Posted on 05/06/2018 4:36:39 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
The Talk Shows
May 6th, 2018
Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:
FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas; Joseph diGenova, Former U.S. Attorney; Lanny Davis, Former Clinton White House Special Counsel.
MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Michael Avenatti, lawyer for adult film actress Stormy Daniels; Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia and Obama administration advisor.
FACE THE NATION (CBS): Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway; Avenatti; Kim Arrroch, British's ambassador to the United States; George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley; Former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden.
THIS WEEK (ABC): Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer; Avenatti.
STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
Joe di Genova on with wall ass now:Genova says: Judge Ellis gave everyone a civics lesson last week in what can and cant be done by special prosecutors.” Priceless stuff.
Because believe it or not, Sessions is the Attorney General of the United States of America.
If his office didn’t pass a subpoena from the House Intel Chairman to Sessions, what does that say about Sessions?
So either Sessions has corrupt or incompetent underlings, or he ignored the subpoena himself.
We’ll see. After this morning, there is no longer any doubt he is aware of the congressional subpoena.
I think they’ve utterly failed to take down Trump, and as time marches on Trump’s popularity grows.
A lot of us came to the conclusion some time ago that we don’t give a democRats hairy a$$ about Trump’s personal excesses. He’s a rich, flamboyant man who loves women and America. We see him as not a perfect, righteous man, but as a man who’s tired of the bull$h1t of the political class and Deep Staters letting this country go down the tubes while THEY enrich themselves. His love for the country and his countrymen is easy to spot.
AND he gets things done. That’s his hat trick. Korea, the economy, trade; he gets done what he intends to do.
This is starting to become the attitude about Trump among the rest of country—or at least a majority that haven’t become Orcs in Sauron’s (Soros) army. That is why Trump’s job approval rating is in the low 50s (and probably higher). Higher than Obama’s at this time in his presidency. People don’t have to like Trump’s personality, but they love results that help THEM.
So, the Deep State and Drivebys have combined to take him down, but everything the do has failed. The stupid among them can go on hoping that this next new thing will SURELY get Trump and as that fizzles out they happily move on to the next bit of dumbassery.
At some point, the smarter ones are going to try to cut a deal—you watch.
Very GOOD report, Pat!
I love your week in review posts.
Don’t stop!
Nunes says he doesn't know if Sessions is aware, or so said some person posting on this forum, maybe they are mistaken, I don't know.
If it is true that Sessions is not aware, then holding him (personally) in contempt is what is called "unfair."
And to prove the unfariness of it, I'll put you on my "do not correpsond with " list - because you are contemptible.
Will he “wake up dead” with a pillow over his face like another judge did not so long ago?
Yeah, I’ve read that here previously.
I just do not see how that plays into the DOJ stonewalling Nunes’ subpoena.
Yabbit...
I just don’t see it working.
People aren’t demanding Trump’s removal over this—unless they have always done so.
No matter how they push it, people don’t CARE about Stormy the Pornstar (Well, except for the titillation part, but not to change their opinions on Trump).
It’s dead, Jim.
The Establishmedia has one job and that is overthrowing this govt. Sunday is their big push for that since they think America hates Trump as much as they do.
Can Mueller make a motion to drop the case now that his request to delay was denied? Would the Judge have to approve such a motion or can he deny it?
I do believe the law stipulates that a special counsel needs to have his scope of operations and such in a WRITTEN document.
The Congress passed a law eliminating the Special Prosecutor after the Clinton Impeachment, and replaced it with a Dept. of Justice appointed Special Counsel law/rule, but THAT has specific requirements. It may well be that Rosenstein screwed up and failed to fulfill them; hence his 4-5 month later memo AFTER the Manafort raid.
Now it’s come back to haunt them. Verbal instructions are a violation of the law itself!
Mueller can indeed dismiss the indictment. Nothing amounting to substantive approval is required. Motions like this are mere formalities, and always granted. Defendant would be nuts to oppose.
Good article by Andrew McCarthy, Why All the Secrecy?
There are thus very good reasons why Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein should step in and prevent Special Counsel Mueller from seeking to question the president. But I want to leave you with a different thought. How are we supposed to grapple with whether the president should be compelled to testify when we don’t know what Mueller is alleging? What crime does Mueller want to ask the president about? And if there isn’t one, why are we even talking about an interview, let alone a subpoena?
Yes, all prosecutors want to maintain investigative secrecy. In the vast majority of cases, the enforcement of the law after a serious crime has been committed outweighs other concerns; secrecy enables prosecutors to investigate without smearing innocent people, so we respect the need for it. But secrecy is not an absolute requirement; it must give way when outweighed by other considerations.
It has become ludicrous. The question of whether a prosecutor should be permitted to interview a president hinges on whether the president is a suspect. There is no public evidence that President Trump is. This raises the patent objection that he should not be asked to be interviewed under those circumstances. What we hear in response is, “How do you know he’s not a suspect?” But the reason we don’t know — other than the lack of evidence after two years — is that Mueller won’t deign to tell us, and Rosenstein won’t deign to comply, publicly, with regulations that required him to outline the basis for a criminal investigation.
That is not acceptable. In every other independent-prosecutor investigation in modern history — Watergate, Iran-Contra, Whitewater/Lewinsky — the president and the public have known exactly what was alleged. The prosecutor was able to investigate with all the secrecy the law allows, but under circumstances in which we all understood what was being investigated and why the president was suspected of wrongdoing.
After two years, we are entitled to nothing less. The president should direct Rosenstein to outline, publicly and in detail, the good-faith basis for a criminal investigation arising out of Russia’s interference in the election — if there is one. If he can’t, Mueller’s criminal investigation should be terminated; if he can, Mueller should be compelled to explain (unless Rosenstein’s disclosure makes it clear) why he needs to interview President Trump in order to complete his work.
If Rosenstein and Mueller are reluctant to do that, it can only be because they’ve decided that not only their investigation but also their desire for secrecy take precedence over every other consideration, including the president’s capacity to govern domestically and conduct foreign policy in a dangerous world. But secrecy is not the nation’s top priority. It’s long past time to lay the cards on the table.
Most people do not care about Stormy Daniels. The people who need a reason to hate Trump are grasping at straws to keep hate alive! Most people have great resentment for a media working to destroy Trump.
‘I do believe the law stipulates that a special counsel needs to have his scope of operations and such in a WRITTEN document”
——————————\
that’s the question but i havn’t seen that answered anywhere or a debate if there is even a “rule” like that...
of course we just found this out yesterday in the transcripts and it was over looked Friday..even by Fox News pundints
Of course one could make the case if there is no rule why even bother to write a Memo in the first place? Why update it months later in writing?
I doubt it not with Trump as potus. The killers and whoever hired them would be sought out and massacred.
Tapper says why not refer the Manafort case like you did the Cohen case. Doesn't it concern you that a judge thinks Mueller is just out to get Trump? Yes, that seems to question the motives of SC.
Schiff thinks Mueller will prevail, this case will be tried by Mueller.
Next Q is on Mueller subpoena Trump. Is there a circumstance where Trump could dodge a subpoena? Schiff says there is no way to dodge a subpoena.
Wants to know if there is a legal issue on the payment to Cohen. Schiff says of course, it shows that Trump has no credibility. This is corrosive of our democracy in addition to putting Trump in legal jeopardy. Tapper points out that it is legal to lie to the public, and pulls up the legal issue with campaign finance, asks Schiff to spell out the legal jeopardy. Telling false statements about this is consciousness of guilt, which means he is has consciousness of guilt of campaign finance.
No questions on evidence of Russian collusion. Huh.
Session’s dysfunction is the weak link causing more and more
chaos. John McCain must be his advisor or closet Chief of Staff.
The thinking is that Trump has it all covered no matter what the issue and that Sessions has it all wired. Near the end of the piece they list all the accomplishments of Trump already and he’s just getting started:
Here is a long clip:
............................
It all smacks of a typical Trump plan; drive them insane over months with a latter-day version of the chinese water torture. A long slow push of minimal moves to achieve the maximum outcome. The net result is that instead of the investigation deligitimising Trump, it’s the investigation itself which has been deligitimised. Mueller has spent a year on a political goose chase and has come up with precisely nothing. It’s a sign of how successful Trump’s strategy of dealing with the whole situation has been that he’s now begun to openly taunt Mueller and the investigation on social media, calling it a witch hunt.
Mueller is desperate, and looking for some way out. The recent FBI raid he ordered on Trump’s attorney was a unique and brutal violation of any notion of client attorney privilege whether you were a special counsel or not. To quote Newt Gingrich’s reaction to it – “Setting up a precedent that a prosecutor is allowed to dig into your life until finding a crime is a threat to the rule of law and a threat to every American.”
It was Mueller’s one last gasp attempt to get out of his dilemma by provoking Trump to fire him, which Trump won’t oblige him by doing, since he’s now got him exactly where he always planned to have him. That’s to say, wiggling on the end of a hook blown high in the wind, and he’s going to leave him dangling there in full public view for as long as possible.
The longer the farce runs on, the more damage will be done to its credibility by the accretion of more nuggets of scandal magically appearing out of nowhere and sticking to it. Trump will see to that. Superficially, its game over, but that’s not the true end game being played here. If you’ve wondered why it’s all gone so silent on the Mueller investigation front, it’s not just because it’s ran out of steam, which it actually has, but because I think they’ve finally spotted what the true end game really is.
All the time, and quietly in the background, AG Sessions has been reopening his own inquiries into various things like the Clinton emails scandal and its investigation lite exoneration by assorted people. All the Obama era scandals formerly thought to be safely buried are being exhumed by him, and all the wrongdoing coming to light about various people involved in investigating Trump are providing him with the legal cause to do so.
A lot of the cheats around the table were involved at a foot soldier level in those dubious investigations as well as other questionable activities, but are still around, their bums polishing FBI and DoJ seats while by all normal procedures, the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility would have long ago had them frog marched out of the building in disgrace.
The obvious and only conclusion to be drawn is Sessions has flipped them and they’re just sitting there on ice, because some sort of deal has been done. The first one to flush the others down the toilet and turn state’s evidence escapes a prison cell. If you don’t cooperate, you get hurt, as McCabe found out when he was not forced to resign, but fired unceremoniously from the FBI with only one day to go to reach a fully pensioned up retirement.
The harshness of his treatment set off a lot of red alarm lights in swampland, because as we approach end game, the kid gloves will come off and the knuckle dusters will be put on in their place, and that was a brutal foretaste of things to come. The message is people are going to end up answering for their misdeeds of previous years. Forgiveness just doesn’t play a big part in Trump’s psychological makeup.
What the implosion of the Mueller investigation has revealed is the manufacture of evidential documents, the outright lies to courts like FISA and too many people having lied under oath, and perjury is still an offense, whether you’re a liberal or not. There are strong grounds to suspect AG sessions has impaneled at least two other grand juries he’s keeping under wraps, but more importantly I wouldn’t be at all surprised if covered warrants for various individuals are being drawn up.
Once you open up warfare on the legalities front, you in effect begin the construction of an intricate machine that on an almost daily basis becomes ever more complex. In the end, it has way too many moving parts for you to keep an eye on all of them. People can no longer just mouth off unsubstantiated rumours as facts; they have to restrict themselves to provable facts that can withstand a cross-examination. If you make up stuff, otherwise known as lying under oath, you open yourself up to legal punishment, as Bill Clinton found out when he was impeached for lying to Congress.
The latest effort of the DNC on the lawfare front is to sue Russia, Wikileaks and various people involved in the Trump campaign, but notably not Trump himself. Call me cynical, but interestingly, none of the supporting paperwork mentions any “facts” thrown up by a year’s worth of the Mueller shenanigans in support of the suits. It is of course madness, not only because there’s no hope of winning any case against any of those parties, but even if a case could be brought to a successful conclusion, it would neither fill their severely depleted coffers with money nor would it roll back the election result of 2016.
Patently, there’s no win there for them beyond trying to irritate various people, but there are several downsides to such a dumb move. I’ll mention only one, since it’s already been mention by the Don himself on Twitter, and that is it introduces the legal complication of the discovery process. Essentially, that means I get the legal right to see the documents and evidence you’re basing your accusation against me on, never mind getting sucked into the obvious move of a counter suit. You either have to hide the embarrassing internal documents, and risk legal punishment, or you have to hand them over to eventually appear in open court.
But that’s not the big danger that goes with such a dumb move. They’ve learnt nothing from the Mueller débâcle, and if they persist along the legal Yellow Brick road, Trump will run exactly the same number on them as he did with Mueller, and make equally sure that road ends abruptly at a similar precipice. Of late, the DNC have that sweaty smell of hurried desperation about them, so I wouldn’t put it past them to plough on with such a bad move. Time will tell.
What’s beyond doubt though, is that there’s only ever been one person manipulating the strings attached to various witting and unwitting puppets all the way through the hearings, and that’s been Trump. What was originally intended to hurt him, has by design been reversed to end up hurting them badly. All in all, he played the Mueller investigation beautifully.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2018/05/03/whos-actually-running-this-game/
No doubt. However, the special council regulations require that this approval be documented. There appear to be only two such documentation letters, and neither apparently give blanket authorization to use FISA warrants to produce criminal indictments. Criminal indictments require criminal warrants for wiretapping, not foreign surveillance warrants.
It seems to me that Mueller is using the foreign surveillance wiretaps to intimidate witnesses to sing about Trump 'crimes'. However, as Ellis said, "some may 'compose' rather than 'sing'".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.