Trump’s been a broken record about collision with the Kremlin. A small sampling from the last month:
It was a great report, no collusion, which I knew anyway, no coordination, no nothing. It’s a witch hunt, that’s all it is. There was no collusion with Russia, you can believe this one. She (Merkel) probably can’t believe it, who can? But the report was very powerful, very strong, there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian people. Cause I’ve said many times before, I’ve always said there was no collusion, but I’ve also said there has been nobody tougher on Russia than me.
Jennifer, I can say this — that there was no collusion, and that’s been so found, as you know, by the House Intelligence Committee. There’s no collusion. There was no collusion with Russia, other than by the Democrats — or, as I call them, the obstuctionists, because they truly are obstructionists.
James Comey Memos just out and show clearly that there was NO COLLUSION and NO OBSTRUCTION. Also, he leaked classified information. WOW! Will the Witch Hunt continue?
Much of the bad blood with Russia is caused by the Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation, headed up by the all Democrat loyalists, or people that worked for Obama. Mueller is most conflicted of all (except Rosenstein who signed FISA & Comey letter). No Collusion, so they go crazy!
We get it, we get it, NO COLLUSION. Fine. Then I suppose Trump would have no problem answering these questions:
- When did you become aware of the Trump Tower meeting?
- What involvement did you have in the communication strategy [about that meeting], including the release of Donald Trump Jr.’s emails?
- During a 2013 trip to Russia, what communication and relationships did you have with the Agalarovs and Russian government officials?
- What communication did you have with Michael D. Cohen, Felix Sater and others, including foreign nationals, about Russian real estate developments during the campaign?
- What discussions did you have during the campaign regarding any meeting with Mr. Putin? Did you discuss it with others?
- What discussions did you have during the campaign regarding Russian sanctions?
- What involvement did you have concerning [the] platform changes regarding arming Ukraine [during the 2016 RNC convention]?
- What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?
- What did you know about communication between Roger Stone, his associates, Julian Assange or WikiLeaks?
- What did you know during the transition about an attempt to establish back-channel communication to Russia, and Jared Kushner’s efforts?
- What do you know about a 2017 meeting in Seychelles involving Erik Prince?
- What do you know about a Ukrainian peace proposal provided to Mr. Cohen in 2017?
Because according to the New York Times, those and many others are on the Special Council’s wish list. That should be easy enough, after all there’s NO COLLUSION and Robert Mueller’s long since requested to interview-
… oh wait, Trump is refusing to sit down with Mueller’s team and answer their questions? Strange. Come to think, why do we have these questions at all? The Special Council investigation is airtight, the only reason we have any information on what they’re doing is that the people they interview keep blabbing to the press. Trump’s “team” of lawyers would be the only people privy to those questions, other than Trump, and there’s no way they’d leak something like this. Oh well, I guess it’ll be up to the press to ask-
… ooohhh. I see what you did there, Mueller.
[HJH 2018-05-01] … or maybe not?
So disgraceful that the questions concerning the Russian Witch Hunt were “leaked” to the media. No questions on Collusion. Oh, I see…you have a made up, phony crime, Collusion, that never existed, and an investigation begun with illegally leaked classified information. Nice!
That’s Trump, using “leaked” in scare quotes. And apparently looking at an entirely different list of questions than I am. He’s smart enough to realize that collusion is not a crime, yet unaware that foreign contributions to US elections are a crime and that the US president can be impeached for non-crimes.
But if Trump’s advisers can spin that infamous Fox and Friends interview into a positive, maybe they thought slipping this list to reporters was another win for Trump. Somehow.
Kudos to Matthew Rozsa over at Salon for filling in some of the “somehow.”
[Margaret] Hartmann also noted that there were three prevailing theories as to why the questions were leaked (and most likely by someone either currently or formerly associated with Trump’s team): to convince Trump not to speak with Mueller, to turn the public against the Mueller investigation or to persuade the Republican-controlled Congress that Mueller is getting too close to the president and needs to be stopped. […]
[Norm Eison:] I helped witnesses decide whether to talk to prosecutors for decades. Now that we know Mueller’s questions, I believe that Trump is unlikely ever to answer them unless subpoenaed–and then his answer will be “I take the Fifth.” No wonder Dowd quit. […]
“The very fact that the questions are out there, my first reaction is that it could be an act of obstruction just to have released these questions,” John Dean, the former White House counsel to President Richard Nixon, told Anderson Cooper. He elaborated that they may have been released “to try to somehow disrupt the flow of information, the tipping off of a witness in advance as to what the questions are going to be.”
Rozsa also has a good summary of the evidence that Trump’s team leaked the questions.
[HJH 2018-05-02] OK, I think we’ve finally cracked this one.
In the wake of the testy March 5 meeting, Mueller’s team agreed to provide the president’s lawyers with more specific information about the subjects that prosecutors wished to discuss with the president. With those details in hand, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow compiled a list of 49 questions that the team believed the president would be asked, according to three of the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly. […]
After investigators laid out 16 specific subjects they wanted to review with the president and added a few topics within each one, Sekulow broke the queries down into 49 separate questions, according to people familiar with the process. […]
For his part, Trump fumed when he saw the breadth of the questions that emerged out of the talks with Mueller’s team, according to two White House officials. The president and several advisers now plan to point to the list as evidence that Mueller has strayed beyond his mandate and is overreaching, they said.
So this was just another front in the grand plan to discredit, distract, or damage the Special Council investigation by the current President of the United States and high-ranking members of the Republican Party. It’s gotten so bad even Trump’s supporters assume he’s guilty of something. I don’t think it worked, which shouldn’t be a surprise given the calibre of the talent surrounding Trump. The only person more blind is Trump himself.