Mueller Investigation pt4

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The Big Dog said:
To answer your question, because the lying to Congress did not result from his investigation. It is a subtle but very important difference.
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I get the difference, but surely the interpretation of the word "arise" cannot be that only crimes that result from the investigating can be further investigated. That would mean that if Mueller found evidence that someone involved with the Russian influencing of our elections killed someone in April 2016, in furtherance of the ability to influence our elections, Mueller couldn't investigate that.
 
The last few pages of this thread have generated an astonishingly large number of reports, so I am temporarily closing the thread whilst I work through the reports. Please do not move the discussion to another thread; I will reopen this thread as soon as I can.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Agatha
 
I have now reopened the thread, so you may return to the discussion.

Will you all make much greater efforts to avoid discussing your opponents or indeed yourselves; concentrate on the topic. Further moderator attention will be stronger, so don't invite it.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Agatha
 
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Update on mystery company:

The unnamed company owned by a foreign country that is challenging a grand jury subpoena issued in federal court in Washington is asking the Supreme Court to step in.

This week, “Company A” lost its challenge against having to comply with a grand jury subpoena that many believe has been issued by special counsel Robert Mueller.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the challenge by the company to quash the subpoena.

On Saturday, the company asked the Supreme Court to intervene and stay the lower courts’ decision — and has also asked that the case remain under seal.
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Linky.
 
Attorney General updates (from Trump thread):

President Donald Trump has at least twice in the past few weeks vented to his acting attorney general, angered by federal prosecutors who referenced the President's actions in crimes his former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

Trump was frustrated, the sources said, that prosecutors Matt Whitaker oversees filed charges that made Trump look bad. None of the sources suggested that the President directed Whitaker to stop the investigation, but rather lashed out at what he felt was an unfair situation.
The first known instance took place when Trump made his displeasure clear to acting attorney general Matt Whitaker after Cohen pleaded guilty November 29 to lying to Congress about a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow. Whitaker had only been on the job a few weeks following Trump's firing of Jeff Sessions.
Over a week later, Trump again voiced his anger at Whitaker after prosecutors in Manhattan officially implicated the President in a hush-money scheme to buy the silence of women around the 2016 campaign -- something Trump fiercely maintains isn't an illegal campaign contribution. Pointing to articles he said supported his position, Trump pressed Whitaker on why more wasn't being done to control prosecutors in New York who brought the charges in the first place, suggesting they were going rogue.
The previously unreported discussions between Trump and Whitaker described by multiple sources familiar with the matter underscore the extent to which the President firmly believes the attorney general of the United States should serve as his personal protector. The episodes also offer a glimpse into the unsettling dynamic of a sitting president talking to his attorney general about investigations he's potentially implicated in.
Whitaker and William "Bill" Barr, Trump's nominee to replace Sessions, are facing increased scrutiny this week for their criticisms of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling. Whitaker refused to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller probe. And a memo from Barr came to light in which he wrote that Trump's decision to fire former FBI director James Comey did not amount to obstruction.
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Linky.
 
jimbob said:
Not state owned as far as I know.

The Turkish company that Flynn worked for, however.
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...is a paper company to mask shenanigans. They wouldn't comply with a subpoena, they'd just dissolve.

Deutsche Bank would be my first guess, but it only sounds government owned.

But RT very well might "comply" with a subpoena, under protest, if only to use it as another route to pass disinformation. They can't burn their bridges over one little crime, Think of all that future criming they have yet to crim.
 
Paul2 said:
It's not that Mueller has to determine that Stone lied to investigate him, he doesn't even need a suspicion that he did: Stone only need to be part of a reasonable connection to Russian interference, which he obviously is (Russia --> Wikileaks --> Stone, combined with Trump --> Stone). And Mueller can investigate Stone in order to see if something can be found out about another person who is under suspicion.
"Ordinarily referred" doesn't change Mueller's charge that enables him to investigate any crime that might arise from his investigation.
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Couple of things about this "scope of investigation" bull.

1. Surely, if the investigation turns up prossible other crimes, say not directly linked to the investigation, some part of the FBI can still investigate it can't they? even if it's not Mueller's team. I mean why woudn't the FBI investigate a possible crime.

2. If all TBD has is, 'er, you not allowed to go there' it is a bit pathetic. I mean, if an investigation leads to some possible criminal activity, especially by a public official, you have no moral or intellectual argument surely if your defence is 'they are not allowed to look into that line of investigation, so there!'. I mean who cares if they are or not. As long as it is investigated, surely thats what matters.
 
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BadBoy said:
1. Surely, if the investigation turns up prossible other crimes, say not directly linked to the investigation, some part of the FBI can still investigate it can't they? even if it's not Mueller's team. I mean why woudn't the FBI investigate a possible crime.
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Because then the GOP would can the whole thing and respond to any further accusations with "Mueller did a 'full investigation' and didn't find anything!"
 
Chief Justice John Roberts on Sunday issued a temporary pause on an order holding an unnamed, foreign government-owned company in contempt over a mystery court case related to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

The order puts on hold the contempt citation issued by a DC federal judge against the company related to a grand jury subpoena it received, but only long enough for the justices to decide whether they want to intervene in the case.

The company asked the Supreme Court to intervene after a federal appeals court ruling that ordered the company to comply with the subpoena, which required it to turn over "information" about its commercial activity in a criminal investigation. The Supreme Court action also paused fines the company was facing for every day of noncompliance.

The pause lasts until the court has time to review a response from the government due on or before December 31.
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Linky.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I wonder if Trump thinks he's shutting down Mueller's investigation with the government shutdown?
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I'm sure he did, but someone probably said "y'know, this won't impede Mueller's investigation, don't you?" At which point he would say "why would you mention that? I didn't even think about the Russia investigation. No collusion!!"
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Because then the GOP would can the whole thing and respond to any further accusations with "Mueller did a 'full investigation' and didn't find anything!"
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I think you'll find that if this happened, the House would subpoena Mueller, all his Staff and all his witnesses (particularly Michael Cohen and Mike Flynn)

First question? "Mr Mueller, would you please tell us what was in your report"

Jerry Nadler (incoming Chair of the House Judiciary Committee) and Adam Schiff (incoming Chair of the House Intelligence Committee) have both indicated that they will do just that if Trump, any of the "yes" men he has appointed, or the GOP try any monkey business with the SCO or Mueller's report.

If Trump thinks things are bad now, wait until next year. Once the Dems get control of the House, Trump will have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and no way out.
 
Stacyhs said:
True. Good point. But I do think that something is going to come out about Deutsche Bank and Trump.
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All I need to know. This is from 2017:
The giant German lender was hit with about $630 million in penalties on Tuesday over a $10 billion Russian money-laundering scheme that involved its Moscow, New York and London branches...The latest fines penalize Deutsche Bank (DB)'s failure to deal with a stock-trading scheme that enabled some of its clients in Russia to improperly move huge sums of money out of the country and into offshore accounts, according to regulators. Link
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Can we please start a pool on who is company A from country A?

I'll take VTB Bank (Russian-owned). Oleg Deripaska is trying to at least appear to divest from Rusal (Russian Aluminium) to try and evade sanctions and keep the company able to do business in the USA. VTB had loaned him a billion or so in 2017. Maybe Deripaska got a heads-up about sanctions from Flynn or Manifort as part of the Trump transition, which is why he was trying to get out ahead of the story with lobbying and appointing a new CEO. Manifort and Gates had worked for him before.

ETA - It's behind a paywall, but here's a great article at NYT. I think that you can read so many articles for free per month.

Two Capitals, One Russian Oligarch: How Oleg Deripaska Is Trying to Escape U.S. Sanctions
 
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carlitos said:
Can we please start a pool on who is company A from country A?

I'll take VTB Bank (Russian-owned). Oleg Deripaska is trying to at least appear to divest from Rusal (Russian Aluminium) to try and evade sanctions and keep the company able to do business in the USA. VTB had loaned him a billion or so in 2017. Maybe Deripaska got a heads-up about sanctions from Flynn or Manifort as part of the Trump transition, which is why he was trying to get out ahead of the story with lobbying and appointing a new CEO. Manifort and Gates had worked for him before.

ETA - It's behind a paywall, but here's a great article at NYT. I think that you can read so many articles for free per month.

Two Capitals, One Russian Oligarch: How Oleg Deripaska Is Trying to Escape U.S. Sanctions
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Rusal would have been my first guess, but they're not government-owned.
 
Trump, his minions and his blindly loyal and devoted disciples, have often claimed that The Steele Dossier is a completely made-up "fake document", that none of the information in it is true. Trump has constantly lied about how much was paid for it (figures he has used have ranged from $4m to $12.4m)

Well it seems that the dossier is in fact a very accurate document. This piece by Chuck Rosenberg, a former U.S. attorney, senior FBI official and chief of the DEA, and Sarah Grant, a Harvard Law student, former Marine with an MPhil in International Relations (Cambridge) and BS in International Relations (USNA) seems to have put the kibosh on Trump's "opinion" of it.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/steele-dossier-retrospective

Rosenberg and Grant have carried out a side-by-side comparison of the dossier and actual information from court filings, indictments, prosecutions and convictions. They have clearly shown that so far, many of the revelations in the dossier are turning out to be accurate when compared with those filings. Furthermore, while some aspects have yet to be verified, there are absolutely NO aspects of the dossier that have been shown to be false.
 
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smartcooky said:
Trump, his minions and his blindly loyal and devoted disciples, have often claimed that The Steele Dossier is a completely made-up "fake document", that none of the information in it is true. Trump has constantly lied about how much was paid for it (figures he has used have ranged from $4m to $12.4m)...Well it seems that the dossier is in fact a very accurate document...
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Interesting link to an interesting website. Trump and his apparatchik have done a masterful job of discrediting and smearing the dossier. Not just among themselves but to the point that most commentators know to leave it alone. Always ignored has been:
The dossier is actually a series of reports—16 in all—that total 35 pages. Written in 2016, the dossier is a collection of raw intelligence. Steele neither evaluated nor synthesized the intelligence. He neither made nor rendered bottom-line judgments. The dossier is, quite simply and by design, raw reporting, not a finished intelligence product.
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One quote from the dossier, contained in the linked news article, caught my eye.
[T]he Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing email messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the Wikileaks platform. The reason for using Wikileaks was "plausible deniability" and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team. Link
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Sounds like Watergate all over again.
 
newyorkguy said:
Interesting link to an interesting website.
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I have been following Lawfare for a while now. Always very interesting stuff on that site.

Rosenberg is a regular MSNBC contributor, along with Barb McQuade and Joyce Vance. They bring level-headedness and reliable commentary, and most importantly, truth to the media (things that are totally lacking at Faux News)

newyorkguy said:
One quote from the dossier, contained in the linked news article, caught my eye.

[T]he Russian regime had been behind the recent leak of embarrassing email messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the Wikileaks platform. The reason for using Wikileaks was "plausible deniability" and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of Trump and senior members of his campaign team. Link
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Sounds like Watergate all over again.
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That was my thought as well.
 
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