Known Associates
Well, the Mueller Report is out and has found that there was no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians (although there were apparently numerous opportunities offered by the Russians). Mr. Mueller further did not conclude that President Trump committed a crime by obstructing justice but he did not exonerate him either. Attorney General William Barr, in consultation with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who was in charge of the investigation after Jeff Sessions recused himself, determined that the president’s actions such as firing FBI Director Comey did not meet the Justice Department’s standards for bringing charges. This makes sense to my non-legal mind because if there is no proof that a crime has been committed you would have no motive to obstruct justice.
Democrat’s on capitol hill have vowed to review the entire report with a fine-tooth comb to make sure that nothing was overlooked, as they should. Then, assuming that they do not find anything, they should drop it. It is not clear, however, that they will do so given all the ranting and raving that still continues on CNN and MSNBC (and others). But people are tired of all the sanctimonious anger emoted by Democrats about this case along with the constant shrill echoes from the mainstream media dominating the airwaves. The president has demanded an apology but he is unlikely to get it (except maybe from Laura Logan).
The Democrats may be tempted to point out all the indictments of friends and associates of President Trump (many of whom have already plead guilty) and tarnish him by his choices of people. But we already knew that President Trump had dealings with shady people. As a businessman, Donald Trump started building and operating hotels in New York City, and I know from personal experience that you cannot build and operate hotels in New York City without dealing with the mob.
My first job after graduate school was with Schweizerische Bankverein (a Swiss bank that is now part of UBS) and one of my first projects at the bank was to evaluate the price of a hotel that the owner, Biff Halloran, was thinking of selling. I learned two things from that project. The first was that I learned that according to Biff you could not run a hotel business in NYC without dealing with the mob (the second was that you can manipulate projections to say whatever you want them to say. When Biff did not like my initial valuation of $20 million my boss told me to redo the analysis to come up with a valuation of $25 million. A few