Bill Barr's Corruption of the U.S. Justice Department

Trump and his consigliere.

Attorney General William Barr is a despicable individual serving an even more despicable individual, Donald Trump. Worse yet, he is utterly corrupting the U.S. Department of Justice and transforming it into a cog in Trump's crime syndicate like regime. Not only did Barr order the tear gas and rubber bullet attack on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square, but he is throwing the Justice Department's reputation down the toilet as evidenced by his efforts to dismiss the case against confessed criminal and former Trump regime member Michael Flynn. Thankfully, the judge in the Flynn case refused to be bullied and appointed a retired judge with stellar credentials to investigate the Barr instigated effort to dismiss the case against Flynn, no doubt at Trump's request.  That investigator has slammed the Barr led effort and shows that Barr's idea of an independent Justice Department looks like something out of Hitler's Germany. Some will shrug and say so what, but should be re-elected, the misuse of the Justice Department could be used to attack and persecute those who oppose Trump and the corruption that he embodies.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the investigator's findings and the depths of Barr's corruption.  Here are excerpts:

The latest development in the saga of Michael Flynn — disgraced former national security adviser, admitted criminal, conspiracy theorist and all-around sleaze — gives us yet more evidence of how completely President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr have corrupted the Justice Department.

Back in May, long after Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents in their investigation into Russia’s attack on the 2016 election — which got him fired as national security adviser after 24 days on the job — Barr took the extraordinary step of seeking to drop the case against him before he could be sentenced. In response, the judge in the case asked a respected retired judge to make a recommendation about how this highly unusual situation should be handled.

That retired judge, John Gleeson, not only recommended that Flynn be sentenced as planned but issued a scathing report condemning the Justice Department’s actions in the case:

In his argument, Gleeson said the government’s “ostensible grounds” for seeking dismissal were “conclusively disproven” by its own earlier briefs; contradict the court’s prior orders and Justice Department positions taken in other cases; and “are riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact.”
 A former federal prosecutor and judge for 22 years in Brooklyn — best known for putting the late mob boss John Gotti behind bars and presiding over the trial of “Wolf of Wall Street” stockbroker Jordan Belfort — Gleeson wrote that judges are empowered to protect their court’s integrity “from prosecutors who undertake corrupt, politically motivated dismissals. That is what has happened here. The Government has engaged in highly irregular conduct to benefit a political ally of the President.”

Not only that, Gleeson stated that “Flynn has indeed committed perjury in these proceedings, for which he deserves punishment,” but recommended that instead of a separate prosecution, Flynn’s misdeeds should be taken into account when he is sentenced for the crime he pleaded guilty to.

Gleeson’s conclusions aren’t surprising in their particulars, because anyone familiar with this case knows them to be an accurate representation of the action Barr took. There is no doubt about what Flynn did, nor that it was against the law, nor that he would have known he was breaking the law when he did it.

Yet Barr carried out Trump’s obvious wishes by intervening to help Flynn (just as he had done with the case against Trump confidante Roger Stone). As the New York Times reported: “A range of former prosecutors struggled to point to any previous instance in which the Justice Department had abandoned its own case after obtaining a guilty plea.”

Barr did it because it was what Trump wanted, and because he evidently shares Trump’s belief that the government should essentially be run like a mob family, in which those who have the boss’s favor need not be held accountable for any crimes they commit. Asked how history would judge his actions, Barr laughed and said, “History is written by the winners.”

But he and Trump haven’t won yet, at least not in this case. An appeals court is about to hear Flynn’s request that the case against him be dropped so he can escape any sanction at all; they’ll have to decide whether the judge can go ahead and sentence him even after the Justice Department has withdrawn. The case could well go all the way to the Supreme Court.

But if nothing else, we can take solace that there are at least some moments when the system is capable of speaking an obvious truth. Not even the most partisan Republican actually believes that Flynn is some kind of martyr, or that impartial justice demands he be unburdened from accountability for his choices. He’s Trump’s guy, so Trump’s AG should let him go. It’s as simple as that.

Gleeson’s report makes that clear. Let me point to this passage:

The reasons offered by the Government are so irregular, and so obviously pretextual, that they are deficient. Moreover, the facts surrounding the filing of the Government’s motion constitute clear evidence of gross prosecutorial abuse. They reveal an unconvincing effort to disguise as legitimate a decision to dismiss that is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump.

We’re not used to reading that kind of blunt language in legal documents, but it’s completely appropriate here. We all know what’s happening: Barr is trying to spring Flynn on the president’s behalf. It’s repellent, it’s corrupt, and in a better world it would itself be grounds for Barr’s impeachment.

That won’t happen, and the Supreme Court may come to Flynn’s rescue in the end. But, at least for now, it’s good to hear the truth spoken.

Wishful Thinking, or Will Mike Pence Be Indicted?

As much as I want Donald Trump out of the White House, I do not want him replaced by Mike Pence.  All that would accomplish is replacing a mentally unstable crook with a mentally unstable religious zealot.  Both need to go down in the Russiagate probe.  A piece in The Advocate looks at whether it is merely a liberal dream that Pence will end up indicted or whether just perhaps Pence is up to his eyeballs in lying to Congress and the FBI like Michel Flynn.  Throughout my years involved in politics and monitoring right wing "Christian" organizations, I have learned one thing:  No one - other than perhaps Trump - lies more often that the falsely pious "godly folk" like Pence.  Here are article highlights:

It could be wishful thinking — but a few liberal pundits and activists are predicting that virulently anti-LGBTQ Vice President Mike Pence will be charged with wrongdoing in connection with the 2016 presidential election. 

Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who’s investigating Russian interference in the election and possible collusion by Donald Trump’s campaign, released a heavily redacted sentencing memo Tuesday regarding former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. “The memo clearly states that the Trump transition team was heavily involved in Flynn’s illegal dealings with Russia,” writes PoliticusUSA commentator Leo Vidal. “And, as everyone now remembers, the person in charge of that transition team was none other than vice president-elect Mike Pence.”

“Michael Flynn committed numerous crimes, and Mike Pence did everything possible to cover up those crimes, possibly because he was implicated in them also,” Vidal continues. “In fact, Pence could face the same criminal charges that Mueller brought against Flynn.” Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with Russian officials and is cooperating with Mueller in the investigation.

Pence, Vidal writes, lied while defending Flynn to the public, and also probably lied to law enforcement. “It is very likely that the redacted portions of Mueller’s memo mention the name Mike Pence, and not in a good way,” he says.

Jon Cooper, chairman of the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, also predicts Pence will face criminal charges, as he expressed in a recent tweet.

[N]o one on the outside really knows what’s going to come out of Mueller’s probe. Documents Mueller’s team released Friday concerning former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and lawyer Michael Cohen allege that both lied about Russia contacts, The Washington Post reports. Also, Cohen has implicated the president in campaign finance violations regarding a payment made to keep adult-film star Stormy Daniels silent about a sexual encounter with Trump. “The plot thickened for Trump just a little bit,” the Post notes.

If it’s thickened for Trump, it may likewise thicken for Pence. . . . . . the Mueller investigation has been full of surprises, none of them good for Trump and his inner circle. We’ll be eagerly waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Did Devin Nunes Invent His Own "Smoking Gun"?

Nunes, Trump and Flynn

Among Donald Trump's sycophants in Congress, perhaps none is more engaged in his own effort to obstruct justice and destroy the FBI as an independent agency than GOP congressman Devin Nunes who, after caught having bizarre  with the White House was supposedly going to recuse himself from his committee trying to investigate the Trump campaign and regime for collusion with Russia.  Except that he hasn't lived up to his promise and is now engaged in a full blown effort to aid Trump and potential traitors while savaging the FBI yet refusing to release information on the so called "smoking gun" of FBI abuses to anyone, including committee Democrats.  Things are to the point where along with Jeff Sessions, Nunes needs to be investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller.  Much of what Nunes seemingly objects to - FISA surveillance that caught Trump minions talking to Russian spy operatives under surveillance - ultimately relates the brazenness and/or stupidity of  Trump regime members like Sessions, Kushner and Flynn who spoke on the phone with folks like the Russian ambassador and then seem shocked that their conversations were caught on surveillance and confirmed that they had lied about their contacts with Russia.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at Nunes' continued improper conduct and extreme efforts to aid Der Trumpenführer.  Here are excerpts:

For all the jokes about his competence as a congressman, Devin Nunes pulled off something of a political masterstroke over the last week. Seeking to cast doubt on Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, his office compiled a memo alleging scandalous misdeeds at the Department of the Justice and the F.B.I., based on classified information that few other people can access. He allowed his colleagues to look at it, then declined to make it public, setting off a social media firestorm around the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo. . . . . House Republicans are refusing to share the memo with the very agencies the memo claims to unmask, fueling the histrionics on Fox News and on Donald Trump’s Twitter over alleged F.B.I. bias, and whipping the conservative base into a frenzy.

Here’s what we know: the memo reportedly claims that senior F.B.I. officials abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows U.S. law enforcement to conduct foreign surveillance on American soil. . . . . But Republican lawmakers, seemingly by design, aren’t divulging any specifics.

The overwrought rhetoric, and near-total lack of substance, suggests that the contents of the memo may not live up to expectations. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in statement that the memo, is “rife with factual inaccuracies” and “is meant only to give Republican House members a distorted view of the F.B.I.” But the panel has moved to prevent Democrats from releasing a minority report characterizing the intelligence upon which the memo is based. As a result, the only thing the public knows is what lawmakers are saying about a partisan document—again, written by Nunes and his staff—based on confidential information that cannot be disclosed.

G.O.P. lawmakers are reportedly considering publicizing the memo through an obscure legislative process that would establish a five-day window for Donald Trump to approve or deny its release. If he were to choose the latter, the decision would be kicked to the full House, which would hold a closed vote on the issue. But releasing the memo could diminish its power—especially if the alleged smoking gun is more smoke and mirrors. Republicans could feasibly bolster their claims by releasing the source material.

And Trump could choose to declassify the entire thing, if he actually wanted to. But unless there’s a there there, it’s not clear there would be a point. If the memo is just Nunes’s ramblings, team “witch hunt” loses both credibility and leverage.

Unless and until Nunes' memo is released and vetted, it should be given about as much credit as a piece authored by Tony Perkins or Franklin Graham on the merits of same sex relationships - i.e., zero.  Meanwhile, Mr. Mueller needs to haul Mr. Nunes' ass in for questioning. 

Flynn’s Plea Deal could be VERY Bad News for Prince Kushner

As previous posts have noted, special counsel Robert Mueller went very easy on Michael Flynn in the plea deal announced on Friday.  The inference to many is that Flynn has apparently agreed to tell Mueller all that he knows and is poised to assist Mueller in indicting or flipping someone even higher in the Trump/Pence regime.   Much conjecture suggests that the likely target of Flynn's information is Jared "Prince Jared" Kushner, Der Trumpenführer's son-n-law.  A piece in Vox looks at Kushner's vulnerability.  Here are article highlights:

[T]he Flynn plea bargain could also be a major problem for someone else extremely close to the president: Jared Kushner, his senior adviser and son-in-law.

A court document in the Flynn case, released Friday, refers to a “very senior” transition official who told Flynn to try to get the Russian ambassador to the US to help stop a United Nations Security Council vote on Israeli settlement policy in late December.

Reporters from Bloomberg, BuzzFeed News, and NBC News have all confirmed that this very senior official is Kushner. That makes perfect sense — by all accounts, Kushner was an extremely important figure during the transition, and reporting even at the time suggested that he was involved in Trump team deliberations on the settlements issue.

[T]he new reporting is just the latest of many, many times Kushner’s name has come up in connection with the Russia matter. There was the meeting he had with Ambassador Kislyak during the transition in which they reportedly discussed setting up a secret backchannel of communication. There was the Donald Trump Jr.-brokered meeting with a Russian lawyer who’d promised “dirt” on Hillary Clinton during the campaign. And there are the reports that Kushner urged Trump to fire FBI Director James Comey.

Furthermore, as part of Flynn’s cooperation agreement with Mueller’s team, he is likely providing information that could incriminate someone close to Trump. That someone could well be Kushner.

To get top-secret security clearance, Kushner was supposed to list any foreign government officials whom he’d met with in the past seven years. But he left more than 100 meetings off his forms — including several with Russians. (His lawyer claims the forms were “prematurely submitted.”) ·        The most curious of these meetings occurred during the transition. On December 1 or 2, Kushner and Flynn met with Kislyak, and, according to the Washington Post, Kislyak told his superiors afterward that Kushner wanted to set up a secret line of communication between them, and suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities for this. This has raised questions about whether Kushner was seeking to shield his contacts with the Russian government from US intelligence.

·        Later in the month, Kushner sent a deputy to attend another meeting with Kislyak. And in mid-December, he met with Sergey Gorkov, head of Vnesheconombank (a Russian bank currently under US sanctions). The White House claims Kushner took this meeting at Kislyak’s request, for diplomatic reasons, while the bank says it was about business.

·        But before all this, there was the June 9, 2016, meeting Trump Jr. set up with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. forwarded Kushner an email thread with the subject “Russia - Clinton - private and confidential,” and further down in the thread, publicist Rob Goldstone clearly states he is setting up this meeting as part of “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Kushner attended the meeting, but according to recent statements by both Trump Jr. and Veselnitskaya, he left after a few minutes.

·        Then a Reuters report claims there were two phone calls between Kushner and Kislyak during the campaign, though Kushner’s lawyer said he had no recollection of these.

That’s not all. A report from McClatchy’s Peter Stone and Greg Gordon also suggests that investigators are taking a close look at the Trump campaign’s digital operation, which Kushner oversaw, with an eye toward whether there was any collaboration with Russian cyber operatives and bots targeting voters in key states or precincts.

Finally, it’s also worth noting that when President Trump was considering firing FBI Director Comey back in May, Kushner was reportedly one of the most prominent advisers arguing that he should go ahead and do it. That disastrous miscalculation led to the appointment of Mueller, the man who could eventually indict Kushner and other top Trump aides. Earlier this week — before Flynn’s guilty plea — the New York Times and CNN both reported that Kushner sat with investigators on Mueller’s team for an interview at some point in November. . . . . that interview also means that Mueller got Kushner on the record about his version of events that related to Flynn — before Flynn was known to have become a cooperating witness.

And since it is a crime to make false statements to the FBI, if Kushner was less than fully forthcoming about matters Flynn is now prepared to dish on, he could be in some legal jeopardy.

Is It Too Late for Mueller to Save America?

With the plea deal struck by Michael Flynn and the incoming Ralph Northam administration here in Virginia next month, there is a sense of hop among many that perhaps we are seeing the beginning of the end of the national nightmare known as the Trump/Pence regime and that in the interim, in Virginia a moral and forward thinking governor and nearly balanced state legislature can ward off some of the worse Trump/Pence policies.   At the national level, however, many have concerns that the cancer within the Republican Party has so metastasized that even if Robert Mueller's investigation hands Congress a smoking gun and an indictment for collusion with Russia, Congressional Republicans would side with a man guilty of treason.  Should that occur, a grassroots revolution would be required to end the sickness.  Two pieces, one by Andrew Sullivan and another in Slate, look at the disturbing reality of where Trump's mental illness and a bankrupt Republican Party have America on a precipice.  First these highlights from Sullivan's piece which was written before the announcement of Flynn plea deal:

[T]he last few days have brought all of them together in a new, concentrated way — a super-storm, as it were, of liberal democratic destruction. We have deranged tweeting; truly surreal lies; mindless GOP tribalism; evangelicals making excuses for the molestation of minors; further assaults on the free press; an unprecedented attack on the most reliable Atlantic ally; the demonization of personal enemies; stupendous tribal hypocrisy with respect to sexual abuse; the White House’s endorsement of a foreign neo-fascist hate group; the vengeful hanging out to dry of a Cabinet member; and the attempt to pass a catastrophic omnibus piece of legislation in one mad, blind rush in order to get a “win.” And all in a few days! 

At its center is mental illness. It radiates out of the center like a toxin in the blood. And this, again, is nothing new. On Trump’s first day in office, with respect to the size of his inauguration crowd, he insisted that what was demonstrably, visibly, incontrovertibly false was actually true. At that moment, we learned that all the lies and exaggerations and provocations of the previous year were not just campaign tools, designed to con and distract, but actually constitutive of his core mental health. He was not lying, as lying is usually understood. He was expressing what he believed to be true, because his ego demanded it be true. And for Trump, as we now know, there is no reality outside his own perfervidly narcissistic consciousness. Give such a man the power and trappings of the most powerful office on earth, give him a few months, and such delusions will get worse. Sane men and women are corrupted by the wielding of power; a psychologically disturbed figure from the get-go will degenerate into deeper and deeper forms of madness. 

In his speech last Wednesday night in Missouri, for example, he claimed that his tax proposal was the biggest tax cut in history (not even close); that it was “going to cost me a fortune, this thing, believe me … I have some very wealthy friends. Not so happy with me, but that’s okay” (an absolute inversion of reality); and that the stock market had been flat before his presidency (the Dow was at 7,000 when Obama came to office and 20,000 when he left).

Or cast your eyes back a few days and consider his condemnation of various sexual abusers and harassers (such as Al Franken and Matt Lauer). Why on earth would someone who has been personally accused by a dozen women of sexual assault get on his high horse with respect to others? Because in his own mind, he never committed assault. Every single woman who accused him really is a liar and the tape that recorded his bragging of assault was in fact as faked as Obama’s birth certificate. And this is not the only indelible delusion we discover he still clings to. He believes — alone among the leaders of every single other country — that climate change is a Chinese hoax, even as the Chinese, for some unfathomable reason, invest heavily in renewable energy; he is adamant that Russia did not meddle in the U.S. elections last year and that the U.S. intelligence community is lying about it or full of “hacks.” He believes that every poll that shows him as unpopular is fake; and that virtually everything the mainstream media reports about his administration is fabricated.

This is a man who inhabits his own world — and it is not the one you or I or anybody else inhabits. And he does not do so passively. His delusions are so fixed and profound that he constantly lashes out at anyone, from a grieving Gold Star widow to random black NFL players to the prime minister of Great Britain, when they dare to inhabit the actual world and proffer a different point of view.

Because his party has become a cult around his unhinged infallibility, his fantasies are entrenching themselves in the real world. And so, faced with the gravest nuclear threat since the end of the Cold War, Trump is involved in actually baiting and taunting an unpredictable dictator, vastly increasing the chances of irreparable catastrophe, with no tangible strategy visible and no secure line of communication open. He has eviscerated the institutions of American diplomacy, because the only diplomats he needs are himself and his dim-witted, mute dauphin, who has formed a strange alliance with another privileged scion in Saudi Arabia. The foreign leader he most admires, moreover, is engaged in an open campaign to sabotage and subvert Western democratic institutions. Those he most detests — such as Angela Merkel — are attempting to save them.

All Trump cares about is the “win” — and he will describe its content as what he wants it to be, not what it is, and most of his supporters will believe him. And so, at a time of deeply destabilizing social inequality, this law will actively shovel billions more to the super-rich, add more than a trillion to an already unprecedented peacetime debt, eviscerate affordable health care for millions, increase taxes on many middle-class blue-state residents, and eventually require massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare as we inevitably face a future fiscal collapse. But again, Trump’s delusional vanity simply wishes all these consequences away.

The only form of reality that will hit sooner is, of course, whatever Mueller discovers. But Trump has already declared this a media and Democratic hoax, and his own reality must mean that Mueller is fired, that the entire justice system be derided and discredited as a corrupt form of elitist convenience, and the super-storm of this week will become a hurricane, made all the deadlier by the ever-warmer waters of the tribalism and polarization Trump daily seeks to intensify. I have no idea what follows; but this liberal democracy is in a death rattle. And so is the international order it once sustained.

The Slate piece raises similar concerns and, given what we witnessed from Senate Republicans on the grotesque GOP tax bill, one cannot assume that rationality and a loyalty to democracy will prevail even if Mueller delivers the goods on Trump - and hopefully Pence as well.  Here are excerpts:

On Friday, former national security adviser Michael Flynn agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. This moment will prove to be incredibly important, or not important at all. The importance or nonimportance of Flynn’s plea will depend on whether the law and legal conclusions continue to matter going forward, or whether they matter not at all. This is the question all of us are asking all day every day: Is the rule of law an escape hatch or a relic? It’s not yet clear what the answer to that question will be.

 I have spent the past year putting great faith in the courts and legal institutions to act as a check on Donald Trump, maintaining this faith even as Trump fired career lawyers like James Comey and Sally Yates and replaced them with ideologues and thugs. And like most people on the left, I placed an enormous amount of confidence in Robert Mueller as the embodiment of the principle that Trump could not escape the oncoming steamroller of justice and legal liability. In recent weeks, and most especially in this past week, I’d begun to suspect that the forces of chaos and nihilism that stand against Mueller’s project might swallow whatever outcomes he produced. The shocking norm-and-truth defiance of the GOP tax bill, the refusal of the GOP leadership to criticize or even comprehend the enormous violence done by Trump’s anti-Muslim tweets, the president’s staggering support for the candidacy of Roy Moore, the silent Republican collusion to the seating of demonstrably unfit judges, and the virulence of the White House’s attacks on the press all contributed to a general sense that absolutely everything was broken and that Democrats had lost whatever momentum they had to halt this chaos. So long as he [Mueller] is working away, filing documents and convening grand juries, nobody needs to take to the streets. But as the year has progressed, it’s become clear that absolutely nothing will persuade Trump supporters and Republicans in Congress that it’s time to disavow the president—not lying, not spilling state secrets, not abject failure in crisis management, and not openly performed corruption. Given that reality, it often feels like it wouldn’t be enough for Mueller to hand us a smoking gun and an indictment. What if they threw a conviction and nobody came? The more abjectly deranged Trump’s behavior and the more Republicans in Congress cover for him, the less likely it is that anything Mueller can magic up in his underground hall of justice will matter. . . . . with every passing day, as Trump escapes consequences and attacks the courts and the press, the chances that a “tick, tick, tick, boom” will be played off as #fakenews also increase.

I’ve been thinking that America is operating along two parallel legal tracks. On one track is the chug-chug of law and order, as embodied in the Mueller investigation. On the other is the daily mayhem and denialism and circus-performing of the present White House. I tend to worry that with every passing day, the circus is training us to ignore, discredit, devalue, or disbelieve what’s happening on the other track. By the time the Mueller train gets to its final station, the norms that would ordinarily lead to impeachment proceedings might be tiny piles of yellow legal pad–shaped cinders. And then it really would be time to take to the streets.

Quotes of the Day: Legal Experts on Magnitude of Flynn Plea Deal

As the prior post on Michael Flynn's plea deal with Robert Mueller notes that the White House is trying to blow it off as a non-event .  True to form, Fox News, a/k/a Faux News,  has likewise down played it and seemed to focus an almost anything else possible last night (we were in the HYC club bar last evening and could see Fox on one TV and CNN on another and it was a case of conflicting realities). But those legitimate experts familiar with criminal law and the legal process see the matter quite differently. As noted in the past, I have worked as a consultant for the FBI in the past and do have some direct sense of how they operate and what plea deals mean.  Politico has a piece that looks at the reactions of various legal expert.   Here's my favorite one out of almost a dozen, none of which bode well for the White House:

‘As big as a day as this was for Mueller’s investigation, expect more and bigger ones’

Norman Eisen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, chief White House ethics lawyer from 2009 to 2011, and ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014

“If you don’t want to do the time, you have to drop a dime” goes the jailhouse saying. How ironic that Michael Flynn, who encouraged the chants of “lock her up” at the Republic National Convention, is now following prison maxims in negotiating a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller. Having worked with and against Mueller, I know he is resolute in his pursuit of justice. The information and statement of the offense makes clear that Flynn has not just “dropped a dime” but a whole roll of them, implicating multiple other Trump transition officials with knowledge of his conversations with Russia and other foreign governments. As big a day as this was for Mueller’s investigation—and it was the biggest yet—expect more and bigger ones.

Trump Should Be Very Afraid of Mueller: Ask John Gotti or Sammy “The Bull”

While Congressional Republicans and the foul occupant of the White House are striving to focus attention on the U.S. Senate's passage of a horrific tax bill - if the nation is lucky, the House and Senate will prove unable to come to an agreement that merges the two versions of a massive give away to the obscenely wealthy and large corporations - the real news from yesterday is that Michael Flynn has struck a plea deal with Robert Mueller and is now set to spill his guts about Trump campaign collusion with Russia and/or obstruction of justice flowing from the oval office.  Besides setting the stage for serious legal exposure to Der Trumpenführer, the first inklings have appeared that Mike Pence may well also find himself in legal jeopardy.  A piece in the Washington Post notes in part as follows:

After six months of work, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has indicted two advisers to President Trump and accepted guilty pleas from two others in exchange for their cooperation with his probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election — a sign of mounting legal peril for the White House.

With the guilty plea Friday by former national security adviser Michael Flynn — one of Trump’s closest and most valued aides — the investigation has swept up an array of figures with intimate knowledge of the campaign, the transition and the White House.

It appears to have swiftly expanded beyond Russia’s interference in the campaign to encompass a range of activities, including contacts with Russian officials during the transition and alleged money laundering that took place long before Trump ran for office.
And Flynn’s agreement to fully cooperate with investigators suggests that Mueller is not done yet.

Both Flynn and George Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, acknowledged lying to the FBI about their contacts with the Russians. Now, both are cooperating with Mueller, according to prosecutors, potentially providing evidence against other Trump aides.

On Friday, the news about Flynn’s deal broke after the regular senior staff meeting at the White House, startling top officials and leaving many feeling helpless.  “We don’t know really what is going on,” said one adviser who speaks to Trump often and requested anonymity to describe private conversations. “Who’s it going to implicate? What are they going to say?”

Flynn’s cooperation poses particular risks for the White House. . . . . If anyone on the campaign coordinated with the Russians in their efforts to interfere with the election, Flynn would probably have been aware.

Aside from the legal implications, Flynn’s account could ratchet up the political pressure on the White House, which will now face more questions about why incoming Vice President Pence, chief of staff Reince Priebus and then-spokesman Sean Spicer insisted that Flynn did not discuss sanctions with Kislyak when other senior officials knew otherwise.

Not surprisingly, Der Trumpenführer is tweeting that Flynn did not implicate anyone in the White House.  Like everything coming from Trump's lips or fingers, the claim is not true.  It seems that Jared Kushner in particular should be very nervous about his own false statements.  As for Mueller's strategy of only hitting Flynn with one of the many charges that he could have faced, a piece in Vanity Fair lays out why Trump should be very, very afraid of what Mueller hopes to accomplish.  Here are highlights:

For months, Mueller has been working his way up the Trump food chain, beginning with a guilty plea by campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, and, more recently, a 12-count indictment against former campaign manager Paul Manafort. (Manafort has pleaded not guilty.) On Friday, after meetings to discuss a deal, the president’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, walked into a federal courtroom in Washington, D.C., and pleaded guilty in an arrangement that reportedly includes his testimony against more campaign officials, possibly including Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the president himself.

It is, one person close the administration recently observed, a “classic Gambino-style roll-up.” To understand how Mueller might now proceed, to get a sense of the compromises he’d be willing to make to bag the larger prosecutorial targets in his sights, it’s eye-opening to go back to the deal he [Mueller] cut with Sammy the Bull.

When Gravano sent word from his cell in 10 South that he wanted to meet with the F.B.I., and that, more pointedly, he wanted to speak to them alone, the overwhelming suspicion was that it was more bull from the Bull. Robert Mueller didn’t believe it.

It is not difficult to imagine the tortured debate within Mueller’s mind as he weighed the decision. He could allow Sammy, a man who had admittedly killed 19 men, to play for Uncle Sam’s team. Or he could go into the Gotti trial knowing that Teflon Don—the swaggering crime boss who had walked away from three prior trials—could once again get away with murder.

All that is known with certainty is that Mueller agreed to the deal that would make Gravano the government’s star witness, the lynchpin of the federal case. In return, a murderer with 19 notches on his gun would wind up spending not much more time in jail than a deadbeat dad.

And all at once John Gotti was on his feet, and he let out a piercing wail as he recognized the act of betrayal that was unfolding just outside his cell door. The plaintive scream, Mouw would say, seemed to echo throughout the entire prison, bouncing off the walls and filling every bit of space. It was a sustained and powerful noise. And he imagined he could still hear the Don’s lamentations as he hustled Gravano into the back of the Chevrolet parked on the street 10 floors below.  It was a nice bit of theatre, but in the end, when the curtain fell, Gotti was—at last!—found guilty.

And Robert Mueller, who would go on to head the F.B.I., had discovered the logic that is the unwritten precept in any treatise on the art of the deal: winning is better than losing. It is ample justification for most any compromise.

Now, as special counsel, he is once again making deals.  He is still determined to get his man at all costs. First he flipped Papadopoulos. And then his office met with Robert Kelner, Michael Flynn’s lawyer. Many accusations were swirling around Flynn, including, not least, his alleged role in a complicated plot to kidnap Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen in return for a $15 million payday (a charge his lawyer has adamantly denied on his client’s behalf). But on Friday the deal was cut: Flynn was charged with one felony count of making a false statement to the F.B.I. regarding his potentially incriminating conversations with the Russian ambassador.

In return for getting off with what amounts to little more than a slap on his bony wrist—the maximum sentence the former general now faces is five years—Flynn will soon have to keep his side of the bargain. Can there be any doubt that the general who had chanted “Lock her up!” at the Republican National Convention has, like Gravano, agreed “to change sides?” Or is there any doubt that Mueller has brought Flynn into his fold because he has his eye fixed, once again, on bigger prey?

It is not difficult to imagine the wail of indignation, a keening and self-righteous outburst [from Trump] that would rival John Gotti’s at his moment of betrayed shock, that might rise out of the Oval Office when Flynn’s testimony finds its target.

Let's hope that Flynn's decision to be "flipped" will be viewed by history as the beginning of the end of the Trump/Pence regime. 

UPDATED:  A fun piece at Mother Jones looks at why Mike Pence likewise needs to be very afraid of where things may be headed.  Here's a small taste:

Mueller’s statement puts Pence on the hot seat. Was he really unaware of what “senior members” of the transition team were told about Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak? After all, at that time, Pence was the head of the transition team. A spokeswoman for Pence did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The bottom line is that Pence, as vice-president elect, made remarks that concealed a questionable Flynn interaction with Russia that was actually approved by the transition team that Pence himself was in charge of. The question now is: Was Pence a witting participant in this plot? And if not, who are the senior Trump aides named in the Mueller document who allowed this cover-up to occur?
 

Mueller May Have Flipped Michael Flynn

While Der Trumpenführer continues to lie and claim that the Russiagate investigation is based on "fake news," special counsel Robert Mueller continues to relentlessly follow the financial leads that link members of the Trump/Pence regime to Russia and other foreign agents.  Now, some believe that Michael Flynn is poised to flip on Trump and turn states evidence.  Obviously, I hope these conjectures prove accurate and that Flynn sings like a canary in order to save himself and his son.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the possibility.  Here are excerpts:

Michael Flynn is itching for some snitching. Or so his lawyers have led the president’s legal team to believe.

On the night before Thanksgiving, Flynn’s attorneys notified Trump’s that they could no longer discuss the special investigation into Russian interference in last year’s election. The president’s lawyers took the call as a sign that Trump’s former national security adviser is, at the very least, negotiating with special counsel Robert Mueller over the possibility of turning state’s witness, according to the New York Times.

That suspicion is sound. It’s common for defense attorneys representing different clients targeted by the same investigation to share information with each other. But once the interests of those clients diverge — say, because one is trying to rat out the other to keep his (large adult) son out of prison — then such chatter becomes unethical. If Flynn has decided to formally consider cooperating with prosecutors, then it would be standard practice for his lawyers to quit talking shop with Trump’s team.

[T]he evidence points to Flynn flipping. Earlier this month, NBC News reported that Mueller has enough evidence to bring charges against Trump’s former national security adviser. This makes sense: Flynn was on the Turkish government’s payroll for most of the 2016 campaign, a fact he failed to disclose until after he left the White House. Mueller has already indicted Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort for similar failures of disclosure. Further, Flynn’s early exit from the White House was triggered by lies he told to the FBI.

Last December, Flynn spoke to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak about U.S. sanctions against the Putin regime. In January, he told federal investigators that he had done no such thing. Unfortunately for Flynn, Kislyak was under routine surveillance by the U.S. government, and a recording of their phone call exposed his fib (eventually, the Washington Post did, too). Lying to the FBI is a federal crime, one that Mueller nailed former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos for, before securing his cooperation.

The special counsel is also eyeing Flynn and his son, Michael Flynn Jr., for offenses far more severe. . . . According to the Times, Flynn has “expressed serious concerns to friends that prosecutors will bring charges against his son, Michael Flynn Jr.” in recent weeks.

So, Flynn has plenty of motivation to make himself useful to the feds. And he almost certainly has information they’d find interesting. Flynn was an early high-ranking member of the Trump campaign, and played a lead role in the transition. 

Turning on Trump makes sense.  Trump has no loyalty to others, so why should Flynn sacrifice himself for Trump who would cast him aside in a heartbeat. 

Mueller Focusing on DOJ Role in Comey Firing

While Roy Moore's much younger wife has been saying that Donald Trump should be thanking her teenage girl loving husband for distracting the media from coverage about Russia, the reality is that the legitimate media is still paying close attention to Robert Mueller's relentless investigation that seems to be moving closer and closer to Der Trumpenführer himself.  A case in point, a piece in New York Magazine that looks at Mueller's focus on the Department of Justice involvement in the firing of James Comey.  Another in Politico looks at Mueller's possible closing in on Michael Flynn who could conceivable be flipped to aid the investigation of Trump himself.  First these highlights from the New York Magazine piece:

Just before firing James Comey, President Trump reportedly drafted a multi-page letter in which he laid out his issues with the FBI director. According to the Washington Post, Trump expressed the he was upset that Comey wouldn’t publicly deny that the FBI’s Russia probe wasn’t focused on him personally.

Now the special counsel’s team is requesting documents that make it sound a lot like they’re looking into whether Trump himself obstructed justice by firing Comey, in addition to all the Russia contacts former campaign officials can’t quite remember.

ABC News reported that in the last month, Mueller’s team requested Justice Department emails and other documents related to the firing of Comey, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from all investigations related to the Russia matter. Muller already sought White House documents related to the FBI director’s dismissal, but this would be the first time he’s directed a records request to the Justice Department – the department in charge of his entire probe. That would include discussions between Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who laid out the reasons Comey should go, and their contacts with the White House.

This, coupled with a recent report that Mueller was preparing to interview Trump’s communications director, Hope Hicks, led some to conclude that the probe is reaching a pivotal moment. . . . . Anytime you can get someone who is the right-hand person or who’s been around the primary target of an investigation, under oath, answering detailed questions, means you’ve progressed very far along in the investigation,” Adam Goldberg, a former Clinton White House lawyer, told Politico.

Sources close to Muller suggested there’s still much work to be done, and legal experts said they expect the probe could last through 2018, and maybe even longer. They note that the trials of two of the three people charged so far, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates, won’t start for months.

“I don’t think there’s any reason to believe this is almost over,” said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor turned George Washington University law professor. “Based not just on what we’ve seen but also what we know about white-collar investigations generally, this seems to me like it is just getting started.”

As for the Politico piece, here are excerpts:

What appear to be obscure details in a court filing against Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, may actually provide clues about what’s next for another target in the special counsel’s Russia investigation: former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates were charged late last month with a variety of crimes, including violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA, even though such a charge is rare.

“While criminal charges under FARA are not often brought,” the prosecutors wrote in the passage about why Manafort and Gates were charged with violating the statute, “the facts set forth in the indictment indicate the gravity of the violation at issue based on the dollar volume of earning from the violation, its longevity, its maintenance through creation of a sham entity designed to evade FARA’s requirements, and its continuation through lies to the FARA unit.”

Jeff Cramer, a former federal prosecutor, said: “It’s odd language to have in there. This language could be a precursor to explain any future FARA violation charge, especially Flynn. If Flynn didn’t exist, you wouldn’t need that language in there. … You wouldn’t have to go through a lot of the machinations.”

Flynn’s work could meet part of the Manafort standard that refers to a “sham entity” fronting for a foreign government. . . . Given the criteria set out in the Manafort filing, many lawyers say they expect that if Mueller moves against Flynn, it will involve more sensational charges than simply failing to file a lobbying registration — a charge that jurors might regard as technical even if it survived scrutiny from a judge.

One eye-popping potential charge against Flynn that any juror could readily understand is kidnapping. Reports in The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere last week said Flynn attended meetings in September and November in which there was discussion of removing a Turkish dissident, Fethullah Gulen, from the United States, perhaps by force.

A sum of as much as $15 million was allegedly offered to arrange Gulen’s delivery to the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The alleged kidnapping plot was never carried out, but legal experts said charges could be brought under conspiracy laws if any substantial step was taken toward forcibly snatching the dissident.

If prosecutors cut a plea with Flynn, it’s possible the FARA charge could emerge as a relatively mild offense for him to plead guilty to, although it’s still a felony that carries a potential term of up to five years in prison.

Leak Documents Reveal New Ties Between Trump Administration and Russia

The cesspool of corruption and possibly treasonous activities that is the Trump/Pence administration seem to no few limits.  Two campaign operatives are under indictment and another one has plead guilty.  Yet, it would seem that more indictments will follow.  Thus the question becomes which of the campaign/administration members will decide to go state's evidence against Trump and, if America is lucky, Mike Pence in order to save their own asses.  On the coming indictment front, NBC News is reporting as follows today:

Federal investigators have gathered enough evidence to bring charges in their investigation of President Donald Trump's former national security adviser and his son as part of the probe into Russia's intervention in the 2016 election, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation.

Mueller is applying renewed pressure on Flynn following his indictment of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, three sources familiar with the investigation told NBC News.

The investigators are speaking to multiple witnesses in coming days to gain more information surrounding Flynn's lobbying work, including whether he laundered money or lied to federal agents about his overseas contacts, according to three sources familiar with the investigation. 

Flynn's son, Michael G. Flynn, who worked closely with his father, accompanied him during the campaign and briefly worked on the presidential transition, could be indicted separately or at the same time as his father, according to three sources familiar with the investigation.

If the elder Flynn is willing to cooperate with investigators in order to help his son, two of the sources said, it could also change his own fate, potentially limiting any legal consequences.

All of this is explosive enough, but more disclosures have come out that are damning to Der Trumpenführer pretense that he and/or his cabal of  sycophants have no tires to Russia.  Of particular interest are the ties of Trump's Secretary of Commerce to businesses involving Vladimir Putin's family.  As an added bonus, it seems that Prince Jared has lied yet again and failed to reveal contacts with Russia.  Here are excerpts from The Daily Beast about a massive document dump.   

A new trove of more than 13 million leaked documents implicates top officials and associates of President Donald Trump—as well as foreign politicians—in shady business relationships tied to offshore financial accounts.

In at least two cases, the documents highlight top administration officials’ previously undisclosed connections to Russia and Kremlin-linked interests.

The so-called “Paradise Papers” were leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the same publication that obtained the “Panama Papers.”

The documents show that many of the wealthy individuals Trump brought into his administration have worked to legally store their money in offshore havens where they would be free from taxation in the United States. Trump has promised repeatedly to “drain the swamp,” in condemning the idea that well-connected individuals in Washington, D.C. preserve their own interests at the expense of the rest of the country.

Among the Trump administration officials implicated in the leaks is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who according to the documents concealed his ties to a Russian energy company that is partly owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law. Through offshore investments, Ross held a stake in Navigator Holdings, which had a close business relationship with the Russian firm. Ross did not disclose that connection during his confirmation process on Capitol Hill.

“In concealing his interest in these shipping companies—and his ongoing financial relationship with Russian oligarchs—Secretary Ross misled me, the Senate Commerce Committee, and the American people,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in a statement on Sunday. He characterized Ross’ financial disclosures as a “Russian nesting doll, with blatant conflicts of interest carefully hidden within seemingly innocuous companies.”

Top White House adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is also implicated. The documents reveal that Kremlin-connected Russian tech leader Yuri Milner invested $850,000 in a startup called Cadre that Kushner co-founded in 2014. Kushner said in July that he told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed-door meeting that he never “relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.” Representatives for Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-VA), the chairman and vice chairman of the committee, did not immediately return requests for comment. Kushner, who still has a stake in Cadre, did not previously disclose the firm’s other business ties. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and top economic adviser Gary Cohn are all mentioned in the documents. But some lower-level appointees have more egregious connections to offshore interests—in some cases, directly related to industries they are tasked with regulating. Randal Quarles, who was confirmed just last month to be vice chairman for supervision at the Federal Reserve, has financial connections to a bank based in Bermuda that is being probed by U.S. officials under suspicion of tax evasion. A Federal Reserve spokesman told The Guardian that Quarles divested from the bank when he assumed his position at the U.S. central bank.

With this kind of news breaking, one has to wonder whether Trump is secretly welcoming the extensive news coverage on the Texas mass shooting.  For Trump, the timing could not have been opportune.