Russian Connection 5: In Which We Plan Sleepovers

[fraurosena]

This is an interesting read from the Lawfare blog.

What To Expect When You’re Expecting a Mueller Report

Quote

Once the midterms are past, Americans can resume their reveries about a hypothetical report from the special counsel’s office. There’s no telling how much Robert Mueller knows, but onlookers can speculate about how much the country is likely to find out, and how it’s likely to do so. A Mueller Report? A Rosenstein Report? An Impeachment Report? All three? Although some of the issues raised by these notions are familiar, they’re worth revisiting during this lull of attention to the Mueller investigation, in the context of law and regulation rather than hope and fear, and without the summertime chaff of misfired forecasts.

A couple of caveats. First, lots of legal issues remain murky. For instance, Jack Goldsmith has suggested that because of the manner of the appointment, the Justice Department special counsel regulations may apply to Mueller but not to his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. That might make it easier for Rosenstein to release information from the investigation. Second, Mueller and his monolithically tight-lipped staff have surprised Americans before. They may do it again. Accordingly, take these predictions, and all others about the Russia investigation, with a grain of salt.

That said, here’s my take on the reports that Mueller and Rosenstein may prepare and the odds that the public will see them.

1. There will be a Mueller Report. Justice Department regulations require a special counsel, at the end of the investigation, to prepare “a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” and submit it to the attorney general—here, because of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s recusal, Rosenstein.
    
2. The public probably won’t see it. At least not the full, unredacted version. In developing the current regulations, the Justice Department aimed to avoid the perceived missteps of the Ethics in Government Act, under which independent counsels such as Lawrence Walsh and Kenneth W. Starr operated. The independent counsels’ final reports ordinarily got released to the public, which “provide[d] an incentive to over-investigate, in order to avoid potential public criticism for not having turned over every stone, and create[d] potential harm to individual privacy interests,” according to the Justice Department’s explanation for its new regulations, published in the Federal Register in 1999. Under the regulations, a special counsel’s final report is not for public release; it’s “a confidential document,” the same as “internal documents relating to any federal criminal investigation.”
    
3. There probably will also be a Rosenstein Report. The regulations require the attorney general to inform the chair and ranking minority members of the House and Senate Committees on the Judiciary when a special counsel has finished the job. If he follows the regulations, Rosenstein won’t provide a full accounting. Instead, according to the Federal Register, he’ll submit just a “brief notification[], with an outline of the actions and the reasons for them.”
    
4. The Rosenstein Report probably will be made public, but it’s not a sure thing. Under the regulations, the attorney general gets to decide whether to release the reports submitted to the judiciary committees. If the Justice Department didn’t release Rosenstein’s report, of course, Congress could do so on its own initiative.
    
5. Rosenstein may be disinclined to disclose much information. “[O]ur default position is that when there’s a Justice Department investigation,” Rosenstein told a Senate hearing in 2017, “we do not discuss it publicly....” Remember, he’s the guy who provided justification for the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Comey’s public statements about the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s emails, wrote Rosenstein,constituted “a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.” Further, Rosenstein may believe that people will (or ought to) trust Mueller’s decisions because they trust Mueller. At the 2017 hearing, Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris of California urged Rosenstein to grant Mueller full independence in the Russia investigation, with no oversight by anyone at the Justice Department. Rosenstein indicated that such an arrangement was unnecessary. “[Y]our assurance of his independence,” he told Harris, “is Robert Mueller’s integrity and Andy McCabe’s integrity and my integrity....” (Rosenstein may now have a different take on McCabe, fired from his job as deputy director of the FBI in March for lack of candor in his interviews with the Justice Department Inspector General regarding McCabe’s having improperly leaked information to the press.) In Rosenstein’s mind, perhaps rectitude can substitute not just for independence, as he argued in the hearing, but also for transparency. People should trust Mueller’s conclusions because he’s Mueller, under this theory, not because he shows his work. An additional factor arguing for taciturnity is grand jury secrecy. More on that below.
    
6.  If there’s an Impeachment Report, it probably will be something different. Neither the Mueller Report nor the Rosenstein Report would seem an apt vehicle for summarizing evidence that may give rise to presidential impeachment. The Mueller Report is likely to have too much detail about prosecutorial decision-making and unindicted wrongdoing, and the Rosenstein Report won’t have much detail at all.
    
7. Mueller won’t prepare an Impeachment Report without Rosenstein’s authorization. The Justice Department regulations require a special counsel to notify the attorney general whenever “significant events” arise in the investigation, ordinarily at least three days in advance. It’s hard to imagine anything more significant than the release of evidence that may warrant impeaching a president. Importantly, notification in this context means consultation. “A Special Counsel will be dealing with issues that are sensitive, with many possible repercussions, and experience has shown that such prosecutions are often as sensitive legally as they are politically,” says the Federal Register explanation from the Justice Department. “Given this sensitivity, notification of proposed indictments and other significant events in the course of the investigation, with the resulting opportunity for consultation, is a critical part of the mechanism through which the Attorney General can discharge his or her responsibilities with respect to the investigation.” Rosenstein takes those responsibilities seriously. A special counsel isn’t subject to anybody’s daily supervision, but Rosenstein said of Mueller in February: “He reports to me, and I am accountable for what he does.”
    
8. Before releasing an Impeachment Report and accompanying evidence, Mueller would need to address the issue of grand jury secrecy. Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), a government attorney generally cannot disclose any “matter occurring before the grand jury.” This isn’t some obscure punctilio; violations can be punished as criminal contempt. 
    
9. It’s conceivable, though a long-shot, that Mueller could prepare the Impeachment Report and accompanying evidence without including material covered by Rule 6(e).Through FBI interviews and other means, prosecutors can gather evidence without a grand jury. But they commonly use the grand jury to “lock in” testimony that implicates someone in criminal activity.
    
10. If the Impeachment Report and evidence do contain grand jury material, Mueller must get a court’s permission before disclosing them. Rule 6(e) requires a court order to release grand jury information beyond the circle of federal law enforcement, with a few exceptions.
     
11. Rule 6(e) doesn’t expressly authorize the disclosure of grand jury material for purposes of presidential impeachment.
     
12. The court might authorize disclosure of 6(e) evidence for a presidential impeachment by invoking common law “inherent authority.” Several courts have taken the position that they have inherent authority to go beyond the strictures of Rule 6(e) and release grand jury information—records relating to the investigation of Chicago Tribune staff members for espionage in 1942, for instance, as well as ex-President Nixon’s testimony from 1975. “[A] district court retains an inherent authority to unseal and disclose grand jury material not otherwise falling within the enumerated exceptions to Rule 6(e),” Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled in April, granting CNN’s request to unseal some documents from the Starr investigation. Judge Howell’s views matter: As the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, she’s supervising Mueller’s grand jury in Washington, and she would be the one to rule on any request to disclose 6(e) evidence from the investigation.
     
13. The “inherent authority” argument, however, may flop. The Justice Department maintains that courts are bound by the language of Rule 6(e), with no power to go beyond it. “[T]he Department’s view... is that the Court lacks the authority to unseal grand jury materials for reasons of ‘extreme public interest’ or any other reason outside the reticulated exceptions to secrecy set forth in Rule 6(e),” the Justice Department told Judge Howell in the CNN case. (The Justice Department, by the way, held the same views under President Obama.) Judge Howell rejected the argument. But Justice Department has taken the “inherent authority” issue to the D.C. Circuit in a different case, McKeever v. Sessions, which was argued on September 21. Judge Howell has entered a stay in the CNN case pending McKeever. Until the D.C. Circuit rules in McKeever, she may be reluctant to authorize any Rule 6(e) disclosures under the inherent-authority rationale. In addition, it might be awkward for Justice Department appointee, Mueller, seeking the release of the Impeachment Report, to invoke a judicial power that department says doesn’t exist.
     
14. Alternatively, the court might authorize disclosure of evidence under the Rule 6(e) exception for “judicial proceedings.” The Special Division of the D.C. Circuit, which oversaw independent counsels under now-lapsed provisions of the Ethics in Government Act, treated presidential impeachment as a judicial proceeding in the Lewinsky investigation.
     
15. But “judicial proceedings” may not work either. Impeachment “falls outside the common understanding of ‘a judicial proceeding,’” Judge Howell wrote in the CNN case. That comment was dicta, yes. If release of the Impeachment Report hinged on it, she might reach a different conclusion. But she might not.
     
16. Even if the court did authorize release of grand jury information, the disclosure might be limited to Congress. In 1974, Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski’s office assembled evidence and a report to aid the House impeachment inquiry. Judge John J. Sirica authorized the handoff. Although he remarked that the circumstances “might well justify” public release of the materials, he lifted the Rule 6(e) veil only for House members and staff. The report, which prosecutors called the “road map,” is still secret 44 years later, though not for much longer.
     
17. President Trump could try to stop release of an Impeachment Report and evidence. In Watergate, former White House aides, under indictment and facing trial, tried to stop the conveyance of grand jury evidence to the House. President Nixon, though, didn’t object, a fact that the D.C. Circuit emphasized in authorizing the transmittal to proceed. A Trump objection wouldn’t necessarily prevent transfer of the evidence, but it would probably slow it down.
     
18. For what I think are compelling reasons, Mueller and Rosenstein may want the House of Representatives to make the first move. During Watergate, the House launched an impeachment inquiry and then asked Jaworski for grand jury evidence. The evidence was essential for the House to perform its “most awesome constitutional responsibility,” said Judiciary Committee chair Peter W. Rodino, a responsibility vested “in the House alone.” In the Lewinsky scandal, by contrast, Starr and staff had to puzzle out what might constitute impeachable offenses while the House sat back and waited. “I don’t want us to drive this thing....” Judiciary Committee chair Henry Hyde told the Boston Globe a month into the Lewinsky investigation. “I want it to be driven by its own momentum, by the independent counsel....” To a remarkable degree, the Lewinsky model seems to have become the norm, with everyone now looking to Mueller for the politically charged initial decision about whether impeachment may be warranted. Reporters and columnists, including Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg and Walter Shapiro of Roll Call, are asking whether Mueller will “recommend” impeachment. That’s hardly what the Framers envisioned. Impeachment and removal of a President is fundamentally a political act, a “national inquest,” a remedy for “injuries done immediately to the society itself,” wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65. In counting on Mueller to lead the inquest, people seem to view impeachment as something apolitical and readymade, like a Blue Apron box. Strict reliance on Mueller raises another problem, too. Impeachment is not the job he was hired to do, not the job he was trained to do and not the job he’s doing. He’s a Justice Department prosecutor performing the legal task of investigating crimes, not a congressional aide performing the political task of investigating high crimes and misdemeanors. Statutory crimes aren’t the same as high crimes and misdemeanors. Not all violations of the federal criminal code reach the constitutional threshold, and some acts that don’t violate the law reach the threshold nonetheless. Mueller and Rosenstein may be hoping that Congress will ask for evidence, as in Watergate, and thereby take the responsibility and the political heat for contemplating impeachment. In obsessing over a hypothetical Impeachment Report, Americans are acquiescing in the House of Representatives’ abdication of responsibility. Mueller and Rosenstein might decline to join in.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[fraurosena]

It seems they're not quite done with Cohen yet. 

 

[fraurosena]

A Seth Abramson mega-thread. Not exactly about Russian connections, but Israeli ones. But as they are about the foreign influences and aid to the campaign, I’m putting it here anyway, to keep all the corruption in one place together.

 

[fraurosena]

Roger Stone and Steve Bannon are in Mueller's crosshairs. No wonder Bannon was interviewed recently for the third time.

Read the Emails: The Trump Campaign and Roger Stone

Quote

When WikiLeaks published a trove of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman a month before the 2016 election, it was widely viewed as an attempt to damage her standing, even as WikiLeaks defended the release as an effort to bring greater transparency to American politics.

We have since learned that the emails were originally hacked by Russian intelligence operatives. What is still not clear is how much Trump campaign advisers knew about the hacks at the time — a subject of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III — or the extent of their interactions with far-right figures eager to undermine Mrs. Clinton.

Emails obtained by The New York Times provide new insight into those connections, as well as efforts by Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump and political operative, to seek funding through the campaign for his projects aimed at hurting Mrs. Clinton. The emails are verbatim, typos and all, save for email addresses deleted to protect the emailers’ privacy.

The Players

• Stephen K. Bannon, Trump campaign chairman and co-founder of the far-right Breitbart News, who ran the website until he joined the campaign
• Matthew Boyle, Breitbart’s Washington editor
• Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime conservative operative and confidant of President Trump
• Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks

The Context
A month before the election, Mrs. Clinton looked to be cruising to victory. Mr. Trump’s surrogates, including Mr. Stone, were trying to come up with ways to attack her to help Mr. Trump gain ground.

Mr. Stone had long claimed both publicly and privately that he had foreknowledge of the information that WikiLeaks planned to release about Mrs. Clinton and her political allies. In early October, Mr. Stone predicted on his Twitter account, which was suspended after a string of expletive-laden tweets, that the documents that Mr. Assange promised to make public would hurt Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

Oct. 2, 2016 @rogerjstonejr: “Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done.”

Oct. 3, 2016 @rogerjstonejr: “I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon. #LockHerUp”

The Emails
On the night of Oct. 3, Mr. Boyle emailed Mr. Stone. Mr. Assange had scheduled a news conference for the next day where he would announce he was releasing a new cache of documents. The emails show how closely intertwined Breitbart News and the campaign were and how people in Mr. Bannon’s orbit saw Mr. Stone as a direct link to WikiLeaks.

Monday, October 3, 2016 
FROM: Matthew Boyle
TO: Roger Stone
EMAIL:

Assange — what’s he got? Hope it’s good.

—

Thanks,

Matthew Boyle 
Washington Political Editor, Breitbart News 
http://twitter.com/mboyle1
http://www.breitbart.com/Columnists/matthew-boyle

Mr. Stone had apparently been trying to get in touch with Mr. Bannon to tell him about Mr. Assange’s plans. Mr. Boyle, a protégé of Mr. Bannon’s, forwarded to him Mr. Stone’s email. But Mr. Bannon appeared uninterested in engaging.

Monday, October 3, 2016
FROM: Roger Stone
TO: Matthew Boyle
EMAIL:

It is. I’d tell Bannon but he doesn’t call me back.

My book on the TRUMP campaign will be out in Jan.

Many scores will be settled. 

R

Monday, October 3, 2016 
FROM: Matthew Boyle
TO: Steve Bannon
EMAIL: 
You should call Roger. See below. You didn’t get from me.

Monday, October 3, 2016 
FROM: Steve Bannon
TO: Matthew Boyle 
EMAIL: 
I’ve got important stuff to worry about

Tuesday, October 4, 2016 
FROM: Matthew Boyle
TO: Steve Bannon
EMAIL: 

Well clearly he knows what Assange has. I’d say that’s important.

The next morning, Mr. Assange told reporters in Berlin, by teleconference, that he planned to release “significant material” in the coming weeks, including some related to the American presidential election. He said WikiLeaks hoped to publish a trove of documents each week in the coming months. Mr. Assange’s comments were reported extensively in the United States.

Mr. Bannon then contacted Mr. Stone directly, asking for insight into Mr. Assange’s plan. Notably, Mr. Stone did not tell Mr. Bannon anything that Mr. Assange had not said publicly. He did explain that Mr. Assange was concerned about his security, and he said in an interview that Randy Credico, a New York comedian and activist whom Mr. Stone has identified as his source about WikiLeaks, also gave him that information.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016
FROM: Steve Bannon
TO: Roger Stone
EMAIL:

What was that this morning???

Tuesday, October 4, 2016 
FROM: Roger Stone
TO: Steve Bannon
EMAIL: 
Fear. Serious security concern. He thinks they are going to kill him and the London police are standing done. 

However —a load every week going forward.

Roger stone

Tuesday, October 4, 2016 
FROM: Steve Bannon
TO: Roger Stone
EMAIL: 

He didn’t cut deal w/ clintons???

The final email in the exchange is vintage Stone. He demanded that Trump campaign surrogates convey his accusations, made without evidence, about Bill Clinton’s having a love child named Danney Williams. And he told Mr. Bannon to have the wealthy Republican donor Rebekah Mercer send money to his political organization — a 501(c)(4) group sometimes called a C-4 — which was structured to keep its donors secret. No evidence has emerged that Mr. Bannon asked Ms. Mercer to send money.

In response to Mr. Bannon’s request for insider information into whether Mr. Assange had cut a deal with the Clintons not to release the emails, Mr. Stone said he did not know.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016 
FROM: Roger Stone
TO: Steve Bannon
EMAIL:

Don’t think so BUT his lawyer Fishbein is a big democrat .

I know your surrogates are dumb but try to get them to understand Danney Williams case 

chick mangled it on CNN this am 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3819671/Man-claiming-Bill-Clinton-s-illegitimate-son-prostitute-continues-campaign-former-president-recognize-him.html

He goes public in a big way Monday— Drudge report was a premature leak.

I’ve raise $150K for the targeted black digital campaign thru a C-4

Tell Rebecca to send us some $$$

 

[Howl]

Trump has invited Putin to visit the US next year.  Not known if Putin has or will accept. 

[GreyhoundFan]

8 hours ago, Howl said:

Trump has invited Putin to visit the US next year.  Not known if Putin has or will accept. 

He'll probably propose that Putin get to stay in the Lincoln bedroom.

[fraurosena]

Putin coming to America will probably depend on what happens next Tuesday. That will determine if the presidunce has the time to host him, or if he’ll be too busy with the inevitable impeachment procedures against him.

Another, even more determining factor for Putin will be if Mueller accuses (or preferably indicts) him as a result of his investigation. 

[Howl]

6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Another, even more determining factor for Putin will be if Mueller accuses (or preferably indicts) him as a result of his investigation. 

Hadn't considered that wonderful possibility! 

[AmazonGrace]

Need a visa to the UK? Apply now in Moscow.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a terrifying thought: "Putin is about to gain control of the world’s main law enforcement organization"

Spoiler

On Sunday, delegates of the general assembly of Interpol — the International Criminal Police Organization, the coordinating body for law enforcement from 192 countries — met in Dubai for their 87th annual session. The most important agenda item will come on the final day: on Wednesday, delegates will elect the organization’s new president to replace Meng Hongwei, who went missing in China in October. (The Chinese authorities later announced that Meng had been arrested on “corruption charges,” and sent what was purported to be his resignation letter to the agency’s headquarters in Lyon, France.)

The leading candidate to become the next president of Interpol is Alexander Prokopchuk, a police general in the Russian Interior Ministry who has for the past seven years headed Interpol’s Russian bureau. Prokopchuk’s candidacy was kept under wraps until the last moment — and, presumably, until the Kremlin was confident of securing enough votes. The British government has determined that Prokopchuk’s victory is assured to the extent that “there is no point in trying to stop him.” A British human rights group, Fair Trials, wrote to the Interpol secretariat strongly protesting the nomination and noting that “it would not be appropriate for a country with a record of violations of Interpol’s rules (for example by frequently seeking to use its systems to disseminate politically motivated alerts) to be given a leadership role in a key oversight institution.”

“Politically motivated alerts” have been a favorite Kremlin tactic, used to legitimize its prosecution of political opponents and make their lives more difficult by limiting their movements. Despite the explicit ban in Interpol’s constitution on “any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character,” the organization happily accepted Moscow’s requests to issue “red notices” — in effect, international arrest warrants — against prominent Kremlin opponents.

Among those targeted were Vladimir Gusinsky, the former owner of Russia’s leading independent media group; Leonid Nevzlin, vice president of Yukos Oil, who was indicted as part of the Kremlin’s campaign against the company; Eerik-Niiles Kross, an Estonian politician who has long been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side; Boris Berezovsky, once Russia’s most influential “oligarch,” who helped bring Vladimir Putin to power and later became his sworn opponent; Akhmed Zakayev, Chechen prime minister in exile; and Nikita Kulachenkov, an activist at Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. It took much time and effort to persuade Interpol to withdraw the warrants because of their political motivation.

Among the most recent targets of Kremlin-inspired “red notices” was Bill Browder, a U.S.-born financier who has spearheaded the international campaign for targeted sanctions on corrupt officials and human rights abusers in the Russian government. Sentenced in absentia to a prison term in Russia, Browder was most recently arrested in Spain on an Interpol warrant in May of this year. (He was quickly released.) He is unable to visit several countries because of the ongoing legal risks.

With a Putin-appointed police general at the helm, the Kremlin would no longer need to abuse Interpol to pursue its goals; it would be able to place the organization at its service. One should look no further than the federal wanted list from Russia’s Interior Ministry, which includes the likes of longtime Kremlin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the Crimean Tatar leader and Ukrainian lawmaker Mustafa Dzhemilev, to guess what names could be singled out for future “red notices.” (Disclaimer: Khodorkovsky is the founder of the Open Russia movement, of which I serve as vice chairman.) Americans who helped the passage of the Magnitsky Act — and whose questioning Putin demanded from President Trump in Helsinki — are likely candidates as well.

But the misuse of the “red notice” system would be the least of the problems should Prokopchuk accede to Interpol’s presidency. The main purpose of the organization is information-sharing and mutual assistance among national police forces. One can imagine what the Kremlin could do with access to sensitive databases around the world. For one thing, there could be many more inconspicuous Russian tourists visiting foreign countries on brand-new passports to admire ancient gothic cathedrals.

Unlike other international organizations, Interpol does not list its former presidents on its official website. There is good reason for this. Between 1940 and 1945, the organization — then known as the International Criminal Police Commission — was led, successively, by three Nazi war criminals: SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the chief architect of the Holocaust; SS General Arthur Nebe, who, as the head of Einsatzgruppe B was responsible for murdering tens of thousands of Jews in Poland and Belarus; and SS General Ernst Kaltenbrunner, founder of the Mauthausen concentration camp and one of the main instigators of the Holocaust, who was hanged at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. It is a page in its history the International Criminal Police Organization would rather forget. Putin’s regime is no Third Reich — but its actions at home and abroad are a travesty to very concept of the rule of law. One day, Interpol will no doubt also want to forget the page it is about to open on Wednesday.

 

[Howl]

8 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This is a terrifying thought: "Putin is about to gain control of the world’s main law enforcement organization"

Yes, this is truly horrifying.  Twitter is collectively, "WTAF????????"  This is after the Chinese man who was head of Interpol was disappeared by the Chinese.   Putin is about to control Interpol and all of the information that goes with it.  Interpol will become an agent of Russian suppression, assassinations, and other bad acts. 

[fraurosena]

Thank Rufus!

We all dodged a bullet there...

 

[Howl]

Yes, I was so excited to read this earlier today.  Putin's probably drinking straight from the vodka bottle this morning, because it is a huge global insult.  Maybe now Interpol will figure out what's really happened to the previous head of Interpol. 

[Howl]

Saturday, Secretary of Defense did an interview with Brett Baier (Fox's chief political anchor) at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley (This event will bring together leaders and key stakeholders in the defense community including members of Congress, military leaders, industry, scholars, and administration officials to address the health of our national defense and stimulate discussions that promote policies to strengthen the U.S. military.) This was a straightforward interview in front of the conference attendees, with direct questions; no softballs. 

Mattis made some extremely pointed remarks about Russia and Putin. 

Quote

Defense Secretary James Mattis said Saturday that Russian operatives attempted to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections, apparently confirming for the first time that Moscow attempted to meddle in last month's elections.

But no details of how the Russians attempted to interfere. 

Quote

This is a very complex situation because clearly Mr. Putin is a slow learner," Mattis said. "He is not recognizing that what he is doing is actually creating the animosity against his people.  We're dealing with someone we simply cannot trust." 

Not sure how calling out Putin will work with Mattis' longevity in his current position. However, Trump doesn't watch straight news on Fox and he's probably busy stress eating over what might be coming up in the next week or two with Mueller, so who knows.  But, as noted above,  Mattis is the first administration person to reference Russian attempts at 2018 election interference. 

OTOH, maybe now is the right time to call out Putin, because Russia seems to be signaling that the Donny/Vlad bromance may be over and Russian media has referred to Trump in less than glowing terms, like "a rock around our necks."  And did Trumpy and Vlad meet at G20 after all?

 

Edited December 2, 2018 by Howl

[GreyhoundFan]

"Cohen’s guilty plea suggests Russia has ‘leverage’ over Trump, top Democrat says"

Spoiler

Last week’s admission by Michael Cohen that he lied to Congress about a Trump Organization real estate project in Moscow suggests the Russian government may have damaging information about President Trump, a top Democrat said Sunday.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in an appearance on NBC’ News’s “Meet the Press” that Thursday’s guilty plea by Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, raises the question of whether Russia continues to have leverage over Trump.

“Does the Kremlin have a hold on him over other things?” Nadler said. “There certainly was leverage during the campaign period and until recently because they knew he was lying, they knew he had major business dealings or that Cohen on his behalf had major business dealings.”

Nadler also said lawmakers “must do whatever we can” to protect special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation from interference by Trump.

“We have a president who lies incessantly to the American people about big matters and small matters. . . . The time when he can get away with lying to the American people all the time and evading accountability is coming to an end,” Nadler said.

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) also defended the Mueller probe on “Fox News Sunday.” Trump has repeatedly decried the investigation as a “witch hunt.”

“I think that America, which stands for the rule of law, the leading democratic country in the world, our president needs to respect the independence of this investigation,” Cardin said.

Cohen last week pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project that Trump and his company pursued at the same time that he was securing the GOP nomination in 2016. Cohen told prosecutors that he had lied to distance Trump from the project during the hotly contested presidential race.

Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said Sunday that “most Republicans who were about to nominate Donald Trump in the summer of ’16 would probably have thought it was a relevant fact” that Trump was still trying to do business with Russia at the time.

He added, in the wake of Cohen’s guilty plea, it has become clear that “most of these characters who are around Donald Trump, none of them have exactly a sterling record of telling the truth.”

“What I find particularly interesting with the revelation of Cohen’s plea is that he’s saying he lied to protect then-candidate Trump’s stories that he had nothing to do with Russia,” Warner said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “So, the president seemed to already be changing his story a little bit and say, ‘well, it was all legal.’ ”

Some Republicans contended Sunday that it was of little consequence that Trump was doing business in Russia during the campaign.

“The president is an international businessman; I’m not surprised he was doing international business,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said on “Meet the Press.” “Cohen is in trouble for lying to Congress. We have a Mueller investigation going on. We need to come to completion on that.”

Asked whether it was fair that voters had not been given a complete picture of Trump’s involvement with Russia in 2016, Barrasso said many factors were involved in the campaign, not just Trump’s business dealings.

“There were so many things involved in the 2016 campaign, it’s hard to point to what one thing influenced voters,” the senator said. “They didn’t want Hillary Clinton; they wanted a new opportunity.”

 

[fraurosena]

Cohen’s guilty plea about lying about a Trump Tower Moskow deal is causing some confusion. You see, there was more than one Trump Tower Moskow deal. In this thread, Seth Abramson explains.

 

Edited December 3, 2018 by fraurosena

[Howl]

Time to get concerned about Russia's 180 on Trump, basically talking now about how awful and weak he is, while they are creating aggressive provocations on the Kerch Strait. Were the US to respond in a straight forward and aggressive way with really getting serious (finally) about hard sanctions, Putin would back right off.  

[fraurosena]

 

 

[Howl]

The Misha Flynn sentencing memo is supposed to drop at 6 eastern according to "someone" who got that info from a *good source*.   tick tock tick tock. 

[onekidanddone]

23 minutes ago, Howl said:

The Misha Flynn sentencing memo is supposed to drop at 6 eastern according to "someone" who got that info from a *good source*.   tick tock tick tock. 

Lock him up! Lock him up!

[fraurosena]

Yes! 

Russia Probe Democrats Want Another Shot at Erik Prince

Quote

House intelligence committee members are eager to have the founder of mercenary company Blackwater back for another round of interviews about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, according to three members of its incoming majority.

Democrats have lots of outstanding questions about Erik Prince’s curious January 2017 trip to the Seychelles, where, at the invitation of a coterie around the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, he met with an influential Russian moneyman. They also have concerns about Prince’s candor during their prior interview last year.

But Prince, through a spokesperson, suggested the committee may have to force him to return to Capitol Hill.

Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, said he wants the panel to recall Prince for more questioning, indicating dissatisfaction with his November 2017 appearance.

“My priority is to bring back anyone before HPSCI who refused to answer our questions, and that includes Erik Prince,” Quigley told The Daily Beast on Thursday, using an acronym referring to the House intelligence panel.

His colleague, California Democrat Jackie Speier, sounded similar notes in anticipation of the Democrats taking control of the committee next month, and indicated Prince will have plenty of company.

“The first thing to do is subpoena all their emails, DMs, etc., and then I expect most of the witnesses in the Trump orbit will be asked to come back,” Speier told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “Many of their stories have been discredited. That includes Erik Prince, but obviously many others as well.”

And Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat who grilled Prince when he appeared before the committee last year, said he still has questions for the Blackwater founder—and concerns he may have misled the committee.

“There’s some significant questions about the truthfulness of what he told the committee based on what we’ve learned subsequently,” he told The Daily Beast. “He also refused to answer a number of questions because he was there voluntarily. And I think it’s important that Congress get all of its questions answered, even if we have to subpoena him.”

A subpoena may be necessary, as Prince doesn’t seem eager for a second meeting with the committee.

“Erik has said everything he is going to say on this and has nothing further to add,” a Prince spokesperson told The Daily Beast.

“The first thing to do is subpoena all their emails, DMs, etc., and then I expect most of the witnesses in the Trump orbit will be asked to come back. Many of their stories have been discredited.”

— Rep. Jackie Speier

Himes added that the timing of any repeat Prince appearance will likely depend on how Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation progresses. The Daily Beast first reported that Prince had spoken with Mueller.

“I’m a believer in watching Mueller unfold his final act and then filling in the gaps,” Himes said.

Anticipation is building among Russia-probe watchers over which old or new witnesses the intelligence committee will summon once Democrats assume control in January. An early committee priority, The Daily Beast has reported, is to chase the money trail among Trump’s associates. While committee Democrats have not yet decided on a renewed witness list, according to a Democratic committee aide, Prince’s name is among the first to surface.

Prince attended a meeting in the Seychelles in early 2017 that has drawn the attention of Trump-Russia investigators. The Washington Post, which first reported the story in April 2017, reported the meeting was an effort by the incoming Trump administration to set up a back channel with the Kremlin and that Prince represented the Trump team there.

Prince met with Kirill Dmitriev, the politically-connected head of one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds in January. Dmitriev flew into the island on January 11 with his wife, Natalia Popova, according to flight records obtained by reporters at The Daily Beast. Dmitriev is the CEO of the fund, which was put under U.S. sanctions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Popova is reportedly close to the Putin family and sits on the board of Innopraktika, the technology foundation owned by Putin’s daughter.

Dmitriev and Prince met at a bar overlooking the Indian Ocean at the Four Seasons resort, according to two individuals with first hand knowledge of the encounter. Popova was also in the same room, but it is unclear if she participated in the conversation. George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who worked as an emissary for the Crown Prince of the UAE, Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, brokered the meeting. Nader was also closely connected to the Trump transition team, meeting several times in 2016 and 2017 with senior staff members and associates of Trump world, including Prince. Nader has cooperated extensively with the special counsel’s office.

In his House testimony, Prince said he had met Dmitriev, the head of a sanctioned Russian entity, “by chance” and that the meeting lasted over one beer. Prince said the two talked about trade relations and the burgeoning mineral market.

Two sources with first hand knowledge of the meeting said Prince had been briefed on Dmitriev and his fund before he flew to the Seychelles, suggesting the meeting was not a chance encounter. And recent reporting by The Daily Beast revealed that Prince and Dmitriev had a far more extensive relationship than previously reported. A memo shows the two spoke about a range of topics, including peace between Ukraine and Russia, military operations in Syria, investment in the Midwest, and nuclear weapons. Although RDIF is under U.S. sanctions, it was and is still legal for U.S. individuals to meet with Dmitriev, and, in some circumstances, do business with the fund.

Under questioning from Speier in November 2017, Prince committed to providing “information regarding any communication you had with the Trump Organization or campaign personnel or related individuals who may otherwise be linked to the Russian government or companies.” But the Democratic committee aide said that Prince “did not provide any additional documents, communications, or travel records to the Committee after his interview.”

Renewed interest on the committee in Prince comes as the panel’s Democratic leadership announced its intentions to provide complete transcripts of all the panel’s interviews from its Russia probe to Mueller. Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat expected to become committee chairman, indicated he considered several witnesses not to have told the legislators the truth.

“We are going through the transcripts of their testimony and all of these transcripts really need to be provided to Bob Mueller so he can make those decisions. Bob Mueller has the advantage of, I think, far more information than we do that would allow him to vet whether what these witnesses told our committee was true or not,” Schiff told ABC News on Sunday.

“I believe we were lied to,” Quigley told The Daily Beast–speaking generally, not specifically about Prince.

 

[Howl]

For those following Russian provocations in the Kerch Strait/Sea of Azov and generally jerking around Ukraine: 

Russia Launched Cyber Attacks Against Ukraine Before Ship Seizures, Firm Says

[AmazonGrace]

Sanctions have been delayed because of course they have been. 

[AmazonGrace]

 The link is in French but it's the Russians inciting the riots. Fuck them. Seriously, fuck them. There are people dead because of the riots.