When lying is second nature

Perhaps lying just goes with the job if you're in politics, as it does if you're in criminal operations. But the Trump cabal strikes me as particularly infected.

Mueller’s investigators are also still actively mapping out all the attempts by Russian nationals and people with ties to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s government to connect with and possibly infiltrate the Trump campaign. So far, at least nine people in Trump’s orbit had contact with Russians during the campaign or the transition to the White House, according to Mueller’s charging documents and interviews and records obtained by The Washington Post.

  WaPo

And that's only the ones Mueller has publicized to date. From the very beginning, this whole mess of lawless, unethical liars has denied contact with Russians, and then had to retract their denials when presented with proof otherwise, changing their stories to "nothing was wrong with their contacts." If nothing was wrong, why try to hide it in the first place?

Every freaking one of them.

Arguing that most investigations start with periphery players and move ever closer to the inner circle, [many in the White House] view Mueller’s recent focus on those closest to Trump as a sign that his probe has reached its final stage.

To be fair, Trump's lawyer, Ty Cobb, is telling them that the investigation is nearing a close, suggesting at first it would be done by Thanksgiving, and then changing that to the end of the year or shortly thereafter. I imagine he's trying to keep the panic at bay.

People close to the investigation, however, say a tidy and quick conclusion is unlikely, and would defy the pattern of most special counsel investigations in recent history.

In fact, legal experts and private defense lawyers monitoring the case believe that Mueller’s investigation — which officially began in May and resulted in its first charges against three former campaign aides last month — is still in its early stages.

They expect that the prosecutors have considerable investigative work still to do, and they predict more campaign officials, among others, will face charges. They expect the probe to extend deep into 2018 and possibly longer.

The trial of Manafort and Gates, for instance, is many months away. And Mueller’s investigators are still gathering documents and other evidence to evaluate.

I want them to be thorough, but dear god. I keep reading reminders that the Watergate investigation took two years to get to Nixon's resignation. And, if you think about it, that was much, much less complex and complicated. I'm guessing that if this drags out much past Cobb's reassurances to Trump, The Most Notable Loser will become more and more erratic and inclined to do something rash with very unfortunate repercussions for everyone, not limited to his administration.

Some people close to the president, including former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, have urged Trump in recent weeks to consider hiring a veteran criminal defense lawyer to protect him from missteps in the probe. Bannon has complained to friends that he considers Cobb, who is managing the White House’s response to the Russia probe, and John Dowd, one of the president’s personal lawyers on the investigation, to be out of their league in handling questions and document requests from Mueller’s star-studded team of prosecutors.

I seem to recall that he tried and couldn't find anybody in that category willing to take on the job.

More than a dozen [staffers], including [White House counsel Don] McGahn and Vice President Pence, have had to hire lawyers, and some junior aides fear their legal fees will rise to three or four times their annual salaries.

And some of these people - if not most - weren't even involved in the campaign. I do feel a certain sympathy, but no one forced them to sign on with a man they knew was a corrupt, lying POS, even if they were just trying to work their way up in the Republican organization. (That alone loses them 80% of the sympathy I have for them.