Is it Mueller Time Now?

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sat, 05/11/2019 - 9:59pm

Robert Mueller Is in Serious Legal Trouble - Here's Why

For the PDRs, (Progressive Democratic “Resistance”) the metaphysical concept of reality refers to some land of dark make-believe over a distant horizon where numbers supposedly add up (ha!) and the actions of persons are said to entail a strange cosmic condition known as consequence.

Now that the Mueller Investigation has concluded empty of charges — despite two-plus-years of sedulous effort by fiercely dedicated antagonists of its target — everything about it, including the sacred Mueller Report, begins to emit odious vapors like unto a rump roast that has laid uncovered in a pantry for three weeks, attracting the attention of flies. The PDRs might think twice about a closer examination of all that festering material. What they’re liable to find is evidence of how slovenly and dishonest it was and how the revered legal maestro in charge of composing it may well be subject to charges himself of obstructing justice and malicious prosecution.

Information emerged over the weeks since the Mueller Report’s release that Mr. Mueller and his team knew unequivocally that the Special Counsel’s mission and the FBI operations that preceded it were based on concocted political bullshit supplied by Mrs. Clinton and her network of flunkies and fixers, ranging throughout the permanent DC bureacuracy (a.k.a. the Swamp), to outposts in foreign intel services and the political kitty-litter box known as Ukraine. Mr. Mueller must have suspected this from the outset, but knew for sure by the summer of 2017, and omitted to advise the American public that he had uncovered a fraud. Rather, he rode on the back of that fraud for two years, as if touring a political landfill on a donkey, leaving the public to stew in anxious hallucinations.

What else did Mr. Mueller do, or omit to do? He never engaged US government forensic computer analysts to examine the DNC servers at the heart of RussiaGate story. Rather, he allowed the conclusions to stand of a company called CrowdStrike, hired by the DNC itself to supposedly investigate the theft of emails, especially those of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. (See Craig Murray’s commentary on all this.) Mr. Mueller never bothered to interview the one person who might have known exactly who supplied the purloined emails to Wikileaks, namely Julian Assange. Mr. Mueller also did not bother to interview several dozen retired Intel Community computer experts, led by William Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA, who determined that the hack was accomplished by direct download by an insider onto a flash drive.
....

These various parties may also seek to understand why Mr. Mueller omitted to mention the now reeking Steele Dossier in his 444-page report, and why in his 20-plus page recounting of the oh-so-crucial Trump Tower meeting he never disclosed that the two Russians present were on the payroll of Hillary contractor FusionGPS, and met with its principal, Glenn Simpson before and after the meeting.
....
The crisis she (Pelosi) mis-identifies is the coming indictment of so many supposedly untouchable and hallowed public figures, up to and including the former president, Mr. Obama, and the former heads of CIA, Mr. Brennan, and Director of National Security, Mr. Clapper, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the sainted Mr. Mueller, a whole posse of former Intel Community subalterns, and an unholy host of creeping, crawling, and flying swamp creatures from Glenn Simpson to the shyster lawyers at DNC law firm Perkins Coie, to the errand boys at the Cable News Networks, Wash-Po and The New York Times who trafficked in leaked perfidious documents

Why didn't Mueller interview anyone that was involved in cooking up the sham of Russia Gate? Not Comey, Brennan, Strzok, Page, Christopher Steele, Glen Simpson, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, the Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr, Kushner or many others?

Did Mueller know that Comey killed the deal with Assange who would have been able to tell him that the DNC information did not come from a Russian source? I'm pretty sure that he did because he and James are good friends and besides wouldn't Mueller have all the information that the FBI did regarding everything related to Russia Gate?

Why didn't Mueller interview Comey who was instrumental in getting this damn ball rolling? Remember that Comey leaked his notes that he took when he met with Trump about Flynn. BTW. Why hasn't Comey been charged for doing that? Is it normal for the leader of the FBI to leak confidential information about their meetings with the president?

Oh look...more damaging information about Christopher Steele has come out.

FBI's Steele story falls apart: False intel and media contacts were flagged before FISA

The FBI’s sworn story to a federal court about its asset, Christopher Steele, is fraying faster than a $5 souvenir T-shirt bought at a tourist trap.

Newly unearthed memos show a high-ranking government official who met with Steele in October 2016 determined some of the Donald Trump dirt that Steele was simultaneously digging up for the FBI and for Hillary Clinton’s campaign was inaccurate, and likely leaked to the media.

The concerns were flagged in a typed memo and in handwritten notes taken by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec on Oct. 11, 2016.

Her observations were recorded exactly 10 days before the FBI used Steele and his infamous dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s contacts with Russia in search of a now debunked collusion theory.

It is important to note that the FBI swore on Oct. 21, 2016, to the FISA judges that Steele’s “reporting has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings” and the FBI has determined him to be “reliable” and was “unaware of any derogatory information pertaining” to their informant, who simultaneously worked for Fusion GPS, the firm paid by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign to find Russian dirt on Trump.

That’s a pretty remarkable declaration in Footnote 5 on Page 15 of the FISA application, since Kavalec apparently needed just a single encounter with Steele at State to find one of his key claims about Trump-Russia collusion was blatantly false.

In her typed summary, Kavalec wrote that Steele told her the Russians had constructed a “technical/human operation run out of Moscow targeting the election” that recruited emigres in the United States to “do hacking and recruiting.”

She quoted Steele as saying, “Payments to those recruited are made out of the Russian Consulate in Miami,” according to a copy of her summary memo obtained under open records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United. Kavalec bluntly debunked that assertion in a bracketed comment: “It is important to note that there is no Russian consulate in Miami.”

Kavalec, two days later and well before the FISA warrant was issued, forwarded her typed summary to other government officials. The State Department has redacted the names and agencies of everyone she alerted. It is unlikely that her concerns failed to reach the FBI.
....
But it is almost certain the FBI knew of Steele's contact with State and his partisan motive. That's because former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland says she instructed her staff to send the information they got from Steele to the bureau immediately and to cease contact with the informer because "this is about U.S. politics, and not the work of — not the business of the State Department, and certainly not the business of a career employee who is subject to the Hatch Act."

Even if the FBI didn’t get Kavalec's memo, it is just as implausible that the bureau couldn’t figure out, during the many hours that its agents spent with Steele, what Kavalec divined in a few short minutes: He was political, inaccurate, spinning wild theories and talking to the media.
....
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, released last month, dispelled all those wild theories while hardly mentioning Steele, except for a passing reference to his dossier being “unverified.” That’s significant, because the FISA request from October 2016 that rested heavily on Steele’s information was marked “verified application” before the FBI submitted it to the court.

And, as I reported earlier this week, Kavalec’s memo clearly warned that Steele had admitted his client was “keen” to get his information out before Election Day. In other words, he had a political, rather than an intelligence, deadline.

Then there's all the information that is coming out about how Hillary's campaign people went to Ukraine to get information on Paul Manafort's lobbying deals that Obama's administration knew about in 2014, but for some reason decided not to do anything about it. They just left it on the back burner in case it was needed in the future...stay tuned.

Tags:

Mueller in hot water

Vote

Comments

Submitted by Raggedy Ann on Sat, 05/11/2019 - 11:13pm

The chickens

are coming home to roost. They’ve created havoc in the garden and now it’s time to pay their dues.

No one gets a free ride. No one.

—

"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

Submitted by dkmich on Sun, 05/12/2019 - 8:04am

Great article and great comment.

CHUCKMAN • a day ago
For me, this well-done article only adds to the evidence that Washington lacks coherence in virtually all of its thinking and behavior.

It is not just in its past and recent behavior around Trump, and the one thing I see as quite negative about articles like this is their tendency to offer support to Trump’s sympathizers, people who see him as a victim, a victim of diabolical political plots.

The fact is that Washington has been reduced to political and intellectual chaos for years. Giant noisy, spoiled children on all political sides, shouting to the world about the harm that has been done to them while they busy themselves actively harming others.

Yes, there are dark and chaotic deeds here, related to Trump's election and Hillary Clinton's loss and the nature of Mueller’s investigation and huge numbers of unanswered questions around the behavior of senior Democrats, very much including Obama, but then there are dark chaotic deeds these days in all of Washington's behavior towards the world. Why would anyone expect things to be different inside the asylum?

What is more absurd and threatening than Washington's public behavior against Venezuela? Imagine spending years of effort imposing economic sanctions and other sabotage, effort going well back into Obama’s day, to try strangling a country and then turning around, as the United States has recently, to blame Venezuela’s own government for the mess?

Imagine stooping to such low stunts as turning off most of the country’s electricity so that millions of ordinary people lose all the food in their fridges and then turning around to say the country’s government is responsible for people being hungry?

Imagine giving speech after speech about freedom and democracy in Venezuela, as they do in Washington, while you openly support an unelected man, who swore himself into office, one who goes around proclaiming himself president of the country?

A man, moreover, known to have old ties to the CIA? A man who in recent days publicly has considered the idea of asking Washington to invade his own country?

Imagine stealing access to everything from a government’s bank accounts to its gold reserves and handing them over to the unelected man you say is the country’s president?

Well, all that vicious effort against Venezuela comes while making ceaseless efforts against Russia and the “threat” that it represents. Tanks clanking through Europe, planes approaching Russia’s borders, ships in the Baltic and the Black Sea on special exercises, massive war games put on not far from Russia, threatening language regularly heard from military officials, more sanctions illegally imposed against a country just to hurt it.

And there are the attempts to interfere directly in legitimate business capital projects like a new natural gas pipeline to Europe, something that is absolutely none of America’s business, except to the extent that it wants to control all relationships, hardly what anyone would describe as an appropriate or even healthy interest.

All of that in response against Russia’s measured responses to yet another coup, one clearly engineered just like the one attempted in Venezuela, a coup on one of Russia’s longest borders, in Ukraine, intended to threaten and intimidate the very country against which you have all those tanks and planes and ships making threatening movements. For Russia, it was something like what America might experience with a coup in Mexico or Canada, and that was precisely the intention.

And there’s the still more ferocious efforts against a law-abiding and peaceful Iran, more ferocious because they are driven entirely by an unhealthy relationship between the United States and Israel, an Israel never satisfied with the level of its domination in its region, always demanding more and getting it through immense political leverage in Washington.

Talk about a “swamp,” that relationship absolutely is described by the word. The relationship has been at the very heart of fifteen years of Neocon wars in the Middle East, wars which have killed a couple of million people and kill more still. It is also at the heart of America’s going into the extrajudicial-killing business on a grand scale, the land of liberty and rights silently murdering thousands never charged with any crime, only having their names placed on a “kill list” by nameless officials at the CIA.

And that relationship has never been so fervently catered to than it is by Trump. Some political victim.

The clear threat of a large war against a law-abiding country? Daily threatening language, senseless in its charges and demands. Massive, intrusive, illegal sanctions levied in an effort to bring the country to its knees? An aircraft carrier and nuclear-capable bombers and more missiles all brought to bear against a country that has done nothing wrong, started no conflict?

And the destructive efforts against China? Massive new illegal tariffs laid down to pressure China to do what America wants?

How about the support for a truly blood-thirsty man like the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a man conducting a horrible war against Yemen, a man supporting terrorists in Syria, a man now conducting record numbers of beheadings in his own country, sometimes even beheading teen-agers, and a man who ferociously represses a minority, the Shia Muslims? A man who had a journalist clubbed and cut-up alive, the pieces incinerated in a barbecue, and who suffers no diminishment of his influence for the barbarism recorded completely by sound and partly by camera?

What we actually see in all of this, and there’s a lot more we could cite, is a sputtering, stumbling, angry giant demanding he have his way everywhere, incoherently demanding oversight and control of events almost everywhere, or else. The angry giant is the American government in total, not just Trump and not just Democrats and not just Republicans. It is angry about its once central place in the world beginning to be shared by others. It is so angry that it behaves irrationally regularly, both abroad and inside the country.

So, what is special about the angry chaos in Washington concerning Trump and Mueller and Clinton and Obama and the FBI and the CIA?

Nothing. It’s just what Washington does.

The majority of comments on the page are of the opinion Mueller and the elite will never see the inside of a court room let alone a jail.

—

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 2:02am

A favor, please?

Someone give me the "TL;DR" gist of this.

Mind you, I hate the very existence of that term (because of the incredibly disrespectful implications when posted as a response to something), and I hate asking to have things dumbed down for me, but I'm just so tired.

Nearly 20 years now of obsession with politics and social studies education, and what have I got to show for it?! People don't even treat me like I know anything.

—

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Submitted by Linda Wood on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 1:18pm

If you

@The Liberal Moonbat

let me know what "TL;DR" means, I'll give it a try, if it means something I can grasp.

Submitted by TheOtherMaven on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 3:06pm

"Too Long; Didn't Read"

@Linda Wood

—

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Submitted by Linda Wood on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 3:25pm

Thank you,

@TheOtherMaven .

I'm always three years behind with these expressions.

Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 4:19pm

It's MUCH older than 3 years

@Linda Wood I normally try to avoid using any slang that's younger than I am.

I just mean I'd appreciate a condensed version.

—

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Submitted by Linda Wood on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 4:25pm

You're not the first person

@The Liberal Moonbat

I've seen asking for a simple version of the Russiagate controversy. Posting links to timelines of events doesn't really provide you with the gist. But I'm going to try to sum up my understanding.

During the 2016 primaries, staff of the DNC were openly discussing in their emails their involvement in major crimes, including money laundering, in order to get around the Supreme Court decision McCutcheon, and voter suppression, entering into agreements with state officials to close polling places in order to disadvantage Sanders voters. The release of these emails by WikiLeaks was incriminating to the DNC.

Immediately after the release of the emails, the DNC said their communications had been hacked by Russia. Evidence of the hack was never provided. CrowdStrike, a private Ukrainian security outfit paid by the DNC, described their decision that Russia had committed the hack, but provided no evidence. The FBI began an investigation a month or so later into whether the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia in the alleged interference into the election. But the FBI as well never provided any evidence.

Three years later, after countless media claims that Russia and the Trump campaign had attacked our election, after countless investigative leaks and counter-leaks involving Congressional testimony and rumors, the Mueller Report has been released finding no collusion by the Trump campaign. And we still have no evidence of a hack of the DNC.

Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 9:37pm

I was just asking for a summary of THIS, specifically

@Linda Wood Why is Mueller himself in "serious legal trouble" now?

—

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Submitted by Linda Wood on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 11:08pm

I'm so sorry.

@The Liberal Moonbat

I misunderstood you. Or I didn't read carefully enough. My summation wasn't all that great even if I had.

But I think if the Attorney General looks into how Mueller's investigation began, on what predicate, as AG Barr said it, and it turns out there was no predicate, or no probable cause for a warrant, then Mueller and a lot of other persons involved could be in a lot of legal trouble.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/say-spying-barr-walks-back-testim...

… “You’re not suggesting, though, spying occurred?” Shaheen said.

Barr stammered a bit. “I don’t, well, I guess you could, I think spying did occur, yes. I think spying did occur,” he said.

Five seconds of silence filled the hearing room after that, and Barr continued: “The question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated, and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that. I think it’s my obligation.”

That second part of the answer — which can be unpacked only with some deep familiarity with the origins of the intelligence probe, the requirements of getting Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants, and whether those warrants count as “spying” — was somewhat lost behind Barr’s verbiage.

Barr’s answer fit in with the views of President Donald Trump and some Republican lawmakers, who have called for an investigation into the intelligence agencies and into whether a warrant was obtained against a Trump campaign official, an American citizen, with unverified information.

… More than an hour after Barr first used the spying word, Schatz asked Barr if he wanted to rephrase what he is doing with the review.

“Because I think the word spying could cause everybody in the cable news ecosystem to freak out, and I think it’s necessary for you to be precise with your language here,” Schatz said. “You normally are, and I want to give you a chance to be especially precise here.”

“I’m not sure of all the connotations of that word that you’re referring to, but, you know, unauthorized surveillance,” Barr responded. “I want to make sure there was no unauthorized surveillance. Is that more appropriate in your mind?”

Submitted by Pluto's Republic on Mon, 05/13/2019 - 4:55pm

The FBI forgot to tell the FISA Court something else:

It is important to note that the FBI swore on Oct. 21, 2016, to the FISA judges that Steele’s “reporting has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings” and the FBI has determined him to be “reliable” and ... the informant simultaneously worked for Fusion GPS, the firm paid by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign to find Russian dirt on Trump.

.
The FBI also paid a sizeable chunk of the costs to make sure the report was written.

The FISA court might think that should have been disclosed, too.