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[Zangi]

Innocent until proven guilty is still the ideal, even if it hasn't been the reality for a while now.

I am pretty late, but this is also my opinion.

[Strife26]

"Lying to the FBI" is the preferred charge because the feds can effectively make the crime out of whole cloth

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We are entering levels of failure never before seen. Mere days remain before the metaphorical cockroaches are driven out by the literal cockroaches.

[Trekkin]

We are entering levels of failure never before seen. Mere days remain before the metaphorical cockroaches are driven out by the literal cockroaches.

Well, "never before seen" is stretching things. The White House has had a vermin problem for at least the past 100+ years; people are making a big thing out of it now, but it's just a huge, porous old building. Of course it's going to have pest problems.

While Bannon may look like he's a suit of necrotic skin stuffed with diseased mice, this is in fact not literally the case, and it would be wrong to blame the administration for causing the problems endemic to building they're obligated to work out of.

[smjjames]

All of those were done a while ago, I don't see any that are pending, so yeah, as trekkin said, it's stretching it. It's also a really old building, of course it's gonna need maintainence.

They also have an ant problem, which isn't surprising either.

Edit: just found the workorder for Bannons big whiteboard, heh.

[sluissa]

I don't think you understand me. He said *something* to the investigators, and we don't know whether that something is an outright rat-out of Trump. The articles with the headlines saying "he's gonna spill everything!" present no actual evidence that that's what he did.

And as I already said, all indications point to it being something *significant* because of the number of things he *could* have been charged with, and because every leaker with knowledge of the situation is saying, "Flynn is going to testify that Trump told him to break the law/lie about it."

So yes, leaving aside our knowledge of how prosecutors proportionally reduce charges based on the value of the witness (and Flynn is getting off easy here), and leaving aside what every unofficial source is saying, then yes, we don't know what's going on.

Rather than something actually significant and groundbreaking, this is a case of a news agency desperate to get something out fast and then slapping a click bait title on it. I'm hopeful it turns into something, but as of yet I see absolutely nothing to get excited about. Given how tight Trump's protections are right now if there IS something going on, I'd be surprised if Mueller came out with anything incriminating until at LEAST closer to the mid terms and possibly even close to the end of Trump's first term, if not after either one. Exceptions being lower level people like Flynn that are already in the open as "In trouble" and can actually be prosecuted.

If you consider Mueller the prosecutor of Trump and Congress as the judge and jury on any potential impeachment, you'd prefer to have a court that's going to be more responsive and willing to listen, even if it means holding off on actually bringing charges. Now, that's all up to how things progress as well, it might come to the point that congress, even headed by republicans turns so hard on Trump they're willing to impeach. Mueller might make a move then as well, if it looks good. Without those sorts of favorable winds, I expect he'll wait until they come up, or even until after Trump's no longer president and thus can't potentially pardon himself or anyone under him.

This is a slow process and the left are grabbing at any little straw they can hoping it's attached to something they can gnaw on. It's honestly disgusting and does nothing but divide things even further. I see echoes of the right's attacks on Obama's citizenship the ridiculous lengths they went to to blow any and every little misstep out of proportion and I'm just flat out sick of it all.

I used to not like this particular phrasing and at points defended them... but I think we're fully at the point where I can whole heartedly join in on the chant, Fuck The Fourth Estate.

[smjjames]

Flynn wasn't lower level, he was the chief National Security Advisor.

As for the feeding frenzy from the left, yeah, in this age of 24 hour news cycles, the drip-drip-drip is slow as all heck.

Admittingly, yeah, the initial report was kind of blown out of proportion somewhat, given that it was after the election. Also turns out that it was Kushner who asked him to talk with the Russians. So, it's just one piece of a larger puzzle that only Mueller and his team can see the entirety of.

And to nobody's surprise (except maybe Jim Acosta), the WH pulls the "OBAMA DID IT!" defense yet again. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/362856-cnn-white-house-claims-obama-admin-approved-flynn-calls-with-russian Do they realize how easily that can be verified? And do they really think Obama would have been okay with them undermining him? The leaps of logic are astounding.

[Akura]

Pretty much the only eyebrow-raisers in that list of work orders is the new toilet seat and TV service directly into the Oval Office. I'm curious if the latter one might be security risk, considering you're putting (possibly commercially available) telecommunications equipment with outside connection into the Oval Office.


As for the toilet seat, well, we know Taft had a massive bathtub put in because the one originally there couldn't hold him(apparently untrue, Taft just liked bathtubs that much). Maybe Trump's greatest achievement in office will be installing a toilet seat that can survive nuclear war. Because honestly that's what it's looking to be.

[Dunamisdeos]

So I'm generally down with Obama as a rad kind of guy, but we recently found out that his party was actively undermining itself for that election so yeah, I could see that happening.

Waiting on evidence, though.

[smjjames]

So I'm generally down with Obama as a rad kind of guy, but we recently found out that his party was actively undermining itself for that election so yeah, I could see that happening.

Waiting on evidence, though.

Evidence for what? Some of the problems are more chronic though as it didn't take one election cycle to get to this point.

The Dems definetly did things to undermine themselves in the 2016 election.

[Trekkin]

Evidence for what? Some of the problems are more chronic though as it didn't take one election cycle to get to this point.

The Dems definetly did things to undermine themselves in the 2016 election.

Bear in mind, though, that the DNC in 2016 was on the verge of bankruptcy because of Obama's decision to effectively abandon it on both the fundraising and the organizational level, using his own Organizing for America organization instead and sticking Wasserman-Schultz at the head of the DNC to keep her away from him. Predictably, Obama won reelection while everything else the DNC was trying to do failed.

So the DNC selling itself to Clinton wasn't entirely the Democratic Party's fault; the party apparatus had long been hung out to dry by the President.

[ZeroGravitas]

Admittingly, yeah, the initial report was kind of blown out of proportion somewhat, given that it was after the election. Also turns out that it was Kushner who asked him to talk with the Russians. So, it's just one piece of a larger puzzle that only Mueller and his team can see the entirety of.

[

None of that has to do with the real story. The thing he pled guilty to is not the story. It's all only important in the context of the overall investigation, which is that Flynn is now a cooperating witness for the investigation, not a target of the investigation. As you said, Flynn wasn't low level; he was the NSA and under consideration to be VP at point. So who is higher than him that he's rolling on? Kusher, Don Jr, Trump, Pence?

[smjjames]

As I said, some of it is more of a chronic problem. Speaking of funding, the House Democrat congressional funding for campaigns, and the Senate side as well I believe, have been reporting record funding. So, as a whole, Democrats are doing well in funding, but it seems like the funding got spread around to various grassroots groups (along with Obamas org). Only problem is that the DNCs resources are going to be pretty critical in a Presidential election year.

If the Dems seem to do just fine with a struggling DNC in the midterms, then I'm not sure if that means the DNC is no longer relevant or if the structure is just changing to something else.

@zerogravitas: Ivanka might get caught up in that net given that she did have a role in the campaign, possibly Eric Trump (though he hasn't been implicated so far), Bannon, other top staff members on the campaign, but in terms of pure hierarchy, only Trump and his family and Pence would be higher.

[sluissa]

Admittingly, yeah, the initial report was kind of blown out of proportion somewhat, given that it was after the election. Also turns out that it was Kushner who asked him to talk with the Russians. So, it's just one piece of a larger puzzle that only Mueller and his team can see the entirety of.

[

None of that has to do with the real story. The thing he pled guilty to is not the story. It's all only important in the context of the overall investigation, which is that Flynn is now a cooperating witness for the investigation, not a target of the investigation. As you said, Flynn wasn't low level; he was the NSA and under consideration to be VP at point. So who is higher than him that he's rolling on? Kusher, Don Jr, Trump, Pence?

See, I was under the impression that the NSA was one of those weird... "Why does this job even exist?" kind of positions. They're not exactly head of a department, they don't have any role in liaison between a given branch and the president. In some cases they can sort of mediate between arguing departments as a sort of middleman, but that's not really their job either. A quick glance at the history of NSAs over the last couple of decades shows people who either left and moved on to even more successful political careers or simply vanished altogether. It's almost like it's a position the President can use to sort of do an extended interview and put into a holding pattern of someone they might want to take over more responsibility later on, or a position they can use to kind of bump up a nobody into a position where they'll get more attention. If they fail in that position somehow, that's basically a career death sentence.

There's also the fact that Flynn was in that position for less than a month. Barely had time to get his chair broken in. Not enough time to have any real affect on the White House.

By normal standards, sure, he's a somebody, but by "People who work with and around the President who aren't Secret Service or Interns"... basically a nobody. Few people would have even heard of him if not for the whole Russia scandal that broke.

[smjjames]

Regardless of whether you think the position is an unimportant one or not, he was with the campaign for a long time and was very senior in it. As was mentioned, he was considered a VP candidate at one point. You don't put 'a nobody' in your VP list.

Besides, he links directly to Kushner who IS in Trumps innermost inner circle, which makes him very valuable to Mueller.