But but but
she is so special.
as in caught and kept.
It’s the part where they start out by presupposing the establishment of what are, at best, contested issues of fact that jumped out at me. When that’s how a motion to dismiss starts, there’s no point doing more than scanning the rest of it.
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Whose paying for her defense…funny how they can produce hypotheticals out their collective buts…but no precedence…
Fiction isn’t admissible nor will it be considered in Ms. Butina’s case. She’s charged with failing to register for reasons a bit heavier than “protest”. She facilitated the movement of foreign money into US politics. And then she went about doing the actual transfers. Her activities as an unregistered agent wee illegal and I imagine the charges holding her in the USA are for just that. Holding her until Mueller drops a real case on her. She’d love to dee dee mou out of the USA to avoid that but I think the Judge she’s appealing to understands what’s going on and will probably not entertain discussion of the American Constitution from a fucking Russian.
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High priced or not, her lawyers are arguing their point the exact wrong way.
If you want to make the argument that a law is over-broad, you don’t point out how in OTHER CONTEXTS the government has DECLINED to prosecute on OTHER CHARGES. That’s just blather.
What you have to do is argue that a whole bunch of things that FOREIGN NON-RESIDENT do that technically offend the law under challenge are ACTUALLY VULNERABLE to being prosecuted.
Her lawyers are in fact SAYING that they are arguing that latter point, but they’re actually not doing it…
And why not?
Because all the acts that they might point to that WOULD expose a foreign resident or visa resident to being prosecuted would IF KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN DONE, would in fact expose that person to prosecution, and rightly so.
It could be that the basis for this confused state of mess by her lawyers is that in order to puff up their argument, they’ve decided to resort to things that ACTUAL U.S. CITIZENS have done in the past that COULD have been prosecuted, under the SEPARATE law that applies to people like, say, Manafort and Gates, but previous administrations, for whatever reason, did not prosecute.
The law is different, the test is different, the factual basis has to be different, and IAE Manafort TRIED to argue this and was shut down.
This motion is doomed, and the fact that in a separate item up at TPM News right now it appears that her attorneys are trying to play Monty Hall with the DoJ tells you all you need to know about how secure they feel about this motion.
That negotiation is ALSO weak: DoJ doesn’t want an empty plea, they want a pleas deal that fits within the larger theory of a Russian government sponsored contribution to a conspiracy to defraud Americans of an otherwise honest presidential election, with a cooperation agreement.
They, on their client’s behalf, are taking a desperate shot at cobbling together two weak hands in futile hopes that the DoJ and FBI will think they make up one strong hand. The Feds are simply not interested at all here just building up conviction stats - this case is part of the FBI national security mandate and they and DoJ would rather go to trial and lose than make the kind of deal on offer.
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Oh, but she was just SUPER enthusiastic! About America! Although it’s not that great, somebody needs to make it great again.
She is branded a foreign agent because she explained the complexities of American politics and shared her extraordinary affinity for American culture with family and friends back home.
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“This simple country girl, who wished only to get an education in your wonderful United States, has been unfairly maligned for the entirely innocent pastimes of funneling thousands of dollars into political operatives’ open and above-reproach methods. Can not this graduate student enjoy pretty clothes and guns like all young women do? Fie!”
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