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Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse
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explain this post ^^^^^
Mister Sandman
New Member
Remind me: what is it that theorangething got done with North Korea?
This means Trump’s Presidency is not only illegitimate but criminal. It means a Presidential election was compromised by the most insidious criminal conspiracy in American History. It means Trump is a traitor and Putin determined the outcome. The impeachment bar has been reached.
Michael Cohen is willing to speak with Special Counsel Robert Mueller about a “conspiracy to collude” with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, his lawyer said on Tuesday night.
Cohen — who pleaded guilty earlier on Tuesday to helping President Trump pay hush money to two women — wants to tell Mueller that Trump knew of an infamous 2016 meeting at Trump Tower and the Russian hacking of Democratic institutions before they took place, Lanny Davis told MSNBC.
“Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows,” Davis told the network.
“Not just about the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election, which the Trump Tower meeting was all about, but also knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on.”
Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, made the extraordinary admission in court on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had directed him to arrange payments to two women during the 2016 campaign to keep them from speaking publicly about affairs they said they had with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Cohen acknowledged the illegal payments while pleading guilty to breaking campaign finance laws and other charges, a litany of crimes that revealed both his shadowy involvement in Mr. Trump’s circle and his own corrupt business dealings.
He told a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan that the payments to the women were made “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” implicating the president in a federal crime.
“I participated in this conduct, which on my part took place in Manhattan, for the principal purpose of influencing the election” for president in 2016, Mr. Cohen said.
The plea represented a pivotal moment in the investigation into the president, and the scene in the Manhattan courtroom was striking. Mr. Cohen, a longtime lawyer for Mr. Trump — and loyal confidant — described in plain-spoken language how Mr. Trump worked with him to cover up a potential sex scandal that Mr. Trump feared would endanger his rising candidacy.
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The plea agreement does not call for Mr. Cohen to cooperate with federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Still, it does not preclude him from providing information to them later or to the special counsel, who is examining the Trump campaign’s possible involvement in Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign. If Mr. Cohen were to substantially assist the special counsel’s investigation, Mr. Mueller could recommend a reduction in his sentence.
Mr. Cohen had been the president’s longtime fixer, handling some of his most sensitive personal matters over a decade at the Trump Organization. He once said he would take a bullet for Mr. Trump.
As Mr. Cohen addressed the judge, admitting to the crimes he had committed, the packed courtroom remained silent. Even when Mr. Cohen made obvious references to Mr. Trump, referring to him as “the candidate” and “a candidate for federal office,” spectators seemed to listen raptly, with no gasps or audible reactions.
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Prosecutors left little doubt that A.M.I. Inc., owner of The National Enquirer, became a de facto campaign proxy for Mr. Cohen in his efforts on behalf of Mr. Trump.
According to court papers, the publisher agreed in August 2015, months before the first primaries, to look out for damaging stories about Mr. Trump and his alleged affairs with women during talks with Mr. Cohen and “one or more” members of Mr. Trump’s campaign.
The tabloid company agreed to identify those stories “so they could be purchased and their publication avoided,” the prosecutors said on Tuesday — an inverted role for a tabloid scandal sheet such as The Enquirer, which went on to savage Mr. Trump’s opponents while promoting and protecting him.
That deal led to the arrangement with Ms. McDougal, which was struck in August 2016. It only came together, prosecutors said, after Mr. Cohen promised A.M.I. it would be reimbursed for the McDougal payment.
But prosecutors also reported for the first time that A.M.I. was intimately involved in the arrangement with Ms. Clifford. The tabloid connected Mr. Cohen with the lawyer who had negotiated the McDougal contract, Keith Davidson. Mr. Davidson also had Ms. Clifford as a client and later hashed out the agreement for Ms. Clifford’s silence.
Prosecutors said in court papers that when Mr. Cohen initially failed to finalize the deal, an editor at A.M.I. — a likely reference to Dylan Howard, the company’s chief content officer — alerted Mr. Cohen that there was a risk that Ms. Clifford would sell her story to another media company, one that would publish it.
Listen ... TrumPsychopathy
It’s Robert Mueller’s biggest victory yet, in one of the most successful special counsel investigations in history.
With Tuesday’s convictions in the criminal trial of President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has struck another blow in his investigation: five guilty pleas, 32 indicted individuals, 187 charges revealing startling evidence of Russia’s 2016 attack on our democracy, and now the conviction of one of the top operators in the Trump campaign orbit. Mr. Manafort’s conviction on eight separate counts means he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
The conviction conclusively and publicly demonstrates what many of us have said since the start of the investigation: This is no “witch hunt.” It instead is one of the most successful special counsel investigations in history. Coming alongside the guilty plea by Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, implicating the president in campaign finance violations, it was a very bad day for Mr. Trump.
Mr. Manafort’s conviction cannot be diminished by arguing, as Mr. Trump and his coterie are fond of doing, that the misconduct was unrelated to the Trump campaign or Russian “collusion.” On the contrary, the trial evidence included Mr. Manafort’s close ties to pro-Russia forces and his desperate financial straits as he “volunteered” his time for the next president. The trial revealed how willing Mr. Manafort was to corruptly leverage his position of influence over Mr. Trump during the campaign for his own personal benefit. He offered briefings to a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch and dangled a position in the Trump administration in front of a banker who provided him a loan for which he would not otherwise have qualified.
The conviction also shows the caliber of the foe that President Trump is facing as he decides whether or not to sit for an interview with Mr. Mueller focusing on obstruction of justice. While we had already believed that Mr. Trump was unlikely to voluntarily sit for an interview, Tuesday’s verdict makes that interview even less probable. We should now prepare for a potential extended legal battle about the scope and power of a possible Mueller-issued subpoena for the president’s testimony.
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They would be wise to study the Manafort trial as a preview of the prosecutions that could emerge next. As the legal pressure builds on these major figures, there could well be a corresponding increase in their desire to cooperate with the investigation. This pressure has already paid dividends to Mr. Mueller's investigation: Mr. Cohen entered a plea agreement on Tuesday afternoon on charges related to campaign-finance violations and bank and tax fraud. He had previously suggested publicly that he had information to share, and in court on Tuesday he implicated the president by indicating that Candidate Trump instructed him to make illegal payments to influence the election.
Notably, Mr. Cohen’s plea agreement does not provide him with any protection from additional charges that could be brought by the special counsel. Mr. Manafort’s conviction (together with mounting pressure on him from the Department of Justice investigation of his own alleged misdeeds) will only increase the pressure on Mr. Cohen to cooperate with Mr. Mueller's investigation to reduce his sentence.
The conviction is also bad news for the president because it increases the pressure on Mr. Manafort to cooperate with investigators. He has a second trial coming shortly in Washington, D.C., which could add even more time to what will likely be a substantial sentence — and Mr. Mueller reportedly has much more evidence to present to jurors in that trial than he did in the trial that just concluded.
Nor can Mr. Manafort simply wait for a presidential pardon. Mr. Trump hinted at one in his inappropriate tweets while the jury was deliberating, and has otherwise signaled his readiness to use his pardon pen. But should Mr. Trump pardon him, Mr. Manafort should expect state attorneys general to pick up under applicable state laws the threads of corruption and tax fraud that Mr. Mueller has already woven together. Unlike the federal crimes for which he has been convicted, state crimes cannot be wiped away with a presidential pardon. The risk of state charges maintains the pressure on Mr. Manafort to cooperate — especially after Tuesday’s conviction revealed what jurors think of his questionable business practices and other activities.
A pardon for Mr. Manafort could also end up inflicting more harm on the Trump presidency than any of the other allegedly obstructive acts Mr. Trump has so far undertaken. The Constitution and the laws of our country do not allow Mr. Trump to dangle the possibility of, or explicitly offer, pardons with corrupt intent.
If his fawning statements about Mr. Manafort during the jury deliberations were part of an effort to impede or harm the investigation, that could be used to support the obstruction of justice case against him. If he or his representatives had gone further and actually promised or offered pardons to Mr. Manafort or other potential Mueller witnesses to prevent or change their testimony, as some reports suggest, that could support bribery charges as well.
Mister Sandman
New Member
theorangething’s “wall” is looking every day more and more like 4 walls ... all around him though!
The danger is not over: Mr. Trump rules like an autocrat, viewing himself as above the law, and has already flexed his muscle with inappropriate presidential pardons and political purges. He has threatened to end the Mueller probe, and a cowardly, complicit GOP has done little to protect the investigation. That needs to be rectified immediately. Officials must take a cold, hard look at both their failure to stop these criminals earlier – and at how to prevent their boss, Donald Trump, from further abusing his power and stripping away what remains of the path to justice.
Mister Sandman
New Member
If any of this had happened to. Democratic president ... the republicans would be outside the White House with pitchforks shouting “lock em up” ..!
What a bunch of hypocrites
What a bunch of hypocrites
