Mostly true. Except when state criminal exposure is involved. A person still has a 5th Amendment privilege against testifying to facts that would result in criminal liability under state law. And since in general the 5th Amendment privilege is a blanket privilege – i.e., you get so say “I refuse to say anything at all”, that’s pretty much a get-out-of-testifying free card.
The question is whether Paulie faces any potential state criminal liability. I don’t have the answer to that.
How do you cheat on your federal taxes without also cheating on your state taxes?
Dude was almost as much of a shit in his hearing as Kavanaugh was in his. Entitled assholes, the both of them.
I’m not an expert on tax cheating, but depending on the laws, I imagine there are ways it could be done.
Some things, however, are federal crimes, but are not state crimes. And vice versa. Other times, either jurisdiction can prosecute. Consult your lawyer.
And the evidence just continues to pile up of obstruction and witness tampering. Doesn’t any of these stable geniuses at the White House realize that all of their communications are being followed and recorded by the NSA?
Forget the FBI, CIA and Special Prosecutor. We now have a national security entity in place that doesn’t have to follow any rules since W and his Republican Congress gave them the license to snoop on everything EVERYONE does. Donald’s minions must be putting on quite a show for them to document.
Between Manafort, Cohen, Papadopoulos, Stone, when do Trump’s steps to taint witnesses behavior get viewed for what they are?
In court in two years. There will be decades of crimes to try in court. The best ones being the moneylaundering for radical Islamic terrorists with Russia.
Here’s a simple theory of what went on. Rudy Giuliani lured Manafort to break his plea deal by dangling the promise of a pardon, one that Trump never intended to give. Rudy learned what Manafort had told prosecutors. Once he learned that, Rudy dangled the pardon long enough to get Manafort to walk back his most explosive claims. Rudy then cut the cord and likely had Manafort exposed so that he would be discredited as a witness against Trump. Will the SCO find Rudy’s fingerprints on this?
So, when does Rudy get disbarred? And jailed?
Yeah and if you care to parse, there is almost nothing that Ghouliani or Chump has said that isn’t dripping with unintentional language of guilt. Flipping? Innocent people don’t flip on Innocent people. Innocent people don’t flip on guilty people. Guilty people don’t flip on innocent people. So that leaves you with guilty flipping on guilty. Same as the word RAT. No innocent person calls old allies Rats.
Hey TSP I don’t think you noticed I sent you a PM a day or two ago.
About this post, I am sure it began with Chump wanting the hotel deal, but I believe the carrot was replaced with the stick long ago and Putin was using the voluminous dirt of hundreds of illegalities they know Chump has committed.
I mean, Chump was in bed with them money laundering for a decade or two. I doubt his relationship with Putin and the lower level Oligarchs and money pumpers was a 50/50 arrangement where Chump got to make demands, call shots, and take or leave offers. If Cohen and Manafort are flying half way around the world to hand deliver documents and seek audiences, my guess is Chump’s deal making days were gone and he was begging for crumbs or at the very least…don’t use the Kompromat you have on me.
It has always been my take on this, that Chump really did not want the presidency and he got cornered by winning the Primaries and then forces out of his control went and got him elected because he was much more useful as a Prez Patsy than half-bankrupt Don The Con. The only silver lining was Chump thought as Prez he would be able to arrange a We Square truce with Putin after he destroys Western Civilization.
Not if you’re a Republican.
“And the motive, I think, is plain …” Weissmann said. “We can see what it is that he would be worried about, which is that the reaction to the idea that REDACTED would have.” The prosecutor added: “I think, negative consequences in terms of the other motive that Mr. Manafort could have, which is to at least augment his chances for a pardon.”
IOW, there’s one very big overriding reason why Manafort lied and then there also the possibility of a pardon.
REDACTED + pardon, with REDACTED being a threat and also looming larger than the possibility of a pardon. While the pardon obstruction is certainly interesting, the threat of REDACTED is even more interesting.
Except that the possibility of a pardon was not the driving reason for Manafort choosing to lie according to the transcript. It’s even quoted in the article that threat of REDACTED was what motivated him with the possibility of a pardon playing at most a peripheral role.
I didn’t see it. Still not in my notifications.
As for Chump being “coerced” into being POTUS, you may very well be right about that. He wanted his hotel in Moscow so bad that he simply went along for the ride. My only question regarding that would be what in the fucking hell is so fucking important to him that he would put himself through this entire fucking fiasco of campaigning and being fucking POTUS in order to make that fucking happen. His shit-ass hotel is more important than his shit-ass dignity? More important than his cockamamie freedom? More important than the survival of this country? What on earth is he so afraid of?
This is going to get worse. Its always required a certain amount of courage to report truth about power, even her in the good old US of A, but we typically attribute real courage to foreign correspondents in war zones.
Because of Trump’s penchant for provoking his basest base into fits of anti-media fervor, that courage is now local.
Kudos to the reporters, camerafolks and their crews for having that courage, lets all hope it isn’t tested in much more serious events. Anyone who scoffs at the idea of an anti-media riot breaking out at a Trump rally probably hasn’t watched one on the web. Trump himself is the instigator-in-chief.
Fascinating. Repulsive and Fascinating.
I think Chump snookered himself in lots of ways. I have no CIA experience but reading folks here, a compromised Chump is a compromised Chump. That he was Real Estate and working with high dollar properties makes him almost too perfectly formed as a Russian Laundering prostitute - to be used and used and used. Most of what we attribute to Chump’s free will and “style” and way of doing business are just as suspect as everything else. We don’t know that anything he did in the last 20 years was really his idea or what %. I think a side benefit in a very bleak existence was he got to use Russian and The Enquirer’s dirt system and he was turning dirty tricks on that side of the tracks too. Cohen seemed to have a whole side gig skimming from Chump’s transactions and every other cesspool. Hey, their cesspool orbits just seem to mesh, and hey, since we are here anyways lets never miss a chance to extort someone.
Which makes me think Chump was at least a fair success in keeping his loud mouth from getting caved in numerous times (although who knows where\when he got the dentures and we should check if he disappeared from public for any length of time)
And a fair success at moving in a horribly filthy world and somehow staying afloat by being as horrible as any mob boss, drug kingpin, and finally mixed up with the most horrific international thugs. I still cannot countenance him with anything other than abject subservience to those players. He had no way to “hit back” to anyone with real money or real muscle. He may be beating up on Rosie O’Donnel and squeezing extortion money out of D listers and stealing from renters and ChumpU back here, but Bone Saw and Vlad are playing a game he can’t even get in the room.
Back to his Free Will. I don’t know how completely animated by Russians he was going back. I feel he is almost completely owned now. Again, his own doing. He may have had to go along with money laundering but was otherwise a pretty free agent. Now, all the stakes have gone up and our Chumpy was never gonna do the smart thing and climb off the rocket. Not gonna take the hit, explain what happened, take his lumps, or suddenly find his courage and be a hero. He is compromised now in ways he could never imagine, and his exits are all stopped up.
I think he loved flirting with running. No cost, no downside, all that mic time. He got to lambaste everybody and paid no price for his bloviating and we can see that any adulation is like cocaine to him. I think the Russians may have been very ready to pounce as he got his ass in a crack more and more with them 2013 2014 2015 and suddenly seemed possible in 2016. Not that they were pulling any strings 2013-15, just that he was definitely someone they had a good hold on and WTF suddenly he is in the top20, top10 for president and they saw the most amazing chance in world history to hit an inside Royal Flush.
Now we get to how he could possibly think he could survive the scrutiny. I think he is too dumb and just has no idea how the legitimate world works. I know, it’s not a VERY legitimat world, but he had no clue. He had pretty good instincts and eyeballs for his gold plated cesspool scumbaggery, but his ignorance and ego made him think The Elevation was all perks and no downside. He has found out he is more trammeled than ever before. Great Power that he cannot use to punish his enemies and brown people. No way to give him ‘soldiers’ to match Putin and enrich himself. He was vested with all the legitimate power of the most powerful position in the world and has whiffed.
Unrelenting scrutiny, and inability to use the power he was counting on. The guy is a failure at everything. Even when gifted with the presidency. He only survived before that by racking up enough bodies so he could keep his head above water. And he is doing the same in govt. Everything he touches dies, and gets added to the rotting pile he stands upon.
This is a completely self inflicted and possibly fatal wound. Completely owned by R lawmakers and a moronic populace (mostly Rs). That we would allow a completely criminal cartoon of a human anywhere near our elections. If you put a vicious punisher of brown people, who throws in some “I’m an outsider and will shake things up”, the R herd will trample everyone else in the field rushing to vote for him. R politicians and R party leaders allowed a complete criminal with 0% legit history to head their party. Wonder if they learned anything by that.
Just my take. Snow day here in WI. I have no experience in NY, mafia, govt. or international affairs.
You were talking about how something that can’t last, won’t last. Like Fossil Fuel. Or Chump.
I love the movie Cold Mountain. The book too.
Ruby Thewes: This world won’t stand long. God won’t let it stand this way long.
I messaged you this:
I have a car that is a plugin hybrid. I have been working since July to erect 6 solar panels (ground mounted next to my garage, I could put them on garage roof in future) and 8 golf-cart batteries for a battery system so I can charge batts during the day and dump that power into the car at night. On sunny days I should get a few hours of straight daylight charging from the panels during the summer after I get home from work and the batts were already charging most of the day, and even in winter I can charge the car some during daylight hours (weekends) and still bank batt while the car is charging on sunny weekends. Car’s battery capacity is about 30 miles in winter and 40 miles in summer. Switches to gas when the battery runs out. I drive about 70 miles a day, M-F. 50% of that is electric, and I hope to get about 70% of my electricity myself. EPA and onboard computer calculation is that I get 75 mpg for the last 4 yrs. Another $400 of batteries and I will be flirting with 100% of my cars electrical usage. That would bring me to about $4k for all my equipment and will last beyond this car and the panels may well last 25-30 years.
I have had the panels up about 1.5 months and have done about 25% of my cars electricity use so far; but it has been winter here up N and very cloudy except a few full sun days. I can also use the battery bank to run the house for days at a time on limited lights, freezer, fridge, and some other basics. I could carry on that way indefinitely…but I will have to come up with a step-up converter to run my well pump. Can’t run the electric oven or dryer. Going to switch them to gas when they are next due to be replaced. None of my system is tied to the grid. That is my next project, a separate roof mounted grid-tie system.
I used to work in town here and could go 3-4 days on a car charge…even going home for lunch but now I commute 70+ miles a day and can drain my car battery every day. So if I returned to working in town, I could easily go long periods without ever using any gas, and all my electric could be solar.
2013 Chevy Volt
You can’t rush these things. First they have to find the crypt.
Then, shove a wallet or belt into his mouth to disable his coyote dentures.