Texas on Monday night.

Sticking a knife in with a smile
The President also unsheathed another skill common to other accomplished politicians: his use of humor to twist a knife, in this case in the unfortunate Sen. Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat who had effectively been held captive after a photo-op to sign a water infrastructure bill.

After Pence said the caravan was financed by leftists, Trump turned to Carper and teased: “And the Democrats maybe?”

On Trump’s face was the grin of a man who knows he has power over others and can make outrageous claims and get away with it.

If his rising approval rating and dominance of the agenda in the days running into the midterms with a campaign based on fear and untruths help Republicans hang on to the House and perhaps increase their Senate majority, a comment by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at the CNN CITIZEN conference in New York on Monday will look prescient.

“The more time I spend with him working with him, the more I realize I don’t bet against his instincts,” Kushner said, despite polling and historical data that suggest Trump could be heading for a bloody nose in two weeks.

“He’s a black swan. He’s been a black swan all of his life,” Kushner said, suggesting there was something unpredictable and unexplainable about his father-in-law’s talents.

However, despite dominating his immediate circle and delighting his base, Trump is a politician with an approval rating in the mid-40s who could end up constrained by a Democratic-led House next year, a scenario that could have been brought on largely part by his extreme behavior and fear-based leadership.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, one Democrat who’s itching to take on Trump, hinted Tuesday at the possibility that Americans will reject the President when he said: “This President is more like George Wallace than George Washington!” – referring to the late populist firebrand and former Alabama governor.

Biden says Trump is ‘more like George Wallace than George Washington’
“We have to choose truth over lies. We have to choose a brighter future for Americans over this desperate grip of the darkest element of our past in our society,” Biden said in Florida.

Still, Democrats running for president might wind back Trump’s performance on Tuesday afternoon for a reminder of what a dangerous opponent – ready to go low and relishing his own power – the President could be in two years.

CNN’s Steve Brusk and Arlette Saenz contributed to this story.
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Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein on Sunday argued that cable news networks should stop airing full White House press briefings because they are “propagandist exercises.”

Bernstein argued the media should consider editing and fact-checking the press briefings instead of treating them as a publicity opportunity for the White House.

“I also think because of Trump’s lying and his conduct in the presidency, which is so different than anything we’ve ever seen, we need to start thinking of a different way to cover his press conferences and briefings,” Bernstein said on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.”

The legendary Watergate reporter is a political analyst for CNN. He frequently speaks out against the Trump administration, calling out the president’s conduct as abnormal.

Counterbalance:

How well Trump does with the Chinese President will go a long way to rebalance his political standing and perhaps years of litigation, at least until the end of his first term, which I believe WILL happen.

After US-China clash at APEC, all eyes shift to the Trump-Xi meeting in Argentina
Yen Nee Lee
Published 5 Hours Ago
CNBC.com
Investors will watch the upcoming meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Argentina for clues of any easing — or escalation — in tensions between the two countries, analysts said on Monday.
Differences between the world’s two biggest economies were on full display at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit over the weekend, resulting in the group’s failure to agree on a joint communique for the first time in its history.

Investors and world leaders alike will be glued to the upcoming meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Argentina, hoping for clues to what’s next.

“One gets the sense that he’s (Trump) going to be a bit tougher with China” compared with Mexico and Canada, said Paul Gruenwald, chief economist at S&P Global Ratings. The G-20 meeting of the world’s developed economies takes place in Buenos Aires from Nov. 30 to Dec. 1.

Trump criticized Mexico and Canada for months, claiming they took advantage of U.S. companies through trade, but the three countries reached a new trilateral deal at the end of September to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The approach to China has been different. Trump has repeatedly attacked the country for stealing intellectual property, creating barriers to American companies that try to operate in China, and for the massive trade imbalance between the two countries.

“I’m not particularly optimistic about a walk-back in trade tensions in the next six months.”
-Hannah Anderson, global market strategist, J.P. Morgan Asset Management
Differences between the world’s two biggest economies were on full display at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit over the weekend, resulting in the group’s failure to agree on a joint communique for the first time in its history.

Gruenwald said he’s not surprised there were no new developments between the U.S. and China at the APEC summit in Papua New Guinea. He called the G-20 “a better forum” to discuss such issues.

“I really think the big action’s going to be in Argentina in a couple of weeks, so let’s see what happens,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday, adding that “no one really knows” what will come out of the meeting.

In Buenos Aires, the two presidents are expected to meet each other with trade high on their agenda. Tensions between the two countries have dominated economic headlines this year, with both sides imposing tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s products.

The trade fight has resulted in the International Monetary Fund downgrading its global growth outlook for this year and next. American banking group Citi said some of its biggest clients have made plans to shift elements of their supply chains to circumvent those additional tariffs, because they expect negotiations between the U.S. and China to last more than a year.

Worries that U.S.-China tensions could impede growth have also rattled global markets. Hannah Anderson, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, advises investors to prepare for the rift between the two economic giants to drag on.

“I’m not particularly optimistic about a walk-back in trade tensions in the next six months,” Anderson told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday.

“If there is an agreement or if there are some positive headlines out of G-20, it’s much more likely that it’s an effort to cool tensions and a symbolic statement of intent, rather than actual substantive change in resolving the trade tensions between the two countries,” she said.

© 2018 CNBC LLC. All Rights Reserved. A Division of NBCUniversal

the following is self explanatory:

Live TV
CNN asks for emergency hearing after Trump threatens to revoke Acosta’s press pass again
By Brian Stelter and David Shortell, CNN
Updated 11:58 AM EST, Mon November 19, 2018

article video
(CNN) The White House has issued a new letter to CNN’s Jim Acosta, saying his press pass could be revoked again at the end of the month.

In response, CNN is asking the U.S. District Court for another emergency hearing.

“The White House is continuing to violate the First and 5th Amendments of the Constitution,” the network said in a statement. “These actions threaten all journalists and news organizations. Jim Acosta and CNN will continue to report the news about the White House and the President.”

Government lawyers downplayed CNN’s request for urgent court action.

Last Friday CNN won a temporary restraining order, forcing the White House to restore Acosta’s press access to the White House for 14 days. Judge Timothy J. Kelly ruled on Fifth Amendment grounds, saying Acosta’s right to due process had been violated. He did not rule on CNN’s argument that the revocation of Acosta’s press pass was a violation of his and the network’s First Amendment rights.

Later that same day, the White House sent Acosta a formal letter outlining a “preliminary decision” to suspend his pass. The letter – signed by two of the defendants in the suit, press secretary Sarah Sanders and deputy chief of staff for communications Bill Shine --cited Acosta’s conduct at President Trump’s November 7 press conference, where he asked multiple follow-up questions and didn’t give up the microphone right away.

“You failed to abide” by “basic, widely understood practices,” the letter to Acosta claimed.

Many journalists have challenged the administration’s actions against Acosta, pointing out that aggressive questioning is a tradition that dates back decades.

But Trump appears eager to advance an argument about White House press corps “decorum,” no matter how hypocritical.

Since the judge criticized the government for not following due process before banning Acosta on November 7, the new letter looks like an effort to establish a paper trail that could empower the administration to boot Acosta again at the end of the month.

The letter gave Acosta less than 48 hours to contest the “preliminary decision” and said a “final determination” would be made by Monday at 3 p.m.

CNN’s lawyers had signaled a willingness to settle after prevailing in court on Friday. Ted Boutrous, an attorney representing CNN and Acosta, said they would welcome “a resolution that makes the most sense so everyone can get out of court and get back to their work.”

But in a new court filing on Monday morning, CNN’s lawyers said the defendants “did not respond to this offer to cooperate.” Instead, the letter from Shine and Sanders was an “attempt to provide retroactive due process,” the filing alleged.

So CNN and Acosta asked the judge to set a schedule of deadlines for motions and hearings that would give the network the chance to win a preliminary injunction, a longer form of court-ordered protection to Acosta’s press pass.

They are seeking a hearing “for the week of November 26, 2018, or as soon thereafter as possible,” according to the court filing.

A preliminary injunction could be in effect for much longer than the temporary restraining order, thereby protecting Acosta’s access to the White House.

In a response Monday morning, government lawyers called the CNN motion a “self-styled ‘emergency’” and sought to portray the White House’s moves as a lawful next step.

“Far from constituting an ‘emergency,’ the White House’s initiation of a process to consider suspending Mr. Acosta’s hard pass is something this Court’s Order anticipated,” they said.

The DOJ lawyers continued to say that the White House had made “no final determination” on Acosta’s access, and asked the court to extend its own deadline, set last week, for a status report due Monday afternoon.

The case was assigned to Judge Kelly when CNN filed suit last Tuesday. Kelly was appointed to the bench by Trump last year, and confirmed with bipartisan support in the Senate. He heard oral arguments on Wednesday and granted CNN’s request for a temporary restraining order on Friday.

“We are disappointed with the district court’s decision,” the Justice Department said in response. “The President has broad authority to regulate access to the White House, including to ensure fair and orderly White House events and press conferences. We look forward to continuing to defend the White House’s lawful actions.”

Trump seemed to shrug off the loss, telling Fox’s Chris Wallace in an interview that “it’s not a big deal.”

He said the White House would “create rules and regulations for conduct” so that the administration can revoke press passes in the future.

“If he misbehaves,” Trump said, apparently referring to Acosta, “we’ll throw him out or we’ll stop the news conference.”

“This is a high-risk confrontation for both sides,” Mike Allen of Axios wrote in a Monday item about Trump’s new targeting of Acosta. “It turns out that press access to the White House is grounded very much in tradition rather than in plain-letter law. So a court fight could result in a precedent that curtails freedom to cover the most powerful official in the world from the literal front row.”

And now: Skip to the content

Dartmouth

Thirsting for Indictments
The election is over and so is Mueller’s quiet period. We read the tea leaves.
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

In this Plus episode, Virginia Heffernan welcomes Daniel Goldman, MSNBC legal analyst and former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who reads the tea leaves and feels out the potential for Mueller indictments.

Bernstein: Matthew Whitaker is Trump’s spy
Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein argues that acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker is President Trump’s first look and conduit into special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Early bet:

The idea that Trump’s stay in the White House will be litigated until at least the end if his first term is predictably stronger than it was about a year ago, notwithstanding the factored in results of the Congressional election, and the view that a sort of compromise will take place.

The assumption that the Mueller investigation will loose effectiveness, and will be compromised, as time goes on, may level out as the way to a compromise.

Maybe the whole circus is about proving the remaining largess of the States, that even the most vocal antagonistic critics and overseas partners need the myth of the uncle to stay alive in a mythic role that has eclipsed the reality of the past 100 some years, stretching back to the yet undiscovered haven of the lived out reality of the children of paradise, the longer for visions of Rousseau and the Enlightenment, now weary from the crumbling sign posts of the ancient and the non accessible .

Only through the golden myths around the Fleece, the Shroud, the Banquet, and the Ring, could the weight of civilization be endured, through dispersing light through a crystal ball of hegemony, the warning through a glass , darkly forbidding the other areain of the expulsion.

The medicum so shortly and s singularly quiet, did harm badly, and now , so the 1 percent through so now vagrant and flagrant a call, disburse that this is sad.

Sad that the only way to reclaim is by way of such that promises more and more to less and less , otherwise the grand collapse , imminent in the signs of diminishing understanding by the more and more where happy be those living who may envy the dead.

The gnashing of teeth long forgotten in an orgy of the passing days , the slack taken up by the silent whirring of the nights machines, his eyes shoningly omniscient in metropolis est.

The world over the sleep now interrupted by the longed for silence of the western front, a front once silent and wild, the sand dunes standing out giving rise to the subtyrannical derision of the gods, standing in quiet abayance planning a vengeful return into a new risen realm.

This can not pass away, even this, trump knows.

The machine of the myth against the machine of the past of Every Man.
Paul Bunyan cross skiing the vast plains of the Midwest.

POLITICO

Warning signs mount for Trump reelection bid
‘They haven’t gotten his job approval over 50 percent, like Reagan,’ says one GOP pollster.

By STEVEN SHEPARD 11/23/2018 08:09 AM EST
Donald and Melania Trump
President Donald Trump has argued that many voters who support him did not vote in the midterm elections because his name was not on the ballot. | AP Photo/Susan Walsh

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Donald Trump insists the GOP’s midterm election shellacking had nothing to do with him. Things will be different, he says, when his name is actually on the ballot in 2020.

While it’s true that most presidents who see their party suffer major losses in their first midterm election get reelected anyway, Trump isn’t most presidents — and there are lots of blaring-red warning lights in this month’s election results for his bid for a second term.

Unlike most of his predecessors, he’s been persistently unpopular, with approval ratings mired in the 40-percent range — so far, he’s the only president in the modern era whose job approval ratings have never been over 50 percent, according to Gallup.

Some of Democrats’ biggest gains came in the states that powered Trump’s Electoral College victory in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And while a president’s base has stayed home in previous midterm elections, leading to losses, the record turnout in this year’s races suggests 2018 was more like a 2016 re-run than Trump voters standing on the sidelines.

Thus far, even Trump loyalists in the party haven’t seen the president expand his electoral base beyond core Republicans.

“This is now the party of Donald Trump. I read articles saying the Republican Party has merged with the Trump coalition — they have no choice. Trump voters own the Republican Party. That’s consolidated,” said John McLaughlin, who was part of the team of pollsters working on Trump’s 2016 campaign. “The bad part is they haven’t broadened [his coalition]. They haven’t gotten his job approval over 50 percent, like Reagan. We haven’t done that.”

Republicans have taken solace in the examples of recent presidents who saw their party drubbed in their first midterm, only to win a resounding reelection victory two years later.

Barack Obama’s Democratic Party lost 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats in 2010, but Obama defeated former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012. Republicans flipped both the House, where they netted 52 seats, and Senate in 1994, but Bill Clinton slaughtered former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) in 1996. Ronald Reagan’s GOP lost 26 House seats in 1982 — and picked up a seat in the Senate — but Reagan nearly swept the Electoral College against former Vice President Walter Mondale two years later, winning a 49-state landslide.

Reagan’s example has been a balm for some Republicans, especially given the similarities in the House-Senate split decisions — Republicans gained at least one Senate seat this year, pending the results of next week’s special-election runoff in Mississippi. But in order to repeat his feat, Trump’s approval rating would have to rise to heretofore-unseen levels: Reagan was in the low-40s around the 1982 midterms and improved to 58 percent in the Gallup poll immediately before the 1984 election.

Throughout the campaign, even the most optimistic Republican pollsters were modeling a turnout rate far higher than in previous midterm elections. And that’s borne out in the election results: As of Thursday, more than 111.7 million votes had been counted in House elections nationwide, according to the Cook Political Report.

Estimates are that the final count will be around 113 million — a lot closer to the 129.8 million votes that were cast in House races in the presidential year of 2016 than 2014’s paltry turnout of 79 million votes.

Republicans made gains in 2010 because — in large part — the coalition that elected then-President Barack Obama didn’t come out to vote in his midterms. Turnout dropped from 120.7 million in 2008, to 86.9 million in 2010.

“All the data indicated that voters were really pumped [this year] — that there was an excitement and energy that we didn’t really see in 2010 and 2012,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster who worked for Romney’s 2012 presidential bid. “What you see in this election is not only can Democrats turn their votes out, but Trump demonstrated an extraordinary ability to turn his votes out, too.”

Trump has argued, however, that many voters who support him stayed home on Election Day.

“I didn’t run. I wasn’t running. My name wasn’t on the ballot,” Trump told “Fox News Sunday,” in an interview recorded last week. “There are many people that think, ‘I don’t like Congress,’ that like me a lot. I get it all the time: ‘Sir, I will never vote unless you were on the ballot.’ I get it all the time.

“People are saying, ‘Sir, I will never vote unless you’re on the ballot. I say, ‘No, no, go and vote,’” he added. “As much as I try and convince people to go vote, I’m not on the ballot.”

There were some bright spots in the wreckage for Republicans who, besides expanding their slim Senate majority also held Florida’s governorship and ousted Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by the narrowest of margins. They retained the governorship in Ohio, though Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown won reelection. Iowa GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds also won a full term, but Democrats beat two of the state’s three Republican members of Congress.

But the biggest advances for Democrats were made in the three states that put Trump over the top in the Electoral College in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Democrats won the governorships in all three — wresting away an open seat in Michigan and defeating two-term incumbent Scott Walker in Wisconsin, while holding Pennsylvania. Democratic incumbent senators in all three won reelection without breaking much of a sweat.

Democrats also won six more House elections across Michigan and Pennsylvania than they had captured in 2016, helped in large part by a new congressional map in Pennsylvania.

“There’s simply no evidence that those states are crying out for more Trump,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster who worked for then-Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

The map could expand beyond those three states, too. Mellman added that the Florida results were “essentially a tie,” and Sen.-elect Kyrsten Sinema’s victory in Arizona — she’s the first Democrat to win a Senate race there since 1988 — is a sign that the state “is likely to be a significant battleground” in 2020.

Pollsters from both parties say Trump’s chances of recovering depend, in part, on improving his approval rating, which he’s thus far failed to do. In the latest POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, 45 percent of registered voters approved of the job Trump is doing as president — equal to his performance in two separate exit polls of 2018 voters, and consistent with the past year, when his approval rating has ranged between 40 and 47 percent.

“Trump’s approval rating has been historically very low,” said Mellman. “Other presidents have been as well, but their approval ratings have been more malleable. His is sort of stuck.”

Lynn Vavreck, a professor at the University of California-Los Angeles and a member of the advisory board for the American National Election Studies, said she’s skeptical public opinion of Trump will change markedly in the next two years.

“It’s so divided by partisanship,” said Vavreck. “Republicans approve of him, and Democrats don’t. And that’s pretty much the floor and the ceiling. There’s not a lot of room for movement, unless Republicans turn on him, or Democrats learn to like him. I don’t see either of things happening.”

But pollsters and experts also urge caution against assuming the die is cast against Trump. Presidents typically see their party lose seats in their first midterms, and most presidents get reelected.

“It [usually] borders on the foolish to draw a straight line from the midterms to the next general,” Mellman said.

In 2020, not only can the president run against the new House Democratic majority — he’ll have an opponent with whom to contrast himself.

“Be careful of extrapolating 2018 success into what it means for 2020 because it just doesn’t fit,” Newhouse said. “2018 was more of a referendum on President Trump. 2020 is going to be more of a choice. And Trump does much better in a choice battle when he has someone to run against.”

This story tagged under:
Donald Trump Donald Trump 2020

What probably underlies the resiliency of this administration is the rising realization on most levels that policy considerations have eclipsed personalities, and even though the perception of Trump has emerged mixed between street shyster and snake oil salesman, there is appeal for many of this approach , even from the point of view of comic relief.

In fact, there may be the emergence of public attitude that trump is becoming a kind of folk hero, able to stand up against unadmirable and hostile elements




Latest news:



Trump Foundation lawsuit: New York state judge rejects Trump claim that he can't be sued because he is president


Published 9 Hours Ago  Updated 6 Hours Ago
CNBC.com


A New York Supreme Court judge on Friday denied a request from President Donald Trump and his family members to dismiss a lawsuit against them and the Trump Foundation.
In her ruling, Justice Saliann Scarpulla shot down an argument from the Trump family's attorneys that the case should be dismissed because the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution suggests "a sitting president may not be sued."
The suit from New York state Attorney General Barbara Underwood alleges that the charitable foundation violated state and federal laws for "more than a decade."
In this April, 2010 file photo, Donald Trump, left, chairman and CEO of the Trump Organization, cuts the ribbon with his children Eric, Ivanka, and Donald Trump, Jr. right, at the opening of the Trump SoHo New York.
Mark Lennihan | AP
In this April, 2010 file photo, Donald Trump, left, chairman and CEO of the Trump Organization, cuts the ribbon with his children Eric, Ivanka, and Donald Trump, Jr. right, at the opening of the Trump SoHo New York.
A New York judge on Friday denied a request from President Donald Trump and his family members to dismiss a lawsuit against them and the Trump Foundation alleging that the charitable foundation violated state and federal laws for "more than a decade."

In her ruling, Justice Saliann Scarpulla of the New York state Supreme Court shot down an argument from the Trump family's attorneys that the case should be dismissed because the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution suggests "a sitting president may not be sued."

Scarpulla also rejected Trump's argument that the state court lacked jurisdiction over the president in this case. While the Constitution prohibits state courts from exercising "direct control" in a way that interferes with federal officers' duties, Scaruplla wrote: "Here, the allegations raised in the Petition do not involve any action taken by Mr. Trump as president and any potential remedy would not affect Mr. Trump's official federal duties."

Scarpulla noted that the defendants "have failed to cite a single case in which any court has dismissed a civil action against a sitting president on Supremacy Clause grounds, where, as here, the action is based on the president's unofficial acts."

"I find that I have jurisdiction over Mr. Trump and deny Respondents' motion to dismiss the petition against him on jurisdictional grounds," she wrote.

New York state Attorney General Barbara Underwood praised Scarpulla's decision.

"As we detailed in our petition earlier this year, the Trump Foundation functioned as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump's business and political interests. There are rules that govern private foundations — and we intend to enforce them, no matter who runs the foundation. We welcome Justice Scarpulla's decision, which allows our suit to move forward," Underwood said in a statement.

A lawyer for the Trump Foundation, in a statement to CNBC, said: "The decision means only that the case goes forward. As we have maintained throughout, all of the money raised by the Foundation went to charitable causes to assist those most in need. As a result, we remain confident in the ultimate outcome of these proceedings"

The White House did not immediately responded to CNBC's requests for comment on Scarpulla's decision.

The judge's ruling could bolster other legal actions against Trump in New York and other states. Those include a complaint by former ''Apprentice'' contestant Summer Zervos, who is one of a dozen or so women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Zervos, who has been pursuing a defamation case against the president, claimed that Trump forced himself on her in 2007. Trump has denied the claims.

The Trump Foundation suit, filed by Underwood in Manhattan state Supreme Court, alleged that Trump had misused the Trump Foundation "for his own personal benefit."

The "pattern" of illegality, Underwood's office wrote, included "improper and extensive political activity, repeated and willful self-dealing transactions, and failure to follow basic fiduciary obligations or to implement even elementary corporate formalities required by law."

After Underwood first filed the suit in June, Trump had vented rage on Twitter against "the sleazy New York Democrats."



--CNBC's Mike Calia contributed to this report.



© 2018 CNBC LLC. All Rights Reserved. A Division of NBCUniversal


Example of moderate to extreme views developing :




    
 The Trump Impeachment
UncategorizedUnfit To Lead
WHOA: Former Reagan Budget Chief Tells FOX News that Trump is a ‘Madman’ Who is ‘Out to Lunch’
By News Corpse / Daily Kos (11/23/2018) - November 23, 2018951

 
CBC News / YouTube Donald Trump talks possible impeachment 
It isn’t often that Fox News broadcasts anything that is remotely critical of Donald Trump. That would be contrary to the mission of the State TV cable network. And it is even less common that the criticism would come from a devout conservative whose credentials reach back to the hallowed administration of Ronald Reagan.

However, that’s precisely what happened on Black Friday morning as former Reagan budget chief, David Stockman, sat down for an interview with confirmed Trump-fluffing Fox Business host, Charles Payne. The interview began innocently enough with Payne acknowledging the recent stock market decline which continued on Friday. But Payne was not prepared for Stockman’s response (video below):


 
Payne: How far down do we go from here?
Stockman: I have no idea but I know the foundation is not stable. We’ve got a perfect storm of a madman in the White House, who’s pursuing trade wars, border wars, a fiscal policy that is totally out to lunch, and attacking the fed.”

Whereupon, Payne interrupted Stockman and diverted him from a discussion about how badly Trump is managing the economy to some absurd speculations about an imaginary war between the U.S. and China. Clearly, Payne wasn’t going to allow Stockman to educate the willfully ignorant Fox News audience about Trump’s foolish economic agenda. Payne thought it would be better to fear monger about a war that no sane analyst is predicting. And it went downhill from there:

Payne: It’s kinda harsh for you to call President Trump a madman.
Stockman: Oh, absolutely he is.
Payne: Because he’s fighting back against unfair trade, intellectual property theft, a country that’s building man-made militarized islands […] You don’t think that we should be pushing back against China?
Stockman: No. China is not a threat to us whatsoever. If they want to waste their money on sandcastles in the South China Sea, be our guest. […] China’s economy is a house of cards. They’ve got forty trillion of debt. It is the biggest speculative building spree in history. Without our export markets, without 4,000 Walmarts and everything else in America, their economy would collapse. They don’t dare threaten us.

So Payne successfully sidetracked the conversation from Stockman’s initial commentary that Trump is a “madman” who is “out to lunch” with regard to the economy. But only to get walloped by Stockman’s astute insight into the weakness of China’s position in relation to the U.S. Which exposes another of Trump’s painfully misguided assessments of the world order.


For a bona fide acolyte of St. Reagan to rip apart a Trump/Fox News narrative like that, it can only bode ill for Fox’s efforts to keep the Deplorables in line ideologically. They must be having hemorrhages trying to reconcile these notions and decide whether to believe the Reagan guy or the stuttering Fox News host. Now that’s entertainment.






Robert Burnett
Trump has never been back from lunch. He’s cuckoo…cuckoo!



The abstractions slowly coalesce:







George Papadopoulos tweets offer at Comey: Testify publicly and I’ll withdraw my request for immunity
Sonam Sheth Nov 24, 2018, 4:45 PM
   
George Papadopoulos
Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos.Yuri Gripas/Reuters
George Papadopoulos, a former adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign, called for former FBI director James Comey to publicly testify about the FBI's purported mishandling of the Russia investigation.
Papadopoulos' tweets came after House Republicans subpoenaed Comey and former attorney general Loretta Lynch to appear before lawmakers in a closed-door session.
But Comey has already been pushing for an open hearing.
Papadopoulos earlier wanted immunity to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, but said Saturday that he'll withdraw his request if Comey testifies publicly.
George Papadopoulos, the former foreign-policy aide to President Donald Trump's campaign who pleaded guilty in the Russia investigation last year, took to Twitter on Saturday to call for the former FBI director, James Comey, to testify publicly about the FBI's purported mishandling of the Russia probe.

"If Jim Comey wants to testify in public and tell America who/why in Trump's advisory board was under FISA; who Joseph Mifsud is; if the FBI had any role in my dealings with Charles Tawil; and explain the UK and Australia's surveillance role," he tweeted, "that would be good for the country."

But Comey has been asking to testify publicly from the start.

Earlier this week, House Republicans - who will be a minority in the lower chamber of Congress come January - made a last-minute push to subpoena Comey and former attorney general Loretta Lynch.

Comey acknowledged the news Thursday, tweeting, "Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. I'm still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a 'closed door' thing because I've seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Let's have a hearing and invite everyone to see."


Democrats have also called for an open hearing, though Republicans are pushing for a closed-door session as they continue their investigation into whether the FBI allowed anti-Trump bias to affect its handling of the ongoing Russia investigation.

James Comey
James Comey.Win McNamee/Getty
Papadopoulos, meanwhile, reportedly wanted immunity in exchange for testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Legal experts said the request indicated the former Trump aide may be worried his testimony could implicate him in a crime.

Read more: George Papadopoulos dumped by his own lawyers as the former Trump aide embarks on a 'self-defeating gambit'

But Papadopoulos backed away from his request Saturday.

"If Jim Comey agrees to answer the below questions in a public testimony, I will agree to testify to the senate without immunity," Papadopoulos tweeted. "It's a win-win for the country. America first."

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI last year and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. At his sentencing hearing in September, he expressed remorse for his actions, saying he was "grateful" for the opportunity to help the investigation and had "nothing but respect for the Court and the legal process."

But the former Trump aide soon adopted a very different tone.

After his sentencing hearing, Papadopoulos tweeted that the FBI's investigation was "the biggest case of entrapment!" The next day, Papadopoulos said he was considering withdrawing his guilty plea because he believed he was framed.

Several days later, he tweeted that he had been sentenced "while having exculpatory evidence hidden from me."

He added that if he had known that at the time, he never would have pleaded guilty. And on November 9, Papadopoulos tweeted that his "biggest regret" was pleading guilty.

He has since deleted those tweets.

Read more: Mueller used George Papadopoulos' own tweets against him in a new court filing

Robert Mueller.Alex Wong/Getty Images
Papadopoulos hired new lawyers in September as he and his wife took to Twitter and the media to promote the unfounded theory that he was entrapped by the FBI, who he said wanted to "infiltrate" and "sabotage" the Trump campaign.

Earlier this month, Papadopoulos' former defense lawyers filed a motion pulling out from representing him.

DOJ veterans pointed out that it's unusual for lawyers to file paperwork to formally withdraw from a case.

Elie Honig, a former prosecutor from the Southern District of New York who specialized in organized-crime cases, said it was likely that Papadopoulos' "lawyers are trying to disassociate with him because of the conspiracy theories he's spreading, or perhaps they told him to knock it off, and he's not listening."

If Papadopoulos is seriously considering withdrawing his guilty plea, he would have to show a judge he was somehow misled or coerced into pleading guilty, and that the plea was not fully voluntary. On a practical level, that would set a defendant up to argue that his lawyers didn't explain the full terms of the plea correctly or lied to him.

In that case, Papadopoulos' lawyers may also have withdrawn because they'd no longer be able to represent him due to a conflict of interest.

Withdrawing a guilty plea is extraordinarily difficult. And if Papadopoulos does succeed, he may find himself in deeper trouble than he was in before because his indictment would resurface and he would not have the option of pleading guilty with an agreement to cooperate.

SEE ALSO: Mueller used George Papadopoulos' own tweets against him in a new court filing

 
* Copyright © 2018 Insider Inc. All rights reserved. 
International Editions: UK DE AUS IN MY SG PL SE NL FR IT JP

Preview of coming attractions?

ABCNews
Mueller report will be ‘devastating’ for the president: Frequent Trump defender
By Roey Hadar
Nov 25, 2018, 12:05 PM ET

WATCH: ABC News Chief Legal Analyst Dan Abrams and Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz, a frequent defender of the president, join “This Week” to weigh in on the president’s legal challenges.
Alan Dershowitz, a frequent defender of President Donald Trump, said special counsel Robert Mueller’s report will be “devastating” for the president.

The Harvard Law professor emeritus told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos that he believes the president will have to navigate the political impact of a potentially damning final report from the special counsel.

“I think the report is going to be devastating to the president and I know that the president’s team is already working on a response to the report,” Dershowitz said on “This Week” Sunday.

Dershowitz added that he believes the report, although it will have a strong political impact, is unlikely to result in criminal charges.

“When I say devastating, I mean it’s going to paint a picture that’s going to be politically very devastating. I still don’t think it’s going to make a criminal case,” Dershowitz said.

The comments come as Trump, this past week, submitted written answers to questions from Mueller in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to a statement from his attorneys given to ABC News.

Alan Dershowitz attends Hulu Presents “Triumph’s Election Special” produced by Funny Or Die at NEP Studios, Feb. 3, 2016 in New York City.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, also said Sunday on “This Week” that the investigation may be jeopardized by the appointment of acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker.

Pointing to Whitaker’s previous public comments on the Mueller investigation before becoming attorney general, Klobuchar said he should not be running the Justice Department and that Congress should pass legislation protecting Mueller.

“I’m really concerned about having him in charge. As you know, we have tried in the Senate on a bipartisan basis, to protect that investigation by law,” Klobuchar said.

The bill is still pending in the Senate.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar arrives at the Intercontinental Hotel for the night’s DFL headquarters election party in St. Paul, Minn., Nov. 6, 2018.
The Minnesota Democrat added that she believed that Whitaker was “literally a walking conflict,” citing reports that the acting attorney general made nearly $1 million leading a tax-exempt organization allegedly advocating right-wing positions.

“There are court cases going on that are questioning this appointment of someone that is literally a walking conflict who got $1.2 million – the most he ever got in his life – to go on TV to protect Donald Trump, and we have no idea where that money came from, and so I’m asking, where did that money come from?”

Since the probe started in May of last year, Mueller’s team secured indictments against 32 individuals and three Russian businesses on charges ranging from computer hacking to financial crimes.

Of those indictments, six people have pleaded guilty and three have been sentenced to prison.

© 2018 ABC News Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.

An expected and expendable development :

Menu
NEWS
Trump says Mueller’s ‘gone rogue’ after dumping Manafort plea deal
By Mark Moore

November 27, 2018 | 8:37am

Donald Trump
AP
President Trump lashed out at Robert Mueller in a trio of tweets on Tuesday, claiming he’s a “conflicted prosecutor gone rogue” and harming the “Criminal Justice System” — a day after the special counsel dumped a plea deal for Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort for lying to the feds.

“The Phony Witch Hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of Angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other. Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie,” Trump wrote on his Twitter account. “Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue.”

Moments later, he continued his Twitter assault on the special counsel.

“The Fake News Media builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other,” Trump wrote.

He concluded in a third.

“Heroes will come of this, and it won’t be Mueller and his terrible Gang of Angry Democrats. Look at their past, and look where they come from. The now $30,000,000 Witch Hunt continues and they’ve got nothing but ruined lives. Where is the Server? Let these terrible people go back to the Clinton Foundation and ‘Justice’ Department!,” Trump said in the posting.

Mueller’s team of prosecutors in court filings on Monday said Manafort breached an agreement he had to cooperate with the investigation and now faces a stiffer sentence.

“After signing the plea agreement, Manafort committed federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Counsel’s Office on a variety of subject matters, which constitute breaches of the agreement,” the court filings say.

They did not immediately detail what Manafort lied about, saying his “crimes and lies” would be revealed at another time.

Manafort’s legal deal disputed Mueller’s claims.

SEE ALSO
Mueller: Paul Manafort violated plea deal by lying to feds
“He believes he has provided truthful information and does not agree with the government’s characterization or that he has breached the agreement,” a court filing by Manafort’s lawyers says.

Both sides are now ready to move into the sentencing phase.

The 69-year-old Manafort was found guilty of eight counts of financial fraud after a federal trial in August in Virginia.

He then pleaded guilty in September to conspiring to defraud the US and conspiring to obstruct justice and agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation to avoid another trial in federal court in Washington, DC.

The charges were connected to his work in Ukraine for a Kremlin-connected politician.

Manafort, who is being held behind bars, is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 8, 2019.

He faces a maximum sentence of 80 years in prison.

FILED UNDER DONALD TRUMP , FBI INVESTIGATIONS , PAUL MANAFORT ,
© 2018 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Read more news from CNN
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Trump appears consumed by Mueller investigation as details emerge
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 8:57 AM EST, Wed November 28, 2018

Washington (CNN) Donald Trump’s behavior isn’t doing much to bolster White House assurances that he’s got nothing to worry about from Robert Mueller’s probe, after a series of potentially ominous turns in the Russia investigation.

The President’s recent barrage of tweets and comments and testimony from sources close to him – coinciding with thickening intrigue around the special counsel – hint instead at deep concern on Trump’s part.

“While the disgusting Fake News is doing everything within their power not to report it that way, at least 3 major players are intimating that the Angry Mueller Gang of Dems is viciously telling witnesses to lie about facts & they will get relief. This is our Joseph McCarthy Era!” Trump tweeted Wednesday, a day after blasting the special counsel as a “conflicted prosecutor gone rogue.”

Despite this outburst of fury, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders painted a portrait of a President who was serenely awaiting Mueller’s findings.

“I don’t think the President has any concerns about the report because he knows that there was no wrongdoing by him and that there was no collusion,” Sanders told reporters at her first daily briefing in a month.

The explanation for Trump’s angst over his predicament seems to lie in a flurry of startling and potentially significant developments and reports swirling around his jailed ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort and other associates.

Trump, the most powerful man in the world who crafted a self-flattering image as the ultimate strongman boss, is in a deeply vulnerable spot and appears to feel cornered and in increasing peril.

He has no choice but to watch as Mueller, an adversary whose discrete public profile makes him an elusive target, grinds away, apparently getting ever closer to Trump’s inner circle and perhaps even to the President himself.

“The Mueller investigation is what it is. It just goes on and on and on,” Trump told The Washington Post Tuesday when asked about his relentless, unseen foe.

Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani offered a hint of the toll being inflicted on Trump behind the scenes when he told CNN’s Dana Bash the President had been “upset for weeks” about “the un-American, horrible treatment of Manafort.”

Details emerge
Manafort denies ever meeting with Assange
While the White House refuses to budge from its denial of collusion between Trump and Russia in 2016, a string of events now coming to light is stretching the notion that this is all one harmless coincidence to the limit of credulity.

In the space of a few days, it emerged that Manafort’s cooperation deal collapsed after Mueller accused him of lying on multiple occasions.

The Guardian reported on Tuesday that Manafort met Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is accused of blasting out emails stolen by Russian spies to attack Hillary Clinton, on a number of occasions in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Both Manafort and Wikileaks have issued strenuous denials of the report – Manafort called it “totally false and deliberately libelous” and Wikileaks was “willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor’s head that Manafort never met Assange.”

The paper’s sourcing was also vague, making it difficult to assess the veracity of the reporting. So for now, joining the dots cannot produce definitive conclusions.

CNN later obtained draft court documents Tuesday with which Mueller plans to show how Trump associate Roger Stone allegedly sought information and emails from Wikileaks using another operative, Jerome Corsi, as a go between.

In another development, CNN contributor Carl Bernstein reported Tuesday that Mueller’s team has been investigating a meeting between Manafort and Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno in Quito in 2017 and has specifically asked if WikiLeaks or Assange was discussed in the meeting, according to a source with personal knowledge of the matter.

Such is the secrecy around Mueller’s investigation that no one outside knows what he knows. The special counsel has yet to lay out any case against Trump or his close associates on either alleged collusion or obstruction of justice.

If there is such supporting evidence, it is not clear that Mueller would be able to prove malicious intent by Trump. But all of the recent developments suggest that the special counsel has penetrated deeply into the events surrounding the troubled 2016 election.

In his dismissal of a cooperation agreement with Manafort, for instance, Mueller’s team said it has evidence to prove the former lobbyist lied “on a variety of subject matters” – a fact that alone must leave Trump wondering about the extent of his knowledge.

There was immediate speculation that Manafort’s apparent attempts to mislead Mueller amounted to an implicit plea for a pardon from the President. The White House said there had been talk of such a step. But adding to speculation that Manafort is angling for a pardon, Giuliani told Bash that the two legal teams had been in contact. This also raised the possibility that Trump has a genuine window into Mueller’s progress, another factor that might explain his recent anger.

The New York Times reported that the cooperation between the two legal teams had inflamed tensions between the special counsel and Manafort’s lawyers.

Potential impact
Stone’s efforts to seek WikiLeaks documents detailed in draft Mueller document
Former Watergate special prosecutor Richard Ben-Veniste told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Tuesday that if the report of Manafort-Assange meetings was correct it would be extraordinary.

“What in the world would Mr. Manafort be doing meeting with Julian Assange if not to talk about Assange’s role as a cut out for disseminating information the Russians obtained by illegal hacking?” Ben-Veniste said.

It was not clear whether Manafort’s alleged lies dealt with the reported meeting with Assange. But given that the fugitive Australian is confined to his hideaway in the embassy, he or his hosts are likely under surveillance, intelligence that Mueller would likely be able to access.

Mueller is not the only potential threat to the President interested in the deepening questions. Democrats, poised to take power in the House, are already gearing up to reinvigorate a congressional investigation on Russia.

What Democrats in Congress will do if they’re in power after midterms
“A meeting with Julian Assange would be the smoking gun,” said Rep. David Cicilline, D-Rhode Island, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee.

The House Democratic majority could eventually pose a grave threat to Trump’s presidency and represents a devastating erosion of the force field of political protection so far offered by the GOP majority on Washington power – another possible reason for his mood.

In the long term, any sustained dip in Trump’s popularity – his disapproval rating climbed to 60% in Gallup’s weekly tracking poll – could even eventually raise questions about the solidity of his standing among Senate Republicans that has so far always been seen as impenetrable.

Expectations high
The latest drama around Manafort is even more tantalizing given the possibility that the collapse of the cooperation agreement could prompt Mueller to reveal more about his tightly private investigation.

Special counsel prosecutors plan to detail Manafort’s alleged lies in a number of areas in a sentencing memo that could be filed with the court in the coming weeks.

Mueller has used indictments and court filings throughout his tenure to embroider a rich picture of Russian intelligence hacking, a social media campaign to disrupt the election and cozy ties between Manafort and pro-Russian political figures in Ukraine.

So expectations will be high ahead of his filing if it is done in public

“Without releasing a report, without another indictment, Mr. Mueller would be in a position to reveal a lot of information that we would all find very interesting about his investigation in open court,” said Ben-Veniste.

Such a filing is also now seen in Washington as a potential way around any attempt to disrupt a final report of the Russia investigation by Trump’s acting-Attorney General Matt Whitaker.

The new focus on the man picked to succeed the sacked Jeff Sessions may also point to another possible spur for the President’s current fury.

Trump has often seemed to know more about the probe than is available, and it’s possible that Whitaker, who is now in charge of overseeing Mueller, has read him in on the inside story of the investigation.

View on CNN
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It seems as if time is running out for both, Trump and Mueller. The international policies on China, its pilfering on intellectual property and its pressing on South Asian and coastal interests is more in accordance with State Department policy, then a unique Trump overture, its to manifold intelligence, for this reason Trump appears again more of a think tank puppetry abiding by an earlier forecast, that he us mainly interested in doing right by the sponsoring banks who hold him hostage by his bankrupt failures.

However the compromise is shaping up for a handshake on keeping him in office for the rest of his term, while everything will be litigated away.

Rationale:(even more bizarre)

The so called 'collusion was pre-planned!

This is how: no one was supposed to go down, Banaford, or anyone else. Now this may be a faulty way to approach this, but in the remainder of this ad.administration, all of these people may only given slaps on the wrist, and forfeiting their dishonest booty, well that will pay for their ‘defense’ at the very least.

What collusion? Right!
This collusion is a classic ponzi play, whereby a double entendre was created magically slight of hand to underwrite any doubt and to create an ansmolous atmosphere of a faux synthesis.

Lack of initial referendum or platform?
No Problema. The platform is being constructed as we speak. Very cleverly thought out with interest to those familiar with Vaudville.

Sub rationale: political correctness has passed with the by now familiarity with stuff like Pizzagate, the oral office, and the sudden death of the legal partner involved in whitewater, not to mention the use of private phones for top secret communication.

Therefore ‘they’ have to prolong judgement day unroll all of this will sink in 2 the public cinsciousness, which the second parties looks at with distaste, anyhow.

Psychologically speaking on an individual level, this is tantamount to an already borderline population being de-differentiated into an obliging search for a prototype, a hero to save a revolted child lashing out and repressed simultaneously.

This type of Everyman best Assange Himself either into Heroworship Or Aninomity, cause there is no going back.

New crisis about the role of attorney general:

If things couldn’t be any more muddy:

SCOTUS Blog’s Tom Goldstein’s Motion to Install Rosenstein as AG. “This is a constitutional crisis.”
By durrati / Daily Kos (11/29/2018) - November 29, 201893

Share
Michael Belanger / Flickr Rod Rosenstein PATRIOT…
Michael Belanger / Flickr
(Thomas C. Goldstein, known as simply Tom Goldstein, is an American attorney known for his advocacy before and blogging about the Supreme Court. Over the past fifteen years, Goldstein has served as one of the lawyers for one of the parties in just under 10% of the cases argued before the Supreme Court.)

Jurist.org

“Lawyer Tom Goldstein on Friday asked the US Supreme Court to appoint Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as the acting Attorney General, replacing Matthew Whitaker.

Goldstein claims that Whitaker was illegally installed as the temporary successor of former attorney general Jeff Sessions, and that Rosenstein is the legal and constitutional successor to Sessions. The motion argues that as the Senate-confirmed Deputy Attorney General, Rosenstein automatically succeeded to the role of Acting Attorney General under 28 USC § 508(a) and the Appointments Clause in Article II of the Constitution.

It seems as if crisis after crisis tries to deflect the idea that the process is wearing true the proposition that the
Swamp and the investigation are somehow related.

Michael Cohen pleads guilty to lying to Congress about Trump Tower project in Moscow, cuts deal with special counsel Robert Mueller
Kevin Breuninger
Dan Mangan
Published 12 Hours Ago Updated 6 Hours Ago
CNBC.com
President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleads guilty to lying to Congress about a Trump Tower real estate project in Russia.
Cohen’s plea, his second in four months, comes as part of a new deal with special counsel Robert Mueller in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In his court statement, Cohen says he lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee in order to be consistent with Trump’s political messages and out of loyalty to the president.

President Donald Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Thursday to lying to Congress about a Trump real estate project in Russia, and the extent of the president’s involvement in and knowledge of that deal.

Cohen’s plea in federal court in Manhattan, his second in four months, came as part of a new deal with special counsel Robert Mueller.

Prosecutors said Cohen lied in order to minimize links between Trump and his Moscow building project, and to give the false impression that the project had died before the Iowa caucuses in February 2016, the first contest on the path toward a presidential nomination.

On the White House’s South Lawn after Cohen’s court appearance, the president accused his former fixer of lying about his most recent admissions in order to “get a reduced sentence.”

“He’s a weak person and not a very smart person,” Trump said.

Trump’s lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, attacked Cohen’s credibility: “Michael Cohen is a liar.”

Cohen, 52, did not previously have a formal cooperation agreement with Mueller, but it is known that he has been speaking for the past several months to the special counsel’s office and other law enforcement entities. Mueller is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible coordination between Trump campaign-related figures and the Kremlin, as well as possible obstruction of justice by Trump.

Cohen told a judge Thursday that he lied in 2017 to the Senate Intelligence Committee about a proposed Trump Tower development in Moscow in order to be consistent with Trump’s political messages and out of loyalty to the president.

Cohen’s violation carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and three years of supervised release, according to his plea agreement.

Read Cohen’s plea agreement here

Giuliani said in a statement that “It’s no surprise that Cohen lied to Congress”:

“Michael Cohen is a liar. It’s no surprise that Cohen lied to Congress,” Giuliani said. “He’s a proven liar who is doing everything he can to get out of a long-term prison sentence for serious crimes of bank and tax fraud that had nothing to do with the Trump Organization. It is important to understand that documents that the Special Counsel’s Office is using to show that Cohen lied to Congress were voluntarily disclosed by the Trump Organization because there was nothing to hide. It is hardly coincidental that the Special Counsel once again files a charge just as the President is leaving for a meeting with world leaders at the G20 Summit in Argentina. The Special Counsel did the very same thing as the President was leaving for a world summit in Helsinki. With regard to the hotel proposal in Moscow, the President has been completely open and transparent.”

A court document laying out the special counsel’s allegations refer to Trump and his company, the Trump Organization, through the respective pseudonyms “Individual 1” and the “Company.”

The special counsel in a court document said Cohen “knowingly and deliberately” lied when he told the Senate committee that the Moscow proposal “ended in January 2016 and was not discussed extensively with others” in the Trump Organization.

In fact, Cohen discussed the Moscow project with another individual as late as about June 2016, and briefed Trump on it more times than he had claimed to the Senate committee, the special counsel wrote. Mueller’s team adds that Cohen “briefed family members of [Trump] within the Company about the project.”

Andrew Kelly | Reuters
President Donald Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen exits Federal Court after entering a guilty plea in Manhattan, New York City, November 29, 2018
Cohen had made the false claim in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee in September 2017.

“I assume we will discuss the rejected proposal to build a Trump property in Moscow that was terminated in January of 2016; which occurred before the Iowa caucus and months before the very first primary,” Cohen said in that letter. “This was solely a real estate deal and nothing more. I was doing my job. I would ask that the two-page statement about the Moscow proposal that I sent to the Committee in August be incorporated into and attached to this transcript.”

Read Cohen’s criminal information here

The special counsel also writes that Cohen lied when he told lawmakers that he didn’t recall hearing a response about the project from Russia.

Cohen’s appearance in court was a surprise. He is due to be sentenced Dec. 12 on his prior guilty plea of eight criminal counts related to tax fraud, excessive campaign contributions and making false statements to a financial institution. Those charges came in a separate federal case not directly lodged by the special counsel.

In that hearing in August, Cohen said he paid two women at the request of a political candidate later confirmed to be Trump “for the principal purpose of influencing the election.” The women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, claimed they had had affairs with Trump. The White House denies the allegations.

At the courthouse on Thursday, Cohen pleaded to a single count of making false statements to Congress.

Cohen attorney Lanny Davis declined CNBC’s requests for comment. The White House had no immediate comment when asked about Cohen’s guilty plea. Trump was preparing to travel to Buenos Aires for the G-20 summit as Cohen pleaded guilty. In a tweet shortly after his comments outside the White House on Thursday, Trump announced that he had canceled his planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Argentina summit.

Trump said his decision was based on Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait of the Black Sea.

Neither Cohen nor his criminal defense lawyer Guy Petrillo had any comment for a horde of reporters confronting them as they exited the lower Manhattan courthouse about 50 minutes after the plea hearing began.

After Trump won the 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton, the then-president elect denied having anything to do with Russia.

The Washington Post reported in August 2017 that Cohen had emailed Putin’s personal secretary during the 2016 presidential campaign to request assistance in moving along a stalled Trump Tower development project in Moscow.

The development in Cohen’s legal saga came shortly after Trump sent multiple tweets raging against the Russia investigation.

© 2018 CNBC LLC. All Rights Reserved. A Division of NBCUniversal

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2018 ELECTION RESULTS
Trump Michael Cohen Moscow Toobin finish term ac360 vpx_00000000
Toobin: I think Trump might not finish term
CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin discusses Michael Cohen pleading guilty to lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow.Source: CNN
Trump Michael Cohen Moscow Toobin finish term ac360 vpx_00000000.jpg
Toobin: I think Trump might not finish term
NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 29: Michael Cohen, former personal attorney to President Donald Trump, exits federal court, November 29, 2018 in New York City. At the court hearing, Cohen pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress about a Trump real estate project in Moscow.

The growing opinion of what is ahead illustrates such discontent , and the prediction that Trump may not be able to manage governing the U.S. is not unreasonable. About the question whether the VP can correct the misguided policy which some think is pretty well l locked in. However that’s putting the carriage before the horse.

Much reversals now, yesterday Trump looks mixed at the G20 meet in Brussels, major nations ignore him yet follow US policy cues, while he is shared to piesrs at home.

His narcissism does not translate and extend to American centrism, as Eurocentrism tosses over hints its ready to part with remaining plastic Ancien Regime reflections. The Chinese are eager to bargain, yet their theft of intellectual property goes on as does NK’s vague verbal jettisons of abiding by the successes of that face to face meet.

Yet Trump’s resilience is noteworthy and admirable, and the Wall has no structural fidelity to cope with its formative weaknesses. A complete toss up so far, and the remarked fissures appear at a strange hidden detante. Underneath this political standstill a rumbling of political lava :
Sunday Morning
Face The Nation

Warner says Senate Intel has made “a number of referrals” to Mueller
1:18 PM EST FACE THE NATION

BY CAMILO MONTOYA-GALVEZ / CBS NEWS

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said his committee has made “a number of referrals” to special counsel Robert Mueller’s office for prosecution, and vowed to do the same for anyone who lies to congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“If you lie to Congress, we’re going to go after you. We’re going to make sure that gets referred,” Warner said on “Face the Nation” Sunday.

On Thursday, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his involvement in an effort to build a “Trump Tower” in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. In the plea agreement, Cohen admitted to lying to the Senate and House intelligence committees about the project and the extent to which then-candidate Trump and his family were involved.

Transcript: Sen. Mark Warner on “Face the Nation,” December 2, 2018
Warner declined to say whether Mueller obtained transcripts of Cohen’s testimony from the Senate committee in which he lied under oath. Cohen admitted to misleading investigators “out of loyalty” to Mr. Trump and to remain in line with his “political messaging.” On Thursday, Mr. Trump downplayed the plea and accused his former attorney of lying to “get a reduced sentence.”

Warner said Cohen’s plea contradicts Mr. Trump’s multiple denials during the campaign in which he said he did not have any business links to Russia. Cohen alleged the president was actively involved in the Moscow project and claimed he discussed with Mr. Trump a possible trip to Russia as a candidate in 2016.

“I do think it would have been a relevant factor, frankly, for Republican delegates to know that during that time period when [Mr. Trump] was saying only good things about Vladimir Putin as a candidate for president he was still trying to do business with that very same government,” Warner said Sunday.

Warner said he did not know whether Cohen was instructed to lie to Congress, but said it was a “very relevant question that the American people need an answer to.”

Warner did not specify who else has been the subject of criminal referrals, but said the committee has an “ongoing relationship” with Mueller’s office. He said the committee is still probing the question of whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, which Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied.

“That is something both Chairman Burr and I are reserving judgment until we see all of the witnesses and we’ve got more folks to see,” he said.

© 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

However , here is something unsettling:

Fox News

OPINIONPublished December 03, 2018
Jason Chaffetz: Why is Michael Cohen prosecuted when Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder and Lois Lerner were not?
By Jason Chaffetz | Fox News

With a Republican president in place and soon-to-be Democrat-run House, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has conveniently remembered that they have the ability to prosecute people who lie to Congress. This was a power they had inexplicably forgotten about during the 10 years that Democrats were benefiting from witnesses who lied.

No doubt there should be consequences and accountability if you testify to Congress under oath and blatantly lie or violate the law. But the DOJ seems to have different standards based on which party’s political fortunes will be impacted. It is this unequal application of justice that is dividing the country and threatens peace.

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former attorney, struck a plea deal with the DOJ for lying to Congress. But what about all the other egregious cases of misconduct interacting with Congress? Why weren’t those pursued or prosecuted?

Let’s look back at how a very similar case was handled just a few short years ago. After FBI Director James Comey announced there would be no charges against Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or any of her associates for a variety of potential unlawful acts, Comey testified before the House Oversight Committee. I was the Chairman of the committee at the time.

When I asked Comey specifically if he had reviewed Secretary Clinton’s testimony before the Benghazi Select Committee, he confirmed the FBI never reviewed nor considered that testimony. As Chair of Oversight, I along with JudiciaryChairman Bob Goodlatte sent a formal request to the DOJ. We never even got a response. Note the contradiction: Cohen is forced into a plea deal and Clinton’s lies to Congress were not even reviewed.

Continue Reading Below

The inconsistency always seems to conveniently favor the Democrats and penalize those connected to Donald Trump.

Eric Holder became the first Attorney General (AG) in the history of the United States of America to be held in contempt of Congress. Nearly a year after the formal vote in the House of Representatives, the DOJ said they were going to exercise prosecutorial discretion and not pursue charges. Again, note the contrast. Cohen is prosecuted. The Holder matter is not even presented to a grand jury as required by law.

Last year the DOJ settled two lawsuits involving 469 conservative groups by paying $3.5 million for the targeting done by the IRS in suppressing their applications based on their conservative nature. IRS employee Lois Lerner and others were never prosecuted by the DOJ. In other words, DOJ pays for wrongdoing by the IRS but nobody is held accountable. Yet, Cohen is the one they do pursue.

In the Fast & Furious gun running operation, the DOJ knowingly and willingly allowed nearly 2,000 firearms, mostly AK-47s, to be illegally purchased by drug cartels. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed with one of those guns. Responding officially to Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the DOJ flatly denied the critical aspects of the case. Ten months later the DOJ withdrew the letter because of the lies and inaccuracies.

Was anybody dismissed, reprimanded or prosecuted? No, but now that the tables are turned, Cohen is being prosecuted for the much lesser crime of not fully articulating the extent of Donald Trump’s personal business dealings.

There isn’t enough room on the internet to list all of the examples of double standards and unequal applications of the law. The inconsistency always seems to conveniently favor the Democrats and penalize those connected to Donald Trump. This obvious disconnect legitimately erodes faith in our justice system and further divides the country.

Jason Chaffetz is a Fox News contributor who was the chairman of the U.S. House Oversight Committee when he served as a representative from Utah. He is the author of "The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and is Working to Destroy the Trump Administration. Tr©2018 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. All market data delayed 20 minutes.

The weakness of the above argument lies in the ethical moral argument , that simply, two wrongs don’t make a right.

It is to be expected that the FBI-Justice Department may commit lax oversight favoring the administration finds itself in. Does this give a valid excuse for the opposite party to use this as a political balance using similar tactics?

No! However the use of bargaining chips evaluated as quantifiable zero sum political capital , irrespective of the under lying standards of moral/ethical consideration results in vacuous arguments, substantially destroying the formal argument.

That this be a basis of a compromise, has certain utility, in absence of immediate other choices.

The compromising current situation is probably sees this as the reason to drag this out, until a definitive picture arises from the way things unfold , at least until the Presidential election in 2020. However, with the Democratic control of the House, coincidental with a major policy emergency, this formula may develop into a changed time line.

Another case developing is noted:

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Politics

Courts & Law

Supreme Court to consider case that could affect potential Manafort prosecutions
By Robert Barnes

December 2, 2018 at 8:00 PM

Before he joined the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort hadn’t been seen around Washington in a while. He had made a name for himself in the D.C. lobbying world, but he made a fortune overseas, advising strongmen and doing business with oligarchs. Then his past caught up with him. (Dalton Bennett , Jon Gerberg, Jesse Mesner-Hage/The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court next week takes up the case of a small-time Alabama felon, Terance Gamble, who complains that his convictions by state and federal prosecutors for the same gun possession crime violate constitutional protections against double jeopardy.

But likely to be watching the proceedings closely will be those concerned about a big-time felon, Republican consultant and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was prosecuted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III for tax fraud.

With President Trump keeping alive prospects that he might pardon Manafort, Gamble v. United States might be redubbed Manafort v. Mueller, joked Thomas C. Goldstein, an attorney who regularly argues before the Supreme Court.

The outcome in the case could affect nascent plans by states to prosecute Manafort under their own tax evasion laws — New York, in particular, has expressed interest — should Trump pardon Manafort on his federal convictions.

The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Constitution’s 5th Amendment prohibits more than one prosecution or punishment for the same offense. But the Supreme Court since the 1850s has made an exception, allowing successive prosecutions and punishments if one is brought by state prosecutors and the other by the federal government. (One early case from that time involved counterfeiting; another was prosecution of someone harboring a fugitive slave.)

In Gamble, the court is reconsidering these precedents. Almost none of the briefs filed in the case speculate on how a presidential pardon of a federal conviction would affect prosecutors at the state level should the so-called separate sovereigns doctrine be renounced.

But the issue is being debated loudly online. While Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was pending, a theory emerged in some circles that the Trump administration was in a hurry to get him on the Supreme Court in time to have him participate in the case.

The reality of Gamble v. United States is more complicated than that. For one, the court accepted the case before Kavanaugh’s nomination. And it is unclear how the new justice would vote on the issue or whether he is pivotal to the outcome.

For another, Trump’s Justice Department urged the Supreme Court not to take the case. It says the status quo, allowing state and federal prosecutions, should remain in place.

That hasn’t stopped the speculation involving Manafort, who was convicted over the summer in Virginia of bank and tax fraud and in September pleaded guilty in D.C. to two other felonies as part of an agreement to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian operatives. On Monday, the special counsel’s office said Manafort had breached his D.C. plea agreement by lying to investigators.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Trump reiterated that he had not offered a pardon to Manafort but that he wasn’t taking it off the table. “I have never seen anybody treated so poorly,” he said of his former campaign chairman.

A spokesman for Manafort declined to comment for this story.

The real motivation for the court to reconsider the separate sovereigns doctrine came from liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who expressed the desire in an opinion two years ago. Her ally in that call? Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas.

“The double jeopardy proscription is intended to shield individuals from the harassment of multiple prosecutions for the same misconduct,” Ginsburg wrote in 2016. “Current ‘separate sovereigns’ doctrine hardly serves that objective.”

As the Ginsburg-Thomas alliance shows, concern about the doctrine is shared across the ideological divide.

“You see conservatives and liberals coming together on this issue,” said Brianne Gorod, chief counsel at the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, who filed an amicus brief on Gamble’s behalf.

Their agreement reflects “a shared concern among many progressives and conservatives that there are profound problems in our criminal justice system — one manifestation of which is people being sentenced to jail time twice for the same offense, notwithstanding a constitutional provision designed to prevent exactly that,” Gorod said.

Because the states and federal government are separate sovereigns, the court has reasoned in the past, each has an interest in prosecuting someone for violating its laws, even for the exact same conduct.

The court recently signaled how seriously it is taking the question of overturning its precedent: It expanded the time allotted for oral argument. Besides hearing from Gamble’s lawyer, the court will hear separately from the Justice Department and the state of Texas, which heads a group of 36 states objecting to any change in the law.

Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said at a preview of the Supreme Court term this fall that the case raises conflicting issues. On the one hand, successive prosecutions of the same offense seem unfair.

But on the other, it has been a handy tool for enforcing civil rights from the 1960s to more recent times. For instance, federal prosecutors brought charges against the Los Angeles police officers who beat motorist Rodney King in California after state trials ended in acquittals.

“The federal government possesses the solemn obligation to vigorously enforce the nation’s civil rights laws, including the relevant federal criminal civil rights laws,” says a brief filed by the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at the Howard University School of Law. “Consequently, any modification or abolition of the dual sovereignty doctrine will necessarily impact the future direction of federal criminal civil rights enforcement.”

The federal government and the states argue that they have their own laws to uphold and that they do not abuse the right.

“Each state has a strong interest in its sovereign power to prosecute violations of its laws regardless of the prosecutorial decisions of other sovereigns, whether the federal government or other states,” says a brief filed by Texas and 35 other states.

At the same time, more than 20 states have their own restrictions on prosecuting crimes for which an individual has already been prosecuted, as does the Department of Justice.

In its brief, the DOJ says it is better for state and local prosecutors to decide between themselves who should be responsible for a case. There is a federal policy saying the feds should step in after a state prosecution only where there is a significant national interest.

But Gamble’s lawyers say his case proves those protections don’t mean much; their client’s case held no special significance. “If the government believes that a ‘substantial federal interest’ is present in a [routine] gun possession case, when will the policy ever bar re-prosecution?” said lawyer Louis A. Chaiten, who represents Gamble.

The DOJ brief notes the power of the president to issue pardons affects only federal convictions. But would a ruling for Gamble make it impossible for states to bring charges against someone who received a pardon?

Not necessarily, said Gorod, as the specific elements of a state and federal case may be different.

“As an initial matter, a pardon on federal charges would, if anything, only block state prosecutions for the same offense,” she said. But the Supreme Court has explained in a previous case that “two offenses are not the same if each requires proof of a fact that the other does not.”

Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.

© 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Michael Flynn not given prison sentence , the rationale being that he fully cooperated with the Special Council.

The Trump Impeachment
UncategorizedUnfit To Lead
Trump’s lawyers make desperate bid to halt emoluments lawsuit against Trump
By Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos (12/10/2018) - December 4, 2018832

As a federal judge in Maryland planned to the open discovery process in an emoluments case involving Donald Trump, the government sought to advance an “unusual” appeal to halt the case from moving forward, according to Politico.

Attorneys for Trump had appealed several rulings that went against Trump in a lawsuit brought by the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia charging that Trump is violating two provisions in the Constitution by profiting off his luxury hotel in Washington.

U.S. District Court Judge Peter Messitte had expected to order the beginning of the discovery process in the suit Monday, but on Friday the Justice Department told Messitte it that would petition the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the case from moving forward.

On Monday, Trump’s lawyers appealed those rulings using “a rarely invoked process” that is intended to stop rogue judges from pursuing a line of legal reasoning that is deemed improper. In their request for what’s known as a “status conference,” Trump’s lawyers argued that he is “entitled to absolute immunity” as pr*sident and allowing discovery to move forward would violate that immunity.

“In sum, the President will suffer the very burdens from which absolute immunity is supposed to shield him,” wrote Trump’s lawyers, in an appeal that was reportedly approved by the solicitor general of the United States.

Lawyers who brought the lawsuit are seeking to begin a six-month discovery process, which would allow them to depose witnesses, seek records relevant to the case, and perhaps even depose Trump, though they promised to pursue other avenues of information first.

Similar lawsuits emanating from New York and Washington are also working their way through the legal system.

The Trump Impeachment
UncategorizedUnfit To Lead
Trump’s lawyers make desperate bid to halt emoluments lawsuit against Trump
By Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos (12/10/2018) - December 4, 2018873

As a federal judge in Maryland planned to the open discovery process in an emoluments case involving Donald Trump, the government sought to advance an “unusual” appeal to halt the case from moving forward, according to Politico.

Attorneys for Trump had appealed several rulings that went against Trump in a lawsuit brought by the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia charging that Trump is violating two provisions in the Constitution by profiting off his luxury hotel in Washington.

U.S. District Court Judge Peter Messitte had expected to order the beginning of the discovery process in the suit Monday, but on Friday the Justice Department told Messitte it that would petition the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the case from moving forward.

On Monday, Trump’s lawyers appealed those rulings using “a rarely invoked process” that is intended to stop rogue judges from pursuing a line of legal reasoning that is deemed improper. In their request for what’s known as a “status conference,” Trump’s lawyers argued that he is “entitled to absolute immunity” as pr*sident and allowing discovery to move forward would violate that immunity.

“In sum, the President will suffer the very burdens from which absolute immunity is supposed to shield him,” wrote Trump’s lawyers, in an appeal that was reportedly approved by the solicitor general of the United States.

Lawyers who brought the lawsuit are seeking to begin a six-month discovery process, which would allow them to depose witnesses, seek records relevant to the case, and perhaps even depose Trump, though they promised to pursue other avenues of information first.

Similar lawsuits emanating from New York and Washington are also working their way through the legal system.

UPDATE: Trump lost… discovery will move forward in the DC/MD emoluments lawsuit, says judge.

Now the third and last stage of Trump’s troubled presidency has arrived. Lets see if these stages coalesce, or if the government can deal with them and disparage focus.

:

The Trump Impeachment
UncategorizedUnfit To Lead
Trump’s lawyers make desperate bid to halt emoluments lawsuit against Trump
By Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos (12/10/2018) - December 4, 2018883

As a federal judge in Maryland planned to the open discovery process in an emoluments case involving Donald Trump, the government sought to advance an “unusual” appeal to halt the case from moving forward,

Attorneys for Trump had appealed several rulings that went against Trump in a lawsuit brought by the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia charging that Trump is violating two provisions in the Constitution by profiting off his luxury hotel in Washington.

U.S. District Court Judge Peter Messitte had expected to order the beginning of the discovery process in the suit Monday, but on Friday the Justice Department told Messitte it that would petition the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the case from moving forward.

On Monday, Trump’s lawyers appealed those rulings using “a rarely invoked process” that is intended to stop rogue judges from pursuing a line of legal reasoning that is deemed improper. In their request for what’s known as a “status conference,” Trump’s lawyers argued that he is “entitled to absolute immunity” as pr*sident and allowing discovery to move forward would violate that immunity.

“In sum, the President will suffer the very burdens from which absolute immunity is supposed to shield him,” wrote Trump’s lawyers, in an appeal that was reportedly approved by the solicitor general of the United States.

Lawyers who brought the lawsuit are seeking to begin a six-month discovery process, which would allow them to depose witnesses, seek records relevant to the case, and perhaps even depose Trump, though they promised to pursue other avenues of information first.

Similar lawsuits emanating from New York and Washington are also working their way through the legal system.

UPDATE: Trump lost… discovery will move forward in the DC/MD emoluments lawsuit, says judge.

OMG What Trump Just Did on The World Stage

Here are the torn seems that are becoming bothersome as frantic efforts are under way to sow them up, damage control in the works.

The case of a Democratic Governor whose political capital is being undermined while the administration is still Republican, by passing laws, which will limit his ability to govern , is but one example that came to light recently.

By John Solomon

Opinion Contributor

Just before Thanksgiving, House Republicans amended the list of documents they’d like President Trump to declassify in the Russia investigation. With little fanfare or explanation, the lawmakers, led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), added a string of emails between the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to their wish list.

Sources tell me the targeted documents may provide the most damning evidence to date of potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), evidence that has been kept from the majority of members of Congress for more than two years.

The email exchanges included then-FBI Director James Comey, key FBI investigators in the Russia probe and lawyers in the DOJ’s national security division, and they occurred in early to mid-October, before the FBI successfully secured a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The email exchanges show the FBI was aware - before it secured the now-infamous warrant - that there were intelligence community concerns about the reliability of the main evidence used to support it: the Christopher Steele dossier.

The exchanges also indicate FBI officials were aware that Steele, the former MI6 British intelligence operative then working as a confidential human source for the bureau, had contacts with news media reporters before the FISA warrant was secured.

The FBI fired Steele on Nov. 1, 2016 - two weeks after securing the warrant - on the grounds that he had unauthorized contacts with the news media.

But the FBI withheld from the American public and Congress, until months later, that Steele had been paid to find his dirt on Trump by a firm doing political opposition research for the Democratic Party and for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and that Steele himself harbored hatred for Trump.

If the FBI knew of his media contacts and the concerns about the reliability of his dossier before seeking the warrant, it would constitute a serious breach of FISA regulations and the trust that the FISA court places in the FBI.

That’s because the FBI has an obligation to certify to the court before it approves FISA warrants that its evidence is verified, and to alert the judges to any flaws in its evidence or information that suggest the target might be innocent.

We now know the FBI used an article from Yahoo News as independent corroboration for the Steele dossier when, in fact, Steele had talked to the news outlet.

If the FBI knew Steele had that media contact before it submitted the article, it likely would be guilty of circular intelligence reporting, a forbidden tactic in which two pieces of evidence are portrayed as independent corroboration when, in fact, they originated from the same source.

These issues are why the FBI email chain, kept from most members of Congress for the past two years, suddenly landed on the declassification list.

The addition to the list also comes at a sensitive time, as House Republicans prepare on Friday to question Comey, who signed off on the FISA warrant while remaining an outlier in the intelligence community about the Steele dossier.

Most intelligence officials, such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, have embraced the concerns laid out in the Steele dossier of possible - but still unproven - collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Yet, 10 months after the probe started and a month after Robert Mueller was named special counsel in the Russia probe, Comey cast doubt on the the Steele dossier, calling it “unverified” and “salacious” in sworn testimony before Congress.

Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page further corroborated Comey’s concerns in recent testimony before House lawmakers, revealing that the FBI had not corroborated the collusion charges by May 2017, despite nine months of exhaustive counterintelligence investigation.

Lawmakers now want to question Comey about whether the information in the October email string contributed to the former FBI director’s assessment.

The question long has lingered about when the doubts inside the FBI first surfaced about the allegations in the Steele dossier.

Sources tell me the email chain provides the most direct evidence that the bureau, and possibly the DOJ, had reasons to doubt the Steele dossier before the FISA warrant was secured.

Sources say the specifics of the email chain remain classified, but its general sentiments about the Steele dossier and the media contacts have been discussed in nonclassified settings.

“If these documents are released, the American public will have clear and convincing evidence to see the FISA warrant that escalated the Russia probe just before Election Day was flawed and the judges [were] misled,” one knowledgeable source told me.

Congressional investigators also have growing evidence that some evidence inserted into the fourth and final application for the FISA - a document signed by current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein - was suspect.

Nunes hinted as much himself in comments he made on Sean Hannity’s Fox News TV show on Nov. 20, when he disclosed the FBI email string was added to the declassification request. The release of the documents will “give finality to everyone who wants to know what their government did to a political campaign” and verify that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia during the election, Nunes said.

As more of the secret evidence used to justify the Russia probe becomes public, an increasingly dark portrait of the FBI’s conduct emerges.

The bureau, under a Democratic-controlled Justice Department, sought a warrant to spy on the duly nominated GOP candidate for president in the final weeks of the 2016 election, based on evidence that was generated under a contract paid by his political opponent.

That evidence, the Steele dossier, was not fully vetted by the bureau and was deemed unverified months after the warrant was issued.

At least one news article was used in the FISA warrant to bolster the dossier as independent corroboration when, it fact, it was traced to a news organization that had been in contact with Steele, creating a high likelihood it was circular intelligence reporting.

And the entire warrant, the FBI’s own document shows, was being rushed to approval by two agents who hated Trump and stated in their own texts that they wanted to “stop” the Republican from becoming president.

If ever there were grounds to investigate the investigators, these facts provide the justification.

Director Comey and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein likely hold the answers, as do the still-classified documents. It’s time all three be put under a public microscope.

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He is The Hill’s executive vice president for video.

Friday was a very, very bad day for Donald Trump
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
Updated 10:50 PM EST, Fri December 07, 2018

(CNN) On Friday, President Donald Trump (and the rest of us) got the most fulsome look into the inner workings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation yet. And what Trump saw has to terrify him.

What was on display – in sentencing documents for former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and a memo detailing how one-time Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort broke the terms of his plea agreement – was the depth and breadth of what Mueller and his team are investigating, what they already know and just how close they are to the President himself.

View this interactive content on CNN.com
Consider what we learned from the filings from Mueller and the Southern District of New York on Friday:

  1. Trump directed Cohen to pay off both porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, both of whom have alleged they had affairs with the President in the mid 2000s, during the 2016 campaign. Cohen had already pleaded guilty to purposely circumventing campaign finance law to make the payments – and said he did so at the direction of and coordinated with Trump. Trump has denied that he knew where the money was coming from and that he had anything to do with the decision to pay off the women.

  2. In November 2015, a Russian national spoke with Cohen and attempted to offer “political synergy” with the Trump campaign (Mueller’s office said Cohen didn’t pursue the outreach).

  3. Cohen lied to Congress about the nature and extent of his involvement in trying to cut a deal on Trump Tower Moscow with the Russians to hide “the fact that the Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government.”

  4. Manafort lied about the extent of his contacts with a Russian – named Konstantin Kilimnik – who has ties to the Russian military intelligence agency accused of hacking into the Democratic National Committee’s servers, which led to the publishing of emails via the site WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign.

  5. Manafort continued to stay in touch with White House officials long past the point we knew prior. CNN’s Katelyn Polantz and Marshall Cohen write: “The document also contains the stunning disclosure that Mueller can show, including with text messages, that Manafort was in contact with Trump administration officials early this year – even after he was indicted in late 2017.”

Take a step back and consider all of that – on top of what we already know about the Mueller probe (192 criminal charges against 36 people and entities, 7 guilty pleas, 3 people sentenced, 1 convicted in a jury trial) and an unmistakable picture forms: A number of people who, at one time or another, were close to Trump not only had ties to the Russians but went out of their way – sometimes risking severe criminal penalties – to lie about the nature of those contacts.

That’s important, so I’m going to say it again: People with very close personal and professional ties to the President of the United States have now been found to have ties to the Russians. Many of those same people not only lied about those connections publicly but also to Congress and/or Mueller’s office.

All of which makes Trump’s response to the news on Friday laughable – if this wasn’t such serious stuff: “Totally clears the President,” wrote Trump. “Thank you!”

Which is, well, bunk. Nothing in the documents filed by either Mueller or the Southern District of New York on Friday do any such thing. Quite the opposite.

What’s more clear now than at any times since Mueller was named special counsel last May is that his investigation is both wide and deep. He has found wrongdoing across a variety of fields and with a variety of actors. Many of those actors were close to either candidate or Trump. Almost all of them have been caught lying by Mueller and held to account. And, perhaps most concerning for Trump, they are all – with the exception of Manafort – now fully cooperating with Mueller’s probe.

To be clear: Nothing that emerged on Friday – or in the sentencing memo of former national security adviser Michael Flynn that was released earlier this week – is any sort of smoking gun that pins collusion or obstruction of justice on Trump.

But what happened Friday is that the walls around Trump began to close in even further. Mueller has been slowly tightening the vise around this White House for months. On Friday, we got a glimpse of how much tighter he can make it. And that prospect has to worry not just Donald Trump, but anyone and everyone in his inner circle.

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Prosecutors: Michael Cohen acted at Trump’s direction when he broke the law
By Erica Orden and Marshall Cohen, CNN
Updated 10:25 PM EST, Fri December 07, 2018

New York (CNN) Federal prosecutors said for the first time Friday that Michael Cohen acted at the direction of Donald Trump when the former fixer committed two election-related crimes during the 2016 presidential campaign, as special counsel Robert Mueller outlined a previously undisclosed set of overtures and contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian nationals.

Those revelations came in a set of court filings in which federal prosecutors in New York said Cohen should receive a “substantial” prison sentence of roughly four years for tax fraud and campaign-finance crimes, and as Mueller’s office accused the President’s former attorney of lying about his contacts with Russia.

Mueller’s disclosures also exposed deeper entanglements than previously known between Trump, his campaign apparatus and the Russian government, including that a Russian national who claimed to be well-connected in Moscow spoke with Cohen in 2015 and offered “political synergy” with the Trump campaign.

Mueller: Paul Manafort lied about contacts with Trump administration this year
Mueller: Paul Manafort lied about contacts with Trump administration this year

The pair of memos from two sets of prosecutors reflected competing views of Cohen’s utility to the federal investigations ahead of his scheduled sentencing on Wednesday.

Prosecutors added, “In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1.” Individual-1 is the term prosecutors have been using to refer to the President.

In their filing, prosecutors from the Manhattan US attorney’s office knocked Cohen’s “rose-colored view of the seriousness of his crimes,” noting his years-long willingness to break the law. “He was motivated to do so by personal greed, and repeatedly used his power and influence for deceptive ends,” they wrote in a filing that also sought to puncture Cohen’s public pronouncements of assistance in their investigations.

Mueller’s team acknowledged that Cohen provided “useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation,” but also disclosed that he had initially lied to them about a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow.

In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight federal crimes after being charged by Manhattan federal prosecutors. Those included tax fraud, making false statements to a bank and campaign-finance violations tied to his work for Trump, including payments Cohen made or helped orchestrate that were designed to silence women who claimed affairs with the then-presidential candidate. Trump has denied those claims.

View this interactive content on CNN.com
Contact with Russians
Cohen was subsequently charged last week by the special counsel’s office with one count of lying to Congress about the Moscow project. He pleaded guilty, disclosing that talks about the effort in Moscow had extended through June 2016, after Trump had become the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and that both Trump and his family members had been briefed on the discussions. Cohen also acknowledged pursuing plans to send Trump and himself to Russia in service of the project and discussing the proposed development directly with a representative of the Kremlin.

The special counsel’s Friday memo on the matter suggested that Cohen’s – and, by extension, Trump’s – intersection with Russians eager to aid the presidential campaign was more substantial than previously known, with the Russians anxious to put Trump face-to-face with their president.

In one instance, Cohen spoke in November 2015 to a Russian national who offered “synergy on a government level” to the Trump presidential campaign and “repeatedly proposed” a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to court papers.

The interest appears to have been reciprocal. Cohen told the special counsel that he had consulted with Trump about his interest in contacting the Russian government before suggesting in a radio interview in September 2015 that Trump meet with Putin during the Russian President’s visit to New York City that fall.

Cohen had previously claimed his comments on air were spontaneous, the court papers said, but he admitted to prosecutors that they came about after his discussion with Trump.

That meeting never happened, nor did the one with the Russian national, although Cohen told the special counsel that was due to the fact that he was working on the Moscow project “with a different individual who Cohen understood to have his own connections to the Russian government.”

Mueller’s sentencing memo also provided the first explanation of the Trump Tower Moscow project’s relevance to Russia’s interference during the 2016 campaign.

According to the special counsel, Cohen’s false statements to investigators about the Trump Tower Moscow project “obscured the fact that the Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government.”

That Cohen continued to work on the Trump Tower Moscow project – and discuss it with Trump – was material to both the ongoing congressional and special counsel investigations, prosecutors said, noting in particular that “it occurred at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.”

A tightening net
The filings on Cohen, and a submission from Mueller about Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, appear to further tighten the net that Mueller is gathering around the President and his inner circle.

They come at a time when Trump appears to be increasingly worried and furious about the investigation, following a searing tweet storm aimed at the special counsel on Friday morning. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders downplayed the significance of prosecutors’ findings, saying late Friday that “the government’s filings in Mr. Cohen’s case tell us nothing of value that wasn’t already known. Mr. Cohen has repeatedly lied and as the prosecution has pointed out to the court, Mr. Cohen is no hero.”

The memos also appear to take aim at several issues that have and could continue to ensnare others in the President’s orbit, including the act of lying not just to federal agents but also to the public and the media. Cohen’s effort to lie about the Moscow project, they said, constituted an attempt to alter the course of the investigation.

“The defendant amplified his false statements by releasing and repeating his lies to the public, including to other potential witnesses,” prosecutors wrote. “By publicly presenting this false narrative, the defendant deliberately shifted the timeline of what occurred in the hopes of limiting the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election – an issue of heightened national interest.”

Prosecutors unhappy with Cohen’s cooperation
Despite Cohen’s disclosures to the special counsel, however, Manhattan federal prosecutors sought repeatedly to emphasize the limited nature of his assistance in other investigations.

New York federal prosecutors have continued to investigate the Trump Organization based on information in the charges against Cohen, CNN has reported, and Cohen met with prosecutors to discuss “the participation of others in the campaign finance crimes,” they said in their filing. But, they noted, he “declined to meet with the office about other areas of investigative interest.”

Prosecutors also said the information Cohen has provided to the New York State Attorney General’s Office, which has a civil lawsuit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation, “warrants little to no consideration as a mitigating factor.”

And while Cohen has met with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, which has also been examining the Trump Organization, CNN has reported, his assistance “appears to consist solely of providing that entity information that they would otherwise have obtained via subpoena.”

The Cohen cases are being considered together for sentencing purposes. In the New York federal prosecutors’ case, the sentencing guidelines call for a term of 51 to 63 months in prison, and prosecutors on Friday asked the court to “impose a substantial term of imprisonment, one that reflects a modest downward variance from the applicable guidelines range.”

US District Judge William Pauley III can deviate from the guidelines when he determines Cohen’s sentence.

Cohen’s attorneys have asked the court to give him no prison time, but prosecutors on Friday voiced their objection to that proposal, noting that the crimes Cohen committed had far-reaching consequences that extended all the way to the White House.

“While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks, or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows,” they wrote.

“He did so by orchestrating secret and illegal payments to silence two women who otherwise would have made public their alleged extramarital affairs with Individual-1,” they said. “In the process, Cohen deceived the voting public by hiding alleged facts that he believed would have had a substantial effect on the election.”

CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Stephen Collinson contributed to this report.
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This is the basic fear I had all along that he may wag the dog , as a trump card.

Or, Nixon like, he may tale the only apparent rational move, bit Nixon was child’s candy next to him.

Now that the house ia devided , let’s see if it will fall, since even the judicial
has declared a negative opinion on his government -business entanglement, including his newly chosen attorney general.

Here is a slanted opinion , but getting more factual by the minute.

THE END GAME
Mueller Is Telling Us: He’s Got Trump on Collusion
Max Bergmann,
Sam Berger
12.07.18 10:38 PM ET
OPINION

Daily Beast
For nearly two years, since the U.S. intelligence community released its report on the Russian campaign to assist Donald Trump in the 2016 election, the American people have been seeking an answer as to whether the Trump campaign colluded with its Russian counterpart. In the endless speculation about the direction of the investigation, a common view was that maybe the investigation would never implicate President Trump or find any collusion.

But a flurry of recent activity this past week all points in the same direction: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation will likely implicate the president, his campaign, and his close associates in aiding and abetting a Russian conspiracy against the United States to undermine the 2016 election.

First, Mueller has clearly identified collusion in the efforts of top Trump aides and associates to contact WikiLeaks. In a draft plea agreement provided to conservative operative Jerome Corsi, Mueller details how Roger Stone, who the special counsel notes was in frequent contact with Donald Trump and senior campaign officials, directed Corsi to connect with WikiLeaks about the trove of stolen materials it received from Russia. Corsi subsequently communicated WikiLeaks’ release plan back to Stone, and the Trump campaign built its final message around the email release. That is collusion.

Second, we now know that Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn have provided evidence to Mueller related to collusion. In Cohen’s sentencing memo, Mueller said that Cohen provided his office with “useful information” on “Russia-related matters core to its investigation.” The core of Mueller’s investigation is collusion. In Flynn’s sentencing memo Mueller said that Flynn’s false statements to the FBI about his calls with the Russian ambassador during the transition were “material” to the investigation into links or coordination between Russia and “individuals associated with the Trump campaign.”

Third, Mueller has found definitive proof that Trump was compromised by a hostile foreign power during the election. In his plea deal, Cohen revealed that Trump had repeatedly lied to voters about the then-candidate’s financial ties Russia. While Trump claimed during the campaign to have no business dealings with Russia, he was negotiating a wildly lucrative business deal not with Russian businessmen, but with the Kremlin itself. Trump’s team even reportedly tried to bribe Russian President Vladimir Putin by offering him a $50 million penthouse.

Worse, Russia not only knew that Trump was lying, but when investigators first started looking into this deal, the Kremlin helped Trump cover up what really happened. That made Trump doubly compromised: first, because he was eager to get the financial payout and second because Russia had evidence he was lying to the American people—evidence they could have held over Trump by threatening to reveal at any time.

PLAY BALL
Flynn Behaved Like Mueller’s Dream Cooperator
Barbara McQuade

Since the president’s embarrassing performance at the Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin—when he kowtowed to a foreign adversary rather than stand up for American interests—there has been open speculation about what leverage the Kremlin has over him. Now we know at least part of the picture, raising the specter of what other information Putin has, and how he is using it to influence Trump’s policy decisions.

Fourth, we know that Trump has engaged in an increasingly brazen attempt to cover up his actions: installing a political crony to head the Department of Justice by potentially illegal means in an effort to shut down the investigation; using his former campaign chairman and convicted criminal Paul Manafort to find out information about Mueller’s investigation; and even appearing to offer Manafort a pardon if he helps him obstruct the Russia probe. These may be components of an obstruction of justice case, but they also provide strongly circumstantial data points as to how serious Trump himself views the allegations of collusion being levelled against him.

Lastly, federal prosecutors have told us Trump broke the law to influence the 2016 election by hiding evidence of his affairs. Trump clearly had no qualms about breaking the law to win an election.

In the face of what Mueller has revealed, there is little question where this is going. Mueller may still be only showing us part of his hand, but it’s a damn good hand. He has signalled to us he’s found collusion. He has shown us that the president is compromised. He has told us that he has gathered information important to his investigation about contacts with people in the Trump Organization, the campaign, the transition, and even the White House. That’s everyone Trump has been connected with since he started running. And given all the redacted information in his filings and all that he’s been told by cooperating witnesses, we can be confident that Mueller will show us even more.

Mueller is coming. And he is clearly coming for Trump. Not simply for obstructing justice but for conspiring with a hostile foreign power to win an election. This is a scandal unlike any America has ever seen.

Max Bergmann is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Moscow Project at the Center for American Progress. He served in the State Department from 2011-2017. Sam Berger is the Senior Advisor at the Center for American Progress. He served in the White House from 2010-201

Donald Trump launched an early morning Twitter attack on Robert Mueller’s investigators Friday, hours before the special counsel’s team is set to deliver important court filings in his cases against the president’s former campaign chairman and his longtime legal fixer.

The president quickly turned his eight-tweet rant into an analysis of Mueller and his team, who today will drop new public information in the cases of Paul Manafort and and Michael Cohen. James Comey, whom Trump dubbed “Leakin’ Lyin’ James Comey,” will also testify before the House intelligence committee today. In total, Trump wrote nearly 300 words lambasting the men responsible for the Trump-Russia investigation over the past two years.

“Robert Mueller and Leakin’ Lyin’ James Comey are Best Friends, just one of many Mueller Conflicts of Interest,” Trump began. “And bye the way, wasn’t the woman in charge of prosecuting Jerome Corsi (who I do not know) in charge of “legal” at the corrupt Clinton Foundation? A total Witch Hunt [sic],” Trump continued, referring to Jeannie Rhee, who was appointed by Mueller to join his team.

Donald J. Trump
:heavy_check_mark:
@realDonaldTrump
Robert Mueller and Leakin’ Lyin’ James Comey are Best Friends, just one of many Mueller Conflicts of Interest. And bye the way, wasn’t the woman in charge of prosecuting Jerome Corsi (who I do not know) in charge of “legal” at the corrupt Clinton Foundation? A total Witch Hunt

Rhee, a former partner at the WilmerHale law firm, represented Hillary Clinton during a 2015 lawsuit involving her private emails and represented the Clinton Foundation in a separate racketeering case.

Donald J. Trump
:heavy_check_mark:

“Will Robert Mueller’s big time conflicts of interest be listed at the top of his Republicans only Report?” Trump asked. “Will Andrew Weissman’s horrible and vicious prosecutorial past be listed in the Report. He wrongly destroyed people’s lives, took down great companies, only to be overturned, 9-0, in the United States Supreme Court. Doing same thing to people now.”

Trump was likely referencing Weissman’s role in the Justice Department’s Enron Task Force in the early 2000s that convicted several top executives at the now-defunct energy-trading firm as well as former accounting giant Arthur Andersen (the latter convictions were later overturned by the Supreme Court).

Donald J. Trump
:heavy_check_mark:
@realDonaldTrump
…overturned, 9-0, in the United States Supreme Court. Doing same thing to people now. Will all of the substantial & many contributions made by the 17 Angry Democrats to the Campaign of Crooked Hillary be listed in top of Report. Will the people that worked for the Clinton…

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“Will all of the substantial & many contributions made by the 17 Angry Democrats to the Campaign of Crooked Hillary be listed in top of Report. Will the people that worked for the Clinton Foundation be listed at the top of the Report?” Trump asked. “Will the scathing document written about Lyin’ James Comey, by the man in charge of the case, Rod Rosenstein (who also signed the FISA Warrant), be a big part of the Report? Isn’t Rod therefore totally conflicted?”

In his pre-campaign days, Trump himself also donated to Hillary Clinton. And, to be clear, Rosenstein is supervising the investigation, not conducting it, and Trump has said multiple times that he decided to fire Comey before he even received the memo. “The FISA Warrant” is a reference to a special warrant to conduct surveillance on Carter Page, who was suspected of acting on behalf of a foreign power believed to be Russia. Rosenstein signed a reapplication for the warrant, which was reauthorized several times by Republican-appointed federal judges.

Donald J. Trump
:heavy_check_mark:
@realDonaldTrump
…the lying and leaking by the people doing the Report, & also Bruce Ohr (and his lovely wife Molly), Comey, Brennan, Clapper, & all of the many fired people of the FBI, be listed in the Report? Will the corruption within the DNC & Clinton Campaign be exposed?..And so much more!

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“Will all of the lying and leaking by the people doing the Report, & also Bruce Ohr (and his lovely wife Molly), Comey, Brennan, Clapper, & all of the many fired people of the FBI, be listed in the Report? Will the corruption within the DNC & Clinton Campaign be exposed?” Trump asked. “And so much more!”

Trump’s attack—just one of many—on Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr and his wife, Nellie, was apparently focused on his time as associate deputy attorney general until late 2017 and her work as a contractor for Fusion GPS, the same research firm that hired ex-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele to compile its notorious dossier on Trump and Russia.

In a bit of bright news, Trump turned his attention east.

“China talks are going very well!” Trump added.

And now this from the Athlantic Monthly:

IDEAS
Manafort, Cohen, and Individual 1 Are in Grave Danger
Robert Mueller is closing in on the president and all his men.

REUTERS

Federal prosecutors filed three briefs late on Friday portending grave danger for three men: the former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, the former Trump fixer Michael Cohen, and President Donald Trump. In an age when Americans usually get mere squibs of breaking news from Twitter, Facebook, and red-faced cable shouters, many started their weekend poring over complex legal filings and peering suspiciously at blacked-out paragraphs. The documents were stunning, even for 2018.

In brief No. 1, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office argues that Paul Manafort breached his cooperation agreement with the government by lying to the FBI and the Special Counsel’s Office in the course of 12 meetings. The brief oozes a level of confidence notable even among professionally hubristic prosecutors: Mueller says he’s ready to present witnesses and documents, and that he gave Manafort’s lawyers an opportunity to refute the evidence but they could not. Mueller is sure he has the receipts.

According to the brief, Manafort lied about his communications with the reputed Russian intelligence agent Konstantin Kilimnik, whom Mueller has scrutinized as a possible conduit between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Although Mueller’s brief is heavily redacted, it’s clear that Manafort minimized the frequency, duration, and subject of his meetings with Kilimnik. Mueller has emails contradicting Manafort’s description of those meetings, which—we can infer from the unredacted snippets—related to the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian interests. Mueller also asserts that Manafort lied about some of the payments he received and about an investigation in another district—possibly, based on the context, the Southern District of New York investigation of Michael Cohen and the president. Finally, and of great concern to the White House, Mueller claims that Manafort lied about his contacts with the Trump administration before his guilty plea, and that text messages, documents, and witnesses prove that he was in contact with administration officials.

Mikhaila Fogel and Benjamin Wittes: Mueller is laying siege to the Trump presidency

In brief No. 2, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York asks a federal judge to sentence the former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to a “substantial term of imprisonment”—meaning between three and four years. Last week, Cohen’s lawyers filed a brief lauding their client’s cooperation with the Special Counsel’s Office, the Southern District of New York, and the New York attorney general, downplaying the significance of his crimes and asking the court to sentence Cohen to probation. Such gambits are tricky: Defense lawyers must thread the needle between praising their client’s cooperation and seeking leniency enough to sway the judge, but not doing this so effusively that they trigger a prosecutorial rebuttal. Here, Cohen’s lawyers’ pirouette turned into a disastrous face-plant.

Each weekday evening, get an overview of the day’s biggest news, along with fascinating ideas, images, and people.

The prosecutors’ rebuttal of Cohen’s sentencing brief is one of the more livid denunciations I’ve seen in more than two decades of federal criminal practice. The Southern District concedes that Cohen provided some information to it, to the special counsel, and to the New York attorney general. But Cohen refused to cooperate fully; he declined to engage in a full debriefing about everything he knew or to commit to ongoing meetings, and he only spilled about the things he’d already admitted in his plea. That’s not how cooperation works. In this game, you either cooperate fully or you shut up; there is no middle ground. It’s not surprising that Cohen’s stance angered the notoriously proud Southern District prosecutors.

The New York prosecutors blast Cohen’s “rose-colored view of the seriousness of his crimes,” accusing him of a “pattern of deception that permeated his professional life.” Prosecutors portray Cohen as stubbornly obstructing his own accountant to cheat at taxes, even refusing to pay for accounting work that raised inconvenient issues he wanted suppressed. When it comes to Cohen’s campaign-finance violations, the prosecutors’ fury leaps off the page. Cohen, they say, schemed to pay for two women’s stories (Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, we now know) in violation of campaign-finance laws in order to influence the 2016 election, and did so “in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1”—that is, the president of the United States. As the brief puts it:

While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks, or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows. He did so by orchestrating secret and illegal payments to silence two women who otherwise would have made public their alleged extramarital affairs with Individual-1. In the process, Cohen deceived the voting public by hiding alleged facts that he believed would have had a substantial effect on the election.

If the Southern District’s fury at Cohen is notable, its explicit accusation that President Trump directed and coordinated campaign-finance violations is simply stunning. The prosecutors’ openness suggests that they are sure of their evidence and have mostly finished collecting it. It’s a sign of a fully developed, late-game investigation of the president’s role, one that may soon make its way to Congress.

Read: Mueller’s memos and the alleged lies of the Trump administration

And that brings us to brief No. 3: Special Counsel Mueller’s separate sentencing brief in Cohen’s lying-to-Congress case. He does not recommend a sentence but informs the court about the nature of Cohen’s assistance to his office. Mueller discloses that Cohen has “taken significant steps to mitigate his criminal conduct” by pleading guilty to lying to Congress and meeting with the special counsel seven times to discuss his own conduct and other “core topics under investigation.” That includes information about multiple cases of contact between other Trump-campaign officials and the Russian government, and about Cohen’s contact with the White House in 2017 and 2018, suggesting an ongoing inquiry into obstruction of justice. Most significant, the special counsel indicates that Cohen “described the circumstances of preparing and circulating his response to the congressional inquiries, while continuing to accept responsibility for the false statements within it.” That statement suggests that the special counsel believes that someone in the Trump administration knew of, and approved in advance, Cohen’s lies to Congress. That’s explosive, and potentially impeachable if Trump himself is implicated.

The president said on Twitter that Friday’s news “totally clears the President. Thank you!” It does not. Manafort and Cohen are in trouble, and so is Trump. The special counsel’s confidence in his ability to prove Manafort a liar appears justified, which leaves Manafort facing what amounts to a life sentence without any cooperation credit. The Southern District’s brief suggests that Cohen’s dreams of probation are not likely to come true. All three briefs show the special counsel and the Southern District closing in on President Trump and his administration. They’re looking into campaign contact with Russia, campaign-finance fraud in connection with paying off an adult actress, and participation in lying to Congress. A Democratic House of Representatives, just days away, strains at the leash to help. The game’s afoot.

In addition , Forbes magazine reports:

Forbes: Trump appears to be swindling his campaign contributors for profit,

by using campaign contributions and not hos own money for business interests, billing his party for rent to Trump Tower for oxxupanxy and legal services for political occupancy which according to Forbes never happened. They cases the place out. And there were no such occupancy nor activity.
The richest President ever, allegedly defrauding his own party.

What if this is another hoax on part of liberal detractors to pit the. 'lame - GOP into another depreciating situation? Who can tell , bit watch what’s the coming of attractions.

If some one would parallel this to the Decline of ancient Rome, one could ponder such figures as Caligula and Nero.

Comey says firing Mueller alone won’t derail investigations, is the opinion on Friday’s House hearing of Coney by a Semoxratox oversight committee. He said, "You’d have to fire everyone in the FBI to get rid of the investigation totally.

Could it happen that Mueller would be fired? Would it not result as the repeat performance of Watergate . when Nixon on fact fired Archibald Cox, his special investigator , hired by Elliot Richardson attorney general? Or are things so fundamentally different this time around? It probably is, because that is already am eatabliahed precedent, and as such the legal community may not dare a repeat performance.

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Trump tries to change the story, but Russia cloud darkens
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Updated 9:23 PM EST, Sat December 08, 2018

(CNN) President Donald Trump is dipping into his playbook of distraction and denial, but even his skills at weaving alternative narratives cannot disguise the growing threat he faces from special counsel Robert Mueller.

On Saturday, Trump announced the exit of chief of staff John Kelly, dismissed new revelations from the Russia probe, slapped familiar foes and promoted violent demonstrations challenging his erstwhile friend, French President Emmanuel Macron.

But while he can spin new stories for the media to chase, the President seems powerless to stop Mueller’s relentless focus on his own conduct in the 2016 campaign and ever since.

A week of legal filings related to the Russia investigation has only increased the President’s vulnerability and raised new questions about whether his campaign cooperated with a Russian election meddling effort.

The more Mueller’s work seems to uncover contacts with Russians by people inside Trump’s orbit and evidence that they lied about what happened, the more the President argues that he is being vindicated and cleared.

“We’re very happy with what we’re reading because there was no collusion whatsoever,” Trump told reporters before heading to the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia.

Trump tweeted earlier Saturday that it was “time for the Witch Hunt to END” and quoted Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera, saying “this is collusion illusion” and “there is nothing impeachable here.”

The President has a long record of disregarding evidence that contradicts his preferred version of events. And Trump has mounted a long campaign to discredit the special counsel, apparently seeking to devalue any eventual conclusions that are critical of his conduct.

But the deepening record of the Mueller investigation is raising the possibility that Trump’s talent in creating alternative realities is facing its stiffest test yet.

New and damaging information for the White House comes at a time when every move by Mueller appears to bring his investigation deeper into the White House and Trump’s inner circle, and shows it has expanded well beyond what may or may not have happened in the 2016 campaign.

So the President has every reason to change the subject.

Trump calls for Mueller probe to end following Manafort, Cohen court filings
Kelly’s departure has long been expected given an apparently fractious relationship with the President and his diminishing influence in a riotous White House he once tried to tame with military-style discipline.

“I appreciate his service very much,” Trump said, of a respected retired general who also served as his first homeland security secretary.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported Saturday that Trump was in talks with Nick Ayers, who current serves as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, to succeed Kelly. But the elevation of Ayers is not certain, as he is looking to move his young family back to Georgia and may only want to do the job in the short term.

Trump also took time to tweet about violence in France that has rocked the Macron government and caused the cancellation of fuel tax increases designed to wean consumers off fossil fuels that cause global warming.

“Very sad day & night in Paris. Maybe it’s time to end the ridiculous and extremely expensive Paris Agreement and return money back to the people in the form of lower taxes?” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Deepening jeopardy
Taunting a fellow world leader who was once a friend but has recently criticized the President’s nationalistic worldview might be a pleasant diversion for Trump, but cannot change the reality of the widening special counsel probe.

Mueller is clearly now looking not just at allegations of possible cooperation of Trump associates with Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, but at possible obstruction of justice even after the firing of then-FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. That much became clear when CNN reported on Friday that the special counsel has spoken to Kelly in recent months. The chief of staff did not even take the job until July 2017.

A series of filings and court action this week by Mueller, federal prosecutors and attorneys for the President’s former lawyer Michael Cohen and former national security adviser Michael Flynn appeared to significantly sharpen the threats facing Trump and key associates.

Prosecutors: Michael Cohen acted at Trump’s direction when he broke the law
None of the documents amount to criminal action against the President himself. But they tell an indirect tale of allegedly questionable behavior by the then-GOP nominee.

For the first time, prosecutors said Trump directed Cohen to make payments designed to silence women who claimed affairs with Trump, which broke campaign finance laws.

Mueller also drew a link between Trump’s business interests and the Russian election meddling effort. He pointed out that work on a proposed Trump Tower Moscow project that continued until deep into the campaign in June 2016 – and which Cohen lied about – came “at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the US presidential election.”

Mueller also confirmed that he has benefited from substantial cooperation from Cohen and Flynn, and that he has documentary evidence in addition to testimony from witnesses. This raises the likelihood that he has built a comprehensive picture into what went on in the Trump campaign, the transition and in the White House, even though he is yet to reveal everything publicly in heavily redacted documents.

Trump and his legal team insist, however, that the President is in the clear.

“When you look at what was revealed today, there’s nothing that links the President to collusion with the Russians, so maybe they should fold up their tent, give a report to the Justice Department and go home,” Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani told CNN’s Pam Brown on Friday.

Giuliani also said the President never told Cohen to pay women who claimed affairs with him, adding that such payments would not count as a campaign contribution.

The depth of the President’s legal and political difficulties will only become clear when Mueller files a final report – and Trump’s team will have the chance to challenge his findings and make their defense. But it’s increasingly looking like the President’s denials and distractions are failing to keep up with the special counsel’s accelerating pace.

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The Trump Impeachment
Business ConflictsUncategorized
Forbes: Trump appears to be swindling his campaign contributors for profit
By Aldous J Pennyfarthing / Daily Kos (12/08/2018) - December 8, 2018760

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Gage Skidmore / Flickr Donald Trump…
Gage Skidmore / Flickr
The torrent of Donald-Trump-is-a-debauched-amoral-criminal news yesterday drowned out this revealing piece from Dan Alexander, who works the Donald-Trump-is-a-debauched-amoral-criminal beat for Forbes magazine.

Seems Trump has been taking in campaign donations since inauguration day when he officially launched his 2020 reelection campaign and has been using them to line his own pockets. (You may remember inauguration day; it was when you realized it’s virtually impossible to kill yourself with pound cake, NyQuil, and Costco gin before falling asleep in the bathtub desperately clutching a Tickle Me Elmo you’ve somehow never laid eyes on before.)

Donations poured in from more than 50,000 people across the country. But according to the latest federal filings, Trump still has not donated a penny of his own, while his businesses continued to charge the campaign for hotels, food, rent and legal consulting. That means the richest president in American history has turned $1.1 million from donors across the country into revenue for himself.

Because of course, he did. And the Trump cultists are only too happy to help.

Here’s the thing with Donald Trump, though. Everything he does is a grift, and his greed simply knows no bounds. If at any point he’d thought Don Jr. had swallowed a quarter, he’d have put on a mask and snorkel, sliced him open like a tauntaun, and dived in like Hooper in the third act of Jaws.

Trump Tower Commercial LLC, an entity owned 100% by the president, has charged the reelection campaign $665,000 in rent, according to federal filings. The Republican National Committee also coordinated with the campaign to pay an additional $225,000 in rent. Campaign representatives did not respond to requests for comment, and an RNC official declined to answer questions about the payments, leaving it unclear exactly how much space they leased inside Trump Tower.

But it appears to be plenty. Leading up to the 2016 election, the president’s campaign paid an average of $2,700 in monthly Trump Tower rent for every person listed in campaign filings as receiving a “payroll” payment. The 2020 operation, by contrast, is shelling out an average of $6,300 in monthly rent for every such person.

Oh, but here’s the thing, though. One of the Trump properties charging rent to the Trump campaign appears to be accommodating literally no one having anything to do with the Trump campaign. If you wanted to be charitable you’d call this dishonest. If not, you might call it fraud.

Trump Plaza LLC has received $42,000 from the Trump campaign since November 2017 for “rent,” but it’s unclear what the campaign is actually using that space for (other than grifting Trump’s famously incurious followers, that is).

So Forbes staked out the buildings, arriving at 7:15 a.m. one November morning and staying for the next 14 hours, with the exception of an 18-minute break around 3 p.m. By our count, seven people went in and out of the twin, four-story brownstones over the course of the day. One refused to talk, and six said they had not seen any sign of the campaign in the buildings. Nor had a man behind the front desk at Trump Plaza. “I’ve been here since the beginning,” he said. “If there was any kind of office rented out for campaigning or whatever, I would know about it.”

Oh, and that’s not all!

There are other campaign payments that raise suspicions. One month after Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election, the campaign paid the Trump Corporation, another one of the president’s companies, $90,000 in “legal consulting” expenses, according to federal records. It is not clear what legal services Trump’s company provided the campaign, or what rate it charged for the work. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.

This is what happens when you elect a lifelong conman as your president. He fucking cons you.

So if you happened to send a donation to Donald Trump’s reelection campaign at any time since January 2017, you might want to ask him what happened to it.