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In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king and in the land of a totally phony House Russia investigation the halfway serious Senate investigation looks pretty darn good. But better than the Devin Nunes’ show is not high praise and while the Senate Intel Committee’s comparatively done a much better job, it has been far from ideal and has some real shortcomings of its own.
Trump, of course, commanded investigators to stay away from his family’s finances as they aren’t relevant to Russia collusion-as if the person being investigated gets to decide the scope. The House investigation which shutdown prematurely last month was a total joke-they proclaimed there was no collusion but didn’t even speak to either George Papadopoulous, Paul Manafort, or Michael Flynn and many other important witnesses you’d need to speak to to make this case. They did nothing on the financial crimes track at all.
The Senate investigation has rightly worked with the financial crimes division at Treasury
“The Senate Intelligence Committee, the last bipartisan body on Capitol Hill investigating potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, has requested information on dozens of key witnesses from the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit in an attempt to follow the money, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.”
But guess who didn’t make their list of 45? Yep, Donald Jr, Jared Kushner, and Herr Trump himself:
“But that list of 45 names does not include some of the most high-profile figures in the investigation: Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and the president himself.”
“Five sources familiar with the matter said they had seen no other requests from the committee to the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for financial documents on the Trumps, Kushner, or their companies, an omission that has drawn criticism — even from members of the committee itself.”
“Overall, the committee’s approach to follow-the-money issues has been wholly deficient and in my view, does not adhere to the whole principle of what we’re supposed to be about, which is counterintelligence,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat on the committee, told BuzzFeed News. “If you want to compromise people, you do it with dough.”
Indeed-that’s one of the FSB’s favorite tricks-financial inducement. Like in the case of Manafort-who was Trump’s campaign manager during such a critical time in the race-during the period of grabbing the necessary delegates to win the primary and the GOP convention-one big motivator for him to collude with Russia was that he owed Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska millions of dollars and was looking for a way to use his position as campaign manager to ‘get whole’ with Deripaska.
Wyden declined to comment on specific requests to Treasury, but said the the committee is making a “major mistake” in not prioritizing financial issues, suggesting it could leave a hole in the the findings of Congress’ leading probe into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
UPDATE: It’s over a year since I wrote this on March 29, 2018-actually I should say Happy Mother’s Day-today is Sunday May 12, 2019.
Regarding Deripaska he refused to cooperate with the investigation and that has left a lot of holes in the Mueller Report regarding the activities of Manafort-who offered him campaign briefings and regularly gave Konstantin Kilimnik detailed polling data.
Indeed, one of the many questions the House needs to ask Mueller when they finally get him under oath is if he ever attempted to talk to the Belorussian model who claims to have incriminating tapes of Deripaska’s incriminating conversations during 2016.
3/ I don't think it's alarmist to wonder if we'll ever hear from this woman again. I can't imagine—if she lives—she'll ever be allowed to speak to anyone.
Deripaska, who almost certainly orchestrated this bogus arrest, is the man Trump is trying desperately to lift sanctions on.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 18, 2019
Subsequently she was arrested at a Moscow airport and has now changed her story-and handed the tapes back to Deripaska.
She later stated that the FSB warned her not to return to Belarus.
Konstantin Kilimnik’s FSB-the same Kilimnik who Manafort handed all that campaign polling data.
If Mueller’s answer is no the followup question is obvious-exactly why not?
As noted above Mueller comes as close as you get to an actual Republican institutionalist-rather than yet another partisan Republican who’s able to con the institutionalists into believing he cares about something more than partisan Republican advantage.
But an enduring question at least until Mueller testifies is wether he was aggressive enough-or did he pull his punches. If he made no effort to speak to Deripaska’s model friend that certainly seems like a pulled punch.
There is much we don’t know about Manafort’s dealings with Deripaska regarding collusion, coordination, and conspiracy. Much of this is due to Manafort’s lies and lack of cooperation but Deripaska’s own lack of cooperation was another big part of it so why wouldn’t Mueller try to speak to Anastasia Vashukevich?
As for Trump family finances this has been something of a black hole. Schiff has long suspected Mueller didn’t delve into them and this has been affirmed with the release of the redacted Mueller Report. Schiff himself has hired financial investigators and he and Maxine Waters are coordinating for a deep dive.
Trump’s bank records at Deutsche are seen as the Rosetta Stone of Trump finances.
The bank is cooperating even as Trump attempts to quash it via lawsuits. Trump’s recent frivolous lawsuit to prevent Cummings from obtaining financial records from his accounting firm is moving faster than expected-so maybe Trump’s lawsuits won’t be as successful in running out the clock as many assume.
As for the Senate Intel Committee Chairman Richard Burr did surprise many-and outrage his fellow GOP co-conspirators-by subpoenaing Donald Jr to correct previous testimony.
What the rest of Trump’s GOP co-conspirators-it’s hard to argue Burr isn’t also a Trump co-conspirator-don’t get is Burr is probably just trying to protect Jr for his clear perjury on when he knew and how many conversations he had regarding the Trump Tower Moscow deal.
After all, Cohen and Roger Stone didn’t get a chance to correct their testimony.
UPDATE:
NEW: Don Jr had agreed to a voluntarily interview date with the Senate Intel Committee twice before backing out, a process that led to the subpoena from Burr last month. That and more details on the impasse here, w/ @KaraScannell @mkraju https://t.co/J5fAiQJQfb
— Jeremy Herb (@jeremyherb) May 13, 2019