The Donald Trump Score Card

I've got a feeling Maria Butina wants to talk, because she loves America so much and she loves the NRA so much! She even loves John Bolton who she accompanied to Russia. The Senate now wants to talk with both Bolton and Butina about her involvement in Trump's inauguration and connections to the campaign and all the Republican sausages she's had along the way.

 

Michael Cohen Implicates Trump In Potential Criminal Violations Of Campaign Finance Law | HuffPost

 

I just wish they could have gotten him for the money laundering, collusion and sexual assaults... as well as intentionally undermining the US through policy and rhetoric.

 

Michael Cohen Implicates Trump In Potential Criminal Violations Of Campaign Finance Law
“It’s big time.”
By Paul Blumenthal
08/21/2018 07:05 pm ET

Michael Cohen Implicates Trump In Potential Criminal Violations Of Campaign Finance Law | HuffPost

excerpt:

"Since Trump is alleged to have directed these payoffs to his alleged mistresses and his campaign accepted and failed to disclose these donations, he and his campaign are implicated in breaking the law. Federal campaign finance law makes it illegal to accept a corporate contribution, receive excessive contributions and to fail to disclose those donations to the Federal Election Commission. Additionally, the Department of Justice views an intentional failure to disclose contributions to the FEC as an additional crime of making materially false statements to the federal government. This would make a total of six potential criminal violations that the president of the United States and his campaign could face.

This is the first time since President Richard Nixon was in office that a sitting president has been directly implicated in criminal campaign finance violations. Nixon solicited, received and failed to disclose illegal corporate campaign contributions to be used as hush money for Watergate burglars."

 

Michael Cohen’s guilty plea implicates Trump in federal crime. Republicans don’t care.
Sen. Lindsey Graham: “Anything short” of Russia collusion will probably “fall into partisan camps.”
By Tara Golshan
Aug 21, 2018, 7:10pm EDT

Michael Cohen’s guilty plea implicates Trump in federal crime. Republicans don’t care.

excerpt:

"In other words, Graham, who is known for being both an occasional Trump critic and one of his golf buddies, is saying this might be a scandal, but it’s not the scandal.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) tried a similar deflection, saying the news of Manafort’s guilty verdict and Cohen’s guilty plea doesn’t have any ties to the investigation into possible collusion with Russia, even though both cases stemmed from that investigation. (Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team pursued the case against Manafort and referred the Cohen investigation to the Southern District of New York.)

Graham’s reaction to the news is a frank read of congressional Republicans’ mode of operation with Trump: No matter what Trump says or does, or what develops around him, Republicans in Congress find a way to absolve him of wrongdoing."

 

Trump rally crowd chants “lock her up” as Trump ignores Manafort and Cohen
That’s 2018 in a nutshell.
By Alex Ward
August 21, 2018

Trump rally crowd chants "lock her up" as Trump ignores Manafort and Cohen

excerpt:

"About three hours before the evening rally, Trump’s longtime fixer and personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felony counts. That’s not all: A Virginia court convicted Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort of eight felony counts, including tax fraud, bank fraud, and hiding a foreign bank account.

Cohen and Manafort are likely soon headed to prison — in other words, they will actually be locked up. Cohen also implicated Trump in breaking campaign finance laws, saying he coordinated with a candidate for office (Trump) when he made a $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, who had claimed she had an affair with Trump, during the 2016 presidential campaign."

 

Five things to know about Michael Cohen's guilty plea
Steve Reilly and Brad Heath, USA TODAY
Published 9:27 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2018 | Updated 9:29 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2018

Five things to know about Michael Cohen's guilty plea

excerpt:

"Trump's company was behind one of the payments

Prosecutors also alleged that Trump’s private company, The Trump Organization, agreed to reimburse Cohen for the $130,000 he paid to Clifford through a Delaware shell company, and the $35 it had cost him to wire the money. The company also reimbursed him $50,000 for what he described as “tech services.”

The audio, released by Cohen's attorney exclusively to CNN, allegedly reveals plans between Cohen and President Trump to keep a story about Trump's affair out of the National Enquirer. USA TODAY

Then an executive at the Trump Organization doubled his payment and threw in a $60,000 bonus. Prosecutors said an unnamed executive told an employee to pay it and to falsely describe the payment as a retainer for legal services.

"Please pay from the Trust. Post to legal expenses. Put 'retainer for the months of January and February 2017' in the description."

President Trump's two adult sons and a third Trump Organization executive are in charge of a revocable trust which holds the president's business assets."

 

Trump can always rely on making more references to Al Capone and revoking more security clearances as a distraction.

 

When they finally get him, what is he going to tell his deluded supporters?

I wonder if this Alex Jones thing is part of an effort to control the damage that all of the lies are going to cause once Trump is removed. A little too late, unfortunately.

 

"Don't worry, I've pardoned myself... "

 

I just tuned my guitar and started writing a new impeachment song, using the same cords from Shakin All Over!

 

With the Manafort Convictions and Cohen Plea, President Trump Has Been Implicated in a Criminal Conspiracy
By Adam Davidson
August 21, 2018

With the Manafort Convictions and Cohen Plea, President Trump Has Been Implicated in a Criminal Conspiracy

excerpt:

"The Cohen plea and the Manafort indictment establish that this separation is entirely artificial. Trump did not isolate his private business from his public run for office. He behaved the same, with the same sorts of people, using the same techniques to hide his actions. It is impossible, after Tuesday, to imagine that a responsible congressional investigation wouldn’t thoroughly examine every deal with which Cohen was involved and wouldn’t even more aggressively seek to understand Manafort’s links to Russian figures. These two men are now convicted financial fraudsters, each found guilty of precisely eight counts of various financial crimes, though nobody, glancing at their record, would imagine this is an exhaustive list. Tuesday was not the end of an examination of their record; it is much more like a beginning. Manafort has another trial ahead, as well as a possible retrial for the ten counts for which the jury could not reach a consensus; Cohen is all but screaming that he has more to share.

What will this add up to? Well, at first, nothing. The Republican leadership has, indeed, made clear that its instinctive response to any Trump outrage is silence. And the increasingly desperate Trump apologias have already been tried: this has nothing to do with Russia, nothing to do with Trump, it’s a witch hunt, the President can’t be indicted."

 

A dark day for Trump. The darkest day for the presidency since Watergate.
ANALYSIS: Two of the president's former associates were in court Tuesday. Both guilty of multiple felonies. What happened to draining the swamp?
by Jonathan Allen
Aug.21.2018 / 9:11 PM ET

A dark day for Trump. The darkest day for the presidency since Watergate.

excerpt:

"And when they look at the Trump operation, they will see that the president surrounded himself not with "only the best," as he has long claimed, but with several convicted criminals.

In addition to Cohen and Manafort, Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, and campaign adviser George Papadopoulos have all pleaded guilty to felonies. Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., a political ally, has been indicted on charges related to insider trading."

 

In hindsight, it would have been better to have waited a day before making such a post.

 

The First 2 Congressmen To Endorse Trump Have Been Indicted
Reps. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) are now in hot water over allegations of insider trading and campaign finance violations.
By Doha Madani and Amanda Terkel
August 21, 2018

The First 2 Congressmen To Endorse Trump Have Been Indicted | HuffPost

excerpt:

"The first two members of Congress to publicly support Donald Trump for president have been indicted, and the three men who were next in line to back him have weathered significant scandals.

Reps. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) threw their support behind Trump in February 2016, back when much of the GOP establishment was staying far away from the real estate mogul and long before it was clear that Trump was going to win the nomination.

But this month the scandals plaguing the two Trump backers caught up with them. On Aug. 8, the FBI arrested Collins, who was accused of insider trading, and on Tuesday, a grand jury indicted Hunter and his wife on charges of improperly using campaign funds."

 

trump called John Dean a rat. apparently trump is the second coming of Richard Nixon.
Although Richard Nixon did a couple of good things,

 

I am NOT displeased this morning. I'm hoping when this travesty--this "comedy "of errors concludes, there will be some changes in the way presidential candidates are vetted to include a complete mental exam to determine fitness.

 

I think this will actually play out poorly, unfortunately. I believe the White House and many republican politicians along with Trump followers will fight to discredit the Michael Cohen verdict/testimony/whateveritscalled. I don't think it's going to make a difference, but it might. Unless there is irrefutable evidence that Trump did something wrong I don't see an impeachment happening, though I wish there were one.

 

It depends on what party controls the House of Representatives. There's an election coming up that could change that. But impeachment is just the first step--bringing the charge. Removal from office requires two-thirds of the Senate, and that's never been done in U.S. history. Might affect Trump's re-election prospects, though.