Trump now a subject of Mueller probe

Forget Paul Manafort and his "double-agent" misbehavior that led to Robert Mueller's going back to court to dissolve his plea agreement.    The spotlight has been grabbed by the surprise appearance in court Friday by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pled guilty in federal court to having lied to Congress by telling them that the Trump Foundation was not pursuing plans beyond January 2016 to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Cohen now says that there were very active attempts up into June 2016 to acquire land.  In fact, during the campaign itself, Trump had signed a non-binding letter of intent, allowing Cohen to negotiate licensing for the Moscow project;  and they already had an agreement from a Russian oligarch to finance the project.    Cohen further states that he lied about this in order not to contradict statements that had been made by President-elect Trump that he had "nothing to do with Russia."

This thrusts Trump into the midst of a criminal investigation "as a major subject of interest," according to the Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Josh Dawsey.  In fact, in court filings, Trump is referred to as "Individual 1."  They write:

"New evidence from two separate fronts of [Mueller's] investigation casts fresh doubts on Trump's version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president.   Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump's campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.

"Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks -- and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities. . . . 

"Alan Dershowitz, a Trump ally and constitutional lawyer, said Cohen’s confessions don’t suggest Trump committed any crime but could suggest that Trump wasn’t telling the public the whole truth about the Moscow deal.  'This is politically damaging, but I’m not sure how legally damaging it is,' Dershowitz said.  'This is all about questionable political behavior. It’s a good reason for people voting against Trump. But I don’t see a crime yet.'

"But Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer and frequent critic, said the developments pose significant new challenges for the president. . . .  Some legal experts argued Mueller appears to be drawing a picture of a candidate who was beholden to the Kremlin. Emails released in the Cohen plea show Trump seeking a financial endorsement from the Russian government on a private project while Russian President Vladi­mir Putin was offering to say flattering things about Trump."

[And, it should be added here, that Putin was hoping to get sanctions lifted that the US had imposed on Russia and some of its oligarchs in response to the Crimean takeover and the invasion of Ukraine.    That's the potential quid quo pro.]

“It creates the potential for Trump to feel an obligation to pay back President Putin, or Russia in general that ... do not put the best interests of America forward,” [former federal prosecutor Glen Kopp] said. “You are creating a potential vulnerability for a future leader of America.” . . . 

"Legal experts said prosecutors were not likely to build a guilty plea — a brick in the overall case — on the word of one person. The prosecutors’ filings show they have corroborated and buttressed Cohen’s account with contemporaneous emails, and people familiar with the probe say they have also obtained corroborating testimony from other witnesses."

In separate reporting, there is a fairly reliably sourced report that, as Cohen and his Russian business associate Felix Sater were seeking assistance from Putin on this project, they floated the idea of giving Putin personally the entire penthouse apartment, valued at $50 million.   As Sater put it:  "If we put Putin in the penthouse, every oligarch in Russia will line up wanting to live in the same building as Putin."  Whether Trump himself was involved in those discussions has not been clarified.

Michelle Goldberg, writing in the New York Times, put it this way:  "We still don’t know for certain if Russia has used leverage over Trump. But there should no longer be any doubt that Russia has leverage over him."

Nothing important -- such as building a major hotel and getting Russian financing for it -- happens there without Putin's knowledge and approval.    Some of it is formal, as in required permits, and some of it is simply winks and nods.   There is no doubt that Putin knew everything about it -- and that he knows that Trump lied about it.

This in itself gives him leverage over Trump -- and it continues to give him leverage -- just as Acting FBI Director Sally Yates told presidential attorney Don McGahn the same about Michael Flynn.   It gives the Russians the potential to blackmail our top national security official . . . and the president.

But it's more than just that Trump lied to the American people about his business dealings in Russia -- and that Putin knows he lied and could use that against him.   There's probably much much more "kompromat" that they have on Trump involving Russian oligarchs purchasing real estate from Trump in the US as ways of laundering money for them.

So why did the building project suddenly end in mid-June 2016?    That's not entirely clear, yet, although there are striking contemporary happenings.   In pursuit of the Trump Tower project, Michael Cohen was scheduled to travel to Russia at their invitation -- until he suddenly cancelled the trip -- immediately after the DNC emails were hacked.    As one journalist speculated:    perhaps Team Trump decided there was much more to be gained from getting those released to embarrass Clinton -- and perhaps other help in getting Trump elecvted -- than in pursuing the Trump Tower in Moscow.  Stay tuned for further clarity.

So this development in the Mueller probe is huge.   And Trump himself is squarely in the center of it.    It's not just that he's been caught lying.   Here we have the Republican candidate for president, who inexplicably goes around insulting the leaders of our allies while praising Vladimir Putin, who at the same time is secretly pursuing a big financial deal with Russia that will obligate him to the Russians but also will reap financial benefits for him personally -- and who is lying to the American people about it . . . which gives Putin power over him.

If the deal had gone through, it would clearly have been a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.   And some have even called it treason, or at least an impeachable offense.

Ralph

Making sense of Manafort's strategy

The sudden announcement this week from Robert Mueller's office that he was cancelling the plea deal/cooperation agreement with Paul Manafort was at first puzzling.    Mueller's office said it was because Manafort had continued to tell lies and commit crimes even while supposedly cooperating.

At first that just seemed arrogant and stupid on Manafort's part -- thinking he could get away with pulling off a fake cooperation stance while continuing to withhold the truth Mueller was seeking.    But, as we learn more, or figure out more, it seems perhaps to have been a strategy that didn't work because the investigators saw through it.

Here's what I think, at this point, happened.   We knew that Manafort's lawyers had a mutual defense arrangement whereby separate individuals being investigated in related cases can share information of what their clients are being asked, what direction the investigation seems to be going, etc.     There is nothing illegal about this.

President Trump is said to have 31 such sharing agreements with others being investigated by Mueller, Paul Manafort among them.

The only thing is that, by tradition observed, as soon as a plea deal/cooperation agreement is made by one of the parties, the person is supposed to end any further sharing.    Paul Manafort's lawyer did not do this.  The plea agreement did not specifically require this, but it did use language that arguably would rule out such sharing as not cooperating with the investigation.   Whether thus omission was a simple mistake or intentional, on the Mueller team's part, has not been clarified.

In fact, Manafort's lawyer kept right on informing the Trump lawyers the inside view Manafort now had into the investigation as he was supposedly being a cooperating witness.   In effect, Manafort became a "mole" or a double agent. Was this a scheme the Manafort had set up in exchange for a presidential pardon later on?   It's about the only thing that makes sense.   Because now that he's been caught in the act, Manafort is facing much more jail time than he would under the plea deal -- or maybe even without the plea deal.

In a way, it's a set back for Mueller, because some of what Manafort has told him may not be true and because he may not have gotten to all the questions he wanted to ask.  However, all is not lost.   Here's why.

Before Manafort knew he had been caught, he may have given false answers -- then had his lawyer tell Trump the answers he had given Mueller.   And Mueller didn't let on that he knew until after Trump had already submitted his written answers.    So he may have Trump in writing giving some answers that are knowingly false, which he assumed would be backed up by Manafort's (false) testimony.   If Mueller has other proof that Manafort lied to him -- and that Trump gave the same lie in writing, then this implicates Trump anyway.

But at the least, this adds to any case Mueller is constructing on obstruction of justice for Trump, because he would knowingly be participating in an effort to interfere with the investigation.

Here's another benefit to Mueller's case.    He is now required to make the case to the court as to why he cancelled the plea agreement.   In doing so, he can implicate Trump in court filings now that do not have to get approval of the Acting Attorney General stooge Trump set up in office to protect him.   And, unless they are sealed, this will become known to the public.

So Mueller can get things in the court record about Trump's activity that might be blocked in the final report by the Special Counsel.    There has already been speculation that Mueller might use indictments of others to get into open court records some of the things that Trump has done, even if he can't be charged as a sitting president.

I believe the apt metaphor would be:   "There's more than one way to skin a cat."

Ralph

Some short takes on the news

1.  Breaking news in the Mueller investigatioon.    Special counsel Robert Mueller has revoked Paul Manafort's plea deal for continually lying to investigators even while supposedly cooperating.   Manafort's defense is that he thought what he was saying is true.   Thus far, the reporting is based on anonymous sources only, so a degree of skepticism is in order.   However, Mueller is too careful to have revoked the plea deal without very good reason -- either contraverting evidence or confidence in his reading of Manafort as lying.

One of the issues, if true, would be a blockbuster -- a probable link of the Trump campaign with Wikileaks publication of the Clinton campaign emails.  The charge is that Manafort had met secretly with Julian Assange several times, one being about the same time he joined the Trump campaign as chief strategist.    Stay tuned for this breaking story.  It could be an essential key in proving conspiracy with Russia to influence our election.

And, if true, according to a theory of Malcolm Nance, a counterterrorism expert:   if Manafort did have prior knowledge from Assange about the hacked emails from the Clinton campaign in the March 2016 meeting with Assange, then the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with the Russians (about "dirt on Clinton") would have been an act of treason, because it would involve meeting with representatives of a foreign government that had committed a crime to influence our election.


2.  President Trump's "caravan" fake news is fizzling before his eyes, even as he creates ever more blatant lies to justify stoking his base's outrage.   This weekend, his Homeland Security people even went so far as to fire tear gas canisters at women and little children -- claiming that they were throwing rocks at the border patrols agents.   Journalists have said they saw no rocks but only a situation where immigrants and asylum seekers were being kept on the Mexican side of the entry points and entry processing going at such a slow pace that people were becoming hopeless and desperate.   When a new line seemed to be forming, crowds rushed to get in the line -- which seems to have been what sparked the false claims by the Trump people that the crowd was out of control.

It's not going too far, I think, to blame the Trump administration for much of what is happening at the border.    They have made some terrible, inhumane policies and decisions.   Admittedly, it is a difficult situation -- but nothing like what Trump claims to justify his actions.    He is turning a difficult situation into a disaster of our own doing.


3.  "They silenced Khashoggi but gave thousands a voice."   This sums up the point expressed by Omar Abdulaziz, a Saudi dissident journalist living in exile in Canada, who is the subject of an article by Kareem Shaheen in The Guardian.

Abdulaziz considered Khashoggi both his mentor and father figure.  He was terribly disturbed by his death but "now takes solace in what Khashoggi has achieved in death.  "The idiots wanted to silence his voice," he says.   "But they made way for a thousand other voices."

The article continues to quote Abdulaziz:  "Today, Saudi activists are stronger, and their voices are heard.  I think now the silent majority believes in what we say, and thinks the regime is lying.  The mask has fallen and the ugly, murderous, thuggish, cowardly image has been shown."

There is no doubt that the image of the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has been badly tarnished.    Despite a multimillion dollar lobbying campaign here in the US to burnish his image as a young modernizer, a popular reformer, and the leader for the future that the Saudis needed -- despite that and the Trump family's embrace of him as their partner in stabilizing the Middle East, MbS's brutality is now coming back into the forefront.

He seized power by deposing a cousin, then imprisoned dozens of cousins  and had some tortured to extort vast sums of money from them.    He is largely responsible for backing the war in Yemen that has killed so many thousands of women and children.   He had the Lebanese prime minister kidnapped and held in Riyadh, forcing him to resign.  He led several other Arab nations in a blockade of the United Arab Emirates.   And he almost certainly was behind the savage murder of Jamal Khoshaggi.    All the cosmetic reforms (allowing movies and women's right to drive cars) shrink into insignificance when put on a balance scale with these brutalities.

Donald Trump and Jared Kushner have chosen the wrong horse to back in this race.    There is international outrage that MbS seems to be getting away with the crime without consequences.   However, Argentine authorities are looking into the possibility of charging MbS with war crimes (concerning the fighting in Yemen) when he attends the G-20 summit meeting in Argentina this week.   This was initiated by a complaint by the activist group Human Rights Watch.    That will likely come to naught.

Beyond all the thuggish acts, however, is the concern that the young Crown Prince is not the visionary leader we once thought.    He may be more open to modernity -- but he lacks maturity and good judgment that is most needed.

"A Grave Climate Warning." Government report buried by release on Black Friday.

As we so well know, President Trump chooses to present himself as a climate change denier.   No doubt this is a political decision, and we have no idea what he really believes . . . if anything at all.  But play the political game, he does.   With forest fires still raging in California, destroying a whole town, Trump tweeted about the recent cold wave hitting the Northeast:  "Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS -- Whatever happened to Global Warming?"

As if global warming means no more winter.

No, it wasn't just a throw-away line-joke.   His policies reflect the thinking of a denier:  opening up off-shore areas for more oil drilling, reversing regulations on industry that were designed to reduce green house gasses, campaigning on "bring back coal" as a jobs program.   More More MORE fossil fuel energy sources!!!!

So it shouldn't have surprised anyone that the Trump administration chose to release the National Climate Assessment report (required every four years) on Black Friday afternoon -- the busiest shopping day of the year when people would be paying the least attention to such devastating news.

Not surprising, of course, in the world of public relations and political spin.  But what does this say about Trump's moral leadership and his lack of stewardship of the future of not just our country but of planet Earth . . . the one we call home?

The report is devastating, the equivalent of a 10 alarm fire in the short term and -- if we fail to act now -- a burnt up cinder hurling through space in the long term.

As reported by Robinson Meyer for The Atlantic, by Alexander Kaufman and Chris D'Angelo for HuffPost, as well as by others, the assessment is the work of some 300 researchers and authors;  and it is endorsed by NASA, the National Weather Services' Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], the Department of Defense, and at least 10 other federal scientific agencies.   It is congruent with the report issued last month from the United Nations consortium, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Meyer's Atlantic article stresses that the NOAA report "warns, repeatedly and directly, that climate change could soon imperil the American way of life, transforming every region of the country, imposing frustrating costs on the economy, and harming the health of virtually every citizen."

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel reported that, over the last 115 years, the global average air temperature has increased by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit -- and warns that, over the next 12 years, we must cut emissions in half to avoid another 2.3 degrees increase.   Increases beyond that, it estimates, would cost a cataclysmic $54 TRILLION in damages.

Yes, the temperature change numbers sounds small, almost inconsequential to the untrained ear.   But the price tag certainly is not inconsequential.

Continuing the Meyer quote:  "[The NOAA report] contradicts nearly every position taken on the issue by President Donald Trump.   Where the president has insisted that fighting global warming will harm the economy, the report responds:   Climate change, if left unchecked, could eventually cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year, and kill thousands of Americans to boot.   Where the president has said the climate will 'probably' change back,' the report replies:   Many consequences of climate change will last for millennia, and some (such as the extinction of plant and animal species) will be permanent."

All reports and virtually all scientists say that this situation "can only be explained by the effects that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, have had on the climate."

If we caused it, then we can fix it.    If we have the will and the maturity to take the long view.   Donald Trump obviously does not.   We must replace him with those who will act before it's too late.   Before we reach that point of irreversibility and inhabitability.

The point of no return is shockingly closer than we think.

Ralph