Quote (IceMage @ Jun 3 2018 09:48am)
Does it though?
As you said, for months we've seen Trump lawyers and his propagandists in the media making these arguments. Maybe they put it out to soften the public even more before the legal battle starts.
Why would Cohen even have the letter? He's not on the Russia team.
Let's be honest, if you had to bet, you'd say it's more likely that it was leaked by the Trump team, not Mueller's team. They've been basically leak proof as far as we know.
How would we know? If we judged secrecy on some actions taken without being leaked, I'm sure the Trump team has some examples. But we've had plenty of leaks over the past year
purporting to be with inside information from Muellers team.
The letter coming from someone within Trumps orbit who got access to it and leaked it is a strong possibility but doesnt imply an intentional leak by Trumps team, like I said its an old letter, its not unreasonable that even figures like Cohen got looped in on it to be kept up to date. And all it takes is one meddlesome aide or interloper or journalist guessing a password.
I dont like theories that require Xanatos gambits. If you have to look three unpredictable steps out to speculate an impact in Trumps favor after weeks of the media exploiting it against him, its not rational. If Trumps team wanted to soften the ground for legal arguments they'd let those ideas slip in their own given context by speaking to the public on TV, not releasing the confrontational lawyerspeak to Mueller. Because look at Giuliani. Or when Ty Cobb eats very loudly at a diner next to journalists. Theres no way that leaking an entire unredacted legal document to the media works in your favor when you know all they need is one line to exploit and throw away the rest. Thats why you give them just the one line you want them to print, not a choice, and certainly not 20 pages of documents. Because here you are in this thread already hammering at one such line