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The More Puzzling Inaction in SDNY: National Enquirer

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As bmaz noted, SDNY released less redacted copies of warrants to search Michael Cohen’s property today, revealing many more details about Cohen’s negotiation of hush payments for Trump.

A lot of people are trying to figuring out how Trump and Hope Hicks avoided charges — the former for his very active involvement in campaign finance crimes, the latter for lying to the FBI. But an equally important question, I think, pertains to American Media Inc. AMI is a likely mention behind the first redaction in the redacted footnote where the government describes the disposition of the investigation.

After all, DOJ publicly announced in December that AMI — the parent company of the National Enquirer — had entered into a Non-Prosecution Agreement with DOJ in September 2018. And they were involved in both campaign finance crimes, the hush payments to both Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. So they should be mentioned in precisely that spot.

But that raises questions about why the mention should be redacted. While the AMI NPA is not readily available from a search on the main DOJ website (I believe it used to be), it still remains linked on SDNY’s site. It’s public.

And, frankly, the closure of this investigation is just as suspicious with respect to AMI as it is with Trump and Hicks. That’s because Jeff Bezos published records in February showing AMI threatening to publish details that would embarrass him that raised real questions about whether AMI was in violation of its NPA.

Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is “apoplectic” about our investigation. For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve.

A few days after hearing about Mr. Pecker’s apoplexy, we were approached, verbally at first, with an offer. They said they had more of my text messages and photos that they would publish if we didn’t stop our investigation.

My lawyers argued that AMI has no right to publish photos since any person holds the copyright to their own photos, and since the photos in themselves don’t add anything newsworthy.

There were public reports at the time that SDNY was weighing whether these threats constituted a violation of AMI’s NPA. Those reports were all the more interesting as the National Enquirer exposure of Bezos’ affair seemed like a favor to Trump, who has long targeted Bezos.

If that references is to AMI, then it shouldn’t be redacted, as the fact of the NPA is public, even on SDNY’s own website. But if the entire investigation — including into AMI’s possible follow-up violations of its DPA — it would suggest DOJ was going easy on not just Trump and Hicks, but also Trump’s favorite rag.

The Cohen Material Just Released By The Court

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Okay, as you may recall, the Judge William Pauley in the Southern District of New York had indicated he would release additional materials from the Cohen case there. As some background, here is our friend Adam Klasfeld of Courthouse News (if you are on Twitter and not following Adam, you are doing it wrong). Here is a Twitter thread Adam did as background.

Here is a blurb from his original story on this:

The first time a tranche of search warrants against former Trump fixer Michael Cohen became public, U.S. prosecutors aggressively redacted those materials to protect what was then an ongoing campaign-finance probe.

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, stops to talk to a member of the press on May 4, 2019, in New York. Cohen reported to a federal prison on May 6 to begin serving a three-year sentence for campaign-finance violations, tax evasion, bank fraud and lying to Congress. AP Photo/Jonathan Carroll)
Announcing that investigation’s end, a judge ordered prosecutors on Wednesday to quickly disclose new information about how Cohen paid two women to silence their stories about supposed affairs with President Donald Trump.

“The campaign finance violations discussed in the materials are a matter of national importance,” U.S. District Judge William H Pauley III wrote. “Now that the government’s investigation into those violations has concluded, it is time that every American has an opportunity to scrutinize the materials.”

That moment is now. And, without further adieu, here are the newly released materials:

Cover Letter

Exhibit 1

Exhibit 2

Exhibit 3

Exhibit 4

Exhibit 5

Exhibit 6

Exhibit 7

Exhibit 8

Exhibit 9

Okay folks, this is a working thread. I have gotten it up as fast as possible, but there was a LOT of documents to download, and then upload. Have at it. There are many fascinating things in there, but many were known already. It is the newly unredacted stuff that is important. Happy hunting!

Renewing My Obsession with Paul Manafort’s iPods: Robert Mueller’s 2,300 Media Devices

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In an attempt to argue that properly processing Jason Leopold’s admittedly very broad FOIA for materials relating to the Mueller investigation, DOJ has claimed that it would need to process the contents of 2,300 media devices to fully comply with his FOIA, which would amount to more content than is stored in the Library of Congress.

For Request No. DOJ-2019-003143—Plaintiffs’ request for all records from the Office of the Special Counsel—the volume of responsive documents is enormous. Defendant estimates that the approximate number of responsive records that OIP would process is as follows:

  • 11 terabytes of non-email digital data, which is the approximate equivalent of 825 million pages (assuming each terabyte consists of 75 million pages); and
  • 318 gigabytes of email, which is the approximate equivalent of over 215 million pages (assuming each gigabyte consists of 677,963 pages).

Defendant estimates that the approximate number of responsive records that FBI would process is as follows:

  • More than 2 million pages of investigative records that are not on media devices; and
  • More than 2,300 media devices that have a combined storage capacity of 240 terabytes of data. If these devices are filled to capacity, this is the approximate equivalent 18 billion pages. [my emphasis]

I find that number — 2,300 — intriguing, given that in the public records on the investigation, I’m not sure we’ve seen warrants reflecting that volume of production. As a reminder, here’s what we know about the warrants obtained in the DC District; there are around 321 docket entries, the better part of which are for stored content rather than searches of media devices. The volume of devices obtained with DC searches would mean the balance of the 500 warrants Mueller obtained are either still sealed, precede Mueller’s appointment, or in other districts.

As a test of how we get to that number, consider what we learned as part of my continuing obsession with Paul Manafort’s iPod habit (I was interested in that habit, in part, because iPods can be used for non-telephonic texting). Just from the search of Manafort’s condo, the government obtained the contents of over 83 devices (note there were some device extractions done as part of the search).

  • 4 DVD discs
  • 7 external hard drives
  • 12 SD cards
  • 7 memory sticks
  • 1 micro SD card
  • 1 iPod
  • 3 compact flash cards
  • 1 MacBook Air hard drive
  • 2 iPads
  • 9 thumb drives
  • 1 iPhone
  • 1 micro vault pro
  • 1 DEWF_COMBO1: A 1TB (containing forensic images and device extractions from rooms: C, F, K, and Q)
  • 7 iPods
  • 1 iMac (including 1 Solid State Drive (SSD) and 1 Hard Disk Drive (HDD))
  • 4 iPhones
  • 1 SD card
  • 12 digital flash drives
  • 1 Macbook Air
  • 2 iPad Minis
  • 2 micro SD HC cards
  • 2 SD HC cards
  • 1 ultra-SD XC I card

My impression is that the government seized fewer devices from Michael Cohen and the same or more from Roger Stone, plus three from George Nader. But they are the only public searches of residences that would result in a big haul of devices, meaning about 300 would be from those three men (there are around 3 searches of residences the owners of which are not identified in the DC docket). Cooperating witnesses like Rick Gates and — before he reneged — Mike Flynn likely provided a number (Flynn described facilitating the production of electronic devices in his sentencing memo), though probably not that high of one, of devices. And many of Mueller’s 500 witnesses provided their phones “voluntarily,” or had some of their content subpoenaed. Mueller also obtained the transition cell phones and laptops for 13 transition officials, but the team appears to have obtained warrants before actually searching them, meaning they’re already accounted for in the DC docket.

Still, somehow that gets us from a universe of around 1,000 devices (counting 500 from Manafort, Cohen, Stone, Gates, and Flynn, plus 500 more from witnesses) to 2,300.

So there’s still a great number of media devices the source of which is not readily apparent.

As I disclosed last July, 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. 

Jim Jordan’s Bubble Has Allowed Him to Remain Painfully Stupid about the Mueller Investigation

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Politico has a piece on Republican plans to blow up Robert Mueller’s testimony later this month with stupid questions. It’s a fair piece; it even quotes Louie Gohmert calling Mueller an asshole, in as many words.

The Texas congressman added that his reading of the special counsel’s report did little to temper his long history of animosity for the former FBI director: “It reinforced the anal opening that I believe Mueller to be.”

But it misses an opportunity when it presents what Jim Jordan imagines will be a doozy of a question with only a minimal fact check.

But Republicans preparing over the next two-plus weeks to questionMueller say they have their own points they hope to drive home to Americans as well. Several indicated they intend to press Mueller on when he first determined he lacked evidence to charge Americans with conspiring with Russia — insinuating, without evidence, that he allowed suspicions to linger long after he had shifted his focus to the obstruction of justice investigation.

“The obvious question is the one that everyone in the country wants to know: when did you first know there was no conspiracy, coordination or collusion?” said Jordan, one of the Republicans’ fiercest investigators. “How much longer did it take Bob Mueller to figure that out? Did he intentionally wait until after 2018 midterms, or what?”

Mueller emphasized in his report that he did not make a finding on “collusion,” since it’s not a legal term, and that his decision not to bring charges didn’t mean he found no evidence of them.

If Jim Jordan, who has been spending most of his time as a legislator in the last year investigating this investigation, were not so painfully stupid, he would know not only that not “everyone in the country” feels the need to know when Mueller finalized a decision about conspiracy, but that attentive people already do know that Bob Mueller wasn’t the one who decided to wait out the mid-terms.

The Mueller team told Amy Berman Jackson that Paul Manafort had breached his plea agreement on November 26, 2018. His last grand jury appearance — on November 2 — did not show up in his breach discussion (meaning he may have told the truth, including about Trump’s personal involvement in optimizing the WikiLeaks releases). But in his October 26 grand jury appearance, he tried to hide the fact that he continued to pursue a plan to carve up Ukraine well into 2018, and continued to generally lie about what that plan to carve up Ukraine had to do with winning Michigan and Wisconsin, such that Manafort took time away from running Trump’s campaign on August 2, 2016 to discuss both of them with his co-conspirator Konstantin Kilimnik. Mueller never did determine what that August 2 meeting was about or what Kilimnik and Viktor Boyarkin did with the Trump polling data Manafort was sharing with them. But the delay in determining that Manafort’s obstruction had succeeded was set by Manafort, not Mueller.

And until November 26, prosecutors still hoped to get Jerome Corsi to stop lying to them about how he and Roger Stone got advanced notice of John Podesta’s stolen emails — to say nothing about why Stone was talking to someone “about phishing with John Podesta.” Indeed, the government obtained a search warrant against Stone in February 2019 — possibly the one on February 13 to search multiple devices  — to investigate hacking allegations. If that warrant is the February 2019 one targeting Stone, the devices likely came in the search of his homes on January 25 of this year.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump refused to answer questions — all the questions he answered were about conspiracy, and most of his answers were non-responsive — until November 20, 2018. His answers about the Trump Tower Moscow deal were worse than non-responsive: they replicated the lies for which Michael Cohen is currently sitting in prison. Then, in December and January, Trump and Rudy Giuliani made comments that made it clear Trump’s answers were willful lies. Mueller offered Trump the opportunity to clarify his testimony, but he declined.

In light of the President’s public statements following Cohen’s guilty plea that he “decided not to do the project,” this Office again sought information from the President about whether he participated in any discussions about the project being abandoned or no longer pursued, including when he “decided not to do the project,” who he spoke to about that decision, and what motivated the decision. 1057 The Office also again asked for the timing of the President’s discussions with Cohen about Trump Tower Moscow and asked him to specify “what period of the campaign” he was involved in discussions concerning the project. 1058 In response, the President’s personal counsel declined to provide additional information from the President and stated that “the President has fully answered the questions at issue.” 1059

1057 1/23/19 Letter, Special Counsel’s Office to President’s Personal Counsel.

1058 1/23/ 19 Letter, Special Counsel’s Office to President’s Personal Counsel.

1059 2/6/ l 9 Letter, President’s Personal Counsel to Special Counsel’s Office.

In short, the public record makes it clear that the answer to Jordan’s question — when Mueller made a determination about any conspiracy charges — could not have happened until after the election. But the person who dictated that timing, more than anyone else, was Trump himself, who was refusing to tell the truth to Mueller as recently as February 6.

This is all in the public record (indeed, Trump’s role in the delay is described in the Mueller Report, which Jordan might have known had he read it). The fact that Jordan doesn’t know the answer — much less believes that his already-answered question is a zinger — is a testament to what a locked bubble he exists in, where even the most basic details about the investigation itself, rather than the fevered dreams Jordan has about it, don’t seep in.

Jordan should branch out beyond the spoon-fed journalists from whom he got this question, because even in its original incarnation, the question was utterly inconsistent with the public record.

When did you determine that there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia?

Some congressional Republicans have asserted that Mueller figured out early on in his investigation — which started on May 17, 2017 — that there was no conspiracy or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Mueller’s report said that prosecutors were unable to establish that the campaign conspired with Russia, but the report did not go into detail about when that conclusion was reached.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure Jordan is going to pose unanswerable questions that will feed conspiracists (which is one of the reasons I was somewhat sympathetic for Mueller’s preference for a closed hearing). But it’s only within the closed bubble that can’t be pierced by obvious facts that such questions are legitimate questions.

As I disclosed last July, 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. 

Questions for Robert Mueller (and His Prosecutors) that Go Beyond the Show

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I generally loathe the questions that people are drafting for Robert Mueller’s July 17 testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, largely because those questions are designed for a circus and not to learn information that’s useful for understanding the Mueller investigation. Here are the questions I’d ask instead (I’ll update these before Mueller testifies).

  1. Can you describe how you chose which “links between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” to focus your investigation on?
  2. The warrants released in Michael Cohen’s case and other public materials show that your grand jury conducted investigations of people before Rod Rosenstein formally expanded the scope to include them in October 2017. Can you explain the relationship between investigative steps and the Rosenstein scope memos?
  3. Lisa Page has explained that in its initial phase, the investigation into Trump’s aides was separate from the larger investigation(s) into Russian interference. But ultimately, your office indicted Russians in both the trolling and the hack-and-leak conspiracies. How and when did those parts of DOJ’s investigation get integrated under SCO?
  4. An FD-302 memorializing a July 19, 2017 interview with Peter Strzok was released as part of Mike Flynn’s sentencing. Can you describe what the purpose of this interview was? How did the disclosure of Strzok’s texts with Lisa Page affect the recording (or perceived credibility) of this interview? Strzok was interviewed before that disclosure, but the 302 was not finalized until he had been removed from your team. Did his removal cause any delay in finalizing this 302?
  5. At the beginning of the investigation, your team investigated the criminal conduct of subjects unrelated to ties with Russia (for example, Paul Manafort’s ties with Ukraine, Mike Flynn’s ties to Turkey). Did the approach of the investigation change later in the process to immediately refer such issues to other offices (for example, Michael Cohen’s hush payments and graft)? If the approach changed, did your team or Rod Rosenstein drive this change? Is the Mystery Appellant related to a country other than Russia?
  6. Did your integration of other prosecutors (generally from DC USAO) into your prosecution teams stem from a resourcing issue or a desire to ensure continuity? What was the role of the three prosecutors who were just detailees to your team?
  7. Your report describes how FBI personnel shared foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information with the rest of FBI. For more than a year, FBI agents were embedded with your team for this purpose. Were these agents focused just on Russian activities, or did their focus include the actions of other countries and Americans? If their focus included Americans, did it include Trump associates? Did it include Trump himself?
  8. Can you describe the relationship between your GRU indictment and the WDPA one focused on the WADA hacks, and the relationship between your IRA indictment and the complaint against a Yevgeniy Prigozhin employee in EDVA? Can you describe the relationship between the Maria Butina prosecution and your investigation?
  9. Do you regret charging Concord Management in the IRA indictment? Do you have any insight on how indictments against Russian and other state targets should best be used?
  10. In discussions of Paul Manafort’s plea deal that took place as part of his breach hearing, Andrew Weissmann revealed that prosecutors didn’t vet his testimony as they would other cooperators. What led to this lack of vetting? Did the timing of the election and the potential impact Manafort’s DC trial might have play into the decision?
  11. What communication did you receive from whom in response to the BuzzFeed story on Trump’s role in Michael Cohen’s false testimony? How big an impact did that communication have on the decision to issue a correction?
  12. Did Matt Whitaker prevent you from describing Donald Trump specifically in Roger Stone’s indictment? Did you receive any feedback — from Whitaker or anyone else — for including a description of Trump in the Michael Cohen plea?
  13. Did Whitaker, Bill Barr, or Rosenstein weigh in on whether Trump should or could be subpoenaed? If so what did they say? Did any of the three impose time constraints that would have prevented you from subpoenaing the President?
  14. Multiple public reports describe Trump allies (possibly including Mike Flynn or his son) expressing certainty that Barr would shut down your investigation once he was confirmed. Did this happen? Can you describe what happened at the March 5, 2019 meeting where Barr was first briefed? Was that meeting really the first time you informed Rosenstein you would not make a determination on obstruction?
  15. You “ended” your investigation on March 22, at a time when at least two subpoena fights (Andrew Miller and Mystery Appellant) were ongoing. You finally resigned just minutes before Andrew Miller agreed to cooperate on May 29. Were these subpoenas for information critical to your investigation?
  16. If Don Jr told you he would invoke the Fifth if subpoenaed by the grand jury, would that fact be protected by grand jury secrecy? Are you aware of evidence you received involving the President’s son that would lead him to be less willing to testify to your prosecutors than to congressional committees? Can congressional committees obtain that information?
  17. Emin Agalarov canceled a concert tour to avoid subpoena in your investigation. Can you explain efforts to obtain testimony from this key player in the June 9 meeting? What other people did you try to obtain testimony from regarding the June 9 meeting?
  18. Did your investigation consider policy actions taken while Trump was President, such as Trump’s efforts to overturn Russian sanctions or his half-hearted efforts to comply with Congressional mandates to impose new ones?
  19. Can you describe how you treated actions authorized by Article II authority — such as the conduct of foreign policy, including sanctions, and the awarding of pardons — in your considerations of any criminal actions by the President?
  20. The President did not answer any questions about sanctions, even the one regarding discussions during the period of the election. Do you have unanswered questions about the role of sanctions relief and the Russian interference effort?
  21. Your report doesn’t include several of the most alarming interactions between Trump and Russia. It mentions how he told Sergey Lavrov and Sergey Kislyak he had fired Comey because of the Russian investigation, but did not mention that he shared classified Israeli intelligence at the meeting. Your report doesn’t mention the conversations Trump had with Vladimir Putin at the G-20 in Hamburg, including one pertaining to “adoptions,” while he was working on the June 9 meeting. The report doesn’t mention the Helsinki meeting. Did your investigation consider these interactions with Russia? If not, are you aware of another part of the government that did scrutinize these events?
  22. Why did you include Trump’s efforts to mislead the public about the June 9 meeting when it didn’t fit your team’s own terms for obstructive acts?
  23. You generally do not name the Trump lawyers who had discussions, including about pardons, with subjects of the investigation. How many different lawyers are described in your report to have had such discussions?
  24. You asked — but the President provided only a partial answer — whether he had considered issuing a pardon for Julian Assange prior to the inauguration. Did you investigate the public efforts — including by Roger Stone — to pardon Assange during Trump’s Administration?
  25. The cooperation addendum in Mike Flynn’s case reveals that he participated in discussions about reaching out to WikiLeaks in the wake of the October 7 Podesta releases. But that does not appear in the unredacted parts of your report. Is the entire scope of the campaign’s interactions with WikiLeaks covered in the Roger Stone indictment?
  26. Hope Hicks has claimed to be unaware of a strategy to coordinate the WikiLeaks releases, yet even the unredacted parts of the report make it clear there was a concerted effort to optimize the releases. Is this a difference in vocabulary? Does it reflect unreliability on the part of Hicks’ testimony? Or did discussions of WikiLeaks remain partially segregated from the communications staff of the campaign?
  27. How many witnesses confirmed knowing of conversations between Roger Stone and Donald Trump about WikiLeaks’ upcoming releases?
  28. The President’s answers regarding the Trump Tower Moscow match the false story for which Michael Cohen pled guilty, meaning the President, in his sworn answers, provided responses you have determined was a false story. After Cohen pled guilty, the President and his lawyer made public claims that are wholly inconsistent with his sworn written answer to you. You offered him an opportunity to clean up his sworn answer, but he did not. Do you consider the President’s current answer on this topic to be a lie?
  29. Did Trump Organization provide all the emails pertaining to the Trump Tower Moscow deal before you subpoenaed the organization in early 2018? Did they provide those emails in response to that subpoena?
  30. In his answers to your questions, President Trump claimed that you received “an email from a Sergei Prikhodko, who identified himself as Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation … inviting me to participate in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.” But the footnotes to your discussion of that exchange describe no email. Did your team receive any email? Does the public record — showing that Trump never signed the declination letter to that investigation — show that Trump did not decline that invitation?

As I disclosed last July, 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. 

Donald Trump Has a Roger Stone Problem

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By all appearances, the investigation into whether Roger Stone bears some liability for the 2016 Russian hacks is ongoing, with new evidence available from the search of his homes, a February search following that, Andrew Miller’s testimony, and anything Ecuador turns over to the US government.

But even without any further charges against Stone, Donald Trump has a Roger Stone problem, one he may not be able to dispense with by pardoning his rat-fucker before Stone’s November trial.

That’s because he could be a lynch pin in the DNC lawsuit against Trump’s campaign and associates, and no one is actually contesting that.

The lawsuit has been inching along with updates after each new batch of evidence. Earlier this week, everyone but WikiLeaks submitted their reply in support of a motion to dismiss (WikiLeaks’ response, which has always been premised on claiming that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are not the same thing, has gotten more difficult in the wake of Assange’s arrest).

Along with all the replies, the Trump campaign (represented by Jones Day, which has an incentive to bill liberally while the White House tries to prevent partner Don McGahn from testifying to Congress) submitted a motion for sanctions on the DNC for continuing to claim a conspiracy after the Mueller Report made clear there was evidence of a — or several — conspiracies, but nothing for which he had proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Of course, the standard for a civil case is lower than it is for a criminal one, and to survive the motion to dismiss the DNC doesn’t even have to get that far, which is one of the things the DNC argued when the Trump campaign first threatened sanctions.

In arguing to the contrary, the Trump Campaign commits a logical error that the Report warned readers not to make. Specifically, the Campaign assumes that there were only two possible outcomes from the Special Counsel’s investigation: (1) it would conclusively establish the Trump Campaign’s guilt; or (2) it would conclusively establish the Trump Campaign’s innocence. And because the investigation did not conclusively prove that the Trump Campaign conspired with Russia, the Campaign insists that investigation proved their innocence. By creating a false choice between these two extremes, the Trump Campaign leaves no room for the Report’s actual findings: there was evidence of the Trump Campaign’s guilt, but not enough to establish that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. On page 2 of the Report, the Special Counsel warned readers not to make that mistake, explaining: “A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” Report at 2 (emphasis added). Nevertheless, the Trump Campaign’s letter repeatedly and falsely suggests that, if the Special Counsel’s investigation “did not establish” a particular fact, then the investigation refuted that fact. 3. The Campaign’s Letter Overlooks the Differences Between Civil and Criminal Actions

The Campaign’s May 13 letter also overlooks the crucial differences between civil and criminal cases. It is axiomatic that an “acquittal in [a] criminal action does not bar civil suit based on the same facts.” 2A Charles Wright et al, Federal Practice & Procedure § 468 (4th ed. 2013); see also Purdy v. Zeldes, 337 F.3d 253, 259 (2d Cir. 2003). Similarly, the government’s decision not to press criminal charges against a defendant has no effect on civil proceedings. Indeed, civil plaintiffs routinely prevail in cases where the government has declined to prosecute the defendants. See, e.g., In re: Urethanes Antitrust Litigation, No. 04-1616 (D. Kan.) (after the government determined there was not enough evidence to prosecute the defendants, civil plaintiffs took the case to trial and secured a judgment of approximately $1.06 billion). This is not surprising in light of the different standards of proof in civil and criminal cases and the additional sources of evidence available to civil plaintiffs.

First, a civil plaintiff’s burden of proof is much lighter than the government’s burden of proof in a criminal case. See Sedima, S.P.R.L. v. Imrex Co., 473 U.S. 479, 491 (1985) (noting that a civil plaintiff only needs to show that it is more likely than not that the defendants violated the law, while criminal prosecutors must prove their case “beyond a reasonable doubt”). Thus, while the information available in the Special Counsel’s Report may be insufficient to sustain a criminal conviction, a civil jury could find the same information more than sufficient to hold Defendants civilly liable.

[snip]

Moreover, a civil plaintiff can pursue evidentiary avenues unavailable to prosecutors. For example, unlike in a criminal proceeding, where a defendant has no obligation to speak to government investigators regarding her own illegal conduct, a civil plaintiff can compel a defendant to attend a deposition, and if the defendant refuses, she can be held in contempt of court or otherwise sanctioned. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(b). Similarly, if a defendant invokes her Fifth Amendment right not to answer specific questions during a deposition or at trial, a civil jury— unlike a criminal jury—can infer that the defendant invoked her rights because she violated the law. See, e.g., See Mitchell v. United States, 526 U.S. 314, 328 (1999); Woods v. START Treatment & Recovery Centers, Inc., 864 F.3d 158, 170 (2d Cir. 2017). Thus, in this case, Trump, Jr., Assange, and the Agalarovs—whom the Special Counsel did not interview—can be compelled to attend depositions, where they will have an incentive to answer the DNC’s questions truthfully (rather than invoking their Fifth Amendment rights).

More interestingly, the motion for sanctions remains utterly silent about one of DNC’s key allegations: Roger Stone’s seemingly successful effort to optimize the WikiLeaks releases.

Admittedly, so is the DNC in its response to the Trump campaign letter, when it points to all the new details in the Mueller Report that supports their suit. But there’s good reason for it: Most of the Roger Stone stuff is redacted.

But the Trump campaign’s silence on Roger Stone is particularly damning because Stone has never address a key observation the DNC has made: that after Stone dismissed the value of leaked DCCC oppo research in a DM with Guccifer 2.0, the GRU went on to hack Democratic data that was quite valuable: their AWS-hosted analytics.

On September 9, 2016, GRU operatives contacted Stone, writing him “please tell me if I can help u anyhow[,]” and adding “it would be a great pleasure to me.” ¶ 179. The operatives then asked Stone for his reaction to a stolen “turnout model for the Democrats’ entire presidential campaign.” Id. Stone replied, “[p]retty standard.” See id.

Throughout September 2016, Russian intelligence agents illegally gained access to DNC computers hosted on a third-party cloud computing service, stole large amounts of the DNC’s private data and proprietary computer code, and exfiltrated the stolen materials to their own cloud-based accounts registered with same service. ¶ 180.

[snip]

Moreover, GRU officers using the screenname Guccifer 2.0 stayed in close contact with Stone, asking for feedback on how they could be most helpful, after Russia had been publicly linked to the theft of Democratic documents. See ¶¶ 167, 177-79. In September 2016, the GRU operatives asked Stone for his reaction to a “turnout model” that the GRU had stolen from another Democratic Party target. ¶ 179. After Stone suggested that he was not impressed, see id., Russia took snapshots of the virtual servers that housed key pieces of the DNC’s analytics infrastructure— its “most, important, valuable, and highly confidential tools,” which could have “provided the GRU with the ability to see how the DNC was evaluating and processing data critical to its principal goal of winning elections,” ¶ 180.

Not only does this put Stone’s interaction with GRU prior to some of the hacking it did, but it undercuts Stone’s entire defense (which is mostly to claim his involvement extends only to John Podesta emails, which he distinguishes from DNC).

The DNC’s second amended complaint does not overcome the lack of standing argument and that it does not allege Roger Stone conspired to damage the DNC; rather, the allegations are only inferences of another conspiracy against John Podesta whose emails were on a Google server – i.e. “gmail.com.” Furthermore, it has no standing against Roger Stone because Plaintiff did not sufficiently allege that he participated in the conspiracy against it.

The DNC keeps raising the September hack — which was clearly a DNC target — and Stone keeps just blowing that allegation off.

As noted above: the Stone material in the Mueller Report is currently redacted. But it’s there, showing that Stone provided Trump non-public details ahead of time (which Michael Cohen has described under oath and Rick Gates apparently has also described) and also showing that Trump wanted the emails and his top aides — including Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Mike Flynn, and Steve Bannon — made sure he got them.

It is still a very high bar for the DNC to win this suit.

But Roger Stone is a very weak point in the Republican attempt to defeat it. And neither he nor the Trump campaign seem to want to address that fact head on.

How to Read the Mueller Report Referrals

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A filing in the BuzzFeed/EPIC FOIA lawsuits to liberate an unredacted copy of the Mueller Report provides new insight on how to read the referral section at the back of the report. (Here’s BuzzFeed’s own report on the filing.) The filing provides a more specific breakdown of the exemptions used to withhold parts of the report, especially the b7 redactions.

As it explains, it uses four categories of b7C, which protects, “information ‘compiled for law enforcement purposes’ when disclosure ‘could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.'” These distinguish between four kinds of people: those unwittingly involved, those who were considered for charges but ultimately not charged, those “concerning a subject of the investigation,” and those whose non-criminal activity got described in the report.

  • (b)(6)/(7)(C)-1: names, social media account information, and other contact information of unwitting third parties;
  • (b)(6)/(7)(C)-2: names and personally-identifiable information about individuals not charged by the SCO;
  • (b)(6)/(7)(C)-3: information concerning a subject of the investigation by the SCO; and
  • (b)(6)/(7)(C)-4: names, social media account information, contact information, and other personally-identifiable information of individuals merely mentioned in the Report

The description of the third category claims that all the b7C-3 redactions hide information about Roger Stone or “also … other individuals discussed in connection with the facts related to Mr. Stone’s criminal case.”

72. The third category of privacy-based withholdings protects information pertaining to an individual who was a subject of the investigation by the SCO, and is coded as “(b)(6)/(7)(C)- 3.” Within this category, OIP has protected non-public information pertaining to Roger Stone and/or his pending criminal case in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The redactions in this category include information pertaining to Mr. Stone, but also to other individuals discussed in connection with the facts related to Mr. Stone’s criminal case. 17 The information related to the investigative subject or subjects that has been protected in this category would, if released, clearly invade the individual’s or individuals’ personal privacy and in particular, Mr. Stone’s ability to receive a fair trial and to respond to the charges against him in court without compounding the pre-trial publicity that his case has already received.

73. As noted above, in order to withhold information pursuant to Exemptions 6 and 7(C), a balancing of the privacy interests of the individuals mentioned in the Report against any FOIA public interest in disclosure must weigh in favor of non-disclosure. Given the intense public interest surrounding the SCO’s work as well as the public and media attention surrounding this individual’s ongoing court case, and the significant attention that any new fact made public will receive, disclosure of any additional non-public information about the individual or individuals protected in this category would certainly subject them to unwarranted harassment, stigma, further reputational or even physical harm. Individuals have protectable privacy interests in premature release of investigatory details relevant to criminal law enforcement proceedings against them, beyond what is made public in connection with their criminal justice proceedings. That interest is magnified here, where Mr. Stone’s trial is imminent, and any further public disclosure of details regarding the case against him will impact his ability to amount an effective defense and deprive him of the right to a fair trial.

This would obviously include information on Jerome Corsi and Randy Credico, at least the latter of whom will be a witness at Stone’s trial. But it almost certainly includes WikiLeaks, because the redaction started on page 176 of Volume I describes why publishing stolen information was not prosecuted.

Then there’s category b7C-4, which hides the sensitive information about people who had a role in the operation (including as victims), but were not subjects of Mueller’s investigation. So among other things, this redaction is used to hide the identities of people who were referred for criminal prosecution for things unrelated to the Mueller investigation (like, say, George Nader’s child porn). It covers,

names and related personally-identifiable information of individuals for whom evidence of potential criminal activity was referred by the Special Counsel to appropriate law enforcement authorities. With respect to the latter group of individuals, who are mentioned in Section B (“Referrals”) of Appendix D to the Report, these individuals were not subjects of the SCO investigation. Rather, they are included in an appendix to the Report only because evidence of potential criminal activity periodically surfaced during the course of the SCO’s investigation.19

But as this footnote describes, two of the people in the referrals are “individual or individuals” labeled with the designation limited to Stone’s case. Another appears to be someone whom Mueller decided not to charge for Russian related activities, but whom Mueller referred for something else.

19 Two entries in Section B of Appendix D relate to an individual or individuals whose privacy information has been categorized and coded as (b)(6)/(7)(C)-3, discussed supra in ¶¶ 72-75. Another entry in Section B of Appendix D relates to an individual against whom the SCO contemplated, but did not pursue, charges related to the Special Counsel’s investigation. Although information about this individual is considered a “mere mention” in the context of Appendix D, this individual’s privacy information has separately been categorized and coded as (b)(6)/(7)(C)-2, elsewhere in the Report.

In other words, people or subjects referred to in the referrals section appear to be:

  • b7A: People or subjects (these can be criminal or national security investigations) not mentioned in the report (in the transfers section, this is likely used to hide the names of people like Tony Podesta and Vin Weber who are tied to Manafort’s Ukrainian graft)
  • b7C-3: People who have some tie to the Stone case referred on their own right
  • b7C-4: People who appear in some non-criminal fashion in the Mueller Report, but who got referred for unrelated possible crimes (again, George Nader might be included in this category)

Here’s the updated FOIA version.

This redaction could be of Jerome Corsi for his false statements (though that would mean someone who fit between Cohen and Corsi in the alphabet would be included).

I’ve suspected that this redaction pertains to WikiLeaks (this part of the report is in alphabetical order and this is the last entry).

If all that’s right, it would mean the referrals include:

  • Michael Cohen
  • Greg Craig and related
  • 4 and 14: Two people associated with Stone (possibly Corsi and WikiLeaks)
  • 1, 3, 6-9, 11-12: Eight people who play a non-criminal role in the Mueller Report, but were referred for some other crime
  • 10, 13: People or subjects not mentioned in the report, but referred for prosecution for some other crime or national security investigation

And one of those category b7C-4 people was considered, but not charged, in the Russia investigation but was referred for investigation for something else.

Update: Fixed the referrals for people who play a non-criminal role in the Mueller Report but were referred for some other potential crime. H/t EB.

As I disclosed last July, 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. 

If FBI Had Spied on Trump’s Campaign As Alleged, They’d Have Known Why Manafort Traded Michigan for Ukraine

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If the FBI had spied on Trump’s campaign as aggressively as alleged by Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, then Robert Mueller would have been able to determine why Trump’s campaign manager had a meeting on August 2, 2016 to discuss how to get paid (or have debt forgiven) by Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs while discussing how to win Midwestern swing states and how to carve up Ukraine. In fact, the public record suggests that the FBI did not start obtaining criminal warrants on Manafort’s election year activities until the July 25, 2017 warrant authorizing the search of Manafort’s condo, which was the first known warrant obtained on Manafort that mentioned the June 9 meeting. A mid-August warrant authorizing a search of the business email via which Manafort often communicated with Konstantin Kilimnik is probably the first one investigating that August 2 meeting (as distinct from his years of undisclosed Ukrainian foreign influence peddling).

In other words, it took a full year after the Steele dossier first alleged that Paul Manafort was coordinating on the Russian election interference operation, and over a year after he offered Oleg Deripaska private briefings on the Trump campaign, before the FBI obtained a criminal warrant investigating the several known instances where Trump’s campaign manager did discuss campaign details with Russians.

While there are definitely signs that the government has parallel constructed the communications between Kilimnik and Manafort that covered the period during which he was on the campaign (meaning, they’ve obtained communications via both SIGINT collection and criminal process to hide the collection of the former), it seems highly unlikely they would have obtained campaign period communications in real time, given the FBI’s slow discovery and still incomplete understanding of Manafort’s campaign period activities. And the public record offers little certainty about when if ever Manafort — as opposed to Kilimnik who, as a foreigner overseas, was a legitimate target for EO 12333 collection, and would have been first targeted in the existing Ukraine-related investigation — was targeted under FISA directly.

All the while Manafort was on a crime spree, engaging in a quid pro quo with banker Steve Calk to get million dollar loans to ride out his debt crisis and lying to the government in an attempt to hide the extent of his ties with Viktor Yanukovych’s party.

Similarly, by all appearances the FBI remained ignorant of one of George Papadopoulos’ dodgy Russian interlocutors until after his second interview on February 16, 2017, suggesting they not only hadn’t obtained a FISA order covering him, but they hadn’t even done basic criminal process to collect the Facebook call records that would have identified Ivan Timofeev. Papadopoulos told Congress that when the FBI first interviewed him in January 2017, they knew of his extensive Israeli ties, but the asymmetry in the FBI’s understanding of Papadopoulos’ ties suggests it may have come from spying on the Israelis rather than targeting Papadopoulos himself.

Those are a few of the details illustrated by a detailed timeline of the known investigative steps taken against Trump’s associates. The details comport with a claim from Peter Strzok that he lost an argument on August 15, 2016, about whether they should pursue counterintelligence investigations of Trump Associates as aggressively as they normally would. The overt details of the investigation, at least, are consistent with Attorney General William Barr’s May 1, 2019 observation that the investigation into Trump’s associates was “anemic” at first.

The timeline does suggest that one of Trump’s associates may have been investigated more aggressively than he otherwise might have been, given the known facts. That person was Michael Cohen, whom the dossier alleged had played a central role in negotiations with Russia and even — the last, most suspect dossier report claimed — had paid hackers.

Cohen, of course, was never formally part of the campaign.

But even there, Cohen was not under investigation yet at the time Richard Burr shared the targets of the investigation with the White House on March 16, 2017 (at that point, only Roger Stone had been added to Carter Page, Papadopoulos, Manafort, and Mike Flynn, who are believed to be the four initial subjects).

In the days after Robert Mueller was appointed on May 17, 2017, the investigation might still not have amounted to anything, even in spite of Trump’s reaction, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I’ m fucked.” The next day, after all, Peter Strzok (who had been involved in the investigation from the start) said, “my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.” And less than a month later, Lisa Page appears to have suggested to Strzok that the FBI hadn’t decided whether Agents on Mueller’s team would be able to use 702 data — something that, in normal national security investigations, Agents can access at the assessment level.

But by June 21, Mueller was investigating Cohen’s Essential Consulting bank account — the one from which he paid hush payments to Stormy Daniels — because it appeared he was accepting big payments from Viktor Vekselberg, perhaps in conjunction with a plan Felix Sater pitched him on Ukranian peace. At first, Mueller got a preservation order on his Trump Organization emails. But then on July 18 — shortly after Mueller got a preservation order for all of Trump Organization emails in the wake of the June 9 meeting disclosure — Mueller got a warrant for Cohen’s emails, which set off an investigation into whether Cohen had been an unregistered foreign agent for any of a number of countries.

The investigation into the Essential Consulting account would lead the SDNY to charge him in the hush payments. And the collection on Cohen’s Trump Organization emails — collected directly from Microsoft instead of obtained via voluntary production — that would disclose the Trump Tower Moscow plan that Trump lied and lied and lied about.

Only after Mueller started ratcheting up the investigation against Cohen did Mueller first get a warrant on Roger Stone, in August 2017. That’s one of the two investigations (the other being Manafort) that remains ongoing.

Meanwhile, every one of these targets continued to engage in suspect if not criminal behavior. Manafort went on a crime spree to hide his paymasters, stay afloat long enough to re-engage them, and in January 2017 even tried to “recreate [his] old friendship” with Oleg Deripaska. Carter Page went to Moscow in December 2016 and claimed to be speaking on behalf of Trump with regards to Ukrainian deals. Papadopoulos considered a deal with Sergei Millian worth $30,000 a month while working at the White House, starting the day after the election, something even he thought might be illegal (but about which he didn’t call the FBI). Mike Flynn continued to try to implicate Hillary Clinton in his efforts to get Fethullah Gulen arrested on behalf of his secret foreign paymasters, all while getting intelligence briefings. And Cohen moved to collect on reimbursements for the illegal campaign donations he made to silence some of Trump’s former sex partners.

This is just the public record, presented in warrant applications being progressively unsealed by media outlets in court dockets. There may be an entirely asynchronistic counterintelligence investigation conducted using intelligence authorities. Though given the FBI’s actions, it seems highly unlikely, given their apparent ignorance of key details, that’s the case.

Which is to say that the public record supports Peter Strzok’s claims that the investigation lagged what a normal counterintelligence investigation might have. And all the while the investigation slowly moved to uncover the secrets that George Papadopoulos and Mike Flynn and Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort and (allegedly) Roger Stone lied to cover up, those men continued to engage in sketchy behavior, adding more reason to pursue the investigation.

As I disclosed last July, 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. 

Timeline

March 2016: Start date on spreadsheet of communications between Konstantin Kilimnik and Paul Manafort (possible parallel construction, though available portions of chart do not show whether contacts include phone calls).

April 26, 2016: Joseph Mifsud tells George Papadopoulos the Russians have Hillary emails that will be damaging to her that they plan to release to help Trump.

May 6, 2016: Papadopoulos speaks to Downer aide Erica Thompson; this is the day the Mueller Report says Papadopoulos first shared news that the Russians had emails.

May 10, 2016: Papadopoulos tells Alexander Downer some of what Mifsud told him.

June 14, 2016: DNC announces Russia has hacked them.

June 15, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 claims credit for the DNC hack.

June – July 2016: Facebook provides FBI two warnings about GRU using social media to conduct an espionage operation.

July 1, 2016: Christoper Steele writes Bruce Ohr email about “our favorite business tycoon,” referring to Oleg Deripaska, part of an effort to pitch Deripaska as a source to the US.

July 7, 2016: Via email, Paul Manafort offers private briefings on the campaign for Oleg Deripaska.

July 19, 2016: Steele dossier allegations about Carter Page trip to Moscow

July 25, 2016: Stone gets BCCed on an email from Charles Ortel that shows James Rosen reporting “a massive dump of HRC emails relating to the CF in September;” Stone now claims this explains his reference to a journalist go-between. Stone emails Jerome Corsi and tells him, “Get to [Assange]. At Ecuadorian Embassy in London and get the pending Wikileaks emails . . . they deal with Foundation, allegedly.” Corsi forwards that email to Ted Malloch.

July 27: Paul Manafort struggles while denying ties to Russia, instead pointing to Hillary’s home server.

July 27, 2016: In a press conference, candidate Trump:

  • Asks Russia to find Hillary’s missing emails
  • Lies about having ongoing business discussions with Russia
  • Suggests he may have ordered someone to reach out to foreign countries (which he seems to have done with Flynn)
  • Suggests he’s considering recognizing Russia’s seizure of Crimea

Both before and after this press conference, Trump asked aides — including Flynn and Gates, and probably Stone to go find the emails.

July 28, 2016: Paul Manafort gets a refinance in exchange for a campaign position for Steve Calk; this has led to a criminal conviction for Manafort and a bribery charge for Calk.

July 30, August 1, 2016: Papadopoulos and Sergei Millian meet in NYC; Millian invites Papadopoulos to two energy conferences.

Before July 30, 2016: First Steele dossier allegation that Manafort managed cooperation with Russia.

July 30: Bruce and Nellie Ohr meet with Christopher Steele; they talk about two claims from dossier, that “a former head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, had stated to someone…that they had Donald Trump over a barrel,” and that Carter Page had met with high level Russians while in Moscow. They also discuss Oleg Deripaska’s efforts to get evidence Manafort owes him money (though not, according to Ohr’s notes, the claim that Manafort was coordinating an election-year operation with Russia) and Russian doping. Ohr passes the information on to Andrew McCabe and Lisa Page.

July 31, 2016: FBI opens investigation into Papadopoulos and others based on Australian tip.

July 31, 2016: GAI report on From Russia with Money claiming Viktor Vekselberg’s Skolkovo reflects untoward ties; it hints that a greater John Podesta role would be revealed in her deleted emails and claims he did  not properly disclose role on Joule board when joining Obama Administration. Stone emails Corsi, “Call me MON,” and tells him to send Malloch to see Assange.

August 1, 2016: Steve Bannon and Peter Schweitzer publish a Breitbart version of the GAI report.

August 2, 2016: Paul Manafort meets with Konstantin Kilimnik to talk 1) how the campaign plans to win MI, WI, PA, and MN 2) how to carve up Ukraine 3) how to get paid by his Ukrainian and Russian paymasters. Corsi writes Stone, “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.”

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.

August 5, 2016: Manafort puts Calk on an advisory committee. Stone column in Breitbart claiming Guccifer 2.0 is individual hacker. Page texts Strzok that, “the White House is running this,” which is a reference to the larger Russian active measures investigation.

August 7, 2016: Stone starts complaining about a “rigged” election, claims that Nigel Farage had told him Brexit had been similarly rigged.

August 8, 2016: CrowdStrike report on hack of Democrats (referred to here).

August 10, 2016: Steele dossier reports on Mike Flynn RT meeting that had already been publicly reported.

August 12, 2016: Guccifer 2.0 publicly tweets Stone.

August 10, 2016: Manafort tells his tax preparer that he would get $2.4 million in earned income collectable from work in Ukraine in November.

August 14, 2016: NYT publishes story on secret ledgers. Corsi would later claim (falsely) to have started research in response to NYT story.

August 15, 2016: Papadopoulos follows up with Sam Clovis about a September 2016 meeting with Russia. Manafort and Gates lie to the AP about their undisclosed lobbying, locking in claims they would make under oath later that fall. In response to NYT story on Manafort’s graft, Stone tweets, “@JohnPodesta makes @PaulManafort look like St. Thomas Aquinas Where is the @NewYorkTimes?” Strzok loses an argument with McCabe and Page about aggressively investigating the Trump leads; afterwards he texts Page, “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40….”

August 17, 2016: Trump’s first intelligence briefing. While working as an unregistered agent of Turkey, Mike Flynn accompanies Trump to his intelligence briefing.

August 17, 2016: AP publishes story on Manafort’s unreported Ukraine lobbying, describing Podesta Group’s role at length.

August 19, 2016: Paul Manafort resigns from campaign in part because he was not forthright about his ties to Russia/Ukraine.

August 21, 2016: Roger Stone tweets, it will soon be Podestas’ time in the barrel.

August 23, 2016: Sergei Millian offers Papadopoulos “a disruptive technology that might be instrumental in your political work for the campaign.”

August 24, 2016: CrowdStrike report on hack of Democrats (referred to here).

September 1, 2016: Stefan Halper meets with Sam Clovis.

September 2, 2016: Halper reaches out to Papadopoulos. Lisa Page texts Peter Strzok that “POTUS wants to know everything we are doing;” per her sworn testimony, the text is a reference to the larger Russian investigation.

September 12: Following further reporting in the Kyiv Post, Konstantin Kilimnik contacts Alex Van der Zwaan in attempt to hide money laundering to Skadden Arps.

September 13, 2016: DOJ starts inquiring about Manafort obligation to register under FARA.

September 13-15, 2016: Papadopoulos meets with Stefan Halper and Azra Turk in London. He believes Halper records his answer to the emails question, including his remark it would “treason.”

Mid-September: FBI has opened sub-inquiries into Page and (probably) three other people linked to Trump, including Papadopoulos and probably Manafort and Flynn.

September 19, 2016: As part of his work for Turkey, Flynn meets with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Turkish Energy Minister (and Erdogan son-in-law) Berat Albayrak to discuss how to get Fethullah Gulen extradited. After meeting, James Woolsey informs Joe Biden.

September 24, 2016: Trump campaign severs all ties with Carter Page because of his suspect ties to Russia.

Early October 2016: Trump campaign dismisses Papadopoulos in response to Russian-friendly Interfax interview he did.

October 6, 2016: Corsi repeats the Joule/GAI claims.

October 7,  2016: Manafort gets Calk to increase the loan still further. WikiLeaks begins releasing Podesta emails right after Access Hollywood video drops. Steve Bannon associate tells Stone, “well done.”

October 11, 2016: Release of Podesta email allegedly backing Joule story (December 31, 2013 resignation letter, January 7, 2014 severance letters).

October 14, 2016: While working as unregistered agent of Turkey, Flynn plans to launch FBI investigation into Fethulah Gulen by alleging ties to Clinton Foundation and Campaign.

October 17, 2016: Michael Cohen forms Essential Consultants LLC.

October 18, 19, 20, 2016: Steele dossier reports on Michael Cohen role in operation.

October 21, 2016: DOJ applies for FISA order on Carter Page (Jim Comey and Sally Yates approve it). Manafort emails Kushner proposing to call Clinton “the failed and corrupt champion of the establishment” based on using WikiLeaks’ leaks. “Wikileaks provides the Trump campaign the ability to make the case in a very credible way – by using the words of Clinton, its campaign officials and DNC members.”

October 26, 2016: Cohen opens bank account for Essential Consultants, claiming it will be for his consulting with domestic clients, uses it to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 to prevent her from sharing true information about Trump.

October 30, 2016: Giorgi Rtslchiladze texts Michael Cohen to tell him he has stopped the flow of some compromising tapes in Moscow.

November 5, 2016: Manafort predicted Hillary would respond to a loss by, “mov[ing] immediately to discredit the [Trump] victory and claim voter fraud and cyber-fraud, including the claim that the Russians have hacked into the voting machines and tampered with the results.”

November 8, 2016: Mike Flynn publishes op-ed for which Turkey paid almost $600,000, without disclosure, thereby serving as an unregistered agent of a foreign government; Steve Calk approves $9.5 million to Manafort he knew wasn’t backed by underwriting. Michael Cohen starts contacting Andrew Intrater regularly.

November 9, 2016: Papadopoulos arranges to meet Millian to discuss business opportunities with Russian “billionaires who are not under sanctions.”

November 10, 2016: Obama warns Trump against picking Mike Flynn as National Security Advisor; Mike Flynn gets his third payment for working as an unregistered agent of Turkey.

November 11, 2016: Calk asks his loan officer to call Manafort to find out if he’s under consideration for Secretary of Treasury.

November 14, 2016: Calk gives Manafort a list of potential roles in the Trump Administration; Manafort claims he is “involved directly” in the Transition; Papadopoulos and Millian meet in Chicago. Carter Page applies for a job in the Administration.

November 16, 2016: Calk’s bank closes on Manafort’s loan.

November 18, 2016: Elijah Cummings warns Mike Pence about Mike Flynn.

November 30, 2016: Manafort asks Jared Kushner to get Calk appointed Secretary of the Army, in response to which Kushner said he was “on it!”

December 8, 2016: Kilimnik raises plan to carve up Ukraine again in (probably foldered) email to Manafort; he also reports, “Carter Page is in Moscow today, sending messages he is authorized to talk to Russia on behalf of DT on a range of issues of mutual interest, including Ukraine.”

December 13, 2016: Steele dossier reports Michael Cohen contributed money for hackers.

December 15, 2016: Manafort arranges Calk interview for Under Secretary of the Army.

December 22, 2016: Calk directs his loan officer to approve a further $6.5 million loan to Manafort because he’s “influential.”

December 29, 2016: Flynn convinces Kislyak to hold off on retaliating for sanctions.

December 31, 2016: Kislyak tells Flynn they’ve held off because of Trump’s wishes.

January 3, 2017: Loretta Lynch approves procedures authorizing the sharing of NSA EO 12333 data with other intelligence agencies.

January 4, 2017: Manafort signs new $6.5 million loan.

January 5, 2017: IC briefs Obama on Russian investigation; possible unmasking of Flynn’s name in Sergei Kislyak transcripts in attempt to learn why Russians changed their response to sanctions.

January 6, 2017: Comey, James Clapper, John Brennan, and Mike Rogers brief Trump on Russian investigation.

January 10, 2017: Calk interviews for Under Secretary of the Army job. Intrater emails Cohen about the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, referencing Victor Vekselberg.

January 12, 2017: Manafort in Madrid at meeting set up by Kilimnik and Boyarkin to “recreate old friendship” with Deripaska; Manafort stated that “need this finished before Jan. 20.”

January 12, 2017: DOJ applies for FISA reauthorization on Carter Page (Jim Comey and Sally Yates approve it).

Before January 15, 2017: Steve Bannon would have been picked up on a FISA intercept targeting Carter Page telling him not to do an appearance on MSNBC.

January 19, 2017: In NYT report that Manafort investigation relies on foreign intercepts (without specifying whether he or others are targeted), he denies the kinds of meetings he had a week earlier. Stone has (probably erroneously) pointed to mention of his name in article to claim he was targeted under FISA.

January 20, 2017: In conjunction with inauguration, Manafort meets with Ukrainian oligarchs and Papadopoulos parties with Millian.

January 24, 2017: FBI interview of Mike Flynn.

January 27, 2017: FBI interview of George Papadopoulos.

Between January 27 and February 16, 2017: FBI asks if Papadopoulos is willing to wear a wire targeting Mifsud, suggesting they believed his comments in the first interview.

February 10, 2017: FBI interviews Mifsud in DC.

February 16, 2017: By his second FBI interview, FBI still has not subpoenaed logs from George Papadopoulos’ Skype and Facebook accounts (because they don’t know about Ivan Timofeev).

February 17, 2017: Papadopoulos attempts to delete his Facebook account.

February 23, 2017: Papadopoulos gets a new phone.

February 26, 2017: Manafort and Kilimnik meet in Madrid and again discuss Ukraine plan.

March 2017: Carter Page interviewed five times by FBI.

March 5, 2017: White House Counsel learns the FBI wants transition-period records relating to Flynn.

March 7, 2017: Flynn submits a factually false FARA registration.

March 10, 2017: FBI interviews Carter Page.

March 16, 2017: Richard Burr tells White House Counsel FBI is investigating Flynn, Manafort (though not yet for his campaign activities), Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Roger Stone. FBI interviews Carter Page.

March 20, 2017: Jim Comey confirms investigation.

March 30, 2017: FBI interviews Carter Page.

March 31, 2017: FBI interviews Carter Page.

Early April 2017: DOJ obtains reauthorization for FISA order on Carter Page (Comey and Dana Boente approve it).

May 7, 2017: Cohen has meeting with Vekselberg at Renova.

May 9, 2017: Jim Comey fired, ostensibly for his treatment of Hillary Clinton investigation; within days Trump admits it was because of Russian investigation.

May 17, 2017: Appointment of Mueller; Rosenstein includes Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and George Papadopoulos along with Flynn in the list of Trump officials whose election year ties might be investigated.

May 18, 2017: Strzok texts Page that, “my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there” in the Russian investigation.

May 27, 2017: Application for search of Manafort’s storage compartment does not mention June 9 meeting.

May 28, 2017: Lisa Page assigned to Mueller’s team.

Early June 2017: Peter Strzok assigned to Mueller’s team.

June 2017: Federal agents review Michael Cohen’s bank accounts.

June 6, 2017: Mueller team still not certain whether they would search on Section 702 materials.

June 16, 2017: Trump campaign tells Mueller GSA does not own Transition materials.

June 21, 2017: FBI sends a preservation order to Microsoft for Michael Cohen’s Trump Organization account.

June 29, 2017: DOJ obtains reauthorization for FISA order on Carter Page (Andrew McCabe and Rod Rosenstein approve it).

July 7, 2017: First date for warrants from Mueller-specific grand jury. (D Orders, PRTT)

July 12, 2017: Mueller subpoenas people and documents pertaining to June 9 meeting.

July 14, 2017: FBI sends a preservation order to Microsoft for all Trump Organization accounts.

July 15, 2017: Lisa Page leaves Mueller team.

July 18, 2017: Application for search of Michael Cohen’s Gmail reflects suspicions that Essential Consulting account used for payments associated with unregistered lobbying for Ukraine “peace” deal (name of AUSA approving application redacted); warrant obtains email from January 1 through present.

July 19, 2017: Peter Strzok interviewed, apparently to capture events surrounding Flynn firing.

July 20 and 25, 2017: FBI sends grand jury subpoenas for call records related to Michael Cohen Trump Organization account.

July 25, 2017: Application for search of Manafort’s condo includes request for materials relating to June 9 meeting; does not mention election year meetings with Kilimnik.

July 27, 2017: Early morning search of Paul Manafort’s condo. Horowitz tells Mueller about Page-Strzok texts. George Papadopoulos arrested.

July 28, 2017: Strzok moved off Mueller team.

August 2017: First search warrant obtained against Roger Stone, focused on CFAA.

August 1, 2017: Application for search warrant for Cohen’s Trump Organization email account adds Bank Fraud to suspected crimes; Mueller signed the nondisclosure request.

August 2, 2017: Rosenstein memo codifies scope to include Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and George Papadopoulos already under investigation, adds the Manafort financial crimes, the allegations that Papadopoulos had acted as an unregistered agent of Israel, and four allegations against Michael Flynn.

August 7, 2017: FBI obtains search warrant on Cohen’s Apple ID.

August 11, 2017: Strzok receives his exit clearance certificate from Mueller’s team.

August 17, 2017: Application for Manafort’s [email protected] email includes predication (probably Russian investigation related) unrelated to his financial crimes. (A warrant for Rick Gates and Konstantin Kilimnik’s DMP emails submitted that day does not include predication outside of the lobbying.)

August 17, 2017: Andrew McCabe interviewed.

August 23, 2017: Mueller requests Transition emails and devices for nine Transition officials from GSA.

August 30, 2017: Mueller requests Transition emails and devices for an additional four Transition officials.

September 19, 2017: CNN reports that FBI obtained a FISA warrant on Paul Manafort (though claims that search of storage facility happened under FISA, not criminal, warrant).

October 20, 2017: Rosenstein expands scope to include Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, Roger Stone, Don Jr, and at least one other person, plus Jeff Sessions’ lies to Congress.

November 13, 2017: FBI obtains Cohen’s Gmail going back to June 1, 2015 (prior warrants covered January 1, 2016 to present) and personal email hosted by 1&1.

January 19, 2018: Trump signs 702 reauthorization without any new protections on back door searches.

January 29, 2018: By this date, White House had turned over 20,000 pages of records to Mueller covering (see this post for more background):

  • White House response to DOJ concerns about Mike Flynn, his resignation, and White House comments about Jim Comey
  • White House communications about campaign and transition communications with Manafort, Gates, Gordon, Kellogg, Page, Papadopoulos, Phares, Clovis, and Schmitz
  • Records covering Flynn’s campaign and transition communications with Kislyak and other Russian officials, as well as the May 10, 2017 meeting
  • Records relating to the June 9 meeting
  • Records pertaining to Jim Comey’s firing

Between that date and June 5, 2018, the White House also turned over:

  • McGahn’s records pertaining to Flynn and Comey firings
  • White House Counsel documents pertaining to research on firing Comey before it happened
  • Details on the Bedminster meeting in advance of Comey’s firing
  • Details on McCabe’s communications with Trump right after he fired Comey
  • Details on the Trump’s actions during the summer of 2017 during events pertaining to obstruction

March 2018: Mueller subpoenas Trump Organization.

March 9, 2018: Application for search of five AT&T phones includes predication (and, apparently, phones) unrelated to Paul Manafort.

April 9, 2018: Michael Cohen raid.

June 5, 2018: White House turns over some visitor log information.

August 3, 2018: Three warrants against Stone in DC, focused on CFAA (per May 14, 2019 ABJ minute order).

August 8, 2018: Search warrant against Stone in DC, focused on CFAA (per May 14, 2019 ABJ minute order).

Around January 25, 2019: One SDNY, two SDFL, and one DC warrant against Stone focused on false statements.

January 25, 2019: Roger Stone raid and arrest.

February 2019: One DC warrant against Stone focused on CFAA.

Two Factors that May Change the Impeachment Calculus, Part One: To Enforce a GOP Subpoena Covering a Trump Lie to Mueller

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Since Justin Amash started laying out the necessity of impeachment and even more after yesterday’s Mueller press conference, the question of whether or not to start an impeachment proceeding against the President has picked up steam.

In my opinion, Democrats have to start that process, in part to have a ready response as Trump’s increasingly authoritarian approach to governing violates more and more foundational norms.

But I also wanted to point to two fairly recent developments that may change that calculus. This post will describe how Trump Organization did not comply with a GOP-issued Congressional subpoena that sustained a lie that Trump has since reiterated, under oath, to Mueller.

New evidence that Trump lied to Mueller and Trump Organization defied a (GOP-issued) subpoena

As I noted the other day, Michael Cohen’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee revealed several things:

  • Trump replicated Cohen’s lies — that is, a cover story his defense attorney helped to write — in his sworn answers to Mueller
  • Trump Organization (probably Alan Garten) withheld emails from Cohen and HPSCI that would have made it clear Cohen was lying about the Trump Tower Moscow deal

Trump’s statement, submitted under oath, to Mueller included the following assertions:

  • Trump and Cohen only had a few (three) conversations about the deal rather than ten or more
  • Trump did not know of any travel plans to Russia
  • Trump didn’t discuss the project with anyone else at Trump Org, including Ivanka and Don Jr
  • Cohen’s attempt to contact Dmitry Peskov in January 2016 was via a public email address and proved unsuccessful

Compare those lies with the three main lies Cohen pled guilty to.

  • The Moscow Project ended in January 201 6 and was not discussed extensively with others in the Company.
  • COHEN never agreed to travel to Russia in connection with the Moscow Project and “never considered” asking Individual 1 to travel for the project.
  • COHEN did not recall any Russian government response or contact about the Moscow Project.

That is, in spite of rumblings that Cohen was cooperating with Mueller, Trump still told the story his lawyer had helped Cohen write. And Mueller gave Trump an opportunity to fix his testimony, but he refused. In spite of the more-than-a-year long effort to avoid telling lies to the Special Counsel, Trump still managed to do so.

Perhaps that’s why the FBI (though possibly NY-based agents tied to the investigation into Bob Costello’s pardon dangle) interviewed Cohen again on March 19, 2019, which is the latest interview noted in the Mueller Report (this section must be one of the last things Mueller’s team finished as footnotes 1057-9 and 1071 all post-date the discussion of Trump’s non-responsive answers in Appendix C).  Along with more details about the various pardon dangles offered to Cohen, that interview elicited this testimony:

During the summer of 2016, Cohen recalled that candidate Trump publicly claimed that he had nothing to do with Russia and then shortly afterwards privately checked with Cohen about the status of the Trump Tower Moscow project, which Cohen found “interesting.”940 At some point that summer, Cohen recalled having a brief conversation with Trump in which Cohen said the Trump Tower Moscow project was going nowhere because the Russian development company had not secured a piece of property for the project.941 Trump said that was ” too bad,” and Cohen did not recall talking with Trump about the project after that.942 Cohen said that at no time during the campaign did Trump tell him not to pursue the project or that the project should be abandoned. 943

[snip]

Cohen recalled explaining to the President’s personal counsel the “whole story” of the attempt to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin and Trump’s role in it.981 Cohen recalled that he and the President’s personal counsel talked about keeping Trump out of the narrative, and the President’s personal counsel told Cohen the story was not relevant and should not be included in his statement to Congress.982

[snip]

941 Cohen could not recall the precise timing of this conversation, but said he thought it occurred in June or July 2016. Cohen recalled that the conversation happened at some point after candidate Trump was publicly stating that he had nothing to do with Russia.

That Trump adhered to this lie even after Cohen showed signs of flipping makes the apparent fact that Trump Organization withheld emails that would make it clear Cohen lied to the House Intelligence all that more damning. This is one of three emails that would have made it clear to HPSCI in real time that Cohen was lying that apparently did not get turned over.

Remember: Cohen was almost alone among Trump flunkies in having been subpoenaed by any committee in Congress. And the subpoena that Trump Organization defied was signed not by Adam Schiff, but by Devin Nunes [Update: this may have been Mike Conaway].

Even with all the efforts Republicans in Congress have made to help Trump avoid legal jeopardy, he — or rather, his eponymous company — still managed to break the law in complying with GOP requests!

Congress can obtain withheld Trump Organization emails more easily than thought

And while normally proving that Trump Organization violated the law to protect the President would be especially hard for Congress to prove (because they’ll fight subpoenas even more aggressively than Trump’s accountants or creditors), the opposite may be the case in this instance.

That’s because since June 21, 2017, Microsoft — which provides Trump Organization’s email service for the company — has been preserving Michael Cohen’s Trump Organization emails and since July 14, 2017, Microsoft has been preserving all Trump Organization emails.

54. On or about July 14,2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a request, pursuant to l8 U.S.C. $ 2703(f), to Microsoft, requesting that Microsoft preserve all content for all email accounts associated with the domain “trumporg.com,” which included the Target Account.

[snip]

62. On or about June 21, 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a request, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. $ 2703(f), to Microsoft, requesting that Microsoft preserve all content associated with the Target Account.

So rather than going to Trump Organization to obtain proof that their Attorney Alan Garten withheld documents that were clearly responsive to a Congressional subpoena, HPSCI can go to Microsoft itself.

Michael Cohen is the a demonstrable example of someone who was willing to lie only so long as a pardon offer was on the table

One more detail about Cohen makes his case a particularly apt case to impeach the President.

The sworn evidence in the case makes it very clear Cohen was willing to — and did — lie to Congress so long as he believed he’d be pardoned for those lies.

But as soon as it became clear that he could not expect a pardon, Cohen decided to start telling the truth.

(I’ll revisit and reconfirm this, but the record shows that a pardon was withdrawn (and Trump stopped paying Cohen’s legal bills) around the same time 1) Trump got to see all the paperwork and recording that might back Cohen’s claims against him 2) He saw that Cohen had recorded him agreeing to the Karen McDougal hush payment).

He told the truth about something implicating “Individual-1” as a co-conspirator.

And he told the truth about lying to Congress.

In other words, with Cohen, it will be very easy to show that Trump’s pardon offers led to a witness providing false testimony in response to a Congressional subpoena (false testimony made possibly only through parallel obstruction on the part of Trump’s business).

In other words, Cohen is a fairly strong case proving Trump successfully suborned perjury.

So with Cohen, there is all new evidence of Trump-related crimes: Trump’s sworn lies about Trump Tower Moscow to Mueller mirrored by Trump Organization’s defiance of a Republican issued Congressional subpoena on precisely that topic.

And Congress should be able to get proof of it.

This provides an opportunity to pitch impeachment in terms of GOP equities. That will surely not make a difference for Republicans, at first, but for any that want to find an excuse to come around to supporting impeachment, it may be useful down the road.

As I disclosed last July, 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. 

The FBI Went to Microsoft, not Trump Organization, for Emails Incriminating Individual-1

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I’m working on a post showing how slow the investigation into Donald Trump and his associates was, contrary to the President’s squeals. That led me to realize something about this August 1 search warrant application for Michael Cohen’s Trump Organization email.

Trump Organization used Microsoft to host their email.

54. On or about July 14,2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a request, pursuant to l8 U.S.C. $ 2703(f), to Microsoft, requesting that Microsoft preserve all content for all email accounts associated with the domain “trumporg.com,” which included the Target Account.

55. On or about July 20,2017 and again on or about July 25,2017,in response to a grand jury subpoena, Microsoft confirmed that the Target Account was an active account associated with the domain trumporg.com. Microsoft also provided records indicating that email accounts associated with the domain “trumporg.com” are being operated on a Microsoft Exchange server. According to publicly available information on Microsoft’s website, Microsoft hosts emails for clients on Microsoft Exchange servers, while allowing customers to use their own domain (as opposed to the publicly available email domains supplied by Microsoft, such as hotmail.com). According to information supplied by Microsoft, the domain trumporg.com continues to operate approximately 150 active email accounts through Microsoft Exchange, meaning that data associated with trumporg.com still exists on Microsoft’s servers.

[snip]

62. On or about June 21, 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a request, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. $ 2703(f), to Microsoft, requesting that Microsoft preserve all content associated with the Target Account.

That means Microsoft — and not (just) Trump Organization — controlled access to these accounts.

This is something that has long been an unrecognized problem. If the government wants your email and your business or university has Microsoft or Gmail host email for them, the tech giants will get and respond to a law enforcement request, not the entity that might make privilege or First Amendment legal challenges to the subpoena. For example, the government would have gotten Xiaoxiang Xi and Ally Watkins’ Temple University email from Google, not the University, preventing both from making a First Amendment challenge to the warrant.

Microsoft sued over the sheer number of gags on such subpoenas in 2016; few people realized that they were concerned primarily about businesses like Trump Organization, not individual customers. That suit settled on October 24, 2017 after DOJ agreed to provide Microsoft more leeway to notice its customers.

But that agreement would have come too late for Michael Cohen and anyone else at Trump Organization who might have been investigated by DOJ. Since June 21, 2017, Cohen’s emails were preserved, and since July 14, 2017 — just after the June 9 meeting arranged via what appears to be Don Jr’s Trump Organization email became public — all Trump Organization emails have been preserved.

In DOJ’s opposition to Michael Cohen’s efforts to get a restraining order on the materials seized in the April 9, 2018 raid on him, there was a redacted reference suggesting that some materials may have gotten destroyed.

Mueller didn’t subpoena documents from Trump Organization directly until March 2018. So if they discovered documents via email searches direct from Microsoft that were withheld in that March subpoena — such as the emails that Cohen received on Trump Tower Moscow — it might explain this redaction.

This is the kind of thing that Trump might make a big stink about, if he ever figures it out (or if it gets Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten in trouble for blowing off subpoenas — they were already non-responsive in response to the May HPSCI subpoena). But it’s the kind of thing that businesses and universities everywhere are exposed by.

As I disclosed last July, 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.