The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This is how a document should be redacted. Ain't no cutting and pasting and revealing of this hidden text.

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/01/15/manafort.1.pdf

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, if this Buzzfeed report is true, it is a BFD!

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/18/politics ... index.html

[Primula Baggins]

Bussfeed has broken other stories that turned out to be true. We'll see, I guess.

But I agree that it would be the biggest BFD so far. And apparently solidly supported by evidence and interviews already in Mueller's possession, or so says Buzzfeed.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Just to back up for a second, I see now that one of the reporters with the "scoop" for Buzzfeed is Jason Leopald, which significantly dampens my optimism that the report is accurate. Back during the Valerie Plame scandal, he repeatedly reported things that were not a true; if you believe him, Karl Rove was absolutely definitely going to jail. And we know what happened there. He had a number of other questionable stories as well. He has done some good reporting more recently, and this still might be true, but until it is confirmed elsewhere or the Mueller report ultimately included such information, I will treat it with a large grain of salt.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And, right on cue, the special council's office has put out a very rare statement saying "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony are not accurate."

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[Frelga]

Ben Smith, BuzzFeed's editor in chief: "In response to the statement tonight from the Special Counsel's spokesman: We stand by our reporting and the sources who informed it, and we urge the Special Counsel to make clear what he's disputing."

I'm sure Mueller's office has said all it was going to say.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It's deja vu all over again. The editor of TruthOut firmly stood by Leopald's reporting about Karl Rove's indictment being imminent, too. My deep suspicion of alternative journalists like Leopald, Greg Greenwald, Seth Abramson, etc. stems from that time.

[Frelga]

But then, Giuliani!
https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/sta ... 2036656130

[yovargas]

Ummm. Isn't that, like, straight up admission of breaking the law??

[yovargas]

I'm guessing from the lack of response, the answer is....no? I figured that hiding that all this time would surely be a violation of some campaign law.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

No, though it certainly doesn't look very good. What was more significant in Giuliani's latest series of comments is that he refused to deny that Trump spoke to Cohen before Cohen's testimony, even though he (Giuliani) said that he was 100% sure that Trump did not tell Cohen to lie, as the disputed Buzzfeed report claims. However, just proof that Mr. Trump spoke to Cohen about it could be enough to expose Mr. Trump to criminal liability since clearly Trump would have known that Cohen was lying about the discussions about the Moscow Trump Tower ending in January. What is most bizarre about Giuliani's interviews yesterday is that at the same time that he categorically confirms that Mr. Trump was aware that the Moscow Trump Tower discussions lasted throughout 2016 he also claims that Mr. Trump believed that Cohen's testimony to Congress in 2017 that the Moscow Trump Tower discussions ended in January 2016 was true! Both of those things can't be right, unless what Mr. Guiliani is saying is that Mr. Trump is actually a functional idiot.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It looks like someone told Giuliani that he had messed up.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/01/21/politi ... cnn.com%2F

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[Frelga]

Giuliani tells NYer he's "been through all the tapes" and that's how he knew BuzzFeed misreported. Pressed on what he means by tapes, Giuliani: "I shouldn’t have said tapes." Pressed again, says, "I have listened to tapes, but none of them concern this."

New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new- ... -buzzfeed/

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Reading that interview made my brain hurt, and made me seriously consider giving up being an attorney.

[Primula Baggins]

Voronwë, you are as much the opposite of that piece of ... crud *she said delicately* as I can possibly imagine.

[yovargas]

So..... this is all pretty damn confusing so, to see if I semi-understand some of this..... Michael Cohen has admitted to some of these lies, and that is part of why he is being sentenced to jail, correct? But now the question is whether Trump directed him to lie, or whether Cohen lied on his own for some reason? Is the gist of that correct?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

First of all, it is important to remember that this is likely just one small piece of the puzzle. There are a lot of other components that we already know are out there, and we don't how much the special council has been able to track down. But with regard to the Moscow Trump Tower, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress when he said that discussions about it ended in January 2016, and that those discussions actually went through at least July. Importantly, he did not say that he did so at Mr. Trump's direction, he said that he "made these misstatements to be consistent with Individual 1's political messaging and out of loyalty to Individual 1." In contrast, when he pleaded guilty to campaign violations resulting from the payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, he specifically stated that these actions were taken at the direction of Individual 1. That is why I always found the Buzzfeed report suspicious (beyond the fact that it came from the infamous Jason Leopald, who had caused so much disappointment in the Plame affair). If the special counsel really had the kind of evidence that Buzzfeed said, why would they have not structured the plea in the same way? It makes me wonder whether the evidence that the Buzzfeed reporters are referring to is actually evidence supporting the allegation that Trump directed the payouts to the women, which I think very likely exists. If so, that would be incredibly irresponsible reporting.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has granted the request of the mystery foreign company fighting the subpoena presumed to be from the special council's office to file its request that the SCOTUS review its case under seal, but ordered that the company must release redacted copies for the public record. If they do so, we may learn something more about who they are, though it is unclear how much.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/22/politics ... index.html

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Reportedly, the "mystery company" is wholly-owned by the foreign government. This is so very strange.

[yovargas]

I assume the court would tell them what they can and can't redact?