Next week... "I never said there was no collusion between Trump and the Russians, I said he didn't do any collusiony things this past Tuesday. Or even Monday afternoon."
We may not have a functioning government, but at least our tax dollars are buying us a great comedy production. barfo
What the hell is he doing? He knows there has been collusion and he is trying to get in front of it by now saying people in Trump's campaign colluded, but Trump knew nothing about it? Bullshit. He knew. He is part of it. He is going down. Mueller is coming.
Let’s walk through the de-evolution of the Trump team’s collusion denials — a list we’ve updated below. 1. November 2016: No communications, period Hope Hicks: “It never happened. There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” 2. February 2017: There were no communications, “to the best of our knowledge” Sarah Sanders: “This is a non-story because, to the best of our knowledge, no contacts took place.” 3. March 2017: There were communications, but no planned meetings with Russians Donald Trump Jr.: “Did I meet with people that were Russian? I’m sure, I’m sure I did. . . . But none that were set up. None that I can think of at the moment. And certainly none that I was representing the campaign in any way, shape or form.” 4. July 8, 2017: There was a planned meeting at Trump Tower, but it was “primarily” about adoption and not the campaign Trump Jr.: “We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow-up.” 5. July 9, 2017: The meeting was planned to discuss the campaign, but the information exchanged wasn't “meaningful” Trump Jr.: “No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.” 6. December 2017: Collusion isn't even a crime President Trump: “There is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime.” Jay Sekulow: “For something to be a crime, there has to be a statute that you claim is being violated. There is not a statute that refers to criminal collusion. There is no crime of collusion.” (Technically speaking, the criminal code doesn't use the word “collusion,” but it's generally understood as a broad term that could encompass more specific, codified crimes. And even special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's team has used it in court filings.) 7. May 16, 2018: Even if meaningful information were obtained, it wasn't used Giuliani: “And even if it comes from a Russian, or a German, or an American, it doesn’t matter. And they never used it, is the main thing. They never used it. They rejected it. If there was collusion with the Russians, they would have used it.” [One thing, Rudy Giuliani: The Trump campaign *did* use it.] 8. May 19, 2018: There was a *second* planned meeting about foreign help in the election, but nothing came of it either The New York Times reported Sunday on yet another meeting about getting foreign help with the 2016 election. This one came three months before the election and featured Donald Trump Jr. and an emissary, George Nader, who said the princes who lead Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates wanted to assist Trump. Alan Futerfas, Trump Jr.'s attorney: "They pitched Mr. Trump Jr. on a social media platform or marketing strategy. He was not interested, and that was the end of it.” 9. July 16, 2018: Trump couldn't collude, because Trump didn't even know Putin Trump: "There was no collusion. I didn't know the president. There was nobody to collude with." 10. July 30, 2018: Collusion isn't a crime, and Trump wasn't physically at the Trump Tower meeting With Michael Cohen alleging that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting in real time — despite many previous denials — Giuliani told both CNN and Fox News that Trump wasn't physically at the meeting. "I’m happy to tell Mueller that Trump wasn’t at the Trump Tower meeting,” Giuliani told CNN, adding that "Don Jr. says he wasn’t there.” He added on Fox: “He did not participate in any meeting about the Russia transaction. . . . And the other people at the meeting that he claims he had without the president about it say he was never there.” Giuliani also argued that collusion isn't even a crime. “I don’t even know if that’s a crime — colluding with Russians,” Giuliani said on CNN. “Hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack. He didn’t pay for the hacking.” And on Fox: “I have been sitting here looking in the federal code trying to find collusion as a crime. Collusion is not a crime.” 11. January 16, 2019: Trump didn’t collude, but no guarantees on others in the campaign The exchange with Cuomo: GIULIANI: I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign -- CUOMO: Yes, you have. GIULIANI: I have no idea -- I have not. I said the president of the United States. There is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you could commit here -- conspired with the Russians to hack the DNC. CUOMO: First of all, crime is not the bar of accountability for a president. It’s about what you knew -- GIULIANI: Well, he didn’t collude with Russia either! CUOMO: -- what was right, and what was wrong, and what did you deceive about? Those are going to be major considerations. GIULIANI: The president did not collude with the Russians. (CROSSTALK) CUOMO: He said nobody had any contact, tons of people had contact. Nobody colluded, the guy running his campaign -- GIULIANI: He didn’t say nobody -- CUOMO: -- was working on an issue at the same time as the convention. GIULIANI: He said he didn’t. He didn’t say nobody. How would you know that nobody in your campaign -- CUOMO: He actually did say that, Rudy. He said, nobody, and then he said, as far as I know. (CROSSTALK) GIULIANI: Well, as far as he knows, it’s true. https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...denials/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1cd156134da9
The circular firing squad: Mueller targets turn on each other After Rudy Giuliani's latest comments, it’s everyone for themselves. And it's a prosecutor’s dream for the special counsel. Rudy Giuliani sent an unmistakable message Wednesday night: It’s everyone for themselves. During a CNN interview, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer blurted out that the only person he knows about who didn’t collude with Russia was Trump himself. Although Giuliani tried to walk back his comments on Thursday, the remarks put the sprawling web of people caught up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe on notice: no one is coming to save you. “Ya think!!!” one former Trump campaign official wrote to POLITICO when asked if Giuliani was trying to protect the president at the expense of everyone who worked for him. The Team Trump infighting has been a prosecutor’s dream for Mueller, opening up an ever-widening window into the behind-the-scenes workings of a rookie politician whose campaign has been under investigation for years. The special counsel and federal prosecutors have already benefited from the internal sniping, flipping Trump’s former lawyer, national security adviser and campaign chairman. Bickering and backstabbing were Trump world trade marks long before the former businessman launched his White House bid, from the real estate mogul’s decades of private business dealings to his years as a reality television star. But the attitude has taken on a completely new life as Mueller’s 20-month-old probe creeps increasingly closer to the president. Now the sniping can have long-term legal consequences, and the president and his former aides have used press interviews, social media posts and court filings to take shots at each other in the interest of protecting themselves and their reputations. “Nobody is really on the same team anymore when you’ve worked with Donald Trump,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump 2016 campaign aide who has been questioned multiple times by Mueller and congressional investigators. “Trump puts everyone against each other when you work for him,” he added. “While he demands loyalty, he doesn’t return it. Loyalty is not a two-way street, especially when you’ve got special counsel involved in it.” Michael Zeldin, a former Mueller DOJ aide, likened the current divisions inside Trump world to the mafia. “Even Whitey Bulger gets beaten to death for having squealed. That always made it hard for prosecutors because it was very hard to break someone out of the organization,” Zeldin said, referencing the famous Boston mobster. “Here, everyone is saying, ‘I can cooperate.’ Whether they are fully truthful, they all seem to be available.” The latest example is Michael Cohen, the former Trump personal lawyer who appears to be sparing few in his bid to shorten his prison sentence and resurrect his image after being swept up in multiple investigations. Cohen turned publicly against Trump last summer and even urged voters headed into the 2018 midterms to elect Democrats so that Congress could rein in his former boss’s presidency. Next month, Cohen is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee in a high-profile hearing expected to draw gavel-to-gavel media coverage. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/17/giuliani-mueller-collusion-investigation-1110671
I think the biggest thing we should take from this whole Trump administration, is not that they're a group of lying potential jailbirds, but that if they just were run with by the Clintons and Obamas, they would've totally gotten away with this just like the Clintons and Obamas did!
We are literally watching a movie unfold before our eyes. Right now, we're at the part right before the final climatic scene happens. Soon, we'll have the ending part where America is saved from evil.
