The Smoking Russiagate E-mail: NYT BURIES the lede!
PLUS: Did Trump just doom his presidency with a tweet?
The New York Times did not wait for Monday to drop a major story that undermines game show host Donald Trump’s repeated claims that Michael Flynn went rogue in his interactions with Russian agents:
[E]-mails among top transition officials, provided or described to The New York Times, suggest that Mr. Flynn was far from a rogue actor. In fact, the emails, coupled with interviews and court documents filed on Friday, showed that Mr. Flynn was in close touch with other senior members of the Trump transition team both before and after he spoke with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, about American sanctions against Russia.
But here’s the big, MOAB-sized bombshell in the story:
On Dec. 29, a transition adviser to Mr. Trump, K. T. McFarland, wrote in an email to a colleague that sanctions announced hours before by the Obama administration in retaliation for Russian election meddling were aimed at discrediting Mr. Trump’s victory. The sanctions could also make it much harder for Mr. Trump to ease tensions with Russia, “which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him,” she wrote in the emails obtained by The Times.
That’s not going to make Mister Real Estate Big Shot happy! Let Twitter’s @aliasvaughan explain the nut of the article in one tweet:
6. You read that right. This means they KNEW Moscow interfered, absolutely DID NOT want them to pay the price, AND wanted the spotlight AWAY from Russia’s election meddling.
— Ale (@aliasvaughn) December 2, 2017
Nor will the consequences of this little tweet from the guy in the Oval Office with zero impulse control:
I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2017
Did you catch that? We did a spit take. So did the former director of the US Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub:
…just couldn’t resist commenting on Flynn.
Are you ADMITTING you knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when you asked Comey to back off Flynn??????????????????????????????????????????? https://t.co/HJWlUvC99F
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) December 2, 2017
Tell us, @realDonaldTrump, did you know Flynn had lied to the FBI when Counsel to the President Don McGahn snubbed Yates as she tried to warn the White House Flynn had been compromised?
Did you know Flynn had lied to the FBI when you fired Yates days after her whistleblowing?
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) December 2, 2017
Before we slipped into an alternate universe of unabashed corruption, this tweet alone might have ended a Presidential administration.
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) December 2, 2017
Shaub was not the only one who noticed.
I’m no lawyer, but a friend of mine who’s an excellent attorney says that @realDonaldTrump just admitted to obstruction of justice – and with millions of Americans as witnesses.
👇👇👇https://t.co/uYFc4ndGcQ— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) December 2, 2017
Late this afternoon, The Washington Post updated their coverage of the tweet with this tidbit:
The Post is now reporting that the tweet was authored by Trump’s personal lawyer, John Dowd, according to two people familiar with the situation. The fact that Dowd authored the tweet could limit its salience to the investigation, but the White House still hasn’t publicly corrected anything.
It could also still be a substantive nugget of evidence against one Donald J. Trump.
Meanwhile, WaPo learned that Don McGahn was interviewed by Team Mueller on Thursday, a marathon session that was scheduled to continue Friday but postponed due to the indictment of and guilty plea by Michael Flynn. Interesting timing, don’tcha think? It can’t be a coincidence. Here’s just a sample:
Investigators were particularly interested in how certain foreign officials got on [Jared] Kushner’s calendar and the discussions that Flynn and Kushner had about those encounters, according to people familiar with the questions.
…
The volume of questions about Kushner in their interviews surprised some witnesses.
“I remember specifically being asked about Jared a number of times,” said one witness.
Another witness said agents and prosecutors repeatedly asked him about Trump’s decision-making during the May weekend he decided to fire FBI Director James B. Comey. Prosecutors inquired whether Kushner had pushed the president to jettison Comey, according to two people familiar with the interview.
What that means is that Kushner is a prime person of interest, and it is not unlikely that you are going to hear his name mentioned along with the words “treason” and “espionage” in the very near future.
Even if Trump leaves or is forced from office, it’s “Mueller time” — and the party is just getting under way.
‘Nuff said.
