A Wee Dram o' Russiagate

Wow, is this thing finally dying, or are we waiting for something big, like Mueller's "testimony?" George Parry at AmSpec has tips for the Republicans who will actually get to pose questions to the sphinx. The Art and Science of Cross-Examining Mueller

First, cross-examination is at once an art and a science, subject to certain rules that must be followed in order for it to be effective. Unfortunately, most members of Congress are terrible questioners and even worse cross-examiners. They tend to ask sloppy, convoluted, and easily evaded questions with little follow-up. It’s not their fault or even a part of their job description. It’s just the way it is.

Second, the committee format, which limits questioning by each member to a mere five minutes, makes it extremely difficult to lay the necessary foundation of any good cross-examination: the meticulous and comprehensive question-by-question preliminary process of pinning down the witness and closing off all rhetorical escape routes before the questioner can go in for the kill. Doing this well is difficult even for experienced trial lawyers who are not faced with an arbitrarily brief time limits.

So, how should the Republicans approach Mueller? Here are a few suggestions.

Not all cross-examination need be destructive or calculated to undermine the witness. In fact, if a witness has favorable information to impart, that should be elicited up front before the questioning becomes contentious.

For example, the Mueller report exonerates the president on the charge of conspiracy with Russia. Selected passages from the report that make that point should be read by the questioner to Mueller, and the questioner should follow the reading of each passage by asking, (a) Did I read that correctly, (b) In preparing and drafting the report, did you and your colleagues take care to have the report accurately reflect your findings, and (c) Is the passage that I just read the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? What’s Mueller going to do? Refute his own work product?

We know of at least two cases, and probably a third (Mifsud) where the special counsel's report omitted material helpful to the people charged. But apparently that can wait until later in the examination.

As for the claim that the report demonstrates that the president obstructed justice, the temptation for Republicans will be to get down into the weeds and mud wrestle with Mueller over the report’s loaded phraseology. They shouldn’t and they don’t need to do it.

There is an old maxim among trial lawyers about cross-examination: Never wrestle with a pig. You will just get dirty, and besides, the pig will like it. So, instead of parsing words, stay out of that bog and go for the big picture, starting with the fact that the Special Counsel neither charged Trump with obstruction nor made a finding of obstruction that could be acted on once the president leaves office.

Then the witness should be asked about Team Mueller’s investigative statistics: 2,800 grand jury subpoenas, 500 search and seizure warrants, 230 orders for communications records, 50 pen register orders, 13 requests to foreign governments, and interviews of approximately 500 witnesses, including almost 80 before the grand jury.

After reading each statistic, the questioner should ask whether the White House or anyone acting on its behalf opposed or attempted to block that effort. For example, as to the 500 grand jury subpoenas, did the Trump administration either assert executive privilege or move to quash a single one?

Was executive privilege asserted in regard to any of the 500 witnesses? Did the White House produce over one million documents? Did it assert executive privilege or attempt to withhold any document requested? Since the answers to these questions are a matter of public record and favorable to the president, Mueller will have a difficult time evading truthful and helpful responses.

So when do we get to ask about "spygate"?

After the non-destructive cross-examination is completed, then the questioners should shift to short, carefully phrased, and sharp questioning about such areas of interest as the following:

When did Mueller learn there was no collusion with Russia?

Did he delay announcing that there was no collusion? If so, why?

Did he drag out the investigation in the hope that the president, under constant and unremitting accusations of treason, would crack and submit to interrogation by Mueller’s Hillary acolytes? In other words, did Mueller prolong the investigation in the hope of luring the president into a General Flynn-style perjury trap?

Why did he hire and then fire Special Agent Peter Strzok? Was Strzok terminated because of his demonstrable hatred of the president?

Before he appointed Andrew Weissman to be his first assistant, was Mueller aware of Weissman’s checkered ethical background and record of prosecutorial misconduct? This line of inquiry should set forth seriatim each and every instance of Weissman’s misconduct and history of reversals by the courts for pursuing unfounded theories of criminal liability. This should include Weissman’s most significant professional accomplishment: the illegal and utterly unwarranted destruction of the Arther Anderson accounting firm, which resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

As to each such milestone, Mueller should be asked if he considered Weissman’s behavior to be appropriate. He should also be asked to explain why he appointed Weissman to a leadership role in what was and continues to be such a sensitive and politically explosive matter of vital importance to the nation. Was there no one better than Weissman available to take the job?

I believe that Sundance at CTH and others have made a pretty good case that Weissman arranged to have Mueller hired as the figurehead for the investigation he was already engineering, and not the other way around.

Mueller should also be asked to explain his decision to hire only Democrat lawyers, including one who had represented the Clinton Foundation, others who had contributed to Hillary’s campaign, and, of course, Weissman, who attended Clinton’s abortive election night victory party? Was Mueller concerned about the appearance of impropriety created by his exclusive hiring of Democrat lawyers?

Did he consider any of these individuals to have an abiding animus against Trump? If so, why did he hire such individuals, and why didn’t he fire them as he did Strzok?

Mueller should be asked to explain his reasons for not investigating the source of the Russian collusion hoax, including the clandestine payments by the DNC and Clinton campaign for the eponymous Steele dossier.

As for Team Mueller’s conclusion that the DNC’s computer was hacked, he should be asked if his office or any law enforcement agency ever forensically examined the computer. Did they rely solely on the report of CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC? Also, did Team Mueller query the NSA for evidence that the purportedly hacked DNC data were transmitted in cyberspace?
. . .
This is by no means a complete template for cross-examining Mueller, but you get the idea. The possibilities for mischief and mayhem are endless and exciting.

Frankly, I doubt Republicans have the required discipline. Maybe if the bring Trey Gowdy back.

Jerry Dunleavy at WaEx: Groups claim Clinton campaign broke campaign laws over Fusion GPS and Steele funding. Not exactly original thinking. Laws are for little people and Republicans.

Two watchdog groups filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission alleging the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee broke campaign laws by filing reports meant to conceal their hiring of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS and British ex-spy Christopher Steele.

And one has now filed a lawsuit in federal court.

The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit, filed its complaint with the FEC in 2017, alleging that Clinton and the DNC “failed to accurately disclose the purpose and recipient of payments for the dossier of research alleging connections between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia, effectively hiding these payments from public scrutiny, contrary to the requirements of federal law.”

Mark Tapscott at ET, Hillary Clinton’s Lawyer Changes Story on When She Knew About Emails

Heather Samuelson, Hillary Clinton’s personal attorney, gave the FBI and Judicial Watch conflicting explanations of when she learned that the former secretary of state used a private email system to conduct official U.S. diplomatic business.

“I believe I first became aware when either she e-mailed me on personal matters, such as wishing me happy birthday, or when I infrequently would receive e-mails forwarded to me from others at the department that had that e-mail address listed elsewhere in the document,” Samuelson told Judicial Watch lawyers during a June 13, 2019, deposition.
Samuelson worked in the Department of State’s liaison office to President Barack Obama’s White House at the time, according to Judicial Watch.

Samuelson told the FBI in 2016 that she didn’t learn of the Clinton email system until becoming Clinton’s personal attorney in 2014, after serving for a year in the White House counsel’s office.

The 2016 conversation with the FBI was part of the bureau’s highly controversial investigation of the Clinton private email system, which culminated with then-FBI Director James Comey’s July 5, 2016, announcement that he wouldn’t recommend prosecution of the former chief diplomat.
. . .
Samuelson’s contradiction of her prior statement to the FBI is significant because she also told Judicial Watch that she had been granted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) what she described as “limited production immunity” in June 2016.

It isn’t known whether the DOJ’s grant of immunity insulated Samuelson against whatever legal obligation she may have had while working in the White House or the State Department to disclose to law enforcement officials her knowledge that Clinton wasn’t using a secured U.S. government communications system to conduct official diplomatic business.

Telling two different stories under oath? That's a no no for most people. I wonder if anyone will bother to prosecute her for lying to the FBI like Flynn or Papadop?