Exclusive: Mueller Has Dozens of Inquiries for Trump in Broad Quest on Russia Ties and Obstruction

By artappraiser on Mon, 04/30/2018 - 9:32pm |

Alt. title: Mueller Has List of Questions for Trump; Majority Relate to if Trump Obstructed Inquiry on Russia

By Michael S. Schmidt @ NYTimes.com, 44 minutes ago

Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s election interference, has at least four dozen questions he wants to ask President Trump.
The Times obtained the list, which provides the most detailed look yet inside an investigation that has been shrouded in secrecy.

Read the Questions: What He Wants to Ask and What It Means

URL:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/us/politics/robert-mueller-questions-trump.html

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meanwhile over at WaPo:

Trump-allied House conservatives draft articles of impeachment against Rosenstein as ‘last resort’

The lawmakers are targeting the deputy attorney general, who oversees the special counsel investigation, setting up a possible GOP showdown over the federal probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

By Robert Costa, Sari Horwitz and Matt Zapotosky, April 30 @ 9:30 pm

Document: Draft of articles of impeachment

Conservative House allies of President Trump have drafted articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees the ongoing special counsel probe, setting up a possible GOP showdown over the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The document, which was obtained by The Washington Post, underscores the growing chasm between congressional Republican leaders, who have maintained for months that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III should be allowed to proceed, and rank-and-file GOP lawmakers who have repeatedly battled the Justice Department during the past year.

The draft articles, which one of its authors called a “last resort,” would be unlikely to garner significant support in Congress. But the document could serve as a provocative political weapon for conservatives in their standoff with Mueller and the Justice Department.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus — led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a Trump confidant — finalized the draft in recent days. It came after weeks of disputes with Rosenstein over the Justice Department’s response to congressional requests for documents about the decisions and behavior of federal law enforcement officials working on the Russia investigation and other federal probes, including the investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s email server [....]

by artappraiser on Mon, 04/30/2018 - 9:48pm

and earlier this evening @ The Hill:

Impeachment looms large in White House midterm plans

By Alexander Bolton & Melanie Zanona, 04/30/18 06:53 PM EDT

President Trump wants to step up efforts to protect Republican control of the House in hopes of avoiding an impeachment debate and congressional investigations if Democrats seize the chamber, according to GOP sources.

“It is super important to the White House and really the whole White House is very focused on it,” said a source familiar with strategy talks about protecting the House majority.

“The president is expected to dial up efforts in this regard during and after the August recess,” the source added [....]

And here is their summary of the NYTimes story:

List reveals questions Mueller wants to ask Trump: report

By Brett Samuels - 04/30/18 updated 09:50 PM EDT

and their coverage of the House draft of a Rosenstein impeachment, they also have gotten a copy:

Conservative House lawmakers draft articles of impeachment against Rosenstein

By Olivia Beavers - 04/30/18 09:01 PM EDT

A group of conservative House lawmakers have begun drafting a resolution that calls for the impeachment of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the top Department of Justice (DOJ) official overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The impeachment document makes a series of charges against Rosenstein, the latest sign of escalating efforts among conservatives to oust the DOJ’s No. 2 official, according to a copy of the draft obtained by The Hill.

There has been no indication, however, that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and other House GOP leaders will act on the measure, having largely remained silent amid calls for his removal by hard-line conservatives.

Conservative members led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and close ally of President Trump, drafted the eight articles of impeachment against Rosenstein.

The articles include allegations that Rosenstein violated federal law by refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena [....]

by artappraiser on Mon, 04/30/2018 - 10:02pm

Reading the actual questions gives a better insight into where Mueller's going - and what he's leaving for (perhaps) another day. Very interesting.

by barefooted on Mon, 04/30/2018 - 10:05pm

popular question:

Hmmm

“‘What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?’ No such outreach has been revealed publicly.” https://t.co/BnmvimXnoz
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) May 1, 2018

https://t.co/OaDKf8fpJw pic.twitter.com/E0FtIxUwEL
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 1, 2018

and Seth Ambramson goes through the questions in quite a few tweets on his Twitter feed and concludes:

TWO POSSIBILITIES:

(1) Trump gives an interview to Mueller and *definitely* gets impeached in 2019.

(2) Trump refuses to give an interview to Mueller and *likely* gets impeached in 2019.

I don't see a third possibility—at least with respect to Trump sitting down with Mueller.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) May 1, 2018

by artappraiser on Mon, 04/30/2018 - 10:31pm

Ambramson has added this tweet 28 mins. ago on what indeed seems the most popular question, the Guardian quoting Benjamin Wittes on it:

This Guardian quote underscores that some folks whose names we regularly encounter in media are still behind the story on Russia. Manafort offered Deripaska private briefings; lied on TV about the RNC platform change; had secret meetings with "ex"-Russia intel officer Kilimnik... pic.twitter.com/pHshRS7Wcg
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) May 1, 2018

by artappraiser on Mon, 04/30/2018 - 11:46pm

I see some time stamps already reminding it's May Day!

I googled.At the top of results,

teh wikipedia sez

May Day is a public holiday usually celebrated on May 1. It is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and a traditional spring holiday in many cultures. Dances, singing, and cake are usually part of the festivities. In the late 19th century, May Day was chosen as the date for International Workers' Day by the Socialists ...

and teh google dictionary sez

exclamation

1.

an international radio distress signal used by ships and aircraft.

noun

1.

a distress signal using the word “Mayday”.

"we sent out a Mayday"

by artappraiser on Mon, 04/30/2018 - 11:07pm

P.S. FWIW I noticed that many of the main White House reporters this evening are also exchanging tweets about the story that NBC News did earlier on Trump and Kelly discord. and also another story how Trump is thinking of appointing Kelly as VA head to get him out of the White House. Kelly then had his deputy speak to the Washington Examiner to say the NBC story and all the scuttlebutt is a lie. The reporters all think this is like: proof it's not a lie. Judging from past behavior. And then they are going on to exchanging lots of other proof about Kelly actually saying stuff that he is now saying is a made up lie. It's too much trouble to link to all the stuff I saw on this. Suffice it to say, White House reporters think something's up on Kelly.

by artappraiser on Mon, 04/30/2018 - 11:18pm

Mueller warned of a possible presidential subpoena in meeting with Trump lawyers

The tense March encounter kicked off weeks of turmoil among the president’s lawyers and led to the development of a list of questions Trump’s team expects he would be asked.

By Carol D. Leonnig and Robert Costa @ WashingtonPost.com, 57 minutes ago

by artappraiser on Tue, 05/01/2018 - 9:04pm

That could explain the "by any means necessary" approach taken by the Trump team since that time.

by moat on Tue, 05/01/2018 - 9:19pm

I would think so! Pretty tough stuff, no beating around the bush. And let's not forget the entrance of Giuliani on the scene after that. From the article:

Trump’s remade legal team is now led by former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who told The Washington Post on Tuesday that he views Mueller as the utmost professional, but is still reviewing documents and considering conditions he might set before deciding whether to recommend that Trump agree to an interview. “Hopefully we’re getting near the end. We all on both sides have some important decisions to make,” Giuliani said. “I still have a totally open mind on what the right strategy is, which we’ll develop in the next few weeks.”

Edit to add another quote from the article:

For his part, Trump fumed when he saw the breadth of the questions that emerged out of the talks with Mueller’s team, according to two White House officials.

The president and several advisers now plan to point to the list as evidence that Mueller has strayed beyond his mandate and is overreaching, they said.

“He wants to hammer that,” according to a person who spoke to Trump on Monday.

“Mueller is in Kenny Starr territory now,” said another Trump adviser,

by artappraiser on Tue, 05/01/2018 - 9:55pm

Yeah, only been over a year of Mueller asking permission yo discuss. At some point people stop asking nice.

by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 12:24am

Mueller asks for 2 more months before Flynn sentencing @CNNPolitics https://t.co/t6WX9JR2nl
— David P Gelles (@gelles) May 1, 2018

by artappraiser on Tue, 05/01/2018 - 9:16pm

The odds experts talk game:

Should Trump Answer Mueller’s Questions? A FiveThirtyEight Chat, May 2

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): For your consideration today: Should President Trump agree to be interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller?

Obviously, we’re not lawyers or legal analysts, so we mostly want to focus on the politics of that question [....]

by artappraiser on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 12:39pm

June 9 Trump declared he was 100% willing to answer Mueller's questions. 11 months later? still stalling & running scared. Art of the Squeal.

by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 12:50pm

I just ran across John R. Schindler on the Veselnitskaya revelation @ The Observer April 30 which happens to give an example of how Trump might answer these kind of questions. From Trump's Michigan rally speech he points out some quotes that I haven't seen elsewhere (probably because the news was coming so fast and furious after the speech.) One thing it makes clear is that Trump is thinking about how he would answer such questions,convincing himself of a narrative, trying out fitting together pieces of a narrative:

[....] The White House seems dumbstruck by this public revelation, which blows apart its cover story about the Trump Tower meeting. On Saturday evening, at a Michigan rally, the president tried to slough off Veselnitskaya’s revelation by stating, “In fact, have you heard about the lawyer? For a year—a woman lawyer—she was like, ‘Oh, I know nothing.’ Now all of a sudden, she supposedly is involved with the [Russian] government.”

Interestingly, the president conceded that obviously Veselnitskaya wouldn’t drop a bombshell like this without Kremlin approval. He explained his take on Putin’s motivation, “You know, this Trump is killing us. Why don’t you say that you’re involved with government so that we can go and make their life in the United States even more chaotic.” This seems highly unlikely. While Trump regularly pronounces that “nobody’s been tougher on Russia than Donald Trump,” this would be news to Ronald Reagan or John F. Kennedy—or even Jimmy Carter [....]

from Forget Pee-Pee Tapes: the Kremlin Just Dropped a Bigger Bomb on the White House

by artappraiser on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 2:48pm

Yup, he's trying out narrative points:

It’s fake unless he feels it helps him in which case it’s real. https://t.co/u3MmgArenc
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 2, 2018

by artappraiser on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 9:31pm

Ty Cobb: you're fired! Big shot Emmet Flood who helped Bill Clinton: hired:

Trump has a new, aggressive approach to Mueller's probe, and it doesn't include Ty Cobb

By Chris Cizzilla @ CNN, 4:38 pm

On Wednesday at 12:16 p.m. ET, ABC News tweeted out this quote from Ty Cobb, one of the lead lawyers on President Donald Trump's legal team, about the possibility of the president sitting down for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller: "It's certainly not off the table and people are working hard to make decisions and work towards an interview."

Less than 45 minutes later, Cobb was gone -- "retiring" from the president's legal team.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said that "for several weeks Ty Cobb has been discussing his retirement and last week he let Chief of Staff Kelly know he would retire at the end of this month."

Cobb himself told CNN's Jim Acosta that he was leaving because his work was done. "I've done what I came to do in terms of managing the White House response to the special counsel requests," said Cobb [....]

The White House calls Ty Cobb’s exit a ‘retirement,’ but it sounds as though he was pushed

by Collum Borchers @ WaPo, 5:00 pm

Clinton Impeachment Lawyer Emmet Flood to Join Trump Team

By MATT APUZZO and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT 4:38 PM ET @ NYTimes.com

Ty Cobb, who had at one time persuaded Mr. Trump not to attack the special counsel publicly, will be replaced by the more adversarial Emmet Flood, who represented Bill Clinton in his impeachment.

by artappraiser on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 6:46pm

on CNN TV they just had Carl Bernstein doing his usual ala this is worse than Nixon, this thing is going to blow any minute but my cavaet on that is that he's been saying that for months and months. With Carl, I have the cry wolf thing, also he likes to do the hyperbole to counter what he feels Trump is doing to the country. Basically acting as an advocate, so I don't trust his analysis.

by artappraiser on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 6:44pm

It was Opposite Day https://t.co/B9dmSIko3g
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) May 2, 2018

by artappraiser on Wed, 05/02/2018 - 8:32pm

Exclusive: Mueller Has Dozens of Inquiries for Trump in Broad Quest on Russia Ties and Obstruction

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