Narrative Fail: Rudy As Foreign Agent Story Springs Serious Leaks

Yeah, little bit of a pun there--the leaks turn out to be in the narrative, and the leaks from "FBI sources" turn out to have been not so reliable.

I'm talking about the smear campaign against Rudy Giuliani. The WaPo and NYT were pushing the suggestion that Rudy was an unregistered agent for Ukraine, based on leaks from claimed "official" sources. This narrative was riding heavily on the claim that Rudy had received a "defensive briefing" from the FBI (or, more dramatically, had been "warned" by the FBI) that he was being targeted by the evil Russians. As if virtually any person of influence in any major government isn't targeted by other governments for influence purposes. Is that really supposed to stop our officials from talking with persons connected to foreign governments?

But the big story now is that both the WaPo and the NYT are having to consume a major helping of crow:

The retraction and correction by the Post:

“Correction: An earlier version of this story, published Thursday, incorrectly reported that One America News was warned by the FBI that it was the target of a Russian influence operation. That version also said the FBI had provided a similar warning to Rudolph W. Giuliani, which he has since disputed. This version has been corrected to remove assertions that OAN and Giuliani received the warnings.”

New York Times correction and retraction:

“Correction: May 1, 2021
An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation. Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing.”

We'll have to see how this affects the search warrants that were executed against Giuliani, involving the seizure of electronic communication devices.

Of more interest to me is Giuliani's claim that his iCloud account had been accessed in some way by the FBI shortly after the 2020 election, i.e., on Bluto Barr's watch. Whether the access to Giuliani's iCloud account involved IDs for his contacts or content of his communications as well is unclear. 

In one way or another, this all has the appearance of a Deep State attempt to intimidate Giuliani with regard to his investigation of the Biden Crime Family. We shall see how this plays out. One certainly wonders what caused this very sudden volte face and climb down from the narrative.

Rudy Clarifies

Per Breitbart (and h/t Thomas Lifson at AmThinker I am having a nightmare… and I can’t wake upI).

Rudy Giuliani on Break with Sidney Powell: ‘We’re Pursuing Two Different Theories’

In other words, it appears Jenna Ellis bungled the statement of Powell's status. There's no break, in the true sense. Rather, according to Rudy--and his explanation appears to fit the known facts regarding Powell's funding and representations. There is no criticism of Powell expressed or implied in what Giuliani says.

Since the Breitbart story is really just a transcript from Giuliani's appearance, I'll include it all:

The Biden Inc. Scandal Deepens

Commenter Cassander posted a link to Andrea Widburg's article at AmThinker this morning. As it happens, I've been spending some time this morning listening to Dan Bongino interview Rudy Giuliani while reading Widburg's article (Forget the Hunter Biden sex tapes. The real news is much bigger than that.) and a companion piece. Here's Cassander's summary of the allegations we're hearing about. I hasten to add that Widburg, a lawyer, isn't prone to wild speculation. Moreover, what's been documented so far makes these new allegations all too probable:

First: China has long owned Biden thanks to its having compromising information about his family (and possibly about him too).

Second: Biden identified CIA assets in China. The back story is that, between 2010 and 2012, China executed or imprisoned 18 to 20 assets who had bravely worked with the CIA, destroying a critical intelligence network.

Third: [A dissent Chinese billionaire, Guo Wengui, controls 'outlets' which] have “millions of videos and photos” of people who have worked with the Chinese against their own countries, implying] that Guo managed to get into China’s “blackmail” database and can release that information.

As you can see from #3, these allegations come from Guo Wengui, a "dissident Chinese billionaire" and friend of Steve Bannon. As you can see, however, Widburg's title is a bit misleading. There's no "forget[ting] the Hunter Biden sex tapes." Because the sex blackmail is key to the whole thing. Here's Widburg's summary of Guo's background and the leadup to these allegations:

MAJOR APOLOGY: I Go There

Thanks to the commenters--see below--who took the time to correct me on a faulty timeline. I confused Giuliani's "detailed outline" of Biden Crime Family dealings in Ukraine--which Giuliani provided to DoJ in January, 2020, nine months ago--with the date that the FBI obtained the Hunter Biden hard drive. As the commenters have pointed out, it appears that the FBI obtained that original hard drive--not a copy--in about December, 2019. It was Giuliani who only obtained the material recently. I've revised this post and used the red font to indicate where the changes were made.

This correction doesn't actually change the legal ramifications of anything I say below.

I've been listening to Mark Levin's interview of Rudy Giuliani from last night, here. As I've made clear, I've been loath to get into the reports of disturbing sexual material on the Hunter Biden hard drive, for a number of reasons. However, during the Levin - Giuliani interview, there is a brief segment in which Rudy dances around the issue a bit. Nevertheless, while he hedges his statements with legal provisos, he leaves no doubt that the material on the hard drive involves clear criminal conduct. That doesn't leave too much to the imagination, in the total context. Thomas Lifson, in a blog at American Thinker--Hold on to your hat: Hunter's hard drive roll-out this week is going to unleash a whirlwind--quotes some Wayne Allen Root tweets that leave even less to the imagination. These are public figures making public statements that are clearly actionable if untrue. Further, Giuliani is credible--I presume that he would never make statements as explicit as those I'll describe without having his behind totally covered.

Now, before I get to my transcript of the Levin - Giuliani interview, let me go over some ground that we've already covered. You need to be clear that Giuliani talks about two separate issues in his response to Levin. Those two issues are quite separate from an investigative standpoint. They are also separated by nine months in time and may involve different evidence--evidence that may differ in probative value. 

Jonathan Turley: The Biden Dog That Didn't Bark

Jonathan Turley, professor of law at George Washington University, has moved on from the Judge Amy confirmation hearings and is now addressing the Biden Crime Family story. He has a nice article at Fox today, in which he likens the Biden campaign non-responses to the dog that didn't bark in the famous Sherlock Holmes case, The Adventure of Silver Blaze. In The Adventure of Silver Blaze, a favored race horse disappears shortly before a big race. Holmes notes that the dog on guard failed to bark--a very curious fact, which Holmes recommends to the attention of the local police inspector

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

The metaphor works like this: If the Biden campaign is the dog, then it failed to bark at least three times, and each failure to bark corresponds to what should have been a predictable response to the Rudy Giuliani revelations stemming from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop. Each non-bark corresponds to an expected register of bark that we would have expected to hear:

UPDATED: What Did Trump Know, And When Did He Know It?

UPDATE: Apologies--I got my timeline wrong. I assumed that Giuliani received the evidence a few months after the FBI, but it turns out it was quite a few months later. Please refer to the exchange in comments between EZ and me, below. Also, in general on these issues, please refer to the exchange between Mike Sylwester and me.

Rudy Giuliani is Trump's private attorney. The evidence he has gathered regarding the Biden Crime Family was gathered using his own resources--not government resources. In practical terms, that means that, since the evidence wasn't gathered using legal process (especially not grand jury subpoenas or search warrants) Giuliani is utterly unfettered by grand jury rule regarding the use and disclosure of the material. He can talk to anyone he wants about the evidence, and disclose it to whomever he wants. He can do MSM interviews about it, he can make videos disclosing the evidence on Youtube. The sky's the limit. The Bidens remain welcome to sue Rudy for defamation if they care to (Nick Sandmann can recommend a good lawyer).

This is very different than the situation that the FBI and DoJ are in--night and day different. Rudy can talk about this being an easy case to make. And he's probably right. But the only case he cares about--really--is the case he's making to the public. And rightly so, in my opinion.

But all this means that our working assumption is that Rudy has been sharing what he has discovered with Donald J. Trump. I'd go so far as to say that I'd eat my hat if Trump has not been fully briefed on all this, on an ongoing basis, for many months. And I'm sure Rudy has cautioned Trump on who to talk to and under what circumstances. 

Of course, people like Wray and Barr would probably assume as much, too--knowing what Rudy has been occupied with. Rudy specifically mentioned Barr's knowledge of what evidence Rudy possessed. Whether Wray knew about that is unclear, but since Rudy was referred to a local US Attorney, it's an excellent bet Wray knows all this, too.

However, my major point is that we should assume that Trump is in charge of the timing for what Rudy is doing. And that Trump has been planning this for a long, long time. So, the overwhelming likelihood is that Trump has known pretty much everything and has known it on a real time basis--that is, Trump has known it pretty much as soon as Rudy has known it. When, Rudy says the real smoking gun evidence will be released ten days before the election, we can therefore assume that that's actually Trump speaking to us. Building suspense.

QUICK ADDENDUM: I'm just now starting to listen to the Rudy interview with the Daily Caller's Christian Datoc. Datoc starts with what he says may be the biggest part of the story--the Twitter censorship.

I absolutely LUV Rudy's response. He says this is the kind of thing, the level of censorship, that used to happen in the Soviet Union, in Nazi Germany, in Cuba. I wish he'd have said--and maybe he will later on--AND IS STILL HAPPENING IN RED CHINA TODAY! You know, the place where the Bidens get their money.

But then he comes up with a great line:

No,  they're not government, but they're acting like a government.

Can you say Deep State?

UPDATED: Barr Angry With Trump?

Commenter Joe brought to my attention the fact that there are news accounts suggesting that AG Barr is angry with President Trump over the Ukraine Hoax telephone call. For example, the Washington Examiner reports: Barr ‘surprised and angry’ about Trump phone call with Ukraine. When you get into the story the actual reason for Barr's displeasure--which I assume is real--becomes apparent:

Attorney General William Barr was dismayed to discover President Trump had grouped him in with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in a call with Ukraine’s leader in July. 

...

When Barr learned of the call, he was “surprised and angry” that Trump lumped him in with Giuliani, a person familiar with the attorney general’s thinking told the Associated Press. Giuliani represents Trump’s personal interests and is not employed by the U.S. government.

I saw this issue when I wrote about the call transcript originally--Woops! Dems Score Own Goal. At the time I maintained that Trump attempted to maintain the distinction between his personal attorney's (Giuliani's) interest and the Attorney General's official interest. I still do maintain that Trump didn't "lump" Barr "in with Giuliani" and intended to maintain the distinction between his personal lawyer and the Attorney General of the United States. Zelenskyy introduces the idea of speaking to Giuliani. Trump appears to me to deflect that to indicate that he wants Barr involved because what's under discussion is an official DoJ investigation:

Giuliani Tells Us What It's All About

Last night, in a long interview with Laura Ingraham, Rudy Giuliani confirmed what I've been maintaining all along (especially in Does Paul Mirengoff Have Things Backwards Re Ukraine?): The Ukraine investigation the US has been pursuing has been pursued for official purposes and is tied directly into the Russia Hoax. It is exposing deep corruption at the FBI and DoJ, led by the highest levels of the Obama administration. The Biden corruption angle is, in itself, a side show except to the degree that it too ties in to the Russia Hoax. This is what Dems are desperate to distract from, to the point of embarking on a virtual suicide mission.

You have to listen closely, but Giuliani explains the connection succinctly, beginning shortly after the 6:30 mark:

Giuliani traces this back to 2016 when, he states, Obama told the Ukrainians to gather dirt on Trump. Biden was Obama's "tsar" for Ukraine. Biden got the Ukrainian prosecutor fired who was investigating his son's corrupt connections--the prosecutor wouldn't play ball. He wanted to attack corruption on behalf of a sovereign Ukraine. Biden then appointed a prosecutor for Ukraine--there's no other way to put it. That prosecutor was one who would play ball with the Obama administration. The prosecutor then went to work doing the work of the Obama administration. That work was to arrange a successor administration to Obama's, headed by Hillary Clinton. To that end the prosecutor started by dismissing a case against an organization (funded by George Soros) that was manufacturing "information" about Trump and Paul Manafort and feeding it to the DNC, through the instrumentality of an FBI agent who now works for Soros.

Laura challenged Giuliani: Why are you doing this investigating instead of the FBI and DoJ? Rudy's response is telling. He directly attacks the FBI but stays away from DoJ and Barr:

Rudy: "We've lost the FBI and who knows what else." 

Laura: "We can't lose the FBI. We have Bill Barr over at Justice. No way we're losing the FBI under Barr."

Rudy: "Their inability to investigate this is astounding. You know how this first came to me? It came to me from this very prominent investigator telling me, for one year they were trying to get this information [Ukraine collusion]. You ask me why I'm doing this? Because the FBI didn't do their job! ... I will show you the statements of five Ukrainians who will tell you, We desperately tried to get the information to the FBI and we were blocked by the [US] ambassador [to Ukraine] who eventually got fired."

This confirms to me that the Barr/Durham investigation is involved in this investigation in a major way, as commenter Unknown has also been maintaining.

UPDATED: Did Giuliani Just Drop A Bomb On Chris Wray?

Tonight on Hannity, Rudy Giuliani had a lot to say (h/t GP):

Rudy Giuliani: Sean we’ve known this for a year… You can’t BELIEVE what’s going to come out! And this is dramatic revelation now. But Bruce Ohr should have been prosecuted and his wife for conflicts of interest ten months ago because we had a Justice Department that was completely warped. The fact is that these are crimes that are shocking! These are crimes that go to the very heart of our republic. These people had a plan to stop the Republican candidate from getting elected and then they executed a plan to remove from office on false evidence, false testimony. The whole thing was made up from the very beginning and they sold it to 90% of our media! It’s a tragedy… The dimensions of it you still don’t realize. There’s plenty of evidence of what happened in Ukraine. Plenty of evidence of what happened in UK. In Italy. This was a massive conspiracy!

DoJ was completely warped? I think he's talking about Rod Rosenstein, isn't he? That's pretty amazing, but then he added even more:

 Sean Hannity: Was there outsourcing of techniques that are illegal. In other words, did our top intelligence officials, did they outsource spying on American citizens for the purpose of hurting President Donald Trump or candidate Trump or transition to be President Trump? Did they outsource intelligence gathering methods to spy on Americans to circumvent US law and outsource it to even allied countries. Did that happen, sir? 

Rudy Giuliani: There is plenty of evidence that it happened, Sean. Plenty of evidence. Some of it documentary, some of it already recorded. And for a year people in Europe have been trying to get this to our FBI. And they have been thwarted and ignored and pushed aside. It was a deliberate effort to cover this up. It didn’t just happen. Even during the Trump administration there was a deliberate effort to cover this up to protect the prior wrongdoing. That’s really sick.

I don't think there's any other way to understand that than that Giuliani is saying FBI Director Chris Wray has, for at least a year, been deliberately covering up the prior wrongdoing. That's pretty big.

I assume that the Dems are very well aware of what's going to being coming out--as early as September, if Joe diGenova is right. Nadler's impeachment theater is a desperate attempt to deflect attention, but I don't see any way that will succeed.

UPDATE: I see that sundance has done a brief post re Giuliani's remarks last night, and he highlights something important that I noted but neglected to include above:

Giuliani drops a few bombshells, including an apparent lengthy amount of time that U.S. Attorney John Durham has spent in Europe investigating the FBI and CIA operations against the Trump campaign.

You can imagine that the process of securing cooperation, arranging interviews, etc., with subjects and witnesses who are overseas and under the jurisdiction of other countries is a time consuming process--but crucially important.

Investigating The Investigators: More On The Case Theory

Last week I looked into the new meme that came to the forefront immediately in the wake of the Mueller Meltdown. As part of my analysis I offered a theory of the case that Barr and Durham would be pursuing, in which I suggested that some form of extortion might well be under examination. Here's how I summarized that case theory in Investigating The Investigators--And A Theory Of The Case:

As I've stated before, the main object of the Russia Hoax was to prevent Donald Trump from taking office as POTUS. How was this to be accomplished, if not by force/violence? The answer is fairly obvious. Trump was to be forced to withdraw or resign by non-physical means--the threat that he could be humiliated, his position made untenable, impeached, hounded from office, ultimately prosecuted. All these things are still being threatened, and that's the point. Threats would be leveled at Trump under the color of law or of official authority, threats that would be presented as if they had a factual predication. The threats would be presented by persons who had official positions in the US government and who would present those threats as expressions of their official authority. Which is to say that Trump would be, in effect, extorted under color of law.

For example.

What was Comey doing when he met with Trump at Trump Tower and told him that there were reports of sexual shenanigans involving Trump in a Moscow hotel? I would argue that Comey was attempting to create a situation in which Trump would feel compelled to withdraw before even being inaugurated as POTUS. I would argue that that is a form of extortion and that, coming from the Director FBI, a suggestion was being made that Comey had some degree of control over this situation--if Trump should withdraw, perhaps Comey could make the problem go away. It's an argument.

The appointment of a special counsel itself was an act under color of law, which had no legal predication, as we know and as both McCabe and Rosenstein both had ample reason to know. The fact that they discussed an attempted use of the 25th amendment is another indication of their knowledge of the lack of predication for a criminal investigation. Was the appointment of a special counsel made with the object of pressuring Trump to resign? His initial reaction ("I'm f*cked") is evidence. I would argue that this, too, was a form of extortion.

Finally, as John Solomon has reported within the last few days, within two weeks of the initiation of the Mueller inquisition Andrew Weissmann had approached the lawyers for a Ukrainian oligarch under US indictment and made offers that for all the world appeared to have been an attempt to suborn perjured testimony against Trump. The idea being, I would argue, that if the imminent threat of criminal allegations could be presented publicly Trump would feel forced to resign.

The question is: Is there a specific statute to cover this? Perhaps a reader can come up with something. My very tentative search just now yielded 18 USC 242:

     Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States ... 

At any rate, I think this general direction--some form of extortion--may hold some promise. But I welcome input.

Unsurprisingly, I'm not the only one, nor the first, to be thinking along those lines--the lines of extortion. It also comes as no surprise to learn that most of the atttention in this regard has focused on the example I list first: Comey's January 6, 2017, "briefing" of Trump on the Steele "dossier's" most salacious--and only the most salacious--claims. In researching another matter I came up with these relevant items from May 16, 2019.

UPDATED: Briefly Noted: Giuliani Traveling To Ukraine

Not much to add--Giuliani's been talking about Ukraine for several weeks, and the evidence appears overwhelming that Ukraine was a key nexus for the Russia Hoax. Fox News reports:

... Rudy Giuliani said in an interview Thursday that he plans to travel to Ukraine to push the country's leadership on several probes that may prove "very, very helpful" ... 

Ukrainian President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky, who takes office in June, will assume stewardship of two major ongoing investigations. One concerns evidence that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton campaign may have worked with Ukrainians to illegally help Clinton by revealing damaging information about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. 

The other investigation pertains to allegations that former Vice President Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor in order to take the heat off the prosecutor's probe into a company that employed his son as a board member.

“I am going to tell him what I know about the people that are surrounding him, and how important it is to do a full, complete and fair investigation," Giuliani told the New York Times, referring to Zelensky. 

"We’re not meddling in an election; we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do,” Giuliani continued, when pressed on whether his visit would be appropriate. "And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

Last week Ukraine's embassy in Washington confirmed that "a DNC insider" or, possibly, "a DNC contractor," attempted to persuade Ukraine to approach a member of the US Congress to open hearings on Paul Manafort or to ask (then) Ukraine President Poroshenko to raise Manafort's name while visiting Washington. "A DNC insider" suggests perhaps a lawyer for Perkins, Coie--someone like Marc Elias or Michael Sussman, both of whom we've seen before. On the other hand, "a DNC contractor" would clearly seem to point toward Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson.

UPDATE: Whoops! It's off!

Rudy On A Roll: Pay Attention To Ukraine

Rudy Giuliani was on Fox News last night, as DC waits for Barr's redacted Mueller reported. As one would expect, he had some choice words, but also some possibly significant words. Of course he teed off on Comey (I've done myself to simply reproduce the flow of Rudy's comments):

[Comey] probably perjured himself with regard to the FISA applications.

He presented the Steele dossier as if it was a piece of intelligence.

Never did anything to corroborate it.

Coulda asked Steele, When was the last time you were in Russia?

He'da told ya nine years ago.

Or ya coulda looked at his passport documents.

There was a specific allegation that Michael Cohen was in Prague on a certain date. I can't imagine FBI agents on their own not checking out with the Passport office.

Where it got even more interesting was when Rudy was asked: "Are you going to have a rebuttal ready if there's information that suggests that they came close to obstruction?"

The President's Lawyers Speak

With Team Mueller shut down and the Barr summary public, President Trump's lawyers have been speaking out: John Dowd, Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekulow (but not Emmett Flood, who I don't expect to speak publicly in the near future). John Dowd, Trump's first lawyer has spoken on a number of forums, perhaps most notably an hour long interview with Byron York.

Dowd's interview with York is a somewhat rambling affair, although it has its definite points of interest. Personally, I grew a bit impatient with Dowd's repeated protestations of respect for "Bob" (Mueller) and how "polite" and "considerate" everyone on Team Mueller was. I guess I know where Dowd is coming from, but I found it frankly tiresome--especially in view of some of what he revealed.

According to Dowd, Trump's first lawyer, the whole thing began with Rosenstein's announcement of the Special Counsel with no warning, no head's up. Sessions was actually speaking with Trump when the announcement came down, and Sessions immediately offered to resign. But, really, what was Trump supposed to do at that point? Dowd says that Rosenstein was a guy he "just didn't get."

Of course, the whole Russia Hoax was and is a political operation as much as--or maybe more than--a legal operation. From that standpoint, Dowd's strategy--approved by Trump at the time--of total cooperation and transparency can be said to have made sense. Dowd states that this strategy was based on discussions with "Bob" and the understanding that "Bob" would seek to wrap the whole thing up within a year. Right.

As it developed, by December, 2017, if not earlier, Dowd was completely convinced that Mueller had nothing on Trump, but "Bob" just kept working away. By early 2018 Dowd wrote a letter to Rosenstein asking for an explanation for why Team Mueller wasn't wrapping things up, given that there was no collusion. In response, says Dowd, Rosenstein simply "blew me off." At which point Dowd says he lost all respect for Rosenstein. But that, apparently, made no difference in Rosenstein's life, either.

Later, when "Bob" came to Dowd demanding that Trump submit to an interview or be subpoenaed, Dowd exploded. "Bob" acknowledged that Trump had "no exposure" (no prospect of criminal charges) but claimed he "needed to know what was in the president's mind". That told Dowd that it was really all about "obstruction." At that point he basically invited "Bob" to bring the subpoena on--the president's lawyers would welcome the opportunity to take it to court. "Bob" dropped it.

This episode, and the footdragging, really irked Dowd. He recounts that he repeatedly told "Bob" that the president needed to get this over with, because in negotiations with foreign leaders Trump would be asked: "But, Donald, will you still be here?" Somehow, considerations like that appear not to have impressed "Bob".

One other minor point. Dowd says there were two guys he "just didn't get." One, of course, was Rosenstein. The other was Comey. It's clear that Dowd regarded Comey as simply a very strange guy, possibly not fully in touch with reality. That would be one explanation. Another might be that Comey is a peculiarly malevolent and narcissistic personality.

Overall, and in hindsight, it's easy enough to see the possible benefits to Dowd's strategy, despite the obvious frustrations over the past years. Those benefits may become especially apparent when Barr releases the longer report, because Barr will probably find ways to emphasize the extreme cooperation and transparency of Trump to blunt the liberal PR offensive.

That said, however, you have to wonder whether it would have been better to have pursued a more legal and less political strategy. I've maintained for the past two years and more that there never was a basis for the Crossfire Hurricane investigation to start with--as Devin Nunes has recently stated. Andy McCarthy, NeverTrumper that he is, seems to agree. Would it not have been better--arguably--to have challenged the Special Counsel appointment in court for legal insufficiency, lack of authority, based on the clear lack of probable cause? That I think, is where the legal debate will go in the future.

How Was Trump Able To Stiff Mueller?

In other words, how was Trump able to successfully resist submitting to an interview?

Obviously an aggressive public relations campaign, led not only by Trump himself but also by lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, was a key. Trump never backed down from his insistence that he was innocent of all wrongdoing and that the whole was nothing but a witchhunt. In other words, as Devin Nunes said yesterday in response to the question, When did Mueller know he had no case:

"Likely since [the moment] he walked in the door [took charge] of the phony investigation."

A correspondent has sent me a Reuters article that addresses the question of Trump's successful resistance to an interview. Unfortunately, the article--The Mueller interview that wasn't: how Trump's legal strategy paid off--is short on legal analysis. My view, which shouldn't come as any surprise, is that the lack of probable cause for a legitimate investigation was key.

Consider: Team Mueller was only authorized to investigate an alleged conspiracy to collaborate illegally with Russian intelligence operatives--an alleged conspiracy that was supposed to have been conducted by an "enterprise" group of "four Americans" (Page, Papadopoulos, Manafort, and Flynn) as a subset of the Trump campaign. That was Crossfire Hurricane, which Team Mueller was authorized to continue. That means that, just as James Comey three times stated to Trump, Trump was never actually the subject of the substantive investigation:

Rudy's Shot Across Mueller's Bow

On Monday, 8/5/17, during an appearance on the Sean Hannity Show, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes put the world on notice to pay close attention to disgraced Department of Justice attorney Bruce Ohr, formerly the #4 in the DoJ chain of command, reporting to Sally Yates: “Bruce Ohr is going to become more and more important in this investigation ..." Since then, thanks to the reporting of John Solomon, Byron York, and Sara Carter, we've had a glimpse of a few emails in an extensive e-correspondence between Ohr and the British ex-spook and "dossier" author, Christopher Steele. Included in those emails are tantalizing references to telephone calls and face to face meetings, the contents of which we can only guess at.

Now, President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in an appearance on the Sean Hannity Show, has fired a clear warning shot across the bow of Special Prosecutor (SC) Robert Mueller. Giuliani warned that Mueller's case against the President

"isn’t going to fizzle. It's going to blow up on them. ... there's a lot more to what they [the Mueller team] did that nobody knows about yet. A lot more to the obstruction of justice, to the collusion, to the fake dossier." And Giuliani added: "... when this plays out over the next year or two, it's not going to be about President Trump. ... It’s going to be about all the things they [the Mueller team] did." ... It’s a different kind of Watergate. It’s on the side of the investigator."

With Paul Sperry stating that President Trump is about to begin declassifying some key documents, we may soon have a better picture of what's been going on in the Mueller "probe." But we may already be getting a preview, based on the handful of Steele/Ohr emails that we've already seen. Let's focus on some of those emails beginning immediately before the appointment of Mueller as Special Counsel, on 5/17/17. (In what follows, I've preserved the original spelling and punctuation as they appear in the emails.)