Cult 45 won’t budge then, either. They’ll never budge; they’ll never admit what he is, and they’ll never do the right thing. There is no set if circumstances that will get them to turn.

...but a certain number of other Republicans will probably finally try to escape their Faustian bargain once they’re hopelessly surrounded by flames.

1/18/2019 1:57:04 AM

I, personally am ready for a long day of congressional Republicans running away from reporters, saying they haven’t seen the report or contorting themselves into pretzels in order to argue suborning perjury is actually good.

1/18/2019 6:37:19 AM

i like how before this story broke, Barr was asked if a president directing someone to lie to congress was obstruction of justice and he said yes

1/18/2019 8:55:02 AM

^ https://twitter.com/axios/status/1086122878116999171

1/18/2019 8:58:01 AM

I am looking forward to people internet legal scholars pretending "suborning" was part of their vocabulary before today.

1/18/2019 9:10:44 AM

So basically Trump was put in power by Russia, Israel, UAE, and SA? At this stage, it might as well be NK too....

1/18/2019 9:10:56 AM

^^ anyone who grew up watching law & order is familiar with the phrase "suborning perjury"

1/18/2019 9:27:44 AM

We basically knew this a few weeks ago when Cohen plead guilty. Pretty clear he didn't lie to congress/federal investigators of his own accord.

1/18/2019 9:34:16 AM

^^It has been used exactly one time before today on this website. And that was back in 2005 in relation to a thread about Bill Clinton.

1/18/2019 9:35:45 AM

i never said it's in anyone's daily vernacular, but if you watch TV you know what it means

1/18/2019 9:42:27 AM

https://edition-m.cnn.com/2019/01/18/politics/buzzfeed-trump-cohen-russia/index.html

Can we put him out of his misery now?

1/18/2019 9:54:22 AM

"Ladies and Gentleman of the Jury, I submit that my client cannot be guilty of suborning perjury based on the grounds that his accusers do not even know the meaning of the words".

1/18/2019 6:56:19 PM

what is you doing Buzzfeed

1/18/2019 8:24:54 PM

https://twitter.com/ronanfarrow/status/1086425618802241536?s=21

Ronan Farrow is saying the part of the story that he couldn’t corroborate was that there’s documentation that trump himself directly ordered the lying.

Definitely an interesting twist in all of this. The thought is agents in SDNY are the leakers, and leaking disinfo can only help trump. Cohen himself on twitter affirmed the thrust of the report that trump ordered him to do it.

The plainest reading is that the same FBI agents working with Guiliani since the election are still working with him to leak info to help trump, and Cohen is also still working for trump despite the public feuding.

Also, if the special counsel is saying that at least 1 part of buzzfeeds reporting is false, that implies to me the case against trump is weaker than the charges/pleas we already know about would indicate.

I think we all price in that Cohen is a slimy scumbag, but I had been minimizing the likelihood he hadn’t actually turned on trump, but I think the likelihood that he’s still on trump’s side just went up to me.

1/18/2019 9:14:15 PM

I think the plainest reading is Buzzfeed got greedy, overreached and ran a story without fully corroborating sources.

1/18/2019 10:47:55 PM

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/08/05/trump-tweets-a-confession-then-sekulow-admits-his-client-has-been-lying-about-his-involvement/

Empty wheel reminds us that there's at least 3 other instances that aren't disputed where trump had suborned perjury

^ yeah they screwed up, not much more needs to be said. But still curious who is shopping this info and why did Cohen so readily affirm if

1/18/2019 11:28:01 PM

Cohen corroborated because he was told to lie, Muellers statement is probably about the documentation and being mad because he doesnt like leaks

1/19/2019 6:18:55 AM

Mueller: youre looking at 20 years of time here
cohen: crap
M: how about 3 years if you give us what we want on this trump collusion to steal the election i mean build a tower
C: ok

[Edited on January 19, 2019 at 9:18 AM. Reason : s]

1/19/2019 9:11:21 AM

it’s just sad at this point. stripped down to the studs.

1/19/2019 10:47:33 AM

^^^i thought that but given everything that's gone on in the past three years, there's no way mueller risks his credibility by falsely claiming something. so i'm very intrigued by this because i don't see why buzzfeed would have run something they didn't believe was solid.

1/19/2019 10:56:36 AM

What is Mueller falsely claiming? What's the 'something' in your post?

1/19/2019 11:51:56 AM

He's not claiming anything falsely - that's the point I'm making in my post. Which is why this situation is fubar. I don't see Buzzfeed running this story without confidence it was true and I don't see Mueller falsely disputing it to buy himself time or to temper impeachment talk. I only see him disputing it because it's false.

dtownral made a point in another thread that it's likely mostly/generally true and only the specific points are being disputed (which I would normally agree with). But the two points Mueller is disputing are literally the entire point of the Buzzfeed story - that Cohen testified to Mueller he was directed to lie by Trump and that Mueller possesses Trump Organization documentation that corroborates this.

So I have no clue what's going on.

[Edited on January 19, 2019 at 12:09 PM. Reason : a]

1/19/2019 12:07:22 PM

Ah, ok, I'm following you now.

BuzzFeed ran a story they shouldn't have. It's simple, clean, no conspiracies required, Occam's Razor, etc.

1/19/2019 12:36:30 PM

This has happened numerous times, not sure why it’s so surprising now. Every newspaper is desperate for the exclusive killshot.

1/19/2019 12:59:48 PM

^^^ I'm not saying Mueller is lying, both he and Cohen are telling the truth because their statements dont conflict

1/19/2019 1:11:12 PM

Yeah it's just the details that fucked me up. This helps:. https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/01/19/peter-carr-speaks/

1/19/2019 2:25:12 PM

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/buzzfeed-reporter-after-rebuke-by-mueller-declines-to-explain-discrepancies-we-cant-get-into-like-the-details-there

1/21/2019 12:39:30 AM

Poor Roger Stone

1/25/2019 7:26:34 AM

Trump's supporters are in total freak-out mode right now.

They're apparently convinced that the FBI tipped CNN off about the arrest, as if CNN wouldn't have already had a camera crew at Roger Stone's home in anticipation, due to yesterday's Grand Jury indictment.

[Edited on January 25, 2019 at 8:36 AM. Reason : ]

1/25/2019 8:07:12 AM

I wonder if everyone in Trumps entire orbit lied consistently about Russia and the DNC/Podesta hacks because they are actually guilty?

1/25/2019 8:11:27 AM

happy collusion day!

1/25/2019 8:34:51 AM

Poor Trump, it must suck to be totally innocent when everyone around you is an indicted criminal.

1/25/2019 8:41:32 AM

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1088796131365175296?s=21

lol. I cannot wait until Sanders says Trump barely knows Junior.

1/25/2019 8:52:15 AM

1/25/2019 9:29:01 AM

I'm guessing Bannon is the "high-ranking Trump campaign official", right?

1/25/2019 9:30:56 AM

That's what I was thinking, small chance of Manafort maybe.

1/25/2019 11:40:33 AM

Perhaps it was both Steve Bannon and Paul Manafort.

https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1088809331141865472

1/25/2019 11:45:53 AM

Didn't Bannon move to Europe?

1/25/2019 11:49:23 AM

Wasn't it reported that Roger Stone had been communicating with Guccifer 2.0, which was allegedly affiliated with the GRU? I'm surprised that I haven't seen any mention of those connections.

1/25/2019 12:47:46 PM

yes, he communicated with wikileaks and guccifer

1/25/2019 12:53:34 PM

Manafort and Stone's attorneys rn,

1/25/2019 1:13:08 PM

Hahahaha

1/25/2019 1:27:14 PM

1/25/2019 1:27:19 PM

what a stupid asshole

1/25/2019 1:43:04 PM

I was just reminded that he has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back.

1/25/2019 2:43:59 PM

Roger looking swole.

Also:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Be1XjZpgLOQ/?taken-by=rogerjstonejr

1/25/2019 3:08:59 PM

1/26/2019 2:12:19 PM

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/azeenghorayshi/trump-tower-moscow-the-secret-files-cohen-sater-putin

2/5/2019 2:28:53 PM

Quote :

"Poor Trump, it must suck to be totally innocent when everyone around you is an indicted criminal."

lol

The very best people

2/5/2019 8:20:59 PM

set em up ---------------->

2/5/2019 10:45:04 PM