Jump to content
IGNORED

Mueller Investigation Part 2: Release The Report


GreyhoundFan

Recommended Posts

Interesting thread on the implications for national security.

 

  • Upvote 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"White House plans to fight House subpoena of former counsel Donald McGahn for testimony on Mueller report"

Spoiler

The White House plans to fight a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee for former White House counsel Donald McGahn to testify, according to people familiar with the matter, setting up another showdown in the aftermath of the special counsel report.

The Trump administration also plans to oppose other requests from House committees for the testimony of current and former aides about actions in the White House described in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report, according to two people familiar with internal thinking who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke of the plans on the condition of anonymity.

White House lawyers plan to tell attorneys for administration witnesses called by the House that they will be asserting executive privilege over their testimony, officials said.

Such a move will intensify a power struggle between the Trump administration and congressional Democrats, potentially setting up a protracted court battle.

McGahn was mentioned more than 150 times in Mueller’s report and told investigators about how the president pressured him to oust the special counsel and then pushed him to publicly deny the episode.

McGahn’s lawyer, William Burck, began discussions with the Judiciary Committee about his potential testimony after the panel issued a subpoena Monday, according to people familiar with the matter.

Securing McGahn’s testimony would be a boon for the committee, which hopes to focus on potential obstruction of justice by Trump in a series of public hearings this spring while exploring other “abuses of power,” Democratic aides said.

[House Democrats issue subpoena for former White House lawyer McGahn]

Public testimony from McGahn could create a spectacle that would parallel the June 1973 testimony of President Richard Nixon’s former White House counsel, John Dean, whose live televised appearance before a Senate committee painted a vivid portrait for the country of the White House coverup of the Watergate burglary.

People close to McGahn, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said McGahn is “following the process” and working with the White House on his next steps, despite Trump’s public and private anger about his former counsel’s prominence in the Mueller report.

“He’s not eager to testify. He’s not reluctant. He got a subpoena. It compels him to testify. But there are some countervailing legal reasons that might prevent that,” said one person close to McGahn, who described private discussions on the condition of anonymity. “He doesn’t want to be in contempt of Congress; nor does he want to be in contempt of his ethical obligations and legal obligations as a former White House official.” 

Trump has told advisers that McGahn was disloyal to him, and he criticized the lawyer for taking extensive notes of meetings that were cited in Mueller’s report. While initially portraying the report as an exoneration, Trump has grown frustrated with its depiction of his White House.

 The two men had an adversarial relationship, with McGahn contemplating quitting several times during his tenure. But he was also key to some of the president’s main accomplishments, like the confirmation of two Supreme Court judges and a record number of federal judiciary appointments.

 

  • WTF 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can’t say I disagree.

 

  • Upvote 2
  • I Agree 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Mueller wins again with appeals court ruling against Stone associate"

Spoiler

Special counsel Robert Mueller notched yet another legal victory on Monday even though his Russia investigation is over, as a federal appeals court rejected a bid to reexamine a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of his appointment.

In a one-sentence order, a three-judge panel from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals turned back a request for a rehearing of a case it decided in February arguing that Mueller should have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Separately, the D.C. Circuit on Monday also denied a petition for a rehearing before the full court.

At issue is a case challenging Mueller’s authority brought by Andrew Miller, who refused to testify before a federal grand jury under subpoena about his former employer, the longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone.

Miller’s attorneys moved to quash the subpoena by citing alleged flaws in Mueller’s appointment but lost in a unanimous opinion that found no flaw in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s May 2017 decision to put the special counsel on the job investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Miller’s attorneys all along have said their primary goal in fighting the Mueller subpoena was to score an audience before the Supreme Court, but the clock may have run out in the process. The special counsel indicted Stone in January on charges of witness tampering and lying to congressional investigators, and then last month concluded his overall Russia investigation.

The court orders issued Monday rejected Miller’s attempt to have the court inquire into whether the dispute might be moot because the grand jury is no longer seeking testimony from the former Stone aide.

Paul Kamenar, a lawyer for Miller, has said that prosecutors told him the wind-down of Mueller’s office did not change the posture of the case and that the grand jury still needed Miller’s testimony.

And since grand juries are not supposed to be used to investigate pending cases, the stance suggests that the grand jury is still investigating something beyond the already-filed false statement and obstruction of justice charges against Stone.

The appeals court’s actions put Miller closer to a choice between going to jail and complying with the grand jury subpoena seeking his testimony. Unless he secures relief from the D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court, the District Court’s contempt order could effectively kick in in one week.

In an interview Monday after the D.C. Circuit orders came out, Kamenar said he’d be filing a motion seeking a stay while he tries to interest the Supreme Court in the case. He also said he’d reach out to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington to see whether it still wanted Miller to appear and whether it would issue a new grand jury subpoena.

“It’s still too early to tell how this can shake out,” he said.

Mueller had a run of court victories while probing Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice to stymie the investigation. The chief judge of the U.S. District Court in D.C. also rejected Miller’s arguments. And federal judges in D.C. and Alexandria, Va., also dismissed narrower challenges to Mueller’s authority during the criminal trial of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman.

Judge Greg Katsas, who served as a deputy White House counsel for Trump before being nominated to the bench, recused himself from the order Monday denying full court review. Trump’s other appointee on the D.C. Circuit, Neomi Rao, joined in the decision.

 

  • Upvote 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Mueller complained that Barr’s letter did not capture ‘context’ of Trump probe"

Spoiler

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III wrote a letter in late March complaining to Attorney General William P. Barr that a four-page memo to Congress describing the principal conclusions of the investigation into President Trump “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s work, according to a copy of the letter reviewed Tuesday by The Washington Post.

At the time the letter was sent on March 27, Barr had announced that Mueller had not found a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Barr also said Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but Barr reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to support such a charge.

Days after Barr’s announcement, Mueller wrote a previously unknown private letter to the Justice Department, which revealed a degree of dissatisfaction with the public discussion of Mueller’s work that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.

“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

The letter made a key request: that Barr release the 448-page report’s introductions and executive summaries, and made some initial suggested redactions for doing so, according to Justice Department officials.

Justice Department officials said Tuesday they were taken aback by the tone of Mueller’s letter, and it came as a surprise to them that he had such concerns. Until they received the letter, they believed Mueller was in agreement with them on the process of reviewing the report and redacting certain types of information, a process that took several weeks. Barr has testified to Congress previously that Mueller declined the opportunity to review his four-page letter to lawmakers that distilled the essence of the special counsel’s findings.

In his letter, Mueller wrote that the redaction process “need not delay release of the enclosed materials. Release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation.”

Barr is scheduled to appear Wednesday morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee — a much-anticipated public confrontation between the nation’s top law enforcement official and Democratic lawmakers, where he is likely to be questioned at length about his interactions with Mueller.

A day after the letter was sent, Barr and Mueller spoke by phone for about 15 minutes, according to law enforcement officials.

In that call, Mueller said he was concerned that news coverage of the obstruction investigation was misguided and creating public misunderstandings about the office’s work, according to Justice Department officials.

When Barr pressed him whether he thought Barr’s letter was inaccurate, Mueller said he did not, but felt that the media coverage of the letter was misinterpreting the investigation, officials said.

In their call, Barr also took issue with Mueller calling his letter a “summary,” saying he had never meant his letter to summarize the voluminous report, but instead provide an account of the top conclusions, officials said.

Justice Department officials said in some ways, the phone conversation was more cordial than the letter that preceded it, but they did express some differences of opinion about how to proceed.

Barr said he did not want to put out pieces of the report, but rather issue it all at once with redactions, and didn’t want to change course now, according to officials.

Throughout the conversation, Mueller’s main worry was that the public was not getting an accurate understanding of the obstruction investigation, officials said.

“After the Attorney General received Special Counsel Mueller’s letter, he called him to discuss it,” a Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday. “In a cordial and professional conversation, the Special Counsel emphasized that nothing in the Attorney General’s March 24 letter was inaccurate or misleading. But, he expressed frustration over the lack of context and the resulting media coverage regarding the Special Counsel’s obstruction analysis. They then discussed whether additional context from the report would be helpful and could be quickly released.

“However, the Attorney General ultimately determined that it would not be productive to release the report in piecemeal fashion,” the spokeswoman’s statement continues. “The Attorney General and the Special Counsel agreed to get the full report out with necessary redactions as expeditiously as possible. The next day, the Attorney General sent a letter to Congress reiterating that his March 24 letter was not intended to be a summary of the report, but instead only stated the Special Counsel’s principal conclusions, and volunteered to testify before both Senate and House Judiciary Committees on May 1 and 2.”

Some senior Justice Department officials were frustrated by Mueller’s complaints, because they had expected that the report would reach them with proposed redactions the first time they got it, but it did not. Even when Mueller sent along his suggested redactions, those covered only a few areas of protected information, and the documents required further review, these people said.

Wednesday’s hearing will be the first time lawmakers will get to question Barr since the Mueller report was released on April 18, and he is expected to face a raft of tough questions from Democrats about his public announcement of the findings, his private interactions with Mueller, and his views about President Trump’s conduct.

Republicans on the committee are expected to question Barr about an assertion he made earlier this month that government officials had engaged in “spying” on the Trump campaign — a comment that was seized on by the president’s supporters as evidence the investigation into the president was biased.

Barr is also scheduled to testify Thursday before a House committee, but that hearing could be canceled or postponed amid a dispute about whether committee staff lawyers will question the attorney general.

Democrats have accused Barr of downplaying the seriousness of the evidence against the president.

In the report, Mueller described ten significant episodes of possible obstruction of justice, but said that due to long-standing Justice Department policy that says a sitting president cannot be indicted, and because of Justice Department practice regarding fairness toward those under investigation, his team did not reach a conclusion about whether the president had committed a crime.

 

  • Upvote 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does anyone actually think that Barr will have the guts to go to the House hearings on Thursday? I will be mightily surprised if he does. 

Mueller on the other hand is a dead cert to testify before the end of the month.

  • Upvote 5
  • I Agree 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"William Barr has a whole lot of explaining to do"

Spoiler

Attorney General William P. Barr’s handling of the Mueller report was already controversial. On Tuesday night, it became a whole lot more controversial.

We knew based upon previous reporting that members of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team were concerned about Barr’s characterization of their report ahead of its release. But now we know Mueller himself shared in the concerns — and spoke up.

The Post’s Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky report that Mueller went so far as to send a letter to the Justice Department after Barr summarized Mueller’s principal conclusions in late March. Mueller took issue with how Barr allowed the report to be portrayed:

At the time Mueller’s letter was sent to Barr on March 27, Barr had days prior announced that Mueller did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian officials seeking to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In his memo to Congress, Barr also said Mueller had not reached a conclusion about whether Trump had tried to obstruct justice, but that Barr reviewed the evidence and found it insufficient to support such a charge.

Days after Barr’s announcement, Mueller wrote the previously undisclosed private letter to the Justice Department, laying out his concerns in stark terms that shocked senior Justice Department officials, according to people familiar with the discussions.

“The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusions,” Mueller wrote. “There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations.”

Given how diplomatic prosecutors and lawyers tend to be, that’s a pretty stunning letter. Mueller’s decision to create a record registering his dismay suggests significant concern -- even as the language may be somewhat muted. (Some have noted the story also says Mueller later told Barr that his letter wasn’t inaccurate. It’s possible to be strictly accurate and also misleading, which is what Mueller seems to believe happened here.)

Mueller’s letter effectively backs up reporting since the Mueller report’s release about how Barr obscured key details and seemed to spin things in a way that favored Trump. Barr initially said that Mueller hadn’t reached a conclusion on obstruction of justice, but he didn’t explain at the time that Mueller had declined to reach such a conclusion regardless of evidence — and because of an existing Justice Department policy saying that you don’t indict a sitting president.

Even amid the blowback against Barr’s initial summary, though, it wasn’t clear that Mueller himself personally disputed it. The two are said to be friends, and while it was reported that members of Mueller’s team privately expressed concern, there was the question of how Mueller himself actually felt.

We now know that he shared in at least some of the major concerns. Mueller’s letter makes clear he doesn’t believe Barr handled the “context” of his report accurately, which lends credence to analysis that Barr skipped over Mueller’s actual justification for not concluding Trump had obstructed justice. In fact, if you look at the Mueller report closely, you’ll see that there are multiple instances in which he indicated there was evidence that President Trump’s conduct satisfied the three key criteria for obstruction.

There are also new questions now about whether Barr misled Congress during his March testimony, when he claimed ignorance about how Mueller and his team felt about key aspects of Barr’s letter.

Barr has already been under fire for a number of reasons. During his confirmation hearings, there was his previous commentary arguing that Mueller’s obstruction probe wasn’t warranted and was actually dangerous. Since then, Barr has issued the suspect summary of Mueller’s principal conclusions, borrowed a Trump talking point about the FBI “spying” on his campaign, and then held a news conference before the Mueller report’s release in which he seemed to offer the kind of defense of Trump that you’d expect from one of Trump’s lawyers. Perhaps most importantly of all, he cleared Trump of obstruction even though Mueller seemed to believe it wasn’t the Justice Department’s place to make a decision about it.

The timing of the leaking of Mueller’s letter is certainly conspicuous, given that Barr is set to testify to Congress on Wednesday morning. As with his aides’ comments being leaked, it suggests profound dissatisfaction with Barr’s handling of the matter.

Barr has got a lot of explaining to do.

 

  • Upvote 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's Mueller's letter in full:

 

  • Thank You 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"‘I don’t know’: Barr’s professed ignorance prompts calls for his resignation after Mueller letter"

Spoiler

In back-to-back congressional hearings on April 9 and 10, Attorney General William P. Barr disclaimed knowledge of the thinking of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and members of his team of prosecutors investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“No, I don’t,” Barr said, when asked by Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.) whether he knew what was behind reports that members of Mueller’s team were frustrated by the attorney general’s summary of their top-level conclusions.

“I don’t know,” he said the next day, when asked by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) whether Mueller supported his finding that there was not sufficient evidence to conclude that President Trump had obstructed justice.

These statements resurfaced Tuesday following the revelation that Mueller had sent a letter to Barr two weeks earlier objecting to the attorney general’s characterization of the probe.

Suggesting that Mueller’s letter — only portions of which have been made public — belied the sworn testimony of the attorney general, Van Hollen recirculated a clip of his back-and-forth with Barr and declared, “He must resign.”

In an interview with The Washington Post, the Maryland Democrat said he believed Barr’s answer was “completely misleading because he was well aware of the fact that Bob Mueller had raised questions with the substance of the conclusions stated in the attorney general’s letter.”

The Justice Department didn’t immediately return a request for comment on Van Hollen’s accusation.

In the March 27 letter, Mueller protested that Barr’s four-page memo “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of his work, according to a copy reviewed by The Post. In a subsequent phone conversation between Mueller and Barr — longtime colleagues whose differences of opinion about the handling of the Russia probe are beginning to spill into the open — the special counsel expressed concern about public misunderstanding of the obstruction component of the investigation.

According to Justice Department officials, Mueller indicated in the conversation that he did not find fault with the accuracy of the memo but rather with conclusions drawn in media coverage.

Though he had not examined the entire letter, Van Hollen allowed, “Based on what I’ve seen, it’s clear to me that what Attorney General Barr told me is totally inconsistent with what he knew at the time.”

He said he hoped his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who were preparing to question Barr on Wednesday, would press the attorney general on what he knew about the special counsel’s frustrations, and how that knowledge squared with his sworn testimony in early April. Wednesday’s hearing will be Barr’s first appearance before lawmakers since Mueller’s partially redacted report was released on April 18.

In a prepared statement for the committee, Barr defended his handling of the special counsel’s investigation.

“As Attorney General, I serve as the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States, and it is my responsibility to ensure that the Department carries out its law-enforcement functions appropriately,” he wrote. “The Special Counsel’s investigation was no exception.”

Democrats view his conduct differently. Central to their objections has been the news conference in which Barr previewed the report’s release and echoed the president’s defense, saying there was no collusion and no obstruction case that could be prosecuted.

The disclosure of Mueller’s March letter provided fresh ammunition.

Van Hollen labeled Barr’s profession of ignorance about the special counsel’s position “the most recent example of the attorney general acting as the chief propagandist for the Trump administration instead of answering questions in a straightforward and objective manner.”

“You now have a pattern of misleading conduct from the attorney general,” Van Hollen added. “His bluntly misleading answer to my question is part of that.”

Still, the lawmaker stopped short of concluding that Barr had lied to him, saying he needed to review the full letter. And, in a sign of broader reticence among some Democrats about embarking on an impeachment process, he said, “The House has so many questions before it. And they of course have to decide how to prioritize all of the issues facing them.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who has authority over impeachment questions as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, also made a point Tuesday night of recalling the exchange between Barr and Van Hollen.

Beyond Capitol Hill, some of the president’s critics were quick to conclude that the attorney general should be removed, with some suggesting that he had committed perjury.

At least one presidential candidate, Julián Castro, a former housing secretary for the Obama administration, said the attorney general should step down or face impeachment. A number of prominent figures reached the same verdict. They ranged from Democratic stalwarts, such as former Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer, to disaffected Republican operatives, such as John Weaver, a longtime campaign strategist, including for John Kasich, who was unsuccessful in his bid to deny Trump the Republican nomination in 2016.

Legal experts, however, were skeptical, noting that the uncertainty surrounding the precise objections raised by the special counsel make it difficult to assess Barr’s candor. So, too, the ambiguity of the language employed by the attorney general, as well as by the lawmakers questioning him, would likely shield him from a perjury charge, said Jennifer Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Federal law makes it a criminal offense to speak falsely about a material matter while under oath, and to do so knowingly and willfully.

“He’s tiptoeing, dancing and threading the needle all at once around perjury, but I don’t think he ever actually steps into the land of perjury,” Levinson said. “We’re talking about a very skilled attorney who purposely used vague enough language.”

Barr’s answer to Crist came in a hearing of a House Appropriations subcommittee. The Florida Democrat asked the attorney general about news reports that investigators working on the special counsel’s probe were disturbed by his conduct.

“Reports have emerged recently, general, that members of the special counsel’s team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your March 24th letter, that it does not adequately or accurately necessarily portray the report’s findings,” he said. “Do you know what they’re referencing with that?”

The attorney general said he could only speculate.

“No, I don’t,” Barr replied. “I think — I think — I suspect that they probably wanted more put out, but in my view, I was not interested in putting out summaries or trying to summarize, because I think any summary, regardless of who prepares it, not only runs the risk of, you know, being underinclusive or overinclusive, but also, you know, would trigger a lot of discussion and analysis that really should await everything coming out at once.”

The following day, in a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Van Hollen asked Barr to explain his finding that there was insufficient evidence to bring obstruction charges against the president — a finding, the lawmaker said, that allowed Trump to claim exoneration.

“It was the conclusion of a number of people, including me and I obviously am the attorney general,” Barr said. “It was also the conclusion of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.” Van Hollen said he understood, and, as Barr pledged to elaborate on his conclusion once the report was released, the senator asked, “Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?”

Barr was ambiguous, offering, “I don’t know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion.”

Neither does the public. It remains unclear whether Mueller will testify before Congress, and on what terms.

But Van Hollen claims that Barr faced no such uncertainty. “When the attorney general answered that question, he had full knowledge of the letter from Mueller, in which Mueller expressly stated that he did not capture the substance of Mueller’s conclusions,” the first-term senator said.

Absent a clear legal infraction, the contest over Barr’s handling of the special counsel’s report will continue to unfold as a pitched partisan battle, said Levinson, the law professor.

The latest revelation, she said, gave Democrats a chance to claim politically popular ground. That would be an unfamiliar scenario, she added, as, “up to now, the attorney general has been very smart at controlling the narrative, dominating the new cycle at the most important moments.”

 

  • Upvote 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is now direct evidence that Barr lied in his testimony on the 10th of April to Congress. His assertions that he "did not know if Bob Mueller supported my conclusion" are proven false by the letter Mueller sent him on the 27th of March.

There is also evidence that Barr lied or mislead Mueller in early March and on the 24th of March, wherein Barr was told about Mueller's conclusions, only to have Barr state the complete opposite only a couple of hours after the meeting on the 24th.

From Mueller's letter:

As we stated in our meeting of March 5 and reiterated to the Department early in the afternoon of March 24, the introductions and executive summaries of our two-volume report accurately summarize this Office's work and conclusions. The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this Office's work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the Department on the morning of March 25

There are grounds enough to impeach Barr for misleading the public and for knowingly and willingly lying to Congress.

I sincerely hope the Democrats have the guts to do so, but I am rather sceptical at this point. The Dems seem to be focussed primarily on the elections, believing that will be the only way to get rid of this administration. 

  • Upvote 2
  • I Agree 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Barr has been testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning. "4 early takeaways from William Barr’s tense hearing"

Quote

ttorney General William P. Barr ventured up to Capitol Hill on Wednesday an embattled man. About 15 hours before his testimony, The Washington Post reported that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III had sent Barr a letter saying Barr’s summary of his report “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this office’s work and conclusion.” Mueller asked Barr to release a fuller summary he provided; Barr did not do so.

It’s hardly the first time that Barr has run into trouble in recent weeks. And that made his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday a tense affair.

Below are some of the highlights and lessons from the hearing. We’ll update throughout the day.

1) Barr is unrepentant

If you thought Barr might bend to criticism that he had been too favorable to Trump and change his approach, you’d be wrong. And one exchange encapsulated it.

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), began by questioning Barr about one of the key events in the obstruction portion of the special counsel’s probe: Trump trying to get then-White House counsel Donald McGahn to dispute media reports that Trump had tried to get McGahn to fire Mueller.

Barr suggested that the initial New York Times report on the event had gone further than the evidence, by saying Trump explicitly “directed” McGahn to have Mueller fired. But the Mueller report is clear that it believes Trump did, in fact, make a direct request: “Substantial evidence . . . supports the conclusion that the President went further and in fact directed McGahn to call Rosenstein to have the Special Counsel removed.”

Barr also suggested that it was possible Trump’s actions weren’t obstructive because he was concerned about correcting media reports rather than hindering an investigation. Again, the Mueller report appears pretty clear on this point. “The President’s efforts to have McGahn write a letter ‘for our records’ approximately ten days after the stories had come out — well past the typical time to issue a correction for a news story — indicates the President was not focused solely on a press strategy but instead likely contemplated the ongoing investigation and any proceedings arising from it.”

Throughout his testimony, Barr repeated many of the same arguments and comments that have landed him in hot water in the first place, and he again leaned into the idea that the Russia investigation might have been improperly launched — as Trump has argued. Asked by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) whether he shared “my concerns about the counterintelligence probe and how it was started,” Barr responded, “Yes.”

He also said he shared Graham’s concerns about the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) process and stood by his controversial past use of “spying” to describe how former Trump campaign aide Carter Page was monitored. “I don’t think the word ‘spying’ has any negative connotation at all,” Barr said. “I’m not going to back off the word spying.”

2) Barr explains his allegedly misleading testimony

In addition to the Mueller letter’s rebuke of Barr, it also called into question his past testimony. Barr testified before the House last month — after receiving the letter — and suggested he wasn’t familiar with how the Mueller team perceived his actions.

When asked whether he knew what was behind reports that members of the Mueller team were unhappy with his summary, Barr said, “No, I don’t.”

Barr explained Wednesday that he was narrowly answering the question: “I don’t know what members he’s talking about, and I certainly am not aware of any challenge to the accuracy of the findings . . . I talked directly to Bob Mueller — not members of his team.”

Barr repeatedly returned to how Mueller told him that his letter summarizing the report wasn’t inaccurate. But that’s not really the issue. The issue is whether it cherry-picked from the Mueller report and excluded key details. Mueller implied strongly that Barr had misled and excluded important information. And in his past testimony Barr suggested that he wasn’t familiar with anyone on Mueller’s team being upset.

3) Graham’s misleading preamble

Graham has turned into one of Trump’s most loyal allies on Capitol Hill. And true to form, he started the hearing on a very pro-Trump foot, offering several misleading statements.

He said the Mueller report had stated there was “no collusion.” In fact, the report ruled more narrowly that there was no “conspiracy” and explicitly said it wasn’t evaluating the broader concept of collusion, because it isn’t a legal term.

Graham said, “As to obstruction of justice, Mr. Mueller left it to Mr. Barr to decide.” In fact, Mueller didn’t ask Barr to make a decision on obstruction (as Barr himself has said) nor did Barr need to make the call. Mueller made clear in his report that he didn’t think it was the Justice Department’s job to accuse a sitting president of crimes, since a sitting president can’t be indicted.

And, finally, Graham suggested Barr’s previews of the Mueller report, both in his letter and in a news conference just ahead of the report’s release, didn’t really matter. “Here’s the good news,” he told everyone. “You can read the report.” But Barr in many ways pre-spun the report — to the extent that members of Mueller’s team and Mueller himself were clearly concerned. And setting the first narrative matters.

Graham hailed Mueller as a public servant, but he did not dwell upon Mueller’s concerns about Barr’s handling of the matter.

4) Digs at Mueller?

Barr and Mueller are reported to be friends, but one comment in particular suggested that there might be some tension between them. When discussing Mueller’s letter and their conversations, Barr suggested that Mueller could have prevented all of this in the first place.

“I offered Bob Mueller the opportunity to review that letter before it came out,” Barr said, “and he declined.”

Barr’s intent might have been more to suggest that he did his due diligence in releasing the letter — rather than that Mueller did anything wrong. But it sure sounded as if he was saying Mueller could have spoken up sooner.

Barr also suggested later that Mueller’s opinions don’t really matter, because he serves in the Department of Justice and reports to the attorney general. He likened Mueller to a “U.S. attorney” in the DOJ’s pecking order.

“His work concluded when he submitted the report to the attorney general. At that point, it was my baby,” Barr said. “It was my decision how and when to make it public — not Bob Mueller’s.”

 

  • Upvote 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Never, ever ever discount Barr's shrewdness.  But, there's no question that he is running interference for and is the the legal consigliere to the Trump Crime Family mobligarchy.  The US AG appellation is just a cloaking device.

What the motivation for that is unclear to me.  Is he a Federalist Society good soldier?  GoP uber alles?  Unbridled arrogance leading Barr to assume he's such a smooth operator that he can pull off a modern-day Iran-Contra dealio, and it's turning out to be a lot rockier than he thought?

Should Trump unravel, Pence will take over. Or maybe, the real issue is that should Trump unravel, Pence's crimes (if there are any) will be exposed, and then, oopsie, Nancy P. is prez. 

I have to wonder if Mueller is evaluating his old friend through a totally different lens now.  Mueller was going for transparency and clarity with a report for Congress and the citizenry; Barr is totally focused on obfuscation.  Remember that Barr was in charge of redacting the Intelligence Community aspect of the report. 

Has he redacted the bombshells that show.....collusion with Russian.  No, not conspiracy in it's narrow sense, but being aware of and welcoming Russian active measures during the election and after. 

And this: 

 

Edited by Howl
  • Upvote 5
  • I Agree 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/23/2019 at 2:09 AM, fraurosena said:

Interesting thread on the implications for national security.

 

Sorry I missed this when you posted it on April 23.  This is THE most important aspect of what's going on.  Although there is no legal definition of "collusion," what's described in this twitter thread is collusion.  And it's a disaster to national security.  I wish there was as much focus on this as on Barr, because what went on is totally criminal and (dare I say it?) treasonous. 

Here's an unroll:  THREAD: The Mueller Report is conspicuously silent on the harm to US national security from the Trump team’s dalliances w Russian emissaries during 2015-2017,

  • Upvote 2
  • Thank You 1
  • Love 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

  • Upvote 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

31 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Will she be calling for impeachment, or will it just be pretty, but hollow words?

Also, has Ted Lieu announced he's running yet? Because if I were American, he'd be on my list of candidates I'd be willing to vote for:

 

  • Upvote 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Lindsey Graham’s stunningly fact-free, pro-Trump spin of the Mueller report"

Spoiler

There’s shading the truth to suit your message, and then there’s what Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) just did: completely forsaking the facts to play politics.

At Attorney General William P. Barr’s hearing on Wednesday, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee had a chance to clarify key issues related to Barr’s release of the Mueller report into Russian interference in the 2016 election and President Trump.

Instead, in his opening statement, Graham adopted a Trumpian-like worldview in which the president could do no wrong. Graham completely mischaracterized special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report and how damaging it was for Trump. He misstated key facts. He ignored reality and raised conspiracy theories about how the Russia investigation got started in the first place.

Even for a senator who has cozied up to the president and is up for reelection next year in a state that voted for Trump, the overtly pro-Trump display on Graham’s part was stunning. Here’s what Graham said in the opening moments of the Barr hearing that was misleading and just not true:

On the obstruction-of-justice charge: “Mr. Mueller left it to Mr. Barr to decide after two years.”

This is not true. Mueller said he couldn’t exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice, and he laid out all the ways he thought Trump might have committed a crime. Then Mueller left it up to Congress to decide.

The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.

Mueller report

“No collusion, no coordination, no conspiracy.”

Graham’s attempt to summarize the Mueller report’s findings is misleading, at best. The report did not assess whether there was collusion, because “collusion” isn’t a legal term. Mueller’s team investigated whether there was coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russians that would constitute conspiracy to coordinate with a foreign power. They found that Trump’s campaign welcomed help from the Russians — by, say, expressing interest in getting dirt from them on Hillary Clinton or encouraging the hacking of her emails. In the end, Mueller did not find coordination that would constitute a crime. But he never explicitly said there was “no collusion.” Trump, Barr and Graham have said that.

“He was never removed. He was allowed to do his job,” Graham says of Mueller.

This is true. But Graham glosses over a little finding in the Mueller report that Trump tried to fire Mueller. Several times. The only reason this and other obstruction-like actions didn’t happen, Mueller concludes, is because Trump’s aides didn’t carry out his orders.

“There were zero instances of Trump impeding Mueller. Zero.”

This is not true. Trump tried to fire Mueller. (“Mueller has to go. Call me back when you do it,” Trump told then-White House counsel Donald McGahn in a call, according to the report.)

And when Trump’s former campaign head Paul Manafort was charged with crimes stemming from the Mueller investigation, Trump dangled pardoning Manafort, the Mueller report found. “The president intended to encourage Manafort not to cooperate with the government,” the report reads. Trump “intended Manafort to believe he could receive a pardon.” The president also ridiculed people in his orbit who cooperated with Mueller.

Graham read texts from former FBI agents criticizing Trump in 2016.

Graham quoted a text from Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that used the f-word to describe Trump. This isn’t incorrect, but it’s hypocritical and misleading. In 2016, Graham would have agreed with Strzok and Page’s assessment of Trump the candidate. Graham publicly said he thought Trump was a “jackass” and a “kook” and “a con man” and “unfit for office.” And Graham seems to be suggesting that the whole probe was corrupt because of some texts, something that the facts don’t bear out.

“When the Mueller report is put to bed, and it soon will be, this committee is going to look long and hard on how this all started. We’re going to look at the FISA warrant process.”

Graham spent a significant portion of his limited time looking back at the origins of the Russia probe. Trump and his conservative allies have long tried to argue that the probe was put together on false pretenses, despite the rigorous protocols in place to avoid such politicization of the FBI, most especially in how agents get warrants to surveil people. (The Justice Department’s independent watchdog is investigating the FBI’s warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, but there is no indication there was any wrongdoing.)

And never mind that a Trump appointee, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, is the one who created the special counsel investigation and oversaw much of it. Graham also spent time criticizing Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server — a point of contention so out of date that not even Trump talks about this anymore.

In the opening moments of this hearing, Graham made his allegiances clear. He’s going to use his significant weight as head of this committee not to investigate whether the president committed a crime or obstructed an independent investigation or lied to the American people, per the Mueller report. He’s going to put all that aside and dig into conspiracy theories about how the investigation got started in the first place.

It should be no surprise that aligns with exactly what Trump wants done. Graham is conducting this hearing not for the American people, but for Trump.

 

  • WTF 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Who else is going to clear their calendar as soon as the date is set?

 

  • Upvote 1
  • I Agree 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

They do realize Mueller’s time of silence is almost over, right? And that this spin is not only ridiculous but has already been debunked by the letter Mueller sent and will soon be even more contradicted by Mueller’s inevitable testimony before the House?

Trump retweeted this, btw.

Edited by fraurosena
  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mueller's televised testimony may break records. I'll be marking the days on my calendar. 

  • Upvote 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

  • WTF 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I haven't read much about Annie Donaldson: "Watergate had the Nixon tapes. Mueller had Annie Donaldson’s notes."

Spoiler

The notes, scribbled rapidly on a legal pad, captured the fear inside the White House when President Trump raged over the Russia investigation and decreed he was firing the FBI director who led it: “Is this the beginning of the end?”

The angst-filled entry is part of a shorthand diary that chronicled the chaotic days in Trump’s West Wing, a trove that the special counsel report cited more than 65 times as part of the evidence that the president sought to blunt a criminal investigation bearing down on him.

The public airing of the notes — which document then-White House counsel Donald McGahn’s contemporaneous account of events and his fear that the president was engaged in legally risky conduct — has infuriated Trump.

“Watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed,” Trump tweeted a day after the release of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report.

The scribe keeping track of the president’s actions was Annie Donaldson, McGahn’s chief of staff, a loyal and low-profile conservative lawyer who figures in the Mueller report as one of the most important narrators of internal White House turmoil.

Her daily habit of documenting conversations and meetings provided the special counsel’s office with its version of the Nixon White House tapes: a running account of the president’s actions, albeit in sentence fragments and concise descriptions.

Among the episodes memorialized in Donaldson’s notes and memos: the president’s outrage when FBI Director James B. Comey confirmed the existence of the investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump’s efforts to pressure Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from overseeing the probe and his push to get Mueller disqualified and removed as the special counsel.

The Harvard Law School graduate’s unflinching words — “Just in the middle of another Russia Fiasco,” she wrote on March 2, 2017 — have cast the die-hard Republican in an unfamiliar role: as a truth teller heralded by Trump’s foes for providing what they view as proof he is unfit for office.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) has already signaled that he intends to subpoena Donaldson as a critical witness.

Donaldson — who lives in Montgomery, Ala., where her husband recently got a job as a federal prosecutor — did not respond to requests for comment. She left the White House in December, both proud of her service and also somewhat stung by her experience in Washington, friends said.

Those close to Donaldson fear she will be thrust in the middle of the building war between congressional Democrats and the White House. Some privately worry she could become a target of the president, despite having worked hard to help implement his agenda.

“My only concern for her now is not getting too caught up in this Washington meat grinder, when she really did the right thing and cooperated as she was directed,” said former Republican senator Luther Strange, who hired Donaldson to work in his law firm in Alabama.

Documenting worries about obstruction

As McGahn’s chief of staff, Donaldson was charged with managing 30 to 40 lawyers in the counsel’s office, getting White House policies legally vetted, keeping judicial nominations on track and working with McGahn on Trump’s top priorities.

Along the way, she did what virtually all lawyers consider a necessity: kept a record of decisions, disputes, and tasks left to do. Nearly every day, when McGahn emerged from the Oval Office or other West Wing meetings, she would take notes as he recalled significant discussions with the president and his team, according to people familiar with her role.

In the case of Nixon, the discovery of his White House taping system provided unquestionable proof of his role in a coverup of his campaign’s illegal spying on opponents, precipitating his resignation in 1974.

In Trump’s case, Donaldson’s notes depict McGahn and others as worried that the president could be accused of criminal obstruction — and as seeking to protect him from his impulses.

In an entry on March 21, 2017, Donaldson recounts how Trump told McGahn he was furious with the testimony that Comey gave to Congress about the Russia probe the day before, sounding as if he might fire him on the spot. The president felt betrayed that Comey had failed to do as Trump had asked: to tell the public that he was not personally under investigation.

“beside himself,” she wrote of the president. “getting hotter and hotter, get rid?”

McGahn was so concerned that Comey’s firing was imminent that the counsel’s office drafted a memo analyzing the president’s legal authority to do so, according to the report.

McGahn’s lawyer William Burck declined to comment.

That day, Trump repeatedly pressured McGahn to get the Justice Department to intervene, Donaldson later told investigators. McGahn then called Assistant Attorney General Dana Boente asking whether officials could “correct the misperception that the President was under investigation,” the report said.

At one point, McGahn warned the president that some of the actions he took — such as asking Comey to let go of his investigation of Flynn — could make him vulnerable to accusations of obstruction of justice. “biggest exposure . . . other contacts . . . calls . . . ask re: Flynn,” Donaldson wrote that day.

White House aides who know Donaldson said they are confident her notes are an accurate account of events in Trump’s White House.

For her part, Donaldson is dismayed her confidential work product — documenting sensitive conversations with the president that would normally be shielded from public view by executive privilege — is available for all to see, colleagues said.

“I doubt she had any notion that these notes would ever end up in anyone’s hands, let alone Mueller’s,” said one former White House official, who requested anonymity to describe internal dynamics.

White House advisers expect records of their confidential advice to the president to stay private, probably for decades, until they are released for historical archives.

Bob Bauer, who served as White House counsel to President Barack Obama, said Donaldson’s notes bring the unprecedented nature of the Trump presidency into immediate focus.

“It is impossible to imagine that these extensive notes were taken for any reason other than to document questionable presidential conduct and the counsel’s office response,” Bauer said. “It speaks volumes to the extraordinary challenges facing lawyers in this White House, and it raises the question: If this is what is necessary for lawyers to do their job, then how is it a job the lawyers should agree to do?”

Friends and colleagues said McGahn trusted Donaldson, who worked as his associate at Jones Day, to make tough calls without him and to lead a team of deputies with their own impressive legal pedigrees.

He had once compared their work relationship to that of a football coach and a defensive coordinator, according to one colleague. They had walked through all the films and plays together for so long that Donaldson knew his mind.

'The glue that held this all together'

As McGahn drank from a fire hose of meetings, deregulation debates and legal disputes, Donaldson was known for her careful tracking of small details.

She met McGahn each morning with a to-do list she wanted him to tackle, and she gave similar lists to deputy counsels and associate lawyers.

White House aides praised her ability to get the often prickly factions within the White House to respond to her requests. She sought to make sure McGahn was included in meetings in which some Trump advisers tried to avoid the lawyer’s input. She displayed a quiet confidence, often speaking toward the end of a meeting rather than first, and made her points slowly and precisely.

“She has a true desire to get things done,” said her friend and former boss Katie Biber, who worked with Donaldson on the 2008 Mitt Romney presidential campaign. “She’s not trying to get credit.”

“Don may have been the White House counsel, but Annie is the glue that held this all together,” she added.

There was one major exception to her low-key ways: Donaldson’s red Corvette, an older model that once bore the vanity plate “RLL TIDE” in honor of her alma mater, the University of Alabama.

She parked the Corvette on West Executive Drive; other senior White House aides would spot it there when they arrived for work and see it still there when they headed home, as she often arrived at the White House at 7 a.m. and stayed until 9 p.m.

“The entire West Wing knew it was her car. It was always there,” said one former administration official. “You’d walk in on a Saturday and see it: ‘Oh yeah, Annie’s already here.’”

Donaldson had the legal credentials to pursue a Supreme Court clerkship, but she was smitten with politics, friends said. She joined Romney’s presidential campaign in 2007, and when he lost the Republican primary to John McCain, she applied to Harvard Law.

At Harvard, she served as both an editor of the Harvard Law Review and executive editor of its conservative sister publication, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, a bastion of the Federalist Society.

After graduating, she got a job as an associate lawyer at Patton Boggs, where she met McGahn. She worked for Romney’s second presidential bid as a campaign lawyer in 2012, and then followed McGahn to work for him at Jones Day. There, she joined him in his work as legal counsel for the Trump campaign.

At the White House, Donaldson played a significant role in helping push forward Trump’s judicial nominations; a record 30 were seated on federal appellate courts in his first two years, double the number of any previous administration.

“Annie is going to go down in history as a real unsung hero of the judicial nominations process,” Biber said.

But one nomination painfully singed Donaldson and her husband Brett Talley. Trump nominated Talley for a federal district court seat in Alabama, but he was among a rare handful of nominees whom the American Bar Association rated “not qualified.”

Talley, who was a deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, had never tried a case in court. He withdrew his nomination amid questions that he failed to disclose he was married to a White House lawyer on public forms asking if any of his family could create potential conflicts. Donaldson had recused herself from involvement in his nomination.

After just eight months in the job, Donaldson would learn her notes were going to be turned over to federal investigators.

Trump reacted angrily when he learned from a news report in February 2018 that McGahn kept a written record of their encounters, according to Mueller’s report.

“What about these notes? Why do you take notes?” Trump asked McGahn during a tense Oval Office confrontation. “Lawyers don’t take notes. I never had a lawyer who took notes.” (McGahn told investigators Trump was referring to Donaldson’s notes, which the president thought of as McGahn’s.)

McGahn responded to the president that he keeps notes because he is a “real lawyer” and explained that notes create a record and are not a bad thing, according to the report.

Trump replied: “I’ve had a lot of great lawyers, like Roy Cohn. He did not take notes.”

In the end, the president’s desire for the investigation to come to a close ultimately led to the release of Donaldson’s precise description of events. In an effort to speed up Mueller’s review, then-White House lawyer Ty Cobb embraced a strategy of turning over all the administration’s records to Mueller.

McGahn privately warned that the approach would force him to divulge highly sensitive and privileged communications, and increase the chances that they would become public. His forecast proved true.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Only five?

 

  • Upvote 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Wowsers. This is yuge!

Fingers crossed these transcripts and audio recordings will not be filed under seal. With the news yesterday that it's unknown what has happened with the counterintelligence investigation into Trump and his cronies, it's time everything was made public.

  • Upvote 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.