U.S. Politics: Covfefe Boys

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

As I’ve said before, assume Trump means the opposite of what he says until he’s proven right. Therefore, “I hire the best people” still means “I hire the worst criminals.”

[Morpheus]

There is a lawyer on MSNBC estimating 7-9 years potentially for these 8 counts against Manafort. 

He does have another trial in the future.

[Bonnot OG]

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. That's all. BAHAHAHAHAHAHA. 

I'm loving this and I am looking forward to his melt down. 

Oh yea, and MSNBC is fucking daft for broadcasting his little hate rally. Stop normalizing this bullshit anymore than it already has been ya daft shits. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Anybody with a twitter account, please post a "ding dong the witch is dead" vid as replyTwitler's witch hunt whining

 

[Mexal]

42 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

There is a lawyer on MSNBC estimating 7-9 years potentially for these 8 counts against Manafort. 

He does have another trial in the future.

Yup and that's even bigger. Prosecution has put in like 1000 exhibits, about 700 more than this case if I remember correctly.

[KingintheNorth4]

Most of Trump's former aides have pled guilty. Can't wait to see his meltdown over that.

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

As I’ve said before, assume Trump means the opposite of what he says until he’s proven right. Therefore, “I hire the best people” still means “I hire the worst criminals.”

Well, they could just hire the best criminals. However, the taste in ostrich jackets argues against that.

Not much of a witch hunt if real criminals are being tried and convicted. Apparently Trump wants criminals running free. Which is rather strange since he is so eager to enforce minor crimes against undocumented workers.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Morpheus said:

It is a bad day for Trump.

Prepare for a week of Republicans claiming none of this has anything to do with the president and for further escalation of calls to end the investigation.

If Cohen has pled that he acted at the direction of a candidate that he is refusing to name, then I'm sure team Trump will be throwing out all manner of possibilities of who that candidate might be, with the exception of Trump himself. They'll probably even contrive some conspiracy whereby Hillary directed Cohen to do the pay off. After all, Hillary would have been shrewd enough to know that Trump simply having an affair with a porn actor would do no harm to his electoral chances. But making it appear that he paid hush money to cover it up would be very damaging to his presidency once elected. 

Ergo it was always crooked Hillary.

[Mexal]

4 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

If Cohen has pled that he acted at the direction of a candidate that he is refusing to name, then I'm sure team Trump will be throwing out all manner of possibilities of who that candidate might be, with the exception of Trump himself. They'll probably even contrive some conspiracy whereby Hillary directed Cohen to do the pay off. After all, Hillary would have been shrewd enough to know that Trump simply having an affair with a porn actor would do no harm to his electoral chances. But making it appear that he paid hush money to cover it up would be very damaging to his presidency once elected. 

Ergo it was always crooked Hillary.

I don't think he's refusing to name Trump. I just think that by law or practice, they don't name unindicted co-conspirators.

[Martell Spy]

 

Quote

 

Does that mean prosecutors will never find out what Cohen knows? Not necessarily. Even though Cohen apparently has not entered into a cooperation agreement, he might still end up having to cooperate. The Mueller prosecutors could now elect to subpoena him to appear before the grand jury. They would not have taken this step before because Cohen would have just asserted his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Under Kastigar v. United States, the Fifth Amendment can be overcome if the prosecutors grant the witness use immunity.

Before Cohen’s plea deal, prosecutors would not have wanted to grant him use immunity without first addressing Cohen’s own criminal responsibility. But that’s now been done. Presumably the investigation has uncovered all there is to know about Cohen’s possible exposure on collusion with Russia, so the Mueller prosecutors would feel comfortable giving him immunity for any collusion crimes as well. So, if the Mueller prosecutors subpoena Cohen and he asserts the Fifth Amendment, they could grant him use immunity. Prosecutors do not give up anything under this scenario because the investigation has already uncovered all his criminal wrongdoing. If he refuses even after immunized, then prosecutors would move to compel his testimony. If he still refuses, he will go to jail in contempt.

That kind of detention is called “coercive contempt” because it is designed to force the testimony rather than punish the recalcitrant witness. Cohen would, in effect, have the keys to his own jail cell. He could testify at any time and get out. The contempt jail time would not count against the jail time he might have to serve as a result of his guilty plea. And, of potential relevance in these unprecedented circumstances, a presidential pardon does not operate against coercive contempt—it only reaches crimes

 

 

Michael Cohen Doesn’t Have a Cooperation Deal. He Still May End Up Cooperating.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/michael-cohen-cooperation-deal-he-doesnt-have-one-he-still-might-end-up-cooperating.html

[The Anti-Targ]

11 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I don't think he's refusing to name Trump. I just think that by law or practice, they don't name unindicted co-conspirators.

Makes sense, and in this case it would be hugely explosive if the unnamed candidate did get publicly named.

But what is the possible consequence for the unnamed candidate of breaching campaign laws? Not sure how it is in the USA, but here some of the penalties for breaching campaign law are just a fine, which the guilty politician / party simply pays and then waives the whole thing off, mostly pleading ignorance of the nuances of campaign law. So for the president who can't be ordinarily prosecuted while in office it's a reputational hit only. And in Trump's case, if he's the unnamed candidate, that means nothing.

And you can hear Fox News already, "Trump is no politician, how can he be expected to know all the intricacies of campaign law, that's what he has lawyers and advisors for. The only thing Trump is guilty of is having bad advisors and bad lawyers who didn't properly advise him on what is lawful. Which is why he's now brought in the brilliant Rudy Giuliani to head up his legal team. You can't blame Trump for getting bad advice as a candidate."

[Mexal]

4 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Makes sense, and in this case it would be hugely explosive if the unnamed candidate did get publicly named.

But what is the possible consequence for the unnamed candidate of breaching campaign laws? Not sure how it is in the USA, but here some of the penalties for breaching campaign law are just a fine, which the guilty politician / party simply pays and then waives the whole thing off, mostly pleading ignorance of the nuances of campaign law. So for the president who can't be ordinarily prosecuted while in office it's a reputational hit only. And in Trump's case, if he's the unnamed candidate, that means nothing.

And you can hear Fox News already, "Trump is no politician, how can he be expected to know all the intricacies of campaign law, that's what he has lawyers and advisors for. The only thing Trump is guilty of is having bad advisors and bad lawyers who didn't properly advise him on what is lawful. Which is why he's now brought in the brilliant Rudy Giuliani to head up his legal team. You can't blame Trump for getting bad advice as a candidate."

Doesn't really matter. Trump can't be indicted as President per DOJ policy. I think that count carries a maximum sentence of 5 years but it's likely normally reduced, similar to lying to a FBI agent.

Guiliani is already saying that nothing in Cohen's indictment has anything to do with Trump even though it says "he started working for Individual-1, who became President of the US". Lanny Davis, on the other side, is already calling out Trump for violating the law.

I don't think this is the last we'll hear of Cohen. If he's subpoenaed to testify, he can do so with immunity since he's already plead guilty to charges. 

[Bonnot OG]

He really is a fucking scumbag.

[Mexal]

And then there is this. The 2nd politician to endorse Trump, following Collins, the first.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

So like shit attracts flies, a corrupt candidate attracts support from criminal politicians. The only thing that properly cleans up shit is the dung beetle. Who's the dung beetle? Mueller?

[Sour Billy Tipton]

2 hours ago, Morpheus said:

It is a bad day for Trump.

Prepare for a week of Republicans claiming none of this has anything to do with the president and for further escalation of calls to end the investigation.

More likely that Fox News escalates the Mollie Tibetts story.  The story already captured the hearts of most Americans.  Now that the accused is an illegal Mexican immigrant, it'll be used by both sides for political reasons.  It's hard to fathom how the left will be able to use it to their advantage, somehow they will.  

[Martell Spy]

This is perfectly fine. According to Republicans, private actors can never abuse their power. 

 

Far Right Fuming After Big Finance Chokes Off Money Flow
Some right-wing figures say they are planning legal action after PayPal and credit-card companies cut off their fundraising.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/far-right-fuming-after-big-finance-chokes-off-money-flow?ref=home

Quote

 

Mastercard doesn’t own Patreon, and both companies were vague about what had prompted Mastercard to flag Patreon payments to Spencer.

In a statement on Spencer’s Patreon ban, Mastercard said it sometimes flags “questionable or illegal content.” Patreon, in a series of tweets, wrote that Mastercard “required us” to take down Spencer’s account.  

That leaves Spencer, who received the couple of hundred dollars he had already raised on Patreon and said he doesn’t have a Mastercard himself, mulling a lawsuit.

Most of the conservative conversation about tech bias has focused on social media companies, with congressional Republicans holding hearings over what they say are unfair punishments from YouTube and purported “shadow-banning” on Twitter. But the next front in the clash between with Silicon Valley looks set to center instead on right-wing personalities’ pocketbooks, as fundraising platforms and payment processors crack down on the right.

White supremacist groups have been financially under pressure online since the fatal 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia Spencer’s views, on the other hand, are relatively mainstream within the Republican Party and right-wing media, suggesting that a broader enforcement from the credit card companies could be ahead.

 

 

[Morpheus]

The whole not indicting a sitting president is a matter of DoJ policy, not law, correct?

In theory, a president could be indicted and that indictment would likely go to the supreme court (and with justices like Kavanaugh, we know how that would go). By most accounts, Mueller is an entirely by the book type and would not try something as radical as an indictment against Trump. 

[The Anti-Targ]

I guess this Cohen confession removes one of the possible perjury traps Trump might have faced if he testified in the Mueller investigation. There is no point in Mueller asking Trump about it, because the truth is already out there. Though Mueller could still ask Trump if he actually had sexual relations with "that woman", which could then lead Trump to allegedly lie. After all, I believe the party line is still that Stormy Daniels is lying, and that any pay off was simply to keep her out of the media, and not an admission that there was a sexual encounter.

Of course any impeachment that could arise from Trump lying about having sex with Stormy Daniels would go exactly the same way as Bill Clinton's impeachment for essentially telling the same lie.

[Martell Spy]

11 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

The whole not indicting a sitting president is a matter of DoJ policy, not law, correct?

In theory, a president could be indicted and that indictment would likely go to the supreme court (and with justices like Kavanaugh, we know how that would go). By most accounts, Mueller is an entirely by the book type and would not try something as radical as an indictment against Trump. 

I think Mueller's strategy is to squeeze the blood from everyone around Trump until he begs for mercy. It's pretty effective, since nearly everyone around Trump is guilty of something. All his kids may even get swept up in this, assuming they have done something Mueller can catch them on. 

The report to Congress and recommendation for impeachment may come, but it may not be necessary if for example Trump agrees to resign in order to save one of his kids.