Russian Connection 4: Do Not Congratulate

[GreyhoundFan]

"Carter Page FISA Documents Are Released by Justice Department"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration disclosed on Saturday a previously top-secret set of documents related to the wiretapping of Carter Page, the onetime Trump campaign adviser who was at the center of highly contentious accusations by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that the F.B.I. had abused its surveillance powers.

[Read the documents here.]

Democrats in February rejected the Republican claims that law enforcement officials had improperly obtained a warrant to monitor Mr. Page, accusing them of putting out misinformation to defend President Trump and sow doubts about the origin of the Russia investigation. But even as Republicans and Democrats issued dueling memos characterizing the materials underlying the surveillance of Mr. Page, the public had no access to the records.

On Saturday evening, those materials — an October 2016 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Mr. Page, along with several renewal applications — were released to The New York Times and other news organizations that had filed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to obtain them. Mr. Trump had declassified their existence earlier this year.

“This application targets Carter Page,” the document said. “The F.B.I. believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.” A line was then redacted, and then it picked up with “undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election in violation of U.S. criminal law. Mr. Page is a former foreign policy adviser to a candidate for U.S. president.”

Mr. Page has denied being a Russian agent and has not been charged with a crime in the nearly two years since the initial wiretap application was filed. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

The spectacle of the release was itself noteworthy, given that wiretapping under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, is normally one of the government’s closest-guarded secrets. No such application materials had apparently become public in the 40 years since Congress enacted that law to regulate the interception of phone calls and other communications on domestic soil in search of spies and terrorists, as opposed to wiretapping for ordinary criminal investigations.

The documents made public on Saturday were heavily redacted in places, and some of the substance of the applications had already become public in February, via the Republican and Democratic Intelligence Committee memos.

Visible portions showed that the F.B.I. in stark terms had told the intelligence court that Mr. Page “has established relationships with Russian government officials, including Russian intelligence officers”; that the bureau believed “the Russian government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with” Mr. Trump’s campaign; and that Mr. Page “has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.”

The fight over the surveillance of Mr. Page centered on the fact that the F.B.I., in making the case to judges that he might be a Russian agent, had used some claims drawn from a notorious Democratic-funded dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent.

The application cited claims from the dossier that Mr. Page, while on a trip to Moscow in July 2016, had met with two senior Russian representatives and discussed matters like lifting sanctions imposed on Russia for its intervention in Ukraine and a purported file of compromising information about Mr. Trump that the Russian government had. (Mr. Page has denied those allegations, although he later contradicted his claims that he had not met any Russian government officials on that trip.)

Republicans portrayed the Steele dossier — which also contained salacious claims about Mr. Trump apparently not included in the wiretap application — as dubious, and blasted the F.B.I. for using material from it while not telling the court that the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign had funded the research.

But Democrats noted that the application also contained evidence against Mr. Page unrelated to the dossier, and an unredacted portion of the application discussed efforts by Russian agents in 2013 to recruit Americans as assets. It has previously been reported that Mr. Page was one of their targets, although any discussion of Mr. Page’s interactions with them in the application is still censored.

Democrats argued in February that the F.B.I. had told the court that the research’s sponsor had the political motive of wanting to discredit Mr. Trump’s campaign. They argued that it was normal not to specifically name Americans and American organizations in such materials. The released documents show that portion of the filings, which the previously released Democratic memo had quoted.

The application shows that the F.B.I. told the court it believed that the person who hired Mr. Steele was looking for dirt to discredit Mr. Trump. But it added that based on Mr. Steele’s previous reporting history with the F.B.I., in which he had “provided reliable information,” the bureau believed his information cited in the application “to be credible.”

The applications largely avoided using names; renewal materials noted that they would continue to refer to “Candidate #1” by that description, for example, even though he “is now the president.”

The renewal applications from 2017 told the court in boldface print that the F.B.I. had severed its relationship with Mr. Steele because he had shared some of his claims with a news organization in October 2016, contrary to the F.B.I.’s “admonishment” to speak only to law enforcement officials about the matter. But they said the bureau continued to assess his prior reporting as “reliable.”

The final two renewal applications also contained two additional pages describing a letter Mr. Page sent to the Justice Department in February 2017 accusing the Clinton campaign of spreading false information about him.

The unredacted portions of the original application and the three renewal applications are otherwise largely identical, so it is not visible whether the F.B.I. told the court that it was gaining useful intelligence from the wiretap of Mr. Page as it asked for extensions. But the length of the applications grew significantly each time, indicating that new information was being added: They were 66 pages, 79 pages, 91 pages and 101 pages, respectively.

The materials also revealed which Federal District Court judges signed off on the wiretapping of Mr. Page: Judges Rosemary Collyer, Michael Mosman, Anne C. Conway and Raymond J. Dearie. All were appointed by Republican presidents.

As has been publicly known from the February congressional fight, the application also contained a description of a Yahoo News article from September 2016 that discussed the investigation into Mr. Page’s Russia ties. It is now known that Mr. Steele was a source for that article, but the application and renewals state that the F.B.I. did not believe he “directly” provided information to Yahoo News.

Republicans at the time claimed that the F.B.I. had misleadingly used the article as corroboration for Mr. Steele’s claims, while Democrats said that was false and that it was instead included to inform the court that Mr. Page had denied the allegations.

The section of the application that describes the Yahoo News article is titled “Page’s Denial of Cooperation With the Russian Government to Influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.”

Since February, even as Mr. Trump and his allies have continued to portray the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt,” it has produced indictments of two dozen Russians and Russian government officials for efforts to covertly manipulate American social media and for hacking and releasing Democratic emails during the campaign.

Noting that the original application and its three renewals were approved by senior law enforcement officials in two administrations and by federal judges, for example, Representative Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, portrayed the threat from Russia that the F.B.I. was investigating as real and severe.

“Anyone aware of these facts would recognize that these applications were necessary and appropriate,” Mr. Nadler said. “Those who say otherwise are trying desperately to protect President Trump from a broader investigation that must be allowed to take its course without interference.”

While applications for criminal wiretap orders often become public, showing what the government’s basis was for seeking it, the government until now has refused to disclose FISA materials even when using evidence gathered through such wiretaps to prosecute people.

But in February, Mr. Trump — over the objections of law enforcement professionals — took the unprecedented step of lowering the walls of secrecy around such materials to enable House Intelligence Committee Republicans, led by Representative Devin Nunes of California, to disclose their three-and-a-half-page memo, which sought to portray the surveillance of Mr. Page as scandalous.

In addition to invoking Mr. Trump’s declassification to seek disclosure of the underlying materials by filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department, The Times also petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to unseal the materials itself. The court has not responded to that request.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[AmazonGrace]

Thread highlighting interesting bits from the Carter files 

 

[fraurosena]

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The Trump administration disclosed on Saturday a previously top-secret set of documents related to the wiretapping of Carter Page, the onetime Trump campaign adviser who was at the center of highly contentious accusations by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee that the F.B.I. had abused its surveillance powers.

[Read the documents here.]

Oh dear, @GreyhoundFan, what have you done to me?

Being the nerd that I am for this kind of thing, now I have to go and read the whole 412 pages... 

[fraurosena]

Interesting paragraph with a tantalizing redacted part. What jumped out at me, was the tense used.

Here's the paragraph:

[...] Based on the foregoing facts and circumstances, the FBI submits that there is probable cause to believe that Carter Page [redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted] knowingly engage in clandestine intelligence activities (other than intelligence gathering activities) for or on behalf of such foreign power, or knowingly conspires with other persons to engage in such activities and, therefore, is an agent of a foreign power [..]

The redacted line (which I've attempted to make as long as the one in the Carter files) coupled with the the tense 'engage' rather than engages, suggests that the redacted line is covering names of more than just one or two associates who Page is engaging with in clandestine intelligence activities and that these clandestine intelligence activities were ongoing at the time of the request. The fact that these names are redacted piques my interest. Who are (or were) the people Page is (was) working with? Could one or more of them have familial ties to the presidunce? Although it's just speculation at this point, if that were to be true, I would not be surprised one little bit.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

Sweet Rufus, this is treason. It’s so glaringly obvious, that I don’t get why you all aren’t out in the streets right now. What will it take for Americans to acknowledge that they shouldn’t wait any longer to put an end to this hostile takeover? Do something, before it’s too late!

 

[AmazonGrace]

Do not ask Dana about Russia. 

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

I can't read this story because apparently some news are not meant for my region but she sure gets around 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

It might be time to consider that not every computer needs to be online 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/with-the-release-of-new-documents-devin-nunes’s-memo-on-carter-page-has-gotten-even-less-credible/ar-BBKVM9o?ocid=st

With the release of new documents, Devin Nunes’s memo on Carter Page has gotten even less credible

Spoiler

 

Earlier this year, the political world was gripped by a stunning accusation from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) that the government’s application for a warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was born of bias and almost entirely reliant on a dossier of information compiled on the dime of Democratic operatives. He had a memo that made that argument; eventually, and probably without much goading, President Trump was persuaded to release it publicly.

Even based on what was known then, the hype surrounding Nunes’s memo seemed to oversell the point. In short order, other revelations about the warrant application made it clear that the contents of the memo were iffy. It was the second time in two years that Nunes had gone to bat in defense of one of Trump’s pet theories, and neither time worked out that well.

As it turns out though, Nunes’s efforts to raise questions about the surveillance warrant, granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, were even less robust than they seemed at the time. With the release Friday of a redacted copy of both the initial warrant application targeting Page in October 2016 and the three 90-day extensions of the warrant, we can get a better sense of just how far from the mark the Nunes memo actually was.

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The Nunes memo made a number of interpretive claims — assessments of the importance of aspects of the warrant — as well as a number of factual claims. Among the latter were:

That the dossier of reports from former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele on behalf of the firm Fusion GPS were an “essential” part of the application.

That the fact that Fusion GPS was being paid by a law firm working for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee was never explicitly stated.

That neither Steele nor Fusion GPS are identified by name.

That the application cites a Yahoo News article from September 2016 that “does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News.” The application also incorrectly asserts that Steele wasn’t directly Yahoo’s source for the story.

That the application mentions another Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos but that there is no evidence of cooperation between him and Page.

The memo made a number of other claims focusing on information related to the launch of the investigation into Page that aren’t illuminated any further by the released document.

We can begin with the first point above, that the Steele dossier’s information was “essential” to the warrant.

At the outset, Page is described in the warrant application as “an agent of a foreign power,” specifically Russia. The third section of the application details the evidence linking Page to Russia, beginning with Page having lived in the country for several years and being mentioned as a possible target for recruitment by Russian intelligence officers about five years ago, at which point he was interviewed by the FBI. The first four pages of this section, excluding footnotes, are either redacted or deal with that prior interaction with federal authorities.

The information from the Steele dossier comprises the next 4½ pages, excluding footnotes. It is followed by Page’s public response to reports that he was under investigation, a response triggered by the Yahoo article. That response runs for about 3½ pages and makes up the fourth section of the report.

Five fully redacted pages, making up the fifth and sixth sections of the document, follow, leading into the document’s conclusion.

It’s clear that the information uncovered by Steele does play a prominent role. It’s impossible to say how critical it was to the warrant, though, because so much of the document is redacted.

What isn’t redacted, though, makes a few things clear. First, that the Yahoo article is introduced not as a corroborating story but as the first part of the section titled “Page’s Denial of Cooperation with the Russian Government.” As noted above, that article spurred Page’s response, which is included. There’s no suggestion from the unredacted document that it was included to serve as a second source for the story.

While the warrant application does state that the FBI “does not believe that Source #1 [Steele] directly provided this information to the press” — which was incorrect — that same footnote (No. 18) clearly implies that Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS might have been Yahoo’s source, undercutting the idea the FBI was trying to use Yahoo to bolster the significance of Steele’s findings.

© Provided by WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post

(Steele’s findings, by the way, include allegations that Page met with key Russian figures during a trip to Moscow in July 2016. Page later admitted to the House Intelligence Committee that, despite past denials, he had encountered senior Russian officials on that trip, albeit not the ones Steele identified.)

Each of the three renewals of the warrant to surveil Page was granted after the FBI argued that it needed to keep collecting data on Page. The length of the renewals relative to the original application suggests the government kept adding new information to its requests as the surveillance was ongoing.

Consider three sections that appear in each document: The third section (including the Steele information), the fourth through sixth sections (including Page’s denial and more redacted information) and the conclusion. Here’s the page number where each of those appears in each document.

© Provided by WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post

As time passes, more information is added to the warrant applications. The middle section — whatever it contained — kept getting larger, meaning that the section dealing with Steele’s report made up less of the overall application.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that after Steele leaked the existence of his dossier to Mother Jones in late October, the FBI cut off its relationship with him. That’s indicated in a bold-type footnote in the renewal applications.

“n or about October 2016, the FBI suspended its relationship with Source #1 [Steele] due to Source #1’s unauthorized disclosure of information to the press,” it reads. However: “Notwithstanding the suspension of its relationship with Source #1, the FBI assesses Source #1 to be reliable as previous reporting from Source #1 has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings.”

In the initial application, a footnote — which appears on the page in type the same size as the rest of the warrant — indicates Steele had been a corroborated FBI source in the past about whom the FBI was unaware of any “derogatory information.”

There is a full page of footnotes that includes an exploration of the motivations behind Steele’s research, specifically noting why Steele’s “reason for conducting the research” doesn’t disqualify its validity.

You’ve noticed that Steele isn’t mentioned by name in the application and is referred to as Source #1. The critique that Steele and Fusion GPS aren’t identified by name is especially hollow because none of the key actors are. Trump is “Candidate #1.” Clinton, “Candidate #2.” The Republican Party is “Political Party #1.” Clinton, Fusion GPS, Steele and the DNC aren’t identified by name because no one is, save Page, some Russians and Papadopoulos.

The context for naming Papadopoulos isn’t clear; the document is largely redacted in the section where he’s mentioned. But that section does include two important unredacted lines: “the FBI believe that the Russian Government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1’s campaign,” and “Page has established relationships with Russian Government officials, including Russian intelligence officers.”

© Provided by WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post

For all that we learned in the release of the memo, there’s still an enormous amount of redacted information that prevents us from getting anywhere close to a full picture of what happened. From the evidence at hand though, it’s certainly fair to assume that it’s Nunes’s memo, not the warrant application, that suffered from a stronger political bias in its creation.

 

Quote

We can’t entirely blame Nunes, though. In an interview with Fox News in February, he admitted that he himself hadn’t read the warrant application.

 

[AmazonGrace]

What Butina doesn't want you to know about her

https://www.thedailybeast.com/who-whitewashed-the-wiki-of-alleged-russian-spy-maria-butina

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Kremlin: Thanks for the invite but you can't order the Boss around, agent Trumpsky.

 

[AmazonGrace]

My girly crush Adam Schiff:

 

Mostly they're talking about why the Nunes memo is a bunch of crap.

Also mentions that Trey Gowdy wants to be a judge.

I'm sure he would be impartial and not at all a partisan hack as a judge. :=O

This is a new character to me.

I guess he would be the Deep State.

[AmazonGrace]

I didn't know this was the first time that FISA applications were ever released publicly

[GreyhoundFan]

20 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Also mentions that Trey Gowdy wants to be a judge.

I'm sure he would be impartial and not at all a partisan hack as a judge. :=O

The only thing Gowdy should judge is his local tractor-pull.

[AmazonGrace]

TL;DR: Apparently NYT got Elliot Broidy's hacked emails. He blames Qatar for the hacking. He's had some weird dealings with Rick Gates and assorted characters.
Two Trump Allies, Seeing Unlimited Opportunity, Instead Drew Scrutiny

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/us/politics/rick-gates-elliott-broidy-trump-payments.html

Spoiler

 

By Kenneth P. Vogel, Mark Mazzetti, Maggie Haberman and David D. Kirkpatrick

July 24, 2018

WASHINGTON — Early one morning in October, Rick Gates, a Washington lobbyist who had been a top official in the Trump campaign, emailed family and friends warning them that he was about to be indicted by the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. He declared himself innocent of “collusion with the Russians,” and denounced the investigation as “highly politicized and an assault on those who helped elect a president that was not favored by many.”

One recipient of the email, Elliott Broidy, a top fund-raiser for President Trump, responded quickly, expressing his condolences to Mr. Gates and adding that he and his family were “in my thoughts and prayers.”

The warm response hints at the relationship that once existed between the two men as they worked together to pursue lucrative opportunities in Mr. Trump’s Washington. Mr. Broidy was a client of Mr. Gates, and had paid him at least $125,000. For that money Mr. Gates advised Mr. Broidy on how to pursue both a contract for his business and appointments for his associates and provided insight into the new administration’s foreign policy plans, according to interviews as well as internal emails and documents obtained by The New York Times.

Their financial arrangement, not previously reported, was emblematic of the way a small circle of Mr. Trump’s associates at the beginning of his presidency aggressively marketed their administration access to well-paying clients, and sheds light on the activities of Mr. Gates, who has emerged as a key figure in the investigation of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

Those activities are detailed in a batch of Mr. Broidy’s emails that was hacked and provided to The Times and other news outlets by an anonymous individual or group opposed to Mr. Broidy’s work in Washington for foreign countries, including the United Arab Emirates. The emails detailing Mr. Gates’s work with Mr. Broidy were corroborated by people familiar with the arrangement, as well as additional documents from other sources.

Mr. Gates has pleaded guilty to financial fraud and lying to investigators, and is also cooperating with Mr. Mueller’s team. Paul Manafort, who was Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman and was indicted together with Mr. Gates, is in jail awaiting trial.

Mr. Broidy has not been implicated by the authorities in any wrongdoing related to his work during the Trump era. But his associates have drawn legal scrutiny, bringing attention to his dealings.

A criminal investigation of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, was made public in April, followed days later by the revelation the revelation that he had arranged a $1.6 million hush agreement with a former Playboy model who became pregnant during an affair with Mr. Broidy. Because of that, and revelations in Mr. Broidy’s emails about his efforts to use his connections to Mr. Trump to help his business, his status in Washington has been diminished.

It is a marked contrast from the early days of the Trump administration, when there seemed to be unlimited clout — and earning potential — for those who helped elect the new president.

 

Mr. Gates was looking to re-establish himself as a Washington power broker after spending the better part of the decade before the 2016 campaign working with Mr. Manafort, his mentor and business partner, for Russia-aligned Ukrainian interests that paid them tens of millions of dollars.

Mr. Broidy, who had pleaded guilty in 2009 in a pension fund fraud case, was looking for help courting foreign government clients for a defense contractor he had purchased in 2015, and pushing for policies that favored clients and prospective clients.

Although Mr. Gates’s role on Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign had shrunk dramatically after Mr. Manafort resigned under pressure as its chairman months before the election, he maintained connections to numerous Trump advisers, including two key players in Mr. Trump’s orbit with whom he had worked planning the presidential inauguration — Mr. Broidy, who was a vice chairman of the inaugural committee’s finance team, and the billionaire California investor Thomas J. Barrack Jr., who served as chairman of the inaugural committee.

After the inauguration, Mr. Gates began receiving monthly consulting payments for help navigating the new administration from a company headed by Mr. Barrack, Colony NorthStar, which paid Mr. Gates $20,000 a month, and one owned by Mr. Broidy, which paid Mr. Gates $25,000 a month, according to documents and people familiar with the relationships, who requested anonymity to discuss private business arrangements.

The payments came despite the fact that Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort were emerging as subjects of federal and congressional investigations looking into their lucrative Ukraine work, and any connections between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Other Washington consultants were puzzled by the willingness of clients to hire Mr. Gates or Mr. Manafort at a time when it seemed that the looming investigations would limit their effectiveness and access to Mr. Trump’s advisers, some of whom had tried to bar Mr. Gates from working with the administration. Mr. Gates maintained at least some access, in part because he was seen as having the blessing of Mr. Barrack, a close friend and business associate of Mr. Trump’s, according to a Trump associate.

But when Mr. Gates was indicted in October, Mr. Trump’s allies began to further distance themselves. Colony NorthStar quickly terminated its arrangement with Mr. Gates, according to someone familiar with it.

Mr. Broidy’s payments to Mr. Gates had begun in March 2017 and ran through that July, according to an associate of Mr. Broidy’s, who requested anonymity to discuss private financial arrangements. The associate said that Mr. Broidy continued consulting with Mr. Gates after the payments ended, but that Mr. Broidy had stopped seeking advice before the indictment.

Mr. Gates submitted at least two invoices after July, including one sent three weeks after he was indicted. But those were not authorized or paid by Mr. Broidy, according to one of Mr. Broidy’s lawyers, Christopher Clark, for whom Mr. Broidy unsuccessfully sought to secure a position as a United States attorney with help from Mr. Gates.

The invoices requested payments to a company owned by Mr. Gates called Konik Madison Group LLC, which had also received nearly $37,000 from the Trump campaign in the weeks before Election Day, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The campaign listed the payment as “strategic consulting,” but a campaign official said Tuesday that Mr. Gates “was a volunteer” for the campaign, and that the payment was reimbursement for “travel, meals and other appropriate expenses.”

Mr. Gates declined to comment through his lawyer. Mr. Broidy also declined to comment.

Mr. Broidy’s work has made him enemies, as was evident when the anonymous person or group critical of American policy toward the United Arab Emirates began distributing tranches of his emails to news organizations.

Lawyers for Mr. Broidy have filed a lawsuit accusing Qatar of orchestrating the hacking in retaliation for his criticism of its policies, and they have accused numerous Washington consultants and former intelligence operatives of conspiring with Qatar in the effort.

On Monday, his lawyers also filed another lawsuit accusing Jamal Benomar, a former United Nations diplomat, of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Qatar. In a statement, the lawyers accused him of “helping spearhead the operation to generate damaging media stories with PDF files and physical printouts sent to media outlets with cherry-picked, curated hacked emails.”

Mr. Benomar declined to comment.

Qatar is a foe of the United Arab Emirates, which had awarded a $200 million contract to Mr. Broidy’s Virginia-based defense firm, Circinus. Qatar has rejected Mr. Broidy’s accusations. The F.B.I. has opened a criminal investigation into the hacking allegations.

In a letter to The Times this month, Filiberto Agusti, a lawyer for Mr. Broidy, called the leaked documents detailing Mr. Broidy’s relationship with Mr. Gates “part of a foreign power’s sophisticated campaign to smear a prominent U.S. citizen who has spoken out against its policies.” Mr. Agusti added that the emails were “a carefully curated selection of Mr. Broidy’s emails, designed to portray him in a false and unflattering light.”

While documents and interviews show that Mr. Gates advised Mr. Broidy on numerous ventures, he appears to have had limited success delivering on Mr. Broidy’s objectives.

In one instance, Mr. Broidy sought assistance from Mr. Gates in securing an endorsement from the Commerce Department for Circinus’s efforts to win lucrative defense work from the Romanian government, in partnership with its state-owned defense company, Romarm.

Mr. Gates told Mr. Broidy and Circinus officials in an email that he intended to flag the request for “my contacts at Commerce,” including “in the secretary’s office.” He relayed talking points about why Circinus deserved the endorsement to one such contact, Eric Branstad, who had served as senior White House adviser to the Commerce Department until January, and before that had worked on the inaugural committee with Mr. Gates.

Mr. Branstad, the son of the Trump administration’s ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, relayed Circinus’s request to the agency staff overseeing Romania, according to someone who worked with the agency.

The Commerce Department eventually provided an endorsement, which is commonly sought by American companies trying to do business with foreign governments. But it is unclear what role, if any, Mr. Gates’s efforts played.

 

A person familiar with his involvement said Mr. Gates did not lobby the Romanian government or Romarm to award a contract to Circinus. Romarm said an active “cooperation agreement is in place” with Circinus, but the Broidy associate said no contracts have been awarded or are pending.

Mr. Gates also advised Mr. Broidy on how he might be able to secure a round of golf with Mr. Trump for Najib Razak, then the prime minister of Malaysia, from whose government Circinus planned to pursue a contract potentially worth more than $225 million. And he offered advice to Mr. Broidy on how to get his friends and business associates influential positions in the Trump administration.

Mr. Clark, the lawyer for Mr. Broidy, said Mr. Broidy sought similar help from many contacts who he believed might have influence in the appointment process. And the person familiar with Mr. Gates’s involvement said he did not directly lobby the administration to hire people recommended by Mr. Broidy.

One associate recommended by Mr. Broidy for a top post in the Justice Department, Robert C. Riegle, said he was also recommended by several other people. Mr. Riegle had been hired in 2012 by Threat Deterrence, a company Mr. Broidy had started to provide training and technology to law enforcement agencies.

Mr. Riegle did not get the job for which Mr. Broidy had recommended him. Mr. Broidy “never mentioned” Mr. Gates’s involvement, according to Mr. Riegle.

Mr. Gates’s prospects for a lucrative Washington consulting practice, once seemingly limitless at the beginning of the Trump administration, had dried up by last fall amid intensifying scrutiny by Mr. Mueller’s investigators. He appears to have lost paying clients, such as Mr. Broidy, while his legal bills mounted amid preparations for a potentially long and costly defense.

In February, he decided to plead guilty and cooperate with Mr. Mueller, citing the onerous costs and the “circuslike atmosphere of an anticipated trial.”

“I will better serve my family moving forward by exiting this process,” he said on the day of guilty plea.

Kenneth P. Vogel, Mark Mazzetti and Maggie Haberman reported from Washington, and David D. Kirkpatrick reported from London.

 

I can't believe someone who's plead guilty in a pension fund fraud case was let anywhere close to the White House. (oh well who am I kidding)

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.propublica.org/article/why-russian-spies-really-like-american-universities

Mostly about Butina and her American University adventures.

[GreyhoundFan]

A good analysis: "Giuliani’s new Mueller theory actually reveals weakness of Trump’s position"

Spoiler

Rudy Giuliani, who is rumored to be President Trump’s lawyer, has rolled out a new set of demands that must be met in exchange for Trump agreeing to an interview with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. But in so doing, Giuliani has inadvertently shed light on the weakness of Trump’s political position, in the face of a coming confrontation with Mueller and, looming behind that, the midterm elections.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Giuliani said Trump’s team has submitted a new offer to Mueller: Trump will agree to a sit-down with the special counsel, but it wants questions about obstruction of justice, and Trump’s firing of former FBI director James B. Comey, to be off the table:

The president’s legal team is open to him answering questions about possible collusion with Moscow, Mr. Giuliani said, but is less willing to have Mr. Trump discuss questions about obstruction of justice.

“We think the obstruction of it is handled by Article 2 of the Constitution,” Mr. Giuliani said, referring to the provision that gives the president executive authority to appoint and dismiss members of his administration. …

Mr. Giuliani said … that the reasons Mr. Trump has given for firing the former FBI director are “more than sufficient” and that as president, he had the power to fire any member of his administration.

By invoking Article II of the Constitution as the reason Trump should not be questioned by Mueller, Giuliani appears to be saying Trump cannot be legally liable for obstruction of justice by definition. He can fire members of his administration at will, and as the head of the executive branch, he has control over all Justice Department investigations, including into himself. Therefore, there is no reason for Mueller to question him about such actions.

This roughly matches the theory laid out in that recent memo by Trump’s lawyers, which asserted that as “chief law enforcement officer,” Trump’s actions can “neither constitutionally nor legally constitute obstruction,” and that “he could, if he wished, terminate the inquiry” into himself. There is a separate question over whether a sitting president can be indicted for obstruction while in office — a question on which experts differ — but Trump’s team is going further, claiming he cannot commit obstruction to begin with.

Notably, however, Giuliani isn’t merely claiming that Trump is constitutionally immune from committing obstruction and/or getting indicted for it. He’s saying that this should also insulate Trump from any questioning about his actions in this regard. And in making that argument, Giuliani is likely hoping to protect Trump from impeachment, never mind protecting him from legal liability.

The view that a president cannot commit obstruction is strongly contested by some experts, who argue that obstruction statutes can and should apply to the president if he acts with corrupt intent. But regardless of your view on that question, a president can still be impeached for it. Indeed, that has already happened.

What’s more, there is a strong public interest in seeing Trump questioned about his intent in demanding Comey’s loyalty; leaning on Comey to drop the probe into his former national security adviser; subsequently firing Comey and admitting on national television that he was angry about the Russia probe; pressuring his attorney general to protect him from that investigation; and pressing his White House counsel to fire Mueller, among other obvious efforts to scuttle a full accounting of Russian sabotage of our election and Trump campaign collaboration with it.

By moving to place all of this off limits, Giuliani is “taking the Article II argument further than I’ve ever seen it taken before,” Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, told me. “There’s no suggestion anywhere in the caselaw, or in the relevant opinions by the Office of Legal Counsel, that things for which the president cannot be held criminally liable or indicted are also things on which he cannot be questioned.”

Trying to have it both ways

By making this argument, Giuliani is trying to have it both ways. The claim that a president cannot be criminally liable for obstruction rests on the idea that true accountability for a sitting president resides in impeachment. Indeed, Giuliani himself has made this case elsewhere, claiming that the Justice Department cannot hold Trump accountable because it is “a creature of the president,” and that instead he is “constrained” by “Congress’ impeachment power.”

But Giuliani is now saying that Trump also must not be questioned about actions for which he might be held accountable by Congress’ impeachment power. “On the one hand, they’re saying impeachment is the only remedy,” Vladeck says. “But on the other, they’re saying the president should only answer questions about things for which he can be held criminally liable or indicted, while saying the president can’t be held criminally liable or indicted for anything.”

Ultimately what this absurdity really amounts to is a ham-handed effort to put Trump beyond accountability entirely. He isn’t criminally liable, because the only remedy is impeachment; but he must not face questions designed to ferret out the full truth about his potentially impeachable actions, either.

Which reveals the fundamental weakness of Trump’s political position right now. Giuliani does not want Trump to face questions about obstruction because he is likely to incriminate himself further in ways that will make the impeachment case against him stronger.

Of course, the GOP-controlled House will never impeach Trump, no matter what he says to Mueller. But Mueller will prepare a report on Trump’s obstruction, and whatever Trump says in a sit-down with Mueller would likely figure into that account. Meanwhile, the chances are rising that Democrats will take back the House. And if they do, that Mueller report — complete with Trump’s own self-incriminating statements — would then give Democrats more ammunition to pursue impeachment themselves. To the degree that the prospect of a Democratic-controlled House becomes more likely, that makes an interview with Mueller even more perilous for the president.

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Update: I should have noted that Giuliani made a similar demand in an interview with The Post ten days ago.

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,,,

I think Rudy needs some new medication.

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Featuring a confederate homie and Marsha Blackburn https://amp.thedailybeast.com/pro-confederate-birther-introduced-maria-butinas-handler-to-nra-chief