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It’s pretty surreal but the GOP has tried to claim that the FBI was totally biased in 2016-in favor of Hillary Clinton. Yes, totally, other than the fact that they were known as Trumpland in 2016 and Comey’s interventions into the race won it for Trump.

One thing the GOP has misconstrued is the idea that Comey had already declared her innocent in an internal document before interviewing her. But this is not unusual at all-it’s normal protocol. As Comey himself has pointed out, if after a year you don’t have a pretty good idea of where the case is going you’re not much of a prosecutor.

UPDATE: Indeed as we see in Chapter A it turns out Hillary was never even a subject of the investigation-and just so. By definition that she was interviewed was proof she wasn’t the subject-as a subject or target isn’t interviewed by an investigation under the premise a subject/target shouldn’t have to testify against him/herself. The fact that she was interviewed underscored that she wasn’t a subject and was never likely to be indicted-which is why the real question is why Midyear Emailgate was opened in the first place-Chapter A.

Of course, this is another source of legitimate complaint with the way Comey ran that investigation. By July, 2016 he had known for many months that she was not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing yet he because of  his preoccupation  over political optics he continued to string her along creating the perception among much of the public that there was a good chance Clinton would be indicted though he knew this was ‘not a close call.’

Indeed, per Lanny Davis’ important book on Clinton-get link Mike!-there’s reason to suspect Comey and the FBI should have known much sooner-back in August 2015 that Clinton wasn’t guilty.

Comey’s stock answer to questions over his October 28 letter that flipped the election has been ‘Come back with me to that date and tell me what you would have done.’

Yet the answer is not tough-simply follow the protocol and don’t say anything. This is, one strongly suspects, exactly what Mueller would have done. Which brings us to Mueller and the Russia investigation today. He’s been at it for 11 months. Does he have a pretty good idea of where this is headed? Quite possibly, yes.

Indeed, right off the bat, Mueller always knows more than we think-Wired argues he likely knows how it will end. 

Every single indictment has been deeper, broader, and more detailed than anyone anticipated. This “misunderestimating” of what Mueller knows has been true of both the public and media reports, and of his witnesses and targets: Both Rick Gates and Alex van der Zwaan were caught in lies by Mueller’s team, who have known far more specific information than their targets first realized. Presumably, Mueller’s questions to Trump are informed by even more evidence that we haven’t seen.

Beyond that there’s clearly no ‘witch hunt’ as Mueller is a very cautious and careful prosecutor.

Mueller is building a bulletproof case. Paul Manafort spent the spring trying to argue that Mueller was a loose cannon, a reckless, out-of-control prosecutor straying far beyond his assignment. His court case, though, proved just the opposite: The release this spring in court of a previously classified memo by Rod Rosenstein makes clear just how cautiously and conservatively Mueller is proceeding legally. One of the key members of Mueller’s team, Michael Dreeben, specializes in looking down the road at potential legal pitfalls and how cases might appear not just at initial trials but in later appellate courts. And Dreeban’s work has paid obvious dividends: After reviewing the evidence in Manafort’s effort to dismiss the charges against him and Mueller’s highly detailed 282-page rebuttal, Judge Amy Berman Jackson told Manafort’s lawyers, “I don’t really understand what is left of your case.”

The 49 questions-unlikely that they are exhaustive-also show how many loose threads remain. There are still a great deal of Rumsfeld’s ‘known unknowns.’

Perhaps the most troubling conclusion after reading Mueller’s proposed questions is just how many questions exist about the behavior and motivations of the President of the United States during his first year in office. The 49 questions lay out just how much remains unanswered and unknown, publicly at least, nearly a year into Mueller’s special counsel work. It’s hard to tell from the questions alone which ones represent the most possible jeopardy for the president, but when matched against the five core areas of Mueller’s investigation, it’s clear that Mueller wants to talk with President Trump about nearly all of them, from obstruction of justice to the Trump Organization’s business deals in Russia to the 2016 Trump campaign’s involvement with various Russian officials. Add in the full breadth of the investigation, from New York taxi medallions to Virginia rug stores, and the “supporting players”—including Erik Prince, Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner, Tony Podesta, Carter Page, Sergey Kislyak, Sergey Gorkov, Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, as well as the hackers of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear—and it’s clear that this is no made-up “witch hunt.” There are likely more indictments yet to come.

And we still haven’t seen the most important evidence-that Mueller has from Papadopoulos and Rick Gates.

“There’s an ever-growing pile of evidence that exists that hasn’t become public yet. That includes, obviously, the evidence that George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, and Rick Gates all traded to Mueller for their plea deals over the last seven months. Presumably, Mueller considers each defendant’s testimony worthy of trading months—and even years—off of a potential prison sentence, so it seems significant that more than seven months after Mueller “flipped” Papadopoulos, we still haven’t seen a single iota of the evidence he presumably provided to the investigation.

The writer, Garret Graff, argues this may mean the investigation is nearing the end.

 “Mueller likely already knows how this story ends. Add up the four above points and it seems clear that Mueller might actually be relatively close to wrapping up the investigation. Given that the FBI raid on Michael Cohen’s office, stemming from an investigation by federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, was sure to provoke a reaction from President Trump—the investigative equivalent of kicking a hornet’s nest—it seems likely that Mueller and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who approved the raid, understood that one or both of them might be fired by the president in its wake. It seems likely that before they took such a provocative step on the case that they could see their way through to the investigation’s end.”

UPDATE: This is from May 7, 2018. Today is March 18, 2019 so it’s pretty clear Graff wasn’t correct that the investigation was near its end-unless you have a very expansive-way too expansive-definition of ‘relatively closely.’

As for the questions for Trump, he-or his lawyers-answered the take home exam questions and it’s quite possible he lied-he claimed Roger Stone never told him about Wiikileaks’ email dumps but Cohen contradicted this in his testimony back on February 27, 2019 before Oversight.

The drumbeat that Mueller is close to wrapping up has only gotten louder in the 10 plus months since Graff wrote this last May. Ken Dilanian and friends have been wrong again and again in their predictions. Dilanian will predict Mueller will be done next Friday and then after it doesn’t happen declare the following Monday this only makes it even more certain it’s coming the following Friday.

For more  on Ken’s follies see here. 

Seth Abramson’s analysis shows everything that’s wrong with the way MSM conventional wisdom gets made:

2/ If I make one mistake—and it’s human to do so—there will be hit-pieces written solely about me and how I was always in some sense unreliable. Meanwhile, Ken can re-report a story that had previously been found to be false on seven occasions and face virtually no real blowback.

3/ When @KenDilanianNBC—he alone—created the false but shortly ubiquitous narrative that Mueller was done with his work and now in the report-writing phase, I laid out for him in a thread why his report was incorrect as a matter of *fact*. And he called me greedy and un-American.

Dilanian is in the club so his errors-even absurd errors-are treated gently and indulgently. But if someone-like Abramson-who’s not in the club gets one thing wrong this is treated as an excuse to dismiss anything he says subsequently out of hand.

As I discuss elsewhere it’s true that the MSM’s congenital timidity is in many respects a blessing-they seldom get clear matters of fact wrong;

But while it’s a clear virtue to seldom get clear matters of fact wrong-for the people to be informed they need a press they can rely on and trust-the blessing comes with a curse-like Monk because of the MSM’s pack mentality-when a well regarded Beltway pundit like Dilanian gets something wrong the whole ‘smart set’ drinks the Koolaid.

If Mueller is close to done-and obviously it’s more likely that ‘Mueller is all but done’ today then when Dilanian first claimed it three months ago-then evidently Mueller will finish his report without a live interview of Trump-Schiff has clearly stated if Mueller fails to do so it’s a mistake. 

Schiff has also stated that the evidence of Russian Collusion Coordination and Conspiracy is hiding in plain sight. 

Chairman Burr must have a different word for it,” Schiff told host Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” pointing to communications between Russia and Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump aides George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn.

“You can see evidence in plain sight on the issue of collusion, pretty compelling evidence,” Schiff said, adding, “There is a difference between seeing evidence of collusion and being able to prove a criminal conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Schiff said special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on potential Russian government meddling in the 2016 election might not be the final word on the matter.

It’s certainly a relief Schiff recognizes this. As for evidence in plain sight the best we have so far as public evidence is the communications between Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, and the Trump campaign about the email dumps in advance-including Cohen’s testimony that he saw Roger Stone tell Trump via speakerphone about the DNC email dump in advance.

These communications clearly establish Coordination-presumably that’s only a fraction of everything Mueller has. While the late Peter Smith’s emails to senior Trump campaign staff-including Michael Flynn and Bannon of his clearly stated intent to pay Russian hackers to hack Clinton’s emails implicates the Trump campaign in Conspiracy  to Commit Computer Crimes.

Then we have the news from Publica that George Nader’s office was also raided which also bears directly on the quid pro quo of Russian Coordination and Conspiracy.

Mueller certainly wanted to know what Nader’s $2 million dollar payment to Joel Zamel-owner of a sanctioned Israeli social media company-was for. 

Quite possibly he already knows the answer to this and much besides that we don’t. Again the presumption should always be we likely don’t have 5% of what Mueller has.

FN: Though, not to toot my own horn-but someone has to do it!-I don’t think Mueller is aware of Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi’ role in Comeygate as we looked at in Chapter A.

Essentially the Trump campaign didn’t only conspire with both the National Enquirer-the hush money payments-and Russia to improperly influence and election but also the rogue anti Clinton pro Trump FBI agents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.wired.com/story/robert-mueller-trump-questions-investigation/

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