The federal lockout and shakedown has never been about immigration, it’s about racism (and some imaginary wall), but it’s always been about diversions, mainly in the service of distracting from #TrumpRussia. Remember that even if the wall was a metaphor, it’s now become concrete(sic) and has hemmed in Individual-1.
This time the diversion is part of what ultimately will be desperate attempts to prevent Don Junior going to prison. The MSM still knows where its corporate money comes from, so the pretext for objectivity remains strong even if it’s designed against inconvenient truthfulness. Impeachment will come and go but indictments further up the chain of corruption will emerge to frame the 2020 campaign.
The path to the bunker goes off the rails but remains headed to a psychotic conclusion, perhaps taking the US economy and democracy with it.
We’re approaching that moment when Trump throws Don Junior under the bus to save his presidency bacon
At some moment, the regret about naming his son after himself will become manifest when Mueller indicts Don Junior. It won’t come until the end of the Mueller report simply because of timing and the continuing threat of suppressing the report, however fleeting.
Marcy Wheeler helps explain the slight discord among reporting outlets about the lies Trump told. It’s mainly about the differences between the SDNY and the Special Counsel’s office. As sobering a prospect as not seeing Trump indicted until 2021 might be, the path to the bunker will be strewn with the sub-scandals of others.
Trump’s not going to be indicted by Mueller — at least not before he leaves office via election defeat or impeachment. So Mueller’s focus needs to be on the crimes of those he can charge, like Don Jr. That doesn’t rule out that the evidence he’s looking at show that Trump oversaw a series of coordinated false statements. He did! With Mike Flynn’s lies, Don McGahn’s clean up of Flynn and Jim Comey’s firings, the response to the June 9 meeting, and yes, this Trump Tower deal, nothing explains the coordinated story-telling of multiple Trump flunkies other than Trump’s approval of those lies. It is, frankly, journalistic malpractice that the press hasn’t noted that, especially on the June 9 meeting, the evidence that Trump lied and ordered others to has already been made public. Trump’s tacit (and explicit, with the June 9 statement) approval of serial false statements, to Congress, to the FBI Director, to FBI Agents, and to Mueller, is an impeachable offense. Multiple outlets have gotten solid proof of that, they just haven’t stated the obvious like Buzzfeed did, perhaps in part because they’re relying on White House sources for their reporting.
But Mueller won’t need to allege that for his case in chief, at least not on the issue of the Trump Tower deal. Because the events that matter to Mueller’s case in chief — the events to which Cohen might have to serve as a witness — happened in 2016, not 2017 or 2018. And the guilt that Mueller would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt if he does indict this conspiracy is not Trump’s guilt — except as an unindicted co-conspirator. It is Don Jr’s guilt.
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