To be clear, I appreciate Fuzzy Bear's willingness to change his opinion. I think he's a quality poster overall, even though we strongly disagree on a lot of issues. I am just still mystified at how anyone can talk about nationalism and the flag while excusing Trump's invitation to the Russians to hack us last year. I realize that's a different topic and some liberals don't even care about it but it's just mind-boggling.
That's exactly what I was thinking, but thought I shouldn't go there, since it is off-topic.
FB says "Trump is far more loyal to America than the kneelers," but as Beet is pointing to, trump totally denies that the Russians hacked/intervened-in our elections.
To trump it is all "fake news" and just "a witch hunt." But yet all our national intelligence agencies are saying that it happened !
Russia's actions should be 1000 times more of a concern (compared to knelling to our flag) to every citizen in our nation. Yet trumpists give the Orange-Haired Clown a pass, and go on to call him "more loyal to America."
WTF.
There is an investigation going on. I will wait until that is concluded to judge Trump.
I will note that many of the most raving accusations at best remain unproven. I will trust the findings of Mr. Mueller, but I will not trust the mainstream media on this issue. They have become vested in "getting Trump", and they have lost credibility and harmed their own institutions.
I mean, the other thing to keep in mind is that Mueller is only focusing on criminal liability, specifically those crimes that he can actually prove. With Trump, you could name him as an unindicted co-conspirator and/or recommend impeachment in the report for obstruction of justice, but "collusion" itself isn't a legal term.
I think we'll definitely see indictments against Manafort and Flynn (neither of whom would be very likely to flip until after the government has rested its case well into the trial phase) on a wide variety of charges (some of which may be for crimes separate from the main Russia scandal since – as Renato Mariotti and others have noted – Mueller will want to focus on things that are easiest to prove such as lying on disclosure forms and violations of the foreign agents registration act [the latter of which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison per-violation IIRC]). I also wouldn't be surprised if we see indictments against some combination of (though not necessarily all these people) Kushner*, Carter Page, Stone†, Donald Trump Jr, and Michael Cohen (although he may be a little less likely than some of the others). I've seen a few articles saying Don McGahn is worried that he might get disbarred if he ever gets subpoenaed by Mueller, but we don't really know anything about that (if it's even true), so who knows *shrug*.
I highly doubt Sessions will be indicted (just from what is publicly known, obviously Mueller knows a lot we don't) since unlike with Trump (whose tweets, initial letter detailing his first-reaction reasons for firing Comey, comments to Lavrov, and general inability to shut up about the investigation create a rich body of evidence regarding his intent/mens rea) I don't know that there's enough to really prove that Sessions acted with corrupt intent regarding whatever role he played in the firing of James Comey. Trump seems like the guy with the strongest obstruction of justice case against him.
Another interesting thing is that the NY AG's office is actively working with Mueller's investigation which suggests that the probe is also looking into state charges. Lastly, I wonder if they're also looking into the money laundering at Trump's casinos. They've had so many citations for money laundering over the years that one almost wonders if Trump got into the casino business in part as a means to launder money.
*If Mueller can establish sufficient mens rea to prove Kushner was knowingly making omissions on those disclosure forms where he left off hundreds of Russian contacts (IIRC), that alone could result in a major indictment, to say nothing of any *potential* liability Kushner may or may not have stemming from the Trump Tower meeting and his role overseeing the Trump campaign's data-operation and FaceBook ad targeting.
†Incidentally, Stone really needs to fire his lawyer and hire a new one who can control him [Stone]. He's really playing with fire by being as noisy and visible as he has been lately. He's gonna get himself subpoenaed if he's not careful.
Anyway, Badger and Torie can take a look at this and tell me if I'm wrong about any of it. Either way, I'd be curious to hear both of their thoughts on this.
