USA: The Mueller report: the best day for Trump presidency "this outcome could mean his reelection in 2020, unless there is a snake in the grass"

This is only the beginning - "It isn't over till the fat lady sings"

BBC News - Mueller report: The best day of Trump's presidency

Note EU-Digest:  As the saying goes , "It is not over until the fat lady sings" and no one should jump to conclusions before the report becomes Public, either voluntary, or by subpoena. Regardless of what Trump says. 

On top of that, this US President who habitually lies has not been exonerated from crimes in this report, even though he says so. 

In addition to the above; most of his Cabinet members have been jailed for criminal offenses; he still has not shown his Tax returns; his administration has ran up the highest budget deficit of any US Government; he  is on friendly terms with dictators around the globe, while angering all his Allies around the world, except Israel and its corrupt PM Netanyahu, because he needs the powerful US Jewish lobby to help him win in the 2020 elections.

And, this is only the top of the iceberg when it concerns the mismanagement of the country by his Administration over the past 2 years.

Bottom-line, if he thinks he is out of the woods, he must be dreaming.

Read more at: 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47688348

USA The Mueller Report: Here’s What’s Next Now That Mueller Has Turned In His Report - by Chris Strohm and Larry Liebert

Now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has closed up shop and submitted his long-awaited final report, an explosive chain of events is sure to follow.

There will be a struggle in Congress, on cable TV and social media -- and probably in the courts -- over how much evidence must be disclosed from Mueller’s 22-month inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

There’s also likely to be an epic political fight over whether anything from the inquiry directly or indirectly implicates President Donald Trump in wrongdoing that may merit his impeachment, as some Democrats say, or whether it clears him after an investigation

Here’s a look at how the Mueller report is likely to play out:
Why It Starts Out Secretthat he and Republican supporters regularly call a “witch hunt.”

Justice Department regulations call for a special counsel to provide a final report to the attorney general, who decides what to tell Congress and make public.

The only exception under the regulations is that Congress must be told if the special counsel was prohibited from taking any specific action. “There were no such instances during the Special Counsel’s investigation,” Barr wrote in a letter to lawmakers Friday.

Barr may send his own summary of the findings to Congress, rather than Mueller’s actual report. He said in the letter that he was reviewing the report and may be able to advise lawmakers of Mueller’s “principal conclusions as soon as this weekend.”

He said he also was consulting with Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed the special counsel, “to determine what other information from the report can be released to Congress and the public.”

Why Barr May Keep Trump Out of It

While Barr pledged “as much transparency as possible,” he has previously suggested that promise has its limits. At his confirmation hearing in January, Barr cited Justice Department policies that a president can’t be indicted while in office -- and that prosecutors shouldn’t comment on someone who isn’t indicted.

But a precedent may have been set by former FBI Director James Comey, when he made public comments about Democrat Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, even though his investigation didn’t result in any charges against her. His comments brought criticism at various points from Democrats and Republicans.

“If you’re not going to indict someone, then you don’t stand up there and unload negative information about the person,” Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

It also isn’t clear how many details Mueller put in his report, especially about Trump.

Read more: Here’s What’s Next Now That Mueller Has Turned In His Report

RUSSIA - US relations: Trump avoids questions if he ever worked for Russia?

Trump evades question on whether he worked for Russia

Read more at: 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/fbi-report-trump-sunday-shows-russia-policy-1.4976567

USA: Vice President Pence Faces Heightened Scrutiny Over His Relationship with Paul Manafort - by Gwendolyn Smith

The "American Nightmare" has become a reality

Pence has remained largely in the background of the Trump presidency, often working behind the scenes on policy and other issues while Trump takes center stage. As Trump's fortunes have waned, however, those in his orbit are being reexamined.

The line of succession would call for Mike Pence to replace Donald Trump should he be removed from office. Many have feared what a Pence presidency would look like, given his actions as the Governor of Indiana against the LGBTQ community, women, and others.

Amongst the bad news for Trump last week was the indictment of Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. Manafort was found guilty last week on eight counts of financial crimes in his fraud trial.

It was Paul Manafort who chose Mike Pence as Donald Trump's vice president, with the president reportedly preferring Chris Christie for the role.

The link between Manafort and Pence is leading to additional scrutiny for the vice president, as people ask just what Pence knew about Manafort and his connections.

Many are also curious about Pence's involvements with former adviser Mike Flynn, questioning if he lied to protect the general in January of 2017 when he declared that Flynn had not discussed, "anything having to do with the United States' decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia" with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Read more: Vice President Pence Faces Heightened Scrutiny Over His Relationship with Paul Manafort | Alternet

Russia - US Summit: Is it a Summit or a Performance review of Donald Trump by his boss?

President Donald Trump said on Friday that nothing was off the table for his upcoming meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

“I’ll talk to him about everything,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for the weekend.

Trump said he planned to address election integrity when the two leaders come face to face in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16. Though Trump and Putin often speak warmly of each other, their countries are increasingly at odds when it comes to issues like foreign policy and meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

“We don’t want anyone tampering with elections,” Trump said on Friday.
Russia denies any interference in the 2016 elections, though U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded otherwise.

Trump maintains there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia leading up to the 2016 presidential election, a subject at the core of several federal investigations.

Other topics on the table are Ukraine, Syria, Crimea and issues involving former President Barack Obama,

Trump told the White House press pool on Friday. The president also said he didn’t see a problem with having good relationships with Russia and China.

Note EU-Digest:As one of the US Late Night talk Show Noted: This is not a summit - this is a performance review for Trump by his boss.

Read more: Latest Trump-Russia and Muller investigation news today - POLITICO

USA: The Russia Probe: What Roger Stone’s Latest Lie Reveals About Russia Scandal - by Jonathan Chait

TRUMPUT

This weekend, the Washington Post reported that Roger Stone met in May 2016 with a Russian man offering to sell the Trump campaign damaging information on Hillary Clinton. There’s no evidence that Stone consummated the transaction. But there is plenty of significance in the revelation.

The first is that the story confirms Stone’s functionally active status as a surrogate for the Trump campaign. Stone officially left his role in August 2015. But he continued to speak regularly with Trump, while supporting him fervently. There is abundant evidence that Stone communicated privately with WikiLeaks during the campaign.

Stone turned down the latest offer because, as he told fellow Trump adviser Michael Caputo at the time, the self-styled Russian intermediary was demanding too much money in return for goods that seemed to promise little. He turned the deal down because it was a bad deal, and claims he now believes the man was an FBI planting trying to entrap him, but there is no dispute he was negotiating on Trump’s behalf.

This tells us that any contacts Stone had with WikiLeaks were also done in his unofficial capacity as Trump surrogate. Stone was colluding with the publicity arm of Russian intelligence as a functional member of the Trump campaign.

Second, it matters that Stone and Caputo have been caught in another lie. Both men told congressional investigators they had no contact with Russians or people identifying themselves as Russian. “I’ve never been to Russia. I didn’t talk to anybody who was identifiably Russian during the two-year run-up to this campaign,” he explained to the Washington Post. “I very definitely can’t think of anybody who might have been a Russian without my knowledge.”

Stone now says he forgot all about this meeting. “I just didn’t remember, 2016 was a pretty busy year,” he tells ABC. It would be fairly surprising for Stone to have forgotten all about an approach from a Russian man offering dirt on Clinton given that Stone says he had zero contacts with Russians. You never forget your first time, as they say. It would be plausible that he forgot this contact with the Russians if he had a lot of contacts with Russians. Even if Stone’s unsupported charge that he was being set up is true, it would not explain why he failed to disclose the meeting and lied about it. In either case, “I forgot” is not usually a compelling defense against charges of perjury.

And the broader point is that Trump and his campaign keep lying, over and over, about the extent of their contacts with Russia. It is conceivable that one or two members of Trump’s campaign might forget an incidental contact with a purported Russian agent, especially if that person had a legitimate role as well. But the scores of lies tell us something different. They are not coming clean in the belief they did nothing wrong. They are denying everything, and when their lies are disproven, they simply retreat to a new categorical defense, and keep doing it. At every moment they insist that the only Russian contacts that occurred are the ones publicly known, but the list just keeps growing. The assumption that the list of known contacts is the entire list rests upon an assumption of innocence that, at some point we long ago passed, is forfeit.

Read more: What Roger Stone’s Latest Lie Reveals About Russia Scandal