Thread: Mueller's Russian Interference investigation

It seems Baldy orange cunto is unaware that it is the job of the FBI to investigate if anyone in his campaign was doing something illegal. It was then and it is now.

Fuck, he's so unbelievably dumb.

^In fact, he does not have a clue...
('arry, you do not know?)

this is getting interesting

Trump lawyer 'paid by Ukraine' to arrange White House talks - BBC News

Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received a secret payment of at least $400,000 (£300,000) to fix talks between the Ukrainian president and President Trump, according to sources in Kiev close to those involved.

The payment was arranged by intermediaries acting for Ukraine's leader, Petro Poroshenko, the sources said, though Mr Cohen was not registered as a representative of Ukraine as required by US law.

Mr Cohen denies the allegation.

The meeting at the White House was last June. Shortly after the Ukrainian president returned home, his country's anti-corruption agency stopped its investigation into Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

A high-ranking Ukrainian intelligence officer in Mr Poroshenko's administration described what happened before the visit to the White House.

Mr Cohen was brought in, he said, because Ukraine's registered lobbyists and embassy in Washington DC could get Mr Poroshenko little more than a brief photo-op with Mr Trump. Mr Poroshenko needed something that could be portrayed as "talks".

This senior official's account is as follows - Mr Poroshenko decided to establish a back channel to Mr Trump. The task was given to a former aide, who asked a loyal Ukrainian MP for help.

He in turn used personal contacts in a Jewish charity in New York state, Chabad of Port Washington. This eventually led to Michael Cohen, the president's lawyer and trusted fixer. Mr Cohen was paid $400,000.

There is no suggestion that Mr Trump knew about the payment.

A second source in Kiev gave the same details, except that the total paid to Mr Cohen was $600,000.

There was also support for the account from a lawyer in the US who has uncovered details of Mr Cohen's finances, Michael Avenatti. He represents a porn actress, Stormy Daniels, in legal action against President Trump.

Avenatti said that Suspicious Activity Reports filed by Mr Cohen's bank to the US Treasury showed he had received money from "Ukrainian interests".

'Trump's son should be concerned': Wiretaps show Trump Jr. met with Putin ally

The FBI has obtained secret wiretaps collected by Spanish police of conversations involving Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank who has forged close ties with U.S. lawmakers and the National Rifle Association, that led to a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. during the gun lobby’s annual convention in Louisville in May, 2016, a top Spanish prosecutor said Friday.


Jose Grinda, who has spearheaded investigations into Spanish organized crime said that bureau officials in recent months requested and were provided transcripts of wiretapped conversations between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a convicted Russian money launderer. On the wiretaps, Romanov refers to Torshin as “El Padrino,” his godfather.


“Just a few months ago, the wiretaps of these telephone conversations were given to the FBI,” Grinda said in response to a question from Yahoo News during a talk he gave at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. Asked if he was concerned about Torshin’s meetings with Donald Trump Jr. and other American political figures, Grinda replied: “Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.”


The comments by Grinda were the first clear sign that the FBI may be investigating Torshin, possibly as a part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Torshin — a close political ally of Vladimir Putin — had multiple contacts with conservative activists in the United States during the election, seeking to set up a summit between the Russian president and then-candidate Trump. Although the summit never transpired, Torshin did meet briefly with the president’s son at a private dinner in Louisville during the May 2016 annual convention of the NRA. A member of the NRA since 2012, Torshin has been a regular attendee of the group’s conventions in recent years and hosted senior members of the group in Moscow.


MORE https://www.aol.com/article/news/201...ally/23443917/

I think this fall is going to be an interesting one, both weather and trump wise...

“Mr. Trump’s son should be concerned.”

of course this is very interesting, but let's wait a bit to see if another shoe falls.

Originally Posted by raycarey

but let's wait a bit to see if another shoe falls

...I think tRump may be up for an Imelda Award...

you guys are still dreaming, fishing on little thing, when the big bait is right in front of everyone

he is a sexual predator like Weinstein and yet nobody is saying anything

^close but the thing isn't sexy predation, it's obstruction. All the other stuff can be whittled away at by trump's lawyers

obstruction is interpretation by the court, and if there is little effort but only a feeble attempt, it won't hold in a court or in a meaningful sentence

too bad he is too old and probably sexually impotent, but I bet he raped a few receptionists hotties back in his prime 10 years ago

WTF has happened to Trey Gowdy?!

“When the FBI comes into contact with information about what a foreign government may be doing in our election cycle, I think they have an obligation to run it out,” said Gowdy on “CBS This Morning” on Wednesday.

He added, “Based on what I have seen, I don’t know what the FBI could have done or should have done other than run out a lead that someone loosely connected with the campaign was making assertions about Russia, I would think you would want the FBI to find out whether there was any validity to what those people were saying.” …

“I think the FBI, if they were at the table this morning, they would tell you that Russia was the target and Russia’s intentions toward our country were the target. The fact that two people who were loosely connected to the Trump campaign may have been involved doesn’t diminish the fact that Russia was the target and not the campaign,” said Gowdy.

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/05/...dnt-spy-trump/

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

WTF has happened to Trey Gowdy?!

What do yo mean what happened? He was a shit heel from the start.

Originally Posted by Cujo

Sounds an awful lot like he's trying to put himself above the law.

Of course he is. He has felt that way for sometime.

Candidate Donald Trump bragged that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any support, and now President Donald Trump’s lawyer says Trump could shoot the FBI director in the Oval Office and still not be prosecuted for it. “In no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted,” Rudy Giuliani told HuffPost Sunday, claiming a president’s constitutional powers are that broad. “I don’t know how you can indict while he’s in office. No matter what it is.”

Giuliani said impeachment was the initial remedy for a president’s illegal behavior ― even in the extreme hypothetical case of Trump having shot former FBI Director James Comey to end the Russia investigation rather than just firing him.

“If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day,” Giuliani said. “Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.”

Norm Eisen, the White House ethics lawyer under President Barack Obama and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the silliness of Giuliani’s claim illustrates how mistaken Trump’s lawyers are about presidential power.

“A president could not be prosecuted for murder? Really?” he said. “It is one of many absurd positions that follow from their argument. It is self-evidently wrong.”

Eisen and other legal scholars have concluded that the constitution offers no blanket protection for a president from criminal prosecution. “The foundation of America is that no person is above the law,” he said. “A president can under extreme circumstances be indicted, but we’re facing extreme circumstances.”

Giuliani’s comments came a day after The New York Times revealed that Trump’s lawyers in January made their case to special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump could not possibly have obstructed justice because he has the ability to shut down any investigation at any time.

“He could, if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired,” Jay Sekulow and John Dowd wrote in a 20-page letter. Dowd has since left Trump’s legal team, replaced by Giuliani.

The letter also admits that Trump “dictated” a statement that was then released by his son, Donald Trump Jr., regarding a meeting held at Trump Tower in June 2016 between top Trump campaign officials and Russians with links to that country’s spy agencies.

That meeting was scheduled after the Russians said they had damaging information about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton that would be of use to the Trump campaign. The Trump-dictated statement falsely claimed the meeting was primarily about the adoption of Russian children by American families ― the same topic that Trump claimed had been the substance of a conversation he had had with Russian leader Vladimir Putin the previous evening in Germany.

The U.S. intelligence community concluded during the 2016 campaign that not only was Russia interfering in the U.S. election, but was actively trying to help Trump win.

Both Sekulow and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders claimed, falsely, that Trump had not dictated the statement, but had merely offered his son suggestions. Sanders on Sunday referred questions about the matter to Trump’s outside legal team.

Giuliani said Sekulow was misinformed about the Trump Tower meeting, which in any case was not that significant. “In this investigation, the crimes are really silly,” he said, arguing that the firing of Comey last year could not be construed as obstruction of justice because Trump had the right to fire him at any time and for any reason. “This is pure harassment, engineered by the Democrats.”

Comey had been leading the FBI probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence until his dismissal, which led to the appointment of Mueller to take it over. Within two days of the firing, Trump told both NBC News and Russian officials visiting him in the Oval Office that he had done it because of the investigation.

Eisen said Giuliani’s assertion, taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that a mob boss under investigation by the FBI could give Trump a bribe to fire the FBI director, Trump could explain on television that he had done so “because of this Mafia thing,” and then not face criminal charges.

“Well, of course it would be appropriate to initiate a prosecution,” he said. “I think the legally correct answer is, as usual, the opposite of Giuliani’s answer.”

Giuliani, once the mayor of New York City and prior to that the U.S. attorney there, took charge of Trump’s outside legal team in April, saying then that he planned to wrap the whole thing up within a few weeks. Now he said he is not sure when it will end because Mueller is taking too long and not turning over material to Giuliani ― such as a report of what was learned from an FBI informant who made contact with several members of the Trump campaign with links to Russia.

Giuliani said he has so far met with Trump about 10 times and spoken to him on the phone another 40 or so times, totaling at least 75 hours of conversation. “I’m not billing by the hour, otherwise I could tell you exactly,” he joked about the case he has taken on for free.

Mueller’s investigation has so far resulted in the guilty pleas of five people, including three former Trump campaign staffers, and the indictment of 14 other people and three companies. That total includes 13 Russians, Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and the Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” that was used to create and disseminate propaganda to help Trump win.

A related investigation by Giuliani’s former U.S. attorney’s office is examining the dealings of longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. A former business partner has agreed to cooperate in that probe and plead to New York state charges

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...143b7cd633e?48

that could give Trump some idea with Mueller

giuliani's point is valid: you have to impeach (house) and convict (senate) trump before indicting him.

Originally Posted by bsnub

“If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day,” Giuliani said. “Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.”

Originally Posted by CSFFan

No, local or state officials could walk in and cuff him in the Oval Office.

not the case. we've already had this discussion on this thread (maybe you don't recall).

rosentstein's said the same:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/16/p...ent/index.html

Rosenstein said. "The Department of Justice has in the past, when the issue arose, has opined that a sitting President cannot be indicted.

if they tried to indict trump, it would likely go to the supreme court.

State and local law enforcement, oddly enough, don't work for the department of justice. They work for their jurisdictions.

I say Trump should shoot Mueller, and be done with it

Let's test that judical system to the end

Originally Posted by CSFFan

Originally Posted by Farangrakthai

a sitting President cannot be indicted.

State and local law enforcement, oddly enough, don't work for the department of justice. They work for their jurisdictions.

indictments can be brought by local, state and the feds (of course).

President Donald Trump might be dead certain that he has the "absolute right to PARDON myself," but experts are divided.

No American president has ever tested the idea. Nor has a court has ever ruled on the question of whether such an extreme action is allowed under the U.S. Constitution.

But 44 years ago, when the Justice Department was faced with the possibility that President Richard Nixon might try to pardon himself, a top lawyer in the department in a memorandum to the deputy attorney general said the answer to that question was an unequivocal "No."

"Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself," wrote acting assistant attorney general Mary Lawton in her Aug. 5, 1974 memo, four days before Nixon resigned in disgrace.

"If under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment the President declared that he was temporarily unable to perform the duties of the office, the Vice President would become Acting President and as such could pardon the President. Thereafter the President could either resign or resume the duties of his office," Lawton wrote.

A number of legal scholars Monday, on the heels of Trump's tweet proclaiming his power to pardon himself, agreed with Lawton.

But other leading legal experts disagreed, including some who otherwise are critics of the president.

Below, 11 experts weigh in on Trump's claim.

Jamal Greene, Dwight Professor of Law at Columbia Law School

"The Constitution grants the president power to issue pardons for federal crimes," Greene told CNBC. "It doesn't say he can't pardon himself, so there's an argument to be made, but I think the better view is that a ban on self-pardons is implicit. Giving the president the power to be a judge in his own criminal case is inconsistent with this being a rule of law society. It would enable the president theoretically to commit the worst federal crimes imaginable — terrorism, treason, etc. — with impeachment as the only remedy. Reading the Constitution to require that should be avoided if at all possible."

Jens David Ohlin, vice dean and professor at Cornell Law School

"The self-pardon would be a disastrous move for Trump," Ohlin told CNBC. "It would accelerate impeachment. Even talking about self-pardon helps galvanize the anti-Trump movement in the run-up to the midterm elections that will decide the makeup of the House and the Senate. It is hard to predict how the Supreme Court would react to a self-pardon, but certainly it would be viewed by most of the electorate as corrupt. It's the ultimate expression of Trump's vision of the president as monarch, rather than rule by co-equal branches of government as expressed by the Founding Fathers."

Richard Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law

"Nothing in the Constitution or existing constitutional doctrine directly addresses the issue of a presidential self-pardon," Pildes told CNBC. "But much of constitutional law is based on reasoning from the underlying design of the Constitution and the structures it creates, and a presidential self-pardon is so radically inconsistent with the Constitution's commitments to (1) limited government; (2) the separation of powers; (3) and elected officials being accountable to the rule of law that I doubt any court would uphold the legality of a presidential self-pardon."

Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School

"The constitutional arguments about self-pardoning are ... complex, and no one should have strongly held views about the correct analysis," Tushnet told CNBC. "That said, my view is that the weight of the arguments lies in favor of finding that the president has the power to self-pardon, because of the president's power to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed.' This gives the president a great deal of discretion about initiating and terminating investigations, coupled with the absence of express limitations on the pardon power (other than barring pardoning in cases of impeachment, which isn't, technically, a criminal proceeding). But, as almost everyone also acknowledges, exercising the power to self-pardon would almost certainly trigger sufficient public outrage to make impeachment a realistic possibility — or, put another way, exercising the power to self-pardon, if the president has it, would be extraordinarily politically unwise (ordinarily). But, again, we aren't in ordinary times, and perhaps a self-pardon wouldn't trigger that reaction in the present circumstances."

Mark Osler, Professor and Robert and Marion Short Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of St. Thomas

"He can issue himself a pardon warrant," Osler told CNBC. "There is nothing to stop him from doing so. The question is what happens next. It probably could not be challenged until a prosecutor presented a charge against him, and he then relied on the Pardon as a defense."

Richard Painter, former chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush

"He absolutely cannot pardon himself," Painter told CNBC. "I do not know of an instance in human history in which a king has pardoned himself. The pope does confession to another priest. A pardon is by its very nature when one person pardons another. The point is, the constitution uses the word pardon, and a pardon is by very nature a situation that involves two people, or between God and a human being. We even say 'Forgive us our trespasses,' in The Lord's Prayer."

Preet Bharara, former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York

"I think (if) the President decided he was going to pardon himself, I think that's almost self-executing impeachment," Bharara told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday. "Whether or not there is a minor legal argument that some law professor somewhere in a legal journal can make that the president can pardon, that's not what the framers could have intended. That's not what the American people, I think, would be able to stand for."

Renato Mariotti, former federal prosecutor

"You don't need to be a lawyer to understand why courts would never uphold a president's power to commit crimes and then pardon himself for them," Mariotti wrote in a post on Twitter Monday. In a separate post, he wrote: "Many legal experts call Trump's legal arguments 'novel,' but that doesn't go far enough. His arguments have never been made before because they're extreme and dangerous. They will be rejected by courts because they're consistent with tyranny, not our Constitution. "

Harvey Silverglate, Civil Liberties Attorney at the law firm of Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein and co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

"Since the question of presidential self-pardons turns on a constitutional provision – the president's pardon power – where there is no judicial precedent that answers the question, I think it is wise to simply take the text of the Constitution at face value," Silverglate told CNBC in an email. "The president is given the unequivocal power to pardon. ("[He] shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment" – Article II, Section 2.) There is no expressed limitation governing whom the president may or may not pardon. Therefore it seems quite clear to me that the President may pardon himself."

John Brennan, former director of the CIA

"The constitutional powers granted to the president for pardon are quite broad," Brennan said Monday on "MSNBC Live with Hallie Jackson." He added: "It doesn't exclude explicitly the president's pardoning of himself."

Nicholas Gravante, Jr., partner at the law firm of Boies Schiller Flexner

"I'm not sure that there's a definitive answer," Gravante told CNBC. "The notion of somebody taking office and then being able to pardon themselves for things they have done while in office would give any president the freedom to act lawlessly and then simply be allowed to pardon themselves from the consequences of such actions prior to leaving office. In effect, the president would be not subject to the rules of law. and this is a country that is governed by the rule of law."

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/04/here...n-himself.html

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said on Monday that President Trump should get a new lawyer if he's been told that he can pardon himself.

"If I were president of the United States and I had a lawyer that told me I could pardon myself, I think I would hire a new lawyer," Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN when asked if Trump had the ability to pardon himself.

Trump, during an early morning tweet, poured fuel on the debate over whether he can use his presidential powers to protect himself if Mueller accuses him of wrongdoing in the probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?” the president wrote in the tweet.

The issue of a potential pardon is back in the spotlight after The New York Times published a January letter from the president’s legal team over the weekend that opened the door to Trump pardoning himself.

Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani told ABC News's “This Week” that the president “probably” does have the power to issue himself a pardon, but warned that it would spark political backlash.

“I think the political ramifications of that would be tough. Pardoning other people is one thing. Pardoning yourself is another,” Giuliani said.

Lawmakers in both parties are warning Trump against trying to pardon himself.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Sunday the president should not pardon himself.

“The president is not saying he is going to pardon himself. The president never said he pardoned himself,” McCarthy told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I don't think a president should pardon themselves.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) added in a tweet on Monday: "Only in a two-bit tin horn totalitarian dictatorship could the President even consider pardoning himself from all accountability."

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-actio...pardon-himself

Mueller accusing Manafort of witness tampering in his tax and lobbying case......

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/0...imes&smtyp=cur

^ Lock him up!!