Talks are underway for Robert Mueller to interview Donald Trump. More popcorn anyone?

Courtesy of NBC News: 

Anticipating that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will ask to interview President Donald Trump, the president’s legal team is discussing a range of potential options for the format, including written responses to questions in lieu of a formal sit-down, according to three people familiar with the matter. 

Lawyers for Trump have been discussing with FBI investigators a possible interview by the special counsel with the president as part of the inquiry into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. 

The discussions were described by one person with direct knowledge as preliminary and ongoing. Trump’s legal team is seeking clarification on whether the president would be interviewed directly by Mueller, as well as the legal standard for when a president can be interviewed, the location of a possible interview, the topics and the duration. But the president’s team is also seeking potential compromises that could avoid an interview altogether, two of those interviewed told NBC News.

With the possibility now looming that the president himself could be subject to an interview by the FBI or Mueller’s investigators, Trump’s legal team has been debating whether it would be possible to simply avoid it. One individual familiar with the strategy said those internal discussions within Trump’s legal team began shortly after the president’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was indicted in late October for money laundering in connection with his business dealings with Ukraine.

Yeah, you bet your ass Trump's attorneys want to avoid having him sit down for a direct interview with Mueller, or one of his prosecutors.

There is video of Trump giving a deposition online, and he does not do well under that kind of scrutiny, and he is all but guaranteed to perjure himself.

However there is almost no chance that Mueller will let Trump avoid this.

Justice Department veterans cast doubt on the possibility that Mueller, who served as FBI director for 12 years, would forgo the chance to interview the president directly. 

“Prosecutors want to see and hear folks in person,” said Chuck Rosenberg, former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and chief of staff to FBI Director Comey. “They want to probe and follow up. Body language and tone are important,” said Rosenberg, now an NBC News analyst. “And they want answers directly from witnesses, not from their lawyers. The odds of prosecutors agreeing to written responses are somewhere between infinitesimally small and zero."

My feeling is that once Mueller gets Trump into a room to answer direct questions, that it is game over for Trump. 

And I think Trump's legal counsel is all too aware of that fact.

Senator Elizabeth Warren tears Wells Fargo CEO into tiny bite size pieces, and it is a thing of beauty.

Courtesy of UPROXX:  

During a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Senator Warren joined panel Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and others to grill Stumpf about his knowledge of and participation in the scam. Warren’s cross-examination was particularly tense, as the senator had to repeat her questions three or four times before they were answered to her satisfaction. 

“Mr. Stumpf, the Wells Fargo Vision and Values statement, which you frequently cite, says ‘We believe in values lived not phrases memorized. If you want to find out how strong a company’s ethics are, don’t listen to what its people say, watch what they do.'” Warren quoted. “So, let’s do that. Since this massive years-long scam came to light you have said repeatedly, ‘I am accountable.’ But what have you actually done to hold yourself accountable? Have you resigned as CEO or chairman of Wells Fargo?” Stumpf admitted that he had not resigned, nor had he returned any of his earnings to the company or fired any top executives. 

“You haven’t resigned, you haven’t returned a single nickel of your personal earnings, you haven’t fired a single senior executive,” Warren said. “Instead, evidently, your definition of ‘accountable’ is to push the blame to your low-level employees who don’t have the money for a fancy PR firm to defend themselves. It’s gutless leadership.”

The reason that Strumpf finds himself being treated like a puppy's chew toy by Elizabeth Warren is because his company just paid a 185 million dollar fine for opening fake accounts for its customers in order to make a profit without their knowledge.

This is fraud, and if Senator Warren hates anything, it's fraud.

I don't know about all of you but I could not help fantasizing about what it would be like to watch Warren laying a smackdown like this on Trump's running mare Mike Pence in a VP debate.

I know, I know, that ship has sailed.

But you can't blame a guy for wondering what if?

Rage inducing video of the day. Girlfriend of man shot to death in an Ohio Wal-Mart threatened with jail for not admitting that she knew he had a gun before entering the store. He did not.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

Police aggressively questioned the tearful girlfriend of a young black man they had just shot dead as he held a BB gun in an Ohio supermarket – accusing her of lying, threatening her with jail, and suggesting that she was high on drugs. 

Tasha Thomas was reduced to swearing on the lives of her relatives that John Crawford III had not been carrying a firearm when they entered the Walmart in Beavercreek, near Dayton, to buy crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars on the evening of 5 August. 

“You lie to me and you might be on your way to jail,” detective Rodney Curd told Thomas, as she wept and repeatedly offered to take a lie-detector test. After more than an hour and a half of questioning and statement-taking, Curd finally told Thomas that Crawford, 22, had died. “As a result of his actions, he is gone,” said the detective, as she slumped in her chair and cried. 

For the record John Crawford III was NOT armed when he entered that Wal-Mart. 

He only had a BB gun in his possession when he was shot.

This poor woman was on the phone with him when the police opened fire on him.
A 94-minute police video recording, released to the Guardian by the office of Mike DeWine, the Ohio attorney general, in response to a public records request, shows Thomas, 26, being interviewed by Curd after she was driven from Walmart to the Beavercreek police department. Curd later told investigators he had not yet been told Crawford only had a BB gun that had been on sale at the store. 

Curd promptly asked Thomas whether she and Crawford had criminal records. Already tearful and breathless, Thomas explained that she may have had some traffic offences and had been arrested for petty theft as a juvenile. 

The detective then became increasingly aggressive and banged on the table between them with his hand. “Tell me where he got the gun from,” Curd repeated. Thomas insisted Crawford had been carrying only a white plastic grocery bag when they arrived at Walmart to buy the ingredients to make s’mores at a family cook-out. 

Asked one of several times whether Crawford owned a gun, Thomas said: “Not that I know.” 

Curd told her: “Don’t tell me ‘not that you know’, because that’s the first thing I realise somebody’s not telling me the truth”. 

He later repeated: “You need to tell me the truth” and “You need to be truthful.” 

I have to question the fact that his officer claims that he did not know the murdered man only had a BB gun on him. Either he is lying to save face, or else he should never have been in that room interrogating this poor woman with no knowledge of what actually took place.

To me it appears that Detective Curd is trying to get her to say hEr boyfriend was armed in order to provide an excuse for officers to have executed him in that fashion.

When she fails to do so his anger is apparent.

Personally I am disgusted by this.

The Bush approved "enhanced interrogation techniques" are virtually the same ones used by the Nazis.

Didn't Russian President Putin make the allegation recently that America was much like Nazi Germany?

I think it is no longer debatable whether or not George Bush has destroyed Americas credibility in the world.

But we still cannot consider impeachment huh?