Holy, uh, Cow! Solomon's Big Scoop On Weissmann

Last week I noted John Solomon's tease re "new evidence emerging about the conduct of one of Mueller’s deputies." I assumed that would mean Andrew Weissmann, and I haven't been disappointed. I'm still working on a commentary based on Paul Sperry's article today. I'll finish that first, but I'll just say that Solomon's story is, IMO, very big. Here are the first few paragraphs:

The ink was still drying on special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment papers when his chief deputy, the famously aggressive and occasionally controversial prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, made a bold but secret overture in early June 2017. 

Weissmann quietly reached out to the American lawyers for Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash with a tempting offer: Give us some dirt on Donald Trump in the Russia case, and Team Mueller might make his 2014 U.S. criminal charges go away. 

The specifics of the never-before-reported offer were confirmed to me by multiple sources with direct knowledge, as well as in contemporaneous defense memos I read. 

... 

At first blush, one might ask, “What’s the big deal?” It’s not unusual for federal prosecutors to steal a page from Monty Hall’s “Let’s Make a Deal” script during plea negotiations. 

But Weissmann’s overture was wrapped with complexity and intrigue far beyond the normal federal case, my sources indicate.

IMO, Solomon isn't exaggerating: How Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann's offer to an oligarch could boomerang on DOJ. One more thing for Mueller to explain.

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.

January 2016: Obama WH Sought Russia Hoax Help From Ukraine

John Solomon has a new revelation regarding the Ukrainian Connection to the Russia Hoax. We know that the Ukrainian anti-corruption bureau (NABU) was set up by the FBI, with continued close ties. Operatives from NABU released two pages from Paul Manafort's "black book" to smear him while he was campaign manager for Trump. Now, in How the Obama White House engaged Ukraine to give Russia collusion narrative an early boost, Solomon provides some of the backstory.

Claiming confirmation from "multiple participants and contemporaneous memos," Solomon describes a WH meeting in January, 2016, that

brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), the FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ).

The ostensible purpose for the meeting  was "training and coordination." However, the Ukrainian participants soon realized that the meeting was about a number of sensitive political topics. One had to do with Hunter Biden's involvement in a corrupt Ukrainian venture, but the second had to do with the possibility of reviving a two year old investigation into Paul Manafort involvement with the party of ousted Ukrainian President Yanukovych. The original investigation had been dropped without any charges being brought against Manafort.

Kulyk said Ukrainian authorities had evidence that other Western figures, such as former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig, also received money from Yanukovych’s party. But the Americans weren’t interested: “They just discussed Manafort. This was all and only what they wanted. Nobody else.”

Manafort joined Trump’s campaign on March 29, 2016, and then was promoted to campaign chairman on May 19, 2016. 

Here's what interests me. There is talk of targeting Manafort's lobbying firm: "a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump." But this meeting was in January, 2016--two to three months before Manafort was associated with the Trump campaign. By all accounts Trump didn't reach out for Manafort--Manafort was pushed on Trump. A White House meeting seems rather over the top for what sounds like simple opposition research. Could there be more to this? Is it possible that Dem operatives were somehow behind maneuvering an unwitting Manafort into joining the Trump campaign? After all, an actual member of the Trump campaign ensnared in supposedly pro-Russian lobbying activities would have a lot more punch than "a lobbying firm linked closely to Trump."

One way or another, Solomon appears to be on to something big. The Russia Hoax narrative was a developed thing already in January, 2016, but to make it really take off there had to be a attention grabbing hook. That hook was Manafort. Coincidence?

Later, of course, Carter Page and Michael Flynn fit right into the Russia Hoax narrative. George Papadopoulos, on the other hand, had to be worked into the setup. But it all seems to lead back to the Obama White House.

Interesting times.

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.)