President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

A position that nobody on this board has taken.

 

Alabama certainly does.

 

Looks like someone's not using the button after all.

 

Kinesiology is the hot major at ACLU.

 

I read "major scheme" generically, not specifically as re: any charge or charter Mueller had in this investigation. Thus, to me McCarthy was discussing the "role" (I can't think of a better word) underlings' guilty pleas play in prosecutors' strategies in general. I could have erred there, and even if I didn't err his case could be wrong. Nevertheless, his take struck me as reasonably well-informed.

 

Seemed relevant:

 

A lot of bluster until we know which allegations she's talking about.

 

Another note: everything I've read about Mueller suggests that the public narrative is exactly what he wants it to be. Anything that we know, or think that we know, or are being told that we know, is because Mueller wants it that way, for purposes of optimizing his investigation. The most interesting part of the Flynn thing was the news that he is no longer feeding information to the Trump Team about his dealings with Mueller. I assume that means Trump is now completely in the dark about the leads/angles/evidence/strategy Mueller is pursuing. There are plenty of scenarios in which that element of surprise is far more valuable than throwing the book at Flynn. Who knows, Flynn's ability to tip Trump off might have been his greatest leverage. The FBI made a science out of understanding human behavior, and Trump isn't exactly a closed book to begin with. Maybe Mueller just secured himself the ability to exert 100 percent control of the information that reaches an impulsive, narcissistic, pathological suspect who likes to tweet while watching television.

 

Quibble: Did the Mueller team decide there was no top-down collusion, or that it would be unlikely they could prove it to a prosecutable degree? Those are two very different things.

 

Well America should have thought about that when it elected a boob as President. We are an international joke and this will be another punchline.

 

I read the link you posted, but didn't have time to respond at the time. He is certainly well informed based on his experience, but I felt like he was underplaying the significance of the plea and he was dealing too much in absolutes.

My biggest problem is that none of us know what Mueller's end game is - or if he has one yet - which makes reading the tea leaves here particularly difficult. I believe things could play out the way McCarthy speculates, but I also think this could end up being far more serious than he lets on.

What I do know is that there are plenty of times where prosecutors allow participants in a conspiracy to plead to a lesser crime without pleading to the conspiracy, in exchange for cooperation.

If I've got a felony murder case where four guys participated in a robbery that turned deadly, I am sure as hell going to let the getaway driver, who never entered the store, plead to a lesser offense than murder if I can get him to roll specifically on the gunman, but also his conspirators who went in. I'd even consider something as light as possession of a firearm by a felon or accessory after the fact if I needed that testimony to make my case.

 

A real writer would never write "reverted back". I mean, really.