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Tag Archive for: Natalia Veselnitskaya
The Debate We May Be Having Tomorrow: If Trump Obstructed Justice to Hide Compromise by Russia, Could that Be a Crime?
April 17, 2019 /212 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
In my How to Read the Mueller Report post, I said that if Bill Barr's memo (which claims the report is broken into just two sections, one on the trolls and hack-and-leak activities, and one on the obstruction question) is to be believed, the report won't provide much detail about the second half of Mueller's mandate: to figure out the nature of links between Trump's flunkies and various Russians.
But we have good reason to believe Barr's memo is not reliable.
Plus, there's this passage that came out during the pushback from Mueller's team.
According to a senior law enforcement official who has spoken to members of Mueller's team, Mueller team members say it includes detailed accounts of Trump campaign contacts with Russia. While Mueller found no coordination or criminal conspiracy, the official said, some on the special counsel's team say his findings paint a picture of a campaign whose members were manipulated by a sophisticated Russian intelligence operation. Some of that information may be classified, the official said, so it's not clear whether it will be released in a few weeks when Barr makes public a redacted version of the Mueller report.
At the time Mueller's prosecutors were leaking to correct Barr's misleading portrayal of their report, a story said that the report actually shows that Trump's team was susceptible to the manipulation of people working for Russia.
That is, it may not so much be that Mueller's team found Trump and his flunkies' conduct criminal. Rather, maybe they found their conduct naive — susceptible to compromise by Russia.
Their venality likely contributed to their vulnerability as well.
Such a conclusion is what I was pointing to when I suggested one question the report will answer is, "Did Mueller decide Don Jr is simply too stupid to enter into a conspiracy?" The evidence already in the public record, after all, shows that Don Jr took a meeting offering dirt at a time when he believed that cozying up to Russia could help the family business land a ridiculously lucrative $300 million real estate deal. At the end of the meeting, he told Russians who might be deemed agents of the government that the Trumps would revisit sanctions relief if his dad got elected. And contrary to the Trump camp's public claims, there not only was follow-up after Trump won, but Trump himself did make moves towards giving Russia that sanctions relief.
That exchange could fit all the elements of a conspiracy charge: an agreement to trade dirt and real estate for sanctions relief and overt acts to further the conspiracy. Unless you figured the key player at the center of the agreement to enter into a conspiracy, Don Jr, is too stupid to know what he's doing.
The leaked conclusion that Trump's flunkies were manipulated by a sophisticated intelligence operation sure seems to support the "too stupid to enter into a conspiracy" conclusion.
All that said, the only way that such analysis would be consistent with both the regulatory mandate of the report (limiting the report to a discussion of prosecutions and declinations) and Barr's description of it (saying it was split into the hack-and-leak and trolling section, and the obstruction section) would be if that analysis appeared in the obstruction section. (Frankly, I suspect Barr's memo is wrong on this point, as Mueller would need to explain that Don Jr is too stupid to enter into a conspiracy, if that's why he decided not to charge him in one).
That is, it may be that what Trump was obstructing was not criminal conduct, a knowingly engaged conspiracy, but stupid conduct, his failson saying all the words that amount to entering into a conspiracy, without realizing he was entering into one.
The reason Trump may have fired Mike Flynn and Jim Comey and pushed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress may be to hide that he got badly used by Putin's envoys who appealed to Trump's narcissism and greed to get him (in the form of his especially stupid son) to agree to sanctions relief.
Such a conclusion would be consistent with the reason Barr exonerated Trump, in usurping Congress' authority to make that judgment: Trump and his failson didn't so much knowingly commit a crime — they didn't mean to enter into a conspiracy with the Russians, it just happened because they're too weak to resist. Under such analysis, because Trump didn't commit a crime, he had no crime to obstruct, and therefore did not obstruct.
Again, this is all hypothesis based on the known outlines of the report, at least as presented by an Attorney General who can't be trusted.
Given that it's a possibility, however, I want to prepare for the possibility that tomorrow we'll be debating whether a President can obstruct justice to prevent voters from learning how badly he and his dumb son compromised themselves in an foreign intelligence operation in the course of running a presidential election to get rich.
As I disclosed last July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I'm going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
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Rod Rosenstein Didn't Even Clear Trump on All the Topics He Hired Mueller to Investigate
March 25, 2019 /220 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
As I have noted, the William Barr memo everyone is reading to clear Trump and his flunkies of a conspiracy with Russia actually only clears the Trump campaign and those associated with it of conspiring or coordinating with the Russian government in its efforts to hack into computers and disseminate emails for purposes of influencing the election. The exoneration doesn't even extend to coordinating with WikiLeaks, as Roger Stone is alleged to have done (though that, by itself, is not a crime).
More significantly, it is silent about whether Trump and his flunkies conspired with Russia in a quid pro quo trading election assistance and a real estate deal for policy considerations, the very same kind of election year shenanigans Barr has covered up once before with Iran-Contra.
And that's important, because it means Barr and Rod Rosenstein haven't even cleared Trump of what Rosenstein hired Mueller to investigate.
Jim Comey first described the investigation to include:
The Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 election
The nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government
Whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts
When Rosenstein appointed Mueller, he referenced Comey's statement, but specifically mentioned just bullets 2 and 3 in his mandate, combining those two bullets into one that (unlike Comey's original statement) was limited to just the Russian government, not Russia's efforts generally.
any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and
In May 2017 when Rosenstein hired Mueller (and, according to public reports, through November 2017), the investigation into the hack-and-leak remained elsewhere at DOJ (significantly, but not entirely, in Pittsburgh and San Francisco).
When the FBI raided Paul Manafort on July 27, 2017 — a raid Rosenstein almost certainly approved personally — they were looking for evidence (among other things) on the June 9, 2016 meeting in support of an investigation into accepting campaign contributions from a foreigners or a conspiracy to do so; there was no mention whatsoever of probable cause that Manafort had helped Russia hack Hillary Clinton. Six months after that raid, Mueller would learn that two months after the June 9 meeting, on August 2, 2016, Manafort shared Trump's polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik at a meeting where he also discussed a Ukrainian peace deal that would amount to sanctions relief. Manafort lied about what happened at that meeting. In Andrew Weissmann's opinion, he lied in hopes of getting a Trump pardon.
When the Mueller Report states, "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities," it does so after Manafort refused to explain why he shared that polling data, or whether he knew whom Konstantin Kilimnik was sharing it with, and significantly, whether he had reason to believe that either Kilimnik himself or Oleg Deripaska — neither themselves part of the Russian government but Deripaska unquestioningly with close ties to it — would share the data with the GRU hackers who were still hacking Hillary Clinton.
And yet the only "links and/or coordination" that Barr and Rosenstein addressed involved an, "agreement–tacit or express–between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference."
Because of Trump's obstruction, we don't know whether Manafort entered into an agreement with Kilimnik to trade sanctions relief for election assistance, but even if he did, it would not qualify as "coordination with the Russian government." It would qualify as coordination with a cut-out for the Russian government.
Likewise, we know if Don Jr agreed to revisit sanctions relief after Natalia Veselnitskaya and the Agalarov family offered dirt on Hillary. But Don Jr wasn't even officially part of the campaign, and while Veselnitskaya and Agalarov both have almost inseparable from the Russian government, they are not the Russian government and therefore would not qualify under this standard.
The nature of Manafort's links to the Russian government via Kilimnik and Don Jr's links to the Russian government via Veselnitskaya and Agalarov are squarely within Mueller's mandate as laid out by Rosenstein. And those links are pretty fucking sketchy and possibly criminal, but quite possibly for reasons distant from the hack-and-leak. But by limiting the evaluation of the memo to whether the campaign coordinated directly with Russia on the hack-and-leak and not whether the links to Russia that Mueller discovered were criminally suspect, Rosenstein, with Barr, is not addressing one part of the job he hired Mueller to do.
That's all the more true given the way that Barr, in consultation with Rosenstein, determined that Trump did not obstruct justice. An explicit part of Mueller's mandate was to investigate the links between his campaign and Russia, including the link through Kilimnik to Deripaska and through him the Russian government. According to Weissmann, Trump's actions led Manafort to refuse to explain those links.
In "conspiring" with Barr to give Trump the all-clear, Rosenstein didn't address a significant part of the job he gave Mueller.
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Rod Rosenstein's Unfortunate Vocabulary: Defining a Criminal Investigation by "Links" and "Collusion"
March 24, 2019 /27 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
Rod Rosenstein is the very unlikely hero of the Mueller investigation. "Rod is a survivor," Jim Comey said after getting fired. "And you don't get to survive that long across administrations without making compromises."
Yet here we are, 22 months after he appointed Robert Mueller to investigate an investigation Trump tried to kill by firing Comey, awaiting the results of that investigation.
At times, I think Rosenstein didn't imagine (and doesn't now acknowledge) the damage his bend-don't-break has done along the way. While based off the very sound precedent that existed until Comey's declination speech about Hillary, it seems ridiculous for him to claim that the full results of the Mueller investigation can't be shared with Congress, as he's now claiming, given how he has provided unprecedented disclosure to Congress about the investigation already, including the first ever unsealed probable cause FISA application.
It will take some years to measure whether Rosenstein chose the best or perhaps only the least worst approach to the last several years.
But there's one thing he did that really makes me uncomfortable, today, as we all await the results of the Mueller report: his mandate to Mueller.
As has been noted countless times in the last 22 months, Rosenstein asked Mueller to investigate:
any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation;
any other matters with the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a).
if the Special Counsel believes it is necessary and appropriate, the Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters.
We actually know the answer to the first bullet, in part: As I laid out here, during five key interactions pertaining to the question of a possible conspiracy between Trump's associates and Russia, there was direct contact between someone the government has deemed an agent of Russia and the Trump campaign:
January 20, 2016, when Michael Cohen told Dmitry Peskov's personal assistant that Trump would be willing to work with a GRU-tied broker and (soft and hard) sanctioned banks in pursuit of a $300 million Trump Tower deal in Russia.
June 9, 2016, when Don Jr, knowing that currying favor with Russia could mean $300 million to the family, took a meeting offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." At the end of the meeting, per the testimony of at least four attendees, Don Jr said they'd revisit Magnitsky sanctions if his dad won.
August 2, 2016, when Paul Manafort and Rick Gates had a clandestine meeting with Konstantin Kilimnik at which Trump's campaign manager walked Kilimnik through highly detailed poll data and the two discussed a "peace" plan for Ukraine understood to amount to sanctions relief.
December 29, 2016, when (working on instructions relayed by KT McFarland, who was at Mar-a-Lago with Trump) Mike Flynn said something to Sergey Kislyak that led Putin not to respond to Obama's election-related sanctions.
January 11, 2017, when Erik Prince, acting as a back channel for Trump, met with sanctioned sovereign wealth fund Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev.
That Peskov's assistant (and whatever representative from Putin's office that called Felix Sater the next day), Sergey Kislyak, and Kirill Dmitriev are agents of Russia is clear. With the indictment of Natalia Veselnitskaya in December, the government deemed her to be working as an agent of Russia during the same time period she pitched sanctions relief to Trump's campaign. And while the government hasn't proven it beyond quoting Rick Gates acknowledging he knew of Konstantin Kilimnik's past with the GRU and FBI's belief that he continues to have ties, the government certainly maintains that Kilimnik does have ties to Russian intelligence.
Those are links. It'd be useful to have an official report on them. But since Mueller hasn't charged them as a conspiracy, we may only learn what we've seen in plea agreements or official testimony to Congress.
Likewise Rosenstein's invocation of "collusion" in the unredacted parts of his memo describing the scope of the investigation as it existed in August 2017 (it expanded and contracted after that point, so there are like different memos).
Allegations that Paul Manafort:
committed a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government's efforts to interfere with the 2016 election for President of the United States, in violation of United States law;
Here, unlike in the initial mandate, Rosenstein at least noted that Mueller was assessing whether crimes were committed in using that squishy language. But he used the word "collusion," which started to be politicized by March 2017, when Comey tried to correct it once and for all.
I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.
Collusion is not a legal term. It is not one I have used today. I said we are investigating to see if there is any coordination between people associated with the campaign– [my emphasis]
Sure, "collusion" might be understood to incorporate a bunch of possible crimes, and so appropriately didn't limit Mueller to one specific crime as he investigated Manafort (but then, so did the term, "coordination"). But I nevertheless think that using the word has confused the issue of what Rosenstein intended Mueller to be able to reveal, which would instead be conspiracy and a bunch of other crimes covering up evidence of coordination that Mueller has found necessary and appropriate to charge, and not whether there was "collusion."
All the while, people on both sides of this debate have taken "collusion" to mean whatever minimalist or maximalist interpretation of wrong-doing that best serves their side.
There are two things at issue: whether Trump and his aides coordinated in a way that is criminal, which would be a conspiracy, and whether Trump has coordinated with Russia in a way that would be an abuse of power and/or puts the nation at risk.
Both are legitimate questions. And while Rosenstein says only crimes that are indicted are appropriate to reveal (and he may well be right about that, as a principle), he did ask Mueller to conduct an investigation of that other stuff, and Congress has deferred to Mueller even while that other stuff is squarely within their mandate.
Ideally, this weeks focus on Mueller's discoveries would be on what the actual evidence showed, which we know to include, at a minimum, the following:
Trump pursued a ridiculously lucrative $300 million real estate deal even though the deal would use sanctioned banks, involve a former GRU officer as a broker, and require Putin's personal involvement at least through July 2016.
The Russians chose to alert the campaign that they planned to dump Hillary emails, again packaging it with the promise of a meeting with Putin.
After the Russians had offered those emails and at a time when the family was pursuing that $300 million real estate deal, Don Jr took a meeting offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." At the end (per the sworn testimony of four people at the meeting) he said his father would revisit Magnitsky sanctions relief if he won. Contrary to the claim made in a statement authored by Trump, there was some effort to follow up on Jr's assurances after the election.
The campaign asked rat-fucker Roger Stone to optimize the WikiLeaks releases and according to Jerome Corsi he had some success doing so.
In what Andrew Weissmann called a win-win (presumably meaning it could help Trump's campaign or lead to a future business gig for him), Manafort provided Konstantin Kilimnik with polling data that got shared with Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs. At the same meeting, he discussed a "peace" plan for Ukraine that would amount to sanctions relief.
Trump undercut Obama's response to the Russian hacks in December 2016, in part because he believed retaliation for the hacks devalued his victory. Either for that reason, to pay off Russia, and/or to pursue his preferred policy, Trump tried to mitigate any sanctions, an attempt that has (with the notable exception of those targeting Oleg Deripaska) been thwarted by Congress.
Instead, however, we're still arguing about a word — collusion — that was stripped of all meaning years ago, with the result that Mueller's presumably very measured assessment of what happened cannot serve as the arbiter of truth we need.
Rosenstein may well be the unlikely hero of preserving some semblance of rule of law in this country. But along the way, his choice of language has unfortunately twice fostered the confusion about where the line between crime and misconduct is.
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Quid Pro Quo Redux, Part Two: Russian Government Involvement in All Three Conspiracy Agreements
February 24, 2019 /123 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
Given reports that Mueller will "report" imminently, I'm not sure I'm going to finish the second version of my Quid Pro Quo series laying out the evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia trading campaign help and real estate deals for sanctions relief (here's the initial series; here's the first post of this second series). But I'd like to make a point as a way of showing that Amy Berman Jackson deemed Paul Manafort's August 2, 2016 meeting with Konstantin Kilimnik to be evidence of a link between the Russian government and the campaign.
We know of at least five conversations at which various people entered into what I describe as a quid pro quo conspiracy:
Remember: to enter into a conspiracy you have to agree to one object of a conspiracy (a conspiracy might have multiple objectives), and take an overt act to further that conspiracy. You don't have to agree to all objects of the conspiracy, nor do you have to know about all parts of it.
The key conversations in this conspiracy, it seems to me, are the middle three: the June 9 Trump Tower plus dirt for sanctions relief agreement, the August 2 election assistance for sanctions agreement, and the December 29 reassurance that Trump would revisit Obama's sanctions. The involvement of the Russian government in the fourth one — with Sergey Kislyak and Mike Flynn on a series of phone calls relaying messages back and forth between Putin and Trump — is obvious (as it is for the first and fifth).
It's the other two where, in recent months, the government has solidified its proof of direct Russian government involvement.
Natalia Veselnitskaya, Russian government agent, at the June 9 meeting
They did so for the June 9 meeting on December 20 when they charged Natalia Veselnitskaya with obstruction of justice. The indictment alleges that an MLAT request served on the Russian government in the Prevezon case was actually drafted by Veselnitskaya. As Joshua Yaffa argued after the indictment was unsealed on January 8, the indictment will probably never result in prison time for Veselnitskaya but it does substantiate a claim that she is an agent of Russia.
In short, the U.S. Attorney's office alleges that a document that was ostensibly prepared by the office of Russia's general prosecutor and sent to its counterparts in the U.S. Department of Justice was in fact drafted, or at least edited, by Veselnitskaya herself, who then went on to cite the document as independent proof of her version of events. In this manner, the U.S. Attorney's office alleges, "Veselnitskaya obstructed the civil proceeding in the Prevezon action then pending in this District."
Veselnitskaya is unlikely ever to return to the United States. This means that U.S. prosecutors are probably less interested in this particular, narrow matter than in what filing charges allows them to do going forward. "If the government wants on record that Natalia is a Russian government agent, this indictment serves this purpose," the former member of the Prevezon defense team told me. That is to say, if and when charges are filed in relation to the Trump Tower meeting, prosecutors now have a building block on which to argue that, in her actions in the United States, Veselnitskaya did not represent merely herself and her client but the interests of Russian officials. That should worry Donald Trump, Jr., and Jared Kushner, who attended the meeting with Veselnitskaya, and, in turn, the President himself.
So when Don Jr told Veselnitskaya on June 9, 2016, that Trump would revisit sanctions if he won, he was effectively telling an agent of the Russian government that.
Konstantin Kilimnik, Russian government link, at the August 2 meeting
While the redactions require logic to demonstrate the case, Amy Berman Jackson's explanation of her breach decision shows she believes that Konstantin Kilimnik — regardless of his alleged ties to the GRU — served as a link to the Russian government at that August 2 meeting.
Early on in the hearing, while ruling that she regards Manafort's attempts to backtrack on his confession to conspiring with Kilimnik to witness tamper in 2018 to be bad faith but not proven, she questions Manafort's loyalties while calling Kilimnik his "Russian conspirator."
To me, this is definitely an example of a situation in which the Office of Special Counsel legitimately concluded he's lying to minimize things here, he's not being forthcoming, this isn't what cooperation is supposed to be. This is a problematic attempt to shield his Russian conspirator from liability and it gives rise to legitimate questions about where his loyalties lie.
When she turns to the two-fold lies about Manafort's ongoing meetings with Kilimnik (which starts on page 28, line 2), here's what ABJ judges, up to the point where she talks about whether Kilimnik is a tie to Russia:
Manafort's most problematic Ukraine peace deal lie is that he never discussed a peace deal after August because he thought it was a bad idea. His subsequent emails supporting one show that claim to be an "alternative narrative."
Manafort's denial of the Madrid meeting amounts to denying a contact. (29)
Manafort offered "a series of revised explanations" about providing questions for a poll on a Ukraine peace deal in conjunction with running another campaign in Ukraine. (29-30)
Manafort's claims to have forgotten about the August 2 meeting because he was so busy running Trump's campaign in fact show the opposite. That's because sharing polling data "relates to the campaign." If he was "so single-mindedly focused on the campaign, then the meeting he took time to attend" to share polling data and discuss a Ukraine "peace" plan had a purpose related to the campaign. Or, if he only took the meeting to curry favor with Ukrainian and Russian paymasters, "well, in that case he's not being straight with me about how single-minded he was. It's not good either way." (31)
The clandestine nature of the meeting, with Gates and Manafort arriving and leaving separately "because of the media attention focused at that very time on Manafort' relationships with Ukraine" further undermines his claims he can't remember the meeting. (32)
In heavily redacted language, ABJ lays out why she finds Gates' testimony on the August 2 meeting credible. (33-35)
There's further corroboration surrounding the August 2 meeting, which Manafort appears to have tried to rebut with information newly submitted on February 8 (which seems to relate to an earlier meeting and may be an effort to suggest this was dated polling information). (34)
There are a series of emails from Kilimnik to somebody else (possibly ones sharing the information) that corroborate Gates' story. (35)
The defense claim that the polls are gibberish doesn't fly because Manafort, Gates, and Kilimnik all understood them. Indeed, these polls (presumably from Fabrizio) were the ones Manafort preferred and that Kilimnik would understand. (35-36)
The discussion of whether Kilimnik amounts to a tie to Russia starts on 36; it is a response to Manafort's attempt to disprove that this exchange is material by arguing that Mueller has alleged, but not proven, that Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence (which suggests not even Manafort is claiming that these events don't amount to a tie with Russia). ABJ starts that discussion by moving directly from describing (in a heavily redacted passage) who the intended recipients of the data were to the Russian question.
Also, the evidence indicates that it was understood that [redacted–poll data] would be [redacted] from Kilimnik [redacted] including [redacted], and [redacted]. Whether Kilimnik is tied to Russian intelligence or he's not, I think the specific representation by the Office of Special Counsel was that he had been, quote, assessed by the FBI, quote, to have a relationship with Russian intelligence, close quote.
The only way that ABJ would make that transition, logically, is if the descriptions behind some of those redactions are Russians. If they were just the Ukrainian oligarchs the NYT claims they were, this entire passage — and Manafort's attempted rebuttal of them (that is, to deny its import because Kilimnik himself has no ties to Russian intelligence) — makes zero sense.
Having made that transition, ABJ then lays out why she doesn't have to determine whether Kilimnik is himself Russian intelligence to determine that he does amount to a tie to the Russian government.
Whether that's true, I have not been provided with the evidence that I would need to decide, nor do I have to decide because it's outside the scope of this hearing. And whether it's true or not, one cannot quibble about the materiality of this meeting.
In other words, I disagree with the defendant's statement in docket 503, filed in connection with the dispute over the redactions, that, quote, the Office of Special Counsel's explanation as to why Mr. Manafort's alleged false statements are important and material turns on the claim that he is understood by the FBI to have a relationship with Russian intelligence.
I don't think that's a fair characterization of what was said. The intelligence reference was just one factor in a series of factors the prosecutor listed. And the language of the appointment order, "any links," is sufficiently broad to get over the relatively low hurdle of materiality in this instance, and to make the [redaction] Kilimnik and [redaction] material to the FBI's inquiry, no matter what his particular relationship was on that date.
From there, ABJ dismisses the defense claim that because Kilimnik made comments about various loyalties (possibly to the press, possibly to the State Department), he couldn't be Russian intelligence. She even suggests that an email sent on August 18, 2016, at a time when Manafort's ties to Ukraine were becoming incredibly toxic, may not be all that reliable. She notes the timing: "Manafort was gone the next day."
Having dismissed that claim, ABJ then judges that "Manafort made intentional false statements to the FBI and the grand jury with respect to the material issue of his interactions with Kilimnik, including, in particular, [redacted; this must either be a reference to the August 2 meeting generally or the sharing of polling data].
But then ABJ makes a more general statement, having reviewed the multiple efforts Manafort made to obscure his relationship with Kilimnik. In it, she repeats again that he is a link to Russia, whether or not he's an active spy.
On that note, I also want to say we've now spent considerable time talking about multiple clusters of false or misleading or incomplete or needed-to-be-prodded-by-counsel statements, all of which center around the defendant's relationship or communications with Mr. Kilimnik. This is a topic at the undisputed core of the Office of Special Counsel's investigation into, as paragraph (b) of the appointment order put it, Any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign.
Mr. Kilimnik doesn't have to be in the government or even be an active spy to be a link. The fact that all of this is the case, that we have now been over Kilimnik, Kilimnik, and Kilimnik makes the defense argument that I should find the inaccurate statements to be unintentional because they're all so random and disconnected, which was an argument that was made in the hearing, is very unpersuasive. [my emphasis]
To have ruled this conversation material, ABJ rules that Kilimnik (especially the sharing of this polling data, seemingly) amounts to a link with the Russian Government, whether or not he has ties to Russian intelligence. And note, this is a link to the Russian government, not just a link to a Russian like Oleg Deripaska.
We don't know why that is so; it seems like it relates to the recipients of this polling data. But we know she considers him one, according to the preponderance of the evidence she has seen.
Mind you, if this is all moving just to a report claiming such a conspiracy, but stopping short of charging one, then it may not matter all that much.
But for the three main exchanges in which Trump flunkies entered into agreements that form part of a larger conspiracy, at least one key player has been deemed to have a tie to the Russian government this year (and of course the other two exchanges — Cohen to Peskov and Prince to Kirill — also have obvious Russian government involvement).
These are some of the most useful resources in mapping these events.
Mueller questions as imagined by Jay Sekulow
CNN's timeline of investigative events
Majority HPSCI Report
Minority HPSCI Report
Trump Twitter Archive
Jim Comey March 20, 2017 HPSCI testimony
Comey May 3, 2017 SJC testimony
Jim Comey June 8, 2017 SSCI testimony
Jim Comey written statement, June 8, 2017
Jim Comey memos
Sally Yates and James Clapper Senate Judiciary Committee testimony, May 8, 2017
NPR Timeline on Trump's ties to Aras Agalarov
George Papadopoulos complaint
George Papadopoulos statement of the offense
Mike Flynn 302
Mike Flynn statement of the offense
Mike Flynn cooperation addendum
Peter Strzok 302 (describing Flynn's interview)
Michael Cohen statement of the offense
Internet Research Agency indictment
GRU indictment
Senate Judiciary Committee materials on June 9 meeting
BuzzFeed documents on Trump Tower deal
Text of the Don Jr Trump Tower Meeting emails
Jared Kushner's statement to Congress
Erik Prince HPSCI transcript
Government declaration supporting breach determination
Manafort breach hearing
Amy Berman Jackson breach determination hearing
Amy Berman Jackson order finding Manafort breached his plea deal
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A Focus on Florida: What Happened to the Three Campaign Officials Chatting with Yevgeniy Prigozhin's Trolls?
February 7, 2019 /41 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
I want to go back to something I've been uniquely obsessed about for almost an entire year. As I've noted, the Internet Research Agency indictment describes the IRA trolls interacting with three Trump campaign officials that it describes in the manner used with possible co-conspirators.
74. On or about August 15, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators received an email at one of their false U.S. persona accounts from a real U.S. person, a Florida-based political activist identified as the "Chair for the Trump Campaign" in a particular Florida county. The activist identified two additional sites in Florida for possible rallies. Defendants and their co-conspirators subsequently used their false U.S. persona accounts to communicate with the activist about logistics and an additional rally in Florida.
75. On or about August 16, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used a false U.S. persona Instagram account connected to the ORGANIZATION-created group "Tea Party News" to purchase advertisements for the "Florida Goes Trump" rally.
76. On or about August 18, 2016, the real "Florida for Trump" Facebook account responded to the false U.S. persona "Matt Skiber" account with instructions to contact a member of the Trump Campaign ("Campaign Official 1") involved in the campaign's Florida operations and provided Campaign Official 1's email address at the campaign domain donaldtrump.com. On approximately the same day, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the email address of a false U.S. persona, [email protected], to send an email to Campaign Official 1 at that donaldtrump.com email account, which read in part:
Hello [Campaign Official 1], [w]e are organizing a state-wide event in Florida on August, 20 to support Mr. Trump. Let us introduce ourselves first. "Being Patriotic" is a grassroots conservative online movement trying to unite people offline. . . . [W]e gained a huge lot of followers and decided to somehow help Mr. Trump get elected. You know, simple yelling on the Internet is not enough. There should be real action. We organized rallies in New York before. Now we're focusing on purple states such as Florida.
The email also identified thirteen "confirmed locations" in Florida for the rallies and requested the campaign provide "assistance in each location."
77. On or about August 18, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators sent money via interstate wire to another real U.S. person recruited by the ORGANIZATION, using one of their false U.S. personas, to build a cage large enough to hold an actress depicting Clinton in a prison uniform.
78. On or about August 19, 2016, a supporter of the Trump Campaign sent a message to the ORGANIZATION-controlled "March for Trump" Twitter account about a member of the Trump Campaign ("Campaign Official 2") who was involved in the campaign's Florida operations and provided Campaign Official 2's email address at the domain donaldtrump.com. On or about the same day, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the false U.S. persona [email protected] account to send an email to Campaign Official 2 at that donaldtrump.com email account.
79. On or about August 19, 2016, the real "Florida for Trump" Facebook account sent another message to the false U.S. persona "Matt Skiber" account to contact a member of the Trump Campaign ("Campaign Official 3") involved in the campaign's Florida operations. On or about August 20, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the "Matt Skiber" Facebook account to contact Campaign Official 3.
Since this indictment was rolled out last February, no one has identified these three Trump campaign officials nor what they did in response to dangles from Yevgeniy Prigozhin's trolls.
That said, contrary to the assumption made when a DC-based team of US Attorneys joined the IRA prosecution team, DOJ's investigation on this front has continued. Not only was IRA accountant Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova charged in EDVA last September (the complaint was unsealed in October, during a pre-election disinformation campaign involving IRA trolls), but in August, Mueller prosecutor Rush Atkinson was still pursuing investigative action in the IRA case (this means it's possible that the involvement of a DC prosecutor in Roger Stone's prosecution serves largely to keep the Mueller team targeting him focused on other aspects of their investigation of him).
In any case, since the mention of three different campaign officials interacting with Prigozhin's trolls, we've gotten a number of other reasons to be interested in what happened in Florida in 2016.
Obviously, there's Roger Stone. The actions laid out in his existing indictment largely take place in DC and NY, but we know Mueller has pursued (and continues to pursue, with Andrew Miller) testimony from aides working for Stone elsewhere, including in Florida. We know in May 2016, for example, Stone met in Florida with a Russian using the name Henry Greenberg offering dirt on Hillary. In principle, his denials on that should be taken no more seriously than his denials pertaining to WikiLeaks, but he was willing to correct his testimony on that point, unlike his testimony on WikiLeaks.
And there are other connections in Florida of interest. In a piece adding to stuff we already knew about Sergei Millian (which bizarrely remains silent about Ivan Timofeev and Oleg Deripaska's ties to him, or his promise to build a Trump Tower), the WaPo describes how Millian worked with a Florida-based Russian named Mikhail Morgulis to build support in Florida.
As he was working to build a relationship with Papadopoulos in 2016, Millian also offered to serve as a conduit to the Trump campaign for a Belarusan author in Florida with connections to the Russian government, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.
The author, Mikhail Morgulis, who said he never ended up hearing from anyone in the campaign, later claimed that he rallied Russian Americans to back Trump.
Morgulis took credit in interviews with Russian media for helping to elect Trump by organizing Russian-speaking voters.
"I personally visited 11 cities in Florida, where I said that if you want our new president to be a homosexual . . . vote for Hillary," he said a July 2017 interview with the Russian government-funded outlet Sputnik, touting a false claim popular among some conservative conspiracy theorists. In the interview, he also said he had briefly met both Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Then consider this detail from BuzzFeed's report on what Suspicious Activity Reports say about Rinat Akhmetshin's finances. Rather than getting paid by Lanny Wiles — as had previously been portrayed — Akhmetshin was in fact paying Wiles.
Akhmetshin continued receiving checks and wires from Wiles Consulting, a Florida-based company controlled by Lanny Wiles, a longtime Republican operator. Those payments, which began in January 2016, extended to April 2017, and totaled $72,500.
Investigators at Akhmetshin's bank said the direction of the payments — from Wiles to Akhmetshin — contrasted with how their working relationship had been portrayed publicly. Investigators, citing unspecified public information, said Wiles claimed he was paid by Akhmetshin to work on the Magnitsky lobbying issue, not the other way around. The investigators did not cite their source, but a 2016 Politico article quoted Wiles saying he had been paid by Akhmetshin. Investigators at Bank of America did find that the foundation had issued checks to Wiles, but the amount is unclear. Wiles, whose wife was the chair of Trump's Florida campaign, did not return messages seeking comment.
In the same Politico article, Wiles said he didn't want to register as a foreign agent, but that Akhmetshin had told him it wouldn't be necessary, as he would be working for BakerHostetler.
In the wake of the Natalia Veselnitskaya indictment in December, the government will have an easy time arguing that Akhmetshin and Wiles' lobbying will easily be demonstrated to be work on behalf of Russia.
As noted, Wiles' wife, Susie, was Trump's Florida campaign chair, and the woman who got Veselnitskaya a seat in a hearing on Magnitsky sanctions.
Update: The Wiles' daughter, Caroline Wiles, quit her White House job as director of scheduling after it became clear she'd fail a background check. (h/t LR)
Among those who won't be working at the White House was President Donald Trump's director of scheduling, Caroline Wiles, the daughter of Susan Wiles, Trump's Florida campaign director and former campaign manager for Governor Rick Scott. Wiles, who resigned Friday before the background check was completed, was appointed deputy assistant secretary before the inauguration in January. Two sources close to Wiles said she will get another job in Treasury.
There seems to be a lot more that happened with Trump's campaign in Florida in 2016 than we currently know about. Including the three campaign officials mentioned in the still active investigation into Yevgeniy Prigozhin's trolls.
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Felix Sater Promised a Putin Meeting with Michael Cohen Minutes after Don Jr Promised to Revisit Magnitsky Sanctions
BuzzFeed has posted the documents showing Michael Cohen and Felix Sater organizing a Trump Tower deal until June 14, literally as the news of the DNC hack broke. The documents show how closely those negotiations interacted with the June 9 meeting.
The Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr and Russians promising dirt was scheduled for 4PM (Rob Goldstone posted on Facebook that he was at Trump Tower at 3:57). Natalia Veselnitskaya ran a bit late, but they would have started the meeting by 4:10PM.
Four witnesses to the meeting (the four whose responses weren't coached by Trump Organization lawyers) said that the meeting ended with Don Jr saying that his father might or would revisit Magnitsky sanctions if he became President.
Natalia Veselnitskaya said Don Jr said they'd revisit the topic.
Mr. Trump, Jr. politely wound up the meeting with meaningless phrases about somewhat as follows: can do nothing about it, "if' or "when" we come to power, we may return to this strange and confusing story.
Ike Kaveladze said that Don Jr said they might revisit the issue if his father won.
There was no request, but as I said, it was a suggestion that if Trump campaign wins, they might get back to the Magnitsky Act topic in the future.
Rinat Akhmetshin said that Don Jr said they would revisit Magnitsky when they won.
A. I don't remember exact words which were said, but I remember at the end, Donald, Jr., said, you know, "Come back see us again when we win." Not "if we win," but "when we win." And I kind of thought to myself like, "Yeah, right." But it happened, so — but that's something, see, he's very kind of positive about, "When we win, come back and see us again." Something to that effect, I guess.
Anatoli Samochornov, Veselnitskaya's translator, who is the most independent witness and the only one who didn't compare his story with others, said that Don Jr said they would revisit the issue if Trump won.
A. Like I described, I remember, not verbatim, the closing that Mr. Donald Trump, Jr., provided, but that's all that I recall being said from the other side.
MR. PRIVOR: That closing being that Donald Trump, Jr., suggested —
MR. SAMOCHORNOV: If or when yes, and I do not remember if or when, but if or when my father becomes President, we will revisit this issue.
The meeting lasted somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes.
At about that time, Trump tweeted out a reference to Hillary's emails, invoking 823 staffers, which was a good ballpark estimate for how many staffers (including unpaid advisors) she really had at the time.
At that same time, Felix Sater texted Michael Cohen to tell him he was working on setting up Cohen's trip to St. Petersburg.
At that point, Sater told Cohen there was a "very strong chance" he would meet Russia's President, which Cohen and Don Jr would have both believed meant that the Trump Organization could make $300 million by lending Trump's name to the tallest tower in Europe.
Quid pro quo, all executed on social media.
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How Trump "Directed" Don Jr's June 9 "No Follow-Up" False Statement to Congress
January 23, 2019 /54 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
In the New Republic, I have a piece expanding on what I laid out in my first post on last week's BuzzFeed story. It should not have been a big deal that BuzzFeed claimed Trump had "directed" Michael Cohen to lie, because we already had plenty of evidence that Trump had induced his top aides to lie. In it, I note an even more clear cut example of Trump scripting his aides' lies with the June 9 meeting.
Then last June, the Times published a January 2018 letter in which Trump's lawyers admitted to Mueller's office that "the President dictated a short but accurate response to the New York Times article on behalf of his son, Donald Trump, Jr." The letter tied that statement directly to Don Jr.'s testimony to Congress about the infamous Trump Tower meeting in 2016, in which Don Jr. sought to procure damaging information about Hillary Clinton from Russian agents. "His son then followed up by making a full public disclosure regarding the meeting, including his public testimony that there was nothing to the meeting and certainly no evidence of collusion." Trump's statement to the Times claimed there had been "no follow-up" after the June 9 meeting, and Don Jr.'s testimony to Congress sustained that claim. But the public record shows there was follow-up after the election.
And I suggest, later in the piece, that what we know happened with the June 9 meeting is probably what happened with Cohen's Trump Tower story.
Mueller has hinted that Trump's other subordinates were involved in just one of these lies: Cohen's. In a filing describing how Cohen explained "the circumstances of preparing and circulating his response to the congressional inquiries," Cohen suggested he coordinated with "White House-based staff and legal counsel to Trump."
That's what the public record shows happened with Cohen's statements about the Trump Tower meeting, in which he falsely claimed there was no "follow-up."
As I suggested, how that happened is already in the public record, in documents released by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As early as June 3, 2017, Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten called Rob Goldstone to find out details about the June 9, 2016 meeting, including who the Russian lawyer who attended was. On June 26, Garten contacted Goldstone again to find out about and get contact information for Ike Kaveladze. In a call with Goldstone the next day, Garten expressed "concern" because the June 9 meeting "links Don Jr. to officials from Russia, which he has already denied meeting."
On July 8, the White House put out a Trump (and Putin) statement claiming the meeting was only about adoptions, and therefore didn't include any topic that was a campaign issue. As part of that statement, Trump claimed that "there was no follow-up."
It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at that time and there was no follow up. I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand. [my emphasis]
On July 9, Don Jr put out his own statement, admitting that Goldstone had also offered dirt and that Magnitsky sanctions were discussed, but repeating that "no follow-up" line (as well as telling some other lies).
I was asked to have a meeting by an acquaintance I knew from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant with an individual who I was told might have information helpful to the campaign. I was not told her name prior to the meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to attend, but told them nothing of the substance. We had a meeting in June 2016. After pleasantries were exchanged, the woman stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information. She then changed subjects and began discussing the adoption of Russian children and mentioned the Magnitsky Act. It became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the meeting. I interrupted and advised her that my father was not an elected official, but rather a private citizen, and that her comments and concerns were better addressed if and when he held public office. The meeting lasted approximately 20 to 30 minutes. As it ended, my acquaintance apologized for taking up our time. That was the end of it and there was no further contact or follow-up of any kind. My father knew nothing of the meeting or these events. [my emphasis]
That's when Goldstone — who had been on a cruise in Europe and so out of the loop — got angry that, after having asked for advance warning a week earlier, was now fielding calls from the press without first knowing what Trump had put out.
I had requested last week of you guys to see what was being put out, so I could be able to prepare our own statement but never received anything from you or your colleague. Can I please at least now see the statement you guys put out.
Goldstone wanted that statement, he explained to SJC, so he could match what Trump put out. "I just felt it would be useful if I knew what they had put out, the style, the type." He wasn't so much looking to coordinate; he was just trying to message effectively. "This — this was area was really alien to me. I'm a music publicist. We talk about ego and nonsense. I'm not used to this kind of structured world."
Then, on July 10, both Alan Futerfas and Alan Garten sent Goldstone a statement they wanted him to put out under his own name. It included the claim that there had been no follow-up.
As the person who arranged the meeting, I can definitely state that the statements I have read by Donald Trump Jr. are 100 percent accurate. The meeting was a complete waste of time, and Don was never told Ms. Veselnitskaya's name prior to the meeting. Ms. Veselnitskaya mostly talked about the Magnitsky Act and Russian adoption laws, and the meeting lasted 20 to 30 minutes at most. There was never any follow-up and nothing ever came of the meeting. [my emphasis]
Goldstone told SJC he thought the "ludicrous" because it sounded nothing like him, and so kept trying to put out his own statement.
But (as SJC made clear in questions about the statement) the two Trump Organization Alans, who had been chasing down what happened at this meeting for over a month by the time they drafted a statement for Goldstone, had to have known that the statement they wanted Goldstone to adopt was partly incorrect (in spite of their exhortations that any statement be accurate). That's because they would already have reviewed an email Goldstone sent to Rhonna Graff the previous fall.
On November 28, after ten days of efforts to set up another meeting for Veselnitskaya after the election and on directions that almost certainly had to have come from Don Jr, Goldstone sent Veselnitskaya's latest statement on sanctions to Trump's Assistant, Rhona Graff. On July 15, 2017, after Trump and Don Jr had already issued statements claiming there had been no follow-up to the meeting — and after Trump's lawyers tried to get Goldstone to say that publicly, too — Graff forwarded Goldstone's email back to show that there had, in fact, been follow-up.
Nevertheless, almost two months after Graff identified this proof of follow-up (there are also some calls between Don Jr and Goldstone that are in some ways even more damning, though Goldstone disclaims them), Don Jr continued to hew to the family line that there had not been follow-up.
Even in response to a direct question about it, Don Jr insisted there had been no follow-up,
Q. There was, in your view, no follow-up at all from this meeting?
A . Correct.
So Trump dictated a statement (and the lawyers tried to massage it even while leaving a number of lies in the statement), his son repeated it, his lawyers tried to get Goldstone to repeat it, even while they had clear documentary evidence it was not true.
And then Don Jr repeated that lie — there was no follow-up at all from this meeting — in September 2017, sustaining the lie his father first told, only this time to Congress, where it counts as a criminal false statement.
Last week, people on both sides of the aisle treated the BuzzFeed story as the first evidence that Trump had suborned false statements. It's not. We've seen how he does so in very detailed form already.
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Trump's "Official Acts" to Pay Off a Russian Bribe Should Make Impeachment a Legal Issue, Not Just a Political One
January 13, 2019 /187 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
The pearl clutchers screamed about Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib saying that we need to impeach the motherfucker, Donald Trump, demeaning the presidency.* While I'm glad that she has refused to back down from her beliefs in the face of the attacks, I think her more substantial argument about impeachment deserves further attention (which I hope to return to in a later post). More important, I think that the response to Tlaib's comments has resulted in members of both parties retreating to a debate about Trump's impeachment using the old formulation that it's a political, not a legal question.
It is true that impeachment is political question insofar as, so long as there's the political will, a president can be impeached for anything, even lying about a consensual blowjob immaterial to an investigation into financial scandal. But impeachment is also a legal question. Indeed, the Constitution mandates that the President be removed from office if he is impeached and convicted not just for the unenumerated grab bag of "high crimes and misdemeanors" — where Congress exercises the political will to decide whether a blowjob merits impeachment — but also the enumerated crimes of treason and bribery.
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
In spite of Emmet Sullivan's question — as one of the only people who has read sealed documents laying out what Trump's transition team did — about whether Mueller's investigators considered charging Mike Flynn with treason, there's no chance that Trump will be named in a treason charge.
But there is very good chance he will be named in a conspiracy involving a quid pro quo trading dirt and real estate deals for sanctions relief and other policy considerations.
The other day, I realized something ironic: in precisely the same period Trump was entering in an apparent quid pro quo with Russians, John Roberts was authoring a unanimous Supreme Court decision that clarified the limits of quid pro quo bribery.
And while the Supreme Court believed that Governor Bob McDonnell had not accepted bribes for setting up meetings in exchange for gifts, the language Roberts wrote in the weeks after Trump's son told some Russians they would revisit Magnitsky sanctions if his father won does not so narrow the definition of bribery as to make Trump's actions legally excusable.
Roberts described an official act this way:
In sum, an "official act" is a decision or action on a "question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy." The "question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy" must involve a formal exercise of governmental power that is similar in nature to a lawsuit before a court, a determination before an agency, or a hearing before a committee. It must also be something specific and focused that is "pending" or "may by law be brought" before a public official. To qualify as an "official act," the public official must make a decision or take an action on that "question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy," or agree to do so.
Notably, the bribed public official doesn't actually have to follow through on the official act he agreed to take, so it doesn't help Trump that Congress has repeatedly prevented him from overturning sanctions on Russia.
Under this Court's precedents, a public official is not required to actually make a decision or take an action on a "question, matter, cause, suit, proceeding or controversy"; it is enough that the official agree to do so.
And there are a number of data points in the public record that suggest Trump did believe he had made a deal with the Russians and that Russia had what it believed was a commitment from Trump. For example, four of the people who attended the June 9 meeting testified (most under oath) that Don Jr said his father would revisit sanctions relief if he got elected.
And Ike Kaveladze, in the call back to his boss to report on the meeting that witnesses observed, was happy with the outcome of the meeting.
It's not just the Russians who seem to have acted on the meeting. Michael Cohen's allocution seems to suggest that the meeting tied directly to the negotiations over a Trump Tower, because he took steps to travel to Russian on the day of the meeting.
From on or about June 9 to June 14, 2016, Individual 2 sent numerous messages to COHEN about the travel, including forms for COHEN to complete. However, on or about June 14 , 2016, COHEN met Individual 2 in the lobby of the Company's headquarters to inform Individual 2 he would not be traveling at that time.
Remember: a "senior campaign official" was involved in discussions about trips to Russia. And had the President's personal lawyer actually taken this trip to St. Petersburg, the plan was to meet Vladimir Putin (who did attend the forum that year).
While the dates provided in Cohen's allocution also suggest the disclosure that Russia hacked the DNC halted Cohen's plans "at that time," we know that the plans did resume after that canceled trip into July.
The Russians certainly believed they had an agreement. They put in some effort to meet again after Trump won. While finding an appropriate communication channel failed for the Agalarovs, Flynn and Jared Kushner moved to establish a back channel via Sergey Kislyak. When Trump met with Preet Bharara and reportedly agreed to keep him on, Veselnitskaya panicked, and suggested Trump planned to keep him on so he could take him out.
In its indictment of Veselnitskaya, DOJ just established that she was actually working as part of the Russian government when she claimed to have fought to get an MLAT request in her Prevezon case. And Veselnitskaya believed that after Trump won the election, he would take out the prosecutor whom she was facing in court. Ultimately, Trump did take out Preet, firing all his US Attorneys in an effort to do so.
And details from Mike Flynn's allocution provide one important piece of evidence that Russians believed they had received a commitment from Trump.
After Obama imposed sanctions on Russia partly in retaliation for the election year operation, Trump's team panicked, both because they wanted to improve relations with Russia, but also because Russia's role in his victory delegitimized the victory. That is, even those unlikely to be unaware of any quid pro quo recognized that the public accounting of Russia's role in helping defeat Hillary would make it all the more difficult to deal with Russia.
Obama is doing three things politically:
discrediting Trump's victory by saying it was due to Russian interference
lure trump into trap of saying something today that casts doubt on report on Russia's culpability and then next week release report that catches Russia red handed
box trump in diplomatically with Russia. If there is a tit-for-tat escalation trump will have difficulty improving relations with Russia which has just thrown USA election to him.
Trump's response, however, was to reach out to Russia and assure them they didn't need to worry about Obama's new policy. In response, the Russians made it very clear that Putin had decided not to respond based on the assurances that Flynn gave Kislyak.
On or about December 30, 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a statement indicating that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in response to the U.S. Sanctions at that time.
On or about December 31, 2016, the Russian Ambassador called FLYNN and informed him that Russia had chosen not to retaliate in response to FL YNN's request.
Mueller, of course, has the full transcript of what Flynn said to Kislyak that successfully placated Putin. It is highly likely the transcript provides explicit evidence of an official act to pay off his side of the deal, sanctions relief.
All of which is to say that Mueller may well be finalizing a conspiracy indictment of Don Jr and Trump Org laying out a quid pro quo in which Trump agreed to provide sanctions relief (and some other stuff) in exchange for Russia's help winning the election.
That Mueller might be able to show all this is bribery may not affect Republican willingness to take the action laid out in the Constitution, to convict Trump in an impeachment inquiry. But given that the Constitution specifically envisions impeaching a President who has accepted a bribe, commentators should stop treating impeachment exclusively as a political issue.
Update: I posted this before I had read this analysis from Jack Goldsmith raising concerns about investigating the President for foreign policy decisions. While I think Goldsmith raises key points, he focuses on actions Trump took as President. But that's one reason I think the transition activities are so important. If I'm right that the calls to Kislyak amount to an official act, then Trump took it to undermine the official policy of the government, not set it as President. Further, The Trump team had been asked — and at least one person had agreed — to not undermine Obama's policies during the transition. There were several efforts to hide that they were doing so: the indications they couldn't reengage on Magnitsky sanctions using the same channels as they used during the election, the request for a back channel, and the meeting with Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan that Susan Rice discovered by unmasking the identities of those who met with him.
The actions Trump took that led to Flynn and Comey's firings were part of an effort to hide these clandestine efforts during the transition. Yes, they were conducted while he was President. But they were conducted to cover up actions taken before he became President. This is why I keep harping on the remarkable lack of curiosity about why Trump really fired Flynn. The public story Trump is telling is assuredly false. The real reason almost certainly ties back to these transition period actions.
As I disclosed in July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I'm going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
*Full disclosure: I donated to Tlaib's campaign.
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Those Sexy Details in the Papadopoulos Sentencing Memo Aren't Intended for Your Consumption
September 1, 2018 /65 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
In this post, I argued that George Papadopoulos' sentencing memo was written to make a case to Donald Trump for a pardon, not to judge Randolph Moss for no prison time (even though that's what he asks for).
It would follow logically, then, that the details of his testimony Papapdopoulos chose to highlight in a claim that "George provided investigators with critical information" — details that have attracted much of the press coverage of this memo — also aren't intended for our benefit, but for Trump and other co-conspirators.
Jeff Sessions lies as much as "young George" Papadopoulos
Consider the one that has attracted the most attention, revealing that (according to Papadopoulos), he told the government that Trump approved of his plan to pursue a meeting with Putin and — even more importantly — Jeff "Sessions … appeared to like the idea."
On March 31, 2016, he joined Mr. Trump, Senator Jeff Sessions, and other campaign officials for a "National Security Meeting" at the Trump Hotel. George's photograph at this meeting flashed around the world via Twitter. Eager to show his value to the campaign, George announced at the meeting that he had connections that could facilitate a foreign policy meeting between Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. While some in the room rebuffed George's offer, Mr. Trump nodded with approval and deferred to Mr. Sessions who appeared to like the idea and stated that the campaign should look into it.
At a minimum, after 11 months of being prevented from sharing this detail, including it here tells all the other co-conspirators what Papadopoulos said. The allegation is not new; at least two other participants in the meeting offered a similar version to Reuters in March (and presumably to the FBI before that). Still, Papadopoulos provides the detail in such a way and at such a time that it's sure to generate pressure on Sessions, just as Trump is trying to convince Republican members of Congress he should fire the Attorney General. Not to mention that Papadopoulos raises an example of a person who has thus far avoided all consequences for lying in official settings.
The offer of emails came during a discussion finalizing a meeting
An even more delicious mention is the specific description Papadopoulos gives of the meeting at which Joseph Mifsud told him the Russians had Hillary emails they planned to release to help Trump.
George strived to organize a meeting with the Russian government and help the Trump campaign promote its foreign policy objective: improve U.S. and Russian relations. He believed that such a meeting would be a boon for the campaign as Mr. Trump had not yet hosted any major foreign policy events with officials from other countries.
George joined Professor Mifsud for breakfast in London on April 26, 2016, with the intention of finalizing plans for the foreign policy meeting. It was during this breakfast meeting, however, that Professor Mifsud told George that individuals in Moscow possessed "dirt" on candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails." Not knowing what to make of this comment, George continued his efforts to make the Trump – Russia meeting a reality. [my emphasis]
Papadopoulos' statement of the offense had made it clear that Mifsud mentioned the emails in the context of Papadopoulos' efforts to set up a meeting.
On or about April 25, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS emailed [Stephen Miller — see this story confirming Miller as the "Senior Policy Advisor" in the document]: "The Russian government has an open invitation by Putin for Mr. Trump to meet him when he is ready []. The advantage of being in London is that these governments tends to speak more openly in "neutral" cities.
On or about April 26, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS met the Professor for breakfast at a London hotel. During this meeting, the Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS that he had just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with high-level Russian government officials. The Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS that on that trip he (the Professor) learned that the Russians had obtained "dirt" on then-candidate Clinton. The Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS, as defendant PAPADOPOULOS later described to the FBI, that "They [the Russians] have dirt on her"; "the Russians had emails of Clinton"; "they have thousands of emails."
[T]he day after his meeting at the hotel with the Professor, on or about April 27, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS emailed [Miller]: "Have some interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right."
Also on or about April 27, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS emailed a [Corey Lewandowski] "to discuss Russia's interest in hosting Mr. Trump. Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right."
The Schiff memo and Alexander Downer have subsequently added the detail that Mifsud specifically told Papadopoulos that, "the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the election, which may be damaging," to assist Trump's campaign.
Remember, Papadopoulos worked with Lewandowski to draft Trump's first foreign policy speech, delivered on April 27, which Papadopoulos reportedly told Ivan Timofeev (whose entire existence Papadopoulos' lies had managed to hide from the FBI at first) was a signal to meet. That speech included these lines:
I believe an easing of tensions, and improved relations with Russia from a position of strength only is possible, absolutely possible. Common sense says this cycle, this horrible cycle of hostility must end and ideally will end soon. Good for both countries.
Some say the Russians won't be reasonable. I intend to find out. If we can't make a deal under my administration, a deal that's great — not good, great — for America, but also good for Russia, then we will quickly walk from the table. It's as simple as that. We're going to find out.
Obviously, the tie between Russia releasing stolen emails and foreign policy meetings was always implicit. But Papadopoulos has just revealed that Mifsud said Russia might release emails in the context of setting up a meeting, after having floated such a meeting with Miller the day before.
The breakfast meeting ties the release of the stolen emails to help the Trump campaign and foreign policy meetings together directly. And having just sat through such a meeting, Papadopoulos worked with Stephen Miller and Corey Lewandowski to send a message to Russian that Trump was willing to meet — and would pursue improved relations with Russia.
Papadopoulos tells the Greeks of the dirt offer just in time to pass Putin a message
I'm most interested, however, in the inclusion of Papadopoulos' admission he told the Greek Foreign Minister about the Russian offer of dirt just before Putin came to town on May 27, 2016.
George provided investigators with critical information. George told investigators about his interactions and meetings with other members of the campaign. He detailed a meeting in late May 2016 where he revealed to the Greek Foreign Minister that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. He explained that this meeting took place days before President Vladimir Putin traveled to Greece to meet with Greek officials.
Remember, Natalia Veselnitskaya dates the idea for the June 9 meeting to a conversation she had with Aras Agalarov at "the end of May" 2016.
Around the end of May 2016, during a conversation with a good acquaintance of mine, being my client, Aras Agalarov on a topic that was not related to the United States, I shared the story faced when defending another client, Denis Katsyv, about how terribly misled the US Congress had been by the tax defrauder William Browder, convicted in Russia, who, through his lobbyists and his close-minded rank-and-file Congress staffers, succeeded in adopting the Act in the name of a person whom Browder practically hardly ever knew. I considered it my duty to inform the Congress people about it and asked Mr. Agalarov if there was any possibility of helping me or my colleagues to do this. I do not remember who of us was struck by the idea that maybe his son could talk about this with Donald Trump, Jr., who, although a businessman, was sure to have some acquaintances among Congress people.
But it's not just the tantalizing possibility that Papadopoulos left some kind of message for Putin just before Aras Agalarov started setting up the June 9 meeting.
Papadopoulos' statement of the offense describes him emailing Paul Manafort about Russia's desire to set up a meeting, which Manafort forwarded to the government's most important now cooperating witness, Rick Gates, telling him that the candidate wasn't going to do such meetings himself — someone else in the campaign would.
On or about May 21, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS emailed another high-ranking Campaign official, with the subject line "Request from Russia to meet Mr. Trump." The email included the May 4 MFA Email and added: "Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite sometime and have been reaching out to me to discuss."2
2 The government notes that the official forwarded defendant PAPADOPOULOS's email to another Campaign official (without including defendant PAPADOPOULOS) and stated:
"Let[']s discuss. We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal."
The House Intelligence Majority Report, however, reveals that that Papadopolous sent that email from Greece.
(U) While on a trip to Athens, Greece in May 2016, Papadopoulos sent an email to Manafort stating that he expected to soon receive "an official invitation for Mr. Trump to visit Greece sometime this summer should his schedule allow."183 In the same email to Manafort, Papadopoulos also forwarded a meeting Invitation from Ivan Timofeev, Director or [sic] Programs for the Russian International Affairs Council, and claimed that "Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite sometime and have been reaching out to me to discuss. thought it would be prudent to send to you."184
(U) As of May 2016, Manafort had not yet been elevated to campaign chairman, but had a long track record of work abroad. Manafort forwarded Papadopoulos' email to his business and campaign deputy [Rick Gates] noting that we need someone to communicate that D[onald] T[rump] is not doing these trips." 185 Manafort and [Gates] agreed to assign a response of a "general letter" to "our correspondence coordinator." the person responsible for "responding to all mail of non-importance."186
While it's clear nothing in that email could have reflected a discussion of passing a message to Putin via Papadopoulos' Greek contacts, it does show that Papadopoulos used the opportunity of a verbal offer from Greece to raise a Russian meeting with Manafort directly. Manafort responded by saying other campaign aides would do such meetings. Papadopoulos then somehow saw reason to tell Greece's Foreign Minister that the Russians were offering dirt to help Trump just before Putin arrived. And that's precisely the timeframe when the June 9 meeting setting up a Russian meeting with Trump's senior-most campaign officials, including Manafort, got born.
Maybe it's all a big fat coinkydink, but Papadopoulos seems to believe it important enough to tell all his co-conspirators (even while it makes his repeated claims not to have told the campaign itself laughable), possibly because he knows the FBI has evidence from the Greeks as well.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Screen-Shot-2017-10-30-at-11.21.41-AM.png 510 596 emptywheel https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png emptywheel2018-09-01 17:06:572018-09-01 17:06:57Those Sexy Details in the Papadopoulos Sentencing Memo Aren't Intended for Your Consumption
It Is False to Claim There Was No Follow-Up to the June 9 Meeting
August 21, 2018 /113 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
On July 15, 2017 — a week after the June 9 meeting was reported in a NYT story publishing the first of numerous White House statements attempting to explain the meeting — Rhona Graff sent Rob Goldstone an email (PDF 44). With only a garbled (perhaps autocorrected) explanation, she forwarded back to Goldstone an email Goldstone himself had sent her the previous November, attaching some talking points from Natalia Veselnitskaya about Bill Browder and the Magnitsky sanctions (for a copy of the talking points, see PDF 37 ff).
A week after the White House had first issued a statement saying, in part, "there was no follow up" on the June 9 meeting, Trump's Executive Assistant was sharing with Goldstone a paper trail showing that there had been.
Rudy gets all the facts about the June 9 meeting wrong, again
That's an important detail that gets missed every single time the punditocracy deals with attempts by Rudy Giuliani or his client to spin the June 9 meeting, as has happened in the wake of this TV appearance by Rudy on Meet the Press.
RUDY GIULIANI:
Well, because the meeting was originally for the purpose of getting information about, about Clinton. The meeting turned into a meeting —
CHUCK TODD:
Which in itself it's attempted collusion. I understand —
No it's not.
You just said it. The meeting was intended to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from a criminal lawyer.
(OVERTALK)
No, it wasn't. No, no.
That was the intention of the meeting, you just said it.
That was the original intention of the meeting. It turned out to be a meeting about another subject and it was not pursued at all. And, of course, any meeting with regard to getting information on your opponent is something any candidate's staff would take. If someone said, I have information about your opponent, you would take that meeting. If it happens to be a person with a Russian —
From the Russian government?
She didn't represent the Russian government, she's a private citizen. I don't even know if they knew she was Russian at the time. All they had was her name.
They didn't know she was Russian, I think they knew she was Russian, but ok.
Well, they knew it when they met with her, not when they set up the meeting. You, you told me, you, you asked me, you know, did they show an intention to do anything with Russians? Well, all they knew is that a woman with a Russian name wanted to meet with them. They didn't know she was a representative of the Russian government and indeed, she's not a representative of the Russian government. So, this is much ado about nothing. Plus, the President of the United States wasn't at that meeting. He didn't know about that meeting. He found out about it after and by the time he found out about it, it was nothing. So, I mean —
Don Jr. took a meeting expecting and accepting dirt from the Russian government
Numerous people have noted that Rudy was totally wrong about the terms on which Don Jr took the meeting in the first place. Rob Goldstone told Don Jr his boss, Aras Agalarov, would,
provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.
Whether or not that's what Don Jr got at the meeting (or a week later, when Guccifer 2.0 started releasing stolen documents and information), it is nevertheless the case that Don Jr accepted a meeting at which he expected to be offered dirt on Hillary that was "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump." Indeed, Don Jr specifically said he'd be willing to wait to receive that dirt until later in the summer.
If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer
The email exchange, by itself, goes a long way towards meeting the terms of a conspiracy, willfully engaging in an agreement to break the law (which includes both accepting things of value from a foreign government and, given events later in the summer, possibly conspiracy to hack a computer).
Remember: to be charged with conspiracy, the conspiracy doesn't have to be successful. So even ignoring the "documents and information" the Russians started releasing a week later, that "it turned out to be a meeting about another subject," as Rudy excuses, doesn't help Jr. He took a meeting to obtain dirt.
Rudy is wrong about follow-up to the meeting as well
So the rest of that that sentence — "and it was not pursued at all" — actually isn't necessary to an analysis of a conspiracy, because overt acts had already taken place. Still, on that point, too, Rudy is wrong.
The record shows that those behind the meeting did pursue the "it" in question — sanctions relief — fairly aggressively after the election, with some inconclusive cooperation from the Trump Administration. And even after the record on that pursuit goes dark, Russia as a state continued to pursue sanctions relief — indeed, continues even today, most recently by buttering up a series of Republican Senators visiting Moscow to lobby for it.
As I lay out below, Aras Agalarov's US Vice President, Ike Kaveladze, pushed Goldstone to set up a second meeting, even if with lower level people. As far as we know, that meeting never got scheduled.
But even as the Agalorov effort to obtain sanctions relief fizzled, a more formal Russian effort started, then moved to a back channel.
The most important moment in any follow-up on the June 9 meeting request for sanctions relief came in the December 29, 2016 phones calls between Mike Flynn and Sergei Kislyak about sanctions, a discussion in which Flynn took close directions from KT McFarland, who was with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Those are the phone calls Flynn lied to the FBI about, in spite of broad knowledge of the calls among transition aides. Those are the phone calls about which he got a plea deal to cooperate with the Mueller team.
Don Jr probably promised the Trumps would revisit sanctions after the election
According to most participants in the meeting who offered testimony to SJC, the Russians were right to expect a follow up discussion on Magnitsky sanctions. In fact, all the participants representing the Russian side save Goldstone (including Anatoli Samochornov, who is the only witness on either side not to have compared notes with at least some of the others before testifying) remembered Don Jr ending the June 9 meeting by saying they'd revisit the issue if or when his father won.
Just two people remember it differently. In an answer that, in some respects, exactly tracks statements that were massaged elsewhere by Trump's lawyers, Rob Goldstone said Don Jr told Veselnitskaya to raise it with Obama.
And he stopped this in its tracks and said, with respect, I suggest that you address your — what seemed very valid concerns but to the Obama administration because they actually are in power. My father is a private citizen and, as such, it has no validity, of what you're saying. Thank you very much for coming. I appreciate all your time. You know, we have a very busy schedule, and thank you.
And Don Jr himself remembers he ended the meeting by saying his father, a private citizen, couldn't do anything about this.
I proceeded to quickly and politely end the meeting by telling Ms. Veselnitskaya that because my father was a private citizen there did not seem to be any point for having this discussion.
Paul Manafort would have provided testimony on this point to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but stood up SJC after the raid on his condo the morning after he testified. And Jared left the room before any of this transpired.
In any case, given their impression that Don Jr, in a meeting offering dirt on Hillary, had committed to revisiting Magnitsky sanctions if his pop won the election, the Russian side of the meeting did follow-up after Trump won. And so they did.
Agalarov's team spent ten days in November trying to get Veselnitskaya a follow-up meeting
Ten days after the election, November 18, Ike Kaveladze reported to his boss, Aras, that Rob Goldstone had already reached out to the Trump people (Kaveladze doesn't say to whom) to follow up.
Q. Could you please take a look at the entry for November 18, 2016, at 17:45. This appears to be a message from you to Aras Agalarov. Mr. Kaveladze, could you please translate the content of that message?
A. "Hello. Rob spoke with Trump people. They asked a short synopsis of what is she going to be discussing. Last time she produced a lot of emotions and less facts. Most of the people who took part in that meeting are moving to Washington, D. C. Some of them already fired. When they receive synopsis, they will decide who to send to that meeting."
Goldstone apparently asked for a short synopsis of the topic presented at the meeting — what would turn out to be the Magnitsky Act — so the Trump team could figure out who should attend a follow-up meeting.
On November 23, Kaveladze sent Goldstone that synopsis.
Less than an hour later, Goldstone wrote back and noted that the synopsis was largely what Veselnitskaya had presented in June.
When Kaveladze pressed for a meeting, Goldstone got squirrelly, even while saying he'd speak to both Don [Jr] and Rhona after sending a synopsis.
When Kaveladze followed up on November 27, Goldstone claimed he had sent materials the week before. Kaveladze suggested that this meeting could happen on the assistant or lawyer level — something both Kaveladze and Goldstone had expressed regret hadn't happened during the summer.
The next time Kaveladze followed up, Goldstone said that Emin might have to call directly (which Kaveladze took to mean making a call to Don Jr).
It appears only after that did Goldstone forward the synopsis to Rhona Graff, above. After which he told Kaveladze that he had "again" asked about a low level meeting.
After that follow-up call, Graff forwarded Goldstone's email to Steve Bannon (who early this year argued the June 9 meeting should have been held with lawyers, not the top campaign officials, thought without objecting to the exchange in principle), explaining that Trump knew Aras well, but that she wasn't "sure how to proceed, if at all."
During this whole exchange, Kaveladze was juggling messages with Veselnitskaya who was in New York on Prevezon business and beginning to panic based on news reports that Trump would keep Preet Bharara on (Kaveladze would continue handling her throughout December, until handing her off to Agalarov attorney Scott Balber in January).
On November 29, he explained to Vesenitskaya that,
Robert says that logistics of organizations [sic] of meetings with Team Trump now would be difficult and lengthy. I've landed in Moscow. I will discuss this situation … with my boss.
Kaveladze did not explain from whom Goldstone learned that, or if it included another phone call. He had also told Goldstone he was in Moscow if he wanted to speak directly. As Kaveladze told SJC, he discusses important things with his boss face-to-face because,
Agalarov is based in Russia, and I'm pretty sure, you know, his phone is being, you know, monitored.
And that's where, as far as we know, the Agalarov effort to follow up on the June 9 meeting, ended, with Kaveladze explaining things face-to-face to his boss. Which would make it follow-up, just unsuccessful follow-up.
At least two communications are unaccounted for
One key question about this follow-up is the role that Don Jr had in it.
None of these texts suggesting Goldstone had phone conversations with someone, probably Don Jr, as early as November 18 were turned over to SJC before Don Jr testified. Probably as a result, he was asked only about the November 28 email from Goldstone to Graff. He claims he was not aware of any part of the follow-up.
Q. It appears Mr. Goldstone continued his anti-Magnitsky effort beyond your June 9, 2016 meeting. Other than this e-mail, were you aware of any other effort he made on this issue after your meeting?
A. Not that I recall, no.
For his part, Goldstone claims he didn't send anything before that November 28 email, in spite of telling Kaveladze, back in November 2016, that he had.
Q. So in your November 27th message to Mr. Kaveladze, you said you forwarded the information last week. The last email was an email sent on November 28th, the day after this message with Kaveladze, forwarding the document to Ms. Graff. Had you, in fact, forwarded the document the week before your November 27th message with Kaveladze?
A. I don't recall, but because I know myself, and I know how I write , I would imagine that the minute he reminded me of it in here, I forwarded it to Rhona, probably the next day. So I don't recall one before then, no.
Q. All right. Prior to sending that email to Ms. Graff on November 28th, 2016, did you speak with Ms. Graff or any other Trump associates about a second meeting with Veselnitskaya?
A. I don't believe so.
Nevertheless, there are several known or reported communications unaccounted for: the one Goldstone had before November 18, any email he had the week before November 28 with the synopsis, and any follow-up call via which Goldstone would conclude that the logistics of organizing a meeting with Trump people would be difficult during the transition.
Mueller, of course, will know whether Goldstone and Don Jr communicated directly, and if so when. So he will have a sense of whether Don Jr and Goldstone's claims, which seem to contradict contemporaneous records, are true or not.
The Russian side concludes there is no communication channel
The problem, at least as the Russian side saw it (possibly based off what Goldstone had reported back), was those logistics: a channel of communications. The next day, December 1 at 11:49AM, Kaveladze texted again (Veselnitskaya was by this point frantic because Trump had met with Preet Bharara, with her even discussing who Trump might, "Wet and not to wet" with respect to the US Attorney, which Kaveladze translated as "crush"), explaining that Aras planned on meeting with Trump to restore communications.
Unfortunately, we don't have communication. My boss planned to meet with him. We will send a formal request. Hopefully after the meeting we will keep communication.
As far as we know, that meeting never happened. Though the Agalarov camp and the Trump camp would resume intense conversations in June 2017, as the Trump Organization began to try to understand the legal liability posed by the meeting. Trump's lawyers would speak directly with both Kaveladze and Goldstone before Agalarov's lawyer, Scott Balber, took over the discussions (indeed, he remained the key architect of the narrative from that point forward, probably for all sides). Those are the conversations that would lead, on July 15, Graff to remind Goldstone that he had emailed her to follow up on the June 9 meeting.
So while there was clearly follow-up, there was not a clear resolution to the June 9 meeting in which Veselnitskaya got Trump to adopt her preferred policy.
Other Russians pursue a communication channel
Unless the resolution moved to a different path.
As it happens (this may be a coincidence, or may be a sign of greater coordination that the Trump people claim they're capable of), later on the same day after Kaveladze said his boss would seek to restore a channel of communication with Trump, Jared hosted a meeting in Don Jr's office with Sergei Kislyak, attended by Mike Flynn. Even according to Jared's prepared statement, that meeting was about establishing communication channels to Russia.
The meeting occurred in Trump Tower where we had our transition office, and lasted twenty-thirty minutes. Lt. General Michael Flynn (Ret.), who became the President's National Security Advisor, also attended. During the meeting, after pleasantries were exchanged, as I had done in many of the meetings I had and would have with foreign officials, I stated our desire for a fresh start in relations. Also, as I had done in other meetings with foreign officials, I asked Ambassador Kislyak if he would identify the best person (whether the Ambassador or someone else) with whom to have direct discussions and who had contact with his President. The fact that I was asking about ways to start a dialogue after Election Day should of course be viewed as strong evidence that I was not aware of one that existed before Election Day.
The Ambassador expressed similar sentiments about relations, and then said he especially wanted to address US. policy in Syria, and that he wanted to convey information from what he called his "generals." He said he wanted to provide information that would help inform the new administration. He said the generals could not easily come to the U.S. to convey this information and he asked if there was a secure line in the transition office to conduct a conversation. General Flynn or I explained that there were no such lines. I believed developing a thoughtful approach on Syria was a very high priority given the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and I asked if they had an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn. The Ambassador said that would not be possible and so we all agreed that we would receive this information after the Inauguration. [emphasis original]
Don Jr, in his SJC testimony, is the one who revealed that this meeting took place in his own office (and therefore outside of transition space that might be more closely monitored). But he claims he didn't attend because he was sweaty from a workout; he also claims he didn't know about it beforehand.
Q. You mentioned during the conversation with my colleagues that you had become aware of a meeting or meetings with Ambassador Kislyak. Can you just explain like what meetings did you become aware of? When did they take place?
A. I don't remember the exact timing of when they took place. I believe it was after we had already secured — meaning after the election, but I could be mistaken. The only reason I'm aware of it is because it occurred in my office. I came back from the gym and they were in there.
Q. So when you say after the election, you mean after November 8, 2016?
A. I believe so.
Q. Was it a meeting in December of 2016?
A. That would fit the description, yes, I believe so.
Q. So it was a meeting in Trump Tower?
Q. In your office but you hadn't known about it beforehand?
A. Correct.
Q. Do you know why they used your office?
A. It was open, I was at the gym.
Q. And who was in that meeting?
A. I believe it was Jared Kushner, the Ambassador, maybe Flynn, but I don't remember.
Q. Anyone else, to the best of your recollection?
A. No, not that I recall.
Q. Was the meeting still ongoing when you returned?
A. I believe it was, yes.
Q. Did you go in and join the meeting?
A. No, I did not.
Q. Why not?
A. Because I didn't know what it was about and I was sweaty from the gym.
Q. Did you ask Mr. Kushner or Lieutenant General Flynn about the meeting after?
A. No, I don't think I did.
So Don Jr doesn't remember any calls with Goldstone about following up on the June 9 meeting (though they likely occurred), and he says a meeting with the Russian Ambassador just happened to get scheduled into his workout window on the same day his liaison was seeking a new channel of communications.
Mind you, the subject of this attempt to set up a back channel, per Jared, would be cooperating on Syria, something I learned — from someone who played a significant role in the Russian election attack — that Trump was working on within 15 hours of the close of polls in Hawaii the day after the election.
But within short order, these very same players would shift focus of back channel communications to sanctions relief. Within weeks, Kislyak had set up a meeting with the head of a sanctioned bank, Sergey Gorkov, to meet with Jared. And shortly after that, Flynn would make a series of calls to Kislyak about delaying any response to Obama's December 28 sanctions. This, in turn, would lead to a meeting involving Erik Prince and another sanctioned bank in Seychelles leading up to the inauguration.
Natalia Veselnitskaya never got her second meeting to pitch the end to Magnitsky sanctions, but Sergey Gorkov got a meeting.
The stakes of dissociating the June 9 meeting from any sanctions relief
By this point, Rudy's credibility is so shot that when he makes a claim, we should assume that it (like any claim his client makes) is suspect, if not an outright lie.
As I noted above, whether or not there was follow-up on the June 9 meeting doesn't really change whether Don Jr gleefully accepted a meeting expecting dirt from the Russian government on Hillary Clinton. He did. But in Rudy's dodgy explanations for why the June 9 meeting isn't criminal, he relies heavily on his claim — a claim that the Trump side has maintained since a week before Rhona Graff found the email that proved it wasn't true — that there was no follow-up on the meeting.
But there was.
At a minimum, there were several weeks of follow-up on the Russian side, understandably trying to hold Don Jr to (what they remember as) his offer to revisit the issue of sanctions after the election. As part of that follow-up, there are hints that Don Jr was in the loop, even if both he and Goldstone can't remember that happening.
The follow-up led by the Agalarovs was, as far as the public record indicates, inconclusive. The Agalarovs lost their communication channel (perhaps as Don Jr got sidelined), and so never did get their follow-up meeting.
But on the same day Trump's long-time handler, Aras Agalarov, said he'd seek out a new channel of communications, Jared Kushner and Mike Flynn were sitting in Don Jr's office, attempting to establish a back channel of communication, and solidifying a relationship that would, less than a month later, involve yet another overt act regarding sanctions relief. And that overt act — persuading Sergey Kislyak to defer any response to Obama's new sanctions — was closely directed from Mar-a-Lago.
Update: Looks like Rudy keeps issuing bogus exonerations for Jr because Mueller is closing in on him.
Mueller may be closing in on his son Don Jr. "A lot of what Trump is doing is based on the fact [that] Mueller is going after Don Jr.," a person close to the Trump family told me. "They're squeezing Don Jr. right now."
Don Jr.'s lawyer said, "I'm not going to comment." Another person briefed on the investigation disputed the term "squeeze," but said the Mueller team continues to ask for documents.
As I disclosed last month, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I'm going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
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bmaz on A Feud for Fun and Profit
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emptywheel@emptywheelAnd they should, so HJC can get busy talking about how unfit Trump is using descriptive language. twitter.com/joshchafetz/st…2 hours ago16 July 2019