Mueller report, part 1: Russia

The Mueller report is divided into two parts.   Part 1 has to do with Russian interference in our 2016 election and begins with this:  The Russian government "interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion."

Part 2 of the Mueller report has to do with obstruction of the investigation and related other acts of obstruction of justice.    This blog today will focus on part 1 and will rely heavily on an article in the Wall Street Journal by Dustin Volz and Alan Cullison.   Paragraphs beginning with quotation marks are direct quotes from their article

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"Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report is unambiguously clear on this point: Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and sought to help Donald Trump win the White House.

"That has been the unanimous view of the intelligence community for nearly 2½ years. But it is laid out in unprecedented detail across nearly 200 pages of the special counsel’s report, which also describes Russian efforts to forge ties with members of Trump’s campaign to further the Kremlin’s interference goals.

The report from Mr. Mueller will likely serve as the definitive document about Russia’s use of an array of digital weapons to influence the American electorate in 2016. It will also bolster warnings from senior U.S. intelligence officials that Russia and other hostile foreign powers remain intent on disrupting future elections, including the 2020 presidential contest."

[The report then contains some historical context, clarifying that Russia's attempts to interfere in US democracy go as far back as 2014 at a time when US-Russia relations took "an abrupt turn for the worse" after Russia's seizure of Crimea.  The point is that Russia's attempt to destabilize our democracy predated Donald Trump's plan to run for president.   But, when he came along, the Russians apparently saw him as useful and began to make overtures to him and his associates.    Now back to the WSJ article:]

"The report explains how Russia’s yearslong hacking and social-media operations coincided with a series of contacts between the Kremlin and Trump campaign officials and associates, including Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son. Those interactions included discussions about possible business deals, policy goals and getting dirt on Hillary Clinton. The latter transpired during a well-known meeting in Trump Tower in New York. Investigators didn’t establish that a conspiracy existed between the two sides to work together to interfere in the election.

"The Russians also succeeded in getting a number of officials closely associated with the Trump campaign to promote the Russian government’s messages. Those officials included the younger Mr. Trump; then-digital-media director for the Trump campaign, Brad Parscale; and prominent members of the media. . . . 

"Large portions of the report’s section on Russian interference were redacted due to concerns that details would reveal sources or methods of the U.S. investigation, or do damage to an ongoing probe. . . .

"Despite the redactions, new details are scattered throughout the report. Former national security adviser Mike Flynn embarked on an effort to find Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails at Mr. Trump’s direction in the summer of 2016, enlisting the help of a Senate staffer and a longtime GOP donor, according to the report.

"Mr. Trump 'asked individuals affiliated with his campaign to find the deleted Clinton emails,' the report said. Mr. Flynn 'recalled that Trump made this request repeatedly, and Flynn subsequently contacted multiple people in an effort to obtain the emails.'. . .

"The report doesn’t answer all Russia-related questions. Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian-born aide to Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort, remains a riddle. . . . "

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Kilimnik is suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence and has been long suspect as a conduit between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.    Kilimnik is the one to whom Paul Manafort reportedly gave polling data, which we now know to have been from the swing states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. 

However, because Manafort and others lied so much to investigators, it was difficult to build an actionable case of collaboration or conspiracy based on this alone.  Kilimnik has reportedly denied spying for Russia;  and he is now in Russia and unavailable to be interviewed directly by the Mueller team.

Thus we have abundant evidence of the digital and social media interference in our election;  and our counterintelligence agencies have been able to trace the hacking directly to certain Russian-controlled troll farms and bots -- and indictments for them have been issued.   They will likely never be extradited and brought to trial; but the extreme detail of their operation has been exposed and the relation to the Russian government is based on solid evidence.

What can be said is that the Kremlin very actively pursued collaboration with the Trump campaign and that the Trump campaign was willing to accept the help.  Their goals were largely in parallel.

What there is not the evidence for, and why no charges of conspiracy were brought, is the lack of evidence of any agreed upon plan to cooperate (i.e. a conspiracy) or to cooperate in a quid pro quo arrangement.   There are suspicions and suspicious behavior -- but, ultimately, no cigar.

They found no emails or phone records that could show definite evidence of actual conspiracy.   Having similar goals and both working to achieve those goals does not make a conspiracy.  We may speculate that such evidence may have once existed but was destroyed or lied about;  but you can't make a court case out of suspicions.

More evidence may turn up later, but that's the way I understand it at this point.   There was assistance from Russia, gladly received by the Trump campaign -- but investigators were not able to establish that it met the criteria for conspiracy.

What we must do now is take steps to prevent Russia from doing the same thing in our 2020 election.  There is ample evidence that the Russians never stopped their campaign to sew discord, and President Trump seems blithely unconcerned -- or rather he actively wants to avoid the whole thing.   Any discussion of Russia's interference in 2016 sets off alarm bells in his head that clang our to him the message:    "Your win was illegitimate.   You have to suppress anything that suggests that you didn't win the election on your own."

To him, that's far more important than protecting our democracy.  That's who Donald J. Trump is.

Ralph

Romney is "sickened and appalled"

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) put out a statement about the revelations of the Mueller report:

". . . . I am sickened at the extent and pervasiveness of dishonesty and misdirection by individuals in the highest office of the land, including the President.  I am also appalled that, among other things, fellow citizens working in a campaign for president welcomed help from Russia -- including information that had been illegally obtained;  that none of them acted to inform American law enforcement;  and that the campaign chairman was actively promoting Russian interests in Ukraine."

Well, that's one Republican.   Any others sickened and appalled?

First thoughts on Mueller's report

Despite the claims by President Trump and Attorney General Barr that the Mueller report clears Trump, it does not.   Not by a long shot.

It's true that there were no blockbuster new revelations.  Rather, the report paints a devastating picture of the man with presidential powers who has no respect for the law when it comes to his own actions.    And it's even worse than we knew.

He repeatedly asks his aides and associates to commit unlawful acts, to lie for him, to cover up -- to the point that not only White House counsel Don McGahn, but even a tough cookie like Cory Lewandowski sometimes refused Trump's order because it went too far in flouting the law.

Quoting from the Mueller report:  "The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.  Comey did not end the investigation of Flynn . . . McGahn did not tell the Acting Attorney General that the Special Counsel must be removed but was instead prepared to resign over the President's order" (vol. 2, p. 158).

Chris Hayes had both Frank Figliuzzi and Neil Katyal on as guest analysts.  Figliuzzi is a former high official in the FBI and Katyal was in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel and actually wrote the regulations for the Special Counsel position.

Katyal says that the first couple of pages in Mueller's report are the most important, because they outline what the Special Counsel can and can't do.   He repeats, in colloquial language, what Mueller is saying in those opening remarks:

   1.  "I would love to exonerate the President if I could find the evidence to do so.  I can't."
   2.  "If I found evidence that was really directly implicating the President, and he was guilty as sin, I'm not going to tell you -- because I'm bound by an Office of Legal Counsel opinion that says I can't indict a sitting president."

This is important, because we should consider Mueller's lack of charges of obstruction in this light.   Katyal clarifies:   "Mueller can't implicate the president in a crime [because a sitting president can't be indicted];   but he can exonerate a sitting president."   Katyal concludes:  "Mueller pointedly does neither."

And Figliuzzi agrees, saying that Mueller is telling us that he has the evidence of obstruction but he is constrained by the Department of Justice policy from indicting.  And Mueller also tells us that he is not going to make the case for indictment if he can't then indict.   Because that makes a charge, without there being a trial in which the person charged can mount a defense.

So what Mueller has done is to give us the evidence he found -- in exquisite detail -- and intends for Congress to deal with it in an impeachment process, if it so chooses.

Barr was wrong (as he has been on so much) when he said that Mueller left it to him to make the decision, which he then stepped in and said the President was cleared.   Congress can still do what it will do, regardless of the free pass Barr thinks he gave Trump.

More to come.

Ralph

Attorney General's pre-emptive spin on Mueller report

Thursday, April 18, 2019, 10:30 am.

We were stunned last night when the Justice Department announced that Attorney General William Barr would hold a press conference at 9:30 Thursday morning -- prior to the release of the Mueller report a few hours later.

Who does that and why?    Give the appearance of transparency by letting the media ask questions about something they have not seen or heard -- except through Barr's own four page summary of conclusions.

There is no question that this was political spin to protect the president -- from what?  What must be so damaging in the report that they are engaging in pre-emptive spin?

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, himself, tweeted out his opinion that Barr's press conference behavior was that of a Trump defense attorney, not that of an Attorney General --- the chief law enforcement officer for the American People.

As I write this, the Mueller report has not yet been released -- except to the White House lawyers.   It will shortly be released to Congress and then an hour later to the media and the public.

But we've already heard several times over weeks from AG Barr with his Trump-loyalty spin, trying to set the narrative in the public's mind before we see the actual report.

Two positives:   (1)  Barr says the report is only "lightly" redacted and the the redactions are chiefly in the category of not revealing information that could affect other ongoing investigations;  and (2)  Barr says he has no objection to Mueller testifying before Congress.

But one of the looming questions over this process is:   Why was Mueller not present this morning at the press conferenc?.

Here's an example of Barr's spin:    He said that The White House and the president had cooperated fully with the special counsel investigation.    Oh?    What about the refusal to grant Mueller's request for Trump to be interviewed in person by Mueller?

Here's another:   Under questioning previously, Barr said that he was certain that there had been "spying" on the Trump campaign.    Using the term "spying" is egregious and prejudicial.    Several former Justice Department officials say that term is never used for what the U.S. does.    The proper term is "court authorized surveillance."   For an AG who has previously served as AG to use that term can be nothing other than deliberate -- and he said it three times in that one public comment.   It was deliberate and obviously was said for the benefit of and to impress Donald J. Trump.

Many people suspected that Barr would not be an impartial attorney general;  now he has proved, beyond any doubt, that he is trying to be Trump defense attorney, not the chief lawyer for the American people.

Shame on him.   This will be a stain on his legacy.

Ralph

Assange, Wikileaks, and Freedom of Speech

Emily Stewart, writing for Vox.com, says the Julian Assange arrest raises the thorny questions of "what it means to be a journalist."    For example:   Does Assange's arrest represent "justice against a man who broke the law or is it a warning shot that journalism is under threat in the United States?"

Stewart outlines other related questions it raises:  "Do you consider Wikileaks a journalistic organization or not?   Did Assange actively participate in criminal activity to obtain classified intel, as the US government alleges, or did he just disseminate information passed on to him and is therefore protected by the First Amendment? . . . . And is the single charge he faces in the United States the total of the government's push for justice -- or is it just the opening salvo in what will become a larger war to punish Assange (and anyone else who publishes classified information)?"

The essential question, it seems to me, is whether Assange simply received the intel passively (which would entitle him to publish/disseminate it without penalty) or whether he broke the law by assisting Chelsia Manning in the stealing/leaking of the intel.  Manning is the one who had access to classified material as an employee of the U.S. government.

Excerpts from Emily Stewart's article for Vox.com:

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". . . Assange was arrested in London by British police after being expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy there.  He now faces extradition to the US.  After his arrest, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment alleging that Assange conspired with former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to crack a password on a Defense Department computer network in order to download classified records and transmit them to Wikileaks in 2010."

[In other words, they are not charging him for publishing but for conspiring to, in effect, "break in" to steal the records.]   That's where the red line is that our justice system distinguishes between freedom of the press and illegal stealing of state secrets.   Now to return to Stewart's article:]

Stewart asserts that the US government already had its sights on Assange and Wikileaks prior to those recent Manning leaks, going back to 2010 when they published videos of airstrikes that killed civilians in Iraq, as well as diplomatic cables -- all supplied by Manning.   And then there were the hacked emails from the DNC and Clinton's campaign chair's computer.   Stewart's article continues:

"There has long been a debate about whether what WikiLeaks does counts as journalism.   Some view Assange and WikiLeaks as a bastion of transparency and an ultimate example of forcing government accountability.  Others see the work as dangerous and treacherous. . . .

"Some groups dedicated to free speech and press have decried the incident as foreshadowing of dark times to come for American journalism, while many observers have celebrated it as justice served. . . .

"Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's speech, privacy, and technology project, said . . . that any prosecution of Assange for WikiLeaks' publishing operation would be 'unprecedented and unconstitutional and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations.'

"Barry Pollack, an attorney for Assange, [wrote]:  'Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges." . . .

". . . As Vox's Andrew Prokop laid out at the time, the US government had already charged people they'd accused of leaking classified information, including Manning, but going after the publisher of that information was highly unusual.  It's one of the reasons President Barack Obama's Justice Department hadn't charged Assange years ago.

"But after Assange's arrest on Thursday, Department of Justice unsealed the indictment, which is dated to March 2018.   The charge:  'conspiracy to commit computer intrusion,' related to Assange's alleged attempt in 2010 to help Manning figure out a password she needed to access more classified documents and information. . . .

". . . [compared to what some expected, including more serious charges under the Espionage Act] the charge against Assange is, frankly, a pretty small one.  If he's convicted, he could face up to five years in prison -- less time than he spent hiding out in the Ecuardorian embassy. . .

"It's a bit like gangster Al Capone being arrested on tax evasion charges:   It's probably not what the US government wanted to get him on, but . . . . 'it's the thing that they can win a court case over.' . . .

"That's not to say that what the indictment alleges . . . isn't a crime.   And reporters don't get to just commit any crime they want in the name of journalism. . . .

"Whether Assange committed a crime in his work with Manning is something that will ultimately be decided if he is indeed extradicted and brought to trial.  That's when courts will determine whether he knowingly violated the law to gain access to information.    What it could all hinge on:   Did he just advise Manning on how to avoid detection, or was he conspiring with her to get information in an illegal way? . . .

"There is established in the law a pretty bright line . . .  You cross it when you become a participant in illegal activity. . . .

"The debate about Assange and WikiLeaks stretches far beyond helping Manning crack a password.  It has reopened the ongoing discussion about whether what WikiLeaks does counts as journalism. . . .

"Is a data dump journalism?  . . . When you release terabytes of data indiscriminately . . . [it is] not self-evidently journalism.

"'Never in the history of this country has a publisher been prosecuted for presenting truthful information to the public,' [the ACLU's] Wizner told CNN in 2017.  'Any prosecution of WikiLeaks for publishing government secrets would set a dangerous precedent that the Trump administration would surely use to target other news organizations. . . .

"The controversy over WikiLeaks' place in the journalistic sphere and what Assange's arrest means for reporting isn't going anywhere anytime soon.  It may very well be that Assange did commit a crime -- but his arrest might not be something we should cheer, at least not without some reflection."

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Where is Clarence Darrow now when we need him?

Ralph

Trump's sister, Judge Maryanne Barry, implicated in family financial fraud

An article, "Trump's sister quietly retired in February, and it's actually a really big deal," was written by Vox.com's Matthew Yglesias:

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"The retirement of a federal appeals court judge is normally not a huge national news story, and while the fact that Maryanne Trump Barry is the sister of the president of the United States makes her decision a bit more noteworthy, on its face, you can still see why it’s been treated as relatively minor news.

"But peer a little bit deeper and the reason Barry is stepping down makes it clear that the story is a very big deal indeed.

"The key is that last fall, the New York Times published a bombshell investigation of Donald and Maryanne Trump’s father Fred Trump’s finances that appeared to reveal . . . that he illegally evaded taxes in transferring much of his wealth to his children . . .

"All this happened a long time ago, and the statute of limitations would have expired on any possible crimes. But some shrewd people noted that there is no statute of limitations on judicial ethics investigations and filed a complaint against not Donald Trump but Maryanne. This would have launched an investigation of her that would, were she found guilty of wrongdoing, have implicated the president as well.

"Now, according to Russ Buettner and Susan Craig of the New York Times, [Maryanne Trump] Barry has retired, which renders the investigation moot. Their reporting indicates that this all actually happened in February. . . Ten days later, Barry filed her paperwork to resign.

"And it certainly raises questions of whether she and her brother might have something to hide. . . .

"Did the Trump family's tax practices break the law?  An expert explains.

"The most striking of these . . . began in 1992. The Trump kids, including Donald and Maryanne [Note:  these "kids" were in their 50s in 1992], were set up as the owners of a company . . . [which sold equipment and supplies] at unusually high prices to buildings owned by Fred Trump. On its face, this looks a lot like an illegal effort to evade gift and estate tax by masking it as a business transaction.

"What’s more, Fred Trump then compounded the offense because the buildings in question were rent-regulated and he cited the high prices paid as legal justification for rent increases.  This is one of several schemes the court ethics panel was in a position to look at, but now the investigation is off.

"This all makes for extremely relevant context as the Trump administration continues to defy legally valid requests from congressional Democrats to see his tax returns.

"There has been, for years, considerable speculation around what Trump might be hiding in those returns. . . .  a possibility raised by the Times’s examination of Fred Trump’s returns is that examining his son’s returns would, likewise, reveal tax evasion.

"Fred Trump evidently managed to slip these shenanigans past the investigators at the IRS, . . . But if those returns were to be disclosed today, they would obviously attract a ton of attention from the media and various outside experts, and Maryanne Trump wouldn’t be able to avoid accountability by quietly retiring."

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Now, to be fair to Judge Trump Barry, she just turned 80 last week; so that may also have had something to do with her retirement plans.   But, shall we just say, sometimes you can kill two birds with one stone?

It seems pretty clear on the face of it that the Trump family has participated in very shady, and perhaps illegal, evasion of taxes -- i.e., cheating the government and the American people;

Ralph

PS:  Related story:   According to analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington think tank, the following corporations are among those that make huge profits yet who, under the new Trump tax law, will pay zero corporate taxes for 2018:   Amazon, Netflix, Chevron, Eli Lilly, Delta Airlines, GM, IBM, and Goodyear.   And, unlike the Trumps, this appears to be completely legal, thanks to the new Trump tax law.