Network For #StrongerTogether: Robert Mueller

Mueller, Don McGahn, Trump, Pence, Michael

Flynns Senior and Junior, Paul Manafort,

Jared Kushner, and George Papadopoulos ~

some of the mentions in the story

⬇

Focused Read in 1:30 minutes

more if you choose to hit the links and go deeper

“Robert Mueller Has a Plan

How the special counsel’s deal with Michael Flynn neutralizes Trump’s pardon power.

(By Jed Handelsman Shugerman)

Michael Flynn has offered a guilty plea, and he cannot rely on Donald Trump’s pardons to save himself or his son. There is broad consensus that the plea, to a single charge of lying to the FBI, is a clear sign Flynn has agreed to very significant cooperation against a very significant target. Reports indicate that Flynn has agreed to testify against Trump.

Mueller’s charges and Flynn’s plea still leave open the possibility of state charges, just in case Trump pardons Flynn federally.

Presidential pardons apply only to federal crimes. I’ve written before about how Mueller’s prosecutorial strategy required him to navigate complicated state-level double jeopardy rules. His charges against Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos reflected a sharp strategy to bring certain charges, while leaving plenty of others available to state prosecutors.

Let me spell out how this strategy would apply to Flynn.

The former national security adviser has pleaded guilty to one charge of making a false statement to the FBI. What are the other charges a state prosecutor could bring?

In early November, the Wall Street Journal reported that Flynn and his son Michael Flynn Jr. allegedly discussed a scheme in which they would receive up to $15 million for taking part in an extradition scheme and an extralegal “rendition” of cleric Fethullah Gülen, an opponent of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

These allegations could be grounds for charges of bribery and conspiracy to kidnap (as well as conspiracy to assault and perhaps other violent crimes)...

You can read much more and you can find links that will take you deeper into the story here

( The photo is courtesy of Fortune Magazine )

Personal Commentary …

Systems are only as good as those who are running them and so far Special Counsel Robert Mueller is a great example of all that is good about our justice system which is based on the rule of law and not on the rule of men. We need to stay informed about his work and support him in it and – be patient.

... (John) Adams believed that a stable and democratic government required the consent of the governed and the separation of powers among the executive, legislature, and judiciary, and a bicameral (two-body) legislature. Of the necessity for an independent judiciary, Adams wrote:

The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people, and every blessing of society depend so much upon an upright and skillful administration of justice, that the judicial power ought to be distinct from both the legislative and executive, and independent upon both, that so it may be a check upon both, as both should be checks upon that. The judges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men. To these ends, they should hold estates for life in their offices; or, in other words, their commissions should be during good behavior, and their salaries ascertained and established by law. ...

John Adams

( The Adams excerpt is courtesy of the Mass.Gov website )

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The Democratic Party Website

The Democratic Party on Facebook

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The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Website

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Website

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee Website

Also

C-SPAN (a good place for speeches & hearings direct source (s))

→ Fact checking organizations courtesy of the Society of Professional Journalists
in alphabetical order...

FactCheck.org

FlackCheck.org

PolitFact

Snopes

Washington Post Fact Checker

( You can read more here: https://www.spj.org/ethicsweek-beintheknow.asp )

→ Some of my favorite, most informative

follows on Twitter include:

Malcolm Nance

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ US Intelligence | Author | Navy Senior Chief | NBC/MSNBC

Kurt Eichenwald

⭐⭐⭐ Federal Government Operations | Vanity Fair | Newsweek | MSNBC Contributor | Author

Ari Berman

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Voting Rights/Voter Suppression | Author | Mother Jones

⭐⭐⭐⭐ You can find Verrit:"Media for the 65.8M" here

→ Some of the most credible media -- at the moment:

📰📰📰 Mother Jones

📰📰📰 The Washington Post

📰📰📰 The New York Times

💻💻💻 News And Guts on Facebook

→ Some of the most credible Talking Heads -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:

📺📺📺 Rachel Maddow on MSNBC

📺📺📺📺📺 AM w/Joy Reid on MSNBC

📺📺 Chris Cuomo on CNN

📺📺📺 The Beat With Ari on MSNBC

📺📺📺 Velshi & Ruhle on MSNBC

📺 Nicolle Wallace On MSNBC

( ⬆⬆⬆ Wallace is new to the job but for right now

her work on Trump GOP has been credible, IMO)

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It’s a simple but powerful idea: We are stronger together."

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Curated by Gail Mountain, with occasional personal commentary, Network For #StrongerTogether ! is not affiliated with The Democratic Party in any capacity. This is an independent blog and the hope is you will, at a glance, learn more about the Party and you will, with a click or two, also take action on its behalf as it is provided!

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g., aka Focused Democrat

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"White House as crime scene: how Robert Mueller is closing in on Trump

There is a grand jury in Washington DC. The special counsel’s team is full of experts in financial crime. On Russia, the president can feel the net closing..."

* Selected Excerpts *

The legal net around Donald Trump’s beleaguered presidency tightened dramatically this week with news that a grand jury has been established a few hundred yards from the White House, to pursue evidence of collusion with the Kremlin.

The special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US election, former FBI chief Robert Mueller, had been using a sitting grand jury in Virginia to authorise his team’s demands for documents and witnesses. The convening of a separate grand jury in Washington suggests the Mueller team – working in a suite of offices a few blocks’ walk from where the 20-odd jurors sit – is going to be making extensive use of it. It will not be hospitable terrain for the president. Trump won only 4% of the vote in the District of Columbia.

The grand jury is also clear evidence that the inquiry is widening, not tapering off. It suggests that the special counsel is exploring possible crimes committed inside the District of Columbia.

Meanwhile, a report from Vox says that senior FBI officials have been told to consider themselves potential witnesses in an investigation of Trump for obstruction of justice. The former FBI director James Comey, Mueller’s successor in the post, has testified that Trump tried to put pressure on him to drop the Flynn investigation.

In the investigation into the obstruction of justice, the White House is the potential crime scene. That is where Trump contrived to be alone on two occasions with Comey and where the alleged arm-twisting took place.

On Tuesday, after adamant denials from Trump’s lawyer, the White House admitted that Trump had “weighed in as any father would” in drafting a misleading statement about his son’s June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer with strong Kremlin and intelligence links.

Reuters has reported that the grand jury in Washington had already issued subpoenas connected to that meeting at Trump Tower in New York, another sign that the investigation is closing in on the Trump family. Trump Jr’s rapid emailed response to the Russian offer of dirt on Clinton – “If it’s what you say I love it” – suggests at least an appetite for collusion, like his father’s own call a month later, in July 2016, for Russia to find thousands of Clinton’s “missing” emails.

Grand jury subpoenas could oblige the president’s son and other participants at the meeting, including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, to testify under oath about what really happened in Trump Tower.

CNN reported on Friday that investigators had found intercepts of Russian operatives referring to conversations with Manafort about coordinating the release of information damaging to Clinton possibly hacked from the Democratic National Committee.

It is evident, however, that the scrutiny of Manafort, the now infamous Trump Tower meeting and the obstruction of justice issue are just fragments of a far bigger inquiry.

“The Mueller dream-team now has the top 14 financial crimes prosecutors in America,” said Malcolm Nance, a former US intelligence officer and the author of a book on Moscow’s role in the 2016 US election, The Plot to Hack America. Nance predicted that the Mueller investigation would look into every corner of Trump and Kushner’s past business dealings.

“The wheels of justice grind finely and slow but this is a wood chipper, and all these various items and going to get fed into it – Flynn, [Jared] Kushner, Trump, Manafort and anyone who has been assigned to the White House over this period,” Nance said. “Their entire lives are going to be subjected to scrutiny. No one is getting out unscathed. That’s why Trump is so terrified.”

In a New York Times interview last month, Trump appeared to suggest that a probe of his financial dealings beyond direct links with Russia would represent a “violation”, a possible red line which Mueller should not cross.

Firing Mueller would come at a high price, triggering uproar in Washington, alienating some Republicans in Congress. Two bipartisan bills were drafted this week aimed at blocking Trump from doing just that.

Trump has also been reported to be exploring the possibility of issuing pardons to family members and other associates found to have broken the law, including even pardoning himself, a stretch of executive prerogative into uncharted territory.

For now, his strategy is to seek to drain the legitimacy of the special counsel and the FBI, ridiculing the investigation as a witch hunt. His supporters are counter-investigating the Mueller team, looking for weaknesses and points of leverage and portraying the investigators as operatives of an amorphous “deep state”.

That strategy looks ahead to an endgame in which the Mueller investigation comes into its conclusion, next year or possibly even later than that. The grand juries could issue indictments of Trump associates along the way, but when it comes to the president himself, Mueller’s judgment will most likely come in the form of a report to Congress.

It will then be up to the House of Representatives whether to proceed with impeachment and then the Senate to decide his guilt. Those will be political judgments. Until now, only a few Republicans have broken ranks openly against Trump.

Any Republicans voting for impeachment would have to watch their back. The unfolding investigation could topple a president, or could just as easily leave the country even more grievously divided and wounded than it is now...

You can read the story in full here

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