First Charges Filed in U.S. Special Counsel Mueller's Russia

[seemslikeadream]

First Charges Filed in U.S. Special Counsel Mueller's Russia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal grand jury in Washington on Friday approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, CNN reported, citing sources briefed on the matter.

The charges are sealed under orders from a federal judge, CNN said. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, CNN reported, citing the unnamed sources. It is unclear what the charges are, CNN said.

(Reporting by Mohammad Zargham)

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/ar ... russia-pro

Exclusive: First charges filed in Mueller investigation
By Pamela Brown, Evan Perez and Shimon Prokupecz, CNN
Updated 8:57 PM ET, Fri October 27, 2017
First charges filed in Mueller investigation

Washington (CNN)A federal grand jury in Washington, DC, on Friday approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to sources briefed on the matter.

The charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said. It is unclear what the charges are.
A spokesman for the special counsel's office declined to comment.
Mueller was appointed in May to lead the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Under the regulations governing special counsel investigations, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has oversight over the Russia investigation, would have been made aware of any charges before they were taken before the grand jury for approval, according to people familiar with the matter
On Friday, top lawyers who are helping to lead the Mueller probe, including veteran prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, were seen entering the court room at the DC federal court where the grand jury meets to hear testimony in the Russia investigation.
Reporters present saw a flurry of activity at the grand jury room, but officials made no announcements.
Shortly after President Donald Trump abruptly fired then-FBI Director James Comey, Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel. Mueller took the reins of a federal investigation that Comey first opened in July 2016 in the middle of the presidential campaign.
Mueller is authorized to investigate "any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation," according to Rosenstein's order.
The special counsel's investigation has focused on potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as obstruction of justice by the President, who might have tried to impede the investigation. CNN reported that investigators are scrutinizing Trump and his associates' financial ties to Russia.

Mueller's team has also examined foreign lobbying conducted by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and others. His team has issued subpoenas for documents and testimony to a handful of figures, including some people close to Manafort, and others involved in the Trump Tower meeting between Russians and campaign officials.
Last year, the Comey-led investigation secured approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to monitor the communications of Manafort, as well as former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, as part of the investigation into Russian meddling.
In addition to Mueller's probe, three committees on Capitol Hill are conducting their own investigations.
CNN's Marshall Cohen, Mary Kay Mallonee and Laura Robinson contributed to this report.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/27/politics/ ... index.html

probably obstruction charges? Kushner... Steven Miller (he wrote the "reason lie" on the plane)?

or Manafort .....Flynn?

I'd love it to be Hope Hicks


or considering my last post in the other thread earlier

maybe Flynn because Woosley talked with the FBI today


tweets of the night

So this might be a good time for airlines to keep an eye out for all-cash-one-way tickets under names that rhyme with "Blanafort" or "Glynn"

We approach the most anticipated perp walk in American history!

Boy it’s almost as if some people knew this was coming so they tried to pour chum in the water to make it dank and murky

Now you know why the horseshit uranium story was getting pushed so hard...here's looking at you Morty


Dana Boente retired today...probably going to be a witness

BREAKING NEWS

Sean Hannity has total breakdown on tweeter


what up with someone trying to smear Woosley yesterday?

Exclusive: While advising Trump in 2016, ex-CIA chief proposed plan to discredit Turkish cleric
Nathan Layne

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former CIA director James Woolsey pitched a $10 million contract to two Turkish businessmen to help discredit a controversial U.S.-based cleric while Woolsey was an adviser to Donald Trump’s election campaign, three people familiar with the proposal said.

Just eight days after formally joining Trump’s campaign as an adviser on national security issues, Woolsey met on Sept. 20, 2016 with businessmen Ekim Alptekin and Sezgin Baran Korkmaz over lunch at the Peninsula Hotel in New York, they said.

Woolsey and his wife, Nancye Miller, proposed a lobbying and public relations campaign targeting Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric who lives in Pennsylvania.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses Gulen of instigating a failed coup in July 2016 and wants him extradited to Turkey to face trial. Gulen has denied any role in the coup.

In an email memo seen by Reuters, Woolsey and Miller sketched a plan to “draw attention to the cleric’s possible role in the coup attempt” and encourage an official investigation into his activities.

Alptekin, an ally of Erdogan, had already agreed through one of his companies to a $600,000 contract with the consulting firm of Michael Flynn to research Gulen. Flynn was also a Trump campaign adviser and later became his national security adviser before being fired in February.

Woolsey was a member of Flynn’s firm, the Flynn Intel Group, according to a Justice Department filing by the firm and an archive of the company’s website, although a spokesman for Woolsey disputed that characterization, saying he was an unpaid adviser and his affiliation was “loosely defined.”

At the Sept. 20 meeting, Miller said she and Woolsey were in a better position than Flynn to influence decision-makers about Gulen’s alleged role in the coup, according to Alptekin and two other people familiar with the discussion.

Bidding for a lobbying or consulting contract with a foreign company or government is not illegal, and Woolsey and Miller did not win the contract in any event.

But the previously undisclosed meeting shows for the first time that two Trump aides were competing with each other to win the lucrative business deal with Alptekin. The deal with Flynn is now being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his wider probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians who tried to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment.

Jonathan Franks, a spokesman for Woolsey and Miller, said his clients were not under investigation.

Flynn is a central figure in Mueller’s investigation because of conversations he had with then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak last year and because he waited until March to retroactively register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for the work he did for Alptekin.

In that filing, Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, said the work done for Alptekin’s company “could be construed to have principally benefited the republic of Turkey.”

Flynn was fired as national security adviser in February after misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the extent of his conversations with Kislyak.

Franks described the Sept. 20 meeting as “unremarkable” and said Miller could not locate the email memo or remember writing it.

He also said Woolsey had pursued with Turkish interests an “economic development proposal in the wake of the coup that centered around reassuring folks that Turkey was a safe place to do business” but that the project’s focus was not on Gulen.


Alptekin said Woolsey and Miller pursued his business at the Sept. 20 meeting, pitching the project to target Gulen, but he decided to stick to his contract with Flynn’s firm.

Kelner declined to comment for this story.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

SCRUTINY

The disclosure in March of Flynn’s contract to discredit Gulen sparked intense media scrutiny of people who had worked with Flynn, including Woolsey.

Shortly after, Woolsey alleged in media interviews that Flynn and others had, at a Sept. 19, 2016 meeting in New York, discussed with Turkey’s foreign and energy ministers the idea of covertly spiriting Gulen out of the United States and to Turkey.

Flynn has denied through a spokesman ever discussing such a plan. Alptekin also denied it was ever discussed and said Woolsey’s claim was “all the more astounding” because he had sought Alptekin’s business at a meeting the following day.

“His story is fiction,” Alptekin told Reuters.

Franks said Woolsey stands by his account of the meeting.

Woolsey first proposed the $10 million project to Korkmaz, the second Turkish businessman, at a meeting in California in August 2016. The proposal was outlined in an email sent from Miller to Woolsey on Aug. 18, printed out and shown by Woolsey to Korkmaz, who then forwarded it on to Alptekin.

Korkmaz, who had known Woolsey for some years, invited Woolsey to the meeting, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Korkmaz told Woolsey that he was looking for someone who could handle a lobbying and public relations project related to Gulen.

Korkmaz and Alptekin have no business ties but knew each other through a U.S-Turkey trade group, according to two people with knowledge of their relationship. Anil Leylek, a spokeswoman for Korkmaz’s company, declined to comment.

Franks confirmed the August meeting but described it as “brief” and “not a pitch.”

Woolsey and Miller’s proposal included getting Washington insiders like then-Senator Jeff Sessions, who is now Trump’s attorney general, to co-author articles on the situation in Turkey, engaging with influential lawmakers such as Republican Senator Bob Corker, and getting Woolsey on Fox News and CNN, the memo said.

“The cost of this engagement will be $10,000,000,” it said.

Woolsey, who led the CIA for two years under former President Bill Clinton, joined the Trump campaign in September. He was on the transition team after Trump’s election victory in November but he stepped down in January.

Franks said Woolsey was an unpaid adviser to the campaign, had no obligation to report any efforts to pursue work for Turkish interests, and was now being smeared.

“With growing speculation that indictments could be handed down soon, it’s not a surprise that others are attempting to accomplish in the press what they cannot in the grand jury room,” Franks added.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... =hvper.com

My laundered money's on Manafort.

[82_28]

"They" knew this day was coming. Thus, it has been "prepared" for.

[seemslikeadream]

^^^^^^ hey you deleted at pic now my post has lost it's meaning

it said something about sucking dicks

was it this one?


remember that Manafort was told he was going to be indicted

Let the dick sucking begin!

speaking of dicks

I guess they should've included a trigger warning in the report on Mueller's first indictments ...

After the Mueller news, it’s clear by his tweets that Roger Stone doesn’t have a pair of pants left to shit in.

Yikes—@RogerJStoneJr is tweeting like a man who knows there's no internet access in prison.

Just sayin'.






It appears @RogerJStoneJr has deleted these about @donlemon.

For some reason.






nobody remembers who the first person that was indicted in the Watergate scandal



Game: If you live near Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn, or any of Team Trump, go trick-or-treating at their house as a cop.


“We’re bracing for an indictment, when first one hits we will impeach.” Sr Staff for GOP House Member on Mueller’s likely indictments

‘Decent chance he lied to the FBI’: Counselor to 4 presidents says Mike Flynn may be arrested — not Paul Manafort
Bob Brigham BOB BRIGHAM
27 OCT 2017 AT 22:49 ET

CNN Senior Political Analyst and former White House staffer David Gergen


An advisor to four different presidential administrations suggested a pause in the rush to assume that former Donald Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is the target of reported sealed indictments.

David Gergen, who served presidents of both parties, suggested that former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn might instead be Robert Mueller’s first target.

“You know, the main person we’ve been talking all along is Paul Manafort,” Gergen explained to Anderson Cooper on CNN. “It is just very possible that the indictment could be against Michael Flynn.”

“It’s worth noting that in the last few days, Jim Woolsey, former head of CIA, who was in the transition — and abruptly left…with no explanation — is a very honest man, he was there to observe a lot of this, and he got the hell out,” Gergen explained.

“He talked to the FBI in the last few days, he’s gone public with that, there’s that possibility,” Gergen noted.

After the panel debated the intended message sent by Trump’s pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpiao, Gergen brought the discussion back to former General Flynn.

“Michael Flynn, you know, was pretty deep into some stuff that was very, very questionable. We know he lied people along the way. If he lied to a variety of people around the White House, there’s a decent chance he lied to the FBI,” Gergen concluded.

Watch:
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/10/decent ... -manafort/

[82_28]

Yeah. That was the pic! What happened to it?

[seemslikeadream]

it was there again and now it's gone again

I think tink is playing tricks on us..maybe she thought I would take offense!



I don't mind talking about dicks with friends

nothing could harsh my buzz this morning



NBC has now confirmed indictment story ....indictment will be handed down Monday morning


I will be smoking some pot but not taking up your suggestion


And never forget
Billionaire Robert Mercer.....owner of Breitbart has 7 billion reasons to steal an election did Trump a huge favor. Will he get a payback
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40573#p639875

[PufPuf93]

Hope this all plays out well and the USA gats a reset and uses it wisely.

[seemslikeadream]

I'm pretty sure there will be a constitutional crisis ...so plenty of drama ahead


an indictment heard around the world

these are not the darkest days of this country ...but definitely dark

[SonicG]

Reset? Doubtful...The PTB will let things drag a bit until impotent Trup admin. starts fucking the economy, then they will let the generals re-engineer their coup with Pence...It is not going to be pretty no matter what...

[seemslikeadream]

it's looking like Flynn and son will be the ones indicted on Monday ....

The General Yellowkerk Flynn matter is also a Mike Pence matter

Cummings sent a letter to Pence about Flynn

Pence lied and said he knew nothing about Flynn

Pence's job was to vet Flynn he was the head of the transition team

Pence has an A list lawyer

Pence will never be president

Flynn has committed serious crimes ...Flynn heard C.I.A. Secrets and we have Pence to thank for that

It’s time for Mike Pence to come clean and Mueller will see to that

When reporters later asked Pence why he hadn’t heeded Cummings’s letter, he said that he’d never seen it. But Cummings produced an e-mail from the transition staff acknowledging his letter and promising to review it carefully. “Either he read it and ignored our warnings or someone on his team did so,” Cummings told me.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017 ... dent-pence

You’d have to believe that McGahn, who, according to Sean Spicer, conducted an “exhaustive and extensive questioning of Flynn,” did not, for some reason, inform the Vice President. It would mean that either McGahn was not doing his job and Pence didn’t know, or Pence is not telling the truth and covering the White House.
.....
The question remains: What happened between Pence and McGahn and why was the Vice President continuing to make claims that the administration knew were false?

PENCE CLAIMS IGNORANCE OF FLYNN LOBBYING FOR TURKEY EVEN THOUGH ELIJAH CUMMINGS TOLD HIM
by
TheIntellectualist
Mar 11


The top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform told then Vice President-elect Mike Pence in a November letter that the man Donald Trump had tapped to be his national security adviser was lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
Miami Herald:

The letter, a copy of which was shared with McClatchy, contradicts White House claims that neither Pence nor Trump knew of Michael Flynn’s lobbying until it was revealed in a Justice Department filing this week.

In the letter, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, asked Pence, then the leader of Trump’s transition team, for information regarding Flynn’s business interests and statements regarding potential conflicts of interests.

Cummings said Flynn’s work for Turkey and a speech Flynn gave in Russia could violate Trump for America’s code of ethics if Flynn was advising Trump on policy related to those two nations. Flynn was Trump’s principal foreign policy adviser during the campaign.

“Lt. Gen. Flynn’s involvement in advising Mr. Trump on matters relating to Turkey or Russia – including attending classified briefings on those matters – could violate the Trump for America, Inc. Code of Ethical Conduct,” Cummings wrote.



https://www.themaven.net/theintellectua ... 4HQ?full=1

Despite Concerns About Blackmail, Flynn Heard C.I.A. Secrets
By MATT APUZZO, MATTHEW ROSENBERG and ADAM GOLDMANJUNE 20, 2017


Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director, center, at the Capitol to brief members of the House Intelligence Committee last month. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Senior officials across the government became convinced in January that the incoming national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, had become vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

At the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — agencies responsible for keeping American secrets safe from foreign spies — career officials agreed that Mr. Flynn represented an urgent problem.

Yet nearly every day for three weeks, the new C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, sat in the Oval Office and briefed President Trump on the nation’s most sensitive intelligence — with Mr. Flynn listening. Mr. Pompeo has not said whether C.I.A. officials left him in the dark about their views of Mr. Flynn, but one administration official said Mr. Pompeo did not share any concerns about Mr. Flynn with the president.

The episode highlights another remarkable aspect of Mr. Flynn’s stormy 25-day tenure in the White House: He sat atop a national security apparatus that churned ahead, despite its own conclusion that he was at risk of being compromised by a hostile foreign power.

The concerns about Mr. Flynn’s vulnerabilities, born from misleading statements he made to White House officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, are at the heart of a legal and political storm that has engulfed the Trump administration. Many of Mr. Trump’s political problems, including the appointment of a special counsel and the controversy over the firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, can be ultimately traced to Mr. Flynn’s tumultuous tenure.

Time and again, the Trump administration looked the other way in the face of warning signs about Mr. Flynn. Mr. Trump entrusted him with the nation’s secrets despite knowing that he faced a Justice Department investigation over his undisclosed foreign lobbying. Even a personal warning from President Obama did not dissuade him.

Mr. Pompeo sidestepped questions from senators last month about his handling of the information about Mr. Flynn, declining to say whether he knew about his own agency’s concerns. “I can’t answer yes or no,” he said. “I regret that I’m unable to do so.” His words frustrated Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“Either Director Pompeo had no idea what people in the C.I.A. reportedly knew about Michael Flynn, or he knew about the Justice Department’s concerns and continued to discuss America’s secrets with a man vulnerable to blackmail,” Mr. Wyden said in a statement. “I believe Director Pompeo owes the public an explanation.”

After Mr. Pompeo’s Senate testimony, The New York Times asked officials at several agencies whether Mr. Pompeo had raised concerns about Mr. Flynn to the president and, if so, whether the president had ignored him. One administration official responded on the condition of anonymity that Mr. Pompeo, whether he knew of the concerns or not, had not told the president about them.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to discuss any interactions between the president and Mr. Pompeo.

“Whether the C.I.A. director briefed the president on a specific intelligence issue during a specific time frame is not something we publicly comment on and we’re not about to start today,” said Dean Boyd, a C.I.A. spokesman.

Concerns across the government about Mr. Flynn were so great after Mr. Trump took office that six days after the inauguration, on Jan. 26, the acting attorney general, Sally Q. Yates, warned the White House that Mr. Flynn had been “compromised.”

Ms. Yates’s concerns focused on phone calls that Mr. Flynn had in late December with Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. When the White House faced questions about whether the two men had discussed lifting American sanctions on Russia, Vice President Mike Pence told reporters that Mr. Flynn had assured him that sanctions were not discussed. Intelligence officials knew otherwise, based on routine intercepts of Mr. Kislyak’s conversations.

“That created a compromise situation,” Ms. Yates later told Congress, “a situation where the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians.”

Mr. Trump waited 18 days from that warning before firing Mr. Flynn, a period in which Mr. Pompeo continued to brief Mr. Flynn and the president. The White House has offered changing explanations for why the president waited until Feb. 13 — soon after Ms. Yates’s warning made national news — before firing Mr. Flynn.

White House officials have said they moved deliberately both out of respect for Mr. Flynn and because they were not sure how seriously they should take the concerns. They also said the president believed that Ms. Yates, an Obama administration holdover, had a political agenda. She was fired days later over her refusal to defend in court Mr. Trump’s ban on travel for people from several predominantly Muslim countries.

A warning from Mr. Pompeo might have persuaded the White House to take Ms. Yates’s concerns more seriously. Mr. Pompeo, a former congressman, is a Republican stalwart whom Mr. Trump has described as “brilliant and unrelenting.”

Mr. Pompeo was sworn in three days before Ms. Yates went to the White House. He testified last month that he did not know what was said in that meeting. By that time, C.I.A. officials had attended meetings with F.B.I. agents about Mr. Flynn and reviewed the transcripts of his conversations with the Russian ambassador, according to several current and former American security officials. Separately, intelligence agencies were aware that Russian operatives had discussed ways to use their relationship with Mr. Flynn to influence Mr. Trump.

Mr. Pompeo, who briefs the president nearly every day, had frequent opportunities to raise the issue with Mr. Trump.

The President’s Daily Brief is a rundown of what America’s spies consider the most pressing issues facing the United States. On any given day, it can include details of a terrorist plot being hatched overseas, an analysis of a foreign political crisis that threatens American interests or a look at foreign hackers who are trying to breach American government computer systems.

Each president takes the briefing differently. President Barack Obama was said to prefer reading it on a secure tablet. President George W. Bush liked his briefers to talk through the document they were presenting. Mr. Pompeo has described Mr. Trump as a voracious consumer of the briefing, who likes maps, charts, pictures, videos and “killer graphics.”

At an event last month at Westwood Country Club in Northern Virginia, Mr. Pompeo told retired C.I.A. officials that his briefings often run past their scheduled 30 minutes, according to one retired official in attendance. Mr. Pompeo said Mr. Trump is eager for information and asks many questions.

At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Pompeo assured senators that he would provide the president with unvarnished information, even when it would be viewed as unpleasant. “I can tell you that I have assured the president-elect that I’ll do that,” Mr. Pompeo said.

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Wyden questioned why Mr. Pompeo continued having discussions with Mr. Flynn despite the concerns of intelligence officials. “He was the national security adviser,” Mr. Pompeo said. “He was present for the daily brief on many occasions.”

Mr. Flynn had no love for the C.I.A., and the feeling was mutual. An Army general who had risen to lead the Defense Intelligence Agency, Mr. Flynn emerged in retirement as a C.I.A. critic, blaming the agency for his firing and what he called its failure to foresee the rise of the Islamic State. He insisted the Obama administration had politicized the agency, an assertion Mr. Pompeo later said he saw no evidence to support.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/us/p ... o-cia.html

NYT: Flynn Was Briefed On CIA Secrets For Weeks Despite Blackmail Concerns


By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published JUNE 21, 2017 10:12 AM
The head of the CIA continued to brief Michael Flynn on the nation’s most sensitive intelligence information until he was ousted as national security adviser, despite concerns from top government agencies, including the CIA itself, that Flynn was vulnerable to Russian blackmail, according to a New York Times report out Tuesday.

Trump administration officials were warned days after inauguration that Flynn was under federal investigation and had mislead White House officials about his contacts with Russian operatives. Yet Flynn still sat in on near-daily presidential briefings from CIA Director Mike Pompeo throughout his tenure in the White House, according to the Times.

While career officials at the CIA, Justice Department, FBI, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence reportedly expressed grave concerns about Flynn, Pompeo declined under oath to say if he was aware of those concerns.

“I can’t answer yes or no,” he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last month. “I regret that I’m unable to do so.”

One administration official who spoke to the Times said that if Pompeo was aware of Flynn’s compromised situation, he never shared any concerns about it with the President.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/f ... sed-russia

Is Michael Flynn Cooperating With the FBI?

Two Democratic senators think so. How sound is their case?

By Jeremy Stahl
U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn walks along the West Wing colonnade at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 10, 2017.


With all the drama surrounding James Comey, it’s easy to forget that the Trump administration’s troubles started with Michael Flynn. It was Flynn who lied to Vice President Mike Pence and to FBI investigators about a meeting with the Russians, and it was the former national security adviser who the president was trying to protect when he—according to Comey’s sworn testimony—asked the ex-FBI director to “see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.” (Trump denies saying this.)

There’s every reason to believe Flynn continues to be a key figure—and perhaps the key figure—in Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s election meddling, the Trump campaign’s potential collusion in such, and other crimes that may have stemmed from those affairs. On Monday, two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee posited that Flynn was already cooperating with Mueller, potentially offering testimony that could incriminate Trump.

“If you draw conclusions as a prosecutor about what we can see from the Flynn investigation, all the signals are suggesting that he’s already cooperating with the FBI and may have been for some time,” Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Later in the evening, Sen. Richard Blumenthal agreed with that assessment. “The likelihood of his cooperation is very high,” the Connecticut Democrat told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. “Whether he will be truthful in cooperating, whether in fact he knows enough to justify some kind of agreement with the prosecutors, I think will be told by time.”

What exactly are the arguments that Flynn is cooperating, how sound are they, and what would it mean if Flynn did in fact decide to roll over? Whitehouse, a former U.S. attorney and state attorney general, laid out his case in great detail on Monday night. (Blumenthal, who also served as a U.S. attorney and state attorney general, was more succinct in his analysis.) Here is a point-by-point assessment of Whitehouse’s theory, one that criminal justice experts have told me is clearly speculative but also makes a great deal of sense.


Flynn was caught red-handed and faces stiff jail time.

“First of all, they had him dead to rights on a felony false statement,” Whitehouse told Blitzer. He was referring to the reporting that Flynn lied to federal investigators about what he discussed in his December meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Indeed, such a crime—as well as additional crimes Flynn may have committed—would carry a very stiff penalty, as Blumenthal noted:

He has pretty clearly lied to the FBI, lied to intelligence agencies on his disclosure form, the defense intelligence agency perhaps, and committed other serious falsehoods that put him in serious legal jeopardy. And as you may know, the penalty for violating the law prohibiting these false statements, which is 18 United States Code, 1001, is five years in prison for each violation.
Robert Weisberg, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, told me it’s only logical that these potential penalties would induce Flynn to cooperate. “It makes a lot of sense to me that he’s singing,” Weisberg said. That cooperation, though, could be coming in fits and starts. “He may be singing in short arias as he is sort of dosing out his information,” Weisberg told me. “The dealmaking between him and DOJ could take many stages and is likely to have a lot of contingencies.”

Julie O’Sullivan, a Georgetown Law professor who worked for Comey in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and then briefly on the special counsel investigation into President Bill Clinton’s Whitewater dealings, agrees Flynn would at this point be in the very early stages of cooperation. “I really doubt that Mueller is in a position at this point to give him immunity,” O’Sullivan told me. “You never make decisions on immunity until you’re fairly far along in an investigation so that you know you’re not giving immunity to someone who really doesn’t deserve it.”

Flynn previously requested immunity in exchange for testifying before Congress. That was denied, most likely because Flynn hadn’t offered up any information. Prosecutors also tend to be cautious in granting immunity, O’Sullivan said, because “juries hate cooperators” who are perceived as willing to “say anything” to clear their names. One exception came in the inquiry that eventually led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. “The one person who got immunity was Monica Lewinsky because there was only one semen-stained dress and she had it,” O’Sullivan said. “Without that there was no case.”

If and when Mueller believes Flynn has something to offer that would be worth either immunity or a plea deal, the lieutenant general would have to answer a series of questions to reach what lawyers call a “Queen for a Day” proffer agreement. That deal is named after a game show in which housewives would tell sob stories in exchange for prizes. “Criminal lawyers generally have a very dark sense of humor,” O’Sullivan said.

Flynn is behaving like cooperating witnesses behave.

Whitehouse told Blitzer that after Flynn was found to have failed to disclose work he did for Turkey on government documents, he went back and corrected this error. The senator says this is what a cooperating witness would be asked to do.

“Comey reported that one of the things the FBI does with cooperators is to get them to go back and clean up areas of noncompliance,” Whitehouse told Blitzer.

Comey indeed did testify that this was “long-standing practice” during a May hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And as the Daily Caller reported at the time of Flynn’s registration as an agent of Turkey, “It had been unclear exactly why Flynn decided to register, though his unusually detailed filing did suggest that he was compelled by government forces to disclose the work.”

Various subpoenas indicate Flynn might be cooperating.

It’s been reported by CNN, Reuters, and the New York Times that business associates of Flynn received subpoenas demanding “records, research, contracts, bank records, communications” connected to Flynn and his Flynn Intel Group. These subpoenas were sent out by Dana J. Boente, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and indicated that this information should be sent to Brandon Van Grack, the investigator reportedly heading the grand jury inquiry into Flynn. Some of these subpoenas were issued in the weeks just before Trump fired Comey.

“All the reporting on the Eastern District of Virginia subpoenas is [that they are] one hop away from Flynn,” Whitehouse said on CNN on Monday. “He’s like the hole in a donut of subpoenas.”

We reached out to Whitehouse’s office to ask what exactly the senator was suggesting here, but no one would speak on the record. Published reports regarding the Eastern District of Virginia subpoenas have not indicated whether Flynn himself has been subpoenaed. “The government’s never going to tell you what the grand jury has subpoenaed, and if [Flynn] doesn’t say what he’s produced or whether he’s gotten a subpoena you wouldn’t know,” O’Sullivan said.

Based on what we know now, it’s impossible to classify this prong of Whitehouse’s theory as anything but speculation.

Michael Flynn hasn’t been running his mouth.

“One of the more talkative people in Trumpland has gone absolutely dead silent, and that’s what prosecutors strongly encourage cooperating witnesses to do,” Whitehouse told Blitzer.

That could just mean, though, that Flynn has been advised by counsel to keep his mouth shut. “Silence by itself is the weakest inference to stand on,” Weisberg told me. “The Occam’s Razor to explain why he’s silent is that he has a lawyer.”

One final argument for why Flynn might be talking, which Whitehouse only hinted at, is that all of Trump’s alleged efforts to block the investigation indicate the former national security adviser might have an incriminating story to tell.

“Who knows what Trump has said to him, both during the campaign and during the early days of the presidency,” Whitehouse told Blitzer. “Apparently Trump has been in touch with him after his firing from the White House to tell him to ‘stay strong,’ which, in some circumstances, could be looked at as manipulation of a witness or obstruction of justice.”

Trump’s alleged efforts to block the investigation indicate Flynn might have an incriminating story to tell.
O’Sullivan sees better evidence for this theory in the other obstruction element the special counsel is reportedly investigating: Trump’s treatment of Comey. She says Trump’s request to clear the room before he allegedly asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation is “really hard to explain away” if the president doesn’t have something to hide.

“When [Trump] asks everybody, including Comey’s boss, to leave the room and then he poses a question—as a prosecutor what I would invite a jury to assume from that is that he knew it was wrong to ask that question,” she said. “In every criminal case that I’ve been involved in, if you have something that indicates a consciousness of guilt or a consciousness that what you’re asking is improper, juries get that.”

The implication for O’Sullivan, then, is that Trump would only do something so “extraordinary” if he had something to gain from it—that is, halting an investigation that might reveal information he doesn’t want revealed. If Flynn has that kind of information, he’d likely have a strong incentive to offer it up as an inducement to decrease his own possible prison term.

Ultimately, this is all speculation: We don’t know if Flynn is cooperating yet, and we likely won’t know for a while. That said, Reuters reported on Monday that Mueller has brought on a veteran federal prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, who helped bring down both Enron and mob boss Vincent “the Chin” Gigante. Weissmann’s specialty in those investigations? Flipping witnesses.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... e_fbi.html

It’s time for Mike Pence to come clean
BY ROSS ROSENFELD, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 06/16/17 04:20 PM EDT

It’s time for Mike Pence to come clean
© Greg Nash
The key question after James Comey’s testimony is: What did Mike Pence know, and when did he know it?

Yes, the question the nation asked more than a generation ago during Watergate is the same question which needs to be asked in the latest White House scandal.

Let’s go through some key facts and dates:

Dec. 29, 2016: Flynn speaks with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about the sanctions recently placed on Russia by the Obama administration.

Dec. 30: Vladimir Putin announces that Russia will not take action in response to the sanctions.

Jan. 4, 2017: Flynn informs the Trump transition team, which Pence headed, that he is under investigation for failing to register as an agent of the Turkish government.

Jan. 12: The Washington Post reports that Flynn and Kislyak spoke the day before Putin’s announcement.

Jan. 14: Flynn and Pence speak about the situation. Pence claims that Flynn told him that the sanctions against Russia were not discussed with Kislyak.

Jan. 15: Pence goes on Face the Nation and states that Flynn did not discuss sanctions with the Russian ambassador – a statement that proved blatantly false.

Jan. 26: Sally Yates and an aide go to the White House to speak with Don McGahn, the White House counsel. They explain that Flynn has been compromised and that he needs to inform the President, Vice President, and others.

Jan. 27: McGahn asks Yates to return to the White House to further discuss the matter.

Jan. 30: Trump fires Yates after she refuses to enforce his travel ban.

Feb. 9: The Washington Post reports that Flynn discussed the sanctions with Kislyak. A spokesperson for Pence claims that the VP had been unaware.

Feb. 10: Donald Trump also claims that he was unaware that Flynn and Kislyak had discussed sanctions.

February 13th: It is reported that the White House knew about the nature of Flynn’s discussions with Kislyak for weeks.

Now we come to James Comey’s testimony. According to Comey, as far as he understood it, the Vice President was aware of the nature of Flynn’s discussion with Kislyak.

If you are to believe otherwise, you’d have to be willing to believe that somehow others in the White House knew, including the President, but not the Vice President, who was busy speaking on news outlets and saying the complete opposite.

You’d have to believe that McGahn, who, according to Sean Spicer, conducted an “exhaustive and extensive questioning of Flynn,” did not, for some reason, inform the Vice President. It would mean that either McGahn was not doing his job and Pence didn’t know, or Pence is not telling the truth and covering the White House.

Shouldn’t we ask McGahn in order to find out?

And why wouldn’t Trump stop Pence from repeating the inaccurate information?

And if Pence isn’t telling the truth, we again must ask why. Why would Pence continually mislead the public about his knowledge of Flynn’s interaction with Kislyak?

If you ask yourself that question, you can’t help but reach the conclusion that it could only be for nefarious purposes.

Comey also indicated that Attorney General Jeff Sessions potentially could not be trusted when it came to the Russia/Flynn situation.

Again: Why?

Then, when Comey himself refused to let the Russia matter drop, he was pressured by Trump and then suddenly and unceremoniously canned. Coincidence?

The question remains: What happened between Pence and McGahn and why was the Vice President continuing to make claims that the administration knew were false?

Can Mr. Pence answer that one?
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/t ... come-clean

VP Pence Will Be Caught In Flynnghazi Scandal’s Paper Trail Says Democratic Coalition


Will Vice President Mike Pence take the fall for hiring disgraced ex-General Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor?
“It’s really nonsense to think that Trump and Pence are not close with their NSA,” said Democratic Coalition co-founder Scott Dworkin on MSNBC’s Morning Joy (video below). “Pence is a hands on guy, he was leading the transition team himself.”
I think that Trump put him in a position where he can take the fall now.

On November 18th, 2016 the Democratic Coalition reported Flynn to the Department of Justice for failure to register his paid representation of Turkey as required under FARA.
That very same day, the House Oversight Committee’s ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) sent Pence a letter plainly stating that Flynn was hired by Turkey for political reasons — including to monitor the presidential transition.
The Democratic Coalition co-founder told MSNBC’s Morning Joy:
Mike Pence would have to be a straight up idiot to not realize that Flynn was going to register as a foreign agent, or the staff would have to be totally incompetent for him not to be aware of the situation.
Even though the Trump Transition was warned, they turned a blind eye when Gen. Flynn then lied on his application for Department of Defense security clearance.

Transition team Chair Mike Pence then appointed the unregistered Turkish agent to America’s most sensitive national security role anyhow.
If it wasn’t totally obvious that something had changed in Flynn, just recall that he was celebrating a Turkish coup attempt against autocratic leader Recep Erdogan in June, and then writing an op-ed advancing Turkey’s interests on election day in The Hill last November.
That was a major about face for Gen. Flynn, who made famous remarks that “fear of Muslims is rational” would seem otherwise to rule out supporting an Islamist leader in Turkey.

Mike Pence has flown under the radar during the Trump Administration’s failed first 100 days in Washington, D.C. and maintained a public profile as the least insane voice in the Republican regime.
But new reports about Gen. Michael Flynn’s foreign lobbying this week, revealed this week that there’s a major Russian tie with the cash he accepted.
The Siberia Energy Group’s owner has major ties to the Dutch company owned by a Turkish government official, who paid Flynn and caused him to register under FARA a month after being fired due to the media firestorm after his contacts with Russian Ambassador Kislyak were revealed.

Flynn also took money from Russia’s RT propaganda outlet for travel, and had a long dinner with Putin in Moscow for the tv station’s 10th anniversary, as well as a Russian airline that violated sanctions, and a Russian cybersecurity company with Kremlin ties.
“Mr. Flynn should be stripped of his military title, he should also be in jail right now,” Dworkin told the national news audience, “Anyone who helped cover it up, who helped push him through, they should be just as culpable as well.” He concluded:
I guarantee you that there will be a paper trail — an electronic trail — leading back to at least Mike Pence.
https://thesternfacts.com/vp-pence-will ... 9e3e3a19c1

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

Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-17?
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40188

when all the indictments come down trump/pence/republicans will not be able to do anything

[Belligerent Savant]

.

A reset! You are surely f'ing with us, right?

A reset.

This is all fucking theatrics. Nothing is being "reset" . The plebes are being fed distractions/diversions per usual.

That's all this is. Nothing more. I'd say it's a surprise that I must be explicit about this here at RI, but that ship sailed some time ago.

And with that, I step back out of your* sandbox; you can continue playing uninterrupted. Enjoy.

*y'all know who you are.

[seemslikeadream]

slow your roll NO one said anything about a reset

This is all fucking theatrics

.....yea everything is theatrics ....EVERYTHING...so what's your point?


you can always go back to the Mass shooting in Las Vegas, 2/10/2017 thread

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Scroll up, Miss SLAD. You'll see it.

Well, there is some authenticity out there.
There are examples in the arts. Creative expression. Relationships.

But in politics? Increasingly rare, if to be found at all.
Why pay mind to the rabble?

[seemslikeadream]

this?

Reset? Doubtful...The PTB will let things drag a bit until impotent Trup admin. starts fucking the economy, then they will let the generals re-engineer their coup with Pence...It is not going to be pretty no matter what...

oh this .....so fuckin what? Get over yourself

Hope this all plays out well and the USA gats a reset and uses it wisely.

arts Creative expression....not theatrics ..funny that

Why pay mind to the rabble?

....well you seem to be.....funny that


you're always raggin' on someone ...give it a rest

[Belligerent Savant]

.

"Theatrics" as in artifice, or, to borrow from the parlance of our times, fake news.
But they apparently also serve as instruments of instigation.
In other words, they're trollin' (those of) us (that continue to pay mind to the noise).

They're quite good at it. Look who they propped up as their court jester, for chrissakes. Clearly, they're enjoying this.

I will now heed your advice and give it a rest. Good call, SLAD.

Wastin' my time.

[PufPuf93]

I meant reset in a limited sense, that is a reset to Trump's time as POTUS.

That said, I am no fan of Hillary Clinton and have been unhappy with many policies; war, economics, environment, social justice, etc; of the USA establishment.

They cannot be trusted no matter what their label.