Trumps false claims to Comey about Moscow stay could aid Mueller

[babylonsister]

Trump’s false claims to Comey about Moscow stay could aid Mueller

James Comey says the president told him that he never spent the night in Moscow in 2013, but flight records, social media and his bodyguard's testimony show otherwise.

By BEN SCHRECKINGER

04/23/2018 06:09 PM EDT


Late last January, at a private White House dinner attended only by Donald Trump and Jim Comey, the president steered the conversation to a sensitive topic: “the golden showers thing.” He wanted the then-FBI director to know, Comey later wrote in a memo, that not only did he not consort with hookers in a Moscow hotel room in 2013, it was an impossibility. Trump “had spoken to people who had been on… the trip with him and they had reminded him that he didn’t stay over night in Russia for that," Comey recalled.

Trump made the same claim a second time, telling Comey in a later Oval Office meeting "that he hadn’t stayed overnight in Russia during the Miss Universe trip,” as Comey wrote.

But flight records obtained by POLITICO, as well as congressional testimony from Trump's bodyguard and contemporaneous photographs and social media posts, tell a different story—one that might bring new legal jeopardy for the president, legal experts say.

In fact, Trump arrived in Moscow, where he attended the Miss Universe pageant, which he owned at the time, on a Friday. He left in the early morning hours the following Sunday—spending one full night and most of a second one in the Russian capital—in contradiction to the recollections of Comey, who wrote about his early 2017 meetings with Trump minutes after they concluded.

A conscious effort by Trump to mislead the FBI director could lend weight to the allegation—contained in a largely unverified private research dossier compiled by a former British spy in 2016—that Trump engaged in compromising activity during the trip that exposed him to Russian government blackmail.

It has also likely caught the eye of special counsel Robert Mueller, legal analysts say. False statements to Comey about the trip could demonstrate that Trump has “consciousness of guilt,” according Pete Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor who worked for special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of national security-related leaks during the George W. Bush administration.

more...

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/23/trump-moscow-overnight-stay-mueller-comey-545834

[riversedge]

1. Trump says Comey lied, but will he claim that his long time body guard Keith Schiller also lied??

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/23/trump-moscow-overnight-stay-mueller-comey-545834

.....Congressional testimony reportedly given by Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller last year further supports the evidence that the president stayed overnight in Russia.

According to media reports last fall, Schiller testified to Congress that, during a daytime business meeting, a person he did not recognize offered to send five women to Trump’s hotel room that night. Schiller said he rejected the offer.

Schiller reportedly testified that he stood outside Trump’s hotel room for a period that night before going to bed himself, having seen no women enter the room.

A lawyer for Schiller, Stuart Sears, declined to comment on the record.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

2. BLOTUS is circling the drain... it's fun to watch!!

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

4. Really?

Enjoy your popcorn. It's not a game. He was "circling the drain" 8 months ago. He's 72 years old. He only cares about himself, and golfing. He's nasty and an Ugly American in ways we had been able to walk-away from in past decades. To think someone enjoys the daily news cycle makes me wonder about posters like you. It's distressing to the rest of the world...not something anyone should look forward to 'watching w intent.' What if he doesn't go down the drain?

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

7. Yes, I do enjoy watching Nazi tRump goin' down the shitter & you wonder about ME?! hahaha, good one!

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

9. laugh it up.

Hopefully, you can enjoy many more days of popcorn and revelry. Unbelievable that we are all socked into the news cycle everyday. I want dt gone too, but, making it too easy for him to "last' ala...looking forward to the next news snippet, seems ineffective...lo these 18 months into it. That's almost half-way. May we all survive it.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

10. I will, especially after the Traitor-in-Chief is impeached!!

It may be a small consolation after Hillary's heart-breaking loss to BLOTUS, but, at this point, I'll take what I can get... with much revelry and popcorn, yes!!!

Does make me wonder though... hmmm.

Just kiddin... but see how easy it is to play the innuendo game? An apology from you would be nice, though I don't expect one.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

11. I hear you.

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

3. Coulda woulda shoulda

Meanwhile, the United States of America suffers, and there's no one in high office to set examples for any of our children, teens, or young adults. The time for removing him was yesterday. It's become a daily dose of pablumatic hope for Americans. Nothing is going to change. These people he's appointed are destroying our nation. Everyday its some 'reality show' tidbit, like it's all a big joke and can be fixed. You can't un ring the bell sometimes.

[4139]

5. Well maybe he didnt stay in the hotel... maybe he stayed in Putins Palace instead

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

8. Maybe it depends on the meaning of "never."

[kentuck]

6. I am not surprised he lied about it.

That's his "normal"...