Hoo boy. It's beginning. Grand jury subpoenas issued in relation to Russian lawyer, Trump Jr. meeting.
This looks pretty fucking interesting, to say the least. Apparently 99.99% of Grand Juries formed proceed to indictment. It's time to invest in some Orville Redenbocher stock. I wonder if Trump will be tweeting while he's off golfing for 17 days?
I'm just gonna go ahead and assume this story was released with that in mind. The last time they had an insane news dump was 20 minutes after he was wheels up on the way to Saudi Arabia.
Can we all take a moment to share our theories and predictions ranging from logical to straight-up tinfoil hat regarding all the Russia stuff? There's a part of me that's going to remain skeptical until the very end (which I'm assuming is going to be Meuller announcing his verdict either way) and another part of me that thinks even if there was collusion it wasn't exactly intentional conniving collusion but more of the Trump-and-his-posse-just-being-too-dumb-and-entitled-to-even-realize-they-were-breaking-the-law type of collusion, and that's mostly due to my dumb little patriotic heart simply not wanting to believe that our country is weak and stupid enough to have a scheme like that pulled off exactly as it was supposed to go. But. After a year of following all the different little ministories that have come out and dismissing the ones I thought were meaningless or too far into conspiracy theory territory and following up on the ones that seemed at all based in substantive reality I...really would not be at all surprised if this all played out exactly as people are thinking it might, especially concerning people like Flynn and Manafort if not directly Trump and his family. As much as I would like the kompromat to be solely based on the pee tape - and, as I've mentioned, will live my entire life believing with all my heart that such a pee tape exists - my best guess is that the kompromat has something to do with money laundering. It's kind of an open secret in NYC that a high percentage of all Manhattan real estate is used by foreign people (particularly the Russians and Chinese) for money laundering, and Trump did make his fortune and fame in NYC real estate after all. Plus things like the story about the house in Florida. But my extra juicy conspiracy theory, that I've been considering ever since the story about the Trump hotel in Baku came out,, is that there's also money laundering connected to terrorist organizations that the Trumps were either fully aware of, or just did not do their due diligence on until it was too late., and somehow Russia is in on it. (The Trump Organization fully signed on to the Baku project in 2012, and all of the Miss Universe Russia stuff ~allegedly~ happened when he was there in 2013.) Then, my prediction is that he won't actually be impeached, but will resign just before shit really hits the fan, and he'll somehow spin it that he's resigning for some heroic patriotic reason, and his followers will completely eat it up and believe him and fall in line, and he'll go on to start Trump TV with his family just like he always wanted to do instead of actually being president. i don't know how Pence will manage to get out of all of this unscathed but he will. He just genuinely does not seem to be caught up in any of this so far.
So if you go way off the deep end there's a gaggle of folks suggesting the kompromat is that the Trump modeling agency was sex trafficking and that there are tapes of Trump himself fucking 12-13 year olds. But I'm skeptical because that's some shit people don't usually just hold on to. And if Trump did fuck children - well. Lordy. I hope there are tapes. If he's even remotely there - then I want no doubts.
If the Kompromat exists, I think the contents are, from most likely to least likely: Proof of money laundering using Trump assets Proof of improper payments to Trump/Campaign being routed through anonymous purchases of Trump properties Proof of bribes paid by Trump organization in bribe-friendly countries, some of which ended up in the hands of unsavory or anti-American interests. Video of Trump sleeping with honeypots Proof of a Trump offering quid pro quo for help in election Video of Trump sleeping with underage honeypots Video of trump peeing on honeypots Proof of Trump actively working as a Russian asset
I think when it's all said and done, Trump colluding(which isn't the actual type of crime, btw) is going to look like a speeding ticket. It's all the stuff involved in the act of colluding that are the crimes. Also, being too stupid to know what actual crimes you are committing, is no defense. All the stuff involved in witness tampering, obstructing justice, etc are general intent crimes. Meaning that all they have to do is intend to do a certain behavior and if that behavior happens to fall into a criminal statute, then they are guilty of it. They don't have to consciously think to themselves, "I'm about to obstruct justice." All Trump had to think was "Comey is getting too close...I gotta get some distance." If the stuff I'm reading about with the NY AG is true, it's gonna get bad. After all the federal stuff goes down, then we have the state crimes. That's the shit that could put him behind bars. We might see some convictions and Trump has literally vilified every single group of people except the Russians. It's just weird. But I think there is going to be shit with his modeling agency and some real estate. I think he will go to jail for a long time.
To think that none of this would be happening if he didn't run for President. and win... he could be golfing 300 days a year, tweeting shit nightly, etc., and it wouldn't mean a fucking thing.
I agree. Maybe far down the road, the state crimes in New York might have come to light. But he has been setting himself on fire this whole time. The only better than watching justice getting served will be seeing the people who still support him cry baby tears.
I would argue that if Trump was convicted of anything, no matter what it was (like, say, shooting someone on 5th Avenue), his supporters would merely say that the justice system is rigged and use it as more evidence to support their belief that Trump was right all along. He'd be deemed a martyr and, I'm afraid, violent protests and chaos would soon follow. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing.
That's why the second amendment is a good thing no matter what side of the aisle you're on. I also fear some violent backlash if Trump goes down. People have invested so much of who they are into this presidency. It's quite unhealthy. To a lot of people, he represents the cultural fear that a lot of the shit kickers used to justify their voting for him. He's the guy who didn't make you feel bad for being white. Fox News and some others used protests from BLM and those on college campuses to exaggerate a threat on white people. And some on the far left conflate their beliefs on a subject with who they are as people. Now sessions is trying to roll back affirmative action because black people have it too good? It's pure base-riling garbage. Just like the tranny shit from last week. You keep the retards happy while the ship is sinking. So people voted for him because haha librul tears! When Trump loses his presidency, I have zero doubt in my mind that he will resign peacefully. If he is impeached, and removed from office, he will say whatever the fuck to burn it all down. I honestly believe he hates this country. You think he will give a shit about inciting a riot if he's about to get arrested for money laundering and possible human trafficking?
I doubt it will end with anyone incarcerated. My prediction is they make him a deal to resign, retire and they won't prosecute him or his inner circle. Trump will throw someone under the bus (looking at you Manafort), and withdraw from public life. Being real, he's 70 fucking years old...the stress of this gig is overwhelming and his response thus far is to simply not do it. He wants this for 3 more years, while he is effectively neutered from any "wins"? Doubtful. I would also say Mueller will stick to the script. Whatever evidence he finds of truly soulless shit like human trafficking, etc. he will keep out of the public eye. The question isn't how dirty is Trump, but how dirty is Pence? I count myself as one of the folks that would greatly prefer Paul Ryan to Pence. Like it's not even close. Pence's stance on abstinence only education, his record in Indiana and his midwest Sharia law slant would basically be like the WBush years round 2, which...weren't great for most of us. Also, the closer this is to midterms, the more Republican heads are on the chopping block. Assuming the Democrats can competently assemble a strategy (which is a breathtaking assumption at this point), all they need to say is: Russia got this guy elected, he's dirty and my opponent helped him. Anyone standing close to Trump gets infected, and the Democrats are facing an uphill battle in the Senate mid-terms. Given how he's "performed", Trump is the easiest of easy targets, and the party, by extension should be weaker. Most of the Senate Republicans are safe, but it wouldn't surprise me if heads roll in NV, AZ & Ted Cruz is shown the door. I think a lot of the Tea Partiers will feel the heat, since they can't seem to get anything done. My prediction is the House will swing pretty wide, and the Senate will stay about even, with some surprises from red states out west. http://www.270towin.com/2018-house-election/ http://www.270towin.com/2018-senate-election/
The congressional testimony in this story is pretty interesting- not at all surprising, though. http://m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/uk_597ee55ce4b02a4ebb7675a6? I think that people got in way over their head and don't necessarily know how good the Russians are at their game. The end goal is to distract everyone, including their own population, while the inner circle line their pockets.
This is one reason I believe Russia really didn't have a vested interest specifically in Trump winning. Shaking America's trust in it's own institutions was it's only objective. Given access to the RNC's info, which they tried to get, they'd have released it in a similar manner as they did the DNC's. Fanciful speculation of vast money laundering* and naked election influence aside, shouldn't we more upset at the fact that this slimey Russian lawyer had a network of legal lobbying influence to acheive the goals of Russian oligarchs in our own political system? * It has been fun seeing the same hilariously extreme conspiracy speculation, as has been leveled at the Clintons for the past 2 decades, coming from the other side of the spectrum (who had been denouncing the same practice the entire time).
This contains a decent ELI5 of what a grand jury is and what it can/can't do: http://www.politico.com/magazine/st...p-russia-mueller-investigation-215458?cid=apn
This wasn't a tweet, he said it at a press event. There's video of it; dude looks like he's auditioning for the villain in the next Die Hard.
And "we" have also decided the way to combat an opioid epidemic is prosecutions? So that would be going after doctors for overprescribing? Pharmacies? My understanding of this is that generally it's people who get addicted to pain meds and then graduate to heroin. Obviously that's simplified but even if you're arresting street level dealers of heroin, the demand is still there. Am I missing something here?