#JAILTOTHECHIEF- Shit Just Got Real

[Cindy Claveau]

This may be the smoking gun in the Russia investigation

From the link:

It's hard to overstate what a big deal that is. No other major outlets have confirmed the BuzzFeed report. But if the BuzzFeed report is right, then the President of the United States directed an underling to lie under oath -- which is, in and of itself, a crime.

Don't take my word for it. Check out this exchange between Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Attorney General nominee William Barr during his confirmation hearings earlier this week (hat tip to Washington Post's Jacqueline Alemany for flagging):

Klobuchar: The President persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction, is that right?
Barr: Well, yes. Well, any person who persuades another to -- yeah."
Klobuchar: "You also said that a President or any person convincing a witness to change testimony would be obstruction, is that right?
Barr: Yes."

I have to believe that Mueller has the evidence to support this allegation, and if not then Michael Cohen has willingly stated in public (on Twitter) that he did this at the behest of POTUS.

The only questions remaining are two: 1) When will the evidence be presented to the House & Senate and (2) what will it take for the GOP to get off the Trump bus and do their jobs?

I realize they (especially McConnell) have been firmly in Trump's pocket all this time, but I've also wondered if there wasn't some bit of information out there that was so damning and incontrovertible that even the most diehard Trumpette would jump ship and vote for impeachment.

We'll worry about almost-as-crazy religionist anti-gay Pence if/when we need to. But for now I don't think there's any doubt that POTUS is the single greatest threat to our country since the Cold War. He needs to go. Now.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Five big takeaways from the stunning report that Trump told Cohen to lie

If Cohen can really testify to this, it may be confirmed sooner than we think. According to the two anonymous sources who spoke to BuzzFeed, Cohen told the special counsel that the president personally instructed him to lie to Congress about the duration of negotiations over Trump Tower Moscow, to obscure his involvement.


This, of course, would be suborning perjury, which is a crime. BuzzFeed claims that the special counsel “learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents.” That’s awfully specific and suggests hard evidence exists. (The White House has not commented.)

(Actually, the WH has already tweeted their flaccid denial, trying to point the finger back at Cohen).

Let’s not forget that, during the period in question, Republican primary voters were choosing their party’s presidential candidate, and again and again, Trump talked up the need for better relations with Russia and Putin, and publicly absolved Putin of various nefarious charges against him. He presented this as a good-faith description of what he saw to be in the national interest. But if the BuzzFeed report is correct, he understood that he had a direct financial stake in making this argument to a far greater degree than we thought.


The new story suggests Donald Trump Jr. may have committed perjury. The BuzzFeed report says:

Donald Trump Jr., meanwhile, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 7, 2017, that he was only “peripherally aware” of the plan to build a tower in Moscow. “Most of my knowledge has been gained since as it relates to hearing about it over the last few weeks.”

The two law enforcement sources disputed this characterization and said that he and Cohen had multiple, detailed conversations on this subject during the campaign.​

Then lock HIM up too!

Whether there are tapes or not, the BuzzFeed report suggests that law enforcement has hard evidence Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress. And if that is the case, it could prove pivotal, just as it did during Watergate.


“Through the spring of 1974, it seemed totally plausible that Nixon would fight his way through the investigation and survive,” historian Julian Zelizer, the co-author of a new book about the history of the United States since 1974, told me. "Then the tapes emerged, and suddenly it was impossible to imagine him surviving.”

 

[Cristiano]

Bolded is a HUGE leap, honestly.

It's not that much of a leap. Cohen recorded a lot of his conversations with Trump as insurance. Even if it was not recorded, the reporting around this said that Cohen confirmed this happened - Mueller already had evidence of it from other sources. I agree that we've been told over and over that each thing that happens is THE THING THAT WILL FINALLY TAKE TRUMP DOWN, but I do think this is the most damaging revelation so far in all of this, and the one that has the most potential to bring an end to this nightmare. I'm with you on the hope thing, but this is some serious shit.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

This morning, Reddit is overrun with posters denying and playing down the BuzzFeed article. I'm sure a lot of them are either Trumpies or Russian bots, but if/when Congress or Mueller can confirm the facts, "shit just got real" is a massive understatement.

 

[Lianne Marten]

Why does it matter what random people on Reddit think?

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

This may be the smoking gun in the Russia investigation

This must be the "Smocking Gun" that Trump insisted doesn't exist. Sweet!

 

[Han Held]

No other major outlets have confirmed the BuzzFeed report.

I'm not getting my hopes up, personally.
Certainly not before we get a lot more confirmation....

 

[danielravennest]

This must be the "Smocking Gun" that Trump insisted doesn't exist. Sweet!

The fact that this is coming out now, a few days after the Supreme Court let the mystery "Country A" subpoena go forward, tells me the prosecutors are pretty much done investigating, and it's time for the grand juries to issue indictments. You may not be able to indict a sitting president, but nothing stops them from indicting family members. My guess is New York State's attorney general, and the federal Southern District of NY are also ready to go.

The White House is going to feel like this video, and I can't wait:

 

[Lianne Marten]

The whole not being able to indict a sitting president or vice president thing is entirely a legal hypothesis. It's never been attempted. It was a premise brought up by corrupt criminal asshole VP Spiro Agnew as an attempt to get public pressure put on the investigation against him shut down.

Even if it's true, the generally left unstated second part of that sentence is "so they need to be impeached first, removed from office, then they can be indicted."

What happens if there's evidence of a crime and no impeachment happens? That's when we get into untested waters.

 

[Brian]

The whole not being able to indict a sitting president or vice president thing is entirely a legal hypothesis. It's never been attempted. It was a premise brought up by corrupt criminal asshole VP Spiro Agnew as an attempt to get public pressure put on the investigation against him shut down.

Even if it's true, the generally left unstated second part of that sentence is "so they need to be impeached first, removed from office, then they can be indicted."

What happens if there's evidence of a crime and no impeachment happens? That's when we get into untested waters.

It's not even a hypothesis.
It is a rule the Justice Department initiated themselves.
They are free to drop it if they so choose, in which case there would be no such barrier at all.

 

[Han Held]

What happens if there's evidence of a crime and no impeachment happens? That's when we get into untested waters.

And those waters are about to be tested, aren't they?

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Mueller disputes BuzzFeed report that Trump directed lawyer to lie

Well, nuts.

 

[Lianne Marten]

The greater point is just that it's not some immutable fact of the universe. These are all laws and ideas and concepts that are human constructions, built from our society to try and fill a need we collectively wanted to accomplish.

So saying "the president can't be indicted" like it's some kind of get out of jail free card is missing the point of what is going on. If the president commits a crime, and enough people want to see them punished for that crime, and this law/rule/idea is all that's standing in the way of that punishment... some shit will happen to make that change.

 

[Han Held]

Mueller disputes BuzzFeed report that Trump directed lawyer to lie

Well, nuts.

"If it's too good to be true..."

Still no end in sight; shit sucks.

 

[Han Held]

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/01/buzzfeed-reporters-broke-cohen-lying-story-may-misled-sources-john-dean/

Alternately, everyone may have been caught up in a fit of wishful thinking and should have waited for actual, real confirmation before jizzing their collective pants.

I don't blame anyone for the wishful thinking, but there was some serious and obvious chicken counting going on here.

 

[Porsupah Ree]

I wouldn't worry too much about the statement from Mueller's office. You'll notice it's very carefully worded, basically amounting to "not all details are accurate". Some example tweets here cover the theme:

Mueller's Office Disputes Buzzfeed's Perjury Report - Joe.My.God.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I wouldn't worry too much about the statement from Mueller's office. You'll notice it's very carefully worded, basically amounting to "not all details are accurate".

That doesn't cut it.

Cohen already said last year that Trump ordered him to lie; that's not news. The only thing new the Buzzfeed article had to offer was the suggestion that Cohen's claim was corroborated by documentary evidence obtained from the Trump Org. If that's not true, then Buzzfeed done f'd up. "At least some of this information is accurate" is NOT an acceptable journalistic standard.

Buzzfeed had better have a fantastic explanation for this, or they will have lost ALL credibility.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Why does it matter what random people on Reddit think?

I take it as a weathervane for public opinion - not MOST public opinion, but redditors probably pay more attention to events than your average citizen in the US. Besides that, it's amusing to me to watch what's said.