Flynn’s Category C (or B iii) Cooperation: Mueller’s Expanded Investigation

/54 Comments/in , /by

Yesterday, I argued that the structure of the addendum describing Flynn’s cooperation looks like this.

The section on cooperation describes Flynn’s assistance in three investigations. The Mueller investigation is actually the second thing listed, which I take to suggest that the the Mueller investigation is just the second most important. My wildarse guess is that these consist of A) a criminal national security investigation (the Turkish investigation tied to Reza Zarrab could be one possibility), B) the Mueller investigation, and C) a counterintelligence investigation into the Russians. But obviously the first and third are just a guess.

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

On Twitter, Elizabeth de la Vega argued that the ordering of the addendum doesn’t necessarily mean Category A is any more important than Mueller’s investigation, but that Category C was instead something under Mueller’s supervision.

That would mean the structure of the addendum looks like this:

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)Mueller investigation into something else:

10 line paragraph

9 line paragraph

iii) Mueller investigation into something else:

4.5 line paragraph

The description of SCO’s investigation covering “a range of issues” would be consistent with more than two topics.

If that’s right, we might learn the subject of that B iii cooperation by looking at more recent descriptions of the scope of Mueller’s investigation that show up in Jerome Corsi’s draft statement of the offense. As that describes, one of the things Mueller’s office told Corsi they were investigating pertained to any ties between Trump’s campaign, the Russian government, and WikiLeaks.

the nature of any connections between individuals associated with the U.S. presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump (“Trump Campaign”) and the Russian government or Organization 1.

That roughly correlates to the unredacted description of the parts of Mueller’s investigation in the addendum (though Wikileaks got added somewhere along the way).

the Special Counsel’s Office’s (“SCO”) investigation concerning any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald J. Trump.

But there were two other categories Mueller was investigating by September 6 when they interviewed Corsi: GRU’s theft of the Democrats’ emails, and GRU’s provision of them to WikiLeaks.

the theft of campaign-related emails and other documents by the Russian government’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (“GRU”);

the GRU’s provision of certain of those documents to an organization (“Organization 1”) for public release in order to expand the GRU’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign;

Even if one of those two categories describes the area on which Flynn provided cooperation (it’s possible, after all, that these are just the aspects of the Mueller scope that were pertinent to Corsi’s testimony, and there are other categories, like the Middle Eastern graft, that have also been included), it doesn’t necessarily tell us anything. Though — particularly given Corsi’s own ties to the Peter Smith effort — that could be one possible area of cooperation.

Still, I agree her reading may be the correct one (which would also explain why there’s not an introductory paragraph for what I had labeled Category C).

Update: In this post I lay out that we don’t yet know what extradition expert and Arabic speaker Zainab Ahmad has been working on. She has only shown up in Flynn’s docket thus far. She would be a likely candidate to oversee an investigation into the Middle Eastern graft that Flynn was involved with (in which the Seychelles meeting is key). So it may be that B(i) is the transition, B(ii) is the Middle Eastern graft, and B(iii) is another part of the investigation.

As I disclosed in 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. 

The Mueller Investigation Is the Second Most Important Investigation into Which Flynn Assisted

/97 Comments/in , /by

The Flynn sentencing memo, with a largely redacted addendum describing his cooperation, is out. Effectively, Mueller recommends no prison time because of Flynn’s substantial cooperation, his early cooperation, his record of service to the country.

The section on cooperation describes Flynn’s assistance in three investigations. The Mueller investigation is actually the second thing listed, which I take to suggest that the the Mueller investigation is just the second most important. My wildarse guess is that these consist of A) a criminal national security investigation (the Turkish investigation tied to Reza Zarrab could be one possibility), B) the Mueller investigation, and C) a counterintelligence investigation into the Russians. But obviously the first and third are just a guess. [Update: This post considers another possibility, that the Mueller section involves three categories.)

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.

The transition discussions map what appeared in his criminal information. It does make it clear that Flynn reported false information to them about his conversation with Sergei Kislyak, which means what really went on between him and Kislyak goes beyond what appeared in emails involving KT McFarland, which is pretty damning by itself. That also suggests he really may have lied to Mike Pence.

The second, almost entirely redacted section, is actually the longest, and it’s two paragraphs. If the two sections split into the transition and post-inauguration period, there might be one paragraph on policy issues and another on his firing and obstruction.

The cooperation section emphasizes that Flynn cooperated early. It suggests that because he cooperated, “related firsthand witnesses” decided to be “forthcoming with the SCO and cooperate.” We know that happened with KT McFarland.

The memo also describes Flynn as “one of the few people with long-term and firsthand insight regarding events and issues under investigation by the SCO.” That says the Russian matters were actually fairly closely held, which is itself telling.

Finally, the description of the third investigation is just five lines long.

As I disclosed in 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. 

Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi’s Matryoshka Cover-Up

/18 Comments/in , , /by

I want to reverse engineer the serial cover-ups that Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone have attempted, at least as disclosed by Corsi’s leaked statement of the offense.

I will assume, for this post’s purposes, that Corsi and Stone not only learned that John Podesta’s emails were going to be released, but also at least some information about what they would contain, as laid out in these two posts. Given the elaborate cover-up I’m about to lay out, it seems likely that where and how they learned that is quite sensitive.

The immediate cover story (probably for knowledge that Joule Holding documents would be released)

The first cover-up, at least according to Corsi, came within a month of the time whatever they’re trying to cover-up happened. Nine days after Stone tweeted that it would soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel, he called Corsi and asked him to invent an alternate explanation for it.

He said in an interview Tuesday that Mr. Stone called him on Aug. 30, 2016—nine days after the tweet—and asked Mr. Corsi for help in creating an “alternative explanation” for it.

Shortly after that conversation, Mr. Corsi said he began writing a memo for Mr. Stone about Mr. Podesta’s business dealings. In the following months, both Mr. Stone and Mr. Corsi said the memo was the inspiration for his tweet, even though it was in fact written afterward, Mr. Corsi said.

“What I construct, and what I testified to the grand jury, was I believed I was creating a cover story for Roger, because Roger wanted to explain this tweet,” Mr. Corsi said. “By the way, the special counsel knew this. They can virtually tell my keystrokes on that computer.”

In the version of the story Corsi told Chuck Ross, he seems to have forgotten the parts of the phone call where he and Stone explained why it was so important he have a cover story.

Corsi writes that his alleged cover up plan with Stone began on Aug. 30, 2016, when Stone emailed him asking to speak on the phone.

“I have no precise recollection of that phone call,” writes Corsi, adding, “But from what happened next, I have reconstructed that in the phone call Stone told me he was getting heat for his tweet and needed some cover.”

Corsi claimed he had begun researching John Podesta’s business links to Russia and believed the research “would make an excellent cover-story for Stone’s unfortunate Tweet.”

Corsi writes that in his phone call later that evening, “I suggested Stone could use me as an excuse, claiming my research on Podesta and Russia was the basis for Stone’s prediction that Podesta would soon be in the pickle barrel.”

“I knew this was a cover-story, in effect not true, since I recalled telling Stone earlier in August that Assange had Podesta emails that he planned to drop as the ‘October Surprise,’ calculated by Assange to deliver a knock-out blow to Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations.”

Corsi emailed the nine-page memo to Stone the following day.

“So you knew this was a lie when you wrote the Podesta email,” Zelinsky asked Corsi during one question-and-answer session, he writes.

“Yes, I did,” Corsi responded. “In politics, it’s not unusual to create alternative explanations to deflect the attacks of your political opponents.”

Corsi’s report — as I detailed here — made no sense and makes even less now that we know that Paul Manafort ordered Tony Podesta to hide his Ukrainian consulting, but it distracted from a focus on Joule Holdings that Stone and Corsi had been focused on earlier that month and would return to after the Podesta emails were released in October.

When SSCI announces its investigation, Corsi attempts to destroy evidence of (probably Joule Holding) knowledge prior to October 11

According to Corsi’s draft statement of the offense, he deleted all of his email from before October 11 sometime after January 13, 2017.

Between approximately January 13, 2017 and March 1, 2017, CORSI deleted from his computer all email correspondence that predated October 11, 2016, including Person 1’s email instructing CORSI to “get to [the founder of Organization 1]” and CORSI’s subsequent forwarding of that email to the overseas individual.

There are several things that might explain that date. It was the day after Guccifer 2.0 returned to WordPress to insist he wasn’t a GRU persona. It was days after Obama’s top spooks talked about the Intelligence Community Assessment of the Russian attack, which found that Guccifer 2.0 was a GRU operation. It was the day that the Senate Intelligence Committee announced its investigation.

And January 19 was the day the NYT reported that Stone was under investigation.

Mr. Manafort is among at least three Trump campaign advisers whose possible links to Russia are under scrutiny. Two others are Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign, and Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative.

The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said.

[snip]

Mr. Stone, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump’s, said in a speech in Florida last summer that he had communicated with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that published the hacked Democratic emails. During the speech, Mr. Stone predicted further leaks of documents, a prediction that came true within weeks.

In a brief interview on Thursday, Mr. Stone said he had never visited Russia and had no Russian clients. He said that he had worked in Ukraine for a pro-Western party, but that any assertion that he had ties to Russian intelligence was “nonsense” and “totally false.”

Stone falsely claims that the story said he himself was wiretapped (it said Manafort was); he dates it to January 20, when it appeared in the dead tree NYT.

According to the New York Times, I was under surveillance by the Obama administration in 2016. They wrote that on January 20, 2017.

In any case, as I’ve noted, October 11 is the date when the Peter Smith crowd discussed their pleasure with the Podesta emails in coded language.

“[A]n email in the ‘Robert Tyler’ [foldering] account [showing] Mr. Smith obtained $100,000 from at least four financiers as well as a $50,000 contribution from Mr. Smith himself.” The email was dated October 11, 2016 and has the subject line, “Wire Instructions—Clinton Email Reconnaissance Initiative.” It came from someone calling himself “ROB,” describing the funding as supporting “the Washington Scholarship Fund for the Russian students.” The email also notes, “The students are very pleased with the email releases they have seen, and are thrilled with their educational advancement opportunities.” The WSJ states that Ortel is not among the funders named in the email, which means they know who the other four funders are (if one or more were a source for the story, it might explain why WSJ is not revealing that really critical piece of news).

And it’s the date when WikiLeaks released the Podesta emails that had Joule Holdings documents attached.

Thus, it seems likely that Corsi, at least, was trying hide that he had foreknowledge of what WikiLeaks ended up dropping on that day.

Corsi packages up the past August’s cover story publicly

Then, on March 23, 2017, Corsi packaged up the cover story he had laid the groundwork for the previous year. In doing so, however, he acknowledges the common thread of Joule starting on August 1.

Having reviewed my records, I am now confident that I am the source behind Stone’s tweet.

Here is the timeline showing how I got Roger Stone on the track of following the real story – that Podesta played a key role in the Clintons’ plan to get paid by Putin.

On July 31, 2016, the New York Post reported that Peter Schweizer’s Washington-based Government Accountability Institute had published a report entitled, “From Russia with Money: Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism.”

That report detailed cash payments from Russia to the Clintons via the Clinton Foundation which included a Putin-connected Russian government fund that transferred $35 million to a small company that included Podesta and several senior Russian officials on its executive board.

“Russian government officials and American corporations participated in the technology transfer project overseen by Hillary Clinton’s State Department that funneled tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation,” the report noted in the executive summary.

“John Podesta failed to reveal, as required by law on his federal financial disclosures, his membership on the board of this offshore company,” the executive summary continued.  “Podesta also headed up a think tank which wrote favorably about the Russian reset while apparently receiving millions from Kremlin-linked Russian oligarchs via an offshore LLC.”

Reading Schweizer’s report, I began conducting extensive research into Secretary Clinton’s “reset” policy with Russia, Podesta’s membership on the board of Joule Global Holdings, N.V. – a shell company in the Netherlands that Russians close to Putin used to launder money – as well as Podesta’s ties to a foundation run by one of the investors in Joule Energy, Hans-Jorg Wyss, a major contributor to the Clinton Foundation.

Note how carefully he postdates the report — which he has testified before the grand jury he wrote very quickly on August 30 — to August 14.

On Aug. 14, 2016, the New York Times reported that a secret ledger in Ukraine listed cash payments for Paul Manafort, a consultant to the Ukraine’s former President Viktor F. Yanukovych.

When this article was published, I suggested to Roger Stone that the attack over Manafort’s ties to Russia needed to be countered.

My plan was to publicize the Government Accountability Institute’s report, “From Russia With Money,” that documented how Putin paid substantial sums of money to both Hillary Clinton and John Podesta.

Putin must have wanted Hillary to win in 2016, if only because Russian under-the-table cash payments to the Clintons and to Podesta would have made blackmailing her as president easy.

On Aug. 14, 2016, I began researching for Roger Stone a memo that I entitled “Podesta.”

Making a cover story about the Credico cover story

On September 26, 2017, Stone testified to HPSCI. He gave no name for his go-between with WikiLeaks. But later that fall, he privately gave them Randy Credico’s name and then released it publicly, claiming that Credico had accurately predicted what would come when.

Randy Credico is a good man. He’s extraordinarily talented. He’s come back from personal adversity .He often using Street theater and satire to illustrate the hypocrisy of our current drug laws and in his fight for Prison reform. He is a fighter for Justice.The Committee is wasting their time. He merely confirmed what Assange had said publicly. He was correct. Wikileaks did have the goods on Hillary and they did release them.

Credico’s three interviews of Julian Assange on WBAI are an example of excellent radio journalism.

Credico merelyconfirmed for Mr. Stone the accuracy of Julian Assange’s interview of June 12, 2016 with the British ITV network, where Assange said he had “e-mails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication,”

. [sic] Credico never said he knew or had any information as to source or content of the material. Mr. Credico never said he confirmed this information with Mr. Assange himself. Mr. Stone knew Credico had his own sources within Wikileaks and is credible. Credico turned out to be 100 % accurate.

I initially declined to identify Randy for the Committee fearing that exposure would be used to hurt his professional career and because our conversation was off-the-record and he is journalist. Indeed when his name surfaced in this he was fired at WBAI Radio where he had the highest rated show.

I want to reiterate there is nothing illegal or improper communicating with Julian Assange or Wikileaks. There is no proof Assange or Wikleaks are Russian assets.The CIA’s “assesment” is bullshit.Credico has done nothing wrong.

Then HPSCI subpoenaed Credico, meaning they would check Stone’s cover story (as Mueller has been doing for nine months). Stone apparently told Credico to invoke the Fifth rather than admit that he really wasn’t that go-between.

At that point, Stone asked Corsi to start backing that cover story.

After the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“HPSCI”), the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (“SSCI”), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) began inquiring in 2017 about Person 1’s connections with Organization 1, CORSI communicated with Person 1 about developments in those investigations. For example, on or about November 28, 2017, after Person 1 had identified to HPSCI a certain individual (“Person 2”) as his “source” or “intermediary” to Organization 1, Person 2 received a subpoena compelling his testimony before HPSCI, and Person 1 learned of the subpoena. On or about November 30, 2017, Person 1 asked CORSI to write publicly about Person 2. CORSI responded: “Are you sure you want to make something out of this now? Why not wait to see what [Person 2] does? You may be defending yourself too much – raising new questions that will fuel new inquiries. This may be a time to say less, not more.” Person 1 responded by telling CORSI that the other individual “will take the 5th—but let’s hold a day.”

Pressuring Credico to sustain the cover story

Finally, sometimes this spring — as Mueller started systematically working through Stone’s associates — Stone pressured Credico not to contest his public claim that he was Stone’s go-between, going so far as threatening him.

“I am so ready. Let’s get it on. Prepare to die cock sucker,” Stone messaged Credico on April 9. Stone was responding to a message from Credico that indicated Credico would release information contradicting Stone’s claims about the 2016 election and that “all will come out.”

Corsi’s lies to prosecutors

As bad luck would have it for Corsi, Mueller’s team interviewed him, not Stone. That meant he was the first person to have to sustain this cover story with the FBI (though of course Stone already did with HPSCI).

When asked on September 6 and (apparently) on September 10, Corsi claimed not to have remembered that he was Stone’s journalist cut-out all this time.

CORSI said he declined the request from Person 1 and made clear to Person 1 that trying to contact Organization 1 could be subject to investigation. CORSI also stated that Person 1 never asked CORSI to have another person try to get in contact with Organization 1, and that CORSI told Person 1 that they should just wait until Organization 1 released any materials.

CORSI further stated that after that initial request from Person 1, CORSI did not know what Person 1 did with respect to Organization 1, and he never provided Person 1 with any information regarding Organization 1, including what materials Organization 1 possessed or what Organization 1 might do with those materials.

He arranged that — the outer layer of the Matryoshka cover story — with his lawyer even before he got asked any questions. Which is going to make his currently operative cover story — that he didn’t remember crafting a multi-level cover story with Stone over the course of over a year — because he had deleted some of the emails reflecting that (but not, apparently, the ones from fall 2017).

It’s fairly clear, this Matryoshka cover-up has become part of Mueller’s investigation. It all suggests that whatever lies inside that last little doll is something so damning that the guy with the Nixon tattoo allowed the cover-up to become a second crime.

As I disclosed in 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. 

 

The Year Long Trump Flunky Effort to Free Julian Assange

/82 Comments/in , , , /by

The NYT has an unbelievable story about how Paul Manafort went to Ecuador to try to get Julian Assange turned over. I say it’s unbelievable because it is 28 paragraphs long, yet it never once explains whether Assange would be turned over to the US for prosecution or for a golf retirement. Instead, the story stops short multiple times of what it implies: that Manafort was there as part of paying off Trump’s part of a deal, but the effort stopped as soon as Mueller was appointed.

Within a couple of days of Mr. Manafort’s final meeting in Quito, Robert S. Mueller III was appointed as the special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and related matters, and it quickly became clear that Mr. Manafort was a primary target. His talks with Ecuador ended without any deals.

The story itself — which given that it stopped once Mueller was appointed must be a limited hangout revealing that Manafort tried to free Assange, complete with participation from the spox that Manafort unbelievably continues to employ from his bankrupt jail cell — doesn’t surprise me at all.

After all, the people involved in the election conspiracy made multiple efforts to free Assange.

WikiLeaks kicked off the effort at least by December, when they sent a DM to Don Jr suggesting Trump should make him Australian Ambassador to the US.

Hi Don. Hope you’re doing well! In relation to Mr. Assange: Obama/Clinton placed pressure on Sweden, UK and Australia (his home country) to illicitly go after Mr. Assange. It would be real easy and helpful for your dad to suggest that Australia appoint Assange ambassador to DC “That’s a really smart tough guy and the most famous australian you have! ” or something similar. They won’t do it, but it will send the right signals to Australia, UK + Sweden to start following the law and stop bending it to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons. 12/16/16 12:38PM

Weeks later, Hannity would go to the Embassy to interview Assange. Assange fed him the alternate view of how he obtained the DNC emails, a story that would be critical to Trump’s success at putting the election year heist behind him, if it were successful. Trump and Hannity pushed the line that the hackers were not GRU, but some 400 pound guy in someone’s basement.

Then the effort actually shifted to Democrats and DOJ. Starting in February through May 2017, Oleg Deripaska and Julian Assange broker Adam Waldman tried to convince Bruce Ohr or Mark Warner to bring Assange to the US, using the threat of the Vault 7 files as leverage. In February, Jim Comey told DOJ to halt that effort. But Waldman continued negotiations, offering to throw testimony from Deripaska in as well. He even used testimony from Christopher Steele as leverage.

This effort has been consistently spun by the Mark Meadows/Devin Nunes/Jim Jordan crowd — feeding right wing propagandists like John Solomon — as an attempt to obstruct a beneficial counterintelligence discussion. It’s a testament to the extent to which GOP “investigations” have been an effort to spin an attempt to coerce freedom for Assange.

Shortly after this effort failed, Manafort picked it up, as laid out by the NYT. That continued until Mueller got hired.

There may have been a break (or maybe I’m missing the next step). But by the summer, Dana Rohrabacher and Chuck Johnson got in the act, with Rohrabacher going to the Embassy to learn the alternate story, which he offered to share with Trump.

Next up was Bill Binney, whom Trump started pushing Mike Pompeo to meet with, to hear Binney’s alternative story.

At around the same time, WikiLeaks released the single Vault 8 file they would release, followed shortly by Assange publicly re-upping his offer to set up a whistleblower hotel in DC.

Those events contributed to a crackdown on Assange and may have led to the jailing of accused Vault 7 source Joshua Schulte.

In December, Ecuador and Russia started working on a plan to sneak Assange out of the Embassy.

A few weeks later, Roger Stone got into the act, telling Randy Credico he was close to winning Assange a pardon.

These efforts have all fizzled, and I suspect as Mueller put together more information on Trump’s conspiracy with Russia, not only did the hopes of telling an alternative theory fade, but so did the possibility that a Trump pardon for Assange would look like anything other than a payoff for help getting elected. In June, the government finally got around to charging Schulte for Vault 7. But during the entire time he was in jail, he was apparently still attempting to leak information, which the government therefore obtained on video.

Ecuador’s increasing crackdown on Assange has paralleled the Schulte prosecution, with new restrictions, perhaps designed to provide the excuse to boot Assange from the Embassy, going into effect on December 1.

Don’t get me wrong: if I were Assange I’d use any means I could to obtain safe passage.

Indeed, this series of negotiations — and the players involved — may be far, far more damning for those close to Trump. Sean Hannity, Oleg Deripaska, Paul Manafort, Chuck Johnson, Dana Rohrabacher, Roger Stone, and Don Jr, may all worked to find a way to free Assange, all in the wake of Assange playing a key role in getting Trump elected. And they were conducting these negotiations even as WikiLeaks was burning the CIA’s hacking tools.

The Illogical Core of “Chain Migration” Sponsor and Grifter Jerome Corsi’s Complaint against Robert Mueller

/35 Comments/in , /by

Amid much fanfare and Twitter blocking, Jerome Corsi has released his “complaint” against Robert Mueller and his team (including even Peter Carr for his serial no comments, which Corsi alleges amounts to leaking grand jury material). The complaint ticks all the boxes you’d expect:

  • Cut and pasted complaints about the bias of Mueller’s team — complete with original and now inaccurate date — that already failed in a Larry Klayman appeal to the DC Circuit
  • Reliance on Judicial Watch’s FOIA of Peter Carr’s serial no-comment answers to claim that Mueller has been leaking grand jury information (citing a number of stories clearly sourced to Trump’s lawyers, with whom Corsi is in a Joint Defense Agreement)
  • A litany of crimes Corsi claims Mueller’s team have committed, up to and including treason; several of the crimes include those that Mueller’s team has said Corsi may be charged with, including subornation of perjury
  • A request to liberate information — his own 302s and grand jury testimony — that would disclose to his co-conspirators the kinds of questions Mueller is asking
  • Gratuitous mention of Uranium One and complaints that Mueller’s team didn’t want to hear about it

In a particularly nice bit of timing, the complaint was released just before Trump committed some of the crimes Corsi claims Mueller’s team committed, including witness tampering.

Grifters gotta grift

Some of the supporting documentation that Corsi includes reveals two of the undisclosed reasons Corsi didn’t accept a plea agreement. First, he worried it would prevent him from being a (as Stephen Miller would call it) “chain migration” sponsor for his wife’s cousin.

More tellingly, perhaps, Corsi claimed he would go bankrupt if he were not able to grift off of accusing Robert Mueller of abuse.

Though as I read his plea, it doesn’t include such restrictions, and if it it did, it would only apply to the subject of his testimony.

The September 13, 2016 release Corsi cites to explain his August 15, 2016 foreknowledge

All that said, I’m quite interested in how Corsi formulates what happened, not least because of the way it fits into the rest of Corsi and Stone’s joint cover story.

First, Corsi situates his actions from 2016 in context of Hillary’s 2015 announcement about her server, not the election.

In a March 10, 2015 press conference, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted that as Secretary of State she had conducted U.S. Government business through a nongovernment, private email server. Secretary Clinton stated that she had turned over 30,490 emails but deleted nearly 32,000 others.

Immediately after March 10, 2015, people experienced in foreign affairs and national security instantly recognized to a virtual certainty that Clinton’s emails had already been acquired by the espionage services of every major nation and perhaps passed on to terrorist organizations, because (a) the server was not secure and (b) communications of the U.S. Secretary of State would be a high priority for spy agencies.

There are numerous reasons why Corsi might want to frame this complaint this way, not least that he couldn’t claim that Jeannie Rhee has a conflict without making everything about the Clinton Foundation. But we also know that Corsi (though allegedly not Stone) was part of the Peter Smith effort to find the emails Hillary deleted, so it’s rich he complains that the server made her vulnerable to the very spies the Smith effort was soliciting the emails from.

From there he transitions seamlessly (this is the following paragraph) into the DNC leaks.

Ultimately, this story led to further, but different, revelations that Wikileaks was releasing emails from the computer servers of the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”) on Friday, July 22, 2016.1 “On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. The operation took 87 seconds . . . No Internet service provider . . . was capable of downloading data at this speed.” 2

1 Tim Hamburger and Karen Tumulty, “WikiLeaks releases thousands of documents about Clinton and internal deliberations,” The Washington Post, July 22, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/22/on-eve-of-democraticconvention-wikileaks-releases-thousands-of-documents-about-clinton-the-campaign-and-internaldeliberations/.

2 Patrick Lawrence, “A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack,” The Nation, August 9, 2017; https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questionsabout-last-years-dnc-hack/.

Notably, Corsi focuses on the NGP/Van story in its most breathless form as told in The Nation, one that was subsequently corrected. That’s remarkable for a lot of reasons, not least because the NGP/Van story has been treated by its proponents as a release from Guccifer 2.0, not Wikileaks (Guccifer 2.0 linked to it but did not actually release the file on the WordPress site). If that’s what Corsi wants to claim was the source of his knowledge, then he’s saying he based his deductions on Guccifer 2.0, not anything Wikileaks did. But even that doesn’t help, because that file was not released publicly until September 13, well after the August comments that pose such a legal problem for Corsi and Roger Stone.

To substantiate his divine inspiration story that he deducted that Podesta’s emails would come out, he points to just one story.

Wikileaks actually announced before July 22, 2016, that it would release DNC documents and do so in several batches, which was widely reported ahead of time, including in The New York Times. See Exhibit B, attached.

Corsi’s claim he deducted anything is — as Charlie Savage complains about his own article himself — problematic, as his article only addressed the DNC documents. There actually could be ways to claim you could deduce Podeta’s emails were coming by August 2, 2016, but Savage’s story is not one of them.

This passage makes explicit what was already clear elsewhere: the time period Mueller is interested in is August 2016. And, Corsi says, Mueller accuses him and Stone of “acquiring” foreknowledge, which I find striking given the evidence they acquired not just foreknowledge that the emails would be leaked, but of the specific content of at least some of those emails.

Readers of The New York Times and other news received the same foreknowledge from mid to late July of which the Special Counsel’s office now accuses Dr. Corsi and Roger Stone of supposedly acquiring in August 2016.

Dr. Corsi – as he has stated publicly – noticed that emails to and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta were conspicuously missing from the July 22, 2016 public-release of DNC emails. Employing his professional skills and considerable experience as an analyst and investigative journalist, Dr. Corsi logically concluded that Wikileaks would release Podesta’s emails soon in a second round “data dump” from the same group of DNC emails stolen on July 5, 2016.

Note, too, the claim that Corsi predicted a “second” data dump of Podesta’s emails is inconsistent with his own email (cited in his criminal information) that said there would be, “2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct.” That is, even in his own complaint, he obfuscates between the DCCC or Clinton Foundation emails WikiLeaks was peddling literally days after he returned to the US and the Podesta emails that eventually came out in October.

Special Counsel Mueller and his prosecutorial staff, however, have misrepresented the investigative research of hundreds of journalists into a false narrative that Dr. Corsi and/or Roger Stone “colluded” with Russian intelligence services.

Finally, Corsi describes that Mueller claims this amounts to him and Stone “colluding” with “Russian intelligence services.” Either he’s full of shit, he’s extrapolating from a Mueller allegation shared in proffers that WikiLeaks is tied to RIS, or he’s revealing a more direct accusation than publicly made thus far. All three of those are possibly, with Corsi the most likely guess is always “full of shit,” but the other two are worth noting.

Why Have Roger Stone and Trump Hidden Their Ongoing Joint Defense “Collusion”?

/58 Comments/in , /by

Donald Trump is happy to admit that he’s a potential criminal co-defendant with a whole slew of (37!!) shady characters, up to and including (perhaps especially) the guy who worked for his campaign for “free” while apparently being handled by a current-or-former GRU officer. He even recently added the far right’s greatest serial fabulist Jerome Corsi to his omertà. But his lifelong political advisor, Roger Stone, is allegedly not in it.

Stone recently told WaPo he’s not in a JDA with Corsi or anyone else in this investigation, which would seem to necessarily include Trump.

Stone, who recently brought a new defense attorney onto his legal team, said he does not have a joint defense agreement with Corsi or anyone else who is involved in the investigation.

Nevertheless, Stone was on ABC yesterday (in a horrible — for him — appearance that I’ll return to) denying that he has or would ever ask Trump for a pardon, the kind of pardon comment that people who have been floated pardons keep invoking.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say you’re always going to be loyal to President Trump. If you’re indicted or convicted, do you expect that he’ll pardon you?

STONE: First of all, generally speaking in politics, you avoid hypothetical questions. That said, there’s no circumstance under which I would testify against the president because I’d have to bear false witness against him. I’d have to make things up and I’m not going to do that. I’ve had no discussion regarding a pardon.

That comment may or many not have been one of the things (as well as detail of Cohen’s cooperation against Trump) that set Trump off this morning.

A number of smart lawyers (including George Conway and Neal Katyal) argue that this Tweet, even beyond Trump’s normal efforts, may constitute witness tampering.

So to sum up: unlike Trump’s 37 other potential co-conspirators, he — Trump’s longtime political advisor and a lifelong ratfucker — Stone claims that he’s not in a JDA, but won’t testify against Trump out of the goodness of his own heart.

I find that all very interesting against the context of a recent WaPo article about how (and how frequently) Stone and Trump spoke during the campaign.

In recent months, the Trump Organization turned over to Mueller’s team phone and contact logs that show multiple calls between the then-candidate and Stone in 2016, according to people familiar with the material.

The records are not a complete log of their contacts — Stone told The Washington Post on Wednesday that Trump at times called him from other people’s phones.

Stone said he never discussed WikiLeaks with Trump and diminished the importance of any phone records, saying “unless Mueller has tape recordings of the phone calls, what would that prove?”

Stone and WikiLeaks have denied collaborating with each other, and Stone has decried the Mueller investigation as a “political witch hunt” to punish him for supporting Trump.

Trump has told his lawyers — and last week said in written answers to Mueller — that Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks’ upcoming release and that he had no prior knowledge of it, according to people familiar with his responses.

After a period, by Stone’s admission, Stone and Trump communicated via cut-outs.

From January through March 2016, Stone said he had a cellphone number for Trump. But he said the phone number got into too many hands, and Trump’s staff changed it. After that, a pattern developed for their calls, Stone said: Trump would call Stone from a blocked number or from the phones of associates or campaign aides.

“He would initiate the calls,” Stone said. “I didn’t call him.”

Once, Stone said, he answered his iPhone because the caller ID said he was getting a call from Christopher Ruddy, a Trump friend who is the CEO of Newsmax, a conservative television network. But the voice on the line was Trump’s.

“I believe there was one time when he asked me to call Roger,” Ruddy said in an interview Wednesday, adding that he did not believe “there was any discussion related to Russians or improper activities.”

The calls from Trump came at odd hours, Stone said, because Trump “gets almost no sleep.” Trump usually wanted to get a sense of how the campaign was going, Stone said, or just to “touch base.” Stone sometimes offered suggestions, but often he could barely get a word in.

Perhaps in response to Stone’s ABC appearance, Rick Wilson tweeted that he had alerted Mueller about an on-going back channel between Stone and Trump.

Stone recently made Bruce Rogow his lead attorney on these matters. Rogow has represented Trump Organization in various disputes over the years (including one that will elicit scrutiny in NY State’s lawsuit against the Trump Foundation.

In 1992, Rogow represented former KKK leader David Duke in a case brought by the ACLU to have Duke reinstated on the Florida Republican presidential primary ballot.

Those still traumatized by the 2000 election recount might recall Rogow representingTheresa LePore, the Palm Beach county election official responsible for the area’s butterfly ballots.

[snip]

Rogow began to pick up more cases for the Trump Organization.

[snip]

Rogow represented Trump in a federal complaint that arose from the case, arguing that the town ordinances “unconstitutionally restrict its ability to fly a large American flag at Mar-a-Lago.”

Trump eventually settled the case, agreeing to move the flag inwards on his property and pay $100,000 to an Iraq War veterans’ charity in exchange for the town waiving its fines.

The donation was made, but not by Trump himself or Mar-a-Lago — rather, the Trump Foundation gave the $100,000. That donation has now become one part of a New York State Attorney general’s lawsuit against the charity.

Call me crazy, but all this suggests that Stone and Trump are in as close touch as — say — Manafort and Trump, but for some reason, Stone and Trump are working harder at hiding their ongoing ties.

That would be truly remarkable. It would say an association with Stone — and whatever it is Mueller seems to know he did during the election — is even more toxic than Trump’s ties with a guy apparently being handled by a GRU officer.

 

If SSCI Was Referring All This Perjury to Mueller about GRU Funding Trump, Why Did Richard Burr Claim It Had Found No “Collusion”?

/57 Comments/in , /by

In the wake of the Michael Cohen plea, Richard Burr made some comments about his committee’s relationship with the Special Counsel. He referred to multiple referrals to Mueller, even using the phrase “a lot.”

“It’s a loud message to everybody that’s interviewed by our committee. … If you lie to us, we’re going to go after you,” Mr. Burr said during a candid question-and-answer session at the annual Texas National Security Forum.

[snip]

[T]he committee has on more than one occasion recommended prosecutions based on their interviews.

“We continually go back and look at the testimony we’ve been given, and we weigh it against any new information that might be out there that either a reporter has been able to [get] in a comment from an individual,” he said. “We have shared, when permission has been given by those we interview, interview notes with the Department of Justice and specifically with the special prosecutor.”

“We have made referrals to the special prosecutor for prosecution,” he continued. “In a lot of cases, those might be tied to lying to us.”

While it’s not clear how much SSCI confirmed about Cohen’s lies (Cohen testified on October 25, 2017, and Felix Sater testified on April 4, 2018), given Sater’s public comments up to and including BuzzFeed’s big story, At a minimum (per Sater’s description of his testimony to BuzzFeed, SSCI knew that Cohen had lied about how many times he spoke to Trump about the deal.

The Moscow Project was discussed multiple times within the Company and did not end in January 2016. Instead, as late as approximately June 2016 , COHEN and Individual 2 discussed efforts to obtain Russian governmental approval for the Moscow Project. COHEN discussed the status and progress of the Moscow Project with Individual 1 on more than the three occasions COHEN claimed to the Committee, and he briefed family members of Individual 1 within the Company about the project .

And SSCI almost certainly learned that Cohen was working on a trip to Russia up to the time when news broke that the Russians had hacked the DNC.

COHEN agreed to travel to Russia in connection with the Moscow Project and took steps in contemplation of Individual l ‘ s possible travel to Russia. COHEN and Individual 2 discussed on multiple occasions traveling to Russia to pursue the Moscow Project. COHEN asked Individual 1 about the possibility of Individual 1 traveling to Russia in connection with the Moscow Project, and asked a senior campaign official about potential business travel to Russia.

On or about May 4 , 2016 , Individual 2 wrote to COHEN, “I had a chat with Moscow. ASSUMING the trip does happen the question is before or after iii. the convention. Obviously the pre – meeting trip (you only) can happen anytime you want but the 2 big guys where [sic] the question. I said I would confirm and revert.” COHEN responded, “My trip before Cleveland. [Individual l] once he becomes the nominee after the convention. ”

On or about May 5, 2016, Individual 2 followed up with COHEN and wrote, “[Russian Official l] would like to invite you as his guest to the St. Petersburg Forum which is Russia’s Davos it’s June 16- 19. He wants to meet there with you and possibly introduce you to either [the President of Russia] or [the Prime Minister of Russia], as they are not sure if 1 or both will be there. He said anything you want to discuss including dates and subjects are on the table to discuss. ”

On or about May 6, 2016, Individual 2 asked COHEN to confirm those dates would work for him to travel. COHEN wrote back, “Works for me.”

From on or about June 9 to June 14, 2016, Individual 2 sent numerous messages to COHEN about the travel, including forms for COHEN to complete. However, on or about June 14, 2016, COHEN met Individual 2 in the lobby of the Company’s headquarters to inform Individual 2 he would not be traveling at that timeT.

SSCI would have known this in April (perhaps not coincidentally, five days before the raid on Cohen by SDNY; remember that Paul Manafort was raided the night after testifying to SSCI).

In addition to Cohen, we also know SSCI referred Sam Patten to Mueller (though SSCI seems to have referred Patten for something other than the lies laid out in his criminal information). Patten lied about funneling oligarch money into Trump’s inauguration.

PATTEN misled the SSCI in that he intentionally did not provide SSCI certain documents that could lead to revelation of him causing and concealing the foreign purchase of the PIC tickets, described about, and gave false and misleading testimony to avoid disclosing that he had caused and concealed foreign money to be paid to the PIC. In addition, PATTEN provided misleading testimony about his representation of foreign principals in the United States, so as to conceal his violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Finally, after the interview, PATTEN deleted documents pertinent to his relationships with the above-described foreign principals.

So in other words, by April, SSCI knew, as part of their investigation into whether Trump conspired with the GRU officers who hacked and leaked Hillary’s email, that Trump was in bed with GRU money on both the front end of the election — in attempting to set up this Trump Tower deal — and the back end — in accepting laundered money from GRU-connected individuals.

And yet two times during election season, first in August and then again in September, Richard Burr claimed that his committee had found “no hard evidence of collusion.” In response to both, I suggested that it looked like the committee wasn’t pursuing what evidence it had learned of. Now Burr is openly talking about referring “a lot” of people to Mueller’s office — and the two we know he referred, together, may not be a smoking gun but certainly would set off my itchy smoke alarm.

As I disclosed in 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. 

The Manafort Lying Cards I’d Show if I Were Playing Presidential Pardon Poker

/118 Comments/in , , /by

One detail from Paul Manafort’s status hearing yesterday did not surprise me: Andrew Weissmann said he was “ready to go immediately with his filing of details on Manafort’s alleged breach” of his plea agreement.  (Judge Amy Berman Jackson gave him a week, until December 7, to do so).

Weissmann plays coy about next steps

One detail surprised me a bit: Weissmann claimed the government hasn’t decided whether they’ll further charge Manafort.

Jackson asked Weissmann if the government planned to bring more charges against Manafort after noting that the report by prosecutors earlier this week repeatedly used the word “crimes” in describing new allegations against Manafort.

The “report seems to make a point with its vocabulary,” Jackson said.

Weissmann said they hadn’t made a decision yet, but that they did believe Manafort’s conduct would be relevant at sentencing on the charges he already pleaded guilty to.

It’s not really clear from the reporting precisely what the government would charge him with, either: either the hung charges from EDVA, those that had been dropped in DC, or something else.

I’m spitballing, of course, but the two details together suggest that while Mueller has a very specific story to tell about Manafort ready to go, they haven’t decided where to go once they tell that story — whether they plan to pressure him some more to provide evidence on the things he has lied about, or perhaps charge him in the case in chief. We’re not, then, getting the full Mueller report, but I expect we’ll get some fairly interesting accusations and — given past practice from this team — some primary evidence to back up those claims. Further, given Kevin Downing’s claim to be mystified about the substance of Manafort’s lies, I suspect the Manafort (and Trump) team will get specifics about what Mueller knows that they’re not yet aware of.

Mueller’s slow reveal

When they’ve laid out such details in the past, the Mueller team has significantly advanced the long slow process of getting Manafort to describe what really happened in 2016. Early on, they used a redlined copy of an op-ed Manafort did with Konstantin Kilimnik to argue that Manafort had violated the gag in the case; while revealing that op-ed didn’t elicit sanctions on Manafort, it put Manafort in a weaker spot with ABJ. It also may have been how Manafort learned that the government had (probably in mid-August 2017, so in the wake of the raid on his condo) seized the content of the email account he used to communicate with Kilimnik.

Then, for months, the government let Manafort submit one after another attempt to make bail. And only when he had finally done so, they moved to revoke bail by slapping on two additional obstruction charges. To substantiate those charges (in yet another speaking indictment), they not only revealed that Manafort and Kilimnik had tried to convince witnesses to lie about past work with Manafort, but in the process they revealed they had collected and parallel constructed both men’s WhatsApp and Telegram chats (and had, presumably, parallel constructed Manafort’s communications with Kiliminik going back over two years, importantly for our purposes, including the entire time period Manafort worked on Trump’s campaign).

Given all the discussion Friday about further indictments, it’s instructive that rather than just submitting a motion to revoke bail last June, the government had the grand jury indict those two new charges, with the effect that they didn’t have to call the Hapsburg witnesses publicly to describe the attempts to suborn perjury.

I’m not saying it will happen again. But it could.

In any case, that move had the result of getting Manafort thrown in the pokey (he got put in a nice one, at that point), adding pressure to flip.

The next month, as Manafort made an ill-considered attempt to move his trial to Roanoke, Judge TS Ellis instead moved him to the crummier Alexandria jail. In fighting both those moves, the government revealed several new details about how they were collecting his ongoing communications, both that they had heard him say damning things on a call to his spouse, but also that they heard him explaining that “he reads and composes emails on a second laptop that is shuttled in and out of the facility by his team.”

To sum up, thus far: over the course of the 400 days since Manafort was first indicted, the government has made Manafort disclose everything he was willing to put up for bail (that is, the liquid and legal stuff), while repeatedly providing hints about how they continued to thwart his counter-surveillance (and shitty opsec) methods, while providing mere snippets about what they were learning as a result. Meanwhile he has been sitting in increasingly shitty jail cells for over five months.

And now the government has a set of accusations about his lies all wrapped up with a bow, or maybe they’ll just roll out another indictment.

If we’re playing another round of poker

As I noted above, when we were at this stage in June, the government just indicted as a way of making it far easier for ABJ to revoke bail. Here, getting a grand jury to agree they had probable cause that Manafort lied to the FBI would even further surpass the good faith standard Mueller needs to deem Manafort in violation of his plea deal.

But let’s assume, for the moment, that they’re not going to do that, that they’re going to submit a declaration laying out Manafort’s lies. What lies would Mueller disclose to ratchet up the pressure on Manafort more?

It seems there are several potential lies that would continue to wear away at Manafort’s efforts to protect Trump.

Kilimnik on a boat

A year ago, Mueller made clear he knew what Manafort was clandestinely up to with Kilimnik. In June, Mueller made clear he knew what Manafort was clandestinely up to with Kilimnik. Just weeks before Manafort purportedly flipped, Mueller made it clear, with the plea deal of Sam Patten, he knew what Kiliminik was up to.

Are you sensing a theme here?

And since Mueller deemed Manafort in violation of his plea agreement, WSJ has reported that one thing Manafort lied about was Konstantin Kilimnik. That includes whether Manafort — at a time he was dead broke and setting off on a crime way to hide that fact and his ties to Russia — hopped on a yacht with Tom Barrack (the guy who got him the job in the first place) and Kilimnik.

He has questioned witnesses about a boat trip that Mr. Manafort took with Tom Barrack, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump, after Mr. Manafort was ousted from the Trump campaign in August 2016, say people familiar with the matter. Witnesses believed investigators were seeking to determine whether Mr. Manafort ever met with Mr. Kilimnik on that trip.

Particularly given that Mueller has two cooperating witnesses who were close with Kilimnik in this period, I assume we’ll get more — possibly substantially more — details about how the suspected GRU spy Kilimnik served as the handler for Trump’s campaign manager during a period when GRU was rolling out its stolen emails.

Hidden stash

I noted on Pod Save America the other day, Manafort’s calculations look idiotic if Mueller is about to seize the last of his ill-gotten gains, $46 million in forfeitures. It looks a little different if he’s got $100 million stashed in Cyprus that, if he is pardoned, he can go live off of.

That’s another thing the WSJ reported that Manafort lied about.

In his conversations with Mr. Mueller’s team, Mr. Manafort also allegedly misrepresented information about payments he received related to his lobbying work, the people familiar with the matter said.

Particularly given that Manafort hadn’t paid his mortgage on his Trump Tower condo, Mueller has permission under Manafort’s plea deal to replace that forfeiture with another. So after spending 6 months making Manafort identify the last of his liquid and legal holdings in the US, Mueller could go after whatever else Manafort has.

If Mueller not only proved Manafort was lying, but proved he had the funds to replace the forfeitures that he hadn’t actually owned, that would further constrain his finances going forward.

Trump’s pardon dangles

Between Michael Cohen and Mike Flynn, we’ll have sentencing hearings for two people known to have been floated pardons by Trump for their lies. Admittedly, both the public reporting based off leaks and Cohen’s language about pardons in his sentencing memo stops short of offering a guarantee — or, indeed, any direct conversations with attorneys.

He took these steps, moreover, despite regular public reports referring to the President’s consideration of pardons and pre-pardons in the SCO’s investigation. See, e.g., Sharon LaFraniere and Nicholas Fandos, Trump Raises Idea of Pardon For Manafort, N.Y. Times, Nov. 28, 2018, at A1; Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey, Trump Recently Sought His Lawyers’ Advice on Possibility of Pardoning Manafort, Giuliani Says, Washington Post (Aug. 23, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumpsought-his-lawyers-advice-weeks-ago-on-possibility-of-pardoning-manafort-but-they-counseled He took these steps, moreover, despite regular public reports referring to the President’s consideration of pardons and pre-pardons in the SCO’s investigation. See, e.g., Sharon LaFraniere and Nicholas Fandos, Trump Raises Idea of Pardon For Manafort, N.Y. Times, Nov. 28, 2018, at A1; Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey, Trump Recently Sought His Lawyers’ Advice on Possibility of Pardoning Manafort, Giuliani Says, Washington Post (Aug. 23, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumpsought-his-lawyers-advice-weeks-ago-on-possibility-of-pardoning-manafort-but-they-counseled.

[snip]

He could have fought the government and continued to hold to the party line, positioning himself perhaps for a pardon or clemency, but, instead – for himself, his family, and his country – he took personal responsibility for his own wrongdoing and contributed, and is prepared to continue to contribute, to an investigation that he views as thoroughly legitimate and vital.

According to ABC, pardons are one of the topics Cohen cooperated on.

So Mueller probably has evidence that Trump systematically offered pardons, and may have more than that.

If Mueller has proof that Trump offered Manafort a pardon to keep quiet (or that Manafort believed he had) and Manafort denied it, disclosing that now would be devastating, not least because it would force a judicial decision about whether that had actually happened.

If Mueller can present evidence, now, that Trump promised to pardon Manafort and then Manafort lied about it, then it would make it far harder for Trump to follow through on what was probably not a promise in any case without it being an obviously impeachable offense, if not worse.

And proving that lie might, in addition, change Manafort’s calculus about holding out for a pardon.

June 9 meeting

Finally there’s any number of key disclosures involving Trump about which Trump — as well as Manafort — have already submitted sworn statements. The key one of these involves the Trump Tower meeting. Trump’s lackeys have already made it clear he denied knowledge of the meeting.

President Donald Trump told special counsel Robert Mueller in writing that Roger Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks, nor was he told about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his son, campaign officials and a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

One source described the President’s answers without providing any direct quotes and said the President made clear he was answering to the best of his recollection.

Given that Trump has made this clear, he must believe his answers match Manafort’s on this point.

But if Mueller has solid evidence — perhaps in the form of both witnesses and communications — then revealing that would undercut all the President’s claims about this meeting.

An even crazier possibility is if Mueller has found evidence — perhaps on those iPods I’m so obsessed about — that Manafort not only has proof to the contrary, but that Manafort was keeping records for his handler Kilimnik.

A big reason Trump seems to have turned on Cohen is that, in the course of reviewing the stuff SDNY seized from Cohen’s home, he discovered how much incriminating evidence Cohen was sitting on, whether intentionally (in the form of recordings) or not. Trump hasn’t gotten the same visibility on how damaging the materials seized in the Manafort raid were — though in the immediate aftermath, John Dowd panicked in the same way (though perhaps not as acutely) he did when SDNY raided Cohen. Heck! Who knows? Maybe there’s even hard evidence of a pardon dangle that was in Manafort’s condo by the time he was raided in July 2017, when the Trump people were trying to minimize Manafort’s awareness of the meeting.

The point being, if Mueller can provide evidence, it would be useful both to show that he has proof that Trump knew about the June 9 meeting (though that’s only the most obvious example) and that Manafort kept evidence showing that proof (as Cohen did, of other incriminating activities). The former would undercut the President’s relentless claims there was no collusion. The latter would lead the President to believe Manafort had betrayed him, like his former lawyer.

Mueller is sitting on a great deal of evidence right now, and neither Manafort’s nor Trump’s team seems to know what to expect. If they have the evidence to do so, it seems it would be very easy to replicate the betrayal that happened with Michael Cohen.

Update: I’m going to note that the outlets that have captured Weissmann’s comments differ in their quotes. ABC uses the passive voice.

“That determination has not been made,” special counsel prosecutor Andrew Weissman said, leaving the matter of a second trial open for consideration.

So does NBC.

“That determination has not been made yet,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann said when asked if the special counsel would lodge more charges.

But WaPo uses the first person plural.

“With respect to whether there will be additional charges, we have not made that determination yet,” Weissmann said.

Sometimes, especially when they’re in a media room (where they can talk to each other while things are proceeding), journalists can reinforce the wrong transcription. But I’m interested in the passive voice, if Weissmann actually used it, because it might leave open that Mueller’s team had decided, but the grand jury had not yet.

The Trump Organization Is Not the Sitting President

/122 Comments/in , /by

In his sentencing memorandum submitted late last night, Michael Cohen laid out what investigations he has cooperated with so far:

Beginning before the entry of his plea on August 21, 2018, and continuing thereafter through late November, Michael participated in seven voluntary interview meetings with the Special Counsel’s Office of the Department of Justice (“SCO”). He intends to continue to make himself available to the SCO as and when needed for additional questioning. He also agreed to plead guilty to an additional count, namely, making false statements to Congress, based in part on information that he voluntarily provided to the SCO in meetings governed by a limited-use immunity proffer agreement.

[snip]

Michael has also voluntarily met twice with representatives of the Office, and responded to questions concerning an ongoing investigation. In connection with this inquiry, he intends to continue to make himself available as and when needed by the Office.

Michael has similarly met voluntarily with representatives of the New York State Office of the Attorney General (“NYAG”) concerning a state court action in which the NYAG has sued the Donald J. Trump Foundation and certain individual defendants, including Donald J. Trump. He also provided the NYAG with documents concerning a separate open inquiry. As above, Michael intends to make himself available to the NYAG to provide any additional cooperation it may request in these matters.

So:

  1. The Mueller investigation
  2. An open SDNY investigation (possibly just the one on campaign finance violations Cohen pled to, possibly more)
  3. NYS’ Trump Foundation lawsuit
  4. Another NYS investigation

That puts Trump’s eponymous organizations — his company and his foundation — squarely in the bullseye of law enforcement. The known details of all those puts one or the other Trump organization as an actor in the investigation. And we’ve already seen hints that the Trump Organization was less than responsive to some document requests from Mueller, such as this detail in a story on the Trump Tower deal:

According to a person familiar with the investigation, Cohen and the Trump Organization could not produce some of the key records upon which Mueller relies. Other witnesses provided copies of those communications.

If there’s a conspiracy to obstruct Mueller’s investigation, I’m fairly certain the Trump Organization was one of the players in it.

This is something I started thinking more about after reading this Walter Dellinger analysis of the OLC opinions on whether you can indict a sitting President (which is a really worthwhile read in any case). He notes how, once the President (or Vice President) enters into a conspiracy, you’ve got to name him, whether or not you indict him, to properly lay out the conspiracy.

The Jaworski filing notes how critical it is to identify the president as one of the criminal accused: “the identification of each co-conspirator — regardless of station — is a prerequisite to making his declarations in furtherance of the conspiracy admissible against the other conspirators.”

Although the brief concludes that “it is by no means clear that a President is immune from indictment” during his term, the special prosecutor chose not to indict the sitting president on the basis of “practical arguments.” Those arguments, however,

cannot fairly be stretched to confer immunity on the President from being identified as an unindicted co-conspirator, when it is necessary to do so in connection with criminal proceedings against persons unquestionably liable to indictment.

Naming the president as an unindicted co-conspirator was necessary for the grand jury to return a “true bill,” Jaworski argued, and “required here to outline the full range of the alleged conspiracy.” There exists, moreover, “a legitimate public purpose in reporting the fact that serious criminal charges against a government official have been made.”

The mere fact that an official has a personal immunity from prosecution does not bar the prosecution from alleging and proving his complicity as part of a case against persons who have no such immunity.

It would not be fair “to the defendants … to blunt the sweep of the evidence artificially by excluding one person, however prominent and important, while identifying all others.”

It made me realize something has been missing from every analysis of the indictment question I’ve seen: whether you can indict a sitting President’s eponymous corporate entities. Under Dellinger’s analysis, you’d have to include the Trump Organization in any conspiracy involving a Trump Tower in Moscow — it was the entity that signed the Letter of Intent, would be the entity that would obtain funding, and would be the entity that would profit.

But the Trump Organization did not get elected the President of the United States (and while the claims are thin fictions, Trump has claimed to separate himself from the Organization and Foundation). So none of the Constitutional claims about indicting a sitting President, it seems to me, would apply.

If I’m right, there are a whole slew of implications, starting with the fact that (as I laid out on a Twitter rant this morning), it utterly changes the calculation Nixon faced as the walls started crumbling. Nixon could (and had the historical wisdom to) trade a pardon to avoid an impeachment fight; he didn’t save his presidency, but he salvaged his natural person. With Trump, a pardon won’t go far enough: he may well be facing the criminal indictment and possible financial ruin of his corporate person, and that would take a far different legal arrangement (such as a settlement or Deferred Prosecution Agreement) to salvage. Now throw in Trump’s narcissism, in which his own identity is inextricably linked to that of his brand. And, even beyond any difference in temperament between Nixon and Trump,  there’s no telling what he’d do if his corporate self were also cornered.

In other words, Trump might not be able to take the Nixon — resign for a pardon — deal, because that may not be enough to save his corporate personhood.

For virtually every other legal situation, it seems to me, existing in both natural and corporate form offers protection that can save both. But if you’re the President of the United States, simultaneously existing — and criminally conspiring — in corporate form may create all sorts of additional exposure any normal President would normally be protected from.

Update, 12/9: I’ve changed the title of this post, in part because comments here and on Twitter have convinced me that Mike Pence could pardon Trump Organization. The central point — that Trump seems to be ignoring the risk to his eponymous businesses — remains.

Government Wouldn’t Unseal Michael Cohen’s Warrants because “Many Uncharged Persons Are Named in the Materials”

/55 Comments/in , /by

Back on October 11, the NYT moved to unseal the search warrants targeting Michael Cohen, arguing the search was of utmost public interest. A bunch of other media outlets have since joined in. On October 25, the government responded, laying out a bunch of reasons why the warrants had to remain sealed. First, it described investigative reasons: unsealing warrants might reveal the identities of persons of interest in criminal investigations, might jeopardize cooperating witnesses, might disclose the full range of crimes under investigation, and might reveal what evidence the government had already collected in the investigation.

Courts have recognized numerous different ways in which the disclosure of sealed materials could interfere with an investigation. Search warrant materials often reveal “the identities of persons of interest in criminal investigations.” In re Search Warrant, 2016 WL 7339113, at *4; In Application of the United States for an Order Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d), 707 F.3d 283, 294 (4th Cir. 2013) (citing fact that “documents at issue set forth sensitive nonpublic facts, including the identity of targets and witnesses in an ongoing criminal investigation”). The disclosure of sealed materials could also jeopardize the cooperation of persons in either the particular investigation or in future cases. Amodeo II, 71 F.3d at 1050. And even when some aspect of a criminal investigation is public, disclosure of a detailed affidavit could “disclose to the subjects the full range of potential criminal violations being investigated, the evidence obtained by the United States prior to the searches, and the information which the subjects and other individuals had provided to the United States or had failed or declined to provide.” In re Sealed Search Warrants Issued June 4 and 5, 2008, 08-M-208 (DRH), 2008 WL 5667021, at *4 (N.D.N.Y. July 14, 2008); see also In re Search Warrant for Secretarial Area Outside Office of Gunn (Gunn), 855 F.2d 569, 574 (8th Cir. 1988) (public access outweighed by fact that disclosure would reveal the “nature, scope and direction of the government’s investigation”).

Let’s see: Cooperating witness, check (Cohen first proffered to Mueller on August 7). Crimes under investigation not already identified, check. Lots of evidence co-conspirators don’t know about, check. The other people being investigated … hmmm.

Indeed, the government’s second reason to keep the warrants sealed is to protect the privacy interests of third parties who are named in the search warrant, but not charged. The response stated clearly that “many uncharged individuals and entities are named in the” search warrants and other documents.

And in the specific context of third parties named in search warrant applications, that interest is especially weighty, because “a person whose conduct is the subject of a criminal investigation but is not charged with a crime should not have his or her reputation sullied by the mere circumstance of an investigation.” In re Search Warrant, 2016 WL 7339113, at *4. Moreover, unlike charged defendants, uncharged third parties whose involvement in or association with criminal activity is alleged in search warrant materials may find themselves harmed by the disclosure but without recourse to respond to the allegation. See In re Newsday, Inc., 895 F.2d at 80; Amodeo II, 71 F.3d at 1051.3

Here, as set forth in the Government’s supplemental submission, many uncharged individuals and entities are named in the Materials.

3 The Government has not notified the uncharged third parties that they were named in the Materials, in part because disclosure of that fact to certain of the uncharged third parties would itself impair the ongoing investigation.

Judge William Pauley has not yet ruled and, surprisingly, the press has not yet renewed their request given Cohen’s second guilty plea this week.

But read retrospectively, the government’s filing makes it clear that part of the reason it insisted on keeping the warrants sealed was to hide the other part of the affidavits covering Cohen’s lies to Congress and the underlying conduct. I’d be acutely interested to see how the government responded if they did make a renewed request, as I suspect it is all the more important to keep the materials sealed now.

Suffice it to say, though, that the charges Cohen originally pled to, even the campaign finance charges that implicated Trump and the Trump Organization, don’t implicate “many uncharged individuals.” As I’ll show in a later post, the lies Cohen told to Congress do implicate people beyond Cohen himself.

But the underlying Trump Tower deal itself — that’s where you begin to get into “many uncharged individuals and entities.”

image_print