Clinesmith Is Lying About Lying

That's the contention of Andy McCarthy's latest:

Clinesmith’s Guilty Plea: The Perfect Snapshot of Crossfire Hurricane Duplicity

McCarthy contends that, while Clinesmith's guilty plea allocution may have been legally sufficient, it was just barely so. McCarthy's expressed hope is that DoJ will have much more to say about that when it comes time for sentencing. In McCarthy's view it was only a "sort of" guilty plea.

In “admitting” guilt, Clinesmith ended up taking the position that I hoped the judge, and especially the Justice Department, would not abide ... 

... in my view, Clinesmith is lying about lying. His strategy is worth close study because it encapsulates the mendaciousness and malevolence of both “Crossfire Hurricane” (the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation) and the “collusion” never-enders who continue to defend it. A defendant’s lying about lying does not necessarily make a false-statement guilty plea infirm as a matter of law. The bar is not high. Still, his story is ridiculous, in a way that is easy to grasp once it’s placed in context.

And so McCarthy proceeds to provide the context in masterful fashion. I highly recommend the article.

For our purposes, I want to point out just a few things.

First, McCarthy makes this very important point:

Clinesmith’s Motives Mirror His Superiors’ Motives

Sally Talks To The Senate--What Was That About?

Sally Yates performed pretty much as expected--and I use the word 'peformed' advisedly. She was putting on a show, reprising all the worn out and discredited Russia Hoax talking points, smearing once again people who did nothing wrong but were framed by the DoJ and the FBI for political purposes.

How did the GOP senators do? Josh Hawley--a very smart lawyer but without prosecutorial experience--got high marks for aggressively challenging Yates' non-credible denials that she knew, well, anything.

Lindsey Graham, on the other hand, has had extensive prosecutorial experience and has demonstrated that he's an adept cross examiner when he wants to be. After rewatching a portion of his questioning it strikes me that we need to ask ourselves exactly what Graham--as, in my view, the lead questioner--was trying to accomplish.

I have in the past suggested, repeatedly, that Graham coordinates his committee's activities with regard to the Russia Hoax with AG Bil Barr. In other words, Graham makes sure that he does nothing that might involve stepping on John Durham's toes in any way. And that means that Graham calls no witnesses until he gets a go ahead from Barr and Durham.

From this standpoint, what would be the purpose of these witness inteviews and, in particular, the Yates interview. Obviously it satisfies the senatorial need for a certain amount of grandstanding for their constituents. Beyond that, I suggest the serious purposes are strictly limited--no one should expect any witness before the senate to break down and abjectly admit to criminal wrongdoing. That happens in movies or on TV, and it may happen in plea negotiations, but Graham's goal in questioning Yates yesterday were likely more modest and closely circumscribed after consultation with Barr. Those purposes may well have been achieved in Graham's questioning.

Was There A Conflict Of Interest Between Flynn And His Lawyers?

Margot Cleveland at The Federalist isn't given to speculation. However, today Cleveland offers just that, regarding what's really going on with Judge Sullivan in the Michael Flynn case. Yesterday in Judge Sullivan Enters Dispute Between Flynn Lawyers, Past and Present I noted the unusual and marked manner in which Judge Sullivan had interjected himself, on his own motion, in the matter of the delay by Flynn's prior legal team from Covington and Burling in providing the full Flynn case file to Flynn's new legal team, led by Sidney Powell--long time and noted critic of the legal tactics pioneered by Robert Mueller and Andrew Weissmann. Covington and Burling, as has been frequently noted, is the law firm of Eric Holder and Trisha Anderson.

Today Cleveland asks whether there may be more to Judge Sullivan's intervention, touching on matters that may be very much at the heart of what will almost certainly develop into a challenge of the guilty plea that Flynn entered into with Team Mueller: Judge Orders Ethics Training For Michael Flynn’s Former Lawyers--Was there a conflict of interest between Michael Flynn and his Covington and Burling attorneys who used to represent him? New facts unfold.

Cleveland bases her speculation on two factors. The first is the fact that Judge Sullivan set the date for the meeting with the ethics officials and the lawyers a few days before a regularly scheduled status hearing--August 27, only three days before the scheduled hearing on August 30. Why, asks Cleveland, would the judge not wait the three extra days to handle all the business at one hearing? Especially given that Powell expects provision of the case file to be complete by then?

Cleveland finds the clue to the explanation in a phrase from Powell's response to the Government's statement on the effect Flynn's changed posture in the "Bian Kian" trial might have on sentencing of Flynn in Flynn's own criminal case. In Flynn's Legal Team Responds To The Government I pointed out that, while Powell saw no reason why sentencing should be affected by that change in posture, she took the opportunity to signal to Judge Sullivan the direction in which her representation of Flynn was moving:

Trisha Anderson Quibbles

What is a "spy"? What is the meaning of the verb "is"? Who knew our high level FBI officials had a taste for such arcane speculation? Jeff Carlson has shared some additional tidbits from Trisha Anderson's House testimony, Testimony by FBI Lawyer Trisha Anderson Reveals Extensive Role in Trump, Clinton Investigations, which reveal that Anderson possessed that penetrating type of mind.

It may be well to refresh recollections regarding exactly who Trisha Anderson is. We previously cited a press release from the DC law firm of Covington & Burling, where she was a protege of Eric Holder, who recruited her to DoJ. Her government legal experience ran like this (most recent first):

* Federal Bureau of Investigation, Principal Deputy General Counsel 

* U.S. Treasury Department, Assistant General Counsel for Enforcement & Intelligence 

* U.S. Department of Justice, Associate Deputy Attorney General; Attorney-Adviser at the Office of Legal Counsel 

Trisha Anderson Clarifies

Jeff Carlson has more excerpts from the testimony of a key Russia Hoax player at the Epoch Times today. Previously, in Trisha Anderson: Andy McCabe and Sally Yates Read The FISA Application "Line By Line", we reviewed Gregg Jarrett's summary of Anderson's testimony. In that post we noted that Anderson, as head of the National Security Law Branch (NSLB) at the FBI, was in a key position to know pretty much all there was to know about the Carter Page FISA application: all FISA applications had to be signed off by her for approval. Further, while in the case of "ordinary" FISAs one might have expected the top leadership at DoJ and FBI to rely on people like Anderson to vet the application in detail, in the case of the Carter Page FISA application, Anderson told the House, it was FBI Deputy Director McCabe and Deputy AG Yates who read the application "line by line." In the normal course of approval, Anderson would have vetted the application for "probable cause," and she would have been the final approver to demand to know whether the probable cause had been verified--before the application was sent to the top officials for their signatures.

Today, we learn from Carlson, Senior FBI Lawyer Did Not Read Carter Page FISA Before Signing Off on It: Congressional testimony by Trisha Anderson highlights unusual process used by FBI and DOJ to obtain FISA warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, that Anderson did her best to distance herself even further from the approval process, and in the process of distancing herself did two things:

* She made clear that all the normal FISA approval procedures were essentially reversed for the Carter Page FISA; and

* She thereby threw Andy McCabe and Sally Yates under the wheels of a bus that is moving at top speed with no brakes.

Here's how Anderson's Aug. 31, 2018, testimony went--as far as we have it:

Mr. Breitenbach: You had mentioned earlier that all FISAs have to be signed off, have an approver at an SES [Senior Executive Service] level. In OGC? Or is that anywhere inside the FBI?

Ms. Anderson: In NSLB, in my particular branch. 

Mr. Breitenbach: In NSLB? 

Ms. Anderson: Yeah. Uh-huh. 

Mr. Breitenbach: Okay. Who was that SES approver for the Carter Page FISA?
Ms. Anderson: My best recollection is that I was for the initiation. 

What Anderson is saying is that, for the first or initial authorization of FISA coverage on Carter Page, she was the SES approver. As we know, there were also three renewals of that initial authorization, but the underlying probable cause for those renewals remained essentially the same, relying heavily on the Steele "dossier"--the "crucial" factor, as McCabe stated in his testimony.

However, Anderson was at pains to emphasize that her role as approver was to serve as the last "backstop," meaning that she relied on the previous review by "many people," both in the FBI and at DoJ. Here's how she explains that:

Trisha Anderson: Andy McCabe and Sally Yates Read The FISA Application "Line By Line"

Gregg Jarrett at Fox News has a new article up, just over an hour ago: Testimony in Russia probe shows FBI and Justice Department misconduct in effort to hurt Trump. This appears to be another in a series of leaks of testimony given by FBI and DoJ officials before the House Intelligence Committee, going back to when Republicans were still in control. Jarrett leads with this:

Newly revealed testimony by a former top FBI counterintelligence lawyer shows that former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe examined “line-by-line” the faulty warrant applications to spy on Trump presidential campaign adviser Carter Page.

The former to FBI lawyer in question is Trisha Beth Anderson, an Eric Holder protege. She was working at Holder's firm, Covington & Burling, and was recruited for DoJ. The Covington web page provides this summary of Anderson's stint with the Federal government before returning to Covington:

Ms. Anderson rejoined the firm after over a decade of service in the federal government. She held senior positions at the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury. Most recently she served as Principal Deputy General Counsel at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where she handled complex and sensitive matters relating to national security and cyber intrusions. 

Previous Experience 

• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Principal Deputy General Counsel
• U.S. Treasury Department, Assistant General Counsel for Enforcement & Intelligence
• U.S. Department of Justice, Associate Deputy Attorney General; Attorney-Adviser at the Office of Legal Counsel  

Obviously these were all sensitive positions. Principal Deputy General Counsel at the FBI means she was the principal deputy to James Baker, currently leaking to the NYT and under criminal investigation for other leaks as well. Since she handled "complex and sensitive matters relating to national security and cyber intrusions" she would very likely have been knowledgeable about such "cyber intrusions" as the potential intrusions into Hillary Clinton's illegal home brewed email server as well as the DNC "hack."