White House worried about Mueller report, Trump Jr. and Roger Stone indictments - Polidicks

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/west-wing-insiders-brace-for-the-mueller-storm On Friday night, current and former staffers of Donald Trump’s West Wing gathered at Dina Powell’s Manhattan apartment to celebrate Hope Hicks’s 30th birthday. The party also served as a send off for Hicks, who’s moving to Los Angeles to run communications for Fox News’s parent company, “New Fox.” Over cupcakes and wine, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Anthony Scaramucci reminisced about old times with Hicks’s mom, Caye, and her older sister. One person not present was Hicks’s ex-boyfriend, Rob Porter, much to the relief of Hicks’s parents, a Hicks friend said. The party provided a brief respite from the news cycle on the eve of the midterms in which Republicans are projected to lose the House of Representatives, and perhaps governorships in red states Georgia and Florida. “Everyone is resigned to the outcome,” a former West Wing official said. The bigger threat for Trump than losing control of Congress is Robert Mueller’s looming report. Sources say Trump advisers are girding themselves for Mueller to deliver the results of his investigation to the Justice Department as early as Wednesday, although it’s more likely he’ll wait till later this month. Sources say besides the president, the ones with the most exposure are Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr. “I’m very worried about Don Jr.,” said another former West Wing official who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The possible exposure would be that Mueller would demonstrate that Don Jr. perjured himself to investigators when he said he didn’t tell his father beforehand about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting to gather “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. (Donald Trump Jr.’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, declined to comment.) One potential sign of how seriously Trumpworld is treating the Mueller threat has been the near total silence of Rudy Giuliani. A constant presence on cable news over the summer, Giuliani hasn’t been on television in weeks. “What the hell happened to Rudy?” a former White House official said when I asked about Giuliani’s whereabouts. According to three sources briefed on Trump’s legal team, Giuliani has been in Europe visiting consulting clients as well as preparing a report with Trump lawyers Marty and Jane Raskin that is designed to provide a counter-narrative to Mueller’s document. “They don’t know what Mueller has but they have a good idea and they’re going to rebut it,” one Republican close to Giuliani said. But another source said Trump instructed Giuliani to stay off television to avoid hurting Trump’s midterm message. “Trump’s thinking is, ‘I gave you a lot of rope and now you got a lot of rope marks around your neck,’” the source said. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

I'm very glad that Mueller didn't risk everything by releasing his findings before the midterms

Eh on the other hand, I could argue that it is in some way irresponsible to not let the people react to the decision in the midterms. If it's seriously bad, R gains in the senate make it that much harder to hold the POTUS or others responsible.

The House can hold the president accountable as well

They can subpoena anyone in the land except the President, even the Vice President

Squirm, you goddamn snakes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GZnon4CMDo

no they can very much subpeona the president, they just have to provide justifiable reason to overturn executive privillage, though this would be decided by the SCOTUS which is exactly where things get murky.

Releasing the info so close to an election would open up a can of worms and could seriously harm the legitimacy of the investigation. Many people would see it as a blatant political move.

Anything Mueller does is inherently political. Besides, if he does anything remotely resembling attacking Trump or his allies, he is going to be seen as a partisan hack by the mainstream Republicans regardless. I'd rather him investigate and let things happen when they do than intentionally delay them for image's sake. If Mueller releases findings that are especially damning, we are now stuck with a Senate who will take no action against the President and will continue to appoint judges that could be favorable in protecting Trump. We will be forced to wait until 2020 at the earliest for him to see any substantial consequences and by then, who knows how faded this could have become in the public mind.

Would you say Watergate is faded from the peoples minds?

Actually by taking this route he's made it more difficult for the Senate to do nothing. And releasing information before the election could have backfired since, as we've seen, Trump supporters pretty much don't care about facts. While it may be frustrating this was the best choice if we want to get rid of Trump.

Mueller is extremely intelligent and skilled, he knows what he's doing

It had, for a very long time. Most people now just know Watergate as A Thing That Happened Once and don't really know the details. I imagine the googling of "what was Watergate" has gone up a lot recently, though.

The difference is that in Watergate Nixon was very likely going to be impeached had he not stepped down anyway. The opposition party had strong majorities in both congressional chambers, and things were substantially less partisan than today. I'm not convinced it makes things more difficult when we're now a full two years off from any senators facing election in what is already a very partisan and inelastic environment. It is a long shot in either case, but at least there would be the opportunity for public reaction before people become complicit and forgetful about it. This stuff does affect Trump popularity in the short term as we saw with Mueller's previous indictments that dipped Trump's approval before it reverted back. My concern is that him waiting will have the effect of people forgetting about it or resorting themselves back into partisan camps by the time elections roll around. If Republican senators can anticipate that, I think they could dismiss or ignore it more easily.

The issue is that there's a lot of fence sitters right now due to how long Mueller's investigation is going. Making a move right before an election would push a lot of them to feel it was an overtly political move attempting to influence the election and would thus oppose the investigation. The chances of the Democrats taking the Senate were very slim anyways and chances are even if Mueller taking action did swing things in their favor they still wouldn't have taken the majority. So the best choice was to keep things more legit so that when Muller does drop his bomb there will be far more public pressure to get the Senate off their useless complicit asses. If he'd dropped his bomb before the election then those fence sitters would result in a larger public push against the investigation which would give the, likely still Republican-controlled, Senate far more leeway in ignoring the investigation or brushing off its results. Mueller's playing the long game here. He doesn't care about the political make up of Congress or anything. He cares about one thing and that's investigating everything necessary regarding Trump, Trump's campaign, and Russian interference into the 2016 election. And any choice that could harm that investigation is a choice that isn't going to come to fruition.

That's a fair point. I certainly hope it pays off.

Does Nate Silver have a forecast yet for the number of indictments?

Going off of this article from august, I'm going with the safe bet of A LOT. https://www.axios.com/2018-midterm-elections-republicans-preparation-investigations-180abf7b-0de8-4670-ae8a-2e6da123c584.html "Thanks to their control of Congress, Republicans have blocked most of the Democrats’ investigative requests. But if the House flips, the GOP loses its power to stymie. Lawyers close to the White House tell me the Trump administration is nowhere near prepared for the investigatory onslaught that awaits them, and they consider it among the greatest threats to his presidency."

I had no idea Roger Stone had an indictment, I would love to see that bastard get his fingers slammed on the door to his cell.

Republicans seem to be really afraid of checks and balances. Wonder why?