“So far I don’t see the things Kushner has done to be criminal, and you want to continue to send a message to the prosecutors that your client is cooperative,”
He has committed numerous counts of perjury, but not being forth coming on his security applications. He is in contempt of Congress for moving his email server, after being told directly by Congress NOT to move his private email server. He is probably on the hook for various violations of the Hatch Act for engaging in policy discussions with Russian agents as a private citizen.
Those are just a few things, that he has done that are criminal.
Its quite likely he has jeopardy concerning the Trump Towers meeting in June 2016. Its also quite likely that he is exposed regarding the firing of Comey, as well as involvement in creating the first letter lying about Junior’s involvement in the Trump Towers meeting.
His name pops up in more communications with Russians than anybody else’s. He has been peddling WH access to foreign countries for money to bail out his failing family real estate investments. He has his fingerprints all over the data connection feeds to Russia during the campaign.
In short, Mueller already has Kushner dead to rights on actual criminal activity…right now. He also has him under the sights for numerous, much, much bigger and worse criminal activities. And Mueller now has multiple people who can speak to/provide evidence of these much worse criminal activities.
That statement is so far out in left field, I have to wonder if Zeldin has a new job testing out new strains of cannabis in Colorado.
EDIT TO CORRECT: I meant the Logan Act, not the Hatch Act.
Most people under criminal investigation can’t rely on their father being able to pardon them at any point in the near future, so his attitude has probably been “Come at me, bro!”
When does Abbe Lowell sleep?
Jaroffski Kushnov—just one of the worker bees in the Ruski Laundromat. A place every millionaire baby and mama-baby needs to wash papa’s Rubles.
Yeah, I found that an odd comment for a federal prosecutor to make as well. It is Friday, so maybe more from Mueller…??
Kushner “has voluntarily cooperated with all relevant inquiries and will continue to do so.”
Lawyer speak that seemingly few if any in the media have commented upon. "Relevant" according to which parties in this investigation? How are the parameters of what is relevant being determined or agreed upon? Is Kushner's legal team arbitrarily selecting questions Mueller's team will have answered? Or is Mueller insisting on defining relevance? Would someone in the damned media press Lowell on what the hell he means by this wording? Do your damned job!What’s not mentioned in the article is that maybe Jared is going to roll over on his father-in-law.
Pardoning Jared, particularly in the near term, is extremely problematic for the WH. Because to issue a pardon, they have name specific crimes. All of them. There are no “blanket” pardons, nor are there any “pardons for things in the future”.
So lets take a very basic example of this problem. Suppose Trump issues a pardon for all counts of perjury related to Jared leaving off information on his security forms. That pardon has to list everything that Jared left off…which means anything else that pops up later, the pardon doesn’t cover. So either Jared has to be forth coming about ALL of his misinformation, or the pardon becomes useless on the next revelation.
Neither of those scenarios is appealing to Jared or Donald.
That’s just a simple example. The reality is, Jared is being looked out for a very wide array of criminal activities right now. Pardoning him for those, means he has to admit to all of them AND he can no longer plead the 5th to cover for any of his cohorts in these activities. Including Donald. And since so many of the things he is being investigated for, directly tie to Donald, issuing such a pardon immediately becomes more evidence for the eventual Obstruction case. Even discussing the idea of a pardon with Jared is probably grounds of Obstruction and witness tampering.
He may be stupid enough to think that he can outsmart Mueller’s team but he is in the big leagues now and they won’t miss a beat. Anytime he gives interviews, he is probably adding more perjury charges to the long list. He got away with lying to Congress, which emboldened him. I haven’t heard that Mueller’s team is cooperating with New York prosecutors, but if they are, he is in deep doo-doo.
I wrote about this earlier. Seth Abramson has a good thread on this. He thinks it was a critical error by Lowell to let this happen. Kushner has many areas of potential liability: SF-86 form violations, potential perjury from his congressional testimony, participation in the conspiracy to violate election laws and actively concealing it as evidenced by his participation in the 6/9/16 meeting, the Mayflower Hotel meeting, additional calls/emails with various key Russians. He has potential Logan Act violations. He may have been involved in a bribery scheme as he was shopping for financing and willing to return favors, which included policy changes. This may include the foreign corrupt practices act because he spoke with public officials. We also have Kushner’s role in the digital campaign thread - where there appears to be a significant amount of coordination with Wikileaks and perhaps other Russian troll farms + the use of stolen material (emails and voter data). Finally, there is the obstruction of justice thread - where Kushner was involved in the decision to fire Comey.
Lowell would’ve tried to limit the scope of the questioning but the areas of risk vs. non-risk aren’t clear. Anything that Kushner said with respect to Flynn could’ve been used against him. Kushner probably did not know that Flynn was cooperating with Mueller and Mueller could’ve used that meeting to confirm Flynn’s stories, get Kushner in a perjury trap or both.
Now, Therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.
Looks a lot like a blanket to me.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=4696Yeah, that’s the one that immediately popped into my head . . .
It reads that way. But its important to take in the context of what went into Ford making that proclaimation.
Jarowski was on the record of saying, if it was up to him, he would push for indictment, on an extremely lengthy list of crimes. His entire staff agreed with him, and the overwhelming opinion was, the grand jury will issue the majority, if not all, of those indictments.
So there were specific crimes already spelled out.
Benton Becker was given the task by Ford to hammer out the details between Nixon and Jarworski. Nixon originally, of course, refused the idea of a pardon, but finally agreed when it became clear he was going to be impeached. So Nixon resigned with the understanding that he would receive a pardon for ALL the indictments Jarworski was pursuing.
So the agreement was reached, Jarworksi realizing that he was never going to be able to indict Nixon, and instead of listing every possible indictment…which would have made for extremely painful speech as well as probably would have blown up the entire deal…he phrased it as a “blanket” for those 5 years.
But there was an actual lists of indictments that were covered.
I agree with regard to “pardons for things in the future” — but as for the rest of it, what is your basis?
ETA: Here I should note what the ABA has said: “The legal record is also clear that a president can pardon for a presumptive crime.”
Kinky.
So an FOIA filing would reveal the exact crimes the government was prepared to charge Nixon with? Or is that list already in the public domain? If the answer to both of the above queries is no, then the existence of a government bill of particulars is no more than hearsay. I’d be interested to read precisely what crimes the government felt they had probable cause to lodge charges against Nixon, beyond the obvious transgressions that manifested themselves over the course of the last years of his second term.
Kushner wants to look cooperative now, so a plea bargain will be offered to him and Ivanka when the indictments start coming down?
They really don’t have anything to bargain with right now and are too close to the target to be a credible source at this point, so their lawyer thinks why not make Jared look useful when he isn’t to Mueller. Kushner can lie his head off and forget to tell the important things to confuse the other possible prosecutions of fellow conspirators against the United States and its election process? .
Or maybe it’s just that Putin told Kushner to do it? And he has to do what the real president and his extortionist tells him to do?
I agree the President can pardon for presumptive crimes. But they are still for specific crimes.
As I noted above, even though Ford used terms that describe a blanket pardon, there were very specific indictments…and a very long list of them…that Jarworski’s office had already drawn up and was prepared to go to the grand jury with. Behind the scenes, and before Ford made the speech, the terms for which of those indictments was going to be pardoned, was worked out with Jarworski and Nixon’s lawyer. But the list was so numerous, that it wasn’t politically expedient for Ford to list each and every one in his speech.
Thanks for your response. Taking it at face value, I suppose one test is whether Nixon would have been prosecuted if evidence had emerged of some hitherto unknown crime committed between January 20, 1969 and August 9, 1974. What do you think might have happened in that case? Would he have been prosecutable?