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UPDATE: What did MR say about Stephen Miller? Did it say anything regarding Lewandowski and collusion?
Start here
https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2019/05/duke-university-alum-stephen-miller-robert-mueller-report-james-comey-donald-trump-russia-investigation-drafted-termination-letter
As Marcy Wheeler argues, one way to suss out which current and former Trumpsters have been spending a lot of time with Mueller is looking at quarterly political spending reports. One thing that jumps out is how much the Trump campaign spent last quarter on Corey Lewandowski.
The NYT reported the other day that the Trump campaign has paid $173,000 in the past quarter to the law firm representing Corey Lewandowski.
The campaign also paid $173,000 to Mintz Levin, a law firm that has helped Mr. Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, handle inquiries related to the Russia investigations.
The suggestion that Lewandowski has spent quality time with Mueller’s team of late is particularly interesting, for several reasons. First, Lewandowski had a number of key interactions with George Papadopoulos regarding the outreach from Russia, including drafting Trump’s first foreign policy speech, which Papadopoulos reportedly told Ivan Timofeev was a sign that the campaign was interested in pursuing a Trump-Putin meeting
April 27: Papadopoulos to Corey Lewandowski
“to discuss Russia’s interest in hosting Mr. Trump. Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right.”
April 27: Papadopoulos authored speech that he tells Timofeev is “the signal to meet”
[snip]
May 4, Papadopoulos to Lewandowski (forwarding Timofeev email):
“What do you think? Is this something we want to move forward with?”
May 14, Papadopoulos to Lewandowski:
“Russian govemment[] ha[s] also relayed to me that they are interested in hostingMr. Trump.”
[snip]
June 19: Papadopoulos to Lewandowski
“New message from Russia”: “The Russian ministry of foreign affairs messaged and said that if Mr. Trump is unable to make it to Russia, if a campaign rep (me or someone else) can make it for meetings? I am willing to make the trip off the record if it’s in the interest of Mr. Trump and the campaign to meet specific people.”
Lewandowski was also the person that the House Intelligence Committee treated most curiously. HPSCI originally interviewed him in January, during the phase when HPSCI seemed to be interviewing key witnesses to be able to pass on to Trump how they would testify. At that point, Mueller had not yet contacted Lewandowski.”
As Wheeler points out, while Lewandowski never worked in the Russia House, he still cited executive privilege during the hearing.
“Even though Lewandowski never worked in the Administration, in that first appearance with HPSCI, he invoked privilege over parts of his testimony. On March 8, HPSCI brought him back, the very last witness in their so-called investigation. After his three hour appearance, Adam Schiff discussed subpoenaing Lewnadowski to compel him to answer questions he had still refused to answer (Schiff had also demanded HPSCI compel full testimony from Hope Hicks). In the same discussion of compelling Lewandowski to answer questions, Schiff suggested the committee should subpoena Stephen Miller.
After Lewandowski’s testimony had wrapped, Schiff raised a new name he wanted to speak to: White House aide Stephen Miller.
Which is curious because WSJ reports that the legal defense fund supporting specific former campaign staffers paid Akin Gump $115,000.
The fund directed most of its third-quarter spending to legal consulting, paying nearly $115,000 to the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and another $8,500 to Schertler & Onorato LLP. The latter firm has represented Keith Schiller, Mr. Trump’s longtime bodyguard who was interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee as part of its Russia investigation.
It’s not publicly known which former campaign staffer Akin Gump represents, but two of the few key Trump people whose lawyers have not been publicly identified are Brad Parscale (though the campaign would probably pay for his legal defense at this point) and Miller.
Miller is the person whom Papadopoulos has said he would have told about the Russian offer of emails had he actually connected by phone the day he learned of it.
In any case, we can from this infer that Lewandowski is someone of pretty high interest-you wonder what Papadopoulos told him about their interactions.
As for Miller, he has emerged as a clear target for Mueller:
“Back when Robert Mueller decided late last year to begin interviewing Donald Trump’s underlings about Trump’s obstruction of justice, Mueller went to Stephen Miller first. That tells us that Mueller views Miller as having been the key figure in Trump’s obstruction efforts. It’s not difficult to connect this to the widespread reporting that Miller helped Trump draft a letter firing FBI Director James Comey, which was then scuttled by the White House Counsel for being too incriminating; Mueller now has a copy of that letter.”
That’s on obstruction of justice, not for what he may well have discussed with Papadopoulos.
As for Lewandowski, besides his conversations as campaign manager with Papadopoulos on Russia, then there’s the fact that Lewandowski also gave the ok for Carter Page to go to Moscow. It’s pretty plausible that Carter Page ended up the one to go on the trip to Russia Papadopoulos had been so excited about in March-May of 2016.
UPDATE: What did MR say about Stephen Miller? Did it say anything regarding Lewandowski and collusion?