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Rsie Mem
Give me your own interpretation of the Matt Tait testimony from Comey’s semen shielding propaganda arm Lawfare blog
R
best of luck getting back to LA
3 years away at the earliest
Did I miss the prima donna pirouette?
(My sister's school was Russian influenced; athletic leaping and bounding were emphasized. The women looked like male soccer players, only more athletic.)
Testimony Reveals Deep State Spy Joseph Mifsud Is Member of the Clinton Foundation https://t.co/dG6fnBo4QM
He just found out about this when the hearsay was from his wife?
Jeffrey Jensen was appointed by Barr specifically to dig dirt on this case, which in and of itself is an extraordinary move. You can't divorce Barr from this outcome, and this is the AG explicitly undermining his own department's employees, and not the first time either.
I have nothing against Jeffrey Jensen, and Van Grack could be the ultimate slime, but only a corrupt AG would not recuse itself from getting involved in any case associated with friends (political or not) of the president/administration. You let justice run it's course, and then the prez always have the option to pardon.
Then again, this is not surprising, Barr was appointed to do the dirty deeds that Jeff Sessions would not do, tbh, it's just frankly egregious at this point.
Where did he say he just found out about it?
He just found out about this when the hearsay was from his wife?
Someone is squirming
Did he say it before?
Let me know.
Seems excited.
I'd believe it if his wife never told him.
nono with some truth nukes
boom!
Where did he say he just found out about it?
Stealth Jeff
Sure acts like it.
Don't think there would be a reason to hold that hearsay back if he thought it was true.
Let me know if he talked about it before.
Sure thing pal.
I know you won't. That's the joke.
Someone is squirming
Barr already knew one of his own department’s employees (Van Grack) was withholding evidence from Flynn as the FBI had already turned it over to both Horowitz and Durham (per FBI statement). Barr was 100% justified in asking Jensen to review the Flynn case. Nothing would have come of the review had Van Grack not been hiding evidence and lying to the Judge.
Foreign Agent Flynn.
The Government Could Not Win the Case Against Gen. Flynn; Dismissal Was the Only Option (Part Two)You're obviously not as this was never a plea bargain
Here is someone with a bit more experience than you on these matters, educate yourself
Understanding the Process Used to Coerce Gen. Flynn’s Guilty Plea Shows Why His “Admission” to the Crimes Is Practically Meaningless
General Flynn entered his guilty plea on Friday, December 1, 2017, to the charge that he knowingly and intentionally made false representations, and omitted material information, in responding to questions posed to him by FBI Agents who interviewed him on January 24, 2017.
Gen. Flynn pled guilty to an “Information” which is a charging do ent created and signed by a Department of Justice prosecutor – in this case, a member of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel’s Office (SCO). Charging by way of Information is an alternative to seeking an “Indictment” from a federal grand jury, and can only be done with the consent of the defendant charged in that fashion.
Charging by way of “Information” happens almost exclusively when the prosecution and defense have agreed in advance to the specific crime(s) the defendant will plead guilty to having committed. The terms of the deal are set forth in another do ent called a “Plea Agreement,” which includes a “factual” section describing what it is the defendant admits to having done. The “factual basis” must establish each element of the offense charged. This “factual basis” is, for all practical purposes, a “confession” by the defendant.
This kind of outcome is not called a “plea bargain” – it’s called a “charge bargain.” A “plea bargain” is negotiated after an Indictment is filed, and the defense has been provided the discovery in the case. “Discovery” includes the do ents, witness statements, and physical evidence which the government believes will be used in a trial to establish the defendant’s guilt. The “plea bargain” process can involve a “give and take” negotiation between the two sides resulting in a written agreement wherein the defendant admits to one or more of the offenses charged in the Indictment, normally in exchange for the government’s agreement to dismiss the remaining charges. But the defendant, for the most part, understands the nature of the evidence the government possesses with regard to the crimes charged and can make a judgment for himself as to the “strength” of the government’s case against him when deciding to take the case to trial or accept the plea bargain offered.
A “charge bargain” – as happened in General Flynn’s case — comes before the government has filed an Indictment. The government only “threatens” the putative defendant with being charged with more serious offenses if the defendant doesn’t agree to plead guilty as suggested by the prosecutor. But what other charges the defendant might be facing — and the nature of the evidence supporting such potential charges – are commonly known only to the prosecutor. The defendant and his attorney know only what the prosecutor chooses to share with them.
When moving forward to a guilty plea pursuant to an Information, the prosecution has no obligation to provide “discovery” to a defendant. The right to discovery only arises when a defendant is charged by way of Indictment and makes an appearance in court to enter a “not guilty” plea. One significant category of evidence the government must produce after an Indictment is any relevant written or recorded statements made by the defendant which are in the government’s possession. In a case like Gen. Flynn’s where the allegations involve lying to investigators, the discovery would include all the memorandum of interview(s) conducted of the defendant. This means that a defendant pleading guilty to a “false statement” charge would have the Agent’s report of his interview, and he would know exactly what the Agents wrote in their report about what they claim a defendant said in the interview. But a defendant pleading guilty to an Information must make that decision without the right to see the FBI Agent’s report — unless it is given to him by the prosecution.
When Gen. Flynn and his attorneys began discussing a possible plea deal with the SCO, no Indictment had been filed, and no discovery rights/obligations existed. Since changing lawyers in June 2019, hiring attorney Sidney Powell, the subject of the defense getting access to all versions of the memorandum of interview from the January 24, 2017, interview – referred to FBI form “302” – has been extensively litigated. What seems clear now is that the 302 of the January 24 interview underwent several revisions from start to finish in the weeks and months following the interview. But it also seems that Gen. Flynn’s previous attorneys either never asked for – or they simply never received — either the final version of the 302 or any of the earlier versions of the draft 302 that are now known to have existed.
What that means is that when Gen. Flynn’s attorneys were negotiating the “factual basis” of his plea agreement – the “facts” of his confession — Gen. Flynn’s attorneys did not know what the Agents had written about what they claimed he said. If both sides had access to the do ents there would be little or no need for lengthy negotiations over the language in the plea agreement. Both sides could point to specific passages in the transcript, and the specific words of the Agents reporting what Gen. Flynn had told them, and the “factual basis” for his misrepresentations or omissions would be easily set forth. If Gen. Flynn disagreed with the Agents’ 302, his attorneys could point to their specific words, and characterize the nature of Gen. Flynn’s disagreement with what they wrote. Without knowing the specific words in the report, Gen. Flynn’s attorneys could only base their advice to Gen. Flynn on what the SCO prosecutor said the Agents had written.
The factual basis set forth in the plea agreement is drafted by the prosecutor. Ultimately the defendant must agree to a factual basis before each side signs the agreement. But, in the end, the facts say what the prosecutor wants them to say, and the defendant has a “take it or leave it” decision to make. This often comes down to a “risk/benefit” calculation about what is more important — the strict accuracy of the prosecutor’s language, or the outcome of the case that might ride on the willingness to accept less-than-perfect language. For Gen. Flynn the outcome of the case was as good as he could expect — a “no time” recommendation to a sentence of probation, and no exposure for people close to him.
With the benefit of hindsight, and having now had a bit of a window into the way the SCO operated, it does not seem unfair to consider the real likelihood that the SCO prosecutor was not upfront and “forthright” in communicating what the Agents wrote in their report. But the dynamic of the process, in this kind of cir stance, is that the prosecutor holds all the cards when it comes to what the defendant will be compelled to admit in the “factual basis” of the plea agreement.
The key point to understand – based on what’s been filed and reported — is that only the SCO had all the do ents to work with when hashing out the language of Gen. Flynn’s “confession.” He had a transcript of Gen. Flynn’s calls with the Russian Ambassador, and he had the Agents’ report of what they said Gen. Flynn said in response to their questions. With this “monopoly” on information, the SCO prosecutor could “characterize” what the Agents had written in a manner most optimal to his negotiating tactics. He did not have to fear being contradicted because Gen. Flynn’s attorneys did not have the same source do ents to work with. Given his track record, I have no confidence that SCO prosecutor Van Grack was “forthright” in characterizing what he expected the Agents would to testify to if Gen. Flynn refused to plead guilty. We saw for ourselves how the FARA prosecution of Gen. Flynn’s former business partner buckled and collapsed under scrutiny in a trial. We see how the “Troll Farm” case buckled and collapsed when the SCO’s “dream team” of prosecutors had to actually defend the Indictment they conned a grand jury into returning.
SCO prosecutor Van Grack demanded that General Flynn make a decision to plead guilty or face indictment on a very short time frame. Just 30 days earlier Manafort and Gates had been indicted. Papadopoulos had pled guilty only 45 days earlier.
When you see former federal prosecutors – or wannabe pretenders like Benjamin Wittes at Lawfareblog – repeatedly point to the fact that Gen. Flynn “admitted” to having committed the crimes with which he was charged, keep in mind that Gen. Flynn “admitted” to the characterization of events and statements that was fashioned by SCO prosecutor Van Grack, and Gen. Flynn had precious little leeway when having to decide whether to agree or not agree to the SCO’s characterization of the facts. His options were to accept what was presented, or to continue spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in his own defense, and possibly expose family members to criminal charges by the same prosecutors he was watching run roughshod over the lives of numerous individuals simply because they had the temerity to work for the Trump campaign, or in the Trump Administration.
I’ve been there, and I did this. I used the “process” to leverage guilty pleas on my terms. I raised the price of saying “no” so high that I knew the defendants couldn’t do anything but say “yes” to what I was demanding in terms of a guilty plea. I didn’t demand that anyone admit anything that was false, but I knew defendants would sign whatever I wrote in the end because they had nothing to bargain with.
It comes down to the integrity and motives of the prosecutor. The SCO staff hired by Mueller have revealed themselves over time to not warrant any favorable presumptions on either count.
https://www.redstate.com/shipwrecked...-meaningless./
This is Part Two of a two-part story analyzing the process used to coerce a guilty plea out of General Michael Flynn. (Read Part One here.) This part examines the significance of the recent do ent disclosures, and why those do ents would have prevented the government from proving a necessary fact at trial — it had no witnesses or evidence to show a legitimate investigation of Gen. Flynn was underway.
The Government Could Not Win the Case Against Gen. Flynn; Dismissal Was the Only Option (Part Two)
Shipwreckedcrew
AP featured image
FILE – In this July 10, 2018, file photo, former President Donald Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, right, arrives at federal courthouse in Washington, for status hearing. Prosecutors with the special counsel’s office say Flynn is not yet ready to be sentenced. The joint filing with defense lawyers Tuesday, Aug. 21, is a sign that Flynn’s cooperation with investigators is continuing.(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
This is Part Two of a two-part story analyzing the process used to coerce a guilty plea out of General Michael Flynn. (Read Part One here.) This part examines the significance of the recent do ent disclosures, and why those do ents would have prevented the government from proving a necessary fact at trial — it had no witnesses or evidence to show a legitimate investigation of Gen. Flynn was underway.
While trying to resist the temptation to turn this into a law school lecture on an obscure point of substantive federal criminal law, it is nevertheless important to understand the evidentiary significance of some of the do ents in the Flynn case that have recently come to light. Those do ents — had they been timely disclosed to 1) Flynn’s attorneys; 2) the Court; 3) the Inspector General; or 4) Congress — would have destroyed the justification repeatedly asserted for questioning Gen. Flynn on January 24, 2017, and raised the obvious implication of there being a political motivation in the FBI and SCO’s pursuit of Gen. Flynn.
Recognizing this problem, the Department of Justice earlier today filed with the District Court a notice of its intention to seek permission to drop the prosecution of Gen. Flynn.
Before I explain the significance of the newly released do ents, let me make an observation based on my 22+ years as a federal prosecutor having dealt with hundreds of federal law enforcement agents from more than a dozen different agencies. First, some agents are excellent, while some agents are terrible. The excellent agents generally understand their jobs and their roles, and understand that being “prosecutor” isn’t part of either. The terrible agents tend to think they understand the entire process, and can answer questions about how to prove a case as well as the prosecutor because they gathered the “evidence” — agents who are attorneys are the worst offenders.
But prosecutors who are good trial lawyers — and not all of them are good trial lawyers — bring a different set of questions to the table when looking at prospects of success at trial in a given case, and a criminal case should always be evaluated in terms of the likelihood of success at trial.
The first question a prosecutor who is a good trial attorney asks is “What are the elements of the offense that I will need to prove?”
The second question is “What witnesses or evidence will I be able to get admitted at trial to prove each of those elements?”
A third question that doesn’t normally get asked — but is highly pertinent to the case against Gen. Flynn — is “Has anything happened during the course of the investigation that will make it difficult or impossible for me to prove one of those elements?”
The newly released do ents go to this third question — and the answer was unequivocally “Yes.”
Unknown to Gen. Flynn or his attorneys when he pled guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, nearly 11 months earlier, on January 4, 2017, an unnamed FBI agent completed a draft “Closing EC” to close out the investigation of Gen. Flynn (code-named “Crossfire Razor”) that had been opened under the umbrella of the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation. The Closing EC is the last do ent in a closed investigation, and no further investigative activity is allowed unless there is another EC “Reopening” a closed investigation, and the new EC justifies the further efforts.
The draft Closing EC reflected that several months of investigative effort had revealed “no derogatory information” about Gen. Flynn in connection with the allegations that caused him to be included as part of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The Crossfire Razor investigation of Gen. Flynn began in August 2016, in order to determine if Gen. Flynn “may wittingly or unwittingly be involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may cons ute a federal crime or cons ute a threat to national security.” The Closing EC details the various types of investigative steps taken to develop information that answer that question as to Gen. Flynn. The EC do ented that the outcome of those efforts was a determination that no such information existed — he wasn’t a Russian agent.
It is quite likely that the Agent tasked with performing the ministerial task of drafting the Closing EC was simply a member of the squad supervised by Joe Pientka. Such a task would normally fall to a squad agent — it would not be done in the first instance by a supervisor, certainly not by someone at Peter Strzok’s level, or even at Joe Pientka’s level. Normally, a case agent would meet with his squad supervisor, detail the findings of the investigation over several months (after having kept the supervisor up to date as the investigation proceeded), and would then be given the instruction by the supervisor to “close” the file since nothing had been developed that warranted further investigation. After the “Draft” was complete and uploaded into the electronic database, the Supervisor would sign off on the closing, and the file would be closed in the FBI’s internal case tracking system.
In text messages on January 5, 2017, Strzok and Lisa Page discussed the need to prevent the file from being closed even though the draft Closing EC had been completed. My guess is that the only thing lacking at that point was the approval of the supervisor — maybe Pientka — who had given the instruction in the first instance. But January 5 was the day of the Oval Office meeting between representatives of DOJ, FBI, and IC agencies, during which the results of the IC investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election were discussed with Pres. Obama and his national security staff. Part of this meeting involved a discussion of what to tell — and what not to tell — members of the incoming Trump Administration about the investigation. The text messages indicated that the decision to not close Crossfire Razor came from senior FBI management — some of whom had been at that meeting.
The calendar becomes important here because Flynn’s two contacts with the Russian Ambassador, which became the point of controversy connected to his later interview, took place on Dec. 22 and 29, 2016. By January 5, 2017, the FBI certainly had transcripts of both calls, and knew exactly what Flynn had said to the Ambassador. So, on January 4, 2017, the FBI agents and supervisors on Crossfire Hurricane and Crossfire Razor had determined there was no evidence, including in the transcripts of the calls, to support the proposition that Gen. Flynn was “wittingly or unwittingly” involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation that was a crime or a threat to national security.
That determination meant that had the closing of the file taken place as contemplated, any subsequent effort to interview Gen. Flynn would not be part of a pending or open investigation of him. That doesn’t mean the FBI could not interview Gen. Flynn — it means that the FBI could only interview Gen. Flynn about the specific matters still open with regard to Crossfire Hurricane. Questions put to Gen. Flynn about any other subject would not be deemed “material” to the pending investigation that justified an interview.
Whether or not interview answers given to FBI Agents are “material” is a question of fact that the jury must decide at trial. So “materiality” is an issue the government must prove as part of its case-in-chief.
The legal question is generally formulated as follows: “To establish “materiality” … it is sufficient that the statement have the capacity or a natural tendency to influence the determination required to be made.” The Department of Justice Criminal Resource Manual advises federal prosecutors that “Materiality is best shown by the testimony of a witness, generally those who make the decisions … in the particular case, concerning the influence that defendant’s allegedly false statement might have had on the ultimate result….”
So, at any trial of Gen. Flynn on the charge that his false statements to the Agents were “material”, it would have been necessary for the government to call witnesses who could answer the questions about why Gen. Flynn’s answers were “material” — i.e., capable of influencing their decision making in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The witnesses would have needed to explain how it was that Gen. Flynn’s answers to questions about his conversation with the Russian Ambassador were “material” to the investigation into alleged activities of the Russian Federation that were a “crime or threat to national security”? How was the subject of the potential Russian response to the Obama Administration’s expulsion of Russian diplomats “material” to a crime or threat to national security? How did the Russian position on the UN vote on the Egyptian resolution involve a “crime” or “threat to national security”?
FBI agents are not empowered by law to questions people on “spec”. Their questions must relate to an authorized pending investigation. We know now that the pending investigation of Gen. Flynn was set to be closed on January 4, but it was then kept open at the direction of top FBI management. Why was it kept open when there was a finding of “no derogatory information” on the original justification for opening the investigation? The transcripts of his conversations with the Russian Ambassador were known to the FBI agents who were closing the investigation. Any fertile line of cross-examination at trial would have involved running down the “pretextual” reasons that were offered — such as the Logan Act canard — for justifying keeping the matter open in order to interview Gen. Flynn.
Relating back to Part One of this story, remember that it was SCO prosecutor Van Grack who drafted the “factual basis” for Gen. Flynn’s guilty plea. A necessary part of that factual basis to set forth for the Court was the element of the offense meeting the “materiality” requirement. Van Grack wrote: “FLYNN’S false statements and omissions impeded or otherwise had a material impact on the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the [Trump] Campaign and Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.”
How would Gen. Flynn know if that was a true or false statement? What insights would Gen. Flynn have on the issue of whether his answers to questions on Jan. 24 “impeded” or “otherwise had a material impact” on the investigation? He didn’t. This is a subject where the Prosecutor has a monopoly on the information that Gen. Flynn is being forced to “admit”. The accuracy of this claim all rides on the integrity of the SCO prosecutor in telling the defendant and his lawyers that it is true, and then telling the Court that it is true.
So what impact does it have on the viability of a prosecution if it turns out that the prosecutor lied to Gen. Flynn and his lawyers about the issue of materiality? What impact does it have on the case when the Prosecutor withholds derogatory information about the federal agents who would be called to show “materiality”, and that information shreds their credibility and makes them useless as witnesses at trial?
Who would Van Grack have called as a witness at trial to prove that the substance of Gen. Flynn’s discussions with the Russian Ambassador would have influenced the decisions to be made in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation — with that testimony being offered against the backdrop of the do entary evidence showing that the proffered justifications for the interview of Gen. Flynn were pretextual, and the investigation into him was supposed to have been closed by the FBI 20 days earlier?
This goes back to the three questions I posed at the outset — 1) What are the elements of the “false statement” crime? Materiality is one element. 2) Who are the witnesses and what evidence is admissible to prove that element? The witnesses are badly compromised by expressions of bias and potentially illegal conduct. 3) Did anything happen during the course of the investigation to making proving an element difficult or impossible? The FBI was set to close out the investigation, but then decided to keep it open on transparently pretextual grounds in order to justify the interview, and there is a written record of that fact.
The government could not win the case against Gen. Flynn if he was successful in withdrawing his guilty plea, and forcing a decision on the part of the DOJ as to whether to continue the case against him or not. Today’s filing was simply a recognition of that fact — and it was long overdue.
https://www.redstate.com/shipwrecked...mpression=true
So a new precedent established will be the president and the WH taking over the function of the DOJ.
Thats just wonderful.
“Mr. Lake’s report confirms Mr. Nunes account: That the Obama administration had collected incidental information on the Trump transition team and that some of the unmasked names had nothing to do with Russia. That the requests for the unmasking came directly from Ms. Rice — someone who was so close to Mr. Obama — is startling.”
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