Impeachment proceedings against Trump

Sentencing recommendation from the Special Counsel's Office for Michael Flynn has just been released and it is a recommendation that does not include incarceration.

GOVERNMENT’S MEMORANDUM IN AID OF SENTENCING

ADDENDUM TO GOVERNMENT’S MEMORANDUM IN AID OF SENTENCING - heavily redacted

Thoughts? If you believe that upholding the Constitution is imperative, how can you reconcile our presidents' actions?

Trump’s Moscow Deal Is Exactly What the Framers Worried About
Self-dealing and foreign influence were their biggest fears for the presidency.
By ASHA RANGAPPA December 03, 2018

As a former FBI agent and lawyer, I sympathize with the temptation to find the statute that will crack open this case. But what matters most here is not found in a criminal law text. It’s a 230-year-old document in the National Archives. Cohen’s guilty plea on Thursday demonstrates that Trump’s behavior is fundamentally incompatible with the vision of government expressed by the Constitution itself. To wit, Trump not only believes it’s OK to profit from the presidency, but he’s also willing to put the U.S. under a foreign adversary’s thumb to do it.

The office of the presidency outlined by the Constitution is animated by two main fears: that the person occupying it might engage in self-dealing behavior, and also that the president might succumb to foreign influence. The former is most obvious in the impeachment clause, which enumerates the crime of bribery as grounds for removal. Clearly, the framers foresaw that opportunists might seek to profit from the awesome powers of the presidency.

Meanwhile, worries about foreign influence were raised even in the debate over the ratification of the Constitution. In Federalist Paper No. 68, Alexander Hamilton warned that the “most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches … chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.” The emoluments clause does double duty here, prohibiting federal officeholders from self-dealing by receiving gifts and things of value from a foreign government.

Candidate Trump’s secret attempt to enrich himself through a business deal with a hostile foreign adversary is the embodiment of the twin evils the Constitution seeks to prevent.

From @SpicyFiles :
40min ago
Cohen Sentencing Memo from SDNY’
BEJESUS
Office respectfully requests that this Court impose a substantial term of imprisonment, one that reflects a modest downward variance from the applicable Guidelines range.
www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts...sd.499666.27.0_2.pdf

BEJESUS - SDNY
“neither the SCO nor this Office is making a motion under U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1....Cohen that his meetings with law enforcement reflect a selfless and unprompted about-face are overstated... Cohen’s efforts thus fell well short of cooperation”

SDNY -is clearly fed up:
“...does not dispute that Cohen’s assistance to the SCO was significant...afford Cohen credit for his efforts with the SCO, but credit that accounts for only a modest variance from the Guidelines range and...”
Pulling down SCO now

SCO- Cohen about his own conduct and that of others on core topics under investigation by the SCO, and committed to continuing to assist the SCO’s investigation. The infohe has provided has been credible & consistent with other evidence obtained in the SCO’s ongoing investigation

SCO 4 areas
1) Moscow Project
2)certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact
with Co Exec during the campaign.
3)useful info White House during 2017–2018
4) circumstances of preparing & circulating

It’s clear the SCO obtained a lot of substantial & cooperative info from Cohen
The 4th area means those who lied to Congress are FORKED bc Cohen gave the SCO internal coordinating for Congressional Testimony
7 page memo from SCO re Cohen
assets.documentcloud.org/documents/54534...-18-00850-0015-0.pdf

file under seal [459-1] Attachment A to the motion, the
unredacted version of the Govt’s submission in support of its breach
The Clerk of Court is also directed to unseal 459 the motion itself.
Govt shall file on the public docket [459-2] Attachment B to the motion,

Also filed tonight, USA vs Paul Manafort
Government's Submission in Support of its Breach Determination

Same @SpicyFiles thread as linked in previous post, continued:

MANAFORT & SCO Met w SCO & other DOJ 12 times TWO grand jury appearances Nov delay was the Govt giving Manafort’s attorney’s to refute the factual issues as laid out by the Govt
KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK BAD BOY
ps Manafort’s attorneys are likely now witnesses

MANAFORT & SCO Manafort lied about Kilimnik, $125K March 2017 payments between two firms, 6% commission, conspiracy re witness tampering & obstruction of Justice circa 2/2018 And ANOTHER DOJ INVESTIGATION & Contact with @realDonaldTrump @RudyGiuliani and 3 other areas HOLY BALLS

MANAFORT & SCO The SCO obtained a search warrant for Manafort’s electronic devises. Manafort made MULTIPLE contactS with @realDonaldTrump administration as Senior “officials” via a proxy May 26, 2018 & a colleague of Manafort’s stated as late as Feb 2018

Manafort’s attorneys are FORKED They brought the laptop to/from jail. Manafort pulled a Petraeus/Bradwell by using the draft email function. How do you commit MORE crimes in custody, when you committed other crimes that got you remanded? Mob gotta mob?

Sorry everyone, I got woefully behind these past few weeks keeping up with all the news coming out of the Special Counsel's Office and White House shenanigans.

This is a big one that has been talked about by several citizen journalists for quite some time: did Michael Cohen lie about being in Prague? The Prague meeting is important because it would clearly show direct ties between Trump's campaign and the Kremlin.

Is the Cohen-in-Prague mystery about to be revealed at last?
Trump’s fixer has always denied a meeting took place
John R. Schindler
December 13, 2018

Yesterday, Michael Cohen, the president’s disgraced consigliere, accepted his fate. Although Cohen has assisted the Department of Justice in its inquiry into Donald J. Trump’s Kremlin connections, he nevertheless was sentenced to three years in Federal prison for myriad crimes, including hush-payoffs to two Trump mistresses, as well as lying to Congress.

The customary Trumpian tweeting tirades aren’t stopping Robert S. Mueller, III, and his investigation, and even stalwart defenders of the president are expressing concerns about where this drama is headed. As Andrew Napolitano, the New Jersey judge turned Fox News pundit, explained yesterday, Cohen’s court ‘submissions place the president directly in the legal crosshairs of Federal prosecutors,’ adding the caution that Trump ‘cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. Those consequences may be fatal to his presidency and to his liberty.’

If that weren’t enough for the White House to fret about, there’s the key matter of what Cohen did not speak about yesterday, above all President Trump’s reported connections to the Kremlin. This is something the newly sentenced felon is believed to know a great deal about. The controversial dossier compiled two years ago by the retired British spy Christopher Steele cited an alleged late August 2016 meeting in Prague with Russian intelligence to coordinate clandestine activities, including hacking, designed to harm Hillary Clinton and boost Trump’s campaign.

The Prague meeting, if it happened – Cohen understandably has always denied it did – is more than the vaunted ‘smoking gun.’ It would constitute proof of Trump’s collusion with the Kremlin to secure his election, something most Americans would fairly label treason.

Cell signal puts Cohen outside Prague around time of purported Russian meeting
BY PETER STONE AND GREG GORDON
DECEMBER 27, 2018 10:36 AM, UPDATED 1 HOUR 32 MINUTES AGO

WASHINGTON - A mobile phone traced to President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.

During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague, two people familiar with the incident said.

The phone and surveillance data, which have not previously been disclosed, lend new credence to a key part of a former British spy’s dossier of Kremlin intelligence describing purported coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s election meddling operation.

The dossier, which Trump has dismissed as “a pile of garbage,” said Cohen and one or more Kremlin officials huddled in or around the Czech capital to plot ways to limit discovery of the close “liaison” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

If the foreign intelligence intercepts are accurate, the big questions now are whether Cohen has acknowledged to investigators that a meeting in Prague occurred, informed them what transpired and revealed what, if anything, he told Trump about it.