Discussion: Trump Officials Repeatedly Pushed Flynn's Bogus Story Of Russia Contacts

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“It would have been political malpractice not to discuss sanctions,” Cobb told the New York Times in a report published Saturday.

Before inauguration, and with an enemy country that tampered with our elections, resulting in your taking office?
Do tell!

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In other words, pathological liar surrounds himself with inveterate liars, with the predictable result.

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So.

It will be interesting to hear and see these people say with straight faces, Yes, okay–we talked to the Russians, but we didn’t breathe a word of this to Trump. He remains the ignorant ignoramus we elected to be our President.

And then watch Mueller let a very big shoe drop.

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Sorta OT: I wonder why Flynn went to The Daily Caller to deny the denials he gave to the Post. The perceived friendliness of the Caller doesn’t seem to help him with a story like that, especially since by that point he had to have known he was going to be fired. Maybe so Trump-allied people would only get that side of the story, perhaps?

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We’ve actually surpassed the Ed Meese days.

It’s not obstruction of justice if you disagree with that particular justice.
It’s not a bribe if you might have done it anyway
It’s not treason if… Oh never mind, you wouldn’t understand. NEXT!

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Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes, ears, nose and intellect?

This is like watching a sneeze on a house of cards in super slow motion. Once the sneeze happens, gravity takes over. It’s only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down.

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You cheer me up. Well done.

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Didn’t see this on TPM:

Ooops. My bad.

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Mueller is going to be yanking his bail for that. He will be lucky to just have house arrest, and most probably will be behind bars until his trial.

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So, House of Cards was not just a fictional TV show? Director Mueller is going to huff and puff and blow the whole thing down, or so I fervently hope.

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Rinse Priebus has his hands on this too…here’s hoping more of these smarmy f’ers get pulled into this train wreck.

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Said it before and it bears repeating, they haven’t even EXAMINED forensically, the voting machines in the swing states that determined the election. Racist elf at the DOJ is stalling any investigatory efforts.

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So from a different angle-
Reading through the timeline the questions that my under caffeinated brain posed was “If Russia and the US were only a 2 or 3 hour time zone difference would we know all this? Would there have been more shenanigans? And finally did Trump know any of this, when did they tell him of any of this, and isn’t Trump too dumb and self absorbed to have thought of any of this?”

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So it’s not true that Flynn lied to Pence about his conversation(s) with Kislyak, because the whole transition team had ordered him to bring up the subject of sanctions–in fact, that was the sole reason for the calls. In that case, Trump couldn’t have fired Flynn for lying to Pence. It appears that he had to fire him because someone somewhere was going to blow the whole thing open right there and then if he didn’t.

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And now this: Trump twitterstorm…3…2…1

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I have a bit of a problem with Josh’s sidebar comments about this, where he tries to make the case that it doesn’t matter if Flynn lied to Pence and/or Trump, because clearly, everyone knew.

It matters because if it can be definitively proven that Trump knew Flynn had lied when he privately pressured Comey to “go easy” on Flynn, that becomes the centerpiece of at least one charge of Obstruction of Justice against Trump.

It’s one of those nagging little details that don’t matter much if you are a writer trying to pen down the sweeping story, but they matter a whole bunch from a legal stand point. And we are definitely at the point in the sweeping saga, where legal stand points are dominating the storyline.

But there is another problem here, that I think Josh and many, many others are still ignoring.

Its not just that everyone knew that Flynn was negotiating with Russia in real time (including Priebus, which as I pointed out again the other day, should have a HUGE problem with Obstruction because of his visit to the FBI in an attempt to get them to drop the investigation/spin it as “no there there” to the press. That particular storyline takes on a whole new light when we consider Priebus was in the know real time about Flynn’s negotiations), its that they were consumed with Russia and nothing else. No other country, no other issue was getting even close to this attention (basically the entire senior staff). And even the few times they did show an interest in something or somewhere else…they immediately ran it right back to Russia. Kushner’s designs with Bibi to delay or stop Obama’s condemnation of the expansion of building in occupied territory at the UN is a great example. Its something not Russia. But what do they do? Immediately call Russia and offer them another quid pro quo (or add it to their bill). They don’t call the UK, or China or France (all the permanent members of the UN Security Council) or any of the other 10 members, (Bolivia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Senegal, Sweden, Ukraine or Uruguay), they call Russia.

EVERYONE was all about Russia. And nothing but Russia. That alone should be sending up a HUGE red flag from a “sweeping saga” story telling perspective, and probably quite a few from a legal perspective too. (at least it guarantees a target rich environment. Probably something like 90% of all communication was about Russia)

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The move is peculiar, belligerent or reckless. Didn’t the judge explicitly say NOT to do that?!?

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Lock. Them. Up. ALL OF THEM.

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I am assuming you have legal training-experience…? Maybe you can help me with the question of ‘can a sitting President be indicted at all’ dilemma that many talking heads were wrestling with yesterday.

The phrase high crimes and misdemeanors kept being analysed, but Toobin on CNN, and Dershowitz on Fux continued to insist that legally you cannot even indict a sitting President for anything. Can you shed some light??

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