Assuming the needed political changes as time goes on, I think the fact that this dream team is grinding away is bad news for every single one of the scores of people who’ve cut corners in this mess. Hell, 97 percent of the GOP is tangled up in the racket, and the closer you are to the top, the more implicated you tend to be. Not too many boy scouts in an international organized crime syndicate.
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Maybe Mueller is an olympic figure skater?
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Mueller may be waiting until he has crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s before he interviews Pence. He will come in knowing virtually everything that went down and Pence will know it also. There might not be many people left in the line of succession, including Ryan, before he is done. The reaction of a lot of Republicans to Mueller’s investigation shows how deeply Putin has penetrated into the GOP and I am not going to be shocked if there are dozens, maybe hundreds of indictments before it is over because a lot of staff members were probably involved also. I take some delight in the fact that these scumbags are probably losing a lot of sleep over Mueller’s investigation.
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Yes, maybe he’s leaving Pence out so someone is there to be prez. Though if this crew gained the presidency via criminal/treasonous means (big scary if that we don’t know enough at this moment to say), and Trump goes down for it, is it tenable to simply install this VP as P? Is there not some fruit of the poisoned tree logic that would really create a crisis if this were to unfold? So scary. I wish our democracy were sturdier and better functioning.
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My thinking is “both”…
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At one time or another, most of us have allowed there may be a political component to Mueller’s work. If there is, it may be something as simple as this, he sees the mid-terms coming (he also recognizes the real possibility Paul Ryan may not run again which would become immaterial anyway if the Democrats retake the house). Bringing his investigation to a close, laying the results at the feet of a Democratic house majority may well mean articles of impeachment for both Trump and Pence and wait for it…President Pelosi. Well, heck a guy can dream, right?
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My uninformed guess is that there is precedence for indicting a VP while there is not for POTUS. Putin’s Bitch can keep things tangled in legal knots probably till 2020. Pence can be dispatched without much fuss.
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Indeed.
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Because Pence is icky. Very, very icky.
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While sitting as VP Spiro Agnew was indicted (and pled no contest) to felony tax evasion.
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Precedent, even.
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Interesting article, Ms. Kirkland. Thanks.
Pence’s lawyer, Richard Cullen, declined to comment to TPM on the record
Anything else would have surprised me.
Cullen is an old hand at this game, and a dyed-in-the-wool Republican.
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Certainly.
If I were to correct every grammatical mistake and spelling error I see, I’d be doing nothing else.
And I’m talking about my own writing, never mind anyone else’s!
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Because he’s a clueless fuck, I’m guessing.
Yep, clueless!
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I don’t want to exonerate Trump or his campaign team, but it seems that they might have been in the dark about some things.
For example, Donald Jr., Papadopolous and a couple others held meeting with people who claimed to have dirt on Hillary which Team Trump could use against her, but Putin and others seemed to have believed that that detail would be best handled by them.
I do think American operatives might have been involved in helping the Russians micro-target Americans with disinformation campaigns, through Cambridge Analytica and Jared’s digital campaign.
Here’s my guess: because Pence had little experience in Trump’s orbit prior to getting the call, he and his staff actually know how to keep their mouth shut.
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The timing is something to consider. Although we do a lot of projecting on Mueller, he probably cannot be an ‘October surprise’ in 2018. It seems that Mueller either needs to wind it up before May, or after the midterms. Comey may be remembered as an FBI intervention in the 2016 election, whereas his motivations may have been entirely for the sake of keeping FBI in a good light.
The dems have to defend seats, and pick up seats…and the odds are longer than 50/50.
If Mueller winds up before the election it could influence it a bit, and if he winds up after, which he may have to do to appear apolitical, if the democrats take over, he will still be called political.
.
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It seems a near certainty that some such crisis has to unfold. There’s really only two high-probability outcomes. One, the investigation runs its course and we hit the end of the Trump administration + its supporting apparatus, with huge chaos and uproar. Two, the investigation is blocked, and we hit a gigantic “constitutional crisis”, likely festooned with every manner of damaging leak and who knows what accompanying chaos and uproar…
For some reason, many people appear to talking as if we’ll somehow skate around the calamities, even though no low-drama outcome seems plausible. How is this going to happen?
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I like the idea of Pence as the mole in the campaign.
Mostly because it raises the question, “What have the feds got on him?”
Boilerplate corruption?
Freaky deaky?
There’s a broad range of possibilities …
In honor of Rudy, and with apologies to the Byrds Pete Seeger …
For every fink (turn, turn, turn, turn)
There is a reason (turn, turn, turn, turn)
And your crimes are quite serious, despite 9/11
A time to run, a time to hide
A time to rant, a time to freak,
A time to spill, a time to squeal
A time to crap, a time to weep
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