The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[N.E. Brigand]

I've mentioned this before, but I really think that too little attention was given to the news (revealed a couple years ago in the Dept. of Justice Inspector General's report and subsequent reporting by ABC on the IG report) that Christopher Steele, he of dossier fame, was friends with Ivanka Trump. Close enough that they exchanged gifts and discussed the possibility of him working for her father.

I didn't see George Stephanopoulos's interview with Steele. Did it come up there?

[N.E. Brigand]

In October 2020, President Trump fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper apparently based on a list of supposed misdeeds Esper had committed that was written by a junior but powerful White House staffer named Johnnie McEntee.

One of the actions on the list was that Esper "approved the promotion of Lt. Col. Vindmann, the start [sic] witness in the sham impeachment inquiry, who told Congress that the President's call with Ukraine 'undermined U.S. national security.'"

So Trump fired Esper in part because he wouldn't punish someone for testifying to Congress about Trump's actions.

Could that be obstruction of justice?

[N.E. Brigand]

The Republican National Committee is paying Donald Trump's personal legal bills relating to investigations by the state of New York into Trump's finances. That's per the Washington Post. And why? "He's a leader of our party," said an RNC spokesperson.

[N.E. Brigand]

In an interview last night with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Donald Trump said that John Durham's report has "come out" and while he wished it had come out "a little earlier," it's "unbelievably complete." Hannity corrected him to note that Durham has in fact not released a report. (As far as I can tell, Durham hasn't even finished it.)

Is this just Trump once again demonstrating that he has no idea what he's talking about? Probably. But I would like to know if Durham has been in communication with Trump about the content of his report.

[River]

The Republican National Committee is paying Donald Trump's personal legal bills relating to investigations by the state of New York into Trump's finances. That's per the Washington Post. And why? "He's a leader of our party," said an RNC spokesperson.

The relationship Trump has with the RNC looks abusive.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's the only reason I have any hope at all for the 2022 election

[N.E. Brigand]

This is a fine new piece in The Atlantic, concisely summarizing the key findings of the 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on the cooperation between Donald Trump and Russia:

It Wasn't a Hoax

While this may seem to be old news, the essay's point is that a number of recent attempts to vindicate Trump almost completely overlook the damning material in that report.

[River]

Is there any way to vindicate Trump for anything without overlooking damning material? The man leaves ooze on everything he touches.

[N.E. Brigand]

On Fox News yesterday, Donald Trump said that if he had not fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, "You might not be talking to me right now about a beautiful book about four years in the White House ... I don't think I could have survived if I didn't fire him."

That sounds like a confession to me.

[elengil]

[RoseMorninStar]

On Fox News yesterday, Donald Trump said that if he had not fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, "You might not be talking to me right now about a beautiful book about four years in the White House ... I don't think I could have survived if I didn't fire him."

That sounds like a confession to me.

Yup. When people tell you who they are, believe them the first time.

[N.E. Brigand]

I like this analysis of the Sussmann case by Benjamin Wittes at Lawfare:

On the Special Counsel’s Weird Prosecution of Michael Sussmann

Wittes thinks that John Durham is trying to pressure Sussmann so that he can get to Sussmann's clients and sources and paint a (misleading) picture in which the Trump-Russia investigation was falsely predicated.

And this piece from last October in the New Yorker is a useful summary of what we know about the Alfa Bank servers. As I said the other day, the thousands of lookups between those servers and the Trump Org. servers very well may have been innocuous, but the Senate Intelligence Committee, for example, said in its bipartisan reports that investigators "could not positively determine an intent or purpose that would explain the unusual activity" and that possible explanations offered by the Trump Org. and by Alfa Bank "were not consistent".

As previously noted, Durham's charge against Sussmann is that Sussmann allegedly told FBI general counsel James Baker (in 2016, Sussmann gave Baker some tech researchers' information on apparent connections between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization) that he wasn't representing any particular client.

But it turns out that Durham's various evidence for this is, well, contradictory:

(1) "Baker said that Sussman did not specify that he was representing a client regarding the matter, nor did Baker ask him if he was representing a client. Baker said it did not seem like Sussman was representing a client."

(2) Baker: "And he [Sussman] had some amount of information, physical evidence, printed out, and also a thumb drive or two, that he said related to strange interactions that some number of people that were his clients, who were, he described as I recall it, sort of cyber-security experts, had found about some strange connection between some part of Donald Trump's organization and Alfa Bank, which was described as being controlled by the Kremlin."

And on top of that, Politico reporter Kyle Cheney notes that in 2018, under questioning by Congressman Jim Jordan, Baker said that he deliberately didn't ask Sussman for many details because he was the FBI's lawyer and not a working agent. He referred the matter to the FBI's head of counterintelligence, who says he investigated it thoroughly.

I struggle to understand how Durham can have any hope of prevailing in this case.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It certainly doesn't sound like he has a very good case. The only caveat that I would make is that media reports don't always give a full or accurate picture. I tend to agree that Durham's prosecution of Sussman is not well-founded, but I can't really say for sure.

[N.E. Brigand]

Good point about the possibility of media reports not accurately describing the case. I would note that the two numbered quotes above are from actual documents in the Sussmann case. Which doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't other documents that would explain the seeming contradictions or otherwise bolster Durham's claims about Sussmann.

[N.E. Brigand]

Durham's office responded in a court filing to Sussmann today. In an earlier filing, Sussmann's lawyers had noted that Baker in 2019 and 2020 interviews described his 2016 meeting with Sussmann in a way that is exculpatory for Sussmann. Durham says those interviews happened too long after the incident to be reliable.

Instead, Durham says that it's Baker "now-clear recollection" as given in interviews from 2021, after the supposedly unreliable interviews and after he was presented with earlier notes about the 2016 meeting (notes that I believe were written by others), that should count.

(Also, even though Sussmann was indicted 10 weeks ago, Durham only turned over the apparently exculpatory statements to Sussmann a week ago.)

A while ago, Marcy Wheeler made the interesting point that Durham's theory of the case seems to be that Democrats deliberately laundered false and defamatory information about Donald Trump to the the FBI. The evidence we've seen so far does not support such a theory (the tech researchers who discovered the weird Alfa Bank activity were never sure what to make of it, but their texts and emails show that they took seriously the implication that the communications could represent a possibly illicit connection between Trump and Russia; one of them wrote of the Alfa internet traffic with astonishment, just days after news broke about Russia hacking the Democrats: "am I really seeing evidence of espionage on behalf of a presidential candidate?"). Also, as Wheeler observes, feeding false information to the FBI to hurt a political campaign is precisely what Republicans seem to have done with the bogus Clinton Foundation and Uranium One claims -- and no Republican operatives were ever prosecuted for that.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

New York attorney general seeks Trump’s deposition as part of civil fraud investigation

Following this announcement, NY Attorney general Letitia James made a surprising announcement that she was ending her bid to become governor and instead was going to run for reelection as AG. She stated in a statement: "I have come to the conclusion that I must continue my work as attorney general. There are a number of important investigations and cases that are underway, and I intend to finish the job. I am running for re-election to complete the work New Yorkers elected me to do."

Letitia James ends bid for N.Y. governor as Trump probe ramps up

[N.E. Brigand]

A recent Siena College poll had the current New York governor, Kathy Hochul, well in the lead, with 36%. Tish James was second at 18%, and the remainder was split between Jumaane Wiiliams, Tom Suozzi, and Bill de Blasio (who has yet to officially join the race). This is for the Democratic primary, which will be in June.

- - - - - - - - -
Turning back to Donald Trump, I seem to recall that when he was previously deposed about financial matters, he explained that when providing figures about his net worth, the numbers go up and down depending on how he feels that day.

[N.E. Brigand]

Speaking of Donald Trump's finances, tonight MSNBC anchor Brian Williams wrapped his nearly 30 years with NBC and the past 5 years of hosting "The Eleventh Hour," a show that debuted just two months before Trump's election. The final broadcast included a brief montage of clips from the show, one of which was Williams asking Chris Christie, then the governor of New Jersey and an advisor to candidate Donald Trump, if Trump would release his tax returns.

Christie said that Trump would release his returns as soon as an ongoing audit was complete. Again, that was more than five years ago.

Also from fall 2016, Wiliams asked Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway if it wasn't unreasonable for her to suggest that Hillary Clinton would be indicted for improper use of government email. Conway replied: well, that's what's on voters' minds.

[N.E. Brigand]

In 2011, President Obama told Russian Prime Minister Medvedev that he would have more flexibility to negotiate with Russia after the next presidential election -- and Obama's never been able to live that comment down, even though his administration imposed a series of ever tougher sanctions on Russia (sanctions that the Trump administration tried to lift before being blocked by Congress).

Now we learn that President Trump, not only tried to have the Taliban in the U.S. at Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11, but in a discussion with a Taliban leader, Trump said, "You guys are tough fighters" and asked him "Do you need something from me?" And subsequently approved the release of Taliban prisoners and eventually a withdrawal from Afghanistan. As with Obama, the sentiments expressed aren't necessarily unreasonable in a diplomatic conversation and the policy decisions were quite possibly the correct ones.

[N.E. Brigand]

Trevor McFadden, a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump, has dismissed Trump's lawsuit attempting to block the House Ways and Means Committee's efforts to obtain his tax returns. Judge McFadden says that it doesn't matter if the Committee's motives might not be pure. He also says that the Committee, once it has the tax returns, has the right to make them public if it wishes (although he doesn't see a good reason for them to do that).

Trump has two weeks to appeal, and will presumably do so.