BOOM BOOM! FLYNN WILL PLEAD GUILTY — Obstruction scandal times 6 plus Sessions
BREAKING, 9:15amEST: MSNBC reports former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn will enter a guilty plea to lying about his discussions of Russian sanctions with Ambassador Kislyak.
CNN reports:
Special counsel Robert Mueller has charged former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn with “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI regarding conversations with Russia’s ambassador.
Flynn is the first Trump administration official and the fourth connected to the campaign to be charged as part of Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Russian government and members of Trump’s team, as well as potential obstruction of justice and financial crimes. …
The charge against Flynn is the first in Mueller’s probe that has reached someone in the Trump White House and is the latest sign that the special counsel investigation is intensifying.
Two big Russiagate stories detonated late yesterday.
The New York Times had the biggie:
President Trump over the summer repeatedly urged senior Senate Republicans, including the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to end the panel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, according to a half dozen lawmakers and aides. Mr. Trump’s requests were a highly unusual intervention from a president into a legislative inquiry involving his family and close aides.
You need to read it all. Trump pulled a “Comey meeting” on six senators.
- Sen. Richard Burr, Intelligence Committee Chairman
- Sen. Mitch McConnell, Majority Leader
- Sen. Roy Blunt
- “a Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss his contact with the president”
- Sen. Bob Corker
- Sen. Thom Tillis
If President Obama had done this, Republicans would have been screaming for impeachment, and they would have been fully justified. With their agenda in serious play, however, corruption is just jim-dandy with them — they will even equivocate:
Mr. Burr said: “In his world it hampers his ability to project the strength he needs to convey on foreign policy.”
And in the realty-based world, it hampers our ability to trust anyone with an “R” after their name. That’s the way they roll.
Meanwhile, Sessions continued his “I don’t recall” tour of Capitol Hill:
Representative Adam Schiff, the committee’s top Democrat, told reporters he was troubled by Sessions’ refusal to answer what he believes are essential questions.
“I asked the attorney general whether he was ever instructed by the president to take any action that he believed would hinder the Russia investigation and he declined to answer the question,” Schiff told reporters after the hearing.
“There is no privileged basis to decline to answer a question like that. If the president did not instruct him to take an action that would hinder the investigation, he should say so. If the president did instruct him to hinder the investigation in any way, in my view that would be a potential criminal act,” Schiff said.
Representative Mike Quigley, another Democratic committee member, said on MSNBC that Sessions “is one of the most forgetful persons who works out of Washington, D.C., or he’s being less than candid with the American public.”
Sessions declined to comment to reporters as he left the secure hearing room.
And yes, there were other Russiagate developments yesterday of which you should be aware:
- “Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s questioning of Jared Kushner earlier this month suggests that he has incriminating evidence implicating Kushner in the ongoing probe into Russian collusion in the 2016 election…”
- Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab has implicated Turkish autocrat Erdogan in an Iran money laundering scheme.
- In a move that suggests that he may at last be cooperating with Mueller, former Trump campaign aide Paul Manafort has hammered out an $11.65 million bail deal, according to one of his lawyers.
- Yes, it’s off-topic, but there is a hearing coming up next week that could put Donald Trump on trial for sexual misconduct.
Keep those seat belts on. We’re hearing chatter that another major story is poised to break late today.
