The Russia Investigations and other Trump-related cases

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm not trying to be snarky either, and to the best of my knowledge (which is limited) I think he made the wrong decision, but in the real world these kind of decisions require a multitude of different calculations.

[RoseMorninStar]

Perhaps I'm missing the mark in equating these 2 situations, but I have an ever-growing respect for the courage and perseverance for Liz Cheney (and Adam Kinzinger). Although I don't often agree with her stance and opinions, she's doing her job no matter the political fall-out. I don't mean to downgrade Rep. Kinzingers efforts, but he is not running for re-election which changes the situation.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Oh, Liz Cheney is definitely making a political calculation, too. It might be a long-shot one, but it is a political calculation nonetheless. That doesn't mean that she also isn't doing what she thinks is right, and for that I applaud her, but with considerable reservations.

[N.E. Brigand]

Huh. So if I'm reading that correctly, Mueller's team found that Flynn's son also committed a crime but, in exchange for cooperation, they would agree to not prosecute that crime. Is that about right? If so..... I don't see anything unethical about that.

I think it is probably more accurate to say that the special counsel's team agreed to no longer investigate whether Flynn, Jr. committed a crime in exchange for Gen. Flynn's cooperation; I don't think we know for sure whether they made a definite determination that Flynn, Jr. had committed any crimes, though he certainly was under investigation (and as a side note, he [Flynn Jr.] was one of the main conveyers of one of the more bizarre conspiracy theories, which held that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a pizza parlour, resulting in his termination from the Trump transition team; see here and here). These kind of trade-offs are common in our justice system, particularly in a situation like this when the goal is to get the bottom of an issue of major national concern.

Gen. Michael Flynn himself also at least once shared Pizzagate stuff on social media in fall 2016, a fact which now seems not the least bit surprising, given how Flynn became a key figure in the insane QAnon cult.

[N.E. Brigand]

As far as I can tell, this October 2020 story from CNN hasn't been mentioned here before:

Exclusive: Feds chased suspected foreign link to Trump's 2016 campaign cash for three years

Those folks who closely followed Robert Mueller's investigation into Donald Trump and Russia may remember that there was some mystery corporation whose records Mueller's team was pursuing for quite a while. The case was even appealed by the unidentified company to the Supreme Court, who declined to hear it, but the matter was still ongoing when Mueller's investigation shut down in 2019, and references to this prong of the investigation were redacted in Mueller's report. As I recall, it was publicly known by some point in 2018 that the unnamed corporation was a foreign nation's sovereign wealth fund -- because it was known that the company was claiming to be legally part of its nation's government (and there are limits on what courts can force foreign governments to do) -- and that nation was apparently not Russia, because one court filing suggested that the name had five letters. There was speculation that it might be Qatar, although that possibility seemed shaky because that particular country seemed to be at odds with the Trump administration.

Per that 2020 CNN story, the country was Egypt. CNN reported that Mueller's investigation had a component apparently unknown even to one of Mueller's top prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann, whose 2020 book criticized Mueller for not pursuing Trump's finances. Shortly after Weissmann's book appeared, Mueller issued a rare public statement, in which he cryptically said that the people who worked for him might not be aware of the full scope of his investigation. But according to CNN, while Mueller apparently was very concerned that investigating Trump's finances would lead to Trump firing him and shutting down the investigation, and Mueller in fact never did directly pursue such an inquiry (Trump had publicly referred to that as a red line), Mueller nonetheless had a team trying to understand why Donald Trump made a $10 million dollar contribution to his own campaign in late October 2016, which he publicly called a "loan," at a time when his campaign was short on cash and long after he had pledged but failed to contribute $100 million of his own funds to his campaign. The investigation had actually been started, based on a tip from an informant, even before Mueller was appointed special prosecutor in spring 2017. The FBI suspected that Trump had been reimbursed by the Egyptian government, and also that possibly the money didn't even originate there but was being passed through from some other source, but he was never able to determine what was really going on. Even after Mueller himself wrapped up, the case continued for another year, as the Egyptian bank continued to stall prosecutors by providing incomplete records (as the federal judge overseeing the case acknowledged), but it was closed without outcome in summer 2020.

Egypt's president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, had met with Trump earlier in October 2016, and he was the first foreign leader to call Trump after he won the presidential election the next month, and they reportedly had a much better relationship than Sisi had with Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama. (Trump was once heard to refer to Sisi as "my favorite dictator.")

[N.E. Brigand]

Trump sues Hillary Clinton and DNC, alleging conspiracy to link his campaign to Russia

Words fail

Donald Trump has filed to have the judge assigned to this case disqualified on the grounds that the judge was appointed by Bill Clinton.

[N.E. Brigand]

Trump sues Hillary Clinton and DNC, alleging conspiracy to link his campaign to Russia

Words fail

Donald Trump has filed to have the judge assigned to this case disqualified on the grounds that the judge was appointed by Bill Clinton.

Citing relevant precedent, the judge says he won't disqualify himself. And he also points out that Trump filed his lawsuit in the only division of that federal district with a Trump-appointed judge, but "[d]espite the odds, this case landed with me instead."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think this headline speaks for itself.

New York AG asks court to hold Donald Trump in contempt

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Meanwhile,

Criminal investigation into Trump and his company continues as prosecutors review new evidence, NY DA says

Um, yeah right.

[N.E. Brigand]

Meanwhile,

Criminal investigation into Trump and his company continues as prosecutors review new evidence, NY DA says

Um, yeah right.

Indeed. It appears the Manhattan D.A.'s office released that information to multiple outlets, but not The Daily Beast, because they knew that TDB was about to publish this story, that went out later yesterday:

'Gutted': Inside the Manhattan DA's Unraveling Trump Probe

That article reports that in addition to the two prosecutors who resigned after the D.A. told them that he didn't think they had a case against Trump, a third prosecutor leading that investigation -- the one who got Trump's tax returns -- has apparently been sidelined.

[N.E. Brigand]

"State Department: White House gift records for Trump, Pence missing"

"The State Department says it is unable to compile a complete and accurate accounting of gifts presented to former President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials by foreign governments during Trump’s final year in office, citing missing data from the White House.

In a report to be published in the Federal Register next week, the department says the Executive Office of the President did not submit information about gifts received by Trump and his family from foreign leaders in 2020. It also says the General Services Administration didn’t submit information about gifts given to former Vice President Mike Pence and White House staffers that year."

Does this mean that Trump was bribed? (And if so, what's the statute of limitations?)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Most likely it means that Trump and his team were incompetent record-keepers.

[River]

Why not both?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Could be.

[N.E. Brigand]

It's bone saws all the way down.

[N.E. Brigand]

"Six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince, a close ally during the Trump administration, despite objections from the fund’s advisers about the merits of the deal."

It's bone saws all the way down.

New reporting in The Intercept indicates that "Jared Kushner Flaunted His Influence With Saudi Arabia And Russia In Pitch To Investors".

You get a bone saw! And you get a bone saw!

This is a helpful analysis from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo: Princelings and War Crimes. By way of comparison, Marshall notes that the Saudis also provided funding to Steven Mnuchin, who was Treasury Secretary in the Trump administration. That appears dirty enough, but unlike Kushner, Mnuchin does at least have extensive experience in the field, so there's a veneer of plausibility. Even so, the Saudis only gave Mnuchin half as much as they gave Kushner, and they're charging Mnuchin higher fees too. Then, picking up from some reporting a few days ago by independent journalist Vicky Ward, Marshall observes that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ("MBS") appears to rewarding Kushner not necessarily, or not only, for whatever the Trump administration did to assist with and/or subsequently politically minimize the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but also for apparently giving MBS information he needed in 2017 to prevent his cousin Mohammed bin Nayef ("MBN"), then the Crown Prince, from having the Saudi high council name him as the nation's king (on the grounds that King Salman was mentally incompetent). Apparently using intelligence from Kushner, MBS got his father, the aged king, to depose MBN -- who hasn't been seen in years -- and install himself in that role. But Marshall sees the situation as going deeper, and worse, than that. Apparently at a series of recent Saudi events for the world's top investors, Kushner repeatedly was seated right next to MBS on nearly every occasion: the Saudis are signaling to the world's power players that they are going to do everything they can to get the Trump family back in power.

And one way they're going to do that is to keep oil prices high, so that American voters hate Joe Biden. During the Trump administration, there were at least two occasions when the Saudis increased or decreased oil production at the request of the Trump administration. They have rebuffed all such requests from the Biden administration.

And Business Insider reports: Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman started 'shouting' at Biden's national security advisor when he brought up Jamal Khashoggi's brutal killing. Plus this reporting in the Wall Street Journal says that U.S.-Saudi relations have reached a "breaking point."

So let me also note what Marcy Wheeler notes about last summer's indictment of Donald Trump's friend, the investor Tom Barrack, who was charged with being an unregistered foreign agent of the United Arab Emirates. Barrack, who had a role in getting Paul Manafort to work for free as Donald Trump's campaign manager, has been arguing in court filings that, essentially, he didn't need to register as a foreign agent because the Trump White House knew what he was doing. Manafort, as we know, was also sharing information with Russia to help Trump win the 2016 election. Wheeler asks: what if that was actually a joint Russian-UAE operation? (She's not the first to ask this -- I saw it suggested at least as far aback as 2018 -- but I appreciate her arriving there following an independent chain of evidence.) She observes that the indictment against Barrack explicitly refers to attempts to get the U.S. to recognize MBS as the de facto leader in early 2017.

As Wheeler sees it, the seeming goal of the 2016 plot -- "and this shows up in Mike Flynn's transcripts with Sergei Kislyak -- was to turn the US into the same kind of corrupt kleptocracy that Russia, UAE, and KSA were. Make the world safe for oil corruption, was the plan behind Trump, I now suspect. This is one reason the Saudis and UAE aren't opposing Russia. They had a plan -- through Trump -- to turn the U.S. into the same kind of kleptocracy they are Russia was using Trump to keep Ukraine corrupt, too. That's what this war is about: making it easy to buy a president."

[N.E. Brigand]

I have been a bit out of it the past few days for obvious reasons, but i wanted to mention that we can add Steve Bannon to the list of indicted Trump associates for his role in allegedly defrauding donors to a crowdfunding campaign to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

But some breaking news: the New York Times just repoted that Trump has pardoned his former campaign chair and White House adviser Steve Bannon, who is facing federal charges for fraud. I wonder if in the course of engaging in that activity, Bannon happened to violate any state laws.

Some people are surprised by this, because Bannon trashed Trump to some reporters. On the other hand, Bannon appears to have destroyed text messages that might have incriminated Trump in the Russia scandal. (Bannon was arrested at sea by U.S. Postal Police, on a Chinese billionaire's yacht off the coast of Connecticut.)

Justin Amash: "It went from 'Mexico will pay for it!' to 'You will pay for it!' to 'You will pay Steve Bannon, and I will pardon him for defrauding you!'"

As Voronwë noted at the time, in August 2020, the Department of Justice indicted four people on fraud charges for allegedly having stolen millions of dollars raised for the "We Build the Wall" organization, supposedly a volunteer effort that was meant to crowd-fund Donald Trump's pet project of a U.S.-Mexican border wall. As you may recall, Trump had claimed during the 2016 presidential campaign that, if elected, he would build this wall and force Mexico to pay for it. He failed in those efforts, and he was only able to convince the U.S. Congress to appropriate funds for some short sections of border wall. Naturally, most of the contributors to this crowd-funded project were Trump's supporters.

The four men charged with defrauding Trump's supporters were Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, Timothy Shea, and longtime Trump associate, Steve Bannon. Bannon, the conservative media publisher who co-founded Breitbart News in 2007, was little known outside of far-right circles prior to the summer of 2016, when he was named as the Trump campaign's CEO. He then was a top advisor in the White House for the first year of Trump's presidency.

Today Kolfage and Badolato pleaded guilty to wire fraud, money laundering, and falsifying tax returns in connection with this scheme. Shea still faces trial.

Bannon will never go on trial for his part in the plot: one of President Trump's last acts, on January 20, 2021, was to pardon Bannon. I think it's likely that the pardon was partly motivated by Bannon's role in Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Bannon is now fighting a charge of obstruction of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the January 6th Committee.

(Supposedly the Manhattan District Attorney's office is investigating whether Bannon's "We Build the Wall" acts violated New York state law, but (1) we have seen that the Manhattan D.A. seems to be wary of bringing charges in cases connected to Donald Trump and (2) there are some tricky legal issues in charging someone at the state level for conduct they were also charged at the federal level.)

Kolfage and Badolato admitted in court that they lied when they claimed all the funds -- some $25 million was raised -- would go to fund the wall project. Kolfage kept at least $350,000 for himself. Prosecutors said in 2020 that $1 million of the funds went into Bannon's pockets.

If the government have gotten Kolfage and Badolato to admit to this scheme, can prosecutors now at least force Bannon to return the money he stole? If I steal your car, even if I'm pardoned for my crime, I don't get to keep it, right?

Also: will the Trump supporters who gave to this project ever know that these men have admitted stealing form them?

And if they were told, would they even care?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Judge holds former President Trump in civil contempt for failing to comply with document subpoenas from New York attorney general

[N.E. Brigand]

Judge holds former President Trump in civil contempt for failing to comply with document subpoenas from New York attorney general

And then later in the day, the same judge also ordered that Donald Trump's appraisers, Cushman & Wakefield, must obey subpoenas issued the attorney general in that investigation and turn over the documents requested by May 27.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thanks, N.E.B. I had not seen that before, but it could have major significance.