Man, what a grift. I remind you at the outset that, contrary to popular belief, it’s not true that McCabe lost his pension when Jeff Sessions fired him on the eve of his retirement. What he lost was the right to qualify for that pension early, at age 50. He’ll need to wait now until he’s 57 to begin receiving money. Or, to put this in private-sector lingo, instead of being able to retire comfortably 15 years before a private-sector worker might, he’ll only be able to do so eight years before.Is he capable of embarrassment? And speaking of McCabe Trump Rips Justice Department as ‘Embarrassment to Our Country’ for following the McCabe tradition of slow walking revelations into the FBI/DOJ scandal. But a slow trickle of tidbits suits my publishing, so there's that.
In the meantime, there’s no end to the ways he can monetize “Resistance” pique at Trump. Just follow the Comey model. First comes the bestselling book, then come some speaking gigs, maybe a paid job writing anti-Trump analysis for some website, a contributor’s role on CNN, on and on. And in case all of that’s not enough to pay the bills, it so happens that Mrs. McCabe is not just a doctor but medical director of the pediatric emergency unit at a well-respected hospital in Virginia. McCabe will be fine.
But Trump hates him and that’s good enough reason for liberals to shower with him cash. His initial GoFundMe target for his “legal defense” was $250,000; three days later he’s at $540,000 and counting. This is a guy, remember, who was fired for cause on the recommendation of the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility after being flagged for “lack of candor” by the DOJ’s Inspector General. He’s shutting his fundraising page down tonight, possibly because even he’s grossed out watching lefties push bundles of money at an upper-class family from suburban Virginia just because Trump dislikes them.
Bob Mueller prepares to collect his first scalp: First sentencing in Robert Mueller investigation set for Tuesday
Dutch lawyer Alex van der Zwaan will be sentenced in federal court Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. in Washington, D.C.Noticeably absent from sentencing is Michael Flynn, the first person to plead guilty to lying to the FBI in Mueller's probe. Hmm, is Flynn negotiating to get his guilty verdict set aside, once it became public that the FBI didn't actually think he was guilty of lying?
Van der Zwaan, the son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Khan, pleaded guilty in late February to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with senior Trump campaign official Rick Gates and who he knew Gates was talking too.
Last week, it was revealed that Gates told van der Zwaan he was communicating with a former Russian intelligence officer during the 2016 election — van der Zwaan admitted he lied to federal prosecutors about knowing this, and then pleaded guilty.
Also last week, lawyers for van der Zwaan also filed a 30-page memo asking that their client be allowed to avoid jail time, and describing how his life has been ruined.
He faces up to five years in federal prison.
The 33-year-old London-based lawyer who worked with Gates and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is the first person in the probe to be sentenced. In addition to Gates, Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and former national security adviser Michael Flynn have also pleaded guilty.
Byron York: So why was Trump aide talking to a Russian spy?
The "Russian intelligence official" mentioned by CNN is thought to be a man named Konstantin Kilimnik. If you want to know more about him, read an August 2016 article by Kenneth Vogel, then with Politico, called "Manafort's Man in Kiev." What follows comes from Vogel and a few other articles that reported much the same material.If I were someone important, or even had a vague relationship to someone important, I would assume any Russian I came into contact with was somehow associated with Russian intelligence. That's just who they are.
Kilimnik, born in 1970, joined the Russian army as a translator — he speaks at least four languages — and his job "closely aligned him with the army's intelligence services," according to Vogel. In 2005, Kilimnik, working for a pro-democracy nonprofit, took a second job "translating and interpreting for a Manafort team that was working for [a] pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch" who backed top Manafort client Victor Yanukovych.
In 2009, when Yanukovych became a candidate for president, Vogel reported, "Manafort beefed up the operation running out of his Kiev office, and Kilimnik began playing a bigger part, orchestrating key campaign logistics in a way that transcended his initial role as translator and interpreter."
Long story short, Kilimnik has been with Manafort — and that means with Gates, too — for quite a while. More recently, Vogel reported, Kilimnik "has had conversations with fellow operatives in Kiev about collecting unpaid fees owed to Manafort's company by a Russia-friendly political party called Opposition Bloc." Vogel cited locals who said the amount owed to Manafort was in the millions of dollars.
So, given that history, and given Manafort's well-documented financial troubles caused by the manic overspending outlined in the charges against him, and given the effects the money problems had on the Manafort-Gates enterprise, it doesn't seem terribly odd that Gates would be in touch with a "Russian intelligence official" — AKA the firm's longtime guy in Kiev — about getting the money owed them. (Neither Manafort nor Gates took a salary during their time with the Trump campaign.)
So putting it all together, yes, Gates was "in contact with a Russian intelligence officer." And who knows? Perhaps they were plotting to fix the U.S. presidential election for President Trump. But the evidence that Mueller has revealed, and the statements he has made, suggest something more prosaic. Manafort, Gates, and Kilimnik were engaged in all sorts of shady and possibly illegal conduct in Ukraine. They were not interested in the world knowing about it. In addition, Manafort and Gates were strapped for cash and thought some Ukrainians owed them millions of dollars. Which means there were plenty of reasons for Gates and Kilimnik to be in contact in 2016, none of which they would want prosecutors to know about.Collusion Alert! Latest Manafort Leak Reveals… Not Much
One question which comes up over and over again as we’ve watched the Mueller investigation unfold has basically been… where’s the beef? The big enchilada in this scenario is the “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. If you can find the collusion, then it could lead to High Crimes and Misdemeanors, making the most glorious dreams of most of the mainstream media come true. That’s why there seemed to be a palpable sense of excitement coursing through the news cycle when I woke up this morning and saw some breaking news about a new leak.What we do know is that, generally speaking, big government types like Mueller and his Clinton loving staff revile businessmen and will go to almost any lengths to take them down a peg or two, even if it requires bending the law or his "mandate" into a pretzel. The President is such a businessman. Do the math.
It had both the name of Paul Manafort and the word “collusion” in it. Could this be it at last? The smoking gun? The fire underneath the fog of political warfare? Had Mueller finally uncovered the holy grail? Let’s see what CNN had to say about it. (Emphasis added)
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told special counsel Robert Mueller in a classified August 2, 2017, memo that he should investigate allegations that President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was “colluding with Russian government officials” to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, prosecutors in the Russia probe revealed late Monday night.The heavily redacted memo appears to include an extensive list of names and allegations of possible wrongdoing on their part. All but Manafort’s have been blacked out, which seems sensible. The only reason this is coming to light now is the claim by Manafort’s attorneys that the case against him should be dropped because Mueller was going beyond the scope of his investigation when he dug into financial dealings Manafort had in Ukraine.
Mueller was also empowered by Rosenstein to investigate Manafort’s payments from Ukrainian politicians, a cornerstone of the Trump adviser’s decades-long lobbying career that has resulted in several financial criminal charges so far.
The revelation of the August 2 memo comes amid a broader court filing from Mueller’s prosecutors that offers a full-throated defense of their investigative powers and indictments thus far. In the filing, the special counsel’s office argues that a federal judge should not throw out Manafort’s case.
. . .
You know what’s missing from this story? We’re not seeing even the slightest suggestion that Mueller actually found any collusion. All the memo says is that he was authorized to look into the allegations. It was one possibility set forth while defining the scope of the investigation. And given how badly the FBI has sprung leaks throughout this investigation (at least when it was damaging to Trump), if he’d come up with something I’m guessing it would have shown up on the front page of the New York Times long before now.
Things that make you go hmmm. Americans Support Mueller Probe — But Want Another One For FBI's Spying On Trump: IBD/TIPP Poll
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