Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

[seemslikeadream]

to protect information sensitive to the grand jury investigation, which prosecutors say is ongoing.

Judge Won’t Release Identity Of Mystery Foreign Company Resisting Mueller Subpoena
Tierney Sneed

U.S. District Court of D.C. Chief Judge Beryl Howell said Monday that she would not order that the identity of a foreign-owned company at the heart of a mystery special counsel Robert Mueller grand jury case be made public.

Her opinion — responding to a press freedom group’s request that more information about the highly secretive grand jury case be released — will allow for additional documents in the subpoena dispute to be unsealed. However, those documents will be redacted, her order said, to protect information sensitive to the grand jury investigation, which prosecutors say is ongoing.

“The parties shall do their best to identify material that may be released without compromising matters occurring before the grand jury,” Howell said. “Maintaining grand jury … secrecy is paramount.”

The identity of the company that sought to challenge the subpoena last year has remained a mystery, even as other details about the case slowly become known. The company’s American lawyers have been identified, and many details of its legal arguments have also been made public, due to filings that were unsealed from the proceedings when they were at the appellate court and Supreme Court level.

The company received the document request last summer, and challenged the subpoena on the basis of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Both Howell and the appellate court ruled against it, while the Supreme Court declined to take up the case. The company is now facing a $50,000 per day fine for resisting the subpoena.

Notably, Howell is the same judge who will be weighing a request by the same press freedom group, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, to authorize the release of grand jury material in Mueller’s report submitted to Attorney General Bill Barr.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker ... r-subpoena

America Is Done Waiting for the Mueller Report
April 1, 2019
Someday, Trump will not be in office. Congress needs a full accounting of his misdeeds to ensure they don’t happen again.

By Jerrold L. Nadler

Mr. Nadler is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.


Matt Chase
Last Sunday, Attorney General William Barr sent us a letter summarizing what he says are the “principal conclusions” of the special counsel, Robert Mueller. The next day, together with five other committee chairmen, I wrote back to the attorney general, demanding that he provide us with the full Mueller report — not a summary, but the full report and all of the relevant evidence — by April 2.

For nearly two years, the country has waited to read the report. Over those many months, President Trump has raged against the institutions that make our democracy possible — among them, the free press, the courts and his own Department of Justice. When the special counsel indicted members of the president’s inner circle, his attacks got louder.

Before the formal investigation began, Mr. Trump fired his F.B.I. director. He later fired his attorney general. He reportedly attempted to fire the special counsel himself. Despite this profoundly unacceptable behavior, the special counsel persevered and wrote his report.

We — the members of the Judiciary Committee, the House of Representatives and the entire American public — are still waiting to see that report. We will not wait much longer. We have an obligation to read the full report, and the Department of Justice has an obligation to provide it, in its entirely, without delay. If the department is unwilling to produce the full report voluntarily, then we will do everything in our power to secure it for ourselves.

The entire reason for appointing the special counsel was to protect the investigation from political influence. By offering us his version of events in lieu of the report, the attorney general, a recent political appointee, undermines the work and the integrity of his department. He also denies the public the transparency it deserves. We require the full report — the special counsel’s words, not the attorney general’s summary or a redacted version.

We require the report, first, because Congress, not the attorney general, has a duty under the Constitution to determine whether wrongdoing has occurred. The special counsel declined to make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” on the question of obstruction, but it is not the attorney general’s job to step in and substitute his judgment for the special counsel’s.

That responsibility falls to Congress — and specifically to the House Judiciary Committee — as it has in every similar investigation in modern history. The attorney general’s recent proposal to redact the special counsel’s report before we receive it is unprecedented. We require the evidence, not whatever remains after the report has been filtered by the president’s political appointee.

On its face, the attorney general’s letter raises more questions than it answers. He tells us, for instance, that he declined to charge the president with obstruction in part because there was no underlying crime to obstruct.

Did he discuss that conclusion with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — who, while a federal prosecutor, routinely charged individuals with obstruction without charging the underlying crime? Did the attorney general forget that the special counsel indicted 37 other people, including the president’s campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman and former national security adviser, for various crimes, including conspiracy against the United States? Did he lose track of his own prosecutors, who effectively named the president as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Southern District of New York?

Second, we require the report because Congress has a role that is fundamentally different from that of the Department of Justice. The special counsel’s mandate was narrow: investigate allegedly criminal conduct stemming from links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Our job is to hold the president accountable any time he undermines the rule of law, and is not limited to his involvement with the Russian government during the campaign.

Whether or not the president could have been charged with a crime, even the attorney general acknowledges the existence of evidence that has so far been hidden from view. We have every reason to suspect that the unedited obstruction section of the Mueller report resembles the report that Congress received from the Watergate grand jury in 1974. That evidence showed that President Richard Nixon had attempted to obstruct justice. It did not recommend that the president should be prosecuted. It did not say the president should be impeached. It simply stated the evidence so that Congress could do its job.

Finally, we require the report because one day, one way or another, the country will move on from President Trump. We must make it harder for future presidents to behave this way. We need a full accounting of the president’s actions to do that work.

When the full scope of the president’s misconduct has been revealed, when his lies are debunked and his abuses have been laid bare, I believe that members of Congress on both sides of the aisle will draft legislation to curb the worst of his offenses. Put another way: If President Trump’s behavior wasn’t criminal, then perhaps it should have been.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/opin ... ked=google

Cummings tonight told us it is “a million times worse” than Clinton emails.

“Because what you have here are people who literally have the top secrets of the world ... and they have not been properly cleared ... That should alarm each and every American”

Cummings: Whistleblower says White House pushed for security clearances despite 'serious disqualifying issues'

(CNN) — A White House staff member has told House investigators that senior officials have overruled concerns raised about 25 individuals whose security clearances were initially denied over a range of disqualifying issues -- such as fears about foreign influence and potential conflicts-of-interests -- warning of the grave implications to national security, according to a senior Democratic lawmaker.

Now House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings plans to issue a subpoena this week demanding an interview with Carl Kline, who served as the personnel security director at the White House during President Donald Trump's first two years in office -- as part of the Democrats' investigation into the handling of the security clearance process, including for Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the President's daughter, Ivanka Trump, who are both also White House advisers.

Cummings released a memo Monday detailing an interview with Tricia Newbold, a White House employee who has worked for 18 years in Republican and Democratic administrations and currently serves as the Adjudications Manager in the Personnel Security Office. According to the memo, Newbold, whom Cummings described as a whistleblower, alleges that the White House has overturned the denials of 25 individuals, including two current senior White House officials, saying those decisions were occurring "without proper analysis, documentation, or a full understanding and acceptance of the risks."

"According to Ms. Newbold, these individuals had a wide range of serious disqualifying issues involving foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use, and criminal conduct," Democratic committee staff write in the memo.

A source familiar with Newbold's case told CNN Kushner and Ivanka Trump are on the list of 25 individuals.

The interview took place on March 23.

Elijah Cummings: White House officials using personal accounts to do official work
During a full day of questioning before Democratic and Republican staff on the committee, Newbold aired out an array of concerns about the security clearance process, saying that the White House had stopped doing credit history checks during the review process, lacked security for personnel files and adequate staff during the review process, and allowed for an "unusually high" number of interim security clearances, including for some individuals "who were later deemed unsuitable for access to classified information," according to the memo. And Newbold contended White House officials retaliated against her because she would not easily greenlight security clearances, alleging they sought to "humiliate her" because of her "rare form of dwarfism" by placing personnel security files she needed out of her reach.

"I would not be doing a service to myself, my country, or my children if I sat back knowing that the issues that we have could impact national security," Newbold told the committee, according to the memo.

Newbold's lawyer says she does not have official whistleblower protection because her case is still making its way through the Office of Special Counsel adjudication, which can take a long time. The lawyer, Ed Passman, says there's no such thing as official whistleblower protection but that the office can offer some protections.

The White House did not immediately respond a request for comment, nor did Kline.

The top Republican on the committee, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, called Cummings' memo "unfortunate and disappointing" and "a partisan attack on the White House." Jordan said that GOP members were not given adequate time to prepare for the Newbold interview.

"Furthermore, the memo mischaracterizes the information shared by Ms. Newbold. For instance, the twenty-five examples of overruled recommendations by Ms. Newbold heralded by the Democrats include non-political officials such as a GSA custodian."

On Monday afternoon, Jordan's staff issued a nine-page memo rebutting Cummings, saying that the Democrats "cherry-picked" information from Newbold's interview to assert that the White House had poor procedures over national security matters. Jordan's staff argued that Newbold was unhappy with her work environment and that her main concerns centered on Kline, arguing she knew little about why specific individuals' security clearances had been denied, who overrode those denials and their rationale for doing so. The staff's memo said Newbold told the investigators that just "four to five" individuals out of the 25 had been denied clearances for "very serious reasons," saying just three were current and former employees of the White House.

"If Kline overturned only -- at most -- five clearance adjudications with very serious concerns out of 5,000, Ms. Newbold's concerns seem very overblown," the memo said.

Under the law, the President does have final say when it comes to allowing employees access to classified materials, something that Newbold acknowledged to House investigators, according to the memo.

But Cummings has raised concerns that the White House has ignored basic standards for providing security clearances, instead allowing his inner circle access to the country's innermost secrets without regard to the concerns raised by career professionals. CNN reported last month that Trump pressured senior White House officials to grant Ivanka Trump a security clearance, while The New York Times reported that Trump did the same for Kushner.
The memo does not specify the names of the individuals whose security clearances were initially denied -- only to be overruled by the White House. But it does provide some detail about situations involving two senior White House officials and another who used to work for the National Security Council.

Top oversight Democrat accuses White House of 'unprecedented level of stonewalling, delay and obstruction'
For "senior White House official one," Newbold alleged that the individual's security clearance was denied after the background check revealed "significant disqualifying factors, including foreign influence, outside activities ... and personal conduct." But, she alleged, Kline overruled her recommendation to reject the clearance and merely noted "the activities occurred prior to Federal service," prompting concerns from another federal agency after the official applied for an even higher security clearance.

Similarly, after concerns were raised about "senior White House official two," including over the potential of foreign influence, Kline said "do not touch" the case in a conversation with Newbold, according to the memo, and the individual's security clearance was approved.

For "senior White House official three," who worked at the National Security Council, Kline told Newbold to "change the recommendation" against providing a security clearance, something she said she refused to do.

"I said I would absolutely not," Newbold told the committee.

In their rebuttal memo, Jordan's staff said Newbold had "no direct knowledge" about why Kline overruled her recommendation on the first White House official, and that she acknowledged she did not work on the second White House official's case "specifically." The Jordan memo also contended that the third White House official had never obtained a final security clearance.

Along with releasing the memo Monday, Cummings sent a letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone, accusing the White House of stonewalling his repeated requests for information and saying he would proceed to issue a subpoena for Kline at a committee meeting Tuesday. Cummings warned that he was prepared to issue subpoenas after multiple requests for information went ignored, and said he wanted to interview a number of other officials, including former deputy chief of staff Joseph Hagin.

"In light of the grave reports for the whistleblower -- and the ongoing refusal of the White House to provide the information we need to conduct or investigations -- the Committee now plans to proceed with (the) compulsory process and begin authorizing subpoenas, starting at tomorrow's business meeting," Cummings wrote Monday.

"The Committee will depose Mr. Kline about the security clearance practices in place when he was at the White House, the treatment of specific security clearance adjudications during his tenure, and the interactions with the whistleblower," Cummings wrote.

The White House has continuously argued in their correspondence with Cummings that it had broad jurisdiction to protect security clearance information of individuals and that they had no intention to turn over personal security clearance information with the committee. The White House did provide the committee with a briefing of the administration's security clearance process and a review of "a handful of guidance documents," according to Cummings.

This story has been updated with additional developments Monday.
.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/01/politics ... index.html

FBI expected to brief House and Senate 'Gang of 8' on Mueller's counterintel findings
Attorney General Barr's summary of the Mueller probe is silent about whether investigators found Trump or any associate was influenced by Russia.

The Capitol in Washington early on March 25, 2019.J. Scott Applewhite / AP
March 25, 2019, 1:59 PM CDT / Updated March 25, 2019, 8:45 PM CDT
By Ken Dilanian
WASHINGTON — Two senior U.S. officials told NBC News on Monday that the FBI is prepared to brief congressional leaders on the counterintelligence findings of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into President Donald Trump, and the letter sent to Congress on Sunday by Attorney General William Barr about the Mueller probe is silent on the question of whether investigators found that Trump or anyone around him might be compromised or influenced by Russia.

The officials said they expect the FBI to brief the so-called Gang of 8 — the leaders of the House and the Senate and the chairmen and ranking members of the intelligence committees — in closed session.

No briefing has been scheduled, a third U.S. official familiar with the matter said, but one of the officials said it could happen within the next 30 to 60 days.

Congressional Democrats have demanded such a briefing under a law requiring the executive branch to keep Congress informed about intelligence activities.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said during a conference call with House Democrats on Saturday she would reject any classified briefings, but the Senate Intelligence Committee wants one, according to Senate aides, to assist in its ongoing Russia investigation.

The House Intelligence Committee said it had postponed testimony by Trump associate Felix Sater that was previously scheduled for Wednesday, and would instead focus on interviewing witnesses about counterintelligence. Sater was expected to discuss his work on a proposed Trump Tower in Moscow.

"In light of the cursory statement from the Attorney General," said Patrick Boland, a spokesperson for committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., "and our need to understand Special Counsel Mueller's areas of inquiry and evidence his office uncovered, we are working in parallel with other Committees to bring in senior officials from the DOJ, FBI and SCO [the Office of Special Counsel] to ensure that the Committee is fully and currently informed about the SCO's investigation, including all counterintelligence information."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justic ... el-n987111

[seemslikeadream]

Kushner’s security clearance was flagged by the FBI, CIA, White House security, WH Chief of Staff, and WH Counsel.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlx41NYjq7c


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlMEmK2pPJ8

WATCH: House committee discusses subpoena over White House security clearances
WASHINGTON — A career official in the White House security office says dozens of people in President Donald Trump’s administration were granted security clearances despite “disqualifying issues” in their backgrounds, including concerns about foreign influence, drug use and criminal conduct.

Tricia Newbold, an 18-year government employee who oversaw the issuance of clearances for some senior White House aides, says she compiled a list of at least 25 officials who were initially denied security clearances last year, but senior officials overruled those denials.

The allegations were detailed in a letter and memo released Monday by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. The documents, which are based on Newbold’s March 23 private committee interview, don’t identify the officials on the list but say they include “two current senior White House officials, as well as contractors and individuals” in different parts of the Executive Office of the President.

“According to Ms. Newbold, these individuals had a wide range of serious disqualifying issues involving foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use and criminal conduct,” the memo says.

The release of the documents sets up another fight between the White House and the Democratic-controlled House, and it immediately drew criticism from House Republicans who called the allegations overblown and “cherry-picked.”

Cummings’ panel has been investigating security clearances issued to senior officials including Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former White House aide Rob Porter. That probe has picked up steam after The New York Times reported that Trump ordered officials to grant Kushner a clearance over the objections of national security officials, and after Newbold spoke out to NBC News and other news outlets about her concerns.

On Monday, Cummings said he will move this week to authorize his first subpoena in the probe. The subpoena will be for the deposition of Carl Kline, who served as the White House personnel security director and supervised Newbold. He has since left the White House for the Defense Department.

READ MORE: House Oversight Committee to issue subpoena over White House security clearances

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said on Fox News on Tuesday that she could not talk about individual security clearances, but asserted that Democrats were “acting in bad faith” because they are asking for personal, confidential information “they know they have absolutely no right to see.”

“Let’s not forget 3 million Americans have security clearances that work for the government. By exploiting one, you’re exploiting all of their personal information,” Sanders said.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the committee’s ranking Republican, said in a statement that Cummings’ probe is a “partisan attack” and an “excuse to go fishing” through personnel files. He also said that one person on Newbold’s list is a GSA custodian.

Also, in a response memo circulated to Republican members, Jordan’s staff cast Newbold as a disgruntled employee who had only limited knowledge of the reasons security clearances were granted. The Republican document also suggests Newbold’s concerns were “overblown,” saying that four or five of the clearance denials for “very serious reasons” were a small fraction of about 5,000 employees who work in the Executive Office of the President.

According to Democrat Cummings’ memo, though, Newbold considered the decisions to be part of a “systematic” problem within her office where the decisions of security clearance reviewers were “continuously” overridden.

Newbold said she raised her concerns up the chain of command in the White House to no avail. Instead, she said, the White House retaliated, suspending her in January for 14 days without pay for not following a new policy requiring that documents be scanned as separate PDF files rather than one single PDF file.

Newbold said that when she returned to work in February, she was cut out of the security clearance process. The office also announced a plan to “restructure” that would remove her from a supervisory role, she said.

In response to Newbold’s interview, Cummings is asking the White House to turn over the list she created as well as documents related to the handling of security clearances for several senior officials including Flynn, Kushner and Porter.

Flynn maintained his clearance even after the White House learned that he lied to the FBI about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador and that he was under investigation by the Justice Department for his previous foreign work.

Kushner failed to initially disclose numerous foreign meetings on security clearance forms, and, according to the Times, career officials recommended against granting him a clearance before Trump personally overruled them.

Porter had high-level access with an interim security clearance even though the FBI repeatedly told the White House of past allegations of domestic violence lodged against him by two ex-wives.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/w ... clearances

Committee on Oversight and Reform 116th Congress
A Resolution
Offered by Chairman Elijah E. Cummings
Authorizing Issuance of Subpoena Related to Security Clearances
Resolved, that upon the adoption of this resolution, the Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform is authorized to subpoena the former White House Personnel Security Director Carl Kline to testify in connection with the Committee’s investigation into the security clearance process at the White House.
This resolution is adopted pursuant to Rules 12 and 15 of the Committee on Oversight and Reform and clause 4(c) of Rule X and clause 2(m) of Rule XI of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Committee on Oversight and Reform 116th Congress
A Resolution
Offered by Chairman Elijah E. Cummings
Authorizing Issuance of Subpoenas Related to the 2020 Census
Resolved, that upon the adoption of this resolution, the Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform is authorized to subpoena Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Gore for testimony in connection with the Committee’s investigation into the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census;
Further resolved, that upon the adoption of this resolution, the Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform is authorized to subpoena Attorney General William P. Barr for all records described below:
1. Memorandum and note from James Uthmeier to John Gore in Fall 2017.
2. All documents and communications from January 20, 2017, through December 12, 2017, within the Department of Justice and with outside entities regarding the request to add a citizenship question to the census, including but not limited to the White House, the Commerce Department, the Republican National Committee, the Trump Campaign, or Members of Congress.
Further resolved, that upon the adoption of this resolution, the Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform is authorized to subpoena Secretary of Commerce Wilbur L. Ross, Jr. for all records described below:
1. Unredacted copies of the following documents, including all emails in each email chain, and all attachments:
a. Memorandum and note from James Uthmeier to John Gore in Fall 2017;
b. May 2, 2017, email from Earl Comstock to Wilbur Ross, cc: Ellen Herbst, subject: “Re: Census;”
c. May 2, 2017, email from Wilbur Ross to Wendy Teramoto, subject: “Re: Census;”
d. August 8, 2017, 7:44:29 p.m., email from Wilbur Ross to Earl Comstock, subject: “Re: [redacted];”
e. August 10, 2017, email from Wilbur Ross to Earl Comstock, subject: “Re: Census Matter;”
f. August 11, 2017, email from Earl Comstock to Wilbur Ross, cc: Wendy Teramoto, subject: “Memo on Census Question” (with attachment: “Census Memo Draft2 Aug 11 2017.docx”);
g. September 1, 2017, email from Wilbur Ross to Earl Comstock, cc: Wendy Teramoto, subject: “Re: [redacted];”
h. September 1, 2017, email from Earl Comstock to Wilbur Ross, cc: Wendy Teramoto, subject: “Re: ITA Request for [redacted];”
i. September 7, 2017, email from James Uthmeier to Earl Comstock, cc: Peter Davidson, subject: “RE: Census Matter Follow-Up;”
j. December 20, 2017, email from John Zadrozny to James Uthmeier, subject: “RE: Census Question Request;” and
k. February 26, 2018, email from James Uthmeier to Michael Walsh, subject: “Re: Memos.”
2. All communications from January 20, 2017, through December 12, 2017, between or among officials from the Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau, and any other office or entity inside or outside of the government regarding the addition of a citizenship question.
This resolution is adopted pursuant to Rule 12 and Rule 15 of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and clause 4(c) of Rule X and clause 2(m) of Rule XI of the U.S. House of Representatives.



Per @NBCNews, the House Oversight Committee has served the Trump administration with four subpoenas related to the committee's security clearance and census investigations.

[seemslikeadream]

This person was the DEPUTY FINANCE CHAIR of the anti-abortion party...the party that is pushing for Kavanaugh who will take women's rights away






Amazing report on 1MDB - theft of billions of $ from Malaysian people by network that included ex-prime minister, his son, Jho Low, Saudis, UAE, Swiss banks & others

Elliott Broidy was offered millions to deter the WH & judges from prosecuting DOJ case

https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/11122478 ... me=600x314

In Leonardo DiCaprio’s acceptance speech after winning a Golden Globe in 2014 for his role in The Wolf of Wall Street, he thanked the production team for the film including his collaborators “Riz and Jho”.1

Six months later, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that these two individuals – Riza Aziz and Jho Low – were at the centre of a multi-billion-dollar corruption scandal. It claimed that Aziz had financed The Wolf of Wall Street with money embezzled from a Malaysian government-owned company called 1MDB.

The story of how these two Malaysian businessmen and their associates apparently embezzled billions to fund lavish lifestyles and Hollywood films is a plot worthy of a film of its own. It’s a story of mega-yachts, luxury properties and multi-million-dollar gambling trips. It briefly promoted Low into the world of global celebrities, earning him a reputation as a party animal.2 Paris Hilton was photographed going clubbing with Low and posing topless on his yacht in Saint-Tropez.3 Low also reportedly dated the model Miranda Kerr and used money from 1MDB to buy her over $7 million worth of jewellery.4

But it’s not just a story of glitz and glamour. It’s also a story of major banks and New York lawyers failing to prevent the flow of billions of dollars of dirty cash. And while all of this was happening 1MDB’s finances were given a clean bill of health by some of the world’s most prestigious auditors.
Jho Low and Paris Hilton in Paris in 2010.
Goff Images
At Global Witness, we have been campaigning to tackle the role of professionals who enable corruption for nearly ten years, and this is one of the largest and boldest cases we have seen. Yet while this case’s sheer size is exceptional, there is nothing unique about the ways in which those involved were able to launder the proceeds through the international financial system.

This analysis reveals for the first time the unique insights this case gives into how financial professionals enable high-level corruption. In many ways this analysis, by following one complex case in forensic detail, sheds far more light on this system than the vast range of less detailed revelations from the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers. This analysis does not try to cover the full story of the scandal, or of every bank or lawyer involved, but focuses on some of the most significant players in the 1MDB scandal to reveal insights about the state of the international financial system.

A global anti-money laundering system exists to prevent the laundering of the proceeds of crime through the international financial system. This costs banks and other financial professionals around $8 billion per year.5 Yet as expensive as this system is, it is not nearly as effective as it needs to be. The UN estimates that law enforcement seize and freeze less than 1% of criminal funds laundered through the international financial system.6

These rules are there for a reason. Behind every flow of laundered funds lies a crime, and those crimes have victims.

It now appears likely that 1MDB will fail to repay its debts, given the scale of embezzlement alleged to have taken place. If that happens, the Malaysian government will face a bill greater than the country’s annual healthcare budget.7 In the end, the people of Malaysia will pay the price.

So how did these Malaysian businessmen manage to launder billions of dollars from a government-owned company through the international financial system, as the DoJ alleges? Are the banks, lawyers and auditors involved the real wolves of Wall Street – willing to put morality and the law aside for their pursuit of profit – or are the rules just not fit for purpose?
Leondardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street, which was financed with money taken from 1MDB.
Mary Cybulski / © Paramount Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection / Mary Evans
This analysis will show that for the banks involved, this was not a problem of inadequate regulations - it was a clear failure of those banks to follow the rules. The existing regulations should have prevented the embezzlement of these billions of dollars, yet the banks ignored the rules, turned a blind eye, kept profitable clients and continued handling billions of dollars of dirty money despite clear warning signs.

This does not mean that the rules are perfect. The lawyers involved handled hundreds of millions of dollars from the scheme, yet were never required by law to do any checks on that money. The auditors that gave 1MDB a clean bill of health were never required to blow the whistle despite the increasingly suspect excuses given for the whereabouts of 1MDB’s billions.

Ultimately, this is a story where almost no one involved comes out looking good. It is a story of the failure of the system designed to prevent corruption on such an enormous scale. However, that story also shows where and how action is needed to make sure such scandals never happen again.

How the scheme worked

In total, $4.5 billion was allegedly embezzled from the Malaysian government-owned 1MDB.
ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo
The scheme relied on close collaboration between those within and with influence over 1MDB, and those outside. The embezzlement revolved around those outside 1MDB creating companies that appeared to be investment opportunities for 1MDB. 1MDB then borrowed billions of dollars from investors, largely backed by the Malaysian government, to invest in these companies. Yet rather than 1MDB’s money being invested, it was instead passed through other companies the conspirators controlled to be used for their personal benefit.

The first phase of the scheme involved a joint venture between 1MDB and a Saudi oil company called Petrosaudi.10 Low played a significant role in setting up the deal, organising a meeting between Petrosaudi’s co-founders and Najib on a yacht off the coast on Monaco in the summer of 2009.11 In September, Low emailed his family saying “Just closed the deal with petrosaudi. Looks like we may have hit a goldmin[e].”12

The deal was a goldmine for Low. Under the guise of this joint venture, more than $1 billion of 1MDB funds were instead transferred to a Swiss bank account belonging to a company he owned called Good Star.13 1MDB had borrowed much of this billion dollars from investors and these loans were guaranteed by the Malaysian government.14 As with the subsequent phases, this money was embezzled for the personal benefit of Low and other conspirators and never invested for the benefit of 1MDB or the Malaysian people, the DoJ says.

The second and third stages of the scheme involved another set of joint ventures, this time with Aabar, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund.15 To fund these joint ventures 1MDB borrowed $6.5 billion from investors, the majority of which was ultimately backed by the Malaysian government.16 Of this, $2.6 billion was shifted out of 1MDB to the conspirators’ bank accounts.17

In the second phase, more than a billion dollars went into a Swiss bank account of a company called Aabar. However, this was not the real Aabar, it was a company registered in the British Virgin Islands with the same name, which the DoJ refers to as ‘Aabar-BVI’.18 Qubaisi and Husseiny, officials at Aabar, set up this company with the intention of making it appear as if it was related to the real Aabar – yet nothing could be further from the truth.19 In the third phase, more than a billion dollars more was diverted to a Singapore company bank account owned by an associate of Low called Eric Tan.20

The DoJ's case is that the fourth phase of scheme intended, at least in part, to cover up the huge losses 1MDB had made as its money embezzled in the earlier stages of the scheme had been used to fund lavish lifestyles rather than business investments.21 To do this 1MDB borrowed more than a billion dollars, which it cycled repeatedly through its accounts and a series of opaque offshore companies and investment funds.22 Through these transfers it created the appearance of money flowing into 1MDB from its investments. Yet beneath this appearance, $850 million of this was diverted to Aabar-BVI and another Aabar copy registered in the Seychelles, ‘Aabar-Seychelles’.23

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campai ... /section-3

Trump’s Friend Elliott Broidy to Get Information in Case Against Qatar
By Bob Van Voris and Caleb Melby
June 6, 2018, 8:16 PM CDT
Former Republican party official has sued over email leak
Broidy admitted paying $1.6 million to former Playboy Playmate
Elliott Broidy, the Republican fundraiser and Donald Trump friend whose stolen emails have spilled into public, took a step forward in his pursuit of evidence that Qatar may have been involved.

A federal judge in New York ruled Wednesday that Joey Allaham, a real estate consultant and former owner of a Manhattan kosher steakhouse, must turn over any records showing ties to the government of Qatar. Broidy claims Allaham worked as an unregistered agent for the Middle Eastern nation and has ties to one if its lobbyists, Nicholas Muzin.

The leaked Broidy emails have spawned embarrassing stories on his efforts to use his influence with Trump to the benefit of clients in Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere. Broidy is suing Qatar in federal court in Los Angeles, claiming it’s behind the email hacks in retaliation for his public criticism of the country. Qatar denies Broidy’s allegations.


Elliott Broidy and his wife Robin.Photographer: Alex J. Berliner/ABImages via AP Photo
The email hack is one of two controversies to have dogged Broidy. In April, he stepped down as Republican National Committee deputy finance chair after saying he paid $1.6 million to a former Playboy Playmate he’d impregnated, as part of a hush agreement negotiated by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

Qatar, which is seeking to have Broidy’s suit tossed out, argued against the Allaham subpoena, claiming its communications with officials and agents should be protected. But at a midday hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan gave Allaham 72 hours to comply.

Document Demand

“The judge’s order rightfully affirms that American citizens who are hired by foreign governments are still subject to our laws here in the United States,” Lee Wolosky, a lawyer for Broidy, said in a statement Wednesday.

Allan Anderson, who represents Allaham, didn’t return a voicemail and email seeking comment. Allaham, who isn’t a defendant in the case, is scheduled to give a deposition June 22.

The subpoena demands documents showing Allaham’s communications with Qatari officials and agents, including Muzin, about Broidy and his firm, Broidy Capital Management; records relating to payments to Allaham from Qatar; communications about Allaham’s retention by the country; and communications between Qatar and various law firms, lobbyists and public relations firms about Broidy and Broidy Capital.

Qatar, home to a U.S. air base, has had an unsettled relationship with Trump, who last year denounced the Persian Gulf nation as a “funder of terrorism” but in April welcomed its monarch to the White House. The country has engaged more than two dozen U.S. firms to help lobby the U.S. government, including two recent hires with ties to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney who has focused on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election meddling.

Senior Adviser

On May 21, Qatar’s Attorney General hired Blueprint Advisers, headed by Chris Henick, who previously worked at the consulting and security firm Giuliani Partners LLC, and served as a senior adviser to Giuliani’s 2007 presidential campaign.

Blueprint’s co-chairman, Tony Carbonetti, served as chief of staff to Giuliani when he was mayor, and co-founded the politician’s eponymous consulting firm. Blue Print will be paid $1.2 million for a year’s service.


Qatar also hired Debevoise & Plimpton, with Michael Mukasey signing documents for the law firm. Mukasey has worked with Giuliani for decades -- a relationship so close that he pledged to recuse himself from cases involving Giuliani in 2007, when he was in hearings to be appointed U.S. attorney general. His son Marc Mukasey, a former law partner to Giuliani, was in discussions as recently as a month ago to join Trump’s legal defense team.

The elder Mukasey will receive $1,600 an hour for representing Qatar, according to a May 29 letter. Another attorney, David W. Rivkin, will receive $1,485 per hour.

In an interview, Carbonetti said he’s worked with Qatar for years, but had only recently been asked to perform duties that required registering as a foreign agent. Carbonetti is a former senior adviser at Perella Weinberg Partners, where an investment arm of Qatar has held an ownership stake.

Mukasey didn’t immediately return a call, and a spokesman for Qatar’s embassy in Washington declined to comment.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... inst-qatar

U.S. Probing Whether Malaysian Fugitive Laundered Funds to Pay Chris Christie and Trump Lawyer

Jho Low under investigation for alleged embezzlement of $4.5 billion from 1MDB fund

Tom Wright in Hong Kong and Updated Aug. 29, 2018 12:20 p.m. ET

Malaysian financier Jho Low, now a fugitive, attending a ball in New York City in 2014. Photo: Debby Wong/Corbis

By
Bradley Hope in London,
Rebecca Davis O’Brien in New York
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether a fugitive Malaysian financier laundered tens of millions of dollars through two associates and used the funds to pay a U.S. legal team that includes former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and a lawyer who represents President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Jho Low, the Malaysian businessman, has been described in U.S. court filings as playing a central role in the alleged embezzlement of $4.5 billion from a Malaysian fund called 1Malaysia Development Bhd.

Malaysian authorities this week separately charged Mr. Low with money laundering in the case, which investigators suspect may be one of the biggest financial frauds in history. He has been moving around Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China in recent months, according to people with knowledge of his whereabouts.

Mr. Low was close to former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who unexpectedly lost an election in May and was arrested last month in Kuala Lumpur. Mr. Najib has pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering and criminal breach of trust in connection with the 1MDB scandal.

The Justice Department, in July 2016 and last year, filed civil lawsuits in federal court in California seeking to recover assets from Mr. Low and others including mansions, artwork and a yacht allegedly bought with 1MDB funds. It is now pursuing a criminal investigation in which Mr. Low, who has U.S. assets, is a target, these people said.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is part of Mr. Low’s U.S. legal team.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is part of Mr. Low’s U.S. legal team. Photo: Julio Cortez/Associated Press
Since 2016, Mr. Low’s access to the global financial system has been sharply curtailed by banks wary of handling allegedly tainted funds, according to the people familiar with the matter. That has made it difficult for him to pay directly for a range of outlays, from lifestyle expenses to legal and advisory services, according to these people.

There is no indication that any of the people who ultimately received payments were aware the funds could have originated from money Mr. Low allegedly siphoned off from 1MDB. The Justice Department is investigating Mr. Low’s potential use of two intermediaries to facilitate the payments through the international financial system, people familiar with the matter say. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

Representatives for Mr. Low didn’t respond to a request for comment. He has previously denied wrongdoing.

The team of lawyers and consultants working for Mr. Low includes Mr. Christie, who briefly headed Mr. Trump’s presidential transition team; Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitz ; Bobby Burchfield, a lawyer who has served as the Trump Organization’s outside ethics adviser; and Ed Rogers, a Washington lobbyist with close ties to the Republican Party.

Mr. Christie is representing Mr. Low in the asset-forfeiture cases in California, a spokesman for the former governor said. “There has been no communication by Governor Christie with any other area of government on Mr. Low’s behalf,” the spokesman said, adding there has been “no inquiry made to him by the Department of Justice with regard to any other investigation regarding funding or otherwise."

A spokesman for Kasowitz Benson Torres, Mr. Kasowitz’s New York law firm, confirmed the firm represents Mr. Low in Justice Department matters. “Here, as with all of our clients, our job as attorneys is to represent and vindicate our clients’ interests; and here, as with all of our non-pro-bono clients, we are paid for the legal services we provide,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Mr. Burchfield said, in an emailed statement, that Mr. Low retained his Atlanta-based firm, King & Spalding, to “advise him on the ongoing investigations,” adding that the law firm “performed appropriate due diligence on sources of payment.”

“Further, neither I nor King & Spalding has had contacts with any governmental entity, directly or indirectly, on behalf of Mr. Low, nor has King & Spalding received any inquiries from the Department of Justice regarding this engagement,” Mr. Burchfield said.

Mr. Rogers declined to comment.

The Justice Department is looking into whether a Thai businessman, Phengphian Laogumnerd, and American former rap artist Pras Michel, a founding member of the Fugees hip-hop group, played roles in helping Mr. Low make payments, the people familiar with the matter said.

For at least a year, these people say, Mr. Low has relied on Mr. Phengphian to pay accommodation expenses in Hong Kong and Macau, legal and advisory bills and to keep Mr. Low’s $250-million yacht, Equanimity, fully staffed and maintained until it was seized earlier this month. Justice Department investigators are examining records and money flows related to a series of companies controlled by Mr. Phengphian in Hong Kong and in offshore havens such as the British Virgin Islands to determine whether Mr. Low’s money was involved, the people said.

The Thai businessman also handled payments of tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Low’s lead law firm and advisers, New York-based Kobre & Kim LLP, and British reputation law firm Schillings International LLP, according to the people familiar with the investigation.

“We do not comment on any specific financial arrangements with our clients due to the commercial confidentiality and privileged nature of such information,” said Robin Rathmell, who has identified himself as Mr. Low’s global counsel at Kobre & Kim. Partners at Schillings didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A representative for Mr. Phengphian said his client “is an independently wealthy businessman. The source of his income is nothing to do with—and he has not received any money from—Mr. Low.”

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The representative added: “What he chooses to do with his own funds is his business alone. The Department of Justice has never contacted him about anything, neither have they ever asked him about the source of his funds.”

Mr. Michel was responsible for bringing on another consultant to work on Mr. Low’s behalf: Republican fundraiser and venture-capital executive Elliott Broidy, who was vice chairman of the Trump campaign’s joint fund with the Republican Party during the 2016 presidential campaign. The route of any payments to Mr. Broidy also are part of the Justice Department probe, the people said.

Mr. Broidy’s lawyer has previously said Mr. Broidy and his wife were hired by Mr. Michel “to provide strategic advice as part of a broader team to Mr. Low.”

A lawyer for Mr. Michel said: “I do not know what, if anything, the Department of Justice is currently reviewing, but I am confident that Mr. Michel has not done anything improper.”

The public-integrity section of the Justice Department is separately investigating some of the lobbying work on behalf of Mr. Low, including whether Mr. Broidy attempted to sell his influence in the Trump administration to Mr. Low, who in turn was allegedly acting as an agent of the Malaysian and Chinese governments, people familiar with the investigations said.

A lawyer for Mr. Broidy said: “Elliott Broidy has never agreed to work for, been retained by nor been compensated by any foreign government for any interaction with the United States Government, ever.”

Mr. Low has been seeking to influence the administration to drop its investigations into him and 1MDB, according to people familiar with Mr. Low’s dealings and the Justice Department investigations. The Justice Department investigations overlap and involve some of the same investigators, the people familiar with them said. The Washington Post first reported on the public-integrity investigation.

—Julie Bykowicz in Washington contributed to this article.

Write to Bradley Hope at bradley.hope@wsj.com, Tom Wright at tom.wright@wsj.com and Rebecca Davis O’Brien at Rebecca.OBrien@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
The former Malaysian prime minister arrested in Kuala Lumpur last month is Najib Razak. An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled his name as Najib Rajak. (Aug. 29, 2018)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-probin ... 1535535000

This person was the DEPUTY FINANCE CHAIR of the anti-abortion party...the party that is pushing for Kavanaugh who will take women's rights away

NASTY BOY
Elliott Broidy’s Mistress Shera Bechard Says He Demanded She Get Abortion
Shera Bechard also accused Elliott Broidy of having unprotected sex with her—‘without telling her he had genital herpes.’ Broidy denies the claims.
Justin Miller,
Lachlan Cartwright
09.07.18 5:12 PM ET

George Pimentel/Getty
A major Republican fundraiser allegedly demanded that his Playboy playmate mistress have an abortion. That’s according to accusations leveled by the mistress, Shera Bechard, and revealed in a document unsealed in court on Friday.

Bechard sued Elliott Broidy, the former deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, for allegedly breaching their hush-money agreement that saw the former Playboy playmate receive $1.6 million for her silence about their extramarital affair. Broidy’s attorneys filed a motion in July to redact parts of Bechard’s complaint that contain explosive allegations against him. A judge agreed and redacted portions of Bechard’s complaint this summer.

Broidy’s motion, however, contains the unredacted allegations.

They include Bechard’s claim that Broidy compelled to her to have an abortion; that he refused to wear a condom; and that he had sex with Bechard “without telling her he had genital herpes.” In addition, Broidy allegedly told Bechard he had prostate cancer and that he was unwilling to have his prostate removed “because it would stop him from having sex, which he told her was more important to him than life itself.”


Bechard also claims that she was scared of Broidy because he carried a gun in his car and “had told her that he knew people who could make other people disappear.” She alleges that Keith Davidson—her former attorney who negotiated the hush-money agreement—told her that Broidy would sue her for child support if she kept the baby and that Bechard should “be very very careful.”

The agreement between Bechard and Broidy was drawn up by President Donald Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, using some of the same language he wrote for a non-disclosure agreement to silence Stormy Daniels about her alleged affair with Trump. Cohen pleaded guilty to breaking the law to silence Daniels and Karen McDougal, who also alleged an affair with Trump.

Before their relationship ended, Broidy allegedly pushed her to “drink excessively so that she would be more compliant toward his physical abuse.” Broidy also hurt her during sex, she alleges, and talked about wanting to “skull fuck” her.


“This person tried to extract money from me by making up false, malicious, and disgusting allegations. I have acknowledged making the mistake of having an affair, and I entered a confidential agreement to protect my family’s privacy,” the statement reads. “I honored my agreement until her lawyer breached it—and then, when I failed to pay her demands, she did what blackmailers do and went public with her lies. I will vigorously defend myself against these false and defamatory allegations, and I will seek all relief available to me under the settlement agreement against her and her attorneys.”

Broidy’s attorneys called the allegations “spurious” and false in the motion before Los Angeles superior court. They argued that purported facts about Broidy are protected by his constitutional right to privacy, and said disclosing allegations to the public are irrelevant to as a matter of law and improper because their disclosure violates their settlement agreement.

A spokeswoman for Stris & Maher said: "Elliott Broidy continues to viciously attack our client, Shera Bechard, in the press—this time because a judge found his legal arguments for secrecy unavailing and because his own lawyers failed to do their jobs. We will not be intimidated as we work to vindicate our client’s rights."
https://www.thedailybeast.com/elliott-b ... t-abortion

Ex-Mistress Accuses Longtime RNC Leader Elliott Broidy Of Physical, Sexual Abuse, Complaint Shows

The former Playboy model also says in the complaint that the major Republican donor thought Donald Trump was “an idiot.”

Yashar Ali
Shera Bechard, a former Playboy Playmate who had a four-year affair with former Republican National Committee Deputy Chairman Elliott Broidy, says he subjected her to physical and sexual abuse and that he exposed her to herpes. These allegations are in a complaint that remains sealed under court order in a lawsuit filed by Bechard contending that Broidy ceased making payments on a $1.6 million hush money agreement.

The complaint contains significant allegations about Broidy’s sexual and medical history and his relationship with President Donald Trump. Bechard says that Broidy called the president “an idiot, who could not even pronounce the names of countries correctly” but that Broidy “admired Mr. Trump’s uncanny ability to sexually abuse women and get away with it.”

Bechard also alleges that Broidy was emotionally abusive and told her that she couldn’t date or be seen with other men, and that he wanted her financially dependent on him. She also says in the complaint that Broidy told her she was “fat and needed to fix it” and pushed her to undergo liposuction.

Broidy’s attorneys have told the court that the allegations partially detailed in this story needed to be stricken from the complaint because they weren’t material to the lawsuit and involved Broidy’s personal health and medical information.

In a statement sent to HuffPost, Broidy said:

“This person tried to extract money from me by making up false, malicious and disgusting allegations. I have acknowledged making the mistake of having an affair, and I entered a confidential agreement to protect my family’s privacy. I honored my agreement until her lawyer breached it—and then, when I failed to pay her demands, she did what blackmailers do and went public with her lies. I will vigorously defend myself against these false and defamatory allegations, and I will seek all relief available to me under the settlement agreement against her and her attorneys.”

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A spokeswoman for Stris & Maher, the firm that represents Bechard, said in a statement late Friday: “Elliott Broidy continues to viciously attack our client, Shera Bechard, in the press — this time because a judge found his legal arguments for secrecy unavailing and because his own lawyers failed to do their jobs. We will not be intimidated as we work to vindicate our client’s rights.”

Bechard met Broidy, a Republican donor and investor, at a California restaurant in 2013, and they carried on an extramarital affair (Broidy is married) during which Broidy financially supported Bechard.

Broidy is also the subject of a criminal investigation being conducted by the Department of Justice. The investigation, according to The Washington Post, is centered on Broidy’s business activities with foreign officials and whether he sought to sell “US government actions... in exchange for tens of millions of dollars.”

This article has been updated with a statement from Shera Bechard’s legal representatives.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/el ... 2d2ea3?acq

Trump Official Did Undisclosed Work With Scandal-Plagued GOP Fundraiser
BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JUNE 24: Fred Sands and Elliot Broidy attend Dedication And Celebration Dinner For The Fred Sands Institute Of Real Estate At Graziadio School, Pepperdine University at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel on June 24, 2015 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images for Pepperdine University)Stefanie Keenan/Getty Images North America
By Justin Elliot ProPublica
October 25, 2018 2:08 pm
Meetings arranged for Elliott Broidy, a major Trump fundraiser and former Republican National Committee official, should have triggered foreign agent registration, experts say.

A current State Department official helped a top fundraiser for Donald Trump arrange meetings with U.S. senators and Angolan officials in early 2017, according to emails obtained by ProPublica. Neither the official nor the fundraiser registered as a foreign agent.


Aryeh Lightstone helped plan the January 2017 meetings with U.S. senators, high-ranking Angolan government officials and the Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy, the emails show. Several months later, Lightstone was appointed by the Trump administration to a top position in the U.S. Embassy in Israel. The involvement of a now-sitting Trump administration official in Broidy’s work has not previously been reported.

Broidy has since been embroiled in scandal, stepping down from his Republican National Committee deputy finance chair post after the revelation that he agreed to pay $1.6 million in a settlement with a Playboy model he reportedly impregnated. (Broidy has said it was just to help her financially, and he stopped paying her after the arrangement became public.)

The Washington Post reported in August that the Justice Department is investigating whether Broidy “sought to sell his influence with the Trump administration by offering to deliver U.S. government actions for foreign officials.” Several news outlets have also reported that Broidy worked for or sought to do business with a Malaysian financier and the United Arab Emirates. (Learn more about Broidy in this “Trump, Inc.” podcast episode.)

Some legal experts argue that Lightstone and Broidy should have registered with the government for the Angolan meetings, though representatives for both dispute that. Work for foreign governments must be publicly reported under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people conducting business with foreign countries for political purposes to disclose and periodically report details of that work.

“Arranging meetings between a foreign government and U.S. government officials to discuss the foreign policy of the U.S. vis-à-vis a foreign government or to discuss the relationship between the U.S. and the foreign county would in my view count as political activities requiring registration,” said Joshua Rosenstein, a FARA specialist at the law firm Sandler Reiff.


For years, the foreign agents law was sparsely enforced. Recently, the Justice Department has pursued high-profile prosecutions based on the law, most notably of former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, who was paid millions to represent a Ukrainian political party.

Broidy’s attorney said in a statement he “has never done any work, in relation to Angola or otherwise, that would require registration under FARA.” He declined to comment on the Post report of a Justice Department investigation, calling it a “rumor.”

In a statement, Lightstone said he “never worked for or received any compensation from Elliott Broidy, Threat Deterrence, or Circinus,” referring to Broidy’s companies. The statement added that Lightstone “has never engaged in activity that would require him to register under FARA.” The State Department declined to comment.

In January 2017, Angola paid Broidy’s company $6 million for intelligence services, according to the emails and Broidy’s lawyer. The Angolan defense and intelligence minister were in Washington and were “looking forward to fostering a closer relationship with the United States and the Trump Administration,” Broidy’s assistant said in a Jan. 15, 2017, email to an aide for Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

The emails show that Lightstone helped plan the meetings with Cotton and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; the Angolan officials; and Broidy. In one email to Broidy under the subject line “Contacts & next steps,” Lightstone lists several senators and advice for how to approach them.


“Cotton – ideal lunch in Senate dining room,” Lightstone wrote. “My gut is if we can lock in these Senators we have a good showing – plus the group you have on the house side [sic].” He added, “Please advise if I am looking to do anything else?”

In his statement, Broidy’s attorney described the meetings as “simply handshake opportunities and purely introductory in nature” and added that “no substantive matters of any kind were discussed. There certainly were no policy-related discussions.”

In July 2017, several months after Lightstone helped arrange the meetings for the Angolans, he was appointed to the Israel Embassy post. He is now considered one of the most influential people in the embassy as a top aide to Ambassador David Friedman. Lightstone’s connection to Broidy has not been previously reported.

Lightstone and Broidy have long been friends and fixtures in pro-Israel advocacy circles. They co-hosted fundraisers focused on pro-Israel advocacy in the 2016 election cycle for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. Lightstone also owns a stake in Broidy’s company, Threat Deterrence Capital LLC, as ProPublica previously reported.

Angola, which is a major oil producer, has military and economic interests with the U.S. government. In May 2017 Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis signed a memorandum of understanding with the Angolan defense minister to “enhance the security cooperation” between the U.S. and Angola. That was the same official, João Lourenço, for whom Lightstone helped arranged meetings with U.S. senators. Lourenço is now president of the country.


Broidy’s attorney, Chris Clark of Latham & Watkins, described the emails about Broidy’s dealings with the Angolans as “stolen and likely doctored.” He declined to give specific examples of any emails that had been altered. Broidy this year sued Qatar and several people accusing them of hacking his emails to retaliate against him for working for one of Qatar’s regional rivals, the United Arab Emirates. Qatar has denied the allegations.

The embassy of Angola and the offices of Cotton and Johnson did not respond to requests for comment.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/arye ... ott-broidy

Disgraced Trump Fundraiser Tried to Use GOP Contacts to Score “Billions” in Africa

Here’s another chapter in the Elliott Broidy saga.

David Corn

December 12, 2018 11:04 AM



In late 2016, as Donald Trump was readying to move into the White House, Elliott Broidy, then one of the Republican Party’s top fundraisers, was working on a deal to gain control of what a business partner called “billions of dollars in oil & gas, and mining assets” in Angola. And while he was trying to pull together this gigantic venture—as well as mounting another project to provide intelligence services to the Angolan government—Broidy used his clout to hook up top Angolan government officials with members of the US Congress and the Trump administration. It was a swampy endeavor involving old-fashioned political influence, a Beverly Hills activist and realtor, and a Nigerian American businessman who had been a close friend of Michael Jackson.

Broidy is no longer a power player wielding sway in the Republican cosmos. Early this year, he faced a series of media stories that raised questions about his business dealings (which included ventures with the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Romania, and the Republic of Congo) and alleged influence peddling. Those articles were based on emails hacked from his personal accounts. Broidy subsequently sued Qatar, claiming Qatari officials orchestrated the hacks and a smear campaign because Broidy, a vigorous supporter of the Israeli government, was a vocal opponent of Qatar. (In August, a federal judge dismissed the government of Qatar as a defendant in the case.) And in April, news broke that Broidy had in 2017 used Michael Cohen, then Trump’s personal lawyer, to pay $1.6 million in hush money to a Playboy model with whom he had an extramarital affair. Broidy soon resigned as deputy finance chair of the Republican Party. In August, the Washington Post reported he was under federal investigation for possibly selling his influence within the Trump administration to foreign officials for tens of millions of dollars. And recently, federal prosecutors implicated Broidy in a scheme under which millions of dollars ended up in his wife’s law firm in return for Broidy helping a Malaysian financier, who was accused of embezzling billions, end a Justice Department investigation.

This venture involved, Broidy’s business partner wrote in an email, the Angolans “signing over billions of dollars in oil & gas, and mining assets.”
The hacked Broidy emails are an incomplete set of records. The hackers obviously disseminated material to cast the businessman/fundraiser in a negative light. But the emails do depict slices of Broidy’s world in which he attempted to grease deals with ties he forged as a top fundraiser for Trump and the Republican Party. And Broidy’s wheeling and dealing in Angola—a full account of which has not yet been reported—reveal how he mixed commerce and politics.

The story begins with an unlikely hook-up: a prominent Beverly Hills resident named Lisa Korbatov brokering a partnership between Broidy and Dolapo Asiru, a Nigerian American dealmaker. On his LinkedIn page, Asiru describes himself as a “highly regarded international investment banker and diplomat” who “has represented African governments at the United Nations and regularly advises other governments on all aspects of their financial planning, investments and international trade.” In 2001, Asiru was sued by Motown for being connected to a company that the record label complained was infringing on its trademark by using the Jackson5.com domain name. (Asiru says that his attorney “not only demonstrated that the action lacked merit, but achieved a confidential and very satisfactory financial settlement in my favor. On a personal note, that frivolous lawsuit never affected my relationship with Michael Jackson who was one of my close friends.”) In 2008, Asiru attended a state dinner at the George W. Bush White House for the president of Ghana. A columnist for Africa News in 2009 called him “one of Nigeria’s most influential men in America.” Asiru, an American citizen, has donated to Republican political candidates, most notably Mitt Romney.

In the latter months of 2016, Lisa Korbatov, a realtor, member of the Beverly Hills school board, and pro-Israel activist, connected Broidy with Asiru, according to sources familiar with the deal. Actually, they already knew each other.

About a decade earlier, Asiru, who had links to the ruling family of Gabon, and Broidy had been involved in a venture in the coastal African country. But that deal—of which there are scant public details—never materialized. “It imploded,” says a former Broidy associate. (The Gabon venture might have ended in a legal fight. In one of the hacked emails, Asiru, writing to Broidy, refers to “litigation with Gabon.”) And around that time, Broidy’s overall dealmaking hit a major roadblock. In 2009, he pleaded guilty to charges he had handed out $1 million in illegal gifts to New York state officials so they would invest $250 million from the state’s pension fund in Broidy’s investment company. (Three years later, after Broidy had cooperated with prosecutors, a federal judge reduced his felony conviction to a misdemeanor.)

Broidy’s involvement in that crime put a crimp in his relationship with Asiru, and by 2016, they were not on the best terms, according to sources familiar with the men. But Asiru had some business prospects he wanted to share with Broidy, and Korbatov, a social acquaintance of both, brought the pair together again. “Elliot wanted to pitch companies in Africa,” a former Broidy associate recalls. (Korbatov and her husband, Igor Korbatov, met Asiru in 2007, when a trust controlled by her parents bought a Beverly Hills mansion from the family of Omar Bongo, the longtime dictator of Gabon. Asiru was then the “managing member” of the limited liability company that officially owned the property for the Bongo family.)

Korbatov convinced the two men they should once again throw in with each other. On December 7, 2016, Broidy, Asiru, and Korbatov signed a memorandum of agreement related to a joint venture called BCH Development Group. A later amendment to this memorandum noted that Korbatov would get a finder’s fee of 3 percent for any security contract negotiated by the Republic of Angola and Circinus, a security firm Broidy owned. And Asiru would pocket 30 percent.

Asiru and Broidy at this point were working on at least two different ventures in Angola. As 2016 was ending, the hacked emails show, the pair finished up a deal under which Circinus would set up and operate an “Open Source Intelligence Center” for the Angolan government. Much of the paperwork for that project was handled by Circinus executives. The contract was worth $12 million.

Yet at the same time, Broidy and Asiru had their eyes on a bigger prize: They were developing a deal with Grupo Simples, an Angola-based oil services company that in late 2015 had been assigned oil concessions by Angola’s state-owned oil company for possible development. (The company, at that point, had no experience developing oil wells.) This venture involved, Asiru noted in an email to Broidy, the Angolans “signing over billions of dollars in oil & gas, and mining assets” to BCH Development, the company formed pursuant to the agreement between Broidy, Asiru, and Korbatov.

Asiru was Broidy’s go-between with Grupo Simples. In a December 29, 2016, email from Asiru to Broidy—under the subject head, “Framework Agreement Between BCH Development Group and Grupo Simples Oil”—Asiru included a note from Alberto Mendes, the head of the Angola company, requesting that Asiru “urgently send me the due diligence” on BCH Development, including “formation year, directors, basic information.” Asiru pointed out to Broidy that “the Angolans are concerned” about striking a deal with “a newly formed entity (BCH Development Group). We need to show some history to avoid raising any Red Flags.”

As Broidy and Asiru were working with Angolans on the oil deal and the intelligence center, Broidy used his Republican Party connections to obtain invitations to Trump’s inauguration for two Angolan officials.
Asiru had some ideas how to assuage the concerns of their Angolan partners. He asked Broidy whether they should tell the Angolans that BCH Development Group was formed as an affiliate of the company he and Broidy had used for their earlier dealings in Gabon. This way, Asiru added, they could “show some history.” Asiru also noted they needed “to provide some credible names to add to the board of Advisory for BCH.”

Broidy replied in an email that same day and said Asiru should not “tie BCH Development Group, LLC to any BCH Group entity that relates to Gabon.” Instead, Broidy instructed Asiru to tell the Angolans that BCH Development Group was formed in 2016 and that its directors included Asiru, Broidy, and Korbatov, with only Broidy and Asiru having “signature authority.” Broidy noted it was his understanding that Asiru had already “formed” BCH Development Group in Delaware. Yet a corporation of that name was not created in Delaware until three days later, on January 1, 2017.

Though Korbatov was part of this company, she was unaware Broidy was pursuing this mammoth deal in Angola, according to sources familiar with this episode.

As Broidy and Asiru were working with Angolans on the oil deal and the intelligence center, Broidy used his Republican Party connections to obtain invitations to Trump’s inauguration for two Angolan officials: João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, the defense minister, and André de Oliveira João Sango, the director of external intelligence. In a January 3, 2017, letter to the two men—on BCH Development Group letterhead—Broidy invited Sango and Lourenço to the inauguration, and he also included a copy of the contract for the Circinus project in Angola and asked them to sign and return the paperwork within six days. The letter was drafted by Asiru.

Lourenço and Sango accepted the invitation, and while they were in Washington for the inauguration, Broidy, according to the hacked emails, arranged for them to meet Republican members of Congress, including Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). The meetings were set up by Aryeh Lightstone, a leading Orthodox Jewish rabbi and businessman who owned a stake in a Broidy company called Threat Deterrence Capital LLC. (Lightstone, a well-connected player in GOP circles, is now a senior adviser to Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.) In one email, a Broidy aide informed Lightstone that the meetings would include Broidy, Asiru, Lourenço, and Sango, as well as Alberto Mendes of Grupo Simples and Mario Gomes, another executive from the company. (The email did not explain why the two Angolan oil executives would be present.) Broidy appeared to be blending politics with his Angola business dealings: the intelligence center he was establishing for the government and the big oil endeavor he was pursuing. Reporting on Lightstone’s role in arranging these meetings, ProPublica recently noted, “Some legal experts argue that Lightstone and Broidy should have registered [as foreign agents] with the [US] government for the Angolan meetings, though representatives for both dispute that.” (Lightstone did not respond to an email request for comment.)

In mid-January 2016, Broidy received the first payment from Angola for the intelligence center project. It was for $6 million, but Broidy had been expecting $8 million, per his agreement with the Angolan government. He accepted the lower payment but requested Angola pay the rest of the $12 million fee within 180 days. According to the hacked emails, he would spend the coming months pushing the Angola government to pay up. (For her role, Korbatov pocketed $180,000. The emails do not show how much of a fee, if any, Asiru received.)

In February, Alan Blaine Stone, founder and CEO of Circinus, emailed Broidy that he needed a signed contract related to the firm’s Angola project: “I wanted to let you know that we need something from the Angolans signed even if it just says we’re ‘consulting and advising’ with the US Government; something to put in the records to show that we are on contract in order to justify the influx of funds.” Soon after that, Broidy asked Asiru to send him the signed contract for the company’s files, noting, “You mentioned that it was provided to you some time ago.” (Lawyers for Broidy say he provided the Angolans with no advice or consulting services related to the US government and that the Circinus contract only covered setting up and operating the open-source intelligence center in Angola.)

At this time, Broidy was chasing after yet another venture in Angola. In February 2017, Fran Moore, a former top CIA official who was a board member of the Broidy-owned Threat Deterrence Capital, sent an email to Broidy noting she wanted to “strengthen” a proposal related to Angola. This project aimed at diminishing the “high-level of corruption” in Angola in order to create a “better investment atmosphere,” according to Juan Zarate, a former deputy national security adviser in the Bush-Cheney White House and now chairman of the Financial Integrity Network, a consulting firm specializing in thwarting money laundering. Zarate tells Mother Jones that Broidy had heard Zarate’s firm wanted to develop business in Africa, reached out to him, and said he could “get a proposal from us in front of the Angolan government.” In an email Zarate sent Broidy, he referred to this endeavor as “an ambitious and important project for the Angolans (and us).”

Asiru, Zarate recalls, was going to make contacts for the Financial Integrity Network in Angola and would earn a finder’s fee, if a contract were signed. Asiru, Zarate says, “was very well-versed in African politics and business. Well-connected. He was a business mover-and-shaker.”

As Broidy was trying to do all this assorted business in Angola, he was using his political bonds to connect Lourenço, the Angolan defense minister, with the Trump White House. In a February 27, 2017, email to Asiru about the anti-corruption project, Broidy reported, “I will be at the White House meeting with VP Pence, CoS Priebus etc. tomorrow and can begin to set the wheels in motion for a meeting for the Defense Minister.”

“I wanted to let you know that we need something from the Angolans signed even if it just says we’re ‘consulting and advising’ with the US Government; something to put in the records to show that we are on contract in order to justify the influx of funds.”
And Broidy was willing to go all the way to the top. In this email, Broidy noted he would be visiting with “President Trump this weekend at Mira Largo [sic] (Friday) and on [casino owner and GOP fundraiser] Steve Wynn’s Yacht Aquarius on Saturday evening. I can also ask Trump for the meeting.” He noted it might be tough to arrange a meeting for the Angolan defense minister for this weekend, but added, “[W]e can certainly accomplish [it] this month predicated on next deal for BCH and immediate collection of balance.” The message seemed clear: If Angola paid what Broidy believed he was owed and moved ahead with a new project, he would use his political juice to arrange a face-to-face between Lourenço and Trump officials.

In this email, Broidy referred to a conversation he had with Sango, the Angolan intelligence chief, a few weeks earlier at a high-end Washington, DC, restaurant: “The bottom line is that Sango looked me in the eye and promised at the Occidental Grill lunch that the funds would be sent by early February; I asked for January payment. Sango was effusive in his praise and said that I had exceeded all of his expectations. He needs to hear from me that this…treatment of us is unacceptable and that payment needs to be made now. I can also convey things directly that he will appreciate.” Then Broidy referred to the two Grupo Simples officials: “Of course Mario and Alberto can join us on the call.” This suggests that somehow the oil deal Broidy was pursuing with Grupo Simples was connected to his interactions with Angolan government officials.

Days later, Broidy wrote directly to Lourenço and asked if he would be “joining us for the events at Miro Largo.” He told the Angolan defense minister, “Many preparations have been made in advance of your visit, including additional meetings at the Capitol and the Department of Treasury.” He added that Sango “promised me that the balance of the payment due would be received by early February.” He asked Lourenço to send the money immediately.

The available emails do not indicate how the Angolans replied. The anti-corruption plan, though, didn’t get that far and fizzled out, according to Zarate. “Doing what we do is hard,” Zarate says. “It requires a real transformation of culture.”

Lawyers for Broidy maintain that Broidy didn’t discuss any Angola projects with either Trump or Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and they insist Broidy did not trade on his White House connections to receive payments from Angola or to win contracts there. “That message was never conveyed” to the Angolans, a Broidy attorney notes. “What was written down there [in Broidy’s February 27 email to Asiru] never happened.”

In May 2017, Lourenço signed a memo of understanding with Mattis to boost “security cooperation” between Angola and the United States. “The Angolan defense minister met with Mattis on his own, having nothing to do with Elliott,” a Broidy lawyer says.

Come June, Broidy was still after the Angolans to pay the $6 million. And in an August 22, 2017, email exchange with Broidy, Korbatov asked him for help for her effort to stop a mass transit project that would pass beneath Beverly Hills High School, and Broidy informed her he had “a path” to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. “Let me work on it a bit,” he said. In response, Korbatov said she was “nagging” Asiru—a reference, according to sources familiar with this project, to collecting the payment the Angolan government owed Broidy. “He’s waiting for the [Angola] election to finish,” Korbatov reported.

The Angolan presidential election was the following day. Lourenço won the presidency. Days later, Broidy drafted a congratulatory message that noted, “We look forward to continuing to work together [to] support you and your country….Please let me know if I can be helpful to you during your transition and I look forward to speaking with you soon.” Three months later, after Lourenço had assumed office, Broidy wrote him, offering to set up a visit for Lourenço to the United States and “possibly” a meeting with Trump or Vice President Mike Pence. “I am able to assess and advise in this matter,” he pointed out. At the time, Broidy was still looking to collect the $6 million the Angola government owed him.

That money, as of September 2018, still had not come, according to Broidy’s attorneys, yet his company was still performing services under the contract. His lawyers also note that the oil deal with Grupo Simples—which Asiru said could involve “billions”—never happened. (In May 2017, the new head of Sonangol, Angola’s state-owned oil company, put a hold on concessions it had granted earlier. And once Lourenço took office, he took steps to overhaul Sonangol, which had been criticized for a lack of transparency.) Mendes and Gomes of Grupo Simples did not reply to repeated emails requesting comment. Angola’s embassy also did not respond to requests for comment.

Asiru declined to answer questions about his involvement in Broidy’s deals in Angola. “Regrettably, I must decline to comment since I now realize your questions pertain to outreach programs I support that are helpful to African countries,” he wrote in an email to Mother Jones. “All these endeavors are covered by a range of confidentiality arrangements, hence the reason I must decline to make any further comments.” In a subsequent text message, Asiru said, “I continue to work with major multinational corporations, NGOs and government agencies to improve the economic situation in Africa. I am proud of my relationships and my reputation. I have never engaged in, nor ever been accused of, unlawful activities. Elliott has been involved in many businesses, including a few ventures in which I participated. The accusations against Elliott do not involve me. Guilt based on mere association smacks of a sad era that I thought concluded more than 60 years ago.” He added, “Be assured, I’ll respond vigorously to any libel or slander by you or your colleagues to link me in any way with any of Elliott Broidy’s alleged misdeeds. Please govern yourself accordingly.”

Broidy’s attorneys did not respond to a list of additional questions about his Angola dealings submitted by Mother Jones.

After helping the GOP regain the White House, Broidy has become a poster child for Trump-era corruption. He has generated headlines about multiple controversies—personal, political, and business
And there could be more Broidy stories to come. But the Angola episode illustrates how Broidy, having used the Trump campaign and victory to establish himself as a force within the Republican Party, did business—and indicates there is a public interest in learning the full story of how Broidy put his Trump and Republican connections to personal use.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... in-africa/

DOJ Probes Whether Fugitive Financier Supplied Donation to Trump Re-Election Effort
Justice Department investigates whether the $100,000 contribution came from Malaysian businessman charged in a global scandal
By Tom Wright and Bradley Hope
Updated March 13, 2019 11:46 a.m. ET
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether $100,000 donated to a Trump-related political fundraising committee originated from a fugitive Malaysian businessman alleged to be at the center of a global financial scandal, according to people familiar with the matter.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/doj-probes ... 1552482187

Federal Authorities Raided Trump Fundraiser’s Office in Money Laundering Probe

A sealed search warrant obtained by ProPublica shows federal agents scoured Elliott Broidy’s office for documents related to China, Saudi Arabia and a Miami Beach club promoter.

by Robert Faturechi and Justin Elliott
March 18, 5 a.m. EDT
Federal authorities raided the office of Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy last summer, seeking records related to his dealings with foreign officials and Trump administration associates, according to a sealed search warrant obtained by ProPublica.

Agents were authorized to use the megadonor’s hands and face to unlock any phones that required fingerprint or facial scans.

The Washington Post reported in August that the Justice Department was investigating Broidy. The sealed warrant offers new details of federal authorities’ investigation of allegations that Broidy had attempted to cash in on his Trump White House connections in dealings with foreign officials. It also shows that the government took a more aggressive approach with the Trump ally than was previously known, entering his office and removing records — just as it did with Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

Broidy served as a major Trump campaign fundraiser and was the national deputy finance chair of the Republican National Committee until he resigned in April 2018, when it was revealed he had agreed to secretly pay off a former Playboy model in exchange for her silence about their affair.

The search warrant cites three potential crimes that authorities are investigating: conspiracy, money laundering and violations of the law barring covert lobbying on behalf of foreign officials. To obtain a search warrant, authorities have to convince a judge that there’s a probable cause they will find evidence of those specific crimes.

The search warrant also for the first time links Broidy to a globe-trotting Miami Beach party promoter.

The warrant, filed in July 2018, targeted Broidy’s office in Los Angeles. The scope of what authorities were seeking was broad. They planned to seize any evidence related to a list of dozens of people, countries and corporate entities, according to the warrant. Among the names on the list are Rick Gates, the former Trump campaign official who has pleaded guilty in the Mueller probe; Colfax Law Office, the firm founded by Robin Rosenzweig, Broidy’s wife; and several foreign countries.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the FBI declined to comment for this story.

Broidy’s attorney as well as a spokesman did not answer a list of detailed questions sent by ProPublica.

Broidy, an investor based in Los Angeles, pleaded guilty in 2009 to charges connected to his role in a major New York state public corruption and bribery case. But after backing Trump for president, he saw his star rise again. After the inauguration, he played a central role in filling administration vacancies, according to reports by ProPublica and others.

However, he once again quickly became mired in controversy, amid allegations of influence peddling and his dealings with the former Playboy model.

The search warrant shows that federal authorities are interested in Broidy’s alleged work for the Malaysian financier Jho Low, who is at the center of a sprawling international scandal known as 1MDB. In November, the Justice Department unveiled a bribery and money laundering case against Low.

In a separate filing in November, the Justice Department alleged that Broidy was paid by Low to lobby Trump administration officials to ease off on U.S. investigations into Low. Broidy is not identified by name in the filings, but he is widely reported to be the person referred to as “Individual No. 1.” Broidy has not been charged with a crime, and it’s unclear what the status of the investigation is.

Pras Michel, a member of the hip-hop group The Fugees and an associate of Low’s, funnelled the money to pay Broidy into the United States, the Justice Department alleged. Asked about the Broidy search warrant, a lawyer for Michel, Barry Pollack, said: “There has been news of this Broidy investigation for many months. Mr. Michel has not been charged with any wrongdoing whatsoever related to Mr. Broidy or anyone else.”

Federal authorities were also seeking records in Broidy’s office related to the United Arab Emirates, UAE adviser George Nader, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and any travel to the Middle East.

The New York Times reported last year that Broidy worked with Nader to steer the White House toward decisions benefiting the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Documents reviewed by the Times showed that Nader tempted Broidy with the prospect of more than $1 billion in contracts for Broidy’s private security company. Hacked communications showed Nader praised Broidy for “how well you handle Chairman” — a reference to Trump.

Nader became a cooperating witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian influence in the 2016 election, according to multiple news reports.

Broidy’s attorney has in the past responded to the allegations with a statement saying Broidy “has never agreed to work for, been retained by nor been compensated by any foreign government for any interaction with the United States Government, ever. Any implication to the contrary is a lie.”

According to the warrant, federal authorities also sought to seize any records related to China and Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman and dissident who fled to New York, where he publicly accused the Chinese government of corruption.

The Times reported that Broidy explored plans to use his influence with the White House to force Guo out of the United States, apparently as part of an effort to curry favor with the Chinese and other foreign officials, and ultimately earn a payoff.

The search warrant for Broidy’s office also lists a name and corporation not previously linked to Broidy: “Joel Rouseau” and “Intelligent Resources.” There is a company by that name incorporated in Miami Beach by a Joel Rousseau, who is a friend of Michel’s. The search warrant does not describe Rousseau or Intelligent Resources’ role in the case.

Rousseau’s Instagram account shows him bouncing from Rio to Paris to Ibiza, frequently surrounded by models. “If you want to be successful, you need the beautiful people,” he told Crain’s New York in 2007, which described him as a specialist “in bringing agency models to clubs.” In another series of pictures, he is at an oil site in Haiti with workers he describes as his drilling crew. Rousseau made a foray into politics in 2012 when he donated tens of thousands of dollars to several Democratic Party groups.

Filings in a court case over unpaid taxes describe Rousseau as an “entrepreneur” with income swinging from under $1,000 for 2009 to over $2 million in 2013. He paid a long-standing bill for back taxes and penalties of more than $700,000 in late 2017, the filings show.

The address for Intelligent Resources is a house on Miami Beach’s exclusive Hibiscus Island. The person answering the door at the house last week told a reporter he had rented the house on Airbnb. Rousseau didn’t respond to requests for comment.
https://www.propublica.org/article/fede ... ring-probe

Justin Elliott

NEW: Feds raided Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy’s office in money laundering probe https://www.propublica.org/article/fede ... ring-probe … from @RobertFaturechi and me


‏
Here's a bit more about an intriguing aspects of this story: there are two new names on the Broidy search warrant -- Joel Rouseau and Intelligent Resources. There’s a company with that name registered in Miami to a Joel Rousseau.

Rousseau, a promoter who has been described as a specialist in getting models for night club parties, has one of the most interesting instagram accounts I’ve seen:

Image

Mostly model parties, trips to Europe, and the like, but then also him at an oil drilling site in Haiti ...

Image

Rousseau is a friend of Pras Michel, the former Fugees star who has been linked to Broidy through the 1MDB scandal -- here they are at a Pras birthday party years ago:
https://celebrityvibe.photoshelter.com/ ... FdatSLKIms …


Rousseau is also a one-time political donor, generously spreading tens of thousands to Barack Obama and various Dem outfits in 2012. That was the same year of Pras Michel donations to Dems that have been scrutinized by the WSJ @bradleyhope @TomWrightAsia


Rousseau also has a tax court case showing his income bouncing from close to zero one year to $2 million a few years later. He then paid a longstanding tax and penalty bill of more than $700k in late 2017. Rousseau didn’t respond to requests for comment.
https://www.documentcloud.org/search/pr ... court-case …

But we still don’t really know how Joel Rouseau and Intelligent Resources connect to the Broidy case -- do you? My email: justin@propublica.org Signal: 774-826-6240
https://twitter.com/JustinElliott/statu ... 0859139072

Wendy Siegelman

Nov 2018 thread on DOJ case involving Elliott Broidy - former co-chair RNC finance committee w/Michael Cohen & Steve Wynn

Broidy is on my list of Trump associates I expect to be indicted likely re: 1MDB & efforts to extradite Guo Wengui from US to China


Wendy Siegelman
‏

Former DOJ Employee (Jul2016-Aug2018) George Higginbotham Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Deceive US Banks about Millions of Dollars in Foreign Lobbying Funds - helped move millions related to lobbying for 1MDB (Elliot Broidy also pitched proposal to 1MDB)


There's no indication Elliott Broidy is involved in conspiracy involving Higginbotham - however Broidy pitched a proposal to earn $75 mil for getting DOJ to drop investigation of Malaysia's 1MDB - the same objective described in Higginbotham announcement


Justice Dept investigating GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy for alleged efforts to sell govt influence - including a plan to persuade the Trump government to extradite a Chinese dissident home & $75 mil plan to get DOJ to drop investigation of Malaysia's 1MDB
…
Show this thread

Another purpose of campaign Higginbotham was involved with was to persuade high-level U.S. government officials to have a separate foreign national residing in the US on a temporary visa removed from the US

Elliott Broidy also worked on a similar effort
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-j ... t-millions …


Wendy Siegelman Retweeted Wendy Siegelman
prosecutors were scrutinizing a plan that "Broidy allegedly developed to try to persuade the Trump government to extradite a Chinese dissident back to his home country, a move sought by Chinese President Xi Jinping"
Wendy Siegelman added,
Wendy Siegelman

@WendySiegelman
Justice Dept investigating GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy for alleged efforts to sell govt influence - including a plan to persuade the Trump government to extradite a Chinese dissident home & $75 mil plan to get DOJ to drop investigation of Malaysia's 1MDB
…
Show this thread

Broidy explored plans to force the exit from the US of Chinese billionaire and dissident, Guo Wengui, evidently to please Chinese allies in Malaysia while reaping payoffs from both the Chinese and the United Arab Emirates


Note - I've interspersed the DOJ announcement about Higginbotham (top tweet) with a few older articles about Broidy in thread above

The DOJ announcement doesn't mention anything about Broidy - but there are strong parallels in what he worked on and Higginbotham pleaded guilty to


US Seeks to Recover over $73 Million in Proceeds Traceable to Bank Fraud to Conceal the Involvement of Jho Taek Low - multiple bank accounts were opened by Prakazrel (“Pras”) Michel and George Higginbotham in 2017 to receive $ from accts of Jho Low - 1MDB


Higginbotham Forfeiture Complaint - the complaint indicates tens of millions of dollars from 1MDB's Jho Low have been seized
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-relea ... 1/download …




This WSJ story describes how Elliott Broidy's wife Robin Rosenzweig runs Colfax Law Office a firm engaged by Pras Michel, a member of the 1990s hip-hop group the Fugees and a friend of Jho Low - Pras Michel is in today's DOJ 1MDB complaint w/Higginbotham

Wendy Siegelman Retweeted SeriouslyUS?
This is a huge story - Elliott Broidy is in the middle of many Trump-related scandals - he's ex-RNC finance chair, ex-Michael Cohen client, business partner of George Nader, he tried to influence WH on behalf of UAE/Saudis - see thread below for more
Wendy Siegelman added,

SeriouslyUS?

@USseriously
I've been wanting to do a thread on Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy for a while, but I seriously don't know where to start. This guy seems to be up to his neck in all sorts of bizarre scandals. So here's a short…
Show this thread


Wendy Siegelman
‏

From DOJ complaint:

MICHEL contacted INDIVIDUAL NO. 2 & INDIVIDUAL NO. 2 recommended retaining LAW ENTERPRISE NO. 1... owned by INDIVIDUAL NO. 1’s wife

Broidy's wife Robin Rosenzweig's law firm was engaged by Pras Michel

Broidy may be Individual No. 1

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-relea ... 1/download …


Wendy Siegelman
‏

Wendy Siegelman Retweeted Wendy Siegelman
Steven Brown who was sentenced to 5 years in prison this week for a multi-million fraud was a business associate of Elliott Broidy - and also a business associate of Rick Gates and in 2012/2013 did some Ukraine related work for both Gates and Paul Manafort
Wendy Siegelman added,
Wendy Siegelman

@WendySiegelman
Steven Brown Sentenced To More Than 5 Years In Prison For His Role In Multimillion-Dollar Fraud On Film Investors

Steven Brown did business with Rick Gates and Paul Manafort - and…
Show this thread

Wendy Siegelman Retweeted SeriouslyUS?
Wendy Siegelman added,

SeriouslyUS?

@USseriously
Higginbotham is cooperating with prosecutors. (!) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -doj-probe …

Here's a crazy detail in the Higginbotham complaint - while it appears Elliott Broidy's agreement was $8 mil retainer + $75 mil success fee to resolve 1MDB DOJ case - another client is noted who would get a $25 mil retainer and a $300 million success fee

https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-relea ... 1/download …


Wendy Siegelman Retweeted Kenneth P. Vogel
Elliott Broidy accepted at least $6M in laundered money to lobby the Trump administration to end the DOJ investigation into JHO LOW 1MDB scandal
Wendy Siegelman added,

Kenneth P. Vogel

NEW: Former top TRUMP fundraiser @ELLIOTT_BROIDY accepted at least $6M in laundered money to lobby the Trump administration to end an investigation by @TheJusticeDept into the Malaysian financier JHO LOW, according to court filings submitted Friday. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/us/p ... money.html …
Show this thread

Talking points for MALAYSIAN OFFICIAL NO.1 & US GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL NO.1 noted - US involvement in the 1MDB investigation was unnecessary because it was being handled by Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, and Malaysia
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-relea ... 1/download …


Wendy Siegelman Retweeted Wendy Siegelman
More on the 1MDB scandal - $4.5 billion was allegedly laundered by Malaysian financier Jho Low through 1MDB - Jho Low hired/paid Chris Christie, Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz, Trump Org ethics advisor Bobby Burchfield & Ed Rogers (w/BGR ex-Alfa Bank lobbyist)

US investigating whether Malaysian fugitive Jho Low - under investigation for $4.5 bil 1MDB scandal - laundered funds to pay Chris Christie, Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz, Trump Org ethics advisor Bobby Burchfield & Ed Rogers (w/BGR ex-lobbyist for Alfa Bank)
…

Wendy Siegelman Retweeted Wendy Siegelman
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is linked to the 1MDB scandal, was Trump's golfing buddy

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has been linked to the 1MDB scandal, was Trump's golfing buddy
https://twitter.com/WendySiegelman/stat ... 6322488320 …
Show this thread

Wendy Siegelman Retweeted Wendy Siegelman
Money laundered through 1MDB funneled into Hollywood where Red Granite which produced the Wolf of Wall Street agreed to pay a settlement of $60 million related to the case

'The Wolf of Wall Street' producers to pay $60 million to US in lawsuit settlement linked to 1MDB - film producer Red Granite is run by Malaysian prime minister's stepson Riza Aziz - 10 countries are probing billions of allegedly stolen assets
…
Show this thread

Wendy Siegelman Retweeted Thomas Smith
Individual 2 is likely Nickie/Nicky Lum Davis, a Hollywood producer, who was identified yesterday by @ThomasS4217 and matched through additional verifications including reporting that she was intermediary with Broidy, Rosenzweig, Pras Michel and Jho Low
Wendy Siegelman added,

Thomas Smith


And...Broidy...Elliot Broidy is likely ind 1..wife Robin is Law Firm 1..Nickie Lum Davis is likely ind 2...

Wendy Siegelman Retweeted SeriouslyUS?
And @USseriously noted likely identities of others mentioned in the complaint - however note that the 3 government officials were mentioned in the context of scheduling meetings, not being part of the complaint or conspiracy
Wendy Siegelman added,




SeriouslyUS?

@USseriously
INDIVIDUAL NO. 1 = Broidy
U.S. GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL NO. 1 = Tillerson
U.S. GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL NO. 2 = Trump
U.S. GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL NO. 3 = Sessions

Wendy Siegelman Retweeted Susan Simpson
Here's one way yesterday's DOJ complaint related to 1MDB goes beyond Broidy - here's a thread by TheViewFromLL2 w/emails with Broidy, Rosenzweig, Nickie Davis and Jeff Sessions discussing negotiations w/China over exchanging US & Chinese citizens
Wendy Siegelman added,






Susan Simpson


I must have missed something, but how the heck is that Jeff Sessions came to be using Elliott Broidy as his go-between to negotiate with China for the release of U.S. citizens?
Show this thread

Wendy Siegelman Retweeted Susan Simpson
Here's a leaked email from Elliott Broidy saying "POTUS approved with me directly, to play golf with Najib Razak, Prime Minister of Malaysia"
Wendy Siegelman added,

American foreign policy is now conducted by arranging for foreign heads of state to play golf with lobbyists at the president's private golf club.
Show this thread

This article by @garymbaum @scott_c_johnson about a March '18 $35,000/person fundraiser Elliott Broidy & Robin Rosenzweig hosted for Trump covers the players in the 1MDB scandal: Jho Low, ex PM Najib Razak, Nicky Lum Davis, Pras Michel and others


Wendy Siegelman Retweeted Wendy Siegelman
And of course Broidy also had a Russian connection and was reportedly under investigation in Ukraine related to a deal he did with sanctioned Russian VTB bank


Trump donor in Ukraine criminal probe - Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy under scrutiny over alleged deal with sanctioned Russian bank VTB by @willjordan @willthorne1 HT @submergingmkt @AJENews http://aje.io/4g98b

The conspiracy Broidy was allegedly involved in to lobby DOJ to clear Jho Low 1MDB & send Guo Wengui from US to China started in April 2017

In April 2017 Broidy became RNC deputy finance chair where he helped raise $108 mil w/Steve Wynn & Michael Cohen

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elliott-br ... 1523645801 …

Wendy Siegelman Retweeted Wendy Siegelman
Steve Wynn - who co-chaired RNC finance committee with Broidy and Michael Cohen - delivered a message to Trump from the Xi government seeking to have the dissident returned to China.

(thx @USseriously for reminder about Wynn's involvement)

Broidy’s alleged efforts to push for Guo’s extradition came after Steve Wynn separately helped deliver a message from the Xi government seeking to have the dissident returned to China.
…
Show this thread
https://twitter.com/WendySiegelman/stat ... 9377482755

[seemslikeadream]

Judge Won’t Release Identity Of Mystery Foreign Company Resisting Mueller Subpoena
Tierney Sneed

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images North America
U.S. District Court of D.C. Chief Judge Beryl Howell said Monday that she would not order that the identity of a foreign-owned company at the heart of a mystery special counsel Robert Mueller grand jury case be made public.

Her opinion — responding to a press freedom group’s request that more information about the highly secretive grand jury case be released — will allow for additional documents in the subpoena dispute to be unsealed. However, those documents will be redacted, her order said, to protect information sensitive to the grand jury investigation, which prosecutors say is ongoing.

“The parties shall do their best to identify material that may be released without compromising matters occurring before the grand jury,” Howell said. “Maintaining grand jury … secrecy is paramount.”

The identity of the company that sought to challenge the subpoena last year has remained a mystery, even as other details about the case slowly become known. The company’s American lawyers have been identified, and many details of its legal arguments have also been made public, due to filings that were unsealed from the proceedings when they were at the appellate court and Supreme Court level.

The company received the document request last summer, and challenged the subpoena on the basis of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. Both Howell and the appellate court ruled against it, while the Supreme Court declined to take up the case. The company is now facing a $50,000 per day fine for resisting the subpoena.

Notably, Howell is the same judge who will be weighing a request by the same press freedom group, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, to authorize the release of grand jury material in Mueller’s report submitted to Attorney General Bill Barr.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker ... r-subpoena

Deciphering the Mystery Subpoena Case: Corporate Claims to Foreign Sovereign Immunity from U.S. Criminal Proceedings
Chimène Keitner
Speculation has been rampant about the identity of the appellant in In re Grand Jury Subpoena, the case that prompted the D.C. Circuit to seal offan entire courthouse floor for oral argument. The dispute might well end up being decided at the Supreme Court, although it would be extremely unusual and perhaps unprecedented for the Court to conduct plenary review in a case that remained entirely under seal. It would also be a shame for the Supreme Court to weigh in without the opportunity for broader input. The underlying legal questions raised should not be answered definitively by the Court based solely on the exigencies of this particular case.

Knowns and unknowns about the case at hand

For those not yet following the saga or needing a refresher: Politico reported in October that an “unknown person” had been summoned before a grand jury and was fighting a subpoena, which compels witness testimony or the production of evidence. Although the identity of the “person” and the nature of the evidence sought remain unknown, some have surmised that the case has ties to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election and related matters.

On December 18, the D.C. Circuit issued an order siding with the U.S. government. Grand jury proceedings are conducted in secret, as are ancillary judicial proceedings “to the extent necessary to prevent disclosure of matters occurring before a grand jury.” The order did, however, disclose that the witness is a company (referred to as “the Corporation”) owned by a foreign state (“Country A”), and that the company is fighting the subpoena based on a claim to foreign sovereign immunity. Lawfare’s Scott Anderson has speculated that the company is likely a foreign state-owned commercial bank. The anonymous Twitter account @TheHoarseWhisperer suggested that it might be the Qatari Investment Authority, which recently acquired an almost 20% stake in Russian oil company Rosneft through a somewhat opaque series of transactions. As with all things Mueller-related, the guessing-game prompted by this dispute reflects the public’s anxiousness to discern what stage the Special Counsel’s investigation has reached and what it has uncovered. The thirst for details only increased when the company asked the Supreme Court to block the imposition of monetary contempt sanctions for its refusal to comply with the subpoena. Chief Justice Roberts issued an interim stay pending a response from the U.S. government, which U.S. government attorneys filed (under seal) on December 28, in the midst of the government shutdown. The Chief Justice acting alone, or five justices if the application is referred to the full Court, can decide to grant a stay of the contempt sanctions while the Court decides whether or not to grant full review of the D.C. Circuit’s decision.

The scope and strength of the legal challenges raised by the corporation

In addition to the foreign sovereign immunity argument, which I discuss below, the company also argued that complying with the subpoena would force it to violate foreign law. Variations on this “foreign sovereign compulsion” argument come up frequently in transnational litigation, from the antitrust context (“the foreign government forced me to act anti-competitively”) to the discovery context (“foreign law prohibits me from turning over this document”). Here, the company argued that complying with the subpoena would be “unreasonable or oppressive” because doing so would violate Country A’s laws. The D.C. Circuit rejected this argument, finding that the company “has fallen well short of carrying [its] burden” to show that Country A’s law “prevents compliance with the court’s order.” The company provided (1) the text of a provision in Country A’s law and, subsequently, (2) a submission from “a regulator from Country A seeking to explain the Corporation’s atextual interpretation.” The three-judge panel found the law unpersuasive on its face, and held that the regulator’s submission did not exhibit “indicia of reliability,” according to the criteria recently articulated by the Supreme Court in an antitrust case. The panel appears not to have been impressed by, among other criteria, “the role and authority of the entity or official offering the statement.” Some might interpret this as suggesting that the company, although owned by a foreign state, has not been receiving high-level support from that foreign state in opposing the subpoena. On the other hand, the foreign state also has not waived the company’s immunity, thereby creating the legal dispute that is now before the courts.

Foreign Sovereign Immunity

The crux of the legal dispute is whether the United States can exercise jurisdiction over the foreign company in the form of compelling compliance with the grand jury subpoena. Because a majority of the foreign company’s shares or other ownership interest is owned by a foreign state, the company claims that it is entitled to jurisdictional immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), which provides that foreign states and companies owned by foreign states “shall be immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States and of the States” unless an enumerated exception applies.

A threshold question is whether the FSIA applies at all. As the U.S government did in a previous dispute over a grand jury subpoena issued to a foreign state-owned company, the government appears to have taken the position here that the FSIA does not apply to criminal proceedings, including investigations. The Court of Appeals, like district court Chief Judge Beryl Howell who initially heard this argument, “decline[d] to resolve whether foreign sovereigns are entitled to claim the protection of the Act’s immunity provision, 28 U.S.C. § 1604, in criminal proceedings.” Instead, the court “assume[d] that immunity extends to the criminal context.” If the Supreme Court reviews the D.C. Circuit’s opinion, it could also decline to resolve this question. The Supreme Court often prefers to wait until an issue has “percolated” sufficiently in federal courts of appeals before it decides to weigh in.

Although there are lower court opinions that reach opposite conclusions on whether the FSIA applies to criminal proceedings, practice is relatively sparse. As I noted before, the question of criminal immunity for foreign states has arisen most often in the context of civil liability under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which requires the plaintiff to show that the defendant has engaged in a pattern of indictable acts. The Tenth Circuit found in a 1999 case that the FSIA provides jurisdiction over civil RICO claims, whereas the Sixth Circuit reached the opposite conclusion in 2002. The Tenth Circuit read the FSIA’s silence about criminal proceedings as meaning that criminal proceedings fall outside the scope of the statute. There is some support for that line of reasoning in the Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Samantar v. Yousuf. In that case, the Court interpreted the FSIA’s silence regarding the immunities of individual foreign officials to mean that those immunities fall outside the scope of the FSIA, and are governed instead by the common law. The Sixth Circuit read the same silence to mean that there is noexception for criminal proceedings in the FSIA, and therefore no jurisdiction in U.S. courts. By contrast, as I also noted earlier, recent U.S. indictments related to malicious cyber activity have been issued on the assumption that foreign defendants, whether they are natural persons or state-owned entities, are not immune from U.S. criminal jurisdiction when they act on behalf of foreign states.

The United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia all have state immunity acts that explicitly exclude criminal proceedings from their scope. The primary purpose of all of these acts, like the FSIA, was to codify the restrictive theory of foreign sovereign immunity, under which one state can exercise jurisdiction over another state’s commercial acts. Although the Supreme Court has observed that “the text and structure of the FSIA demonstrate Congress’ intention that the FSIA be the sole basis for obtaining jurisdiction over a foreign state in our courts,” it made that observation in the context of a civil suit for damages. The Court has also described the Act as providing “a comprehensive set of legal standards governing claims of immunity in every civil action against a foreign state or its political subdivisions, agencies, or instrumentalities.” David Stewart, one of the American Law Institute’s reporters on the topic of foreign sovereign immunity, has written that “[t]he reference to ‘civil actions’ does not suggest, however, that states or their agencies or instrumentalities can be subject to criminal proceedings in U.S. courts; nothing in the text or legislative history supports such a conclusion.” Yet, as his co-reporter, Ingrid Wuerth, has observed, there is “an unmistakable trend toward the criminal prosecution of foreign organizations with ties to foreign governments.” At some point, the jurisdictional basis for those prosecutions will need to be placed beyond doubt. In the meantime, in the mystery case, the D.C. Circuit found, based in part on evidence submitted by the government ex parte, that there was a “reasonable probability” that the FSIA’s commercial activity exception applied. The exception to immunity, cited by the court, applies in “any case” in which the proceedings are “based upon” an act outside U.S. territory “in connection with a commercial activity” of the foreign state-owned company elsewhere, and that act causes a “direct effect” in the United States.

Subject-Matter Jurisdiction

The source of jurisdiction for these criminal proceedings against the corporation can also shed light on the source of any immunities the corporation may claim. In civilactions, 28 U.S.C. § 1330(a) provides U.S. courts with personal and subject-matter jurisdiction over foreign states, as long as (1) an enumerated exception in the FSIA applies and (2) service has been effectuated using the proper procedures. The question is, where does subject-matter jurisdiction come from over criminalproceedings? The government’s answer to this question, which the D.C. Circuit found compelling, is 18 U.S.C. § 3231, which provides federal district courts with original jurisdiction over “all offenses against the laws of the United States.” A straightforward reading of this provision is compatible with the government’s apparent argument that any immunities from criminal proceedings that might exist are a matter of common law, not statute. It was therefore arguably unnecessary for the Court of Appeals (or district court) to look for a statutory exception to immunity in the first place. That said, because it found such an exception in §1605(a), it concluded that the company’s suggestion that there is nosubject-matter jurisdiction over any criminal proceedings against corporations that are majority-owned by foreign governments “seems in far greater tension with Congress’s choice to codify a theory of foreign sovereign immunity designed to allow regulation of foreign nations acting as ordinary market participants.” Denying immunity for a foreign state’s commercial activities would also be consistent with the pre-FSIA regime articulated by Acting State Department Legal Adviser Jack Tate in 1952. In addition, although the U.S. government’s filings in the grand jury disputes are not publicly available, the government has indicated in filings related to foreign official immunity that the common law entails applying “principles of immunity articulated by the Executive Branch.” As the Eleventh Circuit observed in upholding the denial of immunity to Manuel Noriega, “by pursuing Noriega’s capture and this prosecution, the Executive Branch has manifested its clear sentiment that Noriega should be denied head-of-state immunity.” The same is presumably true of the U.S. government’s decision to initiate other types of criminal proceedings.

As a side note: Although most proceedings against foreign states are governed by the FSIA, there is at least one other U.S. code provision outside the FSIA that denies immunity to foreign states in certain circumstances: §106 of the bankruptcy code, as amended in 1994. The FSIA is thus not quite as comprehensive as has often been assumed.

Contempt Sanctions

A further issue addressed by the D.C. Circuit’s opinion, albeit only in a few lines, is whether monetary contempt sanctions are available against foreign states. This is another question upon which lower courts have disagreed, with the D.C. Circuit previously upholding such an order and the Fifth Circuit vacating one as incompatible with the FSIA. In those cases and others, the United States has opposedthe imposition of civil contempt sanctions on foreign states. (It is unclear whether the government has taken a position on the imposition of contempt sanctions here.) A separate legal regime governs the immunity of foreign state assets from execution to satisfy monetary judgments, including any accrued sanctions. Over time, these amounts can become substantial. Here, the panel relied on circuit precedent to uphold the imposition of sanctions, and bracketed the question of execution for future resolution.

Given that the subpoena appears to fall within the commercial activity exception to the FSIA, the most prudent—and still legally defensible—course of action would be for the Supreme Court to let the D.C. Circuit’s decision stand. The Court should not attempt to resolve the core underlying question of the relationship between the FSIA and criminal proceedings in a sealed case that could be related to a potentially politically divisive investigation. If it does take up the dispute, the best answer is that the FSIA does not apply to criminal proceedings. However, the myriad additional questions such a holding would raise argue in favor of continuing to avoid the issue, at least for now. If the Court declines review and allows the D.C. Circuit’s decision to stand (assuming the panel’s decision is not overturned by an en banc court), the effect of contempt sanctions on the company’s eventual compliance with the subpoena remains to be seen—or inferred by investigative journalists, as the case may be. If it grants full review, the Court should not lose sight of the many interconnected pieces of the foreign sovereign immunity puzzle that could be affected by any definitive resolution of the underlying issues raised by this dispute.

Photo of U.S. Supreme Court by Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images.

https://www.justsecurity.org/62068/deci ... oceedings/

Supreme Court has DENIED the stay request in the mystery grand jury subpoena case

This dissolves the administrative stay that the chief justice granted last month and means the mystery company will now have to pay penalties for not complying w/ subpoena


An unidentified corporation owned by a foreign government.


News: The fine against the company is to be a fine of $50,000 per day, per the DC Circuit opinion.

7A4F7163-5FF6-41F0-8AC4-D68BECF808BE.jpeg

Third redaction suggests witnesses have given some info to Mueller about a $125K payment involving Manafort. This payment reportedly involves a pro-Trump Super PAC.

THE SUPREME COURT HAS ALREADY AGREED THAT THE MYSTERY APPELLANT CAUSED A “DIRECT EFFECT” IN THE UNITED STATES

January 14, 2019/14 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by empty wheel

I’d like to make a minor — but I think important — point about the DC Circuit opinion in the Mystery Appellant challenge to what is believed to be a Robert Mueller subpoena. Assuming that this is a challenge to a Special Counsel subpoena, then the Supreme Court has already agreed with Mueller — in dissolving a stay of financial penalties for blowing off a subpoena — that some company owned by a foreign country took an action outside the US that had an effect inside the US, in an investigation into what happened during an election.

This post will assume that this is a Mueller subpoena. Some of the evidence backing that assumption includes:

DC District Chief Judge Beryl Howell issued the original order; she presides over Mueller’s grand jury

A lawyer asked for Mueller’s latest sealed filing on the day a response from the Mystery Appellant was due

Greg Katsas recused from consideration of this case; he had said he would recuse on Mueller related issues

The secrecy for the hearing before the DC Circuit, and arguably the review process for this challenge, were exceptional

Mueller lawyers Michael Dreeben and Zainab Ahmad were seen returning to his office after the DC Circuit hearing

Judges David Tatel, Thomas Griffith, and Stephen Williams issued their order on December 18. The Mystery Appellant appealed to the Supreme Court, and over Christmas John Roberts took briefing on that appeal. Last week the Supreme Court declined to uphold the stay, effectively agreeing with the Circuit’s decision.

And that’s important, because a key part of the now-public (though still partly sealed) DC Circuit opinion explains how the presumed Mueller request overcomes the sovereign immunity of the company in question. The request must involve — among other things — an exception to sovereign immunity.

Taking section 1604 ‘s grant of immunity as a given, the government must check three boxes for the contempt order to stand. First, there must be a valid grant of subject-matter jurisdiction. Second, one of the Act’s exceptions to immunity must apply. And third, the contempt sanctions must be a permissible remedy. According to the district court, the government satisfies all three. We agree.

Mueller claimed that this qualified as an exception because the request involves an “act outside the territory of the United States in connection with a commercial activity of the foreign state elsewhere [when] that act causes a direct effect in the United States.”

Moving to those exceptions, in its ex parte filing the government steers us to the third clause of section 1605(a)(2). That provision denies immunity in an “action … based … upon an act outside the territory of the United States in connection with a commercial activity of the foreign state elsewhere [when] that act causes a direct effect in the United States.” Ordinarily, the Corporation would bear the burden to establish that the exception does not apply. See EIG Energy FundXIV, L.P. v. Petroleo Brasileiro, S.A., 894 F.3d 339, 344- 45 (D.C. Cir. 2018) (“[T]he foreign-state defendant bears the burden of establishing the affirmative defense of immunity,” including “‘proving that the plaintiff’s allegations do not bring its case within a statutory exception to immunity.”‘ (quoting Phoenix Consulting Inc. v. Republic of Angola, 216 F .3d 36, 40 (D.C. Cir. 2000))).

And because Mueller relied on an ex parte filing to make that case, all the judges involved — Howell, Tatel, Griffith, Williams, Roberts, and whoever else at SCOTUS reviewed this — relied on the argument that Mueller’s lawyers laid out about the request.

Here, however, the government relies primarily on ex parte evidence unavailable to the Corporation. We have repeatedly approved the use of such information when “necessary to ensure the secrecy of ongoing grand jury proceedings,” In re Sealed Case No. 98-3077, 151 F.3d 1059, 1075 (D.C. Cir. 1998), and we do so again here. But where the government uses ex parte evidence, we think the burden falls on the government to establish that the exception applies, and we will conduct a searching inquiry of the government’s evidence and legal theories as a substitute for the adversarial process.

In a sealed discussion of Mueller’s ex parte filing, the DC Circuit finds a “reasonable probability” that that section covers this subpoena. It goes further and states that it doesn’t have to decide what the gravamen of the subpoena is, which suggests that something about this request makes it very clear that the company both possess the records and that they are relevant to Mueller’s investigation.

The “gravamen” of a subpoena may be the mere fact that an entity possesses the documents in question. Alternatively, the “gravamen” may be related to the content of the records and why they may be relevant to the government’s investigation. Indeed, the correct approach may well vary with the facts of a given case. Here, however, we need not resolve that issue [redacted]

There’s some other redacted discussion that dismisses a claim made by the corporation that will be interesting for the history books. But the DC Circuit is clear that the request — as laid out in an ex parte filing presumably written by Mueller’s lawyers — clears the subject matter question.

None of this analysis tells us enough about the company for us to guess what foreign company it is. The WaPo says it is a financial institution. I happen to think that Qatar or the Emirates’ investment authority are the most likely candidates but that’s just an educated guess.

Still, if this is indeed a Mueller subpoena, given the topic of Mueller’s inquiry and his fairly clear discipline at staying within the scope of it, that nevertheless is a signifiant revelation. That’s because Mueller is investigating events relating to an election. And most acts by a company owned by a foreign country that cause an effect in this country — if they have some relationship with that election — would be illegal. It could be the payoff for a bribe. It could be a more direct expenditure associated with the campaign. It could be a payment associated with activities that occurred during the campaign.

Maybe it’s something far more obscure. But any of the obvious applications here would all implicate a foreign country influencing — directly or indirectly — the election. And SCOTUS has already reviewed that Mueller argument, and found it reasonable.

That doesn’t mean SCOTUS has reviewed the evidence the company has, it doesn’t mean the company will turn over the evidence (though it would already incurred something like $300,000 to avoid compliance), it doesn’t mean the evidence proves whatever crime Mueller has cited in demanding it.

But SCOTUS has, at a minimum, found Mueller’s argument that such evidence would be relevant to his criminal investigation reasonable.

Update: Added language to make what happened — SCOTUS dissolved the stay — technically correct.

Update: And SCOTUS is now debating whether to allow the Mystery Appellant to file cert under seal or not.

As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/01/14/t ... ed-states/

NEW filings in the mystery Mueller case - The Special Counsel's office just filed a sealed 1,275-word brief addressing efforts to unseal the case involving its subpoena to the foreign-owned company. A minute later came a separate 364-word sealed motion from Mueller's office.

emptywheel

Mystery Appellant followers: Is it just me or did yesterday's reply have some of the snark that RU entities have asked their lawyers to use in other cases (most notably Concord)?




Beryl Howell likens Mystery Appellant not complying w/Mueller subpoena to someone escaping jail.



This mention of failure to enforce the subpoena--coupled w/language fr SCOTUS brief abt US citizens sheltering their criminal conduct w/foreign companies--is quite interesting.


On my more paranoid days I suspect people use digital redactions rather than blackout to piss me off personally.

southpaw
‏

Newly unsealed documents confirm that the mystery grand jury case relates to records sought by the Special Counsel’s Office (as Politico reported ages ago based on an overheard remark in the DC courthouse) and specifically the Russia/collusion investigation.




Here’s a link, via @ZoeTillman. https://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/ ... inions.pdf …

Not in my interest to say it, but I don’t know why this form of redaction—which doesn’t disclose the length of the redacted text—isn’t a more standard practice.

An interesting phrase, written by the SCO to the mystery foreign govt-owned company’s counsel over 7 months ago:



There is a very closely held document, secret even to the mysterious foreign govt owned company, that persuaded the DC Court that something about that mystery company’s commercial activities in the US “is part of” the Special Counsel’s Russia/collusion investigation.

https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/ ... 0069382144

emptywheel
‏

Throw China in with Russia, UAE, and Qatar as a possibility to be Mystery Appellant.

ǝʌɐp

mystery appellant: comparing the foreign statues cited in the december 22, 2018 vs january 3, 2019 submissions gives interesting results




nb: in both filings the section where those statutes are cited -- [redacted] in 12-22 and russia & china in 01-03 -- deal with reciprocity / retaliation:

Supreme Court to meet behind closed doors to discuss mystery Mueller-related grand jury subpoena

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 21: Rain falls on the White House March 21, 2019 in Washington, DC. The second day of spring brought showers to the United States capital region. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Washington (CNN)The Supreme Court will meet behind closed doors on Friday to discuss whether to add cases to the court's docket next term, including one petition brought by a mystery company related to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

If the court denies the case, it will represent the last stop for a company that has been fighting a subpoena issued last year by a federal grand jury in Washington, DC.

For months now, the case has been one of the most closely watched and guarded secrets among Mueller's work. The company, that calls itself a wholly owned agency of an unnamed foreign state, fought the subpoena arguing it was immune under a federal law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that limits such prosecutorial action.

It also said that complying with the request for documents would violate the country's own laws.

The case was so secret that at one point court security took the almost unprecedented step of clearing an entire floor of a courthouse in Washington to keep secret the identities of the lawyers arguing the case.

Court filings initially blacked out the names of the lawyers representing the company and that the special counsel's office was involved, but both are now publicly known.

Mueller wait-and-see mode hangs over White House, too
A lower court ruled against the company holding that the request fell within the so called "commercial activities" exception in the law, and the court imposed a $50,000 per day sanction until the company complied. Those fines began accruing more than two months ago, on January 15. The ruling was affirmed by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

That court held that if the company's view were to prevail, "a foreign-sovereign-owned, purely commercial enterprise operating within the United States could flagrantly violate criminal laws and the US government would be powerless to respond save through diplomatic pressure."

In January, in an emergency petition, the company asked the Supreme Court to freeze the sanctions while the company prepared its appeal, but the justices, with no noted dissents, declined to do so.

In briefs filed with the Supreme Court, Brian D. Boone and Edward T. Kang, Alston & Bird lawyers, who were finally revealed as the company's lawyers, told the justices if the lower court opinion were not reversed, the judgment would "create chaos in the international community -- possibly alienating American allies, undermining diplomacy, and all but guaranteeing that American agencies and instrumentalities will (despite their protestations) face criminal proceedings abroad."

Solicitor General Noel Francisco, countered however, that the Supreme Court should allow the lower court opinions to stand because there was no "pressing need for this Court to intervene in the absence of a conflict."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/politics ... index.html

[RocketMan]

Respectable Racism

https://yasha.substack.com/p/liberal-xenophobia

I’ve been trying to write about the liberal xenophobia that undergirds so much of today’s elite panic about “Russia” and “the Russians.” Since Trump’s election, the usual stereotypes and tropes about Russians have morphed into an all-encompassing racist conspiracy. It’s become totally fine — and even respectable — in American liberal media circles to bombard viewers and readers with all sorts of conspiracies that see shadowy Russian interests infecting “our” society and lurking behind everything that’s going wrong in America and around the world.

As a Soviet-born Jew who grew up in America, it’s been impossible for me not to notice just how similar these conspiracies are to old antisemitic fantasies about “Judeo-Bolsheviks” and the “Elders of Zion” — deadly fairytales about degenerate “easterners” wielding total power in secret, and plotting from the shadows to dominate and exploit white, Christian civilization.

The liberal journalists, academics, media personalities, Hollywood stars, and New York Times documentary filmmakers who’ve been screeching about “the Russians” for the past three years may not be aware that they’re serving up reheated racist fantasies, but they are. And this bigotry isn’t coming from the “lower-classes” that liberals love to mock so much, but from very top — the crème de la crème of our media and political class. One day you get Rachael Maddow working herself into paranoid seizure about a supposed Russian plot to cut power lines and freeze millions of Americans in their sleep. On another, you can watch the screenwriter of Mrs. Doubtfire take to the Internet to theorize about how the Russians are plotting to take down Joe Biden (and I guess to covertly boost Bernie Sanders) by getting an American politician to highlight the creepy and demeaning way Biden treats women.

It’s gross, and it goes to show that the respectable liberal opposition to Donald Trump is no less racist and paranoid than he is — it just operates in a different xenophobic market demographic.

[seemslikeadream]

you are so amusing...haters are going to keep on hating

you surely are not implying that I am a racist... are you?


come on now your the one that doesn't like photos...that didn't work so now we are on to ???

[RocketMan]

[seemslikeadream]

wow that is a really disgraceful almost phonographic pic why would you post such crap
could you please link to the cartoonist that created that so I can find out who would draw such disgusting filthy stuff...they look racist and homophobic to me but it is in the eye of the beholder

who is that naked guy wearing the Star of David with the big hands and feet Rachel is pointing at? never mind


do you really think the "artist" caught Rachel's face perfectly....do you think Rachel's finger pointing at the guy's pubic hair is really that big?

ok from what I can gather Yasha Levine drew those pics?

the problem is with Russian oligarchs laundering money through trump not the Russian people .......get a grip Yasha

this is racism ....this is trump's America

Screen Shot 2019-04-03 at 10.36.30 AM.jpg

Where are these right-wing antisemitic Poles emerging from? Yesterday a big rally in New York and today in Chicago. How many of them can there be in the USA?

Speakers at the anti-Holocaust restitution bill rally in Chicago appear to be wearing armbands of the Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, a rightist populist Polish underground militia during the Nazi occupation with a strongly anti-Semitic rep.

Yep, There Were a Bunch of Rallies
Josh Marshall

Some sleuthing from TPM Readers has confirmed that the there were a bunch of Polish nationalist rallies around the country on Sunday protesting the new Holocaust restitution legislation, Senate Bill 447.

This article at a site called polishclub.org discusses the rallies around the country. Google translate suggests the language is pretty horrendous. Here’s how Google renders one portion of the first paragraph: “This crisis has also resulted in something positive. In Poland, the era of conspiracy ended, we were shown what Polish-Jewish relations really are and what is really going on in them. We were shown the size of Jewish gratitude, for exposing the lives of Poles helping Jews to avoid death, as well as for sheltering them for the last 800 years.” very idiomatic, pun-filled piece. But very inflammatory, anti-Jewish/antisemitic.

A Polish speaking TPM Reader I showed it to called the piece “a very idiomatic, pun-filled piece. But very inflammatory, anti-Jewish/antisemitic.” The joking reference to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the title probably gives you a sense of the flavor.

One thing the article did have that was helpful was this photo of the rally outside the state house in Boston.



In addition to New York, LA and Boston there was a fairly substantial rally in Daley Plaza in Chicago. From the videos I’ve watched I’d say there were at least 200 attendees, maybe more than three hundred. I should point out that having scanned videos of the event in Chicago, it’s a bunch of people walking around with Polish flags and speaking Polish. The banners are simply opposing SB447. So I can’t really say that it was of a similar character to the event in New York.

There was one speaker who spoke in English. His history of the Holocaust wasn’t really top-notch. But his speech was largely unobjectionable. (His speech comes at the end of the first video below and continues at the beginning of the second.) I don’t know what speakers speaking in Polish were saying. However, several of the speakers who spoke in Polish appeared to be wearing armbands of the Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (NSZ), an occupation-era underground paramilitary organization which had politics probably best described as populist-nationalist-Catholic and also anti-Semitic. See here in the picture below …



Other than that, I didn’t see signs that seemed problematic, though you can’t really see one way or another in the video. (Here’s a brief report on the protest on a Chicago area Polish language newscast.)

Here’s the video of the Chicago event …

https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1113239873077620736

Watch this old video by Richard Widerynski (former President of the Polish-American Congress of Southern California) to know more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOUAhs80WKo

[seemslikeadream]

Whistleblower: Kushner initially denied a security clearance due to:
- Drug use
- Foreign influence
- Criminal conduct
- Money problems





quote]THE PARALLEL TRACKS OF DISCLOSURE ON WHY MANAFORT SHARED CAMPAIGN POLLING DATA WITH HIS RUSSIAN CO-CONSPIRATOR

April 3, 2019/6 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
No one knows what the first half of this sentence says:

[redacted] the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

But it almost certainly includes language acknowledging evidence that might support (but ultimately was not enough to indict on) a conspiracy charge.

I have twice before demonstrated that the Barr Memo — and so this full sentence — is nowhere near as conclusive with respect to exonerating Trump as a number of people have claimed (and Trump’s equivocations about releasing the report). This post showed how little Barr’s Memo actually incorporates from the Mueller Report. And this post shows that the memo ignores Stone’s coordination with WikiLeaks, presumably because he didn’t coordinate directly with the Russian government.

But (as I’ve said elsewhere), the public record on Paul Manafort’s conduct also makes it clear that the Mueller Report includes inconclusive information on whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russians. This came up extensively, in the discussion of Manafort’s sharing of polling data at his August 2, 2016 meeting with Konstantin Kilimnik, at the February 4 breach hearing.

At the beginning of that discussion, ABJ asked whether Manafort had lied to the grand jury about his motives for sharing polling data. [Throughout this, I’m bolding the redactions but including the content where it’s obvious.]

JUDGE AMY BERMAN JACKSON: I think we can go on to the question of the [redacted; sharing of polling data]. And I don’t have that many questions, mainly because I think it’s pretty straightforward what you’re saying.

So, I would want to ask you whether it’s part of your contention that he lied about the reason [redacted; he shared the data]. I know initially he didn’t even agree that that [redacted; he had shared private polling data], and he didn’t even really agree in the grand jury. He said it just was public information. But, I think there’s some suggestion, at least in the 302, as to what the point was of [redacted].

And so, I’m asking you whether that’s part of this, if he was lying about that?

Because Mueller’s team only needed ABJ to rule that Manafort lied, Andrew Weissmann explained they didn’t need her to reach the issue of motive. But they did discuss motive. Weissmann describes that it wasn’t just for whatever benefit sharing the polling data might provide the campaign, but it would also help Manafort line up his next gig and (probably) get out of debt to Deripaska.

MR. WEISSMANN: So, I don’t think the Court needs to reach that issue, and I don’t know that we’ve presented evidence on the — that issue.

THE COURT: You didn’t. So you just don’t want me to think about it, that’s okay.

MR. WEISSMANN: No. No. No. I’m going to answer your question.

THE COURT: All right.

MR. [WEISSMANN]: I’m just trying to, first, deal with what’s in the record. And I think that in the grand jury, Mr. Manafort said that from his perspective, [redacted], which he admitted at that point was with — he understood that it was going to be given by [redacted] to the [redacted; Ukrainian Oligarchs] and to Mr. [redacted; possibly Deripaska], both. That from his perspective, it was — there was no downside — I’m paraphrasing — it was sort of a win-win. That there was nothing — there was no negatives.

And I think the Government agrees with that, that that was — and, again, you’re just asking for our — if we are theorizing, based on what we presented to you, that we agree that that was a correct assessment.

But, again, for purposes of what’s before you on this issue, what his ultimate motive was on what he thought was going to be [redacted] I don’t think is before you as one of the lies that we’re saying that he told.

It’s more that what he specifically said was, he denied that he had told Mr. Gates [redacted; to bring the polling data to the meeting]. That he would not, in fact, have [redacted] and that he left it to [redacted].

Weissmann then goes on to allege that Manafort lied about sharing this polling data because if he didn’t, it would ruin his chance of getting a pardon.

And our view is, that is a lie. That that is really under — he knew what the Gates 302s were. It’s obviously an extremely sensitive issue. And the motive, I think, is plain from the [redacted], is we can see — we actually have — we can see what it is that he would be worried about, which is that the reaction to the idea that [long redaction] would have, I think, negative consequences in terms of the other motive that Mr. Manafort could have, which is to at least augment his chances for a pardon.

And the proof with respect to that is not just Mr. Gates. So that I will say there’s no contrary evidence to Mr. Gates, but you don’t have just Mr. Gates’s information. You have a series of emails where we know that Mr. Kilimnik, in fact, is reporting [redacted]

And probably the best piece of evidence is you have Mr. Manafort asking Mr. Gates to [redacted; print out polling data]. So, it’s — there’s — from three weeks ago, saying: [redacted].

In an effort to understand why this lie was important, ABJ returns to Manafort’s motive again, which leads Weissmann to point out that the question of why Manafort shared the polling data goes to the core of their inquiry.

THE COURT: I understand why it’s false. And I’m not sure I understand what you said at the beginning, that you — and I understand why you’ve posited that he might not want to be open about this, given the public scrutiny that foreign contacts were under at the time. But, I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying where you say you agree with him when he said it had no downside.

So, this is an important falsehood because it was false? Or is there some larger reason why this is important?

MR. WEISSMANN: So — so, first, in terms of the what it is that the special counsel is tasked with doing, as the Court knows from having that case litigated before you, is that there are different aspects to what we have to look at, and one is Russian efforts to interfere with the election, and the other is contacts, witting or unwitting, by Americans with Russia, and then whether there was — those contacts were more intentional or not. And for us, the issue of [redacted] is in the core of what it is that the special counsel is supposed to be investigating.

My answer, with respect to the Court’s question about what it is — what the defendant’s intent was in terms of what he thought [redacted] I was just trying to answer that question, even though that’s not one of the bases for saying there was a lie here. And so I was just trying to answer that question.

And what I meant by his statement that there’s no downside, is that can you imagine multiple reasons for redacted; sharing polling data]. And I think the only downside —

Weissmann ultimately explains that there was no downside to Manafort to sharing the polling data during the campaign, but there was a downside (angering Trump and therefore losing any hope of a pardon) to the information coming out now.

THE COURT: You meant no downside to him?

MR. WEISSMANN: Yes.

THE COURT: You weren’t suggesting that there was nothing — there’s no scenario under which this could be a bad thing?

MR. WEISSMANN: Oh, sorry. Yes. I meant there was no downside — Mr. Manafort had said there was no downside to Mr. Manafort doing it.

THE COURT: That was where I got confused.

MR. WEISSMANN: Sorry.

THE COURT: All right.

MR. WEISSMANN: And meaning all of this is a benefit. The negative, as I said, was it coming out that he did this.

In her breach ruling, ABJ agreed that Manafort’s sharing of polling data was a key question in Mueller’s inquiry, as it was an intentional link to Russia. She establishes this by noting that Manafort knew the polling data would be shared with someone in Russia (probably Deripaska; though note, this is where ABJ gets the nationality of the two Ukranian oligarchs wrong, which Mueller subsequently corrected her on).

Also, the evidence indicates that it was understood that [redacted] would be [redacted] from Kilimnik [redacted] including [redacted], and [redacted]. Whether Kilimnik is tied to Russian intelligence or he’s not, I think the specific representation by the Office of Special Counsel was that he had been, quote, assessed by the FBI, quote, to have a relationship with Russian intelligence, close quote. Whether that’s true, I have not been provided with the evidence that I would need to decide, nor do I have to decide because it’s outside the scope of this hearing. And whether it’s true or not, one cannot quibble about the materiality of this meeting.

In other words, I disagree with the defendant’s statement in docket 503, filed in connection with the dispute over the redactions, that, quote, the Office of Special Counsel’s explanation as to why Mr. Manafort’s alleged false statements are important and material turns on the claim that he is understood by the FBI to have a relationship with Russian intelligence.

I don’t think that’s a fair characterization of what was said. The intelligence reference was just one factor in a series of factors the prosecutor listed. And the language of the appointment order, “any links,” is sufficiently broad to get over the relatively low hurdle of materiality in this instance, and to make the [redacted] Kilimnik and [redacted] material to the FBI’s inquiry, no matter what his particular relationship was on that date.

Elsewhere, in discussing Manafort’s efforts to downplay Kilimnik’s role in his own witness tampering, ABJ refers to Kilimnik as Manafort’s “Russian conspirator.”

Earlier in the hearing ABJ notes that Manafort’s excuse for why he forgot details of the August 2 meeting only reinforce the likelihood that he shared the polling data to benefit the campaign.

You can’t say you didn’t remember that because your focus at the time was on the campaign. That relates to the campaign. And he wasn’t too busy to arrange and attend the meeting and to send Gates [redacted] that very day. It’s problematic no matter how you look at it.

If he was, as he told me, so single-mindedly focused on the campaign, then the meeting he took time to attend and had [redacted] had a purpose [redacted; to benefit the campaign]. Or, if it was just part of his effort to [redacted; line up the next job], well, in that case he’s not being straight with me about how single-minded he was. It’s not good either way.

She further notes that Manafort took this meeting with his Russian partner in Ukrainian influence peddling even though he was already under press scrutiny for those Ukrainian ties.

[T]he participants made it a point of leaving separate because of the media attention focused at that very time on Manafort’ relationships with Ukraine.

Her ruling also explains at length why sharing polling data would be useful to Kilimnik, citing from Rick Gates’ 302s at length.

In other words, these two filings — to say nothing of the backup provided in the January 15 submission, which includes all but one of Gates’ 302s describing the sharing of the polling data — lay out in some detail the evidence that Manafort clandestinely met with Konstantin Kilimnik on August 2, 2016, in part to share polling data he knew would be passed on to at least one other Russian, probably Deripaska.

And here’s why that’s interesting.

Back in early March, the WaPo moved to liberate all the documents about Manafort’s breach determination. On March 19, Mueller attorneys Adam Jed and Michael Dreeben asked for an extension to April 1, citing the “press of other work.”

The government respectfully requests an extension of time—through and including April 1, 2019—to respond to the motion. The counsel responsible for preparing the response face the press of other work and require additional time to consult within the government.

Three days later, Mueller announced he was done, and submitted his report to Barr. Then, on March 25, all of Mueller’s attorneys withdrew from Manafort’s case, which they haven’t done in other cases (the main pending cases are Mike Flynn, Concord Management, and Roger Stone). Then, on March 27, Mueller and Jonathan Kravis, the AUSA taking over a bunch of Mueller’s cases, asked for another extension, specifically citing the hand-off to Kravis and two others in the DC US Attorney’s Office.

The government respectfully requests a further two-week extension of time—to and including April 15, 2019—to respond to the motion. The Special Counsel’s Office has been primarily handling this matter. On March 22, the Special Counsel announced the end of his investigation and submitted a report to the Attorney General. This matter is being fully transitioned to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Because of this transition, additional time will be required to prepare a response.

On March 29, Barr wrote the Judiciary Leadership and told them he’d release his redacted version of the Mueller report — which he’ll be redacting with the Mueller’s team — by mid-April, so around April 15.

So there are currently two parallel efforts considering whether to liberate the details of Manafort’s sharing of polling data with Kilimnik and through him Russia:

The Barr-led effort to declassify a report that Mueller says does not exonerate Trump for obstruction, including the floating of a pardon to Manafort that (in Weissmann’s opinion) led Manafort to lie that and why he shared Trump campaign polling data to be passed on to Russians, which will be done around April 15
The DC USAO-led effort to unseal the materials on Manafort’s lies, for which there is a status report due on April 15
Kevin Downing — the Manafort lawyer whose primary focus has been on preserving Manafort’s bid for a pardon — already expressed some concern about how the breach documents would be unsealed, to which ABJ sort of punted (while suggesting that she’d entertain precise the press request now before her.

MR. DOWNING: Your Honor, just one other general question: How are we going to handle the process of unredacted down the road? I mean, there’s been a lot of redactions in this case, and the law enforcement basis for it or ongoing grand jury investigations. What is going to be the process to — is the Office of Special Counsel going to notify the Court that the reason stated for a particular redaction no longer exists, or still survives? Is it going to be some sort of process that we can put in place?

THE COURT: Well, in one case, I know with all the search warrants, it was an evolving process. There were things that were withheld from you and then you got them but they were still withheld from the press and then the press got them. But usually things have to be triggered by a motion or request by someone. There may be reasons related to the defense for everything to stay the way it is.

I, right now, without knowing with any particularity what it is that you’re concerned about, or if — and not having the press having filed anything today, asking for anything, I don’t know how to answer that question. But I think that is something that comes up in many cases, cases that were sealed get unsealed later. And if there’s something that you think should be a part of the public record that was sealed and there’s no longer any utility for it, obviously you could first find out if it’s a joint motion and, if not, then you file a motion.

But for now, the prosecutors in DC will be in charge of deciding how much of the information — information that Barr might be trying to suppress, not least because it’s the clearest known evidence how a floated pardon prevented Mueller from fully discovering whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia — will come out in more detail via other means.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/04/03/t ... nspirator/[/quote]

The demand for Trump's returns was made on the Treasury Department and IRS, in accordance with federal law, not on Trump personally.

Letter from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman @RepRichardNeal to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig demanding six years of Trump's personal and business tax returns (2 page letter and 4 page FAQ)

southpaw
‏
This is the most interesting tension to me. The SCO investigators reportedly wrote multiple summaries of their work, apparently expecting them to be released in some form, but then DOJ decides they're full of non-releasable information and buries them? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/us/p ... -barr.html …

The New York Times
Breaking News: Some of Robert Mueller’s investigators see their report as more damaging for President Trump than the attorney general indicated

Members of Mueller’s team have told associates that Attorney General William Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1113587484204699648

but this

emptywheel

This is a load of horseshit.

old enough to remember way back when

Lincoln's Bible
‏
Countdown to Hamburger Huckabee moving on to spend time with her kids begins.... now.

[seemslikeadream]

Just noting: a number of Mueller’s team members are leaving or have left the Justice Department. There’s nothing DOJ can do to stop them from talking to Congress.

Mueller’s evidence on obstruction was alarming and significant — “much more acute than Barr suggested,” per one source. There was “immediate displeasure” among special counsel team members.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THAT WORD, “SUMMARY”

April 3, 2019/40 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
In a big story that nevertheless treats Bill Barr’s excuses credulously, the NYT reveals that associates of people on the Mueller team say team members are pissed off by Bill Barr’s obvious misrepresentation of their findings.

Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations.

The article itself is typically credulous, accepting at face value that Barr didn’t realize that by weighing in on Trump’s guilt, he was not only wading into political territory, but usurping the proper role of Congress.

Mr. Barr has come under criticism for sharing so little. But according to officials familiar with the attorney general’s thinking, he and his aides limited the details they revealed because they were worried about wading into political territory. Mr. Barr and his advisers expressed concern that if they included derogatory information about Mr. Trump while clearing him, they would face a storm of criticism like what Mr. Comey endured in the Clinton investigation.

But I want to look at the actual news detail in the story: that Mueller’s team wrote multiple summaries. The article uses the word four times (plus a caption) including these three references:

Mr. Barr has said he will move quickly to release the nearly 400-page report but needs time to scrub out confidential information. The special counsel’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, and some team members believe that Mr. Barr should have included more of their material in the four-page letter he wrote on March 24 laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the investigation. Mr. Barr only briefly cited the special counsel’s work in his letter.

However, the special counsel’s office never asked Mr. Barr to release the summaries soon after he received the report, a person familiar with the investigation said. And the Justice Department quickly determined that the summaries contain sensitive information, like classified material, secret grand-jury testimony and information related to current federal investigations that must remain confidential, according to two government officials.

The detail is useful because it tells Jerry Nadler and FOIA terrorist Jason Leopold precisely what they’re looking for: Mueller’s own summaries of their findings (which in fact may be parallel summaries, addressing multiple questions).

But it’s also significant that NYT’s sources used that term — summary. As I’ve noted, Barr’s original memo claimed he was “summarize[ing] the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation.” Two things: The principal conclusions and the results.

Then after Jerry Nadler scoffed that Burr had released a four page summary (note, one of the journalists on this story, Nicholas Fandos, spent his morning covering the House Judiciary Committee voting to subpoena the report), Barr pretended he hadn’t claimed to be summarizing the investigation and claimed he wouldn’t dream of summarizing the report.

I am aware of some media reports and other public statements mischaracterizing my March 24, 2019 supplemental notification as a “summary” of the Special Counsel’s investigation and report. For example, Chairman Nadler’s March 25 letter refers to my supplemental notification as a “four-page summary of the Special Counsel’s review.” My March 24 letter was not, and did not purport to be, an exhaustive recounting of the Special Counsel’s investigation or report. As my letter made clear, my notification to Congress and the public provided, pending release of the report, a summary of its “principal conclusions” [sic] — that is, its bottom line.

[snip]

I do not believe it would be in the public’s interest for me to attempt to summarize the report or release it in serial fashion.

We now learn, only after Barr pretended he hadn’t claimed to write a summary, that Mueller’s team wrote not just one but multiple summaries (possibly customized to each of several audiences for the report).

And now Barr is offering dubious excuses about why the summaries that tax payers have already paid for couldn’t be released.

My guess is Barr’s claim, which he backtracked off of, to have summarized even “the principal conclusions” of the Mueller report — much less the “results of his investigation” — is going to really come back to embarrass him, if he’s still capable of embarrassment.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/04/03/t ... d-summary/

Mueller Team Finally Cracks Over William Barr’s Letters
U.S. newspapers report that the attorney general has underplayed the obstruction findings. Given his background, maybe he should have recused himself.
By Timothy L. O'Brien
April 4, 2019, 5:30 AM CDT

He has some thoughts on obstruction.
He has some thoughts on obstruction. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Timothy L. O’Brien is the executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. He has been an editor and writer for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, HuffPost and Talk magazine. His books include “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald.”

Eleven days have passed since Attorney General William Barr fired off a surprisingly brief letter outlining what he asserted were the key takeaways from a highly-anticipated report two years in the making. During that time, we’ve learned much more about Barr than we have about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe.

We’ve learned, for example, that Barr rushed to exculpate President Donald Trump and his advisers in that four-page missive, which laid out what the attorney general claimed were the Mueller report’s two key criminal inquiries: Conspiracy and obstruction of justice. We’ve learned that, although Mueller felt his report didn’t completely exonerate the president, he didn’t think Trump and his team conspired with Russia to try sabotaging the 2016 presidential campaign. On the other hand, Mueller didn’t decide whether Trump obstructed justice. Barr took that as a signal that he should rule on that one, and he did: No obstruction.


We’ve learned subsequently that Barr may have come across as a little too absolute in that first letter, hence his decision to send a second missive last Friday declaring that – phew! – his first letter was never meant to be a summary or even an “exhaustive recounting” of everything in Mueller’s report. It was just a “bottom line” conclusion.

It’s worth noting at this point that Barr came to the debate over the criminal obstruction probe with baggage. In 2018 he sent an unsolicited, 19-page memo to Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department arguing that Mueller’s obstruction inquiry was “fatally flawed.” Barr also has an expansive view of executive privilege, outlined in a 1989 memo that he wrote when he was the Justice Department’s deputy attorney general.

So it’s not much of a shock that a president who’s spent decades skirting the law’s limits decided to hire the guy who has an imperial view of presidential latitude, thinks Congress should mind its own business, and who auditioned for the attorney general’s post by saying Trump was legally insulated from one of the crimes Mueller was investigating.

After becoming attorney general, Barr might have recused himself from taking such an active role managing the Mueller report and shaping public perceptions of it, given his history. But that would no doubt have defeated some of the reasons why Trump gave him the job in the first place.

Now, thanks to reporting from the New York Times, matched on Wednesday night by the Washington Post, we’ve learned that Barr’s recent proclamations have so disconcerted members of Mueller’s once tight-lipped and leak-proof team that they’ve become chatty.

According to the Times, Mueller’s crew believes that Barr “failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated.” As it turns out, the Times reported, Mueller’s investigators had written multiple summaries of the report before the special counsel turned it over to Barr and they’re perplexed that he didn’t include much more of that information in his now famous four-page letter. (A person familiar with the investigation told the Times that Barr didn’t include more because Mueller’s team hadn’t asked – and because he was worried about disclosing sensitive information from the summaries.) The Times’s reporting doesn’t disclose what type of investigative findings, exactly, were omitted from Barr’s report.

The Post went further. It reported that “members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant” and “much more acute than Barr suggested.”

The Post quotes one anonymous U.S. official as saying that there “was immediate displeasure from the team when they saw how the attorney general had characterized their work.” This section from the Post’s reporting about the Mueller team’s summaries is telling:

Summaries were prepared for different sections of the report, with a view that they could be made public, the official said. The report was prepared “so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately — or very quickly,” the official said. “It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.” Mueller’s team assumed the information was going to be made available to the public, the official said, “and so they prepared their summaries to be shared in their own words — and not in the attorney general’s summary of their work, as turned out to be the case.”

In an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham on Wednesday evening, one of Trump’s attorneys, Rudy Giuliani, offered his take on why Mueller’s people were suddenly talking. “They are a bunch of sneaky, unethical leakers. And they are rabid Democrats who hate the president of the United States,” he said. “I can’t tell you how much false information they leaked during the course of the investigation… How could you have any confidence in this?”

That has been Giuliani’s line for some time now, and he says it knowing full well that Mueller and his team didn’t leak during the probe. It accords with the “deep state” mumbo jumbo proffered by the same crew that has claimed, incorrectly and repeatedly, that the infamous Steele dossier – a lurid report by a former British intelligence officer – is what prompted the Russian investigation. And it’s meant to cast doubt on a very obvious explanation for why Mueller’s people might be talking now: They think Barr has misrepresented, possibly intentionally, their work and conclusions.

Barr has, of course, been jousting with Congress over when he’ll release the Mueller report and how much of it he’ll disclose. Congress doubts his intentions, and given recent events that isn’t an unreasonable view. After all, Barr knows what he signed up for when he took the job and has been acting accordingly.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... -s-letters

Sarah Kendzior

"It's fascinating to see these journalists who build reputations as advocates for transparency salivating at the words of William Barr, whose entire career has been about obstruction and obfuscation." -- @gaslitnation, one hour ten minutes in
https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior

Apr 3 at 9:28pm
Lisa Page
GN_Lisa_Page.mp3
Another week has gone by, and there is still no Mueller Report! This week on Gaslit Nation we continue our discussion of the William “Iran Contra Cover Up Guy” Barr’s memo and the insipid media coverage from kleptocrat sycophant journalists on both the left and the right. Andrea gives a media literacy lesson once again, and we examine what’s behind the feverish desire to exonerate a president who has committed a multitude of crimes in plain sight and whose circle has never faced consequences for their dangerous actions.

We also look at the killing spree being orchestrated by partners of the Trump administration, in particular the targeted assassinations attempted and carried out by Russia and Saudi Arabia. We look at new developments in these cases, like the stalking of Jeff Bezos and the admission by a former CIA officer that the US government is doing nothing to help Americans who are targets of Russian assassins. We discuss the continued attempt of the GOP to flip the script of the Mueller probe and investigate the investigators – which includes everyone from Adam Schiff to Andrea’s own sister, Alexandra Chalupa, who was the first whistleblower on Manafort’s attempt to illicitly influence the 2016 election. We look at the Ukraine election, which may bring another reality TV celebrity into presidential power, and examine what the ramifications of foreign elections are for ordinary citizens living in a globalized kleptocracy.

Finally, remember Lisa Page, this Lisa Page? From Wired's June 2017 article titled Robert Mueller Chooses His Investigatory Dream Team:

"...While the Special Counsel’s office has yet to make any formal announcements about Mueller’s team, it appears he has recruited an experienced Justice Department trial attorney, Lisa Page, a little-known figure outside the halls of Main Justice but one whose résumé boasts intriguing hints about where Mueller’s Russia investigation might lead. Page has deep experience with money laundering and organized crime cases, including investigations where she’s partnered with an FBI task force in Budapest, Hungary, that focuses on eastern European organized crime. That Budapest task force helped put together the still-unfolding money laundering case against Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, a one-time business partner of Manafort. "

https://www.patreon.com/posts/lisa-page-25860818

Sarah Kendzior
‏

"Some things that we do not need a Mueller report to see: 1) Trump asking Russia for HRC’s emails at a July 2016 presser 2) Stone’s collaboration with Wikileaks, in the public domain 3) Cohen and Sater’s Nov 2015 emails saying Putin would help Trump, also in the public domain...


"4) The changes to the GOP platform by oligarch lackey Paul Manafort to make it favorable to Russia, also in the public domain 5) The details of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting tweeted out by Donald Trump Jr in 2017, also in the public domain...


6) Trump firing Comey, partying with Lavrov and Kislyak in the Oval the next day, and confessing to obstruction of justice to Lester Holt on TV 7) Multiple staffers lying about illicit contacts with Russians on their clearance forms, including Ivanka, Jared and Jeff Sessions...


Jeff Sessions having to recuse himself because he’s implicated in the Russia plot 9) Guilty Michael Flynn working secretly for both Russia and Turkey while openly hanging out with Putin at an RT gala in Dec 2015. All of this is in the public domain!


That’s the tip of the iceberg. You have decades of dirty deals between Trump and the Russian mafia, as well as the deals of almost everyone in their inner circle, as well as events like Russian mobster Felix Sater taking Ivanka to the Kremlin and having her sit in Putin’s chair.


"You don't need the Mueller report to see all this. What we need are answers about why nothing was done when all this took place in public and was a massive security threat. And we need answers about why the media lied about it then and now." @gaslitnation
https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/statu ... 4470029312

[seemslikeadream]

does anyone seriously take Greenwald covering current events these days?

NSA whistleblower Reality Winner leaked a secret NSA memo to the journalism website The Intercept, which promptly betrayed her by showing the document to the NSA. Even worse, they told the Agency where it was mailed from. As a result, Winner is now warming the inside of a prison cell. At bare minimum, The Intercept owes Winner and its readers a big apology for burning their source. But who can possibly trust a news organization that has such close ties to the government spooks it claims to be covering?
http://rall.com/comic/intercept-burned-reality-winner

Polly Sigh Retweeted


The Senior White House Official whose security clearance was denied last year because of concerns about foreign influence, private business interests, and personal conduct is Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Individual-1.

Citizens for Ethics
‏
BREAKING: CREW just obtained Jared Kushner's and Ivanka Trump's certified financial disclosures. Why did it take OGE so long to certify their disclosures? Why did Ivanka revise her disclosure 6 times in the past month???
https://s3.amazonaws.com/storage.citize ... 18-278.pdf



ared Kushner's certified financial disclosure. Jared amended his 4 times in the past month:

The WSJ's defense of Barr was one of the most hilariously ill-timed editorials ever. Came out minutes before the Mueller news broke.

https://twitter.com/neal_katyal

William Barr Seems to Be Covering Up Something Bad for Trump
Jonathan Chait@jonathanchait9:16 A.M.

Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Last evening, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that reporters and House Democrats were smearing Attorney General William Barr by implying that his summary of the Mueller report was anything other than completely faithful and representative. The Journal sneered at “the impression, abetted by a press corps that was fully invested in the collusion story, that Mr. Barr is somehow lying about Mr. Mueller’s real conclusions.” This was “preposterous,” the editorial explained, because Barr “surely understood on releasing the summary of conclusions last week that he would be open to contradiction by Mr. Mueller if he took such liberties.”

The editorial was published at 7:24 p.m. Minutes before, and probably too late to make any alterations, the New York Times broke the news that Barr was in fact contradicted. How could anybody think Barr would be stupid enough to lie when Mueller could expose him, asks the Journal, at almost literally the precise moment when Mueller’s team exposes Barr for lying.

The Times reports that Mueller’s famously leak-free team was moved to break its silence by Barr’s slanted summary of its work. The news from the Times, as well as the follow-up report from the Washington Post, conveys very little information about the substance of the report. There’s no reason to doubt Barr’s conclusion that Mueller was unable to establish a criminal conspiracy between Donald Trump and the Russian government. Whether the unflattering information in the report contains evidence of noncriminal misconduct with Russia — remember, collusion is not a crime — or centers entirely around obstruction of justice remains to be seen.

It does seem clear, though, that Barr has not been dealing from the top of the deck. More evidence of his bad faith can be found in his putative reason for abridging Mueller’s conclusions. The special counsel’s report provided summaries of its work. The Times, apparently relying on Justice Department sources, reports that Mueller’s summaries could not be published, because they “contain sensitive information, like classified material, secret grand-jury testimony and information related to current federal investigations that must remain confidential, according to two government officials.”

But the special counsel flatly contradicts this in its leak to the Post. The summaries, says a special counsel source, were deliberately written “so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately — or very quickly … It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.”

(Fordham law professor Jed Shugerman spotted this contradiction.) It’s possible, of course, the Justice Department is right and the special counsel is wrong. But it seems far more likely that Barr has, at minimum, spun the report in the most favorable way, in order to create the impression that it has cleared Trump. This has enabled the president and his defenders to spike the football, and present any efforts to examine the actual report as sore losers demanding to play overtime after the game has been decided.

Republican messaging in recent days has made it blindingly obvious the Mueller report is not a document Trump fans would enjoy reading around the fireplace. Republicans have gone from supporting its full release — which House Republicans supported last week in a unanimous vote — to cautioning against it as a distraction. Representative Devin Nunes, who has largely directed Trump’s defense in Congress and the right-wing media, appeared on Fox News last night and introduced a new term: “Mueller dossier.”

“Dossier” is the term used to (accurately) describe the reports collected by British agent Christopher Steele. Steele’s work actually was a dossier: a collection of tips and leads from sources he had some reason to credit, but not all of which would pan out. It was not a finished intelligence product.

Mueller’s report is not a dossier. It is in fact held to a higher standard of proof than an intelligence product. As prosecutors, Mueller’s team needed to establish findings at a level that could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in court.

Nunes nonetheless used the term “dossier” three times in the span of a minute to describe Mueller’s conclusion. He is obviously priming the Trump fan base to disregard adverse findings.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/ ... ussia.html

Welcome to our Orwellian nightmare
Robert Harrington
PR193: Our Orwellian predicament

What better day than today to memorialize George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” a work that began its story on the fictional future date of April the fourth of that eponymous year? The novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, is captured and brutally tortured for, among other things, “crimethink,” the entertaining of private thoughts deemed inimical to the state.

Before being ultimately broken and rendered wretchedly subservient in room 101, the place wherein lies everyone’s greatest personal terror, Winston Smith is asked by his tormentor, O’Brien, why does Big Brother, and hence the government, seek power? “You are ruling over us for our own good,” Winston meekly responds. For that Winston is treated to a back-archingly brutal jolt of electricity. “That was stupid, Winston, stupid!” O’Brien replies. “You should know better than to say a thing like that.” O’Brien goes on to explain it to him. “No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end.”

It seems to me this is the best answer to why the Republican Party in general and Donald Trump in particular do what they so outrageously do, day in and day out. I submit this fictional theory of Orwell’s goes a long way in accounting for the pervasive mystery of the two years prior to the Blue Wave, when Trump and party virtually owned the government – yet did virtually nothing with that ownership. What little that did happen, the raping of the average taxpayer with the tax scam, the fast track installation of two eerily unqualified Supreme Court justices, put more money in the pockets of their cronies and paymasters in the first instance and shored up their prospects for keeping that money in the second.

The promised sweeping reforms for Jane and Joe Citizen, including the latest promise that a world-beating healthcare package that is so good you won’t believe it, are just around the corner. After the 2020 elections, of course. Vote us back in, they say, and you’ll see. Just don’t get sick in the meantime.

The Republican machine is using Donald Trump, toward this end, to consolidate their power against the day when they can freely abandon their hypocrisy and cease pretending they exist for the good of the people at all. Orwell gives us a cautionary tale of what might very well one day happen to America unless we stop them. “If you want a picture of the future,” O’Brien tells Winston Smith, “imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.”

Robert Harrington

Attorney General Bill Barr Has Made A Huge Miscalculation
Victor Lipman
uncaptioned image
Attorney General Bill Barr's credibility has been called into question. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) ASSOCIATED PRESS
The leaking has started.

With these following words yesterday the New York Times formalized what many close observers of the Mueller investigation had suspected: Attorney General William Barr's controversial four-page letter about Mueller's work was likely more spin than fact. "Some of Robert S. Mueller's III's investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry," the Times reported, "and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated."

Indeed, by injecting himself deeply into the Mueller investigation process, the attorney general initially had given the president a huge political gift which the savvy marketer quickly turned into a powerful message of "no collusion and complete and total exoneration." Never mind this wasn't 100% true - it had a great positive ring to it. But was it even close to being fair and accurate?

"One sign of how angry Mueller's team is," wrote lawyer and professor Seth Abramson on Twitter, "is that they appear to be *strongly* implying bad faith on the Attorney General's part, inasmuch as multiple members of the Mueller team told the New York Times they'd provided their own summaries to the AG - which he then promptly *ignored*."

Management without credibility

Management without credibility is generally doomed to failure, sooner or later. By pushing the bounds of credibility in his initial communique and then assuming he could use his positional power to control how and when he released the rest of the Mueller Report, the attorney general was making a calculation that he could tightly control the message in the president's favor. But in so doing he was also taking a risk of compounding the problem by piling cover-up upon cover-up, scandal upon scandal. His refusal to be transparent has made him a subpoena magnet for the Democrats.

There was always an uneasy tension between the way Barr "auditioned" for the job with a 19-page memo ripping the Mueller probe and his avuncular, lawyerly, moderate manner in confirmation hearings. But when push came to shove and he actually had the Mueller Report in his hands, he came up with an odd product citing remarkably little of Mueller's actual work and words... while tilting favorably toward the president. But now Barr's credibility is being called into question. Did the attorney general produce a fair and balanced Mueller summary, or carefully crafted legalistic spin?

Which would ultimately seriously frustrate the report's authors.

The leaking has started.

Attorney general or spin doctor?

As I've said before in this space, I'm not a Democrat, I'm a registered political Independent. No fan of Bill and Hillary. Or Obamacare. But I do like to see truth and credibility in our leadership.

So it's disturbing to see the highest lawmaker in the land apparently adding to the Mt. Everest of disinformation already existing in these hyper-partisan times.

Personally I believe the attorney general made a huge miscalculation in how far he believed he could control the message and push the "spin cycle." He now finds his own reputation on the line. Does he want he remembered as a highly accomplished lawyer with credibility, or a political operative? Attorney general or spin doctor?

Right now I'm afraid the scale is tilting toward the spin side. "He looks like he's protecting his guy," law professor Neal Katyal said last night on MSNBC. (The "guy" of course being the president.) "It's looking even more like a cover-up," Katyal concluded, "and why the report has to be released."

The leaking has started.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipm ... ac2a322e78

Neal Katyal
‏
This is absurd. Barr has had 13 days to go to court &ask to have the grand jury material released, as Jaworski did in Watergate (+other sp prosecutors). He hasn't even bothered. That laconic pace poorly contrasts with his clearing of Donald Trump of obstruction charges in 48 hrs.

New from Department of Justice on Barr letter and Mueller report.

https://twitter.com/KellyO/status/1113817501425655813

Cummings told reporters yesterday afternoon that Mazars intends to do so soon, according to CNN. “They have told us that they will provide the information pretty much when they have a subpoena,” Cummings said. “And we’ll get them a subpoena.” When the Committee receives the documents from Mazars, it will probably be bad news for trump.

Cummings: Trump accounting firm will provide financial information with a subpoena
(CNN) — House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings said Wednesday that an accounting firm that provided financial statements for President Donald Trump will give financial documents to his committee — but only if they receive a subpoena first.

Cummings had set a Wednesday deadline for the accounting firm, Mazars USA, to provide financial documents from Trump going back 10 years as part of the committee's probe into Trump's finances.

"The accounting firm told us that they will respond, and they just want a subpoena," the Maryland Democrat told reporters Wednesday. "They have told us that they will provide the information pretty much when they have a subpoena. And we'll get them a subpoena."

Cummings described it as a "friendly subpoena" to the firm because it had been requested.

Michael Cohen, the President's former lawyer and fixer who accused Trump of financial fraud, provided the committee with three years' worth of financial statements prepared by Mazars, in which Cohen says Trump inflated his wealth as he attempted to purchase the National Football League's Buffalo Bills.

Cummings seeking Trump financial info going back 10 years
"Mr. Cohen produced to the Committee financial statements from 2011, 2012, and 2013 that raise questions about the President's representations of his financial affairs on these forms and on other disclosures, particularly relating to the President's debts," Cummings wrote in the letter to Mazars CEO Victor Wahba.

Cummings' letter raised several concerns about the financial statements, including the calculation of Trump's net worth, the omission of real estate assets and debts in Chicago and Las Vegas and the valuation of "real estate licensing developments."

Republicans on the committee have criticized Democrats for seeking financial information about Trump long before he was a candidate for President, as well as their reliance on Cohen as a key witness.

Cohen is set to report to prison in May to start a three-year sentence for nine charges, including campaign-finance violations related to payments he arranged to silence women who claimed affairs with Trump, all of which Cohen pleaded guilty to last year. Trump has denied the affairs.
"Your inquiry to Mr. Wahba about the private finances of citizen Donald J. Trump appears to depart from responsible and legitimate oversight," GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina wrote to Cummings last week. "It appears instead that you seek material from Mr. Wahba solely to embarrass President Trump and to advance the relentless Democrat attacks upon the Trump administration."

Cummings has issued several subpoenas so far as chairman of the oversight committee, including one on Tuesday related to White House security clearances.

Cummings said he didn't have a timeline yet for when he would move to issue the subpoena for Mazars.

A spokesperson for Mazars USA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/03/politics ... index.html

[seemslikeadream]

Glenn and his lackeys in the denialist crowd who continue to willfully misrepresent the public evidence have yet to deal with the fact that Mueller has already presented evidence that Paul Manafort conspired with Russian Konstantin Kilimnik

.......

I find Glenn’s trust of Bill Barr, one of the most authoritarian Attorneys General in the last half century, all the more ironic, coming as it does the same week that DOJ IG released this IG report on several DEA dragnets.

THE IRONY OF GLENN GREENWALD CUDDLING UP WITH BILL BARR, THE GRANDFATHER OF ED SNOWDEN’S PHONE DRAGNET

April 4, 2019/40

/by emptywheel
Glenn Greenwald, who has written two books about the abuse of Presidential power, continues to dig in on his factually ignorant claims about the Mueller report. For days, he and the denialists said that if Mueller’s report was being misrepresented by Bill Barr, Mueller would speak up. Now that Mueller’s team has done so, Glenn complains that these are anonymous leaks and nevertheless only address obstruction, not a conspiracy with Russia on the election.

Glenn and his lackeys in the denialist crowd who continue to willfully misrepresent the public evidence have yet to deal with the fact that Mueller has already presented evidence that Paul Manafort conspired with Russian Konstantin Kilimnik on the election, but that they weren’t able to substantiate and charge it because Manafort lied. Mueller’s team say they believe Manafort did so in hopes and expectation that if he helped Trump and denialists like Glenn sustain a “no collusion” line, he might get a pardon. That is, we know that Trump’s offers of pardons — his obstruction — specifically prevented Mueller from pursuing a fairly smoking gun incident where Trump’s campaign manager coordinated with Russians on the hack-and-leak.

As Glenn once professed to know with respect to Scooter Libby’s obstruction, if someone successfully obstructs an investigation, that may mean the ultimate culprit in that investigation escapes criminal charge.

Glenn’s denialism is all the more remarkable, though, given that this same guy who wrote two books on abuse of presidential power is choosing to trust a memo from Bill Barr that was obviously playing legalistic games over what the public record says. As Glenn must know well, Barr has a history of engaging in precisely the kind of cover-up of presidential abuses Glenn once professed to oppose, fairly epically on Iran-Contra. The cover-up that Barr facilitated on that earlier scandal was the model that Dick Cheney used in getting away with leaking Valerie Plame’s identity and torture and illegal wiretapping, the kinds of presidential abuses that Glenn once professed to oppose.

I find Glenn’s trust of Bill Barr, one of the most authoritarian Attorneys General in the last half century, all the more ironic, coming as it does the same week that DOJ IG released this IG report on several DEA dragnets.

That’s because Glenn’s more recent opposition to abuse of power comes in the form of shepherding Edward Snowden’s leaks. Glenn’s recent fame stems in significant degree to the fact that on June 5, 2013, he published a document ordering Verizon to turn over all its phone records to the government.

The dragnet Snowden revealed with that document was actually just the second such dragnet. The first one targeted the phone calls from the US to a bunch of foreign countries claimed, with no court review, to have a drug nexus. Only, that term “drug nexus” came to include countries with no significant drug ties but instead a claimed tie between drug money and financing terrorism, and which further came to be used in totally unrelated investigations. That earlier dragnet became the model for Stellar Wind, which became the model for the Section 215 dragnet that Glenn is now famous for having helped Edward Snowden expose.

Here’s what the IG Report released the same week that Glenn spent hours cuddling up to Bill Barr says about the original dragnet.



Bill Barr, the guy Glenn has spent 10 days nuzzling up to, is the grandfather of the dragnet system of surveillance.

The IG Report also shows that Bill Barr — the guy Glenn has spent 10 days trusting implicitly — didn’t brief Congress at all; the program wasn’t first briefed to Congress until years after Barr left office the first time.



This is the man that former critic of abusive presidential power Glenn Greenwald has chosen to trust over the public record.

This is, it seems, the strange plight of the denialist left, cozying up to the kind of authoritarians that their entire career, at least to this point, have vigorously opposed.https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/04/04/t ... e-dragnet/

speaking of Bill Barr's best friend and person that outs his sources because he doesn't like what she was giving him....had to silence that!!

John Kiriakou
‏
Verified account

@JohnKiriakou
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.@theintercept should be ashamed of itself. Matthew Cole burns yet another source. It makes your entire organization untrustworthy.

@theintercept showed NSA the original document for comment.
https://twitter.com/JohnKiriakou?lang=en

Moon of Alabama

Do Not Trust The Intercept or How To Burn A Source
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/06/d ... ource.html

WikiLeaks Declares War on The Intercept
The FBI says a reporter led it to an NSA leaker. Julian Assange says that person, whom he suspects is an Intercept reporter, is a ‘menace’ to sources, journalists, and democracy.
On his personal Twitter account, Assange expressed support for Winner’s actions, saying “she is a young women [sic] accused of courage in trying to help us know.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/wikileaks ... -intercept

The Intercept's Bad Track Record Gets Worse as New Whistleblower Outed
March 30th, 2018
MINNEAPOLIS – On Wednesday, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) reported that former Minneapolis-based FBI agent Terry James Albury had been charged with leaking classified government information to the online publication The Intercept.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/bad-track ... pt/239822/

Ted Rall
Et Tu, Glenn Greenwald?
June 12, 2017

NSA whistleblower Reality Winner leaked a secret NSA memo to the journalism website The Intercept, which promptly betrayed her by showing the document to the NSA. Even worse, they told the Agency where it was mailed from. As a result, Winner is now warming the inside of a prison cell. At bare minimum, The Intercept owes Winner and its readers a big apology for burning their source. But who can possibly trust a news organization that has such close ties to the government spooks it claims to be covering?
http://rall.com/comic/intercept-burned-reality-winner

What’s important for readers to know, to The Intercept’s founding editors, is that their publication’s alleged source was not motivated by their Russia skepticism, or at least not spurred by the transcript of one recorded expression of it. What’s conspicuously lacking is that express solidarity with a woman — source or not — who is accused of, and facing prison time for, releasing a report that revealed no raw intelligence or intelligence-gathering methods but demonstrated, for the skeptics, that at least the U.S. intelligence community’s internal assessments track with its public statements.
But that, again, may be unwelcome for those who have devoted a year to a nothing-to-see-here line.

https://medium.com/@charlesdavis/realit ... 70718aaac6

Reality Winner trusted Glenn Greenwald and now she's in federal prison

Greenwald had no problem throwing courageous Reality Winner to the wolves while protecting Assange

She actually sent the info to the intercept to prove to Greenwald that Russian interference...and she got prison time for her trouble

yea Glenn sees a difference in different whistleblowers depending on the info ...it is so obvious why she is in jail

Reality Winner should have known better than to try and contradict Glenn's pro-Russia/trump editorial line and given those docs to NBC.

But that, again, may be unwelcome for those who have devoted a year to a nothing-to-see-here line.

The Intercept's Bad Track Record Gets Worse as New Whistleblower Outed
March 30th, 2018
MINNEAPOLIS – On Wednesday, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) reported that former Minneapolis-based FBI agent Terry James Albury had been charged with leaking classified government information to the online publication The Intercept. Albury’s legal defense, led by Jane Anne Murray and Joshua Dratel, identified him as a whistleblower, stating that his decision to leak the documents was “driven by a conscientious commitment to long-term national security and addressing the well-documented systemic biases within the FBI.”

Albury’s defense also noted that he has accepted “full responsibility for the conduct set forth in the Information,” referencing the fact that the document charging Albury was a two-page felony information. As noted by the Star Tribune, such a document usually signals an imminent guilty plea.

Albury had previously worked as a liaison on counter-terrorism matters at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. He has been charged with one count of “knowingly and willfully” transmitting documents and information related to national defense to a news organization and one count of refusing to hand over documents in his possession to the government upon request.


While the FBI warrant filed against Albury does not explicitly name The Intercept, MPR revealed that the documents described in the search warrant exactly match a cache of FBI documents used in The Intercept’s article series titled “The FBI’s Secret Rules,” published in January 2017. Albury is alleged to have possessed and shared the documents with a news outlet between February 2016 and January 2017. The documents examine the expansion of, as well as the questionable tactics used by, the FBI since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The Intercept’s current editor, Betsy Reed, stated that the publication does not discuss anonymous sources.

Read more by Whitney Webb

The Media’s Curious Coverage of the “Second Snowden”
Displacing WikiLeaks and Intercepting Whistleblowers: SecureDrop’s Security Problem
Palantir: The PayPal-offshoot Becomes a Weapon in the War Against Whistleblowers and WikiLeaks
FBI Whistleblower on Pierre Omidyar and His Campaign to Neuter Wikileaks
Former FBI special agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley — who retired after 24 years after having opposed the invasion of Iraq and exposed the agency’s mishandling of information — told MintPress that she was “kind of surprised that FBI informant guidelines,” such as those allegedly leaked by Albury, “are now considered secret as, if I remember right, most of the informant guidelines were not classified when I worked there [up to and including 2004]. But after 9-11, things began to rapidly change, so I am guessing they have overly/improperly classified them [these types of documents].”

Rowley, who like Albury worked in Minneapolis during her time at the FBI, continued that “the informant program was replete with problems because there was no oversight” during her years at the FBI and that “Albury was probably trying to bring systemic problems [in the FBI] to the public. That makes him a true whistleblower.”

The Intercept fails to protect its source

Other information contained in the complaint against Albury has led some to suggest that The Intercept was responsible for outing or “burning” Albury as a confidential source. According to the FBI, The Intercept made two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in March 2016. Both of those requests contained specific information identifying the names of the documents that were not publicly available.

Previously sealed FBI search warrants show that these FOIA requests led the FBI to link references contained in the requests to Albury’s activity on FBI information systems. This led the FBI to conclude that “the classified and/or controlled nature of the documents indicates the News Outlet obtained these documents from someone with direct access to them” and that The Intercept had the documents prior to making the FOIA requests and then “used its knowledge of such documents to create the FOIA requests.”

Jesus, what a bad look. A second member of the US intelligence community, this time a Minneapolis FBI agent, has been charged with leaking to the Intercept. This appears to the the opsec failure: https://t.co/nMX1K2qUHn pic.twitter.com/eW3xTpsSf8

— Kevin Collier (@kevincollier) March 28, 2018

Ah the Intercept: Get a source, try to launder the source's leaked documents through FOIA requests, fail, publish anyway, get source arrested.#NeverChangehttps://t.co/Vb0tjD1M7T

— Nicholas Weaver (@ncweaver) March 28, 2018

An FBI review conducted at a later date found that Albury had taken 11 screenshots of one of the documents specifically named in the FOIA requests by The Intercept and was one of only 16 individuals to access the document between August 2011 and March 29, 2016 – when the FOIA request was filed. The warrant also added that “to date, a review of FBI records has revealed no indication that any individual other than ALBURY both accessed this document and conducted cut and paste action.”

The FBI has asserted that Albury was found to have accessed more than two-thirds of the leaked documents published by The Intercept and had been caught taking photos of other secret documents months later in the summer of 2017.

Interestingly, The Intercept report referencing Albury’s arrest does not make any mention of the FOIA requests mentioned in the FBI’s case against Albury. A statement regarding Albury’s arrest from First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, mentions neither the FOIA requests nor the involvement of The Intercept.

Second whistleblower burned in less than a year

Albury is not the first source to have been burned by poor journalistic practices and source protection methods at The Intercept. Just nine months ago, Reality Leigh Winner, a now 26-year-old federal contractor, was arrested for allegedly leaking a classified NSA document to The Intercept that was related to an investigation of an alleged Russian military intelligence hacking operation targeting the U.S. Ever since her initial arrest, Winner has been held in pre-trial detention and has been denied bail. She faces up to 10 years in prison under the Espionage Act and her trial is set to begin in October of this year.

While The Intercept has long maintained that it was unaware that Winner was the source of the document, FBI documents have shown that negligence helped lead federal investigators straight to Winner.The Intercept’s scanned images of the intelligence report that Winner leaked contained tracking dots – a type of watermark – that, according to Rob Graham of the Errata Security blog, showed “exactly when and where documents, any document, is printed.” These dots make it easy to identify a printer’s serial number as well as the date and time a document was printed. As Graham noted, “Because the NSA logs all printing jobs on its printers, it can use this to match up precisely who printed the document.”

https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/871931112221794306

In addition, and perhaps most concerning of all, the FBI warrant also notes that the reporter in question – who is unnamed in the document – contacted a government contractor with whom he had a prior relationship and revealed where the documents had been postmarked from – Winner’s home of Augusta, Georgia – along with Winner’s work location. He also sent unedited images of the documents that contained the tracking dot security markings that allowed the document to be traced to Winner.

Despite that, The Intercept has never named the reporter who was responsible and has taken minimal responsibility as an organization for her arrest. However, Pierre Omidyar – the billionaire backer of The Intercept, who has a noted disdain for transparency organizations like WikiLeaks – has directed First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, to support Winner’s legal defense via its Press Freedom Defense Fund. It remains to be seen if Omidyar and First Look Media will offer to support Albury’s defense.

While the identity of the reporter mentioned in the FBI warrant remains unknown, the published report that used the document leaked by Winner has four authors – two of whom, Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito, were once involved in a case against CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou. Cole still writes regularly for The Intercept while Esposito’s last story for the publication was the report containing the Winner document. When Winner’s arrest was announced, Kiriakou specifically singled out Cole as having not only misled him, but also played a likely role in incriminating him. Kiriakou spent nearly two years in prison for exposing the CIA’s torture program.

Kiriakou, in an email to MintPress stated:

I am appalled that yet another whistleblower in touch with The Intercept has been outed and arrested. The Intercept has a track record on whistleblowers that it should be ashamed of. Reality Winner was in touch with The Intercept and was arrested and charged with espionage. Terry Albury apparently was in touch with The Intercept and was arrested and charged with espionage. I was arrested and charged with espionage after being in touch with Matthew Cole, now an Intercept reporter. If The Intercept cannot or will not protect the identity of its sources, it should not be in the business of journalism. Indeed, perhaps The Intercept should walk away from national security reporting before its lack of journalistic professionalism ruins any more lives.”

Rowley, for her part, took a different view of the situation. She stated that “whistleblowing is so difficult these days for a lot of different reasons. … Both the whistleblower and the reporter are really up against some huge challenges. It’s probably not possible [anymore] to guarantee secrecy. If any reporter is promising that kind of thing, they are probably not being honest because the government has really doubled down on the ‘insider threat.’”

However, Rowley also expressed skepticism about recent hires at The Intercept and also asserted:

[The Intercept] should be a lot more forthright about this [Albury arrest] because this issue [whistleblowers, leaks] is their bread and butter. … That’s The Intercept’s brand and if they now are falling down on that job they should be as forthright as they could be about this mess and not just blaming [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions and Trump – the crackdown on whistleblowers has been going on for a long time.”

She also expressed concern about the SecureDrop platform that The Intercept promotes.

Pierre Omidyar and the Snowden documents

The news that another whistleblower in contact with The Intercept has been arrested is concerning, as it suggests that source protection at the outlet is not given the importance it deserves, especially when those sources are risking their freedom to get vital information out to the public. However, other actions taken by The Intercept in its short history have also raised concern and have been the subject of extensive reporting at MintPress News as well as other publications, such as Pando.

Much of the scrutiny, aside from the arrest of Winner and now Albury, has been aimed at The Intercept’s billionaire backer, Pierre Omidyar, who is very well-connected to various agencies of the U.S. government and powerful politicians, including past presidents; has funded U.S.-backed regime-change efforts abroad; and still funds USAID, particularly its overseas program aimed at “advancing U.S. national security interests” abroad. Omidyar also has a history of attacking the transparency organization WikiLeaks and has publicly stated that, in the case of those who leak documents to news outlets, those outlets “should help catch the thief.”

Concern and speculation related to Omidyar’s role at The Intercept has proliferated due to its glacial publishing of the Snowden documents. Indeed, The Intercept was founded with the mission to “aggressively report” on the leaked NSA documents Edward Snowden provided to Intercept co-founders Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. However, in the years since The Intercept’s founding, more than 90 percent of those documents leaked by Snowden have yet to be made publicly available, leading some to accuse the publication of having “privatized” leaks originally intended for public scrutiny.

Snowden, however, has not publicly spoken about the slow pace of the releases and, in the past, has said he delegated all decision-making regarding the release of the documents to the journalists to whom he gave his cache. Snowden’s lack of concern could also potentially be due to the fact that he is now the President of the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Omidyar since 2014. The majority of the FPF’s directors, aside from Snowden, either work for First Look Media – the Omidyar-owned parent company of The Intercept – or for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – which has received significant funding from the Omidyar network since 2004.

Another area of contention related to the release – or lack thereof – of the Snowden documents has been the timing with which some documents have been released. In two recent cases, The Intercept published Snowden documents that would have had a major impact had they been released earlier. In one instance, The Intercept published a document last year on the Syrian conflict that revealed that some Syrian “rebel” opposition groups were taking marching orders from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As MintPress reported at the time, The Intercept published this document only after the U.S. State Department itself began to report more honestly on the nature of these so-called “rebels.”

A more recent example of this occurred little over a week ago. On March 20, The Intercept published Snowden documents that revealed how the NSA worked to illegally “track down” Bitcoin users, naming tracking the movements of Bitcoin as a “#1 priority.” However, the information in this document was released only after Bitcoin had become a mainstream phenomenon. It also was released after it could have helped defend Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame.

As The Intercept itself noted:

Part of his [Ulbricht’s] unsuccessful defense was the insistence that the FBI’s story of how it found him did not add up, and that the government may have discovered and penetrated the Silk Road’s servers with the help of the NSA — possibly illegally. The prosecution dismissed this theory in no uncertain terms.”

Thus, if this document had been released before or during Ulbricht’s trial, it could have impacted the outcome. In 2016, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison without parole and his legal team is seeking to appeal that decision. Interestingly, one of Ulbricht’s lawyers, Joshua Dratel, is currently representing Terry Albury.

“Welcoming” whistleblowers should not mean outing them

Despite its sizable financial resources and the number of employees who are dedicated to source protection, The Intercept’s practices have led to the arrest of a source — not once but twice — in less than a year. In the cases of Winner and now Albury, it has not taken full responsibility for its role in outing either of these unfortunate whistleblowers, but still seeks to present itself as a trustworthy organization that “welcomes whistleblowers.” Along with past calls to scrutinize the publication — as well as its billionaire backer — Albury’s arrest should serve as a fresh reminder that The Intercept has largely become part of the establishment journalism that it purports to stand against, and is hardly the haven for whistleblowers that it has presented itself to be.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/bad-track ... pt/239822/

The Intercept
Betsy Reed
August 23 2018, 10:08 a.m.

STATEMENT ON THE SENTENCING OF WHISTLEBLOWER REALITY WINNER FOR DISCLOSING NSA REPORT ON RUSSIAN ELECTION HACKING
Betsy Reed
August 23 2018, 10:08 a.m.
REALITY WINNER WAS sentenced today to 63 months in prison for disclosing a top-secret NSA document describing a hacking campaign directed by the Russian military against U.S. voting systems.

On June 5, 2017, The Intercept published a story about the document. We did not know the identity of the source who had sent it to us. Shortly after we posted our story, we learned that Winner had been arrested two days earlier. After an internal review, we acknowledged shortcomings in our handling of the document.
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/23/rea ... n-hacking/

Reality Winner was arrested by FBI agents at her home in Augusta, Georgia, June 3rd, 2017, two days before The Intercept published an exposé revealing Russian military intelligence conducted a cyberattack on at least one US voting software company just days before the US presidential election in 2016

It was provided to the Intercept, which made several mistakes related to source protection that led authorities to identify Winner as the person who gave the report to the media outlet.
https://shadowproof.com/2018/08/23/nsa- ... isclosure/

Evidence That The Intercept Betrayed Winner
The Intercept Sent A Copy Of The Document To An NSA Contractor Who Tattled
One of the Intercept's reporters shared a photograph of the document with another contractor in an attempt to verify its authenticity. Crucially, that reporter told the contractor that the document had been sent from Augusta, Georgia — where Winner lives.

[O]n May 24, a reporter from the Intercept reached out to an unnamed government contractor, trying to determine the validity of the leak. During the exchange, the Intercept revealed that the leak had been mailed with a postmark of Augusta, Georgia, where Winner lives. (Checking with other sources about the validity of a leak is not necessarily bad opsec; revealing specific information about the leak almost certainly is — though it's also probably more common than journalists would like to admit.)
[New York Magazine]

According to the FBI's search warrant affidavit, the contractor eventually told his or her superiors about the conversation with the reporter.

The Contractor informed the Reporter that he thought that the documents were fake. Nonetheless, the Contractor contacted the U.S. Government Agency on or about June 1, 2017, to inform the U.S. Government Agency of his interaction with the Reporter. Also on June 1, 2017, the Reporter texted the Contractor and said that a U.S Government Agency official had verified that the document was real.
Lawfare's Susan Hennessey points out on Twitter that the Intercept's contractor source was legally obligated to report any leak to his or her superiors, which means that the Intercept was taking a big risk by sharing the leak with him or her.


The Intercept Also Gave A Copy Of The Document Directly To The NSA
As part of the verification process, and to give the government a chance to recommend redactions of sensitive info, the Intercept shared some version of the document with the NSA.

The Intercept also passed along a copy of the document to the government as part of its reporting process — and that apparently contained some clues as well. "The U.S. Government Agency examined the document shared by the News Outlet and determined the pages of the intelligence reporting appeared to be folded and/or creased, suggesting they had been printed and hand-carried out of a secured space," says one of the court documents.
[Washington Post]
http://digg.com/2017/did-intercept-burn-reality-winner

[/quote]

[seemslikeadream]

House Judiciary Chairman requests all communications between the Justice Department and the Special Counsel regarding the Mueller report

Oops. Did Barr forget that the Special Counsel office will have the other side of emails? If Barr scrubs his emails they still won't go away. The Trump administration often seems to forget that modern technology means communication lasts forever.

The Mueller Report Thread
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41649

emptywheel
See if you can spot Glenn's mis-citation masquerading as rationality.

[also note: Glenn has discovered Dilanian, whose errors somehow never made his list of top ten]

Anyway, since Glenn can't even cite his great authoritarian hero, Bill Barr, faithfully, reupping once more:

The Irony of Glenn Greenwald Cuddling Up with Bill Barr, the Grandfather of Ed Snowden's Phone Dragnet

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1 ... 0745202690
https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1 ... 8710943747

CNN: Michael Cohen wants to stay out of jail - and tells Congress he has more documents and can offer more assistance to investigators

Cohen's attorneys told Hill in a letter Thursday that Cohen has discovered substantial files on a hard drive that might be helpful to investigators. Cohen is asking for additional time, and congressional help to persuade SDNY to delay reporting to jail.

‘Dozens’ of Whistle-Blowers Are Secretly Cooperating With House Democrats
The number of anonymous tipsters reporting wrongdoing from inside the federal government has spiked during the Trump presidency, the House Oversight Committee says.

Russell Berman is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers politics.
10:52 AM ET

Cliff Owen / AP
Tricia Newbold set an important mark when she became the first official currently serving in Donald Trump’s White House to take accusations of wrongdoing to Congress—and to put her name publicly behind them.

But Democrats on Capitol Hill say that beyond Newbold, a small army of whistle-blowers from across the government has been working in secret with the House Oversight Committee to report alleged malfeasance inside the Trump administration. Lawmakers and aides are reluctant to discuss information they have gleaned from anonymous government tipsters in detail. But the list of whistle-blowers who either currently or previously worked in the Trump administration, or who worked closely with the administration, numbers in the “dozens,” according to a senior aide from the committee now led by Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland.

The Oversight Committee, like many committees in Congress, has a long history of working with federal whistle-blowers regardless of which party is in charge. Though some come forward publicly, most provide information or leak documents anonymously, helping to lead to investigations and, sometimes, hearings. “It’s entirely proper, and it’s really the point of what the Oversight Committee does,” says former Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, a Republican who headed the panel during the mid-2000s. When he was the chairman of the committee, many whistle-blowers’ reports led nowhere, he says, as they frequently came from “disgruntled employees” or others whose complaints were frivolous. But that was not always the case. Davis recalled, for example, that whistle-blowers were crucial to the investigation that exposed the military’s cover-up of the 2004 friendly-fire incident that killed Army Corporal Pat Tillman, a former NFL star who died fighting in Afghanistan.

Rob Porter, John Kelly, and Jared Kushner
Committee veterans told me, however, that the number of whistle-blowers who’ve come forward since Trump became president is far higher than the number who cooperated with the panel during previous administrations. “The biggest difference wasn’t necessarily us switching to the majority; the biggest difference was Donald Trump being elected president,” said the Democratic aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the committee’s investigative work. Democrats began hearing from whistle-blowers almost immediately after Trump was sworn in, the aide said, beginning with a report that then–National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had been exchanging text messages with his business partner during the inauguration.

Of the dozens of whistle-blowers Democrats said they are working with, they have publicly confirmed that a handful work in the White House. All but Newbold, however, have come forward on the condition that they remain anonymous. Newbold spoke to the committee as part of its investigation of White House security clearances, and she’s not the only whistle-blower involved in that matter, the panel confirmed in a memo describing her testimony. “Committee staff have spoken with other whistle-blowers who corroborated Ms. Newbold’s account, but they were too afraid about the risk to their careers to come forward publicly,” the memo reads. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Members from both parties interact privately with whistle-blowers, but under a long-standing agreement within the committee, those who want to make on-the-record testimony must agree to be questioned by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Lawmakers conduct investigations and interact with whistle-blowers even when they don’t have the majority. But they have less power to act on information, because they cannot, on their own, issue subpoenas or call hearings. The number of Trump-administration whistle-blowers has already grown now that Democrats are in power and have signaled that they will conduct aggressive oversight of the Trump administration. The committee was receiving about three or four tips a week before the November midterm elections; that has increased to an average of five—and as many as 15—a week in the months since, according to a second committee aide who provided the data on the condition of anonymity.

“I think there are a lot of whistle-blowers out there, or potential whistle-blowers, who are certainly going to feel a lot more comfortable approaching us in the majority than the other side, especially in the Trump administration,” says Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia, the chairman of the Oversight subcommittee with jurisdiction over federal whistle-blower–protection laws.

That was clearly the case with Newbold, a career employee for the past 18 years in the White House personnel-security office. The Oversight Committee disclosed this week that she agreed to come forward publicly to report that senior officials had granted security clearances to 25 people after they were initially denied. Newbold told the committee in a day-long, transcribed interview last month that she had repeatedly reported her concerns to her superiors in the White House and was turning to Congress as her “last hope” for an independent, outside investigation.

Republicans on the committee have accused Cummings of running a “partisan” probe of the security-clearance process, and of cherry-picking from Newbold’s closed-door testimony, which they said was scheduled at the last minute so Republicans wouldn’t have much time to prepare.

Newbold has accused her superiors of repeatedly retaliating against her after she began raising concerns about the clearance process. In October, she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging that her boss, Carl Kline, would move security files to a higher shelf that she could not reach. (Newbold has a form of dwarfism.) And in January, she was suspended without pay for two weeks soon after NBC News reported that Kline had approved a security clearance for Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, after it was denied by two career security specialists. The NBC story mentioned Newbold’s complaint to the EEOC.

Legislation passed in 1970 and expanded numerous times since protects government whistle-blowers from retaliation. But Democrats say the charges from Trump allies of a “deep state” conspiracy against the president within the federal government—along with reports, including one from an unnamed whistle-blower, that the administration planned to purge the State Department of career civil-service officers deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump—have created a climate of fear among potential whistle-blowers.

“I’ve never seen this many whistle-blowers reporting waste, fraud, and abuse, and just general concern,” the senior Oversight Committee aide told me. “On the flip side of that, I’ve also never seen whistle-blowers so afraid of what could happen to them if somebody finds out who they are.”

At a public committee meeting on Tuesday, Cummings defended his handling of Newbold’s testimony, which he said was taken on a Saturday on short notice at her request because she feared further retaliation at the White House if her planned deposition became public in advance. “I will protect whistle-blowers. Period,” the chairman declared.

Connolly told me that Democrats have more power in the majority to protect whistle-blowers and to ensure that their reports “won’t fall on barren ground.” But, in a nod to the fears that potential whistle-blowers confront, he added this warning: “Nothing’s foolproof, and there’s always a risk.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ss/586459/

I’ve Seen Trump’s Tax Returns and You Still Haven’t
Congress finally tries to force the president to show them the money.
By Timothy L. O'Brien
April 4, 2019, 6:30 AM CDT

Timothy L. O’Brien is the executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion. He has been an editor and writer for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, HuffPost and Talk magazine. His books include “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald.”

Follow @TimOBrien on Twitter

Remember back in early 2016 when Donald Trump, who was still regarded as something of a long shot for the presidency, promised he would disclose his tax returns publicly – just like every other candidate had done voluntarily since 1973?

“I have big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful and we'll be working that over in the next period of time,” Trump said on “Meet the Press.”




The “next period of time” turned out to mean “never.”

Once Trump became skittish about releasing his returns he landed on one recurring reason for why he couldn’t put them out there, as forever memorialized when he was asked about his taxes during a presidential debate.

“As far as my return, I want to file it, except for many years, I've been audited every year,” he said in Houston on Feb. 25, 2016. “Twelve years or something like that. Every year, they audit me, audit me, audit me.”

An audit doesn’t prevent anyone from releasing their tax returns. If they really want to, they can go right ahead. Richard Nixon — RICHARD NIXON — released his tax returns when he was being audited. And it is extremely rare, also bordering on never, for someone to be audited several years in a row, much less 12. So maybe Trump hasn’t been entirely forthright about his audits. But who knows? When asked during one interview why he thought he had been targeted, he gave a faith-based response. “Well, maybe because of the fact that I'm a strong Christian, and I feel strongly about it, maybe there’s a bias,” he once offered.

In the end, Trump, who regards disclosure of his tax returns as a financial form of open-heart surgery, decided that people should just stop bothering him. “I'm worth more than $10 billion by any stretch of the imagination. Has tremendous cash. Tremendous cash flow. You don’t learn much from tax returns,” he told “Meet the Press” several months before Election Day in 2016. “But I would love to give the tax returns. But I can't do it until I'm finished with the audit.”

All that talk of an audit may have put Trump in a corner. On Wednesday night, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee asked the Internal Revenue Service to release six years of the president’s personal and business tax returns, attributing their request to Congress’s oversight role. Representative Richard Neal, chairman of the committee, said he was making the request precisely because he wanted to make sure that the IRS was properly auditing Trump.

Trump has already said he isn’t inclined to release his tax returns in accordance with Neal’s request, so this is certain to ignite a legal battle. In the interests of good government and the avoidance of financial conflicts of interest in the Oval Office, I hope Congress wins this one. And I know, for a fact, that it’s not true that you don’t learn much from a tax return. As I noted back in early 2016, I have seen Trump’s tax returns, and I think you should too.

Trump unsuccessfully sued me in 2006 for libel over a biography I wrote called “TrumpNation,” citing unflattering sections of the book that examined his business record and wealth. He lost the suit in 2011, and during the litigation he was forced to turn over his tax returns to my lawyers.

As I noted in 2016, I think there are five broad categories of disclosure related to his returns that should matter to voters, politicians, and anyone else interested in making sure the White House is conflicts-of-interest free.

1) Income: The returns would offer a gauge of how financially robust the president’s businesses actually are and how much of that money flows to him.

2) Business Activities: Trump has always said that the Trump Organization employs thousands and that U.S. companies shouldn’t relocate overseas and take jobs away from U.S. workers. Tax returns would offer a view of Trump’s global footprint and provide a clearer sense of the size and scope of his company.

3) Charitable Giving: Trump has often bragged about being a dedicated philanthropist. If that’s true, his returns would prove it.

4) Tax Planning: The president uses a lot of shell companies, or LLCs, as part of his business and personal dealings. Some wealthy people have also used shell companies overseas to mask their fortunes and hide the money from authorities. Trump’s returns would show how actively he has used tax havens, if at all.

5) Transparency and Accountability: This may be the most important category of all. Trump is now, arguably, the most powerful and influential man in the world. His tax returns would provide a much clearer picture of potential financial conflicts or pressures that would come to bear on him in the White House. They would also provide a way of monitoring whether the president is more interested in his financial self-interest and deal-making than policy-making.

Neal has only requested six years of Trump’s returns, which is, I think, regrettable. Some of the transactions that may interest investigators the most took place around 15 years ago, when Trump, suddenly flush with cash, went on a shopping spree. He bought and developed golf courses, launched a new hotel and condominium in Chicago, and deepened his involvement with the Trump SoHo Hotel in lower Manhattan.

It is still curious to me how Trump, who always used to finance his transactions with debt, raised the funds to do all that in the mid-2000s and pay cash. To find out, Neal will have to dig deeper than six years ago.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/artic ... ax-returns

17 Times Trump And His Team Denied Contact With Russians

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=sfsd6uW-D0I


(from NBC NEWS): Multiple Members of Special Counsel Mueller's Team Consider the "Evidence on Collusion" to Be "Very Compelling"

[seemslikeadream]

Carol Leonnig

The Mueller team found evidence of @realDonaldTrump engaged in obstruction that was "far more serious" and "more acute" than AG Barr revealed to the public in his summary, our sources say. Mueller team frustration is bubbling to surface.
https://twitter.com/CarolLeonnig/status ... 4825550848

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[seemslikeadream]

Says Trump "Instructed" Him To Lie

In a memo submitted to Congress, the president's former lawyer asks for time to help congressional investigators review new evidence.


Emma Loop
BuzzFeed News Reporter

Jason Leopold
BuzzFeed News Reporter

Anthony Cormier
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From
Washington, DC
Posted on April 5, 2019, at 12:16 a.m. ET

Michael Cohen arrives to testify in a closed session before the House Intelligence Committee last month.
Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images
Michael Cohen arrives to testify in a closed session before the House Intelligence Committee last month.
WASHINGTON — Attorneys for Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former fixer, submitted documents to lawmakers Thursday night accusing Trump and his team of lawyers of instructing Cohen to lie to Congress about when negotiations ended to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

In a 12-page memo sent to top House Democrats, Cohen’s attorneys said Trump “encouraged Cohen to lie and say all Moscow Tower project contacts ended as of January 31, 2016 using ‘code’ language — telling Cohen during various conversations that there was ‘no collusion, no Russian contacts, nothing about Russia’ after the start of the campaign.’”

The memo addresses issues that have been at the center of the recently concluded two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into possible coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with Trump’s campaign. Attorney General William Barr has stated that the report, which has not been made public, did not find that the Trump campaign "conspired or coordinated with Russia."

The more than 100 pages of documents included with Cohen’s memo claim to lay bare a “conspiracy to collude” with the Russian government during the campaign, along with an array of other crimes by the president.

Want to support more reporting like this? Become a BuzzFeed News member today.

Cohen’s memo supports BuzzFeed News's earlier reporting that Cohen told investigators Trump had directed him to lie about the timing of real estate negotiations in Moscow.

In January, BuzzFeed News reported that Cohen had described being instructed by the president to say the project was terminated long before Trump became the frontrunner in the Republican primary. In response to the story, many Democratic lawmakers called for Trump’s impeachment.

Less than a day after its publication, a spokesperson for Mueller’s office stated, “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.” The office never specified what descriptions or characterizations it was disputing. Peter Carr, the special counsel’s former spokesperson, declined to comment on Thursday night.

The new memo from Cohen’s attorneys says that Trump “encouraged” him to lie to Congress, alleging the president suborned perjury while in office. A footnote in the memo cites BuzzFeed News’s January report:

3. Note, this is not far off the words used by the Buzzfeed reporters — that Trump “directed” Cohen to lie in his congressional testimony vs. Cohen’s false statement to Congress, i.e., there were no Russian contacts after January 31, 2016, the day before the Iowa caucuses. Cohen’s false statement was made “in accordance with … [Trump’s] directives.”
Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about when negotiations for the project ceased. A cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News over the past year shows that negotiations continued until at least right before the Republican National Convention in July 2016.

The memo states that Cohen’s false testimony was based on “Trump and associates’ overall and intense effort to persuade Cohen to commit crime of lying to congress.”

“Cohen explained that he was, in effect, instructed to lie about the January 31, 2016 date through the use of Trump code words that could only be interpreted as an instruction or ‘directive,’” the memo states, "to cover-up the fact that Cohen had been in contact with Russians during most of the presidential campaign, from the day of the Iowa caucuses, February 1, through all the primaries and caucuses and until June 2016, after Trump had become the putative Republican nominee by assembling a majority of delegates.”

The memo, which details some of what Cohen told the House and Senate Intelligence committees behind closed doors in February, further states that after delivering his false testimony, Cohen received a call “from Trump’s attorney, who congratulated him on the testimony — and said his ‘client’ was happy with Cohen’s testimony.”

Cohen’s attorneys also made new claims in the memo about Trump’s involvement in the Moscow Tower project, which he has previously dismissed as barely more than a notion, and his role in trying to close the deal.

“In May 2016, Cohen told Trump he could travel to Russia to assist the building of the project either before or after the GOP Convention in August, and Trump agreed,” Cohen’s attorneys wrote. “Obviously this proves that Trump knew that Russian contacts about the Moscow Tower project continued after January 31, 2016. Cohen made inquiries about Trump’s schedule to Trump’s executive assistant” about a trip for Trump to make to Russia during the campaign, to move the negotiations along.

The trip did not take place, but the memo characterizes those inquiries “as further evidence that the trip to Russia was under serious consideration after Trump approved it.”

The memo implicates Ivanka Trump in the negotiations, stating that she knew Cohen gave false testimony to Congress. According to the memo, he told the Intelligence committees that in late 2015 the president’s daughter forwarded him “an email from the wife of a former Russian weight-lifting champion about Ivanka sponsoring a health spa at the top of the Moscow Trump Tower.” BuzzFeed News first reported that in November 2015, Ivanka Trump put Cohen in touch with the weightlifter, a Russian Olympian named Dmitry Klokov who offered to introduce Trump to President Vladimir Putin to facilitate the Moscow tower project.

Peter Mirijanian, a spokesperson for Ivanka Trump, did not immediately respond to calls for comment. He previously told BuzzFeed News, “Ms. Trump did not know about this proposal until after a non-binding letter of intent had been signed, never talked to anyone outside the Organization about the proposal, never visited the prospective project site and, even internally, was only minimally involved.”

Congressional investigators had reviewed emails and questioned witnesses about the interaction, BuzzFeed News reported, as had Mueller’s team. In a subsequent court filing, Mueller’s team wrote that in November 2015, Cohen had “received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national” who “repeatedly proposed a meeting” between Trump and Putin to advance the project.

The memo is part of an effort by Cohen to reduce and delay the three-year prison term he was sentenced to serve, which is scheduled to begin on May 6. Highlighting evidence he provided to congressional committees in February, a letter that accompanied the memo states that Cohen “was only recently able to access a hard drive with important documents,” and that the “drive contains over 14 million files, which consist of all e-mails, voice recordings, images, and attachments from Mr. Cohen’s computers and phones.” Lanny Davis, one of Cohen’s attorneys, told BuzzFeed News that Cohen had no access to the hard drive when he testified before Congress earlier this year because it had been seized by prosecutors and was returned to him only last week.

The letter continues: “We are writing this letter in the hope that you will support Mr. Cohen’s value as a cooperating witness and the need for him to be readily accessible.”

Cohen’s lawyers also call his sentence “disproportionate,” noting that Cohen is the only Trump Organization employee headed to prison “for conduct almost all of which was for the benefit of Mr. Trump personally and indeed directed by him.”

“The actions against Mr. Cohen appear to be selective prosecution and the sentence imposed is a disproportionate one,” Davis said. “For him to surrender in 30 days would be a detriment to committees search for truth, as well as a miscarriage of justice."

Cohen’s attorneys sent the letter to the heads of the House Intelligence, Judiciary, Financial Services, and Oversight Committees, who are Democrats. The lawyers wrote that, judging from the attacks that Republican lawmakers leveled against Cohen during his recent testimony, it was unclear whether they were interested in receiving the letter as well.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/em ... gc#4ldqpgc