{"id":402,"date":"2018-09-14T19:59:15","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T19:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=402"},"modified":"2018-09-16T17:06:57","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T17:06:57","slug":"cooperation-the-manafortress-has-fallen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=402","title":{"rendered":"Cooperation – The Manafortress has Fallen"},"content":{"rendered":"

September 14th<\/sup>, 2018<\/i><\/p>\n

Paul Manafort has flipped. He\u2019s going to give Bob Mueller everything he knows; about that Trump Tower meeting, about any and all other contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and the exact degree each played in subverting the Clinton campaign and forced propagandization of the public discourse.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a devastating blow for Trump, le<\/i> coup de gr<\/i>\u00e2<\/i><\/span>ce,<\/i> and it\u2019s now becoming very unlikely that he will still be president six months from now.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s bad enough for a president when his campaign manager pleads guilty to two counts of conspiracy against the United States. (Trumperdoos, \u201cConspiracy\u201d is the legal term for \u201ccollusion\u201d).<\/p>\n

Trump, when Manafort\u2019s going to spill the beans, rat you out, sing like a canary, give it up to the G-men, telling them every thing you did as a part of that, you have a pretty sizable problem.<\/p>\n

Mueller has a death grip on Manafort\u2019s throat. In addition to the two guilty pleas and promise of cooperation, Manafort has agreed to give over nearly all of his personal wealth, some $145 million including four mansions, to asset forfeiture. It leaves just enough so his wife and kids won\u2019t starve while he rots in jail. Manafort is clearly a man with no options and no bargaining chips, other than to give over Trump and many others close to Trump. This way, his family isn\u2019t destitute, and he might actually live long enough to get out of prison, something not in the cards last week.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Cohen decided to plead out and turn evidence, Trump got asked about \u2018flippers.\u2019 His answer was characteristically weird, in that he said he knew a lot of flippers and they were just part of his regular environment.<\/p>\n

You have to wonder what other crime lords would have made of that statement. James Cagney\u2019s characters would have prefaced any remarks made to suspected flippers with \u201cYouse doity rats\u201d and ended up with escapades involving cement overboots and the East River. Real mobsters would have arranged for brake failures, or skiing accidents (\u201cBoth legs\u201d). For a man who supposedly demands absolute personal loyalty from all the people he\u2019ll eventually betray, it was an oddly tepid response.<\/p>\n

If America had to elect a mafia don president, at least they picked one that was profoundly incompetent and abjectly stupid. Trump can\u2019t even call his little friend and arrange for Manafort to have an adventure involving ricin, polonium or novichok. It\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n

Manafort has already given everything he has to convince Mueller to let him off with just a decade or two and $145 million. All he had to do was sign the paperwork, and all that evidence were there for Mueller to do with as he pleased.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too late for Trump to pardon his way out of it, too. A lot of the evidence will go to the State of New York Southern District, who will use it for state charges. Trump can only pardon federal offenses.<\/p>\n

A lot of that evidence stands to implicate Trump himself. Even with Trumpenstooge Kavanaugh on the court (not a foregone conclusion at this point) the Court is unlikely to rule that a president indicted for criminal conspiracy against his own country (which is now quite likely) can pardon himself. Even Dead Tony would have trouble arguing that this came under the aegis<\/i> of original intent.<\/p>\n

I suspect that it wasn\u2019t for their damp lust to get Kavanaugh on the court, thus assuring a corrupt corporate majority, the Republicans would have dumped Trump by now. Unfortunately for them, they need to maintain the few remaining tatters of presidential legitimacy Trump possesses for them to get Kavanaugh confirmed.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s costing them massively, since the American people, Republicans in particular, are beginning to realize that this isn\u2019t a witch hunt or a librul conspiracy; this is real, and Trump\u2019s position becomes less defensible by the day.<\/p>\n

A lot of Republican Senators, even those in safe states, are wondering what the real costs may be of forcibly rubber-stamping a man to the highest court in the land by a president facing indictment for criminal conspiracy against the United States. For Republicans, the question is no longer, \u201cHow badly will we lose the mid-terms?\u201d<\/p>\n

They have to ask if they can survive at all as a party, or even a movement. They\u2019ve bet all their political, ethical and moral legitimacy on this one last toss of the dice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September 14th, 2018 Paul Manafort has flipped. He\u2019s going to give Bob Mueller everything he knows; about that Trump Tower meeting, about any and all other contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and the exact degree each played in subverting the Clinton campaign and forced propagandization of the public discourse. It\u2019s a devastating … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Cooperation – The Manafortress has Fallen”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,6,60,385],"tags":[491,197,489,490,492],"class_list":["post-402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-psyche","category-justice-and-the-courts","category-politics","category-trump-impeachment","tag-cooperating-witness","tag-donald-trump","tag-paul-manafort","tag-plea-bargain","tag-robert-mueller"],"yoast_head":"\nCooperation - The Manafortress has Fallen · Zepp's Commentaries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=402\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cooperation - The Manafortress has Fallen · Zepp's Commentaries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"September 14th, 2018 Paul Manafort has flipped. He\u2019s going to give Bob Mueller everything he knows; about that Trump Tower meeting, about any and all other contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and the exact degree each played in subverting the Clinton campaign and forced propagandization of the public discourse. 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