The story is accelerating rapidly. To try and summarize it so far would be out of date tomorrow. But for those of us who remember Watergate see the same pattern; but at a much faster pace.
Consider, all the effort then was to protect Nixon’s awareness of the illegal activity trying to stem leaks plus sabotage the Democratic campaign and hide that awareness from Congress, the Special Prosecutor and the public. Only when it was no longer possible, due to court orders, to continue to conceal Nixon’s knowledge and acceptance did he resign his office.
All this Russian stuff is the same. And it all comes back to the unquestionable closeness of the Trump campaign to the Putin regime in Moscow. What is the source of that closeness? And why protect it to the probable collapse of the Trump Administration and possible political damage to the GOP?
The only thing that makes the most sense is commercial ties between Trump, his family, and Moscow money. And that will only be explained by examining several decades of Trump tax returns. If there was nothing there, certainly they would have been released. So why not?
- the returns show he is not as wealthy as he claims (public records of bankruptcy, selling of assets, etc… lead to this)
- He has lied about his ties to Moscow money.
- Russian thugs don’t look kindly on to bankrupts and have ways of exerting pressure or revenge on those who they think are going to screw them. Just who does Trump’s private security for himself and family report to? I mean why push the Secret Service aside when they have the full support of the US military and intelligence agencies and use private security?
Its all going to unravel. When it comes out, Donald will have to go. The only question is when and will all the GOP efforts and policies be tainted by association with Trump. Like Watergate, the “Silent Majority” didn’t accept or give importance to the story at first. However, the constant drip of stories and revelations turned them.
And who will the GOP blame for this mess. Can’t be themselves, even though they fell in line with Trump. Can’t be their base. Won’t be the Democrats as they have been in front of this all along.
The Russians will be blamed. The GOP will pivot and become very hardline against Moscow; the opposite result they were trying for. Already there is awareness of it all going wrong in Putin’s circle with firings. The death and arrest of Russian cyber warriors may be tied to this, wiping the trail of the hacking back to the Kremlin. But the NSA and fellows have all the records going back years. Already the archives are being opened. European agencies are reporting contacts in various cities with Russians. To keep out of the spotlight takes years of training and nation state resources. Something that business men and political hacks don’t have.
So the question I might have is, will Putin himself become a liability to the Moscow Money as Trump will become. Will he be such a liability that he is tossed overboard? Or killed? Or dies from a heart attack. Or in a hunting accident?
So enough of speculation. But count on this. Trump will go when the tax returns become the focus and are about to be released.
Ridge
First things first. Only two legal ways for Trump’s tax returns to be made public. 1) He voluntarily releases them. No indication that he has any intention of doing that. 2) Congressional tax committees request them from the IRS and after reviewing them decide that it’s in the public’s interest to see them. As the minority party, Democrats won’t be able even to request that the IRS allows them to see the returns. So, who are the Congressional Republicans that are going to join forces with the Democrats to get this done?
As to what’s in the returns, I’m going with 1) has paid little to no federal income taxes for decades 2) on a tax basis, he may not even be a billionaire 3) skivvy money from many parts of the world in need of a place to park cash for a period of time and not draw attention for doing so. 4) huge debt burden on all of the properties — with a significant portion held by private individuals and entities.
Public release is one thing. Copies are available to FBI and other TLAs legally by NSLs. Also they are assuredly in the hands of intelligence agencies for investigation into National Security and leads to follow the money trail. Certainly FISA warrants are there due to all the contacts with foreign agents by his associates. The TLAs wouldn’t talk (publically or in closed sessions) until all possible juice is squeezed out of them. Treasury would have them to investigate possible money laundering. Plus the IRS and its “audit” can use them for any criminal prosecution and they would be the basis for any warrants.
The Intelligence Committees can subpoena them as part of an investigation. Once that happens, then the temptation for leaks will be unavoidable.
A Special Prosecutor can also subpoena them as part of any investigation.
And if not the forms themselves, those who worked on them are probably not covered by client privilege if there is any question of illegality. So they would be available for testimony.
Tax forms are not sacrosanct. They are legal documents. Public release wouldn’t be necessary if a report detailing their import and what it means would be fine. Trump lawyers would fight it every step along the way, but if they fail in court, that will be the beginning of the end.
We aren’t there yet. But the pressure is building. Too many in the govt think Trump is compromised. Daily revelations give them greater incentive.
There will be a tipping point and the GOP will make a political decision that he is an anchor around their necks. A resignation is then in the works.
R
Do you have a source for the claim that the FBI can easily get or look at tax returns? Requires a warrant and the standard is probable cause. This may be the last USG institutional promise to the public that’s still standing and it’s very important that it remain. “Getting Trump” is less important than tearing down the IRS promise of privacy.
Feel free to pore through and analyze the 104 pages of Trump’s financial disclosure. If Democrats are serious about getting Trump, they’d hire a team to do that. Would only take skilled analysts/researchers three or four months and if there’s any there there, they’d find it. Instead they’ve squandered four months on the Trump-Putin-Russia dry-well.
“Copies are available to FBI and other TLAs legally by NSLs”
A National Security Letter is a non-judicial subpoena which requires NO judicial intervention, NO probable cause before a judge and warrant. It is issued nominally by the FBI (though other agencies may also have this authority) to an individual, agency or enterprise for the purpose of gathering information that would be relevant toward a national security investigation. The main feature of the NSL is that the recipient can NOT disclose receiving said letter to anyone, including the target of the investigation. This “gag” order has been disputed in court with limited nor timely success. If it is disclosed, you and your attorney are in a Fed Prosecutor’s office trying to negotiate a lessened prison term. Though used earlier, it was strengthened under the atmosphere surrounding 9/11 and the “Patriot” Act. The only way to fight it and warn others is to suddenly close up shop. It is speculated the cause of Lavabit and Truecrypt suddenly shutting down rather than compromise their service and program. There is a lot of info on NSLs and court battles at ACLU, Wikipedia, EFF, etc….
So, with that in mind, if the FBI or others think you have a national security “problem” and want to know: your financial records, tax records, health records, dietary habits (through grocery rewards cards), your shopping habits, your telephone records (metadata, not content), your Internet website visits, your email respondents (no content) who you recieve US mail from and to (not content) your utility bills, etc… Anything that has left your hand, they can easily get it and you will never know until revealed in court. Major corporations have rolled over for NSLs. Content of communications (phone calls, emails, texts, postal letters, etc.. ) would be subject to warrants from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts. Said FISA courts are VERY lenient in going along with what ever the FBI or other TLAs want. (like 98% success rate).
So, if Trump’s tax records are of interest, a NSL could be issued to the Director of the IRS and he would have to turn them over, probably restrained from telling the Treasury Sec or the White House. If they think the secrecy couldn’t be held, then it could be issued to his accountant. As communications with WH and advisors are probably now under FISA warrants, they would know if he informed.
So that is the basis of my assertion that if they want his tax returns, they will get them.
As for the dry well about Trump/associates and Putin. We’ll see. Lots of smoke.
R
Good explanation of FISA Court requirements-
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/trumps-wiretap-rant-betrays-ignorance-of-the-law-2148
70
As for the dry well about Trump/associates and Putin. We’ll see. Lots of smoke.
With all the fires the MSM and Democrats are lighting, of course there’s lots of smoke. And Trump is such an impetuous nincompoop that he keeps fanning the flames of those fires.
But where’s the beef?
Paul Manafort has been a sleazy operator for decades and yet through two Democratic administrations they never went after him. Not until … Connect the freaking dots. And once they did, they couldn’t stop.
There are good legal and political reasons why high level Democrats didn’t go after Nixon (and they had the “beef”) and Reagan (an obvious reason for suspicions but no tangible evidence) when those two won. Do you think Democratic politicians and a large portion of the Democratic electorate weren’t angry that they lost? They were but they weren’t unhinged.
Likening Trump’s tax returns to Nixon’s tapes has a huge problem. Those tapes were recorded while Nixon was the highest public official in the country. Public acts on his part. Plus, the subpoena was issued when there was probable cause based on a substantial amount of evidence. It wasn’t a fishing trip.
The allegation in this mess remains a collusion between Trump-Putin that directly impacted the election. How isn’t defined. (The WI re-count quashed the idea of vote rigging. But most Democrats demonstrated in 2000 that they don’t much care about that because they didn’t follow up on the evidence in FL.)
More apt analogies would be from the 1968 and 1980 elections. However, in both those instances (now known fact from ’68 and still in the realm of suspected in ’80), the electoral impact of those acts isn’t obscure. Both altered a robust single data point. So, operationally, where is this Trump-Putin plot?
If you want a corollary with Nixon’s tapes, that would be the Clinton/DNC/Podesta emails (the writers fall within the category of officials). A difference is that we saw some of that before election day (30,000 Clinton emails were destroyed before seen by outsiders). Had the GOP been able to nominate a credible candidate (not sure that had even one out of the herd that ran), difficult to imagine that Clinton campaign wouldn’t have been on life support by election day.
You ask:
The ones who want to get rid of Trump.
Lots of them.
They fear for their own positions if the Trumpsters really manage to take over the party. If they are assured that this will break the alt.right Trump movement’s back, they will be in with the program in a NY minute.
Bet on it.
AG
They can kiss off their positions in ’18 if they do it. The monster that they let out of the bottle in ’16 will not evaporate. Their safe spaces are limited to districts and states where Trump won by at least 60%.
But the way to restrain the monster is to discredit him in the eyes of the public. And the best way is to show he or his team is playing for the other side.
So far their incompetence has helped that along a great deal. Not to mention the real evidence of activity and possible collusion between Trump campaign and Moscow.
The current focus is the timing of the GOP platform and Ukraine with visits by the Russian Ambassador and his minions before and during the convention. That potentially has legs and is understandable to the red state base.
R
It’s not possible to have a constructive dialogue when one party has already convicted or exonerated one of the subjects. When that condition exists the dialogue or debate devolves to debating “facts,” and frankly that’s not only not productive but bores me.
Echoes of the great MWD arguments that I engage in before recognizing the debates for what they were and at which point I said, “I’m not debating facts” and walked away from those that had been engaging me. I had personally done my homework, and while I couldn’t positively assert that Saddam had no WMD — only strongly suspect that he didn’t, the publicly available evidence was clear enough that whatever he had, the facts indicated that it was limited and posed no threat to the US. No threat because he didn’t possess the requisite delivery systems.
I use that as an example because it’s graphic and the truth is now well known. One other aspect of that WMD hoax. A ubiquitous counter-argument to my position was “if he doesn’t have any WMD, why doesn’t he come clean?” Ipso facto in their minds was that there was only one reason why Saddam “didn’t come clean;” he had WMD. All the information that Iraq supplied to the UN was dismissed if it were even acknowledged to have happened. They couldn’t fathom but one reason for why Saddam didn’t come clean. There were many possible reasons; mostly internal and neighboring enemies that could well have seized the opportunity if Saddam revealed his empty hand.
While I don’t doubt that Putin-Russia were concerned, and for good reasons, about a Clinton win. The Clinton cabal has loathed Putin since the demise of their buddy Yeltsin. So, practically what the hell could Putin have done about it? Overall, the GOP was as stuffed with Cold War warriors as the DP. Even if he could have forged a working relationship with any candidate, how could that possibly have aided that candidate’s campaign? Friendly relations with Russia is a harder sell in a US campaign than Iraq WMD.
This new anti-Russian animosity didn’t suddenly appear in the 2016 election. Clinton had been publicly tilling that ground since 2011. Obama (who in 2012 turned Romney into a national laughing stock for asserting that Russia was our number one enemy) didn’t come fully on-board with it until Putin embarrassed him over Libya (Putin stood down on that based on US allegations) and Syria.
If you recall from early in the Democratic primary when Sanders had made large gains, Hillary’s team tried to smear Sanders as a Russian apologist. Ludicrous, but enough may have stuck that a portion of Democratic primary voters that they never bothered to look at Sanders.
I don’t know who snatched the DNC/Podesta emails and then forwarded them to Wikileaks. (To be accurate, the first public release of some of the the DNC emails was not done by Wikileaks. That suggests that the individual(s)/entities were tech savvy but didn’t possess high enough skills to do it on their own.) What I do know is that the evidence presented to date that “Putin did it” is as good as the “aluminum tubes” and one doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to recognize that a list of possible culprits is large. (And that has to include a person or persons that would do the deed for money.)
I think you’ll find the New Yorker story that I linked to earlier to be of interest.
RidgeCook writes:
Precisely, RidgeCook.
The same types of intelligence forces that were running Watergate are running this operation, and they share similar tactics. But…their vehicles (the media) and their weapons (digital surveillance) are thousands of times faster than they were in the early 1970s….thousands of times faster and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of times more easily and efficiently dispersed.
Info/disinfo/misinfo that drip, drip, dripped from news stories in the ’70s Washingtoon Post into national consciousness now rip, rip, rip into the web aggregators and thence to the Twitter feeds and Facebook pages of millions within minutes of their placement.
Same approach, but much, much faster.
AG
P.S. About the taxes…???
Who knows what the endgame will be? Not even the perpetrators, most likely. The one thing that is certain is that they will push to some denouement in their own favor if they possibly can do so.
By any and every means necessary.
Remember…this is the biggest business the world has ever seen, this particular multinational consortium., and it is protecting the world’s largest prize.
Watch.
My bet?
At the currently accelerating pace, Trump is gone before summer.
Maybe even before Easter.
The Trump flu is increasingly looking like a disease that causes a raging fever but reaches a rapid climax and subsides relatively quickly thereafter.
And…it is being treated with new, faster acting PermaGov meds. What are the potential after effects of those meds? Just as in modern medicine, the doctors really don’t know, nor do they particularly care. They just want to win short term and collect their fees.
The operation was a success but the patient never recovered?
Or even died?
We shall see.
Won’t we.
Watch.
AG
If those entities were that powerful, Trump would have lost. It’s not as if they didn’t put considerable effort into defeating Trump.
The “deep state” didn’t orchestrate the Nixon criminal activities, roughly ’70-’72, to oust Nixon. Quite the opposite. The activities were to protect and advance Nixon’s fortunes — he did get his landslide win in ’72 and that was after the discovery of one of their many criminal activities, the DNC break-in, and it was known before election day that the burglars had been hired by CREEP. And they would have gotten away with it if the burglars were only slapped on the wrist.
The cover-up then slowly became more and more difficult to contain. But even after the public congressional hearings on Watergate — spring-summer ’73 — the “deep state” wasn’t acting to oust Nixon. Agnew wasn’t an acceptable alternative. One would have to postulate that US Attorney Beall (an Agnew buddy) was a “deep state” co-conspirator in removing Agnew — a huge stretch because he’d opened the investigation in 1970 and the charges were substantial and unquestionable. It’s possible that Beall and the case were pushed along by DOJ, but that would have been from Nixon loyalists to dump Agnew after the ’72 election and when he’d served his useful purpose. Still a bit too 11-dimensional chess for my taste. (They really aren’t as competent as in your fantasies.)
Agnew’s indictment/resignation was most convenient for Dr. K. Opened the opportunity to move Ford into the slot and if Nixon didn’t survive, Dr. K would.