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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDouglas Blackmon interviewed Sally Yates for 6 hours over 10 days.
Karen Germaine? @KarenGermaine
TRUMP-RUSSIA THREAD:
1/ Douglas Blackmon (writer/producer/former journalist) interviewed Sally Yates recently for 6 hours over 10 days.
2/ Present for the first 4-hour interview was Ryan Lizza, whose article on Yates will appear in The New Yorker on Monday 5/22.
3/ Based on his interviews and other research, Blackmon has concluded that the Trump presidency will not recover from its current crisis.
4/...this is an investigation about one thing: the now undeniable fact that a Russian espionage conspiracy accomplished an objective...
5/...that has never previously occurred in American historycompromising the highest levels of U.S. government,
6/...penetrating the White House, establishing influence and leverage over the presidents National Security Advisor,
7/
and planting false information with the Vice-President of the United Stateswho then unwittingly repeated those fictions
8/
to the American people. Blackmon generally describes the interview, questions it prompted, and opinions hes formed in a FB post.
9/ His conclusion: Within a few monthsand possibly in just weeksmost GOP elected officials will have acknowledged, at least privately...
10/
that Donald Trump is a suicide vest strapped around the body of the Republican Party. If those words don't shake you, what will?
11/ His final words: The collapse of this administration may or may not be swift. But it is inevitable.
12/ Read it here: https://www.facebook.com/douglas.a.blackmon/posts/10155079495445269?pnref=story
And watch for Ryan Lizza's article on Monday. /END/
Link to tweet
"RussiaGate" has become a catastrophic failure of leadershipand a debacle from which the Trump presidency will not recover
#TrumpRussia
By Douglas A. Blackmon
A little more than a week ago, I said on CNN and wrote here thatbased on reporting Id just completed in Washington D.C.it was clear that the controversy surrounding Russian contacts with advisors to President Donald J. Trump and his campaign team was about to become much more serious, much more directly focused on the president himself, and have deeply troubling consequences for our democracy.
The revelations of the past seven days have confirmed all that, and will be remembered as the point when an extraordinary but perhaps still manageable political embarrassment for the Trump administration mushroomed into the most serious controversy to engulf a presidency since Watergate.
Based on what we know already, and new revelations that will soon illuminate more key events in this sequence, our country faces a dramatic constitutional exigency. This crisis now is directly about the President himself, and one for which he now bears complete responsibility. Bluntly stated, it has become a catastrophic failure of conduct and leadershipand a debacle from which the Trump presidency will not recover.
What I couldnt say last week was that, earlier the same day, I spent more than four hours conducting Sally Yates first media interview since being fired by President Trump as acting U.S. Attorney General. With me in the interview was The New Yorker magazines White House correspondent, Ryan Lizza, whose profile of Yates will appear on Monday, May 22. (I have known Yates for more than 25 years. To read a profile I wrote of her in February, look here: http://slate.me/2l1ROhR)
During our interview, and subsequent conversations in the following days, Yates never disclosed any classified details of the ongoing investigation or specific new bombshells. But by the end of that long series of questions, answers and clarifications, important contours of the scandalthe boundaries of what is known or not known and the enormous scale of the stakes involvedbecame much more clear to me. .....................
DURHAM D
(32,617 posts)7/ and planting false information with the Vice-President of the United Stateswho then unwittingly repeated those fictions
Pence was in on it from the beginning.
Yet it is repeated over and over.
L. Coyote
(51,129 posts)I got the impression from her testimony that she is fully aware of the possibilities, and was at the time she took this to WH counsel, the President's attorney.
At any rate, the evidence they had was enough to go after Flynn, and his conversations likely revealed the truth and that truth may well be classified and require her to maintain the public knowledge posture of the inception of the investigation.
brush
(53,933 posts)by the Russians.
He pretended that he was unaware of Flynn's activities and that Flynn had lied to him when it all broke in the open and Flynn was fired.
trump as well as Pence were both trying to keep Flynn, a Russian and Turkish asset, in place as the National Security Adviser of the United States.
They are both complicit and need to go.
underthematrix
(5,811 posts)Great read but I have concern with this assessment of Jeff Sessions confirmation testimony which was under oath:
"The false statements of Attorney General Jeff Sessions during his confirmation hearing that he had had no contact with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, was a bumbling omission. But it came from an Alabama senator already assumed to be bumbling by everyone in Washingtonexcept President Trump. In any case, it was in no way illegal, and touched the president in no direct fashion."
Making false statements under oath is perjury and perjury is a crime. I would appreciate a clarification of how you came to the conclusion that such statements were not illegal.
L. Coyote
(51,129 posts)underthematrix
(5,811 posts)but I doubt his correction was completely honest. I imagine he only reported those contacts uncovered by the media.
I think there are significant number of Trump admin officials and GOP who are in legal jeapardy. I would also add Comey to the legal jeopardy mix. Go back and listen to his testimony on May 4th, particularly his responses to Sen Feinstein.
DefenseLawyer
(11,101 posts)I believe it probably was, but we won't know that until more evidence comes out about Sessions' actual collusion with the Russians. I think it will become clear that he knowingly lied about a material fact but we aren't there yet. I'm equally concerned about his non-recusal recusal by his blatant involvement in the Comey firing. That's an inexcusable ethics violation.
Pluvious
(4,328 posts)How serious was it him saying under oath he didn't "have sex" with dat girl ?
o.O
malaise
(269,237 posts)Slavery by Another Name was brilliant
DefenseLawyer
(11,101 posts)That dog won't hunt.