Whoâs leaking this stuff and why?
Also: I continue to believe that Mueller is still miles ahead of us all and the really âgoodâ stuff hasnât trickled out yet.
Consider:
the âliesâ that Mueller alleged in a court filing this week âdonât appearâ to be related to the Russia probe, in the WSJâs words.
Why?
Actually, that was exactly the phrase that triggered my question. Almost sounds like Ghouliani was whispering in someoneâs ear over at WSJ.
And the Death Star appeared to be a moon, too.
The key question. Itâs unsettling that articles based on leaks never ask it. Without an answer, you canât begin to evaluate the 'âinformation.â
This article from the WSJ enlightened me. Based on this article, Iâm not at all convinced that Mueller ever asked Manafort anything relating specifically to Trump. I had assumed that was the case when the OSC first announced that Manafort breached the plea deal. But this WSJ article doesnât say that Mueller asked any Trump related questions. It says that Manafort lied about questions relating to Konstantin Kilimnick and personal business dealings. Now, itâs possible that Mueller did ask such Trump related questions and WSJâs story is limited or incomplete. We wonât know unless and until that report that Mueller intends to file with the Judge become public.
However, what if the WSJ article is right? What does that mean? Iâd suggest the following possible theory:
- Mueller has operated on the assumption that Manafort is a Russian agent and a traitor. Therefore, Mueller never expected Manafort would tell the truth about anything relating to Trump or with respect to his relationship with the Russian government. For a patriot like Mueller, his view of Manafortâs lack of trustworthiness is probably quite visceral.
- Mueller did not ask about Trump related matters because he never believed that Manafort wouldnât leak it to Trump. Mueller has known for a while that Trump keeps probing other witnesses and the DOJ for information, much as Nixon did.
- Mueller did, however, ask Manafort questions which he knew Manafort would lie about so that he could in effect âlock him upâ for good.
- When Kevin Downing (Manafortâs attorney) was telling Rudy that Mueller was trying to squeeze Manafort on Trump related matters, Downing was lying. He was blowing smoke up Rudyâs ass in order to freak Trump out in order to coax a pardon for Manafort. Downing actually didnât have any real information to give Rudy, and there is no crime in lying to Rudy. Downing mightâve concluded that inducing or tricking Trump to issue a pardon based on essentially vapor or nothing might be a legal issue for Trump, but perhaps not for him or his client.
Trump then made the error to align his answers on his open book test with what he thought Mueller asked Manafort. Trump made an additional error by also aligning himself with Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi regarding the Wikileaks matter. In doing so, Trump has diminished the ability to use those clowns as fall guys for that part of the âcollusionâ story because he has made statements which can be proven false. Both Stone and Corsi are essentially playing and screwing with Trump, again trying to con him into issuing pardons.
Corsiâs interview with Ari Melber was enlightening as Ari did a great job gleaning the major issues from a sea of bullshit. Corsi essentially confirmed the prosecutionâs theory of this portion of the case that the Stone network actively sought information about the stolen emails from Russian and Wikileaks sources, relayed it to Donald Trump and crowd sourced ideas on how to use, leverage and weaponize such information for Trumpâs benefit. Corsi said that Stone wouldâve naturally told Trump everything. That connects the Trump campaign to the pipeline of stolen data that was in possession of Russia and Wikileaks.
The Washington Post piece on Stoneâs late night chats with Trump are even more damning for Trump. This article says that Trump called Stone late at night, frequently in the campaign from a BLOCKED NUMBER. You know who else called likely that same BLOCKED NUMBER during the Trump Tower meeting timeline? Donald Trump Jr. WAPO has all but proven that Junior did in fact call his dad shortly after he spoke with Rob Goldstone, likely to inform and get approval from Trump about the meeting.
We know that the Trump camp was rattled by Muellerâs mentioning of Stoneâs regular chats with Trump. Now we know that WAPO and the OSC have independent proof of that.
In recent months, the Trump Organization turned over to Muellerâs team phone and contact logs that show multiple calls between the then-candidate and Stone in 2016, according to people familiar with the material.
The records are not a complete log of their contacts â Stone told The Washington Post on Wednesday that Trump at times called him from other peopleâs phones.
The reason the OSC knows that Trump and Stone talked frequently is because Corsi (and possibly others) told them and they have confirmed it with phone logs from the TRUMP ORG. Stone is a source for this WAPO story and he is all but outing Trump. Stone claims that they didnât talk about Wikileaks, but Corsi assumes they did. Theyâre both holding Trump over a barrel (âgive us pardons or we take a big dump on youâ). However, the Special Counsel likely already has information proving that Trump was aware of what Wikileaks may have had and that Stone, Junior, and others were sources.
What happens from here is anyoneâs guess, but what Trump ought to do is throw Stone/Corsi under the bus, blame them for everything, not stand in the way of a Mueller indictment of them, and then lobby his voters to give him a pass.
But now having likely been caught lying multiple times, and with Mueller likely having multiple sources of proof of the conspiracy, Mueller could get Trump to resign in exchange for not seeking a Nixon style deferred indictment. Iâm not sure Mueller would do that. I think he is naturally averse to, if not disgusted by, traitors and big time crooks and Trump happens to be both. I think he might want to indict him and try him in a court of law after exposing the entire conspiracy. He might âwant Trump on that wallâ to paraphrase.
Also, Glenn Greenwald (for whatever you think of him) published an article that was HIGHLY dubious of the alleged Manafort/Assange meeting and itâs pretty damn convincing.
Who says there isnât video?
The story details how tight the surveillance of the embassy is and if there was video, it would almost impossible to hide it.
How does he know what GCHQ knows? Ecuadorian intel is a declared source for the Guardian story. I think theyâd know.
And Kilimnik isnât a Russian intelligence agent â so lying about him couldnât possibly have anything to do with Russian involvement in anything â or in how Manafort went from Russian catâs paw in Ukraine to Russian catâs paw in the Trump campaign.
And these arenât the droids weâre looking for. You can go about your business.
But does it say that he didnât?
That doesnât mean thereâs no video. Whether or not it became public would depend on the owner of the video(s). There may be reasons not to make any such videos public knowledge at this time. A court case might just possibly be one reasonâŚor an extradition case.
No. My post above acknowledges that but plays out a scenario as to what mightâve transpired if one assumes that Mueller did not ask Manafort about Trump related things. Based on the Michael Cohen guilty plea this morning, itâs looking more plausible that Mueller never felt he needed Manafort that badly to establish the conspiracy charges. He has Gates. He now has Cohen.
I agree, except I donât think you need to â[assume] that Mueller did not ask Manafort about Trump related things.â
I think Greenwaldâs point is this: If the Grauniad could go so far as to get one piece of information from one faction in one Ecuadorian intelligence agency, why not corroborate it with something else?
I think the story makes more sense if you assume Mueller didnât ask Manafort about anything Trump related. It makes it clearer that Downing was basically blowing smoke up Rudyâs ass to freak Trump out in order to induce a pardon. It was a Hail Mary but one that would not create additional liability risk for Downing or for Manafort.
There was nothing for Manafort to lie about with regard to âcollusionâ because there was ⌠NO COLLUSION!