Frank Rich: Mueller's Steady Stream of Russia Revelations Is Driving Trump Crazy

[babylonsister]

the national circus 3:59 P.M.
Mueller’s Steady Stream of Russia Revelations Is Driving Trump Crazy
By Frank Rich
@frankrichny
Mueller is under his skin.

Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today, Trump’s panic over Mueller, Mike Espy’s loss in Mississippi, and the deal Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta negotiated for multimillionaire and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.


The flurry of Mueller-related headlines this week have led some observers to speculate that the investigation’s “endgame may be in sight,” but news of Paul Manafort’s continued communications with the White House, Jerome Corsi’s leak of a Mueller draft document, and changes to Roger Stone’s story have muddied the waters. If Mueller is close to issuing a report, how will he cut through the noise?

The whole point of the incessant lying by Donald Trump and Manafort — and the apparent lying of Stone and Corsi as well — is exactly that: to muddy as many waters as possible so any Mueller report will be drowned out by what Kellyanne Conway once labeled “alternative facts.” Right now we only know bits and pieces of Mueller’s findings. (Nor do we know whether he is close to issuing a report or not.) But the thing about stories built on actual facts, as Mueller’s will be, is that they tend to be powerful and command attention because they add up. People like solid crime stories. And so even now, even amid all the current racket, at least one such story is emerging loud and clear: the bridge that connects the Trump campaign to the trove of Democratic emails stolen by the Russians and publicized by WikiLeaks to sabotage the Clinton campaign. Two of the biggest sources for this story are Stone and Corsi themselves. The more they try to portray their WikiLeaks ties as innocent — Corsi even gave a blabby interview to the less-than-friendly outlet of MSNBC on Wednesday — the more they poke holes in their own flimsy cover stories and incriminate the president. Not for nothing did Trump promote WikiLeaks’ email cache at least 164 times in the last month of the 2016 campaign, in the calculation of the journalist Judd Legum. Everything adds up.

It also adds up that Trump remains in the panic that has consumed him since he returned from his calamitous trip to rainy Paris nearly three weeks ago. He just keeps tweeting maniacally about his innocence and Mueller’s “witch hunt” even as heads to the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, Mueller’s tale of his collusion with Russia gains traction by the moment. A Washington Post scoop overnight detailing profuse late-night phone calls between Stone and Trump at crucial junctures in 2016 suggests that it was Trump himself, not merely “the Trump campaign,” who had direct knowledge of Russia’s conspiracy to tip the election in his favor. Today has brought Michael Cohen’s surprise guilty plea in a Manhattan court, where he conceded he was lying to Congress when he claimed that Trump had stopped pursuing business deals in Russia in early 2016. Given that Trump has vehemently denied such dealings, Cohen’s revelation is another big chapter of the story. Who knows what additional plot twists will arrive tomorrow when Mueller’s prosecutors face off against Manafort’s lawyers in a federal courtroom — as ordered by a judge this week after Manafort broke his plea deal.

Mueller likely has many other stories to tell. As they become clearer, they are making Trump so nuts that he has given new meaning to the concept of protesting one’s innocence too much. First among them, no doubt, is the Trump Tower meeting with Jared, Donald Jr., Manafort, and Russians who apparently had nothing to do with the WikiLeaks story line. For those who are wondering why Trump doesn’t just go ahead and pardon Manafort and the rest, or have his new thug Attorney General Matthew Whitaker shut down Mueller, I suggest the answer is simple: Someone has gotten it through Trump’s head that such blatant moves will not prevent Mueller’s stories from getting out, not successfully protect all the president’s guilty men (and possibly women) from criminal exposure, and not necessarily be constitutional if the aim is to exchange pardons for silence. What Trump would succeed in doing instead is adding another chapter or two to still another Mueller true-crime tale, the one about obstruction of justice.

more...

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/mueller-revelations-drive-trump-crazy.html?utm_medium=s1&utm_source=fb&utm_campaign=nym&fbclid=IwAR1ijKw9iyBTNCHTedQCeYM2CdRUUVIYQRTEAHdb90YPjCf6aVuo-T6Wzfs

[saidsimplesimon]

1. Thank you Frank Rich and babylon

Most, if not all, prominent Republicans are not in the same league as a Vietnam Marine and accomplished legal scholar. The Honorable Mr. Mueller will serve them their just desserts.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. Nice writeup. I'd think too, that if rump tried to shut down the investigation the outcry will ...

be overwhelming against rump and will make rump definitely seem guilty and is now guilty of additional crimes of covering up so blatantly. I would think that ongoing criminal investigations would still go on in the FBI and elsewhere, to find the truth. Also, I think it's reached a point where more and more repugs are going against rump increasingly (Mike Lee of Utah coordinating w/ democratic counterpart and Bernie S.).

I think that the iron is finally getting hot.

[NCjack]

3. Keep piling the stories on -- a la Donald. nt

[Hermit-The-Prog]

4. one infuriating part

All these revelations point to a fact many of us have proclaimed since the election of infamy -- Trump was sworn in as president illegitimately; he has never been president. One infuriating part of this whole debacle is that the United States citizens cannot be made whole from this crime. We cannot take back the two years of destruction and replace it with the actions of our legitimate President, Hillary Clinton.

[mr_lebowski]

5. I absolutely think the TT meeting had to do w/the Wikileaks storyline ...

Guccifer's DCLeaks was stood up and began the first releases of stolen docs within a couple weeks of the TT meeting.

I believe the Russians heard from Manafort and Junior what they wanted to hear in that meeting (a promise to roll back sanctions if elected), and then they signaled to Guccifer to begin releasing 'the dirt' they told the Trumps they had ... Wikileaks began doing the same another week or two later.

That dirt that was NEVER going to just be 'handed over', in some physical form, the Russians aren't THAT stupid. Donald Jr. is stupid enough to as have thought so, but Natalia? Huh-uh. 'The Dirt' being released by DC and Wikileaks is EXACTLY what she was peddling that day.