Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

The problem people have with Biden’s age is the color of the VPs skin.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

“The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

A consequence of cucumbers

Ah, the different things are different argument.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Consistently wrong since 2002

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / C.R.E.A.M. Open Thread: The Trial(s) of Paul Manafort

C.R.E.A.M. Open Thread: The Trial(s) of Paul Manafort

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D.C., as the company town where politics is the monopoly, and its hometown the Washington Post, are of course engrossed by the details of Paul Manafort’s career. “From six homes to a city jail: Paul Manafort, who redefined lobbying, faces trial”:

… On Tuesday, when his trial on bank and tax fraud charges begins in federal court in Alexandria, prosecutors working with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will seek to keep him behind bars.

For the first time, an investigation into Russian election interference that has operated largely behind closed doors will reveal some of its work. A conviction on the 18 counts brought against Manafort would add credibility to Mueller’s ongoing inquiry. Failure would underline the criticism he has received from President Trump and others who suggest that Mueller’s operation is a partisan “witch hunt.”

Since he was appointed in May 2017, Mueller has charged 32 people, including 26 Russians and several people involved in the Trump campaign. Five people, including Manafort’s onetime business partner Richard Gates, have pleaded guilty. Manafort is the first to go to trial, and he faces a second court battle on related charges in D.C. federal court this fall…

Over a 40-year career, Manafort, 69, redefined and expanded Washington’s influence industry both domestically and internationally, parlaying successful campaigns into lobbying opportunities.

He gained respect early in his career by helping Gerald R. Ford survive the contested 1976 Republican National Convention — and then a reputation for cunning when he quickly shifted his loyalty to the president’s ascendant challenger, Ronald Reagan.

In 1980, his newly formed lobbying firm, with partners Charlie Black and Roger Stone, made its mark consulting for Reagan.

Manafort handled most of the firm’s foreign clients, and some leaders had reputations so dubious that one nonprofit group cited the firm as part of a “torturers’ lobby” for taking on violent dictators in Nigeria, the Philippines and Angola…

But by the mid-2000s, there were signs that his consulting ­career had slumped, and at times his finances appeared to be shaky. It was in Ukraine that he revived both — in ways prosecutors say violated the law. Out of $75 million that flowed to Manafort-controlled offshore accounts over 10 years, more than $18 million was “laundered,” prosecutors allege, with income concealed from the U.S. government that they say was used to pay for the former lobbyist’s extravagant tastes…

Bloomberg, on the other hand, is more interested in exactly what Manafort spent those purportedly dishonest dollars on…

The documentary linked below is almost 18 minutes long, but it’s a very brisk summary of what’s at issue today and in the coming weeks…

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  1. 1.

    Gin & Tonic

    Paul Fucking Manafort is a blood-soaked mercenary who should rot in prison for the rest of his natural life.

  4. 4.

    smintheus

    According to this report by Murray Waas, it is now a virtual certainty that Trump will be charged with obstruction of justice by Mueller’s inquiry.

    Previously undisclosed evidence in the possession of Special Counsel Robert Mueller—including highly confidential White House records and testimony by some of President Trump’s own top aides—provides some of the strongest evidence to date implicating the president of the United States in an obstruction of justice. Several people who have reviewed a portion of this evidence say that, based on what they know, they believe it is now all but inevitable that the special counsel will complete a confidential report presenting evidence that President Trump violated the law. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel’s work, would then decide on turning over that report to Congress for the House of Representatives to consider whether to instigate impeachment proceedings.

    […]

    In an effort to convince Mueller that President Trump did not obstruct justice, the president’s attorneys have argued that the president could not have broken the law because the president did not know that Flynn was under criminal investigation when he pressured Comey to go easy on Flynn.

    […]

    I have learned that a confidential White House memorandum, which is in the special counsel’s possession, explicitly states that when Trump pressured Comey he had just been told by two of his top aides—his then chief of staff Reince Priebus and his White House counsel Don McGahn—that Flynn was under criminal investigation. This memo, the existence of which I first disclosed in December in Foreign Policy, was, as one source described it to me, “a timeline of events [in the White House] leading up to Flynn’s resignation.” It was dated February 15, 2017, and was prepared by McGahn two days after Flynn’s forced resignation and one day after Trump’s meeting with Comey. As I reported, research for the memo was “primarily conducted by John Eisenberg, the deputy counsel to the president and legal adviser to the National Security Council,” who, in turn, was “assisted by James Burnham, another White House counsel staff member.”

    During my reporting, I was allowed to read the memo in its entirety, as well as other, underlying White House records quoted in the memo, such as notes and memos written by McGahn and other senior administration officials. My reporting for this story is also based on interviews with a dozen former and current White House officials, attorneys who have interacted with Mueller’s team of investigators, and witnesses questioned by Mueller’s investigators.

    […]

    The memo’s own statement that Trump was indeed told that Flynn was under FBI investigation was, in turn, based in part on contemporaneous notes written by Reince Priebus after discussing the matter with the president, as well as McGahn’s recollections to his staff about what he personally had told Trump, according to other records I was able to review. Moreover, people familiar with the matter have told me that both Priebus and McGahn have confirmed in separate interviews with the special counsel that they had told Trump that Flynn was under investigation by the FBI before he met with Comey.

    Waas is a careful and exacting reporter. Boom!

  5. 5.

    Mike in DC

    He’s going to be convicted, twice. The circuit court will shoot down his appeals, and it’s a toss up whether or not SCOTUS will take it up. Most likely his appeals will be exhausted by mid-2019, and he will be looking at effectively a life sentence. His only options will be cooperating with Mueller, or seeking a pardon/commutation of his sentence from Trump.
    The problem for Paulie here is, both of those options are likely to fade after the midterms. So he’s better off seeking a deal immediately after conviction.

  6. 6.

    Yutsano

    @The Dangerman: He won’t. Dolt45 already threw Manafort under the bus months ago. He only pardons anyone who he thinks will make him look good. Plus if Manafort is pardoned he has no 5th Amendment concerns. He’ll be made to spill his guts before getting his numerous passports back.

  7. 7.

    oldster

    That photo! That tie! That hair! That ‘stache! Could it be anything but the 70s?

    It all takes me back to my youth. Or, at any rate, my less oldth.

  8. 8.

    germy

    @Yutsano:

    Plus if Manafort is pardoned he has no 5th Amendment concerns.

    What compels him to testify truthfully when he loses his 5th amendment protections? Didn’t Ollie North refuse to play ball many years ago?

  9. 9.

    schrodingers_cat

    OT good news.
    My friend who I convinced to apply for citizenship, passed her interview yesterday. Her swearing in ceremony will be on August 16. One of the last questions the USCIS officer asked her was why does she want to become a citizen after being a GC holder for a long time. Her answer: So that I can vote.
    His response: Great, your application is approved.

  13. 13.

    MattF

    As I said in a previous thread, Manafort was doing just fine until Donald Trump showed up. Trump’s habit of hiring thugs made Manafort a natural match.

  16. 16.

    smintheus

    @patrick II: Yates had spoken to Trump much earlier about Flynn.

    The argument of Trump’s lawyers is that Trump believed that the FBI had already cleared Flynn at the time of his later meeting with Comey occurred. The lawyers are pointing to a statement that Flynn made to some Trump aides the day before he resigned, stating (falsely) that the FBI had dropped the investigation of him. But Waas shows that Mueller has reams of evidence that Trump had just been told that Flynn was under FBI investigation when he took Comey aside and pressured him to drop the investigation.

    Yes, it seems obvious that Trump must have know the investigation had not been dropped. But Mueller would want to be able to nail that, and having a paper trail such as this memo is key to proving Trump intended to obstruct justice when he twisted Comey’s arm.

  17. 17.

    trollhattan

    “Witch hunt!”
    “So unfair.”
    “He fetched my Cokes, I think.”
    “Never heard of him.”
    “A witch!”

  20. 20.

    Yutsano

    @germy: Unless Dolt45 is smart enough to pardon him for all future crimes, Manafort is still subject to a perjury charge.

    Protip: Shitgibbon isn’t smart enough for that.

  21. 21.

    The Moar You Know

    His only options will be cooperating with Mueller, or seeking a pardon/commutation of his sentence from Trump.

    @Mike in DC: Either of which will result in his death by assassination. He’s a loose end nobody can afford to leave walking around on the street. Manafort’s crimes have caught up with him, to be sure, now he’s in a corner that he’s not going to be able to get out of.

    He’d be safest in Supermax, but doubt he’s going to take that option.

  22. 22.

    Leto

    @smintheus:

    The lawyers are pointing to a statement that Flynn made to some Trump aides the day before he resigned, stating (falsely) that the FBI had dropped the investigation of him.

    Liar lies, people he lied to act surprised they were lied to because it undercuts their lies.

    @rikyrah: Notice how we haven’t heard a word from Race? Not that him speaking means anything, but I don’t think we’ve seen or heard from him in months. Last I remember he was standing at the NK wall acting as sniper bait.

  26. 26.

    debit

    @Yutsano: Also, too, they already know everything. If Manafort lies on the stand, they’ll know. And then he can Paulie wolly doodle all the day.

  29. 29.

    gene108

    @rikyrah:

    Don’t sleep on Race Bannon.

    Will you please stop comparing Mike Pence to Race Bannon. I liked Jonny Quest, as a kid. Race Bannon was one of the good guys.

    ************************************

    Anyway, it will be interesting what gets made public in the trial. I hope the prosecutors don’t screw up jury selection. It is such a random process, but its the best we got.

  31. 31.

    the Conster

    No amount of punishment is too much for him. Wikileaks also had texts from his hacked/stolen phone to his daughters, and of course his private sex life is an open sewer too. The depravity of everyone in contact with this cabal of creepy pervs is off the charts.

    I’ve tried to watch as much coverage of this as possible but still only brief passing mention of Tad Devine as being one of the cooperating witnesses. Chris Hayes couldn’t say “Tad Devine an advisor to the Bernie Sanders campaign” fast enough last night, and that was that. I think MSNBC must have a rule about mentioning Sanders and Devine. Lord knows they’ll never get him to appear to answer any questions about his connection to the Devine>Manafort>Trump>GOP>Putin.

  35. 35.

    Kay

    @the Conster:

    I thought the texts his daughter wrote were sad. Describing Manafort’s business as “blood money”. I wonder how old she was when she figured out what he does for a living.

  37. 37.

    Mike in DC

    Just fyi: Federal witness protection or WITSEC has never lost a witness who remained under their protection. 47 years, 18000 witnesses, many testifying against the deadliest organized crime groups on earth.
    It’s not at all easy to get to someone in WITSEC, even if you have the resources of a foreign government.

  39. 39.

    Kay

    @the Conster:

    It is hard, the inequitable coverage. Imagine if Clinton’s campaign manager were on trial. The NYTimes would have to do a special edition. Obama too- it might have been worse for Obama than Clinton.

    With Trump they’re like “ho hum, nothingburger!”

  42. 42.

    MattF

    @Kay: Yeah, he… resigned… only a couple months after being named chairman. Not long enough to blackmail anyone. Well… not anyone innocent.

  48. 48.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Totally OT but in exciting news I had my first bottles of milk delivered to my doorstep this morning. Milkmen were commonplace in England in the past but fell out of favour when people started buying milk in plastic bottles at the Supermarket. Recently though because of people’s dislike of plastic bottles the idea of a milkman has come back. Milk comes in pint bottles which are then washed after use and left on the door step for collection by the milkman for sterilization and reuse. I know it sounds silly but when I lived in the US I dreamed of having a Milkman again and now I have one. (Wait a minute that didn’t come out quite right but you know what I mean, we are not talking Benny Hill Milkman antics here).

  50. 50.

    smintheus

    @Leto: That’s not the point here, though. Trump’s lawyers were desperate for a defense against the allegation of obstruction of justice, and so they seized upon the fact that Flynn had (at one meeting) claimed the FBI investigation was dropped. Probably none of Trump’s minions believed Flynn’s lie because his other lies had been exposed, and it would have taken just a phone call to find out it was a lie. But long afterwards Jay Sekulow figured Trump’s best defense was to pretend that he had been told of and believed this particular lie of Flynn’s…and thus, by this overly clever defense, Trump could not have been attempting to obstruct an investigation of Flynn because he supposedly believed it had already been shut down.

    That’s why these memos and witnesses matter to Mueller. They prove that Trump was told the FBI investigation was still ongoing.

  53. 53.

    zhena gogolia

    @gene108:

    Haha, I restrained myself from going on here to defend Race Bannon, but I see that several jackals have beat me to it.

  54. 54.

    gvg

    @West of the Rockies: No I think it’s her name for Bannon, the racist Breitbart guy who worked for Trump.
    I don’t remember the cartoon well enough. I think it gets criticized in modern terms for a kind of colonialism white superiority assumption that wasn’t to noticeable even 20 years ago, but now pings our radar. Sadly quite a few things I enjoyed as a kid haven’t held up well in that regard.

  55. 55.

    Mandalay

    CNN just got through blathering about how it will be a huge victory for Donald Trump if Mueller fails to convict Manafort. An odious non-story in itself, but just 24 hours ago CNN was bewildered that Manafort was fighting the charges because he’s obviously guilty as hell and facing the rest of his life behind bars.

    That’s CNN news for you.

  56. 56.

    sdhays

    @MattF:

    Trump ‘reading’ anything is a joke. Unless it’s on a LARGE posterboard and Mickey Donald Trump is pointing to it with a big smile.

    FTFY

  57. 57.

    zhena gogolia

    @gvg:

    No, it’s Pence, not Bannon. Very confusing. Pence looks like the character Race Bannon on Jonny Quest. Has nothing to do with Steve Bannon.

  58. 58.

    gene108

    @Kay:

    It’s expectation setting. Trump set his expectations at a very low level during his 40 years in the public eye. Everyone “knows” he’s a lazy, philandering, conman and so forth, so why is it news?

    Republicans get this benefit too. Their expectation is that they’ll savagely cut taxes, gut government services, and hurt common people in the process, but it’s not a big deal, because that’s what’s expected of them.

    I don’t know how this changes, because the media has bought into this sort of thinking. If you set up high standards, they will hold you to it, to an irrational degree, like they did with Obama or Hillary Clinton. If you set low standards, they will just go along.

  59. 59.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Litlebritdifrnt: My neighbors across the street have used the services of a milkman for as long as I’ve lived here. Every Wednesday morning, around 0600, I can hear the truck.

  60. 60.

    The Dangerman

    @Kay:

    …it might have been worse for Obama than Clinton.

    Nah. There is too much that the media would be harping about with Clinton. We’d be having interviews with Linda Tripp, Lewinsky, Lewinsky’s dry cleaner, Lewinsky’s dry cleaner’s dry cleaner. It would have been endless.

  62. 62.

    sdhays

    @smintheus: Next, the excuse will be “Have you met Reince Priebus? Would you believe that guy? And as for Don, I never listen to what my lawyers say.”

  63. 63.

    ? Martin

    The Atlantic has a nice primer on what GOP tax cuts actually delivers.

    In recent years, with corporate profits high, American firms have bought their own stocks with extraordinary zeal. Federal Reserve data show that buybacks are now equivalent to 4 percent of annual economic output, up from zero percent in the 1990s. Companies spent roughly $7 trillion on their own shares from 2004 to 2014, and have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on buybacks in the past six months alone.
    …
    How much might workers have benefited if companies had devoted their financial resources to them rather than to shareholders? Lowe’s, CVS, and Home Depot could have provided each of their workers a raise of $18,000 a year, the report found. Starbucks could have given each of its employees $7,000 a year, and McDonald’s $4,000 to its nearly 2 million employees.

    The cycle is a fairly obvious one if you have reason to pay attention to these things (eg, you are an investor). Corporations are either having trouble pulling additional money out of the economy to generate additional profits, or they are finding themselves with limited options for how to invest their profits to generate additional revenue. So the most effective way to increase returns for investors is through stock buybacks. IOW, the most valuable potential asset the company has is itself. That may seem stupid, but people work that way too. We limit how much we work for our own self-preservation when we can afford to do so.

    Shareholders are the beneficiaries of this cycle. The fraction of the company that you own increases when the company removes shares from the market. So the tax cut gets doubled – you save once on your reduced marginal rates and then again when your investments give you a greater share of the company. In this scenario you don’t even care if cap gain rates go down. As an example, Apple reports earnings today. They are expected to hit a given $/share in terms of profits – around $2.25. But the question investors have now isn’t what the numerator will be, we can estimate that within 5%, but we don’t know what the denominator will be. Apple currently has $110B committed to buying back its shares. If they spent all of that, they’d far surpass that $2.25. If they spent none of it, they might come up short.

    The only party that benefits from this are people that own the stock. None of this money is doing work in the economy. Apple is effectively saying ‘we don’t know what to do with this money, you guys take it and do something useful’. That’s just another form of trickle down, which we know doesn’t work. I’ll use some of the money to pay tuition for the kids, but I’ll bank the rest because I’m expecting Trump will burn this place down before he gets out of office. Most of this will get banked. It’ll do nothing for the economy. It’d do vastly more good simply being seized by the feds and used to expand college opportunities, or invest in other infrastructure. Instead, we’re mostly just setting it on fire.

  64. 64.

    Humdog

    @Litlebritdifrnt: When I,lived in Canterbury years ago and would come home very late after the wine bars closed, the milk deliveries had happened. All that milk sitting on front stoops waiting for the homeowners to wake up was so tempting to me. I never have stolen or shop lifted but have never been so tempted as I was when I wanted to swipe a bottle off the porch. I don’t even really care for milk, it was just that it was sitting there vulnerable…
    Lucky for you, I’m not planning on UK travel any time soon. Your milk is safe, for now.

  65. 65.

    ? Martin

    @Gin & Tonic: We had them in NY through the 70s. I was probably in middle school when the service finally went away. We still had Dairy Barn’s though, basically a drive-through for milk and whatnot. You’d have half gallon glass containers that you’d turn in at the drive through. I see there are only 5 left.

  67. 67.

    Mandalay

    @gene108:

    If you set up high standards, they will hold you to it, to an irrational degree, like they did with Obama

    They are still doing it with Obama! As Betty pointed out the other day, Jake Tapper dumped on him for attending a Beyoncé show when “The Democratic Party is the weakest it has been since the 1920s”.

    So now Tapper is approvingly retweeting about how Beyoncé got Vogue to have a black photographer do the cover in a desperate attempt to show that really he isn’t a racist dirtbag after all.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @? Martin:

    It’s such a shame because you think about all the business every McDonald’s employee spending an additional 4000 a year would throw off. Talk about a boom. If they weren’t such horrible greedheads we could have a real one.

  69. 69.

    Tokyokie

    @schrodingers_cat: When the spousal unit was sworn in as a U.S. citizen several years ago, I looked around the room and saw lots of Latinos, a family of Bosnian Muslims, a few of Africans (mostly men) there by themselves, three or four from South Asia, and a few clusters of East Asians, who I think were mostly Chinese. What I didn’t see were many people who’d I’d expect to vote Republican. When I got home, I called the local Democratic Party headquarters, reporting what I’d witnessed, and suggested they to make sure to send a couple of voter registrars to the weekly ceremonies. Welcoming the new citizens to the country could help make them Democrats for life.

    But I doubt the clerk who answered the phone forwarded my suggestion. Sigh.

  71. 71.

    Platonailedit

    @smintheus:

    If treasonous traitor believed FBI had dropped investigating fucking flynn, then what was the need for the treasonous thug to ask fucking comey to go easy on fucking flynn?

  72. 72.

    ? Martin

    Regarding the 3D printer gun plans that are now on the internet. It may be easy to wave that away as impractical given that consumer 3D printers are primarily plastic based, but metal printers may hit the $5000 price point this year, and ceramic may come down to $20K. Give it 3-4 more years and we’ll definitely be there.

  73. 73.

    Kay

    @Mandalay:

    I do want O to campaign though. I’m not demanding it- I’m asking him nicely :)

    He would be good for Cordray in Ohio. Those would be some well-attended rallies.

  75. 75.

    rikyrah

    @Leto:

    @rikyrah: Notice how we haven’t heard a word from Race?

    Like Jarvanka…they think if they keep quiet, folks won’t notice the criminality.

    Nope.
    Your azzes are gonna get fit for those orange jumpsuits too.

  76. 76.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @Gin & Tonic: That was the exciting bit, DH heard the truck and the clink of the bottles at 0 dark thirty this morning. It tickled him pink to go to the front doorstep and collect the milk.

  77. 77.

    rikyrah

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    I know it sounds silly but when I lived in the US I dreamed of having a Milkman again and now I have one. (Wait a minute that didn’t come out quite right but you know what I mean, we are not talking Benny Hill Milkman antics here).

    LOL

  79. 79.

    Platonailedit

    @gene108:

    You hit it with the last graf. The media minions themselves have a low standard and hence their identification with the rethugs and their talking points.

  81. 81.

    The Dangerman

    @? Martin:

    It’d do vastly more good simply being seized by the feds and used to expand college opportunities, or invest in other infrastructure. Instead, we’re mostly just setting it on fire.

    Yup. Keeping money circulating sometimes requires the government through taxing, etc;

    I can’t stand RWNJ’s saying “Freedom Isn’t Free” when it’s only in reference to the military; it applies to taxes, too, assholes.

  82. 82.

    rikyrah

    @gvg:

    @West of the Rockies: No I think it’s her name for Bannon, the racist Breitbart guy who worked for Trump.

    No. It’s the Johnny Quest cartoon character. It’s Pence’s hair that got him the nickname.

  85. 85.

    JWL

    If readers are shut out from reading the full Post article on just who Manafort is and how he got in this jam, they need only watch a few episodes of American Greed to get right up to speed.

  87. 87.

    Tokyokie

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Does it still come cream on top? I remember it came that way when the milk was delivered to a friend’s house in Yorkshire way back when, but we never got it that way back in Oklahoma. I assume that’s because the English milk wasn’t homogenized.

  88. 88.

    catclub

    @smintheus:

    and thus, by this overly clever defense, Trump could not have been attempting to obstruct an investigation of Flynn because he supposedly believed it had already been shut down.

    If the investigation is already shut down, Trump has no reason to even bother to ask Comey to go easy on Flynn. It is self-contradicting.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @? Martin:

    I’m like you. I’m saving everything. I paid down debt in the Bush boomlet and I was glad I did it when the Bush crash came.

    I just know these assholes will try to bankrupt me. It hasn’t even been ten years since they did it the last time and they’re getting ready to do it again. I’m sick of this. I want normal, reasonable people in charge, not these maniacs.

  90. 90.

    Amir Khalid

    @Litlebritdifrnt:
    Do milkmen leave bottles of milk outside the door even in hot summer weather? I think I’d have a problem with that. And are they still pint bottles in these metric times, or are they now half-litre bottles?

  91. 91.

    smintheus

    @catclub: Even if Trump admits that Comey’s account of what Trump said is accurate, mens rea is critical as Waas explains.

    On its face, this is a counter-intuitive argument—for if Trump believed that Flynn had been cleared and was no longer under investigation, there would have been no reason for the president to lean on Comey to end the FBI’s investigation—telling Comey that Trump hoped that Comey would be able to “see your way clear to letting this go.” Yet Trump’s attorneys have pursued this line of argument with the special counsel because perjury and obstruction cases depend largely on whether a prosecutor can demonstrate the intent and motivation of the person they want to charge. It’s not enough to prove that the person under investigation attempted to impede an ongoing criminal investigation; the statute requires a prosecutor to prove that the person did so with the corrupt intent to protect either himself or someone else from prosecution.

    If, therefore, Trump understood the legal jeopardy that Flynn faced, that would demonstrate such intent—and make for a much stronger case for obstruction against the president. Conversely, if Trump believed that Flynn was no longer under criminal investigation, or had been cleared, the president could not have had corrupt intent. But previously undisclosed evidence indicates just the opposite—that President Trump was fully informed that Flynn was the target of prosecutors.

  92. 92.

    Kay

    @Mary G:

    It’s interesting, though, and getting it out is important for voters:

    In particular, the pages promoted an event pegged as a counter-rally to a far-right march scheduled for next weekend in Washington D.C. Facebook said that the urgency of the upcoming rally prompted them to publicize the information, even though it is in the early stages of an investigation.

    I don’t understand why there’s so much resistance to calling this Russian government campaign ideological.

    It’s Right wing. They promote far Right causes. Always. The “chaos” seems to spin in only one direction, which means it isn’t “chaos” at all. If it were “chaos” we would see the Russian government promoting Democrats, yet we never do.

  93. 93.

    Hitlesswonder

    @Kay: I think it’s another example of bothsiderism. The media feels it would be biased to suggest that Russia is trying to help Republicans. They just can’t bring themselves to do it. Despite all available evidence it is clearly true.

  94. 94.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    Failure would underline the criticism he has received from President Trump and others who suggest that Mueller’s operation is a partisan “witch hunt.”

    Umm…. he’s a lifelong Republican.

  95. 95.

    J R in WV

    @smintheus:

    Trump had just been told that Flynn was under FBI investigation when he took Comey aside and pressured him to drop the investigation.

    Let me ask the naive question – Why would Trump wish Comey to drop an FBI investigation that did not exist? Or am I trusting to logic too much there? But really, if you have just learned that an FBI investigation had been dropped, why would you ask the Director of the FBI to drop that investigation? Really?

    There is no reason to speak of an investigation, unless you know the investigation is on going, is there? Trump fall into the logic trap so often, it makes it clear that he doesn’t understand logical thought at all. He may not be capable of logical thought himself, and has not in 70 years of seeing people around him use logic noticed that people are doing something there.

    Good for us, but sorry for Trump and his minions and family.

  97. 97.

    Miss Bianca

    @gvg: yeah, but I will always have a soft spot for J Quest because, at least until the Jackson 5 and Fat Albert cartoons came out, Jonny’s pal Hadji was the first and only non-white kid I saw depicted on Saturday morning cartoons.

    ETA: Made quite an impression on me!

  98. 98.

    Leto

    @Litlebritdifrnt: When we lived in Italy, there was a moo machine (milk vending machine in the piazza with a cartoon cow on the side) that sold non-pasteurized milk. You bought the container, then filled it up. You could buy small, med, or large plastic containers, but they also had a large 1L glass container with cartoon cows painted on. On Saturdays I’d run over, get two liters of milk, then come back and fix breakfast. It was probably the best tasting milk I’ve ever had, plus those glass milk containers are treasures in our family. Glad you got your milkman wish :)

  99. 99.

    J R in WV

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    Having a milkman. We had milk delivered when I was a kid, the dairy had occasional parties for the kids of their customers, so I got to see the cows coming in for milking, and there was always a couple of inches of cream on top of the quart jars.

    In the winters back then, the milk would partially freeze and there would be a 2 or 3 inch tower of stiff cream with the bottle lid on top when we woke up. Winters then at 2600 feet were harsher than today by lots.Mom would cut that stiff cream off and use it in her coffee. Our grocery today has milk products from a nearby dairy in glass jars, Eggnog around Xmas, cream and half-and-half year ’round.

    Now, today, my friends in Colorado have a cooler on their front porch to hold their milk delivery cold until they come out to gather it in. Glass jars, too. The cooler on their porch keep the milk from warming in the summer and from freezing in the winters, so a modern improvement!

  101. 101.

    Gelfling 545

    @Litlebritdifrnt: I remember the milkman phenomenon from my youth. You never had too much or too little milk because you ordered for the day. Cream and butter too. Ours came in quarts and I still maintain that milk tastes better from glass bottles. Houses in my neighborhood had little 2 way compartments cut into the wall of the house for the milkman to leave the milk in.

  102. 102.

    Leto

    @schrodingers_cat: My son had plastic bags of milk when he was in elementary school. I thought it was the weirdest thing ever. I asked him all these questions like, how do you poke your straw in? Does it spill? Is it difficult to hold? He was patient with his old timer.

  104. 104.

    gvg

    @J R in WV: I am told there were milk deliveries in Jacksonville Fl when my dad was a kid. Hard for me to believe. We had them in Oklahoma in the 70’s the year we lived there, but not since back in Florida. There was a metal insulated cooler on the porch for it. Florida is just too hot.
    In the 80’s my parents had a Norwegian exchange student stay. She could not learn to put the milk back in the fridge in the morning and the milk was spoiled by the time we got home each night. Apparently Norway is a lot colder than I had pictured.
    I guess the closest thing is recently some grocery stores are advertising internet orders for delivery, you specify the time so you are home.

  105. 105.

    MoxieM

    @Tokyokie: I still have my mom’s cream separator–she would take off the cream from the milk bottles for coffee, or whatever. Ours was in brown bottles from Borden dairy in New Haven, CT. Of course that was about 60 years ago! Used to be you could get delivery in Boston, and they had all kinds of other things–cottage cheese, OJ, cream cheese. But I can’t find a dairy that delivers out here in the farm country. Kind of ironic.

  106. 106.

    Gelfling 545

    @J R in WV: Well, Giuliani was talking yesterday about a meeting that 3 out of 5 people who attended said didn’t happen or some such. That’s just how they talk in the Trump WH, I guess.

  107. 107.

    hitchhiker

    Ugh, all of the texts Manafort’s daughters sent to each other are now public. It’s just utterly gross that this man — of all people! — shaped so much of the current worldwide shitshow.

    He used to bring his wife, who did not enjoy group sex or sex with several men, to parties in various countries where group sex was happening, and where she would be expected to have sex with several men.

    This is what his daughters are writing to each other about. Was Mrs. Pence ever in the same room with him? Would Kellyanne like to explain how this man’s presence on the campaign is acceptable to the conservative Christian women she courts?

    Ugh.
    Make it stop.

  108. 108.

    The Moar You Know

    Umm…. he’s a lifelong Republican.

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: Not according to Fox and every other conservative news source out there. Seriously. He’s been identified as a Democrat numerous times, and that’s all it takes for that crowd to adopt it as an article of faith.

    Go ahead, find a Trump supporter and tell them Robert Mueller is a Republican. There will be nothing you can do to persuade them it’s true.

  110. 110.

    jl

    Why the US can’t have the best oligarchs. Sad. Low energy what we’re doing here.

    OK, the above is snark. Manafort seems pretty bad, and I hope they get him. What worries me is that the judge seems to be some reactionary who is upset that Mueller is going after a crook like this. From what I’ve read the judge seems to follow Trump’s logic that it was wrong to get Al Capone on tax evasion when they couldn’t get him on murder extortion fraud and other crimes. I hope the judge’s wrong headed and (I think) corrupt bias doesn’t mess up the case.

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