Since Trump didn't have tapes, if Comey embellished the truth to make him look worse, he didn't have any proof that Comey lied. So Trump's bluff worked. Maybe as a regular poker player I appreciate a good bluff more than others.
Yeah, that bluff worked like a charm...it convinced Comey to release his notes of all of his conversations with Trump and ended up with the hiring of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to take over the criminal investigation. So, Trump bluffed himself from NOT being under investigation to being under investigation. Wow, if you play poker as bad as Trump, I would love to play you...
Just in case you missed it, here's a special article for Trump supporters:
A Special Enemy
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was born and bred to torment Donald Trump.
Donald Trump went to sleep Wednesday night with a new enemy outside his window: former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
Mueller, a 72-year-old former prosecutor who left the FBI in 2013, has been called upon by the Justice Department to serve as a special counsel to investigate Trump and his associates. In accordance with an order issued Wednesday by the deputy attorney general, it will be up to Mueller—whose last name is pronounced Muh-lur—to decide whether anyone involved in the Trump campaign should be charged with a crime. “I accept this responsibility and will discharge it to the best of my ability,” Mueller said in a statement Wednesday.
Even if Mueller’s investigation doesn’t result in any charges being brought, it’s almost certain Mueller and his team will end up asking Trump questions he doesn’t want to answer and demanding to see documents he doesn’t want to provide. Barring a drastic change in Trump’s disposition, the president will respond to these affronts by publishing angry tweets about Mueller and snarling about him in interviews. Maybe he’ll even compare him to a “dog,” as he did recently when talking about former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. Or perhaps he could threaten Mueller, as he did last week in a tweet directed at former FBI Director James Comey.
While Trump loathes a lot of people, his hatred of Mueller is likely to be particularly intense. That’s because Mueller is exactly the kind of guy Trump always hates. He’s also exactly the kind of law enforcement official Trump doesn’t understand.
And, it doesn't end with just Mueller. He has a investigative dream team that will undoubtedly give the Trumpster nightmares...
What does Robert Mueller's team tell us about the Russia investigation?Seasoned lawyers with a depth of experience that includes the investigations into Watergate, Enron and the bombings of the US embassies in east Africa won’t be intimidated by the intense spotlight, experts say
Even before the special counsel’s inquiry has begun in earnest into links between the Trump campaign and Moscow, the team Robert Mueller is building provides clues about which way the investigation is heading.
One is a veteran of the Watergate investigation, and Donald Trump – like Richard Nixon – was reported on Wednesday to now be under investigation for obstruction of justice. Other team members have specialities that could point toward where Mueller is looking after taking over control of the investigation from the FBI: money laundering, financial fraud and Russian organised crime.
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It is the specialities of Mueller’s team that is more likely to be a serious concern to the Trump camp, since they point to a wide-ranging inquiry that will look into all aspects of Trump’s complex links to Russia.
One of the more recent recruits is reported to be Lisa Page, a justice department trial attorney with a substantial record of investigating Russian and former Soviet organised crime and in particular its reputed godfather, Semion Mogilevich.
Mogilevich associates are reported to have owned condos in Trump Tower in New York, and the father of Trump’s business partner in the Trump Soho hotel, Felix Sater, was a Mogilevich lieutenant.
Vladimir Putin is known to use oligarchs and organised crime bosses as instruments of Kremlin influence abroad.
“This pick really shows that Mueller recognises that Russian organised crime and sophisticated financial transactions involving them are going to be right at the centre and Page is definitely a leading expert there,” said Scott Horton, a US lawyer with experience of working in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Another sign that the Mueller team will take a “follow the money” approach is the recruitment of Andrew Weissmann, an organised crime expert who oversaw lengthy cases in the US district court for the eastern district of New York focused on the city’s mafia families and their infiltration of Wall Street.
Weissmann formerly led the FBI’s fraud unit and the taskforce that unpicked the complex financial dealings of Enron, after the giant energy corporation collapsed in December 2001. It was the most complex white collar crime investigation in FBI history and led to the convictions of the firm’s top management.
“What is striking to me is that his team is a counter-intelligence team and is a money fraud, banking, laundering-type team. Andrew Weissman did the Enron cases, which is all about following the money trail,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the homeland security department.
Another legal heavyweight Mueller has recruited is Michael Dreeben, a former deputy solicitor general who has argued more than 100 cases before the US supreme court. Rosenzweig described him on the Lawfare blog as “quite possibly the best criminal appellate lawyer in America” and said he represented even worse news for Trump last week than Comey’s damning testimony.
Mueller has brought with him three members of his law firm, WilmerHale, who have justice department and law enforcement backgrounds. One of them is James Quarles, who was part of the Watergate taskforce and focus on irregularities in GOP campaign finance.
Another WilmerHale lawyer is a former FBI agent, Aaron Zebley, a cybersecurity specialist who, according to Wired magazine, was part of the bureau’s I-49 counter-terrorism unit, which helped track down the bombers who blew up the US embassies in east Africa in 1998. He worked as a counsel at the justice department’s national security division before following Mueller to WilmerHale.
The third member of the WilmerHale trio is Jeannie Rhee, who was deputy assistant attorney general in the Obama administration and is an expert on the intersection of criminal law and government.
“This is a team with wide expertise that is really top notch,” said Karen Greenberg, the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University. “These are people who have a number of competencies who have dealt with fraud and corruption and who know government well. All of them know obstruction of justice and many have worked with Mueller and with each other before.”
So, if this was a Trump bluff, it backfired with a glorious splendor, well, unless you are a Trump supported. In that case, Trump screwed the pooch and is now staring down the barrel of such an intensive investigation that by the time Robert Mueller and his team is done, we'll know everything, regardless of where the chips may fall.
