For months I've written, "Follow the money" and thereby put Trump in jail.
This past week the New York Times reported that Special Counselor Robert Mueller is now investigating Trump's finances:
"A former senior official said Mr. Mueller’s investigation was looking at money laundering by Trump associates. The suspicion is that any cooperation with Russian officials would most likely have been in exchange for some kind of financial payoff, and that there would have been an effort to hide the payments, probably by routing them through offshore banking centers." New York Times reports
Donny Deutsch said Friday on "Morning Joe", this will "take down" Trump. Deutsch is a sort of adman, but mainly he's a guy attuned to "the talk on the street", the street being Wall Street.
And, per Donny, The Street says that Trump is a crook, ran through his credit in the USA, and had to go begging to Russia for loans to stay alive. Donny Deutsch: financial dealings will bring down 'sleazy ...
So what does Russia get in return? Deutsch and others suggest money laundering. I can think of four other things: an end to the sanctions now crippling Russia's economy; the USA abandoning NATO, thus allowing Eastern Europe to fall back into the maw of Russia; a let's-play-nice-with-Putin stance by Trump to heighten Putin's stature with his own people; a quiet greenlight for Russia and Assad in Syria.
There's probably more, but it's now past my lunch time and I'll wind this down. Watching Trump flailing and falling gives me quite an appetite.
What make me so sure there's something financially creepy about Trump in all this? Not just Donny Deutsch saying so. No, it's Trump saying so. With every enraged tweet he announces how distraught he is. And getting more so!
Nothing could frighten him this much other than being caught for his money misdeeds. Two reasons: one is that he can be jailed for these since they occurred before his inauguration. While presidents are not subject to prosecution for misdeeds while in the presidency, their prior misdeeds are not protected.
Second, there's not much quibbling about a conviction based on a written record of financial transactions. No issues of Intent; no swearing contests by witnesses. It's all in the record, probably bank records. And tax records, Trump's taxes. Even those GOP voters who still believe in him would have to believe this kind of evidence.
Mueller is going to want to see those all those records, including Trump's tax returns. So are some Congressional committees. And golly, that's what really scares Trump! Because his tax records may reveal that he's not nearly as rich as he claims.
This twisted, tiny little man is so insecure, so focused on being the biggest and the best. He won't be able to stand us learning that he's not a billionaire many times over, not one of the really big boys financially. That's worse for him than going to jail!
He'd probably do almost anything to keep us from knowing that he is not really, really rich. (See footnote.)
One question: Would his doing "almost anything" include touching off a nuclear war?
That would certainly be a distraction. And distraction is Trump's main weapon when things are going badly.
I keep thinking of the ending of Dr. Strangelove. "We'll meet again..."
Oh, my. Is that mushroom-cloud-risk worth seeing those tax returns?
Actually it is.
Violence or the threat of it must never win our aquiescence.
Never.
__________
Trump just released a "financial disclosure" statement for all of 2016, plus 3 months of this year. It's meaningless absent income tax returns since the amount on the form apparently includes business revenue, according to Bloomberg News: Trump Discloses Multimillion-Dollar "Income" in Latest Filing ... Business revenues can be many multiples time actual income. Trump is boastfully inflating his supposed earnings.
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