Some Sunday Morning Russiagate

Not a lot, the weight of coverage appear to have shifted from the outrage over Flynn's prosecution to the violent response to the true outrage of George Floyd's death. Still, some filtered through. Jeff Dunetz at Da Lid,  They Screwed General Flynn For THIS? Read The Transcripts Of Flynn-Kislyak Calls (Embedded). No Jeff, they screwed General Flynn because they hated his guts, and they were deathly afraid that when he became DNI he would stop what they were doing and put a bunch of them in jail. "This" was just the best excuse they could come up with on the fly, which is why they've been dragging their feet letting the evidence out from behind the curtain.

Nick Arama at Red State has more Furious Reaction to Release of the Newly Declassified Flynn-Kislyak Transcripts, ‘Flynn Was Framed’

It’s now CLEAR, Mike Flynn was framed. This conversation was clearly about the expulsion of the Russian diplomats & de-escalating a dangerous situation.The mention of “sanctions” is secondary & Flynn responds “yeah yeah.” How could Flynn lie about sanctions he wasn’t asked about? pic.twitter.com/ufhkzkk3Pf

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) May 29, 2020

In her pursuit of "cruel neutrality", in About those newly declassified Flynn transcripts..., Althouse presents one quote for Sean Davis at Da Fed, one from Jonathon Chait at NY Magazine and one from Julian E. Barnes, Adam Goldman and Nicholas Fandos at NYT. The two from liberals are clearly holding out for the Logan Act excuse. Fine. Let's charge John Kerry, and let Teresa spend all her dough trying to get him off.

WaPoo whines that Judge Sullivan’s refusal to immediately dismiss Flynn’s case raises novel questions about the limits of judicial power

The pitched legal battle over the fate of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn raises unsettled, novel questions about what happens when a judge refuses to go along when prosecutors no longer want to pursue their case.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan’s decision not to immediately dismiss Flynn’s case has led to an extraordinary situation in which the district judge in Washington is under orders from his colleagues on the appeals court to quickly defend his actions. Sullivan himself has taken the unusual step of enlisting a high-powered trial attorney to respond by Monday after Flynn’s lawyers asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to order the judge to drop the case and accused him of bias.

Some of the rules of the road are clear. Prosecutors can drop charges against a criminal defendant only with permission from the presiding judge, and Sullivan has the power to decide whether tossing Flynn’s case is in the public interest.

But legal experts and former judges disagree on the limits of Sullivan’s authority and how he should make that call. In practice, judges typically defer to prosecutors, and it would be difficult for a judge to go forward with sentencing, for instance, if the prosecutor has had a change of heart.

“The standard tilts heavily in the direction of saying that a judge should grant dismissal unless there’s some reason to think that dismissal would violate an important public interest,” said Stanford law professor Robert Weisberg, who teaches criminal law and procedure. “The customary and very strong presumption is that a judge will and should agree to the dismissal. But it’s not a requirement.”

I guess we'll find out.

From CNS News, Ric  Grenell: 'No Possible Way' Anti-Trump Action in Obama Administration 'Wasn't Known in the White House'. We know he was being briefed from the Strzok-Page texts.

"But make no mistake," said Grenell, "what I would say is, what happened in terms of general parameters, there is no possible way – when you look at this – that it wasn’t known inside the White House."

"Multiple layers of people knew about this over time and were completely aware," he said. "Now, the question is going to be, was this directed or was this, kind of, information sharing? That’s what we’ve got to get to the bottom of.”
. . .
Earlier in the interview, Grenell said that early in the Russia collusion investigation there were several intelligence officials who raised "red flags" but they were silenced or their words were classified away.

“We have to improve the reputation of the current process," said Grenell. "What happened at the FBI, what happened at some other agencies, is an outrage and we have to fix it."

Jerry Dunleavy at WaEx,  Ron Johnson seeks power to subpoena dozens of Obama officials tied to Trump-Russia inquiry and 'unmasking'. Better hurry.

“We have a great tradition in this country of peaceful and cooperative transitions of power, and the American people deserve to know if any wrongdoing occurred to corrupt the process and sabotage the new administration,” Johnson said.

The Wisconsin Republican emphasized that “we are going to vote on this authorization with the hope that subpoenas won’t be necessary” and noted that “in some cases, we are already working with the agencies and individuals identified to obtain the information we need to do our work, and inclusion on the list should in no way be interpreted to suggest they have been noncompliant.”

“I am asking for this authority to ensure the committee has the ability to quickly and efficiently seek compulsory process should it become necessary," he added.

One of the key, but rarely talked about figures in Russiagate, FBI lawyer and once acting Attorney General Dana Boente, has been quietly pushed out, perhaps over his reluctance to release material favorable to Michael Flynn: WaPoo, FBI says its top lawyer is leaving the bureau

The FBI’s top lawyer, Dana Boente, who has spent nearly 40 years with the Justice Department but has been targeted for criticism over the last year by some conservative commentators and supporters of President Donald Trump for his role in the Russia investigation, is leaving the bureau.

Boente has most recently served as the FBI’s general counsel but has held a variety of roles in his 38-year Justice Department career, including acting attorney general in the early days of the Trump administration, a United States attorney in Virginia and the acting head of the department’s national security division.

The FBI said that Boente had given notice on Friday that he intended to retire effective June 30, the bureau said.

“Throughout his long and distinguished career as a public servant, Dana has demonstrated a selfless determination to ensure that justice is always served on behalf of our citizens,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement announcing Boente’s departure. “We should all be grateful for his dedication to the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the American people.”

Boente became acting attorney general in early 2017 after Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, was fired after refusing to defend the president’s travel ban, and remained in that role until Jeff Sessions was installed.

As a top Justice Department official, he approved one of three applications to renew secret surveillance warrants targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. A Justice Department inspector general report from December said those applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had significant errors and omissions that cut against the FBI’s premise that Page, who was never charged with any wrongdoing, was an agent of a foreign power.

The report said that Boente and other Justice Department officials “did not have accurate and complete information” from the FBI at the time they approved them. Even so, Boente has nonetheless been criticized by conservative figures for his involvement in the Russia probe.

A Facebook post in February from the conservative group Judicial Watch announced that its president, Tom Fitton, would appear on Fox Business News with host Lou Dobbs to discuss topics including “the discovery that the FBI’s Chief Legal Counsel, Dana Boente, participated in fraudulent FISA warrants on Carter Page.”

In April, Dobbs himself alleged that Boente and Wray were blocking the disclosure of “exculpatory” information about former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. The FBI and Justice Department denied that that was the case.

NBC News first reported Boente’s departure and said he had been asked to resign by the Justice Department. Wray’s statement made no mention of that. The Justice Department declined to comment Saturday.

Needless to say, Sundance at CTH is much less flattering in BOOM – Dana Boente Removed! – FBI Chief Legal Counsel Forced to Resign… with a long list of grievances.

Finally, the DOJ has moved to remove one of the biggest background corrupt officials within the FBI. According to multiple media sources FBI chief legal counsel Dana Boente was forced to resign on Friday. Finally, sunlight has removed a very corrupt player.

In prior positions as U.S. Attorney for Virginia; and while leading the DOJ National Security Division; and then later shifting to the FBI as chief legal counsel under Chris Wray; Dana Boente was at the epicenter of corrupt intent and malign activity toward the Trump administration. First, the report from NBC:
. . .
My educated hunch is the July 12, 2018, letter from the DOJ/FBI that was fraught with false information and purposeful lies to the FISA court, is really the issue that DOJ Bill Barr could not avoid. The lies within the letter are just too brutally obvious, and contrast heavily against revelations coming from the outside USAO’s that Barr has brought in to review all of the prior DOJ and FBI activity.

Why do I think that’s the final straw? Because if you take that moment in time and start working backward what you find is demonstrable and provable evidence that Dana Boente was one of the original Trump-era officials who participated in protecting “spygate” and using his support of the Mueller investigation as an internal weapon. Remember, all the corrupt FBI players on Mueller’s team reported to Boente, including David Archey.

Dana Boente is enmeshed in all of it: the Wolfe case and cover-up, the Assange case and cover-up, and the hiding of documents in the Flynn case and cover-up. Boente’s role as a manipulative fixer to protect the ongoing corrupt action of the Mueller probe was exactly why FBI Director Chris Wray hired him.

Taking out Boente now exposes the complicit nature of FBI Director Chris Wray; who, it appears, AG Bill Barr is being forced -by new discoveries- to leave Wray naked to his enemies.