Meanwhile:
SHARYL ATTKISSON: 8 signs pointing to a counterintelligence operation deployed against Trump's campaign

As tricky as normal diplomacy is, this seems like another "change for the sake of change" idea that has a whole lot of potential downside. 

 Beaker wrote:
Who really knows if Kim ever really intended on having such a meeting?  Obviously, no matter who is/was President it would always be a pretty thorny and unpredictable situation.  I think part of the optimism about Trump being able to meet with Kim is that he seems equally unpredictable.

Well, Kim did say "ha ha ha ha no" a week or two ago after Bolton jizzed over the idea of going to war if Kim didn't give up all nukes.

It's a strategically good move.  He played the card before Kim Jong Un could.

It's a strategically good move.  He played the card before Kim Jong Un could.

 only after pence and bolton "through a wrench"  in the talks.  Brilliant, let's go back to name calling.  Hopefully the Koreas and China ignore the US and continue on their own.  

It's a strategically good move.  He played the card before Kim Jong Un could.

Full text of Trump's letter to Kim here:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/trump-cancels-june-12-singapore-summit-with-north-korea-s-kim

 Proclivities wrote: 
Anything done by Giuliani should be met with great suspicion on the face of it.

Exactly.  The practice of granting a plea in exchange for testimony has been around for a very long time.  It seems to have become more widely used by the 1970s for drug trafficking and organized crime cases, and was later employed by then-federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani during his cases against John Gotti and others.  There have been numerous arguments for years that the practice is unjust or is a form of bribery, but it certainly is not a new practice, or unique to this investigation.

There are a lot of things wrong with our criminal justice system — a lot — and there certainly are no shortage of abuses by police and prosecutors.  That said, it is rather disingenuous to point to the Mueller investigation and the Cohen spinoff investigation as being emblematic of all that is wrong with the system.

Thank you for pointing me to Sklansky's piece. I'm about 3 pages in right now and will try to respond to it by tonight or tomorrow.

But even though Sklansky, Silverglate and others may have warranted concerns about prosecutors, how are those GENERAL concerns relevant to the investigations into Trump?

I ask in part because MANY types of objections about Mueller and Co. were also used by Nixon, the Republican Party and their supporters during Watergate. Nixon to the end of his life could not admit that he had committed crimes but instead complained that the investigation into the Watergate break-in and other crimes was a politically motivated witch hunt.


Do you see actual instances of prosecutorial overreach or misconduct as you've learned about the work of Mueller and the NY Attorney General's office? Do you have concerns or objections about the possibility that the New York Attorney General's office could use the charges against Evgeny Friedman to sway Friedman to testify against Michael Cohen in state or federal investigations? If so, why?

Please note that Friedman has a pattern of misconduct (he has been disbarred as a lawyer). He also had this to say (per the NYT story):

Later Tuesday, Mr. Freidman texted a New York Times reporter about the article that had been published about his guilty plea, calling it “shameful” and comparing it to a tabloid story. “Michael is dear dear personal friend and a passive client! That’s it!” he wrote. “I am humbled and shamed!” he said, adding that the guilty plea represented “me taking responsibility for my actions.”
Personally, I take the guilty plea and the above bolded text as Friedman's admission of guilt. Friedman was apparently facing 5 class B felonies, each punishable by a prison term of up to 25 years. With the guilty plea, he's on probation for five years...and that's it AFAICT. So I don't see how anyone can claim that prosecutors invented charges against Friedman.

Do you object to the possible use of a person (apparently) tenuously connected to Trump as a point of leverage against another person quite closely connected to Trump? AFAIK it's standard prosecutorial practice of squeezing people on the edge of an investigation in order to get information about the people at the center of an investigation. Are you concerned that Friedman will lie to satisfy prosecutors?

We could talk about general patterns of prosecutorial misconduct, but that discussion would likely have to move to another thread. How is this relevant to Trump and Mueller?

The President of the United States will be "interviewed" tomorrow on Fox&Friends.