For another, it will presumably focus on the Trump campaign's contacts with the Russians. That sort of focus contains an innate bias, emphasizing Russian contact over whatever else the Trump campaign may have been doing. We know those contacts were extensive. Many were no doubt completely innocent. But the Barr summary makes clear that some were not innocent on the Russian side, but contained (illegal) offers to help.
So I see two ways that can be done, neither of which will look good for Trump. One is to describe each contact, including the ones that turned out to be innocent. But describing contact after contact, even followed with the qualification that we investigated this contact and determined it to be innocent is just going to emphasize how many contacts there were. The other way is to write about only the contacts that included Russian .offers of help. This will look bad because it leaves everything else out.
We do not know how many Russian offers of help there were, other than that the offers were "multiple." We know the Mueller Report does not find that any of these offers were accepted. That can mean one of several things. It can mean there was affirmative evidence that the offer was rejected. It can mean there is no evidence one way or the other. Or it can mean that the whole thing looks bad and smells worse, but there is nothing solid enough to be actually indictable.
As of right now there are three known non-innocent contacts that will presumably be addressed in the report. There are also two suspected non-innocent contacts mentioned in the Steele memos that I would like to see addressed even if the only finding was that Mueller could neither confirm nor disprove the contact.
First known, non-innocent contact: March and April, 2016, George Papadopoulos. This one has already been addressed in an indictment. George Papadopoulos was named as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign in early March, 2016. On March 14, while traveling in Italy, Papadopoulos met Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor with ties to the Kremlin, who showed great interest when he learned of Papadopoulos' connection to the Trump campaign. On March 24, 2016, they met again and Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to a woman he falsely claimed was Putin's niece and attempted to set a meeting between the campaign and the Russian government. The indictment sets forth in painful detail e-mails (confirmed by the Trump campaign) about Papadopoulos' attempts to set up a meeting between the campaign and the Russian government, which never panned out. None of this, of course, is a crime, and it might be dismissed as part of the contacts with Russia that were suspicious in volume, but ultimately innocent, except that on April 26, 2016, Mifsud apparently told Papadopoulos that the Russian government had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails." Papadopoulos drunkenly revealed this information to the Australian ambassador some time in May.
The timeline matters here. Russian military intelligence first began attempting to hack the Clinton campaign in March, 2016. They appear to have broken into campaign manager John Podesta's e-mails on March 21, 2016; the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) on April 12, 2016; and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on April 18, 2016. The hack became public knowledge on June 14, 2016. The Australian ambassador does not appear to have seen this drunken revelation as significant until news of the hacks became public, at which time he reported it to to US intelligence and the investigation began.
So, Mifsud's statement to Papadopoulos has been interpreted to mean that the Trump campaign had advance notice of the DNC hacks, but I don't think that is accurate. It had been public knowledge since 2015 that Hillary send classified e-mails on a private server which was vulnerable to Russian hacking, and that some 33,000 of these e-mails had been deleted. Since nothing (thus far) suggests that Mifsud told Papadopoulos (or knew, for that matter) which e-mails, it seems most likely that Papadopoulos though this meant that the Russians had hacked Hillary's private server and had the missing e-mails. Still, his failure to notify the authorities of the offer does suggest that Papadopoulos was open to accepting a hostile power's espionage on a former Secretary of State for the sake of partisan advancement, just not that he was willing to cooperate in ongoing espionage. The whole episode looked bad enough for Papadopoulos that he lied to the FBI about it, saying that the meeting took place before he worked for the Trump campaign. He was not charged with anything else.
It is not clear whether Papadopoulos passed word of the e-mails up the chain of command. If he did, he took care to do so orally and not leave a paper trail. It is also clear that his attempts to set a meeting between the campaign and Russia were rebuffed. So this could be taken as affirmative evidence that this particular offer of help was rejected.
Second known, non-innocent contact: Trump Tower, June, 2016. We haven't heard anything about this meeting from Team Mueller, possibly because there is truly nothing more to know about it. Donald Trump, Jr. got an e-mail from the entertainment agent for a popular singer whose father was a Russian oligarch. It said:
Emin [the pop singer] just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump - helped along by Aras and Emin.
Junior responded, "I love it especially later in the summer." So you clearly have the statement from the candidate's own son that he was willing to accept help from the Russian government. The intelligence community learned about this exchange by reading about in the New York Times. Our systems in place to protect US persons were clearly working. The Russians also knew how to work their way around such systems. Presumably the use of an entertainment agent to deliver the story was deliberate. The Russians took care not to discuss anything sensitive over the phone, but to meet in person. The hacks were not yet public knowledge. No mention is made of e-mails, State Department or otherwise.
The meeting was held. Trump, Jr. attended, along with Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump's husband, and campaign manager Paul Manafort. No dirt was offered on Hillary. Nothing came of the meeting, which turned out to be a Russian delegation seeking to lift the Magnitsky Sanctions. All participants at the meeting agree that this is what happened. Junior initially reported that the meeting was all about adopting Russian orphans. The Russians have responded to the Magnitsky sanctions by forbidding foreign adoptions of Russian orphans, so everyone in the know recognizes a discussion of Russian orphans as a discussion of the Magnitsky sanctions. All parties present agree the discussion was about the sanctions. Natalia Veselnitskaya, the leader of the Russian delegation, has provided a memo of the meeting all about the harm caused by the sanctions and dirt on Bill Browder, the man behind the sanctions. She claims the idea that she had information on Hillary was all a misunderstanding. And, in fact, Veselnitskaya was a long-term lobbyist against the sanctions. Paul Manafort's notes from the meeting track Veselnitskaya's memo. Jared says that he got so bored he texted his office to call and interrupt, a claim he has the text to prove.
If anything followed the meeting, it is not public knowledge. Junior's lawyer has defended his willingness to accept the information instead of reporting it to the authorities as the result of inexperience in running a campaign and not knowing that was what he was supposed to do. I can believe it for Junior, and for Jared as well. But Manafort certainly knew the significance of accepting information from the Russians.
So this meeting was not innocent on the Trump campaign side. The participants attended expecting dirt from the Russian government and did not get it. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. But for a misunderstanding it seems remarkably well arranged to avoid the notice of the authorities.
First suspected non-innocent contact: Carter Page in Moscow, July 7-8, 2016. This one took place after the hacks were public knowledge and after the Russian hackers, calling themselves "Guccifer" started releasing hacked materials, but before Wikileaks began releasing documents. It is a matter of public record that Carter Page traveled to Moscow at this time to give a commencement address to a graduating class. He acknowledges speaking to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, but denies that anything of substance was said, all of which is quite innocent.
This is where things get shady. On July 19, 2016, Christopher Steele's memo (pages 9-10) reports that Page also met with Igor Sechin of the giant Russian oil company Rosneft and discussed "the issue of further bilateral energy cooperation and prospects for an associated Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia." It reports that Page reacted positively but remained non-committal. That would in itself be just as innocent as any other campaign meeting with foreign powers to discuss policy, except that Sechin is also under Magnitsky sanctions. The same memo also says that Page also met with Igor Diveykin, a security official, who said that the Russians had damaging information against Hillary Clinton that they might be willing to share and also darkly hinted that the Russians had such information on Trump as well. The hack was public knowledge at the time, but there is no mention of e-mails. If true, this meeting was another offer of help from the Russians, with a rather unclear response.
On September 23, 2016, Yahoo News ran a story saying that during Page's visit to Moscow, he discussed sanctions relief with Sechin and also met with Diveykin (no discussion of the content of the Diveykin meeting). Steele was, in fact, the source for this article, but the author managed to disguise his source to make it appear that he got the information from sources in Congress. Page went on the record repeatedly denying the contact.
The FBI took Steele's allegations seriously enough to seek a warrant to wiretap him some time in October. The applications states that the FBI has "learned" that Page met with two Russian officials. "First," the application, pages 15-18, cites what is clearly Steele's July 19, 2016 memo about the meeting. Pages 19 and 20 are then blacked out. The application then cites the Yahoo article as saying Page met with the two Russian officials. It then cites Page denying the meetings.
My understanding is that the general journalistic rule is not to publish allegations of this type unless confirmed by a secondary source. My guess, therefore, is that the author of the Yahoo article, after getting his tip from Steele, made inquiries with his sources in Congress and was able to get confirmation that the conversations took place, but not about the contents. My guess is also that the FISA warrant on pages 19 and 20 was able to provide confirmation that the conversations took place, and therefore that Page was lying, but could not confirm the contents of the conversations. No charges were ever brought against Carter Page. Maybe he wised up and did not tell any provable lies to the FBI.
Finally, on October 18, 2016 (pages 30-31), Steele sent a second, far more sensational memo that would seem to indicate the meeting with Sechin was far from innocent. It says that Sechin offered "the brokerage of up to a 19 percent (privatised) stake in Rosneft" is sanctions were lifted, and Page agreed to lift the sanctions. That would be, quite simply, a bribe, which the Constitution expressly recognizes as grounds for impeachment. Given that none of this is mentioned in the FISA application, it appears that the FISA application was submitted some time before October 18. I will also add that 19% of Rosneft was, indeed, privatized, although the Trump organization had nothing to do with it. Mueller may have taken this as evidence that this offer was not accepted.
Third known, non-innocent contact: Manafort and Kilimnik, August 2, 2016. Most of this was blacked out of the sentencing hearing, so we don't know much about it. However, it appears that Manafort and his translator, former Russian Military Intelligence translator Konstanin Kilimnik met on August 2, 2016 at the Havana Club and held a discussion that involved a "Ukrainian peace plan" that would (presumably) recognize Russia's annexation of the Crimea and lift sanctions. And Manafort provided Kilimnik with up to 75 pages of internal polling data that he walked Kilimnik through to explain. It would also appear that both parties were highly secretive about the meeting, taking care to exchange emails only about when and where to meet, limiting their substantive discussions to face-to-face meetings, and leaving by separate doors. The meeting took place 11 days after Wikileaks released its first batch of e-mails, at a time the hacks and leaks were public knowledge, but before they had achieved full effect.
This is, potentially, what most people had in mind when they talked about collusion. Did the Trump campaign provide information to the Russians with material to allow them to deploy their information more effectively. This meeting and hand off of campaign polling data is the first indication that the answer might be yes. But it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Was Kilimnik still in contact with his old employer? Did he pass the polling data on to them. If not, what use did he make of it? And, above all, were is actions authorized. There are numerous hints that Manafort, who had immense debts to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and who was owed large amounts by his old Ukrainian employers, might have been acting on his own and sold the polling data for money.
Hopefully, we will learn a lot more when the Mueller report comes out.
Second suspected non-innocent contact: Cohen in Prague, late August or early September, 2016. Michael Cohen was definitely in contact with the Russians in the first half of 2016 negotiating building a Trump Tower in Moscow. He definitely concealed this from the American people during the election. This is serious misconduct in the sense that it deprived the American people of important information that might have affected their choice of a candidate. It raises questions about how much of Trump's pro-Russian outlook was the result of his own financial interests rather than concern for the public good. It is not, however, a crime. The negotiations appear to have ended when the DNC hack became public knowledge. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about these activities.
The Steele Dossier makes much more damning allegations about Cohen. It alleges (pages 32-35) that Cohen took over as primary contact with Russia after Manafort and Page departed, and that he met with specific Russian agents in Prague around the end of August or beginning of September to arrange to pay the hackers. Cohen does not have any Czech visit stamped on his passport, but the EU now allows visitors to travel among countries with only the original point of entry marked on the passport. Cohen apparently visited Italy in July, 2016. He did not take a plane or stay in a hotel on Prague at the time in question. He was in Los Angeles August 23 to 29. There was also evidence that he was confused with a different, wholly innocent Michael Cohen.
That appeared to be the end of it, except that apparently intelligence services picked up a comment in the Kremlin that Cohen was in Prague about the time of the alleged crime, though no mention of what he was doing. And McClatchy (unsupported by any other news service) claims that one of Cohen's 16 or more phones briefly created a signal in Prague around the time of the alleged crime. Of course, someone else could have had Cohen's phone or the signal could have been false. Obvious leads would be whether anyone saw Cohen in the US after August 29, and whether there was evidence that he was in Europe at the time near enough to Prague to make a day trip there.
Of course, even if such evidence does turn up the most it will show is that the dossier makes certain allegations about Cohen, which he denies, but there is evidence that he might possibly have been in Prague at or about the time of the alleged crime. That seems like rather weak tea.
When Cohen testified in front of Congress, he was happy to give exhaustive details about Trump's payoffs to porn stars and financial fraud, but he evidence about ties to Russia did not go much beyond that Trump was in contact with Roger Stone, who was in contact with Wikileaks (we all knew that), and that he might have known about the Trump Tower meeting. He may be telling the truth. Or he may have decided that he will never practice law again, but that telling all about payoffs to porn stars and financial fraud will get him a best seller and a fortune on the speaker circuit, while telling about Trump's Russia ties will get him some new and creative poison when he least expects it.
We do have a few more hints about Cohen's role in all this. The sentencing reports indicate that the Special Prosecutor appears satisfied that Cohen has told all that he knows. The Southern District of New York is considerably less impressed with Cohen's cooperation. But perhaps most significantly, the Special Counsel had seven sessions with Cohen finding out what he knew. Michael Flynn, by contrast had 19. This may tell us something about the two men's relative importance.
And now I have got to stop writing about Trump and Russia until we actually see the Mueller report and find out what is in it.
If anything followed the meeting, it is not public knowledge. Junior's lawyer has defended his willingness to accept the information instead of reporting it to the authorities as the result of inexperience in running a campaign and not knowing that was what he was supposed to do. I can believe it for Junior, and for Jared as well. But Manafort certainly knew the significance of accepting information from the Russians.
So this meeting was not innocent on the Trump campaign side. The participants attended expecting dirt from the Russian government and did not get it. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. But for a misunderstanding it seems remarkably well arranged to avoid the notice of the authorities.
First suspected non-innocent contact: Carter Page in Moscow, July 7-8, 2016. This one took place after the hacks were public knowledge and after the Russian hackers, calling themselves "Guccifer" started releasing hacked materials, but before Wikileaks began releasing documents. It is a matter of public record that Carter Page traveled to Moscow at this time to give a commencement address to a graduating class. He acknowledges speaking to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, but denies that anything of substance was said, all of which is quite innocent.
This is where things get shady. On July 19, 2016, Christopher Steele's memo (pages 9-10) reports that Page also met with Igor Sechin of the giant Russian oil company Rosneft and discussed "the issue of further bilateral energy cooperation and prospects for an associated Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia." It reports that Page reacted positively but remained non-committal. That would in itself be just as innocent as any other campaign meeting with foreign powers to discuss policy, except that Sechin is also under Magnitsky sanctions. The same memo also says that Page also met with Igor Diveykin, a security official, who said that the Russians had damaging information against Hillary Clinton that they might be willing to share and also darkly hinted that the Russians had such information on Trump as well. The hack was public knowledge at the time, but there is no mention of e-mails. If true, this meeting was another offer of help from the Russians, with a rather unclear response.
On September 23, 2016, Yahoo News ran a story saying that during Page's visit to Moscow, he discussed sanctions relief with Sechin and also met with Diveykin (no discussion of the content of the Diveykin meeting). Steele was, in fact, the source for this article, but the author managed to disguise his source to make it appear that he got the information from sources in Congress. Page went on the record repeatedly denying the contact.
The FBI took Steele's allegations seriously enough to seek a warrant to wiretap him some time in October. The applications states that the FBI has "learned" that Page met with two Russian officials. "First," the application, pages 15-18, cites what is clearly Steele's July 19, 2016 memo about the meeting. Pages 19 and 20 are then blacked out. The application then cites the Yahoo article as saying Page met with the two Russian officials. It then cites Page denying the meetings.
My understanding is that the general journalistic rule is not to publish allegations of this type unless confirmed by a secondary source. My guess, therefore, is that the author of the Yahoo article, after getting his tip from Steele, made inquiries with his sources in Congress and was able to get confirmation that the conversations took place, but not about the contents. My guess is also that the FISA warrant on pages 19 and 20 was able to provide confirmation that the conversations took place, and therefore that Page was lying, but could not confirm the contents of the conversations. No charges were ever brought against Carter Page. Maybe he wised up and did not tell any provable lies to the FBI.
Finally, on October 18, 2016 (pages 30-31), Steele sent a second, far more sensational memo that would seem to indicate the meeting with Sechin was far from innocent. It says that Sechin offered "the brokerage of up to a 19 percent (privatised) stake in Rosneft" is sanctions were lifted, and Page agreed to lift the sanctions. That would be, quite simply, a bribe, which the Constitution expressly recognizes as grounds for impeachment. Given that none of this is mentioned in the FISA application, it appears that the FISA application was submitted some time before October 18. I will also add that 19% of Rosneft was, indeed, privatized, although the Trump organization had nothing to do with it. Mueller may have taken this as evidence that this offer was not accepted.
Third known, non-innocent contact: Manafort and Kilimnik, August 2, 2016. Most of this was blacked out of the sentencing hearing, so we don't know much about it. However, it appears that Manafort and his translator, former Russian Military Intelligence translator Konstanin Kilimnik met on August 2, 2016 at the Havana Club and held a discussion that involved a "Ukrainian peace plan" that would (presumably) recognize Russia's annexation of the Crimea and lift sanctions. And Manafort provided Kilimnik with up to 75 pages of internal polling data that he walked Kilimnik through to explain. It would also appear that both parties were highly secretive about the meeting, taking care to exchange emails only about when and where to meet, limiting their substantive discussions to face-to-face meetings, and leaving by separate doors. The meeting took place 11 days after Wikileaks released its first batch of e-mails, at a time the hacks and leaks were public knowledge, but before they had achieved full effect.
Hopefully, we will learn a lot more when the Mueller report comes out.
Second suspected non-innocent contact: Cohen in Prague, late August or early September, 2016. Michael Cohen was definitely in contact with the Russians in the first half of 2016 negotiating building a Trump Tower in Moscow. He definitely concealed this from the American people during the election. This is serious misconduct in the sense that it deprived the American people of important information that might have affected their choice of a candidate. It raises questions about how much of Trump's pro-Russian outlook was the result of his own financial interests rather than concern for the public good. It is not, however, a crime. The negotiations appear to have ended when the DNC hack became public knowledge. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about these activities.
The Steele Dossier makes much more damning allegations about Cohen. It alleges (pages 32-35) that Cohen took over as primary contact with Russia after Manafort and Page departed, and that he met with specific Russian agents in Prague around the end of August or beginning of September to arrange to pay the hackers. Cohen does not have any Czech visit stamped on his passport, but the EU now allows visitors to travel among countries with only the original point of entry marked on the passport. Cohen apparently visited Italy in July, 2016. He did not take a plane or stay in a hotel on Prague at the time in question. He was in Los Angeles August 23 to 29. There was also evidence that he was confused with a different, wholly innocent Michael Cohen.
That appeared to be the end of it, except that apparently intelligence services picked up a comment in the Kremlin that Cohen was in Prague about the time of the alleged crime, though no mention of what he was doing. And McClatchy (unsupported by any other news service) claims that one of Cohen's 16 or more phones briefly created a signal in Prague around the time of the alleged crime. Of course, someone else could have had Cohen's phone or the signal could have been false. Obvious leads would be whether anyone saw Cohen in the US after August 29, and whether there was evidence that he was in Europe at the time near enough to Prague to make a day trip there.
Of course, even if such evidence does turn up the most it will show is that the dossier makes certain allegations about Cohen, which he denies, but there is evidence that he might possibly have been in Prague at or about the time of the alleged crime. That seems like rather weak tea.
When Cohen testified in front of Congress, he was happy to give exhaustive details about Trump's payoffs to porn stars and financial fraud, but he evidence about ties to Russia did not go much beyond that Trump was in contact with Roger Stone, who was in contact with Wikileaks (we all knew that), and that he might have known about the Trump Tower meeting. He may be telling the truth. Or he may have decided that he will never practice law again, but that telling all about payoffs to porn stars and financial fraud will get him a best seller and a fortune on the speaker circuit, while telling about Trump's Russia ties will get him some new and creative poison when he least expects it.
We do have a few more hints about Cohen's role in all this. The sentencing reports indicate that the Special Prosecutor appears satisfied that Cohen has told all that he knows. The Southern District of New York is considerably less impressed with Cohen's cooperation. But perhaps most significantly, the Special Counsel had seven sessions with Cohen finding out what he knew. Michael Flynn, by contrast had 19. This may tell us something about the two men's relative importance.
And now I have got to stop writing about Trump and Russia until we actually see the Mueller report and find out what is in it.
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