Step by step...inch by inch... by @BloggersRUs

Step by step...inch by inch...

by Tom Sullivan

Some unexpected snark this morning from the New York Times' Peter Baker regarding the walls slowly closing in on the Oval Office:

WASHINGTON — In a fiery speech to supporters on Friday, President Trump went after his vanquished opponent from 2016. “We had a crooked candidate,” he declared. The crowd responded with a signature chant from the campaign trail: “Lock her up!”

About three hours later and 10 miles to the north, Mr. Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, who helped put him in the White House, arrived at a federal courthouse in Washington to plead guilty to being crooked and face the prospect that the authorities will now lock him up.

The Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election so far has yielded 100 criminal counts against 19 people and three companies. The guilty plea on Friday by Rick Gates, Donald Trump's former deputy campaign chairman mentioned above, adds to the count of former Trump associates facing more than chants.

“When you put that all together, the White House should be extremely worried,” Benjamin Wittes told the Times. Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare.

In what Axios calls the "War of the Memos," minority Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) on Saturday released their memo rebutting the claims of Rep. Devin Nunes' memo. Released in January, the Nunes memo alleged FBI misfeasance or worse in their FISA-approved surveillance of former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. The memo attempted to delegitimize the Russia investigation as well as the FBI itself. Much of the hue and cry from Republicans centered on Nunes' allegations that the Steele dossier assembled as paid opposition research against Trump "formed an essential part" in the bureau obtaining warrants from the court.

The Democrats' rebuttal counters that prior to obtaining the dossier the FBI had reason to believe Carter Page was "knowingly assisting clandestine Russian intelligence activities." Indeed, Page had been on the FBI's radar since 2013 when the agency indicted several Russian spies who had targeted Page for recruitment.

The memo contains little not already known, Marcy Wheeler notes. But it adds an important piece of information about the Russian outreach via Joseph Mifsud to Trump adviser George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos has already pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his conversations with people working with the Russian. Wheeler cites this passage from the Democrats' memo:

George Papadopoulos revealed [redacted] that individuals linked to Russia, who took interest in Papadopoulos as a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, informed him in late April 2016 that Russia [two lines redacted]. Papadopoulos’s disclosure, moreover, occurred against the backdrop of Russia’s aggressive covert campaign to influence our elections, which the FBI was already monitoring. We would later learn in Papadopoulos’s plea that the information the Russians could assist by anonymously releasing were thousands of Hillary Clinton emails.

Wheeler writes:

While the description of what Papadopoulos said is redacted, the context makes it clear (as does this Adam Schiff tweet) that Papadopoulos didn’t tell Downer specifically what Russia had told him was available, only that they could release it to help Trump.

But that Mifsud told Papadopoulos that the Russians were thinking of releasing it to help Trump is news, important news. It means the discussions of setting up increasingly senior levels of meetings between Russia and the Trump campaign took place against the offer of help in the form of released kompromat.

Which, particularly given the evidence that Papadopoulos shared that information with the campaign, makes the June 9 meeting still more damning.

It is yet more evidence that the Trump campaign went into the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting knowingly hoping to obtain stolen Hillary Clinton emails the Russians were offering in support of the campaign. Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were in that meeting. Investigation special counsel Robert Mueller now has Manafort under a microscope.

Former White House Counsel John Dean pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in the Watergate investigation. He weighed in last night on the pressure Manafort faces:

Mueller is throwing everything he can against Manafort, including Gates who can nail him. Increasingly it appears Manafort is the link to Russian collusion. If Gates can testify that Manafort was acting with Trump’s blessings, it’s the end of his presidency. That’s substantial. https://t.co/t6pHNno1xL
— John Dean (@JohnWDean) February 25, 2018

Replying to Wheeler about whether current White House counsel Don McGahn may face charges in the investigation, Dean acknowledged he could be, "I was not charged rather plead, when I realized what I had done. Before Watergate no one had heard of obstruction, which is no excuse. Stupidity often topped sinester in planning. That will be true here."

Step by step, Mueller's investigation gets closer to the Oval Office. But should it yield evidence of direct involvement by the president himself, it seems unlikely any of the president's associates in the House of Representatives will do anything about it, even with many among the senior staff of the White House facing criminal charges. More than likely, the chants of his supporters to lock up their opponents will grow louder. Whether they simply will sound increasingly pathetic remains to be seen.

If it wasn't so serious and threat to this fall's elections, the investigation into Russian election interference in 2016 might resemble an old vaudeville sketch, "Slowly I Turned." Video here.

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