391

Though the media has lost the scent of it, it’s clear why Kavanaugh was chosen when many other severe conservatives on the Federalist Society list would have been much easier lifts: Kav is the guy Trump chose to protect him from the Russia probe. So far Kavanaugh is not doing anything to reassure us that he is in any way independent of the Trump Russia House-quite the opposite. 

But the media has largely taken its eye off the ball. Indeed, during the confirmation fight the media acted like there was something wrong if a Democrat voiced other concerns besides the sexual assault allegations-as if this shows the concern over the allegations was somehow fake. As if I can’t have multiple reasons for opposing the illegitimate ‘Supreme Court Justice’ like: he’s a credibly accused sexual assaulter, serial perjurer, partisan hack, a trafficker in stolen Dem Senate emails-the GOP didn’t need the Russians to show them how to weaponize hacked emails, who was chosen to protect Trump from the Russia probe.

But the media acts like the fact that there are other good reasons besides being an accused sexual predator proves that you don’t really care about sexual assault-you can only have one major objection or you must hold your piece.

Indeed, there was collusion between Trump and Anthony Kennedy-who were seen talking on the WH lawn during an event to win support for Neil Gorsuch-who despite what the GOP says-that we Democrats accuse very conservative SJC nominee of sexual assault, no one accused of being a sexual assaulter, not even once.

Now that Kavanaugh has been illegitimately plowed through there is new news about the Trump-Kenndy pact. it is more important that ever that we get to the bottom of what really happened. Trouble is the media has completely gone to sleep on this story. 

UPDATE: This first part is also word for word in Chapter A

 

As for Roger Stone, the walls keep closing in. Randy Credico testified in September and released emails that showed Stone threatening Credico-and his beloved dog. 

Stone himself has been stating since April that he may well be convicted-Mueller will ‘frame him’ on something or other.

Now he’s reduced to saying that his first Amendment Speech rights allow him to traffic in stolen emails, in other words, collusion isn’t a crime. 

This is case is not specifically regarding the Mueller probe, this is s separate lawsuit by a few donors and a former employee of the DNC.

“In a motion to dismiss a new lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump’s campaign team of illegally conspiring with Russian agents to disseminate stolen emails during the election, Trump campaign lawyers have tried out a new defense: free speech.”

UPDATE: The Mueller report makes it clear Stone, Jerome Corsi and the Trump campaign did conspire to disseminate the emails but this defense simply conceded the case.

End of UPDATE

Not that he didn’t do it. He’d been insisting that he didn’t receive the stolen emails. Now he’s admitting he did traffic in them but that he’s allowed to traffic in stolen emails. But then for 20 months he’d claimed never to met with the Russians and now he’s reduced to admitting that he did met with them but he forgot and it was about the weather.

Stone’s certainly a very inventive liar. When Credico stated that Stone threatened him in an email: prepare to die, cocksucker, Stone later claimed he was just wishing Credico’s cocker spaniel get better. Now that Credico has shown that he threatened the cocker spaniel, Stone claims that actually he just wanted to take the dog away because Credico is on drugs. 

Back to Natasha Bertrand at The Atlantic:

“But the Trump campaign—represented by Jeffrey Baltruzak, Michael A. Carvin, Nikki L. McArthur, and Vivek Suri, all of the law firm Jones Day—responded in a brief filed Tuesday that the campaign can’t be held legally responsible for WikiLeaks’s publication of the DNC emails.”

“Furthermore, the Trump lawyers argued, the First Amendment protects the campaign’s “right to disclose information—even stolen information—so long as (1) the speaker did not participate in the theft and (2) the information deals with matters of public concern.”

UPDATE: An extremely narrow reading of wrongdoing. We can debate wether such conduct is illegal-it’s clearly unethical and impeachable. What’s more the fact pattern in the MR makes it clear that Trump and his co-conspirators-Peter Smith and Michael Flynn-clearly did seek to participate in the theft of Clinton’s emails.

End of UPDATE

“The motion’s language seems to further an argument made by Trump and his allies as they await the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into a potential conspiracy between the campaign and Russia in 2016: namely, that collusion, even if it involved the coordinated release and exploitation of a candidate’s emails during the presidential election, is not a crime.”

“In that sense, the campaign’s legal team is taking advantage of the fact that the so-called Cockrum lawsuit—which was dismissed in July but refiled last month by the two DNC donors, Roy Cockrum and Eric Schoenberg, and the former DNC employee, Scott Comer—doesn’t accuse the campaign of actually helping the Russians hack the Democratic National Committee, which would be a crime. Rather, the plaintiffs put forth their privacy argument based on the alleged coordination among the campaign, Stone, Russia, and WikiLeaks.”

“But the right to free speech, the campaign’s lawyers argued, supersedes the right to privacy. “At a minimum, privacy cannot justify suppressing true speech during a political campaign,” they wrote. Quoting from the Citizens United case, they added that the First Amendment leaves parties “‘free to obtain information from diverse sources in order to determine how to cast their votes.’ It would eviscerate that guarantee to punish true disclosures made in a political campaign.”

This argument, argues Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, is fallacious:

“Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, which represents the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told me that the brief “seems like the technical legal version of the more political argument the Trump team has been floating, and will make in earnest, should Robert Mueller eventually find that the campaign engaged in a conspiracy like the one we allege, which seems very possible given how the indictments he’s already brought line up with the complaint in this case. We of course intend to rebut that argument in the litigation, as it’s wrong.”

It’s clearly illegal for a U.S. political campaign to receive anything of value from foreign nationals:

“While there is no evidence yet that the Trump campaign knew about or aided in the hacking itself, campaign-finance laws prohibit candidates from accepting “anything of value” from a foreign national. The Trump campaign could face legal exposure, then, if a prosecutor could prove that Trump or his campaign associates made an agreement with Russia to publish the stolen emails—which were clearly valuable to the campaign, given how often Trump quoted from them during rallies—via a third party such as WikiLeaks, as Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, has written.”

“Their argument is timely, and troubling: The midterm elections, less than 30 days away, are as vulnerable to hackers who steal information and then dump it onto the web to influence voters as the presidential election was two years ago. Both parties face high stakes: Democrats hope to take back the House and the Senate, whereas Republicans are clinging to their majorities as a wave of GOP lawmakers chooses not to run for reelection. So far, however, only House Democrats have pledged not to use stolen or hacked materials in their campaigns this fall. As I reported last month, their Republican counterparts declined to match that commitment—and “one of the major sticking points” was how to address the press coverage of hacked materials.”

“Speech deals with matters of public concern when it can be fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community, or when it is a subject of legitimate news interest,” the Trump campaign’s lawyers wrote in their brief. They went on to justify the disclosure of the hacked materials by arguing that they were in the public interest. “Every disclosed email was (1) a work email (2) sent or received by a political operative (3) during a presidential campaign,” they wrote. “Indeed, the disclosed emails dealt pervasively with important public issues. They revealed the Democratic Party’s conduct during its presidential primaries—which are public processes ‘structur[ed] and monitor[ed]’ by the state. They revealed the DNC’s interactions with rich donors—educating citizens about the influence of ‘moneyed interests.’ And they revealed the closeness of the party’s ties to the media.” (Here, again, the lawyers seem to be emphasizing the value of the emails, which could prove problematic with regard to campaign-finance laws.)”

“Experts fear that the continued use of hacked documents by campaigns only encourages cybercriminals to keep meddling in U.S. elections. While it is often difficult to differentiate between material that has been leaked and material that has been hacked, “there should be” a cohesive policy used to distinguish between the two, Clint Watts, a senior fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University and a Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow, told me earlier this year.”

It speaks volumes that the GOP won’t commit not to use stolen emails. But then while there’s the issue of campaigns using stolen documents, there’s also the issue of how the media handled the stolen Wikileaks documents-they amplified them. While the Clinton campaign warned the Russians were behind this, the media mostly ignored this. Yet, the MSM seems to have learned its lesson by refusing to amplify the huge trove of stolen CIA documents Assange leaked in 2017. It’s certainly possible, then, for the media to behave responsibly unlike in 2016.

But this discussion over stolen emails makes me think of: Brett Kavanaugh, who was chosen by Trump to protect him from Russia and who has made it clear that he’s a biased Republican who hates the Democrats. Will he have Roger Stone’s back if the case gets to the Supreme Court?

Indeed, beyond Kavanaugh’s clear bias and lack of independence you have the fact that he himself previously trafficked in stolen emails. 

Certainly if Stone is going to find a sympathetic Republican judge, Kavanaugh would seem to fit the bill.

UPDATE: The beneath excerpt is also in Chapter A. 

As for the idea that Kavanaugh was chosen to protect Trump from Russia, this is apparently also the working theory of one of Roger Stone’s aides who are in the crosshairs of the Mueller probe. 

The Roger Stone aide who is mounting a constitutional challenge to special counsel Robert Mueller wants to take his case to the Supreme Court and feels “great” that Justice Brett Kavanaugh will be on the bench to, hopefully, deal a major blow to the Russia investigation.

Feels great. Like Don Jr said in an email to Rob Goldstone: if it’s what you say I love it. 

“Andrew Miller previously worked as an aide to Stone, a longtime Trump ally who is under scrutiny in the Russia investigation. Miller was subpoenaed earlier this year to testify before the special counsel’s grand jury. Instead of complying, he waged a legal battle to invalidate Mueller’s authority to act as a prosecutor. A federal judge ruled against him, holding him in contempt of court for failing to testify, and he has appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.”

“Asked how he feels about Kavanaugh’s presence on the court, as someone who might be sympathetic to his case, Miller said, “I feel nothing but great. I’m cool as a cucumber now.”

“Miller made the comments on a radio show Tuesday morning, when Kavanaugh heard his first oral arguments as a newly minted justice. The program on WBEN in Buffalo, New York, was hosted by former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo, a staunch Mueller critic who has been questioned as part of the investigation and is partially funding Miller’s legal team.”

Earlier in the show, Miller’s attorney said he hoped to take the case to the Supreme Court and predicted that a majority of the justices would support his argument against Mueller’s authority, if they decided to take the case. The probability that Kavanaugh and his colleagues on the court would get to hear Miller’s challenge of Mueller anytime soon is a stretch.

“For the case to reach the Supreme Court, Miller would have to lose at the appellate court first. His case is scheduled to be heard by three appellate judges on November 8, and a decision would come later.”

Kavanaugh would be “very good on this issue,” Miller’s attorney Paul Kamenar said on WBEN.

Yes, we can certainly understand why Miller feels ‘as cool as a cucumber’ and thinks Kav would be very good on the issue of bailing at the Trumpsters.

Congratulations to the GOP-it’s now the Roger Stone Supreme Court.

 

 

 

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October 28, 2016: a Day That Will Live in Infamy Copyright © by . All Rights Reserved.

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