cgmw wrote:Clyde_Style wrote:Are We Ther Yet wrote:Water is wet. What gets done about it? That's all I want to know.
Manafort is on trial # 1 this week and it is moving very fast so expect the first conviction to be handed down this month.
Rick Gates is Manafort's partner in crime and turned stated witness. He was in the room when Donald Trump verbally approved the meeting in Trump Tower with the Russians for the hand-off of stolen data. Michael Cohen was in the room too.
That's two corroborating witnesses who can identify Trump as being a 100% willing collaborator with a foreign power to rig the election. That's treason. There is no escaping that now, it is just a matter of time.
Further, Donald Jr. lied during testimony to congress that his father knew nothing about the meeting. So Donald Jr. will go to prison also unless he turns on his father.
We've already reached the turning point in the investigation and it is turning into prosecution now, so it is happening.
Nobody wants Trump out more than I do, but you're conflating two issues.
Mafia connections are only relevant in Mueller's report if they can be tied to collusion. The he-said he-said of Gates/Cohen is something totally different.
I'd love if Mueller had the balls to publish a report detailing Trump's financial entanglements with the Russian mob, but it's hard to see how he'll be able to tie it concretely to a collusion conspiracy.
If what you're saying is that Mueller is going to uncover FINANCIAL high crimes through Trump's Russian connections, then I'm listening. But the mob doesn't seem to have much to do with whether Cohen and Gates can corroborate each other over the Trump Tower meeting.
I'm not conflating anything. You're mixing it up. I'm keeping it separate, but I can understand why you think that.
There's two Manafort trials. First one now is not related to collusion. The second one in September is.
Mueller is empowered to follow ANY criminal activity uncovered during the course of his investigation.
And since the way to understand the connections is to "follow the money" you discover many additional crimes in the process.
If Manafort is a tough nut to crack, he will either cop a plea deal after losing this case since he will die in prison or he'll just go to jail because he fears Putin's poisons and may want the rest of his family to live. So Mueller tried him on the financial crimes first to give Paul the option to spill his guts on the collusion aspects behind closed doors. That's just basic strategy on Mueller's part.
Cohen and Gates corroborating the Tower meeting is unrelated to mafia issues, but is obviously a collusion issue. In which case, that Cohen and Gates are mob-connected people themselves is not particularly relevant.
But everything is relevant when it comes to legal leverage and Mueller has plenty of it. Using financial crimes, some of which relates to mafia stuff, some not, is simply part of the process.
Mueller dismantled John Gotti and brought him to justice. He knows how to open the pinata without spilling the guts all at once.
And I've told people for 18 months that Muellers approach to this case has been a RICO case and a criminal investigation of the GOP. That means the RNC and the GOP are in a dragnet that frames the national republican party as a criminal organization. Almost a year ago I predicted the NRA would go out of business due to it being a money funnel for Putin to buy the GOP and it looks like I was spot on.
So, yes, this is very much a criminal investigation that will lead to the proof of treason.