310

 

UPDATE: Possible transfer

For the last year and a half  the MSM has repeatedly declared the Mueller investigation was over imminently-obviously if you keep doing this eventually you will be right. . Then in December, Ken Dilianian had declared it would be over ‘very soon, as early as late February.’ So predictably the week before the last week of February there were all these MSM predictions that ‘there’s a very good likelihood that the Mueller report will be out next week.’

Of course, that’s what Ken Dilanian had predicted.

Then the last week of February came and went and no Mueller report. We’re now half way through March and the drumbeat of ‘Mueller is done’ hasn’t missed a beat. This is a good example of the trouble with the MSM: it’s deep timidity prevents it from making many clear errors but its pack mentality-another feature of its timidity-means that when its wrong virtually all ‘respectable’ voices are wrong. But because they feel safety in numbers they keep repeating wrong things.

That’s why though Dilanian has a big egg dripping down his face, his ‘savvy’ brothers and sisters aren’t going to admit it because it’s ok to be wrong if you’re all wrong together.

Again, predicting the Mueller report will be over ‘soon’ is perfect in the sense that at some point it will be true-they’ve been predicting it for the last year and a half so…

Yesterday morning after it was announced Andrew Weissmann was leaving the Mueller team there were again all these triumpahlist takes that ‘Mueller is done’ and ‘Mueller will find no collusion.’

There were pundits insisting that Weissmann’s departure was literally 100% proof positive that Mueller was done. Emptywheel argued that too much was being read into Weissmann leaving though she did ultimately agree that he seems to be done

In any case, though, we don’t have long to wait, so it’s not clear that misreading the departure of Weissmann — which is better understood as part of the normal pattern of Mueller’s prosecutors leaving when they’re done — tells us anything useful.”

It seems that part of what’s going on is what Seth Abramson has discussed in the past-the MSM really wants Mueller to be done. A corollary of the current ‘smart take’ that he’s done is that he will find nothing regarding collusion conspiracy.-maybe some small bore corruption stuff or maybe ‘process crimes’ like perjury and obstruction-note that Bill Clinton was impeached over ‘process crimes’ and most of the MSM was cheering-there were many editorials in the allegedly liberal media calling for Clinton to resign in 1998-certainly the NYTimes did.

That they insist on calling it collusion is just one aspect of their flawed coverage. Indeed, they’ve covered the Mueller report like an ostrich. If there is no reporting on a particular aspect of the investigation for a few months they conclude there must be no there there. It’s as if because I haven’t been the the gym in a few months it must be gone.

The notion that there must be nothing in Mueller’s findings regarding the underlying Russian conspiracy is not surprising as the media never felt it was very likely in the first place-the smart take on this was even if it happened there’s no way to prove it. If that’s true then I guess it’s what Guns and Roses called The Perfect Crime. 

Yet another MSM defense of ‘the President’ is that he and his co-conspirators are just too incompetent and disorganized to do such a conspiracy. Then how could they have committed a perfect crime?

Basically the idea that Mueller is going to find ‘no collusion!’-while Trump thinks the MSM hates them, they really do believe everything he says-totally the opposite to how they covered Hillary-they pick up all his catchphrases-largely due to the fact that they have always thought that was a very remote possibility.

Yesterday on Nicole Wallace-though she herself alone questioned the narrative and has actually been one of the best MSM reporters on Russiagate-one of her guests declared that Jared Kushner and Donald Jr are in the clear. Based on what? Because there hasn’t been anything in the news recently about them? All of this seems to be predicated on the idea that we already know 98% of what Mueller has. The Beltway pundits apparently have totally forgotten that much of Mueller’s memos have been redacted-Flynn’s memo was virtually one long redaction. 

Indeed, if we know-as they presume-we know everything Mueller knows-we’d have no need of a Mueller report.

When you look at Flynn’s memo there are a lot of things we don’t know about. As Vanity Fair linked just above says, there are plenty in TrumpWorld who should be worried about what’s in those reactions. Starting with Jared Kushner-Flynn was in the meeting with Prince Jared when the American version of MBS asked Kisylak about the possibility of a backchannel inside the Russian embassy. 

Then there’s the question of what Flynn told Mueller regarding Peter Smith. The late Peter Smith was a GOP operative very close to Flynn and Flynn’s son. He had sent Flynn an email-that also went to Steve Bannon-then the Campaign Director-as well as Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, and Kellyann Conway-expressing his intent to pay Russian hackers to find Clinton’s deleted emails. In other words he expressed the intent to commit a felony-Conspiracy to Commit Computer Crimes and he expressed it to the highest levels of the Trump campaign.

As documented in Chapter A there’s evidence to suggest that Smith was successful and after the Podesta emails paid the Russian hackers. This would be clear Conspiracy and it implicates the top brass in TrumpWorld. While the communications between Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi and the Trump campaign-Bannon’s ‘well done’ in early October; a campaign directed-from Manafort?-in late July to Stone to find out what else Assange had-Cohen revealed Trump also know in advance of the DNC email dump-clearly establish Trump campaign coordination, Peter Smith’s actions could implicate it in actual conspiracy on the supply side-they didn’t just coordinate and utilize the emails after the fact, they also actually paid the hackers in obtaining the emails.

But the MSM has forgotten the name Peter Smith. They’ve presumed there’s nothing to Carter Page, forgotten who George Nader is-he paid $2 million dollars to Joel Zamel-who owns an Israeli social media company. after the election for what must have been some very expensive services rendered for the campaign.

Just recently, Erik Prince admitted that he was who setup the fateful Trump Tower meeting of August 3, 2016 where they discussed a plan for the Saudis and UAE to help the Trump campaign on social media-while we always talk about ‘Russian Collusion’ in truth the Russian Conspiracy wasn’t only the Russians-it also contained Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar. 

The MSM apparently assumes Mueller wasn’t interested in this either. As for Emptwheel, while she also thinks the Mueller investigation will be done soon, she does believe that ‘Russian Collusion’ happened. 

None of that tells us what will happen in the next few weeks. There is abundant evidence that Trump entered into a quid pro quo conspiracy with Russia, trading dirt and dollars for sanctions relief and other policy considerations. But it’s unclear whether Mueller has certainty that he’d have an 85% chance of winning convictions, which is around what he’d need to convince DOJ to charge it. There is also abundant evidence that Trump and others obstructed the investigation, but charging Trump in that presents constitutional questions.

This is why we need to see the full Mueller report. If Mueller believes it happened but that he’d only have an 80% chance at winning convictions we ought to know that rather than simply have Trump declare ‘no collusion.’

Here Seth Abramson covers all the lose threads that have yet to be sorted out if Mueller does his report tomorrow.

 

Well the fact that he hasn’t spoken to them could mean they’re a target or at least a subject. One of the ironies about all the faux outrage about Clinton’s FBI interview is that it was because she wasn’t a subject that she was interviewed. 

Again, this MSM’s Ostrich Theory of Russian Collusion. Because we’ve only heard about Manafort’s financial crimes and tax evasion, and Cohen’s part in Trump’s hush money scheme-and some  personal tax issues for Cohen-the (not so) smart money presumes that’s all Mueller has on them. This presumption that Mueller has already shown us all his cards is tough to understand. The reason for it is that it fits with the MSM’s preconceptions-that Russian Collusion Conspiracy, that if there were crimes they are in the vein of Al Capone not the Rosenbergs-as discussed in Chapter B.

Remember we only even know about Manafort’s handing Kilimnik 75 pages of polling data because of a mistake by Manafort’s lawyer including it in his sentencing memo. Otherwise we’d have no idea-and it clearly implicates Manafort in Russian Conspiracy itself. Is this the only thing we don’t know about? Please.

Ok-Coburn.

FN: Whoever he is but presumably he has sources.

A few weeks ago he suggested the Mueller report would be out March 8-as the following Friday-is the Ides of March. Today is March 15 the Ides of March. So we have another countdown for Mueller’s report.

In Cockburn’s revised prediction he claims that sources tell him that the Mueller and Bob Barr agree on indicting the Trump kids but Barr disagrees about indicting Trump himself.

“Several sources tell Cockburn that the Special Counsel has indeed completed his report. It is said to recommend indicting three of President Trump’s children – Don junior, Ivanka and Eric – as well as his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The Attorney General, William Barr, is said to have ‘silently assented’ to this. It’s also claimed that Mueller wants President Trump himself to be indicted. Barr is said to oppose this. The two men met on Friday but apparently could not agree and this was the reason for the delay in any announcement from the DoJ. At least this is what the sources say.”

“So who are these sources? Joseph Heller mocked Washington’s – and journalism’s — culture of ‘sources’ in his novel Good as Gold.”

‘I believe I got that information about you from a reliable unnamed source.’

‘I’ve been doing a lot of work here as an unnamed source,’ Gold answered with nervousness and haste, ‘so it may have come from me. No truth to it at all.’

“None of Cockburn’s sources was ‘in the room’ – as they say in Washington – for the (alleged) discussions between Mueller and Barr and their two staffs. And none of the sources was briefed by the people ‘in the room’. But they did talk to the people briefed by the people in the room and – twice removed from the original conversations – they all give the same account. It is that the older Trump children and Jared will be indicted for financial crimes while Mueller wants to charge Trump with obstruction of justice. The charges, Cockburn is told now, will not be about ‘Russia collusion’.

“This is different from the story yesterday, which was that Mueller would ‘make the case for collusion’. It is different from what the former CIA director, John Brennan, said on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show on MSNBC this week. He thought that the children would be indicted and (like Cockburn) that it would happen on Friday. He also thought that the issue of Russia would be ‘addressed’ by Mueller with further indictments.”

O’Donnell: ‘What makes you believe that he has more indictments?’

Brennan: ‘He hasn’t addressed the issue of criminal conspiracy as well as any individuals…’

O’Donnell: ‘Criminal conspiracy involving the Russians?’

Brennan: ‘The Russians, yes, yeah…’

“One theory is that Mueller will deliver only an interim report. ‘Russia collusion’ would be saved for another day. But whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with Russia is specifically what the Office of the Special Counsel was set up to investigate. And as Brennan said on MSNBC, if Mueller were to ask for indictments of Trump’s family, he would know this would have to be his ‘final act’. ‘That would basically be the death of the Special Counsel’s office, because I don’t believe Donald Trump would allow Bob Mueller to continue in the aftermath of those types of actions.’ That would go double for any indictments of Trump himself. It might be now or never for Mueller to set out the case for collusion.”

“But wait! Surely a sitting president can’t be indicted? All that Mueller would – or could – do is pass the evidence and the accusations to the House of Representatives. It would fall to the House to charge – or impeach – the President.”

Paging Nancy Pelosi… As you can see from Chapter C I’ve been on the ledge over Pelosi’ apparently giving Mitch McConnell veto power over wether to impeach Trump. But I think this NY Post piece is probably right.

Back to Cockburn:

“It is true that DoJ policy says you can’t indict a sitting President. But as Cockburn has written before, that’s policy, not law. The DoJ has at various times issued different opinions on this. There may not be a constitutional prohibition on laying criminal charges against a sitting President and using the courts or a grand jury to do it.”

“If this is really the debate going on in the Attorney General’s office, it’s no wonder there’s a delay. As one veteran of Washington tells Cockburn: ‘There is a strange silence around town. Like the weird calm before a major hurricane.’ Weather reports – like journalists’ predictions – are notoriously unreliable but there’s still reason to think that the coming weeks will be a testing time in the history of the Republic.”

Beyond Cockburn’s sources-whoever they may be-Senator Richard Blumenthal-who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee-stated very clearly on Chris Matthews the other day-that ‘Mueller is not done there are more indictments coming.’

Logically that must be true. If nothing else, the MSM has taken expectations of the report so low that any surprise will be to the upside. Ken Dilanian’s narrative is maximum bearishness on the report-Mueller is done, the report will be disappointing-but the rules say Mueller shouldn’t give us a report anyway and we may not see much

Dilanian and friends have set the bar so low that it will be almost impossible for it not to exceed.

UPDATE: Nothing yet about Mueller being done on this Ides of March but there is some Michael Flynn news.

Again, I believe Mueller sees his mandate as getting to the bottom of Russian Collusion Conspiracy and that he’s going to implicate the Trump campaign-via Roger Stone, Peter Smith, et. al.

UPDATE: I should also note regarding Smith that Adam Schifft indicated that the Peter Smith case was one area they have achieved good progress on even when Nunes was in there obstructing everything.

UPDATE:

What can we do to get whole? Manafort asked Kilimnik regarding Putin supporting oligarch Oleg Deripaska. So did Deripaska have a role in Russian Conspiracy?

UPDATE: Seth Abramson zeros in on a central problem with the MSM’s coverage of Russiagate.

Great point-the ‘savvy’ insist on treating each spinoff as it’s own totally autonomous little investigation.

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