Natalie Sours Edwards, one of the sources for a series of BuzzFeed stories on Treasury and a larger, global series on Suspicious Activity Reports, submitted her sentencing memorandum last night. It is probably the most convincing example of a whistleblower-turned-leaker telling her story to explain why she did what she did. And while she was charged under a different statute than the Espionage Act — there’s a specific law prohibiting the leaking of SARs — it is a laudable effort to make a public interest defense.

She spends much of her submission (as most do) describing her background — her Native American upbringing, the series of jobs she had after obtaining a PhD in national security decision-making, first at ATF, then at CIA, and then at Treasury’s FinCEN. Not long after she moved to Treasury, she grew concerned about a number of things she was seeing: She believed Treasury was making some organizational changes without first getting congressional approval.

By April of 2016, TFI was considering a proposal to move several employees from FinCEN to OIA. May Sours Edwards and other members of FinCEN’s upper management questioned the legality of the proposed realignment. In an email to John Farley, Acting Director of Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture (TEOAF), Dr. Edwards raised concerns about whether the transfers would be consistent with Congressional appropriations and whether OIA was moving forward in spite of a direction from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence not to proceed until the Committee had reviewed the plans for the reallocation of funds.

She was concerned — as was the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board — that Treasury had never instituted guidelines protecting Americans’ privacy when accessing records under 12333. (I had written about this problem before this period.)

Did OIA, as a member of the intelligence community, have the authority to collect and retain data domestically. Under Executive Order 12333 (“E.O. 12333”) IC entities, which OIA is, are permitted to collect information on “United States persons” only if the organization has promulgated guidelines for doing so and had them reviewed and approved by the Attorney General.11 Dr. Edwards questioned whether OIA had signed guidelines. Counsel for OIA hostilely, in Dr. Edwards’ estimation, disagreed with her interpretation of EO 12333. She believed he deliberately denigrated her during the meeting in front of the other participants in an attempt to bully her into agreeing with his position. She did not acquiesce.

11Executive Order 12333 provides in pertinent part as follows. “2:3 Collection of Information. Agencies within the Intelligence Community are authorized to collect, retain or disseminate information concerning United States persons only in accordance with procedures established by the head of the agency concerned and approved by the Attorney General, consistent with the authorities provided in Part 1 of this Order.”

After she had shared these concerns with Congress, she believed that Jacob Lew had knowingly lied to Congress about whether there were whistleblowers at Treasury.

On September 22, 2016, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew testified before the House Financial Services Committee. https://www.c-span.org/video/?415661- 1/secretary-jack-lew-testifies-financial-stability-report&start=9046. Representative Fitzpatrick specifically asked him whether the proposed realignment was consistent with the existing budget, the issue Dr. Edwards had been raising. He also the Secretary whether there were any whistleblowers at Treasury. Representatives Jeb Hensarling and Sean Duffy later sent a follow-up congressional letter to Secretary Lew, expressing concern that the proposed “changes may violate appropriations requirements, civil service rules, and constraints on gathering and use of financial intelligence data.” They also noted that it was “troubling that Treasury is moving forward with the proposed reallocation with the intention to complete the process before a new Administration takes over in January 2017 and despite bipartisan requests to process at a more deliberate pace.” Id.

Something else of significance happened during the hearing. In response to a question from Representative Fitzpatrick, Secretary Lew stated that he was unaware of any whistleblowers in the Treasury Department. Dr. Edwards was taken aback and concerned. She was a whistleblower, a fact well known to Treasury OIG.

In the wake of that hearing, she believed that her clearance was pulled, briefly, as retaliation.

On September 27, 2016, a week after the contentious OIA-FinCEN meeting, someone at OIA ordered that Dr. Edward’s SCI (Sensitive Compartmentalized Information) clearance and her access to the SCIF (Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility) be revoked. Dr. Edwards questioned the basis for the action. Her clearance was reinstated the following day. Email of September 28, 2016, from May Edwards to Elizabeth Ortiz, attached hereto as Exhibit XX

She submitted two whistleblower complaints — to Treasury IG and to OSC. The latter found that she had engaged in protected activity (meaning that she had been a whistleblower), but ruled against her claims of retaliation on narrow grounds.

By letter dated May 21, 2018, OSC informed Dr. Edwards that they were closing her file. OSC concluded that Dr. Edwards’ reports to her “leadership, OIG, Congress and OSC all likely constitute ‘protected activity’ or whistleblowing under the law.” May 21, 2018, letter from OSC to Dr. Edwards, attached hereto as Exhibit HHH at 4. Further, Dr. Edwards could establish that her “management knew about [her] whistleblowing regarding, at a minimum, the issues [she] raised directly to them.” However, OSC made several findings that it concluded were fatal to Dr. Edwards’ claim that she had been retaliated against as a whistleblower. OSC could not find that there was a substantial likelihood that Treasury Secretary Lew knew of Dr. Edwards’ allegations when he testified before Congress that there were no whistleblowers in Treasury. Id. at 3. The email that outlined OMB’s direction to Treasury on communicating with Congress about the FinCEN/TSI realignment was not improper because it appeared to be directing Treasury officials not to discuss the issue in their official capacities as opposed to directing them in their individual capacities on their rights to report suspected wrongdoing to Congress

A Treasury IG Report ruled against her based on an alternative explanation provided for why the PKI of FinCEN employees had been pulled.

While finding that the problem with the IC PKI certificates was solely the result of inadvertence, the author of the audit did note that “the present working relationship between OIA and FinCEN related to the IC PKI process is strained.” Id. at 3. The two Treasury components had a “fundamental disagreement” about FinCEN’s need for access to the IC PKIs and more broadly about FinCEN’s autonomy.

She even explains how — after she started working with Jason Leopold — Ron Wyden complained that FinCEN was withholding information on Russian interference and its ties with Donald Trump.

In addition to her concern about OIA’s handling of realignment and the PKIs issue, Dr. Edwards grew to question whether FinCEN was providing complete information in response to Congressional requests for information. She was not alone in that belief. On May 10, 2017, Senator Ron Wyden made a floor statement placing a hold on the nomination of Sigal Mandelker for the position of Under Secretary of TFI. His office issued a statement explaining the Senator’s reasoning:

Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today placed a hold on the nomination of Sigal Mandelker to be Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Wyden said he will maintain that hold until the Treasury Department provides the Senate Intelligence Committee and Senate Finance Committee information and documents related to Russia and its financial dealings with President Trump and his associates.

On Tuesday, May 9, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner announced that the Committee had made a request to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-announces-hold-ontreasury-nominee-until-administration-produces-documents-on-russian-dealingswith-trump-associates. On September 22, 2017, Senator Wyden put a hold on another Treasury Assistant Secretary nominee, Isabelle Patelunas, again because of Treasury’s “refusal to provide documents related to Russia.” https:// www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-announces-hold-ontreasury-nominee-over-agencys-refusal-to-provide-documents-related-to-russia.

It’s in that context that — she described — she started working with Leopold to get Congress to return its attention to misconduct at Treasury.

When Congress’ attention to the issues May believed vitally affected the security of this country flagged, she began communicating with Jason Leopold, a reporter with the online publication BuzzFeed News. He told her that he shared her concern for national security. He assured her that the only way to revive Congressional interest was through media attention. He promised to – and did – introduce her to additional Congressional staffers. At his encouragement, she provided him with Suspicious Activity Reports (“SARs”) and other internal Treasury Department documents. He wrote articles that disclosed that information. She was arrested. He was not.

[snip]

Although Congress by then had done little to curb Treasury’s behavior, Dr. Edwards continued to believe that the only way to ensure that those responsible for the improper behavior were held accountable was through Congress. Leopold encouraged this belief: By writing articles, he could get the proper attention for the issues she believed were of vital importance to national security. This was a theme he returned to more than once when he sought information from Dr. Edwards: He could use what she gave him to write stories that would force Congress to investigate her allegations. (September 27, 2017: “We do need to keep momentum going so this story is crucial.” October 16, 2017: “We are going for the next story – keep momentum going with 12333.” January 11, 2018: “Listen, I am going to make a case that we need to leak something and report it. I am going to reach out to some of your colleagues. But this is getting ridiculous and I need to get their attention…By their attention I mean Congress).

Importantly, given the way she was charged (with a conspiracy to leak these SARs, with Leopold identified as a co-conspirator would be) she describes how hard Leopold worked to champion her efforts in Congress.

Throughout 2017 and 2018, Leopold told Dr. Edwards in their WhatsApp conversations that he was committed to her cause of uncovering and remedying corruption in the Treasury Department. He told her at times that he was acting on behalf of Congressional staff members in seeking information from her. He sought to arrange meetings for Dr. Edwards with members of Congress or their staff. Such meetings did take place. Leopold attended meetings with Dr. Edwards. Staffers encouraged Dr. Edwards to provide information they sought about the inner workings of the Treasury Department, including whether the requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act were being enforced by financial institutions as required to assist U.S. government agencies.

Remember: Before the global SARs reporting effort came out, Treasury issued a statement that can only be viewed as an attempt at prior restraint, a threat against Leopold.

Edwards’ sentencing memorandum says that the Probation office recommended two years of probation.

Dr. Sours Edwards faces no mandatory minimum term of incarceration. As discussed above, the relevant range under the United States Sentencing Guidelines, both as stipulated in the plea agreement and as determined by United States Probation, is zero to six months. PSR at ¶4, p. 28. Probation has recommended that the Court sentence Dr. Sours Edwards to a two-year term of Probation.

It is unclear whether this will work — whether Edwards will get probation. It is equally unclear whether Leopold’s laudable efforts to double down on his reporting, to raise global attention to the issue, will bring about reform at banks or in the US.

But this is what every other leaker I’ve covered has tried to do, far less persuasively: an attempt to make a public interest defense for leaking to a journalist.

For a whole slew of reasons, I want to point out a detail in an exhibit released in Roger Stone’s trial: He asked for “lists” — once explicitly described as donor lists, but described as voter registration lists by Stone’s attorney, Bruce Rogow, at trial — from Rick Gates at least nine times:

4/30/16, 2:37:22 PM [Stone to Gates]: Obtain the donor list- I Need it soon to effect [sic] California!!

5/11/16, 7:16:14 AM [Stone to Gates]: Get the list. I don’t care about anything else.

5/11/16, 1:08:05 PM [Stone to Gates]: Get the list !!!!!!!

5/13/16, 1:52:51 AM [Stone to Gates]: Tried – corey trying desperately to tie me to New PAC and Trump seems to be unaware that this PA

5/13/16, 1:15:31 AM [Gates to Stone]: New updates.

5/13/16, 1:32:00 PM [Stone to Gates]: Can make sure Manafort makes sure Trump knows about Sovereignty PAC-???

5/15/16, 2:36:32 PM [Gates to Stone]: Did you see the positive press o. AS PAC? Hope it holds.

5/17/16, 3:54:53 PM [Stone to Gates]: Get the list.

5/17/16, 7:19:20 PM[Stone to Gates]: Get the list – “u need to reconcile against FEC report” crucial

6/21/16, 3:54:40 PM [Stone to Gates]: Lists Friday ??? please

7/2/16, 5:59:17 PM [Stone to Gates]: Lists? You said last weds

9/21/16, 10:30:25 PM [Stone to Gates]: Please get me lists – please.

9/26/16, 8:30:22 PM [Stone to Gates]: Lists????

9/28/16, 1:43:14 AM [Stone to Gates]: Are u going to send me the lists in time for me to use? do me no good after the election

10/19/16, 5:00:14 PM [Stone to Gates]: Lists…..pls

It’s not entirely clear why they were included at trial. The government had talked about introducing 404b information showing Stone illegally coordinating with the campaign, but there was more focus, on that point, on Stone’s discussions with Steve Bannon about obtaining funding from Rebekah Mercer while the latter was campaign manager.

Perhaps the defense wanted to include these exchanges as proof that Stone’s conversations with Gates focused more often on lists than on WikiLeaks. In his cross examination of Gates, Rogow got Trump’s former Deputy Campaign Manager to confirm that Stone, “continually asked questions about voter registration lists.”

Q. Mr. Stone’s role in the campaign dealt with voter registration lists, primarily, didn’t it?

A. I didn’t know what Mr. Stone was responsible for prior to when I arrived. When I arrived, Mr. Stone had already left the campaign.

Q. Did Mr. Stone continually ask questions about voter registration lists?

A. He did.

To be clear: I’m completely agnostic what Stone’s requests were about. But there are a slew of possibilities.

One reason I raise it — given a Campaign Legal Center complaint to the FEC, alleging that Trump laundered $170 million in campaign funding through Brad Parscale’s firms and news today of Parscale’s attempt at self-harm yesterday — pertains to some comments that Paul Manafort made in a September 27, 2016 interview:

Stone had a PAC that was not well funded and he wanted Manafort to designate it as the favored PAC for the campaign, but Manafort did not want to. Lewandowski also had a PAC and wanted the same thing, and Manafort did not want to deal with internal politics related to their PACs. He thought it was a good idea to have a designated PAC, he just did not want it to be either Stone’s or Lewandowski’s.

[snip]

Manafort was not sure how Stone made his money. Manafort knew Stone wrote books and gave speeches and did some consulting. Manafort knew Stone was working on a book about the Trump campaign and consulted with different candidates and on various referenda. Manafort did not know Stone’s client base. Manafort was not familiar with the company Citroen.

Manafort’s comments are positively hilarious. He presents this as a battle between Stone and Corey Lewandowski over who could make the most profit off of illegally coordinating with the campaign. That battle was real, and cut throat.

But at the time Stone and Lewandowski were fighting that out, Manafort’s allies had their own PAC that prosecutors at least suspected that Manafort used as a kick back system to get paid. Manafort didn’t want anyone else to be the official illegally coordinating campaign, presumably, because he wanted his PAC to have that role. And at the time Manafort made this comment in September 2018, he was pretty aggressively trying to hide how his own PAC worked.

The investigation into Manafort’s PAC has been closed, whether because Bill Barr shut it down or prosecutors gave up trying to untangle it.

But the CLC complaint into Trump’s current campaign alleges that one of Parscale’s firms, American Made Media Holding Corporation, serves as a pass through for campaign vendor services that are therefore improperly shielded from campaign finance reporting.

Approximately one month after AMMC’s formation, the Trump campaign began reporting sizable payments to AMMC, and AMMC soon became the Trump campaign’s largest vendor. Since 2019, the Trump campaign has reported paying $106 million to AMMC for an array of general purposes, including placed media, consulting, online advertising, SMS advertising, and more; the Trump Make America Great Again Committee has reported over $61 million in payments to AMMC, largely for online advertising.

Available evidence indicates that AMMC is not directly providing those services to the Trump campaign, but instead is acting as a “clearinghouse”10 that disburses Trump campaign funds to other vendors, “effectively shielding the identities of the underlying contractors being paid for Trump campaign work.”11 In several instances, Trump campaign officials and public reports have described other firms as major contractors providing services to the Trump campaign, yet those contractors’ names do not appear on the Trump campaign’s reports filed with the Commission; instead, it appears that the Trump campaign reports payments to AMMC, which then passes on the funds to the intended payees.

For example, Trump campaign officials have spoken publicly about directing and managing the development of a mobile app produced by the software company Phunware, yet the Trump campaign has not reported direct payments to the company. Other public records suggest that the Trump campaign is contracting with Realtime Media and Opn Sesame— firms headed by the Trump campaign’s digital director, Gary Coby12—yet neither firm has appeared on the campaign’s reports filed with the FEC. Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) records show that the Trump campaign’s ads are placed by the firm Harris Sikes Media, but the campaign has not reported payments to that firm during the 2019-20 election cycle. Available evidence indicates that the Trump campaign is selecting, directing, and controlling these vendors and their work, yet is failing to report payments to the firms and is instead using AMMC as a conduit for its payments to the firms. Other possible vendors that the campaign may be paying through AMMC, such as those providing services for direct mail, software, subscriptions, or video production—all services for which the campaign has also described paying AMMC this cycle—are not ascertainable through public records.

In addition, CLC reviews some of the reporting that Parscale pays a number of people — notably Don Jr’s girlfriend and Eric Trump’s wife — for their work on the campaign.

Additionally, the Trump campaign is currently paying Parscale Strategy, the consulting firm of former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, approximately $48,000 a month for “strategy consulting,” and, according to multiple media reports, using Parscale Strategy as a conduit for salary payments to particular campaign staff.13

[snip]

Similarly, in a July 15, 2020 article reporting on Parscale’s change of position within the campaign, the Washington Post reported that Parscale’s “firm, Parscale Strategy, bills for the campaign salaries of Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the wife and girlfriend respectively of Trump’s two oldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr.”93

In the 2020 cycle, the Trump campaign has not directly reported making any salary payments to campaign manager Brad Parscale, nor has it reported any salary payments to Kimberly Guilfoyle or Lara Trump.94

This is the kind of scheme that the NYT described in its blockbuster report on Trump’s tax returns, though in that case the “consultant” was Ivanka.

Examining the Trump Organization’s tax records, a curious pattern emerges: Between 2010 and 2018, Mr. Trump wrote off some $26 million in unexplained “consulting fees” as a business expense across nearly all of his projects.

In most cases the fees were roughly one-fifth of his income: In Azerbaijan, Mr. Trump collected $5 million on a hotel deal and reported $1.1 million in consulting fees, while in Dubai it was $3 million with a $630,000 fee, and so on.

Mysterious big payments in business deals can raise red flags, particularly in places where bribes or kickbacks to middlemen are routine. But there is no evidence that Mr. Trump, who mostly licenses his name to other people’s projects and is not involved in securing government approvals, has engaged in such practices.

Rather, there appears to be a closer-to-home explanation for at least some of the fees: Mr. Trump reduced his taxable income by treating a family member as a consultant, and then deducting the fee as a cost of doing business.

The “consultants” are not identified in the tax records. But evidence of this arrangement was gleaned by comparing the confidential tax records to the financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she joined the White House staff in 2017. Ms. Trump reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.

When CLC filed an FEC complaint against the grift of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman in 2018, they shared the complaint with SDNY, which is what led to the prosecution of Rudy’s grifters. Here, the appropriate venue would likely be FL or TX (so less likely to pursue a vigorous investigation), but given CLC’s past practice, one should assume it’s likely the information was shared.

In 2016, Trump engaged in all sorts of dodgy campaign financing. But possibly because his key advisors were in such a cutthroat competition with each other, only the now-closed Manafort investigation and the inauguration funding got much scrutiny.

But now, with everything centralized in Parscale’s sports cars, it may be easier to see the grift.

Then there’s what Cambridge Analytica did, some independently and some with the campaign. Channel 4 in the UK has a story today on how aggressively Trump suppressed the black vote.

Finally, I think it’s also important to note that Trump’s Deputy Campaign Manager was being asked (there’s only one indication, May 13, 2016, that Gates delivered, and even that’s not definite) to provide Trump’s rat-fucker with voting lists in a parallel time table as he was providing Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik polling data. In September, Russian hackers would spend much of the month making copies of Hillary’s analytics on AWS.

In any case, Trump continues to be surrounded by people who are clearly grifting off their work with him, without much clarity on how they’re doing so and what the implications of all that are.

Yesterday, Treasury sanctioned four people for election interference. Rudy Giuliani associate Andreii Derkach has gotten most of the attention. But Treasury also sanctioned three people associated with Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s troll operation.

Today, Treasury also designated three IRA actors pursuant to E.O. 13694, as amended by E.O. 13757, and E.O. 13848 for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the IRA, an entity designated pursuant to E.O. 13694, as amended, and E.O. 13848. Russian nationals Artem Lifshits, Anton Andreyev, and Darya Aslanova, as employees of the IRA, supported the IRA’s cryptocurrency accounts. The IRA uses cryptocurrency to fund activities in furtherance of their ongoing malign influence operations around the world.

The identifying information announcement provides not just passport and date of birth information (which is normal), but for two of the sanctioned individuals, it includes 17 and 6 crypto-currency addresses, respectively.

ANDREYEV, Anton Nikolaeyvich (Cyrillic: АНДРЕЕВ, Антон Николаевич), 9 3 Bloshevikov Prospect Apt 35, Saint Petersburg, Russia; DOB 03 Mar 1985; POB Saint Petersburg, Russia; nationality Russia; Email Address [email protected]; Gender Male;

Digital Currency Address – XBT 1Fz29BQp82pE3vXXcsZoMNQ3KSHfMzfMe3;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 1AeSq93WDNdLoEJ92sex7T8xQZoYYm8BtS;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 1AoxtfiBQ22DvbhqAN9Ctb8sULMRhrdwTr;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 18Qj1THHuETfYhuRDZycXJbWwDMGw73Poa;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 1MnbhWe5wr7Ut45ReyQsm96PwnM9jD7KaH;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 1DYFJ6CuBvrxyoQSuBzVsNcetY9tvdsrag;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 15Pt4NwZaUmMUwS2bQbyyncc7mzgWShtv8;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 1PhqQpaGCrqSxQ6QDXcv14QCd1U98Zp34E;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 13YBQr2Cp1YY3xqq2qngaPb7ca1o4ugeq6;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 1KgudqxMfYaGzqAA7MS4DcsqejtMteqhix;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 1FRyL9gmFGbzfYDAB4iY9836DJe3KSnjP9;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 1DbShx4r8i2XesthoDBf5EkYWz5dsKEusV;

Digital Currency Address – ETH 0x8576acc5c05d6ce88f4e49bf65bdf0c62f91353c;

Phone Number 79315403678;

Digital Currency Address – LTC LWnbjLYUfqeokfbWM4FcU7uk2FP2DSxuWS;

alt. Digital Currency Address – LTC LaYUy1DGfVSuSF5KbPhbLrm8kRotqiwUJn;

Digital Currency Address – ZEC t1WSKwCDL1QYRRUrCCknEs5tDLhtGVYu9KM;

Digital Currency Address – BSV 12sjrrhoFEsedNRhtgwvvRqjFTh8fZTDX9; Passport 4005504207 (Russia) (individual) [CYBER2] [ELECTION-EO13848].

[snip]

LIFSHITS, Artem Mikhaylovich (Cyrillic: ЛИФШИЦ, Артем Михайлович), Primorsky Prospect 159, Saint Petersburg 197374, Russia; DOB 26 Dec 1992; nationality Russia; Email Address [email protected]; alt. Email Address [email protected]; Gender Male;

Digital Currency Address – XBT 12udabs2TkX7NXCSj6KpqXfakjE52ZPLhz;

alt. Digital Currency Address – XBT 1DT3tenf14cxz9WFNxmYrXFbB6TFiVWA9U;

Digital Currency Address – ETH 0x901bb9583b24d97e995513c6778dc6888ab6870e;

alt. Digital Currency Address – ETH 0xa7e5d5a720f06526557c513402f2e6b5fa20b00;

Phone Number 79110354982;

Digital Currency Address – LTC Leo3j36nn1JcsUQruytQhFUdCdCH5YHMR3;

Digital Currency Address – DASH Xs3vzQmNvAxRa3Xo8XzQqUb3BMgb9EogF4; Passport 719032284 (individual) [CYBER2] [ELECTION-EO13848].

Yesterday, EDVA also announced a single criminal charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud against one of the sanctioned people, Artem Lifshits, who in 2017 was head of the “Translator Department [or Project],” which is what the troll project focusing on the US is called. As the excerpt above notes, Lifshits actually got fewer of his cryptocurrency accounts sanctioned than another of the targets, Anton Andreyev.

I’d like to look at how the criminal complaint complements the two other sets of charges against Prigozhin’s troll operation, the indictment against 13 of the actual trolls as well as some of the companies involved (here’s a very long post on that prosecution), and Prigozhin himself and a complaint against one of the accountants involved, Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova (here’s my post on that). Along with renewing and fleshing out the case against Prigozhin, the complaint may be an effort to sow discord within Prigozhin’s operation, by alerting him that some of his employees may be helping themselves to company troll funds.

The affidavit by a Secret Service Agent supporting the complaint incorporates the other two legal actions and includes them as exhibits to this charge. It even includes a footnote explaining why DOJ dismissed the charges against Prigozhin’s shell companies.

On March 16, 2020, the United States dismissed Concord Management and Consulting LLC from the Indictment. Concord “availed itself of the Court’s jurisdiction to obtain discovery from the United States . . . while positioning itself to evade any real obligations or responsibility,” even refusing to produce a corporate representative despite “appearing” through counsel. Mot. to Dismiss Concord Defs., 2, 6, United States v. Internet Research Agency, et. al, 1:18-cr-32 (DLF) (D.D.C. Mar. 16, 2020). In light of the defendant’s conduct, the United States dismissed these parties from the Indictment, stating substantial federal interests were no longer served by continuing the proceedings against them. See id. at 9. The Indictment remains pending and active as to thirteen named individual defendants and the IRA.

After some introductory matter, the affidavit:

• Describes the Lakhta disinformation project generally, including a brief overview of its attempts to sow discord between December 2016 through May 2018, incorporating some but not all of the examples from the Khusyaynova complaint, and adding a few new ones, including three paragraphs on use, starting in July 2019 of a cover company located in Accra, Ghana.
• Describes how in October 2018 the Secret Service started investigating the role of cryptocurrency in the operation.
• Explains that Lifshits served as head of the Translator Department.
• Describes how Lifshits transferred money from a BTC account opened using the stolen identity of “T.W.” to his own personal account, the central allegation of wire fraud laid out in the indictment.

The basic proof accusing Lifshits of using T.B.’s stolen identity to open a Bitcoin account that he then used to transfer money into his own account relies on very basic metadata analysis obtained using legal process:

• Evidence backing the selectors of Lifshits tie to his biological person and one of the cryptocurrency accounts he transferred money into (including two other Internet troll employees’ address book entries with his phone number, one of which referred to him as “Troll Face”).
• Evidence showing Lifshits applying to Project Lakhta in July 2015 and appearing on rosters of Project Lakhta employees dated January 28, 2017 to October 26, 2017.
• A description of finding order confirmations in the known IRA email, allforusa, from a criminal marketplace that sold fraudulent identities (this might be Richard Pinedo’s site).
• Two paragraphs describing interviews with T.W. and another identity theft victim, T.B.,  in which they said he had never owned any cryptocurrency themselves and had not authorized anyone to do so on their behalf.
• IP analysis showing Lifshits accessing cryptocurrency addresses (including his own) from an IRA IP address, as well as from a US-based account set up using a stolen identity but controlled by IRA.
• IP address analysis showing him accessing the T.W. cryptocurrency account at the same time he accessed one of his own accounts, into which he transferred funds.
• User Agent String analysis showing those accounts being accessed by the same browser.
• IP analysis establishing venue in EDVA via some AWS servers.

In other words, the complaint, after invoking the two other legal actions against IRA and Prigozhin, finds one manager amid Prigozhin’s employees and shows some very basic metadata evidence — relying on neither intelligence nor some of the more sophisticated blockchain analysis the US government would like to hide — to accuse the manager, Lifshits, of wire fraud because of a financial transfer involving the stolen identity of an American.

There are two interesting aspects of the complaint, besides the way it slowly builds the case against Prigozhin via interlocking accusations.

First, a key passage of all this describes that Lifshits made this transfer “for personal gain.”

60. On or about December 29, 2017, LIFSHITS accessed and used the T.W. Exchange 1 Account to conduct an electronic transfer of funds from the T.W. Exchange 1 Account to his personal Exchange 3 account. This transaction is publicly viewable on the Bitcoin blockchain and USSS confirmed its existence through other investigative means.

61. On or about December 29, 2017, LIFSHITS used United States IP Address 1 at 15:35 UTC to access his Exchange 3 account. Then, three minutes later, he used the same IP address to access the T.W. Exchange 1 Account. This is on the same day that the T.W. Exchange 1 Account sent an electronic funds transfer to LIFSHITS’ Exchange 3 account.

62. With this transaction, LIFSHITS (1) intentionally and voluntarily devised or participated in a scheme to defraud — as evidenced by controlling and using a fraudulent cryptocurrency account, and (2) used interstate wire communications to further the fraud — as evidenced by the online cryptocurrency transactions.

It doesn’t say, one way or another, whether this was a sanctioned transfer of funds out of an IRA-controlled account or not. The government may have used this 34-page affidavit not only to flesh out the case against Prigozhin, but also to reveal that one of his employees is bilking him, effectively stealing trolling funds.

But the complaint also mentions a Co-Conspirator 1, who along with Lifshits bought identities using cryptocurrency.

Law enforcement obtained a search warrant for the contents of the email account [email protected], which as stated above is associated with a cryptocurrency account linked to both LIFSHITS and Co-Conspirator 1. During a review of the emails, law enforcement located “Order Confirmation” emails received from an online criminal marketplace that sells fraudulent passports and similar identification documents (the “Criminal Marketplace”). These emails corresponded to purchases of United States driver licenses that reflected the real names, addresses, and dates of birth of United States identity theft victims. This type of personally identifiable information is a “means of identification” as defined in Title 18, United States Code, Section 1028(d)(7).

It describes Co-Conspirator 1 as the sole other beneficiary of transfers out of a different IRA trolling account (though also suggests that one of the guys charged in the larger indictment might also be conducting such transfers as well).

The T.W. Exchange 1 Account reflected debits to several beneficiaries, including accounts registered to LIFSHITS and another known Project Lakhta member (“Co-Conspirator 1”). The IP activity associated with the T.W. Exchange 1 Account also matched the IP address activity of cryptocurrency accounts registered to LIFSHITS and Vladimir Venkov, who is charged in the USAO-DC Indictment.

It then introduces an account based off a different stolen identity, that of T.B., from which funds were transferred into an account controlled by the Co-Conspirator.

USSS identified a second account, which was hosted at another United States cryptocurrency exchange (“Exchange 2”). The Exchange 2 account was registered to a known Project Lakhta email account, [email protected] (hereinafter the “AllforUSA Exchange 2 Account”).7 Project Lakhta members opened the AllforUSA Exchange 2 Account using the identifiers of T.B. According to Exchange 2’s records, Project Lakhta members solely funded the AllforUSA Exchange 2 Account with an incoming credit from an account also in the name of T.B. at a United States-based financial institution. This credit was used exclusively to fund outgoing payments to a Blockchain wallet that USSS investigators determined was controlled by Co-Conspirator 1.

Now, it may be that the government only introduced Co-Conspirator 1 to establish venue in EDVA (which went through the T.B. account).

But it sure sounds like it is describing Co-Conspirator 1 as engaging in the same kind of transfers from IRA accounts into his own personal accounts that it describes Lifshits as doing.

Perhaps stealing from the troll till is considered part of their official compensation (elsewhere, the complaint cites the salary of Lifshits, so the US government may know the answer). Or perhaps these guys whose cryptocurrency addresses just got published in a US sanction announcement have been stealing from Prigozhin, in which case the US Treasury just provided Prigozhin a lot of hints about how to prove it.

WikiLeaks supporters like to claim the May 2019 superseding indictment against Assange uniquely threatens journalism by treating routine journalistic activities — such as requesting sensitive information — as part of a conspiracy to leak.* That’s not entirely true.

As I’ve noted, well before Assange’s superseding indictment, in October 2018, DOJ charged Natalie Sours Edwards — one of several presumed sources for a series of BuzzFeed stories on Suspicious Activities Reports pertaining to those investigated for their ties to Russia — in such a way to treat Jason Leopold as a co-conspirator. Both the complaint justifying her arrest and the indictment include a conspiracy charge that describes how Edwards (and another unindicted co-conspirator) worked with Reporter-1, including one request pertaining to Prevezon captured on Signal.

c. As noted above, the October 2018 Article regarded, among other things, Prevezon and the Investment Company. As recently as September 2018, EDWARDS and Reporter-1 engaged in the following conversation, via the Encrypted Application, in relevant part:

EDWARDS: I am not getting any hits on [the CEO of the Investment Company] do you have any idea what the association is if I had more information i could search in different areas

Reporter-1: If not on his name it would be [the Investment Company]. That’s the only other one [The CEO] is associated with Prevezon Well not associated His company is [the Investment Company]

On January 13, Edwards pled guilty to one charge, the conspiracy one, though without any sign of cooperation.

In fact, Edwards is not the only case charged like this. While he was charged after Assange’s superseding indictment, Henry Frese, a DIA analyst who leaked reports on China to some NBC reporters, was not just charged in a similar conspiracy charge, but was wiretapped to collect evidence implicating the reporters. Because he cooperated, there’s little to prevent Trump’s DOJ from charging the journalists after the election except Trump’s well-established support for an adversarial press.

The way in which DOJ charged Edwards has become newly critical given an announcement Treasury made yesterday, in the wake of reports about how Donald Trump was never investigated for his financial vulnerability to Russia. The unit of Treasury that collects and analyzes Suspicious Activity Reports released a statement threatening “various media outlets” who were planning to publish stories on SARs.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is aware that various media outlets intend to publish a series of articles based on unlawfully disclosed Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), as well as other sensitive government documents, from several years ago.  As FinCEN has stated previously, the unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime that can impact the national security of the United States, compromise law enforcement investigations, and threaten the safety and security of the institutions and individuals who file such reports.  FinCEN has referred this matter to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Inspector General.

BuzzFeed has always treated their source for the Treasury story as a whistleblower, reporting not just a dispute over access to reports for intelligence reports, but also on the damning Russian information that got ignored.

As Edwards has moved closer to sentencing, she developed irreconcilable differences with her original attorneys over what she called a coerced guilty plea. And documents filed in the case provide some explanation why.

While the substance of her appeal is not entirely clear, it’s clear that she claimed legal access to certain documents — presumably SARs — as a whistleblower.

In the appellants “official capacity” as a government employee from 2015-Jan 2020 and as a whistleblower from 2015 to current, the specific documents were used during the Congressional Request Inquires & Letters from 2015-2018, the Office of Special Counsel’s investigations from 2017-2020 and the appellants legal access to the exculpatory material from 2018 to current per 31 C.F.R. § 103 “official disclosures responsive to a request from an appropriate Congressional committee or subcommittees; and prosecutorial disclosures mandated by statute or the Constitution, in connection with the statement of a government witness to be called at trial, the impeachment of a government witness, or as material exculpatory of a criminal defendant.1

As a government employee I could disclose any information in a SAR (including information in supporting documentation) to anyone, up to and including the person who is the subject of the SAR, so long as the disclosure was “necessary to fulfill the official duties of such officer or employee”2 which I did as a whistleblower and as an employee; however, once I medically resigned, 31 C.F.R. § 103 provided the legal exculpatory material as a whistleblower, administrative appellate and criminal defendant to disclose the information in court proceedings. Furthermore, the appellant was adhering to the courts upholding that disclosures must be specific and detailed, not vague allegations of wrongdoing regarding broad or imprecise matters. Linder v. Department of Justice, 122 M.S.P.R. 14, 14 (2014); Keefer v. Department of Agriculture, 82 M.S.P.R. 687, 10 (1999); Padilla v. Department of the Air Force, 55 M.S.P.R. 540, 543– 44 (1992).

After she tried to use the documents in her appeal of a whistleblower complaint, the Treasury Department Inspector General shared them with the prosecutors in her case, who in turn cited them in her presentencing report.

The agency has argued throughout the appellant no longer is an employee of the agency, the pro se appellant agrees. The agency Inspector General should not have been notified of the administrative proceedings of the court because the appellant is not an employee of the agency. There is no statue or policy that gives the agency the right to notify the agency IG of the “procedural motion” prior “to notify the other party”. Regulation 5 C.F.R. § 1201.55(a) does not state “notify Inspector General” rather it does state “to notify the other party”. The pro se appellant argues notifying the Inspector General prior to “the other party” is a violation of the pro se appellants fifth amendment.

[snip]

[T]he agency/agency IG notified the appellants criminal prosecutors of the disclosures in the IRA case. As explained above, the disclosures are permissible per 31 C.F.R. § 103. Due to the agency/agency IG notification to the government prosecutors, the prosecution requested increased sentencing in the sentencing report for the appellant/defendant thus violating the defendants fifth amendment in the criminal proceeding.

Edwards further claimed that the government withheld her original complaint to coerce her to plead guilty.

The Federal Judge found merit and significant concerns in the “letter and substantial documentation” the whistleblower defendant/appellant provided to the court concerning violation of fifth amendment, conflict of interests pertaining to the prosecution/counsel, coercion of the plea deal, criminal referral submitted against agency IG, the letter defendant sent to Attorney General Sessions and Special Counsel Mueller, etc., all elements withheld from the Federal court by both the prosecution and defense counsel.

Edwards has been assigned a new attorney (who may have convinced her not to submit this complaint as part of sentencing), and her sentencing has been pushed out to October.

There’s no way to assess the validity of her complaint or even her representation of what happened with the judge in her case, Gregory Woods. What her complaint shows, however, is that there’s a packet of information she sent to Mueller and Sessions (possibly implicating and/or also sent to Congress), summarizing some reports she believes got ignored.

If those reports show what Rod Rosenstein and Richard Burr worked so hard not to investigate, it might explain why Treasury is threatening legal consequences for reporting on them. And given how DOJ already structured this prosecution, they might well be threatening to treat reporting on the President’s vulnerabilities as a conspiracy to leak SARs protected by statute.

*WikiLeaks supporters also cite the risk of Assange being subjected to US Espionage Act prosecution. While that risk is real, in his case, the most dangerous charges (for leaking the names of US and Coalition informants) would likely be far easier to prosecute under the UK’s Official Secrets Act, which still could happen if he’s not extradited. The actions described in his indictment are arguably more explicitly criminalized in the UK than the US, even if their sentences are not as draconian.

Steve Bannon and three associates just got indicted in SDNY for defrauding investors in their We Build the Wall “charity,” from which they skimmed about a million dollars.

The alleged fraud here is pretty garden variety: raising funds to pay for a wall and instead pocketing a good chunk of the money.

But it’s significant because it comes just months after Billy Barr tried to replace then-US Attorney Geoffrey Berman with a handpicked successor. Berman responded by insisting that all SDNY investigations would continue as they were proceeding, and he refused to resign until he ensured that his Deputy, Audrey Strauss, would take over.

No one knew this indictment was in the works (and the arrest, by postal agents, makes the surprise more delicious). Which means the other times that Barr has hastily replaced a US Attorney with a flunky could represent similar cases into fraud well beyond the Russian-related crimes we know about. (Note, the Timothy Shea indicted along with Bannon is not the Barr flunky named Timothy Shea whom Barr installed in DC.)Indeed, Erik Prince was a key advisor to this organization; there’s good reason to suspect that an investigation into him got killed at the same time Barr intervened in the Flynn and Stone prosecutions.

Michael Cohen warned the entire Republican Party. If they didn’t stop hanging out with Trump, they would go to jail.

He tried to warn them, anyway.

Jim again here.

See update below.

Over the past few days, several sources of information about Lev Parnas’ history have come out. Perhaps the most complete picture of his early years came from this New Yorker interview shortly before his arrest:

Parnas was born in February, 1972, in the port city of Odessa, in southwestern Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. He was three when his family moved to the United States. “I came here as a legal immigrant, through a legal process,” he said. His family settled in Detroit, where they lived for about a year, before relocating to Brooklyn. When Parnas was sixteen, he worked at Kings Highway Realty, selling Trump Organization co-ops. “That was my first time knowing who Trump was, but, growing up in that area, you knew who Trump was, because his name was all over the place,” he said.

In 1995, when Parnas was twenty-three, he moved from Brooklyn to Florida.

I found the part about Kings Highway Realty and Trump co-ops especially useful, as I had been puzzled about one of the earlier passages from an interview with the Washington Post:

Parnas, 47, was born in Ukraine but moved with his family to the United States as a child and grew up in Brooklyn. He told The Washington Post in an interview conducted before his arrest that he got his start in real estate, selling Trump condos for Donald Trump’s father, Fred, then worked in shipping in the former Soviet Union before becoming a securities trader. He moved to Florida in the mid-1990s.

This passage had bothered me, because when we go back and look at Fred Trump’s career, condos play virtually no role. Fred built large, pedestrian apartment buildings, often with government assistance, in the outer boroughs that he retained ownership of and rented out to the middle class. Donald, as we know, concentrated early on opulent properties in Manhattan.

The one Fred Trump property that bears the Trump name is Trump Village:

The seven towers of Trump Village were designed by the architect Morris Lapidus. The two near Ocean Parkway were rental buildings and were run by the Trump Organization until recent years. The five other buildings were in the state’s Mitchell-Lama program, which allows people with incomes below certain thresholds to enter lotteries for the right to buy co-op apartments at below-market prices.

The snippet above was published in the New York Times in 2010. That begins to resolve some of the apparent discrepancies in the Parnas statements in the different interviews. If he was selling property for Fred Trump, co-ops in Trump Village make the most sense. And by this time, the Trump Organization was managing the properties as Fred’s health was starting to decline.

Remarkably, Kings Highway Realty Corp., which was incorporated in 1977, is still in business. The address listed for it now is around 8 miles from Trump Village. That seems to fit with a first job for a 16-year-old growing up in Brooklyn, although selling real estate at 16 seems pretty advanced.  Further, as we see in Fred Trump’s obituary, he had a history of taking in young men looking for a career in real estate.

By the time Parnas started selling co-ops at Trump Village, Fred Trump was 82. The obituary suggests that Alzheimers set in around 1993, five years after Parnas started, but there appears to have been a single driving force in Fred’s life in this era:

Fred Trump’s real estate empire was not just scores of apartment buildings. It was also a mountain of cash, tens of millions of dollars in profits building up inside his businesses, banking records show. In one six-year span, from 1988 through 1993, Fred Trump reported $109.7 million in total income, now equivalent to $210.7 million. It was not unusual for tens of millions in Treasury bills and certificates of deposit to flow through his personal bank accounts each month.

Fred Trump was relentless and creative in finding ways to channel this wealth to his children. He made Donald not just his salaried employee but also his property manager, landlord, banker and consultant. He gave him loan after loan, many never repaid. He provided money for his car, money for his employees, money to buy stocks, money for his first Manhattan offices and money to renovate those offices. He gave him three trust funds. He gave him shares in multiple partnerships. He gave him $10,000 Christmas checks. He gave him laundry revenue from his buildings.

Much of his giving was structured to sidestep gift and inheritance taxes using methods tax experts described to The Times as improper or possibly illegal. Although Fred Trump became wealthy with help from federal housing subsidies, he insisted that it was manifestly unfair for the government to tax his fortune as it passed to his children. When he was in his 80s and beginning to slide into dementia, evading gift and estate taxes became a family affair, with Donald Trump playing a crucial role, interviews and newly obtained documents show.

So at the very time that Parnas came onto the scene, Fred was already slipping into dementia but singularly focused on channeling as much money as he could to Donald while avoiding taxes on the transfers. Did Parnas see these schemes as they developed? Did he even perhaps play a bit role? Recall that in one of the interviews he says he worked for the Trump Organization. The ultimate vehicle for funneling cash to Fred’s offspring came into being in 1992, and likely postdated Parnas’ time with Trump Village, but we have to wonder if Parnas saw the seeds of this one being planted, or was even one of the employees used in the scheme. Continuing in the Times article above:

The most overt fraud was All County Building Supply & Maintenance, a company formed by the Trump family in 1992. All County’s ostensible purpose was to be the purchasing agent for Fred Trump’s buildings, buying everything from boilers to cleaning supplies. It did no such thing, records and interviews show. Instead All County siphoned millions of dollars from Fred Trump’s empire by simply marking up purchases already made by his employees. Those millions, effectively untaxed gifts, then flowed to All County’s owners — Donald Trump, his siblings and a cousin. Fred Trump then used the padded All County receipts to justify bigger rent increases for thousands of tenants.

Something Parnas almost certainly had to have seen just before going to work with the Trump Organization was the story of David Bogatin, one of the first Russian purchasers of a Donald Trump property:

But Bogatin wasn’t deterred by the limited availability or the sky-high prices. The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin.

/snip/

In 1987, just three years after he attended the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleaded guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After he fled the country, the government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, saying that he had purchased them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York. His family ties, in fact, led straight to the top: His brother ran a $150 million stock scam with none other than Semion Mogilevich, whom the FBI considers the “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia. At the time, Mogilevich—feared even by his fellow gangsters as “the most powerful mobster in the world”—was expanding his multibillion-dollar international criminal syndicate into America.

How could that not have made an impression on Parnas, going to work just months after the Bogatin story exploded?

This leads us to a murky intermediary period in Parnas’ story.  Note that the Post interview, but not the New Yorker interview, mentions that he “worked in shipping in the former Soviet Union”. Also, this biography he eventually put on the Fraud Guarantee website mentions something similar:

Notably, in this version Parnas says he shipped “the first containers of freight between the United States and the former Soviet Union”. The Gorbachev government failed in December of 1991, when Parnas would have been 19, going on 20 the next February. And yet, somehow, this teenager, who had a couple of years selling real estate, suddenly jumps into the middle of a brand new opportunity on the world scene. Even more confusing is the fact that the former Soviet Union in those early years had a horrible economy:

The first seven years of Russia’s transition from the Soviet central planned economy (1991-1998) were not easy. This [period, which coincided with most of the regime of President Boris Yeltsin were, by most accounts, a time of economic chaos, if not near collapse and failure.

During the period, Russia lost close to 30% of its real gross domestic product (GDP), a decline reminiscent of the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States.4 Russia also suffered very high rates of inflation– over 2,000% in 1992 and over 800% in 1993– before it declined to more tolerable, but still high, levels of around 20% by the end of the 1990s. The inflation robbed Russian citizens of their savings as the value of the ruble collapsed, eventually forcing the Russian government to sharply devalue the ruble on January 1, 1998, with 1 new ruble equaling 1,000 old rubles. As a hedge against inflation, some residents, who were in a position to do so, invested in hard assets such as art works, foreign currencies, and real estate.

So what would a teenager ship? Oh, I don’t know, maybe he figured something out at a time when the rich in the former Soviet Union were looking for hard assets.

The next phase in Parnas’ career becomes really fascinating. Note that all of these narratives say he moved from shipping (or directly from real estate) to securities. Again, he seems to have had remarkable luck in jumping into a senior position at an incredibly early age. I’ve been digging into the network of Parnas’ various corporate entities (and hope to write about them soon) and the earliest entry under his name in the Florida database is for Program Trading Corp., which was incorporated on September 25, 1992 in Boca Raton. That would have made Parnas just 20 years old when he suddenly became, at least on paper, a director and President (a partner I’ll address in later posts was CEO) of a stock trading firm. The timeline here seems a bit out of order. Parnas claims not to have moved to Florida until 1995, and yet his first company there was incorporated, with him involved, in 1992. Further, when we look into Parnas’ registration as a stock broker, we see that he is listed as passing the licensing exam on December 10, 1993 and he’s first registered with a brokerage firm a few days before that on December 6. This is over a year after Program Trading Corp. was founded.

I confess to not being familiar with the detailed workings of licensing and registration of stock brokers, but the rapid succession of firms at which Parnas was registered strikes me as strange and perhaps suggestive that his early days as a broker didn’t go well. From the early firms, it appears at least possible that Parnas was indeed still in New York as he passed the first exam and sold his first securities, but it still stands out as strange that his firm in Florida was already incorporated and waiting for him when he moved there in 1995.

It’s almost as if Lev Parnas was a “made man” at 23 with experience in real estate, shipping and securities, all enterprises known to be favored by those laundering cash coming out of the former Soviet Union.

Update October 17

It appears that Parnas didn’t actually become involved in Program Trading Corp. until late 1998. I’ve put strikethrough on the parts of this post that relied on a mistaken interpretation of the forms on file with the State of Florida. See the new post for an updated timeline of Parnas and Program Trading Corp. So Parnas may not have been “made man” until 1998 instead of 1995.

The other day, I described the graymail that former Mike Flynn sleazy influence peddling partner, Bijan Kian, was engaged in. In an effort to identify all the lies Flynn told to discredit him on the stand, his defense team was asking for all his 302s (FBI interview reports). Yesterday, the judge gave Kian a partial victory, ordering him to come up with a specific list of things they still want.

The response is still graymail — they want documents that will embarrass Trump and disclose some of the most sensitive parts of Mueller’s investigation — but not as excessive as it could have been. Among the things they’re asking for are:

• Details of whether he told DIA about a 2015 meeting with Sergey Kislyak and payments from RT, Kaspersky, and Volga-Dnepr Airlines.
• A description of the reasons Flynn got fired from DIA in 2014.
• Details of Flynn’s contact with Kirill Dmitriev and other Russian officials following the election, and whether those were reported to DIA.

Now, this graymail attempt seems to be more focused on revealing that Flynn is nowhere near as honorable as the title he’d use at trial, General, would otherwise indicate. There’s a reason Turkey picked Flynn to run their anti-Gulen campaign, and it’s that he’s willing to trade his values to make a buck, and these documents will help demonstrate that. The government may still want to delay handing these documents over.

That said, details disclosed in the hearing (CNN, Politico, CNS) suggest there may be parts of Flynn’s cooperation beyond those embarrassing details relating to the Mueller probe, parts that wouldn’t be included in Kian’s discovery request.

First, the government revealed that there are 19 Flynn 302s, of which 15 are from Mueller’s office.

In all, the Virginia prosecutors say they have 19 memos from Flynn’s cooperation –15 from the special counsel’s office and four from the Turkish lobbying investigation in Virginia.

“We do not want those 302s leaving the office” of the Virginia US attorney inside the courthouse, Gillis said

More interestingly, AUSA James Gillis at first said those other 302s pertain to investigations in more than one other US Attorney district, only to correct himself and say they pertained to at least one other district.

The prosecutor in court Friday stopped himself after he acknowledged other US attorneys may be looking at what Flynn shared with the special counsel.

“At least one other district,” he said, correcting himself after first saying “districts,” before asking to withdraw his statement in court representing the number of ongoing investigations.

Some thoughts on what this new information might mean.

The government is pretty sensitive about the 302s pertaining even to this case, asking that Kian’s attorneys review them at the EDVA US Attorney’s office, not share them with other counsel, not copy them, and not quote from those not identified as Jencks material at trial without permission.

This may, in part, be an effort to keep the documents out of the hands of Ekim Alptekin, the other defendant charged with Kian, who is back in Turkey.

As of Thursday, Kian’s team had seen just “several” and therefore not all four of the Flynn 302s pertaining to this investigation.

To be perfectly clear, the government has already permitted the defense to review a number of 302s, including several 302s of General Flynn. We have offered upon reasonable conditions to give the defense an opportunity to review all of the General’s 302s that were generated during its investigation of the crimes charged in the indictment,1 as well as the 302s for all but one2 of the other witnesses interviewed in connection with the present charges.

1. The conditions the government requested are listed in the attachment. We offered to negotiate these terms, but we have not heard from the defense. It is interesting, therefore, that the defense has filed this motion for all of General Flynn’s unrelated 302s when that have not even taken the opportunity to review those actually relevant to this prosecution.

2 This individual’s identity is being protected for the time being to prevent any reprisals or tampering involving the witness.

In addition, some of the 302s deemed to belong to the Mueller investigation mentioning Kian or Alptekin or other entities involved in the conspiracy.

Under similar conditions, we have invited the defense to review redacted versions of General Flynn’s 302s that contain any mention the defendants or any reference to the other individuals or entities involved in the charged conspiracy – regardless of whether they relate to this prosecution or to other investigations by the Special Counsel’s Office.

This suggests there’s more of a Turkish part of the Mueller investigation than previously reported.

Remember that in Flynn’s initial FBI 302 (which must be additional to the 19 capturing interviews while he was cooperating), he explained away his December 29, 2016 conversation with Sergey Kislyak to the FBI by claiming they were talking about a Syrian peace conference in Astana, Kazakhstan.

The redactions in Flynn’s 302 included two passages on Flynn’s December 29, 2016 phone calls with Ambassador Kislyak. In the first, Flynn offered up that he and Kislyak had discussed two things: a phone call with Vladimir Putin that would take place on January 28, and whether the US would send an observer to Syrian peace talks Turkey and Russia were holding in Kazakhstan the next month.

[snip]

The claim that those Kislyak phone calls discussed a later call with Putin and the Astana conference is the same one the Transition would offer to the WaPo the day after David Ignatius made clear that the FBI had recordings of the call. Mueller’s reply to Flynn’s sentencing memo describes that Flynn asked a subordinate to feed this information to the WaPo.

[snip]

Flynn’s lies to cover the discussion about sanctions and expulsions were not entirely invented; he’s a better liar than that. The Transition really was struggling over its decision of whether to join in a Syrian peace plan that would follow Russia (and Turkey’s lead) rather than the path the Obama Administration had pursued in the previous year. As he noted to the FBI, the Trump Administration had only decided not to send a senior delegation to Astana earlier that week. It was announced on January 21.

[snip]

But by staking his lies on the Astana conference — and the Trump Administration’s willingness to join a Syrian effort that deviated from existing US policy — Flynn also raised the stakes of his past paid relationship with Turkey. It became far more damaging that Flynn had still been on the Turkish government payroll through the early transition, when Trump directed him to conduct early outreach on Syria. So even while DOJ was repeatedly telling Flynn he had to come clean on his Turkish lobbying ties, he lied about that, thereby hiding that the early days of Trump Administration outreach had been conducted by a guy still working for Turkey.

Under similar conditions, we have invited the defense to review redacted versions of General Flynn’s 302s that contain any mention the defendants or any reference to the other individuals or entities involved in the charged conspiracy – regardless of whether they relate to this prosecution or to other investigations by the Special Counsel’s Office.

In other words, there appear to be parts of the Mueller investigation pertaining to Turkey outside of Flynn’s sleazy influence peddling with Kian. Some of those may have been spun off (like so much else) to other districts (perhaps SDNY, where Reza Zarrab flipped).

Now consider the addendum to Flynn’s sentencing memo describing his cooperation (of which there was an ex parte version withheld even from Flynn). I’ve suggested the description of his cooperation (which covers the same 19 302s at issue in yesterday’s hearing, so there has been no new cooperation since December) is structured like this.

Between the three investigations, Flynn sat for 19 interviews with prosecutors.

Here’s the structure of how the body of the cooperation section describes the three investigations:

A Criminal Investigation:

11+ line paragraph

6.5 line paragraph

2 line paragraph

B Mueller investigation:

Introductory paragraph (9 lines)

i) Interactions between Transition Team and Russia (12 lines, just one or two sentences redacted)

ii) Topic two

10 line paragraph

9 line paragraph

C Entirely redacted investigation:

4.5 line paragraph

The description of the first and third investigations are both almost entirely redacted.

The description of his cooperation with the Mueller investigation is split into two topics — i) interactions between the transition team and Russians, plus another ii) redacted section.

Category A is almost certainly the Kian prosecution, which consists of 4 302s.

Category B, Mueller’s investigation, breaks down into what we know (transition related activities) and something else. Parts of that something else (which likely has to do with the Trump team’s serial efforts to monetize the presidency) may well have gotten spun off.

Then there’s Category c, which given what was said yesterday, seems to relate to Mueller but is of a different sort of information — I’ve suggested it may pertain to a general counterintelligence investigation into Russia, one that might live at DOJ’s National Security Division rather than a US Attorney’s office.

That still doesn’t tell us all that much — except that Flynn hasn’t cooperated further since December and the 3-part cooperation described in his cooperation memo may involved some complexity reflecting Turkish issues that were part  of the Mueller investigation as well as other topics (graft?) that could have been spun off.

Mueller may be close to done, but his investigation seems to have spin-offs that we haven’t even begun to hear of yet.

As I disclosed last 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. 

In the last several days, two outlets have tried — but (in my opinion) failed — to communicate the sheer scale of the President’s corruption. Today, that bastion of warmed over conventional wisdom, Axios, deemed Trump’s Russian conspiracy “the biggest political scandal in American history.”

They miss most of the key details (and treat Trump’s contacts with Russian officials as the crime, when that’s not by itself one). Even in a piece invoking the Teapot Dome Scandal, they don’t seem to see the outlines of a quid pro quo bribe, Tower and dirt for sanctions relief. There’s no mention of Paul Manafort at all, much less one describing how he shared polling data in a meeting where he also discussed sanctions relief.

And I don’t think the Mueller investigation really has delivered one of the biggest counterintelligence cases in history (which may be a mis-citation of this Garrett Graff article).

More remarkably, the Axios founders don’t seem to be able to get their arms around where this scandal ends, in part because some of the other stuff Trump has done — monetizing the Presidency via other foreign powers or various properties — are separate from the Russian part of Trump’s scandals.

Tuesday, Greg Sargent attempted a different approach, cataloging all the things that Republicans in Congress think should not be investigated by Congress. He came up with this list:

• Materials relating to any foreign government payments to Trump’s businesses, which might constitute violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause.
• Materials that might shed light on Trump’s negotiations over the duration of a real estate project in Moscow, which Trump concealed from the voters even as the GOP primaries were underway.
• Materials that might show whether Trump’s lawyers had a hand in rewriting former lawyer Michael Cohen’s testimony to Congress falsifying the timeline of those negotiations.
• Materials that might illuminate more detail about Trump’s numerous efforts to obstruct the FBI/Mueller investigation.
• Materials that would shed more light on the criminal hush-money scheme that Cohen carried out, allegedly at Trump’s direction, and on Trump’s reimbursement of those payments.

This list is based on the HJC list of document requests, and so is limited to people who’ve already (publicly) been asked for documents. But even there, it doesn’t capture why some of these things matter — again, including the appearance of a quid quo pro bribe trading the Trump Tower for sanctions relief. Nor does it incorporate the full scope of kinds of crimes listed here. This list doesn’t include the range of lies told, not just by Cohen but by Roger Stone and Don Jr and others, nor does it consider the import of Cambridge Analytica and Manafort sharing polling data with the Russians.

And, of course, because Sargent works backwards from the HJC list, he doesn’t include issues already being investigated by other committees, such as how Trump’s ICE keeps losing immigrant children, or why he forced aides to give his daughter and her husband security clearances that they clearly weren’t suited for.

I raise this not to criticize, but instead to observe that we’re at a point where journalists are struggling to communicate the full scale of Trump’s corruption, even just that corruption tied exclusively to the Russian investigation. That’s partly been a result of his media approach, treating each day as a new opportunity to replace yesterday’s spectacle with a new one. It’s partly because of the boiling frog effect: we’ve had piecemeal disclosures over two years, and few journalists have taken stock along the way to see what the actual court evidentiary record amounts to. And even there, we often forget to add in the truly breathtaking corruption of Administration aides like Scott Pruitt or Ryan Zinke, or of current Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot of late — I don’t pretend to be able to get my brain around anything beyond the Russian investigation, to the extent even that is doable. It seems that we need to start trying to quantify this not in terms of names or actions but instead in terms of harm to the nation.

Just as one example, even the judges in the Russian investigation have — across the board — seen Trump’s flunkies to be selling out the interest of the United States, perhaps for Trump personally, perhaps for self-dealing, perhaps for foreign associates. Whatever crimes (or not) Trump committed, because he and his flunkies refuse to put the interest of the country first, it has consequences for Americans, including the constituents of members of Congress who want to ignore all this corruption.

We’ve been boiling frogs for several years here. But it’s time to take stock on the bottom line effect that Trump’s corruption has had on the country, and holding Republican enablers accountable for that damage.

The ten year anniversary of the Great Crash is upon us, so we can expect a spate of media reports fighting the wars all over again. Here’s one by the New York Times writer Neil Irwin, discussing the justifications offered by Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary under Bush, Timothy Geithner, the Chair of the New York Fed and then Treasury Secretary under Obama, and Ben Bernanke, the Chair of the Fed. One word that doesn’t appear? Crime. Also not mentioned: “foam the runway”.

The justification offered by the Big Three is the same tired explanation we’ve heard over and over. We had to save the financial system, or, as Irwin explains it:

The goal was not to try to reinvent Wall Street on the fly, but to keep the flow of capital coursing through the global economy while minimizing the depth and duration of the recession that the crisis had caused.

They claim success by this standard. But they ignore the fact that tens of thousands of small businesses were cut off from credit, and individual borrowers were pushed to the wall. And, millions of people lost their homes in disgusting foreclosures waved through by judges utterly indifferent to the requirements for proving up mortgage claims. The legal system failed the people it was supposed to protect, and no one was held accountable. But at least Geithner and his allies foamed the runway for the filthy rich and the bankers.

Irwin defends the actions taken in pursuit of the purported goal of “saving the financial system”, saying that they worked. The economy isn’t perfect, but inflation is relatively low, and while job gains were low, the current unemployment rate is 3.9%. Irwin ignores the fact that competent economists expected low inflation, and doesn’t mention that the share of the population with jobs is still down over two points from the peak in 2000 among those aged 25-54, and still not back the pre-Crash levels 10 years later. His glib skimming over the 10-year slow increase in jobs ignores the lost wages, and ignores the low pay and insecurity of the new jobs.

Irwin thinks that the problem was that the trio of leaders did not manage the politics correctly. They did nothing to help homeowners, because, according to Irwin, the political environment was toxic, citing the usual suspects, Rick Santelli and the Tea Party. Bernanke cites long-term trends, “…stagnation in middle-class wages, social dysfunctions, rising mistrust in government and hostility to immigration”, but that has the feel of both-siderism when everyone knows it was driven by the right wing. Irwin accepts this explanation.

Again, nowhere in this piece does Irwin talk about crimes, fraud, cheating, or corporate wrong-doing. I agree that the problem was political. The Obama Administration, specifically Eric Holder and his deputy Lanny Breuer, refused to conduct criminal investigations into the people who lied, cheated and stole from the investing public and the millions of people cheated in mortgage transactions. The pointless and stupid civil cases were slaps on the wrist of banks, and hardly dented the returns to their shareholders. Not a single banker went to jail, despite overwhelming evidence of fraud.

This is not just a political failure. It’s a moral failure. Obama decided to absolve the bankers who committed crimes, and in doing so clarified to the American people that we have a two-tier system of justice. The rich and powerful are coddled. Everyone else is beaten into the dirt by the legal system. It’s not the salvage operation the holy three managed that drives the anger; it’s the lack of accountability. Explaining the salvage operation gets a lot easier when people see a steady stream of guilty pleas and massive fines and forfeitures.

Sure, I’m angry. But I’m not angry about saving the financial system. I’m angry that the bankers stole the money and got away with it.

This week, Senate Judiciary Committee members are releasing their Questions for the Record for Brett Kavanaugh (questions that he won’t be able to answer given the accelerated confirmation process Chuck Grassley has set). Sheldon Whitehouse’s QFRs have already generated considerable notice. Amid questions about predictable legal (prosecuting a president, environmental rulings, Roe, transgender rights, labor, guns) and GOP rat-fuckery (Starr, staff secretary, and other Bush White House policy issues), Whitehouse asked two questions that should have but did not come up in his hearing: about how debt allegedly tied to Washington Nationals season tickets evaporated when he came under consideration for SCOTUS, and the possibility he’s a heavy gambler (as suggested by one of the letters Don McGahn and Bill Burck tried to keep hidden).

But I’m more interested in some of Whitehouse’s other questions about finances. First, after asking about the baseball tickets, Whitehouse asks why the aspiring Justice has declared himself “exempt” from reporting certain gifts and/or reimbursements.

14. On your Financial Disclosure Report dated July 15, 2018 in Section V. Gifts, you did not check the box for no reportable gifts, you simply wrote “Exempt.”

a. Does this response indicate that you received a gift(s) but considered that gift(s) exempt from the reporting requirements?

b. For each gift (if any) you believe is exempt from reporting, please provide a description of the gift, the approximate value, date received, the donor, and the reason you believe the gift was exempt from reporting requirements.

15. On your Financial Disclosure Report dated July 15, 2018, you did not list any reimbursements. Instead you simply wrote “Exempt.”

a. Does this response indicate that you received reimbursement(s) but considered that reimbursement(s) exempt from the reporting requirements?

b. For each reimbursement you believe is exempt from reporting, please provide a description of the costs incurred, reasons for the costs, the date and amount of any reimbursements that you received for these costs, and the reason you believe the reimbursement was exempt from reporting requirements.

If, as he has claimed, the baseball tickets ended up being gifted by someone, they should be declared here. But then, having asked whether Kavanaugh isn’t declaring gifts he should, Whitehouse then asks about some financial details that also might amount to gifts or other income requiring disclosure: A cost of living adjustment he is known to have received as a judge, a big bump in assets in 2008-2009, the unexplained source of money he used to buy his home, and his membership at Chevy Chase Golf Club.

16. In 2014, federal judges received a lump sum equal to the amount of their delayed cost of living adjustments. For you, this was estimated at $150,000. This amount does not appear to be reported anywhere in your financial disclosures. Please explain this discrepancy.

17. Your Bank of America accounts appear to have greatly increased in value between 2008 and 2009. Your Financial Disclosure Report dated May 15, 2009 reflected a value in the range of $15,001 – $50,000. Your Financial Disclosure Report dated May 14, 2010 reflected a value in the range of $100,001 – $250,000. You did not report any increase in Non-Investment Income, nor did you report any gifts during this period. Please explain the source of the funds that accounts for the difference reflected in these accounts between your 2008 and 2009 Financial Disclosure Reports.

18. In 2006, you purchased your primary residence in Chevy Chase, MD for $1,225,000, however, the value of assets reportedly maintained in your “Bank of America Accounts” in the years before, during, and after this purchase never decreased, indicating that funds used to pay the down payment and secure this home did not come from these accounts.

a. Did you receive financial assistance in order to purchase this home? And if so, was the assistance provided in the form of a gift or a personal loan?

b. If you received financial assistance, please provide details surrounding how this assistance was provided, including the amount(s) of the assistance, date(s) on which the assistance was provided, and the individual(s) who provided this assistance.

c. Was this financial assistance disclosed on your income tax returns, financial disclosure forms, or any other reporting document?

19. You have disclosed in your responses to the Senate Judiciary Questionnaire that you are currently a member of the Chevy Chase Club. It has been reported that the initiation fee to join this club is $92,000 and annual dues total more than $9,000.

a. How much was the initiation fee required for you to join the Chevy Chase Club? What are the annual dues to maintain membership and is this the amount that you pay?

b. Did you receive any financial assistance or beneficial reduction in the rate to pay the initiation or annual fees? If so, please describe the circumstances.

c. If you received financial assistance, please disclose the amount of the assistance, the terms, the dates the assistance was provided, and the individual(s) or entity that provided the assistance.

d. To the extent such assistance or rate reduction could be deemed a “gift,” was it reflected on your income tax returns, financial disclosure forms, or any other reporting document?

The beauty of these questions is that — while I fully expect Kavanaugh to just blow off the slew of questions he’s getting this week (given that they’ve broken the rules everywhere else on this nomination, why the fuck not on QFRs?) — he is now on notice that these financial issues have been noted. If he doesn’t fix any non-disclosures now, he will no longer be able to claim that his failure to disclose required items was just a mistake.

And Whitehouse might believe there are more. He asks, first directly, and then at the end of the series of questions Whitehouse poses about the credit card debt, whether Kavanaugh’s in debt to people he hasn’t told us about.

Are there any debts, creditors, or related items that you did not disclose on your FBI disclosures?

Did you have any creditors, private or otherwise, not listed in your Financial Disclosure Reports?

My favorite bit about Whitehouse’s QFRs, however, is that at the end of all these financial questions, the former US Attorney and Attorney General then asks whether lying under oath is an impeachable offense.

24. Is lying under oath an impeachable offense for an Article III judge?

You see, we can argue Kavanaugh lied under oath in his confirmation until we’re blue in the face. Kavanaugh, each time, will offer a well practiced lawyer’s parse about how his transparently dishonest comments don’t amount to perjury, and he’ll get away with that.

But finances are a different issue. Whitehouse has put Kavanaugh on notice that not disclosing certain things — like who paid for his house or paid off his season ticket debt — will amount to lying.

So Kavanaugh may blow off these questions. But that may come back to haunt him.

Update: Here are Kavanaugh’s answers on finances — basically, he says he has followed disclosure guidelines on all of this, which may necessarily mean that the big ticket items, including the down payment for his home, came from Daddy. The one thing not addressed here are big gifts from family.

I have truthfully provided financial information in conjunction with this nomination process and my service in the judicial and executive branches. Since I graduated from law school in 1990, I have worked in public service for 25 of those 28 years. For most of her years of paid employment, my wife likewise has been a federal, state, or local government worker.

During that time, I have filed regular financial disclosure reports as required by law. The Federal Government’s required financial disclosure reports list broad ranges for one’s assets and debt as of one day or period in time.

At this time, my wife and I have no debts other than our home mortgage. We have the following assets:

(1) A house minus the mortgage;

(2) Two Federal Government Thrift Savings Plan retirement accounts (largely accessible to us beginning in 2024), as well as a Texas employees’ retirement account;

(3) A bank account;

(4) A car that we own and a car that we lease; and

(5) Ordinary personal furniture, clothing, and belongings.

Since our marriage in 2004, we have not owned stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or other similar financial investments outside of our retirement accounts.

Our annual income includes my income as a federal judge, my income from teaching law each year, and now also my wife’s income from being Town Manager of Section 5 of Chevy Chase, Maryland. Our annual income and financial worth substantially increased in the last few years as a result of a significant annual salary increase for federal judges; a substantial back pay award in the wake of class litigation over pay for the Federal Judiciary; and my wife’s return to the paid workforce following the many years that she took off from paid work in order to stay with and care for our daughters. The back pay award was excluded from disclosure on my previous financial disclosure report based on the Filing Instructions for Judicial Officers and Employees, which excludes income from the Federal Government. We have not received financial gifts other than from our family which are excluded from disclosure in judicial financial disclosure reports. Nor have we received other kinds of gifts from anyone outside of our family, apart from ordinary non-reportable gifts related to, for example, birthdays, Christmas, or personal hospitality. On the 2018 financial disclosure report, I correctly listed “exempt” for gifts and reimbursements because those are the explicit instructions in the 2018 Filing Instructions for Judicial Officers and Employees.

At this time, we have no debts other than our home mortgage. Over the years, we carried some personal debt. That debt was not close to the top of the ranges listed on the financial disclosure reports. Over the years, we have sunk a decent amount of money into our home for sometimes unanticipated repairs and improvements. As many homeowners probably appreciate, the list sometimes seems to never end, and for us it has included over the years: replacing the heating and air conditioning system and air conditioning units, replacing the water heater, painting and repairing the full exterior of the house, painting the interior of the house, replacing the porch flooring on the front and side porches with composite wood, gutter repairs, roof repairs, new refrigerator, new oven, ceiling leaks, ongoing flooding in the basement, waterproofing the basement, mold removal in the basement, drainage work because of excess water outside the house that was running into the neighbor’s property, fence repair, and so on. Maintaining a house, especially an old house like ours, can be expensive. I have not had gambling debts or participated in “fantasy” leagues.

The Thrift Savings Plan loan that appears on certain disclosure reports was a Federal Government loan to help with the down payment on our house in 2006. That government loan program is available for federal government workers to help with the purchase of their first house. In our case, that loan was paid back primarily by regular deductions from my paycheck, in the same way that taxes and insurance premiums are deducted from my paycheck. That loan has been paid off in full. I am a huge sports fan. When the Nationals came to D.C. in 2005, I purchased four season tickets in my name every season from 2005 through 2017. I also purchased playoff packages for the four years that the Nationals made the playoffs (2012, 2014, 2016 and 2017.) I have attended all 11 Nationals’ home playoff games in their history. (We are 3-8 in those games.) I have attended a couple of hundred regular season games. As is typical with baseball season tickets, I had a group of old friends who would split games with me. We would usually divide the tickets in a “ticket draft” at my house. Everyone in the group paid me for their tickets based on the cost of the tickets, to the dollar. No one overpaid or underpaid me for tickets. No loans were given in either direction.

My wife and I spend money on our daughters and sports, including as members of the Chevy Chase Club, which we joined in recent years. We paid the full price of the club’s entry fee, and we pay regular dues in the same amount that other members pay. We did not and do not receive any discounts. The club is a minute’s drive from our house, and there is an outdoor ice hockey rink and a very good youth ice hockey program. We joined primarily because of the ice hockey program that my younger daughter participates in, as well as because of the gym.

Finally, it bears repeating that financial disclosure reports are not meant to provide one’s overall net worth or overall financial situation. They are meant to identify conflicts of interest. Therefore, they are not good tools for assessing one’s net worth or financial situation. Here, by providing all of this additional information, I hope that I have helped the Committee.

He refused to answer Whitehouse’s question about whether lying under oath is cause for impeachment.