UPDATED: John Solomon Blockbuster: Ukraine Ledger As Bad As Steele Dossier?

This morning I was bemoaning the fact that we've had little true news for some weeks, now. The heady days of document and testimony revelations appeared to be over. However, this afternoon John Solomon has come out with another blockbuster report. Right up front I want to make two quick points:

1. Solomon's report reflects and supports Rudy Giuliani's advice back in mid April of this year--going forward, we need to Pay Attention To Ukraine.

2. At the same time Solomon's report explains why patience is required, as I explained in Barr And Durham Are Focused On The CIA. The need to secure cooperation from foreign governments and their intelligence services means that Barr and Durham will need the active assistance of other persons and agencies within the US government, beginning with the POTUS himself. And their efforts will be resisted by the FBI and the CIA--the two agencies with the most to lose by the truth coming out.

That said, the opening paragraphs of Solomon's article, FBI, warned early and often that Manafort file might be fake, used it anyway, contains some of the most trenchant reporting I've seen in many months. Bear in mind, the "black cash ledger" is supposed to have been a record of payments to Paul Manafort:

When the final chapter of the Russia collusion caper is written, it is likely two seminal documents the FBI used to justify investigating Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign will turn out to be bunk. 

And the behavior of FBI agents and federal prosecutors who promoted that faulty evidence may disturb us more than we now know.

The First Manafort Sentence

Short story: Mueller recommended what was probably the max: 19 - 24 years. Judge Ellis gave Manafort just under 4 years (minus time served of 9 months, so ~ 3 years), probably about the minimum possible. Along with a pointed statement about how none of this had anything to do with "collusion."

This is unquestionably Judge Ellis' way of showing his utter disrespect for Team Mueller, everyone behind Team Mueller, and everything they stand for--especially their degradation of the criminal justice system. He had no choice but to sentence Manafort but he did it in a way that would be a rebuke to the prosecution. And in a way that will reflect as poorly as possible on Judge Amy Jackson Berman. I hope Judge Sullivan (who will be sentencing General Flynn shortly) pays attention to this.

There's a lot swirling around this and I may well be updating this initial post. For example, Undercover Huber is reminding us that, in response to Manafort's Brady request (Brady disclosure rules require the prosecution to produce exculpatory or impeaching evidence to the defense), Team Mueller admitted that it had NO "surveillance intercepts" of Manafort--"surveillance intercepts" means electronic surveillance or, if you prefer, FISA intercepts. IOW, the US counterintelligence efforts--read: the FBI--never picked Manafort up talking to Russians. This despite "leaks" to the media, like this one to the NYT: Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence. Here's how it begins:

WASHINGTON — Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.

American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

This was a lie, a total fabrication.