Changing your story, even slightly, looks like a cover up.
“Put a process in place to ensure consistent and accurate communication about the facts. It should be the job of the special counsel to gather the facts and equip the president and White House staff to speak with authority … Anyone talking to the press or interacting with Congress should be armed with enough information to respond with consistent message points. …
.. Bad things happen when key players stray from the message
.. or have their own communications with the press or Congress that haven’t been coordinated with the special counsel.
.. Giving an unequivocal answer (e.g., ‘No. No. Next question.’) before all the facts are known or fully understood can be disastrous. … Loss of discipline deepens the crisis.”
.. Take the initiative to disclose bad facts, Jane concludes: “Being tempted to evade the truth, or to shade it, will only end up creating more of a mess for a White House already in trouble.”
.. the special prosecutor couldn’t take down Clinton, but he did ruin Jim Guy Tucker’s life. Clinton’s successor as governor of Arkansas was convicted on charges that he’d lied on his application for a loan a decade earlier when he was in the television business. “Trump’s aides would be well-served by googling him — and Webb Hubbell, and Susan and Jim McDougal, and William J. Marks Sr. — about the brutal collateral damage of Starr’s investigation,”
.. Mueller may well prosecute offenses that appear tangential to the Russia case in order to turn targets into witnesses .. Seeking witnesses who would testify against Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Office of Independent Counsel … indicted well over a dozen of their friends and acquaintances, most of whom had nothing to do with Whitewater at all.”
.. Mueller’s reported decision to take over the Virginia grand jury probing former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s lobbying for Turkish interests might be an early window into how he’ll operate.
.. “Flynn’s legal jeopardy in the Turkish matter will provide heavy leverage over the retired general to testify about Trump,” Joe explains. “And Trump’s fractious and tarnished aides are a prosecutor’s dream.
.. It isn’t so far-fetched to imagine how Mueller might uncover new information about … Chris Christie, who barely escaped prosecution in the ‘Bridgegate’ scandal that sent three of his aides to prison. And then what would Christie say about Trump?”
.. The investigations will likely drag on beyond the end of Trump’s presidency.
.. Clinton staffers quickly had to learn that there were certain things they dare not discuss, and that some meetings were better not attended.”
.. Trump almost certainly does not benefit as much from executive privilege and attorney-client privilege as he thinks.
.. “A pair of legal showdowns between Ken Starr’s office and the Clinton White House two decades ago erased the idea that presidents and their aides are protected by attorney-client privilege when talking with government lawyers,”
.. However, communications directly with Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s personal attorney who’s been tapped to lead the group of lawyers representing the administration in the Mueller probe and related congressional investigations, would be easier to shield.”
.. But legal experts say there are limits and hazards to pushing scandal-related matters to outside lawyers
.. “Some lawyers said it is even possible Kasowitz could be deemed a White House staffer if he takes on too large a role. …
.. the government-paid team is often more responsive to political concerns while the outside lawyers tend to be focused more on avoiding criminal liability.”
.. If you’re sitting in the Oval Office with Kasowitz and he’s talking to Donald Trump and [Sean] Spicer walks into the room … that discussion could be subject to compelled testimony,”