It looks like Robert Mueller has flipped another one.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates is finalizing a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller's office, indicating he's poised to cooperate in the investigation, according to sources familiar with the case. 

Gates has already spoken to Mueller's team about his case and has been in plea negotiations for about a month. He's had what criminal lawyers call a "Queen for a Day" interview, in which a defendant answers any questions from the prosecutors' team, including about his own case and other potential criminal activity he witnessed. 

Gates' cooperation could be another building block for Mueller in a possible case against President Donald Trump or key members of his team. 

Once a plea deal is in place, Gates would become the third known cooperator in Mueller's sprawling probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. It would also increase the pressure to cooperate on Gates' co-defendant Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, who has pleaded not guilty to Mueller's indictment and is preparing for a trial on alleged financial crimes unrelated to the campaign. Gates pleaded not guilty on October 30 alongside Manafort.

That "Queen for a Day" expression was explained last night on the Rachel Maddow show, as being an arrangement where the subject HAS to tell the absolute truth about everything, knowing that he will not be prosecuted for the things that he personally confesses to, unless he attempts to walk back his statements later.

So that means that Gates in in a box, and his only chance of avoiding significant jail time is to cooperate fully with the investigation, and testify in court.

This also means that Paul Manafort is in a corner, and that if he does not also flip, he will definitely be seeing the insides of a prison cell.

I think it is beyond clear at this point that Mueller has built a strong case against Trump, and is now closing in.

Republican lawmakers believe that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is going in for the kill on the Russian investigations.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

Republicans with close links to the White House increasingly believe that special counsel Robert Mueller is “going for the kill” in his investigation into links between President Donald Trump and Russia, according to a report from Axios Tuesday. 

Members of the GOP are said to have come to that stark conclusion based on Mueller’s hiring of lawyers experienced in dealing with money laundering crimes and the Mafia, as well as the intensity of his pursuit of both witnesses and evidence.

Trump has previously warned that investigation of his financial dealings is a red line that Mueller should not cross. But that is thought to be exactly what Mueller is doing, including looking into a proposal made during the 2016 campaign to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

I actually think that when Trump identified his finances as being the "red line" that Mueller then know exactly where he should focus.

Trump is like a child suddenly volunteering that if there are any cookies missing from the cookie jar that he certainly has no idea where they might have gone.

As for the contention that Mueller is "going the kill," if accurate that suggests that he is looking for a conviction of some kind, or to gather enough evidence to put impeachment on the table.

Oh, and he is still gathering evidence.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

The Trump campaign has begun handing over documents to Bob Mueller as his investigators probe potential interference by Russia in the 2016 election. 

A team of attorneys at Jones Day, the firm representing the Trump campaign, is finding the documents that relate to Mueller’s queries of the campaign, sources have told The Daily Beast. And John Dowd, an attorney representing the president, said that the campaign is in “total cooperation” with Mueller on the matter. 

I actually doubt that the campaign is totally cooperating as I think they have a lot to hide, but we will see exactly what their information reveals.

Speaking of cooperation there are still a few who are openly resisting that.

Courtesy of CNN:

President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, retired Gen. Michael Flynn, has refused a new request to appear as a witness before the Senate intelligence committee, a congressional source tells CNN. 

Flynn first declined to comply with a Senate subpoena in May, asserting his Fifth Amendment rights. More recently, the committee has reiterated its request and Flynn has declined again, the source said. 

The Senate intelligence committee has sought testimony from Flynn as part of its investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, as well as whether Trump associates had any involvement. Flynn resigned from the White House in February amid controversy over his communications with the Russian ambassador to the US.

Now it could be that Flynn is pulling a Manafort and making the House subpoena his testimony to demonstrate that he is not a snitch, or it could be that, as has been reported by others, he has already made a deal with Muelller and does not want to participate in every Russia investigation out there.

We shall see.

University Republicans invite Ann Coulter to speak. University President and others speak out in oppostion. Coulter summarily uninvited. Could this be a trend?

So apparently the College Republican club invited Coulter to come for a Q and A with their members. However this did not go down well with many of the other University students, nor with the President of the University, Father Joseph McShane, who wrote the following:

The College Republicans, a student club at Fordham University, has invited Ann Coulter to speak on campus on November 29. The event is funded through student activity fees and is not open to the public nor the media. Student groups are allowed, and encouraged, to invite speakers who represent diverse, and sometimes unpopular, points of view, in keeping with the canons of academic freedom. Accordingly, the University will not block the College Republicans from hosting their speaker of choice on campus. 

To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of the College Republicans, however, would be a tremendous understatement. There are many people who can speak to the conservative point of view with integrity and conviction, but Ms. Coulter is not among them. Her rhetoric is often hateful and needlessly provocative — more heat than light — and her message is aimed squarely at the darker side of our nature. 

As members of a Jesuit institution, we are called upon to deal with one another with civility and compassion, not to sling mud and impugn the motives of those with whom we disagree or to engage in racial or social stereotyping. In the wake of several bias incidents last spring, I told the University community that I hold out great contempt for anyone who would intentionally inflict pain on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed. 

“Disgust” was the word I used to sum up my feelings about those incidents. Hate speech, name-calling, and incivility are completely at odds with the Jesuit ideals that have always guided and animated Fordham. 

Still, to prohibit Ms. Coulter from speaking at Fordham would be to do greater violence to the academy, and to the Jesuit tradition of fearless and robust engagement. Preventing Ms. Coulter from speaking would counter one wrong with another. The old saw goes that the answer to bad speech is more speech. This is especially true at a university, and I fully expect our students, faculty, alumni, parents, and staff to voice their opposition, civilly and respectfully, and forcefully. 

The College Republicans have unwittingly provided Fordham with a test of its character: do we abandon our ideals in the face of repugnant speech and seek to stifle Ms. Coulter’s (and the student organizers’) opinions, or do we use her appearance as an opportunity to prove that our ideas are better and our faith in the academy — and one another — stronger? We have chosen the latter course, confident in our community and in the power of decency and reason to overcome hatred and prejudice. 

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President

Wow, that is a pretty powerful and well reasoned statement.

The letter from Father McShane was posted just yesterday at Salon, and by that evening the College Republicans had decided that Coulter was NOT the sort of conservative representative that they wanted to be associated with, and took back their invitation, while also issuing THIS statement:

The College Republicans regret the controversy surrounding our planned lecture featuring Ann Coulter. The size and severity of opposition to this event have caught us by surprise and caused us to question our decision to welcome her to Rose Hill. Looking at the concerns raised about Ms. Coulter, many of them reasonable, we have determined that some of her comments do not represent the ideals of the College Republicans and are inconsistent with both our organization’s mission and the University’s. We regret that we failed to thoroughly research her before announcing; that is our error and we do not excuse ourselves for it. Consistent with our strong disagreement with certain comments by Ms. Coulter, we have chosen to cancel the event and rescind Ms. Coulter’s invitation to speak at Fordham. We made this choice freely before Father McShane’s email was sent out and we became aware of his feelings – had the President simply reached out to us before releasing his statement, he would have learned that the event was being cancelled. We hope the University community will forgive the College Republicans for our error and continue to allow us to serve as its main voice of the sensible, compassionate, and conservative political movement that we strive to be. We fell short of that standard this time, and we offer our sincere apologies. 

Ted Conrad, President 
Emily Harman, Vice President 
Joe Campagna, Treasurer 
John Mantia, Secretary

Personally I was stuck by the civility demonstrated by both sides in this matter, which of course goes to illustrate just how poor of a choice it would have been to introduce the hateful rhetoric of Ann Coulter onto their campus.

It also gave me a little hope that perhaps this 2012 election may result in a beneficial side effect that impacts our political discourse moving forward.

As identified by David Frum yesterday, and of course pointed out by jubilant progressive pundits every day since the election, the conservatives have allowed themselves to be so completely cut off from information which contradicts their rigid point of view that, despite binders full of information to the contrary, they had convinced themselves that Mitt Romney was going to win Tuesday's election in a landslide.

When that did not happen they tried to attack the media, the Obama campaign, and essentially reality itself for denying them the victory they simply KNEW was coming their way.

And it was people like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, and Rush Limbaugh that told them those lies, and tricked them into looking like idiots.

So maybe, just maybe, (After exhausting every possible conspiracy theory of course) the Republicans will start to move away from the conservative spinmeisters, and bullshit artists, employed by Fox news and Right Wing radio and start to actually pay attention to something we progressives call "facts." I know it helps progressives to win elections when these people are all hopped up on stupid, but it DOESN'T help us to move this country forward. And in the end isn't THAT far more important then  simply putting numbers on the scoreboard?