The Russian Connection 3: Mueller is Coming

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republican Senators Recommend Charges Against Author of Trump Dossier"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — More than a year after Republican leaders promised to investigate Russian interference in the presidential election, two influential Republicans on Friday made the first known congressional criminal referral in connection with the meddling — against one of the people who sought to expose it.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior committee member, told the Justice Department they had reason to believe that a former British spy, Christopher Steele, lied to federal authorities about his contacts with reporters regarding information in the dossier, and they urged the department to investigate. The committee is running one of three congressional investigations into Russian election meddling, and its inquiry has come to focus, in part, on Mr. Steele’s explosive dossier that purported to detail Russia’s interference and the Trump campaign’s complicity.

The decision by Mr. Grassley and Mr. Graham to single out the former intelligence officer behind the dossier — and not anyone who may have taken part in the Russian interference — was certain to infuriate Democrats and raise the stakes in the growing partisan battle over the investigations into Mr. Trump, his campaign team and Russia.

More than a year ago, Republican leaders in Congress agreed that committees in the House and Senate would investigate Russia’s efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Mr. Graham declared in December 2016, “The first thing we want to establish is, ‘Did the Russians hack into our political system?’ Then you work outward from there.”

Since then, that spirit of bipartisanship has frayed. Congressional Democrats have sought to portray the Trump campaign as eager to take whatever help Russia would provide. Republicans have deflected attention from the central issue and sought to cast doubt on Mr. Steele’s dossier and the political research firm that helped produce it, Fusion GPS, whose work was partly funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The criminal referral appears to make no assessment of the veracity of the dossier’s contents, much of which remains unsubstantiated nearly a year after it became public.

... < document >

In a short cover letter dated Thursday but transmitted on Friday, the senators wrote, “Based on the information contained therein, we are respectfully referring Mr. Steele to you for investigation of potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001, for statements the Committee has reason to believe Mr. Steele made regarding his distribution of information contained.”

That section of the federal criminal code refers to knowingly making false or misleading statements to federal authorities.

Mr. Steele had repeated contacts before and after the election with F.B.I. counterintelligence agents who were investigating links between the Trump campaign and Russians. The information he shared was apparently valuable enough that the F.B.I. at one point even considered bringing him on as a paid source. They only backed off the idea after the dossier became public in January 2017 and Mr. Steele’s identity became widely known, leading the bureau to conclude that he would no longer be able to function as a source for its investigation.

More recently, Mr. Steele has been in contact with the Justice Department’s special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who took over the investigation last year.

Anyone can make a criminal referral to the Justice Department, which is not obligated to take up the matter. But a recommendation from a senior senator who runs the committee that has oversight of the department comes with added weight.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the referral. But Fusion characterized the recommendation to charge Mr. Steele as a smear and an attempt to further muddy the inquiry into Russia’s interference.

“Publicizing a criminal referral based on classified information raises serious questions about whether this letter is nothing more than another attempt to discredit government sources, in the midst of an ongoing criminal investigation,” said Joshua A. Levy, the lawyer for Fusion. “We should all be skeptical in the extreme.”

Mr. Grassley is overseeing an array of inquiries related to the F.B.I. and its investigations of both Mrs. Clinton and the Trump campaign. He and Mr. Graham have repeatedly pressed the agency on its handling of the dossier in particular and fought to gain access to key agency witnesses and documents about the matter, reviewing a large tranche of such material in recent weeks.

Fusion GPS hired Mr. Steele, a former officer of Britain’s MI6 with deep connections in Russia, during the spring of 2016 to research Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia. His findings were ultimately compiled into 35 pages of memos outlining a multipronged conspiracy between the Russian government and the Trump campaign to boost his candidacy and hurt Mrs. Clinton, including corrupt business dealings and salacious details alleging an encounter between Mr. Trump and Russian prostitutes.

The firm was first hired by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, in May 2016, and its work was later funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.

This week has seen Mr. Grassley engage in a heated spat with Fusion over the testimony of one of its executives, Glenn R. Simpson. It began when Mr. Simpson and his partner, Peter Fritsch, published an op-ed article in The New York Times accusing Republicans of waging “a cynical campaign” to try to discredit the firm and its findings and calling on the relevant congressional committees to release transcripts of a series of closed-door interviews with the men.

A spokesman for Mr. Grassley, Taylor Foy, shot back, saying that Mr. Simpson had been less than transparent with the committee and had declined to provide public testimony or additional documents and answers requested after the interview. He also said and that “Mr. Simpson and his attorney demanded during the interview that the transcript be kept confidential.” A lawyer for Fusion GPS, Joshua Levy, in turn, disputed that account, and said that upon review, his client now wanted the transcript to be made public — a request Mr. Grassley has denied.

The senator is not the only prominent Republican lawmaker pressing the Justice Department and Fusion GPS for answers on the dossier. Representative Devin Nunes of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has been locked in a standoff with the department over access to documents and witnesses he views as crucial to unraveling what the F.B.I. did with the dossier. And he has aggressively pursued Fusion GPS, subpoenaing the company’s bank records and sending two committee staff members to London last summer to try to meet with Mr. Steele unannounced.

A resolution with the Justice Department appeared to be imminent this week, after Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, paid an unexpected visit to Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin. Mr. Nunes, whom Democrats have accused of acting to protect Mr. Trump, said in a statement after the meeting that he expected to gain the access he desired.

Sigh.

[AmazonGrace]

Watch out, this is getting way into banana republic territory. 

It's purely a partisan thing. 

 

[GrumpyGran]

51 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Watch out, this is getting way into banana republic territory. 

It's purely a partisan thing. 

 

Wow, suddenly a lot of Republicans seem to be desperate to create a smoke screen for the Mueller investigation. I'm going to have to assume that Grassley and Graham have something to hide. Connections to Russia?

[Howl]

21 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I still believe there is a mountain of dirt all around Agent Orange. He's buried up to his neck in it.

Josh Marshall has an interesting editorial discussing Trump's inherently criminal mind set.   Here's an excerpt, but for the Full Monty,  click here: Did Trump Ever Have a Chance?

Quote

 

As he told Michael Schmidt of the Times, “When you look at the things that [the Obama administration] did, and Holder protected the president. And I have great respect for that, I’ll be honest, I have great respect for that.”

We see these attitudes as the mindset of a would-be authoritarian. And they are. But they are also the attitudes of a criminal. By this I mean not simply someone who has broken the law. I mean someone who has no inherent respect for the law or great fear of its enforcement and breaks the law more or less casually when it is convenient and relatively safe to do so. Typically, such people see the trappings of the law as little more than a mask for the exercise of power. This is clearly Trump’s view of the world. Just as clearly he saw becoming President as essentially becoming the law. It is the ultimate power and what comes with that is legal invulnerability for him and his family. He earned it.

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[onekidanddone]

9 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Gives new meaning to the slogan "He went to Jared".

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Hmm, I predict that Junior will get another round of questions after this. That's bound to set off some eye-popping tweets from the three Trump stooges.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[onekidanddone]

5 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Jamie!

[AmazonGrace]

Hey, White House staff, watch out for the bus!

[fraurosena]

From the article in the tweet @AmazonGrace posted above:

Quote

Anticipating that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will ask to interview President Donald Trump, the president’s legal team is discussing a range of potential options for the format, including written responses to questions in lieu of a formal sit-down, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Lawyers for Trump have been discussing with FBI investigators a possible interview by the special counsel with the president as part of the inquiry into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

The discussions were described by one person with direct knowledge as preliminary and ongoing. Trump’s legal team is seeking clarification on whether the president would be interviewed directly by Mueller, as well as the legal standard for when a president can be interviewed, the location of a possible interview, the topics and the duration. But the president’s team is also seeking potential compromises that could avoid an interview altogether, two of those interviewed told NBC News.

With the possibility now looming that the president himself could be subject to an interview by the FBI or Mueller’s investigators, Trump’s legal team has been debating whether it would be possible to simply avoid it. One individual familiar with the strategy said those internal discussions within Trump’s legal team began shortly after the president’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was indicted in late October for money laundering in connection with his business dealings with Ukraine.

Trump’s legal team sat down with representatives from the special counsel’s office in late December. Two of Trump’s lawyers, Ty Cobb and John Dowd, declined comment. A third lawyer, Jay Sekulow, did not respond to a request for comment. Peter Carr, spokesperson for the special counsel’s office, declined to comment.

In addition to the possibility of suggesting the president submit written responses in place of an interview, a second person familiar with the president’s legal strategy said another possibility being contemplated was an affidavit signed by the president affirming he was innocent of any wrongdoing and denying any collusion. It was not clear what such an affidavit might state regarding the president’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey in May 2017 at a time when Comey was leading the Russia probe.

Justice Department veterans cast doubt on the possibility that Mueller,who served as FBI director for 12 years, would forgo the chance to interview the president directly.

“Prosecutors want to see and hear folks in person,” said Chuck Rosenberg, former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and chief of staff to FBI Director Comey. “They want to probe and follow up. Body language and tone are important,” said Rosenberg, now an NBC News analyst. “And they want answers directly from witnesses, not from their lawyers. The odds of prosecutors agreeing to written responses are somewhere between infinitesimally small and zero."

Criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz called the Trump team’s maneuvers “gamesmanship. It's what any criminal defense attorney would do."

"I would never let the prosecution interview my client,” said Dershowitz, “but I don't represent the president of the United States, and presidents don't want to plead the Fifth. So this route makes sense."

Dershowitz added that the defense's strategy does not mean they are presuming Trump is guilty of wrongdoing.

The White House and Justice Department initially tried to portray the Comey firing as a result of Comey’s handling of the investigation into Clinton. But in an interview with Lester Holt of NBC News two days after the firing, Trump tied his actions directly to Comey’s investigation of Russia. Comey later testified that Trump tried unsuccessfully to get Comey to drop his investigation into Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

The president has continued to insist publicly that he is not under investigation and has described the Justice Department investigation as a “hoax” and a conspiracy cooked up by the FBI in concert with his political opponents.

But the intelligence community has been definitive that Russia attacked the integrity of the 2016 election and sought to push the outcome in Trump’s favor. While Trump said during the campaign that he was not aware of any of his aides meeting with Russians, multiple members of his own family and inner circle have since acknowledged that they did.

Some of the president’s own actions following his inauguration, including the handling of the White House departure of Flynn and the firing of Comey in May 2017, have caused the probe to widen to include the possibility of obstruction of justice related to the initial investigation. The special counsel is also delving into the actions of some of the Trump children and the president’s son-in-law, who were involved in the campaign and the presidential transition, the decision to fire Comey and public statements regarding a meeting with Russian individuals during the campaign.

In June 2017, Trump disputed Comey’s testimony to Congress that the president attempted to interfere in the FBI’s investigation of Flynn and said he was “100 percent” willing to testify under oath about his conversations with Comey. Asked by a reporter Saturday if he was willing to speak with Mueller and his team, Trump initially said “yeah,” but it was unclear whether he was committing to an interview or acknowledging the question. He did not elaborate. Instead, he reasserted that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia and sought to focus attention on his former Democratic opponent.

"Just so you understand, there's been no collusion, there's been no crime, and in theory everybody tells me I'm not under investigation. Maybe Hillary (Clinton) is, I don't know, but I'm not," he told reporters at Camp David. "But we have been very open. We could have done it two ways. We could have been very closed, and it would have taken years. But you know, sort of like when you've done nothing wrong, let's be open and get it over with.“

“Because, honestly, it's very, very bad for our country,” the president said. “It's making our country look foolish. And this is a country that I don't want looking foolish. And it's not going to look foolish as long as I'm here."

Hillary Clinton, who lost the 2016 election to Trump, sat for a daylong interview at FBI headquarters during the campaign as part of a separate probe into whether she mishandled government email. The FBI found no evidence of a crime but Trump continued to cite the interview throughout the campaign and called for her imprisonment.

Robert Dallek, a presidential historian, said any risk in Trump speaking to the special counsel under oath depends on what he would say.

“It very much depends on whether the president has things to hide. If there’s really nothing to hide, then I would think there’s no danger in him sitting down with anyone and speaking freely to them,” Dallek said. "But if there are things to hide, obviously there are risks."

Former President Bill Clinton, who was under investigation by an independent counsel, testified under oath and on camera before a federal grand jury for some four hours in 1998 in connection with a relationship he had with a White House intern and previous relationships with other women while married. The dramatic testimony drew widespread national attention and, under questioning about the intimate nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Clinton appeared uncomfortable and halting at times.

But Dallek couldn’t recall another sitting president in discussions to be interviewed in a criminal investigation during his first year in office.

"This has never happened before," Dallek said. "Maybe later in the administration, but in the first year to be under this kind of scrutiny and attack, it’s devastating to an administration."

6

I want need to be a fly on the wall during that interview... Or otherwise, dear Rufus, let there be tapes!

[Howl]

Important to note, based on the above, that WH staff are still leaking, leaking, leaking. 

[formergothardite]

29 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

In addition to the possibility of suggesting the president submit written responses in place of an interview,

I bet his lawyers would love this. His lawyers are probably shaking at the thought of Trump being interviewed. He can't help but make himself look worse every time he talks. 

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I want need to be a fly on the wall during that interview

I just want to be a fly on the wall every time a discussion about this comes up with his staff. Can you imagine? Five minutes alone with Mueller and he'll be toast!

[fraurosena]

21 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

I just want to be a fly on the wall every time a discussion about this comes up with his staff. Can you imagine? Five minutes alone with Mueller and he'll be toast!

Blessed Rufus, yes! I think they're all feeling sick to the stomach at the thought of the presidunce being interviewed. 

I have a vivid imagination, and I can just picture him blowing a gasket and trying to leave the interview because it's very unfair and why is he here anyway, wasn't he supposed to golf today? And, by the way, why is there no tv in this room? I need to see my fox and friends! Such nice people. The nicest. They say such nice things about me. Hey, who the fuck is this person asking me these questions all the time? Can't he shut up? Where's my phone, I've got to tweet about this very fake and very unfair place. I'm a very smart person, the smartest. I know my rights. But now I want a diet coke. And a cheeseburger. Maybe two, cause I'm really hungry now. Where's Hope? My pants need pressing! What? Why is this guy asking me about those Russians again? Of course I spoke to them. Nice people. Gave me permission to build my tower in Moskow you know. Flynn said they didn't even need anything in return, only some sanctions that needed to go away. Well, that wasn't difficult, they elected me presidunce, you know. So I am the boss. The bigliest.  Everybody loves me now... don't they?

[onekidanddone]

20 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

I just want to be a fly on the wall every time a discussion about this comes up with his staff. Can you imagine? Five minutes alone with Mueller and he'll be toast!

The smartest most most stable genius toast. 

[fraurosena]

Ooooooh, I wonder who this could be?

As Blumenthal is on the Judiciary Committee, and in the interview also says that he's read not only the Simpson testimony but also that of Junior, we can safely assume that he knows what he's talking about. He even baldly states that Junior is in deep doo-doo (I'm paraphrasing) and will most probably face charges. 

Am I being overly optimistic here, or are things really ramping up now?

 

[onekidanddone]

1 minute ago, fraurosena said:

Ooooooh, I wonder who this could be?

As Blumenthal is on the Judiciary Committee, and in the interview also says that he's read not only the Simpson testimony but also that of Junior, we can safely assume that he knows what he's talking about. He even baldly states that Junior is in deep doo-doo (I'm paraphrasing) and will most probably face charges. 

Am I being overly optimistic here, or are things really ramping up now?

 

I want them to interview Eric. He will spill all the beans and then ask for more of his Carvel whale cake.

[Audrey2]

3 hours ago, formergothardite said:

I bet his lawyers would love this. His lawyers are probably shaking at the thought of Trump being interviewed. He can't help but make himself look worse every time he talks. 

Based on his tweets, would Trump be capable of writing his response to Mueller's questions? Or would his legal team come up with and write the "appropriate" responses (party line, but not completely truthful)?

[fraurosena]

18 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

Based on his tweets, would Trump be capable of writing his response to Mueller's questions? Or would his legal team come up with and write the "appropriate" responses (party line, but not completely truthful)?

His lawyers and other sycophants would write up the responses. Then without telling him what it is exactly, tell him to sign at the dotted line.

[AmazonGrace]

He might be able to type his responses if Fox and Friends tell him what they should be first.

Shroedinger's Ivanka. Russians may have met her or they may not have met her but no one knows until Ivanka updates her foreign contacts list.

[Howl]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Ooooooh, I wonder who this could be?

As Blumenthal is on the Judiciary Committee, and in the interview also says that he's read not only the Simpson testimony but also that of Junior, we can safely assume that he knows what he's talking about. He even baldly states that Junior is in deep doo-doo (I'm paraphrasing) and will most probably face charges. 

Am I being overly optimistic here, or are things really ramping up now?

 

When I see this type of interview, I start to wonder about the strategy of the timing. Is Blumenthal trying to get out ahead of things in case Trump & Co. start firing and pardoning their associates?  Trying to piggyback on Fire and Fury?

Excellent interview, but do you really want to give Fredo I and Fredo II a heads up?  Interesting times, indeed. 

[AmazonGrace]

18 minutes ago, Howl said:

When I see this type of interview, I start to wonder about the strategy of the timing. Is Blumenthal trying to get out ahead of things in case Trump & Co. start firing and pardoning their associates?  Trying to piggyback on Fire and Fury?

Excellent interview, but do you really want to give Fredo I and Fredo II a heads up?  Interesting times, indeed. 

Maybe they're trying to counter the Trump narrative that it has all been proven to be a democrat hoax.

I wouldn't worry about giving anyone a heads up because everyone who did anything wrong has got to be worried by now, anyhow.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

His lawyers and other sycophants would write up the responses. Then without telling him what it is exactly, tell him to sign at the dotted line.

If this happens, then we hope that Mueller calls him in to confirm what the written statement said. Dumpy won't have a clue, even if they try to drill it into his head. He contradicts himself, boom, Mueller must recommend impeachment.

There's no good way for his lawyers to deal with this.