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Showing Original Post only (View all)Trump-Russia Isn't About the Cover-Up. It's About the Crime. [View all]
In Watergate, it was the cover-up, not the crime. But in Russiagate, that stands to be turned on its head. We already know a lotand we can be sure Mueller knows more.
JONATHAN ALTER
NICK AKERMAN
02.09.18 10:48 PM ET
Recall the Watergate cliché that the cover-up is worse than the crime. That may have been true then. While it was never established that President Nixon knew in advance about the break-in at the Watergate complex, he was forced to resign after proof emerged that he used the CIA to obstruct the FBI investigation.
In the Russia scandal, special counsel Robert Mueller has credible proof of obstruction of justicei.e., the cover-up. But in a highly politicized climate, where memos and insults are weapons of distraction, that wont likely be enough. Even if Democrats take control of Congress in November, most Republicanslike most juries in run-of-the-mill criminal caseswill demand significant evidence of an underlying crime as a motive for the obstruction before turning on President Trump, much less voting in the Senate to remove him from office.
While Mueller and his team dont leak, signs that such evidence exists are clear from news reports, which contain only a tiny portion of what the special counsels office possesses. The fragmentary and often disconnected nature of those reports obscures the reasonable supposition that Mueller is well on his way to detailing conspiracy, wire fraud, illegal foreign campaign contributions, or all three. During Watergate, the special prosecutor had most of the evidence that doomed Nixon at least nine months before his August 9, 1974 resignation. Mueller, too, likely has the goods already, even without smoking gun tapes.
One tip-off was in Michael Flynns December 1 allocutionhis signed submission to the court as part of his guilty plea to making false statements to the FBI on January 24, 2017. It received almost no media attention but suggested the nature of the criminal conspiracy that would likely be at the heart of Muellers prosecution.
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-russia-isnt-about-the-cover-up-its-about-the-crime?ref=home