Impeach Barr If He Tries To 'Blow Up' The Impeachment Hearings With A Fake Conspiracy Narrative

You can tell the Reeps are getting desperate when their co-No. 1 Trump ass kisser Devin Nunes - even as I write- is bloviating out of his vapid mouth that the current impeachment hearings are merely an extension of the 3 year "Russia hoax".  Of course, Mueller's report contained no hoax but verifiable evidence of a Russian conspiracy to take down Hillary Clinton. So much so that Mueller's team had the wherewithal to slam down 12 indictments of GRU agents.

Anyway, this week we know Nunes, Jordan and the other Reeptards will be really climbing the walls as a parade of  witnesses - starting this morning - offer the first hand accounts they've been demanding.  (This despite the fact as I noted in a previous (Nov. 14th) post,  the second hand accounts still constitute evidence.)   The desperation is now at the point that William Barr feels he has no choice but to jump in and protect Trump again - like he did in issuing his whitewash ''summary" of the Mueller report back in April.

The disturbing news over the weekend that  Barr, aka Trump's #1 Toady, plans to 'blow up' the impeachment inquiry and hearings using a false narrative was disturbing to say the least.  E.g.  from Daily Kos Sunday:

• William Barr is racing to deliver a report that blows up the impeachment inquiry--and everything else

Excerpt:

"Attorney General William Barr is racing to complete a new “report” before Thanksgiving. And if Barr’s very poor summary of the Mueller report threw Trump a lifeline by distorting the real findings of the special counsel investigation, this new report looks to be more like an atom bomb, designed to incinerate Washington by putting the whole Justice Department behind a conspiracy theory that rewrites history and declares open warfare on political opponents. And Republicans are already meeting with Barr to plan a “roll out” for this supposedly classified report in order to maximize its impact."

This follows a Friday night appearance of Barr at the Federalist Society where he invoked the now discredited "unitary executive" bunkum (first propounded by John Yoo - the Bush flunkie who tried to justify CIA tortures).  That is, that a president has almost absolute power and the Article I powers of congress are subjugated to the executive's Article II powers.

At the Friday night venue, Barr spouted that:

"Trump’s opponents 'essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple by any means necessary a duly elected government,'.  

Which is total bollocks. The truth is that Trump is unfit for office and is a stone criminal who's already committed numerous impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors - from flouting the Emoluments clause, to multiple 'pay for play' schemes, to violation of federal financing laws, to collaboration with foreign powers (Russia, Ukraine)  to advance his own personal election chances.  The most recent crime on full display in Friday's impeachment hearing when he openly threatened witness Marie Yovonavitch, e.g.


Tweeting at her in real time, causing her to visibly react in a new assault that added to the ones she experienced as Ambassador, from a dedicated smear campaign-  led by Giuliani, two of his associates — Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who have since been indicted — and the right-wing news media.

The precise details of the relevant  conspiracy idiocy -  I won't dignify it with "theory" -  are mind-numbing in themselves.  They apparently involve George Papadopoulos, who served as an adviser to the Trump campaign, a London-based Maltese professor named Josef Mifsud, and assorted characters. The sum of the accusations, speculations and misinformation are enough to blow a hole into the sanity and mind of a normal person, but would do a QAnon zombie proud.  To be sure they are absolutely  ridiculous, almost on the level of the "Pizzagate"  rubbish that pushed the hare -brained malarkey that Hillary was operating a child sex slave ring in the basement of a D.C.  pizza parlor.

You laugh, but one Trumpie imbecile actually took a rifle to the suspected establishment to mete out justice and a tragedy was only averted by quick thinking - and reaction.  Needless to say I am not going to waste time (or blog space)  regurgitating this latest horse shit. Anyone who really wants
 more information can obtain from previously published material at A block and this Vox Vox piece from September.

Why is Barr acting as the lawless protector of a lawless president?  Because he basically wanted desperately to get into the spotlight of national affairs again. To that end he had prepared and published a 19- page memo  eight months ago, asserting presidents can't be found guilty of obstruction of justice. Basically, he'd written a "Look, hire me as AG and I'll set you free!"  job proposal (or audition) for the approval of Trump and his deranged,  legal maggots.

After getting confirmed as AG, which most Dems now regret (those that voted for him) he one-upped his op-ed performance by releasing a  four-page summary of the Mueller Report.  This perfidy twisted the report into a 'get out jail free' card.

As one legal specialist on a CNN panel said at the time: "For law abiding Americans this result is both appalling and confusing. They will ask how could a president who acted in so disruptive a manner even giving aid and comfort to an enemy (Putin) not be found guilty by a legal standard? How does that level of disruption not rise to the level of legal culpability?"

This summary  from Barr, at just four pages long, described the evidence for obstruction as “not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction-of-justice offense”. Furthermore, Barr insisted in his letter the decision not to prosecute was not made based on any limitations related to the indictment of a sitting president.  But in fact it certainly was: the OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted. Note this is not an ironclad rule or a law, but a mere opinion.  Mueller could have chosen to override it but didn't.  

Thanks to Barr's whitewash, Trump - his master- was left unchained and unencumbered by any laws or even threats. Indeed, he felt "vindicated".  See e.g.

Trump and his allies plan to use Barr’s summary of Mueller report as cudgel against critics


Excerpt:  "Trump and his allies sought to put his adversaries on the defensive and cement the view that Mr. Mueller’s report represents complete vindication.  

Hence, no surprise Trump - criminal that he is at heart  - was emboldened to commit his next crime:  the shakedown of the Ukraine president to get dirt on his political opponent, Joe Biden.  Indeed, over the past months we've beheld the sorry spectacle of the AG Toad globe hopping to try to secure supplemental "investigative" info to dig up evidence the "deep state" was involved in outing Trump's alliance with Putin and Russia in 2016.   But there was NO such deep state outing, Trump the dumbass did that to himself when he blurted back in June, 2016:

"I will tell you this, Russia if you're listening, I hope that you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. You will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."

So Trump, in full public view, asked Russia to hack his political opponent.  Did this just come out of the blue as a brain fart blurt? Not at all, given we know Russia has been funding Trump since the late 1980s.  On account of that funding and other Kompromat materials (e.g. the piss video revealed in the Steele dossier), we know Donnie Dotard is  Putin's puppet,  with multiple strings that can be puled at will.

As per The New Republic (Aug./Sept. 2017, . p. 29):

"A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, or even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money .....Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics....It's entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters."

Now, according to new  reports in  The Washington Post  we will have to anticipate an "alternative reality" Barr report that attempts to supersede  and neutralize the impeachment hearings and all that we know of the depraved Trump hitherto.  Despite all of Barr's complaints about a "war to cripple a duly elected government", a federal judge has already ruled the impeachment inquiry is totally legal, e.g.

Impeachment Inquiry Is Legal, Judge Rules, Giving Democrats a Victory

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/2

But since Barr values Trump's protection over any law- or the Constitution- many predict his next move will be a whitewash on steroids .  According to The Post (ibid.):

"Republicans hope the report will give them ammunition to argue the FBI was corrupt in its pursuit of the president and his alleged ties to Russia, according to a person involved in the GOP discussions. Congressional Republicans have defended Trump amid the ongoing impeachment inquiry centered on his effort to convince Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Trump’s supporters have long called for officials to “investigate the investigators,” and some GOP lawmakers have predicted the inspector general’s findings will prove their accusations that a “deep state” cabal of anti-Trump bureaucrats sought to thwart his presidency."

Mathew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman during the Obama administration clearly sees this as a test of Barr's independence from Trump, and is quoted as saying:

 "The first question is whether the report shows any basis for Barr’s pretty aggressive implications that the Justice Department did something wrong in opening the [Trump] investigation, If the report finds missteps by the FBI, 'even minor ones', it will be used as a rhetorical tool for the president."

But we've already seen Act One earlier, when Barr pushed out his summary of the Mueller report, giving the Trump cabal tons of rhetorical ammo to fight off an impeachment (at that time) based on the Mueller report.  This new iteration, of course, is what the Reeptards have been salivating at for the past three months, and will allow them to claim a parallel "real" investigation, but which is nothing more than a sham for the lower IQ end of the populace, namely the Trumpie walking dead, e.g.

What we cannot permit, is this lot to take over our nation and government. We cannot have their cockamamey claptrap conspiracy ideations displacing the rule of constitutional law in the impeachment process. For this reason, if Barr goes through with this shameless charade he will need to be impeached just like his master Trump.

Trump insists he has exculpatory evidence - in documents, records, witnesses- that would prove he has done nothing wrong. But if that were really so he wouldn't have implemented a full tilt stonewall of all relevant documents, and direct witnesses.  So again, he merely lies to distract, like his GOP enablers and defenders. 

See also:

William Barr

Bill Barr's Fascist Manifesto: Is This Man the Real Threat to American Democracy?

And:

Donald Trump

For Trump, It's the White House or the Big House

And:

Conservatives and the Right

Trumpers Will Lie and Gaslight on Ukraine and Impeachment. Here's What I Learned Debating One on TV.

And:

• 'Corrupt': Congresswoman shreds The Hill for publishing conspiracy theories as 'opinion' columns 

Barr Disgraces DOJ By Invoking Cockamamey "Russiagate" Conspiracy Idiocy - To Justify Criminal Investigation Of DOJ

"You shall do my bidding catching  flies as a go-fer conspiracy toad until I say no more!"


"I think this is the most concerning development out of the Justice Department we've seen since Donald Trump became president.  Look, obviously if there was a crime committed it ought to be investigated. But we know more about the Russia probe than probably any investigation in the Justice Department's history.  Bob Mueller wrote a 450 page report that became public, the DOJ released a FISA application which it's never done before in its history...and through all of that we've never seen a single evidence of a crime, or an allegation of a crime that would give a single predicate for an investigation. 

I think it's notable in this story it doesn't say what the allegation of a crime is that the Department is now investigating.   I don't think it's a coincidence that the day after an ambassador goes up to the hill and gives incredibly damning evidence about the president extorting a foreign government that we see this leak from the Department of Justice. And I think it's incredibly concerning about the administration of justice and the rule of law in this country."  -   Matt Miller, former Director of Public Affairs, Justice Department, on 'Last Word' Thursday night.

"What do you do when one party stakes its faith — and ultimately government itself — on observable, measurable realities while the other has made the cynical decision to cast these principles away? How do you strategize? How do you cope?"  - Jennifer Senior, NY Times Friday,

Assume for the sake of argument there is a parallel reality in which one nation's political party believes it can control that nation's governance in perpetuity. Impose an indefinite rule of autocratic, one party fascism if you will.  That nation has a constitution which decrees a separation of powers and the existence of a co-equal branch of government to the executive. However, this political party fancies it can rig the system - with the right president-  to remain in power as long as it wants. Also to render the co-equal branch a neutered nonentity. How to do it?

First define a 'unitary executive' doctrine giving an authoritarian president not only total power over the executive branch but also transcendent power over all branches.  

Second, enable this power to be tested with the election of the "right" candidate. Preferably a flouter of norms who also believes the constitution is just a piece of paper and that he can bully or intimidate any group in the nation: intelligence agencies, media, any other political parties, or other voters, i.e. who never voted for him.

Get this character to then commit impeachable offenses, say collaborating or conspiring with a foreign power to steal an election to shoehorn him into office. Then challenge any supposed co-equal branch to hold him in check or administer  constitutional justice. Such that even if he shot someone on the parallel reality's 5th avenue there'd be no crime, and he'd get away with it.

Then third, to escape any predicament of accountability (by media and the co-equal branch), recruit an attorney general who will not be independent but do this odious autocrat's bidding and investigate the investigators of the original debacle and conspiracy, i.e. that got him into office.   This will come in especially handy when he's later caught shaking down the head of another foreign power to dig up dirt on a political opponent.

Far fetched nonsense? Nope, it's already unfolding even as we've seen William Barr now commence a criminal inquiry into the alleged "Russiagate" conspiracy despite Mueller's judicious probe (involving dozens of FBI agents and others) that led to the Mueller report, e.g.

www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

In other words, Barr and his Justice Department is in the process of opening a criminal inquiry into its own  Russia investigation.  See e. g.  NY Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/politics/john-durham-criminal-investigation.html

How can this head popping anomaly be, you ask? Well, because the DOJ has now been taken over by rank authoritarians and puppets of such who intend to push the specious doctrine of the unitary executive to its limits, devil take the hindmost.  

No surprise then that Barr has mutated into an officious, hop scotching  human toad -   hopping all over the world trying to dig up dirt on his own agency, the intelligence agencies under its roof (the FBI) and ancillary investigators who probed the Russian infiltration into the 2016 election.  Except in this case it isn't to go after the Russkies (and Trumpies who collaborated with them), but those who investigated the conspiracy to steal the election for Donald Trump. In other words Barr has debased the DOJ by converting it into an expeditious vehicle for Trump's political revenge.

Of course, by shamelessly acting on Trump's behalf, Barr has now put himself into impeachment jeopardy. . He's also created enormous embarrassment for the nation in his desperate antics, even as everyone with a brain knows exactly what he's up to: providing an alternative "criminal inquiry" to counter and offset the Democrats justifiable impeachment inquiry. One, I might ad, that now has even more ballast after a federal court judge deemed it legitimate and that the DOJ and Barr now must turn over all previously concealed (e.g. grand jury) materials from the Mueller probe.  See:

Impeachment Inquiry Is Legal, Judge Rules, Giving Democrats a Victory

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/us/politics/house-impeachment-subpoenas.html

As for embarrassing the nation, Giuseppe Conte,  the  Italian prime minister was asked by Italian lawmakers to explain what in the world the U.S. attorney general wanted. The New York Times published this striking account yesterday:

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy said his country’s intelligence services had informed the American attorney general, William P. Barr, that they played no role in the events leading to the Russia investigation, taking the air out of an unsubstantiated theory promoted by President Trump and his allies in recent weeks.

“Our intelligence is completely unrelated to the so-called Russiagate and that has been made clear,” Mr. Conte said in a news conference in Rome on Wednesday evening after spending hours describing Italy’s discussions with Mr. Barr to the parliamentary committee on intelligence. 

Mr. Conte publicly acknowledged for the first time that Mr. Barr had twice met with the leaders of Italy’s intelligence agencies after asking them to clarify their role in a 2016 meeting between a Maltese professor and a Trump campaign adviser on a small college campus in Rome, Link Campus University.

As bizarre as this may seem, Barr appears to have also gone to other allied nations in his Quixote- like tilting at fantasy conspiracy windmills. The toad was driven by the need to find something, anything to save Trump's butt, looking for damaging information about American officials involved in "Russiagate" , which he thought might help Donald Trump.

Italy, not surprisingly, had no such information, and seemed baffled as to what the United States’ top law-enforcement official was looking for.

The precise details of the relevant  conspiracy idiocy -  I can't dignify it with "theory" -  are mind-numbing in themselves.  They apparently involve George Papadopoulos, who served as an adviser to the Trump campaign, a London-based Maltese professor named Josef Mifsud, and assorted characters. The sum of the accusations, speculations and misinformation are enough to blow a hole into the sanity and mind of a normal person, but would do a QAnon zombie proud.  To be sure they are absolutely  ridiculous, almost on the level of the "Pizzagate"  rubbish that pushed the hare -brained malarkey that Hillary was operating a child sex slave ring in the basement of a D.C.  pizza parlor.

You laugh, but one Trumpie imbecile actually took a rifle to the suspected establishment to mete out justice and a tragedy was only averted by quick thinking - and reaction.  Needless to say I am not going to waste time (or blog space)  regurgitating this latest horse shit. Anyone who really wants
 more information can obtain it from Thursday night’s A block and this Vox piece from last month. Be sure you ration your neural exposure time!

In the end, sadly, the Trumpies and their cabal have succeeded in literally reducing our country to a laughing stock.  If my Revolutionary War ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh was alive to day to see this, he'd puke. The United States – the world’s preeminent superpower, ostensibly the global leader on matters of international affairs – has an attorney general who has gone to foreign countries, cap in hand, looking for dirt on his own country’s officials, begging for help with a ridiculous conspiracy, only to be told by our allies, “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”

If that doesn't embarrass any red-blooded American I don't know what would.

See also:

https://www.salon.com/2019/10/25/bill-barrs-alternate-universe-investigation-has-a-goal-right-wing-authoritarian-rule/


And:

The Trump Administration | 2016 Elections | William Barr

Watch Out for Bill Barr's Flunky John Durham to Fabricate a Report That Would "Absolve" Russia of 2016 Election Interference

And:

Donald Trump | Republicans

What Would Republican Senators Do If Trump Shot Someone on Fifth Avenue?

And;

Donald Trump | Republicans

The GOP: Trading Its Future for a Criminal

Kim Strassel - Unable To See The "Conspiracy Theorist" Staring Back At Her In The Mirrror

Kim Strassel in her latest WSJ column ('Mark Warner's Enablers', Jan. 25, p. A13) continues her all in balderdash that her conspiracy theory (actually ideation, since it isn't testable) is the reality and Sen, Mark Warner (and the rest of us) are pushing Trump-Russia "conspiracy theories."  As she puts it:

"Hand it to Sen. Mark Warner. Of the many Russia-collusion theorists, how many get to claim “bipartisan” credentials? That’s one question that accompanied Thursday’s supposedly big news that the Senate Intelligence Committee had subpoenaed former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to testify in February. If anything comes from this appearance—it would be surprising. Senate Intel is the committee Mr. Warner, as ranking Democrat, has turned into the black hole of the Russia investigation, with Republican signoff.."


What Kim means - in her blind consternation- is that committee Chairman Richard Burr has evidently suffered a "mugging" in allowing  Mark Warner's thesis to accumulate credibility - say instead of distorting it and burying it like the scumball Devin Nunes did with the House Intel investigation.   According to Kim, "Mr. Burr appears to have suffered a political mugging".  Then adopting the usual Rightie trick of trying to blame the "left" media for his taking a more principled and honest stand than Nunes.

After all, according to Kim, how could Burr not see the REAL conspiracy  (unearthed by Nunes and his sycophant Reep House cohort) staring him and the other GOP Senate Intel members in the face. As she puts it (ibid.):

"Thanks to House committees, we know the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted surveillance of the Trump team based on opposition research from Hillary Clinton's campaign. And Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee blew the lid off the FBI's feckless relationship with dossier author Christopher Steele."

Re: the House committees, we now know they were fronts set up to protect Trump by deflecting attention to the Steele dossier, the FBI and Hillary (via the 'Uranium One' and Clinton Foundation tropes). With the release of a redacted Democratic memorandum in February, we beheld just how deeply Nunes had embedded himself in Trump's orbit to become his top bootlicker and enabler. At least in the Repug House, by running interference for a traitor.  That Democratic House memo, even with redaction, boldly countered Nunes' claims that top FBI and Justice Department officials has "abused their powers in spying on Carter Page" the former Trump campaign aide. 

Kim - possibly in the throes of an MJ candy high,   vaping overdose or sporadic hormonal imbalance - also again appears not to recall the Fusion GPS oppo research was originally launched by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site. The relevant  WSJ editorial at the time noted it was funded by big GOP donor Paul Singer.  Singer wanted oppo research done on a two bit Queens' chiseler and lowlife he didn't trust. Singer and a group of old guard GOP donors hired Fusion GPS to do the job of digging up dirt on the Queens' grifter. Subsequently, after Trump won the Repub primary,   the material was handed off to the Clinton campaign. This was NOT in any way sinister or illegal as Strassel tries to portray.  Nor in any way conspiratorial, certainly like seeking the help of a hostile foreign power to meddle in a presidential campaign.

What was illegal was the Trump team holding more than 100 meetings - that we now know of -  with Russians, including GRU intelligence agents.  Specifically in "Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration,"   The NY Times tracked down "more than 100 in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter," all made by "at least 17 campaign officials and advisers [who] had contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries."

Further, foreign intercepts of meetings of Trump cronies, e.g. Carter Page, with Russian  (GRU) agents meant that the U.S.  FBI  had to enter the picture with its own FISA warrants, surveillance, etc. Not to do so would have violated agreements with foreign intel sources, assets, and would have amounted to dereliction of duty.   Hence, there was no evil conspiracy by the FBI, it only exists in Kim's mind.  Or perhaps in her fervid, MJ-laced dreams?

Why else spout such unhinged bollocks as:

"In recent weeks Mr. Warner has painted the lurid possibility of Trump-Russia collusion."

Well, it ain't just a "possibility",  Kim. Text messages, phone records, foreign intercepts, emails  - other documentation of the meetings-   point to clear conspiracy with the Russkies to alter  the 2016 election. And as former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah made clear Friday night ('All In'):

"There's just so many facts in this indictment about the coordination of the Trump campaign with Wikileaks, through Roger Stone. Remember that GRU indictment - if you go back to that- one of the objects of the conspiracy is not just hacking but hacking and disseminating.  You can't look at them alone, you have to go back to everything we know, the Trump Tower meeting, the calling out by Trump to Russia (to grab Hillary's emails)...there's just so many other things."

Rocah, in other words, has put her former federal prosecutor's finger on exactly why the reactionary Right media is able to peddle this balderdash there's "nothing there".  Because they count on massive amnesia of their readers, viewers concerning the reams of evidence that came before.  This is also what fuels The Wall Street Journal's lame editorials, e.g. 'Keystone Kops Collusion', p. A12,  Jan. 26-27)  as when this one claimed:

"Robert Mueller's indictment Friday of Roger Stone proves Donald Trump has awful judgment in political associations. What it doesn't show is Trump-Russia collusion."

Which take could have been right out of Andrew McCarthy's National Review piece, "Stone Indictment Underscores That There Was No Trump-Russia Conspiracy."
 
 But as blogger P.M. Carpenter has observed: "Mueller has never suggested that the Trump campaign's Russia collusion was smooth, slick or sophisticated. Stumblebums and poseurs are often at the center of political campaigns. "

So the WSJ editorial amounts to the classic red herring.

I have also pointed out repeatedly - and Ms. Rocah has also noted -  there is no federal statute for collusion, there is for conspiracy. And that case is nailed shut when the compendium of evidence is assembled from the Papadopolous' meeting onward - say to the Trump Tower meeting, and then Trump's invitation to the Russkies to hack Hillary's emails.

According to Robert Mueller's "GRU  indictments" cited by Rocah:

"On or about July 27, 2016, the conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts on a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. They also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign. '

Most interesting, this happened on the very same day Traitor Trump appeared in front of the media cameras and pleaded with Russia to hack Hillary's emails, e.g.

"I will tell you this, Russia if you're listening, I hope that you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. You will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."

And after all, Hillary lost thanks to Trump's conspiracy with the Russians to leverage him into power. So who is really the victim here, Kim?   National Security specialist and counterinsurgency expert Malcolm Nance also reaffirmed yesterday on MSNBC the peril facing Stone and how  he was the "bridge and link for that information" passed from the Trump campaign to Russian intelligence. Adding: "This is a critical,  critical indictment. They're saying they've identified the link.", i.e. in showing the bridge and coordination between Stone,  the Trump campaign, and the Russians.    Adding: "This indictment is based not just on the hearsay or the testimony of others. Robert Mueller brings documentation to the table....And believe me there's also other information in the special counsel's office we don't know about especially from other members of the Trump team including Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and others."

This was echoed by Georgetown Law professor Paul Butler, citing the "treasure trove" of documents, emails, phone messages, interdicted foreign wiretaps, etc. Mueller has on him.  Prof. Butler then stated Stone could "face twenty" years for his part in the conspiracy.

Strassel's other favorite target has been Christopher Steele and his dossier.  It's almost like Strassel goes to bed every night dreaming about it.  Well,  at least dreaming of novel ways to incorporate it into her conspiracy ideations.  But the facts are much less astounding. The dossier has been a frequent target of  the WSJ- FOX- Dotard Axis which seeks to heap incessant   derision upon it. But the probe into the Trump campaign originally was sparked by a separate matter that Steele never wrote about:  a tip from an Australian diplomat that a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, appeared to know Russia had obtained damaging emails on the Democrats. (Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents.) 

The dossier itself is actually several memos, based on conversations with Russian sources, that were written between June and December of 2016.   Further, in retrospect nearly all of the dossier has been substantiated or confirmed.

Strassel whines at the end of her piece that "we all want adult behavior"  and to that end "someone on the intelligence committee needs to step up and supervise Mr. Warner."  Actually, the only ones that need supervising - apart from Trump - are Kim Strassel and her coven of Wall Street Journal conspiracy spinners, "witch hunt" protesters and  Trump enablers  - especially as they seem unable to discern real conspiracies from fake ideations. 

See also:

• 
  
• Mueller's case against Roger Stone is open and shut

And:

Donald Trump | Robert Mueller

Hilariously Different Worlds

by P.M. Carpenter | January 28, 2019 - 6:26am | permalink

And:

‘Trump Is Very Worried’: Fears Reportedly Spread That Roger Stone Will Turn on the President — and That Don Jr. Could Be Next

Trump - Officially A Pawn & Intel Asset For Putin And The Russsians

The Traitor-in- Chief - Putin's Personal Puppet - who will do or say anything to provide cover for his master.

"The attempts by Giuliani and others to say 'oh no American involvement', is one hundred percent wrong. We now have it documented what transpired now on the Russian side, but we are within kissing distance of the final hook between the Russian government and the Trump campaign."

Harry Litman, former U.S. Attorney on All In last  night.


Even as the Trump protection media insist he is a king  -  e.g. Kimberly Strassel's WSJ op-ed Friday, that "King" Trump can cut taxes on his own without congress, and today's WSJ  editorial ('After The Strzok Stonewall', p. A12) that  Pete Strzok "stonewalled" so Trump can declassify any and all files  "to learn the truth of what really happened in 2016". In fact,  we already know what happened from the Mueller probe indictment of 12 officers from the GRU intelligence directorate,  yesterday. So the Trump protection alliance can spin all the BS it wants but no one with sense and an IQ over room temperature is buying it.  Trump supporters, voters excepted, who as Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield put it, "come from the lower half of the IQ curve".(WSJ,  Weekend Interview, March 31).

Let's cut all the Foxite balderdash and cut to the chase: Anyone with more than air between their ears now KNOWS Trump is a goddamned traitor and deserves hanging from the nearest tree, especially if he now goes on to meet Vladimir Putin in secret. This isn't "hyperbole"  or unfair characterization but calling a spade a spade. It is straight unvarnished reality after the orange ape tried to cover for his Russkie collaborators by tossing out the "witch hunt" sound bite on being informed (2 days in advance of its public release) of the latest Mueller indictment.  This was of 12 Russian Military Intelligence officers for whom the names, ranks and roles were even specified . This,  barely 72 hours before the traitor was to hold his one -on- one with Putin.  And despite calls for Trump to cancel his coming secret meet with Putin, we know a traitor never surrenders his cover unless he's caught flat- footed, to the extent he can be hung without question.

True to a Traitor's form, instead of obeying the demands to cancel the covert Putin meeting, in which we'll have no remote idea what he's giving away, Trump doubled down his cover (see David Corn's take at end of post).  Rather than acknowledge the detrimental optics for a private Putin meet, like a true traitor he disparaged the news of the Mueller indictment at a press conference with Therese May;

"I think I have a very good relationship with President Putin.  I think we're being hurt very badly by this witch hunt, I would call it the rigged witch hunt. You know,  in the United States we have this pure stupidity but it makes it very hard to do something with Russia"

Oh, you mean like removing all sanctions imposed, without drawing scrutiny and hyper attention? Is that what's made 'very hard', Mr. Traitor?   Or, do you mean it will be very hard for Russia to help you win in 2020?   Hopefully, maybe by then you'll be hanging from the tallest tree in D.C.

As former assistant Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks put it on All In: "We have no witches here, but we do have a male WARLOCK and his head is almost in the noose. Along with his other warlocks.":

Interestingly,  Mueller's indictment -   the most detailed accusation by the American government to date of the Russian government’s 2016 election interference - came mere hours before Londoners protested the arrival of the treasonous orange maggot in their country,  with an inflatable Baby Trump blimp, e.g.



The Baby Trump captured everything odious about this degenerate, from his infantile, narcissistic nature, to his hideous orange hue via fake tanning creams,  to the incessant need to have his Twitter feed at hand. And his big open yap which never ceases bloviating bullshit and self inflation.

Meanwhile, Mueller's indictment revealed for the first time that a team of Russian Military Intelligence hackers- members of the GRU-  initiated their disruption efforts as early as March, 2016,  or 8 months before the election, and targeting 300 people. This was also around the same time Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos  learned from an Aussie diplomat the Russians possessed "dirt" on Clinton.

Mueller released the indictment day before Trump's planned secret sit down with Putin, obviously as a warning shot over Trump's bow, to behave himself. Or else.  According to the indictment:

"On or about July 27, 2016, the conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts on a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. They also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign. '

Most interesting, this happened on the very same day Traitor Trump appeared in front of the media cameras and pleaded with Russia to hack Hillary's emails.  In front of millions, the Orange Turd had baldly blurted:

"I will tell you this, Russia if you're listening, I hope that you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. You will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."

So Trump, in full public view, asked Russia to hack his political opponent.  Did this just come out of the blue as a brain fart blurt? Not at all, given we know Russia has been funding Trump since the late 1980s.  On account of that funding and other Kompromat materials (e.g. the piss video revealed in the Steele dossier), we know Donnie Dotard is  Putin's puppet,  with multiple strings that can be puled at will.

As per The New Republic (Aug./Sept. 2017, . p. 29):

"A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, or even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money .....Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics....It's entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters."

 And his July 27 invitation to hack Hillary's emails disclosed he was also by then (likely even before) a convenient gopher, puppet and collaborator to the Russkies, who he hoped would help deliver the White House via enough electoral votes in key swing states. Hell, it's been known since earlier this year that Mueller's investigators have been asking witnesses if Trump was advised to make the comment about the Clinton emails from someone outside his campaign.  So Trump tried to coordinate the release of the emails to do the most damage to Clinton, and the GRU provided him with all the material.

In the indictment (see  end of post) we now know one GRU unit engaged in active cyber operations by stealing information, while a second, different unit was responsible for disseminating the stolen information.  Much of this was done via the entity known as "Guccifer 2.0" - who then passed the information on to Wikileaks.

I admit that at the time the initial  (DNC) hacking incidents were exposed (two days before the Clinton email hacks), I wasn't 100 percent convinced it was the Russians, I posted about it (e.g. July 25th, 2016) and wrote at the time:

There was a "claim" - still no evidence - by a DNC -hired bunch of "experts" ('CrowdStrike") that the DNC's email system was breached by "Russian hackers". Even if true, and I haven't seen anything to convince me yet, this doesn't mean the Russian government or Putin was behind it. Further, people need to read this before they jump on that suspicious political meme bandwagon:

http://www.csoonline.com/article/3084594/security/dnc-hacker-slams-crowdstrike-publishes-opposition-memo-on-donald-trump.html

So, until the illustrious 'CrowdStrike' team can provide firm evidence that Guccifer 2.0 was in fact Russian or the "Russian hackers" I will withhold accepting the DNC claim."
  
However, I now believe the case has been made and the details in the indictment have convinced me (at last) we can blame the Russkies for those early hacks.  Also, that Wikileaks was collaborating as when they responded to Guccifer 2.0", i.e.:

"Send any new material (stolen from the DNC) here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact then what you are doing."

That single statement totally altered my perceptions of Wikileaks, from a respectable group  of global citizens out to get the truth (as when they exposed the horrific videos of U.S. helicopter gunships slaughtering civilian Iraqis some 10 years ago), to a detestable bunch of vermin cooperating to undermine a U.S. election.

We now return to the core issue: Was the  July 27, 2016  televised Trump invitation to the Russkies a signal sent to the GRU to launch its hack attack? We don't know, but it sure appears there's enough 'smoke' to infer a fire, one started by the Donald.

According to journalist David Corn, appearing on All In last night, made these remarks concerning the Mueller indictments:

"What this is is a reminder of reality.  Trump and his minions have kept saying this didn't really happen, so in a lot of ways this is an indictment of Donald Trump, of all the people who said the Russia attack never happened. Here we have it in granular detail.  Read between the lines of this iindictment and there's the other half of the equation. That throughout the campaign, and while the attack was going on, Donald Trump and his lieutenants were saying it's not happening. Even when he was briefed by U.S. intelligence he came out and said, 'nope, nothing happening, could be a 400 pound guy, we don't know that it's Russia'

Well, now we know it's Russia. Now we know while they were doing this he was providing cover, he was covering up what they were doing, which was for his benefit. "

In other words, Trump - aka "the Donald" - is effectively a Russian intelligence asset and blatant actor on Putin's behalf, to undermine the U.S. national security interests. This is by way of enabling meddling in our elections to propel Trump to power and act as said agent on Putin's behalf, as well as disrupting friendly alliances and kowtowing to autocrats and dictators - especially Putin.

Readers can believe what they will, I believe this guy should be hung.

[Read the indictment here.]

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/elizabeth-preza/80167/he-doesn-t-read-ex-us-ambassador-to-russia-details-putin-s-strategic-advantage-over-trump-ahead-of-

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/cody-fenwick/80138/a-moment-in-american-history-ex-gop-lawmaker-argues-muellers-latest-charges-should-make-us-fearful-of-

Excerpt:

"The president has known for days about this and he did not pivot in the press conference today to change his message nor is he changing the meeting," he continued. "And what Americans should feel today — and I say this carefully — but we should feel fear. The Department of Justice today issued a statement on behalf of the United States government saying that one of our greatest adversaries in the world, Russia, had intelligence agents interfere with our elections. ... We should be fearful about the allegation. We should be fearful about the statement of facts. At the end of the day, we should be fearful we have a president who has known about this and did not change his behavior."

AND:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/chiara-giaccari/80153/the-trump-putin-helsinki-summit-why-a-meeting-behind-closed-doors