How DOJ Worked Overtime to Avoid Connecting the Dots in the Whistleblower Complaint
As the legal saga of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman plays out against the background of an impeachment inquiry launched when DOJ tried to bury a whistleblower complaint, DOJ has been forced to offer a series of increasingly inconsistent explanations about who at DOJ knew what when. I’ve been working on a timeline examining What Did Bill Barr Know and When Did He Know It (that work in progress appears below). While I’m not ready to answer that question, one thing is clear: the personnel under Brian Benczkowski who reviewed and dismissed the complaint in August could not have followed normal process on assessing a referral if NYT’s reporting and Benczkowski’s most recent claims are true.
Benczkowski tries to prevent Rudy Giuliani from implicating him in his crimes
I’m speaking of a comment that Benczkowski had released to NYT for an October 20 story explaining why Benczkowski and fraud investigators would be willing to hear Rudy Giuliani pitch a client’s case when he was under active investigation for influence peddling in SDNY himself.
“When Mr. Benczkowski and fraud section lawyers met with Mr. Giuliani, they were not aware of any investigation of Mr. Giuliani’s associates in the Southern District of New York and would not have met with him had they known,” said Peter Carr, a department spokesman.
That comment was a response to this Rudy-sourced Ken Vogel story that revealed the meeting, though without any of the answers as to Who What When questions that normally appear in finished news stories. The story may have been Rudy’s attempt to do the same thing he did as his shenanigans at State became public, raise the costs of making him the sole scapegoat by making it clear that his activities had high level knowledge and approval by Trump officials at the agency in question. That is, Rudy may have been making sure that if he gets in trouble for influence peddling, Brian Benzckowski will be implicated as well.
Importantly, both NYT stories on the meeting say the meeting happened a few weeks before October 18, a timeline that DOJ sources may be walking back in time considerably to “earlier this summer” included in this CNN article. One of the only ways for all these descriptions of timing be true is if the meeting took place around September 20, which would make it highly likely it involved Victoria Toensing, since Rudy was pictured meeting her and Lev Parnas across the street from DOJ that same day. (h/t DK for that insight) If it did (or if the descriptions of the meeting taking place a few weeks before October 18 are correct), then it means the meeting happened after DOJ reviewed and dismissed the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s July 25 call with Volodymyr Zelensky in late August.
As I’ll show below, the Peter Carr quote to the NYT might be true. But if it is, it means that well-connected Republicans can get a meeting with the Assistant Attorney General with almost no due diligence.
But if the Carr quotation is true (and if the timing of the meeting described to NYT is correct), then it is an on-the-record admission on behalf of Benczkowski that investigators working underneath him who reviewed and dismissed the whistleblower complaint did not follow procedures designed to keep our nation safe that have been codified since 9/11.
Benczkowski’s claim he didn’t know ignores what DOJ knew
Benczkowski’s explanation in the October 20 NYT story is based on a further one that suggests the only way he could have known about the criminal investigation into Parnas, Fruman, and Rudy is if a subordinate informed him directly.
While the Southern District of New York has been investigating Mr. Giuliani’s associates — an inquiry that may be tied to a broader investigation of Mr. Giuliani himself — prosecutors there had not told Mr. Benczkowski of the Criminal Division of the case, as he does not oversee or supervise their work. The United States attorney’s offices report to the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen.
Prosecutors in Manhattan informed Attorney General William P. Barr about the investigation of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman soon after he was confirmed in February, according to a Justice Department official.
DOJ has locked into a statement that Bill Barr had been briefed on this investigation shortly after he was confirmed in February and repeatedly thereafter since the day the arrest of the Ukrainian grifters became public. But Benczkowski claims he didn’t know about it because he’s not in that chain of command. SDNY reports to the Deputy Attorney General, which would have been Rod Rosenstein when Barr was initially briefed, but would be Jeffrey Rosen in any of the briefings DOJ has admitted to since.
This table attempts to summarize what DOJ learned of Parnas, Fruman, and Rudy when. It’s incomplete in at least one important respect, as I’ll show. But it captures most of the ways DOJ and FBI would have been informed about parts of the Ukrainian grift.
Remarkably, we don’t yet know how the SDNY came to open the investigation. It could have been a Mueller referral, SDNY could have discovered the grift from something that happened in NYC (though the venue that ultimately got laid out in the indictment suggests the obvious signs of corruption took place in FL), or it could have stemmed from a Campaign Legal Center complaint filed with the FEC on July 25, 2018. But by the time Barr was briefed in February, we should assume that DOJ knew at least as much as CLC knew the summer before, which is that Parnas and Fruman had set up a shell company, Global Energy Producers, that they were using to make big donations to Republicans, including a $325,000 donation to a Trump SuperPAC just days after Parnas and Fruman met with Trump at the White House. That’s what Barr would have learned when he got briefed shortly after he was confirmed on February 14: that these Ukrainian-Americans were giving straw donations to Republicans in apparent coordination with key meetings with the recipients.
Here’s where the gap in this table comes in. Someone trying to spin the CNN for its version of the Benczkowski quote claimed that Rudy was not yet a focus of the SDNY investigation at the time Barr was briefed (the claim is silent, however, about all the other times Barr was briefed, per an October 10 statement from DOJ). Nevertheless, as CNN lays out, that claim is probably not true, because a NY lawyer was already getting questions from FBI counterintelligence agents by that time.
A person familiar with the matter said that at the time, Giuliani wasn’t a central figure in the case as he is now. That emerged in recent weeks, the person said.
Still, New York federal prosecutors had their eyes set on Giuliani months ago. A New York lawyer told CNN that FBI counterintelligence agents asked him questions in February or March related to Giuliani and his associates.
The day after the Ukrainian grifters’ arrest became public, NYT reported that Rudy was under investigation for FARA (for activities that extend well beyond his Ukraine work). Particularly given that the National Security Division is setting up a unit to prosecute FARA violations, that, plus the involvement of CI agents, should involve NSD and therefore would suggest that NSD head John Demers would know of the focus on Rudy. That can’t be guaranteed, however, because SDNY often does its own thing. So that’s the gap: We don’t know when Demers would have first learned that Rudy’s under investigation for his sleazy influence peddling.
We do know, however, that sometime in May, State Department’s Inspector General Steve Linick sent FBI (we don’t know which unit) the “Rudy Dossier,” the disinformation developed as part of his Ukraine work. Among the things that dossier includes is an email via which John Solomon sent a draft of this article to Rudy, Victoria Toensing, and Lev Parnas. Whoever received that dossier should have immediately identified that Parnas and Rudy were under active criminal investigation in SDNY for influence peddling, a topic on which that email would be directly relevant. In addition to Victoria Toensing and Rudy, the packet would also directly implicate the White House and Mike Pompeo, because the packet was sent under White House imprimatur to the Secretary of State. So by May, that dossier should have been in Parnas and Rudy’s investigative file. Except that, when Linick asked FBI if they were cool with him sharing the dossier with Congress, they were, which suggests it may not have been added to the investigative file.
Assuming that the vaunted SDNY is at least as sharp as a small campaign finance NGO, then by the time CLC updated their SEC complaint on June 20, SDNY would have known what that GEP’s straw donations (including a $325,000 donation to a Trump SuperPAC) came immediately after Parnas got a $1.2 million infusion from a lawyer who helps foreigners launder money through real estate, something that should have raised further counterintelligence and foreign campaign donation concerns.
After that, the whistleblower complaint comes into DOJ, in two different forms. The first time, it comes when CIA General Counsel Courtney Simmons Elwood and White House Associate Counsel John Eisenberg inform John Demers (who, remember, may or may not know about a FARA investigation into Rudy by this point). Demers went to the White House and reviews the transcript, which would have informed him that multiple people were concerned about the call, that Trump invoked both Rudy and Demers’ boss, Bill Barr, on the call, and that Trump was soliciting dirt related to both the investigation into the Russian operation in 2016 (ongoing parts of which Demers still oversees) and Trump’s imagined 2020 opponent, Joe Biden. If Demers did know that Rudy was under investigation for FARA at this time, Trump’s request that Ukraine share dirt with Rudy would have been directly relevant to that investigation, but in a way that implicated Demers’ boss as well. In any case, a simple database search would have revealed that, along with the $1.2 million cash transfer raising additional concerns about foreign money backing those campaign efforts.
Demers’ reported response to reading the transcript was to tell Brian Benczkowski (who claims not to have known about Parnas and Fruman, but whose Peter Carr quote was silent about whether he knew of any investigation into Rudy) and Jeffrey Rosen (who was probably confirmed after Barr’s first briefing on Parnas and Fruman, but who is currently Geoffrey Berman’s supervisor and so should be in the loop in the subsequent briefings that DOJ admitted Barr had after that initial briefing.
According to public reports, DOJ did nothing with this initial complaint.
DOJ avoids (admitting to) reviewing the full whistleblower complaint based off a false claim it doesn’t include direct knowledge
But then the whistleblower tried again, going to the Intelligence Community Inspector General and writing up his complaint, which then got referred to Brian Benczkowski and some public integrity investigators. According to Kerri Kupec, here’s what happened next.
In August, the Department of Justice was referred a matter relating to a letter the director national intelligence had received from the inspector general for the intelligence community regarding a purported whistleblower complaint. The inspector general’s letter cited a conversation between the president and Ukrainian President Zelensky as a potential violation of federal campaign finance law, while acknowledging that neither the inspector general nor the complainant had firsthand knowledge of the conversation,” Kupec said.
“Relying on established procedures set forth in the justice manual, the department’s criminal division reviewed the official record of the call and determined based on the facts and applicable law that there was no campaign finance violence and that no further action was warranted. All relevant components of the department agreed with this legal conclusion, and the department has concluded this matter,” Kupec concluded.
In another statement, Kupec said that Barr had not spoken with Mr. Trump about Ukraine investigating Biden, and that the president had not asked Barr to contact Ukraine or Giuliani.
In explaining how DOJ came to dismiss this complaint, Kupec cites not from the complaint itself, but from Michael Atkinson’s letter conveying the complaint. Kupec cites from the letter, which notes the whistleblower “was not a direct witness to the President’s telephone call,” and uses that to treat only the transcript of the call — not the broader whistleblower complaint itself, which does include firsthand knowledge — as the official record. And, having referred to just the call, DOJ viewed this as exclusively a campaign finance matter, and therefore dismissed it (DOJ ignores another crime laid out in Atkinson’s letter, a crime Mick Mulvaney has now confessed to, but I’ll come back to how they managed to ignore that).
In fact, parts of the whistleblower complaint make it clear that he was a direct witness to aspects of his complaint, and so DOJ should have treated the complaint itself as an official document (this is why the frothy right invested so much energy into the goddamned whistleblower form, to rationalize DOJ’s decision not to read the actual complaint).
Had DOJ read the complaint and done the most basic investigative work on the materials included in the complaint, they (including Benczkowski) would have known that Trump’s call related directly to matters under active investigation in SDNY.
While the whistleblower complaint does not mention Parnas and Fruman by name, it repeatedly invokes this OCCRP profile (see footnotes 4, 9, 10, 11), The profile would have made it crystal clear — if DOJ’s investigators couldn’t figure it out for themselves — how the evidence that SDNY was already reviewing (including the campaign finance stuff and the Rudy dossier) connected directly with the July 25 call.
Since early last year, the men have emerged from obscurity to become major donors to Republican campaigns in the United States. They have collectively contributed over half a million dollars to candidates and outside campaign groups, the lion’s share in a single transaction that an independent watchdog has flagged as a potential violation of electoral funding law.
The men appear to enjoy a measure of access to influential figures. They’ve dined with Trump, had a “power breakfast” with his son Donald Jr., met with U.S. congressmen, and mixed with Republican elites.
Months before their earliest known work with Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman also lobbied at least one congressman — former U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican — to call for the dismissal of the United States’ ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. She stepped down a year later after allegations in the conservative media that she had been disloyal to Trump.
While setting up meetings for Giuliani with Ukrainian officials, the men also promoted a business plan of their own: Selling American liquefied natural gas to Ukraine to replace Russian imports disrupted by war.
Three days before the call itself, OCCRP and BuzzFeed had already laid out parts of the crime that SDNY has since indicted. And that profile was part of the whistleblower complaint provided to DOJ, in which DOJ claimed they could find no evidence of a crime.
FBI’s three investigative levels are Full Investigations (opened once FBI has evidence that a crime has occurred), Preliminary Investigations (opened once FBI has reason to believe a crime has been committed), and Assessments (the work FBI does to assess the credibility of tips). FBI Agents are expected — encouraged, explicitly, as a matter of national security — to do searches of FBI’s existing investigative databases at the Assessment level. They do this not just to make sure that suspected foreign agents like Parnas and Fruman aren’t allowed to insinuate themselves into top tiers of power unnoticed, but also for deconfliction, to make sure DOJ knows precisely which part of DOJ is investigating which people.
Had FBI followed its DIOG based on the information included in the whistleblower complaint, it would have been crystal clear that the July 25 call related to an ongoing Full Investigation, and the July 25 call — and the President’s extortion — would have been made part of that investigative record.
The Criminal Division Chief has confessed it did not follow protocols in reviewing this complaint
All of which brings me full cycle to DOJ’s efforts to pretend they didn’t know that Rudy was a suspected criminal when they met with him to discuss the accused criminals he represents.
Brian Benczkowski, the head of the Criminal Division (and yet, someone who has never prosecuted a case), claims that he had no way of knowing that Rudy Giuliani’s clients and co-conspirators were about to be indicted when he met with Rudy on some date no one wants to reveal. That may be true — though if it is, it means either his staffers did almost no due diligence before setting up that meeting, or the fact that Rudy, in addition to Parnas and Fruman, was under active investigation did not dissuade Benczkowski from taking the meeting.
But, if the meeting took place after the whistleblower review, as multiple reporters at NYT seem to believe it did, for him to claim that he didn’t know about Parnas and Fruman also amounts to an explicit confession that the investigators reviewing the whistleblower complaint did not follow FBI guidelines requiring them to look up all the names in a tip to see if the FBI already knows about them.
That is, Brian Benczkowski, in trying to claim ignorance of Rudy’s own legal problems in advance of that meeting, confessed that his division, hiding behind whatever false excuses, did not properly investigate the whistleblower complaint.
February 14: Barr sworn in.
February, undated: Barr and Public Integrity lawyers reporting to Brian Benczkowski briefed on investigation into Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, though NYT reported lawyer questioned about Rudy in that time period.
March 5: Barr briefed on Mueller investigation.
March 22: Mueller investigation concludes.
March 24: Barr releases misleading “summary” of Mueller Report.
March 26: John Solomon posts column first reviewed by Joe DiGenova, Victoria Toensing, and Lev Parnas
April 19: DOJ releases redacted Mueller Report.
May, undated: State IG Steve Linick receives Rudy dossier, passes on to FBI.
May 31: Barr does interview explaining his Durham investigation without once explaining any irregularities to justify investigation.
June 20: Campaign Legal Center submits supplemental complaint to FEC.
July 18: OMB informs Departments that Trump has ordered suspension of all aide to Ukraine.
July 25: Trump-Zelensky phone call.
Week after call: Whistleblower informs CIA General counsel Courtney Simmons Elwood, who speaks several times to NSC lawyer John Eisenberg.
August 12: Date of whistleblower complaint.
August 14: Elwood and Eisenberg inform National Security Division head, John Demers.
August 15: Demers reads transcript of call. Senior DOJ officials, including Jeffrey Rosen, Brian Benczkowski, and Barr informed.
The deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and Brian A. Benczkowski, the head of the department’s criminal division, were soon looped in, according to two administration officials.
Department officials began to discuss the accusations and whether and how to follow up, and Attorney General William P. Barr learned of the allegations around that time, according to a person familiar with the matter. Although Mr. Barr was briefed, he did not oversee the discussions about how to proceed, the person said.
August 26: IG Michael Atkinson hand delivers message on whistleblower complaint to Acting DNI Joseph Maguire.
September 3: Original classified OLC memo deeming the whistleblower complaint “not urgent,” treating Barr’s involvement as Top Secret.
September 20: Rudy, Parnas, Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenova lunch at Trump International across the street from DOJ. Rudy also attends State Dinner for Australia.
September 24: Declassification of Telcon. Version of OLC memo hiding Barr’s involvement as classified issue.
September 26: Release of TelCon and whistleblower complaint. Justice Department explains non-prosecution:
In August, the Department of Justice was referred a matter relating to a letter the director national intelligence had received from the inspector general for the intelligence community regarding a purported whistleblower complaint. The inspector general’s letter cited a conversation between the president and Ukrainian President Zelensky as a potential violation of federal campaign finance law, while acknowledging that neither the inspector general nor the complainant had firsthand knowledge of the conversation,” Kupec said.
“Relying on established procedures set forth in the justice manual, the department’s criminal division reviewed the official record of the call and determined based on the facts and applicable law that there was no campaign finance violence and that no further action was warranted. All relevant components of the department agreed with this legal conclusion, and the department has concluded this matter,” Kupec concluded.
In another statement, Kupec said that Barr had not spoken with Mr. Trump about Ukraine investigating Biden, and that the president had not asked Barr to contact Ukraine or Giuliani.
September 29: AP claims Barr was “surprised and angry” when he learned he had been lumped in with Rudy. His further denials include a lot of wiggle room (including unofficial contacts).
Barr has not spoken with Trump about investigating Biden or Biden’s son Hunter, and Trump has not asked Barr to contact Ukranian officials about the matter, the department said. Barr has also not spoken with Giuliani about anything related to Ukraine, officials have said.
October 1: State IG Steve Linick briefs Congress on opposition packet routed to him from Pompeo. Preservation letters to Parnas and Fruman.
October 4: Initial rough date for Rudy meeting with Benczkowski.
October 9: Parnas and Fruman lunch with Rudy at Trump Hotel across from DOJ, later that eventing they are indicted and arrested.
October 10: Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman arrest unsealed. Anonymous DOJ sources report that Barr was briefed in February and “in recent weeks.”
Attorney General William Barr was briefed on the case in February, shortly after he was confirmed. Barr has received additional briefings in recent weeks and fully supports the case.
October 11: NYT reports that Rudy under investigation for Ukraine work.
October 18: NYT reports that Rudy was lobbying Brian Benczkowski and lawyers from Fraud section “a few weeks ago” about a very sensitive bribery case.
October 20: NYT story with on-the-record quote from Peter Carr states Benczkowski and fraud section lawyers would not have met with Giuliani if they had known of the investigation of his associates; it describes the meeting as taking place “several weeks ago.”
October 21: CNN adds DOJ clarification that Rudy was not central to investigation briefed to Barr in February, even though CI Agents were questioning witnesses by March, and that Public Integrity lawyers (who report to Benczkowski) were briefed.
Maybe it’s just me, but it sure seems that a LOT of these insider legal folks doing the covering up have a prior history working for Kirkland and Ellis. It’s almost like that place churns out people specifically for this purpose. (Yeah, I’m looking at you Brian.)
It looks like they’ve finally tied it all together…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/prosecutors-flagged-possible-ties-between-ukrainian-gas-tycoon-and-giuliani-associates/2019/10/22/4ee22e7c-f020-11e9-b648-76bcf86eb67e_story.html
Does anybody know what Kupec meant, “no campaign finance violence”? Is that some FEC term of art?
Perhaps the key word is “finance” as Trump didn’t attempt to squeeze monies out of Ukraine, but instead wanted Ukraine to create false evidence of wrongdoing by the Biden family?
Blackmail with weapons necessary to the successful defense of Ukraine on the one hand, and phony dirt on the Biden family necessary to Trump’s successful reelection on the other hand.
Corruption indeed, on the part of Trump, rather than Ukraine, which seems to have squelched its corruption just in time to be shocked by Trump’s corruption. And being very unprofessionally covered up by Trump men at the FBI.
Probably an autocorrect mistake that didn’t get caught because it’s not a misspelling. Other references in that CBS piece are to “violation” instead.
There are several unaswered questions that you raise in this well-documented post. One, how come Barr has never commented publicly in any extended form on being mentioned in the July 25 Ukraine call, in which Trump’s summary of the transcript implies he is a major player along with Rudy.
Barr’s role in this is as fuzzy as the DOJ’s effort to obfuscate both its own firsthand knowledge of the whistleblower complaint and whom within the department reviewed it the first time after the second look was acknowledged and dismissed. My assumption is, Barr thought he could bury the first report because the WB claimed no firsthand knowledge of the call and its contents instead relying on the word of others.
The reason for buryng it are manifold: many admin figures listened to the conversation, thus had personal knowledge implicating them in whatever went down, and certain officials recognizing the political danger of what was said, sought to consign the record of it to a server for secretly coded reports and files for limited eyes only. That move was seen as a way to keep the matter under wraps.
However, the WB was not acting on his own, and thus his second effort to note the actions taken to put it on the server as well hide the details of the call made two things imperative: learning the WB’s identity in order to construct a proper defense, timeline and explanation for Trump’s conversation during the call. Because no one knew who filed the complaint, they couldn’t create an official backstory to cover all their legal bases and timeline issues. If you don’t know who filed the complaint, you don’t know who knew what and when they knew it, and you can’t offer a valid or coherent explanation for anything.
That is why the White House released the summary transcript. It wasn’t released for transparency purposes. It was released as a way to ferret out other information and see how it played. The release was also a way to relieve political pressure and forestall the criticism being raised by House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff who had certain knowledge of the complaint’s origins, which also prevented DOJ from burying the story behind its public statement on the complaint’s review.
That statement was also supposed to cover or at least obfuscate any reports that belatedly surfaced noting that DOJ had two looks at the original and the second attempt of the WB to bring the complaint to official attention.
The fact that the first one suggested there was no firsthand knowledge bought time but the second one put everyone on the clock especially after Schiff made the issue public more than a month after Congress was supposed to have received it from the inspector general following review by DNI. Part of the cover-up attempt was the way the complaint meandered its way to Congress. And that point has been buried, but it’s central to how DOJ thought it might disrupt the report from going public.
This explains, by the way, why the Republicans made such a stink about Schiff’s role in handling the complaint and the level of his engagement in making it public. So, the Republicans and DOJ are now stuck with the sticky wicket of explaining Rudy’s role in the Ukraine, when his work there grew out of the Mueller Report and efforts to discredit its findings. That to me is the motivation for the Ukraine scandal, drummed up by Manafort and the help of the Kremlin. Trump is still paying off campaign debts left over from 2016, which explains his foreign policy and related actions.
DOJ now has to thread the needle on Trump’s lawyer’s activities, the Igor and Lev show, who are merely sideshow operators for Ukraine and Russian oligarchs doing their dirty work and money laundering on the ground in Florida, Europe and Ukraine wherever Russian money flows with deals to make. The reason we haven’t heard from Barr is because he is still trying to figure out how to clean up this whole mess. If anyone can do it, he certainly can.
Thank you. All roads lead to Russia, and now if grand jury testimony and all other evidence Mueller collected that underwrites his report could become available to the public through the congress…well, it won’t if Pelosi doesn’t let any of her committees dig it out with the help of the federal courts. Sigh
“The reason we haven’t heard from Barr is because he is still trying to figure out how to clean up this whole mess. If anyone can do it, he certainly can.”
You mean Barr is burying this whole mess. There’s zero indication he is doing anything but that when he hasn’t ensured all of his subordinates fully support the House investigations.
And from what is probably the relevant section of EW’s timeline in this post:
If this sequence is not the critically relevant for your point, please correct.
Appreciate such an informative comment on such a detailed post.
That Sept 3 detail from EW’s timeline continues to puzzle: “…treating Barr’s involvement as Top Secret.” See also, Barr’s involvement as a classified issue on Sept 24.
How do those correlate with his global travel spree?
Mystifying.
Amazing site long time follower first time posting
“Parnas got a $1.2 million infusion from a lawyer who helps foreigner launder money through real estate”
Where did the lawyer get the money from?
Hi Marcus, and welcome! Please join in more often.
Firtash, the oligarch/ mobster/ oil man, currently fighting extradition to the U.S.
I wonder if Firtash was the “sensitive bribery case” Giuliani was lobbying Benczkowski about? Seems pretty coincidental…
I wasn’t aware the source had been identified. Do you have a cite/source?
What I read was that the $1.2 million came from an anonymous trust, administered by a Florida lawyer that advertises he is knowledgeable about how to avoid federal reporting requirements for foreign purchases of real estate. Setting up trusts is one of those methods.
Evidently, Bill Taylor’s testimony is quite something.
https://twitter.com/benyc/status/1186690494694383622
10:07 AM – 22 Oct 2019
https://twitter.com/dcpoll/status/1186681413707403264
9:31 AM – 22 Oct 2019
Links to:
https://twitter.com/dcpoll/status/1180917631144140800
11:47 AM – 6 Oct 2019
heh!
https://twitter.com/benyc/status/1186692092216696833
10:13 AM – 22 Oct 2019
https://twitter.com/ShimonPro/status/1186692600054583296
10:15 AM – 22 Oct 2019
Thanks for the timeline! This is amazing!
Your chart posted on Twitter is really great. I could not help but notice one response to your chart.
Jake Storm replying to a comment stating there was no whistleblower investigation:
“It’s either that or he’s walled off.”
(He being Brian Benczkowski)
With Brian’s Strolz Friedburg/Alpha Bank ties and refusing to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation, I wonder if a silent walling off happened?
But DT did nominate him as Asst. in June 2017, the month DT tried to fire Mueller just as the investigation widened.
Just testing the dates in March 2019….FYI – on March 20th 2019 Jon Solomon was on Hannity with both Toensing and DiGenova with a breaking story about a Ukrainian Parliament member’s tape recording proving the Ukrainians were trying to help Hillary, as well as pushing that Ambassador Yovanovitch should be recalled.
DiGenova said:
“But, Sean, here’s the thing that’s really changing, now we know that not was there a Russian collusion through Fusion GPS and through the MI-6 guy and all of that. But now, we know that Ukrainian officials deeply involved in trying to help Hillary Clinton through this and we also now know that the current United States ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, has bad-mouth the president of the United States to Ukrainian officials and has told them not to listen or worry about Trump policy because he is going to be impeached.”
This woman needs to be called home to the United States for consultation.”
On March 22nd 2019, DiGenova told Ingram he had just learned Yovanovitch had been recalled:
JOE DIGENOVA, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: No, they didn’t. And, in fact, Laura, you mentioned that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, contrary to what a lot of people thought, was still in her job. I learned this evening that the president has ordered her dismissal from her post as the United States Ambassador to Ukraine as a result of her activities there, which were complained of by Congressman Sessions. She is known and reported by people there to have badmouthed the president of United States, Donald Trump, to have told Ukrainians not to listen to him or obey his policy because he was going to be impeached. And finally her activities have caught up with her.
I am so glad that my (our?) misgivings about these folks are coming into focus. Remember the red flags when Benzckowski was nominated? Despite knowing that he was totally unfit for the job, the Goopers confirmed him anyway. Who put him up for this position? Who was weaving this fabric even before Barr was brought in?
Knives out
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/22/fec-ellen-weintraub-campaign-finance-law-229872
Op-ed writing beyotch better watch her own back because she’s a Republican and she’s attacking the one person keeping the FEC on track instead of doing her part to insist on a replacement for the other Republican hack who up and quit his role as a commissioner.
We see you, Caroline Hunter.
I couldn’t help but notice the top four headlines on The Washington Post right now:
“U.S. envoy says he was told Trump wanted Ukraine aid to be contingent on probe of Bidens, 2016 election”
“Trump compares investigation to “lynching,” drawing condemnation”
“Parliament denies support for fast-tracked Brexit deal”
“Russia, Turkey agree to remove Kurdish fighters along Syrian border as U.S. withdraws troops”
I can’t help but think that Putin is happy as a clam right now. The seeds of discord he sowed in 2015/2016 vis-a-vis Brexit and the US presidential election are reaping incredible benefits for him now. The US and Great Britain are laughing stocks and Putin gets wish-list items crossed off. Meanwhile, Trump is now in the weakest position he’s yet found himself, so perhaps more to come? Good times!
Yep – Putin is feeling his oats.
Even if one or two of his interferences into other countries’ politics and even population control. Oh, a few calculated assassination attempts/successes also.
I wonder if tRump, bJohnson, bOlsanaro, and others have a nice meeting to discuss how they are collectively f’ing their countries, on behalf of pUtin and other plutocrats.
I don’t think any of them – especially Trmp – see it that way.
Agreed. Trump can only see himself and is, like Mongo, just a pawn in game of life.
The violence threshold was an item for classification purpose and downgrading urgency.
Ukraine produces uranium. Bet that Trump wanted to end run EU/nato for Jared and Bonesaw nuke proliferation
Odd how Barr manages to ignore the whistleblower complaint that comes to the DOJ “in two different forms” but willingly goes hurtling around the globe in pursuit of debunked conspiracy theories about the DNC server.
It’s all about protecting the orange one and himself – the orange one is his meal ticket, and himself so he can benefit fully.
Meal ticket? I think Barr could safely skip a few of those.
Literally and figuratively, I think. He probably has made crap-ton of money in private practice and government service. I’ve been thinking about this a lot these days: What motivates Bill Barr? Is it his so-called Christian morals thing? Or some foreign entity jerking his chain?
Tom….Yes. Exactly.
AFAIK, Barr doesnt need $$, so is his motivation purely ideological, or power, or jobs for his kids? All 3?
Barr knew of Rudy because he handled Epstein?
Almost no cousins were married in the making of this tweet.
I note that Barr and DoJ’s statement does not indicate that Barr did not use any cutouts to communicate with RG, just that he never met with or talked with him directly.
So on Sept 20, that’s when these folks all met with Toensig’s son for lunch across from DoJ headquarters or…?
Comparing William Taylor’s opening statement released today with that of Gordon Sondland from last Thursday, it’s apparent that one man is a professional, the other is a poseur. One man has dedicated his life to the service of his country, the other “… still considers himself to be in the hospitality business.”
ba-dump-bump *TSH*
(Adding: ^ that was for the humor line.
–
But also Taylor noting his Vietnam service with the 101st Airborne caught my eye as a *firm opener* as to his loyalty and service to our country.)
The Screaming Eagles vs. Corruption in the Flesh!
I tend to wonder about things that aren’t really all that important, but here’s something I just don’t understand: If you’re going to go out of your way to tar the Ambassador to Ukraine and then ultimately have her recalled (because she presumably wouldn’t play ball on something as clownishly corrupt as all that followed her departure), then why in the world would you pick Bill Taylor–a career government employee who’s actually qualified to be the Ambassador to Ukraine, since he’s held the position before–to replace her as Acting Ambassador? Seriously, who made this decision? The whole reason to fire her was to install a stooge in her place. Instead, in one of the handful of competent appointments in the history of this Administration, they put in Bill Taylor. Who made this decision? Because they’re either the stupidest person in this whole mess, or they’re someone who knew exactly what they were doing and intentionally picked someone who would be above suspicion when the shit hit the fan.
From Taylor’s opening statement it was Pompeo who asked him to return.
“On May 28 of this year, I met with Secretary Mike Pompeo who asked me to return to Kyiv to lead our embassy in Ukraine.”
Worth reading Taylor’s 15 page opening statement:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-taylor-opening-statement-read-the-full-text-of-the-top-us-diplomats-statement-to-congress/
Chilling. When Bolton starts looking like the guy riding in on the white horse, you know things are all fucked up. Gonna be a few sleepless nights in D.C. – and this is just the opening statement.
Trump has a great future. He could solve America’s addiction crisis. Anybody can rehabilitate themselves using Trump.
Repeating what’s been said here before, but the MSM keeps missing it. (For example, they consistently misdescribe the Zelensky call memorandum as a “transcript.”)
The Ukraine call was about Trump attacking Joe Biden in 2020. It was also about his inventing reasonable doubt about Russia’s election interference during the 2016 election.
As for the Biden, it was not about Ukraine conducting a legitimate investigation. Ukraine had already looked and found nothing. It was about Zelensky’s public announcement of an investigation. Trump wanted fodder for his propaganda campaign.
The questionable stuff Joe’s son did – accepting highly paid employment for which he was not qualified, which was an attempt to gain leverage over Joe – must pay half the rent inside the Beltway and a good chunk of it in every capital in the world. It funds the Trump family handsomely. It is important to stop or reduce. But it is not what Trump was after any more than he wanted to fight corruption.
EoH: It was about Zelensky’s public announcement of an investigation. Trump wanted fodder for his propaganda campaign.
https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1186729842538102784
12:43 PM – 22 Oct 2019
Links to:
Running Covert Propaganda Against Americans Is Illegal. Trump Tried It Anyway.
The whistleblower stopped a covert psychological operation against the American public dead in its tracks
https://gen.medium.com/running-covert-propaganda-against-americans-is-illegal-trump-tried-it-anyway-c324133b218a
10/7/19
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that more comes out about the role of Ken Vogel of the NY Times infamous DC bureau.
Vogel was pushing the Giuliani narrative long before the whistleblower made waves, and I think it is certain that Vogel and the Times would have been willing accomplices if they had a little more time.
If the Times is smart, they will get out ahead of the story before someone else reveals it. I don’t think the Times is very smart.
Institutionally, the DC bureau and top management think a lot like Trump’s staff.
What I don’t get is why they needed the Ukrainians when the whole Biden thing was laid out in the video associated with this March tweet
https://twitter.com/TrueNewsGlobal/status/1107635076878266369?s=19
I suspect they were trying to make it look like a legitimate thing.
Mildly interesting in that it is the earliest instance of “crooked Joe” nickname I could find.
I suspect a lot of this comes down to targeting specific outlets and reporters who can be counted on to make the story into something more than a quick hit crazy tweet story.
I think the standard dynamic is an administration source pitches a story to a credulous reporter or editor, and gets feedback that they need X or Y before they run with it. In this case the missing piece was probably official action by the Ukranian government, so the Trump side went out to manufacture it.
Vogel at the NY Times in September complained that Giuliani’s recklessness was interfering with the stories he was trying to write about Hunter and Joe Biden. The Times will print garbage like their Uranium One articles, but it needs to be sourced garbage, and that is what was happening with Ukraine.
Followups can run with unsourced hints at gathering clouds, but they want their first cheap shot to be a superficially legit article.
If Trump were following Vlad’s playbook, which is the only thing he does religiously, keeping Ukraine’s government preoccupied, less effective, and less able to defend itself against Russian military incursions would be prime objectives. Doing the same to the United States would be even more valuable.
OT but relayed:
DeSantis has problems…
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-ne-desantis-parnas-fruman-giuliani-20191022-5epgf3i5szcp3n2x37blv6szzm-story.html
[clutches faux pearls and falls onto foam pad]
Couldn’t happen to a guy who was actually honest, I think.
By Hook Or By Crook
Checkmate: by a King and a rook
while he is cozy in his own nook,
is it because he continues to look
at a red Fox and its donnybrook?
Or did he fail in protecting the cook,
seasoning taxes in a peppered book?
Was it his head or his hand that shook
as he prepared for whatever it took?
His men have flopped as has his steed,
and he must rely on an unstable breed.
He doesn’t trust the ones whose creed
divine rapture while he would bleed.
His constitution defined by greed,
would it ever allow him to concede?
He muses if somehow he were freed,
he’d finally have time to learn and read.
He shouts for his pet Secretary,
the one who is at the Treasury,
and then he thinks so cleverly,
“We both have our celebrity.”
But as he is lost in reverie,
his shoulders stoop so heavily,
he seems to lose his energy,
and then it is his memory.
Checkmate: by a King and a rook,
he wonders how it was he mistook
a loyal fan and a common hook:
It all boils down to being a crook.
The DOJ elements are pretty complicated, thanks for laying it out, evidentiarily constrained as usual. I wonder if we’ll ever get an enlage of truth-tellers or testifiants out of this group, as with currently from State.
An aside re Rudy’s other foreign entanglements and how they may dovetail here (on the Ukraine issues directly, and on the pro-Turkey-lobbying methodologically, by proxy of added wheedlers):
Last night WaPo had an article re Orban (and Putin) getting Trump’s ear on Ukraine, how the proverbial adults in the room did their best to stave off contact with Orban, until they couldn’t (etc.):
Putin and Hungary’s Orban helped sour Trump on Ukraine
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/putin-and-hungarys-orban-helped-sour-trump-on-ukraine/2019/10/21/a0af1e9c-f40b-11e9-ad8b-85e2aa00b5ce_story.html
Last week I had noted a December 2018 quote of Rudy’s, bragging about his work in Poland and Hungary:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/10/16/on-the-potential-viability-of-foreign-agent-charges-for-rudy-giuliani/#comment-810908
I saw that the recent NBC news article going in-depth on Rudy’s foreign business never mentioned Hungary or Poland.
Also Trump had just recently (re) mentioned a new US base in Poland (I think it died with the news cycle).
Adding: here’s that NBC News I referred to (from Oct 20th):
Lawyer? Lobbyist? Fixer? Rudy Giuliani’s overseas activities leave trail of questions
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/lawyer-lobbyist-fixer-rudy-giuliani-s-overseas-activities-leave-trail-n1069161
Here’s the part of the comment re the Rudy quote:
Uh, I am just going to add this to the Hungary side-car. Retweeted by Rayne and Marcy, from Julia Ioffe this afternoon:
Julia Ioffe: “How was the fact that the American ambassador to Hungary napping in his underwear with Viktor Orban not in the lede of this story? [links NYT, screenshot quote-blocked below]”
https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1187058390721351684
ETA: revival of Victorian homosociality?
Linking two pieces of info re Warsaw events (not sure where else to stick this):
In the WSJ video (~ 4:38 mark) of Parnas’s IG, there’s a February 13, 2019 post of him and Rudy smoking cigars in Warsaw, which Parnas labeled, “Middle East peace!!!”.
See Laura Rozen thread (Oct. 12th) as to what the band of scofflaws was up to (Rudy appears to have on the same outfit w/sweater vest in the photo she quote-tweets):
“Giuliani and Parnas in Warsaw in February 13-14 2019, where Giuliani secretly met Lutsenko, while publicly attending MEK rally [quote tweet with image]”
https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1183027668050161665
“Pompeo, Pence, Kushner and Netanyahu were also in Warsaw for a ME conference those days. @Andrew__Roth from the WB complaint [screenshot text]”
Adding: I found the caption odd when I noticed it; it seems to suggest that (duh) Rudy & Parnas were not “walled off” from the whole of the conspiracy (to remake US foreign relations as RU’s– or vice versa).
*rephrase: to remake US foreign relations as per (apparently) RU’s goals. “Was directed” kicked up a notch.
After Bill Taylor’s testimony today, anyone who refuses to comply with a subpoena should be arrested.
Arrested by who? Where will they be detained at? Do you think a Habeas Corpus motion would not be granted in a split second? Hell, if I was a judge, I would grant that in a second.