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Rudy Giuliani's Alleged "Cooperation" Is a Threat to Lay out How Bill Barr and Jeffrey Rosen Protected Russian Disinformation

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emptywheel
The Russian scandal of 2020 is, in many ways, even more scandalous than the Russian scandal of 2016. At least Paul Manafort and Roger Stone were in a position to claim plausible deniability. Bill Barr and Jeffrey Rosen are not.
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Let The Girls Rock And Roll At Indy

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bmaz
The good news: There is a full on female racing team about to run the Indy 500 in about an hour and a half. The effort is awesome. Hopefully transformational. For any interested, this is a must read ESPN article by Alyssa Roenigk: Roughly…
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The Rudy Giuliani Warrants Likely Go Up To the Andrii Derkach Meeting

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emptywheel
The twin Rudy Giuliani warrants likely end on either December 5 or December 31, 2019, including his first meeting with Andrii Derkach but no later.
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Rudy Giuliani's Support Role in the Mueller Report

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emptywheel
Rudy Giuliani had a significant role in the 2016 campaign, and Mike Flynn believed he'd be among the most likely people to hunt down stolen Hillary emails. Yet he barely shows up as a participant in the Mueller Report.
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Lev Parnas Failed to Delete His iCloud Content Just before DOJ Got a Secret Warrant for Rudy Giuliani's iCloud Content

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emptywheel
Rudy Giuliani is wailing about the suggestion that DOJ might have suspected he would delete content from his iCloud. But shortly before DOJ got a secret warrant targeting him, SDNY would have discovered that Lev Parnas had just unsuccessfully tried to delete content from his iCloud.
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Three Things: Pouring Cement Down the Wells

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Rayne
There's no going back to the toxic avoidance of disruption. Change has come whether we like it or not -- fossil fuel industries are finally feeling it.
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Republicans Filibuster Keeping the Capitol Safe

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emptywheel
Republicans just filibustered the bill to create a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6, 54-35. It was the first bill killed by filibuster in this Congress. I never held out much hope that the commission would work with our partisanship…
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Jeffrey Rosen Separated the Investigation that Could Turn Rudy Into a Russian Agent from the Rudy Investigation

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emptywheel
Because of steps Jeffrey Rosen took after SDNY started investigating Rudy Giuliani, the part of the investigation that relates to Russian agent Andreii Derkach is in EDNY and not SDNY, and Rudy is not a subject.
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Lev Parnas' Gamble: The Three Nested Investigations

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emptywheel
Lev Parnas is trying to force the government to look at evidence he has reason to believe exists of a cover-up to protect Donald Trump.
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In [Legal] Defense of the Nazi

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emptywheel
The government has been holding January 6 defendant, Nazi sympathizer Timothy Hale-Cusanelli for four months, but they have yet to show that he was a key player in the January 6 attack.
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The Manafort Unsealing and Konstantin Kilimnik

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emptywheel
Earlier this week, the court unsealed the filings in Paul Manafort's case pertaining to his breach determination. I've put most of the filings below. Much of what has been unsealed is not new. Because Manafort's attorneys failed to actually…
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Bill Barr Issued Prosecution Declinations for Three Crimes in Progress

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emptywheel
The OLC memo that DOJ is trying to keep secret explains how Bill Barr ended up giving prosecution declinations for three crimes in progress: the pardon for false testimony obstruction Trump engaged in with Mike Flynn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort.
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RICO Comes to the January 6 Investigation -- But Not the Way You Think

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emptywheel
DOJ argues that they can seize the funds John Earle Sullivan made by selling his video of the insurrection by going through RICO thinking.
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Amy Berman Jackson Accuses Bill Barr of a Preemptive Strike on the Mueller Report

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emptywheel
Amy Berman Jackson is still considering whether to grant a stay of her decision to release the full Barr memo.
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"Purge:" Gordon Sondland Probably Just Won Himself Another Subpoena

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emptywheel
Gordon Sondland may or may not win his lawsuit trying to force the State Department and/or Mike Pompeo to reimburse his legal fees from testifying during impeachment. But he is bound to win a subpoena from SDNY.
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Lev Parnas Wants in on the Rudy Giuliani Warrant Bonanza

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emptywheel
Lev Parnas says there's stuff that will help his defense in the materials SDNY seized from Rudy Giuliani.
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Frankenstein's OLC: DOJ Says DOJ Can't Do What DOJ Did in the Barr Memo

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emptywheel
DOJ's memo asking Amy Berman Jackson to stay her opinion releasing the OLC memo admits that DOJ is not permitted to do what DOJ did with the Barr memo it is trying to withhold from FOIA. And part of the memo itself, which DOJ unsealed last night,…
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On the Barr Memo: Julie Straus Harris Says Julie Straus Harris' Unexplained "Flourish" Wasn't a Lie

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emptywheel
In DOJ's motion for a stay of Amy Berman Jackson's decision to release the entire Barr memo rationalizing giving Trump a clean bill of health in the Mueller investigation, Julie Straus Harris ignores ABJ's complaint about Julie Straus Harris' past work.
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Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, and the Ongoing Investigation into Cambridge Analytica

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emptywheel
Steve Bannon responded to what may have been Alexander Nix's pitch to reach out to Julian Assange to help find Hillary Clinton's missing emails in June 2016 by responding, "Love it." DOJ has hidden that email in a series of FOIA releases…
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Steve Bannon's Mueller and Mueller Aftermath Interviews, with Backup

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emptywheel
Given the release of the backup materials to several Steve Bannon interviews in the BuzzFeed FOIA, I wanted to pull together the known interviews Steve Bannon did as part of the Mueller investigation and its aftermath. I've discussed Bannon's…
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