Your Once and Final Supreme Double Impeachee

[Dr Sardonicus]

Lawyer: Assange was offered US pardon if he cleared Russia

LONDON (AP) — A lawyer for Julian Assange said Wednesday that the WikiLeaks founder plans to claim during his extradition hearing that he was offered a pardon by the Trump administration if he agreed to say Russia was not involved in leaking Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 U.S. election campaign.

Assange is fighting extradition to the United States on spying charges, and his full court hearing is due to begin next week.

At a preliminary hearing, lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said that in August 2017, then-Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Fitzgerald said a statement from another Assange lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, recounted "Mr. Rohrabacher going to see Mr. Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr. Assange ... said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks."

[Dr Sardonicus]

Today is sentencing day for Roger Stone. Since speculation is rife that Il Duce will pardon him, I will exhibit just one of the crimes Stone was convicted of.

Roger Stone was convicted of "witness tampering" for his activities WRT Randy Credico, whom he told to "take the fifth," lie, say he couldn't remember and stonewall in official inquiries. Stone also threatened to take away Credico's therapy dog.

He threatened to take away a man's dog. How low can you go?

Stone's threats were successful -- Credico took the fifth.

This is obviously the kind of behavior Il Duce approves of.

Witness tampering strikes at the foundation of our legal system. The penalties are correspondingly severe. On this one count alone, Stone could (in theory) be fined and sentenced to 20 years in prison. I have highlighted relevant provisions.

18 U.S. Code § 1512. Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant

(a)
<snip>
(b) Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to -

(1) influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding;

(2) cause or induce any person to -

(A) withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding;

(B) alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding;

(C) evade legal process summoning that person to appear as a witness, or to produce a record, document, or other object, in an official proceeding; or

(D) be absent from an official proceeding to which such person has been summoned by legal process; or

(3) hinder, delay, or prevent the communication to a law enforcement officer or judge of the United States of information relating to the commission or possible commission of a Federal offense or a violation of conditions of probation, supervised release, parole, or release pending judicial proceedings;

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

[kladner]

Sanders is reported at 46.6% to 46.8% of delegates for some time now in the Nevada returns.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...nevada-results

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/townha...sults-n2561655

https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/state/nevada

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...ection_results

MSNBC Matthews to Establishment Democrats: Vote for Trump
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattve...dency-n2561741

Oh, and it gets worse. Matthews appears to be suffering something of a meltdown, as he compared Sanders winning Nevada to the Nazi conquest of France.

[Dr Sardonicus]

With all due respect to Chris Matthews, I think a more apt comparison to Bernie Sanders' thumping win in Nevada is the 1948 election victory of Harry Truman.

And, speaking of the 1948 election, allegations of "landline only polling" in this day and age are reminiscent of what is probably the best-known case of sampling bias in polling history.

Dewey Defeats Truman: How Sampling Bias can Ruin Your Model:

In the 1948 election season, Thomas Dewey faced off against incumbent Harry Truman for the presidency, running on the Republican and Democratic ticket, respectively. The Chicago Daily Tribune, a Republican-leaning paper at the time, ran a poll forecasting the outcome of the election, with a decisive win for Dewey on November 6th. The night before the election was called, the Tribune went to press with the now-infamous headline: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.

Of course, that isn't what happened. President Truman was elected with a comfortable margin of 49.6 percent of the popular vote to Dewey's 45.1 percent. In the Electoral College, Truman won 303–189.

At the end of the day, the Tribune's polling predictions were off dramatically.

When the Tribune revisited their poll to see what went wrong, they quickly discovered that they had oversampled Republicans in their data for a pretty simple reason: the poll was conducted entirely over the phone. Since wealthy people were more likely to have a phone and were also more likely to identify as Republican, the poll was skewed significantly towards Dewey.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Unlikely as to the characterization -- The US State Department is sticking to its claim that the accused was protected by diplomatic immunity at the time of the offense charged. No such claim can be made for Assange.

As the outcome of Assange's extradition hearing, I am not enough of a UK expert to be able to dismiss out of hand the possibility that it might be colored by the politics of the Harry Dunn case.

You may be interested to read this from the Beeb.

Note the additional comment by Pompeo aboiut the Randy Andy case. Nothing is ever exclusively rules-based.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by xilman

You may be interested to read this from the Beeb.

Note the additional comment by Pompeo aboiut the Randy Andy case. Nothing is ever exclusively rules-based.

In the words of multi-term Victorian-era PM Oliver Gladstone: "She who rules the waves, can waive the rules".

Re. the Assange and Stone cases, based on the nullity of credible evidence provided to date of any Russian Collusion with Wikileaks or anyone else w.r.to the 2016 elections, Trump's offer to Assange can be interepreted as "tell the truth, and all will be well". After all, last July none other that a federal judge ordered Robert Mueller et al to desist from public claims of Russian collusion:

Did Robert Mueller Defy A Court Order To Stop Lying About Russian Companies? | The Federalist: Nobody apparently reminded Robert Mueller that Judge Friedrich ordered his team to stop saying Concord and the Internet Research Agency work for the Russian government.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with every detail of the winding Donald Trump-Russia collusion investigation (don’t feel badly, Robert Mueller hasn’t either), a little review will help explain the importance of a bombshell that is about to go off.

You may remember a triumphant Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein holding a dramatic press conference in February 2018, in which he announced the indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies. These companies included Concord Management and the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

The indictment accused Concord and IRA of creating fake social media accounts to post “derogatory information” about a number of candidates, including “disparaging” Hillary Clinton. There are two of these “Russian interference cases.” The one involving Concord and IRA does not involve hacking or trafficking in stolen emails. The Concord/IRA case is sometimes referred to as the “Russian Troll Farm” case.

The indictment of Russian individuals and companies appeared, at first, to be a mere publicity stunt, as nobody believed the Russians would voluntarily appear in court to challenge the charges. But then one of them did. Concord hired an attorney to fight the indictment.

Both Mueller’s report and Attorney General William Barr’s April press conference releasing the report included statements strongly suggesting that Concord and IRA worked at the direction of the Russian government. Nobody bothered to notice that the original indictment did not charge Concord with being a tool of the Russian government until Concord filed a motion for a contempt citation against the government for making that allegation.

On July 1, 2019, Judge Dabney L. Friedrich issued an order (to which the government agreed) prohibiting further public statements by the government about the Concord and IRA case, particularly statements alleging that Concord and IRA worked on behalf of the Russian government. A more detailed discussion of this train wreck can be read here.

But Mueller Just Did It Again

This takes us to the Mueller testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees last week. On live television in front of an audience of millions, former special counsel Robert Mueller carefully skirted speculating on the guilt or innocence of Roger Stone due to his ongoing criminal prosecution. But nobody apparently reminded Mueller that Judge Friedrich had ordered Mueller’s team to stop saying Concord and IRA worked for the Russian government.

The government hasn’t alleged that, can’t prove it, and abandoned those allegations in open court. The government had only just barely escaped a criminal contempt citation because Mueller’s report and Barr’s press conference seemed to allege that the Russians (the Russians, as in the Russian government) were behind the troll farms. And that’s not true, according to the government’s own admissions.

Given Mueller's flagrant subsequent disregard for her court order, the judge in question was way too kind in giving him a pass with regard to intent.

Now to the Stone conviction -- as I noted last week, a Trump pardon of Stone would be quite curious because Stone was convicted of making the same kind of false claims of Russian intereference as Mueller himself (you see, lying *to* the FBI is a serious crime, but lying *by* the FBI is a routine matter and almost never prosecuted), and further intimidating a witness into echoing the same false claims. Here is Craig Murray on the case:

Following his appearance as the main witness for the prosecution against former Trump aide Roger Stone, my good friend Randy Credico has had the entire American mainstream media chasing him for an interview. He has however decided to give only this single interview to me, which is put out here and which is free for everybody to use, with acknowledgement.

Five of the seven charges against Stone relate directly to Randy, who is the witness that Stone is accused of tampering with and attempting to intimidate. There is a tremendous irony here. The Mueller investigation was set up to reveal links between the Trump campaign, Russia and Wikileaks. There are no such links, as has already been proven in another US court. Roger Stone ends up being charged with lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee, by pretending he had links to Wikileaks when he did not. He is also charged with trying to intimidate Randy into saying there was such a link and Randy was the back channel; which I myself can attest is nonsense.

The Mueller investigation has thus ultimately ended up prosecuting people for telling the same pack of lies that Mueller himself was pushing. The Clinton media, including CNN, the Washington Post and New York Times, are baffled by this. They follow the Stone trial assiduously from delight in seeing a long term Trump hanger-on brought down, and in the hope something will come out about Wikileaks or Russia. Their reporting, as that of the BBC, has been deliberately vague on why Stone is being charged, contriving to leave their audience with the impression that Stone’s trial proves Trump connections to Wikileaks and Russia, when in fact it proves the precise opposite.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Brazilian who met Trump has virus; no plans to test Trump

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's communications director, Fábio Wajngarten, tested positive just days after traveling with Bolsonaro to a meeting with Trump and senior aides in Florida. White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement Thursday that "exposures from the case are being assessed, which will dictate next steps."

"Both the President and Vice President had almost no interactions with the individual who tested positive and do not require being tested at this time," Grisham said.

Wajngarten joined Bolsonaro on a three-day trip to the U.S. and on Saturday was at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, where he posted a photo of himself posing beside Trump. A video from the event also showed him standing directly behind both presidents as they addressed a crowd. Bolsonaro and Wajngarten later attended a birthday party for Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is dating the president's son Donald Trump Jr.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Brazilian who met Trump has virus; no plans to test Trump

What?? Nooo!
If COWH dies from it, he will became a martyr and be forever remembered as the first POTUS killed by a virus...
Better test him, and in case he tests positive, treat him and cure him, and don't let him die, so the history can peacefully forget him when he finishes his mandate...

(Edit: in this respect, it just occurred to me that this is the first president the people MUST take care of, not to let him doing anything worth to remember, including dying, during his mandate... )

[retina]

Originally Posted by LaurV

What?? Nooo!

If COWH dies from it, he will became a martyr and be forever remembered as the first POTUS killed by a virus...

At least the second, so it wouldn't be a big deal.

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/59/7/990/2895539

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by retina

At least the second, so it wouldn't be a big deal.

Whoops, no idea! Mea culpa.

(You had a so large number of presidents..., difficult to find a property which none of them had - as we already had a talk today about the strong law of small numbers, hehe).

[Dr Sardonicus]

"They" say the virus has an incubation period of up to two weeks. So I guess we'll know by next weekend whether the prez -- or the "geriatric Ken doll" -- are infected.

I can only imagine what an epidemiologist or public health official would make of the statement

Both the President and Vice President had almost no interactions with the individual who tested positive and do not require being tested at this time

"Almost no interactions?" Wow. I suppose any public health official working for the federal government would be fired for saying anything about this lackadaisical attitude.

Meanwhile, I wonder how many people are going to bail on meetings with Il Duce and Geriatric Ken.