'Individual 1': Trump emerges as a central subject of Mueller probe

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/individual-1-trump-emerges-as-a-central-subject-of-mueller-probe/2018/11/29/e3968994-f3f7-11e8-80d0-f7e1948d55f4_story.html

‘Individual 1’: Trump emerges as a central subject of Mueller probe
By Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey
November 29 at 7:56 PM

In two major developments this week, President Trump has been labeled in the parlance of criminal investigations as a major subject of interest, complete with an opaque legal code name: “Individual 1.”

New evidence from two separate fronts of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation casts fresh doubts on Trump’s version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president. Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.

Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks — and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities.

On Thursday, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress when he insisted that Trump was not pursuing plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow after January 2016, casting Trump’s repeated claims that he had no business interests in Russia in a new light. A draft special counsel document revealed Tuesday also indicates that prosecutors are closely scrutinizing Trump’s interactions with a longtime adviser, Roger Stone, as Stone was allegedly seeking information about WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails.

Legal experts said it’s still unclear how much peril the president might face as a result of the new evidence Mueller has gathered about the Moscow project and WikiLeaks, but his prominence in the prosecutors’ papers puts the president in an awkward starring role.

“It’s deeply troubling. It’s not a place that anybody wants to be, or where you would want your friends or family to be,” former federal prosecutor Glen Kopp said. “And it’s certainly not a place that you would want your president to be.”

[Turbineguy]

1. We could wake up on Monday

with President Pence.

Crimea is nice in the winter.

If I were Pilot on AF1, I'd have the correct maps.

[moondust]

2. Two Towers

January 2016 was not the end of the Trump Tower Moscow plans; thanks to Cohen we now know the end was in June 2016. Coincidentally, the Trump Tower meeting was on June 9, 2016. Hmmm. Was something discussed at that meeting that precipitated the end of the Moscow Tower plans? Maybe Pooty had so much kompromat on Rumpy that he knew he had him over the barrel and didn't need to make no silly deal.

[sandensea]

3. Trump always wanted to be Number One

He finally got his wish.

[ffr]

4. Because Nixon was impeached, in part, because 'he knew' people in his admin lied to congress.

Nixon had a duty, at the very least, to point out those lies to correct the record.