dagblog - Comments for "Mueller believes Manafort fed information to Russian with intel ties"

Now that this latest

Peter — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 18:53:00 +0000

In reply to Mueller protection bill

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Good lawyers will have

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 13:20:41 +0000

In reply to Bharara says there's some

Good lawyers will have trouble burying 3 years of toxic spills. Just sayin'.

Bharara says there's some

artappraiser — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 06:36:58 +0000

In reply to A beefed-up White House legal

Bharara says there's some good lawyers on Trump's new team:

Trump is finally hiring some very good lawyers for the White House. He will need them. #Mueller #MichaelCohenTestimony
— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) January 11, 2019

NEW SCOOP ON MUELLER

artappraiser — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 18:18:04 +0000

In reply to Manafort sent some himself,

NEW SCOOP ON MUELLER INVESTIGATION from @CNNPolitics: Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio visited the Special Counsel's Office in February last year. Takes on new significance this week.
via the fab @SaraMurray @caroline_mkelly @stark_talk: https://t.co/meQCmzNzZZ
— Katelyn Polantz (@kpolantz) January 10, 2019

the answer:

artappraiser — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 18:15:30 +0000

In reply to How Russia used stolen data

the answer:

“I didn’t know anything about it. Nothing about it.” - @realDonaldTrump on Paul Manafort sharing Trump campaign polling data with the Russians pic.twitter.com/w4Vjb1Q8Rf
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) January 10, 2019

How Russia used stolen data

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 10:32:00 +0000

In reply to Manafort sent some himself,

How Russia used stolen data to confuse, discourage & anger voters, disrupt Hillary's campaign strategy, interfere in the debates, commandeer the media discussions & mislead Comey into taking a public posture.

All with the direct assistance of the Trump campaign, which knowingly took on a Russian asset at the highest level in the campaign, and continued to use his assistance long after Trump had been briefed by the NSA/CIA on Russian interference & subterfuge in the elections.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing...

The election was stolen through highly illegal means, including theft, known conspiracy with foreign powers, and the direct & indirect of foreign money & workforce. The quicker we reverse our "but Hillary ran a bad campaign" and take on that basically *no one* can easily run against a full-on Russian effort to influence an election (as evidenced by numerous other disrupted elections around the world), we'll start framing our actions and re-shuffling our attitudes in a much more useful & serious way.

My favorite laugh line was:

Philip Howard, the director of the Oxford Internet Institute, in England, agrees that the Russian interference could have been decisive, but he is less convinced that the stolen analytics were key. He told me, “It’s plausible, but the Russians wouldn’t have needed the Clinton campaign—they could just as easily have targeted the network of Bernie Sanders supporters.”

which of course they *did* target the network of Bernie Sanders supporters.

Also, reading a side interview with Martha Raddatz, describing how the press is "learning to question itself more":

Raddatz reflected on co-moderating the 2016 presidential debate that took place just 36 hours after the release of Trump’s controversial remarks on “Access Hollywood.”

“None of us prepared to talk about an ‘Access Hollywood’ tape,” she said. “I really had to calm myself down and say: ‘Do not be overwhelmed by this. Do not let it. Ask the questions people would want to hear.’”

So instead of asking Trump about Pussygate, she asked Hillary about a misquoted/out-of-context from one of the stolen emails:

one of the moderators, Martha Raddatz, relayed a question submitted by a voter: Did Clinton think that it was acceptable for a politician to be “two-faced”? The question referred to a leaked passage from one of Clinton’s previously unreleased paid speeches; Russian hackers had given the passage to WikiLeaks, which posted it two days before the debate. In the speech, Clinton had cited Steven Spielberg’s film “Lincoln” as an example of how politicians sometimes need to adopt different public and private negotiating stances. The point was scarcely novel, but the debate question—which took her words out of context, omitted her reference to the movie, and didn’t mention that Russian operatives had obtained the speech illegally—made Clinton sound like a sneaky hypocrite. When Clinton cited “Lincoln” in order to defend the statement, Trump pounced.

“She got caught in a total lie!” Trump said. “Her papers went out to all her friends at the banks—Goldman Sachs and everybody else. And she said things, WikiLeaks, that just came out. And she lied. Now she’s blaming the lie on the late, great Abraham Lincoln!”

So instead of stressing on the scandalous news the day before about Trump - both Russian collusion and his awful attitude towards women - she stresses on a comment out of a stolen email made in context of a movie observation, painting a rather anodyne "people do things & hold somewhat different opinions in private than they do in public", (or at least are willing to move out of the box & comfort zones in private negotiatons) observation - made more poignant perhaps by Trump's "I love women" comments as belied by grab-em-by-the-pussy, sleeping around on his wives & paying them off to hundreds of thousands, and walking in on underaged girls changing (as well as picking his contestant faves to "come upstairs" - but Raddatz didn't make that observation, because she was in the press box cheering the "successful businessman Trump" rather than asking the tough questions to get behind his bullshit).

Good article (Schindler can

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 06:38:18 +0000

In reply to John Schindler claims

Good article (Schindler can be hit and miss). Wirth checking iuy hus embedded primer on Russian methods:

https://observer.com/2017/03/kremlingate-russia-spy-game-disinformation/

A beefed-up White House legal

artappraiser — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 05:21:34 +0000

In reply to Twitter 16-point thread from

A beefed-up White House legal team prepares aggressive defense of Trump’s executive privilege as investigations loom

The team is gearing up to prevent President Trump’s confidential discussions with advisers from being disclosed to House Democratic investigators and revealed in the special counsel’s report, setting the stage for protracted legal standoffs that may reach the Supreme Court.

By Carol D. Leonnig @ WashingtonPost.com, Jan 9

[....] The strategy to strongly assert the president’s executive privilege on both fronts is being developed under newly arrived White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who has hired 17 lawyers in recent weeks to help in the effort.

He is coordinating with White House lawyer Emmet Flood, who is leading the response to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on his now-20-month-long investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Flood is based in White House Counsel’s Office but reports directly to Trump [....]

Twitter 16-point thread from

artappraiser — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 05:19:54 +0000

In reply to Mueller believes Manafort fed information to Russian with intel ties

Twitter 16-point thread from the drafter of the Special Counsel law rules on why the Mueller report will be made public:

1.The special counsel rules, which I drafted at DOJ 20 years ago, contemplate 2 kinds of reports. One is a report from Mueller to the AG, at the close of his investigation: “a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.”
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) January 10, 2019

Mueller protection bill

artappraiser — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 05:05:12 +0000

In reply to Mueller believes Manafort fed information to Russian with intel ties

Mueller protection bill likely to get new committee vote

By Burgess Everett @ Politico.com, Jan. 9

A bill to protect special counsel Robert Mueller is likely to get another vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee if the Russia probe is still going later this winter, new Chairman Lindsey Graham said in an interview on Wednesday.

Graham and Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) are reintroducing the bill this week. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved it under former Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), but it will need another committee vote now that the 116th Congress has convened.

The South Carolina Republican said that if the Mueller probe has not concluded in February, he's likely to put the bill up for a vote on the panel. The measure drew the support of four GOP senators last time, though Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has since retired and been replaced on the committee [....]

Dems to use Mueller probe as cudgel against Barr

Democrats want Trump's nominee for attorney general to assure them he won't interfere in the special counsel's investigation.

By Marianne Levine @ Politico.com, Jan. 9

As the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares for hearings on William Barr’s nomination for attorney general, one person will loom large in the room: special counsel Robert Mueller.

Several Senate Democrats on the committee plan to grill Barr at his confirmation hearing next week on his views on Mueller’s Russia investigation, focusing on a controversial memo Barr wrote last year to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. In that memo, Barr criticized Mueller’s investigation into possible obstruction of justice as “fatally misconceived.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday said Barr should be disqualified from leading the DOJ in part because of the memo.

“The memorandum is deeply worrisome because in effect he says the president is above the law... that’s incorrect as a matter of law but certainly for an attorney general to have that position is deeply wrong,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who said he’ll ask Barr if he’ll stop political interference into the special counsel’s probe.

He added that Barr should recuse himself from overseeing the investigation if he can’t provide an “ironclad” commitment to protecting Mueller and declines to disavow statements he made in the memo [....]