A high likelihood of rampant criminality
Paul Waldman at the Post says Mueller is closing in on Trump.
When he spoke to reporters about this Thursday, Trump stressed over and over that it would have been perfectly fine for him to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, as he had long sought to do. Legally speaking, that’s true. But given the controversy around Trump’s solicitousness toward Vladimir Putin and the growing realization that Russia was intervening in the campaign on his behalf, through 2016 it was important for him to distance himself publicly from Russia, which he did many times by stressing that he had no investments there.
But also there’s a thing Neal Katyal said:
Folks need to remember when Michael Cohen was negotiating the deal with "Russia" for Trump, he was not negotiating like a regular business transaction. The plea agreement says he was negotiating with Kremlin *OFFICIALS* — not private businesspersons. This is no ordinary biz.
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) November 29, 2018
It wasn’t just normal market negotiating, it was negotiating with officials of the Russian government.
And then there’s the whole Trump Organization problem.
Just about everyone who has followed this story closely understands that whatever might or might not have happened with Trump and Russia during the campaign, the real threat to the president lies in the Trump Organization. As Adam Davidson of the New Yorker put it, “I am unaware of anybody who has taken a serious look at Trump’s business who doesn’t believe that there is a high likelihood of rampant criminality.”
Cohen was intimately involved for years in that business, making deals and putting out fires. If he’s telling Mueller everything he knows, Trump could be in serious trouble.
I hope his aides packed plenty of changes of underwear for his trip to Argentina.
We’re moving away from the denials and closer to the “yeah, we did it, and it was awesome!” stage.
If they’ve any sense, they’ll pack a defibrillator and a few vials of epinephrine…
Is it uncharitable to hope he simply blows a blood vessel in his brain? Hmmm, except Pence…
Yeah, there’s the problem. We kick out Trump, we get Pence. Right out of the fires of California into the fires of hell.
At least when Nixon resigned, we got a nonentity like Ford. And he didn’t get any sort of incumbent bump, because everyone was sick of Watergate. If Pence says the right words, and pardons their hero, he will have the Trump voters in his pocket, and he’ll be able to pull the evangelical voters who don’t like Trump, plus the more mainline Republicans who just want to get out of paying taxes, but don’t want someone like Trump messing up the house while the party is still going on. And I fear the Democratic voters will just sit back in relief that Trump is gone and figure they don’t have to fuss anymore.
Bad times ahead for all.
But only towards the end. For a good part of the Watergate debacle, the VP was the equally criminal Spiro Agnew. It was apparently a real scramble to get rid of him before Nixon fell.
Now Pence is no Spiro Agnew, it’s true. But I wonder how clean his hands really are. I don’t know who coined the phrase “Everything Trump touches, dies” but it seems to be true. Certainly, everyone who has any kind of dealings with Trump gets either screwed or drawn into his hideous, lawless world. Or both, of course.
To be sure… There’s no way Pence isn’t involved in this shit at this point.
Or maybe they won’t. You know, best for everyone that way.
Shouldn’t be a problem. I figure that along with The Football, Trump, as Toddler-in-Chief, would always be accompanied by a healthy stock of diapers.