Tag Archives: Robert Mueller

Top Secret Intel Source Aiding Mueller Probe Is Behind Latest Clash Between DOJ And Nunes, by Tyler Durden

Posted on May 9, 2018 | 3 comments

The Department of Justice is up to its old tricks, withholding evidents from congressional investigators. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

House Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) was denied a cache of classified information by the Department of Justice (DOJ) after the White House backed senior FBI and national intelligence officials who told them the materials were too hot to give to him – and “could risk lives by potentially exposing the source, a U.S. citizen who has provided intelligence to the CIA and FBI, reports the Washington Post, citing multiple sources. The FBI made the urgent request to the White House last Wednesday claiming that even a redacted version of the request could risk lives by exposing a top-secret intelligence source.

Which begs the question:

White House officials agreed to the DOJ’s request with President Trump’s blessing – however the Post notes “it is unclear whether Trump was alerted to a key fact — that information developed by the intelligence source had been provided to the Mueller investigation.” 

Whatever the case, the U.S. intelligence community clearly doesn’t trust Nunes with this information.

For the intelligence agencies, Nunes’s request threatened to cross a red line of compromising sources and methods of U.S. intelligence-gathering, according to people familiar with their views. Intelligence officials fear that providing even a redacted version of the information Nunes seeks could expose that person and damage relationships with other countries that serve as U.S. intelligence partners. –Washington Post

Nunes requested the information in a classified April 24 letter to the Justice department. Due to the confidential nature, we don’t know exactly what the DOJ is holding back, however he told reporters this week that he is investigating FBI Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse and “other matters.”

The Post notes that the involvement of the White House marks a rare “moment of alignment between the Justice Department and Trump, who has relentlessly criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other top Justice officials for the probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.”

To continue reading: Top Secret Intel Source Aiding Mueller Probe Is Behind Latest Clash Between DOJ And Nunes

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Federal judge rightly rebukes Mueller for questionable tactics, by Alan Dershowitz

Posted on May 8, 2018 | 1 comment

Robert Mueller is desperately trying to find someone, anyone, who will dish him some dirt on President Trump. From Alan Dershowitz at thehill.com:

An experienced federal judge has confirmed what I have been arguing for months, namely, that the modus operandi of special counsel Robert Mueller is to charge associates of Donald Trump with any crime he can find in order to squeeze them into turning against the president.

This is what Judge T.S. Ellis III said at a hearing Friday: “You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud … What you really care about is what information Mr. Manafort could give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment.”

This tactic is as old as Adam turning against Eve. But, as the judge correctly pointed out, it risks the possibility that the squeezed witness will not only sing, he will compose. Here is what Ellis said about that: “This vernacular is to ‘sing,’ is what prosecutors use. What you got to be careful of is, they may not only sing, they may compose.”

I have been using this “compose” metaphor for decades and I am gratified that a judge borrowed it to express an important civil liberties concern. Every experienced criminal lawyer has seen this phenomenon at work. I have seen it used by prosecutors who threaten wives, parents, siblings and, in one case, the innocent son of a potential witness who was about to graduate law school. Most judges, many of whom were former prosecutors, have also seen it. But few have the courage to expose it publicly, as Ellis has done.

Defenders of Mueller’s tactic argue that the threatened witnesses and their relatives are generally guilty of some crime, or else they wouldn’t be vulnerable to the prosecutor’s threats. This may be true, but the crimes they are threatened to be charged with are often highly technical, elastic charges that are brought only as leverage. They are dropped as soon as the witness cooperates.

To continue reading: Federal judge rightly rebukes Mueller for questionable tactics

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Which Hunt? by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on May 7, 2018 | 1 comment

Federal judges are starting to question the underpinnings of Robert Mueller’s faltering investigation. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

It was refreshing to read the response of Federal Judge T. S. Ellis III to a squad of prosecutors from Robert Mueller’s office who came into his Alexandria, Virginia, court to open the case against Paul Manafort, erstwhile Trump campaign manager, for money-laundering shenanigans dating as far back as 2005. Said response by the judge being: “You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud. You really care about getting information that Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment or whatever.”

Judge Ellis’s concise summation was like a spring zephyr clearing out a long winter’s fog of unreality in our national politics — the idea that Mueller’s mission has been anything but the Deep State’s ongoing crusade to nullify the 2016 election. In the meantime of the past year, Mueller has been additionally burdened by obvious misconduct in the FBI and its parent agency, the Department of Justice, which makes Mueller himself look like the instrument of a cover-up, or at least a massive organized distraction from the misdeeds of the Deep State itself.

I was never a Trump supporter or voter, but it seems to me he deserves to succeed or fail as President on his own merits (or lack of). It’s much more disturbing to me to see the runaway train that federal prosecution has turned into, along with orchestrated intrigues of FBI and DOJ officials at the highest level. These are of a piece with the creeping surveillance of all Americans, and the collusion of multiple intelligence agencies with social media companies and what used to be the respectable organs of the news, especially The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN — all of which are behaving like Grand Inquisitors in a medieval religious hysteria.

To continue reading: Which Hunt?

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Leaked Transcripts Reveal Courtroom Showdown Between Manafort Judge And Mueller Attorney, by Tyler Durden

Posted on May 5, 2018 | Leave a comment

So far Robert Mueller has instigated proceedings against people who have remote or no tangible connection to potential Russia-Trump campaign collusion. Now a federal judge is getting tired of it. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Yesterday we told you about an intense courtroom battle that played out on Friday between the judge in Paul Manafort’s case and an attorney for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in which the judge said that Mueller shouldn’t have “unfettered power” to prosecute Manafort for charges that have nothing to do with collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

Manafort’s lawyers had asked the judge in the Virginia case to dismiss an indictment filed against him in what was their third effort to beat back criminal charges by attacking Mueller’s authority. In addition to pushing back against the Special Counsel’s argument for why Manafort’s bank fraud charges are related to the Russia investigation, the judge also questioned why Manafort’s case could not be handled by the U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia, rather than the Special Counsel’s office, as it is not Russia-related. 

Today, a transcript of that hearing was leaked to Twitter user @Techno_Fog, a New York attorney who eloquently dissected the intense back-and-forth between Eastern District of Virginia Judge T.S. Ellis, a Reagan appointee, and Mueller attorney Michael Dreeben.

The transcript reveals an unimpressed Ellis repeatedly pushing back against Dreeben’s attempts to tie Manafort’s bank fraud case to Russia, while an arrogant Dreeben suggests that the power vested in Ellis is dwarfed by the Special Counsel’s omnipotence.

Ellis then calls out the case as an attempt by Mueller to gain leverage over Manafort.

“You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment or whatever. That’s what you’re really interested in.” –Judge Ellis

Ellis then points out to Dreeben that the Special Counsel’s indictment against Manafort doesn’t mention:

(1) Russian individuals
(2) Russian banks
(3) Russian money
(4) Russian payments to Manafort

To which Dreeben looped back to the argument that “the money that forms the basis for the criminal charges” comes from Manafort’s “Ukraine activities,” which is tied to Manafort’s Russia activities (which still doesn’t answer the Judge’s question).

Manafort’s attorney hit back, calling the Special Counsel’s arguments “absolutely erroneous.”

To continue reading: Leaked Transcripts Reveal Courtroom Showdown Between Manafort Judge And Mueller Attorney

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The Horsefly Cometh, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on May 5, 2018 | Leave a comment

Everybody seems to have forgotten the Inspector General will be releasing a report on the behind the scenes machinations behind the Trump investigation. However, given what we already know, the report is liable to have some bombshells. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

You can see where this Mueller thing is going: to the moment when the Golden Golem of Greatness finally swats down the political horsefly that has orbited his glittering brainpan for a whole year, and says, “There! It’s done.”

It suggests that Civil War Two will end up looking a whole lot more like the French Revolution than Civil War One. The latter unfurled as a solemn tragedy; the former as a Coen Brothers style opéra bouffe bloodbath. Having executed the presidential swat to said orbiting horsefly, Trump will try to turn his attention to the affairs of the nation, only to find that it is insolvent and teetering on the most destructive workout of bad debt the world has ever seen. And then his enemies will really go to work. In the process, they’ll probably wreck the institutional infrastructure needed to run a republic in constitutional democracy mode.

They got a good start in politicizing the upper ranks of the FBI, a fatal miscalculation based on the certainty of a Hillary win, which would have enabled the various schemers in the J. Edgar Hoover building to just fade back into the procedural woodwork of the agency and get on with life. Instead, their shenanigans were exposed and so far one key player, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, was hung out to dry by a committee of his fellow agency execs for lying about his official conduct. Long about now, you kind of wonder: is that where it ends for him? Seems like everybody else (and his uncle) is getting indicted for lying to the FBI. How about Mr. McCabe, since that is exactly why his colleagues at the FBI fired him?

To continue reading: The Horsefly Cometh

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Memo to Trump: Defy Mueller, by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on May 5, 2018 | 2 comments

President Trump is home free on the Mueller investigation unless he opens his mouth in an interview or deposition with Mueller and gets tripped up. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

If Donald Trump does not wish to collaborate in the destruction of his presidency, he will refuse to be questioned by the FBI, or by a grand jury, or by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his malevolent minions.

Should Mueller subpoena him, as he has threatened to do, Trump should ignore the subpoena, and frame it for viewing in Trump Tower.

If Mueller goes to the Supreme Court and wins an order for Trump to comply and testify to a grand jury, Trump should defy the court.

The only institution that is empowered to prosecute a president is Congress. If charges against Trump are to be brought, this is the arena, this is the forum, where the battle should be fought and the fate and future of the Trump presidency decided.

The goal of Mueller’s prosecutors is to take down Trump on the cheap. If they can get him behind closed doors and make him respond in detail to questions — to which they already know the answers — any misstep by Trump could be converted into a perjury charge.

Trump has to score 100 on a test to which Mueller’s team has all the answers in advance while Trump must rely upon memory.

Why take this risk?

By now, witnesses have testified in ways that contradict what Trump has said. This, plus Trump’s impulsiveness, propensity to exaggerate, and often rash responses to hostile questions, would make him easy prey for the perjury traps prosecutors set up when they cannot convict their targets on the evidence.

Mueller and his team are the ones who need this interrogation.

For, after almost two years, their Russiagate investigation has produced no conclusive proof of the foundational charge — that Trump’s team colluded with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to hack and thieve the emails of the Clinton campaign and DNC.

To continue reading: Memo to Trump: Defy Mueller

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The country is about to witness an investigatory train wreck, by Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on April 30, 2018 | 1 comment

This incisive article lays out a little-apprehended dilemma for Robert Mueller. The picayune standards and hair-splitting he’s doing to somehow come up with something on President Trump have to be applied in the opposite direction—against the Democrats and the intelligence agencies. From Victor Davis Hanson at mercury.com:

(FILES) This file photo taken on June 19, 2013 shows then Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Robert Mueller testifying before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on oversight during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Special counsels like the one named to oversee the probe into Russia's alleged election interference are rare super sleuths with more power and independence than regular US investigators. This time it is Robert Mueller, a former FBI director who took over the high-stakes Russia probe in May after US President Donald Trump fired James Comey as FBI director. The first indictments in Mueller's probe are reported to have been brought by a grand jury and could be made public as early as October 30, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEBSAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images

The more Robert Mueller searches for hypothetical lawbreaking, the more he is inadvertently underscoring that actual lawbreakers must be subject to the same standard of justice.

The country is about to witness an investigatory train wreck.

In one direction, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation train is looking for any conceivable thing that President Donald Trump’s campaign team might have done wrong in 2016.

The oncoming train is slower but also larger. It involves congressional investigations, Department of Justice referrals and inspector general’s reports — mostly focused on improper or illegal FBI and DOJ behavior during the 2016 election.

Why are the two now about to collide?

By charging former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI, Mueller emphasized that even the appearance of false testimony is felonious behavior.

If that is so, then the DOJ will likely have to charge former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe with perjury or related offenses. A report from the Office of the Inspector General indicates that McCabe lied at least four times to federal investigators.

Former FBI Director James Comey may also have lied to Congress when he testified that he had not written his report on the Hillary Clinton email scandal before interviewing Clinton. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan lied under oath to Congress on matters related to surveillance.

Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin likely lied when they told FBI investigators they had no idea that their then-boss, Hillary Clinton, was using an illegal private email server. Both had communicated with Clinton about it.

To continue reading: The country is about to witness an investigatory train wreck

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Should Robert Mueller Be Investigated for Violating Civil Liberties? by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted on April 25, 2018 | Leave a comment

Criticizing Robert Mueller or his less than perfect record is regarded as heretical. However, as with past investigation, his conduct of the current investigation has been less than exemplary, especially with regard to civil liberties. From Alan M. Dershowitz at gatestoneinstitute.org:

Just as the first casualty of war is truth, so, too, the first casualty of hyper-partisan politics is civil liberties.

Many traditional civil libertarians have allowed their strong anti-Trump sentiments to erase their long-standing commitment to neutral civil liberties. They are now so desperate to get Trump that they are prepared to compromise the most basic due process rights. They forget the lesson of history that such compromises made against one’s enemy are often used as precedents against one’s friends. As Robert Bolt put it in the play and movie A Man for all Seasons:

Roper: So now you would give the Devil benefit of Law!

Thomas Moore: Yes, what would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that?

Thomas Moore: And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

But today’s fair weather civil libertarians are unwilling to give President Trump – who they regard as the devil — the “benefit of law” and civil liberties.

Consider the issue of criticizing Robert Mueller, the Special counsel. Any criticism or even skepticism regarding Mueller’s history is seen as motivated by a desire to help Trump. Mueller was an Assistant US attorney in Boston, the head of its criminal division, the head of the criminal division in Main Justice and the Director of the FBI during the most scandalous miscarriage of justice in the modern history of the FBI. Four innocent people were framed by the FBI in order to protect mass murdering gangsters who were working as FBI informers while they were killing innocent people. An FBI agent, who is now in prison, was tipping off Whitey Bulger as to who might testify against him so that these individuals could be killed. He also tipped off Bulger allowing him to escape and remain on the lam for 16 years.

To continue reading: Should Robert Mueller Be Investigated for Violating Civil Liberties?

 

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Talk to Mueller? No, Trump Should Use His Bully Pulpit to Expose Mueller’s Corruption, by Kurt Schlichter

Posted on April 13, 2018 | Leave a comment

You never win under cross-examination. Trump has nothing to gain by talking to Robert Mueller and much to lose. From Kurt Schlichter at theburningplatform.com:

Talk to Mueller? No, Trump Should Use His Bully Pulpit to Expose Mueller's Corruption

There is no way to sugarcoat it – especially after the lawless invasion of the attorney-client privilege by fancy-suited thugs, if President Donald Trump sits down and talks to Robert Mueller and his pack of Democrat donor corruptocrats, he’s an idiot.

Instead, he needs to take his case to the people – because a blind man can see that he’s being framed.

If Trump talks to Mueller, Mueller will be laughing at him, but on the inside. On the outside, he’ll keep up that beaten beagle visage of his, roaring at how he outsmarted the man who outsmarted all the Smartest People in the World and who therefore assumes he can somehow “win” his interview.

But Trump can’t win. The fix is in. Raiding Michael Cohen’s office was the icing on an all-icing cake. This is not justice. This is an attempt to claw back power for the disenfranchised elite no matter what it takes, and no one – not the president, not me, and not you, should pretend these hacks deserve any deference or respect.

Trump committed no crime, as we all know because nothing indicating he has committed a crime has leaked out of that unprofessional sieve masquerading as a bunch of professional prosecutors that Mueller assembled to do the bidding of his elite masters to both overturn the result of the 2016 election and avenge his humiliated pal James Comey. The recent report that Trump is not the “target” of an investigation should not lull anyone into complacency – it’s just another flurry in this special counsel’s blizzard of lies.

Donald Trump is their target, though they absolutely and unequivocally know he committed no crime. They don’t care.

It’s not the truth that Donald Trump has to worry about. It’s the lies. Mueller and his pack of Hillary hitmen will not hesitate, not for a second, to manufacture a crime if that’s what it takes. Think of them as all being just as honest as fired FBI bigwig Andrew McCabe, then decide if that makes you more or less confident about the process.

Hmmmm. I’ll go with “less.”

To continue reading: Talk to Mueller? No, Trump Should Use His Bully Pulpit to Expose Mueller’s Corruption

 

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They Fight the Law and the Law Wins, by Doug “Uncola” Lynn

Posted on April 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

A corrupt nation veers towards collapse. What happens afterwards? From Doug “Uncola” Lynn at theburningplatform.com:

I saw the tears of the oppressed—

and they have no comforter;

power was on the side of their oppressors….

–  Ecclesiastes 4:1

 

In viewing the daily headlines and reading various online blogs, it appears many of these have converged into discussions on law and rights.  Two examples of ongoing national conversations include mass shootings versus theSecond Amendment and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s preference for prosecution of process crimes in a bogus election hacking conspiracy, over a real investigation into documented corruption at the highest levels of American government.

On April Fools Day it was revealed the Washington DC permits for the March 24, 2018 “March for Our Lives” event were acquired months before the Parkland Shooting even took place. The irony is palpable.  One would think that would be the smoking gun (pun intended) evidence of a conspiracy, but no.  Nothing shall prevent the children from wielding their emotional wounds, like a Samurai sword in a Tarantino flick, against the Second Amendment; and Laura Ingraham’s right to free speech.

The very next day, on April 2, 2018, Deerfield, Illinois nullified the U.S. Constitution and gave their residents 60 days to turn in their guns or face fines of $1,000 per day per gun.

The day after that, on April 3, 2018, a previously undisclosed memo was unveiled proving illegal collusionbetween Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and his co-conspirator, Robert Mueller, in the special counsel investigation of President Trump.

 

An August 2017 memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to Special Counsel Robert Mueller surfaced late Monday evening in a court filing. Mueller used the memo to defend his scope of the investigation against a recent motion Manafort filed to dismiss his case.

In the heavily redacted memo, Robert Mueller admits Rosenstein’s order appointing him to Special Counsel was intentionally vague.

‘This violates the special counsel law that requires a specific statement of facts to be investigated’, says Attorney Gregg Jarrett.

So let’s get this straight: Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller to be special counsel, signed off on at least one of the misrepresented, and therefore illegal, FISA applications on Team Trump for a counterintelligence investigation.  His aforementioned August 2, 2017 memo to Mueller is now being used to justify the July 26, 2017 home invasion on Paul Manafort after it happened.  Now Mueller is, instead, investigating Trump for possible obstruction of justice for firing former FBI Director, James Comey.

To continue reading: They Fight the Law and the Law Wins

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