Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 195
Shake Up
President Trump claimed that his approval rating would be 75% if it wasn’t for special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Said Trump: “Without the phony Russia Witch Hunt, and with all that we have accomplished in the last almost two years (Tax & Regulation Cuts, Judge’s, Military, Vets, etc.) my approval rating would be at 75% rather than the 50% just reported by Rasmussen.”
FiveThirtyEight has Trump’s average approval at just 41%.
Garrett Graff: “Decoding Mueller’s 17-month investigation has been a publicly frustrating exercise, as individual puzzle pieces, like Flynn’s sentencing memo, often don’t hint at the final assembled picture—nor even tell us if we’re looking at a single interlocking puzzle, in which all the pieces are related, or multiple, separate, unrelated ones. Mueller’s careful, methodical strategy often only reveals itself in hindsight, as the significance of previous steps becomes clear with subsequent ones.”
“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors have told defense lawyers in recent weeks that they are ‘tying up loose ends’ in their investigation, providing the clearest clues yet that the long-running probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election may be coming to its climax, potentially in the next few weeks,” Yahoo News reports.
“The new information about the state of Mueller’s investigation comes during a pivotal week when the special counsel’s prosecutors are planning to file memos about three of their most high profile defendants — former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen.”
“A Flynn sentencing memo is due Tuesday, and memos about Manafort and Cohen are slated for Friday. All three documents are expected to yield significant new details on what cooperation the three of them provided to the Russia investigation.”
Garrett Graff: “One of the least-noticed elements of the special counsel’s approach is that all along, he has been making his case bit by bit, in public, since his very first court filing. With his major court filings so far, Mueller has already written more than 290 pages of the ‘Mueller Report.’ And there are still lots of loose ends in those documents — breadcrumbs Mueller is apparently leaving for later.”
“By making such detailed filings, Mueller is actually increasing his burden of proof — suggesting a supreme confidence that he has the goods.”
“And by making so much public as he goes along, Mueller is also insuring against his probe being shut down or otherwise curtailed by the White House.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS News that his committee has made “a number of referrals” to special counsel Robert Mueller’s office for prosecution, and vowed to do the same for anyone who lies to congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Said Warner: “If you lie to Congress, we’re going to go after you. We’re going to make sure that gets referred.”
“White House aides had hoped that the G-20 summit would be an opportunity for President Trump to showcase his deal-making skills. Now, they’re worried that special counsel Robert Mueller’s latest bombshell could overshadow his latest tour on the world stage. And some think that’s just the way Mueller wanted it,” Politico reports.
Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, called it “hardly coincidental” that Mueller made a dramatic legal move “just as the President is leaving for a meeting with world leaders,” adding that the chief Russia investigator “did the very same thing as the President was leaving for a world summit in Helsinki.”
New York Magazine: “As of September, the fiscal cost of the Mueller investigation was roughly $0.00. By that point, the probe had spent roughly $26 million. But, by striking a plea agreement with Paul Manafort for his myriad white-collar crimes — an agreement that required Trump’s former campaign manager to forfeit five multi-million-dollar properties, a life-insurance policy, and the contents of multiple bank accounts — Mueller’s investigation had acquired somewhere between $26 million and $42 million worth of revenue for the federal treasury.”
Frank Rich: “The thing about stories built on actual facts, as Mueller’s will be, is that they tend to be powerful and command attention because they add up. People like solid crime stories. And so even now, even amid all the current racket, at least one such story is emerging loud and clear: the bridge that connects the Trump campaign to the trove of Democratic emails stolen by the Russians and publicized by WikiLeaks to sabotage the Clinton campaign.”
“Two of the biggest sources for this story are Stone and Corsi themselves. The more they try to portray their WikiLeaks ties as innocent — Corsi even gave a blabby interview to the less-than-friendly outlet of MSNBC on Wednesday — the more they poke holes in their own flimsy cover stories and incriminate the president. Not for nothing did Trump promote WikiLeaks’ email cache at least 164 times in the last month of the 2016 campaign, in the calculation of the journalist Judd Legum. Everything adds up.”
“It also adds up that Trump remains in the panic that has consumed him since he returned from his calamitous trip to rainy Paris nearly three weeks ago. He just keeps tweeting maniacally about his innocence and Mueller’s ‘witch hunt’ even as heads to the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, Mueller’s tale of his collusion with Russia gains traction by the moment.”
CNBC: “Mueller’s Russia probe came roaring back to life in November.”
“The list of questions special counsel Robert Mueller submitted to President Donald Trump included a query about a controversial change to the Republican party’s convention platform in June 2016 regarding the U.S. providing arms to Ukraine,” ABC News reports.
“Sources tell ABC News the president told Mueller he was not aware of the platform change to the best of his recollection.”
“President Trump compared the prosecutions of Robert Mueller to those in the McCarthy era on Wednesday, continuing his relentless attacks on the special counsel investigating possible coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign,” the Washington Post reports.
In a morning tweet, Trump also claimed that “major players” under investigation have “intimated” that Mueller’s team “is viciously telling witnesses to lie about facts & they will get relief.”
“The tweet marked the third straight day in which Trump has taken to Twitter in an attempt to discredit Mueller, who is also examining whether the president has tried to obstruct the investigation.”
Garrett Graff: “Manafort might have unwittingly given Mueller just the opportunity he requires to make public even more details about the former Trump campaign chairman, Russia, and the Trump campaign’s activities in 2016. In a court filing Monday, Mueller’s team alleged that Manafort had lied to investigators, asking the judge to move immediately to sentencing. They also said they would provide a ‘detailed sentencing submission,’ outlining ‘the nature of the defendant’s crimes and lies.'”
“In other words, Mueller plans to quickly issue a ‘report’ on Manafort’s activities, one that—if it’s anything like every other court document Mueller has filed thus far—will be more informed, more knowledgeable, and more detailed than anyone anticipates.”
“In fact, such a move would be entirely consistent with one of the most surprising and least noticed aspects of Mueller’s approach all along: He’s been writing the long-anticipated ‘Mueller Report’ bit-by-bit, in public, since his very first court filing.”
In voiding Paul Manafort’s cooperation agreement, special counsel Robert Mueller also promised extensive information on Manafort’s alleged lies before he is sentenced, the Washington Post reports.
“Mueller’s team has always been tight-lipped publicly, but it has made some key disclosures through indictments… The Mueller filing on Manafort’s alleged lies won’t be an indictment, per se, and there is a very real chance it could remain under seal to protect the ongoing investigation. But if it is made public, it would give Mueller a chance to say whatever he feels like disclosing, and notably without Whitaker’s approval — which would be required for a new indictment or for releasing a final report, if Whitaker has indeed taken oversight of the probe and supersedes Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.”
The morning after special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors accused Paul Manafort of lying and breaking his cooperation agreement, President Trump took to Twitter to criticize the probe as a “Phony Witch Hunt” that’s doing “tremendous damage to our Criminal Justice System.”
He added: “Heroes will come of this, and it won’t be Mueller and his terrible Gang of Angry Democrats. Look at their past, and look where they come from. The now $30,000,000 Witch Hunt continues and they’ve got nothing but ruined lives. Where is the Server? Let these terrible people go back to the Clinton Foundation and ‘Justice’ Department!”
For members: Was Paul Manafort an Unwitting Double-Agent?
Playbook: “One of the seven appropriations bills that needs to get passed in the next 10 days is the Commerce, Justice, Science bill, which has some funding for Bob Mueller’s probe of the White House. If there’s a shutdown, it will be up to President Trump whether to make Mueller essential, or keep him sidelined until Congress finds a funding solution. This is chatter that is picking up on the Hill.”
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An associate of Roger Stone told CNN that he is refusing to sign a plea deal offered by special counsel Robert Mueller.
“Jerome Corsi, whose role in Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election largely revolves around the possibility that he was an intermediary between Stone and WikiLeaks, said he was offered a deal to plea on one count of perjury.”
Said Corsi: “They can put me in prison the rest of my life. I am not going to sign a lie.”
“Roger Stone associate Jerome Corsi said Friday he is in plea negotiations with special counsel Robert Mueller’s office,” CNN reports.
“Corsi, confirming an earlier Washington Post report, declined to comment further.”
Last week, he said publicly he expected to be indicted by Mueller for “giving false information to the special counsel or to one of the other grand jury.”
“The date had been picked, the location too, and the plan was penciled in: President Trump would be whisked from the White House to Camp David on a quiet winter Saturday to answer questions from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team,” the AP reports.
“But as the Jan. 27, 2018, date neared and Mueller provided the topics he wanted to discuss, Trump’s lawyers balked. Attorney John Dowd then fired off a searing letter disputing Mueller’s authority to question the president. The interview was off.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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