Barely Any Russiagate

But enough to post. Sundays are usually slow, but I suspect the Trump WuFlu matter is still dominating the news. 

I&I asks Did The CIA, FBI And Hillary Launch A Silent Coup Against Trump? It certainly seems like it. 

“In the main, it (Crossfire Hurricane) was done by the book, it was appropriate, and it was essential that it be done,” Comey said. Later, under persistent questioning from South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, Comey maintained that “Overall, I’m proud of the work.”

When he wasn’t being proud, Comey played as if he were ignorant of the things going on around him, including the fraudulent application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to spy on the Trump campaign.

Actually, when this is all done, Comey might be lucky to avoid indictment. His stewardship of a corrupt, politically motivated investigation of a presidential candidate financed and pushed by that candidate’s opponent has all the markings of a planned crime.

Because not only did the Special Counsel’s report in 2019 fail to find that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election, it also cited 17 “significant” errors and omissions by the FBI’s top officials in the investigation, not counting the 50 errors it made in FISA court applications to spy on Trump campaign operative Carter Page.

As American Greatness writer Debra Heine reminds us, “It has also since been revealed that the FBI knew in August of 2016 that Carter Page had contacts with certain Russians because he was working with the CIA, and that the FBI doctored evidence to indicate the opposite.”

Yet, under repeated questioning, Comey — who once likened President Donald Trump to a mafioso — denied specific knowledge of this misconduct.

From Red State 'shipwreckedcrew' sends A Serial ‘Fisking’ of Andrew Weissmann’s Version of the History of Robert Mueller’s Office of Special Counsel

So, Part One is just my reaction to some of his comments in the introduction. The guy’s lack of self-awareness and over-indulgence in the mythology of the noble purpose and motives of the SCO is almost comical — if it wasn’t so frightening. Keep in mind as we go along that this is the same guy who was reversed 9-0 by the Supreme Court — Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreeing with Clarence Thomas — because the jury instructions Weissmann drafted and convinced the trial judge to read, said the defendant could be convicted of a crime for merely following its well-established company practice when they had no reason to believe their action was criminal.

And that takes me to my first comment about the introduction, where he said the following:

I had prosecuted small cases that received no press attention, and high profile ones against the bosses of New York organized crime families and the leaders of Enron Corporation.

Arthur Andersen, Enron’s outside accounting company, was prosecuted by Weissmann for destroying Enron’s financial records in accordance with Arthur Andersen’s normal record retention policy prior to receiving a subpoena for the records. Weissmann won a conviction over the company at trial for obstruction of justice. Since SEC regulations prohibit a felon from serving as an accountant for publicly traded companies, the conviction put Arthur Andersen out of business, and 85,000 people lost their jobs. That’s the same conviction the Supreme Court reversed 9-0 — Ginsburg and Thomas agreeing that Weissmann was an idiot.

I had read numerous books on the Watergate investigations and prosecutions, and even further back in history, on the Nuremberg trials of German war criminals after World War II. Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski, Robert Jackson and Telford Taylor, all had written illuminating accounts of these historic investigations and trials. We had the benefit of those and many other first hand accounts to understand those event. The special counsel’s investigation is also an important story to be told, I believe, and one we must add to the historical record. And the historical precedents for this book point the way toward this procedural account that explains our investigative process.

Watergate and Nuremberg — got that?

Hitler and Nixon — follow his thinking?

The inception of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was as a counterintelligence matter seeking to understand if — and how — the Russian government might be seeking to interfere in the 2016 election process. The “Counter” in “Counterintelligence” is the important part of the term. The goal of the investigative effort is to “Counter” it — to stop it. To determine if it is happening, and then take steps to intervene and put a halt to it.

But that wasn’t Weissmann’s view of the SCO’s purpose. The SCO was a “Hunter-Killer” squad. They had a mission. Donald Trump won the election. He could not have done so without Russian help. As a result the outcome of the election had to be overturned. “Get Trump” was the unspoken motto, and it was the unwritten goal.

This account is meant to provide the public with the transparency and candor necessary to assess our actions….

Ok — challenge accepted. Let’s take some time and see just how “transparent” and full of candor your account is given the fuller panoply of facts that seem to be evolving in the public record.

A Democrat even fisks Slippery Andy at WaPoo, Randall D. Eliason, Andrew Weissmann’s book is a public betrayal of Mueller

But no one should assume that a more aggressive prosecutorial stance is necessarily correct, or that Weissmann’s approach would have led to better results. In the abstract, it’s great to sound tough, like a “take no prisoners” kind of prosecutor. Weissmann clearly relishes portraying himself this way; more than once he refers to himself as a Gen. Ulysses S. Grant opposing Zebley’s “timorous [Gen. George B.] McClellan.” But history is full of cases where prosecutors pursuing overly bold tactics led to very bad outcomes.

Weissmann himself was involved in one well-known example: the prosecution of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm for obstruction of justice related to Enron. The firm was convicted after prosecutors, including Weissmann, successfully pushed for pro-government jury instructions that effectively eliminated the requirement of corrupt intent. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed that conviction, faulting those instructions — but not before the company was driven out of business, costing tens of thousands of innocent employees their jobs.

I have no patience for Weissmann’s Monday-morning quarterbacking, or for his willingness to throw colleagues under a bus for not agreeing with him. We don’t want prosecutors in politically charged cases holding back during internal deliberations for fear of being criticized in a book, or to feel as if they should always pursue the most aggressive option, lest they risk being attacked. And it’s hard to see this book as anything other than a public betrayal of Mueller, a man Weissmann purports to revere.

I'd like to Weissman end up behind bars, but that's unlikely in the extreme.

At the Political Insider, Top Republican Calls For New York Times Source Of Trump’s Tax Documents to Be Investigated

WHO’S NEXT?
A felony crime was possibly committed by illegally releasing the private tax returns of #PresidentTrump.

So every American remains protected against the illegal release of their tax returns for political reasons, I call for an investigation.https://t.co/3vvgJZaYj3

— Rep. Kevin Brady (@RepKevinBrady) September 29, 2020

Carrie Sheffield at JTN chimes in with Tax, legal experts say leaker of Trumptax returns could face prison time

"This is every bit as bad as what Nixon did," said tax attorney Jay Mann, noting the privacy section of the Internal Revenue Code, Section 6103, was enacted after the Nixon administration abused tax return information of individuals on the White House "enemies list."

Tax and legal experts say the leaker or leakers who took President Trump's personal tax returns and gave them to The New York Times, committed a felony punishable by prison.

Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who has advised Trump on some legal matters, told Just the News that the leaking was "definitely" a crime that could be liable for both criminal and civil legal actions.

"If you obtain tax information, first of all, if you obtain it from the government — that's 100% a crime if it was an IRS worker," said diGenova. "If it's an accountant or a lawyer who gets it as part of their duties and discloses it, that's also a crime. It's a different type of crime, it could be fraud, or it could be all sorts of different types of crimes. Obviously it's theft of the property and then the illegal disclosure."

diGenova said if the leaking was done by a lawyer, "it's grounds for disbarment," and if it was an accountant, "they can lose their license to practice as a CPA."

"But they also have defrauded their clients, so that's a criminal offense, and when you release your client's confidential information, you defraud your client," diGenova said. "And then there's all sorts of other types of crimes you could use, but it's mail and wire fraud."

diGenova also said a Justice Department investigation to discern who leaked the returns —including whether it was a government official in the state of New York, Trump's longtime former residence — could be initiated by the Southern District of New York or the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of New York, "both of whom are extremely unfriendly to Trump."

Because of this likely anti-Trump bias, diGenova recommended that Attorney General William Barr's office in Washington, D.C. oversee any investigation out of the DOJ's tax division. He also said a separate investigation by the Department of Treasury — which oversees the Internal Revenue Service — could determine whether the documents were leaked by a Treasury worker.