UPDATED: Goldsmith On Barr

I've cited the views of Jack Goldsmith several times in the past--the most extensive discussion of his views can be found in the first three listed posts here. Somewhat belatedly, Goldsmith has weighed in on the discussion of AG Barr's handling of the Mueller Dossier, in a lengthy article at Lawfare: Thoughts on Barr and the Mueller Report.

Goldsmith is widely respected as a legal scholar, served in the Bush Justice Department, and has had wide experience in national security law--including FISA. You can read his Wikipedia biography here. I think its fair to place Goldsmith in the NeverTrump camp, and that's part of what makes his "thoughts on Barr and the Mueller report" interesting. For those interested in the legal discussion surrounding the whole issue of what Special Counsels are supposed to do or not do, I highly recommend his article.

A few comments, however.

Goldsmith has made it absolutely clear in the past that, despite his own NeverTrump views, he considers Bill Barr to be eminently qualified to serve as Attorney General. He also attempts to give Mueller every benefit of the doubt and strongly disapproves of Trump's behavior toward Mueller--the tweets and criticisms. He offers criticisms of both Barr and Mueller, but makes it clear that he agrees with Barr's views on what the nature of the Special Counsel office is really about as well as Barr's criticism of Mueller for failing to make a call on obstruction. He also agrees with Barr's interpretation of what constitutes obstruction:

First, Barr believes that the Justice Department’s job in this context is to decide (as he told Sen. Richard Blumenthal) “whether or not there is a crime” and nothing more. That is what the special counsel regulations and Justice Department traditions counsel as well. This is why Barr objected to Mueller’s strange in-between decision “not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.” No U.S. attorney would ever do that, and Barr clearly thinks it odd, and probably wrong, that Mueller did that. Whether one thinks Barr is right or wrong (I think he’s right), this is a perfectly respectable judgment for an attorney general to make.

Significantly, Goldsmith is also of the view that there is support for the view that Mueller did engage in politics, especially with regard to obstruction, and he specifically refers to Emmet Flood's "powerful rebuttal" of Mueller's conduct. In fact, he refers to Flood's letter twice, so he was clearly impressed by Flood's reasoning. Thus it comes as no surprise that Goldsmith also strongly deprecates the "overheated" and "over the top" criticisms of Barr.

I have two major--and related--disagreements with Goldsmith in all this.

"The Professor Shall Disappear"

Here's a link to a good translation of the Il Foglio article that revealed where Professor Mifsud has been hanging out for at least parts of the past year or two: Missing Mifsud was hidden in Rome Exclusive – The Maltese professor involved in the Russiagate investigation secretly lived in a flat in Rome for seven months. The rent was paid by Link Campus, the Five Star Movement's favourite university.

Five Star Movement? Read about it here:

The M5S is variously considered populist, anti-establishment, environmentalist, anti-globalist, and Eurosceptic. The party has also been described as New Right and described by some as being right-wing due to its anti-immigration stance despite its promotion of policies usually advocated by the Italian left-wing, such as citizen's income and green-inspired policies. Grillo himself once provocatively referred to the movement as "populist". Its members stress that the M5S is not a party but a "movement", and it may not be included in the traditional left–right paradigm. The "five stars" are a reference to five key issues for the party: public water, sustainable transport, sustainable development, right to Internet access, and environmentalism. The party also advocates e-democracy, direct democracy, the principle of "zero-cost politics", degrowth and nonviolence.

Well, OK, it is an Italian political party. Or movement.

Anyway, here are the final paragraphs of the story. You need to know that Link Campus was founded by Vincenzo Scotti, a former Italian Minister of Home Affairs:

Moreover, another witness sheds light on this story. The book “The Faking of Russia-gate” is co-written by Swiss lawyer Stephan Roh, who owns 5 per cent of GEM (the company which manages Link Campus) and is Mifsud’s lawyer. Roh writes that he spoke to Mifsud over the phone on the “advice of the professor’s friends” on 13 January 2018, while visiting Link's main campus in Casale San Pio V, in Rome. In a conversation-interview reported in the book, Mifsud rejects all the accusations. When asked about why he disappeared, Mifsud said that “the head of the Italian secret services contacted the president of Link Campus, Vincenzo Scotti, and recommended that the Professor shall disappear and stay for some time in a safe location”. The authors write that the “Professor and his friends feared for his life”. It is unclear why the Italian secret services hid Mifsud and why they asked for Scotti's help. Everyone can make their own speculations. But the important issue is that, according to a Link shareholder, who also happens to be Mifsud's lawyer, the university played an active role in the disappearance of the Maltese professor, as part of an operation that has more to do with secret services than with academia.

Nobody knows where Mifsud currently is, and many suspect he is no longer alive. The last time anyone saw him was last May, according to the Associated Press, which was sent a photo of Mifsud by his lawyers. There has been no news since. The Italian government should probably be more transparent about an international spy story that has disrupted an allied country such as the US. Clarification should come from Defence Minister Elisabetta Trenta and Deputy Foreign Minister Emanuela Del Re, who come from Link Campus. Ever since the scandal broke out and Mifsud disappeared, all roads lead to the university in Rome. Whoever wants to solve the Russiagate enigma – whether they believe that Mifsud plotted with the Russians to help Trump or that he conspired with Western intelligence services to weaken Trump – should look for evidence at Link Campus, the small university presided over by Vincenzo Scotti.

UPDATED: Nunes Seeking Truth Re Mifsud, Implicates Mueller In Lie

Devin Nunes has sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspel, National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone and FBI Director Chris Wray. The letter asks them to hand over all information they have on Mifsud by May 10.

Nunes presents photographic evidence of Mifsud in close proximity to influential Western political and government officials. Further, in interviews Nunes states that Mifsud served as an intelligence trainer for FBI and CIA agents at the Link Campus in Rome. He points out that if what the Mueller Dossier says is true--that Mifsud was tied to Russian intelligence--then Mifsud's close contact with Western intelligence services such as the FBI and CIA is a major scandal. On the other hand, if what the Mueller Dossier says is not true--and, really, who believed that story?--then Mueller is in trouble on several fronts, including the frame-up of George Papadopoulos.

Nunes states that he's trying to determine how many intelligence operatives were run into the Trump campaign, and clearly believes that the number was significant. Here's his Hannity interview--Devin Nunes Just Caught Robert Mueller Lying to American Public on Joseph Misfud:

AFTERTHOUGHT: Mueller could find himself facing intense questioning from GOPers if he testifies in the Senate (Sen. Graham has invited him--coincidence?) or the House.

UPDATE: National Review is reporting tonight that they have obtained a copy of FBI Deputy assistant director Jonathan Moffa’s testimony. It appears that Moffa's testimony confirms Devin Nunes' claim that there was more going on than the FBI has yet publicly admitted.
Moffa was involved with the Russia–Trump investigation from the start as the section chief over counterintelligence analysis during the period of the election. According to NR:

Moffa’s congressional interview was private, and no transcript has been released. But National Review has obtained a copy. The interview transcript reveals that the FBI’s use of Confidential Human Sources and other counterintelligence assets was far more extensive than has previously been acknowledged.

...

Moffa was asked in the closed-door Capitol Hill interview, “How many CHSs did you have working on this investigation at the time?”

Moffa again conferred with his counsel off the record.

“Okay,” he replied, back on the record. “So I legitimately do not know the total number of CHSs. That’s an operational side decision, but I also don’t want to imply to you that I don’t — I’m not aware of any CHSs, right. So that’s what we were just talking about. But I legitimately can’t tell you the overall number that are engaged. I just don’t know it.”

... 

He was clearly involved in meetings where the use of CHSs was discussed, and he appears to assure lawmakers that he isn’t trying to pretend he’s “not aware of any CHSs.” He just “legitimately can’t tell you the overall number that are engaged.” That he can’t tell “the overall number” of Confidential Human Sources —  that “I just don’t know it” — leaves open the possibility that there were more than just a few.

UPDATED: Emmet Flood's Critique Of The Mueller Dossier

On April 19, 2019, Emmet Flood, special counsel to the president, sent a letter to Attorney General Bill Barr. In the five page letter, Flood expresses concerns about the Mueller Dossier, arguing that the Dossier, particularly regarding obstruction of justice, "fails to comply with the requirements of governing law." The letter, which can be read here or here, is well worth the time it may require to read and reflect upon it, as it amounts to a trenchant criticism of the entire Mueller inquisition. I say this because, while the letter focuses on obstruction, it attacks the deliberately lawless spirit in which the Dossier was produced. I say this, also, because the letter contains a direct attack on James Comey's conduct and the authorization of a Special Counsel that followed upon that conduct.

I reproduce significant portions of the letter below, while editing out citations and extraneous matter--for our purposes here. The text that I've omitted--mostly on page three--is largely concerned with matters of executive privilege. I refrain from comment simply because I find the letter eloquent, cogent, and clearly expressed. It speaks for itself.


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The SCO Report suffers from an extraordinary legal defect: It quite deliberately fails to comply with the requirements of governing law. Lest the Report's release be taken as a "precedent" or perceived as somehow legitimating the defect, I write with both the President and future Presidents in mind to make the following points clear.

I begin with the SCO's stated conclusion on the obstruction question: The SCO concluded that the evidence "prevent[ed] [it] from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred." ... But "conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred" was not the SCO's assigned task, because making conclusive determinations of innocence is never the task of the federal prosecutor.

What prosecutors are supposed to do is complete an investigation and then either ask the grand jury to return an indictment or decline to charge the case. When prosecutors decline to charge, they make that decision not because they have "conclusively determin[ed] that no criminal conduct occurred," but rather because they do not believe that the investigated conduct constitutes a crime for which all the elements can be proven to the satisfaction of a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecutors simply are not in the business of establishing innocence, any more than they are in the business of "exonerating" investigated persons. In the American justice system, innocence is presumed; there is never any need for prosecutors to "conclusively determine" it. Nor is there any place for such a determination. Our country would be a very different (and very dangerous) place if prosecutors applied the SCO standard and citizens were obliged to prove "conclusively . . . that no criminal conduct occurred."

Because they do not belong to our criminal justice vocabulary, the inverted-proof-standard and "exoneration" statements can be understood only as political statements, issuing from persons (federal prosecutors) who in our system of government are expected never  

2

to be political in the performance of their duties. The inverted burden of proof knowingly embedded in the conclusion shows that the Special Counsel and his staff failed in their duty to act as prosecutors and only as prosecutors.

Second, and equally importantly: ln closing its investigation, the SCO had only one job -- to "provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel." 28 CFR. 600.8(c). Yet the one thing the SCO was obligated to do is the very thing the SCO intentionally and unapologetically refused to do. The SCO made neither a prosecution decision not a declination decision on the obstruction question. Instead, it transmitted a 182-page discussion of raw evidentiary material combined with its own inconclusive observations on the arguable legal significance of the gathered content. As a result, none of the Report's Volume II complied with the obligation imposed by the governing regulation to "explain[] the prosecution or declination decisions reached."

The SCO instead produced a prosecutorial curiosity -- part "truth commission" report and part law school exam paper. Far more detailed than the text of any known criminal indictment or declination memorandum, the Report is laden with factual information that has never been subjected to adversarial testing or independent analysis. That information is accompanied by a series of inexplicably inconclusive observations (inexplicable, that is, coming from a prosecutor) concerning possible applications of law to fact. This species of public report has no basis in the relevant regulation and no precedent in the history of special/independent counsel investigations.

An investigation of the President under a regulation that clearly specifies a very particular form of closing documentation is not the place for indulging creative departures from governing law. Under general prosecutorial principles, and under the Special Counsel regulation's specific language, prosecutors are to speak publicly through indictments or confidentially in declination memoranda. By way of justifying this departure, it has been suggested that the Report was written with the intent of providing Congress some kind of "road map" for congressional action. See, e.g., Remarks of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, 4/18/19 (Press Conference). If that was in fact the intention, it too serves as additional evidence of the refusal to follow applicable law. Both the language of the regulation and its "legislative" history make plain that the "[c]losing documentation" language was promulgated for the specific

3

purpose of preventing the creation of this sort of final report. Under a constitution of separated powers, inferior Article II officers should not be in the business of creating "road maps" for the purpose of transmitting them to Article I committees.

4

A great deal is said these days about the rule of law and the importance of legal norms. In that spirit, and mindful of the frenzied atmosphere accompanying the Report's release, the following should not be forgotten. Government officials, with access to classified information derived from a counterintelligence investigation and from classified intelligence intercepts, engaged in a campaign of illegal leaks against the President. Many of those leaks were felonies. They disclosed the identity of a U.S. person in violation of his civil rights; they misused intelligence for partisan political purposes; and they eroded public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of our intelligence services. The criminal investigation began with a breach of confidentiality executed by a very senior administration official who was himself an intelligence service chief. This leak of confidential information, personally directed by the former Director of the FBI, triggered the creation of the SCO itself -- precisely as he intended it to do.

Not so long ago, the idea that a law enforcement official might provide the press with confidential governmental information for the proclaimed purpose of prompting a criminal investigation of an identified individual would have troubled Americans of all political persuasions. That the head of our country's top law enforcement agency has actually done so to the President of the United States should frighten every friend of individual liberty. Under our system of government, unelected Executive Branch officers and intelligence agency personnel are supposed to answer to the person elected by the people--the President--and not the other way around. This is not a Democratic or a Republican issue; it is a matter of having a government responsible to the people and, again, not the other way around. In the partisan commotion surrounding the released Report, it would be well to remember that what can be done to a President can be done to any of us.

These leaks and this investigation also caused immense and continuing interference with the functioning of the Executive Branch. Our constitution makes the President the sole

5

constitutional officer "for whom the entire Nation votes, and [who] represent[s] the entire Nation both domestically and abroad." Clinton v. Jones, 520 US. 681. 711 (1997) (Breyer. J., concurring). As a result, "[i]nterference with a President's ability to carry out his public responsibilities is constitutionally equivalent to interference with the ability of the entirety of Congress, or the Judicial Branch, to carry out its public obligations." Id. at 713. It is inarguable that the now-resolved allegation of "Russian collusion" placed a cloud over the Presidency that has only begun to lift in recent weeks. The pendency of the SCO investigation plainly interfered with the President's ability to carry out his public responsibility to serve the American people and to govern effectively. These very public and widely felt consequences flowed from, and were fueled by, improper disclosures by senior government officials with access to classified information. That this continues to go largely unremarked should worry all civil libertarians, all supporters of investigative due process. and all believers in limited and effective government under the Constitution.

UPDATE: Rush has an extremely long monologue on this letter. He spends quite a bit of time on the Executive Privilege angle--which I edited out. I did that because I think we've known that when push came to shove Trump would assert his privileges. But here's Rush's final bottom line. What he has said leading up to this is that what the Dems really want is to get Don McGahn in front of their committee and they want to convince the public that there's some sort of "coverup." Rush states flatly--that won't work because they're gonna get buried by the declass and Trump's bully pulpit (with able assistance). There's a bit of a problem with one sentence, but I think he's saying that in addition to declass happening soon, so will indictments:

So I think, since the Trump team knows full well what’s gonna happen (they’ve got it all gamed out), I think you can expect (we can expect) rapid-fire disclosure of the inspector general report. I think we’re gonna get rapid declassification of the origination documents for the FISA warrants, this stuff that Trump’s gonna declassify. Barr’s investigation into the origination of the investigation…  I think this stuff is going to happen rapid fire.

I don’t think we’re looking at years for all this to play out.  We’re looking at months for this to play out, and I think any indictments for anybody in the FBI or the DOJ who lied to investigators, who actually conducted a spy operation on the Trump campaign, anybody who lied to Congress like Comey has, or anybody that leaked classified information — and that list is as long as your arm!  The New York Times and the Washington Post survived for two years on leaked classified data.  I think you’re gonna see all of this be made public rapid fire.

Briefly Noted: Larry Johnson Lays It Out

I've quoted Larry Johnson in the past. Today he has an excellent piece at Gateway Pundit. He focuses on eight points of focus re Russia for the Mueller inquisition and demonstrates that in every single instance these were entrapment schemes, provocations instigated by US/UK intel agencies or Clinton connected organizations. Below I set out the intro, but follow the link for the detail that follows.

Johson makes a simple but important point toward the end of the intro:

There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign.

The distinction here is that we have now learned from John Solomon's reporting that the Ukraine has confirmed that a Clinton campaign operative--Alexandra Chalupa--did in fact proactively reach out to the Ukrainian government seeking dirt on Paul Manafort: Ukrainian Embassy confirms DNC contractor solicited Trump dirt in 2016.

Monica Showalter at American Thinker comments: "Paul Manafort's case for a tossout of all the charges against him gets quite a bit stronger."

Flynn, Papadopoulos, Manafort ...



Intel and Law Enforcement Tried to Entrap Trump

Guest post by Larry C. Johnson


The preponderance of evidence makes this very simple–there was a broad, coordinated effort by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments, to target Donald Trump and paint him as a stooge of Russia.

The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called Russian collusion case against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom and organizations aligned with the Clinton Campaign.

The Fear Of Barr Is Almost Palpable

Kim Strassel has a nice article for Friday in the WSJ (subscription wall): For Fear of William Barr: The attorney general gets attacked because his probe endangers many powerful people. What I want to do here is offer a brief paragraph on why Strassel says Washington, DC, is pervaded by this fear, then connect it to a portion of a CTH post tonight. There seems to be a connection, and a fascinating one at that.

Strassel begins by stating flatly that "fear [of Barr] is what’s driving this week’s blitzkrieg of Attorney General William Barr." It takes a while, but she eventually comes out with a succinct explanation for that fear:

Mr. Barr made real news in that Senate hearing, and while the press didn’t notice, Democrats did. The attorney general said he’d already assigned people at the Justice Department to assist his investigation of the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. He said his review would be far-reaching ...

... 

Do not underestimate how many powerful people in Washington have something to lose from Mr. Barr’s probe. Among them: Former and current leaders of the law-enforcement and intelligence communities. The Democratic Party pooh-bahs who paid a foreign national (Mr. Steele) to collect information from Russians and deliver it to the FBI. The government officials who misused their positions to target a presidential campaign. The leakers. The media. More than reputations are at risk. Revelations could lead to lawsuits, formal disciplinary actions, lost jobs, even criminal prosecution.

Let's see.  "Former and current leaders of the law-enforcement and intelligence communities." OK, I'll take a stab at that: James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper--for starters.

What's The Bigger Picture On "Azra Turk"?

Sorry, this may be a bit disjointed--there are a lot of moving pieces.

In my first post regarding the FBI's revelation (through the NYT) that - Oh, did we mention that we actually did spy on the Trump campaign, just like Bill Barr said? - I briefly made two points: 

The first point was the importance of the date that the two FBI assets--the "flirty" Azra Turk (possibly an undercover agent - UCA), posing as Stefan Halper's assistant, and Halper himself--made contact with George Papadopoulos in London: September, 2016. The date is important because it means this contact was putatively legal, pursuant to an open and authorized Full Investigation: Crossfire Hurricane, opened on July 31, 2016. Of course, we know that Halper was making approaches to Trump campaign associates months before that, but I confidently expect that that will be covered by the revelation of a Preliminary Investigation of some sort. You can see from this why Barr keeps mentioning the "predication" for these "investigations." It's key.

The second point I made was that the most important purpose of this leak is probably to give the appearance that FBI targeting of the Trump campaign didn't really begin until they had open investigations going. This is probably another in a long line of falsehoods, and it's what I want to explore a bit more.

When did the FBI begin targeting Trump?

First Take On Azra Turk

So the interwebs are ablaze with the news that the FBI is admitting, via the NYT, that they sent either an agent or an asset of some sort to pose as Stefan Halper's female assistant in London, while meeting with George Papadopoulos. The woman went under the name Azra Turk and the meeting took place in September, 2016.

What's going on here? Sure looks like damage control, right? Several things may be involved.

For starters, the date is very important. September, 2016, places this meeting after the official opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the Full Enterprise Counterintelligence Investigation into "four Americans" in the Trump campaign. Crossfire Hurrican was opened on July 31, 2016. Therefore, targeting Papadopoulos with the "flirty" Azra Turk in September makes it legal, since there was an open investigation. That's very much the focus of the article.

There also appears to be a diversion angle at work. The NYT article places the focus on Azra Turk rather than Halper. It seems the FBI wants us to forget about Halper and his interactions with Papadopoulos and Carter Page before the Crossfire Hurricane opening. Presumably, there will be an explanation forthcoming for that interaction--such as, that there was a preliminary investigation going on, or that Halper met Page and Papadopoulos on his own or as part of something else that was happening in London. Again, they want us to focus on what happened after the Crossfire Hurricane opening, not on anything before. And the reason may be that reports say IG Horowitz is really focusing hard on Halper.

The goal of this leak, ultimately, appears to divert attention to just how far back the inception of the Russian Hoax goes. As we've seen, the appearances are that it may have started as early as a few weeks after Trump declared his candidacy in summer, 2015. The Lisa Page/Strzok texts also strongly indicate a very early beginning--a targeting of Trump campaign aides virtually as soon as they came on board with the campaign.

One wonders what AG Barr thinks of this leak. Has he spoken to the esteemed Chris Wray about it?

In any event, the hope has to be that other news organizations will forget the collusion narrative and start competing for scoops.

UPDATED: Barr On The FBI's Failure To Provide Trump A Defensive Briefing

Thomas Lifson at American Thinker draws attention to a key but underreported part of Barr's testimony yesterday, which occurred in an exchange with Sen. John Cornyn. In his usual laconic style, the exchange begins with Barr providing terse one word (or just a few word) answers. However, toward the end he expresses his views at more length. Remember, Barr had formative influence in the CIA as well as dealing heavily with national security issues at the DoJ, before going into private practice. Therefore, when he says that he "can't fathom" why a defensive briefing regarding purported Russian influence efforts--which should have been standard procedure--wasn't provided to the Trump campaign, that speaks volumes. This is a guy who understands these things, and knows that such a failure does NOT have an innocent explanation--which is exactly why Paul Sperry singled out Barr's pointed refusal to back off from using the word "spying":

BREAKING: AG Barr testified today that "I'm not going to back off the word spying" to describe covert intelligence operations launched against the Trump campaign and presidential transition, particularly when such secret surveillance is "unauthorized and inadequately predicated."

And just in case the meaning of his words was somehow missed, Barr laid it right on the line:

Paul Sperry‏

@paulsperry_

AG Barr: "The evidence is now that the prez was falsely accused of colluding w the Russians & accused of being treasonous & a Russian agent & the evidence now is that that was w/o a basis & 2 yrs of his admin have been dominated by the allegations that have now been proven false"

9:50 PM - 1 May 2019

This is also why Lifson (Barr laid it on the line with the simple question the Russia Hoaxers can’t answer) stresses the importance of Barr's carefully chosen words--going forward:

UPDATED: Criminal Referral? Whoa, Nellie!

It's being reported that Rep. Mark Meadows is working to "finalize" a criminal referral on Nellie Ohr--Clinton oppo researcher and wife of top DoJ official and key Russia Hoax conspirator Bruce Ohr. John Solomon has the story, but a good launching pad, that includes a link to Solomon's story plus additional background, is at Zerohedge: Nellie Ohr Criminal Referral Being 'Finalized' According To Jim Jordan. The criminal referral would be based on discrepancies between Nellie's testimony and a trove of emails that Judicial Watch has obtained.

Nellie strikes me as a hardcore, leftist extremist who hasn't outgrown the extremism of her younger days, when she defended the Stalinist government sponsored famine in Ukraine as just the price one pays for "progress":

As analyzed in 1994 by anti-communist historian Walter Laqueur, these “revisionists” included American academics who “downplayed the human cost of forcible collectivization of agriculture.” 

Did I mention Nellie Ohr’s Ph.D. thesis is titled “Collective farms and Russian peasant society, 1933-1937: the stabilization of the kolkhoz order”? 

“Kolkhoz” order means “collective farm” order, so Ohr’s subtitle refers to the “stabilization” of the collective farm order. The phrasing alone is suggestive of some silverish lining after the six million or more people were killed by Stalin’s state-created famine, mass deportations, and general war of “de-kulakization.” 

...

Speaking “revisionist” lingo, Nellie Ohr turns the millions killed by Stalin into “excesses,” which, in Ohr’s words, “sometimes represented desperate measures taken by a government that had little real control over the country.” (Poor Stalin.) She depicts purges as representing “to some degree a center-periphery conflict in which the ‘state-building’ central government tried to bring headstrong local satraps under control.”

Jordan and Meadows, in the light of the recently obtained emails, believe Nellie lied to the House. My own impression of her testimony was:

Nellie is, when compared to any of the previous witnesses, tight lipped. She volunteers virtually nothing, constantly asks for questions to be rephrased, and generally professes ignorance on most matters that she's questioned on.

Here is a link to past posts that featured Nellie to some significant degree:

https://meaninginhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=nellie+ohr


UPDATE: Confirmed:

John Solomon‏

@jsolomonReports

Breaking: Criminal referral filed against Nellie Ohr concerning congressional testimony after emails surface showing election-year contacts with DOJ

5:19 PM - 1 May 2019

And in a total non-surprise, CTH is also reporting:

Not coincidentally, Fusion-GPS owner Glenn Simpson is also being reviewed for lying to investigators about his contacts and activity in connection to the dossier.  Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion-GPS and it would appear Fusion is at the center of the effort to construct evidence to support the 2016 election operation against Donald Trump.

CTH has lots of background.

Watergate v. The Russia Hoax

Commenter Joe raised the issue recently of how to deal with the Russia Hoax if it leads, as seems inevitable now, to the Obama White House. In doing so, while avoiding the word itself, he referred in passing to the ultimate evil in Liberal mythology--Watergate: Eeeeek!

We have a history of not indicting presidents, à la the Ford pardon of Richard Nixon. Is it a realistic possibility that charges are brought against Obama and Clinton, with a Trump pardon predicated on an admission of guilt and possible payments of large fines? Thinking of Clinton for all the dirty Clinton Foundation pay-to-play scheme.

In response I noted that Nixon, IMO rightly, never made that admission of guilt. Further, in my mind the Russia Hoax is different in kind as well as degree from Watergate. George Parry, a former prosecutor, expresses the stakes as well as the distinction well in a recent article:

"The Watergate burglary was a bungled attempt by the Committee to Re-Elect President Nixon to break into Democrat headquarters to plant listening devices in the telephones. The burglary failed, but the national outrage at the mere attempt drove Nixon from office and sent members of his administration to prison. As bad as that was, at least the Nixon campaign didn’t corrupt the FBI and CIA to do its dirty work. So it is that, if our official law enforcement and intelligence agencies were co-opted by the Obama administration to illegally spy on American citizens and the opposition party, this will be the worst governmental scandal and threat to our civil liberties in the history of the nation.

"If Joe diGenova is right, the very survival of the rule of law and our constitutional republic mandates that these treasonous thugs — no matter how highly placed in the Obama administration — be exposed, charged, and imprisoned."

I think Parry and DiGenova have it exactly right. What we're faced with is a conspiracy against our constitutional order. It may not satisfy the requirement of force and violence to constitute a seditious conspiracy, but in its intent (and its methodical abuse of our legal system) it represents absolutely as much of a threat as any violent conspiracy to the rule of law and our constitutional republic. And let it not be forgotten that this conspiracy was undertaken and carried out in collaboration with foreign powers. A conspiracy against our constitutional order in collaboration with foreign powers. There. I said it again.

The ball is in Bill Barr's court.

MULTIPLE UPDATES: Extracts From AG Barr's Opening Statement, May 1, 2019

Below are what I regard as the most significant part of AG Barr's prepared statement for his Senate testimony this morning. It's refreshing in this age of disregard for principle generally to see a straightforward presentation of the hallowed ethical principles underlying the prosecutorial function, as well as an enunciation of the relationship of the Special Counsel to DoJ. All emphasis is mine. In my view Barr has done himself proud in this statement, and has provided a signal service to the country. It remains for his yapping critics to feel shame.

Bottom-Line Conclusions

After the Special Counsel submitted the confidential report on March 22, I determined that it was in the public interest for the Department to announce the investigation’s bottom-line conclusions—that is, the determination whether a provable crime has been committed or not. I did so in my March 24 letter. I did not believe that it was in the public interest to release additional  portions of the report in piecemeal fashion, leading to public debate over incomplete information. My main focus was the prompt release of a public version of the report so that Congress and the American people could read it for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

The Department’s principal responsibility in conducting this investigation was to determine whether the conduct reviewed constituted a crime that the Department could prove beyond a reasonable doubt. As Attorney General, I serve as the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States, and it is my responsibility to ensure that the Department carries out its law-enforcement functions appropriately. The Special Counsel’s investigation was no exception. The Special Counsel was, after all, a federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice charged with making prosecution or declination decisions.