Russia Investigation Heating Up

[time4fun]

I sincerely hope that's not it.

I think they've just tied themselves so heavily to Donald Trump that they're left with few choices. It's about to be full midterm season, and that means that every GOP House member and several GOP Senators are about to play "Who's more conservative/Who's the better friend to Trump?" with folks who will happily tack right on them. The only voters who matter are the ones who still cling to Donald Trump. Anger those voters, and the Republican is out of a job before the actual elections begin.

Trump is likewise up against a wall. He knows his exposure here is significant, and if he thinks that he and his family are barreling towards indictments or indictment-like reports- twisting the mechanisms of the Office to thwart the investigation will be the least risky thing he could do, in his mind.

That doesn't bode well for democracy and rule of law, unfortunately.

[cwolff]

I sincerely hope that's not it.

I think they've just tied themselves so heavily to Donald Trump that they're left with few choices. It's about to be full midterm season, and that means that every GOP House member and several GOP Senators are about to play "Who's more conservative/Who's the better friend to Trump?" with folks who will happily tack right on them. The only voters who matter are the ones who still cling to Donald Trump. Anger those voters, and the Republican is out of a job before the actual elections begin.

Trump is likewise up against a wall. He knows his exposure here is significant, and if he thinks that he and his family are barreling towards indictments or indictment-like reports- twisting the mechanisms of the Office to thwart the investigation will be the least risky thing he could do, in his mind.

That doesn't bode well for democracy and rule of law, unfortunately.

This was in Newsweek today:

“Things just go from bad to worse every day,” Jacobs, a successful New York architect who designed the Holocaust memorial at Buchenwald, tells Newsweek. “There’s a real problem growing.”
So much so that Jacobs thinks there’s a “direct parallel” with Germany between the two world wars.

Perhaps more alarming than the far-right getting braver is the seep into mainstream politics of their hate, their talking points, their rhetoric. “It feels like 1929 or 1930 Berlin,” Jacobs speculated, ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day 2018 on Thursday.

FWIW: He was born in 1938 so this isn't an eye witness. The article makes you do the math and that's misleading.

[time4fun]

Well that's depressing.

Meanwhile, WaPo outlined the specific requirements for the FBI to have been issued a warrant for the raid:

In short: The Cohen search warrant almost certainly included decision-making or approval on the part of the second-highest-ranking person at the Justice Department (Rosenstein), a federal judge and the U.S. attorney or an assistant attorney general. Before it was executed, the team would have needed to check a number of boxes meant to reduce the likelihood of improperly seizing privileged material and to make the case to a judge that evidence of criminal behavior would probably be found.

Specifically the six things they had to do were:

1) Before obtaining a search warrant, investigators had to try to obtain the evidence in another way, such as by subpoena.

2) The authorization for the warrant had to come from either the U.S. attorney or an assistant attorney general. (Rosenstein is deputy attorney general, a higher position than assistant attorney general.)

3) The prosecutor had to confer with the criminal division of the department before seeking the warrant.

4) The team conducting the search had to “employ adequate precautions” to ensure that they weren’t improperly viewing privileged communications between Cohen and his clients.

5) The search team would have included a “privilege team,” including lawyers and agents not working the case, which would work to ensure that investigators conducting the search didn’t see privileged communications.

6) The investigators had to develop a review process for the seized material.

Note- every decision maker in this chain was a Trump-appointee.

[Neveragain]

[~Rocktar~]

That doesn't bode well for democracy and rule of law, unfortunately.

Yep, the unabashed attack on attorney client privilege is definitely a threat against democracy and the rule of law. So why are you and other so called champions of the law not up in arms about the FBI taking all the records and then handing them over to allow their dissemination without any unbiased determination of what is and isn't admissible evidence and what is protected under attorney client privileged? Alan Dershowitz seems to think that is a really big deal. Trump crime or not, the lack of any confidentiality of anything surely should disturb even the most rabid of Trump haters and so called bastions of law and freedom such as yourself.

Or are you just a raving hypocrite hiding behind the law only when it serves you and dismissing any and all true miscarriages of justice when they don't suit your political agenda?

[time4fun]

Yep, the unabashed attack on attorney client privilege is definitely a threat against democracy and the rule of law. So why are you and other so called champions of the law not up in arms about the FBI taking all the records and then handing them over to allow their dissemination without any unbiased determination of what is and isn't admissible evidence and what is protected under attorney client privileged? Alan Dershowitz seems to think that is a really big deal. Trump crime or not, the lack of any confidentiality of anything surely should disturb even the most rabid of Trump haters and so called bastions of law and freedom such as yourself.

Or are you just a raving hypocrite hiding behind the law only when it serves you and dismissing any and all true miscarriages of justice when they don't suit your political agenda?

ROFL

You might want to actually go read that article instead of demonstrating- yet again- that you rarely understand more than half of an issue. Then you can go take a High School Government class and learn all about subpoenas.

Eventually you can graduate to reading Clark v United States

And when you grow up, you'll understand.

[time4fun]

This more or less got buried in the Cohen news cycle, but it may help explain the raid today. The New York Times is reporting:

The special counsel is investigating a payment made to President Trump’s foundation by a Ukrainian steel magnate for a talk during the campaign, according to three people briefed on the matter, as part of a broader examination of streams of foreign money to Mr. Trump and his associates in the years leading up to the election.

Investigators subpoenaed the Trump Organization this year for an array of records about business with foreign nationals. In response, the company handed over documents about a $150,000 donation that the Ukrainian billionaire, Victor Pinchuk, made in September 2015 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation in exchange for a 20-minute appearance by Mr. Trump that month through a video link to a conference in Kiev.

Michael D. Cohen, the president’s personal lawyer whose office and hotel room were raided on Monday in an apparently unrelated case, solicited the donation. The contribution from Mr. Pinchuk, who has sought closer ties for Ukraine to the West, was the largest the foundation received in 2015 from anyone besides Mr. Trump himself.

Somewhere out there Hillary Clinton is laughing hystarically, and she doesn't know why.

[Androidpk]

Yep, the unabashed attack on attorney client privilege is definitely a threat against democracy and the rule of law. So why are you and other so called champions of the law not up in arms about the FBI taking all the records and then handing them over to allow their dissemination without any unbiased determination of what is and isn't admissible evidence and what is protected under attorney client privileged? Alan Dershowitz seems to think that is a really big deal. Trump crime or not, the lack of any confidentiality of anything surely should disturb even the most rabid of Trump haters and so called bastions of law and freedom such as yourself.

Or are you just a raving hypocrite hiding behind the law only when it serves you and dismissing any and all true miscarriages of justice when they don't suit your political agenda?

[Androidpk]

Cohen is going to prison.

[time4fun]

Cohen is going to prison.

I don't think he is. He'll sing like a canary to Mueller in exchange for his freedom, or he'll possibly be Pardoned by Trump.

He will definitely be disbarred though.