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DOJ IG Finds Bill Barr’s Personal Intervention in Roger Stone Sentencing “Highly Unusual” But Not Illegal

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DOJ IG has released their long-awaited report on Bill Barr’s intervention in the Roger Stone sentencing.

The takeaway conclusion is that Barr (who refused to cooperate, as did several others) did not intervene in response to Trump’s tweets that day. Based on newly installed Acting US Attorney Tim Shea’s intervention, he had already intervened. DOJ IG concluded that Barr’s intervention was highly unsual, but did not look bad.

We recognize that the Department’s handling of the sentencing in the Stone case was highly unusual, including its filing of a second sentencing memorandum and DOJ leadership’s personal involvement in the preparation of that second memorandum. Moreover, Shea’s and Barr’s participation in the Stone sentencing, given their status as Administration political appointees and Stone’s relationship with the then President, resulted in questions being asked and allegations being made about the Department’s decision making. However, absent a law, rule, regulation, or Department policy that prohibits their participation (none of which exist here), whether the U.S. Attorney and/or the Attorney General should personally participate in such a matter is ultimately left to their discretion and judgment, including their assessment of how such involvement will affect public perceptions of the federal justice system and the Department’s integrity, independence, and objectivity

The report concluded that Aaron Zelinsky did not intentionally lie when he claimed there was a great deal of pressure. His belief that that was the case was good faith.

I’ll have more later.

The Conspiracy Beliefs Leading People to Leak

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Just weeks before he provided someone he believed to be a Russian official medical records from five people who had received medical care at Fort Bragg, Jamie Lee Henry told the undercover FBI employee he was speaking to that the Biden Administration hates Russia, in part, because Obama is an effeminate man intimidated by Vladimir Putin. (Henry came out as trans in 2015, but court filings, including from his own lawyer, refer to him with male pronouns, as did his spouse, Anna Gabrielian, in recorded conversations.)

Dr. Henry: We have an ideology too that is very rigid, black and white – a lot of Islamists are, and Christians as well – it creates a lot of violence, and potential violence. And um, you know the way that I am viewing what is going on right now in Ukraine is that the United States is using Ukrainians as a proxy for their own hatred towards Russia. I think the current administration has hatred toward Russia because Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 and I think Obama was offended by Putin because Obama is an effeminate man and he is intimidated by the values that Putin has just as many Americans are offended by Trump when he presents himself um and I think it is personality driven partly and a lot of people are dying as a result of people’s arrogance and personality.

Dr. Gabrielian: A lot more people died than needed to. Because of what we…. Um, America has done is prolong the bloodbath.

Dr. Henry: Not only that, you look at what we have done in Libya for instance. Hillary Clinton is very proud of what she has accomplished in Libya which is basically creating anarchy, there is slave trades going on in Libya now. Talk about oil being wasted. Oil being used to support terrorism. It is insane. And she is proud of it. And it is uh . . .

Dr. Gabrielian: I do think we are on the same page

Dr. Henry: At least George W Bush in his recent speech in Texas he had this Freudian slip – “oh and that too”– you know UC: yeah, I heard that too Dr. Henry: It’s like he actually feels guilt. I don’t think Dick Cheney feels any guilt for what he has done. It is very clear from his daughter when given a chance.

Lawyers for Henry and his spouse, Gabrielian, want to prevent the government from introducing these statements at trial.

To be sure, Henry’s statements to the FBI employee recording his alleged motivations for sharing non-public information with Russia included more than stupid hoaxes sustained by right wingers. He’s right about Hillary’s stupid glee about Libya, and he’s right about Iraq. His views on the damage US hegemony can do on the states itself is reasonable (though it lacks the consequent consideration of how much America’s hegemonic position makes American life cheap and easy).

I think the United States… My experience, having been in the military for 22 years, is we instigate a lot. And we are very arrogant and what we think we know and what we can do with the tools that we have. You know, and it has hurt many, many people across the globe. And I don’t see how constitutionally, you know, reading the American constitution and what I’ve sworn to defend, how this hegemony can persist, you know, without dire consequences to our own United States, you know, being suffering.

But as many self-imagined anti-imperialists have — and likely with the help of his spouse, who (Henry told the undercover FBI agent) had had him read Victor Suvorov’s Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy — Henry adopted facially ridiculous claims to justify siding with Russia on its unjustified invasion of Ukraine.

A separate motion from the government, seeking to prevent an entrapment defense, provides far more details on the extent to which Gabrielian, especially, sought out the contact with the person she believed to be a representative of Russia who told her, “My job is to collect information and to pass it on.” If the portrayal of those recordings is accurate, the government likely won’t need the reference to Obama’s imagined effeminacy.

While we don’t yet have Jack Teixeira’s description of his motivation for throwing his life away so he could share classified documents with a bunch of Discord kids, we’re seeing an increasing number of people, possibly including Jareh Dalke (who was arrested the same day as Gabrielian and Henry) decide to leak based on conspiracy theories sown by Trump and others.

That’s not surprising. After all, 1,000 people and counting similarly threw their lives away in response to other conspiracy theories Trump told, conspiracy theories that are, at least, adjacent to the ones claiming that the anger at Russia for 2016 was entirely about Hillary losing the election and not about an effort to protect democracy.

But as the government grapples with the case of Teixeira, it needs to similarly grapple with the salience that conspiracy theories fed by Russia have had on at least a handful of alleged leakers.

Bill Barr Claimed a Threat Meriting a Four Subpoena Investigation Didn’t Merit a Sentencing Enhancement

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In the aftermath of the Proud Boys-led insurrection, I’ve been reporting over and over on how Bill Barr’s DOJ treated threats by the Proud Boys against Amy Berman Jackson — which the probation office treated as the same kind of threat as the obstruction charge being used against many of the January 6 defendants — as a technicality unworthy of a sentencing enhancement.

Katelyn Polantz advanced that story last night, reporting that DOJ subpoenaed the four Proud Boys implicated by Roger Stone in his threat against ABJ for grand jury testimony.

Stone — testifying at a court hearing in 2019 to explain the post — said at the time that a person working with him on his social media accounts had chosen it.

Then, at another hearing the same year, Stone named names. Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, had been helping him ​with his social media, Stone said under oath, as had the Proud Boys’ Florida chapter founder Tyler Ziolkowski, who went by Tyler Whyte at the time; Jacob Engels, a Proud Boys associate who is close to Stone and identifies himself as a journalist in Florida; and another Florida man named Rey Perez, whose name is spelled Raymond Peres in the court transcript​.

A few days later, federal authorities tracked down the men and gave them subpoenas to testify to a grand jury, according to Ziolkowski, who was one of the witnesses.

Ziolkowski and the others flew to DC in the weeks afterwards to testify.

“They asked me about if I had anything to do about posting that. They were asking me if Stone has ever paid me, what he’s ever paid me for,” Ziolkowski told CNN this week. When he first received the subpoena, the authorities wouldn’t tell Ziolkowski what was being investigated, but a prosecutor later told him “they were investigating the picture and if he had paid anybody,” Ziolkowski said. He says he told the grand jury Stone never paid him, and that he hadn’t posted the photo.

Tarrio and Engels did not respond to inquiries from CNN, and Stone declined to respond to CNN’s questions. ​The FBI’s Washington, DC, office did not respond to requests for comment from CNN.

A person familiar with the case said it had closed without resulting in any charges.

For what it’s worth, given the interest Mueller showed in Stone’s social media work, given the close ties between Stone’s social media work and that of the Proud Boys, and given that parts of the investigation against Stone continued well after his trial, it’s possible prosecutors used Stone’s comments as a way to ask other questions: about whether Stone had paid four of his closest buddies in the Proud Boys (remember they were also looking for a notebook Stone used for his 2016 book that recorded all of his communications with Trump).

That said, DC’s US Attorney’s office paid for four witnesses to come to DC to testify about whether they had had a role in Stone’s threats against the judge presiding over his case.

That raises the stakes on the things Barr said publicly about this threat. As noted, in a sentencing memo written as Barr’s urging, DOJ claimed that the threat against ABJ “overlap[ped] … with the offense conduct in this case.”

Second, the two-level enhancement for obstruction of justice (§ 3C1.1) overlaps to a degree with the offense conduct in this case. Moreover, it is unclear to what extent the defendant’s obstructive conduct actually prejudiced the government at trial.

And DOJ dismissed the import of a threat against a judge by suggesting that if it didn’t prejudice prosecutors at trial, it doesn’t much matter.

More problematic still was Barr’s testimony before House Judiciary Committee last July, just over two months before the President said the Proud Boys should “stand back and stand by.”

When Congressman Ted Deutch asked Barr if he could think of any other case where threatening to kill a witness and then threatening a judge were treated as mere technicalities, Barr kept repeating, at least five times, that “the Judge agreed with me.”

Deutch: You said enhancements were technically applicable. Mr. Attorney General, can you think of any other cases where the defendant threatened to kill a witness, threatened a judge, lied to a judge, where the Department of Justice claimed that those were mere technicalities? Can you think of even one?

Barr: The judge agreed with our analysis.

Deutch: Can you think of even one? I’m not asking about the judge. I’m asking about what you did to reduce the sentence of Roger Stone?

Barr: [attempts to make an excuse]

Deutch: Mr. Attorney General, he threatened the life of a witness —

Barr: And the witness said he didn’t feel threatened.

Deutch: And you view that as a technicality, Mr. Attorney General. Is there another time

Barr: The witness — can I answer the question? Just a few seconds to answer the question?

Deutch: Sure. I’m asking if there’s another time in all the time in the Justice Department.

Barr: In this case, the judge agreed with our — the judge agreed with our —

Deutch: It’s unfortunate that the appearance is that, as you said earlier, this is exactly what you want. The essence of rule of law is that we have one rule for everybody and we don’t in this case because he’s a friend of the President’s. I yield.

That claim — that ABJ agreed with the analysis of Barr and his flunkies — was a lie, a lie made under oath. ABJ, a liberal judge without Barr’s lifetime authoritarian claims about crime, believed the sentencing guidelines are too harsh. She did not believe these enhancements were mere technicalities.

Indeed, in ruling that the enhancement for the threat against her applied — a threat against official proceedings, the same charge being used against many of the insurrectionists — she talked about how posting a threat on social media, “increased the risk that someone else, with even poorer judgment than he has, would act on his behalf.”

I suppose I could say: Oh, I don’t know that I believe that Roger Stone was actually going to hurt me, or that he intended to hurt me. It’s just classic bad judgment.

But, the D.C. Circuit has made it clear that such conduct satisfied the test. They said: To the extent our precedent holds that a §3C1.1 enhancement is only appropriate where the defendant acts with the intent to obstruct justice, a requirement that flows logically from the definition of the word “willful” requires that the defendant consciously act with the purpose of obstructing justice.

However, where the defendant willfully engages in behavior that is inherently obstructive, that is, behavior that a rational person would expect to obstruct justice, this Court has not required a separate finding of the specific intent to obstruct justice.

Here, the defendant willfully engaged in behavior that a rational person would find to be inherently obstructive. It’s important to note that he didn’t just fire off a few intemperate emails. He used the tools of social media to achieve the broadest dissemination possible. It wasn’t accidental. He had a staff that helped him do it.

As the defendant emphasized in emails introduced into evidence in this case, using the new social media is his “sweet spot.” It’s his area of expertise. And even the letters submitted on his behalf by his friends emphasized that incendiary activity is precisely what he is specifically known for. He knew exactly what he was doing. And by choosing Instagram and Twitter as his platforms, he understood that he was multiplying the number of people who would hear his message.

By deliberately stoking public opinion against prosecution and the Court in this matter, he willfully increased the risk that someone else, with even poorer judgment than he has, would act on his behalf. This is intolerable to the administration of justice, and the Court cannot sit idly by, shrug its shoulder and say: Oh, that’s just Roger being Roger, or it wouldn’t have grounds to act the next time someone tries it.

The behavior was designed to disrupt and divert the proceedings, and the impact was compounded by the defendant’s disingenuousness.

This warning about what happens when people post inciteful language on Instagram might well have served as a warning in advance of January 6. But Barr, in testimony under oath to House Judiciary Committee, pretended that his DOJ had not ignored such a threat.

While it didn’t make the sentencing guidelines, the Proud Boy-linked threats to Credico were sufficiently serious that under FBI’s Duty to Warn, they alerted Credico to the threats. Now we learned that line prosecutors treated the threat against ABJ as sufficiently serious that they obtained grand jury subpoenas to learn more about it.

And in testimony under oath, Bill Barr pretended that ABJ agreed — and it was reasonable for his office to treat — such threats as mere technicalities.

The Mike Flynn Interviews (Updated)

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Yesterday, DOJ turned over what was supposed to be all the Mike Flynn 302s to BuzzFeed (though they withheld at least the EDVA ones on his Turkish influence-peddling). Twice before (one, two), I’ve tracked his interviews. This post will attempt a third.

Below, I’ve got a list of Flynn’s known interviews, with the pre-December 2018 aborted sentencing numbered (there were supposed to be 19 before then). Generally, the headings consist of one of three things:

  • My summary of what got included in the Mueller Report (which is helpful to see what is new to this declassification)
  • “Missing” and/or EDVA, which is a reflection of what Bijan Kian’s lawyers claimed they had gotten by June 2019
  • New, with a description of the content

For the 302s released yesterday, I also include the Mueller attendees, when the interview got entered, and any notable remaining redactions (which may reflect ongoing investigations or suspect redactions). I’ll do a few posts on what this all shows, but generally, Flynn’s “cooperation” proceeded as follows:

  • Flynn lied extensively in his first proffer meeting (as prosecutors suggested he had as things started blowing up).
  • Even when he cooperated more, he was not always forthcoming; it took a while, for example, before he disclosed his full involvement in efforts to find Hillary’s deleted emails.
  • On January 19, 2018, Flynn professed absolutely no recall about whether Trump knew of his calls to Kislyak.
  • In spring 2018, he had several meetings that blended a discussion about WikiLeaks (another area he became less forgetful about) and the effort to get the Hillary emails.
  • In May 2018, he was asked twice about his IC badge being used to access an IC facility on April 3, 2017, after he had been stripped of clearance. No explanation ever appears in the 302s.
  • After that point, the interviews seemed to focus more on finding the sources for stories about the investigation and efforts by SJC staffer Barbara Ledeen and HPSCI staffer Derek Harvey to undermine the Mueller investigation.

1. November 16, 2017: Trump appoint Flynn as NSA, first call with Putin, Israel vote, communications with Kislyak, December Kislyak call

Mueller attendees: James Quarles, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered: January 5, 2018

Nine months after Mike Flynn got fired, ostensibly for lying to the Vice President, Mueller’s team invited him for a mulligan on his January 24, 2017 interview in which he lied several times to the FBI. In advance discussions about that interview, Brandon Van Grack alerted Flynn’s lawyers that there were likely things Mueller’s team knew that Flynn’s did not.

There is information that you or your client might not be aware of. From where we’re sitting, there might still be value in sitting down with your client. We have a good sense of what Flynn knows and what Flynn doesn’t know.

As one indication of how badly Flynn had misled his attorneys, Rob Kelner expressed surprise that Flynn might be exposed for false statements from his interview at the White House.

Frankly, we are surprised by that. That is not consistent with what we have learned from press reports and other sources.

Zainab Ahmad warned,

You don’t know everything he knows.

This first interview, then, might be considered a test, whether Flynn was willing to tell the truth about his actions and those of Trump’s associates. He failed.

The interview front-loaded general information (how he came to work for Trump, though even there, later interviews would offer slightly different details as to timing), and questions about topics that Flynn was a tangential participant in — the DNC emails, the June 9 meeting, meetings with Egypt and Mueller’s suspicion that Trump got $10 million from them, ties with Qatar, Manafort’s role in the platform change, Brad Parscale’s operation, an the hush hush meeting with the UAE.

Only after asking questions about all that did Mueller’s team ask Flynn the same questions the FBI had asked him nine months earlier. He answered the questions the same way. He lied to hide the specific requests of Russia on Egypt’s UN proposal and he lied about whether he had discussed sanctions with Sergey Kislyak and discussed them with the Transition team at Mar-a-Lago with Trump.

Topics:

  • How he came to work for Trump
  • The $10 million campaign contribution (Mueller suspected it to be sourced from Egypt)
  • Hillary’s emails (Flynn lied and claimed he had never looked for them)
  • The DNC emails (Flynn lied about discussions about the topic)
  • No knowledge about June 9 meeting
  • The meeting with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (and those suspected of brokering it); Flynn later admitted he met with Egyptians on more than one occasion
  • A reference to Qatar
  • Flynn’s views about Manafort, including the platform change
  • Flynn’s views on Russia
  • Flynn’s review of Parscale’s operations
  • Early congratulation calls, including Egypt, a botched one to Taiwan, and the first call with Putin
  • The meeting with Kislyak (Flynn claimed a back channel did not come up)
  • The call with Sergey Kislyak on 12/6/16, which he always insisted he didn’t remember, and a follow-up on December 7
  • The UAE meeting in NY
  • The UN vote (Flynn repeated his lies from earlier that year, twice)
  • The sanctions discussion (Flynn repeated his lies from earlier that year)

Backup

  • 9/15/16 email to Bannon regarding Egypt (A)
  • 12/7/16 email RE: Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (regarding deferring all conversations until after inauguration) (B and C)
  • 3/27/2017 NYT article describing Kushner meeting (D)
  • 12/12/16 meeting keep UAE meeting to small circle (E)
  • Another email on Egypt

That night, Flynn’s lawyers told him he had botched the interview.

That same evening, after concluding the first proffer, we returned to the Covington offices where my attorneys told me that the first day’s proffer did not go well and then proceeded to walk me through a litany of conceivable charges I was facing and told me that I was looking at the possibility of “fifteen years in prison.”

2, November 17, 2017: Israel vote, December Kislyak call, especially comms with Mar a Lago, re Ignatius Flynn said he had not talked sanctions, Mar a Lago with Trump, Flynn’s last meeting with Trump, “we’ll take care of you”

Mueller attendees: James Quarles, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad (Zebley and Quarles in and out)

Entered: 1/5/18

According to Flynn, overnight his attorneys coached him on language to

“get through” the next day’s proffer and satisfy the special counsel.

Flynn shaded the truth in his November 17 interview — about the Trump Transitions contacts with their predecessors, about his discussions about sanctions with KT McFarland and Steve Bannon, about why he left no written record of having discussed sanctions. Still, it was a better interview, and after being confronted with just a selection of the communications that had recorded these communications in real time, his story edged closer to the truth, even while denying things (such as the explicit nod to their calls from Kislyak) that were in FISA transcripts. Among the things Flynn admitted that day was that he “knew he got involved in U.S. policy when he called KISLYAK.”

In addition, Flynn provided Mueller’s team what must have been important insight. He said that when he resigned, “TRUMP was tired and visibly shaken or upset.” But then when Sean Spicer explained his resignation, “It bugged FLYNN that SPICER said he (FLYNN) had been untruthful.” Flynn’s sense of betrayal would, at times, be powerful motivation for his cooperation with Mueller, until it wasn’t anymore.

Topics:

  • Calls with Kislyak, including January 12 one, (several iterations); Flynn lies abt Bossert speaking with Monaco, claims not to remember specifics of discussion with McFarland, makes excuses for not including sanctions in email, then backtracked somewhat, makes excuse for not telling Trump, claims he didn’t discuss it with Bannon
  • Flynn’s lies to others, including knights of the round table
  • His first FBI interview (several iterations)
  • Covington asks who he spoke with after the call, includes people (like Ted Gistaro) whom he didn’t tell
  • His resignation

Backup

  • 12/29/16 Text messages to Sara Flaherty (possible some withheld on b3) (A)
  • Michael Ledeen report on sanctions (B)
  • 12/30/16 email from McFarland relaying the talking points (C)
  • D [possibly comms from after he spoke with Kislyak]
  • 12/31/16 Keith Kellogg email (E)
  • Probably Ignatius article

Ongoing: Individual words redacted to hide an investigation into Ignatius’ source

3. November 20, 2017: Whether he told others at MAL, response to Ignatius

Mueller attendees: James Quarles, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered : 1/5/18

On November 20, Flynn inched still closer to the truth about what happened during the Transition period. He clarified a key detail about the $10 million infusion of cash that, Mueller suspected, had come from Egypt. Flynn described how Trump blamed him for not informing Trump that Vladimir Putin had been the first to call Trump after inauguration — something Trump had told Jim Comey.

And after being shown texts of the communications he had with Mar-a-Lago surrounding his calls with Sergey Kislyak, he effectively admitted that he had coordinated with Mar-a-Lago. There were still gaps. He had no explanation for why there was a meeting between him, KT McFarland, and Trump at 5PM, which would have been shortly after his call with Kislyak. Flynn inched closer to admitting that he and McFarland had agreed to leave mention of sanctions out of his text summarizing the call. And he admitted that he may have spoken about the sanctions discussion in some meetings with Steve Bannon at the latter’s townhome after the calls.

Once Flynn’s admissions about his own actions got closer to the truth, Mueller’s team asked him questions about Jared Kushner’s actions, especially a secret meeting with Mohammed bin Zayed in mid-December 2016.

Topics:

  • The Infusion of cash (correcting earlier explanation)
  • Theresa May arrival (included in Comey’s notes)
  • Calls with Kislyak (including texts with Flaherty)
  • Texts excluding sanction discussion
  • Meeting with Trump at 5PM on 12/29
  • Meeting with Bannon
  • Kushner’s blueprint for Russia
  • McFarland January 5, 2017 email
  • January 6, 2017 ICA briefing
  • Dossier
  • Cohen’s Ukraine plan
  • Someone who also believed CIA was bloated (and discussed UAE and Libya)
  • Seychelles meeting
  • Egypt package

Backup

Classified: Rex Tillerson? Some details about early January

Ongoing: Two b7A paragraphs in follow-up to Egypt package

4. November 21, 2017: Whether he told others at MAL, response to Ignatius, meeting with Trump [Missing]

Mueller attendees: James Quarles, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad; Mueller, briefly; Zebley left

Entered: 1/5/18

Having given Mueller’s team a passable explanation for his own actions, they focused the last interview on fine tuning that — particularly his admission to discussing the sanctions with Bannon — while getting him to talk about all the times he had been thrown under the bus by those who were in the know on the sanctions discussion, Bannon and McFarland.

Mueller’s team also got him to go over Kushner’s involvement in foreign policy, the relationship with Egypt, and the UAE meeting.

Topics:

  • Logan Act
  • Bannon’s townhouse (Bannon already knew content of conversation)
  • Knights of the round table meeting, Bannon and McFarland silent
  • Another instance of being thrown under the bus
  • Kushner on Mexico
  • Egypt
  • Rick Gerson and Tony Blair, the UAE meeting (April 2017 Flynn contact with Gerson)

Backup [large b4 redactions likely hiding a bunch]

  • Email on el-Sisi meeting
  • 9/16/16 email between Ivanka and Phares
  • Photo of Rick Gerson
  • Kushner email on keeping meeting small

Large b4 redactions (trade secrets), addressing two topics, which leads into Kushner on foreign policy.

5. November 29, 2017: Peter Smith [Missing]

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered: 1/5/18

The November 29, 2017 meeting, when the two sides were already discussing a plea deal, seems to be focused on answering questions that Mueller’s team didn’t know the answers to, unlike the prior proffers. This covered some of Flynn’s other legal exposure (such as his non-disclosure of foreign travel on his clearance form and his financial disclosure), just bits about his ties with Turkish officials, WikiLeaks and the Peter Smith attempt to find Hillary’s email, as well as other election year digital activities.

The interview ended with a discussion about language in a draft statement of offense admitting that Flynn had initially not told the government that he and Steve Bannon discussed sanctions. That language was cut from the final statement of offense, but it provides important background to interviews with others, including McFarland and Bannon.

Topics:

  • Op-ed on Libya relying on WikiLeaks docs
  • Discussions about WikiLeaks having Hillary’s emails, no direct contact
  • WikiLeaks following Flynn starting in October or November 2016, DMs him on 12/5/16
  • An NSC hire
  • Flynn notes on index cards
  • Meeting with Turkish officials, including sitting with Foreign Minister at Trump International Hotel in January
  • More Turkish
  • Svetlana Lokhova, including congratulations sent after election
  • Jobs after DIA
  • Meetings Flynn set up
  • Foreign travel not included in SF-86, financial disclosure
  • Peter Smith (original contact cyber business), probably downplaying extent of their contacts
  • Rick Gates during transition
  • Putin congratulatory phone call (possibly different details than original version), asked about a “signal”
  • Rick Gerson notes on 12/14/16
  • WikiStrat
  • PsyGroup
  • Donbass
  • Meeting with Susan Rice
  • Strong dollar
  • Bannon townhouse language in statement of offense

Backup

  • 10/6/16 Curtis Ellis email, possibly relating to an op-ed on Libya, using classified information that had shown up on WikiLeaks
  • Possible b7A
  • Possible SF-86 and financial disclosure form
  • 12/4/16 notebook entries re Rick Gerson meeting
  • Possible media report that Trump asked him about strong dollar

b7E redactions

Ongoing: Four b7A redactions in discussion of what he did after he left DIA.

6. January 11, 2018: November 30 meeting with Kislyak [Missing]

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, James Quarles

Entered: 2/22/18

Starts with admonishment.

In Flynn’s first interview after pleading guilty, Mueller’s team asked him more generic details — about how he used his classified phone, whether he used encrypted apps, whether he knew about the Seychelles meeting. It’s not clear he told truth about those questions or not, but he did provide other useful information, such as how often Erik Prince was at Transition headquarters.

Topics:

  • Classified emails
  • Flynn claims he only used classified phone with Susan Rice
  • Encrypted apps (he preferred Signal), especially whether Bannon and Kushner used them
  • Kislyak meeting, starting w/12/1/16 (obtained his bio), still claimed no back channel, did not recall sanctions discussion
  • UN calls (including Nikki Haley’s, Bannon’s involvement)
  • Rebuff of Manafort’s 1/15/17 email (Manafort at National Prayer Breakfast)
  • UAE meeting
  • Another discussion of fire-the-CIA guy (could be Prince)
  • Prince at Trump Tower on daily basis, no knowledge of Seychelles
  • Kevin Harrington: Russia trying to usurp US role
  • Gitmo transfer
  • Parscale meeting in September 2016
  • Whom he has heard from post-plea

Backup:

  • NYT article (described as WSJ one) on UNSC vote on Israel
  • 1/15/17 KT McFarland email chain involving Manafort
  • Possible b7A
  • Possible referral consult

Ongoing: Two b7A paragraphs between discussion of Manafort and Egyptian.

7. January 19, 2018: Flynn did not have specific recollection about telling POTUS on January 3, 2017

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, James Quarles, Andrew Goldstein

Entered: 6/21/18 [note: several other 302s have an entry date of 5/21, so this may be a typo]

In Flynn’s January 19, 2018 interview, he protected the President. He said, over and over, that he had no idea if he had spoken directly with Trump about sanctions, or even what he had said to KT McFarland. The Mueller team did not prompt him with information that might have been useful to force him to admit that he had told Trump.

Flynn did, however, admit that Trump had a better understanding of the timeline of Flynn’s calls with Kislyak than Flynn did, including a probable reference to Trump’s involvement in the December 22 call about Egypt.

This 302 was not finalized until June 21, a testament to how important Flynn’s claim not to remember discussing this with Trump was to Mueller’s case.

Topics:

  • Contacts with Mar-a-Lago, claims he assumed McFarland talked to Priebus and Bannon
  • Meeting with Bannon on 1/1/17
  • Whether it came up on 1/3/17
  • Ignatius, now says he’s worried he broke the law
  • His interview (with b5 that may have covered discussion within WH afterwards)
  • Trump corrects his date
  • Whether Trump specified calls with Daily Caller
  • Correcting Nikki Haley on Crimea

Backup:

  • Possibly Ignatius article

8. April 25, 2018: Peter Smith

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad, Andrew Weissmann, Aaron Zelinsky

Entered: 5/21/18

On April 25, 2018, after most Trump associates had had their first interviews and the Mueller team had begun to unravel Roger Stone’s role, Flynn had his first interview discussing those issues. It appears he shaded the truth, disclaiming to have been certain that Russia had hacked the DNC and disclaiming awareness of all the discussions in the campaign about WikiLeaks.

Nevertheless, Flynn likely said things at this interview that betrayed knowledge of far more, even if he didn’t understand that.

Topics:

  • How he got involved in the campaign, including discussions of Russia and Sam Clovis’ role in it, dates involvement from 2/22/16; officially joined June 2016
  • RT trip
  • Regular contact with retired military officer, including email 6/29/16
  • DNC hack, Flynn claims he was uncertain abt attribution [break to walk Flynn through specific dates], Ledeen on missing emails, no memory of Stone, contact with FBI
  • Debate prep included “leverage” discussions about Assange, Flynn did not know under indictment (??)

Backup:

  • 6/29/16 Paul Vallely email

9. May 1, 2018: Peter Smith

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Aaron Zelinsky

Entered: 5/21/18

In this interview, Stone prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky tried to pinpoint Flynn’s vague memories from August 2016, specifically regarding his first flight with the campaign on August 3, 2016, in the middle of a period when Stone was in close contact with the campaign about WikiLeaks. In this interview, Flynn admitted that he had much higher certainty that Russia had done the hack than he had said weeks earlier.

Mueller’s team also asked him what amount to counterintelligence questions and started to figure out who in the FBI was undermining their case in Flynn’s name.

The meeting ended with a question about who used his IC badge to enter a classified facility on April 3, 2017.

Topics:

  • First trip on plane was 8/3/16, to Jacksonville, Flynn’s own assessment would be high likelihood Russia did the hack
  • Russian born investment capitalist talked about Clinton’s emails a lot
  • WikiLeaks reaches out to Flynn on 6/22/16 via publisher (recurring)
  • Flynn email 7/24/16 about attribution showing certainty–he walked back his certainty by August 3
  • Series of emails with someone military who moved to DIA, around first meeting with Manafort on 6/23/16
  • Question abt bots and social media
  • Email 11/2/16 may have clicked on the link
  • Trump’s 7/27/16 comment, specifically asked if Stone put it in his head
  • Contact in USDI
  • Retired general
  • 6/29/16 email from someone he was respectful of
  • Email 9/10/16 about speaking to Russia on Syria, someone pro-Russian
  • Dmitri Simes
  • Email sent to someone he met in August 2015 on 8/20/16
  • Contacts in FBI
  • Digital response team v. Parscales
  • Email 10/9/16 with link to Podesta
  • Extended discussion of Erik Prince, including transition
  • DIA visit on 4/3/17 (discussion about his IC badge)

Backup

  • 7/24/16 email on who hacked DNC (when he believed it was Russian)
  • 7/15/16 email oninformation war
  • 6/21/16 emails starting on 6/21/16 (Vallely?)
  • 6/22/16 WikiLeaks outreach
  • 11/2/16 email
  • 10/29/16 email
  • 6/29/16 email (Vallely?)
  • 9/10/16 email (Vallely)
  • 8/1/16 email
  • 8/29/16 Chatham House email wrt Dmitri Simes
  • 8/20/16 email
  • 9/22/16 email involving Parscales (OPSEC)
  • 10/9/16 email including link to Podesta emails
  • Possible b7A
  • Wickr introduction

Ongoing: Two b7A paragraphs abt discreet subject/person between discussion about WikiLeaks and about Prince.

10. May 4, 2018: [New: Manafort, Ledeen, and badging]

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Aaron Zelinsky

Entered: 5/21/18

The next meeting started with the unexplained use of his badge (Flynn claimed he still hadn’t found it). It hit on his efforts to find Hillary’s emails with Barbara Ledeen, their search for the emails on servers in Ukraine, and a long call Flynn had with Manafort in June, when the WikiLeaks effort first began.

Topics:

  • Use of his badge 4/3/17
  • Barbara Ledeen, including password protected email on 10/29/16
  • Servers in Ukraine
  • Micro-targeting
  • Hour-long call with Manafort on 6/23/16; first met Manafort on 6/30/16
  • The dossier and ICA briefing
  • Transition meeting, some Captain sharing information, and KT McFarland

11. May 17, 2018: [New: Ledeen’s tampering]

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered: 6/1/18

Most of this meeting focused on ways that Flynn’s people were undermining the investigation, with a focus on Barbara Ledeen and Sara Carter (who published several false stories about the investigation). It also returned to the issue of what secure communications he used.

Topics:

  • Ledeen’s probes of the investigation
  • Sarah Carter’s propaganda (starting with possible immunity on 3/30/16)
  • Discussions about the investigation
  • Secure communications

12. May 23, 2018:

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered: 5/29/18

While this meeting returned focus to two key prongs of the Middle Eastern part of this investigation, UAE and Qatar, it also probed more about Flynn’s current job and the FBI agents tracking his case.

Topics:

  • Qatar
  • 12/12/16 Trump Tower meeting, possibly with QIA
  • His then-current consulting gig
  • FBI agents, including retired, who are tracking his case

b3: An entire discussion covered by b3

13. June 13, 2018: [EDVA, Missing]

14. June 14, 2018: [EDVA, Missing]

15. June 25, 2018: [EDVA, Missing]

17. July 26, 2018, [EDVA, Missing, possibly two 302s]

18. September 17, 2018: [New: someone else’s tampering, probably Derek Harvey]

Mueller attendees: Brandon Van Grack, Zainab Ahmad

Entered: 9/28/18

The entirety of this, Flynn’s last meeting with the Mueller team, seems to focus on the role of Derek Harvey, whom Flynn hired into the NSC, and who played a key role in helping Devin Nunes undermine the entire investigation.

Topics:

  • Relationship with someone on HPSCI, probably Derek Harvey

September 26, 2018: Proffer response on meetings with Foresman

January 28, 2019: [EDVA Missing]

February 28, 2019: EDVA

April 5, 2019: [EDVA Missing]

June 6, 2019: EDVA — Flynn blows up his plea deal

Rat-Fucker Rashomon: Guccifer 2.0 the Go-Between

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Fresh off the weekend of Roger Stone’s trial, prosecutors got Rick Gates to testify, and then called former FBI Agent Michelle Taylor back on the stand. Ostensibly, they needed to call Taylor to introduce a transcript of a scene from Godfather II that Stone kept using to try to convince Randy Credico to lie to the House Intelligence Committee, something that the two sides had been debating throughout the first week of the trial.

But the first thing prosecutors did when they got their FBI witness back on the stand was to bring Guccifer 2.0 into it.

Q. When you first testified last week, do you remember testifying about the release of some emails of the Democratic National Committee by an organization called WikiLeaks on July 22nd, 2016?

A. Yes, I do.

Q. What was the name of the online persona or figure who took credit for hacking or obtaining those documents from the Democratic National Committee?

A. Guccifer 2.0.

Q. During Mr. Stone’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, was he asked about that persona, Guccifer 2.0, and that alleged hack?

A. Yes, he was.

MR. ZELINSKY: I would like to publish now, please, for the witness and the jury, what’s been admitted as Government’s Exhibit 1. This is page 28 of Government’s Exhibit 1.

BY MR. ZELINSKY: Q. Ms. Taylor, I want to direct your attention to the portion of — oh, and, Ms. Taylor, just to remind the jury, what is Government’s Exhibit 1?

A. This is a transcript of Mr. Stone’s testimony before HPSCI.

Q. I’ve put on the screen in front of you page 28 of the transcript. Can you read for us, please, the question and answer that I have highlighted there?

A. “MR. SWALWELL: In 2016, August of 2016, you and the American public are aware, from press reporting, that Russia is accused of hacking democratic emails, is that — “MR. STONE. Yes.”

Q. I want to direct your attention now to page 29, the next page of the same exhibit. Can you read, please, the question and answer that I’ve highlighted on page 29 of Government’s Exhibit 1, the transcript?

A. “MR. SWALWELL: It took me a while, too. “Were you aware when you wrote that article, the Breitbart one, that Guccifer 2.0 was assessed by the Intelligence Community as a cutout for the Russian intelligence services? “MR. STONE: I was aware of that claim, but I don’t subscribe to it. There’s a substantial amount of information you can find online that questions that. I realize it’s an assertion, but as I said in my statement, our intelligence agencies are often wrong.”

Q. Finally, Ms. Taylor, I would like to direct your attention to page 113, bottom of 113 to the top of 114 of the same exhibit, the transcript. First, can you read for us, please, the question that starts at the bottom of page 113 of the transcript?

A. “MR. SCHIFF: Mr. Stone, you’ve acknowledged that it’s the conclusion of the intelligence community that Guccifer 2 is a cutout of the Russian intelligence agencies.”

Q. And Mr. Stone’s response?

A. “MR. STONE: They have said that, yes.”

Mind you, Guccifer 2.0 had been mentioned earlier in the trial, as when Taylor read off HPSCI communications with Stone or Randy Credico’s texts with Stone mentioning the persona, as well as legal debates outside the presence of the jury. Prosecutors also had Taylor present two Guccifer 2.0 posts that were published on the same days as calls involving Stone, June 15 and June 30, in the latter case, a call to Trump.

Q. Can you please read for us the first two sentences of the Guccifer 2 Word Press post from June 15th, 2016?

A. Sure. “Worldwide known cyber security company CrowdStrike announced that the Democratic National Committee, DNC, servers had been hacked by sophisticated hacker groups. I’m very pleased the company appreciated my skills so highly, but, in fact, it was easy, very easy.”

[snip]

Q. Did this same author, Guccifer 2.0, post another message about the hack a few weeks later?

A. He did.

Q. I’d like to publish now, please, for the witness and the Court — and the jury, excuse me, Government’s Exhibit 150, which appears at tab 4 of your binder. What is Government’s Exhibit 150?

A. This is another Word Press post by Guccifer 2 dated June 30, 2016.

Jonathan Kravis would remind the jury how the latter post coincided with a call between Stone and Trump in his closing arguments.

And Stone’s lawyers raised the persona a few times, in their opening, in cross examination, and their close.

But this was the first time prosecutors directly addressed Stone’s claims and communications about Guccifer 2.0, as opposed to with Trump or — via a never identified go-between — with WikiLeaks.

In the prosecution prior to this point, as in most of these Roger Stone stories, the WikiLeaks story was kept remarkably distinct from the Guccifer 2.0 story.

Of the four stories told about Roger Stone, two adopt a structure that treat Stone’s communication with Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks in parallel: there are a handful of communications between him and Guccifer 2.0 (pages 194 to 196 of the SSCI Report, one paragraph on page 44 of the Mueller Report), and a separate discussion of Stone’s attempts to optimize the WikiLeaks releases (pages 221 to 252 of the SSCI Report, pages 51 to 59 of the Mueller Report).

The affidavits show that initial investigative work focused on Guccifer 2.0, not WikiLeaks. The way in which later affidavits present these issues changed over time. But many of them separate Stone’s “Public interactions with Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks” from the (later) “Private Twitter Direct Messages with WikiLeaks and ASSANGE.” The affidavits generally stopped mentioning Stone’s private DMs with Guccifer 2.0 in March 2018.

That parallel structure applies to the indictments, too. Stone gets his own paragraph, ¶44, in the GRU indictment. But the Stone indictment makes absolutely no mention of Guccifer 2.0. The government declared Stone’s prosecution a “related case” to the GRU one, meaning the same judge — Amy Berman Jackson — would preside. Stone’s team unsuccessfully objected. Prosecutors explained the designation, in part, because, “Certain Netyksho defendants, through a fictitious online persona they created, Guccifer 2.0, also interacted directly with Stone concerning other stolen materials posted separately online.” Ultimately, ABJ denied Stone’s attempt to dissociate the case. Stone made an equally unsuccessful attempt to make the Russian attribution more central to the case, even addressing his communications with Guccifer 2.0. Ultimately, however, the case was totally separate.

And yet, just before it closed their case, the government got their FBI witness to review the part of Stone’s HPSCI testimony where he acknowledged that the intelligence community had assessed that Guccifer 2.0 was a cut-out for Russian intelligence.

In response, Stone’s attorney Bruce Rogow got Taylor to confirm that she didn’t know independently whether Guccifer is Russian and “was not aware” of any other communications between Stone and Guccifer 2.0, something he tried unsuccessfully to emphasize in his close.

Q. Good morning, again, Ms. Taylor.

A. Good morning.

Q. Do you know, independently, whether or not Guccifer is Russian?

A. I don’t.

Q. Did Mr. Stone turn over his communications with Guccifer that he mentioned in the transcript?

A. He did.

Q. Did you find any other communications between Mr. Stone and Guccifer?

A. I’m not aware of any.

Taylor’s response was the same one the Mueller Report gave, in that sole paragraph on Stone’s communications with Guccifer 2.0 referenced above. A sentence that has been unsealed since the original release reads, “The investigation did not identify evidence of other communications between Stone and Guccifer 2.0,” beyond the DMs in August and September, 2016. Earlier in that paragraph, however, a previously redacted passage reveals the significance of it. “After the GRU had published stolen DNC documents through Guccifer 2.0, Stone told members of the Campaign that he was in contact with Guccifer 2.0,” which it cites to this almost entirely redacted passage in a Rick Gates interview, a passage that seems to discuss events that predate the July 22 DNC release.

SSCI has read this unredacted 302, and they assess (as I have in the past, about a different 302) that Gates was just confused between the illusory deleted Clinton emails and actual advance knowledge of emails.

FBI, FD-302, Gates 4/10/2018. The Committee assesses· that, at this time, the references to Clinton’s “emails” reflected a focus on allegedly missing or deleted.emails from Clinton’s personal server during her tenure as Secretary of State.

But in context, the unredacted passage in the Mueller Report suggests that Stone told Gates — and others — that he spoke to Guccifer 2.0 before those known August and September exchanges.

This is a question that prosecutors might have asked Gates to testify about publicly. As noted, his testimony directly preceded Taylor’s second trip to the stand. Rather than ask for clarification on that question, though, Aaron Zelinsky instead had Gates describe how, on June 15, in the wake of the DNC announcement that it had been hacked by Russia (and, though Zelinsky didn’t say it, the launch of the Guccifer 2.0 site), Stone asked for the phone numbers of Jared Kushner and one other staffer “to debrief them on the developments of the DNC announcement.” Indeed, Zelinsky treated this as entirely a discussion about WikiLeaks’ upcoming leaks, not Guccifer 2.0’s existing one.

Q. During the balance of June — we’re still in June of 2016 — did you continue to discuss WikiLeaks with Mr. Stone?

A. Yes, off and on.

Q. Why did you continue, in June, to continue to discuss WikiLeaks with Mr. Stone?

A. Because at that point, both myself and Mr. Manafort didn’t believe the information was coming because it still hadn’t come out. And Mr. Manafort had asked me from time to time to check with Mr. Stone to see if the information was still real and viable.

Q. And when you say the “information,” you mean releases from WikiLeaks; is that correct?

A. That’s correct.

As for Agent Taylor’s response to Bruce Rogow’s question — that she was not aware of any other communications between Guccifer 2.0 and Stone besides the DMs he shared with HPSCI — she might not be aware of any late-discovered communications between Stone and Guccifer 2.0 beyond those he shared with HPSCI even if there were any. She testified that her role on “that piece” of the investigation — meaning the investigation of Roger Stone — was as a case agent.

Q. Ms. Taylor, in the course of your work with the FBI, was there a time in your career when you were assigned to work on the investigation led by then Special Counsel Robert Mueller?

A. Yes.

Q. And in particular in the course of your work on the special counsel’s investigation, did you participate in the piece of the investigation that concerned the defendant in this case, Roger Stone?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. What was your role on that piece of the special counsel’s investigation?

A. I was one of the case agents on the investigation of Mr. Stone.

According to Andrew Weissmann’s book, though, her primary role on Mueller’s team wasn’t on the Stone team, she was the lead agent on the obstruction team (which, given the involvement of Andrew Goldstein in certain interviews in fall 2018, was closely involved in investigating Roger Stone’s witness tampering and cover story as part of the obstruction piece). Taylor wrote none of the affidavits targeting Stone. Additionally, she had left the FBI months before the trial, in August 2019, so she also wouldn’t have been included in an interview conducted over the weekend of the trial (possibly with Andrew Miller, Stone’s aide who had managed his schedule at the RNC, where Stone appears to have gotten advance notice of the DNC leak).

So even with Taylor on the stand, Bruce Rogow may not have been able to discover — much less convey to the jury — the government’s full understanding of what Guccifer 2.0’s relationship with Stone was … not what it was when other FBI agents wrote affidavits hiding part of the investigation from him a year earlier, not what it was when they obtained Andrew Miller’s testimony weeks after the release of the Mueller Report, not what it was after that last interview on November 9, 2019, over seven months after the completion of the Mueller Report and smack dab in the middle of the trial.

Indeed, when he was standing there asking the question of Mueller’s lead agent from the obstruction team about communications between his client and Guccifer 2.0, Rogow would know that the FBI had found searches, starting on May 17, 2016, that seemed to indicate that Stone had foreknowledge of the Russian hack-and-leak; Stone had received those two warrants (one, two) in discovery. But Rogow would not know — because it was among the 15 warrants that the government had withheld, in part, to hide the full scope of the investigation from Stone — that two minutes after the FBI obtained a warrant for Stone’s cell site location from June 14 to November 15, 2016, in part to confirm whether Stone had done the searches indicating foreknowledge of the Guccifer 2.0 operation and in part to figure out whom he met with on August 3, 2016 in LA when he would later claim to have been dining with Julian Assange — a different FBI agent, one likely tied to the GRU investigative team, obtained a search warrant for an email that Guccifer 2.0 set up on July 23, 2016. That email was set up the day after the DNC drop, and perhaps not coincidentally, on the last day on which Stone may have deleted his Google search history, hiding those earlier searches showing foreknowledge of the Russian operation.

Up to that moment when former Agent Taylor discussed Stone’s HPSCI testimony confirming he knew the intelligence community believed Guccifer 2.0 to be a Russian cut-out, Stone’s trial was about his lies about who his go-between with WikiLeaks was, not about truths and lies he may have told about Guccifer 2.0.

Unless Guccifer 2.0 was that go-between.

In any case, the trial was, ultimately, about Guccifer 2.0, because some of the evidence prosecutors used to prove that Stone spoke with the campaign about a go-between to WikiLeaks involved Guccifer 2.0. In addition to the disclosure that Stone spoke to Trump before the June 15 and after the June 30 Guccifer 2.0 posts, the trial made something else public for the first time, something that had been a key detail in the affidavits, and would be in the SSCI Report, but which was not one included in the Mueller Report (or Stone’s indictment).

At 8:16AM on August 15, Corsi texted and then at 8:17 AM Corsi emailed Stone the same message, telling him there was “more to come than anyone realizes”:

Appearing in the midst of a story about Stone’s lies about his go-between with WikiLeaks, the texts and emails are fairly innocuous. Though the SSCI Report does seem to believe Corsi’s story that this moment — and the 24 minute call between Corsi and Stone at 12:14PM on August 15 — is when Corsi told Stone about what the Podesta files would include.

(U) The Committee is uncertain how Corsi determined that Assange had John Podesta’s emails. Corsi initially explained in an interview with the SCO that during his trip to Italy, someone told him Assange had the Podesta emails. Corsi also recalled learning that Assange was going to “release the emails seriatim and not all at once.”1572 However, Corsi claimed not to remember who provided him with this information, saying he could only recall that “it feels like a man” who told him.1573

(U) Corsi further recalled that on August 15, after he returned from Italy, he conveyed this information to Stone by phone.1574 According to Corsi, the information was new to Stone. Stone seemed “happy to hear it,” and the two of them “discussed how the emails would be very damaging” to Clinton. 1575 Corsi also reiterated by both text and email to Stone on August 15 that there was “[m]ore to come than anyone realizes. Won’t really get started until after Labor Day.”1576

But that’s only so long as you keep the Guccifer 2.0 story separate from the WikiLeaks story, as the SSCI and Mueller Reports do.

If you combine those stories, though, here’s what a partial timeline looks like:

August 2, 2016: Corsi informs Stone that “the hackers” will release one dump shortly after he returns on August 12 and another in October; he also mentions Podesta.

August 3, 9:12AM: Stone emails Manafort to tell him about, “an idea to save Trump’s ass.”

August 4: Stone tells Sam Nunberg that he dined with Assange the night before (he had been in LA).

August 5: Stone flip-flops on prior public statements backing the Russian attribution, writing a column declaring that Guccifer 2.0, not Russia, did the DNC hack.

August 9: Both Julian Assange and Stone start pushing the Seth Rich conspiracy.

August 12, 5:41PM: Guccifer 2.0 releases DCCC docs, fulfilling the timing (but not the outlet) that Corsi predicted.

August 12, 6:31PM: Guccifer 2.0, Emma Best, and WikiLeaks begin a discussion about exclusivity on the DCCC documents for WikiLeaks.

August 12, 10:16PM: Guccifer 2.0 says he’ll send major trove of DCCC documents to WikiLeaks; WikiLeaks never publishes any DCCC documents.

August 12, 10:23PM: Guccifer 2.0 publicly calls out Stone, “Thanks that u believe in the real #Guccifer2.”

August 13, 10:19AM: Corsi texts Stone: “Call when you can.”

August 13, 10:42AM: WikiLeaks tweets “‘@Guccifer_2’ has account completely censored by Twitter after publishing some files from Democratic campaign #DCCC”

August 13, 11:15AM: Stone tweets, “@wikileaks @GUCCIFER_2 Outrageous! Clintonistas now nned to censor their critics to rig the upcoming election.”

August 13, 7:29PM: Stone tweets, “@DailyCaller Censorship ! Gruccifer is a HERO.”

August 14, 12:58PM: Guccifer 2.0 tweets, “#Guccifer2 Here I am! They’ll have to try much harder to block me! #DNCleak #dccchack”

August 14 (unknown time): Stone DMs Guccifer 2.0: “Delighted you are reinstated.”

August 14 (unknown time, per Corsi article): Corsi starts a file called “Podesta.”

August 15, 1:33AM: Stone tweets about Podesta for the first time ever, seemingly in response to NYT story on black ledger implicating Manafort: “@JohnPodesta makes @PaulManafort look like St. Thomas Aquinas Where is the @NewYorkTimes?”

August 15, 8:16 and 8:17 AM: Corsi texts and emails Stone, “More to come than anyone realizes.”

August 15, 12:14PM: Corsi and Stone speak for 24 minutes.

August 15, 2016 (unknown time): Guccifer 2.0 DMs Stone: “thank u for writing back . . . do u find anyt[h]ing interesting in the docs i posted?”

So long as the WikiLeaks story is kept separate from the Guccifer 2.0 one, that August 15 DM from Guccifer 2.0 to Stone appears to be a question about the DCCC emails posted on August 12, and so, as Stone claimed, totally innocuous. But given the evidence that Corsi and Stone acquired advance knowledge of the content of select Podesta emails by August 15 — particularly given Stone’s claim, reportedly made before July 22, to have been in touch with Guccifer 2.0 and his apparent foreknowledge of the GRU personas — that August 15 DM appears to be a comment on the Podesta files.

That is, that August 15 was not innocuous at all. It appears to have been, rather, the GRU’s persona asking Stone whether he liked what he had received in advance.

 

The movie Rashomon demonstrated that any given narrative tells just one version of events, but that by listening to all available narratives, you might identify gaps and biases that get you closer to the truth.

I’m hoping that principle works even for squalid stories like the investigation into Roger Stone’s cheating in the 2016 election. This series will examine the differences between four stories about Roger Stone’s actions in 2016:

As I noted in the introductory post (which lays out how I generally understand the story each tells), each story has real gaps in one or more of these areas:

My hope is that by identifying these gaps and unpacking what they might say about the choices made in crafting each of these stories, we can get a better understanding of what actually happened — both in 2016 and in the investigations. The gaps will serve as a framework for this series.

Rat-Fucker Rashomon: Getting the “Highest Level of Government” to Free Julian Assange

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On June 10, 2017, according to affidavits submitted as part of the Mueller investigation, Roger Stone DMed Julian Assange and told him he was doing everything he could to “address the issues at the highest level of Government.”

57. On or about June 10, 2017, Roger Stone wrote to Target Account 2, “I am doing everything possible to address the issues at the highest level of Government. Fed treatment of you and Wikileaks is an outrage. Must be circumspect in this forum as experience demonstrates it is monitored. Best regards R.” Target Account 2 wrote back, “Appreciated. Of course it is!”

On June 19, 2017, according to the Mueller Report, the President dictated a message for Corey Lewandowski to take to Jeff Sessions, telling the (recused) Attorney General to meet with Robert Mueller and order him to limit his investigation only to future election meddling, not the election meddling that had gotten Trump elected.

During the June 19 meeting, Lewandowski recalled that, after some small talk, the President brought up Sessions and criticized his recusal from the Russia investigation.605 The President told Lewandowski that Sessions was weak and that if the President had known about the likelihood of recusal in advance, he would not have appointed Sessions.606 The President then asked Lewandowski to deliver a message to Sessions and said “write this down.” 607 This was the first time the President had asked Lewandowski to take dictation, and Lewandowski wrote as fast as possible to make sure he captured the content correctly.608 The President directed that Sessions should give a speech publicly announcing:

I know that I recused myself from certain things having to do with specific areas. But our POTUS . .. is being treated very unfairly. He shouldn’t have a Special Prosecutor/Counsel b/c he hasn’t done anything wrong. I was on the campaign w/ him for nine months, there were no Russians involved with him. I know it for a fact b/c I was there. He didn’t do anything wrong except he ran the greatest campaign in American history.609

The dictated message went on to state that Sessions would meet with the Special Counsel to limit his jurisdiction to future election interference:

Now a group of people want to subvert the Constitution of the United States. T am going to meet with the Special Prosecutor to explain this is very unfair and let the Special Prosecutor move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections so that nothing can happen in future elections.610

Days after Roger Stone told Julian Assange that he was trying to resolve matters at the highest level of government, the President of the United States tried to issue a back channel order that would shut down the investigation into Assange — and by association, Stone.

According to Lewandowski, neither he nor Rick Dearborn (on whom he tried to pawn off the task) actually delivered the message. But according to Andrew Weissmann, when he and Jeannie Rhee first got briefed on the investigation into how Russia released the documents it had stolen around that time, they learned no one was investigating it.

This effort didn’t start in June 2017, though. It started at least seven months earlier.

The SSCI Report reveals that the day before the Podesta emails got released, Stone probably had a six minute phone call with the candidate via Keith Schiller’s phone.

On the afternoon of October 6, Stone received a call from Keith Schiller’s number. Stone returned the call about 20 minutes later, and spoke-almost certainly to Trump–for six minutes.1663 The substance of that conversation is not known to the Committee. However, at the time, Stone was focused on the potential for a WikiLeaks release, the Campaign was following WikiLeaks’s announcements, and Trump’s prior call with Stone on September 29, also using Schiller’s phone, related to a WikiLeaks release. Given these facts, it appears quite likely that Stone and Trump spoke about WikiLeaks.

The SSCI Report and the affidavits reveal that Stone postponed a lunch with Jerome Corsi on October 8 to go meet with Trump.

On or about October 8, 2016, STONE messaged CORSI at Target Account 2, “Lunch postponed- have to go see T.” CORSI responded to STONE, “Ok. I understand.”

According to Mike Flynn, in the wake of the Podesta release, senior campaign officials discussed reaching out to WikiLeaks.

Beginning on October 7, 2016, WikiLeaks released emails stolen from John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. The defendant relayed to the government statements made in 2016 by senior campaign officials about WikiLeaks to which only a select few people were privy. For example, the defendant recalled conversations with senior campaign officials after the release of the Podesta emails, during which the prospect of reaching out to WikiLeaks was discussed.

And then, days later, Roger Stone tried to reach out to WikiLeaks — seemingly in response to WikiLeaks’ public disavowal of any tie to Stone — only to be rebuffed.

On October 13, 2016, while WikiLeaks was in the midst of releasing the hacked Podesta emails, @RogerJStoneJr sent a private direct message to the Twitter account @wikileaks. This account is the official Twitter account of WikiLeaks and has been described as such by numerous news reports. The message read: “Since I was all over national TV, cable and print defending WikiLeaks and assange against the claim that you are Russian agents and debunking the false charges of sexual assault as trumped up bs you may want to rexamine the strategy of attacking me- cordially R.”

Less than an hour later, @Wikileaks responded by direct message: “We appreciate that. However, the false claims of association are being used by the democrats to undermine the impact of our publications. Don’t go there if you don’t want us to correct you.”

On October 16, 2016, @RogerJStoneJr sent a direct message to @Wikileaks: “Ha! The more you \”correct\” me the more people think you’re lying. Your operation leaks like a sieve. You need to figure out who your friends are.”

But after the election, it was WikiLeaks that reached out to Stone.

On November 9, 2016, one day after the presidential election, @Wikileaks sent a direct message to @RogerJStoneJr containing a single word: “Happy?” @Wikileaks immediately followed up with another message less than a minute later: “We are now more free to communicate.”

At Stone’s trial, Randy Credico testified that in that same period after the election, he put Roger Stone in touch with Margaret Kunstler, Credico’s tie to WikiLeaks and one of the 1,000 lawyers (per a snarky answer from Credico) who represented Assange, to discuss a pardon.

Q. Had you put Mr. Stone directly in touch with Ms. Kunstler after the election?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. And why had you done that?

A. Well, sometime after the election, he wanted me to contact Mrs. Kunstler. He called me up and said that he had spoken to Judge Napolitano about getting Julian Assange a pardon and needed to talk to Mrs. Kunstler about it. So I said, Okay. And I sat on it. And I told her–I told her–she didn’t act on it. And then, eventually, she did, and they had a conversation.

Credico is very evasive about the timing of all this. Texts between him and Stone, introduced as an exhibit at Stone’s trial, show that Credico raised asylum on October 3, three hours before he boasted that he was best friends with Assange’s lawyer, meaning Kunstler.

But when asked about the timing, Credico refused to answer, or even answer a yes or no question about whether discussions began before the election. Note, these texts were ones that neither Credico nor Stone provided at first, on Credico’s part because he no longer had them; the government ultimately subpoenaed them from Stone after Stone shared them with Chuck Ross. The texts Stone produced go through November 14, but the ones released at trial stop on October 3.

Later affidavits make clear, however, that on November 15, seven days after Trump won an election with Julian Assange’s help, Trump’s rat-fucker sent Kunstler a link to download Signal and asked her to call him, which she said she’d do. (This was the first day Stone was using the iPhone 7 on which he sent her these texts.)

Additionally, text messages recovered from Stone’s iCloud account revealed that on or about November 15, 2016, Stone sent an attorney with the ability to contact Julian Assange a link to download the Signal application. 15 Approximately fifteen minutes after sending the link, Stone texted the attorney, “I’m on signal just dial my number.” The attorney responded, “I’ll call you.”

15 This attorney was a close friend of Credico’s and was the same friend Credico emailed on or about September 20, 2016 to pass along Stone’s request to Assange for emails connected to the allegations against then-candidate Clinton related to her service as Secretary of State.

So the pardon discussions Credico testified about under oath began no later then a week after Assange helped Trump get elected and Credico refused to rule out that they started on November 9 or even earlier. The SSCI Report notes Credico had a 12 minute call with Stone on October 5 and five more calls on October 6.

After Trump was inaugurated in early 2017, via an attorney he shared with Oleg Deripaska, Assange tried to leverage CIA’s hacking tools believed to have been stolen the previous April to obtain an immunity deal. Even while those discussions were ongoing, on March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks released the first installment of CIA’s hacking tools, a release they called Vault 7. According to witnesses at the trial of the accused source, Joshua Schulte, the Vault 7 release brought CIA’s hacking-based spying virtually to a halt while the agency tried to figure out who would be compromised by the release.

But that didn’t stop the pardon discussions between WikiLeaks, including Assange personally, and Stone. After another spat about whether Stone had had a back channel to WikiLeaks which they aired on CNN, Stone returned to a discussion of a pardon on April 7.

On or about March 27, 2017, Target Account 1 wrote to Roger Stone, “FYI, while we continue to be unhappy about false \”back channel\” claims, today CNN deliberately broke our off the record comments.”

On March 27, 2017, CNN reported that a representative of WikiLeaks, writing from an email address associated with WikiLeaks, denied that there was any backchannel communication during the Campaign between Stone and WikiLeaks. The same article quoted Stone as stating: “Since I never communicated with WikiLeaks, I guess I must be innocent of charges I knew about the hacking of Podesta’s email (speculation and conjecture) and the timing or scope of their subsequent disclosures. So I am clairvoyant or just a good guesser because the limited things I did predict (Oct disclosures) all came true. ”

On or about April 7, 2017, Roger Stone wrote to Target Account 1, ” I am JA’s only hope for a pardon the chances of which are actually (weirdly) enhanced by the bombing in Syria (which I opposed) . You have no idea how much your operation leaks. Discrediting me only hurts you. Why not consider saying nothing? PS- Why would anyone listen to that asshole Daniel Ellsberg.”

On April 13, in the wake of the Vault 7 hack, Mike Pompeo declared WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by Russia.

It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that Russian military intelligence—the GRU—had used WikiLeaks to release data of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.

In response, Stone took to InfoWars on April 18, calling on Pompeo to either provide proof of those Russian ties or resign, defending the release of the Vault 7 tools along the way.

The Intelligence agencies continue to insist that Julian Assange is an active Russian Agent and that Wikileaks is a Russian controlled asset. The agencies have no hard proof of this claim whatsoever. Assange has said repeatedly that he is affiliated with no nation state but the Intelligence Agencies continue to insist that he is under Russian control because it fits the narrative in which they must produce some evidence of Russian interference in our election because they used this charge to legally justify and rationalize the surveillance of Trump aides, myself included.

[snip]

President Donald Trump said on Oct, 10, 2016 “I love Wikileaks” and Pompeo who previously had praised the whistleblowing operation now called Wikileaks “a non-state hostile Intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia”. Mr. Pompeo must be pressed to immediately release any evidence he has that proves these statements. If he cannot do so ,the President should discharge him.

[snip]

Julian Assange does not work for the Russians. Given the import of the information that he ultimately disclosed about the Clinton campaign, the Obama administration and the deep secrets in the CIA’s Vault 7, he has educated the American people about the tactics and technology the CIA has used to spy on ordinary Americans.

Assange personally DMed Stone to thank him for the article, while claiming that Pompeo had stopped short of claiming that WikiLeaks had gotten the stolen DNC emails directly, thereby making WikiLeaks like any other media outlet.

On or about April 19, 2017, Assange, using Target Account 2, wrote to Stone, “Ace article in infowars. Appreciated. But note that U.S. intel is engages in slight of hand maoevers [sic]. Listen closely and you see they only claim that we received U.S. election leaks \”not directly\” or via a \”third party\” and do not know \”when\” etc. This line is Pompeo appears to be getting at with his \”abbeted\”. This correspnds to the same as all media and they do not make any allegation that WL or I am a Russia asset.”

It’s in that context — in the wake of Trump’s trusted CIA Director (and a former WikiLeaks booster himself) asserting serial cooperation between Russia and WikiLeaks — that Stone and Assange had the exchange that directly preceded Trump’s attempt to shut down any investigation into the leaks to WikiLeaks.

On June 4, Stone threatened to “bring down the entire house of cards” if the government moved on Assange (Stone kept a notebook during the campaign detailing all the calls he had had with Trump), then raised a pardon again, suggesting Assange had done nothing he needed to be pardoned for.

56. On or about June 4, 2017, Roger Stone wrote back to Target Account 2, “Still nonsense. As a journalist it doesn’t matter where you get information only that it is accurate and authentic. The New York Times printed the Pentagon Papers which were indisputably stolen from the government and the courts ruled it was legal to do so and refused to issue an order restraining the paper from publishing additional articles. If the US government moves on you I will bring down the entire house of cards. With the trumped-up sexual assault charges dropped I don’t know of any crime you need to be pardoned for – best regards. R.” Target Account 2 responded, “Between CIA and DoJ they’re doing quite a lot. On the DoJ side that’s coming most strongly from those obsessed with taking down Trump trying to squeeze us into a deal.”

57. On or about June 10, 2017, Roger Stone wrote to Target Account 2, “I am doing everything possible to address the issues at the highest level of Government. Fed treatment of you and Wikileaks is an outrage. Must be circumspect in this forum as experience demonstrates it is monitored. Best regards R.” Target Account 2 wrote back, “Appreciated. Of course it is!”

According to texts between Stone and Credico, Stone at least claimed to be pursuing a pardon in early 2018 (though he may have been doing that to buy Credico’s silence).

And it wasn’t just Stone involved in the discussions to free Assange.

Manafort’s Ecuador trip

While it’s not clear to what end, Paul Manafort took steps relating to Assange as well.

There’s the weird story by Ken Vogel, explaining that between those two Stone-Assange exchanges in April and June, 2017, long-time Roger Stone friend Paul Manafort went to Ecuador to negotiate Assange’s expulsion.

In mid-May 2017, Paul Manafort, facing intensifying pressure to settle debts and pay mounting legal bills, flew to Ecuador to offer his services to a potentially lucrative new client — the country’s incoming president, Lenín Moreno.

Mr. Manafort made the trip mainly to see if he could broker a deal under which China would invest in Ecuador’s power system, possibly yielding a fat commission for Mr. Manafort.

But the talks turned to a diplomatic sticking point between the United States and Ecuador: the fate of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

In at least two meetings with Mr. Manafort, Mr. Moreno and his aides discussed their desire to rid themselves of Mr. Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, in exchange for concessions like debt relief from the United States, according to three people familiar with the talks, the details of which have not been previously reported.

They said Mr. Manafort suggested he could help negotiate a deal for the handover of Mr. Assange to the United States, which has long investigated Mr. Assange for the disclosure of secret documents and which later filed charges against him that have not yet been made public.

The story never explained whether Manafort wanted Assange handed over for trial, for a golf vacation, or for Russian exfiltration (as was reportedly planned for Assange later in 2017).

That Manafort went to Ecuador and negotiated for an Assange release accords, however, with the 302 of a witness who called in to Mueller’s team. The witness described that Manafort had told him or her, in real time, that he had gone to Ecuador, “to try to convince the incoming President to expel Assange from the Embassy in order to gain favor with the U.S.”

Neither of these stories should be considered reliable, as written. 302s that Bill Barr’s DOJ is willing to release in unredacted form, as this one is, tend to be false claims that make Trump look less suspect than he really is. And Manafort-adjacent sources were using Ken Vogel to plant less-damning cover stories during this period. Further, as we’ll see, the dates of them, November 28 and December 3, 2018, respectively, puts them in a period after Trump knew that Mueller was investigating efforts to pardon Assange.

Manafort went to Ecuador in May of 2017. At the time, his lifelong buddy Roger Stone was still pursuing some means to get Assange released. It’s unclear precisely what Manafort asked Lenín Moreno to do.

WikiLeaks cultivates Trump’s oldest son

A more interesting parallel timeline (one that becomes more interesting if you track the communications in tandem, as I do below) is the dalliance between Don Jr and WikiLeaks. The failson’s communications with WikiLeaks are one area where all of the Roger Stone stories withhold key details. The Mueller Report, for example, covers only three of the Don Jr-WikiLeaks exchanges, which it caveats by explaining that it addresses the ones “during the campaign period” (again, only the one where Don Jr accesses a non-public website using the private password WikiLeaks shared involved a prosecutorial decision and so needed to be included).

Like the Mueller Report, the SSCI Report describes in the body of the report Don Jr’s exchange with WikiLeaks in a period around the time that Trump and his closest advisors had discussed reaching out to WikILeaks.

(U) WikiLeaks also sought to coordinate its distribution of stolen documents with the Campaign. After Trump proclaimed at an October 10 rally, “I love WikiLeaks” and then posted about it on Twitter,1730 WikiLeaks resumed messaging with Trump Jr. On October 12, it said: “Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us … there’s many great stories the press are missing and we’re sure some of your follows [sic] will find it. btw we just released Podesta Emails Part 4.”1731 Shortly afterward, Trump tweeted: “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged System!”1732 Two days later, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted the link himself: “For those who have the time to read about all the corruption and hypocrisy all the @wikileaks emails are right here: wlsearch.tk.”1733 Trump Jr. admitted that this may have been in response to the request from WikiLeaks, but also suggested that it could have been part of a general practice of retweeting the. WikiLeaks releases when they came out. 1734

But it only presents one part of the exchange that Jr and WikiLeaks had on November 8 and 9, and it relegates that to a footnote.

1738 (U) Ibid., pp. 164-166. WikiLeaks continued to interact with Trump Jr. after the general election on November 8, 2016. On November 9, 2016, WikiLeaks wrote to Trump Jr.: “Wow. Obama people will surely try to delete records on the way out. Just a heads up.”

As to the affidavits, the warrant application for Julian Assange’s Twitter account described having earlier obtained Don Jr’s Twitter account, but didn’t refer to him by name. Instead, it referred to him as “a high level individual associated with the Campaign,” and described just the September exchange between the two of them.

After the Atlantic provided more of those DMs, Don Jr, as he had earlier with his June 9 emails, released them himself. The Election Day exchange of which SSCI made no mention pushes Don Jr to adopt a strategy Russia was also pushing — to refuse to concede (a strategy that Trump will undoubtedly adopt on November 4 if he loses).

Hi Don; if your father ‘loses’ we think it is much more interesting if he DOES NOT conceed [sic] and spends time CHALLENGING the media and other types of rigging that occurred–as he has implied that he might do. He is also much more likely to keep his base alive and energised this way and if he is going to start a new network, showing how corrupt the old ones are is helpful. The discussion about the rigging can be transformative as it exposes media corruption, primary corruption, PAC corruption etc. We don’t like corruption ither [sic] and our publications are effective at proving that this and other forms of corruption exists.

That doesn’t pertain to pardons (though it does demonstrate that WikiLeaks was not involved in a journalistic enterprise).

But a DM from December 16, 2016 the SSCI similarly excerpted in a footnote does discuss what amounts to a pardon:

Hi Don. Hope you’re doing well! In relation to Mr. Assange: Obama/Clinton placed pressure on Sweden, UK and Australia (his home country) to illicitly go after Mr. Assange. It would be real easy and helpful for your dad to suggest that Australia appoint Assange ambassador to DC “That’s a really smart tough guy and the most famous australian you have! ” or something similar. They won’t do it, but it will send the right signals to Australia, UK + Sweden to start following the law and stop bending it to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons. Background: justice4assange.com

When these DMs were released on November 14, 2017, Assange tweeted out a follow-up to the December 2016 one, adding a threat by hashtagging, Vault8, the source code to the CIA files, a single example of which WikiLeaks had just released on November 9, 2017.

Meanwhile, the one other example where WikiLeaks provided the President’s son advice — a pitch for him to release his own June 9 emails via WikiLeaks in July 2017 — WikiLeaks explicitly suggested that Don Jr contact Margaret Kunstler, the same lawyer who had been discussing pardons with Assange nine months earlier.

There appears to be more — far more — to Margaret Kunstler’s role. Two 302s identifiable as hers have been released in response to the BuzzFeed FOIA, an interview on October 29, 2018 involving Stone prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky and Obstruction prosecutor Andrew Goldstein, and a second interview, this one by phone, on November 20, 2018, this one adding Russian prosecutor Rush Atkinson along with Zelinsky and Goldstein. Both 302s were released on October 1, 2020, the most recent release. In the first interview, only Kunstler’s response stating that she did not pass on Stone’s September request for information about Libya to Julian Assange was partly unsealed; there are at least five more paragraphs that remain redacted as part of an ongoing investigation. The second is eight pages long and appears to have at least four sub-topics with separate headings. Aside from the introductory paragraph, it remains entirely redacted, with over half covered by a b7A ongoing investigation exemption.

The investigation into much of Stone’s activities appears to have been shut down. But the investigation into the pardon discussions appears to have been ongoing just three weeks ago.

The Mueller question

The discussion of efforts to free Julian Assange appears, primarily, in two versions of the Roger Stone story. Prosecutors at Stone’s trial used the discussions to explain which of Stone’s threats — those naming Kunstler directly — worked most effectively to delay Credico’s cooperation. It also appears in affidavits, though with Don Jr’s identity obscured.

The SSCI report relegates both the Don Jr and Stone pardon discussions with WikiLeaks to footnotes and doesn’t quote Stone using the word “pardon” in the excerpts it includes. It does so even though the SSCI Report describes Dana Rohrabacher’s attempt to broker an Assange pardon in August 2017 in the body of the text.

The Mueller Report doesn’t discuss pardon efforts for Assange where you might expect it, along with discussions of pardons for Manafort, Flynn, Stone himself, and Michael Cohen. Mention of the effort to free Assange appears in just one place: amid the questions asked of Trump in an appendix.

Did you have any discussions prior to January 20, 2017, regarding a potential pardon or other action to benefit Julian Assange? If yes, describe who you had the discussion(s) with, when, and the content of the discussion(s).

I do not recall having had any discussion during the campaign regarding a pardon or action to benefit Julian Assange.

That appendix explains that Mueller’s team submitted these questions on September 17, 2018 (before both of Kunstler’s interviews) and Trump returned them on November 20, 2018.

In the interim period, on October 30, 2018, Don Jr’s close buddy, Arthur Schwartz, for the first time in years of having listened to former Sputnik employee Cassandra Fairbanks’ lobbying for Julian Assange in the right wing chat room they both (along with Ric Grenell) participated in responded by telling her that he would be charged and expelled from the embassy, that a pardon was not going to fucking happen and — at some point, if Fairbanks can be believed — suggesting someone with whom Schwartz was lifelong friends might be affected.

Arthur Schwartz warned me that people would be able to overlook my previous support for WikiLeaks because I did not know some things which he claimed to know about, but that wouldn’t be so forgiving now that I was informed. He brought up my nine year old child during these comments, which I perceived as an intimidation tactic.

He repeatedly insisted that I stop advocating for WikiLeaks and Assange, telling me that “a pardon isn’t going to fucking happen.” He knew very specific details about a future prosecution against Assange that were later made public and that only those very close to the situation would have been aware of. He told me that it would be the “Manning” case that he would be charged with and that it would not involve Vault 7 publication or anything to do with the DNC. He also told me that they would be going after Chelsea Manning. I also recollect being told, I believe, that it would not be before Christmas.

[snip]

The other persons who Schwartz said might also be affected included individuals who he described as “lifelong friends.”

Shortly after Trump submitted his answers, two stories — one public, one via witness testimony to Mueller — claimed that Manafort’s visit to Moreno, at a time when his buddy Stone was seeking a pardon, was actually an attempt to expel him from the embassy.

In spite of what Schwartz told Cassandra, however, the pardon discussions aren’t over. Just before Julian Assange’s extradition hearing started, Roger Stone’s buddy Tucker Carlson invited Glenn Greenwald on to make a three minute pitch — one in which Glenn explained what a good way this would be for Trump to stick it to the Deep State — for both Assange and Ed Snowden.

Timeline

September 20, 2016: WikiLeaks DMs Don Jr a link to putintrump site, including a password.

October 3, 2016: Credico raises asylum for Assange and tells Stone he’s best friends with Assange’s lawyer. WikiLeaks DMs Don Jr asking him to push a story about Hillary drone-striking Assange; Don Jr notes he has already done so and asks what is coming on Wednesday.

October 5, 2016: Credico and Stone speak for 12 minutes.

October 6, 2016: Stone probably has a six minute call with Trump. Stone has five calls with Credico.

October 7, 2016: The release of the Podesta email swamps the DHS/ODNI release attributing the DNC hack and tying WikiLeaks to Russia

October 8, 2016: Stone and Trump probably meet.

Shortly after Podesta release: Senior campaign officials discuss reaching out to WikiLeaks.

October 10, 2016: Trump tweets “I love WikiLeaks.”

October 12, 2016: WikiLeaks disavows any back channel with Stone. WikiLeaks also DMs Don Jr suggesting he get his father to tweet a link. Don Jr tweets it that day.

October 13, 2016: Stone and WikiLeaks exchange DMs.

October 14, 2016: Trump tweets the link WikiLeaks sent to Don Jr.

October 16, 2016: Stone tells WikiLeaks “You need to figure out who your friends are.”

October 21, 2016: WikiLeaks suggests that Don Jr release Trump’s tax returns to WikiLeaks.

November 8, 2016: WikiLeaks DMs Don Jr to suggest Trump not concede if he loses.

November 9, 2016: WikiLeaks DMs Don Jr to claim Obama’s people will delete records on the way out. WikiLeaks DMs Stone to say, “We are now more free to communicate.”

November 14, 2016: Stone gets a new phone.

November 15, 2016: Stone texts Margaret Kunstler a link to Signal and tells her to call him on it, which she said she would do.

December 16, 2016: WikiLeaks suggests that he ask his dad to suggest Australia appoint Assange as Ambassador to the US.

January 6, 2017: WikiLeaks DMs Don Jr a John Harwood tweet asking, Who do you believe, America?

March 7, 2017: WikiLeaks starts releasing the Vault 7 files, effectively halting CIA’s hacking capability for a period.

March 27, 2017: Stone and WikiLeaks exchange more complaints about whether Stone had a back channel.

April 7, 2017: Stone writes WikiLeaks that he is “JA’s only hope for a pardon.”

April 13, 2017: Mike Pompeo calls WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by Russia.

April 18, 2017: Stone calls on Pompeo to release proof of WikiLeaks’ Russian ties or resign.

April 19, 2017: Assange thanks Stone for the attack on Pompeo, but claims that Pompeo has stopped short of calling WikiLeaks a Russian asset.

April 26, 2017: Assange DMs Don Jr some video on “Fake News.”

May 2017: Manafort meets in Ecuador with Lenín Moreno to discuss Assange.

June 4, 2017: Stone DMs Assange, threatening to “bring down the entire house of cards” if the US government moves on Assange.

June 10, 2017: Roger Stone tells Assange he is “doing everything possible … at the highest level of Government” to help Assange.

June 19, 2017: Trump tries to give a back channel order to Jeff Sessions to limit the Mueller investigation to future election meddling, not the meddling that helped him get elected.

July 11, 2017: WikiLeaks DMs Don Jr to suggest he release his June 9 emails via WikiLeaks, providing him Margaret Kunstler’s contact information as if she would take the submission.

October 12, 2017: Mueller’s team obtains Don Jr’s Twitter content.

November 6, 2017: Mueller’s team obtains WikiLeaks and Assange’s Twitter content.

November 14, 2017: Don Jr releases his Twitter DMs with WikiLeaks. Julian Assange publicly references the December 16 DM, suggests he can open “luxury immunity suites for whistleblowers,” and includes a Vault8 hashtag (referencing CIA’s source code).

December 21, 2017: Reported attempt to exfiltrate Assange from the embassy; DOJ charges Assange with CFAA conspiracy.

January 6, 2018: Stone claims “I am working with others to get JA a blanket pardon.”

September 17, 2018: Mueller submits questions to Trump, including one about a pardon for Assange.

October 29, 2018: Mueller’s team interviews Kunstler.

October 30, 2018: Arthur Schwartz tells Cassandra Fairbanks there’s not going to be a fucking Assange pardon.

November 20, 2018: Trump returns his questions to Mueller. Mueller’s team interviews Kunstler.

The movie Rashomon demonstrated that any given narrative tells just one version of events, but that by listening to all available narratives, you might identify gaps and biases that get you closer to the truth.

I’m hoping that principle works even for squalid stories like the investigation into Roger Stone’s cheating in the 2016 election. This series will examine the differences between four stories about Roger Stone’s actions in 2016:

As I noted in the introductory post (which lays out how I generally understand the story each tells), each story has real gaps in one or more of these areas:

My hope is that by identifying these gaps and unpacking what they might say about the choices made in crafting each of these stories, we can get a better understanding of what actually happened — both in 2016 and in the investigations. The gaps will serve as a framework for this series.

Rat-Fucker Rashomon: Jerome Corsi’s Prescience about the Content of John Podesta’s Emails

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In the previous installment of this series, I showed that rather than describing the conclusions of the Mueller team’s investigation into whether, how, and why Roger Stone optimized the release of the John Podesta emails on October 7, 2016, the Mueller Report instead plopped a comedy routine showing how Jerome Corsi changed his story from minute to minute on the topic.

The choice is all the more interesting given that the affidavits used in the Stone investigation — to say nothing of witness testimony — makes it increasingly certain that Stone got advance notice, and probably advance copies, of the stolen emails that pertained to an attack regarding Podesta’s ties to a company with Russian ties, Joule Holdings, that the frothy right had been chasing for months before mid-August 2016.

Jerome Corsi’s Podesta email was actually about timing

The email that Jerome Corsi sent Roger Stone on August 2, 2016 has been widely misunderstood, including by the SSCI Report.

“Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps,” Corsi explained after informing Stone he hadn’t called him back, as Stone requested the day before, because he was in Italy. “One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct.” This language about timing is what Aaron Zelinsky focused on when introducing the email at Stone’s trial. It’s the language that Jonathan Kravis highlighted in his closing argument. In neither prosecutors’ description of the email do they mention John Podesta (though later in Zelinsky’s opening, he describes that, “Roger Stone promised … a massive amount of hacked emails belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta” would be dropped on October 7).

Nevertheless this email has been taken as the means by which Corsi informed Stone that the upcoming WikiLeaks dump involved files stolen from John Podesta.

It’s only much later in the email when Corsi says, “Time to let more than Podesta to be exposed as in bed w enemy.” The reference to Podesta would be incomprehensible to Stone if it were his first notice that WikiLeaks was going to drop emails stolen from Hillary’s campaign manager. Moreover, Corsi wouldn’t bury it in the sixth paragraph if it were new news, particularly not given that the right wing oppo researchers Steve Bannon paid, the Government Accountability Institute, had just days earlier released a report that focused on John Podesta. Indeed, it’s even possible that the email doesn’t reflect advance knowledge of the Podesta emails, but was instead a reference to that report.

There’s no reason to believe that the Podesta reference in this email was news to Stone.

Corsi put the new news — that the dumps were coming shortly after he was scheduled to return from Italy on August 12, and then again in October — in the second paragraph. And as some of the affidavits described obliquely — but which did not get mentioned in any of the other three Roger Stone stories — the timing of both those predictions was absolutely correct.

Based on my training, experience, and review of materials in this case, it appears that CORSI’s reference to a “friend in embassy [who] plans 2 more dumps” refers to Julian ASSANGE; the founder of Wikileaks, who resided in Ecuador’s London Embassy in2016. As discussed above, Guccifer released information hacked from the DCCC on August 12,2016 (the date CORSI identified as when he would “return home.”)

FBI Agent Amy Anderson mentions, but does not explain, that Corsi did not correctly predict who would release these files.

Two releases, one from Guccifer and the other from Wikileaks, occurred at the times predicted by CORSI.

In fact, as Raffi Khatchadourian was the first to explain publicly (but as would have been clear to investigators once they obtained the relevant Twitter content), Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks engaged in a series of very theatrical DM conversations with Emma Best over that weekend in August 2016 about whether Best would publish the DCCC emails; even after WikiLeaks convinced Best to hold off so it could have exclusivity, WikiLeaks never did publish any DCCC documents. At the time Corsi learned that “friend in embassy” would have two upcoming drops, WikiLeaks was still demanding exclusivity before it would deliver the first one.

In the August 2 email, then, Corsi provided new news to Stone about what the Russians were planning, but (if the theatrical DMs are to be believed, which they shouldn’t necessarily be) Assange had yet to buy into the plan. That makes Corsi’s description of “the game hackers are now about” all the more intriguing.

There’s no reason to believe, from this email, that Corsi was newly informing Stone that WikiLeaks would eventually dump the Podesta emails. There’s not even any reason to be sure that Corsi informed Stone of that fact and not vice versa. Indeed, the Mueller Report describes that Corsi told Ted Malloch later in August that, “Stone had made a connection to Assange and that the hacked emails of John Podesta would be released prior to Election Day,” not that he himself had. The email is indication (though in no way, by itself, proof, especially given the possibility it referenced the GAI report) that both believed by August 2 that WikiLeaks would drop the Podesta emails. It is not proof that Corsi told Stone of that fact.

Rick Gates and Paul Manafort testified that Stone knew Podesta emails were coming

We can get a lot closer to proof that Stone had advance knowledge of the Podesta drop, though.

First of all, it’s not just Malloch who testified to having conversations about Podesta’s emails in August. According to the SSCI Report, in part of Rick Gates’ October 25, 2018 interview that remains redacted,

Gates recalled Stone advising him, prior to the release of an August 14 article in The New York Times about Paul Manafort’s “secret ledger,” that damaging information was going to be released about Podesta. 1579 Gates understood that Stone was referring to nonpublic information. Gates further recalled later conversations with Stone about how to save Manafort’s role on the Campaign, and that Stone was focused on getting information about John Podesta, but said that Stone did not reveal the “inner workings” of that plan to Gates. 1580

An unredacted part of that 302 — which is likely the continuation of the discussion cited in SSCI — explains,

Gates said there was a strategy to defend Manafort by attacking Podesta. The idea was that Podesta had baggage as well. Gates said it was unfortunate the information did not come out in time to defend Manafort from his ultimate departure from the campaign.

In a September 27, 2018 interview, Manafort provided details of two conversations that he placed in August 2016, one of which provided specific details (which remain redacted, purportedly to protect Podesta’s privacy!) about John Podesta’s alleged ties with Russia.

Manafort was sure he had at least two conversations with Stone prior to the October 7, 2016 leak of John Podesta’s emails.

In the one conversation between Stone and Manafort, Stone told Manafort “you got fucked.” Stone’s comment related to the fact that Manafort had been fired. The conversation was either the day Manafort left the campaign or the day after.

In the other conversation, Stone told Manafort that there would be a WikiLeaks drop of emails with Podesta, and that Podesta would be “in the barrel” and Manafort would be vindicated. Manafort had a clear memory of the moment because of the language Stone used. Stone also said Manafort would be pleased with what came out. It was Manafort’s understanding that WikiLeaks had Podesta’s emails and they were going to show that [redacted] Manafort would be vindicated because he had to leave the campaign for being too pro-Russian, and this would show that Podesta also had links to Russia and would have to leave.

Manafort’s best recollection was the “barrel” conversation was before he got on the boat the week of August 28, 2016.

Roger Stone’s longtime friend Paul Manafort, at a time when he lying to protect key details about what happened in 2016, nevertheless confirmed that Stone had detailed knowledge not just that the Podesta files would drop, but what Russian-based attacks they would make of them.

The government almost certainly has proof Stone and Corsi had advance copies of the Podesta files

More importantly, there’s evidence that Corsi had copies of some of the Podesta emails by August 14, and had pre-written attacks on Podesta already drafted when the files came out in October.

On March 23, 2017, Corsi published what he claimed was an explanation for Stone’s August 21, 2016 “time in the barrel” tweet. In it, he explained that in response to the August 14, 2016 NYT story exposing Paul Manafort’s Ukraine corruption, Corsi started a memo for Stone on Podesta.

On Aug. 14, 2016, I began researching for Roger Stone a memo that I entitled “Podesta.”

On August 15 at 1:33 AM, Stone tweeted about Podesta for the first time ever,

@JohnPodesta makes @PaulManafort look like St. Thomas Aquinas Where is the @NewYorkTimes ?

At 8:16AM on August 15, Corsi texted and then at 8:17 AM Corsi emailed Stone the same message:

Give me a call today if you can. Despite MSM drumroll that HRC is already elected, it’s not over yet. More to come than anyone realizes.

According to the SSCI Report, at 12:14PM on August 15, Corsi and Stone spoke by phone for 24 minutes.

The implication in Corsi’s March 2017 post was that he spent the next two weeks writing the memo that he started on August 14 and that the report reflects “several detailed conversations” Corsi had with Stone.

I completed that memo on Aug. 31, 2016, and is embedded here in its entirety.

Between Aug. 14 and Aug. 31, 2016, Roger Stone and I had several detailed conversations about the Podesta research.

Except that prosecutors obtained several kinds of proof that Corsi only started writing the memo he published in that March 2017 column (which Stone submitted to HPSCI — starting at PDF 39 — as part of his prepared statement) on that same day, on August 31. Corsi started writing it after Stone called him on August 30 and asked him to do so. This would have started to become clear to prosecutors when they first obtained email returns, since Corsi sent a copy of the report to Stone via email. But according to Corsi, prosecutors found forensic evidence to confirm that.

In his book, Corsi even admitted that the document was a cover story that he didn’t start until August 30 (Stone sued Corsi about this claim).

Next, Zelinsky focused on the email Roger Stone sent me on August 30, 2016, asking me to call him. As we discussed earlier, that led me to write a “cover-up memo” for him on John Podesta, suggesting that Roger’s infamous Twitter post about “Podesta’s time in the barrel” was a reference to my research about John and Tony Podesta’s money dealings with Russia. Roger wanted to disguise his tweet, suggesting “Podesta’s time in the barrel” was not a reference to any advanced knowledge Stone may have had from me, when I began telling Stone from Italy in emails dated earlier in August 2016 that I believed Assange had Podesta emails. “We’ve examined your computer Doctor Corsi,” Zelinsky grilled me. “And we know that the next day, August 31, 2016, your birthday, you began at 7:30 a.m. to write that memo for Stone.”

Before returning to Washington to appear before the grand jury, I had taken the time to research the file of my 2016 writing drafts that I had restored to my laptop from the Time Machine. I found that the file that I labeled, “ROGER STONE background PODESTA version 1.0 Aug. 31, 2016” was time-stamped for 12:17 p.m. that day. But I decided not to quibble with Zelinsky, so I agreed. “Then, Doctor Corsi, we find from your computer that the first thing you did was to find a series of open source articles on Podesta and Russia that you could use in writing your memo for Roger Stone,” Zelinsky said, pressing forward. “Is that correct?”

That said, Corsi may well have another report he started on August 14. In his March 2017 piece, Corsi claims that he wrote a series of articles based on that original report, one installment of which Stone would publish under his own name on October 13.

On October 6, 2016, I published in WND.com the first of a series of articles detailing Putin’s financial ties to Clinton and Podesta, based largely on the research contained in the Government Accountability Institute’s report, “From Russia With Money.”

On Oct. 13, 2016, Stone published on his website an article entitled, “Russian Mafia money laundering, the Clinton Foundation and John Podesta.”

A comparison of the two articles will show the extent to which Stone incorporated my research into his analysis.

To the extent that Corsi wrote a series of articles, it would include the following:

In a November 1, 2018 interview, Corsi explained that he had published the October 6 one (as noted, it was based off the earlier GAI/Breitbart attack), in an effort to force Assange to release the Podesta emails.

Corsi published the August 31, 2016 memo on October 6, 2016. At that time, he still held himself out as the connection to WikiLeaks. The trigger for the release of the article was the publication of an article about [Paul] Manafort and [Viktor] Yanukovych. Corsi wanted to counter it with a story about Podesta, but he really wanted to provide stimulus to Assange to release whatever he had on Podesta. Corsi was angry with Assange for not releasing emails on October 4, 2016.

The claim would only make sense (to the extent that Jerome Corsi can ever be said to “make sense”) if Corsi could threaten to pre-empt what WikiLeaks was about to publish: the Podesta file pertaining to Joule Holdings.

As for the October 13 piece Stone adopted as his own, the affidavits targeting Corsi and Stone provided extensive details on how that got published.

First thing in the morning on October 12, Stone wrote Corsi and asked for his “best podesta links.” (The SSCI Report reveals that Stone and Manafort spoke that day, but does not say what time.) Corsi responded that he would send them on Monday — which would have been on October 17. “The remaining stuff on Podesta,” Corsi said, “is complicated.” That seems to comport with Corsi’s later representation he did a series, of which the October 13 one was part. But it also seems to suggest that the remaining stuff was already written at 8:54 AM on October 12.

75. On or about October 8, 2016, STONE messaged CORSI at Target Account 2, “Lunch postponed- have to go see T.” CORSI responded to STONE, “Ok. I understand.” Approximately twenty minutes later, CORSI texted, “Clintons know they will lose a week of Paula Jones media with T attacking Foundation, using Wikileaks Goldman Sachs speech comments, attacking bad job numbers.”

76. On or about Wednesday, October 12, 2016, at approximately 8:17 EDT, STONE emailed CORSI at Target Account 1, asking him to “send me your best podesta links.” STONE emailed CORSI at approximately 8:$$ [sic] EDT, “need your BEST podesta pieces.” CORSI wrote back at approximately 8:54AM EDT, “Ok. Monday. The remaining stuff on Podesta is complicated. Two articles in length. I can give you in raw form the stuff I got in Russian translated but to write it up so it’s easy to understand will take weekend. Your choice?”

77. On or about that same day October 12, 2016, Podesta accused STONE of having advance knowledge of the publication of his emails. At approximately 3:25PM EDT, CORSI, using Target Account 1, emailed STONE with a subject line “Podesta talking points.” Attached to the email was a file labeled, “ROGER STONE podesta talking points Oct 12 2016.docx.” The “talking points” included the statement that “Podesta is at the heart of a Russian-govermnent money laundering operation that benefits financially Podesta personally and the Clintons through the Clinton Foundation.”

78. CORSI followed up several minutes later with another email titled, “Podesta talking points,” with the text “sent a second time just to be sure you got it.” STONE emailed CORSI back via the Hotmail Account, “Got them and used them.”

79. On or about Thursday, October 13, 2016, CORSI, using Target Account 3, emailed STONE: “PODESTA — Joule & ties to RUSSIA MONEY LAUNDERING to CLINTON FOUNDATION.” STONE responded, “Nice but I was hoping for a piece I could post under my by-line since I am the one under attack by Podesta and now Mook.” CORSI wrote back to STONE, “I’ll give you one more -NOBODY YET HAS THIS[:] It looks to me like [redacted–Vekselberg] skimmed maybe billions off Skolkovo – Skolkovo kept their money with Metcombank[.] The Russians launched a criminal investigation[.] [web link] Once [redacted–Vekselberg] had the channel open from Metcombank to Deutsche Bank America to Ban[k] of America’s Clinton Fund account, there’s no telling how much money he laundered, or where it ended up. Nothing in Clinton Foundation audited financials or IRS Form 990s about $$$ received via Russia & Metcombank[.] I’m working on that angle now.” STONE replied, “Ok Give me SOMETHING to post on Podesta since I have now promised it to a dozen MSM reporters[.]”

80. On or about Thursday, October 13, 2016 at approximately 6:30PM EDT, CORSI sent STONE an email with the Subject, “ROGER STONE article RUSSIAN MAFIA STYLE MONEY-LAUNDERING, the CLINTON FOUNDATION, and JOHN PODESTA.” The text stated: “Roger[,] You are free to publish this under your own name.” That same day, STONE posted a blog post with the title, “Russian Mafia money laundering, the Clinton Foundation and John Podesta.” In that post, STONE wrote, “although I have had some back-channel communications with Wikileaks I had no advance notice about the hacking of Mr. Podesta nor I have I ever received documents or data from Wikileaks.” The post then asked, “Just how much money did, a controversial Russian billionaire investor with ties to the Vladimir Putin and the Russian government, launder through Metcombank, a Russian regional bank owned 99 .978 percent by with the money transferred via Deutsche Bank and Trust Company Americas in New York City, with the money ending up in a private bank account in the Bank of America that is operated by the Clinton Foundation?”

81. On or about October 14, 2016, CORSI sent a message using Target Account 2 to STONE, “i’m in NYC. Thinking about writing piece attacking Leer and other women. It’s basically a rewrite of what’s out there. Going through new Wikileaks drop on Podesta.” [my emphasis]

It turns out the post Stone ultimately posted had no links to the WikiLeaks releases it relied on (remember, he asked Corsi for links and pieces), but it does reference a file that had been released on October 11, hours before Corsi seemed to speak of the post as already completed.

Wikileaks emails tie John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, into the money-laundering network with the confirmation Podesta had exercised 75,000 shares out of 100,000 previously undisclosed stock options he was secretly issued by Joule Unlimited, a U.S. corporation that ties back to Vekselberg connected Joule Global Stichting in the Netherlands – a shady entity identified in the Panama Papers as an offshore money-laundering client of the notorious Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

As a clear indication of guilty conscience, the Wikileaks Podesta file further documents that Podesta made a serious effort to keep the transaction from coming to light as evidenced by his decision to transfer 75,000 common shares of Joule Unlimited to Leonidio LLC, another shady shell corporation – this one listed in Salt Lake City at the home apartment of the gentlemen who registered the company.

A parallel post covering the same material posted by Corsi does have links to the emails that support the disposition of the 75,000 shares and other claims made in it. But that one was updated about six hours after it was first posted, and the first Internet Archive capture postdates that update.

Investigators seem to have found some significance, too, in the Metcombank reference that Corsi got and had to translate from Russian, a significance I don’t understand. But Stone dropped part of that attack when he revived the Vekselberg attack to use against Cohen in 2018.

Remember: Investigators would have had the forensics for the documents Corsi and Stone were sending back and forth by email, and probably would have communications about all this between August 14 and August 31, when (according to Corsi), Stone asked him to write a cover story. They would know if the story Stone posted under his own name was drafted before the public release of the emails it relied on.

But even on its face, Corsi’s comments suggest that these documents were a series started by October 6, of which some parts “were remaining” on the morning of October 12, one day after the email it relied on got released. Remember, too, that Corsi claims Stone told him to delete his email (which he did) on October 11, which would hide any knowledge of that WikiLeaks file before it came out.

Paul Manafort and Rick Gates both testified that Roger Stone had a plan, hatched before Paul Manafort resigned on August 19, to save his job by claiming that Podesta was just as bad as Manafort. Manafort even described the specific nature of the Russian-based attack on Podesta they had planned (though Bill Barr’s DOJ redacted it to protect Podesta’s privacy!).

And then, when Roger Stone asked Corsi for “links” as well as “pieces” on October 12, Corsi sent him a document that, by reference, had already been written, one that didn’t have links but that integrated information that wasn’t public until October 11.

That doesn’t prove that Stone and Corsi had those files in mid-August. But it does explain why Stone might have wanted a cover story denying they did after he boasted that it would soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel on August 21.

The movie Rashomon demonstrated that any given narrative tells just one version of events, but that by listening to all available narratives, you might identify gaps and biases that get you closer to the truth.

I’m hoping that principle works even for squalid stories like the investigation into Roger Stone’s cheating in the 2016 election. This series will examine the differences between four stories about Roger Stone’s actions in 2016:

As I noted in the introductory post (which lays out how I generally understand the story each tells), each story has real gaps in one or more of these areas:

My hope is that by identifying these gaps and unpacking what they might say about the choices made in crafting each of these stories, we can get a better understanding of what actually happened — both in 2016 and in the investigations. The gaps will serve as a framework for this series.

Bill Barr’s Screed Is About Mike Flynn, Nora Dannehy, and Robert Mueller

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Bill Barr delivered a remarkable screed last night at the radical right Hillsdale College. Numerous people have and will unpack both the glaring contradictions and the dangerous assertions in it.

But I want to point out that it is quite obviously about Barr’s attempts to overturn the prosecutions of Trump’s flunkies for covering up their efforts to help Russia interfere in the election.

A big part of it is targeted towards independent counsels (though, tellingly, Barr assails the independent counsel statute that used to be, not the one that left Robert Mueller closely supervised by Rod Rosenstein).

As Justice Scalia observed in perhaps his most admired judicial opinion, his dissent in Morrison v. Olson: “Almost all investigative and prosecutorial decisions—including the ultimate decision whether, after a technical violation of the law has been found, prosecution is warranted—involve the balancing of innumerable legal and practical considerations.”

And those considerations do need to be balanced in each and every case.  As Justice Scalia also pointed out, it is nice to say “Fiat justitia, ruat coelum. Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.”  But it does not comport with reality.  It would do far more harm than good to abandon all perspective and proportion in an attempt to ensure that every technical violation of criminal law by every person is tracked down, investigated, and prosecuted to the Nth degree.

[snip]

This was of course the central problem with the independent-counsel statute that Justice Scalia criticized in Morrison v. Olson.  Indeed, creating an unaccountable headhunter was not some unfortunate byproduct of that statute; it was the stated purpose of that statute.  That was what Justice Scalia meant by his famous line, “this wolf comes as a wolf.”  As he went on to explain:  “How frightening it must be to have your own independent counsel and staff appointed, with nothing else to do but to investigate you until investigation is no longer worthwhile—with whether it is worthwhile not depending upon what such judgments usually hinge on, competing responsibilities.  And to have that counsel and staff decide, with no basis for comparison, whether what you have done is bad enough, willful enough, and provable enough, to warrant an indictment.  How admirable the constitutional system that provides the means to avoid such a distortion.  And how unfortunate the judicial decision that has permitted it.”

Justice Jackson understood this too.  As he explained in his speech:  “If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.”  Any erosion in prosecutorial detachment is extraordinarily perilous.  For, “it is in this realm—in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself.”

And part of it is a restatement of the arguments Acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall made before the DC Circuit, arguing that even bribery was not reason for a judge to override DOJ’s decisions on prosecutions.

I want to focus today on the power that the Constitution allocates to the Executive, particularly in the area of criminal justice.  The Supreme Court has correctly held that, under Article II of the Constitution, the Executive has virtually unchecked discretion to decide whether to prosecute individuals for suspected federal crimes.  The only significant limitation on that discretion comes from other provisions of the Constitution.  Thus, for example, a United States Attorney could not decide to prosecute only people of a particular race or religion.  But aside from that limitation — which thankfully has remained a true hypothetical at the Department of Justice — the Executive has broad discretion to decide whether to bring criminal prosecutions in particular cases.

And the rest suggests that career prosecutors have been putting targets on the heads of politically prominent people and pursuing them relentlessly.

Once the criminal process starts rolling, it is very difficult to slow it down or knock it off course.  And that means federal prosecutors possess tremendous power — power that is necessary to enforce our laws and punish wrongdoing, but power that, like any power, carries inherent potential for abuse or misuse.

[snip]

Line prosecutors, by contrast, are generally part of the permanent bureaucracy.  They do not have the political legitimacy to be the public face of tough decisions and they lack the political buy-in necessary to publicly defend those decisions.  Nor can the public and its representatives hold civil servants accountable in the same way as appointed officials.  Indeed, the public’s only tool to hold the government accountable is an election — and the bureaucracy is neither elected nor easily replaced by those who are.

[snip]

We want our prosecutors to be aggressive and tenacious in their pursuit of justice, but we also want to ensure that justice is ultimately administered dispassionately.

We are all human.  Like any person, a prosecutor can become overly invested in a particular goal.  Prosecutors who devote months or years of their lives to investigating a particular target may become deeply invested in their case and assured of the rightness of their cause.

When a prosecution becomes “your prosecution”—particularly if the investigation is highly public, or has been acrimonious, or if you are confident early on that the target committed serious crimes—there is always a temptation to will a prosecution into existence even when the facts, the law, or the fair-handed administration of justice do not support bringing charges.

[snip]

That is yet another reason that having layers of supervision is so important.  Individual prosecutors can sometimes become headhunters, consumed with taking down their target.  Subjecting their decisions to review by detached supervisors ensures the involvement of dispassionate decision-makers in the process.

And it excuses, in one sentence, calling for probation even after a just prosecution.

Other times it will mean aggressively prosecuting a person through trial and then recommending a lenient sentence, perhaps even one with no incarceration.

Of course, none of this makes sense, and Barr’s own behavior — from removing Senate confirmed US Attorneys to put in people accountable only to him, from seeking prosecution of Democratic officials, and from launching the Durham investigation because he was just certain there was criminal wrong-doing in the Russian investigation — belies his words.

Perhaps it does so in the most basic way. If we hold our Attorney General politically accountable through elections, then we need to make sure elections are fair. We definitely need to make sure that elections are not influenced by hostile foreign powers cooperating with one candidate. The 2016 election wasn’t fair, and Bill Barr is doing his damndest to make sure the voters won’t be able to use the 2020 election to hold him politically accountable for interfering with the punishment of those who worked to cheat.

Because of Barr’s corrupt view on cheating at elections, he ensures that Vladimir Putin has more say over who gets prosecuted than experienced American prosecutors.

Aaron Zelinsky

Beware DOJ Inspectors General Bearing Investigations, Aaron Zelinsky Edition

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When DOJ IG got evidence, in the form of Jim Comey’s memos documenting that every safeguard against White House interference in DOJ and FBI investigations had broken down, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz instead investigated whether Comey had mishandled classified information, ultimately referring Comey for prosecution.

When FBI Inspection Division got evidence that someone kept leaking false information to Sara Carter claiming Andrew McCabe had promised to “fuck Trump,” it turned into a DOJ IG investigation into whether McCabe had lied. After withholding the evidence of a key witness, Michael Kortan, the IG Report was used to justify the firing of McCabe.

When DOJ IG conducted an investigation into the leaks and conduct of various FBI Agents, it ended up being a report that exclusively reported on anti-Trump texts from Agents, and not pro-Trump leaks and texts — it even provided misleading graphics that falsely suggested only anti-Trump leaks happened. That led to the disclosure, during an investigation, of those texts, and ultimately to Peter Strzok’s firing.

That’s why I’m wary about the NBC report today that DOJ’s Inspector General is investigating the Roger Stone sentencing.

The Justice Department inspector general’s office has begun investigating the circumstances surrounding the sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a longtime friend of President Donald Trump’s, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The investigation is focused on events in February, according to the two sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Stone’s prosecutors have said that is when they were told to seek a lighter sentence than they had previously considered.

[snip]

A source familiar with the matter said comments Zelinsky made during his testimony triggered the inspector general’s office to open an investigation. It is not known how far the office has proceeded in its investigation, whom it has interviewed or whether it has found any evidence of wrongdoing.

That’s particularly true given Kerri Kupec’s confidence — in a statement to Politico’s Josh Gerstein — that Billy Barr’s DOJ welcomes this review.

A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed that the agency’s Office of Inspector General is looking into Barr’s move in February to seek a lighter sentence for Stone after rank-and-file prosecutors and an acting U.S. attorney hand-picked by Barr had already submitted a recommendation of seven to nine years in prison for the conservative provocateur, who has been a political sounding board for Trump for more than two decades.

“We welcome the review,” a department spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said on Monday evening.

Gerstein further notes that this probe did not come with an announcement to HJC.

In the past, Horowitz has written to members of Congress to confirm that he has launched inquiries in high-profile cases in which lawmakers demanded a review. It was not immediately clear why Horowitz was being more tight-lipped about the investigation into the Stone sentencing decision.

Even aside from past history and the warning sign that Gerstein notes, there’s one more reason to believe that Horowitz’ IG Report will once against serve to damage — if not provide an excuse to fire — someone who investigated Trump.

DOJ IG cannot investigate the actions lawyers take as lawyers. And virtually everything Aaron Zelinsky testified to in the House Judiciary Committee hearing pertains to actions Barr flunky Timothy Shea and others took as lawyers. Moreover, during the hearing, Jim Jordan made a point to get Zelinsky to name precisely who he claimed had accused Barr of politicized decisions. By the end of the hearing, Republicans were claiming that those people had not said what Zelinsky claimed.

DOJ IG can’t investigate why Timothy Shea engaged in unprecedented interference in sentencing. It can, however, investigate whether Zelinsky’s testimony matches that of more complicit supervisors in the DC US Attorney Office. And that’s what’s likely to happen.

Judge Sullivan Amicus John Gleeson Lays Out How DOJ Is Arguing Against DOJ, then Invokes Barr’s Other Interference

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When Judge Emmet Sullivan holds a hearing on DOJ’s motion to dismiss the Mike Flynn prosecution later this month, DOJ will likely refuse to answer any questions about why just Timothy Shea, Bill Barr’s lifelong flunky, signed the original motion to dismiss.

But even without raising that issue, retired Judge John Gleeson — acting as Sullivan’s amicus to oppose the motion — has amplified Shea’s role in his reply brief, submitted today.

He did so by noting that Shea’s argument is fundamentally incompatible with things DOJ claimed before Barr intervened (in filings arguing against Flynn’s Brady claims) and with things DOJ has claimed since (in a response brief signed by AUSA Jocelyn Ballantine).

Effectively, then, Gleeson has laid out that even DOJ believes DOJ lied in their motion to dismiss.

He does so, first of all, with materiality. Gleeson lays out that the government didn’t bother to defend the radical claims about materiality made in the Shea motion.

Although the Government attempts to respond to other arguments in my brief, it offers no response here. It does not claim I have misapprehended or misapplied the law. It never explains why one legal rule—the one set forth in its motion—applies to Flynn, while a different legal rule applies to everyone else. It never explains why its own lawyers erred so grievously in stating the law. It never explains why Flynn’s statements, in this setting, were not even capable of affecting the FBI’s general function. The Government’s silence on these crucial points is, by itself, sufficient to establish that its claims about materiality are pretextual.

Then, Gleeson argues that the government not only got the standard wrong, but misstated the evidence. To support it, he did what I’ve been clamoring for for months — he pointed to the government’s own claims about the materiality of Flynn’s lies (though he relies on a different and weaker filing than the government’s most aggressive statement on materiality, which had to he delayed twice to get senior DOJ review), noting that not that long ago the government argued aggressively that Flynn’s lies were material.

I have explained that the evidence demonstrating materiality here is so strong that the Government could satisfy an even tougher standard than the law requires—specifically, by demonstrating that Flynn’s statements had an actual effect on a specific FBI investigation. See ECF No. 225 at 41–42, 48–49. The Court need not take my word alone for this point. It can take the Government’s own word, as set forth in briefs submitted (unlike the Rule 48(a) motion) by the prosecutors who actually investigated this case, explaining that Flynn’s lies in fact affected the FBI’s investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government (a.k.a. “Crossfire Hurricane”). See ECF No. 132 at 10–11 (stating that Flynn’s “false statements to the FBI . . . were absolutely material”).

He also shows that the response brief — the one signed by Ballentine — offers no response on materiality itself but instead, “kick[s] up administrative dust.”

[T]he Government now abandons any discussion of the supposedly “critical”—but actually irrelevant—“predication threshold” that formed the backbone of its original motion. See ECF No. 198 at 16; see also id. at 2–5, 13–18. Instead, the Government refers vaguely to an irrelevant internal draft closing memorandum, “disagreement” about protocol, and other supposed “procedural irregularities,” ECF No. 227 at 2, 26–27, none of which is either particularly irregular or has any legal significance in proving materiality, see ECF No. 225 at 42–44. The Government seeks to conceal its retreat by kicking up administrative dust, but the bottom line is that it no longer stands by its own motion’s implausible reasoning.

Significantly, he mocks what is, in Billy Barr’s little mind, the real reason Flynn’s case should be dismissed: that many of the people who prosecuted Flynn have since been hounded out of government and are suing. Gleeson points out not just that two of them (Andrew McCabe and Lisa Page) are not witnesses to Flynn’s lies, but that in other places the government celebrates the experience of Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka (and had disclosed Strzok’s damning texts before Flynn pled guilty both times).

[T]he Government trots out a new explanation for its materiality rationale. The Government previously claimed to believe that the available evidence, taken at face value, showed Flynn’s statements to be immaterial. But it now says it has a different concern: that the witnesses it would rely upon to introduce the evidence might lack credibility with a jury. ECF No. 227 at 27–28. As this Court well knows, shifting explanations are classic red flags of pretext. See, e.g., Foster, 136 S. Ct. at 1751; Geleta v. Gray, 645 F.3d 408, 413 (D.C. Cir. 2011).

In any event, this claim makes no sense. The Government asserts without explanation that it “would need to prove its case” by calling as witnesses individuals from the FBI whose credibility could be impeached. ECF No. 227 at 27. But two of these “witnesses” were not present for Flynn’s false statements, so it is entirely unclear why their testimony would be required or even permitted (under evidentiary rules) in the Government’s case-in-chief. And more generally the Government’s professed credibility concerns are not plausible. They center on professed evidence of political bias by an interviewing agent that both the Government and Flynn have known about from the start of the case, see ECF No. 122 at 8–9; ECF No. 144 at 25– 34 (this Court discussing, at length, the history of the referenced text messages and why they do not cast doubt on Flynn’s guilty plea), and two pages after assailing the agents’ credibility, the Government does a back-flip to proclaim the very same agents “highly experienced investigators” whose assessment of the interview should be credited, see ECF No. 227 at 30. As I previously explained—without response from the Government—“[n]o competent lawyer thinks this way.” ECF No. 225 at 55.

To defeat the government’s claims that it would have a hard time proving Flynn’s lies were false, Gleeson points out a key disagreement Flynn has with the government. The government (in the form of prosecutor Ballantine, but others signed the brief too) maintains prosecutors did not commit any abuses.

[T]he Government affirmatively rejects Flynn’s own principal account of why his prior admissions of falsity should not be credited: namely, that prosecutors had threatened him with charges against his son. Compare ECF No. 160-23 at 8 ¶ 34 (Flynn Declaration describing “intense pressure,” including “a threat to indict my son Michael”), and id. at 11 ¶ 46 (“I allowed myself to succumb to the threats from the government to save my family . . . .”), with ECF No. 227 at 28 n.1 (“[T]he [G]overnment’s motion is not based on defendant Flynn’s broad allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. Flynn’s allegations are unfounded . . .”).

Given that Flynn repeatedly admitted to lying—and given that the Government is unwilling to accept Flynn’s claims about why those admissions were untrue—the Government struggles to offer a coherent account of why it doubts its ability to prove falsity.

Even Billy Barr, in sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, said there were no Brady violations here (though he lied, under oath, about whether files had been withheld from Judge Sullivan).

Having shown how DOJ disagreed with itself on materiality and falsity, Gleeson then notes how DOJ invented a completely new reason — interests of justice — to dismiss the case.

The Government’s Rule 48(a) motion stated that “continued prosecution of Mr. Flynn would not serve the interests of justice.” ECF No. 198 at 12. It then elaborated on the reason: “the Government does not have a substantial federal interest in penalizing a defendant for a crime that it is not satisfied occurred and that it does not believe it can prove beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. The Government thus asserted that the “interests of justice” would not be served by pursuing a case in which the Government doubts it could prove materiality or falsity. See id. at 12–20. No free-standing “interest of justice” policy reason is apparent in the Government’s motion.

But the Government now insists otherwise, asserting that it has always advanced a third “separate” and “alternative” reason for dismissal wholly unrelated to the difficulty of proving the elements of its case. ECF No. 227 at 23, 25–26. While this conclusion would come as a surprise to any careful reader of the Government’s motion, it would not surprise anyone familiar with doctrines designed to uncover pretext. See Foster, 136 S. Ct. at 1751 (where a party’s “principal reasons” have “shifted over time,” it can be inferred “that those reasons may be pretextual”).

And what exactly is the Government’s non-merits reason for dismissal? The answer is unclear, since the Government never quite explains its newly minted rationale in the sole paragraph devoted to it. See ECF No. 227 at 25–26. It gestures vaguely at “enforcement priorities” and “policy assessments,” id. at 24, then rattles off a disjointed string of allegations regarding “circumstances surrounding the interview,” id. at 25. But these are just the same facts that are legally irrelevant to its materiality and falsity assertions. The Government does not explain what additional supposed significance it has suddenly “assess[ed]” those facts to have, or why Flynn’s conviction disserves the “interests of justice,” see id. at 23, given that his guilt is both conceded and readily provable. While the Government conveniently asserts that these “policy assessments” are “quintessentially unreviewable,” id. at 24, it never actually explains what the policy is, what judgment it made, or why the conduct of the FBI agents in question would warrant dismissal of this case given Flynn’s demonstrable and confessed guilt. See id. at 23–26.

Having shown that DOJ (in Ballantine’s reply) already showed that DOJ (in Shea’s motion to dismiss) was wrong, Gleeson notes that DOJ hasn’t even mentioned his arguments showing that there’s a more logical explanation for all this–that Trump demanded it.

As detailed in my opening brief, Flynn is a close ally of President Trump, who personally pressured the FBI director to “let this go” within weeks of Flynn’s crime, who has since repeatedly made clear his desire for Flynn to avoid criminal liability, see ECF No. 225 at 17, 56– 59, and who has expressed a desire to re-hire Flynn within his administration, see Max Cohen, Trump Says He Would Welcome Michael Flynn Back to His Administration, POLITICO (July 15, 2020, 11:08 AM), https://perma.cc/5EG4-CLTQ. Allowing dismissal for these “irregular” reasons would necessarily “implicate this Court” in denigrating “settled, foundational norms of prosecutorial independence.” ECF No. 225 at 59.

The Government does not disagree with any of this—presumably because it cannot. Indeed, the Government nowhere even mentions the President’s personal lobbying, let alone his virulent attacks on those previously involved in this prosecution. Based entirely on evidence already in the public view, the only coherent explanation for the Government’s exceedingly irregular motion—as well as its demonstrable pretexts—is that the Justice Department has yielded to a pressure campaign led by the President for his political associate. This Court need not “exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free” by pretending otherwise. United States v. Stanchich, 550 F.2d 1294, 1300 (2d Cir. 1977). It should instead deny the Government’s request for leave under Rule 48(a) and proceed to sentencing.

Gleeson is exploiting DOJ’s failures to address his claims. But he’s probably right.

Gleeson expands the record to include solid evidence of prosecutorial abuse

Sullivan did not and will not order further discovery in this case. But Gleeson got three key pieces of additional information into his brief. He cited the SSCI Report describing why Flynn’s lies were material.

In its bipartisan report assessing Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential election, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee similarly concluded that the “series of communications between Flynn and Kislyak” on sanctions was relevant to assessing “what Moscow sought to gain and the counterintelligence vulnerabilities associated with the Transition.” REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE UNITED STATES SENATE ON RUSSIAN ACTIVE MEASURES CAMPAIGNS AND INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 U.S. ELECTION, VOLUME 5: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE THREATS AND VULNERABILITIES, S. Doc. No. 116-XX, at 702 (1st Session 2020).

He pointed to Aaron Zelinsky’s testimony describing how Billy Barr personally intervened to sabotage the Roger Stone prosecution.

Most notably, there is now concrete evidence of another prosecutorial decision infected by “heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice . . . based on political considerations.” See Oversight of the Department of Justice: Political Interference and Threats to Prosecutorial Independence: Hearing Before the H. Comm. on the Judiciary, 116th Cong. 2 (2020) (statement of Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, Assistant U.S. Att’y), https://perma.cc/48ZV-23EK. This prosecutorial decision concerned the Government’s sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, another well-connected political ally of the President who committed serious crimes. There, as here, the President publicly assailed the Department of Justice for pursuing the prosecution. And there, as here, the Department of Justice succumbed to that corrupt pressure— though only after all four career prosecutors resigned from the case. As one of those career prosecutors later testified, senior officials at the Department of Justice exerted “significant pressure” to go easy on Stone, against the record of the case, customary prosecutorial practice, and departmental policy. Id. at 2. This occurred “because of [Stone’s] relationship to the President,” id., and “because the U.S. Attorney”—who also signed the Rule 48(a) motion in these proceedings—“was ‘afraid of the President,’” id. at 10.11

And he used that to invoke the case of Geoffrey Berman.

11 Perhaps those officials had reason to worry: the President recently fired a prominent and wellrespected U.S. Attorney who was investigating his associates. See Paul Le Blanc et al., White House Admits Trump Was Involved in Firing of Top US Attorney After Trump Claimed He Wasn’t, CNN (June 22, 2020), https://perma.cc/TPB5-ZXGQ.

Had he waited a few hours, he could have cited how John Durham’s deputy, Nora Dannehy, just resigned in part because of political pressure.

While Gleeson has not had the opportunity to develop a record about why this particular Barr intervention is thoroughly corrupt, he manages to show that Billy Barr here argues against Billy Barr, and in similar cases, did have a political purpose.

At the very least, he has succeeded in establishing a record that Billy Barr’s own DOJ disagrees with him.