In an analysis piece earlier this week, the NYT reported as newsworthy that,
Over the weekend, Mr. Trump also dangled, for the first time, that he could issue pardons to anyone facing charges for participating in the Jan. 6 attack if he is elected president again — the latest example of a yearslong flirtation with political violence.
Politico followed that with a report that Trump at least considered blanket pardons for those who might be implicated in January 6.
“Is it everybody that had a Trump sign or everybody who walked into the Capitol” who could be pardoned? Trump asked, according to that adviser. “He said, ‘Some people think I should pardon them.’ He thought if he could do it, these people would never have to testify or be deposed.”
Offering preemptive pardons is not a new idea for Trump. According to Michael Cohen, Trump also entertained bulk pardons with the Russian investigation before Jay Sekulow figured out that it would make it easier for people to testify against him.
Q What is – you had a conversation with Jay Sekulow about something called a pre-pardon?
A Yes.
Q How many conversations did you have with him about pre-pardoning
A One or two.
Q And what did he say to you?
A The problem with a pre-pardon is that you have to answer every question because technically you have immunity, so you can’t assert any Fifth Amendment privilege.
Q Let’s back up for a second, because that presupposes that you’ve already discussed the idea of you getting a pardon. Did Jay Sekulow tell you that the President was considering giving you a pardon?
A That’s not the way that he stated it, but we had a conversation, one at least – I believe it may have been two – and I am not 100 percent certain of the exact date that that occurred, but the concept of a pre-pardon was discussed, yes.
Q Okay. So if you said that’s not exactly how he said it, what do you remember him saying about the idea of you getting a pardon?
A Well, it wasn’t just me. It was globally, in order to, I guess, shut down, you know, this investigation. And I had said to him, you know, what .. well, you know, there’s always the possibility of a pre-pardon. And –
Q Let’s take your time, because it’s important for us to understand not just the gist of the conversation but who said what exactly. All right? So you mentioned something called a global pardon. Did he use that term?
A No.
Q Okay. What do you mean by a global pardon?
A Okay. That in order to shut this whole thing down, that this is how they were potentially going to do it, and everybody would just get a pardon. And said, well, it wouldn’t be a pardon, it would be a pre-pardon, because nobody’s been charged yet. So it ultimately just became, that’s not really something that could be accomplished, because then they’d have the right, again, to ask you questions, everyone on the team.
Q So when you say everyone, who do you mean?
A I guess whoever it is that you started to request to come in, testify, subpoenaed.
It is the case that Trump has now dangled pardons at a time he doesn’t have the power to grant them. Even that is not new, though, given that Roger Stone was brokering a Julian Assange pardon no later than November 15, 2016 and probably starting even before the election, in October 2016.
This latest dangle is more newsworthy, though — and for reporters who don’t want to enable Trump’s authoritarian power, ought to be reported as — an attempt to reclaim power he already lost after reneging on promises of pardons made while he still had the power to grant them.
It is not news that Trump used pardon dangles as one tool to attempt a coup on January 6. At least five people directly involved in the coup attempt benefitted from pardons, some awarded at key times in the planning process, with Steve Bannon’s issued at the last possible moment.
It is not news that Trump is making pardon dangles publicly to try to bend the will and buy the silence of others. This latest pardon dangle comes in the wake of five events, all of which pose a direct threat to Trump:
December 15: The Select Committee contempt referral for Mark Meadows that puts him at risk of Presidential Records Act and obstruction prosecution
January 19: SCOTUS’ refusal to reverse the DC Circuit order allowing the Archives to share Trump records
January 19: The delivery to prosecutors, on January 19, of a large number of texts and messages from Rudy Giuliani’s phones
January 20: The Select Committee request for Ivanka’s testimony, which strongly suggested she has violated the Presidential Records Act
January 21: The report from Sidney Powell’s attorney that she is “cooperating” in her own prosecution and the Select Committee
What’s newsworthy is that Trump is trying this tack after reneging on promises to three of the people involved (during the last days of his Administration, there were reports that Meadows, Rudy, and Ivanka all might receive pardons) that Trump made in the course of planning for the coup.
So I’d like to tell the story of five pardons — three granted, and two withheld — in the context of Trump’s attempted coup on January 6.
Michael Cohen pardon dangle
This first pardon necessary to understand what Trump is up to is one that didn’t happen: The pardon dangle to try to silence Michael Cohen. As the Mueller Report described. in the wake of a raid on Cohen, Robert Costello started reaching out as an envoy for Rudy Giuliani, offering pardons.
On or about April 17, 2018, Cohen began speaking with an attorney, Robert Costello, who had a close relationship with Rudolph Giuliani, one of the President’s personal lawyers. 1022 Costello told Cohen that he had a “back channel of communication” to Giuliani, and that Giuliani had said the “channel” was “crucial” and “must be maintained.” 1023 On April 20, 2018, the New York Times published an article about the President’s relationship with and treatment of Cohen. 1024 The President responded with a series of tweets predicting that Cohen would not ” flip” :
The New York Times and a third rate reporter . . . are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will ‘flip. ‘ They use nonexistent ‘sources’ and a drunk/drugged up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family. Michael is a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected. Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media! 1025
In an email that day to Cohen, Costello wrote that he had spoken with Giuliani. 1026 Costello told Cohen the conversation was “Very Very Positive[.] You are ‘loved’ … they are in our corner … . Sleep well tonight[], you have friends in high places.”1027
According to Cohen, Rudy Giuliani and Robert Costello were at the heart of Trump’s efforts to buy silence.
But Cohen couldn’t be silent about his own plight, and so facing prosecution from that and after a privilege review of his files discovered the recording Cohen made of Trump’s hush payments, he started cooperating with Mueller, helping them to understand what Trump was trying to hide about his ties with the Kremlin during the election.
Cohen paid for that decision, too. He did more time, for example, than Roger Stone, who (like Cohen) had kept blackmail material on Trump. As such, Cohen served as a useful example to Trump: if you cooperated against Trump, Trump would ensure that you suffered a worse outcome than those who had sustained the lies to protect him.
Roger Stone commutation
Roger Stone kept a notebook recording every conversation he had with Donald Trump during the 2016 election. After the election, according to an unreliable October 2018 interview that Steve Bannon had with Mueller’s team, Stone got a meeting to which he brought what appears to be that notebook. Trump asked Bannon to attend, it seems, to ensure that Stone would be kicked out after a short time.
While BANNON was at Breitbart in 2013-2015, BANNON had a strong relationship with [redacted]. BANNON heard from [redacted] STONE was still talking to Trump and was an advisor. STONE subsequently made those statements to BANNON as well. BANNON was suspect and upset. BANNON believed you had to eep TRUMP “on program.” While BANNON was on the Trump Campaign he never heard any mention of STONE from TRUMP or anyone else on the campaign. After the win, STONE tried a full court press in order to get a meeting with TRUMP. [redacted] eventually set up a meeting with TRUMP and STONE in early December 2016 on the 26th floor of Trump Tower. TRUMP didn’t want to take the meeting with STONE. TRUMP told BANNON to be in the meeting and that after 5 minutes, if the meeting hadn’t concluded, to throw STONE out. STONE came in with a book he wrote and possibly had a folder and notes. [full sentence redacted] TRUMP didn’t say much to STONE beyond “Thanks, thanks a lot.”. To BANNON, this reinforced STONE [redacted] After five to six minutes, the meeting was over and STONE was out. STONE was [redacted] due to the fact that during the meeting TRUMP just stared.
That was Bannon’s second-to-last interview with Mueller’s team. A week after his last interview, at which Bannon also appeared before the grand jury, the FBI raided Stone’s homes. One of the things they explicitly looked for was that notebook.
53. On May 8, 2018, a law enforcement interview of [redacted] was conducted. [redacted] was an employee of Stone’s from approximately June 2016 through approximately December 2016 and resided in Stone’s previous New York apartment for a period of time. [redacted] provided information technology support for Stone, but was not f0rmally trained to do so. [redacted] was aware that Stone communicated with Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, and afterward, both in person and by telephone. [redated] provided information about a meeting at Trump Tower between Trump and Stone during the time [redacted] worked for him, to which Sterne carried a “file booklet” with him. Stone told [redacted] the file booklet was important and that no one should touch it. [redacted] also said Stone maintained the file booklet in his closet.
54. On December 3, 2018, law enforcement conducted an interview of an individual (“Person 1 “) who previously had a professional relationship with a reporter who provided Person 1 with information about Stone. The reporter relayed to Person 1 that in or around January and February 2016, Stone and Trump were in constant communication and that Stone kept contemporaneous notes of the conversations. Stone’s purpose in keeping notes was to later provide a “post mortem of what went wrong.”
In November 2019, Stone was convicted for lying about the nature and Trump’s awareness of his back-channel to the Russian operation. Billy Barr went to extraordinary lengths to attempt to minimize the punishment Stone would suffer for covering that up. He went so far as claiming threats against a federal judge by Roger Stone and the Proud Boys, threats which foreshadowed January 6, were a mere technicality.
But in July 2020, the moment when Stone would have to report to prison approached. Stone made several public appearances telling a story that was impossible as told, the gist of which was that prosecutors had promised Stone they would fight for leniency if he would testify about the content of a subset of the conversations he had with Trump during the election. That had the desired effect: Trump commuted Stone’s sentence before he reported for prison, protecting Stone in a way he had not done for Paul Manafort.
Billy Barr minimized the damage this should have done to Trump’s electoral chances. The Attorney General sat on a footnote of the Mueller Report that revealed when all this occurred, Roger Stone was still under investigation for the hack-and-leak with Russia. Barr released that literally on the eve of the 2020 election, and to this day no major outlet has reported that Stone was still under investigation for conspiring with Russia after the Mueller Report was released.
Mike Flynn pardon
As I laid out in this post, Mike Flynn got next to nothing out of his his two year attempt to renege on his plea agreement with Robert Mueller.
Replaced competent lawyers with incompetent TV grifters
Released evidence he lied to his lawyers doing the FARA filing
Consented to waive privilege so DOJ could find more proof he lied
Debunked a slew of conspiracy theories
Got really damning transcripts released
Served 708 days of supervised release
Joined a gang
Got one of his gang members prosecuted for death threats against Judge Sullivan
Got a ruling — and, later, a clear statement from DOJ — that no abuse occurred
Exposed his son to further prosecution
Exposed DOJ to further scrutiny
Proved Judge Sullivan’s point about selling the country out
After 18 months of making repeatedly debunked claims that he had been victimized by DOJ, however, he did get the most expansive pardon Trump gave, one pardoning not just his underlying crimes, but also the crimes he committed during the process of performing that victimization.
Given everything that has happened since, it’s worth considering Flynn’s performance as a victim as part of Trump’s reelection campaign.
That became most evident on September 29, 2020. Earlier in the day, in a status hearing, Sidney Powell confessed that weeks earlier, she had spoken to Trump about the case, and asked him not to pardon Flynn.
More curious still, she admitted she had spoken with Trump’s campaign attorney, Jenna Ellis.
THE COURT: Let me ask you this before you get to your other objections since we’re talking about — since I raised the issue about communications and correspondence with the Department of Justice. Have you had discussions with the President about this case?
MS. POWELL: I have not, Your Honor, while the case was pending pre-motion to dismiss or otherwise other than an update as to what happened in it.
THE COURT: I’m sorry. I’m not sure I understand your answer. The question is whether you’ve had any discussions at all with the President of the United States about Mr. Flynn and about this case. Yes or no.
MS. POWELL: I’m sorry, Your Honor. I can’t discuss that.
THE COURT: What’s the reason why you can’t discuss that?
MS. POWELL: I would think any conversations that I had with the President would be protected by executive privilege.
THE COURT: Well, you don’t work for the government.
MS. POWELL: I don’t think the executive privilege is limited to people who work for the government.
THE COURT: So you’re purporting to invoke executive privilege not to answer the Court’s question about whether you discussed Mr. Flynn’s case with the President of the United States. Is that correct?
MS. POWELL: Yes. Other than the fact that after the government moved to dismiss or at some point in the last month or so, I provided the White House an update on the overall status of the litigation.
THE COURT: How did you provide that update? Was it in writing?
MS. POWELL: No, sir.
THE COURT: How did you provide that update? Who did you speak with?
MS. POWELL: I provided it in person to counsel for the President.
THE COURT: I mean the White House counsel or a deputy or who did you speak to?
MS. POWELL: Your Honor, I spoke with Jenna [Ellis] and I spoke with the President himself to provide a brief update of the status of the litigation within the last couple of weeks.
THE COURT: And did you make any request of the President?
MS. POWELL: No, sir. Other than he not issue a pardon.
THE COURT: All right. Prior to that discussion with the President — how many discussions with the President have you had about this case?
MS. POWELL: That’s the only one I recall.
THE COURT: So you’re not ruling out other — well, certainly, you would recall a discussion with the President of the United States, wouldn’t you?
MS. POWELL: Well, I’ve had a number of discussions with the President of the United States. I think the New York Times reported I’ve had five. So it seems like they probably have a number better than I know.
THE COURT: Are the New York Times’ representations erroneous?
MS. POWELL: I couldn’t tell you the number of times I’ve actually spoken with the President, Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right. About this case. But there’s been more than one though.
MS. POWELL: No, sir. I can tell you I spoke with one time to the President about this case to inform him of the general status of the litigation.
THE COURT: And was that within the last two weeks?
MS. POWELL: Time has a way of getting by for me, but it’s certainly well after the government moved to dismiss and probably if I recall correctly after the writ of mandamus was entered.
THE COURT: All right. Did you ever ask the President of the United States to request his Attorney General to appoint more attorneys in this case?
MS. POWELL: Oh, heavens, no.
THE COURT: All right. So very succinctly just so I have a clear understanding, what precisely — during the first time you spoke with the President of the United States, what precisely did you ask him to do in connection with this case? What did you ask him to do in connection with this case?
MS. POWELL: I never discussed this case with the President until recently when I asked him not to issue a pardon and gave him the general update of the status of the litigation. [my emphasis]
On the same day Powell admitted to speaking, some weeks earlier, to Trump’s campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, Trump delivered a pre-arranged attack against Joe Biden in the first debate.
President Donald J. Trump: (01:02:22)
We’ve caught them all. We’ve got it all on tape. We’ve caught them all. And by the way, you gave the idea for the Logan Act against General Flynn. You better take a look at that, because we caught you in a sense, and President Obama was sitting in the office.
This false claim was based off misrepresentations based on altered Peter Strzok notes released as part of Bill Barr’s efforts to reverse the prosecution of Flynn. There were other altered documents released for wider dissemination in this period, as well, including additional Strzok and Page texts that newly violated the Privacy Act, though after DOJ had to confess that they had altered those documents, any further focus on the altered documents were dropped.
And then, Trump pardoned his Agent of Turkey along with the Thanksgiving bird.
At the moment Trump would have informed Sidney Powell of that news, she was at Lin Wood’s plantation plotting ways to steal the election Trump had lost. If Flynn was not already with Powell plotting away at the moment he learned of his pardon, he would join her within 24 hours.
Within weeks, the recently-pardoned retired General and foreign agent that had been plotting away with Sidney Powell and Patrick Byrne, someone who had been seduced by an admitted Russian agent, was calling for military intervention. Flynn’s calls for insurrection were reported in real time, but the news was buried and the fact that Trump had just pardoned the man calling for a coup did not make the coverage.
Roger Stone pardon
During the first half of December, Roger Stone was palling around with the accused terrorists who would help physically obstruct the vote certification on January 6.
Days later, one of the Oath Keepers that Stone palled around with, Kelly Meggs, bragged of arranging an alliance with other accused terrorists that Stone also palled around with, the Proud Boys that Trump had told to “Stand Back and Stand By” in that same debate on September 29 where Trump had used a campaign attack packaged up by Sidney Powell.
On December 23, Trump pardoned Stone for the crimes of which he was convicted (but not those that were still under investigation).
On Christmas, Meggs specifically tied protection, almost certainly of Stone, and coordination with a Proud Boy, almost certainly Enrique Tarrio, in the same text.
On December 26, Stone associate Kelly Meggs called this an insurrection (albeit in response to Trump’s order) explicitly.
On December 27, Stone went to Mar-a-Lago to thank Trump for the pardon directly and to discuss how he would “ensure that Donald Trump continues as our president.”
Stone wrote that he counseled the president on how he could “ensure that Donald Trump continues as our president.”
[snip]
Stone said via text that he deleted the words and images after he was notified the golf club has “a policy of prohibiting photos of club members or guests out of respect for their privacy.” He said he didn’t have any additional comment.
A photo posted and then removed from Roger Stone’s Parler social media page shows President Donald Trump, left, Kimberly Guilfoyle, an unidentified man and Roger Stone at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach on Sunday.
“I thanked President Trump in person tonight for pardoning me,” he wrote. “I also told the president exactly how he can appoint a special counsel with full subpoena power to ensure that those who are attempting to steal the 2020 election through voter fraud are charged and convicted and to ensure that Donald Trump continues as our president #StopTheSteal #rogerstonedidnothingwrong.”
The next day, Stone deleted the pictures of his face-to-face meeting with Trump.
On January 5 and 6, Stone continued to interact closely with the Oath Keepers (and some Proud Boys). The morning of the insurrection, one of the Oath Keepers since charged with sedition, Joshua James, checked in with the operational leader for the Oath Keepers that day every time that someone — almost certainly Stone — moved.
Two days after the insurrection, Kristin Davis tweeted out a picture of Stone signing his pardon paperwork. (h/t gal_suburban)
Stone never hid it: His pardon was directly tied to his efforts to keep Trump in power. Given that Stone’s pardon was not as expansive as Flynn’s, he remains at some legal exposure for prosecution for his later efforts (including his June 2017 efforts to shut down the investigation into Julian Assange), so he had a real incentive to do anything he could to keep Trump in power.
Steve Bannon
Three days after Trump lost the election, Steve Bannon — in planning for an illegal second Trump term — threatened to assassinate Chris Wray and Anthony Fauci. The same day, his very competent lawyer, Bill Burck (the guy who got him through a bunch of serial lies in the Mueller investigation), fired him as a client, even as he was facing fraud charges for cheating Trump’s rubes.
It wasn’t until December 11, well into the plotting for a coup, that Robert Costello — the very same lawyer who dangled a pardon to Michael Cohen over two years earlier — noticed his appearance. Costello’s representation of Bannon also meant that the same lawyer represented both Rudy and Bannon, two of the masterminds in the Willard War Room.
December 11, when Costello formally filed as Bannon’s lawyer, is around the same time, according to Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence, that Paul Gosar’s Chief of Staff tied a pardon for their own involvement in Bannon’s fraud to their efforts to overturn the election results.
In December 2020, as the tour rolled around the country, Stockton and Lawrence say they got a call from Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and his chief of staff, Thomas Van Flein. According to Stockton, Van Flein claimed he and the congressman had just met with Trump, who was considering giving them a “blanket pardon” to address the “We Build the Wall” investigation.
“We were just in the Oval Office speaking about pardons and your names came up,” Van Flein allegedly said. Van Flein did not respond to a request for comment.
Gosar suggested the bus tour was helping Stockton and Lawrence build support for a pardon from the caucus and Trump. “Keep up the good work,” Gosar said, according to Stockton. “Everybody’s seen what you’re doing.”
So it was probably assumed that, so long as Bannon kept helping Trump try to steal the election, he would would get a pardon. That was true even though Roger Stone made it clear after his trial that Bannon had testified in the grand jury against him.
But on the last day, among the very last pardons Trump granted, Trump pardoned Bannon not just for the crimes he had already been charged with, but any others that might arise from the Build the Wall project federally.
Rudy Giuliani left dangling
Almost three years after Rudy started helping Trump out of his legal troubles, in part by shamelessly dangling pardons to (at least) Cohen and Paul Manafort, Rudy got nothing. He got no pardon even though he was represented by Robert Costello, who had started the pardon dangles with him. He got no pardon even after working relentlessly — and exposing himself to further criminal exposure — trying to help Trump steal an election. Rudy got nothing, even though it was known that Barr had failed in his efforts to kill the Ukraine influence peddling investigation into Rudy.
While there had been abundant discussion of pardoning people who weren’t yet charged in early 2021, after Trump’s coup attempt, that plan was scotched.
It might not have happened in any case, given the conclusion Jay Sekulow had come to years earlier, the preemptive pardons make witnesses more likely to testify against Trump.
But because of the insurrection, Pat Cipollone got a lot more involved in pardons. And the insurrection made it virtually impossible to pardon the mastermind of the insurrection, Rudy Giuliani, even while making it all the more important to find a way to keep Rudy silent.
Ten days after (we now know) SDNY first obtained a warrant targeting Rudy Giuliani in the investigation used to justify seizing all his phones, Rudy boasted that he had “very, very good insurance.” Rudy certainly believed Trump would protect him.
But he didn’t.
That’s the angle through which Trump’s latest attempt to dangle pardons should be viewed. Rudy may be the most important person Trump needs to silence. But Trump had a chance to pardon Rudy when he had the authority, and he failed to do so.
Update: Added the SCOTUS decision to the list of things that must have Trump worried. h/t Brian Pillion
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Stone-a-Guilfoyle.jpeg422415emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2022-02-03 09:51:172022-02-03 15:00:23Trump’s Coup Attempts: A Tale of Five Pardon Dangles
One of the most scandalous revelations from the Julian Assange extradition hearing — that the company that handled the security for the Ecuadoran Embassy, UC Global, sought to obtain a diaper from one of Stella Morris’ children — may have a very logical explanation: The FBI would need to know whether they had to treat communications between Assange and Morris with spousal privilege. The FBI did precisely the same thing with Roger Stone when they went to some length to figure out whether Kristin Davis’ son was Stone’s child before they interviewed her in the investigation of Stone.
Indeed, once you read through the muddles and inconsistencies, what the two witnesses who submitted testimony about UC Global’s surveillance of Assange (Witness One, Witness Two) described is utterly consistent with FBI surveillance and inconsistent with CIA surveillance.
Witness Two is more detailed and credible than Witness One. That’s easily shown in two ways. First, Witness Two admits that after David Morales got a contract with Sheldon Adelson in 2016, it led to speculation that he was working with US authorities. UC Global employees discussed how he “could” be cooperating with US authorities (a dumb speculation to begin with).
I remember that after David Morales had returned from the United States, at a meeting with the rest of the staff he affirmed that we were moving into “the premier league”. After this I became aware that David Morales was making regular trips to the United States, the context of which my boss, David Morales, repeated to his having “gone to the dark side”. I also recall Morales’s wife’s social media recording the recurring trips to the United States, specifically to New York and Washington, via her Instagram account (with the profile @moda_koko), which prompted ongoing commentary from staff that Mr Morales could be cooperating with US authorities. [my emphasis]
Witness One presents that as fact (unlike Witness Two, Witness One has none of the records or claims he makes documented, another thing that makes Witness Two far more credible).
After returning from one of his trips to the United States, David Morales gathered all the workers in the office in Jerez and told us that “we have moved up and from now on we will be playing in the big league”. During a private conversation with David, I asked him what he was referring to when he said we had moved up into “the big league”. David replied, without going into further detail, that he had switched over to “the dark side” referring to cooperating with US authorities, and as a result of that collaboration “the Americans will get us contracts all over the world”.
In addition to the new contract, after Morales’s return from Las Vegas and his comments about “the big league” and switching to “the dark side”, I learned through my conversation with Davis Morales that he had entered into illegal agreements with U.S. authorities to supply them with sensitive information about Mr. Assange and Rafael Correa, given that UC Global was responsible for the embassy security where Mr. Assange was located.
He does so, even though he didn’t leave UC Global — because Morales was selling everything to “the enemy, the United States” — until 2017 (or possibly even later, after Assange’s arrest).
Thus, I came to realize that David Morales decided to sell all the information to the enemy, the United States, which is the reason I put an end to my professional relationship with him.
If he were certain Morales was working for the dark side in 2016, by his own claims, he would have left then.
Similarly, Witness Two includes the details that explain why Adelson would give Morales a contract when his yacht already had security: it was to protect his kids when they were in Europe.
I remember that Sheldon Adelson himself – who is on the public record as being very close to President Donald Trump—increased his ties with UC Global because at one point David Morales was personally put in charge of the security of the magnate and his children when they visited Europe, in their Summer trips to Nice and Ibiza.
Witness One doesn’t consider such explanations.
That is to say, the contract was to provide security to the luxury boat during the short period during which it found itself in Mediterranean waters. But the most striking thing about it was that the boat had its own security, which consisted of a sophisticated security detail, and that the contract consisted in adding an additional person, in this case, David Morales, for a very short period of time, through which David Morales would receive an elevated sum.
The difference in credibility is important, because Witness One focuses closely on Adelson, whereas Witness Two barely focuses on it. Witness Two — who unlike Witness One had a direct role in the increased surveillance on Assange — mentions it only in passing.
For good reason. Any claim of a connection between the 2016 Adelson contract and surveillance that ratcheted up much later makes no sense.
And that’s important because, while Witness Two describes UC Global being vetted as early as January 2017, he describes (and Witness One agrees) that the increased surveillance started in June or July of that year, with the most intense surveillance starting in December 2017.
I recall that between June and July 2017, I was summoned by David Morales to form a task force of workers at our headquarters in Jerez. The purpose of this unit was to execute, from a technical perspective, the capture, systematization and processing of information collected at the embassy that David Morales requested. So, I was tasked with executing David Morales’s orders, with the technical means that existed in the embassy and additional measures that were installed by order of Morales, in addition to the information gathered by the UC Global employees who were physically present in the diplomatic mission. This unit also had to travel to London every month to collect information.
There are still inconsistencies with Witness Two’s testimony, mind you, including a request in May that he says was part of the task force that didn’t start until a month later. But effectively he provides compelling evidence that, starting in June 2017, the surveillance that UC Global was doing on Assange went up, and then in December it went up considerably.
That’s consistent with the substance — though not the headline claims — of a presentation that Andrew Müller-Maguhn did on this almost a year ago. Add in the report that Morales shared information with an IP in Alexandria, VA, and the surveillance is completely consistent with being part a criminal investigation conducted out of the EDVA grand jury known to be investigating not just Assange, but also accused Vault 7 source Joshua Schulte at the time. Within months, there would be several more investigations predicated against Assange, investigations that would have nothing to do with journalism (and, if DOJ investigated Assange’s attempt to extort immunity using the Vault 7 files, that too would have nothing to do with journalism).
That almost seems like what this paragraph, from the prosecution closing argument, suggests — that, sure, they did have Assange under surveillance but that’s because he was sitting on CIA’s hacking tools and was planning an exfiltration from the embassy to Russia.
Fifth: allegations which Assange makes about being surveilled in the Embassy are not evidence that this prosecution is politically motived. In short, taking the defence evidence at its highest, even if Assange was surveilled by or on behalf of the United States, which is not admitted, that does not demonstrate that this prosecution is politically motivated. Surveillance may evidence wider concern about a risk an individual poses or concern to know their movements. Surveillance may demonstrate a state’s interest in apprehending an individual but that does not make a prosecution for criminal conduct politically motivated.
As I’ve said before, UC Global had a legal presence in the US and as such would be subject to subpoena by a grand jury. Surveillance records are routinely obtained from grand juries. While I imagine they’d get Ecuador’s consent for this, by fall 2016 — and especially after the Vault 7 releases — Ecuador was pretty sensitive about the way Assange was using their embassy as a base for crimes that were pissing off multiple countries.
You can argue this level of surveillance was really overbearing (and you’d be right). But WikiLeaks’ backers keep telling the story without mentioning that it came during precisely the period when the FBI was investigating Assange for a whole bunch of stuff, almost all of which had nothing to do with journalism. You can argue that the 2010 charges are dangerous (they are!). But to argue that Assange shouldn’t be investigated for extortion, conspiring with those who hacked Americans, illegally participating in an American election, and entering into a quid pro quo to get a pardon is not an argument about journalism.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/190501-julian-assange-cs-824a_912157579f6cd4975bcb1ef10cdd52fb.fit-1240w-1.jpg8451240emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2020-12-06 13:24:292020-12-06 13:24:29On Nappies and Law Enforcement Spying
The DC Circuit has just released its briefing schedule for Andrew Miller’s appeal of his subpoena to appear before Mueller’s grand jury. The hearing in that appeal will be sometime after the matter is fully briefed on October 9. Altogether, Miller will have stalled his testimony for five months by then.
That means Mueller will have been pursuing evidence against Roger Stone, as the most visible evidence of the ongoing investigation, for six months.
March 27: Ted Malloch stopped at Logan airport, questioned about Stone and Wikileaks, devices seized, subpoenaed to appear before grand jury on April 13 (the grand jury appearance was rescheduled or canceled)
May 9: FBI interviews Andrew Miller at his home for 2 hours, then hand him subpoena
May 10: Mueller subpoenas Andrew Miller for documents and testimony, Miller agrees to meet voluntarily with Mueller’s team
May 11: Alicia Dearn contacts Mueller and says Miller is no longer willing to appear
May 14: Mueller’s team contacts Dearn to inquire about her representation of Miller; she does not return the call
May 18: John Kakanis reportedly subpoenaed after having been interviewed by Mueller’s team
May 18: Miller blows off a May 18 appearance before the grand jury; Dearn’s employee says Dearn will contact Mueller’s team on May 21
May 21: Dearn blows off promised call to Mueller’s team
May 23: Mueller’s team emails Dearn a second set of subpoenas, to appear on June 1
May 25: Stone says 8 associates have been asked for testimony
May 25: Mueller’s team follows up on subpoenas; Dearn asks for more time to comply “given the volume of responsive documents;” Mueller agrees to adjourn document production to June 5 and appearance to Jun 8
May 31: Mueller contacts Dearn to confirm appearance; Dearn complains about “patently irrelevant” responsive materials; Mueller agrees to exclude those materials
June 5: Mueller emails new subpoenas reflecting the June 5 production date and June 8 appearance
June 6: Mueller emails Dearn to confirm appearance and arrange for travel
June 8: Miller blows off grand jury appearance
June 11, 8:50AM and 2:15PM: Mueller emails Dearn and asks for immediate contact, warning that Special Counsel would move towards contempt
June 12, 9:07AM and 2:15PM: Dearn twice says she’ll provide correspondence within an hour but does not
June 13: Mueller moves to compel
June 14: Miller filed opposition purporting to be a motion to quash
June 18: At hearing on motion to quash, court orders Miller to provide limited set of documents and to appear on June 29
June 28: Miller retains Paul Kamenar, paid by the National Legal and Policy Center, who challenges subpoenas as challenge to Appointments Clause, borrowing argument from Concord Management motion
June 29: At status hearing in Miller challenge, Kamenar adds another challenge, that Mueller was appointed by “Head of Department”
July 18: Hearing on Miller challenge, attended by 5 Mueller lawyers, with follow-up briefing
July 31: Chief Judge Beryl Howell rules that Miller must testify ASAP
August 1: Kristin Davis interviewed by Mueller team; investigators express an interest in having her appear before grand jury
August 3: Dabney Friedrich entertains ignoring DC Circuit and SCOTUS precedent to rule for Concord Management’s challenge of Mueller’s authority, with Kamenar watching; Concord lawyer Eric Dubelier suggests conspiracy in the timing of Howell’s ruling
August 9: Miller moves to be held in contempt
August 10: Kristin Davis appearance before grand jury
September 7: Scheduled grand jury appearance of Randy Credico; Andrew Miller brief due before DC Circuit
September 28: Government brief due in DC Circuit appeal of Andrew Miller subpoena
October 9: Miller reply due in DC Circuit
As I disclosed last month, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Stone-Agent-of-Chaos.jpg7971072emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2018-08-16 16:16:192018-09-21 16:46:12Andrew Miller’s Five Month Stall Leads to a Six Month Investigation of Roger Stone
As I disclosed last month, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
After a puff piece in the NYT over the weekend, Roger Stone took to the Daily Caller to attack Mueller’s case against him. As bad as the Daily Caller is, it actually ends up being far more informative than the NYT because Stone is so bad at telling lies they’re informative for what they mirror.
So assuming, for the moment, that Stone’s piece reflects some kind of half-accurate reflection of what witnesses have said they were questioned about him, here’s what we learn.
Mueller is examining conduct that goes back 10 years
Obviously, statutes of limitation have probably tolled on any crimes Stone committed more than five years ago, but this suggests witnesses are being asked about conduct that goes back further, ten years.
Mueller is running a criminally abusive, constitutionally -unaccountable, professionally and politically incestuous conspiracy of ethically conflicted cronies colluding to violate my Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights and those of almost everyone who had any sort of political or personal association with me in the last 10 years.
Given the involvement of Peter Jensen and Kristin Davis in Stone’s recent rat-fucking, perhaps as an explanation of more recent rat-fucking we’ll finally get an accounting of Stone’s role in taking out Eliot Spitzer ten years ago. (h/t Andrew Prokop for Jensen tie to Spitzer op)
Mueller is considering charging Stone with ConFraudUs
I assume this reference to ConFraudUs comes from a friendly witness passing on what a subpoena described were the crimes being investigated.
Mueller and his hit-men seek to frame some ludicrous charge of “defrauding the United States.”
This is, of course, based on a false and unproven assumption that Assange is a Russian agent and Wikileaks is a Russian front — neither of which has been proven in a court of law. Interestingly Assange himself has said, “Roger Stone has never said or tweeted anything we at Wikileaks had not already said publicly.”
As described, it looks like how I envisioned Stone might be charged with ConFraudUs back in June.
As Mueller’s team has itself pointed out, for heavily regulated areas like elections, ConFraudUs indictments don’t need to prove intent for the underlying crimes. They just need to prove,
(1) two or more persons formed an agreement to defraud the United States;
(2) [each] defendant knowingly participated in the conspiracy with the intent to defraud the United States; and
(3) at least one overt act was committed in furtherance of the common scheme.
Let’s see how evidence Mueller has recently shown might apply in the case of Roger Stone, Trump’s lifelong political advisor.
[snip]
Stone repeatedly entertained offers from foreigners illegally offering dirt that would benefit the Trump campaign — Greenberg, Guccifer 2.0, possibly Peter Smith’s Dark Web hackers. He may even have exhibited a belief that Australian Julian Assange had and could release the latter dirt, possibly with the knowledge they came from Russians.
So we’ve got Stone meeting with other people, repeatedly agreeing to bypass US election law to obtain a benefit for Trump, evidence (notwithstanding Stone’s post-hoc attempts to deny a Russian connection with Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks) that Stone had the intent of obtaining that benefit, and tons of overt acts committed in furtherance of the scheme.
Stone appears to address just one conspiracy with a foreigner — Julian Assange — to obtain something of value, by insisting (though less strongly than he has in the past!) that Assange is not a Russian asset. Except, foreign is foreign, whether Australian or Russian, so making a weak case that Assange is not Russian won’t get you off on ConFraudUs.
Moreover, now that I’ve reviewed some dodginess about Stone’s PACs, I suspect there may be two levels of ConFraudUs, one pertaining to depriving the US government from excluding foreign influence on the election, and the other pertaining to depriving the US government of the ability to track how political activities are being funded.
That is, Mueller’s reported focus on Stone’s finances may well pertain to a second ConFraudUs prong, one based on campaign finance violations.
Stone thinks Mueller wants him to flip, rather than to punish him for the case in chief
In spite of the abundant evidence that Stone is a key target of this investigation, Stone appears to believe that Mueller only wants to charge him to get him to flip on Trump.
Mueller’s hit team is poking into every aspect of my personal, private, family, social, business and political life — presumably to conjure up some bogus charge or charges to use to pressure me to plead guilty to their Wikileaks fantasy and testify against Donald Trump who I have known intimately for almost 40 years.
Side note: I appreciate the way Stone — an unabashed swinger — worked that word “intimately” into his description of his relationship with Trump.
Which is one of the reasons I’m so interested in how he describes hiring a new lawyer, a nationally known one who used to work for Trump.
I have been ably served by two fine lawyers Grant Smith and Rob Buschel who won dismissal of a harassment lawsuit based on the same Wikileaks/Russian conspiracy theory by an Obama directed legal foundation in D.C. last month. No evidence to support this false narrative was produced in court other than a slew of fake news clippings from lefty media sites.
I have recently reached agreement to retain a highly respected and nationally known attorney who has represented Donald Trump to join my legal team and lead my defense.
Possibly this is just a hint that some operative like Victoria Toensing or Joseph DiGenova is going to take on Stone’s propaganda case. Possibly it reflects a recognition from Trump that Stone now presents as big a risk to him as Manafort does. Whichever it is, I look forward to learning how serious a lawyer Stone has and whether — Stone claims reports that he has $20 million are false, but if he has been engaging in epic campaign finance violations, who knows? — Trump is paying for his defense going forward.
Stone doesn’t understand how stored communications work
As I pointed out the last time Stone claimed he was targeted by a FISA order, what likely happened instead is Mueller obtained the contents of his phone along with four or nine others in a probable cause warrant on March 9. But that doesn’t stop Stone from claiming he was targeted under FISA again, explaining that his emails, text messages, and (this is less credible) phone calls have been seized going back to 2016.
Even more chilling is the fact that I have learned that — in this effort to destroy me — the government began reading my e-mails and text messages and monitoring my phone calls as early as 2016.
I believe that I, like Carter Page and Paul Manafort, was subject to an illegal FISA warrant in 2016, as the New York Times reported on January 20, 2017. The New York Times published this claim in a page-one story on the same day as President Trump’s inauguration ceremony.
A whistleblower has told my lawyers where my name and the fact that application had been made for a FISA warrant on me was redacted from the stunning Carter Page FISA warrant application released by the FBI last week with 300 of 400 pages blacked out.
What Stone’s dumbass “whistleblower” was pointing to instead was a passage describing the other people being investigated in October 2016, when Page was first targeted. But being investigated is not the same as being targeted under FISA, and what Stone is really trying to obscure here is that Mueller (probably) already showed a judge, back in March, he had probable cause that Rog committed some crimes back in 2016.
Another witness Stone would like to discredit by calling an informant
Back in June, Stone tried to spin the fact that he willingly accepted a meeting with yet another Russian offering dirt on Hillary by noting (correctly, it appears) that the Russian had served as a source for the FBI on Russian organized crime before — just like Felix Sater, whom the Trump folks are all still peachy with. In spite of the fact that it was so obviously bunk the last time, he’s trying again, hinting at a second informant working against him.
We also now know that at least one FBI informant in the United States on an informant’s visa approached me in May 2016 in an effort to entrap me and compromise Donald Trump. I declined his proposal to “buy dirt on Hillary.” There is now substantial evidence that a second FBI informant may have infiltrated my political operations in 2016. Stand by.
Who knows whether this is another person — like the Russian dealing dirt on Hillary, “Henry Greenberg,” is just someone who has worked his way out of legal trouble by serving as an informant — or whether there’s some other reason Stone is calling him or her an informant. Most likely, Stone is trying to suggest a perfectly ordinary witness cooperating with the government against him is an informant, to inflame his people. Possibly, this is prepping a claim that Randy Credico set up Roger.
Jeannie Rhee is leading the questioning of Stone witnesses
In tandem with Trump’s attacks on Mueller prosecutors with Hillary ties, Stone states that Jeannie Rhee led the questioning of his witnesses, and claims it’s a conflict.
Incredibly, leading the questioning of witnesses before the Grand Jury about me is Jeannie Rhee, who in private practice represented the Clinton foundation in the Hillary e-mail scandal that is front and center in the special prosecutor’s investigation of me! Can you say conflict of interest?
Of course, he gets the attack wrong: Rhee represented the Foundation, not Hillary’s email defense, and she did so against a nutbag Republican challenge, not with DOJ.
But in telling us that Rhee is leading this inquiry, Stone is (helpfully) telling us that a person who has led the Russian side of the inquiry is leading the inquiry into … oh my! Roger Stone!
Even with all his prevarications, it turns out, a Stone column might be more informative than a NYT puff piece!
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Stone-Agent-of-Chaos.jpg7971072emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2018-08-13 22:03:462018-08-14 08:49:36What Roger Stone’s Latest Lies Tell Us about Mueller’s Investigation into Him
As I disclosed last month, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
In my post outlining all the investigative steps the Mueller team has taken with Roger Stone since Rick Gates flipped, I pointed to some things that seem to relate to questions Mueller has asked.
That’s one reason why the circumstances of Stone’s flip-flop in early August 2016, in which Stone went from admitting that the DNC hack was done by Russia to claiming it was not seemly in one day in which he was in Southern California is so important: because he established a contemporaneous claim he has relied on to excuse any coordination with Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks. Given the import of Stone’s flip-flop, I find it interesting that so much of the funding for his SuperPAC came from Southern California, especially from John Powers Middleton. Did he meet with his donors when he orchestrated the flip-flop that makes it harder to argue his discussions and foreknowledge of Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks events count as entering into a conspiracy to break one or several laws?
Whatever the circumstances of that flip-flop, from that point forward, Stone pushed several lines — notably the Seth Rich conspiracy — that would be key to Russian disinformation. A big chunk of his SuperPAC funds also spent on “Stop the Steal,” which may also tie to Russian disinformation to discredit the election.
One of the complexities Mueller may have spent months digging through may be whether and how to hold Stone accountable for willfully participation in disinformation supporting Russia’s larger efforts to swing the election to Donald Trump.
Last week, I started to look more closely at how Stone’s PAC may relate to this. There are, in my opinion, a number of really interesting details about his PAC (which admittedly isn’t dealing with that much money).
That was before, last week, materials in Andrew Miller’s challenge to the subpoena were unsealed, which first revealed Miller wanted a grant of immunity to testify about things pertaining to work he did for Stone’s PAC.
A hearing transcript from June 18 shows that Miller was subpoenaed for information about Stone, as well as key figures in the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the public release of Democrats’ emails. According to that transcript, the subpoena seeks information from Miller about WikiLeaks and Assange. WikiLeaks published large volumes of Democrats’ hacked emails during the campaign.
The subpoena also seeks information about Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks. Investigators say both were online fronts invented by Russian intelligence operatives to spread the hacked documents. DCLeaks was a website that posted hacked emails of current and former U.S. officials and political aides, while Guccifer 2.0 claimed to be a Romanian hacker.
Miller had asked for “some grant of immunity” regarding financial transactions involving political action committees for which he assisted Stone, according to Alicia Dearn, an attorney for Miller.
On that issue, Miller “would be asserting” his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions, Dearn said.
As for the hacking and WikiLeaks questions, Dearn said at the hearing, “We don’t believe he has any information” about those topics.
Along with Miller, Kristin Davis also got paid by one of Stone’s PACs. Neither was paid enough to pay for the legal fees they’ve incurred covering their testimony (though a conservative group has paid for Miller’s challenge to his subpoena). Citroen Associate owner John Kakanis, who also testified, got paid more, though maybe not enough to pay for legal representation.
There are a number of notable things about Stone’s PACs that — at least on their face — are not unusual. There is one detail — that the bulk of the expenditures paid a personal injury law firm, one whose family members appear to have served as treasurers of the PACs — that is unusual. Most interesting of all, however, is how Stone’s Stop the Steal PAC’s voter suppression efforts before the election so closely paralleled Russian efforts.
Guy with the Nixon tattoo’s SoCal funding
First, remember the mysterious funding from SoCal aspect to the Watergate scandal? There was good reason for that for Nixon; after all, he was from SoCal. Maybe Stone’s just doing most of his fundraising there for old time’s sake, because more than half the funding of Stone’s Committee to Restore American Greatness PAC (referred as CRAG below) comes in serial donations from John Powers Middleton, the son of the Philadelphia Phillies’ owner, who makes shitty movies. A good number of the other substantial donations come from SoCal too. And two PACs Stone operated in 2016 were run out of a UPS store in Santa Ana, CA.
That Middleton largely bankrolled this PAC is in no way unique or legally problematic (indeed, the numbers involved are much smaller than other such PACs). It is notable, however, that contributions to Stone’s PAC were Middleton’s only contributions in 2015-2016, and (apparently) his only recent FEC tracked political contributions, though Middleton played a big role in a youngish Republican group in his 20s. It’s also odd how he gave installments, including two smaller ones, in the same time period or even on the same day as other more sizable ones.
Robert Shillman’s pass through
The timing of the donations make it clear that the sole campaign contribution Stone’s PAC made — $16,000 in two donations to Trump, which paid for Clear Channel billboards — were pass throughs of San Diego County executive Robert Shillman donations. He’s a big donor to GOP causes, but spent much bigger money on PACs supporting Carly Fiorina ($25,000) and Marco Rubio ($75,000) in the primary. Interestingly, he also maxed out in direct donations to Ron DeSantis in 2015-2016, and is backing Devin Nunes this cycle. For some reason I don’t understand, the FEC recorded the first of those donations, made in August, as a primary donation (that’s true of a number of other smaller donations made in the fall as well). Shillman has also donated to Islamophobic fearmongering in the past.
This pass through is also not unusual, but it is notable for how obvious it is and because the pass through is the only donation to a political campaign in this PAC.
The Personal Injury lawyers in bed with Stone
What is unusual is the centrality of the Costa Mesa office of personal injury lawyers Jensen & Associates in all this. One of the firm’s only lawyers, Erin Boeck, may be the spouse of Brad Boeck, who served as treasurer for two of Stone’s PACs. The principal, Paul Jensen, may be related to Pamela Jensen, who set up Stone’s Women v Hillary PAC.
Jensen & Associates made two loans to CRAG of very specific amounts: 2398.87 and 2610, which were repaid less than a week after the second one was made. And in 2016, CRAG paid the firm almost $100,000, including $20,000 in April when Stop the Steal was set up, $23,700 in four different payments in July 2016, and a $9,500 payment on August 3, when Stone was out in LA claiming to Sam Nunberg to be dining with Julian Assange.
According to its website, Jensen & Associates does things like sue for dog bites, not set up political rat-fucking PACs.
The personal injury lawyers cohabiting with the Clinton dirt CPA
While the Women v Clinton 527 would not be registered by Pamela Jensen until June 2, 2016, the effort to dig up the women at the center of Bill Clinton’s scandals actually started much earlier, on February 1, 2016, when Pamela Jensen CPA would send out a fundraising letter to fund Kathleen Wiley’s mortgage. Pamela Jensen’s CPA address is the same as for Jensen & Associates law firm (though her license expired on December 31, ,2016).
On February 19, 2016, Roger Stone told Alex Jones that Trump himself had donated to the Willey fund, even though it had never raised anywhere close to the $80,000 it listed as a goal.
STONE: Or, short circuit this. Go right to HelpWilley.com. Help Willey, W-i-l-e-e-y (sic). Now the good news is —
JONES: We’re going to tweet that, we’re going to Facebook it right now. We haven’t really done that yet, so we’re going to do that right now. Go ahead, sir.
STONE: I appreciate it. We have raised a substantial amount of money. Trump is himself a contributor — I’m not ready to disclose what he has given. And many, many other people.
JONES: Oh OK, so that GoFundMe is only one thing.
STONE: That is only receptacle and there are –
JONES: OK so the best place to go again is, again —
STONE: HelpWilley.com. Willey spelled W-i-l-l-e-y. HelpWilley.com will take you right to one of our pages. We have numerous receptacles, we have raised substantially more than 3,970, we’re haggling with the mortgage company even as we speak, and I am still hopeful that we can save Kathleen’s home so she can go out on the road and take the fight right to the Clintons.
There are actually two entities here. The STOP RAPE PAC was registered on October 1, 2015. The Women v Clinton 527 was registered in June 2016. Both only ever had enough money to pay the mailbox used for its official address.
The revolving door between Stone’s rat-fucking PACs
Which brings us to another detail that is typical of many PACs.
Stone and his buddies were shifting money back and forth between a 527 named Stop the Steal and CRAG.
CRAG was set up in 2015 (though it didn’t file its FEC paperwork until July 2016). Stop the Steal was set up on April 6 2016, at a time when Trump was worried about knocking down a Convention rebellion (which is why Paul Manafort first got hired). The day it was set up, CRAG transferred $50,000 to Stop the Steal. Though by April 13, Stop the Steal was claiming to want to fundraise $262,000, money that never showed up in Stop the Steal’s IRS filings, if it did raise that kind of money.
Among the things Mueller questioned Michael Caputo about were meetings he and Rick Gates had with Stone. One of those meetings, to discuss the effort to ensure the loyalty of GOP delegates, took place in the weeks after Stop the Steal was first set up.
“I only have a record of one dinner with Rick Gates,” he said, adding that the guest list included two other political operatives: Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign aide who was recently interviewed by Mr. Mueller’s investigators, and Paul Manafort, who soon after took over as chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign. But Mr. Manafort canceled at the last minute, and Mr. Gates, his deputy, attended in his place.
Mr. Stone said the conversation during the dinner, which fell soon after the New York primary in April 2016, was about the New York State delegate selection for the Republican National Convention. The operatives expressed concern about whether delegates, at a time of deep division among Republicans, would be loyal to Mr. Trump’s vision for the party, Mr. Stone said.
Stop the Steal’s 527 filings show two expenditures for rallies in this earlier incarnation.
On July 12, 2016, Stop the Steal transferred $63,000 to CRAG. Its IRS paperwork doesn’t appear to show how, having made expenditures and raised negligible money in the interim period, it had that much money to return to CRAG, suggesting it may not have reported all its donations.
In the fall, Stop the Steal was repurposed to conduct Stone’s voter suppression efforts, including an effort to register “exit pollers” based on the inflammatory rhetoric about rigging the election that Trump had been pushing for some time, with an added focus on the voting machines.
Help us to reveal the TRUTH! Be an Exit Poller! Register Now!
Donald Trump thinks Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are going to steal the next election. “I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, I have to be honest,” he told a campaign rally last week.
The issue is both voter-fraud and election theft through manipulation of the computerized voting machines. The truth is both parties have used these DIEBOLD/ PES voting machines to rig results of elections at the state and federal election. The party in power in a given state controls the programming of the voting machines.
Here is how easy it is to rig these machines:
We now know, thanks to the hacked e-mails from the Democratic National Committee that the Clintons had to cheat and rig the system to steal the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders. Why wouldn’t they try to steal the election from Donald Trump?If this election is close, THEY WILL STEAL IT.
The Washington Post even ran an editorial saying it was “impossible” to steal an election. Then, incredibly, Barrack Obama called Donald Trump’s concerns about a rigged election “ridiculous.”
Plus they intend to flood the polls with illegals. Liberal enclaves already let illegals vote in their local and state elections and now they want them to vote in the Presidential election.
What can we do to stop this outrageous steal? We must step up to the plate and do this vital job? That’s why I am working with a staticians attorneys and computer experts to find and make public any result which has been rigged
We at THE EMERGENCY COMMITTEE TO STOP THE STEAL WILL:
– Demand inspection of the software used to program the voting machines in every jurisdiction prior to the beginning of voting by an independent and truly non-partisan third party.
– Conduct targeted EXIT-POLLING in targeted states and targeted localities that we believe the Democrats could manipulate based on their local control, to determine if the results of the vote have been skewed by manipulation.
– Retain the countries foremost experts on voting machine fraud to help us both prevent and detect voting machine manipulation by putting in a place to monitor polling, review the results and compare them to EXIT POLLS we must conduct.
– Recruit trained poll watchers for the key precincts in key states to monitor voting for fraud. Between the Trump campaign and our efforts we believe we can cover every precinct in the crucial states.
The effort also included a fundraising aspect, with a stated goal of raising $1 million. Stop the Steal reported $20,894 in small donations for the period covering the election, with $32932 reported for the year-to-date.
The Democratic Party sued Stone, Trump, and the state Republican parties in four swing states to get a Temporary Restraining Order against these activities.
The revolving door was actually a mislabeled front door
Now that I’m looking at the saved versions of Stone’s various websites, it’s clear he wasn’t segregating the fundraising for them, and I wonder whether some of his email fundraising involved other possible campaign finance violations. For example, here’s the Stop the Steal site as it existed on March 10, 2016. It was clearly trying to track fundraising, carefully instructing people to respond to emails if they received one. But it claimed to be TCTRAG (what I call CRAG), even though the incoming URL was for Stop the Steal.
That remained true even after Stop the Steal was formally created, on April 10. Even after the website changed language to disavow Stop the Steal being a PAC by April 23, the fundraising form still went to TCTRAG (what I call CRAG), a PAC.
And that remained true on May 12, when the site was aiming to raise $262,000. When the campaign had shifted to voter suppression targeted Democrats (this is October 16), the entire site redirected to a TCTRAG nation-builder site. Though it appears the Stop the Steal URL was returning both a direct site and a redirect (and it appears it was either hammered, or pretending to be hacked, on election day).
Here are the results of Stone’s “citizen exit polls” on November 9, a totally unscientific data point to “prove” that Hillary had stolen the election.
The parallel Russian and rat-fucker effort to suppress the vote
Stone’s voter suppression effort is not surprising. It’s the kind of thing the rat-fucker has been doing his entire life.
Except it’s of particular interest in 2016 because of the specific form it took. That’s because two aspects of Stone’s voter suppression efforts paralleled Russian efforts. For example, even as Stone was recruiting thousands of “exit pollers” to intimidate people of color, Guccifer 2.0 was promising to register as an election observer, in part because of the “holes and vulnerabilities” in the software of the machines.
INFO FROM INSIDE THE FEC: THE DEMOCRATS MAY RIG THE ELECTIONS
I’d like to warn you that the Democrats may rig the elections on November 8. This may be possible because of the software installed in the FEC networks by the large IT companies.
As I’ve already said, their software is of poor quality, with many holes and vulnerabilities.
I have registered in the FEC electronic system as an independent election observer; so I will monitor that the elections are held honestly.
I also call on other hackers to join me, monitor the elections from inside and inform the U.S. society about the facts of electoral fraud.
In or around October 2016, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators further targeted state and county offices responsible for administering the 2016 U.S. elections. For example, on or about October 28, 2016, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators visited the websites of certain counties in Georgia, Iowa, and Florida to identify vulnerabilities.
Whether or not GRU ever intended to alter the vote, Russia’s propagandists were providing the digital “proof” that Republicans might point to to sustain their claims that Democrats had rigged the election.
This is a line that Wikileaks also parroted, DMing Don Jr that if Hillary won his pop should not concede.
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.
Does Mueller have the proof this parallel effort was coordination?
As I noted, the public record makes it clear these are, at the least, complementary parallel efforts. But Mueller’s relentless focus on Stone — and his inclusion of Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0 in the subpoena to Andrew Miller (whose research on voter fraud is one of the things Mueller wants to present to the grand jury) — suggests he thinks this is not so much a parallel effort, but a coordinated one.
h/t to Susan Simpson and Adam Bonin for help with understanding the numbers here.
Update: TC notes that there are 14 instances of known Russian troll accounts hashtagging Stop the Steal. The examples are most interesting for the date range: the earliest is September 10, 2016; the most recent is February 24, 2017. And they certainly were prepped to go on election day and the day after.
Update: You can pull up the times where Roger Stone’s twitter account hashtagged Stop the Steal in the Trump Twitter archive. Of note, the first instance in the fall campaign was August 4, when Stone was out in LA claiming he was dining with Assange. Two of the earlier incarnations @ Manafort. Also of note are the differing platforms the tweets come from — including Twitter’s web client, TweetDeck, Twitter for iPhone, and Mobile Web — as that may suggest some of the associates who’ve been interviewed did the tweeting.
Update: MS notes that Stone was talking about rigged voting machines as early as July 29.
Update: Added section dedicated to Pamela Jensen’s Bill Clinton focused organizations and moved Stone website details into body of text. H/t Liberty_42 for the former.
Timeline
September 2, 2011: Pamela Jensen registers Should Trump Run 527 with Michael D Cohen listed as President
October 1, 2015: Pamela Jensen registers STOP RAPE PAC by loaning it enough money to pay for a mailbox
November 10, 2015: Jensen & Associates loans $2,398.87 to CRAG
November 10, 2015: CRAG pays Entkesis 2373.87
December 24, 2015: CRAG pays Newsmax 10803.55
December 31, 2015: CRAG pays Newsmax 1585.76
February 1, 2016: Pamela Jensen sends out fundraising letter to World Net Daily pushing Kathleen Wiley’s mortgage fundraiser
February 4, 2016: Jensen & Associates loans $2,610 to CRAG
February 10, 2016: Loans from Jensen & Associates repaid
February 19, 2016: Roger Stone tells Alex Jones that Donald Trump has donated to the Kathleen Willey fundraiser, even though it had raised less than $4,000 at that time
March 1, 2016: John Powers Middleton Company donates $150,000 to CRAG
March 6, 2016: First tweet in spring Stop the Steal campaign
March 9, 2016: John Powers Middleton donates $50,000 to CRAG
March 11, 2016: John Powers Middleton donates $25,000 to CRAG
March 14, 2016: John Powers Middleton donates $25,000 to CRAG
April 6, 2016: Stone (Sarah Rollins) establishes Stop the Steal in same UPS post box as CRAG
April 6, 2016: CRAG gives $50,000 to Stop the Steal
April 6, 2016: CRAG pays Jensen & Associates $11,000
April 6, 2016: CRAG pays Jensen & Associates $9,000
April 6, 2016: Stone tweets Stop the Steal toll free line to “report voter fraud in Wisconsin” primary
April 12, 2016: John Powers Middleton donates $60,000 to CRAG
April 13, 2016: Stop the Steal pays Sarah Rollins $386.72
April 14, 2016: CRAG pays Tim Yale $9,000
April 14, 2016: Stop the Steal pays Jim Baker $1,500 in “expense reimbursements for rally”
April 15, 2016: Stop the Steal pays Sarah Rollins $500
April 15, 2016: John Powers Middleton donates $15,000 to CRAG
April 15, 2016: John Powers Middleton donates $2,000 to CRAG
April 15, 2016: $1,000 refunded to John Powers Middleton
April 18, 2016: John Powers Middleton donates $1,000 to CRAG
April 18, 2016: CRAG pays Citroen Associates $40,000
April 25, 2016: CRAG pays Paul Nagy $2,500
April 25, 2016: CRAG pays Sarah Rollins $500 plus $41.66 in expenses
April 29, 2016: John Powers Middleton donates $50,000 to CRAG
May 1, 2016: Last Stone tweet in spring Stop the Steal campaign
May 2, 2016: CRAG pays Sarah Rollins $800
May 4, 2016: CRAG pays Jensen & Associates $5,000
May 13, 2016: CRAG pays Sarah Rollins 93.50
May 15, 2016: Stop the Steal pays Sarah Rollins $500
May 16, CRAG pays Andrew Miller $2,000
May 16, 2016: CRAG pays Citroen Associates $10,000
May 16, 2016: CRAG pays Sarah Rollins $400
May 16, 2016: CRAG pays Kathy Shelton $2,500
May 24, 2016: Stone PAC RAPE PAC, aka Women v Hillary, announced
June 2, 2016: Pamela Jensen sets up Women v Hillary PAC out of a different mailboxes location in Costa Mesa (again, this only ever showed enough money to pay for the mailbox used as its address)
June 7, 2016: FEC informs CRAG it must submit filings by July 12, 2016
June 7, 2016: CRAG pays Jensen & Associates $4,790
June 8, 2016: Stop the Steal pays Paul Nagy $800 in “expense reimbursements for rally”
June 17, 2016: CRAG pays Andrew Miller $3,000
July 5, 2016: CRAG pays Jensen & Associates $14,500
July 6, 2016: CRAG pays Michelle Selaty $10,000
July 6, 2016: CRAG pays Drake Ventures $12,000
July 11, 2016: CRAG pays Cheryl Smith $4,900
July 12, 2016: Stop the Steal gives $63,000 to CRAG
July 12, 2016: CRAG pays Jensen & Associates $7,200
July 15, 2016: CRAG pays Jason Sullivan $1,500
July 18, 2016: CRAG pays Jensen & Associates $7,500
July 20, 2016: CRAG pays Jensen & Associates $3,000
July 29, 2016: CRAG pays Jensen & Associates $6,000
August 1, 2016: CRAG pays Andrew Miller $4,000; Stone flies from JFK to LAX
August 2, 2016: Stone dines with Middleton at Dan Tanas in West Hollywood (h/t Laura Rozen)
August 3, 2016: CRAG pays Jensen & Associates $9,500
August 3, 2016: CRAG pays Josi & Company $2,500
August 3-4, 2016: Stone takes a red-eye from LAX to Miami
August 4, 2016: Stone flip-flops on whether the Russians or a 400 pound hacker are behind the DNC hack and also tells Sam Nunberg he dined with Julian Assange; first tweet in the fall StopTheSteal campaign
August 5, 2016: Stone column in Breitbart claiming Guccifer 2.0 is individual hacker
August 9, 2016: CRAG pays Jason Sullivan $1,500
August 15, 2016: CRAG pays Jensen & Associates $19,500
August 29, 2016: CRAG pays Law Offices of Michael Becker $3,500
August 31, 2016: Robert Shillman gives $8,000 to CRAG
September 12, 2016: CRAG gives $8,000 to Donald Trump
September 14, 2016: CRAG pays $3,000 to Citroen Associates
September 21, 2016: Robert Shillman gives $8,000 to CRAG
September 22, 2016: CRAG gives $8,000 to Donald Trump
October 4, 2016: Stone tells Bannon to get Rebekah Mercer to send money for his “the targeted black digital campaign thru a C-4”
Following October 5, 2016: Mariia Butina and Aleksandr Torshin discuss whether she should serve as a US election observer; Torshin suggests “the risk of provocation is too high and the ‘media hype’ which comes after it,” but Butina suggests she would do it “Only incognito! Right now everything has to be quiet and careful.”
October 13, 2016: Stop the Steal pays Andrew Miller $5,000
October 23, 2016: Stone tweets out message saying Clinton supporters can “VOTE the NEW way on Tues. Nov 8th by texting HILLARY to 8888”
October 28, 2016: GRU officer Anatoliy Kovalev and co-conspirators visit websites of counties in GA, IA, and FL to identify vulnerabilities
October 30, 2016: Ohio Democratic Party sues Ohio Republican Party to prevent Stop the Steal voter suppression; Democrats also sue in NV, AZ, and PA
November 3, 2016: Filings in ODP lawsuit describing Stop the Steal (declaration, exhibits)
November 4, 2016: Judge James Gwyn issues Temporary Restraining Order against Trump, Stone, and Stop the Steal
November 4, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 post claiming Democrats may rig the elections
November 7, 2016: Sixth Circuit issues a stay in OH TRO
December 14, 2016: Women versus Hillary gives $158.97 to CRAG
December 19, 2016: Stop the Steal pays $5,000 to Alejandro Vidal for “fundraising expenses”
December 19, 2016: Stop the Steal pays $3,500 to C Josi and Co.
December 21, 2016: Stop the Steal pays $1,500 to The Townsend Group
December 27, 2016: Stop the Steal pays $3,500 to Kristen [sic] Davis
December 28, 2016: Stop the Steal gives $94 to CRAG
December 29, 2016: Stop the Steal pays Jerry Steven Gray $4,000 for “fundraising expenses”
December 30, 2016: Stop the Steal pays 2,692 total to unnamed recipients
January 19, 2017: Stop the Steal pays $5,000 for fundraising expenses to Alejandro Vidal
February 8, 2017: Stop the Steal pays Kristen [sic] Davis $3,500 for “fundraising expenses”
February 15, 2017: Stop Steal pays Brad Boeck $862 for sales consultant consulting fee
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Stone-Agent-of-Chaos.jpg7971072emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2018-08-11 18:48:102019-06-07 19:52:03Like a Rat-Fucking Stone: Russians and Roger Reading from the Same Voter Suppression Script
As I disclosed last month, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post.
Last night, Sam Nunberg reportedly told Ari Melber he thought Roger Stone would be indicted on “broad charges of conspiring against America … backed up by some financial charges.” That has led to some Tweet lawyering suggesting that such ConFraudUS charges would arise naturally from Stone’s known interactions with WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0.
I’m certain things are not as simple as that. If they were, Mueller would not have spent much of the last five months focusing on testimony relating to Stone, including (this list doesn’t include at least one other person whose Stone-related testimony is not public):
February 22: Sam Nunberg questioned by Mueller’s team
March 9: Mueller obtains a warrant for 5 AT&T phones (and probably a similar number of Verizon ones)
March 27: Ted Malloch stopped at Logan airport, questioned about Stone and Wikileaks, devices seized, subpoenaed to appear before grand jury on April 13 (the grand jury appearance was rescheduled or canceled)
May 10: Mueller subpoenas Andrew Miller for documents and testimony, Miller agrees to meet voluntarily with Mueller’s team
May 11: Alicia Dearn contacts Mueller and says Miller is no longer willing to appear
May 14: Mueller’s team contacts Dearn to inquire about her representation of Miller; she does not return the call
May 18: John Kakanis reportedly subpoenaed after having been interviewed by Mueller’s team
May 18: Miller blows off a May 18 appearance before the grand jury; Dearn’s employee says Dearn will contact Mueller’s team on May 21
May 21: Dearn blows off promised call to Mueller’s team
May 23: Mueller’s team emails Dearn a second set of subpoenas, to appear on June 1
May 25: Stone says 8 associates have been asked for testimony
May 25: Mueller’s team follows up on subpoenas; Dearn asks for more time to comply “given the volume of responsive documents;” Mueller agrees to adjourn document production to June 5 and appearance to Jun 8
May 31: Mueller contacts Dearn to confirm appearance; Dearn complains about “patently irrelevant” responsive materials; Mueller agrees to exclude those materials
June 5: Mueller emails new subpoenas reflecting the June 5 production date and June 8 appearance
June 6: Mueller emails Dearn to confirm appearance and arrange for travel
June 8: Miller blows off grand jury appearance
June 11, 8:50AM and 2:15PM: Mueller emails Dearn and asks for immediate contact, warning that Special Counsel would move towards contempt
June 12, 9:07AM and 2:15PM: Dearn twice says she’ll provide correspondence within an hour but does not
June 13: Mueller moves to compel
June 14: Miller filed opposition purporting to be a motion to quash
June 18: At hearing on motion to quash, court orders Miller to appear on June 28
June 28: Miller retains Paul Kamenar, paid by the National Legal and Policy Center, who challenges subpoenas as challenge to Appointments Clause, borrowing argument from Concord Management motion
June 29: At status hearing in Miller challenge, Kamenar adds another challenge, that Mueller was appointed by “Head of Department”
July 18: Hearing on Miller challenge, attended by 5 Mueller lawyers, with follow-up briefing
July 31: Chief Judge Beryl Howell rules that Miller must testify ASAP
August 1: Kristin Davis interviewed by Mueller team; investigators express an interest in having her appear before grand jury
August 3: Dabney Friedrich entertains ignoring DC Circuit and SCOTUS precedent to rule for Concord Management’s challenge of Mueller’s authority, with Kamenar watching; Concord lawyer Eric Dubelier suggests conspiracy in the timing of Howell’s ruling
August 10: Kristin Davis appearance before grand jury
While some of these witnesses were clearly asked about Wikileaks, others were reportedly asked about meetings involving Rick Gates, Stone’s finances, and even whether he fathered Davis’ two year old child. And while Stone’s buddies claim Mueller is generally investigating his finances, Mueller’s focus seems to be on the recipients of expenditures from Stone’s SuperPAC.
Clearly, whatever question Mueller is investigating (and whatever potential crimes he showed probable cause of, if he indeed seized the contents of Stone’s phone back in March) is more complex than just chatting up Assange or Guccifer 2.0. Indeed, even the discussions we know of show Stone involved in — or at least entertaining — more than that. That said, Mueller will need to prove that whatever Stone did involved the understanding that he was accepting things of value (or even, soliciting the active help) from foreigners or other illegal actions.
That’s one reason why the circumstances of Stone’s flip-flop in early August 2016, in which Stone went from admitting that the DNC hack was done by Russia to claiming it was not seemly in one day in which he was in Southern California is so important: because he established a contemporaneous claim he has relied on to excuse any coordination with Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks. Given the import of Stone’s flip-flop, I find it interesting that so much of the funding for his SuperPAC came from Southern California, especially from John Powers Middleton. Did he meet with his donors when he orchestrated the flip-flop that makes it harder to argue his discussions and foreknowledge of Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks events count as entering into a conspiracy to break one or several laws?
Whatever the circumstances of that flip-flop, from that point forward, Stone pushed several lines — notably the Seth Rich conspiracy — that would be key to Russian disinformation. A big chunk of his SuperPAC funds also spent on “Stop the Steal,” which may also tie to Russian disinformation to discredit the election.
One of the complexities Mueller may have spent months digging through may be whether and how to hold Stone accountable for willfully participation in disinformation supporting Russia’s larger efforts to swing the election to Donald Trump.
In March, when this focused pursuit started, Mueller wanted to know what the President knew about communication between Stone, his associates, Julian Assange, and Wikileaks. Since then, it appears the question has gotten more complex.
And along the way, a key Roger Stone aide has managed to stall three months on providing testimony.
Update: Fixed spelling of Miller’s attorney’s last name to Dearn.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Stone-Agent-of-Chaos.jpg7971072emptywheelhttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngemptywheel2018-08-04 15:04:272018-08-06 15:22:21On the Apparent Complexities of Charging Roger Stone
Get out the biggest popcorn bowl you own and extra napkins, find your cushy tushy pillow, and get ready for some serious entertainment.
Former New York State governor Eliot Spitzer (D) has thrown his hat in the ring for state comptroller. He will be running against Kristin Davis (R) for the same seat, along with other less well-known candidates.
Spitzer, you may recall, resigned in 2008 as governor after it was revealed he was Client No. 9 [PDF] in a federal case in which four defendants (not named Spitzer) were charged in regards to prostitution enterprise over state lines.
Davis, you will further recall, was the so-called “Manhattan Madam” arrested and prosecuted in the sweep of the prostitution ring related to the Spitzer scandal.
The popcorn is done, you may serve yourselves and make yourselves comfortable.
Further, you may also want to take careful note of these key dates and events:
14-FEB-2008 — An op-ed written by Eliot Spitzer, Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime, was published in the Washington Post. It called out the White House about its actions which thwarted efforts of states’ attorneys general to prosecute predatory lending.
14-FEB-2008 — Spitzer gave testimony this same date to the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services.
14-MAR-2008 — The Fed Reserve initially agrees to loan Bear Stearns at least $25 billion; within two days, Bear Stearns is sold to J. P. Morgan for only $2/share, a mere fraction of its worth a month earlier when it traded for well over $100/share.
The 2008 financial crisis was set in motion by the cascading pressure for liquidity after Bear Stearns collapsed.
A number of folks near and dear to us looked into the origins of the investigation that caught up Spitzer; it’s been said Spitzer’s bank turned over suspicious activity to the IRS. However, in light of recent disclosures about domestic spying and datamining, it might be worth asking again whether some other surveillance tripped up Spitzer — especially after the hinky extension on the original wiretap that snagged a call related to Spitzer.
Perhaps this is why Spitzer feels comfortable attempting a political comeback.
And perhaps he knows why the rest of the prostitution ring’s clients — a substantive number of them employed by Too-Big-To-Fail financial institutions — weren’t disclosed as he was.
In any event, the New York comptroller’s race ought to be highly entertaining if not informative. Stock up on popcorn, kids, and buy some popcorn futures.
https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.png00Raynehttps://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Logo-Web.pngRayne2013-07-07 23:30:062013-07-07 23:25:59Popcorn Futures: Client No. 9 Versus Manhattan Madam in NY Comptroller Race
![[photo: Vegan Feast Catering via Flickr]](http://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Popcorn_VeganFeastCatering-Flickr.jpg)