The Cabal; the Weaponization of Government - deel IV

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Op zondag 2 december 2018 20:27 schreef MangoTree het volgende:

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Goed punt, wat te denken van de moderators van BNW?

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Maar goed ik blijf erbij dat je gewoon zelf kan nagaan of de posts van dellipder bestaansrecht hebben. Het lijkt me dat elk kritisch mens kan zien dat er wel degelijk wat aan de hand is. Zie de inval bij de Deutsche Bank met 170 agenten deze week in Frankfurt, wat weer voortvloeit uit de Panama Papers.

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Op zondag 2 december 2018 21:17 schreef dellipder het volgende:

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Bij het publiekelijk openbaar maken was er alleen voor de FBI en DoJ beschamende informatie dat werd vrijgegeven en geen "sources and methods".

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Op zondag 2 december 2018 22:04 schreef ATuin-hek het volgende:

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Het punt is daar dan ook dat je sources en methods af kan leiden uit die informatie.

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For Trump, Cohen Plea Deal's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Exoneration

Contrary to media speculation that Robert Mueller is closing in on President Trump, the special prosecutor’s plea deal with Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen offers further evidence that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russians during the 2016 election, according to congressional investigators and former prosecutors.

Cohen pleaded guilty last week to making false statements in 2017 to the Senate intelligence committee about the Trump Organization’s failed efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Discussions about the so-called Moscow Project continued five months longer in 2016 than Cohen had initially stated under oath.

The nine-page charging document filed with the plea deal suggests that the special counsel is using the Moscow tower talks to connect Trump to Russia. But congressional investigators with House and Senate committees leading inquiries on the Russia question told RealClearInvestigations that it looks like Mueller withheld from the court details that would exonerate the president. They made this assessment in light of the charging document, known as a statement of “criminal information” (filed in lieu of an indictment when a defendant agrees to plead guilty); a fuller accounting of Cohen’s emails and text messages that Capitol Hill sources have seen; and the still-secret transcripts of closed-door testimony provided by a business associate of Cohen.

On page 7 of the statement of criminal information filed against Cohen, which is separate from but related to the plea agreement, Mueller mentions that Cohen tried to email Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office on Jan. 14, 2016, and again on Jan. 16, 2016. But Mueller, who personally signed the document, omitted the fact that Cohen did not have any direct points of contact at the Kremlin, and had resorted to sending the emails to a general press mailbox. Sources who have seen these additional emails point out that this omitted information undercuts the idea of a “back channel” and thus the special counsel's collusion case.

Page 2 of the same criminal information document holds additional exculpatory evidence for Trump, sources say. It quotes an August 2017 letter from Cohen to the Senate intelligence committee in which he states that Trump “was never in contact with anyone about this [Moscow Project] proposal other than me.” This section of Cohen’s written testimony, unlike other parts, is not disputed as false by Mueller, which sources say means prosecutors have tested its veracity through corroborating sources and found it to be accurate.

Also notable, Mueller did not challenge Cohen’s statement that he “ultimately determined that the proposal was not feasible and never agreed to make a trip to Russia.”

“Though Cohen may have lied to Congress about the dates,” one Hill investigator said, “it's clear from personal messages he sent in 2015 and 2016 that the Trump Organization did not have formal lines of communication set up with Putin’s office or the Kremlin during the campaign. There was no secret ‘back channel.’”

“So as far as collusion goes,” the source added, "the project is actually more exculpatory than incriminating for Trump and his campaign.”

Mueller’s office declined comment to RealClearInvestigations.

Cohen’s dealings with a middleman, New York real estate developer Felix Sater, resemble the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russian figures – a meeting arranged by a British concert promotor. Both instances indicate that no one on the Trump side, including the candidate, enjoyed special access to the Russian government. Cohen’s emails and text messages indicate he failed to establish communications with the Russian leader’s spokesman, although he eventually was able to make contact with a desk secretary in the spokesman’s office.

In the end, neither Putin nor any Kremlin official was directly involved in the scuttled Moscow project, sources say. Moreover, neither Cohen nor Trump traveled to Moscow in support of the deal, as Sater had urged. No meetings with Russian government officials took place.

It was Sater, a Russian immigrant with a checkered past, representing the Bayrock Group and not the Trump Organization, who came up with the tower project idea in 2015. His pitch had more to do with branding than real estate: Trump would lend his name to the tower project and share in the profits, but not actually build it or go into debt for it.

But the project never went anywhere because Sater didn’t have the pull with Putin he claimed to have. Emails and texts indicate that Sater could only offer Cohen access to one of his acquaintances, who was an acquaintance of someone else who was partners in a real estate development with a friend of Putin’s.

Talks broke off in June 2016. Trump publicly stated seven months later, just days before his inauguration, that his company has never had any real estate holdings in Russia. Nothing in Mueller’s latest filings dispute that assertion.

Sources say Sater, whom Cohen described as a “salesman," testified to the House intelligence panel in late 2017 that his communications with Cohen about putting Trump and Putin on a stage for a "ribbon-cutting" for a Trump Tower in Moscow were “mere puffery” to try to promote the project and get it off the ground.

Also according to his still-undisclosed testimony, Sater swore none of those communications involved taking any action to influence the 2016 presidential election. None of the emails and texts between Sater and Cohen mention Russian plans or efforts to hack Democrats’ campaign emails or influence the election.

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group, said the criminal-information statement of offense against Cohen reflects political bias. He said the special counsel appears more interested in trying to draw connections to Russia than highlighting exculpatory evidence.

"Mueller seems desperate to confuse Americans by conflating the cancelled and legitimate Russia business venture with the Russia collusion theory he was actually hired to investigate,” Fitton said. “This is a transparent attempt to try to embarrass the president.”

He added: "The plea deal is weak tea and I suspect, given Mueller’s track record, that there’s even less here than meets the eye."

The actual texts of the plea deal and related materials filed last week in federal court do not jibe with reports and commentary given on several cable news outlets and comments of Democrat leaders.

CNN said the charging documents, which reference the president as “Individual 1," suggest Trump had a working relationship with Russia’s president and that "Putin had leverage over Trump" because of the project.

“Well into the 2016 campaign, one of the president’s closest associates was in touch with the Kremlin on this project, as we now know, and Michael Cohen says he was lying about it to protect the president,” said CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.

“Cohen was communicating directly with the Kremlin,” Blitzer added.

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the development was so “enormous” that Trump “might not finish his term.” At MSNBC, pundits maintained the court papers prove “Trump secretly interacted with Putin’s own office."

“Now we have evidence that there was direct communication between the Trump Organization and Putin’s office on this. I mean, this is collusion,” said David Corn of Mother Jones, co-author of “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.”

Adam Schiff, the incoming Democratic chairman of the House intelligence committee, said Trump was dealing directly with Putin on real estate ventures, and Democrats will investigate whether Russians laundered money through the Trump Organization.

But further dousing such speculation that the Cohen confession puts Trump in legal peril, former federal prosecutors said Mueller's filing does not remotely incriminate the president in purported Russia collusion. It doesn’t even imply he directed Cohen to lie to Congress.

“It doesn’t implicate President Trump in any way,” said former independent counsel Solomon L. Wisenberg, now with Nelson Mullins LLP in Washington. “The reality is, this is a nothing-burger."

Criminal attorney Alan Dershowitz agreed, arguing that Mueller is resorting to false-statement prosecutions in lieu of prosecutions related to his mandate of investigating the Trump campaign’s alleged participation in a Russian plot to interfere in the election — signaling he lacks the evidence to support such a criminal conspiracy.

“We are seeing many of these cases being built around false statements,” Dershowitz pointed out, not the underlying crime that has been alleged by Democrats and the media.

Though Mueller has now, in his 18-month probe, nabbed several Trump associates for process crimes, such as making false statements, and other felonies, such as tax fraud, no evidence has surfaced in any of the cases indicating that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

FBI agents raided Cohen’s office early this spring to seize evidence, and prosecutors have spent the last several months sifting through his emails, texts and phone and travel records, as well as audio recordings he allegedly made of conservations with Trump.

Notably absent from the criminal-information document is any corroboration of the highly inflammatory, though oft-cited allegation made in the so-called Steele dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign, that Cohen visited Prague to clandestinely meet with Kremlin officials in August 2016 to arrange “deniable cash payments to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the Clinton campaign.”

Cohen has strenuously denied the allegation and offered his passport to show “I have never been to Prague in my life.”

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Op zondag 2 december 2018 21:47 schreef dellipder het volgende:

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Dat de FBI het Steele dossier als de kern voor de FISA applicatie gebruikte, dat Christopher Steele behoorlijk ideologisch anti-Trump was werd voor de FISC verborgen gehouden door de FBI, dat de FBI afzonderlijke betalingen autoriseerde aan Steele om maar eens wat voorbeelden te noemen.

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Op zondag 2 december 2018 21:47 schreef dellipder het volgende:

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Dat de FBI het Steele dossier als de kern voor de FISA applicatie gebruikte, dat Christopher Steele behoorlijk ideologisch anti-Trump was werd voor de FISC verborgen gehouden door de FBI, dat de FBI afzonderlijke betalingen autoriseerde aan Steele om maar eens wat voorbeelden te noemen.

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Op maandag 3 december 2018 16:51 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Of Steele anti-Trump is, doet helemaal niet ter zake. Het gaat erom of zijn bevindingen kloppen. Als het Steele-dossier de basis vormde voor vervolgonderzoeken terwijl het enkel leugens bevatte, dan zullen Mueller en co. ook niets vinden.

Begrijp alle ophef dan ook niet. Als Trump schoon is, dan hoeft hij zich nergens zich over te maken.

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Op maandag 3 december 2018 17:44 schreef dellipder het volgende:

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Deze opmerking van mij is in relatie met de zaak die voor de FISC-rechtbank werd gebracht en het feit dat het een ex parte zaak betreft.

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Op maandag 3 december 2018 18:05 schreef Xa1pt het volgende:

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De vraag was hoe de inlichtingendiensten eerder slecht uit de verf zijn gekomen hierdoor.

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Reuters twitterde op woensdag 05-12-2018 om 02:37:10 Mueller's office recommends to judge that Michael Flynn should not receive any prison time; prosecutors say he provided 'substantial assistance' - filing https://t.co/1TZsaO2wy1 reageer retweet

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Flynn Sentencing Memo Is Not Ominous

The media is having a feeding frenzy, trying to interpret the sentencing memo just filed in Michael Flynn’s case, but most of these interpretations are misplaced. The sentencing memo filed by the Office of Special Counsel is a fairly standard filing by federal prosecutors. So, rather than relying on political pundits to interpret this document, allow me provide you with the insight of an attorney experienced in federal criminal matters.

The media has made a big to-do of Mueller’s decision to describe Flynn as having provided “substantial assistance.” However, those enamored with Mueller’s choice of words should understand that “substantial assistance” is the same language used to describe all cooperation agreements and is the title of the relevant section of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines - §5K1.1, Substantial Assistance to Authorities. To explain how this section applies to Flynn, I will show how it works in ordinary, non-political criminal cases.

Federal criminal prosecutions are frequently built on the testimony of cooperating witnesses, usually a former member of the charged conspiracy. It is the classic “prisoner’s dilemma,” where the first defendant to flip on his or her compatriots gets a reduced sentence. While this much is well known, the nuts and bolts are a bit more technical and less understood by the public.

A federal cooperation agreement requires a defendant to plead guilty and agree to provide information and assistance to the government. However, what most people do not know and Hollywood persistently gets wrong, is that there is no agreement about how much the sentence will be reduced. Instead, the defendant puts himself at the complete mercy of the federal prosecutor and the judge, without any promises about what sentence they will receive.

A cooperating defendant is required to immediately plead guilty to everything they did, without any reduction in charges. There are multiple reasons for this. First, it helps their credibility with a jury that they have accepted full responsibility for all their misdeeds. Second, it is a heavy hammer that prosecutors can hold over the cooperators head, because if they breach the agreement, they cannot withdraw their guilty plea and will be sentenced for the full weight of their offenses.

Although the defendant pleads guilty immediately, the sentencing hearing is pushed far into the future, sometimes many years, until cooperation is complete, so that the full extent of the cooperation can be considered by the sentencing judge. This is accomplished through the submission of what is frequently referred to as a “5K letter,” where the prosecutors inform the judge of the full nature and extent of the cooperation to be considered at sentencing — the same redacted document that Mueller filed for Flynn.

Because there is no direct quid pro quo (i.e. promise of probation in exchange for testimony), a cooperator has a motivation to keep the prosecutors happy, knowing that the more he or she helps, the better this letter will look and the more likely the judge will impose a lenient sentence. It also bolster’s the cooperating witness’s credibility because when testifying before a jury, “I don’t know how much jail time I’ll get” sounds far better than “I’m getting no jail in exchange for my testimony here.”

With that background, Mueller’s sentencing memo, and the entire Flynn prosecution, seems much less ominous than many in the media are making it out to be. The fact that Mueller’s memo has been filed is strong evidence that there are no further prosecutions forthcoming from Flynn’s information. No legitimate federal prosecutor would allow Flynn to be sentenced if there is a possibility that he will have to testify in a forthcoming case.

This is the particularly troubling aspect of the op-eds and interviews now being presented by former federal prosecutors; in order to squeeze this document into a narrative which makes this appear as bad news for the president, they must forget how they used to practice law. Aside from the fact that none of these former prosecutors would have submitted such a sentencing memo if the information was leading to further prosecutions, the language that they zero in on as “remarkable” is, in fact, very standard and formulaic. Every cooperator is described as giving “substantial assistance.” Every offense is described as “serious.” Moreover, Mueller’s recommendation of no jail time is completely unsurprising. The sentencing guidelines for his offense is so low that only 0-6 months is recommended, even with no cooperation. As cooperation ordinarily results in a sentence below the guidelines, you cannot go any lower than zero. Any other recommendation would violate the basic principle of cooperation agreements.

There is one final aspect to cooperation that may be quite applicable here, which nobody has mentioned. Substantial assistance is not required to be incriminating. Sometimes, where the government is proceeding to a full investigation based on an erroneous premise, a cooperator can save the government the expense of a fruitless inquiry and the diversion of effort from more promising work. If Flynn provided Mueller with truthful information helping to establish that there was no collusion or other wrongdoing in the campaign, this would also be considered substantial assistance, warranting a recommendation of no jail.

While many would like to interpret Mueller’s memo as an ominous harbinger of bad things to come for Team Trump, when viewed through the perspective of an experienced federal criminal practitioner, this is quite unlikely. The media’s predictions would require us to assume the Mueller and his team are completely disregarding all normal DOJ policies and procedures regarding cooperators. Given the strategic rationale behind these policies and procedures, this is an unlikely scenario.

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Op donderdag 6 december 2018 07:37 schreef dellipder het volgende:
De beste (en niet-politieke) versie van de vele analyses met betrekking tot de Micheal Flynn sentencing memo:

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Op donderdag 6 december 2018 10:13 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Goh, een conservatieve pro-Trump 'nieuwssite' die bekendstaat om haar gekleurde berichtgeving die doet overkomen alsof er niets aan de hand is. Wat een verrassing.

Laten we gewoon rustig afwachten waar Mueller straks mee komt.

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Op donderdag 6 december 2018 13:50 schreef dellipder het volgende:

Nog afgezien dat het stuk een op-ed is, maar het lukt blijkbaar niet om je hoofd daarachter te krijgen.

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En het is verre vanzelfsprekend dat enkel op liberale, neverTrump of #Resistance websites objectieve berichtgeving wordt weergegeven

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Op donderdag 6 december 2018 14:10 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:


Mag ik vragen waarom jij altijd zo denigrerend reageert? Probeer je je eigen topic om zeep te helpen?

Dat een opiniestuk is, is overduidelijk. En dat het artikel op de betreffende website wordt gepubliceerd is evenwel veelzeggend.

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Wie beweert dat dan?

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Op donderdag 6 december 2018 10:13 schreef KoosVogels het volgende:

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Goh, een conservatieve pro-Trump 'nieuwssite' die bekendstaat om haar gekleurde berichtgeving die doet overkomen alsof er niets aan de hand is. Wat een verrassing.

Laten we gewoon rustig afwachten waar Mueller straks mee komt.