UC Huber: Mueller Knew At Once That Trump Tower Meeting Was Nothing

Undercover Huber is reporting that--within 4 days of the event being leaked to the media--Team Mueller interviewed the former State Department translator who accompanied Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya to the famous Trump Tower meeting with Don Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort. That leak occurred on July 8, 2017, less than a month after Team Mueller's Witchhunt started operations--an indication that Team Mueller had hit the ground running and was smearing their target before they had any evidence. The translator who was interviewed, Anatoli Samochornov, confirmed that the Trump version of the meeting was absolutely correct and that the media uproar was all wrong:

Undercover Huber
@JohnWHuber

Within 4 days of the Trump Tower meeting being leaked to the media, Mueller’s FBI investigators interviewed a *key* witness who 100% backed up the account of @DonaldJTrumpJr & other participants.

No collusion or info exchanged, lasted a few mins, mostly about adoptions [i.e., Magnitsky Act sanctions].

THREAD
5:56 PM · Mar 5, 2020

Another leak from Team Mueller anytime during the next two years could have corrected the false impression that had been created, but of course that didn't happen. The media was allowed to continue with wild, and false, speculation until the Mueller Dossier was issued.

Does The Flynn Case Lead To Obama?

In what follows I'll be proceeding at a deliberate pace, so you'll need to be patient.

While the internet has been consumed by the Dem House's impeachment theater, there was a development in the Flynn case. On September 30 Michael Flynn's new lawyer, Sidney Powell, filed a supplemental status report. The report itself is fairly brief--5 double spaced pages--and not difficult to follow. Much longer is the attached opinion in the Rafiekian case, in which Judge Trenga tossed the jury's guilty verdict, stating that no reasonable juror could have convicted on the facts presented. Bijan Rafiekian, of course, was Flynn's partner in Flynn Intelligence Group (FIG), and was charged with violating FARA, the Foreign Agents Registratin Act. You can read Powell's report here or defer to Margot Cleveland's lucid summary. Or you can have the best of it all by reading both. Cleveland's article is here:

New Evidence Suggests Prosecutors Pressured Michael Flynn To Lie

With each new court filing, the public learns more about the government’s manipulation of Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn.

What Powell does in the report is to trace the connection between the two cases--Rafiekian and Flynn--and the way that pressure was exerted on Flynn via the targeting of Flynn's son by Team Mueller (but authorized by Rod Rosenstein) to coerce a guilty plea from Flynn. Powell makes no bones about it. The plea was coerced. But she goes beyond that and argues for additional forms of prosecutorial misconduct by Team Mueller prosecutor Brandon van Grack--including outright lies to the court.

Of course, van Grack denies this, but Powell makes a plausible case. Cleveland has the details. Powell also points out the significance of this misconduct as a justification for Judge Sullivan to authorize her extremely wide ranging demands for document production from the government. The extraordinary scope of the document request doesn't actually constitute an argument against it. If your client has been framed by the government then any amount of document production necessary to prove what happened should be allowed--beginning with the inception of the case itself, all the way through its conclusion, if intervening events were influenced by the illegitimate inception. And that's exactly the extent of what Powell is demanding.

Hold that thought regarding the the illegitimate inception of the investigation into Flynn, because we'll be returning to it.

Conspiracy--The Lesson Of The Flynn Intel Group Case

Epoch Times had a smart article this morning by Petr Svab. For anyone who wants a brief and intelligible explanation of what the Flynn Intel Group case is actually about, Svab provides that. However, his article, Flynn Intel Group Case Highlights Mueller’s Lack of ‘Collusion’ Evidence, also explains the important role that charging a conspiracy can play and relates that to the Team Mueller inquisition into President Trump.

Svab's crucial point in this regard is that conspiracy can be charged even without a substantive crime actually being committed--as long as some step, some overt act in furtherance of the alleged conspiracy, is taken. One step will do. That means that only a circumstantial case need be made as to the underlying conspiracy and, crucially, the one step in furtherance of the conspiracy does not itself have to be a criminal act. Here's Svab's concise explanation of how significant Team Mueller's failure to allege a conspiracy on Trump's part was:

When the final report of then-special counsel Robert Mueller stated that it couldn’t establish that anyone from the Trump campaign had conspired with Russia, many Americans may have failed to realize how revealing a statement that was. 

The recent conviction of a former partner in the now-defunct consultancy firm of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, shows how easy it would have been for Mueller to bring charges even if he could piece together only a circumstantial case. 

Yet he didn’t.

The point is that if conspiracy is relatively easy to charge, given the right circumstances, Team Mueller's failure in that regard is a strong indication of just how clean Trump was.

DiGenova: What Might We Expect From Steele's Testimony?

Joe DiGenova has an important article at Fox News, in which he considers what Christopher Steele's emerging agreement to testify to US investigators--probably led by John Durham--could mean for AG Bill Barr's crusade to get to the origin of the Russia Hoax. Bear in mind two things:

1) The announced--or, at least, projected--cooperation deal with Steele may be only the public version of what could be a broader US/UK deal for cooperation on the Russia Hoax--including protection of British interests (recall Trump's jest about May being a good negotiator?), and

2) While DiGenova rightly warns of the potential consequences for the Democrat Party, the spectacle of the Republican Party revealing itself as a virtually wholly owned subsidiary of the US Chamber of Commerce (in case you had any doubts) shows that Republicans are not immune to suicidal impulses. The calculated attempt to cut the legs out from under Trump while he is absent from the country, on a triumphal tour of the UK, with wind at the back of conservative movements around the world, is one of the most despicable displays in US politics--ever.

In what follows, note that DiGenova walks back his statement last night that for sure Steele will be talking to Durham rather than to IG Horowitz. For my part, I agree with the implication in DiGenova's statement--that it doesn't really matter who Steele talks to because they'll all be on the same page. Horowitz is every bit as experienced a prosecutor as Durham, and deeply knowledgeable about the DC Swamp. Durham's advantage in having Grand Jury powers at his back aren't really relevant in this context, and if Horowitz does the interview the results will go straight to Durham and his team.

From what we've seen thus far, Steele seems to have been kept insulated from the highest levels of the conspiracy. However, that doesn't mean that he won't have information that can lead higher. His close relationship with Bruce Ohr and Glenn Simpson are certainly tantalizing indicators in that direction. So, too, as I pointed out yesterday, that he met at least once with Andrew Weissmann before the election. What does he know about the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians, and who might have been behind it? There's a lot of potential here beyond just the dossier.

With that said, DiGenova:

Was The FBI Connected To The Trump Tower Ruse?

In the penultimate post--Papadopoulos And The Enterprise--I made a few references to suspicions I've long held regarding a possible role of the FBI in the famous Trump Tower meeting between the Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya (and companions) and Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner:

---------------

Techno Fog has a tweet that plays right into some of my obsessions. In this post I mention that evidence that this whole Russia Hoax was planned months before the first steps were taken. I've also repeatedly stated that I suspect FBI involvment somewhere in connection with the Trump Tower meeting, that was nominally run by Fusion GPS. Now read Techno Fog:

Techno Fog
‏
@Techno_Fog

Isn't it curious that Fusion GPS and former FBI informant Steele would look into Trump/Russia after the FBI/IC started that same inquiry?

What are the odds?

Are the basic assumptions all wrong- was Fusion not retained for campaign research, but to bolster the FBI investigation?

4:40 PM - 20 Apr 2019

--------------------

In private correspondence a friend suggested to me that the FBI may have used Fusion GPS to undertake this approach because there was something about it that they didn't want to be involved in. I think this avenue of speculation has great merit.

If we apply my usual approach--look to administrative guidelines to supply a context within which to understand official actions--we can make sense of this. As I've maintained for the past two years, it is a virtual certainty that before Crossfire Hurricane was opened the FBI had some sort of Preliminary Investigation opened on Page, Papadopoulos, and possibly others (Manafort may already have been the subject of a Full Investigation, but ...). However, there's no reason to believe that there was any open case on Don Jr. or Jared Kushner. That means that the FBI could not officially make this kind of undercover approach to those two, and especially not because there was the possibility that The Donald himself could be drawn in. That type of investigation could only be undertaken with an open case. That leaves open the possibility that Techno Fog suggests, that the FBI and Fusion GPS ... "colluded" on this project. That would still be borderline legal/illegal, but deniable.

The Big Picture Behind The FBI's Really Big FISA Problem

Those who have been following the Russia Hoax, having suffered through periods of information drought, are now in danger of suffering information overload. With more and more transcripts being released and more of the central players giving interviews, researchers are going back to connect previously unconnected dots (for one example).

Readers of this blog will know that I've long advocated for the absolute centrality of the famous Trump Tower meeting of June 9, 2016. That was the meeting between the Trump campaign (represented by Don Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort) and a gaggle of Russians, including the lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. The meeting was supposed to be about "dirt on HIllary" but turned out to be Veselnitskaya advocating for a relaxation or elimination of the sanctions imposed on Russia by the Magnitsky Act.

As is now well known, Veselnitskaya was only present in the US courtesy of the Obama Administration--she had been excluded from entry but DHS decided, “in concurrence with the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Southern District of New York,” then headed by Preet Bharara, to allow her in just that one time. Also well known is the fact that Veselnitskaya had dinner with Clinton oppo research supremo Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS both before and after the Trump Tower meeting. Further, other Clinton activists were in close communication with both Simpson and Russian participants in the meeting.

DC Whispers has a fascinating big picture view of the entire Russia Hoax, based off an original at Big League Politics. What I particularly like about his presentation is its emphasis on the centrality of the Trump Tower meeting. That centrality is borne out by the reports that have noted that this was a topic virtually always touched upon by Team Mueller's inquisitors, as well as by the fact that Congressional Dems have carped on it for the last two years.

My oft repeated view has been that the whole purpose of the meeting was to try to create at least an appearance of a corrupt quid pro quo between Trump and Russia: on Trump's side, a promise of relaxation of sanctions in return for (on the Russian side) help against Hillary. That would, IMO, almost certainly violate the federal bribery statute (and possibly other laws), which applies to those who are prospective members of the government, not just current members.

DC Whispers quotes an "FBI insider" who describes what the Trump Tower meeting was originally all about--and I find it persuasive:

Do All Roads In The Russia Hoax Lead To Ukraine?

I've been mentioning the Ukraine angle to the Russia Hoax in comments and asides for several weeks. Yesterday evening, with a Zerohedge post (Real Collusion: Ukraine Launches Criminal Investigation Into Pro-Hillary Election Meddling) and several articles there the story may have achieved liftoff.

As with all aspects of the Russia Hoax this is complicated, so we'll need to work our way into it one step at a time.

Paul Manafort

A good place to start is with Paul Manafort. Recall that Manafort joined the Trump campaign in March, 2016--coincidentally or not, at the same time that Carter Page and George Papadopoulos were brought on board. Manafort was campaign manager for almost exactly two months (June 20 to August 19) before being abruptly fired. But the real point is that from 2003 right up to 2016 Manafort had been a "political consultant" in Ukraine.

How did Manafort's involvement in the Trump campaign actually come to pass? It turns out that that remains a bit of a mystery. As explained by Time magazine (How Donald Trump Hired and Fired Paul Manafort), the standard, Wikipedia endorsed theory, is that Manafort was recommended to Trump by a close Trump friend, Thomas Barrack, Jr. But, as Time notes,

... probe a little deeper and none of the sources familiar with the details can quite agree anymore how Trump came to decide hiring Manafort was a good idea. At least three differing and at-times-contradictory versions are offered by sources in Trump’s orbit.

There's the Barrack story, of course, but another account has it that Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, recommended Manafort to Papa Trump as someone who knew the ropes of political conventions and would be more "professional" than the upstart Corey Lewandowski, who had helped propel Trump through the primaries. And some claim that Roger Stone was the connection to Manafort.

All of these accounts--or a mix of them--are possible, of course. Nevertheless, they tend to leave one asking, Is it possible that some clever person or organization worked through these Trump associates to get Manafort a spot near the top of the Trump campaign. Consider--as Time suggests, that hiring Manafort was "a good idea" wasn't exactly self evident, in the circumstances, so how was persuading Papa Trump managed? And then that coincidence--or non-coincidence--that Manafort came on board at basically the same time that Carter Page and George Papadopoulos did seems a bit like lightening striking the same place three times. (For the view that Page and Papadopoulos may have been "lured" into the Trump campaign for the purpose of setting them up, cf. The Spy In The Trump Campaign.)

It's About Sanctions Relief For ... What?

In two recent blog posts--Crossfire Hurricane: The Theory Of The Case and More On Mueller's Theory Of The Case--I outlined what I view as the centrality of sanctions relief for Russia to Team Mueller's continuing jihad against the Trump administration. In the most straightforward version of the theory, Trump would have entered into a straightforward but corrupt quid pro quo with "the Russians": sanctions relief for Russia in exchange for something of value--some type of help for Trump's campaign, be it the release of supposedly "hacked" DNC emails or unspecified "dirt" on Hillary. This would constitute bribery under the terms of the Bribery statute (18 US Code 201), which covers not only government officials but also any "person selected to be a public official." In a more convoluted version of the theory, outlined in More On Mueller's Theory Of The Case, a case might be attempted--relying on the same corrupt transaction--for fraud against the United States (18 U.S.C. § 371).

While this theory of a sanctions relief for DNC emails deal is featured early on in the Steele "dossier" reports, I have always believed that the famous Trump Tower meeting was an early attempt to involve the Trump campaign in just such a corrupt quid pro quo deal. I described it in this way:

My Theory of the Carter Page FISA Fraud

One of the major mysteries of the whole Russia Hoax is: what's all the fuss about Carter Page? Why a FISA on him, of all persons? Bill Jacobson at Legal Insurrection sums up the view of skeptics well:

Carter Page was so important the FBI went out on a limb to use a questionable document in court to convince a judge to surveil him? I’m not buying it. ...

The surveillance of Carter Page was not about Carter Page. He’s a bit player in a larger drama, and that larger drama is what we need to understand.

We already know what the larger drama is--the attempt to prevent a Trump presidency or, failing that, to abort it. At this point it may not be possible to determine exactly how Carter Page fits into that larger drama, but while awaiting further developments we can at least advance a theory. After all, that's how science progresses, right? You advance a theory and let others try to knock it down or refine it. So, in the spirit of good, clean fun, let's have a go at it.

First, a bit of background on Carter Page's recent activity as it relates to Russian intelligence activity. Back in March to June of 2013 the FBI learned, through its ongoing FISA coverage of Russian nationals in the US, that Carter Page was in contact with Russians in whom the FBI had a particular interest. Did the FBI run out and seek a FISA on Carter Page upon discovering his contacts? Of course not. Like any sensible and professional counterintelligence agency, the FBI opened a preliminary investigation of Carter Page to get an better handle on who he was and where he was coming from, then they interviewed him. He apparently was fully cooperative, and you can read an entertaining account of it all in the FBI's court filing in the case against the Russians (Page is definitely "Male 1" in paragraphs 32-34 and I'm guessing he may also be CS 1--Confidential Source 1--in paragraphs 66-74.)

The point is that, after this high profile fiasco, the Russian SVR would certainly have conducted a damage assessment and they would have had to have been brain dead not to realize that Carter Page had cooperated with the FBI. The idea that they would turn around and try to make Page into a master spy in the Trump campaign three short years later strains credulity--to put it mildly. So keep that in mind as we take a look at the 2016 presidential campaign.