It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over

Reports of the demise of the Mueller Russia Treason Plot Investigation are somewhat exaggerated.

The case against Trump’s corruption will continue to build
By Greg Sargent, Washington Post
March 27, 2019

One glaring analytical error we’re seeing in the coverage of Robert S. Mueller III’s findings is the idea that we’re suddenly in a “post-Mueller” political world. The suggestion is that there’s been a sudden, clean break from a rapidly-receding past in which the special counsel’s activity threatened President Trump, to a new future in which it does not.

The reality is quite different. In fact, while Mueller’s no-conspiracy finding does close one chapter of this affair, the Mueller probe and its spinoffs added substantial new material to the building case against Trump’s corruption, and it has spawned other investigations that will keep that process moving forward.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is hoping to seize this moment to redouble the focus on Trump’s corruption. As a top-tier Democratic presidential candidate, Warren is well positioned to try to ensure that this is central to the case against Trump’s reelection in 2020.

On Wednesday, Warren will introduce in the Senate a sweeping measure called the Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act, which requires the president, vice president, and their close family members to divest in all financial interests that create conflicts of interest, and place them in a blind trust.

The bill would also bar presidential appointees from participating in matters involving the president’s financial interests, and would require the president and major party presidential nominees to release three years of tax returns.

“Corruption has always been the central stain of this presidency,” Warren said in a statement emailed to me. “This bill would force President Trump to fully divest from the same Trump properties and assets that special interests have spent two-plus years patronizing to try and curry favor with this administration — all while lining the President’s pockets.”
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Trump’s corruption provides a natural focal point for Democrats going forward after the conclusion of the Mueller investigation. That’s because this conclusion does not mean “total exoneration” for Trump in the slightest.

Due all these investigations and their consequences, Trump has been implicated in a criminal hush-money scheme to pay off women alleging affairs, and we’ve learned he tried to negotiate an enormous real estate deal with the Kremlin’s help while Republican voters were picking their 2016 nominee — and lied to America about both.

We have also learned from Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen that Trump may have gamed his assets for insurance and tax fraud purposes — and that clues to these potential crimes may lie in his tax returns. Cohen also says those returns might shed light on his family’s extensive history of tax fraud.

All that has led to a plethora of other investigations into multiple Trump organizations, which largely grew out of the Mueller investigation. Some of what we learned has created new avenues of inquiry for House Democrats, who are looking into everything from Trump’s role in the hush-money scheme, to whether Trump’s lawyers coached Cohen to lie to Congress about his Moscow project, to his financial entanglements with Russia. What we’ve learned should also spur Democrats to press for Trump’s tax returns.

For all the triumphalism among Trumpists right now, it’s at least possible that if more is released on what Mueller actually found — or if Democrats can pry that loose by subpoena — it could add fodder for those inquiries.

Given that the White House is resisting all Democratic subpoena requests — something that we should remember in tandem with likely Trump efforts to keep Mueller’s findings buried — it’s hard to say where all this will end up. But one thing that’s clear is that the focus on Trump’s corruption will continue to intensify and broaden.

‘Undoubtedly there is collusion’: Trump antagonist Adam Schiff doubles down after Mueller finds no conspiracy
By Karoun Demirjian, Washington Post
March 26, 2019

“Undoubtedly there is collusion,” Schiff said in an interview this week, after Attorney General William P. Barr submitted a four-page letter to Congress summarizing key aspects of Mueller’s report. “We will continue to investigate the counterintelligence issues. That is, is the president or people around him compromised in any way by a hostile foreign power? . . . It doesn’t appear that was any part of Mueller’s report.”
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This week, the Trump campaign singled out Schiff, along with Intelligence Committee member Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), on a list of people it urged media outlets to avoid booking for interviews after Barr announced Mueller’s findings, according to reports. The list includes House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and former CIA director John Brennan, both of whom, like Schiff, have infuriated the president with their public scrutiny and criticism.

Though Barr’s summary has cast doubt on the premise of the Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe, at least among Republicans, Democrats maintain that Schiff is not wrong in saying there was evidence of collusion even if Mueller determined that the matter did not rise to a level that warranted prosecution.

“It doesn’t mean there wasn’t an enormous amount of smoke there,” said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a member of the Intelligence Committee. “This was a fine legal distinction Mr. Mueller had to make.”

Still, Schiff has taken steps to put the panel’s investigation on hold, pending the release of Mueller’s findings. On Monday, he announced that the committee had indefinitely postponed a planned hearing with Felix Sater, a former business associate of the president’s who was involved with the pursuit to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Schiff said the pause is temporary, adding that the intelligence panel might still uncover “deeply compromising” evidence in its counterintelligence investigation that falls outside the scope of Mueller’s criminal probe. He pledged that his panel, in partnership with the House Financial Services Committee, would continue to explore allegations of money laundering involving Trump’s properties and loans his business sought through Deutsche Bank.

Mueller grand jury ‘continuing robustly,’ prosecutor says
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN, Politico
03/27/2019

The special counsel’s grand jury investigating Russian collusion into the 2016 presidential election is “continuing robustly” despite the end of Robert Mueller’s probe, a federal prosecutor said in court Wednesday.

David Goodhand, an assistant U.S. attorney, acknowledged the grand jury’s active status during a hearing in federal district court over a push to unveil the identity of a foreign-owned company that has been held in contempt for defying a Mueller subpoena.

The mystery company’s case was denied a hearing earlier this week before the Supreme Court, and in the meantime the open government group Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press has sought access to all materials in the clandestine litigation, including the company’s identity.

During a brief open hearing Wednesday, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court, Beryl Howell, pressed Goodhand to say if the grand jury Mueller had been using in the case remained active.

“It is continuing,” the prosecutor replied. “It’s continuing robustly.”

The fact the grand jury is continuing its work adds a new layer of uncertainty to the Mueller probe, which Attorney General William Barr announced on Friday was finished.

Barr also released a four-page summary explaining the special counsel had not found a conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia to sway the election. But Barr also noted that Mueller had not reached a conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice.
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Mueller’s office in recent days has been handing off a series of its cases to federal prosecutors across the government as it closes up shop, including the mystery subpoena fight that’s been ongoing since last year.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., where Goodhand works is now leading the subpoena fight, as well as Mueller’s upcoming trial in November against longtime Trump associate Roger Stone.

Mueller spokesman Peter Carr declined to comment on the federal prosecutor’s statement in court about the active grand jury.

Though every Versailles Villager is pretending that this represents some kind of “normal” end, to me it resembles the contingency plans put in place to thwart a “Saturday Night Massacre” by Unidicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio.