quote:Feds press criminal case against Flynn partner
The move occurs even amid ongoing efforts to drop charges against Michael Flynn
The Justice Department is pressing forward with its criminal case against a former business partner of Michael Flynn, despite Attorney General William Barr’s controversial decision to seek to abandon the prosecution of the former national security adviser to President Donald Trump.
Prosecutors seeking to revive the convictions of Flynn’s former colleague, Bijan Rafiekian, filed a brief with a federal appeals court Sunday.
The filing makes several mentions of Flynn’s integral role in the work that led to the two foreign-agent-related felony charges against Rafiekian and maintains the government’s position that Flynn was a co-conspirator in his business partner’s crimes — a curious stance as the government seeks to drop the criminal case it brought against Flynn more than two years ago.
The 53-page brief filed with the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond makes no mention of the Justice Department’s extraordinary decision to jettison the case special counsel Robert Mueller’s office brought in December 2017 as part of a plea deal with the former Defense Intelligence Agency chief and key foreign policy adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential bid.
While that case focused on Flynn’s statements to the FBI in January 2017 about his dealings with the Russian ambassador, it also included an admission by Flynn that he signed off on inaccurate Foreign Agent Registration Act filings about the project that led to Rafiekian’s prosecution: a $600,000 contract Flynn signed for his Flynn Intel Group at the height of the presidential campaign in 2016 to lobby on behalf of a Dutch firm, Inovo BV.
Prosecutors contend that Inovo was actually a front for the Turkish government and that the lobbying and messaging campaign Flynn and Rafiekian had no real business element, but was aimed at a prominent opponent of the Turkish government, cleric Fetullah Gulen.
When the Justice Department submitted its unusual request last month to dismiss the case against Flynn, it was entirely silent on his Turkey-related admissions. Another federal appeals court, the D.C. Circuit, is set to hear arguments Friday on whether Flynn is entitled to have the case dismissed immediately or a judge can entertain arguments that Flynn’s guilty plea in the case should not be disturbed.
Flynn’s lead attorney, Sidney Powell, blasted the government’s decision to keep prosecuting Rafiekian, a former Trump transition team adviser. Asked by POLITICO about the move, she replied by email: “Wrongful and wasteful use of scarce taxpayer resources.”
One prominent Virginia defense attorney, Edward MacMahon, said Sunday that Rafiekian appears to be the victim of a double standard.
“There is a different kind of justice that is offered to people like Gen. Flynn than is offered to this guy. So, Flynn is the darling of Fox News and this guy is discardable?” MacMahon said.
A lawyer for Rafiekian, Robert Trout, declined to comment on the new filing against his client. However, about two weeks ago, Rafiekian’s defense wrote to the U.S. Attorney that Barr appointed to review the Flynn case, Jeff Jensen, to ask that Rafiekian’s case get a similar review.
“The prosecution of Rafiekian is a direct consequence of the government misconduct uncovered in your review of Flynn’s guilty plea,” Rafiekian’s lawyers wrote in a May 22 letter first reported by the New York Times. “Rafiekian does not have the same recognition nor enjoy the same public support of the President of the United States as Flynn. But political notoriety and the affection of the President must not influence — much less play the dispositive role in — how the Department of Justice makes decisions.”
Spokespeople for the Justice Department and for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, which handled much of the case against Rafiekian, declined repeated requests for comment on the case and on whether Jensen’s review examined the Turkey-related allegations against Rafiekian and Flynn. A Justice Department spokeswoman would only say that Jensen’s work is ongoing.
Rafiekian’s case is in an unusual posture. While the defense is almost always the side appealing in a criminal case, prosecutors find themselves seeking the appeals court’s intervention after the district court judge who handled Rafiekian’s trial ordered his acquittal despite the jury finding him guilty on both counts after a few hours of deliberations last July.
Judge Anthony Trenga said the guilty verdicts went against the overwhelming weight of the evidence in the case. During the trial, he repeatedly indicated that he thought the government’s evidence was very weak when it came to showing actual Turkish government control of the lobbying and public relations project Flynn and Rafiekian undertook.
Flynn was originally expected to be the star witness at Rafiekian’s trial and to testify that he and his former partner were well aware that the project was operating at the direction of the Turkish government.
However, weeks before the trial, Flynn dropped his D.C. lawyers and picked up a new, more combative crew led by Powell. She soon found herself in a heated discussion with ex-Mueller prosecutor Brandon Van Grack, who accused Flynn of backing away from his earlier testimony and his admissions in the 2017 deal.
Prosecutors then abandoned their plans to have Flynn take the stand and instead declared him to be a co-conspirator, prompting both the judge and Rafiekian’s defense to express irritation at the last-minute shift.
The 4th Circuit has not yet scheduled arguments in Rafiekian’s case. Officially, the developments in Flynn’s case are not part of the record of the appeal, but the intense media attention to the Justice Department’s reversal means the judges are likely to bring the issue up anyway if prosecutors don’t act on it by then, lawyers following the case said.
“In my experience, the court of appeals takes notice of these things,” MacMahon said. “There’s zero chance that does not come up — because it should come up.”
quote:Op donderdag 4 juni 2020 17:47 schreef dellipder het volgende:
Lindsay Graham van de Senate Judiciary Committee gaat ook dagvaardingen bekendmaken (mits de stemming daartoe valt). Graham gaat zijn onderzoek richten op het ontstaan van het FBI-onderzoek Crossfire Hurricane en het instellen van special counsel Robert Mueller.
quote:Senate Judiciary gives Graham sweeping subpoena powers in review of Russia probe
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-10 along party lines Thursday to allow its chair, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), to subpoena former Obama administration officials as part of the GOP-led probe into the origins of the 2016 Russia investigation.
Why it matters: Graham now has sweeping authority to subpoena documents and more than 50 individuals related to the Russia investigation, including former FBI director James Comey, former CIA director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Gisteren heeft rechter Emmet Sullivan de aanhouding teruggetrokken en de kalender en de hoorzittingen beëindigd. Er is een heel kleine kans dat de door Democrats gekozen rechters op de D.C. Court een verzoek tot een en banc verhoor vragen, maar rechter Wilkins werd vanwege zijn afwijkende mening in de 2-1 beslissing nogal genadeloos aangepakt, vermoed ik dat deze zaak technisch over is en dat generaal Micheal Flynn een vrij man is.quote:Op donderdag 25 juni 2020 06:46 schreef dellipder het volgende:
Rechter Emmet Sullivan heeft alle deadlines en de zittingsdatum van 16 juli 2020 in de generaal Micheal Flynn zaak aangehouden. Op dit moment is er dus geen mogelijkheid voor John Gleeson zijn amicus reply brief in te brengen.
Nu is het afwachten of de D.C. Appeals Court en banc verhoor gelast.
Gerechtigheid zal er pas zijn als Flynn wordt gerehabiliteerd en de mensen die hebben meegewerkt aan het hem in de cel krijgen op politieke gronden (terwijl ze wisten dat hij onschuldig was), gestraft worden.quote:
Open er eentje danquote:Op woensdag 1 juli 2020 11:38 schreef EdvandeBerg het volgende:
Ik mis in NWS een topic over de meest recente Russiahoax; de Russen zouden de Taliban geld betalen voor iedere gedode Amerikaanse militair en Trump zou dit al maanden weten maar er niks aan doen omdat hij uiteraard de marionet van Poetin is.
Meer iets voor jou. Of Vis1980 of die Tacostamper ofzo.quote:
quote:Flynn's prosecution: The more we learn, the worse it seems
Two recent events, tangentially related, likely were lost in the news cycle of the spike in COVID-19 cases and continued civil unrest in American cities. The first development was the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordering Judge Emmet Sullivan to dispose of former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s case, followed by the disclosure of additional FBI notes related to the matter.
Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, petitioned the court to order Sullivan to dismiss the appeals court case. Since both the prosecution and defense agree that the case should be dismissed, it had been in judicial limbo while the judge was deciding if he wanted to dismiss it or move forward with sentencing. This is the second federal court in less than a year to rebuke the FBI, with Judge Neomi Rao’s opinion noting the agency’s handling of cases related to the failed Russia collusion narrative. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court also did so in December.
The second, and perhaps more significant, news was the revelation that additional evidence in the FBI’s possession was not previously turned over to Flynn or his attorneys. In a landmark case that is rapidly becoming known to many Americans, the Supreme Court held in Brady v. Maryland in 1963 that prosecutors must disclose the existence of exculpatory evidence to a defendant, regardless of how they obtained it or if it relates to their theory of prosecution. And therein lies a two-part problem with the recent disclosure of a handwritten note by fired deputy assistant FBI director Peter Strzok.
The first problem is that such nondisclosure would even occur — especially in the courtroom of Judge Sullivan, who was burned by prosecutors’ violations of the Brady rule, including the 2008 prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). Sullivan starts his trials with a strict admonition about Brady and stresses the continuing obligation on the part of the government. The second concern is that Strzok’s notes appear to document that then-President Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden were driving a criminal investigation of a senior official of an incoming administration from the Oval Office.
As we learned from the events surrounding former FBI Director Jim Comey’s “send a couple of guys over” scenario, wherein he dispatched agents to interview Flynn at the White House on Jan. 24, 2017, there is traditionally a firewall between the FBI and the White House. The latter does not direct criminal investigations, and the former does not report results directly to the latter. It is what many found troubling about President Trump’s one-on-one “I need your loyalty” speech with Comey before he was fired. The firewall is the Department of Justice and the White House counsel who negotiate on sensitive matters such as interviews and investigations.
The Strzok notes reportedly are from a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting later documented in former national security adviser Susan Rice’s infamous email to herself on Trump’s inauguration day. The timing is important because this was the day after the FBI closed “Crossfire Razor,” the Flynn investigation, Jan. 4, 2017. The Justice Department confirmed the notes were from between Jan. 3 and Jan. 5, 2017, and Attorney General William Barr and Strzok’s attorney, Aitan Goelman, both have said Strzok was not a participant in the Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting. Interestingly, although he is willing to comment that the notes have been taken out of context and are being weaponized by the White House for political purposes, Goelman did not say where Strzok heard the details that he documented.
There are reports of interviews and testimony of other participants from the Oval Office meeting after the fact, which focus on the appropriateness of the FBI interview of Flynn and potential concerns about counterintelligence. Biden has said he knew nothing about the Flynn investigation. But these denials come after the fact and before the appropriateness of the Flynn interview came into question — and certainly before the evidence emerged of an internal FBI debate about interviewing him. Thus, any notes taken by Strzok on or about Jan. 5, 2017, even if they are from a briefing after the fact, seem particularly relevant.
So what is in the Strzok notes that might be problematic? First, Comey apparently advised the group that Flynn’s phone call with Russia’s former ambassador Sergey Kislyak “appears legit.” This is significant because it provides evidence that when Comey dispatched agents, including Strzok, 19 days later to interview Flynn, there apparently was not really a counterintelligence concern, which now appears to be the after-the-fact justification for the interview. Notes by former FBI Assistant Director Bill Priestap, disclosed earlier, appear to validate this as well.
A second important notation by Strzok reads “VP: Logan Act,” suggesting that Biden raised the idea of using the Logan Act, which forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with a foreign government. Since we know from recently released emails that former Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord, Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page all researched the Logan Act, it’s unlikely that Biden pulled this out of thin air, if indeed he mentioned it. In other words, it likely was discussed before the Jan. 5, 2017, meeting.
The most problematic of Strzok’s notations is from “P” — widely assumed to refer to Obama — reportedly saying, “Make sure you look at things + have the right people on it.” Can there be any doubt that, if the president gave such direction, Comey likely felt completely emboldened to then “send a couple of guys over” to interview Flynn?
While it is true we have a unitary executive, with the president saying grace over all of the executive branch, it also is true that, especially since Watergate, there has been an acknowledgement from administrations of both parties that the White House should not direct criminal investigations against American citizens. This should be especially obvious when the target is a member of a new administration of the opposing party after a contentious election.
twitter:Isikoff twitterde op zondag 05-07-2020 om 17:23:30 Rice-- who ordered WH aides to "stand down" from preparing tough responses to Putin's attack on the 2016 election-- may not be the best messenger on this issue. https://t.co/6PPjE8YPAX https://t.co/ee96ERnVn1 reageer retweet
Dat is allemaal vast vanavond een Bombshell!!!!!!11!!!!!1! item op CNN en MSNBC vanavond!quote:
Ik denk dat er weinig ruimte is na de uitspraak van vandaag.quote:Op donderdag 9 juli 2020 17:45 schreef EdvandeBerg het volgende:
[..]
Dat is allemaal vast vanavond een Bombshell!!!!!!11!!!!!1! item op CNN en MSNBC vanavond!
O nee, toch niet.
Er is geen uitspraak gedaan. Er is door rechter Emmet Sullivan een verzoekschrift ingediend voor een en banc verhoor, het afstand nemen van de opinie van Neomi Rao en het afwijzen van de writ of mandamus van generaal Micheal Flynn.quote:Op donderdag 9 juli 2020 21:22 schreef Vis1980 het volgende:
[..]
Ik denk dat er weinig ruimte is na de uitspraak van vandaag.
Er zijn geen nieuwe argumenten ingebracht, maar de projectie in de brief is opvallend.quote:Op donderdag 9 juli 2020 23:29 schreef dellipder het volgende:
De inbreng van Beth Wilkinson zal ik binnenkort nader toelichten.
twitter:CBS_Herridge twitterde op zaterdag 11-07-2020 om 21:00:48 NEW #FLYNN Attributable to FBI: "The materials recently produced to Michael Flynn’s counsel include two pages of handwritten notes taken by Peter Strzok in early 2017, prior to his termination from the FBI in August 2018. The FBI previously made Mr. Strzok’s notes available to.. reageer retweet
twitter:CBS_Herridge twitterde op zaterdag 11-07-2020 om 21:00:49 US Attorneys John Durham and Jeff Jensen, as well as to DOJ’s Office of Inspector General during its review of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The documents recently produced to Mr. Flynn’s counsel also include certain other handwritten notes made by senior DOJ officials.. reageer retweet
twitter:CBS_Herridge twitterde op zaterdag 11-07-2020 om 21:00:49 during the time of the Flynn investigation. The FBI has been, and will continue to be, fully cooperative and transparent with U.S. Attorneys Durham and Jensen. The decision whether to turn over documents to defense counsel as part of discovery in a pending criminal... reageer retweet
De FBI zegt hier dus heel duidelijk dat de beslissing om aan de verdediging niet alle ontlastende bewijsmateriaal te geven die openbaar aanklager Jeff Jensen gevonden had en aan de verdediging heeft overgedragen niet bij de FBI, maar bij de aanklagers van het special counsel team lag.twitter:CBS_Herridge twitterde op zaterdag 11-07-2020 om 21:00:49 case typically belongs to the prosecutors handling the case, not the FBI." @CBSNews reageer retweet
Zo ziet corruptie er uit dus. Jammer ook dat hij de tekst niet zelf opgesteld heeft, zal wel te moeilijk geweest zijn.quote:Op maandag 13 juli 2020 22:44 schreef dellipder het volgende:
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