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Thursday, July 18, 2019

Excellent Gregg Jarrett Interview With Toensing And diGenova

Last night Gregg Jarrett, subbing for Lou Dobbs, conducted a wide ranging interview with Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova, going over many aspects of the Russia Hoax. Much of it is in the context of the upcoming--maybe--testimony of Robert Mueller. I'll append the nine and a half minute interview, but I want to focus on two exchanges that I consider key--and which I've transcribed. The first deals with what I strongly suspect John Solomon was getting at in his tease: "new evidence emerging about the conduct of one of Mueller’s deputies." That deputy, as everyone has surely guessed, is almost certainly Andrew Weissmann:

JARRETT: [Speaks about how "dossier" credibility has been destroyed by John Solomon.] 
diGENOVA: Well, the most important thing about the spreadsheet is that it proves conclusively that the Bureau knew, before it ever filed the first FISA warrant, that everything, they couldn't verify it, and they told the FISA court four times that they had verified the information in the application for the wiretap on Carter Page, and that was a lie. And those four applications constituted crimes and everybody involved in that process at the senior levels of the FBI and at the senior levels of the Justice Department knew that. And we are told that there are Justice Department officials who were very concerned about it, but not one of them stepped up and stopped the filing of those four FISA warrant applications. There were crimes committed, just there, plus many other crimes as well. 
JARRETT: Well, and keep in mind, and I would ask Mueller this question Wednesday--assuming he'll testify, and I don't know if he will, really--but I would say, Wait a minute! The fourth FISA warrant application happened on your watch, yours and Rod Rosenstein's watch! Rosenstein signed off on it, the June, 2017, FISA warrant! Were you in on that? Were you submitting an unverified application, when on the top of it it says 'verified'? 
TOENSING: Yeah, well, we have a few more questions, too, for Mueller, who, he certainly can answer process questions, like, Did you ever know that Andrew Weissmann, when he was head of the Fraud Section--which, by the way Greg, I used to supervise, so I know what the portfolio is--were you ever told that he was briefed on the "dossier" and so therefore it would have been a conflict for him to be on your staff for the Special Counsel? Were you ever told that Andrew Weissmann told journalists that the "dossier" was just fine and dandy--when he was head of the Fraud Section? So it would have been a conflict? We have all kinds of those questions for him that are not about the investigation but about process.

The second passage concerns Mueller's visit to the Oval Office with Rod Rosenstein the very day before Mueller was named Special Counsel. That visit has all the appearance of a setup, a undercover recording of the President of the United States that violated standard White House security. There would need to be a written justification for that type of operation (called, in my day, "consensual monitoring"), specifying the investigative justification, including the crime being justified. Does such paperwork exist and, if not ...


If not, that should constitute a crime in which, an abuse of authority under color of legal right. Mueller, Rosenstein, and others would be complicit in it. Which is fascinating for the Barr/Durham investigation going forward:

JARRETT: Y'know, the number one question I would ask, Joe, is: Mr. Mueller, the day before you were appointed Special Counsel [diG, 'Yes,' laughs] you were sitting in the Oval Office with the President, and isn't it true he told you his reasons for firing James Comey--which makes you a witness in your own prosecutorial case, which you cannot do under any circumstances. I'd love to hear the answer to that one! 
diGENOVA: Yeah. And the other thing is, remember something very interesting that hasn't been written about occurred. Bob Mueller went into that meeting with Rod Rosenstein and there was just the three of them in the Oval Office, and Bob Mueller had a telephone with him, a cell phone. He left that cell phone in the Oval Office after the meeting and it is now believed by many people that the cell phone was used to broadcast the meeting between the President, Rod Rosenstein, and Bob Mueller back to FBI Headquarters where they recorded the conversation with the President. Now, why would you leave your phone in the President's office after a meeting? It was to continue to record what happened after they left! 
TOENSING: How did they get in there with a phone? We always have ours taken out!

diGENOVA: That's right! 
TOENSING: You have to put 'em in a locker, so there's something right there but, you know what, Greg? If that was a crime, if people considered it a crime, anywhere near a crime, to fire Comey, why didn't Rosenstein put that in his authorization for a Special Counsel? You're supposed to name crimes! He never once ... 
JARRETT: Mueller was conflicted, Rosenstein was conflicted, they hired a team of partisans, it was all a ... witchhunt! The name of my next book!


15 comments:

  1. This is why Occam's Razor is so important. A pragmatist would argue that the Rosenstein/Mueller conduct was, at best, sufficiently predicated to justify these extraordinary measures against a sitting US president; and at worst, acts of incompetence induced by misleading evidence. In other words, "nothing to see here folks, move along."

    But neither of these men is stupid or incompetent. Everything that they did is consistent with a premeditated attempted coup in which they believed that removing Trump from office (by any means necessary) would save the country from disaster and incidentally solve all their problems as well. The known fact pattern best fits sedition and that is no trivial crime.

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    1. Sedition or seditious conspiracy under US law requires the actual use of force or a conspiracy to use force to effect the overthrow or destruction of the US government. Therefore the known fact pattern--since it doesn't indicate a contemplated use of force--doesn't fit either offense. That's the law, whether you like it or not. All past cases of sedition prove this point.

      That's also why the investigation has to move in a very deliberate manner to uncover false statements and similar offenses that may be concealed or difficult to prove (intent, etc.) but that CAN be prosecuted if all the elements can be proven. The delay in coming out with the OIG report has led to the interview of Steele and the discovery of Kavalec's role and her very important agreement to cooperate.

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  2. If ever there was one incident that demonstrated the out-of-control Deep State that needs to be cleaned out/drained, that was it. They believe themselves to be above the law and security protocol, and had it in their mind to entrap the president in something untoward to get him removed.

    The easy explanation for Mueller's phone? It was a second phone. He put one in the security locker for show, and took the second one into the Oval Office for recording/transmitting.

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    1. Re the phone, I don't think so. If the POTUS should ask security, Hey, how come you let Mueller in here with a phone, and they responded, He left his phone in the locker, the game would be up. As it is, Mueller went back to retrieve the phone from the Oval Office. Which, admittedly, leaves the question: What happened with the security? Where was SS?

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    2. So it wasn't Mueller ignoring (using a workaround) a security protocol he had to have years of experience with--it was just Secret Service incompetence doing their job?

      Neither explanation gives me a warm feeling.

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    3. Right. Neither explanation works for me, either. And yet from everything I've heard--and I've heard this numerous times by now--the story is true. The only thing I can think is that, because of his prestige--over a decade as FBI Director--the SS didn't challenge him as they should have, and he must have claimed to have forgotten. But think about it--to say you forgot your phone in the Oval Office has to mean, to be convincing, that while he's speaking with POTUS he's playing with his phone? Changing ringtones? Checking email, texts?

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  3. The legal definition of "force" also includes lawful compulsion. The conspiracy to frame Trump as medically incompetent and therefore subject to removal via the 25th Amendment can be construed as lawful compulsion implemented via a fraudulent contrivance.

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    1. The meaning of any term in a law has to be taken in the taken within the context of that specific law--it is inadmissible to take a dictionary definition that you found somewhere and simply plug it in.

      The sedition law in the US is the Smith Act, 18 U.S. Code § 2385. It outlaws advocating the overthrow of the US Government "by force or violence." All authorities understand this to mean "violent overthrow" and nothing else. The exact phrasing:

      "overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government"

      "Force" as used in the Smith Act does NOT mean "lawful compulsion."

      Please stop wasting my time with stupid comments like this.

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    2. I believe I've found your "legal definition" of "force"--in Wikipedia. Wikipedia's explanation makes it perfectly clear that in the contexts such as the Smith act "force" means "actual or threatened violence."

      Selective quoting, such as yours, is dishonest. This is the last time I'll tolerate comments like this that patently waste my time.

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  4. The phone should have been seized and checked for any calls that occurred during the time period that Bobby Boy was meeting with DJT.

    This is Security 101.

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    1. Right. They should have told him, No, you don't get your phone back because you violated WH security rules. We may prosecute you for that.

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    2. Actually the meta data for that number should still be on the companies servers, what numbers were called, duration, times, etc. Should be no great trick to retrieve it.

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    3. I suspect that when diGenova spoke of "broadcasting," what really went on was that Mueller's phone microphone was remotely activated so that the conversation with Trump and RR could be remotely recorded. The phone would be basically passive, rather than actively broadcasting by connecting to another phone or device. Perhaps someone with more tech know-how can explain it better. That would leave no traces, in my understanding.

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  5. You know, it could be that this will still come out in the wash against Bobby Bob and Rowdy Rod Rosenstein.

    Sometimes I wonder if a massive counter punch is going to come. "I will hit them so hard..." and all that.

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    1. I would very much like to see RR get whacked for this.

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