Posted on 02/20/2018 8:20:55 AM PST by BenLurkin
Skadden partner Gregory Craig, the former White House counsel under President Barack Obama, also worked on the report, as did partners Cliff Stone and Margaret Krawiec. Associates who worked on the report included Alex Haskell, Paul Kerlin, Kara Roseen and Allon Kedem, who is now a lawyer in the solicitor general’s office.
Manafort’s indictment claims he likely lobbied and paid at least in part for the report. Van der Zwaan’s case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who also oversees the case against Manafort and Gates.
The charges are the latest from Mueller as his activity appears to have increased in the past weeks. Friday, a grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and three companies over involvement in the 2016 election. A guilty plea by a California man accused of selling bank accounts was also made public last week.
(Excerpt) Read more at law.com ...
Again - nothing to do with Russia.
The Skadden lawyers were hired to advance the cause of Russia’s Cats-paw candidate for President of Ukraine.
This Mueller “probe” is nothing more than a glorified colonoscopy pulling out little polyps here and there, while the real cancer is Mueller and the cabal that promoted him into this witch hunt.
Kind of like hiring Pablo Escobar to investigate liquor license violations in East LA.
They’ve been hunting for collusion since last year and have yet to find proof the Russians helped get Trump elected.
Fire mueller, all of his lawyer sycophants, and all of the top brass at DOJ and FBI,
If any of them bitch, bring them up on RICO charges, and make THEM prove their innocence.
Never accept the premise of your enemy, and make no mistake, the socialist-democrats ARE the enemy of Americans.
Has Mueller announced the trial dates for the 13 Russians. Wow that should be fun! More exciting that the Korean Olympics. Well now that we have Russians on the juice for curling maybe not so much. Mueller should indict this Russian also.
Next up in the Mueller Probe. Charges of improper recycling. Mixing newspapers in with the plastics.
Well technically Ukraine is not Russia, but they are a bit...intertwined. What should be concerning to us is the pattern that has emerged from these guilty pleas. Papadopoulos, Flynn and now this lawyer have all admitted to making false statements material to a federal investigation. All of the lies concerned their interactions with agents of the Russian government. According to these 3 men they intentionally made statements they knew to be false regarding their own conduct. All of the lies involved their interaction with the Russian agents. There needs to be an answer as to why that would be. It is beyond implausible to suggest that while these men deliberately lied they were otherwise not engaged in any underlying untoward conduct. People just don’t lie to cover up their innocence, it just doesn’t make sense. And we need to dispense with the misconception that confusion as to something like the color trousers one wore on the morning of June 1, 2016 is sufficient to cause one to be indicated for making false statements. The key word in the statue is material. They made statements they knew to be untrue and they did so deliberately. By entering a plea of guilty they acknowledge they lied, therefore it is no longer speculation or allegation but cold hard fact. So why did they lie? If the whole Russia investigation is a hoax how do you get so many confessed criminals. How do you get so many lies all made to obscure interactions with the same entity? Our defense is fatally flawed, and yet we double down. If there was a deep state operation against the Trump campaign to fabricate Russian connections through the Steele dossier then there should be no other sources that suggest contact between the Trump campaign and Russia. We know there are many such sources. The Trump tower meeting, Papadopoulos running his mouth, and now the “unwitting” contacts alleged in the Friday indictments. If this was a deep state set up, then it has succeeded such that it is indistinguishable from the real thing. We need to protect the President and that protection needs to be based on reality. Manafort is the perfect fall guy, we should acknowledge Russian interference and pin it all on Manafort. Though honestly, we have dug ourselves such a deep hole it may be too late. Our strategy has been a house of cards built on sand and it is coming undone. Providence has blessed us with a once in a lifetime opportunity and we are squandering it by chasing after charlatans and deceivers. I pray that God will lift up the righteous around the President and that he will take heed of better counsel and fulfill the tasks God has appointed. For if we fail in this moment I despair of the judgement to come.
This entire investigation will be nada. Mueller will spend more than the entire budget of a few third world countries and won’t lay a finger on Trump. What a farce.
After investigating Hillary Clinton, FBI Director Coney declared that no reasonable prosecutor would charge someone with deleting an email. I guess he was right. Mueller is not a reasonable prosecutor.
Caution against jumping to conclusions is advised. The entire story has not yet been written or divulged. This is still a time to retain an informed skepticism.
There are rumblings - we will have to wait to see if they are 'confirmed' - that the reports from the FBI agents who conducted the Flynn interview concluded that he was not lying - rather, there is speculation (well-founded? unfounded?) that a highly-placed FBI manager improperly or illegally changed those reports to show that Flynn did lie to the FBI, in contradiction of what those agents first reported.
Why would Flynn admit to something that he did not do?
Here's one possible reason, but I can think of others:
With the threatened full coercive force of "the law" in the hands of a possibly corrupt and immoral prosecutor (who evidently is not constrained by the actual law or by normal checks and balances that are supposed to protect American citizens from abuse by the authorities), it may have been that admitting to making false statements was the only palatable choice for Flynn, even if that admission was itself a lie.
With an agreement apparently currently in place to postpone sentencing for that "admission", and other events swirling around Flynn (at least), including revelation of improprieties and likely even criminal acts having been perpetrated by people at the highest levels of the Department of Justice, the FBI, perhaps the CIA, and the Obama White House itself, isn't it a bit premature to take Flynn's "admission" at face value?
If you believe you are an innocent man being railroaded you plead not guilty and fight it out in court. Martyrdom is not supposed to be pleasant, but it is what is necessary to retain righteousness. Flynn is a twice admitted liar. He resigned because he lied to the Vice President. He entered a guilty plea because he lied to Federal investigators. If you examine the history of the sentencing Judge you will become aware that it is his custom to issue an order to disclose favorable evidence to the defense in all cases that come before him. This is a result of his experience in the Senator Stevens corruption case which saw prosecutorial misconduct go unpunished on the technicality that their conduct was contrary to case law but not contrary to any order by the court of jurisdiction. By entering a guilty plea, Flynn has confessed to the information alleged in the indictment. Having acknowledged his criminal conduct Flynn has effectively made a declaration as to the absence of any potential exculpatory evidence. As a practical matter, the opinions of the FBI agents immediately following the interview of Flynn are irrelevant. Flynn is the only person who can know definitely if he lied, and he has admitted to being a liar. Any FBI opinions to the contrary speak only to Flynn’s skill at deception which is hardly a character trait one wants examined ahead of sentencing. Should Flynn successfully withdraw his plea then his confession and all subsequent cooperation with Mueller will be admissible and will be used to convict him and the government will seek the maximum sentencing. Absent a pardon he is done. A guilty plea means a guilty man. If he feels like he copped too early that is something he just has to live with. Just like all those Bundy Ranch defendants that took pleas before the government case got shredded, they remain felons serving time. If you believe in your innocence, fight for it. If you don’t want the risk of a trial don’t complain about the consequences. Flynn is a criminal. He will likely serve time. He has admitted to willfully deceiving the country he had sworn to defend. And his actions have harmed the Trump administration. He is unworthy of our pity or mercy.
I have not suggested ‘pity’ nor have I suggested ‘mercy’.
Evidently you are not very concerned by concepts of “lawfare”, government wrongdoing such as coercion via plea deals, or else perhaps you are merely flaunting your self-righteous manichaean zeal in defiance of reality.
I do not endorse government/prosecutorial misconduct. I would hope that you do not, either.
If by “the sentencing Judge” you are referring to Judge Emmet Sullivan, then a closer examination of the known facts surrounding the case up to this point might lead you to at least consider temporarily suspending your harsh judgment against Flynn and instead wait and see what develops next.
Greg Craig worked on Clinton’s impeachment defense team also.
And for all practical purposes, he worked for Castro in the Elian Gonzalez case.
And for the Nicarguan Sandinistas while serving Ted Kennedy.
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