So for those watching the Mueller witness show (making inferences from minor public announcements, because that damn ship doesn’t leak), there’s the carrots (Flynn, Gates, etc) and the sticks (Manafort). But Mueller just handed out an unusually large carrot. Complete immunity, granted to a nasty piece of work who could easily go down for a lot of unsavory shit. I’m hoping he got something equally large in return. And I hope Nader has a security detail, because he could be ratting on any or all of about four different organizations that like to assassinate people for fun and profit.
Questions I have include:
- What is the crime?
- Does this have anything to do with Russia?
You mean the crime being granted immunity or the crime being investigated? If the former, Nader is ick personified – there’s some indicators of that in the article of the sort of crimes being granted immunity. If the latter, we don’t know even that much – all of the specifics are behind the scenes and we don’t see any results until there’s an indictment. As I said, the Mueller team just doesn’t leak so you have to infer a bit. Nader organized the Seychelles meeting between Russian bankers/mobsters and the Trump team (Kushner et al and for some reason Erik Prince IIRC), so that’s the likely link to the Russia investigation. But again, we don’t know much until the indictments come out.
I think it was only Prince, a big supporter of Trump, who was at the Seychelles meeting.
Do you think a big scandal of collusion will be uncovered?
Scandal/collusion/uncovered all depend on how you define them. “Collusion” is a generic term for activities that vary between illegal and legal. “Scandal” is a social phenomenon, again that can be about something illegal or legal. Scandal can even happen around events that never actually transpired, or are completely routine events. Scandal is about society’s reaction more than the thing itself. “Uncovering” is dependent on the gullibility/denial spectrum of the observer. You can have nothing at all and convince people something has been uncovered, or you can have a mountain of evidence and people saying the jury’s still out.
Evidence of coordination between Trump’s team and Russian intelligence services has been in the public domain since before the election (something Rep. Schiff has been keen to point out after Rep. Nunes said they couldn’t find any evidence of it), so in that sense the collusion is already uncovered, and was a scandal for some and not for others. However, what Mueller’s doing is looking specifically for illegal acts surrounding and related to that collusion, so he may or may not uncover significantly more than the public already knows. That depends a bit on whether and when Mueller’s investigation is shuttered, and what sort of contingency plans he has in place to continue the investigation in that event (offloading to state AG’s and/or foreign law enforcement). The trick is, we don’t really know any of that, but we can be pretty certain that Mueller’s investigation is the only US investigation with federal resources & authority actually looking to see if crimes were committed (as opposed to the Senate and House investigations, or state AG’s). I’m frankly shocked that Mueller is still able to do his job today, and I still really doubt he’ll be permitted to see the investigation through to its conclusion, so we’ll be stuck with partial results in the end.
If I were a betting man, I’d say Mueller’s investigation, before it’s shut down, will still lead to more evidence of arguably legal/arguably illegal collusion, but few if any charges filed on these issues. This in itself will be a fairly huge scandal for some and not for others. He will also file charges (and in fact, he already has) of obstruction/lying to investigators/witness tampering/destruction of evidence which are not about the collusion itself, but about the coverup. Again, I predict this will be a fairly huge scandal for some and not for others. Lastly, I predict a raft of charges of money laundering/tax fraud/bribery/corruption/RICO-type things (such as those charges already filed against Manafort), again not really about the collusion itself, but about illegal things uncovered during the course of the investigation.
At the end you’ll have a fairly unsatisfactory conclusion: the Trump campaign will be exposed to have colluded with Russian intelligence services in an arguably illegal manner, many staffers and high ranking officials will be charged with a broad range of crimes, from obstruction to money laundering. And Trump supporters will still say that collusion is not a crime and this was all a witch hunt by the liberal Comey/Mueller/Rosenstein cabal, a fishing expedition that merely netted a few dozen high-ranking or cabinet-level bad apples who were just low-level volunteers after all.
And, most importantly, I’m still predicting the Republicans will hold the House and Senate in 2018 (although I’m predicting Democrats will win a landslide in terms of votes cast), and that this is when the Mueller investigation will definitely be shut down if it hasn’t been already. So regardless of charges filed, impeachment will never be considered for any officials at any level, and I think Trump will have a strong chance of re-election in 2020. The House and Senate may, however, decide to launch an investigation into Mueller.
EDIT: Unless you’re just asking if I personally think it’s likely there was scandalous illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence services. In which case, I have a much shorter answer: yes.