Ryan Goodman of the New York Times lays things out in such a way that it’s easy to see the outlines of a fairly slam-dunk case of obstruction of justice in the Russia probe. In addition to that already verified false statements made by Michael Flynn and George Papadapoulos, for which they have both been indicted, he identifies false statements that were made to Congress or on government forms by Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and K.T. McFarland. This is in addition to a long list of false statements that were made to the public, including by the president, insisting that there had been absolutely no contact between members of the campaign and Russians. For Goodman, these public lies are so intertwined with their overall defense that it’s impossible to believe that they were honest in private when speaking to federal investigators.
The original conspiracy to hide Russian contacts has unraveled. We now know that Flynn, Papadapolos, and Sam Clovis are cooperating with the Mueller investigation, while there is reason to believe that Rick Gates may soon join them. Many others have given testimony, either to the grand jury or to the special counsel’s investigators. Some, like Hope Hicks and the president’s White House lawyer Don McGahn are still in Trump’s employ, but others like Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, and Steve Bannon (who is scheduled to testify soon) are not. Only the most guilty have any interest in lying to the Feds, so it’s safe to say that Mueller has decimated the original unity of Trump Team and is no getting to the bottom of how these lies were coordinated. And maybe that’s why it appears that he’ll spend his time talking to the president by focusing on issues related to obstruction rather than the underlying crime.
Trump may have signaled yesterday that he’s knows he’s in trouble on obstruction. He’s been denying he colluded with the Russians but on Wednesday he added a denial that he’s obstructed the investigation, too.
President Trump defended his attacks on investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, denying that it amounts to obstruction and saying he was merely “fight[ing] back.”
“There’s been no collusion whatsoever,” Trump told reporters in an impromptu press conference on Wednesday. “There’s no obstruction whatsoever. And I’m looking forward to it.”
Trump also mocked critics who have accused him of obstructing the Russia probe by attacking the investigations and referring to them as a “witch hunt.”
“You fight back, oh, it’s obstruction,” Trump mockingly told reporters.
So, that’s a defense. If collusion of some sort isn’t demonstrated, Trump will say that he’s been persecuted for fighting back against a witch hunt investigation. It’s not a real defense for lying, but remember that people didn’t support the removal of Bill Clinton for lying under oath because the underlying charges about Whitewater and everything else were never proven. Trump will have to admit to a lot more than lying about a sexual relationship with one intern, but he probably believes he can survive if the case is restricted to obstruction charges.
However, a really strong obstruction case will be a very powerful component of an impeachment proceeding if Mueller brings evidence of previously undisclosed cooperation between the Russians and the Trump campaign, especially in the late phases of the campaign where advertising and propaganda was being targeted to the electorate in a sophisticated manner. To get enough Republicans in a position where they’re willing and able to help remove this president from office, Mueller is going to need both elements. He’ll need to demonstrate not only that the Trump team lied to egregiously to his investigators and to the American people, but that there was a reason that they did so.
Any and all Democratic victories between now and when Mueller finishes will be important!
Here’s to hoping for a victory for Democratic candidate Conor Lamb in PA-18 on March 13.
I donated to his campaign this week (from sunny liberal California)!
I’m sure this will come up:
Why Did Trump Tweet an `in the ball park accurate’ number for Hillary’s Total Staffers on June 9th, 2016?
Good enough to get Nixon.
Good enough for Trump.
Well, Mueller definitely has to move the needle quite a ways from the (actual) Repub displays of personal abasement over “shithole countries” to their (imagined) vote to impeach, haha.
Well of course there’s an underlying crime, or at least profoundly discreditable actions. Why obstruct if there’s nothing to obstruct? Why fight back against an investigation you know isn’t going anywhere? Why lie egregiously for no reason? This isn’t really an issue.
I mean, he was at least specifically obstructing the investigation into Flynn who has already confessed to criminal activity. So we know there was an underlying crime.
Why in the world would congressional republicans go crazy on conspiracy theories unless they know something really bad is coming? Right now the whole republican infrastructure, from Trump to Fox News is doing everything they can to wreck the FBI’s credibility on this whole investigation. Why? Why would even obscure republican members of the House quote text messages that 1) do not say what republicans claim and 2) are not illegal or unethical in any way? How are they threatened?
Every time I read about, or listen to what they are saying, I think `WTF, why peddle nonsense?’ All of them have a fine sense of self preservation, tuned to the highest degree by years as politicians. And yet here they are, attacking the FBI and the professional hierarchy of the DOJ, which In normal circumstances would at least damage future career advancement.
And it is no coincidence that these attacks reached a higher and higher pitch as certain people testified, which allowed them to report back to Trump (and McConnel) on how much Mueller knew, and where he was headed.
Something is up. And it ain’t obstruction.
My bet it’s `follow the money’.
.
There doesn’t need to be an underlying crime to obstruct. Trump and his posse lie, and have lied, their entire lives. They assume everyone lies to them. They have a common criminal mindset – everyone else lies, everyone else scams, it’s not like it’s murder, right? The idea that some people actually play it straight and follow the rules is merely the definition of a sucker. A mark. Having sat across a table from way more than my share of professional crooks, this is kind of the wiseguy way.
You’re probably right but there’s also Trump’s psychotic personality to consider. Part of the reason he considers the investigation to be a “witch hunt” is because of his extreme narcissistic personality disorder in which he considers himself almost like a god. So naturally he considers any investigation into his campaign to be a personal insult to which he will “fight back” (but, like the bully he is, it consists of insults but retreating when faced with actual powerful people).
In all honesty, I also think that he will have to wait until 2018 to finalize the investigation. The Republicans will just keep creating conspiracy theories to explain away any charges against Trump specifically, even if his underlings are expendable.
Citation?
It’s debatable, to say the least.
You got me, I live in the past. 🙂
2019.
Come on, Boo, you know Bill Clinton didn’t lie under oath. The “investigators” gave him a specific definition of “sex”, and by that definition he didn’t have it with Lewinsky.
Well it all depends on what the definition of the word “is” is.
That definition was also from the “investigators”. They gave him a definition of “is” and Clinton was making a joke about it.
Re definition of the Act in Question, I am reminded of a story. Warning — ADULT MATERIAL!!!!! NOT SUITABLE FOR MINORS!!!!!
One week, we’re reading stories about the Russians laundering money through the NRA to support Trump and the GOP.
The next, we’re pretending we might not have enough evidence to make an obstruction case weighty enough to stick.
Collectively, it seems to me that our news media and even many of our smarter analysts struggle to synthesize the disparate arms of the Mueller investigation into the truly massive hyperscandal that it is. We’re in collective denial that the Kremlin holds considerable power over both Trump and the GOP through their blackmail. We deny collectively that this puts us in the worst national security emergency since 1941. We do it because nobody seems to know how many trees of how many types it takes to make a forest.
At the same time, though, we all know quietly that we’re looking at an enormous forest of corruption and foreign intrigue. We just can’t say so openly for fear of being labeled cranks. I’m sick of it.
“…our news media and even many of our smarter analysts struggle…”
Considering much of the media and its “smarter” analyst have systematically disappeared 68 million 2016 voters from the American population, it looks more like they aren’t so much struggling as engaging in an intentional act.
I think Huckabee Sanders knew exactly what she was doing, earlier this week, when she moved the goalposts to “It’s only collusion if the candidate the Russians were helping got elected exclusively because of the Russian help.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-evolving-definition
Republicans have demonstrated amply and on numerous occasions that there’s no place they won’t go, no norm they won’t sacrifice, no moral principle they won’t abandon in furtherance of raw power. So what’s it’s gonna take to defeat them is elections. And the American people are going to have to be smart enough to wise up and know when they’re being played for fools. Given the gerrymandering and voter suppression that have occurred together with population distribution and electoral college disadvantages, plus the complex algorithms now employed to manipulate public opinion, a lot of folks are going to have be very angry and very discerning if we’re going to take back our government and our nation.
Dutch agencies provide crucial intel about Russia’s interference in US-elections
I wonder if Rachel Maddow can dig into this.
How does one point this out to her?
And a huge part of the motive for the 2014 Avid hacking was the Russian downing of the Malaysian 777 over Eastern Ukraine in July 2014, that very same summer. Onboard the jet were dozens of top level Dutch medical researchers and professionals headed to an international HIV conference in Malaysia.
I would think the most obvious thing Trump is guilty of is felony tax fraud. I suppose he could claim that his tax returns were prepared by professionals and he just signed them, but non-disclosure (hiding) of assets is felony tax fraud. There is just no way that Trump filed an honest return in his life.
Nor is it likely that if his returns were ever made public he could hide all kinds of criminal activity like perhaps kickbacks to mobsters, bribery of public officials, etc. It could all be made the basis of impeachment anyway so it could be included in a public report. The report could say “we investigated his tax records and found the following felonies, but declined to prosecute because they were beyond the statute of limitations.” Or something similar.
Even if the tax form is prepared by a professional backed by a phalanx of tax lawyers and accountants, the person signing the 1040 is responsible for its accuracy. It says so right on the form, “under penalty of perjury”, which is a felony.
No, Mueller doesn’t need more than obstruction.
If Trump weren’t in office, or once he leaves, Mueller has enough to get him tried and almost certainly locked up.
To get Trump removed from office, nothing will suffice. He could rape an underage girl in front of news cameras on Fifth avenue and elected Republicans will just say “she deserved it!”
So, no, Mueller doesn’t need anything else. At this point further investigation is to increase Trump’s eventual sentence, and to identify and indict additional conspirators, of which there are clearly many.
Additional investigation and revealing more of the creeps hiding under the rocks will also benefit us politically, but that’s not Mueller’s goal. He’s in it to identify and punish the guilty.
It seems to me that some Republicans have been conspiring to obstruct justice right in front of everyone on the nightly news this past week.
Mueller didn’t let Mike Flynn off with one dinky charge and a light sentence because he liked the color of Flynn’s eyes.
There’s a net full of shoes over the White House, just waiting for the “drop” order.
As Trump & co. have said ad nauseam, “Collusion is not a crime.” Right, it’s not, and that is exactly why Trump emphasizes it so much. Denying it, because that makes it a bright, shiny object.
You can be sure that this whole investigation is PREMISED on collusion between the Trump team and various Russians. Obstruction also grows pout of that. As people on this thread have already pointed out, you don’t obstruct justice unless you’re on the wrong side of justice. But obstruction of justice is also a crime in itself. Tax violations may also be at issue, but I suspect tax violations is the least of it. Very often the reason earnings are not reported is not really to avoid taxes, but because the income looks fishy and they want to hide the real sources.
If people are colluding in something, it’s what they are colluding in that’s the presumed crime. Otherwise it would not be under investigation. Mueller has not wanted to SAY what it is because that is exactly what they are investigating. He’s not going to say what it is until all the ducks are lined up, and when he does it will be a criminal charge. That’s how our system works. It would be incredibly incompetent for Mueller to say what the case is until the investigation is complete.