Maybe your mother told you that you can judge someone’s character by the company that they keep, and I think that is at least accurate enough to serve as a basic self-defense mechanism. Today, Donald Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, who is facing substantial jail time despite copping a plea, finished testifying in the first of two trials against Trump’s campaign chairman. Both of them are guilty of a plethora of crimes, including conspiracy, money laundering, and bank and wire fraud. But they are hardly the only close Trump associates who are already in big trouble.
It appears facially obvious that Donald Trump Jr. lied to Congress. Trump’s personal lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen had his offices and hotel room raided and is sure to face a number of criminal charges regardless of whether or not he decides to become a cooperating witness. Felix Sater, Trump’s longtime business associate and the point man for the failed attempt to build a Moscow Trump Tower, became a cooperating witness months ago. The same is true of Michael Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Advisor. Roger Stone appears to be quickly approaching his time in the barrel, as his friend Kristin Davis (the Manhattan Madam) is scheduled to appear before a grand jury this Wednesday.
There’s a much longer list of Trump-affiliated people who have legal vulnerabilities or who have already resigned for unethical and/or scandalous behavior, but I’m just focusing on people who were very important to either Trump’s business or his political success.
On the political front, very few elected Republicans were willing to endorse Trump. The first to do so in the Senate was Jeff Sessions of Alabama. His reward was to be given the responsibility of organizing a foreign policy team for the campaign and transition and to then get his dream job of attorney general of the United States. Unfortunately, he lied about his contacts with Russians during his confirmation hearings and has had to recuse himself from the subsequent investigation of Russia’s interference on Trump’s behalf.
The first congressperson to endorse Trump was Rep. Chris Collins of New York. He has just been indicted for insider trading.
The charges against Collins, filed in the Southern District of New York, claimed he was part of a scheme to sell off stock of biotech firm Innate Immunotherapeutics in June 2017. Collins’s son, Cameron, was also charged, as was Stephen Zarsky. The trio have been accused of engaging in sales of Innate stock after the congressman fed them information about a failed trial of a drug meant to treat multiple sclerosis.
Chris Collins, who was on Innate’s board, learned of the failed trial and “violated the duties he owed to Innate by passing material, non-public information regarding the drug trial results to his son…so that Cameron Collins could use that information to make timely trades in Innate stock and tip others,” the indictment read.
The sales, which also involved six other unnamed and uncharged co-conspirators, allowed the congressman, his son and Zarsky to avoid more than $768,000 in losses. When the failed drug trial was released to the public, Innate stock plummeted by 92 percent, according to the indictment.
People of bad character are attracted to other people of similarly bad character. With Trump, this works both ways. He flocks to people like Roy Cohn and Roger Stone, while people like Jeff Sessions and Chris Collins flock to him. The result is a collection of truly deplorable criminals.
They are getting rolled up now.
Sadly, none of this appears to matter one iota to almost all Republicans, whether they’re Trump fanatics, Never Trumpers, the Koch Brothers, or whatever.
So there’s been a plethora of crimes committed by high level Republicans and a Congressperson?
To quote that Dick, Cheney: SO???
I can well remember my parents (may they RIP) excusing and exonerating and rationalizing that other Dick, Nixon’s criminal activities by saying (and I quote verbatim): “They ALL do it. Nixon is just ‘the one that got caught'”.
I doubt anything has changed – other than it’s just gotten much much worse – since 1974.
Republicans would rather live in Russia than vote Democratic. So there you have it. That’s all you need to know.
Will anything much happen or change because of these situations? Color me entirely skeptical.
One of the most Republican districts in Ohio came within a few votes of electing a Democrat last night and yet you persist in saying that no Republicans care about this stuff. Curious self-defeating behavior on your part.
Those Washington numbers are also, shall we say, interesting…
I’m curious if “safe/likely R” areas in blue states are more vulnerable than conventional wisdom suggests.
I would love to see voters in Washington State take out Cathy McMorris-Rogers. She’s in the House leadership team, and she’s horrible, despite her agreeable presentation.
McMorris-Rogers gave the response to one of President Obama’s State of the Union addresses. The Congressmember flat out lied about one of her constituents and their experience with the ACA. Instead of helping her constituent use the Law to her benefit, she prevented her constituent from getting the help she needed to gain the help she deserved and scored fraudulent political points on national TV instead. What a rotten person.
Based on last night’s electoral results, the Congressmember is in trouble for November. GOOD.
There are also 9000 absentee/provisional ballots still be counted and the GOP candidate is ahead by well less than 2000 votes. It ain’t over till it’s over.
She also got embarrassingly recorded along with the idiot Devon Nunes at a Republican fundraiser making stupid statements about impeaching Rosenstein to end the Mueller investigation. She should be toast in November.
Glad GOP never remembers people have recording devices at these politically fellating events.
Alas you’re probably right that I’m too cynical for my own good. However, vis the OH12 election last night – we don’t really know who voted for the Democratic candidate. Hard to say if those who voted Democratic are either Republicans who switched their vote this time, people who never vote who decided to vote Democratic, or Democratic voters who rarely vote but finally got the polls this time.
So it’s not entirely clear that it was a bunch of traditional Republican voters who crossed party lines this time. Perhaps we’ll learn more.
I’d be very happy to be proven wrong in my cynicism, but knowing the Republicans that I do… well, let’s just say, I’m not overly optimistic.
And finally, as I’ve often said: what we really need to do big-time is GOTV for Democrats. Hope that happens. I’m doing what I can.
This isn’t hard.
When a rock solid Republican district turns into a toss-up, that means that a lot of people who have a long history of voting for the GOP decided not to do it again. Some stayed home, others crossed over. A Democrat cannot get to parity in a district like OH-12 any other way.
Couldn’t the tie be the result of many lazy progressives finally being shocked back to life and voting?
I am anxious to see the voter make up of OH12 as well. Mostly because I have an inkling (or delusion) that the definition of what is or is not a “safe” district is fundamentally changing.
Fuck-Your-Feelings Republicans may not switch, but as we saw with Roy Moore, they sure as hell will stay home. In Alabama was to the tune of something like 200,000 votes.
Regardless, I think we need to handicap what we hear from Republican voters, who will say anything to “own” their “enemies” (aka. liberals and national media) but also uprooted several trees in my neighborhood from the collective sigh of relief they let out when the Trump’s Obamacare repeal failed and have only seen their taxes go UP (State and municipals making up for the lost federal revenue) since Republicans passed it.
Actually, a number of post-election analyses have already been done. O’Connor drove the votes of the close suburbs of Columbus, mostly middle class and/or professionals. Colberson got the rural, small town and old folks vote that went overwhelmingly for Trump. Colberson also got some of those suburban voters too.
So, the big difference between 2016 and 2018, aside from the absence of an incumbent, was the huge Democratic voting turnout, much bigger than in 2016. But I haven’t seen any analysis (yet) about partisan cross-over voting or the lack thereof.
Here is some data from Ballotopedia and OH SoS websites:
2018 2016 2014
D 99,820 112,638 61,360
R 101,574 251,266 150,573
2018 Primary
D 99,820 43,910 (all candidates)
R 101,574 67,120 (all candidates)
Since 2018 is an off-presidential year it is not surprising that the final turnouts dropped from 2016.
But compared to 2014 – another off-presidential year, D turnout increased by 50%, while R turnout decreased by 33%
And compared to the 2018 primary, more multiple of D voters turned out, than multiples of R voters.
I see. Very encouraging.
Thank you.
Thank you for pointing out the positives. Sometimes when so much evil is being perpetrated it is easy for despair to set in.
And yes they are “deplorable”, if only someone had warned us before the election…
RUKidding, I would think the experience with your parents and their willingness to stick with Nixon even as the public abandoned him at the end could be instructive to you.
These polls which show 80 to 90% of Republicans sticking with Trump should not cause us despair. A few points:
“Sadly, none of this appears to master one iota to almost all Republicans, whether they’re Trump fanatics, Never Trumpers, the Koch Brothers, or whatever.”
The GOP has nurtured a culture of corruption for some time now, to the extent you can say it’s an attribute.
I’ll agree to hope that Sater has been a cooperating witness, but even that article doesn’t point to it.
That said, another point about today’s indictment is to demonstrate that this investigation took 18 mos and was simply that of a sitting Congressman vs Mueller’s investigation is 10 fold in complexity so let’s recognize that Mueller’s team is moving at a good clip to those Fox listeners who want it wrapped up today.
“People of bad character are attracted to other people of similarly bad character.”
Birds of a feather flock together. Why? Because they feel most comfortable with people like themselves and can get approbation and admiration from each other.
. . . does it” self-justification for criminality/immorality: within their self-selected circles, everybody DOES do it! Makes it much easier to convince themselves (or at least pretend) everybody outside those circles does, too.
Got one in Virginia too
https://bluevirginia.us/2018/08/video-this-tv-13-news-report-strongly-suggest-that-scott-taylor-staf
fers-forged-signatures-including-of-dead-person
. . . getting himself and all his associates sent to prison.
And we doubted him on that promise.
Shame on us!
Innate stock hit a peak of $15 in early 2017.
It is now 30 cents.
lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Wilbur Ross certainly deserves a shout out here. Do a Google search and check out the stories of slimy grifting and unseemly greed. Here’s a rat-bastard of a guy who routinely shafted workers at his home and other properties out of their pay. And he just settled with a former partner for having stole $4 million from him while sitting on hundreds of millions in wealth. Reading about his exploits you have to wonder if maybe this Trump’s real father!
The only problem with all of this is the fact that there are some 60+ million people of bad character and they all voted in the 2016 election.
Want to remind all that Sessions recused himself because of a question Al Franken asked.