It's another bombshell to end all bombshells: two of those anonymous FBI sources told the sometimes-reliable BuzzFeed News that Donald Trump had personally instructed his convicted former fixer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about the failed bribery attempt to build another Trump Tower in Moscow. This is despite the fact the president has readily admitted this attempt happened while he was actively running for the presidency and well-positioned to win the nomination if not the actual election.
Like any savvy businessman, Trump had to keep all his options open. It's the all-American way.
The reason that this is such a bombshell, according to BuzzFeed, is that for the very first time, Trump didn't bother to use a variant of wink-and-nod Mafia code to protect himself, via the plausible deniability route, but specifically instructed his minion to lie, lie and lie again, both vocally and in writing.
The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office.And here Trump was, openly colluding with the Pentagon just the other day on a new multi-billion dollar "Star Wars" initiative. Little did he know that BuzzFeed would try to ruin the latest diversionary tactic by cadging the marketing slogan of the cheaper Star Trek franchise. Forget about space being the final frontier. Cohen's utterly reliable testimony is now the official newest frontier of the bombshell to end all bombshells Russiagate franchise.
This revelation is not the first evidence to suggest the president may have attempted to obstruct the FBI and special counsel investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
But Cohen's testimony marks a significant new frontier: It is the first known example of Trump explicitly telling a subordinate to lie directly about his own dealings with Russia.
Just when you thought the crater couldn't get any deeper, it gets deeper. It's the crater that will change everything.
Still, absent the concurrent leakage of any actual alleged "cache of documents," members of the seamlessly joined political-media complex are also keeping their own options open, salivating over and promoting the story while being very careful to preface their glee with the standard avalanche of "if this is true" caveats.
"If this is true," discreetly said former Attorney General Eric Holder, "then Congress must start impeachment proceedings." Because not only will Trump have obstructed justice, he will have suborned perjury. Cohen is expected to testify to Congress on Feb. 7th about what he claims he knew and when he claims he knew it. House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, meanwhile, vows he will do everything possible to find out if the BuzzFeed story is true. Good luck suborning the First Amendment to demand from the reporters the identities of their two anonymous FBI agents.
As a sidelight, Trump's nominee for attorney general, William Barr, told congressional inquisitors this week that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's own report on Russiagate may never even be made public. This suppression would presumably be done to protect other innocent guilty parties in Trumpworld and beyond.
It will also conveniently tie Congress's hands regarding an impeachment and trial. The "resistance fighters" of the opposition party have already stated that they are loath to do anything that might ham-handedly interfere with Mueller's ever-so-delicate and selective surgical probings into whether Trump's long history of sleaze actually translates into his being a treasonous witting or unwitting Putin puppet.
The same Democrats who have been relentlessly promoting the Russiagate propaganda - our democracy is under attack by the Kremlin! - for the past two years are now professing to be alarmed that Trump wants to start a new Cold War with the Kremlin via his space weapons missile "defense" gambit. It seems like only yesterday they were professing themselves alarmed that Trump was being too chummy with Putin. Actually, they are still professing themselves to be alarmed over two mutually contradictory things. Maybe nobody will even notice, especially the talking heads of the corporate cable TV propaganda mills.
Sure sounds like collusion to me. But it's probably neither completely witting nor completely unwitting. If true, it's more like half-witting.
*Update, 1/19. If what Mueller's office says is true, then the BuzzFeed bombshell is a complete dud. This, according to the Russiagate franchise, is mighty confusing, because the special counsel spokesman didn't specify exactly what isn't true. Is it a lie that Trump ordered Cohen to lie, or did the secret FBI sources lie to BuzzFeed, and furthermore, Mueller should just go ahead and release the cache of documents BuzzFeed breathlessly reported on without seeing them or otherwise verifying their alleged existence.
As the HuffPo is reporting, this is all too confusing. It has morphed from the bombshell to end all bombshells into a frantic roller coaster ride with a three-way fight in mid-air among BuzzFeed, Trump and Mueller.
So far, as far as I know, nobody in the Russiagate franchise has yet accused Mueller of being a Putin puppet, a closet Trumpie, or an unwitting Russian stooge.
ReplyDelete"Just when you thought the crater couldn't get any deeper, it gets deeper."
Ah, the deep state pudding with its many layers. Will we ever get to the bottom where all reality is really real, maybe? Nothing new here. Pontius Pilate, a guy once on the fringes of another big bureaucracy resting on a byzantine puzzle, was quoted at an important (for some people) juncture of history muttering the rhetorical question: "What is truth?" Not the first time, not the last.
We've all heard accounts, likely substantial in the main, about how VP Dick Cheney, not Prez Bush Junior, ran the country between 2001-2009. And Dick Cheney and his circle are probably still running parts of the country through the network of old government loyalists, big money, and select CEOs.
Seymour Hersh, in recent years frozen out of mainstream US journals, has a lead article in the latest London Review of Books that informs us that, when Bush Poppy––may the Lord rest his patriotic soul––was VP for the doddering Reagan, he formed a small circle of fellow take-charge types headed up by brilliant Vice-Admiral Arthur Moreau. (Did I hear somebody say 'Who'?) This small club took care of the annoying details of foreign policy throughout Reagan's tenure. The layer of this cabal ran so deep it routinely bypassed the CIA and the State Department who had no idea what was going on beneath their layer.
Who needs a coup when ex-spooks and military operatives are already running the show behind unmarked doors? Political junkies of the world, have a look at the latest Hersh revelations and despair. You have nothing to lose but your time. Can't help you, though, when it comes to your chains. As for the NY Times, WaPo and other sources of distortion and distraction, they are nothing more than a shiny coat of dark varnish topping the known and unknown layers. That is, when they themselves do not serve as one of the denser layers. Keep digging. Start here.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n02/seymour-m-hersh/the-vice-presidents-men