{"id":801,"date":"2018-04-16T09:54:45","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T13:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=801"},"modified":"2018-04-16T09:54:45","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T13:54:45","slug":"known-knowns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2018\/04\/16\/known-knowns\/","title":{"rendered":"Known, Knowns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Known Knowns<\/p>\n

Michael Ch\u00e9 on Saturday Night Live\u2019s Weekend Update made a telling comment:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cFBI raids are like your girlfriend going through your phone, she\u2019s only doing it to prove what she already knows.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

The investigators already know.\u00a0 They already know whether the President of the United States conspired with the Russian government to influence the election of 2016.\u00a0 While Fox News and the rest claim \u201c\u2026after sixteen months and millions of dollars there is no evidence of collusion,\u201d investigators know the truth.\u00a0As Don Rumsfeld so eloquently put it, it is a \u201cknown known.\u201d<\/p>\n

The raid on Michael Cohen\u2019s office and home will prove what they already know.\u00a0 So will the evidence gained through months of electronic surveillance on Cohen, all approved both by the Justice Department and by Federal Judges.\u00a0So will the testimony of Popadoupolos, Flynn and Gates.\u00a0 The investigators already know all of this, they already have conclusions drawn about what occurred in the years leading up to the election.<\/p>\n

As James Comey said in his interview with George Stephanopoulos, after a year any good investigators will have conclusions.\u00a0 If they don\u2019t, they are incompetent.<\/p>\n

Reporters are unearthing bits and pieces of what investigators have.\u00a0 The McClatchy News\u00a0<\/a>is reporting that Michael Cohen did travel to Prague in the late summer of 2016, despite his denials.\u00a0Others have linked Cohen to meetings in Prague with a close advisor to Putin, and to one of the Clinton email hackers.\u00a0Should this turn out to be accurate, it more than confirms information from the Steele Dossier, lending more credence to the rest of the report.\u00a0 If true, it also is the \u201csmoking gun\u201d of conspiracy, and probably the end of the Trump Presidency.<\/p>\n

The Russiagate world will be focused on the Comey book this week.\u00a0 While we are still waiting for our copy, I have listened to Comey\u2019s interviews.\u00a0He strikes me as a moral and honest man, who made difficult decisions.\u00a0 While I disagree with what he did and believe that he altered the outcome of the election, I don\u2019t think he used \u201cbad judgment.\u201d\u00a0 I think he used his best judgment, directed by his own moral compass.\u00a0He tried to make a \u201cblack and white\u201d decision in what is ultimately a very gray and political world.<\/p>\n

Comey is a prosecutor, a man who spent his career making judgments about whether the actions of people were legal or illegal.\u00a0 He never stepped away from the high profile defendants from John Gotti to Martha Stewart to Hillary Clinton.\u00a0 In listening to Comey\u2019s interview, he clearly used those skills to evaluate Donald Trump.\u00a0His conclusion:\u00a0 a man morally unfit to be President.<\/p>\n

The same applied to his decisions about Hillary Clinton.\u00a0 Comey judged that she did something wrong in using her personal email.\u00a0He couldn\u2019t make it a crime, and his statement in the summer of 2016 showed his frustration.<\/p>\n

This also applies to the \u201cOctober Surprise\u201d letter to Congress on reopening the Clinton investigation.\u00a0 Comey knew that the Weiner Laptop email investigation was going to leak out, whether he announced it or not:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI don’t know whether that was part of a leak outta the– FBI office in New York that knew about the search warrant. But that was my concern, that once you start seeking a search warrant, especially in a criminal case– counterintelligence is different.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In his world view, Comey would defend the integrity of the FBI by writing the letter to Congress, knowing it would be released, rather than have it leak out of the New York FBI office.\u00a0 He wouldn\u2019t see it as a choice he made, but as an outcome he wanted to control.<\/p>\n

While James Comey will be the \u201cshow\u201d this week, the legal actions by Michael Cohen (and Stormy Daniels) will be the best sideshow.\u00a0Cohen has demanded that HE determine what pieces of evidence are covered by attorney-client privilege, rather than the Justice Department \u201ctaint team\u201d (the team of lawyers, separate from the investigators, who are going through the evidence now.)\u00a0 The judge should laugh this one out of court, but if not, it would create a huge shift in the investigation.<\/p>\n

But regardless of this decision, in the end Mueller knows, and has the same relentless determination that Jim Comey showed in his career.<\/p>\n

He will make sure that, eventually, we will all know too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Known Knowns Michael Ch\u00e9 on Saturday Night Live\u2019s Weekend Update made a telling comment: \u00a0\u201cFBI raids are like your girlfriend going through your phone, she\u2019s only doing it to prove what she already knows.\u201d The investigators already know.\u00a0 They already know whether the President of the United States conspired with the Russian government to influence … Continue reading “Known, Knowns”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nKnown, Knowns : Our America - 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