It sounds like a crazed movie plot. From a really bad movie. Unfortunately, it’s apparently real.
It was revealed over the weekend that Donald Trump attempted to bribe the government into turning over all of the documents he stole from the White House if the government gives him all of the documents they have on the Russia investigation.
Trump has long been obsessed with the Russia probe, explained NBC political analyst Mike Schmidt. But it was former DOJ prosecutor Andrew Weissmann who noted that looking at it with his prosecutor's hat on, he sees "damning evidence."
[...]
"How do you show that somebody like Donald Trump knew what was at Mar-a-Lago, and it wasn't just his lawyers or underlings who knew the details?" Weissmann posed. "Well, that he's trying to engage in the 'Art of the Deal' with respect to classified documents, and he's saying these documents were all mine. Those are incredibly damning statements that go directly to knowledge and intent. And you can be sure that the DOJ prosecutors are doing what I'm doing, which is listening to this going, this is making it that much easier to prove the only element that it could pose any real difficulty for the Department of Justice in bringing a case in bringing the Mar-a-Lago documents. So, yes, I agree with you, there are all sorts of horrendous things when you take the big picture, that he's thinking of trading these documents and using them this way when they're national security documents. But from a criminal perspective, his statements are even more damning and are going to be I think much more harmful to him."
Trump has long claimed “Total Exoneration” in the Russia-gate case. Besides, an appeals court judge has determined that Bill Barr lied when he wrote his summary of the Mueller report — granting Trump absolution where none existed — Trump has maintained his innocence, but that hasn’t been enough for him. His lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, James Comey and Peter Strzok was summarily thrown out — so he needs to find something tangible. Some document. Some recording. Some piece of evidence that proves that the Russia investigation was entirely a hoax.
Even though it totally wasn’t.
Mueller actually found that Trump was “Not Exonerated.”
US President Donald Trump's claim that he was "totally exonerated" by special counsel Robert Mueller was rejected by Mr Mueller in a hearing on Wednesday.
Mr Mueller said he had not exonerated Mr Trump of obstruction of justice.
The former FBI director spent two years probing alleged collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, but did not establish collusion in a crime.
He concluded that Russia had interfered in the election with the intention of benefitting Mr Trump's campaign.
Mr Trump frequently criticised the special counsel investigation during its investigation, branding it a "witch hunt". Responding to Mr Mueller's testimony on Wednesday, he said: "This was a great day for me.”
In all, 35 people and three companies were charged by the special counsel on matters relating both directly and indirectly to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. No members of the Trump family were charged.
Mr Mueller and his team concluded that they were unable to charge the president with a crime, but could not exonerate him either.
Mueller also listed 10 instances of prosecutable obstruction of justice by Trump and he prosecuted four members of Trump’s entourage for lying under oath about their communications with Russians.
Trump couldn’t be prosecuted because of OLC rules against indicting a sitting president. Beside the interference by Bill Barr, Rod Rosenstein
didn’t allow Mueller to do a full counter-intelligence investigation which would have revealed Trump’s many links to Russia mobsters and oligarchs.
But Trump is determined to keep up (false) appearances. He's essentially delusional — that’s how former Watergate Prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks sees it.
"He is definitely delusional in thinking this. First of all, as you noted, if he had such documents, if there were such documents, if they possibly existed, he had four years when he had every right to ask for them and to get them," she said. "My suspicion is they do not exist. So, let's take that first. Secondly, you cannot steal something to barter. It does go back to what happened in Ukraine where he was trying to say, okay, I'll give you what you're legally entitled to, the funding, if you do this terrible thing for me and make up something about Joe Biden. That is not how America is supposed to be doing business. That is illegal on every aspect
So, she explained, there's nothing there for Trump to barter away.
"It should be that everybody in America realizes that there are no such documents, and even if there were, he can't trade stolen documents that he has no right to possession," said Wine Banks. "This goes back a long way. The Presidential Records Act was a result of Richard Nixon wanting to take tax deductions for having documents and trying to leave the White House when he resigned with the tapes. That's why we have this law, to give it to journalists and historians, to the American people, not to the person who created them as president."
“You cannot steal something in an attempt to barter.”
Yep, that says it.