All of the major news outlets are full of news about yesterday’s indictments of individuals who figured highly in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, to the exclusion of all else. I continue to be content with letting the process work.
To summarize where things stand now:
- Going to foreigners and/or foreign governments for opposition research: ugly but not illegal.
- Lobbying for foreign governments without registering, money laundering, and lying to the FBI: illegal.
- Russia’s objectives in its activities in the 2016 election appear to have been to discredit the American system.
- It worked, probably beyond their wildest dreams.
- In that light it makes sense that they would focus their efforts on Hillary Clinton. Like most of us they thought she was going to win.
Have I missed anything?
I don’t think that foreigners or foreign governments should interfere in other countries’ elections. I don’t think that Russia should do it. I don’t think that we should do it. Other than by being honest and open I’m not sure how it can be prevented.
Off-topic but I thought this would be of interest to you as the logical conclusion of New Left politics:
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2017/10/28/mckellop-discriminates-at-u-penn/
Yeah, I read about that story. In recent weeks I’ve also heard calls from alleged progressives for separate classes, schools, and workplaces for men and whites. I don’t think they recognize the irony (“segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”).
1) From everything I’ve read, the difference between “going to” and “paying” is crucial. It is, in fact, illegal to pay a foreign national. If it was such innocuous std oppo research for Fusion GPS to hire Steele the law firm would not have been hired put in as a buffer. Not just optics. And hence that’s why the legal fight over the Fusion bank records.
2) Probably only the FBI informant’s testimony will clarify this, but it is illegal for the FBI to have had evidence of racketeering and not to have forwarded that information to Congress. Rather, it is reported to have been forwarded through executive branch mechanisms (to and including the President’s Daily Briefing) where players like Holder, Lynch and Rosenstein put the lid on it. The FBI players aware of this include Mueller, Comey, and McCabe. For the life of me I can’t come up with a good explanation why Mueller isn’t a conflicted party.
3) The last piece that touches illegality and not unseemliness is the use of the dossier. I wouldn’t want to be the guy who told the judge I needed FISA warrants based upon that absurd and DNC/Clinton campaign paid for dossier. Again, I’ve read that will get you prosecuted.
I think its wise to let things play out if you are wearing your lawyers hat. But if you are playing Vegas oddsmaker it looks pretty ugly. An indictment on a half decade to decade old, non-related matter and a 29 year old kid talking large but striking out with the bait seem pretty thin gruel for a year’s worth of work and in light of the undisputed Fusion GPS/dossier/legal go between and the FBI known Uranium related racketeering matters.
I should note that the FISA warrant issue is not now known. Its speculation. The facts and optics at this point -like Samatha’s most excellent unmasking party – however, smell like two week old fish.
It’s interesting to take the logical implications of other countries not interfering in our internal politics and ours not interfering in theirs. In the extreme it means the global social media (Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter) should cease to be global. And the US ought to take a more isolationist attitude towards the world.
Otherwise the motive and means to influence US elections are too tempting.
From everything I’ve read, the difference between “going to†and “paying†is crucial. It is, in fact, illegal to pay a foreign national. If it was such innocuous std oppo research for Fusion GPS to hire Steele the law firm would not have been hired put in as a buffer. Not just optics. And hence that’s why the legal fight over the Fusion bank records
What’s funny though is I’ve also seen it argued that by NOT paying for information that they sought, Donald J Trump and cohorts were attempting to accept an in kind donation that would have been illegal.
Of course the general pattern that emerges is that “legal” really is whatever the people in charge say it is (take, for example the selective enforcement of FARA). Also that the only difference between the two campaigns wasn’t related to how willing they were to collude with Russians, the difference was that one team knew how the game was played and the other was a bunch of bumbling amateurs.
One of the things released was the Court order directing Manafort’s attorney to testify. The attorney had submitted two letters (11/16 & 2/17) to the Department of Justice on behalf of Manafort. The DOJ had asked Manafort to respond to numerous published sources which had raised questions about whether he and his company had represented interests of Ukraine without registering and requested supporting documentation.
The response contained a number of misrepresentations that were made to the best of Manafort’s recollection, and indicated that no correspondence related to these issues could be located, particularly as the company had a 30-day e-mail retention policy.
The DOJ subpoenaed the attorney to testify before the grand jury and the attorney declined as his client had refused to waive the privilege and would not testify without court order. The DOJ wanted testimony regarding the source of the facts (falsehoods) in the letter, including the e-mail retention policy, and whether the client reviewed the letter before it was sent.
The court found there was sufficient evidence that the letter was a criminal-fraud and thus the attorney-client privilege did not apply. (For one thing, the DOJ had gotten e-mails through another subpoena that purportedly demonstrated the retention policy did not exist) The Court authorized seven questions to be asked of the attorney, which possibly could have taken less than an hour to respond to. None of them asked for the attorney’s mental impressions, just what he was told and by whom. I think DOJ already knew the answers but wanted to make sure Manafort didn’t try to distance himself from the letters by saying they were made by the attorney. The only other options would be that the attorney made them up because he was part of the conspiracy, or there were other conspirators working with Manafort.
(The client/target was Manafort and Gates; I just simplified things by only mentioning Manafort)
Drew’s analysis is in sync to my understanding and take on Mueller’s indictment efforts. I would also add that the 29 year old Papadopoulos, while pleading guilty of lying about a “correct time,” it was devulged, through an email stream, that his attempts to broker a Rusian-Trump meeting were met with disinterest by the trump people. This piece seems to coordinate with other info showing no actionable reaching out to Russia by Trump, with the exception of Trump Jr’s “bumbling” meeting with that Russian attorney, who had links to fusion GPS.
What a web this whole mess is. However, most of the money and deliberate Russian connections seem to be in the court of the Dems. Even the unfortunate Trump Jr. Meeting is being looked at as a possible “set-up” by the Dems to snare Trump into an unseemly situation.
FARA either needs to be enforced or scrapped – I think its selective enforcement over the years is an outrage. Personally, I would like to see it enforced but that is unlikely to happen because 1/2 of Washington would probably be arrested and Israel remains the most powerful lobby interest and that cannot be touched politically.
These veins of foreign corruption run deep and it will be interesting to see how far Mueller is willing to go – probably not too far since his writ is limited to Russia in relation to the 2016 election.
I have no issues with Mueller at present and don’t see him as conflicted – or rather, I don’t see a viable alternative that would be better. If someone can come up with a name that has the skillset, moxie and credibility for the job, isn’t a partisan toady, and has better than a snowball’s chance of appointment by the Trump administration, I’m all ears.
@Drew, I am skeptical that if a payment is illegal, it can be made legal by channeling it through a law firm. If that is what you mean.
PD, I think if political circumstances were reversed, and a former FBI Director, reigning over the bureau during a controversial uranium transaction, involving suspicious dealings with an R administration and Russia (bribes, money laundering allegations, and the like) , were today given the prosecutorial task of looking into a democrat president’s collusion with Russia, his interests would definitely be viewed as “conflicted.”
This is especially true, IMO, because new eyes are on that old uranium deal, in which Mueller’s FBI appeared to inexplicitly not follow through on their investigation.
Furthermore, if AG Session’s ethics forced him to recuse himself from any Russian investigation matter, because of not revealing two earlier rather benign interactions with Russian diplomats, why should it be any different for Mueller to not have to recuse himself for his prior engagement with the Russian Uranium affair?
Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager. He has been indicted for laundering Russian funds.
Oh. I dunno.
CS
Don’t mistake my amateur lawyering for a value judgment. Both sides were ready to engage in the seedy reality of oppo research. I think the point there is that from what we know right now D Jr and Papa amateurs and nothing really came of their attempts. On the other hand, the basic charge leveled by Democrats, Russian collusion, was in fact surreptitiously engaged in by the DNC and the Clinton Campaign.
PD I – thanks for the commentary.
PD II – I’m just repeating what I’m reading or hearing. I may garble it. If the illegality of paying with a foreign national is cleansed by having the law firm make the payments then I missed it. But we are simply back to who, really, engaged in bald faced collusion. In a similar vein, I also heard that Coie – knowing his firm was channeling payments – had a duty to correct Podesta during sworn testimony, but didn’t. Suborning purgery was mentioned. I’m not a lawyer….
More generally, watched MSNBC for a couple hours last night (they focused on this and not the NY terrorism) to see how they were characterizing all this. I came away thinking that they were willing to engage in some of the most fantastic dot connecting I’ve ever heard. I’ve been trying to listen very carefully to the lawyers, and not the opinionists or party operatives. I’m still in the same place.
1) Team Clinton wins the hypocrisy championship. They did exactly what they accuse Team Trump of. The media and their three monkeys coverage is the big loser there. Only time tells if that dossier was used for FISA’s, or if the FBI actually was going to engage Fusion or Steele. That’s ugly.
2) The Clintons are the Clintons, selling out on Uranium 1 for money. That’s been going on since extraordinary cattle futures trading expertise was exhibited. The real question is did the FBI and Justice muzzle knowledge of Russian criminality and approve the deal anyway, but needed to avoid Obama and Clinton political embarrassment. As we know, that would never happen. Perhaps the FBI got the idea from an offensive YouTube video……
That would be Elias, of the Coie firm………
@Jan, the ethics issues are above my pay grade, but as a general observation there are ethics rules that require someone to step aside, but more commonly people may step aside in the mere interest of “appearance” of a conflict. They don’t want the hassle and the delegitimization that make their job more difficult; there are other people who can do the job without those problems.