The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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IdylleSeethes
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

Post by IdylleSeethes »

There may yet be hope for justice. Manafort's "crimes" had nothing to do with the 2016 campaign, but with activity carried on years before for being paid to lobby for Ukraine without filing the paperwork for agents of a foreign government and for hiding the income. Both of these things had been investigated years before and no charges were filed. Mueller and his band of thugs are all about threatening people into submission and so far it has worked. If you don't believe this look into his head investigator's role in closing down Arthur Anderson, costing 10s of thousands of jobs, only to have the Supreme Court unanamously throw out the convictions, years later. He threatened Flynn's family and he threatened Manafort's family. Mueller is all about ego. He can't pin the non-crime of Russia Collusion on Trump, so he needs something else. Well, there was a very connected family, close to power, that were co-conspirators in the Ukraine lobbying business. Since they had more influence than Manafort, I assume they got a larger share of the pie. They played the game in the same way as Manafort, not registering and hiding the money. Appropriately, they hid their share in the Netherlands. As soon as Manafort was arrested, the brother who was head of the family business resigned. A few weeks later the business folded.

I only hope this family gets the same treatment as Manafort. Isn't justice blind? This may be expecting too much of a team whose members are mostly Hillary donors, but a big ego is omnivorous. Since he has already passed by Hillary's National Security violations and the real Russia Collusion on Uranium One, the Podestas may seem very appetizing. Besides, Hillary has run out of people to blame her loss on.

In a week in which the WP gave Kamala 4 pinnochios, Feinstein got in trouble with her own party for the bungled attempt to use 35 year old rumors on Kavanaugh, and Spartacus fizzled, I think there is hope.


Edit: While I was writing this, it was announced that former Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig is being investigated for his Ukraine activity. He also served in several positions within Bill Clinton's administration.

Edit: Supporting news articles:

Most of Ukraine activity is old news from the spring through fall of 2017, although the Panama Papers exposed this even earlier. Here are a few articles from back then:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/09/politics ... index.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/tony-po ... ia-2017-10
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderi ... lobbyists/
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mu ... ta-n812776
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/us/p ... tion.html
It resurfaced a month ago in a few places:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigat ... er-n896396

These re from the last 24 hours
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/ ... ing-823868
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pa ... 313fbb2867
https://www.wsj.com/articles/manafort-a ... 1536955622

For those who are unaware of Chinagate:

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/22/opin ... -cash.html
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/09/ ... inton.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... edirect=on
https://nypost.com/2000/04/06/gore-temp ... unny-mess/

On the accounting firm case:
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/busi ... ersen.html

On Uranium One:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/c ... pany.html
The NYT later ignored from this story when Hillary was nominated. However, a witness/informant surfaced last year and there were rumors an FBI investigation was started, although nothing has surfaced this year. There were congressional hearings:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN1DG1SB
http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... -testimony

If you are really interested in the details, try looking at conservative news.
Last edited by IdylleSeethes on Sat Sep 15, 2018 7:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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I'm going to repeat what I said a couple of weeks ago. Please review and follow the guidelines for political discussions posted in the sticky thread above, particularly No. 2, "Avoid using gratuitously derogatory, insulting, offensive or profane language to describe any person, including public figures, or any group of people," as well as No. 5 "Avoid making assertions of fact without backing them up with links to a credible source."
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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Voronwë the Faithful wrote: No. 5 "Avoid making assertions of fact without backing them up with links to a credible source."
Gotta say, it feels like that one happens plenty often around here.
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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Too much, I agree. We can all do better.
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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I have edited the post in question and added references to media sources. Most of these can't be accused of conservative bias. One exception is the NYPost entry. If I missed supporting an assertion, just let me know.
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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I wanted to say that I am glad to have a level-headed voice here espousing different points of view. For whatever reason, this board has always been overwhelmingly liberal but I think it is unhealthy to surround oneself only with people who agree with you. I hope you stick around and are willing to continue to offer a different perspective. :)
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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While I agree with that, the post is still not acceptable, as edited. Calling Mr. Mueller and his team a "band of thugs" is no more appropriate than calling Mr. Trump an "Orange Tool, Fool" as I noted a week or so ago. I know that name-calling has been in vogue from the top down in recent times, but that is not how we do things here.

More importantly, you still don't back your relevant assertions with any credible sources. The special council's office never "threatened" Michael Flynn's family, though his son quite rightly was investigated for his own potentially unlawful behavior (see here and it is possible, though no means certain, that one of the reasons that Gen. Flynn agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with the investigation was to avoid further exposure to his son. Contrary to your implication, there is no evidence whatsoever that the special counsel's office targeted Mr. Manafort's family in any way.

As for the Podestas, Tony Podesta was a partner of Mr. Manafort's and there is some evidence that he has engaged in some of the same type of activities that Mr. Manafort was convicted of, and now has admitted to at length. Having followed the Manafort trial closely, and read the statement of offences and other acts that he admitted to (which Judge Jackson said was the most detailed that she has ever seen, and can be read here) I can say confidently that Manafort's crimes were both extensive and despicable (nor is it true that they were completely unrelated to his role in the Trump campaign; one of the bank fraud charges that he admitted to involved receiving a $10 million loan that he otherwise was not eligible for by promising to use his influence to get the chairman of the bank a job with the Trump administration, potentially as Secretary of the Army). There is no evidence that Tony Podesta "got a larger share of the pie" or even that he engaged in nearly the extent of illegal conduct that Mr. Manafort has now admitted. In any event, his case was referred by the special counsel's office to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of NY (the same office that they referred Michael Cohen's case to) for investigation (after several conservative news sites had falsely reported in outrage that Tony Podesta was one of five witnesses that had been granted immunity to testify against Mr. Manafort, when in fact those immunized witnesses were all Mr. Manafort's accountants and bookkeepers). As for his brother John Podesta, contrary to your suggestion there is no evidence that he has engaged in any unlawful conduct (although it is my considered opinion that one of the main reasons that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election was the poor job he did managing her campaign). And as you note in your edit, another former Clinton and Obama official, Greg Craig is also being investigated for illegal lobbying. The suggestion that Mr. Mueller, a life-long Republican who was appointed as director of the FBI by a Republican president, and appointed as the special counsel by a life-long Republican, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, is a partisan favoring Democrats is not supported by any evidence.

As for the Arthur Anderson case (thank you from changing it from "Anderson Cooper"), while it is true that Andrew Weissman, one of Mr. Mueller's top assistants, was the lead prosecutor in the case against the accounting firm whose top executives helped Enron defraud many thousand people out of their life-savings and pensions, and it is true that the conviction was later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court who ruled correctly that the judge in the case had improperly instructed the jury, that in no way proves that the special counsel and his team are "all about threatening people into submission." Arthur Anderson's downfall had as much to do to do with its willingness to participate in Enron's illegal and notorious conduct than it did the conviction itself. Weissman is best known, however, for obtaining convictions of numerous organized crime figures as well as white crime fraudsters. In addition, during his time with the FBI, he was responsible for auditing hundreds of convictions that resulted from faulty forensic testimony, resulting in many exonerations. He certainly is considered a legal pit bull, but he is also known to be all about seeking justice. (See Andrew Weissmann, Mueller’s Legal Pit Bull including this quote from one of my personal heroes, Peter Neufeld, a civil rights lawyer and founder of the Innocence Project, about the audit of erroneous testimony from forensic hair examiners. “He realized that what had gone on in the past was wrong. … He did it. That was transformative.”)

Most importantly, the question of whether the special counsel's office is able to find evidence that Mr. Trump or anyone in his campaign or associated with his campaign (like Roger Stone) engaged in criminal conduct related to the Russian interference with the 2016 election in support of Mr. Trump is still an open question, and the fact that they agreed to a plea deal with Mr. Manafort suggests that they may be closer to doing so (although it is certainly possible that his cooperation will not make a difference). The point that "collusion" is not a crime is a red herring. No, there is nothing in the criminal code about "collusion" but it is a conveniet catch-all term to cover a multitude of various types of criminal conduct that could be charged. I'm still doubtful that in the end they will find sufficient evidence, but I am less doubtful than I was a week ago. As Ken Starr, the independent counsel responsible for the Clinton impeachment, said, "the Manafort plea means 'we're much closer to getting the truth'
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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V,

I responded to all of your points, but it took so long I was timed out. Is there a way to recover? It left me with just the first part. I will try the rest again tomorrow.
-----------------------------------

Thanks for your response. It is difficult to find mention of misbehavior when most of the media is reluctant to print anything critical of the resistance, since they are fellow members. The FBI saying the FBI didn't think Flynn lied took 2 weeks to surface in The Hill and longer in other places, for example.

On the Flynn issue, I think the media almost unanimously reported the pressure put on Flynn by Mueller. I hope the WPs report is enough:
A whirl of behind-the-scenes negotiations ended Friday with Flynn finalizing a cooperation deal and walking out of court with a single count of lying to the FBI.

He scored what several experts called a highly favorable plea agreement that spares him of many of the criminal charges he could have faced and, for now, leaves his son untouched. In exchange, Flynn agreed to share all he knows about the president and his aides with Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

The deal came as a searing conclusion to what Flynn called Friday "many months of false accusations of 'treason' and other outrageous acts." It hints at the enormous pressure he was under to cooperate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... dc27b2403b

I think most of the media reported on the Flynn family's accusations that Mueller threatened to prosecute the son unless Flynn cooperated. I'm not saying Mueller acknowledged this.

This reminds me of a Filopini "investigator" I once knew. He leared from the Muslim rebels in the south the most effective way of getting suspect to talk withut harming them. What they did was collect some members of the family. Then they let the suspect watch as they tortured them in horrible ways as the suspect watched. You can decide if you think this is ethically better than Mueller's offer. I think itis a reprehensible use of the government's power.

Flynn's mistake was representing a foreign government without filing as an agent. I am under the impression this is usually remedied by doing delinquent filing. Flynn's promotion of the Turkish government's desires was counter to the interest of the US, but what he admitted to was lying to th FBI. In the past few months it has surfaced that the FBI didn't think Flynn had lied.

http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... agents-who

Weissmann has been in trouble for his behavior before. Besides the 2 cases unanamously reversed by the Supreme Court, he got in trouble on his home court with Judge Sifton in US vs Persico (92 CR 351):
AUSA Weissmann's myopic withholding of information must also be viewed in the same context: whille reprehensible and subject, perhaps, to appropriate disciplinary measures...
More later.
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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Huh. So if I'm reading that correctly, Mueller's team found that Flynn's son also committed a crime but, in exchange for cooperation, they would agree to not prosecute that crime. Is that about right? If so..... I don't see anything unethical about that. :scratch:
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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yovargas wrote:Huh. So if I'm reading that correctly, Mueller's team found that Flynn's son also committed a crime but, in exchange for cooperation, they would agree to not prosecute that crime. Is that about right? If so..... I don't see anything unethical about that. :scratch:
I think it is probably more accurate to say that the special counsel's team agreed to no longer investigate whether Flynn, Jr. committed a crime in exchange for Gen. Flynn's cooperation; I don't think we know for sure whether they made a definite determination that Flynn, Jr. had committed any crimes, though he certainly was under investigation (and as a side note, he was one of the main conveyers of one of the more bizarre conspiracy theories, which held that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a pizza parlour, resulting in his termination from the Trump transition team see here and here). These kind of trade-offs are common in our justice system, particularly in a situation like this when the goal is to get the bottom of an issue of major national concern.

IdylleSeethes wrote:Weissmann has been in trouble for his behavior before. Besides the 2 cases unanamously reversed by the Supreme Court, he got in trouble on his home court with Judge Sifton in US vs Persico (92 CR 351):
AUSA Weissmann's myopic withholding of information must also be viewed in the same context: whille reprehensible and subject, perhaps, to appropriate disciplinary measures...
This should be put into context. It is part of a mob prosecution resulting from an internal war inside the Columbo organized crime family. Several of the defendants were seeking a new trial. In the course of denying that request, Judge Sifton, who was famously testy, wrote "AUSA Weissmann's myopic
withholding of information must also be viewed in the same context: while reprehensible and subject, perhaps, to appropriate disciplinary measures, it does not begin to approach the level of uncivilized and indecent behavior that would necessitate the extraordinary relief which defendants seek." Subsequently, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District at the time, Zachery Carter, wrote a letter to Judge Sifton stating:

This is to request that you amend your memorandum and order dated February 18, 1997 in the above-captioned case to delete the name of AUSA Andrew Weissmann from the sentence in
which it appears on page 46 of the opinion. We make this request for two reasons.
First, the sentence is inaccurate insofar as it suggests that AUSA Weissmann in particular, among the three trial lawyers and their several supervisors, bears special responsibility for the failure to disclose certain information. In fact, all three trial lawyers presented witnesses who recounted Mr. Scarpa's out-of-court statements, and thus if disclosure was required to impeach the out-of-court declarant, all members of the trial team were equally responsible. AUSA Weissmann was not the lead trial lawyer and was not in a position
more than any other AUSA to make or impose a decision not to disclose information. Moreover, as it occurred to none of them, or to their supervisors, that there was any legal principle compelling disclosure, no one of them in fact made the conscious decision to take the position now criticized by the Court.

The Court may have inferred from a sentence in AUSA Corcellas affirmation, recounted at page 33 of the opinion, that a decision on the issue was made by AUSA Weissmann, and made n the (erroneous) ground that Brady requires the disclosure only of exculpatory information and not, for example, of impeachment material. In fact, however, the exchange described in the Corcella affirmation was a casual conversation between Corcella, who was new to the case in the summer of 1993, and Weissmann, who had until then been the junior member of the trial team.

Weissmann was simply passing on to Corcella the fact, known to other members of the trial team, that Scarpa had been an informant, and in response to her question he reported that neither he nor any of his colleagues or supervisors had previously considered Scarpa's informant status to be disclosable. His response to her, though perhaps inartfully stated or recounted, was not intended to suggest that Brady is
limited to information that serves to exculpate rather than merely to impeach, but that Brady is limited to information that is material to the issues in the case. Until the summer of 1994, well after the trial in this case, when the defense first propounded their theory of materiality in pretrial motions in the
Alphonse Persico case, the prosecutors working on these cases had not considered that Scarpa's informant status might be relevant to the issues in any of these cases.

Second, while the court has determined that the failure to make the disclosure was error, the nondisclosure cannot fairly be characterized as the kind of egregious misconduct that warrants castigating an attorney by name in a published judicial opinion. As the court is well aware, substantial legal authority supports the proposition that disclosure of impeachment material for hearsay declarants is not required; it can hardly be regarded as egregious or unprofessional misconduct for an attorney to follow that authority, even if on the facts of this case this court takes a contrary view.
The letter than goes on to give the legal authority for removing the name. The judge then amended the opinion to remove his name, but a lawyer with an axe to grind against Weissmann provided a copy of the original to a conservative reporter looking for dirt on Weissmann. I'm pretty sure that the conservative sites that have selectively quoted from this opinion in order to attack Weissmann were not overly concerned about the rights of mobsters, before Weissmann became one of the main prosecutors in the special counsel's office.

The full original decision and Mr. Carter's letter can be read here
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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This is intended to address the Manafort part of my assertions.

There is an interesting article in the Kyiv Post:

https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinio ... wrong.html

It is written by Graham Stack who claims to have been a major source of Manafort's portion of the Fusion GPS dossier. He claims the dossier misrepresented Manafort's role in the Ukraine, which I have only previously heard was an attempt to promote Russian interest in the Ukraine to the US government. Stacks story is that, to the contrary, Manafort was trying to shift the Ukraine leadership from its pro-Russia stance, back to the EU. Stack says Russia clamped down on Ukraine when Ukraine was ready to sign an EU agreement. He doesn't make any statement about Tymoshenko's situation.

He also mentions that most of Manafort's Ukraine income was from a non-government source. That source paid Manafort $42 million, which he claims is twice what the government paid. He says the $42 million number came from Gates testimony. So, he is saying Manafort received $21 million from the Ukraine government. This accounts for the "over $60 milion dollars" that has been claimed to be Manafort's Ukraine income. We know part of it went to Podesta Group and part of it went to a group called Mercury Public Affairs. Verifiable numbers have been hard to come by. Using a set from Huffington from last Friday, the $21 million from the Ukraine government was split among Manafort and at least 4 partners. Skadden, Greg Craig's former law firm, received $4.3 million and Podesta and Mercury received over $2.2 million, and FBC Media which received $700,000. There are different numbers floating around including one printed today in the "unreliable" media of $30 million dollars received by Manfort from the Ukraine government. The Stack article says the source of the $42 million now denies having paid Manafort anything. Huffington, and others still claim the money was to pay for changing the West's opinion of Tymoshenko and that seems to have been the objective of Skadden's work.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pa ... 13fbb2867

Stock says Mueller avoided the foreign policy concerns and focused on the illegal activity surrounding the money.

At the moment my opinion is still that Manafort was acting against the interests of the US in attempting to change Western opinion of Tymoshenko. Since the common opinion of Manafort is that he was a mercenary, I don't know who would have been paying him to promote the EU-Ukraine agreement. I haven't heard anything about that source.

My problem with the Manafort case is the same as with the Persico case. I don't recall that there were two separate sets of laws- one for our friends and another for our enemies. Persico, Flynn, and Manafort all lean in the direction of there being a bifurcated system. Flynn pled to lying to the FBI when the FBI said he didn't lie. Manafort couldl spend 80 years in prison, but Podesta is still free. Cohen pled guilty to two non-crimes.

The entire MSM dislikes this claim about Cohen's 2 "crimes", but I trust Alan Dershowitz:
DERSHOWITZ: The president doesn't break the law if, as a candidate, he contributes to his own campaign. So if he gave $1 million to two women as hush money, there would be no crime. If he directed his lawyer to do it, and he would compensate the lawyer, he's committed no crime.

The only crime is if a third-party, namely, Cohen, on his own, contributed to a campaign, that would be a campaign contribution. So it is a catch-22 for the prosecution. iI they claim that the president authorized him to do it or directed him to do it, it is not a crime for anybody. If Cohen did it on his own, then it is a crime for Cohen but not the president.

This is going to be a very difficult case for the prosecution to make, precisely because the laws on election are so convoluted.
This was from an MSNBC interview at 10:23 AM ET on August 22. I couldn't find a link to the video.

There is a long list of liberals we conservatives think unquestionably violated laws in more important ways than Flynn, Manafort, or Cohen. They are still walking the streets.
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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IdylleSeethes wrote:There is a long list of liberals we conservatives think unquestionably violated laws in more important ways than Flynn, Manafort, or Cohen. They are still walking the streets.
So why don't the conservatives, who currently control every branch of federal government and the majority of state governments, do something about these supposed crimes?
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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Rod Rosenstein is reportedly resigning. If true, that means that Mr. Trump could appoint someone to the Deputy Attorney General position who would be willing to either fire Robert Mueller as the special counsel or worse, refuse to make public Mr. Mueller's findings when the investigation is over, or even forward it to congress. This is big news, if true.

However, if the Democrats take back one or both houses of Congress they may be able to force the release of his report, though that is not clear to me.

Buckle your seatbelts, its gonna be a wild ride!
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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I've read that the White House claims Rosenstein is resigning and Rosenstein says he expects to be fired. It sounds like they're doing that thing where they say so-an-so resigned and so-and-so says "Oh, okay, if you say so..." except Rosenstein isn't playing along.

ETA: And apparently Rosenstein is currently attending previously scheduled meeting at the White House. I'll take that to mean that reports of his demise were premature.
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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The latest word is that he met with Chief of Staff John Kelly before that already-scheduled meeting. The rumor is that he said that he would resign, but effective after the mid-term elections, but that Kelly demanded that it be effective before the mid-terms. The White House put out a statement saying that Mr. Rosenstein would meet with Mr. Trump, who is currently in New York to speak at the U.N., on Thursday when Mr. Trump returns to Washington.
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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Who is the source for all this?
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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I've mostly been following CNN. Here are their "live updates" such as it is:

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/ ... index.html

But I don't think at this point there is anything other than rumors and speculation, other than the fact that he was at the White House today, and the White House has put out a statement saying he will meet with Mr. Trump on Thursday. So I don't think there is any real "source" at this point.
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

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As I predicted would happen some time ago, Judge Otero, the District Court judge handling the defamation lawsuit that Michael Avenatti filed on behalf of Stormy Daniels in response to Mr. Trump mocking her claim that someone had tried to threaten her into not reveal their alleged affair has dismissed the lawsuit. This is yet another example of Avenatti disregard basic legal principals and putting his own interests (primarily taking every opportunity to self-promote) over those of his clients. In this case, because the lawsuit was dismissed by way of an anti-SLAPP motion (SLAPP stands for "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation and most states have anti-SLAPP statutes providing a way of quickly dismissing lawsuits alleging defamation and similar causes of action that prevent people from engaging in free speech) Ms. Daniels/Clifford will be on the hook for paying Mr. Trump's attorney's fees, which I'm sure will be substantial, for a lawsuit that never should have been brought in the first place, and only was brought in order to prop up Avenatti's public profile.

ETA: You can read the judge's order here
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Re: The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

Post by Frelga »

I lost the post I started typing, so you'll have to read for yourself.

https://twitter.com/AricToler/status/10 ... 2768074753
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.

Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
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