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RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
- Thread starter ☑︎#VoteDemocrat
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What did Trump know and when did he know it.
LOUISE MENSCH ON HER SHIIITTTT
:weebaynanimated:
Are Saudi Arabia Blackmailing Trump Over Donald Jr and Jared Kushner?
October 18, 2018 Trump Russia
Are Saudi Arabia Blackmailing Trump Over Donald Jr and Jared Kushner?
Why is Donald Trump so soft on terrorism? Is it because he’s being blackmailed over criminal acts with Saudi Arabia committed by his son, Donald J Trump Jr, his son in law, Jared Kushner, and his ally and ‘backchannel’ to Russia, Erik Prince?
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, ordered that a US person be lured into a Saudi consulate and chopped up alive. Per reporting, the United States has proof of this in the form of a recording. This is straight terrorism; Khashoggi was tortured before he was killed.
"@kevinb____: @realDonaldTrump Saudi Arabia is already paying ISIS"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2014
“Radical Islamic Terror” was a keystone of Donald Trump’s attacks on Hillary Clinton. He said it over and over again. He accused Saudi Arabia of funding ISIS, and demanded she return every penny her charitable foundation had accepted from them.
So, for Trump, this should be easy. This should be red meat to Trump’s Republican base. Here is a cut and dried opportunity to prove he’s tough on radical Islamic terror.
Instead, Americans are treated to the shameful sight of Mike Pompeo glad-handing the playboy prince who spat in Trump’s face when he ordered Khashoggi slaughtered. And people want to know why, exactly, Trump is acting like such a gutless coward before the Saudi terrorists. Did they pay him off? Or did they pay his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, off?
Kushner is the administration’s so-called Middle East expert, a job for which Trump granted a basic security clearance after Chief of Staff John Kelly had it downgraded from TS/SCI to ‘Secret’.
(The White House reviewed the background investigation by the FBI on Kushner and then granted ‘Top Secret’ clearance, which it has the right to do whatever the FBI report says; but the CIA prevented Kushner from regaining the TS/SCI clearance that Kelly effectively stripped from him. The stripping followed accusations that Kushner had given names of MBS opponents taken from the Presidential Daily Briefing to MBS in Saudi Arabia, which resulted in the Prince’s torture purge of his opponents, discussed below.).
“Jared Kushner is in my Pocket”
Mohammed Bin Salman, the terrorist and murderer of the Washington Post journalist, reportedly boasted that Jared Kushner was “in his pocket”. But why should he be?
Kushner sought funding from Qatar, Saudi Arabia’s regional rivals, for his personal property, the tower at 666 5th Avenue, shortly after Trump won the election, in spring of 2017. They turned him down. Kushner also sought funding from the Saudis, and in contrast, they agreed.
On May 9th, Trump fired James Comey, who was investigating his campaign for its links to Russia.
Trump then headed off to Saudi Arabia on May 19th, with Ivanka and Kushner in tow.
Ivanka and Jared in Saudi Arabia after Trump fires James Comey. Betsy deVos, sister of Erik Prince, was also there.
Weeks after this visit, with Jared Kushner’s approval, according to reports, the United States changed decades of foreign policy and allowed Saudi Arabia to blockade Qatar.
But that’s not all. In doing so, Kushner and Trump allowed the Saudis to literally cut off a major United States military base. Al Udeid Air Base, in Doha, Qatar, is the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command.
There was an outcry. Donald Trump tweeted his support for the blockade,
Yet in the end, the Qataris did pay up. They had to. Using their company Brookfield, a beneficiary of their sovereign wealth fund, Qatar invested in Kushner’s abominably run company.
But the blockade is still in effect. And Kushner had his security clearance downgraded in Feb 2018. It went from TS/SCI to merely ‘Secret’. It has only been restored to ‘Top Secret’.
Did Jared Kushner actually solicit a bribe from either Qatar or Saudi Arabia, and then change US foreign policy to reflect the results, even allowing the blocking of US Central Command’s main forward base? If there is any proof that he did so, that is not merely ’emoluments’. That is treason.
And Mohammed Bin Salman, MBS, would think himself untouchable. If he has a recording of Jared agreeing to take a bribe, or discussing what he would do to Qatar for failing to pay up, then he has Kushner’s liberty, and possibly life, in his hands.
He can do whatever he likes, including cutting up US persons with bone saws. He can blackmail the President of the United States.Was Erik Prince Involved in the Death of Khashoggi?
Reviewing the published materials, it is easy, looking at Kushner, to forget the reporting on Erik Prince and the Saudis. The UK tabloid the Daily Mail claimed that American mercenaries were torturing Saudis that were enemies of Bin Salman.
The Mail said that a ‘source in the country’ reported that Erik Prince’s company Academi, formerly Blackwater, was involved in this torture.
arrests have been followed by ‘interrogations’ which a source said were being carried out by ‘American mercenaries’ brought in to work for the 32-year-old crown prince…
‘They are beating them, torturing them..’ the source told DailyMail.com.
‘Blackwater’ has been named by DailyMail.com’s source as the firm involved…it strongly denies even being in Saudi Arabia and says it does not engage in torture, which it is illegal for any U.S. citizen to commit anywhere in the world.
‘They are beating them, torturing them..’ the source told DailyMail.com.
‘Blackwater’ has been named by DailyMail.com’s source as the firm involved…it strongly denies even being in Saudi Arabia and says it does not engage in torture, which it is illegal for any U.S. citizen to commit anywhere in the world.
The article cited a deleted tweet by the President of Lebanon, which appeared to back up their source::weebaynanimated:
‘Lebanese authorities have unconfirmed information that the Blackwater firm is guarding Hariri and his family – not official Saudi security forces,’ Michel Aoun, the President of Lebanon, tweeted last Wednesday.
#Lebanon president Michel Aoun: We believe PM #Hariri is being held by #SaudiArabia and consider this a hostile act against us. Our information is that members of the Blackwater firm are guarding him and not Saudi security servicesالرئيس عون: الحريري محتجز وموقوف في السعودية.. ووضع عائلته مماثل لوضعه
— Maha Yahya (@mahamyahya) November 15, 2017
A popular Saudi whistleblowing Twitter account also made this accusation in November. Ahdjadid tweet read:
The first group of Blackwater mercenaries arrived in Saudi Arabia one week after the coup on Bin Nayef, about 150 fighters; Bin Salman [MBS] sent some of them to guard Bin Nayef where he was detained, and kept another group to protect himself.
It took me a little time to find President Aoun’s statement confirmed by a more reputable news source, but the tweet was indeed covered by the BBC’s Arabic service. The relevant quote attribute to Aoun reads:
“لدى السلطات اللبنانية معلومات غير مؤكدة على أن من يحرس الحريري هو جهاز “بلاك ووتر”، وليس الأمن السعودي الرسمي”.
Translated, this reads:
“The Lebanese authorities have unconfirmed information that those guarding Hariri are Blackwater, not Saudi official security.”:weebaynanimated:
It is indeed surprising that this deleted accusation, coming from Lebanon’s President, was not more widely covered in the West, but the BBC are absolutely accurate and trustworthy as a source. So if MBS routinely detains and tortures his enemies, and Academi/Erik Prince are thought, by Middle Eastern heads of state no less, to be part of that, is it not likely that Erik Prince would have had something to do with MBS trained thugs who murdered Khashoggi?:weebaynanimated:
And if Erik Prince helped carry this torture out, did Jared Kushner help identify the targets by leaking MBS classified US intelligence?:weebaynanimated:
The Washington Post reported that, before this purge, Jared Kushner flew secretly to Saudi Arabia and stayed up all night with his bromance MBS:
The two princes are said to have stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. several nights, swapping stories and planning strategy
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PART 2:
Donald Trump Jr Met With Erik Prince About Saudi Help to Get Trump Elected Using Fake News
Among the dizzying web of connections between Trump, the Saudis and the Russians, Mr. Prince looms large. That he was setting up a private contractor army for MBS is not itself in dispute. The New York Times reported:
On August 3rd 2016, the pedophile George Nader, representing the UAE, and, as we see here, also a connection directly to the Saudis and MBS, met with Donald Trump Jr and Stephen Miller in Trump Tower, as did Joel Zamel of Psy Group. Zamel was to help Trump get elected by running fake bots and personae on Facebook:
The Trump campaign apparently thought Zamel’s work was effective. The Times reported he met with Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon many times in the final weeks of the campaign and the transition.
Was Zamel doing for Trump what he’d done for the Russians? He’d run similar fake botnets for Oleg Deripaska and Dimitry Rybolovev, whose plane met Trump’s frequently in the campaign. Furthermore the pedophile Nader paid him $2m after the campaign after going to Moscow.:weebaynanimated:
Reports just out indicate that Jared Kushner is urging Trump to “stand by” terrorist Mohammed Bin Salman – and he is citing the kidnapping of the Lebanese Prime Minister “blowing over” as one reason for that. :weebaynanimated:That’s the very same kidnapping that Erik Prince was involved in, according to the Lebanese President.:weebaynanimated:
So, as insane as it may seem, is Mohammed Bin Salman right? Does he have Jared Kushner, and Erik Prince, in his pocket for taking his money to do illegal acts? Does he have Donald J Trump Jr in his pocket for accepting his illegal election help at Trump Tower? Because if so, it will be very easy for MBS to blackmail the President of the United States.
And, going back to this noxious, yet probably accurate, phrase, why did MBS reportedly say Kushner was “In his pocket” in the first place? He was not referring to Saudi Arabia’s bribe over the Qatar blockade, he was referring to Erik Prince’s mercenaries helping to detain and torture his enemies – with some of those names being leaked to him, by Kushner, from the Presidential Daily Brief. That’s the incident Kushner is referring to, right now, telling Trump that it “blew over” – and so will the murder of Khashoggi.:weebaynanimated:
Yet Trump should watch out. All the reporting indicates Mueller is well aware of Saudi-Russian money washed through Nader and Zamel, that he has seized Zamel’s computers, and that he is preparing to announce the collusion in his forthcoming report. As John Schindler reports in the Observer, Donald Trump knew, through official US intelligence channels, that the Saudis planned to harm Khashoggi:
Trump did not legally have to do anything. But if the reason that he did not act was that Donald J Trump Jr and Jared Kushner committed crimes with Saudi Arabia, and that his ally Erik Prince’s mercenaries were involved, then every day that Trump delays answering Mohammed Bin Salman’s act of terror against a US person will be merely another mark against him on the criminal scoresheet that Mueller and the FBI are building.
Donald Trump Jr Met With Erik Prince About Saudi Help to Get Trump Elected Using Fake News
Among the dizzying web of connections between Trump, the Saudis and the Russians, Mr. Prince looms large. That he was setting up a private contractor army for MBS is not itself in dispute. The New York Times reported:
Mr. Nader was also in discussions with Mr. Prince, the former head of Blackwater, about a plan to get the Saudis to pay $2 billion to set up a private army
On August 3rd 2016, the pedophile George Nader, representing the UAE, and, as we see here, also a connection directly to the Saudis and MBS, met with Donald Trump Jr and Stephen Miller in Trump Tower, as did Joel Zamel of Psy Group. Zamel was to help Trump get elected by running fake bots and personae on Facebook:
Mr. Zamel had been working on a proposal for a covert multimillion-dollar online manipulation campaign to help elect Mr. Trump…using thousands of fake social media accounts to promote Mr. Trump’s candidacy on platforms like Facebook.
The Trump campaign apparently thought Zamel’s work was effective. The Times reported he met with Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon many times in the final weeks of the campaign and the transition.
In the hectic final weeks of the campaign and during the presidential transition, several of Mr. Trump’s advisers drew Mr. Nader close. He met often with Mr. Kushner, Mr. Flynn and Stephen K. Bannon
Was Zamel doing for Trump what he’d done for the Russians? He’d run similar fake botnets for Oleg Deripaska and Dimitry Rybolovev, whose plane met Trump’s frequently in the campaign. Furthermore the pedophile Nader paid him $2m after the campaign after going to Moscow.:weebaynanimated:
Reports just out indicate that Jared Kushner is urging Trump to “stand by” terrorist Mohammed Bin Salman – and he is citing the kidnapping of the Lebanese Prime Minister “blowing over” as one reason for that. :weebaynanimated:That’s the very same kidnapping that Erik Prince was involved in, according to the Lebanese President.:weebaynanimated:
So, as insane as it may seem, is Mohammed Bin Salman right? Does he have Jared Kushner, and Erik Prince, in his pocket for taking his money to do illegal acts? Does he have Donald J Trump Jr in his pocket for accepting his illegal election help at Trump Tower? Because if so, it will be very easy for MBS to blackmail the President of the United States.
And, going back to this noxious, yet probably accurate, phrase, why did MBS reportedly say Kushner was “In his pocket” in the first place? He was not referring to Saudi Arabia’s bribe over the Qatar blockade, he was referring to Erik Prince’s mercenaries helping to detain and torture his enemies – with some of those names being leaked to him, by Kushner, from the Presidential Daily Brief. That’s the incident Kushner is referring to, right now, telling Trump that it “blew over” – and so will the murder of Khashoggi.:weebaynanimated:
Mr. Kushner has argued that the crown prince can survive the outrage just as he has weathered past criticism.
Yet Trump should watch out. All the reporting indicates Mueller is well aware of Saudi-Russian money washed through Nader and Zamel, that he has seized Zamel’s computers, and that he is preparing to announce the collusion in his forthcoming report. As John Schindler reports in the Observer, Donald Trump knew, through official US intelligence channels, that the Saudis planned to harm Khashoggi:
I can confirm that the National Security Agency, America’s big ear, indeed intercepted Saudi communications that indicated Riyadh had something unpleasant in store for Khashoggi. Listening in on foreign governments, after all, is NSA’s main job, and that includes frenemies like Saudi Arabia as well as hostile regimes. At least a day before Khashoggi appeared at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, an NSA official told me, the agency had Top Secret information that Riyadh was planning something nefarious—though exactly what was not clear from the intercepts. This was deemed important because Khashoggi is a legal resident of the United States, and is therefore entitled to protection. According to the NSA official, this threat warning was communicated to the White House through official intelligence channels.
Trump did not legally have to do anything. But if the reason that he did not act was that Donald J Trump Jr and Jared Kushner committed crimes with Saudi Arabia, and that his ally Erik Prince’s mercenaries were involved, then every day that Trump delays answering Mohammed Bin Salman’s act of terror against a US person will be merely another mark against him on the criminal scoresheet that Mueller and the FBI are building.
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What did Trump know and when did he know it.
wsj.com
Mueller Probes WikiLeaks’ Contacts With Conservative Activists
Byron Tau, Shelby Holliday and Dustin Volz
8-10 minutes
WASHINGTON—Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is scrutinizing how a collection of activists and pundits intersected with WikiLeaks, the website that U.S. officials say was the primary conduit for publishing materials stolen by Russia, according to people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Mueller’s team has recently questioned witnesses about the activities of longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone, including his contacts with WikiLeaks, and has obtained telephone records, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Investigators also have evidence that the late GOP activist Peter W. Smith may have had advance knowledge of details about the release of emails from a top Hillary Clinton campaign official by WikiLeaks, one person familiar with the matter said. They have questioned Mr. Smith’s associates, the person said.
Right-wing pundit Jerome Corsi was also questioned by investigators about his interactions with Mr. Stone and WikiLeaks before a grand jury in September, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Corsi declined to comment. A lawyer for Mr. Stone said he hasn’t been contacted by the special counsel. Mr. Smith died last year.
Mr. Mueller’s office declined to comment.
Throughout 2016, Messrs. Stone, Smith and Corsi, who long worked on the margins of Republican politics, tried to dig up incriminating information about Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, according to emails and some public comments. A lawyer for President Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign staffer who interacted with Mr. Stone, said he also was questioned by Mr. Mueller’s team about communications he had with Mr. Stone regarding WikiLeaks. New York radio host Randy Credico also said the special counsel asked about his communications with Mr. Stone and WikiLeaks. Mr. Credico interviewed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016 and has known Mr. Stone for years.
The role WikiLeaks and Mr. Assange played during the 2016 election as the chief publisher of stolen Democratic emails has been of enduring interest to investigators probing Russian election interference in 2016 and whether there was collusion with Trump associates. President Trump has denied collusion, and Moscow has denied meddling in the election. The Mueller probe has resulted in more than two dozen indictments as well as guilty pleas by five Trump associates.
GOP Operative Claimed Contact With Flynn, WikiLeaks
Special counsel Robert Mueller is probing the activities and contacts of Peter W. Smith, a GOP operative who sought Hillary Clinton’s emails from hackers in 2016. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains. Photo: Getty Images.
Mr. Mueller’s office has begun shedding staff and has indicated that key witnesses are ready to be sentenced, a sign that their cooperation is no longer needed.
It couldn’t be determined whether WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange are targets of the probe or if investigators are primarily interested in those who interacted with the organization. As Mr. Mueller focuses on hacking and Russian interference, individuals or groups who may have been involved could be exposed to charges such as conspiracy to aid in a hacking operation.
A July indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers that derived from the special counsel’s investigation alleged that WikiLeaks obtained stolen material from Russian military intelligence through an online persona known as Guccifer 2.0. Much of that material was hacked in the spring of 2016, according to the special counsel.
WikiLeaks didn’t respond to a request for comment. Mr. Assange has said that Russia wasn’t the source of the emails.
The scrutiny of activities related to WikiLeaks suggests investigators believe the organization’s importance to the Russia probe may extend beyond its dealings with Guccifer 2.0. A list of questions Mr. Mueller wanted Mr. Trump to answer and gave to the president’s legal team earlier this year included one about the president’s knowledge of communication between Mr. Stone, his associates and WikiLeaks, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
According to the July indictment, WikiLeaks received an encrypted attachment from Guccifer 2.0 on July 14, 2016, that held “instructions on how to access an online archive of stolen DNC documents.” More than a month earlier, on June 12, Mr. Assange said during an interview with a British television station that he had obtained Clinton-related emails that were pending publication.
That claim came three days before the Guccifer 2.0 persona appeared online, raising the possibility that there may have been another channel that served as a conduit for Clinton-related emails. In the weeks before the election, WikiLeaks released emails belonging to John Podesta, the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
Jerome Corsi in 2008. Photo: AP
The person familiar with Mr. Smith recalled him repeatedly implying that he knew ahead of time about leaks of Mr. Podesta’s emails. The Journal previously reported that in the fall of 2016, Mr. Smith told friends and wrote in an email that he directed hackers to give emails from Mrs. Clinton’s private server to WikiLeaks. It is unclear whether hackers ever obtained the emails belonging to Mrs. Clinton, which she had said were deleted because they were deemed personal. Those emails have never been made public.
In August 2016, Mr. Stone told Alex Jones, a right-wing provocateur who runs the website InfoWars, that he had a “foreshadowing” of the material that would be released by WikiLeaks. Days later, Mr. Stone tweeted that it would soon be “the Podesta’s [sic] time in the barrel.” Several days before WikiLeaks began to post the hacked material from Mr. Podesta’s email account, Mr. Stone tweeted that he had “total confidence” that WikiLeaks would “educate the American people soon.”
Mr. Stone has since said the messages were “benign” and that he had no advance notice of the website’s plans. He also has said his tweet referencing “the Podesta’s” was about the lobbying activities of Mr. Podesta and his brother, Tony.
It isn’t clear to what degree, if any, Mr. Stone’s and Mr. Smith’s efforts were connected. Messrs. Smith and Stone had mutual associates in Mr. Corsi as well as former Wall Street financier Charles Ortel, who was researching the Clinton Family Foundation, emails and public comments show. Mr. Stone said he wasn’t aware of Mr. Smith’s work. Mr. Ortel said he wasn’t aware of a relationship between Mr. Stone and Mr. Smith.
Mr. Smith referred to his project as the “Clinton Email Reconnaissance Initiative.” He compiled a long list of businessmen, activists, lawyers, researchers and Trump campaign officials who he wanted to work with to obtain Mrs. Clinton’s 33,000 emails. While many people on that list say they never gave Mr. Smith permission to use their names, some were copied or named in emails circulated by Mr. Smith in 2016. Others got unsolicited approaches from Mr. Smith they say they never responded to.
—Drew FitzGerald and Rebecca Ballhaus contributed to this article.
Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com and Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com
He stole this idea from Suge Knight.....
Hell Suge didn't invent that, he got the idea from the movie Casino. You think for one second a mobster like Paul Manafort wouldn't gonna pull that move too, LMBAO! He doesn't have a dam thing to lose at this point. I see you Paulie
Feds still gonna hit him with the 
though.PSA: Don’t Misunderstand the Function of a Mueller Report – emptywheel
PSA: Don’t Misunderstand the Function of a Mueller Report
October 19, 2018/14 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
About a million people have asked me to weigh in on this story, which relies on unnamed defense attorneys (!! — remember that its author, Darren Samuelson, was among those citing Rudy Giuliani’s FUD in the wake of the Paul Manafort plea) and named former prosecutors, warning that people may be disappointed by the Mueller “report.”
President Donald Trump’s critics have spent the past 17 months anticipating what some expect will be among the most thrilling events of their lives: special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on Russian 2016 election interference.
They may be in for a disappointment.
That’s the word POLITICO got from defense lawyers working on the Russia probe and more than 15 former government officials with investigation experience spanning Watergate to the 2016 election case. The public, they say, shouldn’t expect a comprehensive and presidency-wrecking account of Kremlin meddling and alleged obstruction of justice by Trump — not to mention an explanation of the myriad subplots that have bedeviled lawmakers, journalists and amateur Mueller sleuths.
Perhaps most unsatisfying: Mueller’s findings may never even see the light of day.
The article then goes on to cite a range of impressive experts, though it quotes zero of the defense attorneys, not even anonymously, except in linking back to Rudy warning that the White House would try to block the public release of any report by invoking executive privilege.
Without having first laid out what Samuelson imagines people expect from the report or even what he himself thinks, the piece’s quotes lay out the assumptions of his sources. “He won’t be a good witness,” says Paul Rosenzweig, suggesting he imagines Congress will invite Mueller to testify about his report to understand more about it. Mary McCord, who knows a bit about the investigation having overseen parts of it when she was still acting NSD head, said “It will probably be detailed because this material is detailed, but I don’t know that it will all be made public,” which seems to suggest it will collect dust at DOJ. Paul McNulty, who worked with Mueller in the Bush Administration, acknowledges that Mueller, “knows there are a lot of questions he needs to address for the sake of trying to satisfy a wide variety of interests and expectations.” All those quotes may be true and still irrelevant to what might happen with the Mueller report.
Later in his piece, Samuelson does lay out his assumptions (this time citing none of his impressive sources). Samuelson posits, for example, that, “it will be up to DOJ leaders to make the politically turbo-charged decision of whether to make Mueller’s report public.” He claims Democrats hope to win a majority and with it “subpoena power to pry as much information as possible from the special counsel’s office.” In those comments, Samuelson betrays his own assumptions, assumptions which may not be correct.
Start with this. Even though Samuelson has covered this investigation closely, he somehow missed the speaking indictments covering Russian actions, to say nothing of the 38 pages of exhibits on how Paul Mananfort runs a campaign accompanying the plea deal of Trump’s former campaign manager It appears he has missed the signs that Mueller — if he has an opportunity — will not be using his mandated report to do his talking.
He’ll use indictments.
Which is probably something you don’t learn listening to defense attorneys who won’t go on the record. But you might learn if you consider what Patrick Fitzgerald has to say. Like McNulty, Fitz also worked closely with Mueller, not just during the four years he served as special counsel investigating the CIA leak case, but during the almost 11 years when Fitz was US Attorney in Chicago and Mueller was FBI Director. Also, while he’s not a defense attorney in the Mueller case, he is representing a key witness, Jim Comey, in it and had a partner, Greg Craig, investigated by it. Fitz basically says that the Scooter Libby trial revealed “a fair amount about what we did.”
Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent counsel in the Plame investigation, was under no obligation to write a report because of the specific guidelines behind his appointment. Testifying before Congress as his probe was ending, Fitzgerald defended the approach by noting that grand jury witnesses expect secrecy when they testify. He also noted that a 2007 public trial involving I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former top aide to Vice President dikk Cheney convicted for perjury, had revealed much of the investigation’s details.
“I think people learned a fair amount about what we did,” Fitzgerald said. “They didn’t learn everything. But if you’re talking about a public report, that was not provided for, and I actually believe and I’ve said it before, I think that’s appropriate.”
Fitz is right. He revealed a lot in that trial, having fought hard to be able to get much of it cleared by the spooks to be publicly released. He revealed enough that, had the Democratically-controlled Congress seen fit in 2007, they could have conducted investigations into the impropriety of things constitutional officer dikk Cheney did in pushing the release of Valerie Plame’s identity. In a key hearing, Joe Wilson actually pulled any punches directed at Cheney. It is my belief, having been present at some key events in this period, that had a witness instead laid out all the evidence implicating Cheney, Congress may well have taken the evidence Fitz released in the trial and used it to conduct further investigation.
No one will have to make that case about Trump to Democrats in the wake of a Mueller investigation, I imagine.
I’ve got a piece coming out next week that lays out what role I think the vaunted Mueller report really plays, because I think it does play a role, a role that Samuelson doesn’t even consider.
But for now, I’ll point to Fitz comments as a way to say that, even drawing as he does on a great number of experts about how such investigations have worked in the past, Samuelson is not drawing the correct lessons. The first of which is that Mueller would prefer to lay out his “report” in trial exhibits.
As I disclosed July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
PSA: Don’t Misunderstand the Function of a Mueller Report
October 19, 2018/14 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
About a million people have asked me to weigh in on this story, which relies on unnamed defense attorneys (!! — remember that its author, Darren Samuelson, was among those citing Rudy Giuliani’s FUD in the wake of the Paul Manafort plea) and named former prosecutors, warning that people may be disappointed by the Mueller “report.”
President Donald Trump’s critics have spent the past 17 months anticipating what some expect will be among the most thrilling events of their lives: special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on Russian 2016 election interference.
They may be in for a disappointment.
That’s the word POLITICO got from defense lawyers working on the Russia probe and more than 15 former government officials with investigation experience spanning Watergate to the 2016 election case. The public, they say, shouldn’t expect a comprehensive and presidency-wrecking account of Kremlin meddling and alleged obstruction of justice by Trump — not to mention an explanation of the myriad subplots that have bedeviled lawmakers, journalists and amateur Mueller sleuths.
Perhaps most unsatisfying: Mueller’s findings may never even see the light of day.
The article then goes on to cite a range of impressive experts, though it quotes zero of the defense attorneys, not even anonymously, except in linking back to Rudy warning that the White House would try to block the public release of any report by invoking executive privilege.
Without having first laid out what Samuelson imagines people expect from the report or even what he himself thinks, the piece’s quotes lay out the assumptions of his sources. “He won’t be a good witness,” says Paul Rosenzweig, suggesting he imagines Congress will invite Mueller to testify about his report to understand more about it. Mary McCord, who knows a bit about the investigation having overseen parts of it when she was still acting NSD head, said “It will probably be detailed because this material is detailed, but I don’t know that it will all be made public,” which seems to suggest it will collect dust at DOJ. Paul McNulty, who worked with Mueller in the Bush Administration, acknowledges that Mueller, “knows there are a lot of questions he needs to address for the sake of trying to satisfy a wide variety of interests and expectations.” All those quotes may be true and still irrelevant to what might happen with the Mueller report.
Later in his piece, Samuelson does lay out his assumptions (this time citing none of his impressive sources). Samuelson posits, for example, that, “it will be up to DOJ leaders to make the politically turbo-charged decision of whether to make Mueller’s report public.” He claims Democrats hope to win a majority and with it “subpoena power to pry as much information as possible from the special counsel’s office.” In those comments, Samuelson betrays his own assumptions, assumptions which may not be correct.
Start with this. Even though Samuelson has covered this investigation closely, he somehow missed the speaking indictments covering Russian actions, to say nothing of the 38 pages of exhibits on how Paul Mananfort runs a campaign accompanying the plea deal of Trump’s former campaign manager It appears he has missed the signs that Mueller — if he has an opportunity — will not be using his mandated report to do his talking.
He’ll use indictments.
Which is probably something you don’t learn listening to defense attorneys who won’t go on the record. But you might learn if you consider what Patrick Fitzgerald has to say. Like McNulty, Fitz also worked closely with Mueller, not just during the four years he served as special counsel investigating the CIA leak case, but during the almost 11 years when Fitz was US Attorney in Chicago and Mueller was FBI Director. Also, while he’s not a defense attorney in the Mueller case, he is representing a key witness, Jim Comey, in it and had a partner, Greg Craig, investigated by it. Fitz basically says that the Scooter Libby trial revealed “a fair amount about what we did.”
Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent counsel in the Plame investigation, was under no obligation to write a report because of the specific guidelines behind his appointment. Testifying before Congress as his probe was ending, Fitzgerald defended the approach by noting that grand jury witnesses expect secrecy when they testify. He also noted that a 2007 public trial involving I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former top aide to Vice President dikk Cheney convicted for perjury, had revealed much of the investigation’s details.
“I think people learned a fair amount about what we did,” Fitzgerald said. “They didn’t learn everything. But if you’re talking about a public report, that was not provided for, and I actually believe and I’ve said it before, I think that’s appropriate.”
Fitz is right. He revealed a lot in that trial, having fought hard to be able to get much of it cleared by the spooks to be publicly released. He revealed enough that, had the Democratically-controlled Congress seen fit in 2007, they could have conducted investigations into the impropriety of things constitutional officer dikk Cheney did in pushing the release of Valerie Plame’s identity. In a key hearing, Joe Wilson actually pulled any punches directed at Cheney. It is my belief, having been present at some key events in this period, that had a witness instead laid out all the evidence implicating Cheney, Congress may well have taken the evidence Fitz released in the trial and used it to conduct further investigation.
No one will have to make that case about Trump to Democrats in the wake of a Mueller investigation, I imagine.
I’ve got a piece coming out next week that lays out what role I think the vaunted Mueller report really plays, because I think it does play a role, a role that Samuelson doesn’t even consider.
But for now, I’ll point to Fitz comments as a way to say that, even drawing as he does on a great number of experts about how such investigations have worked in the past, Samuelson is not drawing the correct lessons. The first of which is that Mueller would prefer to lay out his “report” in trial exhibits.
As I disclosed July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
Cat face kush