#Mueller team files new sealed criminal charges

[malenipshadows]

  *** Manafort, who was Trump's campaign manager for almost five months in 2016, and Gates, who was deputy campaign manager, were indicted by Mueller's office in October. They face charges including conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy to defraud the United States and failure to file as foreign agents for lobbying work they did on behalf of the pro-Russian Ukrainian Party of Regions. Both have pleaded not guilty. ...    Last Friday, Mueller's office revealed in a court filing that it had uncovered "additional criminal conduct" by Manafort in connection with a series of "bank frauds and bank fraud conspiracies" related to a mortgage on his property in Fairfax, Virginia. ***

[feelingbluepolitics]

"A concise report will probably act as a 'road map' to investigation for the Democratic House — and to further criminal investigation by other prosecutors."

"The special counsel Robert Mueller will apparently soon turn in a report to the new attorney general, William Barr. Sure, there is still a lot of activity, including subpoenas, flying around, but that shouldn’t stop Mr. Mueller.

"The report is unlikely to be a dictionary-thick tome, which will disappoint some observers. But such brevity is not necessarily good news for [trump]. In fact, quite the opposite.

"For months, [trump’s] lawyers have tried to discredit Mr. Mueller and this report, but their efforts may have backfired. A concise Mueller report might act as a 'road map' to investigation for the Democratic House of Representatives — and it might also lead to further criminal investigation by other prosecutors. A short Mueller report would mark the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.

"The report is unlikely to be lengthy by design: The special counsel regulations, which I had the privilege of drafting in 1999, envision a report that is concise, 'a summary' of what he found. And Mr. Mueller’s mandate is limited: to look into criminal activity and counterintelligence matters surrounding Russia and the 2016 election, as well as any obstruction of justice relating to those investigations.

"The regulations require the attorney general to give Congress a report, too. The regulations speak of the need for public confidence in the administration of justice and even have a provision for public release of the attorney general’s report. In a world where Mr. Mueller was the only investigator, the pressure for a comprehensive report to the public would be overwhelming.

"This is where the 'witch hunt' attacks on Mr. Mueller may have backfired. For 19 months, [t]rump and his team have had one target to shoot at, and that target has had limited jurisdiction. But now the investigation resembles the architecture of the internet, with many different nodes, and some of those nodes possess potentially unlimited jurisdiction. Their powers and scope go well beyond Mr. Mueller’s circumscribed mandate; they go to [t]rump’s judgment and whether he lied to the American people. They also include law enforcement investigations having nothing to do with Russia, such as whether [trump] directed the commission of serious campaign finance crimes, as federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have already stated in filings. These are all critical matters, each with serious factual predicates already uncovered by prosecutors.

"Had [t]rump and his coterie done nothing wrong, they would have had little to fear from the special counsel, and a report from Mr. Mueller that cleared him would be the gold seal of approval. But [t]rump’s behavior, including his dangling of pardons to witnesses in the investigation, makes total exoneration unlikely, even though it is enormously difficult to prosecute crimes with international dimensions and assertions of privilege. The investigation has been further clouded by the fact that people in [t]rump’s inner circle lied repeatedly when it came to Russia (that long list includes Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone).

..."Of course, there is no open impeachment inquiry now. But that could quickly change if Mr. Mueller writes a report that is anything less than a full clearing of [trump]: Congress would be under a constitutional obligation to investigate the facts for itself. Congress cannot be satisfied that impeachable offenses were not committed when Mr. Mueller’s investigative mandate did not cover many impeachable offenses, and when his report does not provide detailed information and answers to the few offenses that are within his mandate. This is where Mr. Mueller’s 'by the book' behavior may be initially unsatisfying to [t]rump’s critics but ultimately more threatening to [trump] in the long run."

"The overlapping investigations by different entities, housed in different branches of government, spanning geography and even different governments (such as the New York attorney general’s investigation into the [t]rump Foundation), make it difficult for anyone, even Attorney General Barr, to end the inquiries.

"This news may be disappointing, for various reasons, to [trump’s] critics and supporters alike. But the ultimate result is a good one. It means the truth is likely to come out — maybe not on the timetable anyone wants, but it will."

Key points and considerations:

- Mueller's mandate does not extend to all acts deserving of impeachment. Crimes including ones by trump have already been uncovered.

- It would have looked rash and overly political to begin impeachment proceedings before Mueller's report. Regardless of the findings, it will look derelict of the House not to bring them after, as if Democrats were as willing to cover for trump as Republicons. Which they aren't.

- There will be impeachment hearings. That is necessary to return any propriety to the office of the presidency, as well as to manage national security, and governance, responsibly.

- Impeachment proceedings will begin soon, to avoid opening them further along in the election campaign season. It's trump's problem for daring to run in the first place, and then daring to do it again.

- It's best for a co-equal branch of government to be in charge before trump Jr., for example, and Kushner too, are arrested and indicted.

- It may have been foolish of trump et al. to attack Mueller, but it was a lot more foolish to attack the FBI, which is now fighting for institutional legitimacy. They've been there before. The answer is always the highest, most exacting level of law enforcement professionalism. That doesn't bode well for trump or his connections.

- Democrats, being more rational, come across that way in televised hearings. Cf. red-faced ugly sneers and snarls by Kavanaugh and Graham during extraordinary outbursts; or how poorly conservative conspiracy garbage goes over in (most) courtrooms, like Flynn's or Stone's. Rationality won't dent committed partisanship. But rationality will be reassuring to many both in this country and beyond.

- Kamela Harris will get a lot of televised coverage in a venue where she is very impressive.

- It won't all go badly for trump. Just nearly all. It remains to be seen how dangerous trump and Republicons will get, but don't forget that even McConnell has stooped to referring to "mobs." Power in the forms of presidential and Senate controls; ideological extremism; enormous financial disproportion; dedicated propaganda arms; low education and high credulity; strong leanings toward hate and authoritarianism; infiltrated law enforcement, military, roving "Border" Patrol, and apparently Coast Guard; and, of course, guns, are all hugely lopsided.

But at least some of what is certainly coming, such as Cohen's public testimony, should be very enjoyable.

[gehayi]

GRANT STERN

PUBLISHED ON JANUARY 8, 2019

The Russian attorney who came to America to defend a massive money laundering case just got charged with obstructing that very case by working directly for the Kremlin.

A federal judge revealed today that the now-infamous Nataliya Veselnitskaya was indicted (embedded below) by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York under seal last month for obstruction of justice in the Prevezon case, a massive international money laundering scam prosecuted by former SDNY Attorney Prett Brahara.

Former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocha tells the Washington Press that that evidence used in the criminal indictment against Natalya Veselnitskaya could have substantial repercussions in Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation of the Trump Campaign.

Veselnitskya is now a household name in the United States for her role in the June 9th, 2016 Trump Tower meeting where Donald Trump Jr. was hoping to receive dirt on the Clintons.

While Veselnitskaya has previously denied all connections to the Russian government, the indictment tells a very different story. The Times reports:

The case was not directly related to the Trump Tower meeting. But a federal indictment returned in Manhattan seemed to confirm that Ms. Veselnitskaya had deep ties to senior Russian government officials.

The indictment says Ms. Veselnitskaya had secretly cooperated with a senior Russian prosecutor in drafting the Russian response, which was filed in federal court in Manhattan. “In doing so, Veselnitskaya obstructed the civil proceeding,” the indictment charged.

Natalia Veselnitskaya is a self-described informant with the Russian Prosecutor-General, who entered America in 2016 using a non-visa hardship exemption to defend the company Prevezon Holdings, a company that did business with current White House advisor Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law.

“It’s fair to say that the evidence which SDNY has put out there now is also available to Special Counsel Robert Mueller,” said Mimi Rocah, the former SDNY organized crime prosecutor and Pace University law professor. She told us by phone:

“It’s something that we all ‘knew’ in the sense that there was good reporting on it, but having evidence that can be used in court is important.”

“What we learn from reporting is not the same as what a prosecutor can prove in court, which has got to be Robert Mueller’s standard.”

SDNY prosecutors allege that the Russian attorney acted as an agent of the Kremlin to fashion a government coverup in the Prevezon case, interfering with prosecutors’ request to Russia for mutual legal assistance under an international treaty.

Their press release outlines the lengthy history of the case against Prevezon Holdings from the discovery of a multimillion-dollar money laundering scam by accountant Sergei Magnistky, his murder by the Russian government, and the chain of events that ultimately led Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act and the sanctions that accompanied it.

The U.S. government and Prevezon ultimately settled on a $5.9 million fine a few months after President Trump fired prosecuting attorney Bharara and his successor subsequently bailing on the trial.

America and Russia have a mutual legal assistance treaty, but not an extradition treaty, so there’s little chance of compelling Veselnitskaya to face the charges.

“Prosecutors understand that the chances of getting her here are slim, but if they didn’t charge it, then this person who came here and litigated in our court system and lied would get away with it. If they don’t charge her, she could come back and do it again,” said Mimi Rocah [sic] on her way to explaining these charges in more detail on MSNBC, continuing:

“She blatantly lied here in an affidavit in a way that is apparently provable. Prosecutors take that kind of thing very seriously.“

The indictment will also sharply limit the places where Veselnitskaya can travel outside of Russia without facing arrest and extradition.

Now, it appears that Mueller’s team has the evidence that it needs to charge Trump Jr. with campaign finance crimes because of his solicitation of Natalya Veselnitskaya’s help and the Kremlin’s help at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Here is a copy of the SDNY’s indictment against Natalia Veselnitskaya:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5677487/Natalia-Veselnitskaya-SDNY-Indictment.pdf

[moonwalkertrance]

Three former Trump campaign officials charged by special counsel

Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III on Monday revealed charges against three former Trump campaign officials — former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his longtime business partner Rick Gates and former Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos — marking the first criminal allegations to come from probes into possible Russian influence in U.S. political affairs.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier this month to making a false statement to FBI investigators who asked about his contacts with a foreigner connected to Russian officials, and the agreement was unsealed Monday.

Manafort and Gates were charged in a 12-count indictment with conspiracy to launder money, making false statements and other charges stemming from probes into possible Russian influence in U.S. political affairs.

Manafort and Gates are expected to make their first court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson at 1:30 p.m. The special counsel revealed Papadopoulos’s plea shortly after the indictment was unsealed. He has been cooperating with investigators for months, according to a court filing.

The charges against Manafort and Gates did not reference the Trump campaign, a point President Trump noted on Twitter Monday. “Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????” Trump wrote.

“....Also, there is NO COLLUSION!” he said in a follow-up tweet.

The indictment of Manafort and Gates focused on their work advising a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine. But the Papadopoulos matter relates to his time working on the campaign and involved alleged efforts to set up a meeting with Russian officials.

[Read the Manafort and Gates indictment]

The special counsel alleged that for nearly a decade Manafort and Gates laundered money through scores of U.S. and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts, and gave false statements to the Justice Department and others when asked about their work on behalf of a foreign entity.

All told, more than $75 million flowed through offshore accounts, the special counsel alleged. Manafort, the special counsel said, laundered more than $18 million, using his wealth acquired overseas to “enjoy a lavish lifestyle” in the United States, purchasing multi-million dollar properties and paying for home renovation.

Gates did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort. Manafort was spotted walking into the FBI’s Washington Field Office Monday morning.

Washington — especially those in political and media circles — had been anxiously anticipating the charges since CNN reported Friday night that a grand jury had approved the first charges in Mueller’s investigation.

Spokespeople for Mueller and the Justice Department declined to comment over the weekend. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment Monday, and a spokesman for the special counsel’s office did not return messages seeking comment.

According to the indictment, Manafort and Gates arranged to hire two Washington-based lobbying firms to work on behalf of their Ukrainian clients, arranging meetings with U.S. officials and boosting their public image in the United States.

Prosecutors say, however, that Manafort and Gates arranged for a Brussels-based nonprofit to nominally hire the companies to hide the fact that their work was for Ukrainian government officials and would otherwise require registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

In fact, prosecutors allege, Manafort was communicating directly with then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych about the effort, promising in 2012 to provide him weekly updates about the effort.

To further obscure Ukrainian involvement in the lobbying effort, prosecutors say payments to the Washington firms were routed through obscure offshore companies. Prosecutors say that when the Department of Justice approached Manafort and Gates in 2016 and 2017 about whether they should have registered as foreign agents for the work, they responded with false and misleading letters, indicating they had not directed the lobbying effort and asserting they did not hold records reflecting their work, even though later searches showed they did, according to the indictment.

Manafort and Gates also were accused of willfully and intentionally trying to hide monies kept in foreign bank accounts — Manafort from 2011 to 2014 and Gates from 2012 to 2014 . And Manafort was accused of filing fraudulent tax returns — stating on tax forms he filed from 2008 to 2014 that he controlled no foreign bank accounts.

The men made tens of millions of dollars for themselves, the special counsel alleged. From 2008 to 2014, according to the indictment, Manafort arranged to wire $12 million from offshore accounts to pay for personal expenses – including $5 million to a home renovation contractor in the Hamptons, more than $1.3 million to a home entertainment and lighting vendor based in Florida, $934,000 to an antique rug dealer in Alexandria, and $849,000 to a men’s clothier in New York.

While the men were set to first appear before a magistrate judge — as is normal — the case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, 63, a 2011 Barack Obama appointee.

Jackson worked as federal prosecutor in the District after graduating from Harvard Law School and specialized in complex criminal and civil trials and appeals at Trout Cacheris. While at the firm, she represented former Democratic congressman William J. Jefferson at his corruption trial, made famous by the $90,000 in bribe money stuffed into his freezer and a legal battle over the raid of his Washington office.

Jackson contributed $1,000 to Bill Clinton’s 1992 Democratic campaign.

Mueller was appointed in May to oversee the probe of possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, taking over work that the FBI had begun in July 2016. Their interest in Manafort, though, dates back to at least 2014 — long before Mueller was appointed or Manafort was connected to the Trump campaign.

While Mueller’s probe has focused on Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, investigators have shown interest in a broad array of other topics.

Those include meetings the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had with the Russian ambassador and a banker from Moscow in December, and a June 2016 meeting at Trump tower involving the president’s son, Donald Jr., and a Russian lawyer. Mueller’s team has requested extensive records from the White House, covering areas including the president’s private discussions about firing James B. Comey as FBI director and his response to news that Flynn was under investigation, according to two people briefed on the requests.

Mueller is also investigating whether Trump obstructed justice leading up to Comey’s firing. His team has been actively presenting records and bringing witnesses before the grand jury in D.C. for the last three months.

[Special Counsel Mueller using grand jury in federal court in Washington as part of Russia investigation]

Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March 2016, and Trump tapped him to serve as campaign chairman in May of that year. He left in August 2016, but Gates, his business partner and protege, continued to play an important role with the campaign even after Manafort’s departure. After the election Gates directed the inauguration plans, including fundraising, under Tom Barrack, Trump’s close friend and adviser.

FBI agents working for Mueller raided Manafort’s home in Alexandria in late July, armed with a search warrant that allowed them to enter at dawn without warning the occupants. Such an invasive search is only allowed after prosecutors have persuaded a federal judge that they have evidence of a crime and they have reasonable concern that key evidence could be destroyed or withheld.

Prosecutors also warned Manafort they planned to indict him, according to two people familiar with the exchange. People close to Manafort and Gates, though, said the indictment came as a surprise to both.

Though both men knew Mueller had been closely scrutinizing their behavior, they had expected some kind of alert when an indictment was imminent. Even over the weekend, they were telling people close to them that they had received no such notification and did not believe they were the subject of the seal charges.

The tactic might suggest Mueller hoped to use the element of surprise against the two men to potentially stun them into a desire to cooperate against other members of Trump’s team.

Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, said late Friday, “we are not commenting tonight.” A person familiar with Flynn’s defense said he, too, had received no notice of pending indictment.

Wayne Holland, a McEnearney Associates real estate agent who helped Manafort buy the condo in Alexandria, Va., that was raided by the FBI this summer, testified Oct. 20 before the grand jury in Mueller’s probe after he and his firm were unsuccessful in an effort to quash subpoenas, Holland said Friday.

Holland declined to discuss his testimony, first reported by Politico, but confirmed that an opinion unsealed Friday denied his and his firm’s motion to quash a subpoena by claiming real estate broker records are confidential under Virginia and District laws.

Devlin Barrett, Carol D. Leonnig, Sari Horwitz, Spencer S. Hsu, Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller and Adam Entous contributed to this report.

[lovehardenemycollector]

More than an investigation, the Mueller probe was the wellspring of a political narrative. That becomes clearer as time goes by and more information ekes out . . . such as new confirmation that, months before Mueller was appointed in May 2017, it was already well understood in Justice Department circles that there was no case of criminal “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.Never was that made more obvious than by the Justice Department’s quiet announcement late Monday, under the five-alarm noise of the coronavirus scare, that it has dropped the special counsel’s indictment of Russian companies -- an outcome I predicted here at National Review nearly two years ago.A little refresher is in order.As detailed here many times, one of the biggest problems confronting those weaving the collusion tale was the inability to prove that Russia hacked the Democratic email accounts. As Ball of Collusion outlines, that’s not the only fundamental problem. There is also the fact that the Democratic emails, in which Hillary Clinton was not an active correspondent, did not actually hurt her campaign at all -- certainly not the way her own email scandal did (a scandal for which there was no way to blame Moscow). There is also the dearth of evidence that the Trump campaign was even aware of, much less complicit in, Kremlin intelligence operations. Still, very basically, it would be impossible to prove that Trump had conspired in Russia’s hacking unless prosecutors could first establish that Russia had done the hacking.Let me repeat something else I said several times: This is not to say that Russia is innocent. Again, I accept the intelligence agencies’ conclusion on this point (though a number of others, including some former U.S. intelligence officials, do not). But the point is that Mueller could never have proved it beyond a reasonable doubt under courtroom due-process standards. Any competent defense lawyer would have had a field day with the Obama Justice Department’s failure to have the FBI take possession and conduct its own forensic examination of the servers that were hacked. And what fun defense counsel would have had with DOJ’s delegation of that rudimentary investigative task to a DNC contractor with close ties to the Clinton campaign. (Yes, the forensic conclusions blaming Russia were paid for by the same folks who brought you the famously dodgy Steele dossier.)Speaking of dodgy, recall that Team Mueller and the Justice Department dodged every case that would have called for proving Russia’s cyber theft. Even when they indicted WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, the very Ground Zero of “collusion,” they resisted charging him with the Russian hacking scheme. Given that prosecutors and the FBI spent years investigating the president of the United States for this crime of the century, it should seem astonishing that they passed on charging the guy they’ve told us is the central conspirator with this crime. But you weren’t astonished if you were reading National Review . . . because you knew they were not going to charge any crime that called for proving Russia’s culpability in court. Their evidence is shaky and, if there were ever an acquittal, the Trump-Russia political narrative would be kaput, while the Putin regime celebrated a huge propaganda coup.So why did Team Mueller publicly file an indictment against Russians?Because they figured it was a freebie. The prosecutors assumed that they would never have to . . . you know . . . prove the case. The Russian defendants were in Russia. There was no way Putin would ever extradite them for an American criminal trial. The prosecutors knew that. What they wrote was not meant to be a real indictment. It was meant to be a press release. It was meant to be what Team Mueller was best at: the spinning of a narrative. I explained it this way at the time:> When prosecutors are serious about nabbing law-breakers who are at large, they do not file an indictment publicly. That would just induce the offenders to flee to or remain in their safe havens. Instead, prosecutors file their indictment under seal, ask the court to issue arrest warrants, and quietly go about the business of locating and apprehending the defendants charged. In the Russia case, however, the indictment was filed publicly even though the defendants are at large. That is because the Justice Department and the special counsel know the Russians will stay safely in Russia. Mueller’s allegations will never be tested in court. That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument. To the extent there are questions about whether Russia truly meddled in the election, the special counsel wants to end that discussion.It all seemed so well choreographed. The indictment was, of course, reported as gospel-truth by the anti-Trump media -- the same folks who tell you, whenever a Democrat is charged with a crime, that an indictment is merely an allegation, that nothing is proven until it’s proven in court.Alas, Team Mueller made a mistake. A reckless bet, the kind made by people under the misimpression that they are playing with the house's money. To quote from my column nearly two years ago:> [Team Mueller] charged not only Russian individuals but three Russian businesses. A business doesn’t have the same risks as a person. A business can’t be thrown in jail. And while members of Mueller’s prosecutorial stable have a history of putting real businesses out of business, a business that is run by a Putin crony and serves as a front for Kremlin operations is not too worried about that either.Since they had no concerns about being imprisoned or bankrupted by prosecution and fines, there was nothing to discourage these businesses from doing what Team Mueller blithely assumed no Russian defendant would ever do: retaining lawyers to show up in federal court, demanding the trial to which American law entitled the companies, and demanding all the discovery to which American due process guaranteed them access.It was a debacle.First, the prosecutors tried to get the case and all pretrial discovery postponed on the ground that the businesses in question, Concord Management and Concord Consulting (each controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a food-supply oligarch said to be a Putin crony), had not been properly served with the indictment. This was absurd. Service of process is the way you get a business to come to court; these businesses were already in court, demanding to proceed with the prosecution that Team Mueller had chosen to start.The businesses then pressed the government to provide them with all the evidence and other discovery the law requires prosecutors to disclose. Team Mueller countered that they couldn’t do that because it would harm national security. That’s ridiculous. Imagine if I were prosecuting a mafia hitman and refused to make discovery, reasoning that the mafia might find out what’s in my files. The judge would hold me in contempt, or dismiss the case -- or both. As a prosecutor, if you’re worried that the security implications of disclosure are too great a risk, you don’t charge the case. But if you file charges, there is no getting around disclosure obligations.Being forced to make disclosure did not go well for Team Mueller and his Justice Department successors. As they had to concede, there was no evidence that the Russians who carried out the troll farm scheme were directed by the Russian government. Stopping short of such an allegation, the indictment claimed the defendants were backed by Prigozhin -- which was quite the comedown from the Justice Department’s drum-beating about Russia’s “information warfare.”Moreover, as the trial judge groused, the troll-farm indictment was “difficult to follow.” Team Mueller’s evidence was not even strong enough to allege that the defendants were actual Russian agents. Prosecutors thus crafted, shall we say, a creative theory: The defendants had “defrauded the United States” by failing to disclose their Russian identities and affiliations, which purportedly undermined the ability of U.S. bureaucracies to maintain a registry of foreign agents and enforce the campaign-finance laws. Except . . . it was unclear that the defendants had a legal duty to report information in the first place. How do you establish the criminality of concealment if there is no requirement to disclose?Finally, despite all the huffing and puffing about Russia’s purportedly massive effort to influence the election through social-media ads, the grudgingly surrendered discovery indicated that many of the ads violated no American laws and cost pennies. Assuming for argument’s sake that at least some of the candidate ads and rallies fell under Federal Election Commission reporting requirements, the defense contended that total expenditures for such activities amounted to less than $5,000.With the judge trying to push the case to trial this spring, the possibility of humiliation loomed. This past Monday, when no one was watching, the Justice Department finally -- inevitably -- pulled the plug. The cases against the companies were dropped. The sympathetic New York Times reported the prosecutors’ fig leaf: The defense was “weaponizing” the case “to gain access to delicate information.” It’s the kind of claim the Times would ridicule were the paper not so invested in the Trump-Russia narrative. In point of fact, the defendants were demanding the legal right to discovery that Mueller’s prosecutors automatically (if unwittingly) triggered when they decided to file an indictment.Not to say, “I told you so” (of course not!), this is exactly what these columns said would happen. From nearly two years ago:> The surest way to put an end to this unwelcome turn of events would be to dismiss the indictment — or at least drop the charges against the three businesses so Prigozhin and the Kremlin can’t use them to force Mueller’s hand [i.e., to compel discovery]. Of course, that would be very embarrassing. But as all prosecutors are taught from their first day on the job: Never indict a case unless you are prepared to try the case.There is no exception for “indictments” that are really meant to be political theater.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2UgjGlo

[45news]

More than an investigation, the Mueller probe was the wellspring of a political narrative. That becomes clearer as time goes by and more information ekes out . . . such as new confirmation that, months before Mueller was appointed in May 2017, it was already well understood in Justice Department circles that there was no case of criminal “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.Never was that made more obvious than by the Justice Department’s quiet announcement late Monday, under the five-alarm noise of the coronavirus scare, that it has dropped the special counsel’s indictment of Russian companies -- an outcome I predicted here at National Review nearly two years ago.A little refresher is in order.As detailed here many times, one of the biggest problems confronting those weaving the collusion tale was the inability to prove that Russia hacked the Democratic email accounts. As Ball of Collusion outlines, that’s not the only fundamental problem. There is also the fact that the Democratic emails, in which Hillary Clinton was not an active correspondent, did not actually hurt her campaign at all -- certainly not the way her own email scandal did (a scandal for which there was no way to blame Moscow). There is also the dearth of evidence that the Trump campaign was even aware of, much less complicit in, Kremlin intelligence operations. Still, very basically, it would be impossible to prove that Trump had conspired in Russia’s hacking unless prosecutors could first establish that Russia had done the hacking.Let me repeat something else I said several times: This is not to say that Russia is innocent. Again, I accept the intelligence agencies’ conclusion on this point (though a number of others, including some former U.S. intelligence officials, do not). But the point is that Mueller could never have proved it beyond a reasonable doubt under courtroom due-process standards. Any competent defense lawyer would have had a field day with the Obama Justice Department’s failure to have the FBI take possession and conduct its own forensic examination of the servers that were hacked. And what fun defense counsel would have had with DOJ’s delegation of that rudimentary investigative task to a DNC contractor with close ties to the Clinton campaign. (Yes, the forensic conclusions blaming Russia were paid for by the same folks who brought you the famously dodgy Steele dossier.)Speaking of dodgy, recall that Team Mueller and the Justice Department dodged every case that would have called for proving Russia’s cyber theft. Even when they indicted WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, the very Ground Zero of “collusion,” they resisted charging him with the Russian hacking scheme. Given that prosecutors and the FBI spent years investigating the president of the United States for this crime of the century, it should seem astonishing that they passed on charging the guy they’ve told us is the central conspirator with this crime. But you weren’t astonished if you were reading National Review . . . because you knew they were not going to charge any crime that called for proving Russia’s culpability in court. Their evidence is shaky and, if there were ever an acquittal, the Trump-Russia political narrative would be kaput, while the Putin regime celebrated a huge propaganda coup.So why did Team Mueller publicly file an indictment against Russians?Because they figured it was a freebie. The prosecutors assumed that they would never have to . . . you know . . . prove the case. The Russian defendants were in Russia. There was no way Putin would ever extradite them for an American criminal trial. The prosecutors knew that. What they wrote was not meant to be a real indictment. It was meant to be a press release. It was meant to be what Team Mueller was best at: the spinning of a narrative. I explained it this way at the time:> When prosecutors are serious about nabbing law-breakers who are at large, they do not file an indictment publicly. That would just induce the offenders to flee to or remain in their safe havens. Instead, prosecutors file their indictment under seal, ask the court to issue arrest warrants, and quietly go about the business of locating and apprehending the defendants charged. In the Russia case, however, the indictment was filed publicly even though the defendants are at large. That is because the Justice Department and the special counsel know the Russians will stay safely in Russia. Mueller’s allegations will never be tested in court. That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument. To the extent there are questions about whether Russia truly meddled in the election, the special counsel wants to end that discussion.It all seemed so well choreographed. The indictment was, of course, reported as gospel-truth by the anti-Trump media -- the same folks who tell you, whenever a Democrat is charged with a crime, that an indictment is merely an allegation, that nothing is proven until it’s proven in court.Alas, Team Mueller made a mistake. A reckless bet, the kind made by people under the misimpression that they are playing with the house's money. To quote from my column nearly two years ago:> [Team Mueller] charged not only Russian individuals but three Russian businesses. A business doesn’t have the same risks as a person. A business can’t be thrown in jail. And while members of Mueller’s prosecutorial stable have a history of putting real businesses out of business, a business that is run by a Putin crony and serves as a front for Kremlin operations is not too worried about that either.Since they had no concerns about being imprisoned or bankrupted by prosecution and fines, there was nothing to discourage these businesses from doing what Team Mueller blithely assumed no Russian defendant would ever do: retaining lawyers to show up in federal court, demanding the trial to which American law entitled the companies, and demanding all the discovery to which American due process guaranteed them access.It was a debacle.First, the prosecutors tried to get the case and all pretrial discovery postponed on the ground that the businesses in question, Concord Management and Concord Consulting (each controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a food-supply oligarch said to be a Putin crony), had not been properly served with the indictment. This was absurd. Service of process is the way you get a business to come to court; these businesses were already in court, demanding to proceed with the prosecution that Team Mueller had chosen to start.The businesses then pressed the government to provide them with all the evidence and other discovery the law requires prosecutors to disclose. Team Mueller countered that they couldn’t do that because it would harm national security. That’s ridiculous. Imagine if I were prosecuting a mafia hitman and refused to make discovery, reasoning that the mafia might find out what’s in my files. The judge would hold me in contempt, or dismiss the case -- or both. As a prosecutor, if you’re worried that the security implications of disclosure are too great a risk, you don’t charge the case. But if you file charges, there is no getting around disclosure obligations.Being forced to make disclosure did not go well for Team Mueller and his Justice Department successors. As they had to concede, there was no evidence that the Russians who carried out the troll farm scheme were directed by the Russian government. Stopping short of such an allegation, the indictment claimed the defendants were backed by Prigozhin -- which was quite the comedown from the Justice Department’s drum-beating about Russia’s “information warfare.”Moreover, as the trial judge groused, the troll-farm indictment was “difficult to follow.” Team Mueller’s evidence was not even strong enough to allege that the defendants were actual Russian agents. Prosecutors thus crafted, shall we say, a creative theory: The defendants had “defrauded the United States” by failing to disclose their Russian identities and affiliations, which purportedly undermined the ability of U.S. bureaucracies to maintain a registry of foreign agents and enforce the campaign-finance laws. Except . . . it was unclear that the defendants had a legal duty to report information in the first place. How do you establish the criminality of concealment if there is no requirement to disclose?Finally, despite all the huffing and puffing about Russia’s purportedly massive effort to influence the election through social-media ads, the grudgingly surrendered discovery indicated that many of the ads violated no American laws and cost pennies. Assuming for argument’s sake that at least some of the candidate ads and rallies fell under Federal Election Commission reporting requirements, the defense contended that total expenditures for such activities amounted to less than $5,000.With the judge trying to push the case to trial this spring, the possibility of humiliation loomed. This past Monday, when no one was watching, the Justice Department finally -- inevitably -- pulled the plug. The cases against the companies were dropped. The sympathetic New York Times reported the prosecutors’ fig leaf: The defense was “weaponizing” the case “to gain access to delicate information.” It’s the kind of claim the Times would ridicule were the paper not so invested in the Trump-Russia narrative. In point of fact, the defendants were demanding the legal right to discovery that Mueller’s prosecutors automatically (if unwittingly) triggered when they decided to file an indictment.Not to say, “I told you so” (of course not!), this is exactly what these columns said would happen. From nearly two years ago:> The surest way to put an end to this unwelcome turn of events would be to dismiss the indictment — or at least drop the charges against the three businesses so Prigozhin and the Kremlin can’t use them to force Mueller’s hand [i.e., to compel discovery]. Of course, that would be very embarrassing. But as all prosecutors are taught from their first day on the job: Never indict a case unless you are prepared to try the case.There is no exception for “indictments” that are really meant to be political theater.

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[attredd]

More than an investigation, the Mueller probe was the wellspring of a political narrative. That becomes clearer as time goes by and more information ekes out . . . such as new confirmation that, months before Mueller was appointed in May 2017, it was already well understood in Justice Department circles that there was no case of criminal “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.Never was that made more obvious than by the Justice Department’s quiet announcement late Monday, under the five-alarm noise of the coronavirus scare, that it has dropped the special counsel’s indictment of Russian companies -- an outcome I predicted here at National Review nearly two years ago.A little refresher is in order.As detailed here many times, one of the biggest problems confronting those weaving the collusion tale was the inability to prove that Russia hacked the Democratic email accounts. As Ball of Collusion outlines, that’s not the only fundamental problem. There is also the fact that the Democratic emails, in which Hillary Clinton was not an active correspondent, did not actually hurt her campaign at all -- certainly not the way her own email scandal did (a scandal for which there was no way to blame Moscow). There is also the dearth of evidence that the Trump campaign was even aware of, much less complicit in, Kremlin intelligence operations. Still, very basically, it would be impossible to prove that Trump had conspired in Russia’s hacking unless prosecutors could first establish that Russia had done the hacking.Let me repeat something else I said several times: This is not to say that Russia is innocent. Again, I accept the intelligence agencies’ conclusion on this point (though a number of others, including some former U.S. intelligence officials, do not). But the point is that Mueller could never have proved it beyond a reasonable doubt under courtroom due-process standards. Any competent defense lawyer would have had a field day with the Obama Justice Department’s failure to have the FBI take possession and conduct its own forensic examination of the servers that were hacked. And what fun defense counsel would have had with DOJ’s delegation of that rudimentary investigative task to a DNC contractor with close ties to the Clinton campaign. (Yes, the forensic conclusions blaming Russia were paid for by the same folks who brought you the famously dodgy Steele dossier.)Speaking of dodgy, recall that Team Mueller and the Justice Department dodged every case that would have called for proving Russia’s cyber theft. Even when they indicted WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, the very Ground Zero of “collusion,” they resisted charging him with the Russian hacking scheme. Given that prosecutors and the FBI spent years investigating the president of the United States for this crime of the century, it should seem astonishing that they passed on charging the guy they’ve told us is the central conspirator with this crime. But you weren’t astonished if you were reading National Review . . . because you knew they were not going to charge any crime that called for proving Russia’s culpability in court. Their evidence is shaky and, if there were ever an acquittal, the Trump-Russia political narrative would be kaput, while the Putin regime celebrated a huge propaganda coup.So why did Team Mueller publicly file an indictment against Russians?Because they figured it was a freebie. The prosecutors assumed that they would never have to . . . you know . . . prove the case. The Russian defendants were in Russia. There was no way Putin would ever extradite them for an American criminal trial. The prosecutors knew that. What they wrote was not meant to be a real indictment. It was meant to be a press release. It was meant to be what Team Mueller was best at: the spinning of a narrative. I explained it this way at the time:> When prosecutors are serious about nabbing law-breakers who are at large, they do not file an indictment publicly. That would just induce the offenders to flee to or remain in their safe havens. Instead, prosecutors file their indictment under seal, ask the court to issue arrest warrants, and quietly go about the business of locating and apprehending the defendants charged. In the Russia case, however, the indictment was filed publicly even though the defendants are at large. That is because the Justice Department and the special counsel know the Russians will stay safely in Russia. Mueller’s allegations will never be tested in court. That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument. To the extent there are questions about whether Russia truly meddled in the election, the special counsel wants to end that discussion.It all seemed so well choreographed. The indictment was, of course, reported as gospel-truth by the anti-Trump media -- the same folks who tell you, whenever a Democrat is charged with a crime, that an indictment is merely an allegation, that nothing is proven until it’s proven in court.Alas, Team Mueller made a mistake. A reckless bet, the kind made by people under the misimpression that they are playing with the house's money. To quote from my column nearly two years ago:> [Team Mueller] charged not only Russian individuals but three Russian businesses. A business doesn’t have the same risks as a person. A business can’t be thrown in jail. And while members of Mueller’s prosecutorial stable have a history of putting real businesses out of business, a business that is run by a Putin crony and serves as a front for Kremlin operations is not too worried about that either.Since they had no concerns about being imprisoned or bankrupted by prosecution and fines, there was nothing to discourage these businesses from doing what Team Mueller blithely assumed no Russian defendant would ever do: retaining lawyers to show up in federal court, demanding the trial to which American law entitled the companies, and demanding all the discovery to which American due process guaranteed them access.It was a debacle.First, the prosecutors tried to get the case and all pretrial discovery postponed on the ground that the businesses in question, Concord Management and Concord Consulting (each controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a food-supply oligarch said to be a Putin crony), had not been properly served with the indictment. This was absurd. Service of process is the way you get a business to come to court; these businesses were already in court, demanding to proceed with the prosecution that Team Mueller had chosen to start.The businesses then pressed the government to provide them with all the evidence and other discovery the law requires prosecutors to disclose. Team Mueller countered that they couldn’t do that because it would harm national security. That’s ridiculous. Imagine if I were prosecuting a mafia hitman and refused to make discovery, reasoning that the mafia might find out what’s in my files. The judge would hold me in contempt, or dismiss the case -- or both. As a prosecutor, if you’re worried that the security implications of disclosure are too great a risk, you don’t charge the case. But if you file charges, there is no getting around disclosure obligations.Being forced to make disclosure did not go well for Team Mueller and his Justice Department successors. As they had to concede, there was no evidence that the Russians who carried out the troll farm scheme were directed by the Russian government. Stopping short of such an allegation, the indictment claimed the defendants were backed by Prigozhin -- which was quite the comedown from the Justice Department’s drum-beating about Russia’s “information warfare.”Moreover, as the trial judge groused, the troll-farm indictment was “difficult to follow.” Team Mueller’s evidence was not even strong enough to allege that the defendants were actual Russian agents. Prosecutors thus crafted, shall we say, a creative theory: The defendants had “defrauded the United States” by failing to disclose their Russian identities and affiliations, which purportedly undermined the ability of U.S. bureaucracies to maintain a registry of foreign agents and enforce the campaign-finance laws. Except . . . it was unclear that the defendants had a legal duty to report information in the first place. How do you establish the criminality of concealment if there is no requirement to disclose?Finally, despite all the huffing and puffing about Russia’s purportedly massive effort to influence the election through social-media ads, the grudgingly surrendered discovery indicated that many of the ads violated no American laws and cost pennies. Assuming for argument’s sake that at least some of the candidate ads and rallies fell under Federal Election Commission reporting requirements, the defense contended that total expenditures for such activities amounted to less than $5,000.With the judge trying to push the case to trial this spring, the possibility of humiliation loomed. This past Monday, when no one was watching, the Justice Department finally -- inevitably -- pulled the plug. The cases against the companies were dropped. The sympathetic New York Times reported the prosecutors’ fig leaf: The defense was “weaponizing” the case “to gain access to delicate information.” It’s the kind of claim the Times would ridicule were the paper not so invested in the Trump-Russia narrative. In point of fact, the defendants were demanding the legal right to discovery that Mueller’s prosecutors automatically (if unwittingly) triggered when they decided to file an indictment.Not to say, “I told you so” (of course not!), this is exactly what these columns said would happen. From nearly two years ago:> The surest way to put an end to this unwelcome turn of events would be to dismiss the indictment — or at least drop the charges against the three businesses so Prigozhin and the Kremlin can’t use them to force Mueller’s hand [i.e., to compel discovery]. Of course, that would be very embarrassing. But as all prosecutors are taught from their first day on the job: Never indict a case unless you are prepared to try the case.There is no exception for “indictments” that are really meant to be political theater.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2UgjGlo

[saadullah-faisal-world]

More than an investigation, the Mueller probe was the wellspring of a political narrative. That becomes clearer as time goes by and more information ekes out . . . such as new confirmation that, months before Mueller was appointed in May 2017, it was already well understood in Justice Department circles that there was no case of criminal “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.Never was that made more obvious than by the Justice Department’s quiet announcement late Monday, under the five-alarm noise of the coronavirus scare, that it has dropped the special counsel’s indictment of Russian companies -- an outcome I predicted here at National Review nearly two years ago.A little refresher is in order.As detailed here many times, one of the biggest problems confronting those weaving the collusion tale was the inability to prove that Russia hacked the Democratic email accounts. As Ball of Collusion outlines, that’s not the only fundamental problem. There is also the fact that the Democratic emails, in which Hillary Clinton was not an active correspondent, did not actually hurt her campaign at all -- certainly not the way her own email scandal did (a scandal for which there was no way to blame Moscow). There is also the dearth of evidence that the Trump campaign was even aware of, much less complicit in, Kremlin intelligence operations. Still, very basically, it would be impossible to prove that Trump had conspired in Russia’s hacking unless prosecutors could first establish that Russia had done the hacking.Let me repeat something else I said several times: This is not to say that Russia is innocent. Again, I accept the intelligence agencies’ conclusion on this point (though a number of others, including some former U.S. intelligence officials, do not). But the point is that Mueller could never have proved it beyond a reasonable doubt under courtroom due-process standards. Any competent defense lawyer would have had a field day with the Obama Justice Department’s failure to have the FBI take possession and conduct its own forensic examination of the servers that were hacked. And what fun defense counsel would have had with DOJ’s delegation of that rudimentary investigative task to a DNC contractor with close ties to the Clinton campaign. (Yes, the forensic conclusions blaming Russia were paid for by the same folks who brought you the famously dodgy Steele dossier.)Speaking of dodgy, recall that Team Mueller and the Justice Department dodged every case that would have called for proving Russia’s cyber theft. Even when they indicted WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, the very Ground Zero of “collusion,” they resisted charging him with the Russian hacking scheme. Given that prosecutors and the FBI spent years investigating the president of the United States for this crime of the century, it should seem astonishing that they passed on charging the guy they’ve told us is the central conspirator with this crime. But you weren’t astonished if you were reading National Review . . . because you knew they were not going to charge any crime that called for proving Russia’s culpability in court. Their evidence is shaky and, if there were ever an acquittal, the Trump-Russia political narrative would be kaput, while the Putin regime celebrated a huge propaganda coup.So why did Team Mueller publicly file an indictment against Russians?Because they figured it was a freebie. The prosecutors assumed that they would never have to . . . you know . . . prove the case. The Russian defendants were in Russia. There was no way Putin would ever extradite them for an American criminal trial. The prosecutors knew that. What they wrote was not meant to be a real indictment. It was meant to be a press release. It was meant to be what Team Mueller was best at: the spinning of a narrative. I explained it this way at the time:> When prosecutors are serious about nabbing law-breakers who are at large, they do not file an indictment publicly. That would just induce the offenders to flee to or remain in their safe havens. Instead, prosecutors file their indictment under seal, ask the court to issue arrest warrants, and quietly go about the business of locating and apprehending the defendants charged. In the Russia case, however, the indictment was filed publicly even though the defendants are at large. That is because the Justice Department and the special counsel know the Russians will stay safely in Russia. Mueller’s allegations will never be tested in court. That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument. To the extent there are questions about whether Russia truly meddled in the election, the special counsel wants to end that discussion.It all seemed so well choreographed. The indictment was, of course, reported as gospel-truth by the anti-Trump media -- the same folks who tell you, whenever a Democrat is charged with a crime, that an indictment is merely an allegation, that nothing is proven until it’s proven in court.Alas, Team Mueller made a mistake. A reckless bet, the kind made by people under the misimpression that they are playing with the house's money. To quote from my column nearly two years ago:> [Team Mueller] charged not only Russian individuals but three Russian businesses. A business doesn’t have the same risks as a person. A business can’t be thrown in jail. And while members of Mueller’s prosecutorial stable have a history of putting real businesses out of business, a business that is run by a Putin crony and serves as a front for Kremlin operations is not too worried about that either.Since they had no concerns about being imprisoned or bankrupted by prosecution and fines, there was nothing to discourage these businesses from doing what Team Mueller blithely assumed no Russian defendant would ever do: retaining lawyers to show up in federal court, demanding the trial to which American law entitled the companies, and demanding all the discovery to which American due process guaranteed them access.It was a debacle.First, the prosecutors tried to get the case and all pretrial discovery postponed on the ground that the businesses in question, Concord Management and Concord Consulting (each controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a food-supply oligarch said to be a Putin crony), had not been properly served with the indictment. This was absurd. Service of process is the way you get a business to come to court; these businesses were already in court, demanding to proceed with the prosecution that Team Mueller had chosen to start.The businesses then pressed the government to provide them with all the evidence and other discovery the law requires prosecutors to disclose. Team Mueller countered that they couldn’t do that because it would harm national security. That’s ridiculous. Imagine if I were prosecuting a mafia hitman and refused to make discovery, reasoning that the mafia might find out what’s in my files. The judge would hold me in contempt, or dismiss the case -- or both. As a prosecutor, if you’re worried that the security implications of disclosure are too great a risk, you don’t charge the case. But if you file charges, there is no getting around disclosure obligations.Being forced to make disclosure did not go well for Team Mueller and his Justice Department successors. As they had to concede, there was no evidence that the Russians who carried out the troll farm scheme were directed by the Russian government. Stopping short of such an allegation, the indictment claimed the defendants were backed by Prigozhin -- which was quite the comedown from the Justice Department’s drum-beating about Russia’s “information warfare.”Moreover, as the trial judge groused, the troll-farm indictment was “difficult to follow.” Team Mueller’s evidence was not even strong enough to allege that the defendants were actual Russian agents. Prosecutors thus crafted, shall we say, a creative theory: The defendants had “defrauded the United States” by failing to disclose their Russian identities and affiliations, which purportedly undermined the ability of U.S. bureaucracies to maintain a registry of foreign agents and enforce the campaign-finance laws. Except . . . it was unclear that the defendants had a legal duty to report information in the first place. How do you establish the criminality of concealment if there is no requirement to disclose?Finally, despite all the huffing and puffing about Russia’s purportedly massive effort to influence the election through social-media ads, the grudgingly surrendered discovery indicated that many of the ads violated no American laws and cost pennies. Assuming for argument’s sake that at least some of the candidate ads and rallies fell under Federal Election Commission reporting requirements, the defense contended that total expenditures for such activities amounted to less than $5,000.With the judge trying to push the case to trial this spring, the possibility of humiliation loomed. This past Monday, when no one was watching, the Justice Department finally -- inevitably -- pulled the plug. The cases against the companies were dropped. The sympathetic New York Times reported the prosecutors’ fig leaf: The defense was “weaponizing” the case “to gain access to delicate information.” It’s the kind of claim the Times would ridicule were the paper not so invested in the Trump-Russia narrative. In point of fact, the defendants were demanding the legal right to discovery that Mueller’s prosecutors automatically (if unwittingly) triggered when they decided to file an indictment.Not to say, “I told you so” (of course not!), this is exactly what these columns said would happen. From nearly two years ago:> The surest way to put an end to this unwelcome turn of events would be to dismiss the indictment — or at least drop the charges against the three businesses so Prigozhin and the Kremlin can’t use them to force Mueller’s hand [i.e., to compel discovery]. Of course, that would be very embarrassing. But as all prosecutors are taught from their first day on the job: Never indict a case unless you are prepared to try the case.There is no exception for “indictments” that are really meant to be political theater.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2UgjGlo

[global-news-station]

Republican political consultant Roger Stone requested a new trial Friday just days after President Donald Trump’s criticism of his proposed jail sentence sparked an uproar over political influence in the justice system.

Six days before he was to be sentenced, Stone filed a motion to the federal district court in Washington for a new trial on charges of lying to Congress and witness intimidation.

The motion was sealed so his arguments for a new trial were not clear.

But Stone’s supporters recently accused one of the jurors of having been prejudiced against Stone before the trial began.

Earlier this week Trump himself tweeted in support of his longtime political advisor.

“Now it looks like the foreperson in the jury, in the Roger Stone case, had significant bias. Add that to everything else, and this is not looking good for the ‘Justice’ Department,” Trump wrote.

The judge in the case, Amy Berman Jackson, told both sides to file their arguments on the motion on Tuesday.

– Convicted of lying to Congress –

Stone, part of Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign, was arrested in January 2019 on charges brought by then-special counsel Robert Mueller as part of the Russia investigation.

He was accused of lying in testimony to Congress about acting as an intermediary between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which released hacked documents that embarrassed rival Hillary Clinton during the White House race.

Stone was convicted on all seven counts in November, and was scheduled to be sentenced on February 20.

Stone’s supporters alleged on social media that the head of the jury, Tomeka Hart, had not been truthful about alleged anti-Republican biases when interviewed during jury selection.

“This juror should get the same treatment that anyone deemed a Trump supporter would get for committing perjury,” Trump’s son Donald Jr wrote Thursday on Twitter.

But the court transcript depicts Hart providing straightforward answers to questions about her political leanings and prior knowledge of the Mueller investigation.

It was not clear whether Stone’s lawyers were aware of her social media postings strongly critical of Trump, but she told them she could judge Stone’s case with an open mind.

Given a chance by the judge to strike Hart from the jury list, Stone’s defense team accepted her with no objection.

In a Facebook post this week Hart, who lives in Tennessee, defended her role.

“As foreperson, I made sure we went through every element, of every charge, matching the evidence presented in the case that led us to return a conviction of guilty on all 7 counts,” she wrote.

The post is no longer online but was confirmed with Hart by the Daily Memphian newspaper.

– Furor over Trump tweets –

Stone’s push for a new trial came after a week of turmoil that shook the Justice Department.

On Monday prosecutors recommended a stiff seven-to-nine-year prison term for Stone, saying he threatened a witness in the case and implicitly threatened the judge as well.

After Trump called the proposed sentence a “miscarriage of justice” in a late-night tweet and Attorney General Bill Barr intervened for a lighter sentence, the Justice Department attorneys who prosecuted the case resigned in apparent protest.

Barr called the sentence proposal “excessive” but denied allegations that he was doing Trump’s bidding and politicizing the justice system.

Barr said Stone’s case was a “righteous prosecution” and that he was “happy that he was convicted.”

But he also criticized Trump’s comments.

“I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me,” Barr said in an interview with ABC News.

“I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases.”

The post Facing stiff sentence, Trump advisor Stone seeks new trial appeared first on ARY NEWS.

https://ift.tt/38wqBg9

[reneeacaseyfl]

Businessman who testified in Mueller probe indicted on child pornography charges

Businessman George Nader was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport last month on a child pornography charge. Federal magistrates in New York and Alexandria, Va., denied motions for his release. | C-SPAN via AP

By JOSH GERSTEIN

07/19/2019 12:12 PM EDT

A wealthy Lebanese-American businessman and Middle East expert who was a witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation has been indicted on charges of importing child pornography and traveling with a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity.

George Nader, 60, made a brief appearance Friday morning in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to be arraigned on the new indictment, which was returned July 3 and unsealed Friday.

Nader was involved in various meetings and discussions related to the Trump presidential transition that drew the attention of Mueller investigators, including a meeting that Erik Prince, the founder of private military contractor Blackwater, held with a Russian ally of President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles in January 2017.

When Nader flew into Dulles Airport outside Washington in January 2018, he was questioned by agents working for Mueller. A search of three iPhones seized from him that day via a search warrant allegedly turned up child pornography.

Prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Nader over the images in April 2018 but kept the charges under seal and never told his attorneys about them even as he continued to cooperate with Mueller’s probe, lawyers said.

Nader was arrested on the criminal complaint early last month at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as he flew in from overseas. Magistrate judges in New York and Alexandria denied his requests for release.

Nader was wearing an Alexandria jail jumpsuit Friday for the five-minute hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema. She set a trial date of Sept. 30.

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A defense attorney for Nader, Jonathan Jeffress, urged Brinkema to reconsider the earlier orders to detain Nader pending trial.

“This is not a typical child pornography case,” Jeffress told Brinkema.

However, the judge said she wasn’t inclined to let Nader out.

“I think the decision to detain your client was appropriate,” Brinkema said, noting Nader’s extensive overseas connections, the type of conduct at issue and the potential for a lengthy prison sentence.

Brinkema did say she would look at a written motion the defense submitted seeking Nader’s release, but she told prosecutor Jay Prabhu not to bother filing a response unless she asks for it. She did say she expects motions challenging the charge relating to transporting a minor, which dates to 2000.

The defense’s bail submission stresses Nader’s cooperation with Mueller.

“He testified multiple times under a grant of formal immunity before a grand jury empaneled in the District of Columbia,” Nader’s lawyers said.

His attorneys said the videos that led to the charges are 12 recordings found in WhatsApp on one of Mr. Nader’s phones. Nader’s defense said he didn’t know they were there.

“Neither the volume of the images or the content aligns with a typical federal child pornography or obscenity prosecution,” the defense team wrote.

The defense contended that Nader can’t pose much danger because he was allowed to leave and enter the country numerous times after the videos were discovered.

Nader received a six-month sentence from a federal court in Northern Virginia in 1991 on a felony charge of transporting sexually explicit materials in foreign commerce, according to the newly released records and to prison records POLITICO obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

U.S. District Court Judge Claude Hilton also imposed a $2,000 fine on Nader, the records show.

Details of the Virginia case have not been previously reported, but it was known that Nader faced a similar charge in federal court in Washington in 1985 involving allegations of importing from the Netherlands magazines depicting nude boys. A judge later dismissed those charges.

The Associated Press reported that Nader was convicted in the Czech Republic in 2002 of 10 cases of sexually abusing minors. He received a one-year prison sentence in that case, a court spokeswoman said, according to The Associated Press.

This article tagged under:

Credit: Source link

The post Businessman who testified in Mueller probe indicted on child pornography charges appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/businessman-who-testified-in-mueller-probe-indicted-on-child-pornography-charges/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=businessman-who-testified-in-mueller-probe-indicted-on-child-pornography-charges from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186402592592

[velmaemyers88]

Businessman who testified in Mueller probe indicted on child pornography charges

Businessman George Nader was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport last month on a child pornography charge. Federal magistrates in New York and Alexandria, Va., denied motions for his release. | C-SPAN via AP

By JOSH GERSTEIN

07/19/2019 12:12 PM EDT

A wealthy Lebanese-American businessman and Middle East expert who was a witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation has been indicted on charges of importing child pornography and traveling with a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity.

George Nader, 60, made a brief appearance Friday morning in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to be arraigned on the new indictment, which was returned July 3 and unsealed Friday.

Nader was involved in various meetings and discussions related to the Trump presidential transition that drew the attention of Mueller investigators, including a meeting that Erik Prince, the founder of private military contractor Blackwater, held with a Russian ally of President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles in January 2017.

When Nader flew into Dulles Airport outside Washington in January 2018, he was questioned by agents working for Mueller. A search of three iPhones seized from him that day via a search warrant allegedly turned up child pornography.

Prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Nader over the images in April 2018 but kept the charges under seal and never told his attorneys about them even as he continued to cooperate with Mueller’s probe, lawyers said.

Nader was arrested on the criminal complaint early last month at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as he flew in from overseas. Magistrate judges in New York and Alexandria denied his requests for release.

Nader was wearing an Alexandria jail jumpsuit Friday for the five-minute hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema. She set a trial date of Sept. 30.

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A defense attorney for Nader, Jonathan Jeffress, urged Brinkema to reconsider the earlier orders to detain Nader pending trial.

“This is not a typical child pornography case,” Jeffress told Brinkema.

However, the judge said she wasn’t inclined to let Nader out.

“I think the decision to detain your client was appropriate,” Brinkema said, noting Nader’s extensive overseas connections, the type of conduct at issue and the potential for a lengthy prison sentence.

Brinkema did say she would look at a written motion the defense submitted seeking Nader’s release, but she told prosecutor Jay Prabhu not to bother filing a response unless she asks for it. She did say she expects motions challenging the charge relating to transporting a minor, which dates to 2000.

The defense’s bail submission stresses Nader’s cooperation with Mueller.

“He testified multiple times under a grant of formal immunity before a grand jury empaneled in the District of Columbia,” Nader’s lawyers said.

His attorneys said the videos that led to the charges are 12 recordings found in WhatsApp on one of Mr. Nader’s phones. Nader’s defense said he didn’t know they were there.

“Neither the volume of the images or the content aligns with a typical federal child pornography or obscenity prosecution,” the defense team wrote.

The defense contended that Nader can’t pose much danger because he was allowed to leave and enter the country numerous times after the videos were discovered.

Nader received a six-month sentence from a federal court in Northern Virginia in 1991 on a felony charge of transporting sexually explicit materials in foreign commerce, according to the newly released records and to prison records POLITICO obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

U.S. District Court Judge Claude Hilton also imposed a $2,000 fine on Nader, the records show.

Details of the Virginia case have not been previously reported, but it was known that Nader faced a similar charge in federal court in Washington in 1985 involving allegations of importing from the Netherlands magazines depicting nude boys. A judge later dismissed those charges.

The Associated Press reported that Nader was convicted in the Czech Republic in 2002 of 10 cases of sexually abusing minors. He received a one-year prison sentence in that case, a court spokeswoman said, according to The Associated Press.

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from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/businessman-who-testified-in-mueller-probe-indicted-on-child-pornography-charges/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=businessman-who-testified-in-mueller-probe-indicted-on-child-pornography-charges from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186402592592

[weeklyreviewer]

Businessman who testified in Mueller probe indicted on child pornography charges

Businessman George Nader was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport last month on a child pornography charge. Federal magistrates in New York and Alexandria, Va., denied motions for his release. | C-SPAN via AP

By JOSH GERSTEIN

07/19/2019 12:12 PM EDT

A wealthy Lebanese-American businessman and Middle East expert who was a witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation has been indicted on charges of importing child pornography and traveling with a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity.

George Nader, 60, made a brief appearance Friday morning in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to be arraigned on the new indictment, which was returned July 3 and unsealed Friday.

Nader was involved in various meetings and discussions related to the Trump presidential transition that drew the attention of Mueller investigators, including a meeting that Erik Prince, the founder of private military contractor Blackwater, held with a Russian ally of President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles in January 2017.

When Nader flew into Dulles Airport outside Washington in January 2018, he was questioned by agents working for Mueller. A search of three iPhones seized from him that day via a search warrant allegedly turned up child pornography.

Prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Nader over the images in April 2018 but kept the charges under seal and never told his attorneys about them even as he continued to cooperate with Mueller’s probe, lawyers said.

Nader was arrested on the criminal complaint early last month at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as he flew in from overseas. Magistrate judges in New York and Alexandria denied his requests for release.

Nader was wearing an Alexandria jail jumpsuit Friday for the five-minute hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema. She set a trial date of Sept. 30.

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A defense attorney for Nader, Jonathan Jeffress, urged Brinkema to reconsider the earlier orders to detain Nader pending trial.

“This is not a typical child pornography case,” Jeffress told Brinkema.

However, the judge said she wasn’t inclined to let Nader out.

“I think the decision to detain your client was appropriate,” Brinkema said, noting Nader’s extensive overseas connections, the type of conduct at issue and the potential for a lengthy prison sentence.

Brinkema did say she would look at a written motion the defense submitted seeking Nader’s release, but she told prosecutor Jay Prabhu not to bother filing a response unless she asks for it. She did say she expects motions challenging the charge relating to transporting a minor, which dates to 2000.

The defense’s bail submission stresses Nader’s cooperation with Mueller.

“He testified multiple times under a grant of formal immunity before a grand jury empaneled in the District of Columbia,” Nader’s lawyers said.

His attorneys said the videos that led to the charges are 12 recordings found in WhatsApp on one of Mr. Nader’s phones. Nader’s defense said he didn’t know they were there.

“Neither the volume of the images or the content aligns with a typical federal child pornography or obscenity prosecution,” the defense team wrote.

The defense contended that Nader can’t pose much danger because he was allowed to leave and enter the country numerous times after the videos were discovered.

Nader received a six-month sentence from a federal court in Northern Virginia in 1991 on a felony charge of transporting sexually explicit materials in foreign commerce, according to the newly released records and to prison records POLITICO obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

U.S. District Court Judge Claude Hilton also imposed a $2,000 fine on Nader, the records show.

Details of the Virginia case have not been previously reported, but it was known that Nader faced a similar charge in federal court in Washington in 1985 involving allegations of importing from the Netherlands magazines depicting nude boys. A judge later dismissed those charges.

The Associated Press reported that Nader was convicted in the Czech Republic in 2002 of 10 cases of sexually abusing minors. He received a one-year prison sentence in that case, a court spokeswoman said, according to The Associated Press.

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[courtneytincher]

George Nader, Witness in Mueller Probe, Hit With New Charges of Sex Trafficking

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photo GettyGeorge Nader, who was a key witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, has been hit with new federal charges of child pornography, sex trafficking, and obscenity, according to a person familiar with the case. The charges come on top of separate child-porn charges leveled by the same prosecutors last month. The new indictment is set to be unsealed Friday morning in the Eastern District of Virginia, according to the person.The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nader’s attorneys declined to comment. Nader is expected to enter a plea on the charges this morning. Nader, a 60-year-old Lebanese-American businessman with deep political and financial ties to the United Arab Emirates, was a key cooperator in Mueller’s probe of foreign influence in the 2016 election. Nader met several times with individuals associated with the Trump campaign throughout the election and into the early days of the administration. He spoke with officials and advisers on matters ranging from a pitch by a foreign firm for the campaign to use social-media manipulation to regime-change in Iran. (He met with Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign advisors about the plan, which included a proposal to use fake avatars to garner support for Trump, but Trump officials deny they ever considered it.)Revealed: What Erik Prince and Moscow’s Money Man Discussed in That Infamous Seychelles MeetingHe also helped broker a key meeting between Erik Prince, the former Blackwater CEO, and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds, in the Seychelles in January 2017. That meeting came under intense scrutiny by Mueller’s team and was described in its report as one of the ways the Russians tried to influence the incoming Trump administration.Federal prosecutors in Virginia argued last month in court that Nader should be held in jail before trial, based in part on his prior criminal history. That history includes a 2003 conviction in the Czech Republic on charges of abusing minors, including a charge of transporting of a minor boy to the U.S. for sexual purposes. Federal prosecutors said Nader has had “hands-on contact with more than a dozen minor boys.” Nader’s lawyers called the U.S. government’s argument weak because he was later acquitted of the Czech sex-trafficking charge. George Nader’s Phones Had Child Porn—and Communications With a Crown Prince, Feds SayNader is also charged with transporting child pornography—a charge he’s faced in the past. In 1984, Nader was indicted for possessing child pornography in D.C. The charge was later dismissed after his attorneys argued that the material was found through an illegal search conducted on Nader’s possessions at Dulles International Airport. In 1990, again at Dulles, law enforcement caught Nader with films featuring minor boys. Nader pleaded guilty the following year.Nader most recently faced allegations of possessing and transporting child pornography in 2018. Authorities stopped him at Dulles in January of that year and questioned him about his time working with the Trump team. Soon after, Nader began cooperating with Mueller, and in the spring of 2018 he departed for Dubai, where he lived until he attempted to re-enter the U.S. last month. When stopped at Dulles, the FBI executed a search warrant on Nader’s electronic devices, including three iPhones. After analyzing the phones, the FBI found 12 videos that appeared “to be visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” according to a criminal complaint filed in 2018 that remained under seal until last month.Nader is also charged with violating federal obscenity law.On June 3, he was arrested at JFK International Airport in New York and transferred to a Virginia jail, where he remains locked up.Last month, prosecutors told a court that FBI agents found dozens of child-porn videos on one of Nader’s phones, with some depicting children as young as 3 years old. The FBI witness for the government said several of those videos were transmitted from Nader’s phone to other individuals. Prosecutors said authorities also found communications between Nader and UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, also known as MBZ.  Nader’s attorneys said he returned to the U.S. for an urgent doctor’s appointment after undergoing major heart surgery in the UAE weeks earlier.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photo GettyGeorge Nader, who was a key witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, has been hit with new federal charges of child pornography, sex trafficking, and obscenity, according to a person familiar with the case. The charges come on top of separate child-porn charges leveled by the same prosecutors last month. The new indictment is set to be unsealed Friday morning in the Eastern District of Virginia, according to the person.The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nader’s attorneys declined to comment. Nader is expected to enter a plea on the charges this morning. Nader, a 60-year-old Lebanese-American businessman with deep political and financial ties to the United Arab Emirates, was a key cooperator in Mueller’s probe of foreign influence in the 2016 election. Nader met several times with individuals associated with the Trump campaign throughout the election and into the early days of the administration. He spoke with officials and advisers on matters ranging from a pitch by a foreign firm for the campaign to use social-media manipulation to regime-change in Iran. (He met with Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign advisors about the plan, which included a proposal to use fake avatars to garner support for Trump, but Trump officials deny they ever considered it.)Revealed: What Erik Prince and Moscow’s Money Man Discussed in That Infamous Seychelles MeetingHe also helped broker a key meeting between Erik Prince, the former Blackwater CEO, and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds, in the Seychelles in January 2017. That meeting came under intense scrutiny by Mueller’s team and was described in its report as one of the ways the Russians tried to influence the incoming Trump administration.Federal prosecutors in Virginia argued last month in court that Nader should be held in jail before trial, based in part on his prior criminal history. That history includes a 2003 conviction in the Czech Republic on charges of abusing minors, including a charge of transporting of a minor boy to the U.S. for sexual purposes. Federal prosecutors said Nader has had “hands-on contact with more than a dozen minor boys.” Nader’s lawyers called the U.S. government’s argument weak because he was later acquitted of the Czech sex-trafficking charge. George Nader’s Phones Had Child Porn—and Communications With a Crown Prince, Feds SayNader is also charged with transporting child pornography—a charge he’s faced in the past. In 1984, Nader was indicted for possessing child pornography in D.C. The charge was later dismissed after his attorneys argued that the material was found through an illegal search conducted on Nader’s possessions at Dulles International Airport. In 1990, again at Dulles, law enforcement caught Nader with films featuring minor boys. Nader pleaded guilty the following year.Nader most recently faced allegations of possessing and transporting child pornography in 2018. Authorities stopped him at Dulles in January of that year and questioned him about his time working with the Trump team. Soon after, Nader began cooperating with Mueller, and in the spring of 2018 he departed for Dubai, where he lived until he attempted to re-enter the U.S. last month. When stopped at Dulles, the FBI executed a search warrant on Nader’s electronic devices, including three iPhones. After analyzing the phones, the FBI found 12 videos that appeared “to be visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct,” according to a criminal complaint filed in 2018 that remained under seal until last month.Nader is also charged with violating federal obscenity law.On June 3, he was arrested at JFK International Airport in New York and transferred to a Virginia jail, where he remains locked up.Last month, prosecutors told a court that FBI agents found dozens of child-porn videos on one of Nader’s phones, with some depicting children as young as 3 years old. The FBI witness for the government said several of those videos were transmitted from Nader’s phone to other individuals. Prosecutors said authorities also found communications between Nader and UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, also known as MBZ.  Nader’s attorneys said he returned to the U.S. for an urgent doctor’s appointment after undergoing major heart surgery in the UAE weeks earlier.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[marilynngmesalo]

Mueller memo: Paul Manafort ‘brazenly violated the law’ for years

Mueller memo: Paul Manafort ‘brazenly violated the law’ for years Mueller memo: Paul Manafort ‘brazenly violated the law’ for years https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

WASHINGTON — Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort committed crimes that cut to “the heart of the criminal justice system” and over the years deceived everyone from bookkeepers and banks to federal prosecutors and his own lawyers, according to a sentencing memo filed Saturday by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office.

In the memo, submitted in one of two criminal cases Manafort faces, prosecutors do not yet take a position on how much prison time he should serve or whether to stack the punishment on top of a separate sentence he will soon receive in a Virginia prosecution. But they do depict Manafort as a longtime and unrepentant criminal who committed “bold” crimes, including under the spotlight of his role as campaign chairman and later while on bail, and who does not deserve any leniency.

“For over a decade, Manafort repeatedly and brazenly violated the law,” prosecutors wrote. “His crimes continued up through the time he was first indicted in October 2017 and remarkably went unabated even after indictment.”

Citing Manafort’s lies to the FBI, several government agencies and his own lawyer, prosecutors said that “upon release from jail, Manafort presents a grave risk of recidivism.”

The 25-page memo, filed in federal court in Washington, is likely the last major filing by prosecutors as Manafort heads into his sentencing hearings next month and as Mueller’s investigation approaches a conclusion. Manafort, who has been jailed for months and turns 70 in April, will have a chance to file his own sentencing recommendation next week. He and his longtime business partner, Rick Gates, were the first two people indicted in the special counsel’s investigation. Overall, Mueller has produced charges against 34 individuals, including six former Trump aides, and three companies.

Manafort’s case has played out in stark contrast to those of other defendants in the Russia investigation, such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who prosecutors praised for his co-operation and left open the possibility of no jail time.

Manafort pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy arising from his Ukrainian political consulting work and his efforts to tamper with witnesses. As part of that plea, he agreed to co-operate with Mueller’s team, a move that could have helped him avoid a longer prison sentence. But within weeks, prosecutors say he repeatedly lied to investigators, including about his interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, a business associate who the U.S. says has ties to Russian intelligence. That deception voided the plea deal.

The sentencing memo comes as Manafort, who led Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for several critical months, is already facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison in a separate tax and bank fraud case in Virginia. Mueller’s team endorsed a sentence of between 19.5 and 24.5 years in prison in that case.

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Prosecutors note that the federal guidelines recommend a sentence of more than 17 years, but Manafort pleaded guilty last year to two felony counts that carry maximum sentences of five years each.

Prosecutors originally filed a sealed sentencing memo on Friday, but the document was made public on Saturday with certain information still redacted, or blacked out.

In recent weeks, court papers have revealed that Manafort shared polling data related to the Trump campaign with Kilimnik. A Mueller prosecutor also said earlier this month that an August 2016 meeting between Manafort and Kilimnik goes to the “heart” of the Russia probe. The meeting involved a discussion of a Ukrainian peace plan, but prosecutors haven’t said exactly what has captured their attention and whether it factors into the Kremlin’s attempts to help Trump in the 2016 election.

Like other Americans close to the president charged in the Mueller probe, Manafort hasn’t been accused of involvement in Russian election interference.

Reports: NYC prosecutors preparing case against Paul Manafort

Judge finds Paul Manafort lied to investigators in Russia probe

Manafort gave 2016 polling data to Russian associate: Filing

Click for update news Bangla news https://ift.tt/2SVn3QR world news

[bountyofbeads]

Russian lawyer at Trump Tower meeting charged in separate case

https://wapo.st/2Ff2VSr

TrumpTowerTreason #MuellerTime #TrumpRussia #RussiaGate #TrumpRussiaCollusion #ImpeachTrump #TrumpLeaks #TrumpsALiar

Russian lawyer at Trump Tower meeting charged in separate case

By Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky | January 08 at 2:29 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 9, 2019 |

A Russian lawyer whose role in a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower has come under scrutiny from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III was charged Tuesday with obstructing justice in a separate money-laundering investigation.

Natalia Veselnitskaya became a central figure in Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election when it was revealed that, in June of that year, she met with Donald Trump Jr. and other senior Trump campaign advisers after an intermediary indicated she had damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

The indictment unsealed Tuesday relates to a different legal fight involving the Russian and U.S. governments, and charges Veselnitskaya made a “misleading declaration” to the court in 2015, as part of a civil case arising from an investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan into suspected Russian money laundering and tax fraud.

Her work on that case attracted little attention at the time, but her role in the Trump Tower meeting made her the subject of intense investigative interest in the United States, as Mueller’s team has sought to determine whether that meeting was part of any broader conspiracy by Trump associates to seek the Kremlin’s help in defeating Clinton.

While Veselnitskaya has long proclaimed she is innocent and not a representative of the Russian government, the indictment argues she has worked closely with senior Russian officials for years.

Veselnitskaya did not respond to a request for comment. She is not in custody and is unlikely to be brought to a U.S. courtroom to face the charge, because Russia does not extradite its citizens to foreign countries.

The charges against her were filed under seal last year. They stem from a long-running feud between the Russian government and Bill Browder, an American-born businessman who ran Hermitage Capital Management and was once one of Russia’s biggest foreign investors until he had a falling-out with the country’s leaders in 2005.

According to U.S. authorities, lawyers whom Browder hired discovered a criminal scheme in which sham lawsuits were filed against Hermitage-affiliated companies. In the lawsuits, members of a criminal organization posed as both plaintiffs and defendants in the cases, admitting wrongdoing so they could win lucrative judgments that could then be declared as losses in order to collect large Russian tax refunds, U.S. authorities concluded.

The lawyers Browder hired included Russian attorney Sergei Magnitsky, who played a key role in uncovering the alleged fraud and finding evidence that Russian government officials were complicit, U.S. prosecutors say.

Magnitsky was arrested in Russia and died in custody in 2009. On the day he died, U.S. prosecutors said, he was beaten by guards with a rubber baton, and an ambulance crew called to treat him was deliberately kept outside his cell until he was dead.

The incident sparked the United States to pass the Magnitsky Act, which allowed the U.S. government to sanction Russian officials found to have committed human rights violations there. The Russian government has spent years trying to end those sanctions and have Browder arrested.

On Tuesday, Browder called Veselnitskaya’s indictment “the definition of karma,” adding: “When all is said and done, all the truth will come out.”

In 2014, U.S. authorities were investigating whether Prevezon Holdings, a Cyprus-based real estate corporation, orchestrated the lawsuit and tax scheme that targeted Browder’s companies.

Veselnitskaya represented Prevezon Holdings in that civil case, which led the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan to seek millions of dollars in forfeiture from the company and others connected to the tax-refund scheme.

As U.S. officials in New York pursued the financial investigation, they asked Russian prosecutors for assistance. In response, Russian prosecutors provided what they called “the results of the investigation carried out in its territory” and accused Browder of fraud, according to the new indictment. But they refused to provide the requested records.

In November 2015, Veselnitskaya submitted a declaration to the judge overseeing the Prevezon case, asserting that she had gone to great lengths to acquire the Russian government’s response to the U.S. records request. In 2017, the U.S. attorney’s office settled its civil case against Prevezon for more than $5.8 million.

According to the indictment, Veselnitskaya’s 2015 filing to the court in the Prevezon case amounted to obstruction of justice because she “made to the court a false and misleading declaration implying that she had not participated in the drafting” of the Russian government’s response to the U.S. request for records.

The indictment charges that, contrary to those claims, U.S. investigators obtained emails between Veselnitskaya and a Russian prosecutor in which, together, they worked on the language of the Russian government’s response.

The thrust of the charge is that Veselnitskaya stymied prosecutors’ investigation by working with the Russian government to prevent the United States from acquiring documents that could have aided their investigation, while claiming to the court that she was not acting in concert with Russian prosecutors.

A lawyer at BakerHostetler, which represented Prevezon at the time of the November 2015 filing, declined to comment.

Veselnitskaya, who has deep experience in Russian political and legal matters, had been brought on by Prevezon to fight the lawsuit, though she also lobbied more broadly against the political outgrowths of the allegations against the company. When she met with Trump Jr. and others, she talked about her opposition to the Magnitsky Act.

Veselnitskaya has in the past sought to dispute her characterization as a “government attorney,” noting that she worked only in the prosecutor’s office of the province that surrounds but does not include Moscow. “A regional prosecutor is not the Kremlin,” she said previously.

The indictment unsealed Tuesday also underscores how some of the key characters in the Russian government’s fight with Browder reappeared in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Lawyers for Prevezon hired a research firm, Fusion GPS, to collect information about Browder. Separately, Fusion was hired by a Republican donor and then a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign to explore any ties between Donald Trump and Russia. That work produced a dossier of unverified allegations against the president that played a key role in the early days of the FBI’s investigation of Trump.

A lawyer for Fusion declined to comment.

Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.

[mikemortgage]

AP FACT CHECK: Prosecutors’ filings do not exonerate Trump

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is in denial when it comes to the Russia investigation and other scandals besieging him.

The president insists he’s been fully vindicated by court filings released Friday that lay out the level of co-operation from two of his former top advisers, whom prosecutors have accused of lying to federal investigators or Congress. In fact, Trump’s Justice Department puts him in even greater legal jeopardy by directly implicating him in an illegal scheme involving hush money payments to a porn actress and a former Playboy model.

In comments over the weekend, Trump cites the filings in the cases involving his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort, as proof that no collusion had been found in the special counsel’s investigation. That’s also not true. That probe into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election is still ongoing, so the filings do not yet render a judgment on collusion.

The statements capped a week in which Trump also claimed without evidence that Paris protesters were chanting support for him, made questionable assertions about China trade and tariffs and derided U.S. weapons spending as crazy, despite earlier boasts about increasing the military budget.

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez skimmed over the facts when she suggested the Pentagon has a hidden pot of $21 trillion that could help pay for “Medicare for All.”

A look at the claims and the reality:

COHEN

TRUMP: “Totally clears the President. Thank you!” — tweet Friday.

THE FACTS: The court filings Friday are the first time that federal prosecutors directly connect Trump to a crime.

The violations stemmed from payments Cohen made to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal during the 2016 presidential campaign. Both women alleged they had extramarital affairs with Trump, which the White House denies.

Prosecutors in New York, where Cohen pleaded guilty in August to campaign finance crimes in connection with those payments, said the lawyer “acted in co-ordination and at the direction” of Trump. Though Cohen had previously implicated Trump in the payments, the Justice Department is now linking Trump to the scheme and backing up Cohen’s allegations.

It’s unclear whether Trump will actually be charged with illegal activity, because Justice Department legal memos from 1973 and 2000 have suggested that a sitting president is immune from indictment and that criminal charges would undermine the commander in chief’s ability to do the job. But it is possible Congress could use prosecutors’ findings to start impeachment proceedings. There also would presumably be no bar against charging a president after he leaves the White House.

Federal law requires that any payments made “for the purposes of influencing” an election must be reported in campaign finance disclosures. Friday’s filings make clear the payments were made to benefit Trump politically.

——

RUSSIA INVESTIGATION

TRUMP: “On the Mueller situation, we’re very happy with what we are reading because there was no collusion whatsoever. There never has been.” — remarks to reporters Saturday.

TRUMP: “NO COLLUSION!” — tweet Saturday.

THE FACTS: Trump’s incorrect to suggest the filings clear him of collusion. Part of an ongoing investigation, they do not yet draw a conclusion and instead lay out evidence of previously undisclosed contacts between Trump associates and Russian intermediaries.

In one of the filings, special counsel Robert Mueller details how Cohen spoke to a Russian in 2015 who “claimed to be a ‘trusted person’ in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level.”‘ The person repeatedly dangled a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying such a meeting could have a “phenomenal” impact “in a business dimension as well.”

That was a reference to a proposed Moscow real estate deal that prosecutors say could have netted Trump’s business hundreds of millions of dollars and would likely require assistance of the Russian government. Cohen admitted this month to lying to Congress by saying discussions about a Trump Tower in Moscow ended in January 2016 when in fact they stretched into that June, well into the presidential campaign.

Cohen said he never followed up on the proposed meeting, because he was working with a “different individual” with connections to the Russian government.

Cohen also told prosecutors he and Trump discussed a potential meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September 2015, shortly after Trump announced his candidacy for president.

In another filing Friday, prosecutors said Manafort lied about his contacts with Russia and Trump administration officials, including in 2018. Mueller’s team cited Manafort’s interactions with Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate who prosecutors say has ties to Russian intelligence. Mueller’s team said they would be able to offer additional information at a hearing, such as the nature of Manafort’s contacts with the Trump administration in 2018, to prove Manafort was lying.

Trump’s attorneys last month turned over the president’s written answers to Mueller’s questions about his knowledge of any ties between his campaign and Russia. Mueller hasn’t said when he will complete any report of his findings.

——

TRUMP: “The last thing I want is help from Russia on a campaign.” — remarks Saturday.

THE FACTS: Actually, Trump did request Russia’s help during the 2016 campaign.

In a July 27, 2016, speech, then-candidate Trump called on Russian hackers to find emails from Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the presidential campaign.

“Russia, if you’re listening,” Trump said, “I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”

Hours later, the Main Intelligence Directorate in Moscow appeared to heed the call — targeting Clinton’s personal office and hitting more than 70 other Clinton campaign accounts. That’s according to a grand jury indictment in July charging 12 Russian military intelligence officers with hacking into the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party as part of a sweeping conspiracy by the Kremlin to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election.

That indictment by Mueller says July 27 was the first time Clinton’s personal office was targeted.

The attempt to penetrate Clinton’s campaign began March 10, 2016, and hit a significant success on March 19 when the Russian intelligence officers busted open the email account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, an AP investigation last year found.

They “phished” intensively and repetitively. Throughout at least March and April there were repeated efforts to break into about 120 Democratic National Committee, Clinton and left-leaning activists’ accounts across the country.

Then they brought Clinton’s personal office into their scope, the indictment says — the very evening Trump appeared to beckon Russians to do just that.

——

PARIS

TRUMP: “The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France. People do not want to pay large sums of money, much to third world countries (that are questionably run), in order to maybe protect the environment. Chanting ‘We Want Trump! Love France.” — tweet Saturday.

THE FACTS: Neither Associated Press journalists covering protests in the city nor any French television networks have shown evidence that supporters were chanting any slogans in support of Trump. The protests that began as a revolt against a gas tax increase have turned increasingly violent and France imposed exceptional security measures Saturday to prevent a repeat of rioting a week ago.

——

JERUSALEM

TRUMP: “We quickly moved the American embassy to Jerusalem and we got it built.”– remarks Thursday at Hanukkah event.

THE FACTS: Nothing’s been built yet. The Trump administration designated an existing U.S. consular facility in Jerusalem for the U.S. Embassy, retrofitting some offices and holding a big dedication ceremony in May. The U.S. has yet to identify a permanent site for the new embassy, a process that is expected to take years. The State Department has estimated that constructing a new embassy would cost more than $500 million.

——

TARIFFS

TRUMP: “China has agreed to reduce and remove tariffs on cars coming into China from the U.S. Currently the tariff is 40%.” — tweet on Dec. 2.

THE FACTS: A week later, it’s still not clear if this will happen. When asked about the matter, Kudlow would only say that he hoped China would remove its tariffs on U.S. autos. “We don’t yet have a specific agreement on that, but I will just tell you, as an involved participant, we expect those tariffs to go to zero,” he told reporters last Monday. Pressed again Tuesday, Kudlow told “Fox and Friends” that he expected China to move quickly on removing the tariffs “if they’re serious about this.”

“I think it’s coming, OK?” he said. “It hasn’t been signed and sealed and delivered yet.”

The White House’s confusing and conflicting words have left Wall Street skeptical.

“It doesn’t seem like anything was actually agreed to at the dinner and White House officials are contorting themselves into pretzels to reconcile Trump’s tweets (which seem if not completely fabricated then grossly exaggerated) with reality,” JPMorgan told investors in a trading note.

On Thursday, a Chinese official said that China will “immediately implement the consensus reached by the two sides on farm products, cars and energy,” but did not address the auto tariffs specifically or provide any additional details.

Trump has cast doubt on whether a firm agreement had been reached, tweeting that his administration will determine “whether or not a REAL deal with China is actually possible.”

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TRUMP: “I am a Tariff Man. When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. It will always be the best way to max out our economic power. We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs. MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN.” — tweet Tuesday.

THE FACTS: Trump seems to be claiming that tariffs are some kind of a membership fee for foreign companies to trade in the U.S. economy.

They’re not. Tariffs are a tax, per Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

The costs of this tax are borne by U.S. consumers and businesses, often in the form of higher prices. Foreign companies may end up selling fewer goods and services if the United States imposes high tariffs. So they pay a price, too.

In some cases, the tariffs exist to protect industries that are vital for national security. Or, the tariffs exist to retaliate against the trade practices of other countries. Or, they might protect politically connected companies.

In the past, White House aides have insisted that Trump’s tariffs are a negotiating ploy. Yet the president offered no such qualifications on Tuesday.

Tariffs are not seen as some easy way of generating massive wealth for an economically developed nation. After Trump announced steel and aluminum tariffs earlier this year, the University of Chicago asked leading academic economists in March whether Americans would be better off because of import taxes. Not a single economist surveyed said the country would be wealthier.

Nor do the budget numbers suggest they can come anywhere close to covering the costs of the federal government.

Trump is correct that tariffs did generate $41.3 billion in tax revenues last budget year, according to the Treasury Department. But to put that in perspective, the federal budget exceeds $4.1 trillion.

The taxes collected on imports were equal to about 1 per cent of all federal spending.

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MEDICARE

OCASIO-CORTEZ: “$21 TRILLION of Pentagon financial transactions ‘could not be traced, documented, or explained.’ $21T in Pentagon accounting errors. Medicare for All costs (tilde)$32T. That means 66% of Medicare for All could have been funded already by the Pentagon. And that’s before our premiums.” — tweet Dec. 2.

THE FACTS: Ocasio-Cortez is generally correct to suggest that one way of paying for the huge cost of “Medicare for All” would be to cut spending elsewhere. But she is wrong to suggest that there’s a pot of misspent defence dollars that could cover the health care expenses. The New York Democrat also misrepresents the findings of an academic study that found the $21 trillion in Pentagon errors to be accounting “adjustments,” not a tally of actual money wasted.

The study by Mark Skidmore, an economist at Michigan State University and Catherine Austin Fitts, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, did find $21 trillion in Pentagon transactions from 1998 to 2015 that could not be verified. Their study is a cited in a Nation article retweeted in part by Ocasio-Cortez, even though that article makes clear that not “all of this $21 trillion was secret or misused funding … the plugs are found on both the positive and the negative sides of the ledger, thus potentially netting each other out.”

Total defence spending from 1998 to 2015 was $9 trillion. That means defunding the military entirely would only cover a small portion of the estimated $32 trillion cost over 10 years for the “Medicare for All” legislation by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. Ocasio-Cortez wrongly suggests that fixing Pentagon accounting errors would net 66 per cent of costs.

“What she was referencing was the total number of transactions that happened with DoD — there’s a lot of double and triple counting as money gets moved around in the department,” said Todd Harrison, director of defence budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “All of that basically means is that those transactions don’t have a full trail,” akin to an employee who submits an expense report without providing all the receipts.

“Just because you don’t have the proper audit trail for transactions doesn’t mean that those transactions are fraudulent,” Harrison said.

David Norquist, the Pentagon’s comptroller, has attributed the accounting errors to the department’s older bookkeeping “systems that do not automatically pass data from one to the other.” He said in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee in January that the errors do not amount to a pot of lost money. “I wouldn’t want the taxpayer to confuse that with the loss of something like a trillion dollars, it’s not. That wouldn’t be accurate,” Norquist said.

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MILITARY SPENDING

TRUMP: “I am certain that, at some time in the future, President Xi and I, together with President Putin of Russia, will start talking about a meaningful halt to what has become a major and uncontrollable Arms Race. The U.S. spent 716 Billion Dollars this year. Crazy!” — tweet Dec. 3.

THE FACTS: His criticism of U.S. weapons spending as “crazy” vastly overstates the amount spent on the arms race. It also is a sudden change of tone from his previous boasts about increased military spending.

Trump’s statement appeared to confuse the total Defence Department budget with America’s investment in the missile defence systems and strategic nuclear weapons usually associated with the arms race. The Pentagon’s budget for 2019 totals about $716 billion, but that includes everything from health care and pay for service members to the costs of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The arms race is just a fraction of that amount, totalling about $10 billion this year for a wide range of missile defence and nuclear weapons programs.

Until recently, Trump has bragged about his increase in military spending, railing about what he claims is previous administrations’ neglect of America’s armed forces. He said his administration is “rebuilding our military.” He has occasionally complained about specific programs such as Air Force One and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, but his criticism was levelled at the defence contractors and focused on demanding savings.

He has been far more supportive of the broader defence increases, and specifically has endorsed hikes for missile defence in line with a U.S. defence strategy that targets China and Russia as key adversaries.

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IMMIGRATION

TRUMP: “Could somebody please explain to the Democrats (we need their votes) that our Country losses (sic) 250 Billion Dollars a year on illegal immigration, not including the terrible drug flow. Top Border Security, including a Wall, is $25 Billion. Pays for itself in two months. Get it done!” — tweet Tuesday.

THE FACTS: He’s inflating the cost of illegal immigration. Trump’s numbers left even those sympathetic to the president’s position scratching their heads.

“I’m not sure where the president got his numbers,” said Dave Ray, a spokesman for the non-profit group FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which advocates for lower immigration numbers.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to questions about where the $250 billion estimate had come from.

The Heritage Foundation, for instance, estimated in 2013 that households headed by immigrants living in the U.S. illegally impose a net fiscal burden of around $54.5 billion per year.

Even Trump himself has contradicted the figure. During his 2016 campaign, Trump claimed that illegal immigration cost the country more than $113 billion a year — less than half the number he tweeted Tuesday.

That estimate appeared based on a paper by FAIR, which released an updated report in 2017 that claimed taxpayers “shell out approximately $134.9 billion to cover the costs incurred by the presence of more than 12.5 million illegal aliens, and about 4.2 million citizen children of illegal aliens” at the federal, state and local levels, with “a tax burden of approximately $8,075 per illegal alien family member and a total of $115,894,597,664.”

The $116 million figure included services such as health care and education, as well as spending on agencies including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, minus the $19 billon the group concluded those who are living in the country illegally pay in taxes. But it also included costs associated with the children of those immigrants in its tally, even when they are U.S. citizens. The estimate was criticized for making broad generalizations and other major methodological flaws.

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Associated Press writers Chad Day, Christopher Rugaber, Josh Boak, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Jill Colvin and Lolita Baldor in Washington and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures

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