Has Trump been indicted? (And more.)

Covfefe! Everyone else has it all wrong. "Covfefer" is a French verb meaning "to collude." Je covfefe, tu covfefes, il covfefe, nous covfefons, vous covfefez, ils covfefent. Trump covfefa et il covfefera.

Is anyone really buying this? Yesterday, Sean Spicer ducked questions using a rather bizarre tactic:

Spicer suggested during a back and forth with DailyMail.com, immediately after he rebuffed the Post, that Fox's anonymous source was more reliable than the Washington Post's the latter's report was based on a dossier that most news outlets refused to print when it contents could not be verified.

'The dossier that is largely the basis of this has been largely discredited in the first place. Most of the publications here even refused to publish it in the first place. So I'm not going to get into confirming stuff, there's an ongoing investigation,' he rebutted.

First, the Steele dossier has not been discredited. To the contrary: Much of it has been confirmed.

Second -- and most importantly -- the WP report WAS NOT BASED ON THE STEELE DOSSIER. None of the recent Trump stories have had any linkage to Steele's work. In fact, the only ones who have referenced that dossier in recent weeks have been people defending Donald Trump!

Spicer would have made just as much sense if he had said "The Donation of Constantine has been largely discredited. Therefore, Trump is innocent."

Has Trump already been indicted? Even though the idea seems absurd, I'm starting to wonder.

The chief personage making this claim is, of course, Louise Mensch. Not too long ago, many liberals hated me because I dared to declare aloud that I didn't trust her. Nowadays, the same liberals hate me because I continue to find her fascinating. In a recent blog post, she wrote that...

Oh, hell. It'll be easier to pilfer her words than to summarize:

We have New York State Attorney Eric Schneiderman to thank for the genesis of the sealed indictment against Donald Trump currently being held in the Eastern District of Virginia, which has formed the basis of the case of impeachment already begun against him. This is how that happened:

AG Schneiderman began a case of Enterprise Corruption, the state name for RICO, against Donald Trump. The case was based on the activities of Russian mobsters like Semion Moglievich who lived in Trump Tower, Russian oligarchs, and others.

Upon his own judgement and belief, Schneiderman decided that his case touched both Federal issues, and issues of National Security. He took his case to the Federal authorities. While the appropriate Federal District can often be location-based, if a federal case is to start on the same factual basis, the court chosen can also be based on subject matter. Because National Security is involved, Schneiderman brought his case to FISC to be heard.

Earlier this month, Claude Taylor and I reported exclusively that the indictment was granted. We were pulled up on use of the term “granted”, but it is the correct term when, as in this case, no prosecution is yet possible, since a sitting President has immunity; but he can be indicted, and he has been.

What's striking about this story is the specificity. I can visualize a hoaxer who says "Trump has been secretly indicted." I have a much harder time visualizing a hoaxer who brings Schneiderman into the situation.

In his own Twitter feed, Schneiderman mentions nothing about an indictment of Trump -- but neither has he denied what Mensch has said. Like her or hate her, Mensch has become famous enough (or infamous enough) to warrant a denial -- if her claim about Schneiderman is false.

The silence of Schneiderman is fascinating.

Dan Abrams' Law Newz has given the claim respectful attention. (Abrams used to have a show on MSNBC.)

The report says that after the grand jury voted to indict, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein showed the indictment to Senators including Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), and that Representative Al Green (D-Texas) then called for Trump’s impeachment on the House floor. “I can report as fact that the Sergeant At Arms of the Senate … went to the White House on that Wednesday night,” the report says, adding that President Trump was notified that an impeachment case against him has commenced. The report also indicates that a judicial branch official informed Trump that he didn’t follow procedure when he declassified information that he revealed to Russian officials.

LawNewz.com reached out to the offices of Schneiderman and Graham for comment, but they have yet to respond.

Two questions: 1. Why the hesitation? 2. If Mensch and Taylor simply concocted this story, wouldn't they have come up with a yarn impossible to discredit with a single phone call?

By the way, the Law Newz piece has some follow-up on the "Marshall of the Supreme Court" imbroglio...

Mensch drew plenty of criticism when she said in her original report that it was the Marshal of the Supreme Court who gave Trump the news, which is not how this process would go. Mensch corrected herself in the new report, saying that it was the Senate’s Sergeant At Arms who who went to the White House.

Yeah, well, I still say that her mistake was pretty damned strange.

Joy Reid. I heard her say something last night that I've never heard from her before:

"Uh."

That woman talks better than anyone else on television. She's very fast (but not annoyingly so) and always speaks in complete sentences with superb enunciation. And, save for that one occasion, she never says "Uh."

How is this even possible? Years ago, I vowed never again to speak on the radio because I uh I uh I uh I uh I...well, I said "Uh" a lot. My on-air name was uh Joseph uh Cannon.

Is there a trick to it? Do professional broadcasters know of ways to train the tongue? Or is Joy Reid able to speak so well simply because her brain is wired better than the brains of we mere mortals?