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The Russia Investigation: Trump Pardons Flynn (7 Viewers)

tommyGunZ said:
@Opie, any thoughts on why Trump’s campaign manager was discussing campaign strategy and giving polling data to a Russian intelligence officer during the 2016 election?  
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Do not hold your breath for a direct answer. But a response is likely......One filling with lots of look over here at what the socialist are doing links and bolded words.  

 
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zoonation said:
The Trump transition team was full of incompetents and/or colluders.   

”only the best people” got taken to the woodshed by Putin and his henchmen. 

What a gong show.   
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All this,......AFTER........., being warned by the intelligence agency's that there were going to be attempts at contact from Russia and they should be reported immediately......

DJT & his crew wanted the contact, encouraged the election help, accepted that help, failed to alert the FBI and DOJ of contacts made and deliberately tried to hide that fact from investigators/investigations.

 
mcintyre1 said:
For those wanting the obvious answer laid out: the Senate Intel Committee made criminal referrals to the DOJ for Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Erik Prince, and Sam Clovis in 2019. Barr's DOJ binned the referrals and no investigation was done.
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But no Trump family members have been indicted, and one guy from the FBI did, so the Russia thing was obviously a hoax.  Scoreboard!

 
The Joint Defense Agreement included:

Donald Trump

Donald Trump Jr.

The Trump Organization 

Jared Kushner

IvankaTrump

Paul Manafort

The Trump Campaign 

Keith Schiller 

Hope Hicks

Michael Flynn

Felix Sater

“However, the committee was provided with no competent evidence to substantiate the JDA’s existence.”

 
Kilimnik was a state department operative.  He worked at (iirc) the IRI, a US 'pro-democracy' NGO.  What is the evidence for their claim that he worked for Russian intelligence?  

 
ren hoek said:
Kilimnik was a state department operative.  He worked at (iirc) the IRI, a US 'pro-democracy' NGO.  What is the evidence for their claim that he worked for Russian intelligence?  
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To your point, the report states that evidence is limited (no specifics).  I realize that I am using my jump-to-conclusions mat here, but why destroy all of the communication evidence between Kilimnik and Manafort?  
 

ETA Kilimnik was not an operative or source, just a contact 

 
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-jb- said:
To your point, the report states that evidence is limited (no specifics).  I realize that I am using my jump-to-conclusions mat here, but why destroy all of the communication evidence between Kilimnik and Manafort?  
 

ETA Kilimnik was not an operative or source, just a contact 
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The IRI is funded by USAID, a US govt outfit.  Their work generally includes softpower roles in foreign countries to advance the US' special interests.  If that doesn't make someone an operative for the state dept., even if a little indirectly, I don't know what does.  

 
ren hoek said:
The IRI is funded by USAID, a US govt outfit.  Their work generally includes softpower roles in foreign countries to advance the US' special interests.  If that doesn't make someone an operative for the state dept., even if a little indirectly, I don't know what does.  
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Fair enough. You’re way ahead of me on this stuff. Just reading up on him and read he was not. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/us/politics/konstantin-kilimnik-russia.amp.html

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/06/john-solomon-gets-it-wrong-on-kilimnik-by-larry-c-johnson.html

 
It's certainly not inconceivable that Trump was being dishonest in his "failure of recollection" about asking Stone to reach out to Wikileaks.  It's what he does every day all the time.  But he shouldn't have been.  The act itself would not have been a crime, and it really wouldn't have (or shouldn't have) been a big deal.

I really don't have the time to read the 900-page report.  I'll try to sort through it in the coming days.  At first glance, it appears they confirmed John Solomon's reporting about Waldman reaching out to Warner about a potential deal for Assange regarding the Vault7 documents. 

The timing almost seems like manufacturing consent for people to turn their backs on Assange if the extradition trial goes the way I think it will.  It's an abhorrent attack on freedom of press that the Trump DOJ is engaged in, and they're about to have the fullthroated support of his pretend opposition.  I think Biden wants to prosecute him for publishing our war crimes too ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 
-jb- said:
Fair enough. You’re way ahead of me on this stuff. Just reading up on him and read he was not. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/us/politics/konstantin-kilimnik-russia.amp.html

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/06/john-solomon-gets-it-wrong-on-kilimnik-by-larry-c-johnson.html
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Sorry, wasn't trying to dunk on you.  A lot of people would probably disagree that that constitutes serving as an 'operative' for the State Dept.  But the public has definitely been mislead about his affiliations with the US Govt.  

 
ren hoek said:
Sorry, wasn't trying to dunk on you.  A lot of people would probably disagree that that constitutes serving as an 'operative' for the State Dept.  But the public has definitely been mislead about his affiliations with the US Govt.  
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Haha, didn’t feel dunked on my man. I respect the knowledge you have on this stuff. I’m going to keep reading but my initial take on the guy is he’s probably driven by id more than anything. 

 
Can one of the lawyers explain a Joint Defense Agreement in simpler terms?

Can they just keep adding names and pleading the 5th?

 
dozer said:
Can one of the lawyers explain a Joint Defense Agreement in simpler terms?

Can they just keep adding names and pleading the 5th?
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Not a lawyer but I think you can. But all the parties need to know about it and sign off on it which seems to be the problem here.

 
dozer said:
Can one of the lawyers explain a Joint Defense Agreement in simpler terms?

Can they just keep adding names and pleading the 5th?
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I’ll take a shot though @Woz is the right guy to cover this from a crim perspective I think, where I’m sure there are differences.  I deal with them in the civil litigation perspective.  If the parties have joint interest in defending the same or a related claim — as may be the case here — they can enter into a joint defense agreement which can protect those communications from discovery.  The law on the extent and enforceability of these varies state to state, but I imagine in the crim context you don’t need a written agreement.  

I haven’t read anything above, and I assume Trump is lying or stealing or hiding something improperly.  Not sure I’m allowed to allege that in here, but I don’t plan to stay — I was called in to answer a question, did so pro bono, and will find my way out.  Good luck all with whatever it is you hope will happen in November. 

 
@aaronjmate

We've really simplified the domestic propaganda process. If you're an intel official/neocon/Democratic leader/pundit, just follow this simple script:

[insert undesirable outcome] = helps Putin.

See also: Bernie winning; cutting Pentagon budget; withdrawing US troops; etc.

 
ren hoek said:
@aaronjmate

We've really simplified the domestic propaganda process. If you're an intel official/neocon/Democratic leader/pundit, just follow this simple script:

[insert undesirable outcome] = helps Putin.

See also: Bernie winning; cutting Pentagon budget; withdrawing US troops; etc.
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Still think it's hoax and a load of BS after the release of the bipartisan Senate Intel Committee report?

I guess all those guys are in on the gaslighting of the rest of the world...

 
https://mondoweiss.net/2020/08/russiagate-and-american-narcissism/

I don’t know what the truth is on Russiagate. However, even if it is true in exactly the way the New York Times says (reporting on revelations in the bipartisan Senate report this week), it seems relatively trivial and simply not as important as many people say it is.  Even skeptics, it seems to me, rate Russiagate too highly by acknowledging that it would be a huge story if true. This judgment hinges on an unconscious American self-centeredness that is almost impossible to escape.

1. Americans lie to each other far more than the Russians lie to us.  Stop blaming the Russians for our pathologies.  

2.  If we want to talk about foreign influence, then be serious.   Israel and the Saudis do it far more and with more consequences both for our politics and for the lives of innocent people overseas.  Though even here the blame for our actions ultimately falls on our elites and not foreign countries.  

3.  What we do to others, even including Russia, is far worse than what they supposedly did to us. Time Magazine openly bragged about our interference in Russian elections in 1996.  It was on the cover.  Russians suffered a catastrophic economic collapse under the people we supported.  

4.  Russiagate was used to gloss over what the emails sent to Wikileaks actually revealed: the inner workings of the Democrats. For instance, this site has covered the ways that Benjamin Netanyahu and major donor Haim Saban were shown to have coordinated candidate Hillary Clinton’s stance on the BDS campaign targeting Israel (“attack, attack, attack,” Netanyahu said).  To the extent that Russiagate might have mattered, it would be because the emails might have made enough Sanders supporters mad enough to refuse to vote for Clinton. 

But rather than focus on that, Russiagate gives an excuse to focus on how it was allegedly revealed. So people talk in nebulous terms about Russia interfering in our democracy without going into the details of what was exposed. That defused the wikileaks revelations and turned them into a weapon to attack both Russia and Trump. Most journalists and political junkies behave like sheep, or to mix metaphors, tribalistic sheep, so this insultingly obvious ploy worked like a charm.  

5.  Russiagate is an excuse to ramp up a new Cold War.  That’s why so many national security types love it. Antiwar types should see this as an internecine fight between different factions of warmongers. A few lefties naively thought that Russiagate could be used to educate people about how corruption works in the US. Instead, as one would expect, it became a jingoistic and xenophobic way to blame our country’s pathetic political culture on evil foreigners. McCarthyism 2.0. The more demented liberals online blame every criticism of the Democrats on Putin.

6.  Russiagate gives liberals a reason to ignore the harm Trump does to civilians in countries whose governments are allied to Russia.  So we impose brutal sanctions on Venezuela, Iran, and Syria. This hurts civilians.  It is supposed to hurt civilians.  The Democrats support this and then turn around and say that Trump is Putin’s puppet, even as Trump wages economic war on Russian allies with their help and breaks arms control treaties with Iran and Russia, going against Putin’s wishes.  Trump also opposes the gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. 

People who focus on Russiagate and ignore this are American narcissists.  What we do to hurt others doesn’t matter.  What is done to us is all that matters.  
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ren hoek said:
You think Putin wants a nuclear arms race against the United States?  He offered to extend the New Start treaty with no conditions.  
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Putin has been having his way with America since Trump has taken office.  Let's not pretend he's fearful of us at this point.  He has to tread lightly because Trump doesn't wield full control over the country and congress still has significant power, but in every way Trump is capable he's been cutting his pal Vlad slack.

 
In the fall of 2017 and winter of 2018, the U.S. State Department and Pentagon had engaged in conversations about whether to send Ukraine Javelins—anti tank weapons—and whether the U.S. would provide those weapons through federal funding.

“The Secretary [Tillerson] went in to see the president and whether or not we should be doing this—giving Ukraine the Javelins. And the president’s reaction was, ‘Are you out of your ####### mind? Why are we giving them anything?” one former senior official told The Daily Beast. “His whole attitude was [the sale] would hurt the Russians. I wondered at that time what it was about the Ukrainians that particularly irritated him. Of course, we later found out.” Tillerson was fired in March 2018.

Later that month, Trump ignored the advice of his national security team, choosing on a phone call with Putin to congratulate him—instead of condemning him for Moscow’s election interference or its alleged nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter on British soil. Trump even floated the idea that Putin visit the White House.

“He really wanted to get on track with Putin and we kept having to react,” one former senior official said. President Trump fired McMaster just a few days later, replacing him with Bolton. 

Officials said various Cabinet officials, including new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and Bolton, had varying ideas on how to approach the “Russia problem,” as one former senior official put it. 

Not long after, Trump went to Helsinki for a summit to discuss bilateral relations with Putin. The meeting became instantly infamous when Trump publicly rebuked the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia had interfered in the previous election. 

Bolton found it curious for another reason. “What both of them [Putin and Trump] really wanted to discuss was increasing U.S. trade and investment in Russia, a conversation that lasted a surprisingly long time given there was so little to say, with so few U.S. businesses really eager to dive into the Russian political and economic morass,” Bolton wrote in his book. It was a point Dmitriev and Kushner had been trying to get across for a long time.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, senior U.S. officials attempted to engage in intelligence sharing with Russia, including information on terrorist financing. But when the U.S. shared intelligence with Moscow, it was rarely reciprocated—and when it was, the information was unhelpful, officials said. 

“Moscow took a lot of license to really push our boundaries and our buttons very harshly,” as one senior official described it. 
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Jared Kushner’s Private Channel With Putin’s Money Man - More than a dozen Trump administration officials, current and former, described a clandestine relationship between Jared Kushner and the CEO of a Kremlin sovereign wealth fund.

- This is a long, extensive article that deals with Ukraine, Deripaska/Rusal, coronavirus.... so this is just a snip about the Ukraine and intelligence sharing piece. There is so much in the SSCI report as well, it's just impossible to summarize or condense, almost every page has lengthy revelations, more so than the Mueller report even. 

 
So - apparently the House has no subpoena powers.  :popcorn:

ETA - I should add - they can issue subpoenas, they simply can't enforce them

 
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NEWS: The MCGAHN appeals court panel says the House has no legal ability to enforce subpoenas because there is no law on the books allowing it.

It may do so, but Congress must pass a law first, the panel says.

 
8-2 the Flynn case does not have to be dismissed.

Trump lost 7-0 among judges not on the original three judge panel.

 
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The Gator said:
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000174-4582-d403-aff7-6dc334410000

This is the opinion.

Just reading the first couple of pages - I think they (majority opinion) have a valid argument.
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This is the operative paragraph:

In this case, Congress has declined to authorize lawsuits
like the Committee’s twice over. First, Congress has granted an
express cause of action to the Senate—but not to the House.
See 2 U.S.C. § 288d; 28 U.S.C. § 1365(b). Second, the Senate
statute expressly excludes suits that involve executive-branch
assertions of “governmental privilege.” 28 U.S.C. § 1365(a).
The expression of one thing implies the exclusion of the other,
and authorizing the Committee to bring its lawsuit would
conflict with two separate statutory limitations on civil suits to
enforce congressional subpoenas. When determining whether
to “recognize any causes of action not expressly created by
Congress,” “our watchword is caution,” Hernandez, 140 S. Ct.
at 742, and we should not ignore Congress’s carefully drafted
limitations on its authority to sue to enforce a subpoena.

This is a very technical issue that will drive non-lawyers batty - because it feels like it flies in the face of common sense (and it does fly in the face of common sense)

 
This is not to say that a different panel, or an en banc panel, might view this differently, and look to an implied power to enforce - but this argument is not devoid of merit (compare with the original Flynn appeal which was poorly decided)

 
The Gator said:
So - apparently the House has no subpoena powers.  :popcorn:

ETA - I should add - they can issue subpoenas, they simply can't enforce them
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The Gator said:
In this case, Congress has declined to authorize lawsuits
like the Committee’s twice over. First, Congress has granted an
express cause of action to the Senate—but not to the House.
See 2 U.S.C. § 288d; 28 U.S.C. § 1365(b). Second, the Senate
statute expressly excludes suits that involve executive-branch
assertions of “governmental privilege.” 28 U.S.C. § 1365(a).
The expression of one thing implies the exclusion of the other,
and authorizing the Committee to bring its lawsuit would
conflict with two separate statutory limitations on civil suits to
enforce congressional subpoenas. When determining whether
to “recognize any causes of action not expressly created by
Congress,” “our watchword is caution,” Hernandez, 140 S. Ct.
at 742, and we should not ignore Congress’s carefully drafted
limitations on its authority to sue to enforce a subpoena.
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I haven't read anything but that quoted paragraph, but that paragraph doesn't say that Congress can't enforce its subpoenas. It says that Congress can't ask the judicial branch to enforce its subpoenas.

Congress should have its own inherent enforcement power.

 
Maurile Tremblay said:
I haven't read anything but that quoted paragraph, but that paragraph doesn't say that Congress can't enforce its subpoenas. It says that Congress can't ask the judicial branch to enforce its subpoenas.

Congress should have its own inherent enforcement power.
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True - but it cant utilize the courts - which is where they are right now - to enforce the subpoenas.

Congress does not have the will power (or likely the facility) to lock someone up - but it would be interesting to watch.

 
Cool.  So effectively, Congress cannot compel testimony?  Or just that the House cannot compel testimony?  Or neither branch can compel testimony of people in the executive branch?  Doesn't the executive branch cover basically everything that the US Government does?

 
Opinion: Henderson and Griffith in the majority. Rogers dissenting.

Politico

- This will get appealed en banc just like Flynn.

- Henderson has become as pernicious as Rao. Not quite as solipsistic, but bad, terrible, gutless reasoning.

... Because the Committee lacks a cause of action to enforce its subpoena, this lawsuit must be dismissed. We note that this decision does not preclude Congress (or one of its chambers) from ever enforcing a subpoena in federal court; it simply precludes it from doing so without first enacting a statute authorizing such a suit. The Constitution’s Necessary and Proper Clause vests Congress with power to “make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” its constitutional powers, and that Clause gives Congress—and certainly not the federal courts—the broad discretion to structure the national government through the legislative process. U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 18. If Congress (rather than a single committee in a single chamber thereof) determines that its current mechanisms leave it unable to adequately enforce its subpoenas, it remains free to enact a statute that makes the House’s requests for information judicially enforceable. Indeed, Congress has passed similar statutes before, authorizing criminal enforcement in 1857 and civil enforcement for the Senate in 1978. See Senate Permanent Subcomm., 655 F.3d at 1238 & n.26. Because no “legislation pursues its purposes at all costs,” CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, 573 U.S. 1, 12 (2014) (internal quotation marks omitted), any such statute might, for example, carve out certain categories of subpoenas, or create unique procedural protections for defendants. That’s exactly what Congress has done in the past. The 1857 statute, for instance, stated that “no person examined and testifying” before Congress “shall be held to answer criminally . . . for any fact or act [about] which he shall be required to testify.” In re Chapman, 166 U.S. 661, 665 n.1 (1897). And the Senate’s civil enforcement statute exempts from suit any defendant asserting a “governmental privilege.” 28 U.S.C. § 1365(a). Balancing the various policy considerations in crafting an enforcement statute is a legislative judgment. For that reason, the Constitution leaves to Congress—and not to the federal courts—the authority to craft rights and remedies in our constitutional democracy. ...
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Basically - Congress has to pass a law to implement the power it already has under the Constitution, which is nuttery.

 
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