Andrew Miller Was [Probably] Questioned about Someone He Knew Under a Different Name
Among the FBI 302s BuzzFeed just liberated appears to be the 302 from the original FBI interview of Andrew Miller. The date matches, the interview was conducted (as Miller’s was) by agents showing up to serve a subpoena, the location is redacted, the name is six characters, and the interview closely focuses on Roger Stone. In this post, I will generally use “Miller” as the interviewee here, with the understanding that identification of this as him is not 100%.
The interview confirms something I have long suspected: Miller was a witness to details about a person he did not know by proper name. This was the last person the FBI agents asked Miller about (see below for the others). The 302 describes that Miller, “did not immediately recognize the name [redacted] but after discussion, determined he knew the individual in question as [redacted].” After two and a half redacted paragraphs, the 302 records that Miller “had never met [redacted] but had seen a photo of him.” The rest of the discussion of this person is redacted.
Given everything else we know about Miller’s testimony — and how, after extensive discussions with Stone in the wake of this interview — Miller fought his subpoena to the DC Circuit, it is highly likely that Miller knows that Stone met this person at the RNC, where Miller was running Stone’s schedule. Shortly after Stone met with this person, at least according to Michael Cohen, Stone gave Trump advance knowledge that the DNC emails would be dropping days later.
That’s the most interesting detail from this interview, but 302 has other key details.
After two paragraphs laying out whom Miller worked for, his interview included the following:
- Almost 20 paragraphs describing his relationship with Stone, virtually all of it redacted under [dubious] privacy redactions. The unredacted bits describe:
- Miller hadn’t seen Stone for three or four weeks and didn’t know whether he was in NY or FL
- Stone was not a tech guy
- Stone ran his own Twitter account
- Stone traveled to NYC for several days every week
- A claim he had never been to Stone’s current home
- A (false) claim that he had done “nothing really” for Stone over the previous two years, as well as an explanation that no one continued to work for Stone once they had a family because Stone demanded too much time
- About ten paragraphs commenting on Stone’s relationship with Trump, including the following claims, most dubious:
- Miller did not think Stone “was a lawbreaker, nor would he break the law for Trump”
- Stone mostly talked about Hillary incessantly because he was selling a book
- Miller did not really remember talking to Stone about the DNC hack
- Miller spoke to Stone about the media coverage of him since the election
- Stone was “all about Twitter,” and focused on the retweets he got, but did not pay for them (this conflicts with details in the Facebook takedown of Stone’s accounts and other testimony)
- Miller had not been in contact with any Russians himself
- Three paragraphs about Alex Jones (who was raised significantly before Corsi in this interview), including:
- Miller didn’t like Jones
- Miller thought Stone worked there for the money and the reach to areas of the country that “the left has forgotten”
- Miller didn’t know who did InfoWar’s IT and digital strategy, but it was better than Stone’s because they had more money
- Discussions of two people whose names are redacted (one of these is likely Sam Nunberg):
- Of the first person, Miller suggested that Stone took credit for things he didn’t do and lied to people to get credibility with them
- Of the second, Miller described he and Stone having a “love-hate” relationship
- A paragraph about Michael Caputo, describing their relationship as “complicated”
- Just one paragraph about Jerome Corsi, though Miller appears to have testified that he wasn’t aware of what the two were up to
- Miller also claimed not to know if Stone used encrypted apps to communicate (the record actually shows he started using them more later in 2016) and made a false claim that he and Stone primarily communicated via email (Miller turned over texts between him and Stone, and Stone was an avid texter, though all of his texts from 2017 disappeared)
Miller was given the opportunity to correct any lies he told in the interview, but he chose not to.
“Miller did not think Stone ‘was a lawbreaker, nor would he break the law for Trump.'”
JHFC. Are all GOP aides as naive and ignorant of history as Miller? Stone was so committed to serial criminal Richard Nixon that he had a tattoo of him needled onto his back. Breaking the law is politics for a guy like Stone. Or, are people like Miller aides because they are good at parroting the company line, regardless of how unrelated to reality it is?
Is there a secret society of dickheads that sit around scheming loopholes that get passed along to corrupt legislators?
I had the same thought. “Goddamnit you don’t know the guy you call your uncle was indoctrinated in election crime as an 18 year old?!?!?!”
I am having trouble finding the RNC Michael Cohen spell testimony.
A meeting at the RNC possibly with Torshin or Kisylak or?
One Cohen statement was that he overheard Stone and Assange on speaker phone in July.
Or does this 302 refer to the May 29th Miami meeting with Greenberg aka Oknyansky and an Alexei who claimed he had worked at the Clinton Foundation? Following which was the Stone-Caputo text.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-associate-roger-stone-reveals-new-contact-with-russian-national-during-2016-campaign/2018/06/17/4a8123c8-6fd0-11e8-bd50-b80389a4e569_story.html
Thanks
It’s interesting that nobody but Greenberg mentions “Alexei” attending that meeting. Especially given they’re suggesting that Greenberg was an FBI plant.
But, if they’re trying to hide some kind of interaction with “Alexei” one would think that they’d also not have wanted him wandering around at the convention.
The Greenberg and Alexei Rasin ( last name revealed at least by this link April 19, 2019, from Mueller report? ) Miami meetup per the May 29 2016 texts revealed by Stone. The convention was in July in Cleveland.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article229413589.html
I wonder if Stone kept a special phone for non incriminating throw away texts.
Right wing press say they easily contacted Rasin in February 2020.
The DNC emails ran up to May 25, 2016 per Andrea Peterson of the Wapo.
Correction, Cohen reported overhearing Stone talking about Assange on the speakerphone
Anyone who has to ever claim they’re not paying for retweets is paying for retweets.
What?
The thirteenth bullet just appears to be Stone being Stone:
“ Stone was ‘all about Twitter,’ and focused on the retweets he got, but did not pay for them (this conflicts with details in the Facebook takedown of Stone’s accounts and other testimony)”
The Guardian’s headline writers rarely fail to provide a good laugh. Today, they provide two. They’ve discovered that the USPS’s board chair, Robert Mike Duncan, “has high-level ties to the Republican party.” Interested readers knew a month ago that Duncan was a former head of the RNC, and that he ran a super Pac for Donald Trump. They knew a week ago that Duncan “recently” accepted the post as manager of a $130 million super Pac for Mitch McConnell. (The patronage and influence he gains from spending that much money is profound.) Yet, the Guardian seems surprised that Duncan refuses to rein in Louis DeJoy.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/sep/03/usps-board-of-governors-robert-duncan-republican-party
The Guardian is also vexed that Donald Trump is building the very “deep state” he rails against. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/03/as-election-nears-trump-builds-the-very-deep-state-he-railed-against
By that, it means Trump is politicizing government – John Ratcliffe’s corruption of the intelligence community, Steve Mnuchin’s corruption of Treasury, Bill Barr’s of the DoJ. All in aid of Trump’s re-election, as if he were the tin-pot dictator of some shit hole country. That’s not new. BushCheney tried something similar, installing political commissars across government; corrupting the intelligence process; corrupting the staffing, evaluations, and management of the DoJ. But it worked at a fraction of the scale that Trump does.
What the Guardian describes is systemic rot. The deep state, however, traditionally refers to the American version of the nobility and the top ranks of the old boy net – robber barons, banking and corporate titans, and their principal courtiers – which enduringly influence government, whether in or out of it. The classic example of the genus is David Rockefeller (oil, banking, founder of the Trilateral Commission, force behind his family’s foundation). He was a principal. John J. McCloy, Henry Kissinger, and Samuel Huntington, were more visible agent courtiers. Contemporary examples abound: Bezos, Zuckerberg, Koch, Bill Barr, Eugene Scalia.
Its members’ ranks vary at the margins. They often disagree, but coalesce around common goals: lower taxes; anti-inflationary monetary policy; less regulation; no reforms that would enhance disclosure and accountability. Needless to say, they use their power to undercut their opponents, whether in society, the academy, non-profits, government, or business. That’s a different problem than Trump’s rotting of government from the head down.