The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[Jude]

That article seems to be subscriber-only...

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here's another version of it:

New York Prosecutors Find New Evidence in Trump Org Case

[N.E. Brigand]

First two paragraphs:

Prosecutors have discovered a tranche of evidence in the basement of a co-conspirator in the Trump Organization tax fraud case, a defense lawyer for indicted chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg revealed in court on Monday, with the attorney also signaling that more shoes are yet to drop in New York’s ongoing investigation.

“We have strong reason to believe there could be other indictments coming,” Weisselberg’s lawyer, Bryan C. Skarlatos, said in Manhattan criminal court on Monday.

Last two paragraphs:

Skarlatos and Weisselberg’s other lawyer, Mary E. Mulligan, issued a statement during the court hearing that said: “We have studied the indictment and it is full of unsupported and flawed factual and legal assertions regarding Allen Weisselberg. We look forward to challenging those assertions in court.”

But that trial might not happen if prosecutors get their way. Three sources close to the investigation say that prosecutors are actually trying to flip him as a witness against their real target: his long-time boss, former president Trump.

[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 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".

[N.E. Brigand]

A New York state judge has ordered the Trump Organization to produce documents that were subpoenaed by the N.Y. Attorney General's office, and says that if the Trump Org. doesn't comply in a timely manner, arrangements will be made to give an outside firm access to Trump Org. files to find those documents.

A Washington Post reporter seeking comment from the Trump Organization on this story found that the company apparently is now blocking all emails from the Post.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I love this comment to that twitter thread: "If that doesn’t work, I still have a Hotmail account. It’s emails escape modern spam filters because they come from an unexpected place: 1998."

[N.E. Brigand]

Yahoo has published a story about how the Trump administration devised plots against Julian Assange that apparently went nowhere, including the claim the CIA in 2017-18 sketched out some plans to kidnap or kill Assange, possibly in response to President Trump specifically asking in a meeting for for "options" on how Assange might be assassinated.

The story's sourcing is sketchy, but if it is true, wouldn't one possible interpretation of Trump's request be that he was trying to cover up the Russia scandal by eliminating a key witness?

[N.E. Brigand]

Yahoo has published a story about how the Trump administration devised plots against Julian Assange that apparently went nowhere, including the claim the CIA in 2017-18 sketched out some plans to kidnap or kill Assange, possibly in response to President Trump specifically asking in a meeting for for "options" on how Assange might be assassinated.

The story's sourcing is sketchy, but if it is true, wouldn't one possible interpretation of Trump's request be that he was trying to cover up the Russia scandal by eliminating a key witness?

Muckraking journalist Glenn Greenwald offers this comment on the story:

"Great and very important report by three Yahoo News journalist on how CIA spent years plotting against WikiLeaks, including with plans to kidnap or even kill Assange. Mike Pompeo was the key driver. He has snowed many MAGA people: he's pure Deep State."

That would be the same article that claims President Donald Trump asked advisers to develop plans to kill Julian Assange.

So apparently Trump also "has snowed many MAGA people" and is "pure Deep State"?

Greenwald, who sometimes seems like a living embodiment of the horseshoe theory, doesn't say.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Three of my least favorite people, all brought together in one post.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump tells Yahoo News that he never called for Assange's assassination.

Given that most of what Trump says is a lie, that suggests the story is true.

[N.E. Brigand]

I'm skeptical of the Mother Jones story claiming there was nothing to Brett Kavanaugh's vanishing debts (he was asked repeatedly by Senators for a proper explanation and he declined to provide one), and I'm skeptical of Stephanie Grisham's claim (in her new book) that Donald Trump's mysterious trip to Walter Reed in 2019 was for a "routine colonoscopy" (the trip was clearly scheduled at the last minute, and the White House said at the time that it was the first half of his annual physical).

[N.E. Brigand]

Accordingly, I also have to be skeptical of statements that Grisham makes about Trump that bolster my preexisting beliefs about him, like this conversation she relates having had with him about E. Jean Carroll (as described in an article about the forthcoming book):

"During a rant about Carroll—who's accused Trump of raping her—Trump gazed into Grisham's eyes and said something that unnerved her: 'You just deny it. That's what you do in every situation. Right, Stephanie? You just deny it,' he repeated, emphasizing the words."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sometimes somebody can be reliable in one context even if they are not in another context. That latter claim has a ring of truth to me.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Actually, after reading more about Grisham's colonoscopy claim, that has the ring of truth to it as well, particularly the parts about Trump wanting to keep it secret because he didn't want Pence to be in charge while he was under anesthesia and that he didn't want to be the butt (pun intended) of late night jokes.

[N.E. Brigand]

I think it's a truth sandwich, and I'm not sure Grisham herself knows what happened or if she's just repeating what she was told at the time. It is possible, although unusual, to have a colonoscopy without anesthesia. It's not possible to have a regularly scheduled colonoscopy without advance preparations. All indications at the time were that this was a surprise move. Trump was rushed to Walter Reed in a way that could not escape press notice (and at the time, CNN's reporting was that doctors there didn't know in advance that Trump was coming), and then they put out a cover story which everybody knew was a lie. This could have been handled much more discreetly, even by a White House as dysfunctional as Trump's. For starters, there was no need to go to Walter Reed at all. George W. Bush had a colonoscopy at Camp David. We all would have been none the wiser.

[N.E. Brigand]

And he sells clarinets to the kids in the town with the big trombones and the rat-a-tat drums, big brass bass, big brass bass.

[RoseMorninStar]

'You just deny it. That's what you do in every situation. (...) You just deny it,' he repeated, emphasizing the words."

This isn't the first time Trump has said something to this effect so it shouldn't come as any surprise or have a ring of untruth to it. Deny, deny, deny.

Trump's family attended church were Norman Vincent 'The Power of Positive Thinking' Peale preached. Stick with what you want to be true (rather than actual truth) and you can make what you want to believe happen. Self confidence is all one needs. You need be defeated only if you are willing to be.” Yadda, yadda.

[N.E. Brigand]

Imagine that. Per CNN, Durham's indictment of Sussmann misleading quotes an email to make it look more suspicious than it really was.

Durham's indictment also portrays researchers working with Joffe [i.e., cybersecurity expert Rodney Joffe, referred to as "Tech Executive-1" in the indictment] as harboring doubts about whether the Trump-Alfa Bank information was anything other than innocuous email traffic. But the indictment cites snippets of sentences from emails, leaving out further discussion among the researchers that appears to show they firmly believed the Trump-Alfa Bank connection was suspicious and needed to be investigated.

The indictment cites one email conversation in which one of the researchers suggests narrowly tailoring their findings to make a "plausible" case that there was something worth investigating about Trump and Alfa Bank. The rest of the email—left out by prosecutors in the indictment--continues: "If the white paper intends to say that here are communications between at least Alfa and Trump which are intentionally being hidden by Alfa and Trump, I absolutely believe that is the case," according to the email reviewed by CNN.

(Yes, I do know that prosecutors do this sort of thing more often than is generally appreciated.)

And the New York Times has a related story about both Durham's selective quotation of the cyber researchers' emails and the efforts of those researchers to try and figure out just what if anything was going on between Trump and Russia. For example, they "found data suggesting Yotaphones--Russian smartphones rarely seen in the US--were being used inside networks for Trump Tower, Spectrum Health, and the White House, and told the CIA."

[N.E. Brigand]

A U.S. House of Representatives committee has evidence that former President Trump lied on his federal financial disclosure forms about the Trump Hotel in D.C., which he leases from the federal government (as the committee notes, "he was effectively on both sides of the contract, as landlord and tenant," and it took years for the relevant agency to provide the House with the documents they finally received three months ago and are now making public):

https://oversight.house.gov/news/press- ... -hid-debts

Trump's disclosure forms claimed that the Hotel made $157 million from 2016 through 2020.

Information from Trump's accountants indicate the Hotel actually lost $74 million in that period.

So that's a misstatement of $231 million.

Also the committee found that Trump received a six-year deferral on a $170 million loan from Deutsche Bank that he didn't disclose.

Additionally, foreign governments spent more than $3.7 million at the Hotel and Trump didn't disclose the details of who was paying him this way.

And there's even more. Plus the committee awaits further documents.

Remember, the moment that Donald Trump became President, he was in violation of the terms of the lease, which says that "No ... elected official of the Government of the United States ... shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease". On Jan. 20, 2017, the Government Services Administration should have notified him that he was in violation, given him a short period to correct that (e.g., by resigning the Presidency), and then terminated the lease.

I think some people in the GSA need to be fired or worse for covering all this up.

And remind me again why Trump was never held accountable under the Emoluments Clauses?

[N.E. Brigand]

A U.S. House of Representatives committee has evidence that former President Trump lied on his federal financial disclosure forms about the Trump Hotel in D.C., which he leases from the federal government (as the committee notes, "he was effectively on both sides of the contract, as landlord and tenant," and it took years for the relevant agency to provide the House with the documents they finally received three months ago and are now making public):

https://oversight.house.gov/news/press- ... -hid-debts

Trump's disclosure forms claimed that the Hotel made $157 million from 2016 through 2020.

Information from Trump's accountants indicate the Hotel actually lost $74 million in that period.

I would add that it is possible the accountants rather than Trump are the liars here.