The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[River]

MAGA: Make Attorneys Get Attorneys

Giuliani is kind of a tragic figure. I'm not sure what happened to him.

ETA: I present today's winner of the internet: Four Seasons Total Landscaping

[N.E. Brigand]

I guess I'll put this here.

Federal agents execute search warrant on Rudy Giuliani's apartment

As the article says, it is rare for prosecutors to serve a search warrant on an attorney. They would not do so unless they were very serious. It certainly is reminiscent of when they served a warrant on Trump's old attorney, Michael Cohen, and we know what happened to him.

Rudy Giuliani today wrote that the Dept. of Justice "in late 2019 covertly obtained access to my iCloud and never notified me."

There's no way that something like that would have happened without Attorney General Bill Barr approving it. But who knows if it's true?

Also, the Washington Post reports that in 2020, both Giuliani and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin were given defensive briefings by the FBI, warning him that they were being targeted by Russian intelligence agencies with disinformation. Johnson thought the briefing was a trick by the FBI, and both men continued to meet with shady characters who were peddling Russian-derived propaganda about Democrats. Other Republicans including Marco Rubio tried to get Johnson to take the FBI's warnings seriously, to no avail.

[Impenitent]

None so blind as the determinedly blind.

Sent from my SM-G965U1 using Tapatalk

[Beorhtnoth]

Also, the Washington Post reports that in 2020, both Giuliani and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin were given defensive briefings by the FBI, warning him that they were being targeted by Russian intelligence agencies with disinformation. Johnson thought the briefing was a trick by the FBI, and both men continued to meet with shady characters who were peddling Russian-derived propaganda about Democrats. Other Republicans including Marco Rubio tried to get Johnson to take the FBI's warnings seriously, to no avail.

I wonder how much trust is partisan, and how much partisanship renders our ability to judge suspect. As someone who attempts to set my prejudices aside, I find political commentary a minefield of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda.
As such, it puzzles me why the Democrats' narrative is "Russian propaganda" rather than "Republican propaganda". Is this a hangover from Hillary Clinton's refusal to accept her electoral college loss to Trump was legitimate and blaming Russia for results rather than her own unpopularity?

ETA
As an aside, I am repeatedly confused by the fury over Russian "hacking" in place of fury over what the "hacking" revealed.

ETA2
I'm a fan of Asterix the Gaul. In the volume "Asterix and the Roman Agent", the thrust of the narrative is the Romans seeking to discover the secret of the Gauls' magic potion. There is one scene, where the Romans think they have the potion, and experiment with it on a legionary. He drinks it, then tests his strength, starting with a huge boulder. Eventually, he lifts a small stone above his head, and declares it proof of his superhuman strength...
This is like the search for Russian interference; eventually a small stone is found, raised triumphantly above the accuser's head, and rather than point out the size of the stone, the audience marvels at Russian perfidy.

[N.E. Brigand]

A further thought: this whole situation goes back to my earlier grumbling about whether there was wrongdoing by anyone at SDNY. Trump is complaining about New York state investigating his taxes. Why didn't the federal prosecutors in New York do this? The most charitable explanation I can think of is that they feared that if they did so, the attorney general would shut it down.

From all accounts that I have been able to follow, federal prosecutors in New York absolutely have conducted extensive investigations into Trump and the Trump Organization. Whether that investigation was sufficiently robust, and whether the decision to apparently not seek charges against Trump (while still leaving open the possibility of charges against the Trump Organization), is beyond my ability to assess. And, I would argue, beyond that of the people who seem to be willing nonetheless to express an opinion about it.

That is not to say that prosecutors in the SDNY should not be called into account when there is clear evidence of malfeasance.

Federal Judge Urges DOJ Investigation into ‘Grave Derelictions of Prosecutorial Responsibility’ by SDNY Prosecutors

Well it's not about Trump's taxes, but apparently SDNY had cause to be afraid of pursuing certain lines of investigation, let they be shut down by Main Justice:

"AP: Prosecutors in New York wanted last fall to serve a warrant on Rudy Giuliani. But that request was rebuffed by Trump officials in the deputy attorney general's office in Washington."

[N.E. Brigand]

Also, the Washington Post reports that in 2020, both Giuliani and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin were given defensive briefings by the FBI, warning him that they were being targeted by Russian intelligence agencies with disinformation. Johnson thought the briefing was a trick by the FBI, and both men continued to meet with shady characters who were peddling Russian-derived propaganda about Democrats. Other Republicans including Marco Rubio tried to get Johnson to take the FBI's warnings seriously, to no avail.

Something very curious going on with this. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and NBC all issued corrections to their stories regarding the claim that Rudy Giuliani was given a defensive briefing by the FBI about Russian agents trying to use him. Per the corrections, the FBI prepared a briefing for Giuliani but didn't deliver it. Instead they briefed the White House. But apparently Giuliani himself said just yesterday that someone at the White House did warn him about these contacts?

(As far as I can tell, Johnson did indeed receive such a breifing and dismissed it.)

[N.E. Brigand]

In a decision dated yesterday, and including redacted passages that are likely to become unredacted in two weeks, federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson pretty much says that the Dept. of Justice lied to her about the Office of Legal Counsel memo that former Attorney General William Barr claimed to be relying on when he determined that President Trump's actions did not constitute conduct that could be charged with obstruction of justice.

And of even greater importance to this decision, the affidavits [from the Department of Justice] are so inconsistent with evidence in the record, they are not worthy of credence. The review of the unredacted document in camera reveals that the suspicions voiced by the judge in [another case] and the plaintiff here were well-founded, and that not only was the Attorney General being disingenuous then, but DOJ has been disingenuous to this Court with respect to the existence of a decision-making process that should be shielded by the deliberative process privilege.

She says that the memo shows that the decision not to prosecute was already made and the OLC memo was a smokescreen:

Moreover, the redacted portions of Section I reveal that both the authors and the recipient of the memorandum had a shared understanding concerning whether prosecuting the President was a matter to be considered at all. In other words, the review of the document reveals that the Attorney General was not then engaged in making a decision about whether the President should be charged with obstruction of justice; the fact that he would not be prosecuted was a given.

She points out that emails between DOJ personnel at the time reveal that the same people who were writing the memo were simultaneously writing a letter that Barr was going to send Congress that was supposed to be based on the memo, and that in those emails, the DOJ staff even admit that the memo could be finished after the letter.

She orders that the memo be released, but she allows DOJ two weeks to file a motion to stay her ruling.

There's even an appendix that reminds me a little bit of the tables in Arda Reconstructed.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I had not seen that, so I appreciate you posting it, and I read the order with interest. It seems unlikely to me that the current DOJ will file a motion to stay her ruling, but we'll see. Assuming the document is released, it'll be interesting to read it.

There's even an appendix that reminds me a little bit of the tables in Arda Reconstructed.

(It does me too!)

[N.E. Brigand]

This doesn't quite fit here, since it's not a legal case, but this is the most recently upcated Trump-administration thread, so:

New York Times: "Activists and Ex-Spy Said to Have Plotted to Discredit Trump ‘Enemies’ in Government"

A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations.

The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks.

The operations against the F.B.I., run by the conservative group Project Veritas, were conducted from a large home in the Georgetown section of Washington that rented for $10,000 per month. Female undercover operatives arranged dates with the F.B.I. employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Mr. Trump.

Erik Prince and Barbara Ledeen also feature in these schemes. Prince is the founder of Blackwater, a private military company; he was investigated by Robert Mueller, but his role in the Trump-Russia affair remained unclear, in part because a bunch of text messages he exchanged with Steve Bannon at a crucial period were mysteriously deleted. Until earlier this year, Ledeen was* an aide to Senator Chuck Grassley (who thus had access to much information about the Russia investigation that was conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee) who in 2016 worked with Michael Flynn on an effort to find Hillary Clinton's emails (as we were reminded this week when the Dept. of Justice notes of interviews with Flynn were released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests).

Ledeen says she was invited to join this operation by a person "with access to McMaster's calendar."

It's really ironic that Senate Republicans, who complained vociferously about an American presidential campaign having hired (via a political research company) a former British spy to compile reports from Russian sources on Donald Trump, were themselves employing someone who was assisting a former British spy to conduct active sting operations on U.S. government officials working for President Donald Trump.

*Edited to add: Apparently this is not clear. Ledeen told the Times she had retired earlier this year, but that fact was apparently not public before the publication of this story, and the spokesman for Ledeen's (former?) boss, Sen. Chuck Grassley, said today that he "believes" that Ledeen stepped down when the last Congressional session ended January 2, 2021. So are they not sure if she's still on staff?

[N.E. Brigand]

This doesn't quite fit here, since it's not a legal case, but this is the most recently upcated Trump-administration thread, so:

New York Times: "Activists and Ex-Spy Said to Have Plotted to Discredit Trump ‘Enemies’ in Government"

A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations.

The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks.

The operations against the F.B.I., run by the conservative group Project Veritas, were conducted from a large home in the Georgetown section of Washington that rented for $10,000 per month. Female undercover operatives arranged dates with the F.B.I. employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Mr. Trump.

Erik Prince and Barbara Ledeen also feature in these schemes. Prince is the founder of Blackwater, a private military company; he was investigated by Robert Mueller, but his role in the Trump-Russia affair remained unclear, in part because a bunch of text messages he exchanged with Steve Bannon at a crucial period were mysteriously deleted. Until earlier this year, Ledeen was an aide to Senator Chuck Grassley (who thus had access to much information about the Russia investigation that was conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee) who in 2016 worked with Michael Flynn on an effort to find Hillary Clinton's emails (as we were reminded this week when the Dept. of Justice notes of interviews with Flynn were released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests).

Ledeen says she was invited to join this operation by a person "with access to McMaster's calendar."

It's really ironic that Senate Republicans, who complained vociferously about an American presidential campaign having hired (via a political research company) a former British spy to compile reports from Russian sources on Donald Trump, were themselves employing someone who was assisting a former British spy to conduct active sting operations on U.S. government officials working for President Donald Trump.

Some people may also remember Ledeen's name turning up in another story from the Trump administration:

Washington Post: "Leahy says Kavanaugh was ‘not truthful’ about Democratic documents" (Sep. 7, 2018)

That story pertained to Brett Kavanaugh's work in the administration of George W. Bush in 2001-2003, where he vetted judicial nominees.

Separately, an email written to Kavanaugh by a then-staffer to the Republican leadership, Barbara Ledeen, had the subject line “spying.” Ledeen wrote that “I have a friend who is a mole for us on the left,” and described information she had learned about spending plans by liberal groups on judicial nominations. “It is important to note that IF we have a nominee, we need to ZIP THAT PERSON RIGHT THROUGH THE PROCESS....WE CANNOT BEAT 20 MILLION DOLLARS,” Ledeen wrote on June 5, 2003.

Kavanaugh forwarded the message to his boss, Counsel Alberto Gonzales, and others, writing, “interesting Ledeen email …”

Ledeen, who now serves as a Republican staffer on the committee, did not respond to a request for comment.

In his confirmation hearings for the federal appeals court in 2004 and for the Supreme Court in 2018, Kavanaugh professed ignorance about these matters.

[N.E. Brigand]

Very late in the Trump administration, the Dept. of Justice subpoenaed Twitter to reveal the identity of the person running an account that was parodying Devin Nunes, Republican congressman of California. The DOJ also got a gag order on the subpoena. It is unknown what the DOJ claimed to be investigating. Nunes is perhaps best known to the public for his role as chair of the House Intelligence Committee during the Russia investigation, which he appeared to be undermining. Then in 2019, he sued multiple people for defamation, including two other Twitter parody accounts. Twitter sought to get the subpoena quashed in this filing in March, which was unsealed today. Twitter's filing argues that the subpoena likely was based on improper political grounds. I would certainly suspect that, and I'm surprised the Dept. of Justice in the Biden administration hadn't dropped the matter already.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The New York Attorney General's office has announced that its investigation of the Trump Organization is no longer purely civil in nature, and is now a criminal probe.

New York attorney general adds 'criminal capacity' to probe of Trump Organization

[Dave_LF]

But is this accurate???

NoLongerPurelyCivil.png (19.06 KiB) Viewed 4644 times

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1394838531650985984

[Voronwë the Faithful]

If you are asking whether or not the criminal investigation will actually go anywhere, the answer is that it is too soon to say.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

But this suggests that it might not be accurate. I have long considered Weisselberg to be a key piece of the puzzle. If they can get him to flip. I do think there will be charges against Trumps[not a typo].

NY attorney general has been looking into the taxes of Trump Organization CFO for months, sources say

[N.E. Brigand]

Gordon Sondland was the U.S. ambassador to the European Union from 2018 to 2020. He came to public attention for his role in Donald Trump's Ukraine skullduggery, and testified to the House as part of Trump's first impeachment proceedings. Two days after the Senate acquitted Trump, he fired Sondland.

Now Sondland is suing the U.S. government and Mike Pompeo, who as Trump's Secretary of State was Sondland's boss, for $1.8 million in legal fees that Sondland says Pompeo said the government would pay for. To refresh people's memories, this is Sondland at this testimony:

[N.E. Brigand]

Grr.

Or as Ken White put it, "The Department of Justice in a Democratic administration is still the department of f------ justice."

Congressional Democrats had urged the DOJ to comply with Judge Amy Berman Jackson's order the release of the OLC memo that William Barr supposedly (but not really) used to justify not bringing charges against Donald Trump for obstruction of justice. Berman said that Barr and the DOJ lied to the courts and that the memo was just a fig leaf to cover a predetermined decision. Which is obviously true.

But the DOJ under Biden has filed for her to stay her ruling in order that they may appeal. And even if the appeals court ultimately upholds Judge Jackson's decision, it will be roughly a year before those materials are made public.

If the Court of Appeals in May of 2022 finds that Jackson was right and that, by implication, Trump ought to have been charged with obstruction of justice, it will already be five years since some of Trump's obstructive acts took place. So even though Trump should in a just world be charged for those crimes, he'll have an argument at that time that the statute of limitations has passed.

Of course, the DOJ was never going to charge Trump, because we don't live in a just world.

Judge Jackson ought to deny the stay and release it anyway. What's the worst that could happen if she does?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It's possible (not likely, but possible) that the reason that the Garland DOJ is asking for the stay is because they are considering charging Trump.

[N.E. Brigand]

It's possible (not likely, but possible) that the reason that the Garland DOJ is asking for the stay is because they are considering charging Trump.

I may have been over emphatic with my frustration about this last night. Jennifer Taub offers some brief thoughtful analysis here. She identifies two potential Catch-22 situations that could arise from the Dept. of Justice having to release this memo, particularly so early in Merrick Garland's tenure when he's still cleaning up a lot of Bill Barr's messes. (Although she too thinks it should be released.)

But is he making new messes in the process? Marcy Wheeler today argues that "Julie Straus Harris, in her filing addressing Julie Straus Harris's conduct in an earlier filing, doesn't address Judge Amy Berman Jackson's complaint about Julie Straus Harris." Separately Wheeler points out that yesterday's DOJ filing appears to contradict itself by arguing both that the memo is only deliberative (and thus not subject to release) because the OLC can't make a prosecutorial decision and that the memo determined whether or not Trump could be prosecuted.

- - - - - - - - - -
Meanwhile, with the release of new documents pertaining to the investigation of Paul Manafort, we learn ever more about the underlying collusion with Russia that Donald Trump was trying to cover up: Manafort and the Russian intelligence agent he was collaborating with, Konstantin Kilimnik, were sure that Trump could win Pennsylvania at a time when the rest of the Trump campaign believed that state was out of reach. And we continue to learn more about how Manafort himself thwarted Mueller's investigation. For example, even at a time when he was nominally cooperating, he declined to provide Mueller's team with the passwords to ten different electronic devices.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

To be clear, I also think the memo should be released. As Prof. Taub writes:

The redacted portion of the memo is not Schrodinger‘s cat. It exists and departmental lawyers have seen it. I posit that this is official policy of the department as it stands even if we don’t see it. The cat is very much alive.

The cat should be out of the bag.