Columns, Congress, Criminal law, Society

What Does Mueller Have On Trump?

Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the recent insights into the efforts of Special Counsel Robert Mueller to bag President Donald Trump.  There is little ambiguity in these efforts: while Trump is being called a “subject” of the investigation, he is being treated as a “target.”  That danger became more apparent with the later allegations of Michael Cohen that he not only lied to support Trump’s account but that the worked with Trump’s counsel in preparing his false testimony.  He claims to have had “regular contact” with Trump counsel during that period.  That would pose some serious questions for counsel if Cohen was clear that he was giving false testimony.  However, he does not say that.  It still remains unclear how much Cohen is suggesting that the President or his counsel knew about the specifics on the “Moscow Project” or his own falsification of dates and information.

What is clear is that Mueller is still on the hunt for Trump and all eyes should be on Corsi, Stone, and possibly Donald Trump Jr. for the next move.

Joseph Heller, author of the classic war novel “Catch 22,” once remarked that “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” President Trump must have had that feeling this week when it became clear that, indeed, most everyone is out to get him. From the planned subpoenas by Democrats in the House, to the new filings by special counsel Robert Mueller, to the recent confessions of his former lawyer Michael Cohen, Trump has now reached the stage of post paranoia.

While the Justice Department has stressed that Trump is a “subject,” not a “target,” of the special counsel investigation, he appears to be a rather significant subject that features a virtual bulls eye. The week began with what might have seemed good news for Trump. Jerome Corsi, an associate of Trump confidant Roger Stone, refused a plea bargain from Mueller that he said would force him to lie. However, the draft of the agreement had a clear target in mind, and it definitely was not Corsi.

The draft notably refers to “Donald Trump” rather than using standard code like “Person One.” It further states that the Russians did in fact use WikiLeaks as a conduit for the public release of information. It described Stone as someone “Corsi understood to be in regular contact” with candidate Trump. It recounts how Stone allegedly told Corsi to “get to” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and how Corsi related that their “friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps” with “very damaging” information, and how in early 2017, Corsi allegedly “deleted from his computer all email correspondence that predated October 11, 2016.” Corsi has been clearly treated as the direct link to Stone, and Stone as the direct link to Trump.

Then came the guilty plea by Cohen for lying to Congress, an account loaded with clear shots at Trump, including Cohen stating he lied to be consistent with Trump and to try to limit the Russia investigation. According to a later leak, Cohen told Mueller he was led to believe he would be given a presidential pardon or some other protection if he continued to maintain this false account. There was very little ambiguity as to the person who gave Cohen that idea in the statement.

Not long after the start of the special counsel investigation, I wrote how one of the most pressing matters for Trump should be to sever his ties with Cohen, a lawyer with a dubious reputation. Instead, even as Cohen became more and more radioactive, Trump pulled him closer and publicly reaffirmed that Cohen remained his personal lawyer, including having an inexplicable dinner together at Mar-a-Lago. Those errors in judgment could now cost Trump dearly. Cohen lying to Congress does not implicate Trump unless he encouraged it, which could constitute subornation of perjury and other possible crimes, but it raises new questions about what Trump had known or even encouragement of such false testimony.

These efforts by Mueller to get a clean shot at Trump are less surprising than the lateness of the effort. While Mueller reportedly is working on at least one final report, his staff is still pushing hard to implicate Trump. There also is more evidence of a strategy on timing, as it seems likely that Cohen was held back from his plea in open court until after Trump submitted his written answers to the questions from the special counsel. While the known evidence falls short of a clear criminal connection to the president, the immediate danger could be a strategy to trigger Trump to commit possible impeachable offenses. The greatest injuries suffered by Trump in this legal controversy have been largely by his own hand.

The most obvious trigger would be a move against members of the Trump family. The admissions by Cohen could create conflicts with the testimony of Donald Trump Jr., in which he acknowledged the Moscow project but downplayed his knowledge or involvement. Ivanka Trump also reportedly worked on the project. Cohen says he lied to make it seem like the effort to build a Trump Tower ended in January 2016 when it continued well into the campaign until at least June 2016. He also admits to lying about communications with Russian officials and progress on the project.

If Mueller were to indict Trump Jr., he would likely wait until he indicted or secured pleas from most of the other players. This would make it more difficult to unravel the investigation and pending prosecutions. Any indictment of his son would likely trigger a furious response from Trump, and it is in such moments that the president is at his most vulnerable. Unlike past episodes, even a concerted White House staff effort in this case might not stop an enraged executive order to fire Mueller or the issuance of a slew of pardons to block prosecutions.

While some constitutional experts insist that firing a special counsel is not a crime, and therefore not impeachable, such a narrow view is contrary to the statements of the Framers and the history of impeachments. Many offenses are not federal crimes, yet they constitute impeachable abuses of power. Indeed, the Richard Nixon articles of impeachment included obstruction counts as well as the promising of “favored treatment and consideration” for witnesses to remain silent or to offer false testimony.

None of the prior “speaking indictments” or the latest information from Corsi or Cohen show that Mueller has made the critical linkage to Trump. It is clear that Trump associates were interested in seeing the WikiLeaks material, as Trump himself stated on the 2016 campaign trail. That is not a crime any more than it was a crime for Clinton campaign investigators to go to Russia to gather dirt on Trump, including information from Russian intelligence. Moreover, an unsuccessful building project in Moscow does not equal a quid pro quo any more than the tens of millions of dollars given to the Clintons, as speaking fees or foundation donations, equaled wrongdoing for Hillary Clinton as head of the State Department.

However, it is difficult to believe that Mueller has expended all of this effort simply to bag two notorious provocateurs like Corsi and Stone for making false statements. We do not know what evidence Mueller has on the president, but we certainly know what evidence he still wants.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

196 thoughts on “What Does Mueller Have On Trump?”

  1. “What Does Mueller Have On Trump”

    7 more seats in the House than they should have and 7 more seats to potentially continue illegal or unethical violations of the law.

    “On election night, the Republican Party lost 26 seats in the House, a serious erosion but not a catastrophic one.

    But two weeks later, seven races that had been called for Republicans switched and the Democrats were certified to have won. All seven were in California and no seats moved the other way — from blue to red.

    GOP incumbent Reps. Mimi Walters, Steve Knight, Jeff Denham, Dana Rohrabacher and David Valadao lost their seats and the districts formerly represented by Darrell Issa and Ed Royce, both Republicans, flipped to Democrat.

    The state’s Democrats engineered a massive piece of legal fraud to jimmy the results.

    Here’s how they did it:

    California sends ballots to every voter before Election Day, whether they request it or not. All the voter needs to do is to fill in his choices and mail the form back.

    But, if the mail ballot is not received by Election Day, it can still be counted if a sealed, completed ballot is dropped off with elections officials by hand — and the voter does not have to come to drop off their ballots in person.

    In 2016, California Gov. Jerry Brown opened the door to fraud by signing a law allowing anyone to drop off a ballot for another person. This gave rise to a new practice known as “ballot harvesting” in which Democratic Party canvassers visited people who had not voted on Election Day and collected their mail-in ballots and turned them in on their behalf.

    This year, a record 250,000 people voted by having someone else turn in their vote-by-mail ballots.

    Were the voters bribed to vote at their door (“Here’s a pack of cigarettes”)? Or were the canvassers paid more for each vote they harvested (also illegal)?

    Apart from these questions, the practice of ballot harvesting makes a mockery of the idea of Election Day. Democrats have long pushed for early voting to make the franchise more convenient. But Brown’s law essentially extends Election Day for weeks if party operatives are willing to go door-to-door to harvest votes.

    As a result, voters not sufficiently motivated either to turn out on Election Day or to mail in their ballots beforehand get to vote just by finding their mail-in ballots and handing them to the guy at the door.

    So what the Democrats did was they looked at the Election Day returns and then targeted those districts they lost but where the margin was close enough that victory might be snatched from the jaws of defeat by a little ballot harvesting.

    They flipped seven seats and now the California delegation to Congress is largely devoid of Republicans.

    Couldn’t Republicans have done the same thing? Of course they could have, and they have only their lethargic and old-fashioned local party leaders to blame.

    But the Democrats, by inventing ballot harvesting, have pulled a fast one and gotten away with legal fraud.

    The system should be illegal. Early voting is fine, but late voting amounts to unequal protection of the laws. It gives voters who are harvested an unequal opportunity to cast their ballots. So those who vote for parties that are better organized and send canvassers around door-to-door get to have an Election “Day” that stretches into weeks.

    Next time, in 2020, the Republican Party needs to get busy and set up its own ballot harvesting program. And, in the meantime, let’s work to stop other states from passing the law that Brown signed in California to allow this kind of fraud.”

  3. Judicial Watch Sues for Documents on Obama DOJ Effort to Shut Down Clinton Foundation Investigation
    Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for all records of communications involving any investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) into the Clinton Foundation…

    more at: https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-sues-for-documents-on-obama-doj-effort-to-shut-down-clinton-foundation-investigation/?utm_source=deployer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tipsheet&utm_term=members&utm_content=20181203224513

    1. Obama left 2 years ago. Why can’t Trump investigate Clinton Foundation? Is it because Trump’s foundation is being investigated by New York State?

      1. I don’t know why any investigation of a Foundation would prevent other investigations. After all the investigation of a Foundation doesn’t end up significantly affecting the President. I don’t think you know much about foundations or anything else for that matter.

        1. Trump hasn’t had a compliant DOJ.
          He’s not really in control of who gets investigated, who gets a pass, or how the investigations are conducted.
          That may or may not change with Whitaker as acting AG….I don’t think it’s known at this point how he’ll direct/ impact investigations.

          1. Tom the House and Senate are still controlled by Republicans yet he can’t get a border wall passed or even a small portion of it (as an easy example to look at). Historically both parties have played footsies with the Russians so there is a lot of dirt everywhere. I think government may be far more severely corrupted than we may think. All these things are interconnected.

      2. feds can run a concurrent investigation for sure, under other federal statutes, like bribery and and tax evasion and of course the omnipresent “False statements” defrauding the US and all that other stuff that is being tossed around by meuller, could be tossed around by someone else against other targets. be careful, the wheel of karma turns

  4. “Trump, Russia and lessons from the mob: Did ‘godfathers’ steer collusion probe?

    Back in the mafia’s heyday, FBI and IRS agents had a set of surveillance rules.

    If one mobster showed up in town, pay notice. If two arrived, be suspicious. If three or four were in the same vicinity, something was going down.

    And if five or more headed to the same neck of the woods, a meeting of consiglieri or La Cosa Nostra’s council was likely happening. (This, because there were always five families in New York and some adjunct families elsewhere that made up the council’s leadership.)

    There also was another rule of thumb: Mobsters would always have the same calling card, or excuse, to be in town. Attending a funeral (the mid-1980s mob meeting in Chicago) or a vacation in the sticks (the infamous 1957 gathering in upstate New York) were some of the more memorable ones.

    Early in my reporting that unraveled the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe, tying it to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and possible Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses, I started to see patterns just as in the old mob meetings: FBI or intelligence-connected figures kept showing up in Trump Town USA during the 2016 campaign with a common calling card.

    The question now is, who sent them and why?

    Interviews with more than 50 witnesses in the Trump case and reviews of hundreds of pages of court filings confirm the following:

    At least six people with long-established ties to the FBI or to U.S. and Western intelligence made entrees to key figures in the Trump business organization or his presidential campaign between March and October 2016;

    Campaign figures were contacted by at least two Russian figures whose justification for being in the United States were rare law enforcement parole visas controlled by the U.S. Justice Department;

    Intelligence or diplomatic figures connected to two of America’s closest allies, Britain and Australia, gathered intelligence or instigated contacts with Trump campaign figures during that same period;

    Some of the conversations and contacts that were monitored occurred on foreign soil and resulted in the creation of transcripts;
    Nearly all of the contacts involved the same overture — a discussion about possible political dirt or stolen emails harmful to Hillary Clinton, or unsolicited business in London or Moscow;

    Several of the contacts occurred before the FBI formally launched a legally authorized probe into the Trump campaign and possible collusion on July 31, 2016.”

    Continued at https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/419193-trump-russia-and-lessons-from-the-mob-did-godfathers-steer-collusion

    1. as much as they smear J Edgar for political blackmailing and other dirty tricks, they’ve taken right up where he left off! And yet the FBI had a far better reputation in the past. So sad. Meuller and Comey took it right into the pits. Well Louis Freeh was another stellar underperformer too if I recall.

      1. PH,

        I hope you, Prof Turley see those crowds of people over in the UK, at Trump Rallies & the fact the Clinton’s/ other Commie/Nazi types can hardly get 200 “Unpaid” people to show up to see them.

        We are not buying your types voters fraud like recently in Cali/US.

        We know Muler & Co are guilty as hell & much of it is known to the public.

        Anyway, those millions that up those crowds are active against your types tyranny.

            1. I suggest you & PH jump your butts back up to Oky1 4:13 post of the Tommy Robinson video/song, listen & read along & ask yourself just why so many of us understand the massive legal jeopardy Muler & company are in as the walls have closed in on them.

              Mr Ear Wax ynot.

            2. YNOT,

              Thanks for reminding me, I’ve so bust today I forgot to check in with my Russian handlers at Infowars.com & our Comrade Alexandria Jonesekov & get my talking points.

              Let’s take a look shall we?

              LOL;)

              https://www.infowars.com/

  7. WHAT DOES TRUMP HAVE ON OBERGRUPPENFUHRER MUELLER, OBAMA, OBAMA’S “HOLDOVERS,” THE 7TH FLOOR, INTEL, THE “DEEP STATE, “THE SWAMP” ET AL.?
    __________________________________

    Peter Strzok to Lisa Page, “We’ll stop it.”

    Lisa Page to Peter Strzok, “POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing.”

    Lisa Page to Congress, “The texts mean what the texts say.”
    ________________________________________________

    John Solomon
    The HIll

    Back in the mafia’s heyday, FBI and IRS agents had a set of surveillance rules.

    If one mobster showed up in town, pay notice. If two arrived, be suspicious. If three or four were in the same vicinity, something was going down.

    And if five or more headed to the same neck of the woods, a meeting of consiglieri or La Cosa Nostra’s council was likely happening. (This, because there were always five families in New York and some adjunct families elsewhere that made up the council’s leadership.)

    There also was another rule of thumb: Mobsters would always have the same calling card, or excuse, to be in town. Attending a funeral (the mid-1980s mob meeting in Chicago) or a vacation in the sticks (the infamous 1957 gathering in upstate New York) were some of the more memorable ones.

    Early in my reporting that unraveled the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe, tying it to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and possible Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses, I started to see patterns just as in the old mob meetings: FBI or intelligence-connected figures kept showing up in Trump Town USA during the 2016 campaign with a common calling card.

    The question now is, who sent them and why?

    Interviews with more than 50 witnesses in the Trump case and reviews of hundreds of pages of court filings confirm the following:

    At least six people with long-established ties to the FBI or to U.S. and Western intelligence made entrees to key figures in the Trump business organization or his presidential campaign between March and October 2016;

    Campaign figures were contacted by at least two Russian figures whose justification for being in the United States were rare law enforcement parole visas controlled by the U.S. Justice Department;

    Intelligence or diplomatic figures connected to two of America’s closest allies, Britain and Australia, gathered intelligence or instigated contacts with Trump campaign figures during that same period;

    Some of the conversations and contacts that were monitored occurred on foreign soil and resulted in the creation of transcripts;

    Nearly all of the contacts involved the same overture — a discussion about possible political dirt or stolen emails harmful to Hillary Clinton, or unsolicited business in London or Moscow;

    Several of the contacts occurred before the FBI formally launched a legally authorized probe into the Trump campaign and possible collusion on July 31, 2016.

    The recipients of these overtures are all household names, thanks to the infamy of the now very public probe — Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., Michael Cohen, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, Sam Clovis and Roger Stone, to name a few.

    Some of the instigators of the contacts have been acknowledged in public: Professor Stefan Halper, Russian businessman Hank Greenberg, former MI6 agent Christopher Steele and former FBI informer Felix Sater, who is “Individual 2” identified in the Cohen plea deal this week.

    Others I identified through interviews, but U.S. officials have asked me to keep them private to avoid compromising their identities or nexus to intelligence and law enforcement work.

    The chances that so many would converge into then-candidate Donald Trump’s circle, in such a short period around an election, are about as rare as winning the Mega Millions lottery. In other words, most were not coincidences. A few, maybe, but not all.

    And that leaves the biggest question: Who dispatched or controlled each emissary?

    _____________________________

    The Obama Coup D’etat in America:

    The most prodigious abuse of power and scandal in American political history.

  8. OUCH WILL MEDIA FAKE NEWS REPORT THIS OR ADMIT EXCULPATORY FOR DJT?

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-03/mueller-withheld-details-would-exonerate-president-over-trump-tower-moscow

    Mueller Withheld “Details That Would Exonerate The President” Of Having Kremlin
    Backchannel
    by Tyler Durden
    Mon, 12/03/2018 – 12:15
    It appears that special counsel Robert Mueller withheld key information in its plea deal with Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, which would
    exonerate Trump and undermine the entire purpose of the special counsel, according to Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations.
    Cohen pleaded guilty last week to lying to the Senate intelligence committee in 2017 about the Trump Organization’s plans to build a Trump
    Tower in Moscow – telling them under oath that negotiations he was conducting ended five months sooner than they actually did.

    Mueller, however, in his nine-page charging document filed with the court seen by Capitol Hill sources, failed to include the fact that Cohen had
    no direct contacts at the Kremlin – which undercuts any notion that the Trump campaign had a “backchannel” to Putin.

    Page 2 of the same charging document offers further evidence that there was no connection between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin; an
    August 2017 letter from Cohn to the Senate intelligence committee states that Trump “was never in contact with anyone about this [Moscow
    Project] proposal other than me,” an assertion which Mueller does not contest as false – which means that “prosecutors have tested its
    veracity through corroborating sources” and found it to be truthful, according to Sperry’s sources. Also unchallenged by Mueller is Cohen’s
    statement that he “ultimately determined that the proposal was not feasible and never agreed to make a trip to Russia.”
    The Trump Tower Moscow meeting – spearheaded by New York real estate developer and longtime FBI and CIA asset, Felix Sater, bears a
    passing resemblance to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between members of the Trump campaign and a Russian attorney (who hated
    Trump), and which was set up by a British concert promotor tied to Fusion GPS – the firm Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid to write the salacious
    and unverified “Trump-Russia Dossier.”

    On page 7 of the statement of criminal information filed against Cohen, which is separate from but related to the plea agreement, Mueller mentions that Cohen tried to email Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office on Jan. 14, 2016, and again on Jan. 16, 2016. But
    Mueller, who personally signed the document, omitted the fact that Cohen did not have any direct points of contact at the Kremlin,
    and had resorted to sending the emails to a general press mailbox. Sources who have seen these additional emails point out that this
    omitted information undercuts the idea of a “back channel” and thus the special counsel’s collusion case. -RCI
    “Though Cohen may have lied to Congress about the dates,” one Hill investigator said, “it’s clear from personal messages he sent in
    2015 and 2016 that the Trump Organization did not have formal lines of communication set up with Putin’s office or the Kremlin
    during the campaign. There was no secret ‘back channel.’”
    “So as far as collusion goes,” the source added, “the project is actually more exculpatory than incriminating for Trump and
    his campaign.” -RCI

  9. JT and his tip-toe around Trump is funny, sometimes he dips his toes in to far and sometimes he can’t take his foot out of his mouth. Reading the posts by the nothing to see here crowd only makes me feel sad that fellow Americans can’t see what is going on. You have been a mark for most likely, the greatest con-man in US history. Admitting a mistake is the first thing anybody should do, and go and try to make it right.

    1. FishWings: Turley ran a column last night on Michael Cohen. But it was taken down after I went to bed. Do you know anything about that?

        1. It was up last night at about 2:00 am EDT. Turley opined, correctly, that Cohen is the type of lawyer no respectable businessman (or politician) would want anything to do with. I agreed that Turley had hit the nail on the head. There were only about 5 comments at that point.

          1. i think and since i ever have heard of him, have thought, that Cohen is despicable; but doing business is a different matter.

            Once i had to do some very humble modest real estate business in Manhattan, and I tell you the people i had to do business with, I NEVER would have had anything to do with otherwise! very sketchy individuals. but in heavily regulated, licensed, and permitted types businesses, certain people locate themselves at “chokepoints” and you have to pay a toll.

            as a lawyer we often have to “do business” with the worst kinds of people so I will not be too judgmental about others in this regard. lawyers should respect other lawyers in the same way and also respect clients who may make a bad choice, like Trump did in Cohen, obviously

    2. Whoever machine part Fishwing programmer really is I suggest don’t give up your moocher card for a fictioni writing career.

  10. FOR 2 YEARS, TRUMP DENIED MOSCOW DEAL..

    THEN HE ADMITS IT CLAIMING, “EVERYBODY KNOWS”

    Here is a partial timeline of denials by Trump regarding the Trump Tower-Moscow deal. For full timeline, going back to 2015, see referenced article.

    Jan. 11, 2017: Trump tweets: “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!” In a news conference that day, Trump says: “I tweeted out that I have no dealings with Russia. I have no deals that could happen in Russia because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia.”

    May 11: In an interview with Lester Holt of NBC News, Trump says: “I am not involved in Russia. No loans. No nothing.”

    Aug. 27: The Washington Post reports for the first time that when Trump was running for president, his company pursued a plan to develop a massive Trump Tower in Moscow.

    Nov. 29, 2018: After the announcement of Cohen’s guilty plea, Trump tells reporters: “He’s lying about a project that everybody knew about. I mean, we were very open with it. … This deal was a very public deal. Everybody knows about this deal. I wasn’t trying to hide anything.”

    That’s false because it was not disclosed until The Washington Post report in August 2017, almost one year after the election.

    Edited from: “The President’s Misleading Statements On Trump Tower Moscow: A Timeline”

    Today’s WASHINGTON POST

    2. ” I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”

      Totally true. He has nothing to do with Russia which is a nation in case Peter Shill doesn’t recognize that fact. No Deal, unless you have seen a contract, No loans having to do with the Moscow Tower.

      Peter, you wish to take unedited comments to use as fodder for idiots that can’t make a case against Trump.

      1. “No contract”, Allan, that’s splitting hairs. Like we can’t see through that..?? You’re only fooling yourself.

        1. ““No contract”, Allan, that’s splitting hairs.”

          One can see that you are not a very accomplished fellow. There is no deal without a contract even though contracts can take more than one form. Show or prove a deal was made. None was made.

  11. Prof Turley:

    You forgot to mention the famous Steele Dossier in your analysis.

    The dossier has been widely disparaged by Trumpists as slanderous, but many points it has made have been proven.

    The dossier was enough, including corroborating evidence, for four judges to sign off on four FISA warrants.

    1. The infamous pee pee dossier, hired as opposition research from Russian “sources” by Hilary, fed back to a complaisant DOJ, yet was lacking factual support, yet it was enough of a fig leaf nonetheless for the intrustive and unconstitutional FISA invasions of privacy

      a worse abuse than Watergate by far: in this candidate Hillary engaged not a rogue operation but an official one, to investigate and harass her opponent

      The biggest shame of the election and yet unremedied because the bureaucracy is protecting itself

    2. Yes, Miles, I believe that Christopher Steele will be largely vindicated by the time Trump has exited the stage.

      1. Yeah. And Christine Blasey at the same time. The mythmaking never ceases.

          1. Spies are necessarily liars and the British ones are famously competent ones.
            Steele was a British spy. it really speaks for itself.

            They found a lot of women who are proud they had sex with Trump but not the alleged pissettes. Why? Disinformation campaign by Putin that Hillary PAID for and willingly progagated. What a fool and her vendetta has done ten times the damage to our “elections” and the legitimacy and credibility of our system than anything Putin might have expected to come from his forked attack on both candidates.

            You can’t imagine a forked attack perhaps. A basic chess move which any teenage novice knows but most pro Hillary acolytes simply can’t imagine. Putin played both campaigns. Divide et imperator. But by now it’s apparent the worst damage came from Hillary’s did happen “legal” obtaining of “information” from the Russians, versus Velnitskaya meeting that we are told was very, very naughty, unlike whatever Hillary did.

            Thank you Putin for actually showing us what a creepy and awful oligarch we had in Hillary and how she played the DNC and FBI and America for fools.

            The electorate wasn’t deceived, is the part that Putin does not like. He is probably as surprised as we all were Trump won. But if I were him I would be oh so pleased at the witchhunt, it’s like a harpooning wound of the electorate, which was told Trump would lose, he won, but he has been losing ever since to a hostile Deep state which makes it all seem like so much of a fraud. Well, if he didn’t ever really Bribe Hillary, he should have!

            1. Kurtz, during the 2016 campaign, Hillary’s camp never referred to the Piss Party. We didn’t hear about that until the week before Trump took office.

              1. it was used for FISA warrants in a very harmful, unconstitutional, underhanded way to surveil the Trump campaign. very despicable and despicable of Democrats to defend and ignore this. people should repudiate this mischief interfering with the democratic process but Hillary cultists cant because it impeaches both Hillary and the outgoing president and the FBI and the FISA courts itself. it’s a horrendously worse surveillance and harassment of a civilian campaign for political purposes that dwarfs Watergate by far. people either get watergate and they get that too, or watergate is just a third rate burglary by comparison. and henceforth every president will abuse his station on behalf of his party which will further impeach our system as such

              2. “Hillary’s camp” didn’t need to play up the Steele Dossier.
                Christopher Steele and Glenn Simpson were doing their best to peddle information from the dossier to the media.
                The MSM did not run with unverified foreign opposition reasearch; Mother Jones did.
                There were probably other players more closely tied to the Clinton camp promoting material from the Steele Dossier.
                Going forward, candidates will need to use intermediaries to “wash their hands of” obtaining and using foreign opposition research.
                The Clinton campaign method can serve as a good model for concealment/ distancing the campaign from the “investigators”.

                1. Tom, that’s because it ‘was’ the model! Steele’s firm was available to anyone who hired them. They didn’t have a sign on their door saying, “Only Liberals Welcome”.

                  1. Peter,…
                    I think it could well be the model going forward.
                    E.G., those closely associated with the Trump campaign should not have met directly with Veselnitskaya to “get the dirt” on Hillary.
                    You> hire a law firm which >hires Fusion GPS >which hires >Orbis whose founder uses> “contacts” to get the dirt >from “sources” like Veselnitskaya.
                    That model, with its use of all the intermediaries, makes it harder to tie the campaign to the foreign opposition research.
                    And if the campaign is ultimately found to be responsible for the foreign opposition research, their fallback position is that they did it to protect America from the other candidate.

                  2. yes perhaps so, considering cambridge analytica was filled with british spy types too.

                    or maybe we need to investigate the british for sticking their noses into our business and not just the Russians!

          2. another machinei part whose programmer should ditch the idea of writing fiction.

      2. http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/howie_carr/2018/01/carr_clinton_s_dodgy_dossier_is_way_worse_than_watergate

        This Fusion GPS hoax is going to be a bigger political scandal than Watergate.

        Think about it — Hillary Clinton and the DNC paid big bucks to the dirty tricksters at Fusion GPS to concoct an utterly bogus anti-Trump “dossier.” Hillary’s 35-page smear was then handed off to corrupt FBI agents and DOJ employees who were themselves accepting money from either Clinton cronies or the smear artists at Fusion GPS, who by the way were also being paid by the Russians at the same time.

        And then the crooked FBI took Hillary’s fake dossier to a secret federal court and used it to obtain a warrant to spy on Clinton’s opponent Donald Trump and his associates during the 2016 presidential campaign.

        In his wildest dreams, Richard Nixon never imagined setting up a police state this corrupt.

        What if a Republican administration and candidate had done this to a Democrat candidate — say, Barack Hussein Obama? Instead, it was Democrats doing it to a Republican, so the alt-left media stifled a collective yawn and spent last night screaming at us that Haiti is really a very nice country.

        We are close to finally getting to the bottom of this Clinton-Obama-FBI conspiracy, now that Sen. Dianne Feinstein has leaked the 312 pages of testimony of the shady fictioneer who runs Fusion GPS, one Glenn Simpson. DiFi released this because she thought it would prove Russian collusion, and it did.

        You see, at the time Simpson was being paid by Hillary Clinton, he was also working for a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin, the far left’s boogeyman du jour.

        More than a year after the dodgy dossier was first published, it has become clear that most of the statements in it are either a) unverified, or b) false, mostly b). But then, Simpson seems to have a problem with the truth, even when he’s testifying before DiFi’s Senate committee.

        Simpson said that the FBI had a “walk in” from the Trump campaign who volunteered information about the “collusion.”

        Except, the bent G-men didn’t. It turns out, that was a “mischaracterization,” the synonym of which is lie.

        Simpson was asked if any effort had been made to verify what even former FBI director James Comey dismissed as a “salacious and unverified“ report.

        “By its very nature the question of whether something is accurate isn’t really asked. The question that is asked generally is whether it’s credible. You don’t really decide who’s telling the truth.”

        In other words, they just make it up. If you’ve got the cash, Fusion GPS will provide you with a dossier, very official-looking.

        To produce this “intelligence” for Hillary to use against Trump, Simpson hired a British “spy” named Christopher Steele. Simpson said this fiction writer, I mean spy, can spot “disinformation” a mile away.

        In all the fake-news “dossier” stories over the last year, the pivotal event is always the meeting in Trump Tower involving Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner, campaign manager Paul Manafort, and a Russian lawyer named Natalia Veselnitskaya. That meeting took place on June 9, 2016.

        Would you care to guess who Veselnitskaya had dinner with on June 8, 2016?

        That’s right, the guy who was paid $1 million to produce the dodgy dossier, Glenn Simpson.

        Would you care to guess who Veselnitskaya had dinner with on June 10, 2016?

        That’s right, Glenn Simpson.

        1. Mr. Kurtz. Thank you for taking the time to lay out the travesty of justice that is the Steele dossier affair. Noticed that with passing of time Lefty Loony Tunes commenting on this blog tried to white wash history and spin this into some sort of good public service. Perhaps we will be pleasantly surprised to see Muler include chastisement of Steele Dossier and all its actors in his report, but I aint holding my breath. He is like a dirty street cop who mistakenly pulled over a motorist and can’t admit he made a mistake and is hell bent on issuing a citation for whatever reason he can find.

          1. The judge was told the dossier was opposition research. And that reminds me that the Page FISA warrant was renewed several times by the judge. Judges don’t renew a warrant without justification.

            If the FISA warrants were approved by 4 judges on 4 occasions, there is no question they are constitutional.

            1. “Don’t stop believing, hold on to that feeling.” Prosecutorwhatever, your reaction is classic appeal to authority when it suits you. Once first FISA warrant gets rubber stamped by first judge then that sets dominoes in motion for other judges to rubber stamp it. You and your ilk would be howling from the mountain tops if it were disclosed that your beloved Madam Hillary got this treatment from a secret court without representation.

            2. ProsecutorMilesEdgeworth – Judicial Watch has found that the judges did not ask any questions of the attorneys asking for the warrant. We know that there is no transcript of any proceedings with the judges and we are not even sure they read it. And they we “kinda” told it was opposition research in a footnote. We have yet to see the actual applications themselves so we can see how they carefully manipulated the information.

              1. FISA courts are way too complaisant even before this scandal. it’s a problem that lingers unaddressed before Hillary and after, totally unnoticed by the false defenders of “civil liberties” the Dem party. frauds! willing accomplices in every inch forward to greater police state powers and mass surveillance. shameful!

          2. he might, there might be something there before its all done, but it seems unlikely she will be held accountable in any meaningful way whatsoever

            Clinton Crime Cartel

    3. People that still have a shred of common sense:

      Don’t shake the trees or the nuts will fall out.

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