How exonerated is he, kids?
Walter Shaub says yes but we already know he’s a criminal.
2/ Trump directed his attorney to commit criminal campaign finance violations for which the attorney has been sentenced to jail.
Likely as part of the apparent cover up of that criminality, Trump omitted his debt to Cohen for the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels from…
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 24, 2019
4/ Trump’s inaugural committee is under investigation for possibly accepting money from foreign actors, possibly giving favors in exchange for money, possible false statements, and likely allowing the Trump Organization to overcharge for services, so Trump could pocket the money.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 24, 2019
6/ Trump has called for yet another investigation of his vanquished political rival, expressly as a misdirected act of revenge for the special counsel investigation.
He pressured the Postmaster General to retaliate against Amazon as an act of revenge against Jeff Bezos.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 24, 2019
8/ Trump’s campaign manager was convicted, a top campaign aide, his National Security Advisor, and one of his foreign affairs advisors pled guilty to crimes.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 24, 2019
10/ After years of working with a campaign that had featured “lock her up” as a recurring refrain, Jared Kushner is illegally using WhatsApp to communicate with foreign actors outside the view of U.S. authorities.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 24, 2019
12/ Trump has committed nepotism in the White House and has put national security at risk by interceding in the denial of security clearances for his daughter and son-in-law.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 24, 2019
14/ individuals connected to the Russian government, the blockade of Qatar, cancelling the move of FBI’s headquarter, etc.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 24, 2019
16/ There have been suspicions of money laundering activity before he came into the federal government, which warrant investigation. While some have said that business activity before coming into federal office is off limits, they seem to be conveniently forgetting…
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 24, 2019
18/ He has told over 8,000 documented lies or misleading statements to the American people. He has put children in cages and made no effort to track their family affiliations so they could be returned safely, letting his administration speak instead of “deterrence.”
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) March 24, 2019
Put like that it all seems a bit damning, doesn’t it.
Well it’s not like he shot someone on Fifth Avenue or anything…
Let’s just face it: Unless it comes out that this summary completely misrepresents this report, which is doubtful, then impeachment is dead. Makes me think Pelosi knew this was coming when she took it off the table recently.
This is a huge win for a Trump.
Hindsight is always 20/20, so now it’s clear Democrats should not have tied their anti-Trump cred to a single report with an unknown outcome. Trump supporters are yucking it up tonight, digging up old quotes about how the whole Trump family was going to be marched out of the White House in handcuffs when the report came out, etc.
I always thought the Russian collusion could go either way. Nobody disputes Russia did a lot to help Trump. I always thought there was a reasonable chance Trump’s campaign enjoyed the benefit of that without actively colluding.
And I still have liberal friends saying they won’t vote for Democrats if they don’t impeach, that they won’t vote for anyone less progressive than Bernie, etc. This is how Trump gets a path to a second term.
This is a bad day.
The obstruction part is what really disappoints me. That was clear, and right out in the open. I don’t see how Mueller determined it didn’t rise to a prosecutable level. Even if there’s not enough evidence to convict for a crime, I didn’t think that meant you could do everything possible to hamper the investigation.
And now that he’s been semi-cleared of that by Mueller, Democrats are worse off than if there’d been no report, as Trump’s supporters now having talking points that will be convincing to a lot of the public (“this was already covered in the Mueller report”).
The cherry on top of the cow-patty cake for me today is that now we have Crybaby Chelsea Manning in the news again. He refused to answer questions about wikileaks and other stuff, while claiming he had already answered all those questions before and got himself tossed in jail. First off, if he already dealt with these questions once, why not answer them again and go home? And, of course, the libfems and his fellow TIMs are now all whining about poor widdle Manning’s fee-fees about being locked up because of something he had total control over.
I feel like Lloyd Bridge’s character in Airplane —> “Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop drinking” :)
@southwest88:
Not really accurate. Manning refused to answer questions in protest that the proceedings would be secret and the public would have no access to them. If that’s true then it is a principled stand, whether one agrees with it or not.
#3
“Crybaby” strikes me as quite unfair, given that she was jailed for doing a good thing – whistleblowing american military awfulness – and was thrown in solitary for a good deal of her imprisonment. I’m also disinclined to run with the ‘he, him’ approach for those trans women that are simply going about their lives; I reserve that for the incendiary types like McKinnon, Oger and such.
I agree. Manning has been treated very cruelly. Currently, she is in solitary confinement, locked in a cell for 22 hours a day. She has been so for longer than 15 days, which is thought of as the point where solitary confinement becomes cruel and unusual and tantamount to torture. It’s the point at which psychologists have said lasting harm can occur. She’s allowed out of her cell to make phone calls between 1am and 3am. She has no access to any reading material or to the law library. When someone visited her, the contrast between that and a fortnight of seeing and talking to nobody made her physically sick.
All this for contempt of court which, as I said, she (credibly) says she committed on principle, because the proceedings of that hearing should not be kept secret from the public.
So yeah Holms, I agree. More than a little harsh.
That comment @ 3 looks more like provocation than commentary. May be the last; we’ll see.
Skeletor,
I don’t know what they’re saying in the right-wing-osphere (though I could make a pretty good guess), but in reality, Democrats from Pelosi on down have avoided making the Russia investigation anything like a mainstay of their objections to Trump. I’m sure Fox and the “mainstream” media will scream and howl about how Trump is absolved of any and all wrongdoing and the Dems were fools, but it is manifestly untrue that “the Democrats…tied all their anti-Trump cred to a single report”.
What they did was say, publicly, that they would wait for the report before drawing any conclusions about the investigation. Which, in the real world, was the sensible thing to do; they have several non-Russia and non-report avenues of “anti-Trump” cred.
Whether the credulous will fall for the Fox News line remains to be seen, however.
Seth, in fact, the people tying everything to collusion were the Republicans. No matter what he was accused of, Trump screamed “no collusion!” at the top of his…tweet lungs. He wanted it to be all about collusion, because even if there was collusion (and I don’t have trouble believing there wasn’t; the Russians were perfectly capable of doing what they did without his help), there isn’t enough evidence to show that.
Nonetheless, I am not going to hold my breath that anything else ever happens. I wasn’t surprised to see my local newspaper trumpet this morning that there was no crime; this is Trump country.