The Russian Connection 3: Mueller is Coming

[GreyhoundFan]

"Judge lashes out at ‘unacceptable’ delays in setting trial of Manafort and Gates in Mueller probe"

Spoiler

A federal judge lashed out about “unacceptable” delays in the fraud and money laundering case of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his longtime employee, Rick Gates.

The judge criticized both sides Wednesday for failing to set a trial date in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s prosecution of the two co-defendants.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Washington spoke before closing the courtroom for a morning-long hearing to discuss Gates’s request to have another week to respond his defense attorneys’ Feb. 1 request to withdraw from the case due to “irreconcilable differences” with him.

Those differences have not been described in public filings beyond a brief statement that they involve private, “highly sensitive matters” that “would potentially be prejudicial to the Defendant as well as embarrassing.”

Gates on Wednesday sat at the defense table with the attorneys who have asked to leave the case, Shanlon Wu of Washington and Walter Mack and Annemarie McAvoy of New York.

But white-collar attorney Thomas C. Green of the Sidley law firm stood at Gates’s side during a break in proceedings and left the courtroom with him, after quipping to a reporter from a seat on a backbench, “I’m incognito.”

Gates engaged Green to represent him in the last few weeks, according to two people familiar with the situation, although Green has not entered his appearance with the court in Gates’s criminal trial. CNN first reported Green’s role Jan. 23 after spotting him at special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s office, spurring speculation Gates may be in plea discussions with prosecutors.

A shift in defense counsel would be the third for Gates.

The disruption over attorneys has thrown a wrench into the case, which arose out of Manafort’s alleged secret lobbying for a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine.

Both co-defendants pleaded not guilty Oct. 30 to a 12-count indictment, the first disclosed charges in Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the United States’ 2016 presidential election.

Jackson expressed a flash of anger for the case’s slow pace in getting to trial, which the defense had asked to begin no sooner than September, during the heart of the 2018 midterm elections.

“I believe that this case needs a trial date,” Jackson said Wednesday. “I realize there’s some circumstances that make that impossible today, but it needs to happen soon.”

She said both sides have spent months haggling over “minutiae” — such as bail and financial-security terms, releases for matters like children’s soccer practices and defendants’ changes of address — and now, for new counsel.

Jackson said she wanted to stick to a Feb. 23 deadline for the defendants to file motions to toss any charges. It remains unclear if prosecutors would bring new charges amid any plea discussions.

“The charges they are going to have to face can’t be kept a mystery for much longer,” the judge said at one point Wednesday.

Jackson originally set the Wednesday hearing to discuss scheduling matters as the case enters the phase of preparing for trial after prosecutors turned over some 640,000 records.

The hearing also included a closed session to revisit terms of a still-pending bail deal for Manafort, who remains largely under home confinement. The judge approved a $10 million secured bond package, but Manafort has not completed its execution, citing unspecified problems.

Gates last month was given conditional release on a nearly $5 million secured bond.

After the indictment, Gates split with his initial attorney, Michael Dry, with Mack, of Doar Rieck Kaley & Mack in New York. He was succeeded by Wu, of Wu, Grohovsky & Whipple in Washington; and McAvoy, a consultant specializing in financial crime investigations.

Three people familiar with Gates’s situation said he is under financial pressure because of legal bills that outside experts have said would reach millions of dollars if his case went to trial. Gates had expressed interest, they said, in getting help from a legal-defense fund supported by major Republican donors.

The Office of Government Ethics in January signed off on the creation of such a fund to raise and distribute donations to help defray legal costs for people associated with Trump’s campaign or administration and who are called as witnesses in the Mueller or congressional investigations.

However, Gates would not appear to qualify for payments from the fund, according to a 49-page draft agreement for a limited liability company called the Patriot Legal Expense Fund Trust, which was posted on the office’s website and was first reported by MSNBC Feb. 1.

The document states the fund is intended for volunteers or employees of Trump’s campaign, transition or administration, although not Trump himself or members of his family. The documents also state that payments are not intended to help fund the defense of “any charge or indictment for dishonest, fraudulent or criminal activity,” unless the fund manager determined the actions that resulted in criminal charges were undertaken in good faith in direct support for Trump’s campaign or administration and without knowledge by the person that they were illegal.

Gates faces charges due to financial activities undertaken before he joined the campaign.

One of three lawyers who submitted the paperwork to the ethics office regarding the fund, Michael Toner, declined to comment about the fund.

Sigh. More foot-dragging.

[fraurosena]

CNN has a slightly different take on the Gates matter, @GreyhoundFan, which just might cheer you up.

A top adviser to Trump campaign close to plea deal with Mueller

I’m on my phone so I can’t quote right now, and you’ll have to follow the link to read this interesting article.

I find the fact that he reportedly had a so-called Queen for a Day sit down with Mueller’s team very telling.

Whatever is going on with his attorneys is also quite intruiging. I wonder what that is about...

In any case, if what the article surmizes is true, then we could be hearing about Gates’ flipping as soon as next week.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Friday news dump:

 

 

[SassyPants]

Go Team Mueller!!!!

And Trump, his people (campaign, election, family, admin) and his supporters can now stew in the truth that Trump is an effing liar and did work with Russians to interfere in the 2016 election!

Yes, it is a "something burger."

[GreyhoundFan]

"Russian bots promote pro-gun messages after Florida school shooting"

Spoiler

Russia-linked bots are promoting pro-gun messages on Twitter in an attempt to sow discord in the aftermath of the Florida school shooting, monitoring groups say.

Hashtags, topics, and URLs related to the shooting overwhelmingly feature in the tweets pushed by these automated Twitter accounts in the past 48 hours, according to Hamilton 68, a tool launched by the Alliance for Securing Democracy to track what it describes as "Russian propaganda and disinformation efforts online."

The Alliance is a group housed at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) think tank to "defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other actors' efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions," according to their mission statement.

The group does not disclose which accounts it tracks and CNN has not independently verified its findings.

Among the hashtags and topics related to the shooting are #falseflag, #fbi, #gunreformnow, #fbigate, #parklandschoolshooting, the name of the shooter -- Nikolas Cruz -- and Florida.

Another bot-tracking website, Botcheck.me, reports that all but one of the top two-word phrases used in the past 24 hours by 1,500 political propaganda bots were connected to the shooting: "gun control," "Nikolas Cruz," "school shooting," "school shooter" and "fake news." The exception was "President Trump."

Hashtags calling for gun reform and gun control are also topping the list. Unlike Hamilton 68, which targets bots related to the Russian government, Botcheck.me tracks accounts that generally spread political propaganda.

Cybersecurity and media experts are not surprised that trolls and bots are leveraging the Florida school shooting to cause divisions.

"This pattern of divisive propaganda is becoming a staple in information warfare fueled by social media, but it isn't exactly new," Marco T. Bastos, researcher at City, University of London and co-author of a paper on a network of pro-Brexit bots, told CNN. "Similar campaigns can be traced to at least 2014."

In 2014-15, a large number of accounts controlled by Russian quasi-state units were mostly focusing on reinforcing domestic opinions, according to Christo Grozev, senior researcher at New Bulgarian University's Risk Management Lab and an author at investigations website Bellingcat.

Grozev has been tracking approximately 400 Twitter "troll" accounts that were disclosed as part of a Russian leak in 2014.

The "identities" of the accounts have changed over time. Currently they contain a mix of French and Spanish/Catalan identities, suggesting they had been repurposed as needed, Grozev said.

The reason why these accounts seize on shootings like the Parkland school one is not ideological, but to amplify "extreme and divisive causes" in a bid to create "a distracted and weakened US government," Grozev said.

"Gun control is simply one of those causes," he said. "It is not in any way an ideological preference for Russia to have less gun control in the US. It is, however, the perfect divisive cause."

If the intent is not ideological but to sow discord in American society, that could help explain why Russian-related bots are spreading hashtags calling for gun control laws and reforms.

"Such hashtags serve mostly as bait: they serve to attract 'opposing view' readers, which results in explosive and discordant online mutual shouting -- in place of any reasonable debate, which would not be in the interest of Russia," Grozev said.

 

[AmazonGrace]

6 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Russian bots promote pro-gun messages after Florida school shooting"

  Reveal hidden contents

Russia-linked bots are promoting pro-gun messages on Twitter in an attempt to sow discord in the aftermath of the Florida school shooting, monitoring groups say.

Hashtags, topics, and URLs related to the shooting overwhelmingly feature in the tweets pushed by these automated Twitter accounts in the past 48 hours, according to Hamilton 68, a tool launched by the Alliance for Securing Democracy to track what it describes as "Russian propaganda and disinformation efforts online."

The Alliance is a group housed at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) think tank to "defend against, deter, and raise the costs on Russian and other actors' efforts to undermine democracy and democratic institutions," according to their mission statement.

The group does not disclose which accounts it tracks and CNN has not independently verified its findings.

Among the hashtags and topics related to the shooting are #falseflag, #fbi, #gunreformnow, #fbigate, #parklandschoolshooting, the name of the shooter -- Nikolas Cruz -- and Florida.

Another bot-tracking website, Botcheck.me, reports that all but one of the top two-word phrases used in the past 24 hours by 1,500 political propaganda bots were connected to the shooting: "gun control," "Nikolas Cruz," "school shooting," "school shooter" and "fake news." The exception was "President Trump."

Hashtags calling for gun reform and gun control are also topping the list. Unlike Hamilton 68, which targets bots related to the Russian government, Botcheck.me tracks accounts that generally spread political propaganda.

Cybersecurity and media experts are not surprised that trolls and bots are leveraging the Florida school shooting to cause divisions.

"This pattern of divisive propaganda is becoming a staple in information warfare fueled by social media, but it isn't exactly new," Marco T. Bastos, researcher at City, University of London and co-author of a paper on a network of pro-Brexit bots, told CNN. "Similar campaigns can be traced to at least 2014."

In 2014-15, a large number of accounts controlled by Russian quasi-state units were mostly focusing on reinforcing domestic opinions, according to Christo Grozev, senior researcher at New Bulgarian University's Risk Management Lab and an author at investigations website Bellingcat.

Grozev has been tracking approximately 400 Twitter "troll" accounts that were disclosed as part of a Russian leak in 2014.

The "identities" of the accounts have changed over time. Currently they contain a mix of French and Spanish/Catalan identities, suggesting they had been repurposed as needed, Grozev said.

The reason why these accounts seize on shootings like the Parkland school one is not ideological, but to amplify "extreme and divisive causes" in a bid to create "a distracted and weakened US government," Grozev said.

"Gun control is simply one of those causes," he said. "It is not in any way an ideological preference for Russia to have less gun control in the US. It is, however, the perfect divisive cause."

If the intent is not ideological but to sow discord in American society, that could help explain why Russian-related bots are spreading hashtags calling for gun control laws and reforms.

"Such hashtags serve mostly as bait: they serve to attract 'opposing view' readers, which results in explosive and discordant online mutual shouting -- in place of any reasonable debate, which would not be in the interest of Russia," Grozev said.

 

Who needs war when you can just get Americans to shoot each other.

[fraurosena]

Eric Holder is the former AG of the US, so he knows what he's talking about. 

Preet Bharara publically asks the same question that came into my head when I heard about the indictment:

But there is other important news on the Mueller front too, that as far as I can see has not been reported as of yet.

This Richard Pinedo is not someone we've heard of before. As one of the commenters states, it looks like some kind of money laundering/ obscuring of money sources offence. I wish I could read the links, but I think the whole world and his brother are trying to reach that particular site right now to read the indictments and it probably can't handle that much traffic. I'll try later and report back to you when I do.

More info found:

 

[fraurosena]

More info on the indictment of 13 Russians.

The wording of that last sentence is noteworthy. The "...communicated with unwitting people and others..." is wonderfully ambiguous. 

On the face of it, it looks like the sentence states that everyone state-side was unwitting, but you can also read it as stating that there were 'unwitting people' tied to Trump campaign and 'others'. These 'others' do not get the 'unwitting' qualification. Therefore, one might conclude that there were others that were 'witting'.

I wonder if the ambiguity was on purpose.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, SassyPants said:

Go Team Mueller!!!!

And Trump, his people (campaign, election, family, admin) and his supporters can now stew in the truth that Trump is an effing liar and did work with Russians to interfere in the 2016 election!

Yes, it is a "something burger."

I don't want to bust your bubble, but if you are expecting to see upset Trump fans/despondent bots they have their talking points:

Spoiler

 

 

[fraurosena]

3 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

I don't want to bust your bubble, but if you are expecting to see upset Trump fans/despondent bots they have their talking points:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Haha, well, Adam Schiff has this to say about that!

 

Of course the presidunce is weighing in too, in typical presiduncial fashion.

1. You were saying publicly as far back as the eighties and nineties that you would like to run for president one day, decades before Russia started their interference in 2014. Oh, by the way, you do realize that you're admitting now that they did interfere? Wow, that's a first.

2. Nowhere in the indictments does it state that the results of the election were not impacted. In fact, quite the opposite is implied.

3. You can say that all you want, but everybody knows that when you say something the exact opposite is true. So the campaign did something wrong - there was collusion! In fact, the indictment specifically states there was collusion, at minimum with unwitting people in the Trump campaign.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

Today is a big Mueller news day, in case you hadn't noticed. Here's even more...

Mueller Has Interviewed Trump Legal Team’s Former Spokesman

Quote

Mark Corallo, former spokesperson for President Donald Trump’s legal team, spoke with Special Counsel Bob Mueller earlier this week for over two hours, two people familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. He isn’t expected to go in for another interview, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The New York Times reported last month that Corallo’s conversation with Mueller would likely involve topics related to potential obstruction of justice.

One moment that might be of particular interest to the special counsel: a now-infamous flight back from the G-20 summit, when Trump and his close aides –– including his daughter Ivanka, Jared Kushner, and Communications Director Hope Hicks –– drafted a deceptive statement regarding Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Kremlin-linked Russian nationals. According to theTimes, Corallo was in a position to tell Mueller that Hicks once claimed the president’s sons emails about that meeting would “never get out.”

Corallo departed the White House shortly after Trump lambasted Attorney General Jeff Sessions in an interview with the Times. Corallo vocally defended Sessions during his hard-fought confirmation process, and people close to him told The Daily Beast that he found it hard to stomach the president’s criticism of the attorney general.

“To people who know him, his choice to leave was unavoidable on a moral and professional level,” one of his longtime friends told The Daily Beast at the time.

Corallo has long been plugged in to Washington’s conservative legal circles. He was a spokesperson for John Ashcroft during his time as Attorney General, and is also a longtime friend and spokesperson for Blackwater founder Erik Prince.

Mueller has been busy. NBC News reported that his team spent more than 20 hours interviewing Steve Bannon this past week.

And this isn’t the first time Mueller has brought in people close to his subjects’ legal team—which has raised eyebrows. Mueller previously subpoenaed Jason Maloni, a spokesperson for the legal team representing Paul Manafort.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Schiff saying House has evidence of collusion and obstruction

And money laundering.

[onekidanddone]

6 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Schiff saying House has evidence of collusion and obstruction

And money laundering.

Look over there! Shiny! What will shiny be today? Laura Ingram and her phony outrage over LeBron James? Sperm boy Hannity and the idden Da Vinci code in a painting? Is there a Reich Wing outrage bingo we can play? 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Three big takeaways from Mueller’s stunning new indictments"

Spoiler

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III just indicted 13 Russian nationals for participating in an alleged criminal plot to undermine the 2016 presidential election. Here’s the key line from the indictment:

From in or around 2014 to the present, defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the grand jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.

I just spoke with Randall Eliason, a former prosecutor and law professor who specializes in white collar crime and has written extensively about the Russia investigation.

Here are three key takeaways:

1. We now know not just that Russians did sabotage our election, but also that crimes may have been committed in the process — and what those crimes were.

Until today, we knew that our intelligence services had concluded that Russian meddling in the election had occurred. But details were very sketchy. We also did not know whether that sabotage rose to the level of alleged criminality. As Eliason wrote in a perspicacious piece last summer, there were several different possible ways that crimes might have been committed.

Now, from the indictment, we know that the sabotage did, in fact, amount to alleged specific crimes. One of them is “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” The indictment says that the defendants “conspired with each other … to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political process.”

As Eliason put it, “running a free and fair Presidential election is a core lawful function of the federal government,” and “any agreement to secretly and dishonestly attempt to interfere with a federal election” could be a “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” That’s what we allegedly have here.

The indictment lists in extraordinary detail the alleged ways in which the defendants did this: Falsely posing as Americans to operate social media to influence voters; employing active efforts to suppress the turnout of minority groups; creating additional fictional U.S. personas to sway public opinion; purchasing large numbers of ads on social media; and much more.

“It’s a breathtaking picture of the extensive efforts by these Russian individuals to interfere with the election,” Eliason told me, noting that the allegations include not just “conspiracy,” but also “violations of federal election law as part of the object of the conspiracy.” That’s a reference to the indictment’s charge of unlawful expenditures to influence U.S. elections by foreign nationals.

The indictment also notes that the defendants’ efforts to influence the election “included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton.”

2. We still don’t know whether Trump campaign officials or any other Americans conspired with this alleged effort to influence the election.

There’s some confusion around this point. The indictment says that some of the defendants “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign.” At a presser just now, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein reiterated this, claiming that “there’s no allegation in this indictment” that any American was aware of the alleged crimes. (Emphasis mine.)

But Eliason tells me that we simply cannot know yet what this means. It could very well mean that Mueller has not, or will not, find any evidence of U.S. persons knowingly conspiring with these efforts. Or, Eliason says, it could mean there’s more to come.

“What remains unanswered is whether they had U.S. help,” Eliason tells me, adding that the language in the indictment “doesn’t mean the only people involved are these unwitting ones.”

“There could be an investigative reason for not fully showing your hand now,” Eliason says. “Or it could be that they don’t have sufficient information yet to implicate U.S. individuals.” Eliason notes: “We can’t say anything one way or the other.”

3. This confirms just how massive an abdication Trump’s continued claims of a “hoax” really are. Trump has not simply dismissed the idea of Trump campaign conspiracy with Russian sabotage of our democracy. On many occasions, he has refused to acknowledge that Russian meddling happened at all.

This failure on Trump’s part isn’t merely retrospective. It is having serious consequences right now. In a big expose, The Post recently reported that Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Russian meddling is directly linked to his unwillingness to diminish the greatness of his victory. As a result, the Post story detailed, Trump has utterly failed to organize a serious national response to the threat of Russian sabotage of our next elections, even though intelligence officials continue to warn that it may already be in the works.

This new indictment, by illustrating the seriousness and elaborate nature of the alleged scheme to undermine our last election, underscores what a huge abdication this really is.

“Putting aside whether or not any Trump campaign individuals were involved, and understanding that these are of course just allegations, this certainly puts to rest any suggestion that there was not Russian interference in the election,” Eliason says. “The allegations in this indictment show just how extensive and intensive it was. It’s startling. We’ve never seen anything like this.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The White House’s extremely dishonest statement on the Russia indictments"

Spoiler

Even by the standards of a White House whose chief executive has made more than 2,000 false claims, this new statement is a whopper.

Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders just issued a two-paragraph statement on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's indictment of 13 Russian nationals allegedly operating a troll farm during the 2016 presidential campaign. And in that statement, Sanders makes a number of misleading and outright bogus claims about what we know of the investigation. Even worse, the statement repeats bogus claims the administration has been called out for repeatedly — including as recently as this week.

Here's the full statement, and below I'll pull out the most egregious parts:

Earlier today, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein announced indictments against 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian entities for meddling in the 2016 Presidential election, which began in 2014 before the President declared his candidacy. President Donald J. Trump has been fully briefed on this matter and is glad to see the Special Counsel’s investigation further indicates — that there was NO COLLUSION between the Trump campaign and Russia and that the outcome of the election was not changed or affected.

President Trump says, “it is more important than ever before to come together as Americans. We cannot allow those seeking to sow confusion, discord, and rancor to be successful. It’s time we stop the outlandish partisan attacks, wild and false allegations, and far-fetched theories, which only serve to further the agendas of bad actors, like Russia, and do nothing to protect the principles of our institutions. We must unite as Americans to protect the integrity of our democracy and our elections.”

The trouble begins in the second sentence.

“President Donald J. Trump has been fully briefed on this matter and is glad to see the Special Counsel’s investigation further indicates — that there was NO COLLUSION between the Trump campaign and Russia ...”

The indictment, in fact, says nothing about whether there was collusion, nor did Rosenstein rule it out during a news conference. As I noted in my analysis, Rosenstein did say that Trump officials contacted by the troll farm “did not know they were communicating with Russians.” Rosenstein also said, “There is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge.”

But he was referring only to the indictment announced Friday. The indictment is focused on one troll farm, and there is no indication that it is the full extent of Russian meddling. (Indeed, based on what we know about the Russian lawyer meeting, etc., it's probably not.) Rosenstein also said the special counsel investigation was “ongoing.”

This claim is extremely presumptuous and wrongly suggests that the indictment sheds light on something it doesn't.

"[Trump] is glad to see the Special Counsel’s investigation further indicates ... that the outcome of the election was not changed or affected.”

This is the most egregious claim. While the above may be defensible on some level, this one is not.

Rosenstein said that there was “no allegation in the indictment of any effect on the outcome of the election,” but he did not say there was definitively no impact. He was merely saying the indictment doesn't address that — just as the intelligence community's initial report on Russian hacking explicitly declined to address it. And why would they? It's basically impossible to determine, and it has nothing to do with whether the law was broken.

Administration officials including Trump have repeatedly claimed that the intelligence report said Russian interference didn't affect the outcome, and they have been repeatedly called out. Yet Vice President Pence made the claim again just this week. It's getting more and more difficult to believe they don't know better.

“President Trump says, 'it is more important than ever before to come together as Americans. We cannot allow those seeking to sow confusion, discord, and rancor to be successful.' ”

This statement seems to deliberately attempt to sow confusion about what the indictment says.

More Trump: “It’s time we stop the outlandish partisan attacks, wild and false allegations, and far-fetched theories, which only serve to further the agendas of bad actors, like Russia, and do nothing to protect the principles of our institutions.”

Trump has repeatedly labeled the investigation a “witch hunt” and suggested that law enforcement entities are biased against him. He has accused President Barack Obama, without evidence, of wiretapping Trump Tower. To do that and suggest that others are playing partisan politics and spreading conspiracy theories is pretty rich.

More Trump: “We must unite as Americans to protect the integrity of our democracy and our elections.”

There is very little indication that Trump has done much to move the ball forward on this count. As The Post's Greg Miller, Greg Jaffe and Philip Rucker reported in depth in December, Trump doesn't even like to hear about Russian interference. From that report:

Nearly a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject the evidence that Russia waged an assault on a pillar of American democracy and supported his run for the White House.

The result is without obvious parallel in U.S. history, a situation in which the personal insecurities of the president — and his refusal to accept what even many in his administration regard as objective reality — have impaired the government’s response to a national security threat.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

St. Rachel brought this up on her show. I don't think we talked about it here. Apparently, Mueller also had a new filling about Manafort today in response to Manafort's bail request. "Special counsel court filing reveals new bank fraud allegations against Manafort"

Spoiler

(CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller's office dropped more potentially damning details -- from an allegation of "additional criminal conduct" to personal financial troubles -- in a response to Paul Manafort's request to change his bail proposal on Friday.

The newly discovered alleged criminal conduct "includes a series of bank frauds and bank fraud conspiracies," a filing from the special counsel's office said on Friday night.

No new charges have been filed in open court against Manafort since he pleaded not guilty to nine counts of money laundering and making false statements about his business on October 30. But CNN has reported that additional indictments against the former Trump campaign chairman are being prepared.

In their filing Friday, prosecutors allege Manafort received a $9 million mortgage on a house of his in Fairfax, Virginia, by giving the Federal Savings Bank doctored business statements that overstated his wealth. The special counsel's office said it could show the court evidence of this bank fraud "and other bank frauds and conspiracies" at its next hearing, which has not yet been set.

Manafort proposed the house in Fairfax as one of four properties that could secure his bail. Another is an apartment he owns in Trump Tower in New York, which is at risk of foreclosure, the prosecutors said.

The prosecutors also noted that Manafort has "questioned his ability to maintain the payments on all his mortgages" and that members of his family aren't "willing to assume the risk" of helping him.

Manafort earned a judge's approval to be released from house arrest two months ago, if he showed proper documentation and could secure a $10 million bail with assets and properties. He has not been able to clear the judge's hurdles, and proposed a different approach to securing his bail Friday afternoon.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[fraurosena]

Great article by John Schindler.

Trump Gets Caught in His Own Web of Lies

Quote

Ever since Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as president 13 months ago, with his White House shrouded in a fog over its murky Russia ties from day one, Fridays have been the day that big news gets dumped, per venerable Washington tradition. Last Friday did not disappoint, and a week that was supposed to be about the White House’s big infrastructure plan instead wound up focusing on Russia, yet again.

After months of investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued indictments against 13 Russians and three Russian entities on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States. In addition, three Russians were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, while five were charged with aggravated identity theft. Boiled down, the indictments outline a complex conspiracy to clandestinely influence our 2016 election.

Beginning in 2014, the Kremlin began laying the groundwork for information warfare against the American electorate, collecting intelligence and establishing masked computer networks to employ social media in a weaponized manner against our democracy. The hub of this secret effort was the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, which functioned as a front for Russian intelligence; at its 2016 peak, it was spending $1.25 million per month on operations to influence our election with online disinformation and propaganda. This effort aimed to sow distrust among Americans, further poisoning our already polarized election, while boosting Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders at the expense of Hillary Clinton and Trump’s rivals in the Republican primaries.

These indictments fundamentally shift the debate about what happened in 2016. Despite nonstop claims for more than a year by President Trump that Russian interference in his election is a “Democratic hoax,” an assertion that has been parroted virulently by his backers, it’s now glaringly obvious that Kremlin officials indeed did clandestinely interfere to help put Donald Trump in the White House. Here, the president’s repeated assurances that Moscow did not meddle in his election—because Vladimir Putin told him so!—appear worse than merely unbelievable.

Predictably, the White House has latched on to the fact that Mueller’s indictments state that no members of Team Trump wittingly parlayed with Russian spies in 2016, who masked their identities. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s statement, “There is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charge conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election,” has been judged especially significant by the president and his defenders. However, Rosenstein’s careful parsing of his statement about this indictment implies that more may be coming.

In truth, this is just the first wave of Mueller’s indictments against Team Trump. More, and worse, is headed to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The special counsel’s efforts to rope White House staffers into obstruction charges now take on different coloration as what they were trying to hide is coming into focus. At a minimum, events like the Team Trump June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with the Russian attorney Natalya Veselnitskaya—in reality, a Russian intelligence officer—ostensibly to discuss adoptions, look more sinister when viewed against the backdrop of the broader Kremlin conspiracy against our election. As do pro-Kremlin changes to the Republican platform on Ukraine that were pushed by Team Trump at the party’s mid-July 2016 convention in Cleveland.

Even the most senior White House officials are no longer willing to publicly endorse the president’s repeated lies about what happened in 2016. The head of Trump’s own National Security Council, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, in response to the Mueller indictments, stated in Munich that the facts of Russian meddling in our election are “beyond dispute.” For the increasingly besieged White House, there is no going back now—and there are no exits.

Perhaps sensing this, the president went to Twitter for a series of rants against the Russia investigation, the FBI, and his political opponents that has been unusually hostile and overblown even by Trump’s impressive standards. Of particular interest is how President Trump has latched on to the fact that, per Mueller’s indictment, the Kremlin began laying the groundwork for information warfare against our election way back in 2014.

As the president tweeted on Saturday: “Funny how the Fake News Media doesn’t want to say that the Russian group was formed in 2014, long before my run for President. Maybe they knew I was going to run even though I didn’t know!”

This claim is absurd on its face. That Donald Trump floated the idea of running for the White House several times before he officially threw his hat in the ring on June 16, 2015, is a matter of public record. Moreover, he applied for a patent on his trademark slogan Make America Great Again back in November 2012, just six days after Barack Obama was reelected. Donald Trump’s Twitter feed between then and the official announcement of his candidacy included several references to his impending presidential run. The future candidate was re-tweeting others’ use of the #Trump2016 hashtag as far back as 2013, another indication that the White House was on Trump’s mind long before June 2015.

Then there’s highly classified intelligence demonstrating that Donald Trump was planning on running for the presidency—with Kremlin backing—years before the 2016 election. Back in the spring of 2014, a European intelligence service, a NATO ally of the United States, received a top-secret report that the Russians would back Donald Trump for the White House in the next election. The source was a mid-level Russian intelligence official who had plausible access to secret Kremlin plans.

Moreover, this source had a track record of providing accurate information, so his Trump bombshell merited examination. However, our partners determined that the notion was so absurd—after all, Trump was a reality TV star, a mere carnival barker, not a serious person—that the report had to be Russian disinformation. The source was put “on ice” for several months and his information was not shared with the Americans, since our friends didn’t want to appear so foolish as to suggest Donald Trump would run for president with secret Russian help.

However, American intelligence was hearing similar whispers back in early 2014. The National Security Agency’s global signals intelligence apparatus picked up conversations about a coming Trump presidential run with Kremlin backing. These were what the SIGINT world calls “reflections”—that is, Russians talking to other Russians, without Americans (much less Team Trump members) involved. These intercepted conversations included discussions of Trump’s coming White House run and how Moscow planned to boost him; the SIGINT involved, while not detailed, left the indelible impression that this secret effort had approval from “the top” in the Kremlin. Some of NSA’s foreign spy partners intercepted similar conversations in 2014.

Of greatest interest, NSA and its partners noted a spike in Kremlin conversations about Trump and the presidency in mid-November 2013, which was when Donald Trump was in Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant. While that visit has been the source of considerable salacious gossip—both in the notorious Steele dossier and in subsequent Kremlin efforts to fool American intelligence—for its alleged sexual shenanigans, its real purpose may have been more serious and sinister, according to several U.S. and Allied intelligence officials I’ve discussed the matter with.

Based on SIGINT reflections back in November 2013, it appeared likely that Trump had discussions with Kremlin officials when he was visiting Moscow, in preparation for his coming run for the White House. “It’s one hell of a coincidence,” an NSA official told me, “that high-ranking Russians suddenly start talking about getting Trump in the White House right after he’s in Moscow.” It’s unclear what intelligence, if any, was shared with the Obama White House about these SIGINT reflections, since its conclusions were tentative; there was no top-secret “smoking gun.” We can hope that Bob Mueller and his prosecutors will now get to the bottom of this murky intelligence puzzle.

In the meantime, President Trump keeps rage-tweeting. In the last 24 hours, he has issued bizarre rants against prominent Democrats involved in the Russia probe, patently false claims that he never denied Russian attacks on our election, put-downs of his own National Security Council boss, and, most insidiously, the claim that the FBI failed to prevent the recent terrible school shooting in Florida because the Bureau was spending too much time on the Russia investigation. That vile assertion has no basis in any fact or reality and betrays a highly stressed president under siege, without off-ramps, who knows that more indictments are coming his way.

Yep, as the Dutch saying goes, the presidunce is feeling Mueller's hot breath in his neck. His desperation is growing ever more palpable and acute. He knows it's only a matter of time now before his game is up. I have to confess to some delightful epicaricacy at the thought of all that presiduncial squirming and agonizing.

[fraurosena]

Oh, yeah!

No wonder twitler had a meltdown today!

[GrumpyGran]

8 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Oh, yeah!

No wonder twitler had a meltdown today!

"He was not my aide, he was just a delivery boy who brought a package once!"

[onekidanddone]

All he did was bring me a Diet Coke, a couple of dozen Big Macs, steam my pants while they were still on and launder my money bring me my dry cleaning.