Posted on 01/22/2018 10:09:53 AM PST by Red Badger
The latest news that five months’ worth of text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and DOJ attorney Lisa Page is sure to make supporters of President Donald Trump continue to claim that the Russia investigation is a politically-motivated scheme. More importantly, however, Trump’s lawyers will now be able to do the same.
Strzok has already been outed as anti-Trump, leading to his dismissal from the probe, and his past communications with Page showed a potential Justice Department bias towards Hillary Clinton. The fact that now nearly half a year’s worth of text messages between Strzok and Page during the time leading up to Robert Mueller‘s appointment as Special Counsel weren’t preserved by the Justice Department will surely fuel motions from Team Trump’s lawyers against the investigation.
Months of text messages don’t just accidentally disappear. One past conversation between Strzok and Page indicated that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew there would be no charges filed against Clinton well before that investigation ended. Given the significant evidence of impropriety in the Clinton case, a foregone conclusion of innocence before the FBI wrapped up their investigation looks shady at best. Trump’s lawyers will surely argue that after those messages came to light, the DOJ intentionally “lost” those five months’ worth of other messages.
Look for Paul Manafort to jump all over this. He’s already fighting his indictment, claiming that Mueller is overstepping his authority and shouldn’t be running the investigation. Throw in this evidence that the investigation may have been tainted before Mueller even took over, and that the DOJ could be covering up damaging information, and a motion to dismiss alleging prosecutorial misconduct is a near certainty. FBI Agent Strzok was reportedly heading up the Manafort investigation before he was taken off the Mueller probe. Manafort’s attorney might try to say that the missing text messages could contain exculpatory evidence (or evidence favorable to the defendant) and therefore the court should get to the bottom of what the two said. However, two former federal prosecutors who spoke to Law&Crime both contend it would be difficult to get the entire indictment dismissed based on the text messages alone.
“It depends on what FBI’s retention policy is for text messages. It does certainly raise questions as to how these five months came up missing,” explained Bill Thomas, a former federal prosecutor “However, the court is not going to just dismiss the case. If it comes to it, the judge may hold a hearing to get to that information through calling witnesses. Dismissal is the nuclear option, it would have to be something very very egregious for a court to dismiss the case.”
The same would go for any future defendants in the case. If other members of the Trump campaign gets hit with charges, they’ll just throw these missing texts back as evidence that the probe was tainted from the beginning.
Of course, lawyers will have to find some sort of evidence of foul play for this to mean anything. That could include proof that the messages were intentionally deleted, recovery of some of the texts (should they include incriminating information), or other evidence of political bias in the investigation.
“Though it doesn’t look good and will only further embolden conspiracy theorists I don’t see how this could be used to attack any charges already filed or future charges,” former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer explained to Law&Crime. “A judge will focus on whether clear evidence supports the charges in response to a motion to dismiss. Perhaps at trial this stuff could be used to cross examine the agent for purposes of showing bias.”
Barring the discovery of evidence favorable to the defendants, this development will likely result in a slight headache for Mueller as his team responds to court filings by claiming that the investigation is on the up and up, and that Strzok’s dismissal was proof that politics have no place in the Russia probe.
What are the legal terms at play here? Spoliation and fruit of the poisoned tree?
Seems like Manafort and Flynn won the anti-Mueller lottery.
I don't think so. It really depends on the rules of evidence in the Federal courts, doesn't it?
Like withholding evidence? Yeah, I'd think that would qualify.
Judge: Okay, FBI, which would you like to accede to: incompetence or willful misconduct?
FBI: Uh....
Judge: Case dismissed.
Didn’t IG Horowitz say this weekend that he has the memos as they were delivered to his office last Aug. Am I missing something?
Like a laser beam, focus in to determine WHO ORDERED THE CESSATION OF “RETENTION” of these text messages! The system didn’t suddenly do it on its own accord.
I do not understand the legal posturing stipulated by this article. One does not “file for a dismissal” of a special counsel investigation. It is, by its very nature, a witch hunt. It wouldn’t be a court which would dismiss the special counsel.
Hopefully, the publication of the 4 page FISA memo from congress should provide enough cover that the DOJ can call a halt to the special counsel and disband the nonsense.
It's about missing text messages, not missing memos, isn't it?
Criminals often find themselves in this kind of quick sand. Either destroy the evidence and have to deal with the incriminating nature of having destroyed evidence in the future. Or don’t destroy the evidence and deal with the incriminating nature of the evidence itself right away.
In this case, the criminals at the FBI decided they had to destroy the evidence. Thus we can safely conclude that the emails they destroyed were absolutely devastating to Obama’s corrupt administration and the Mueller shell game.
The biggest question now is whether or not we have sufficient jail capacity in this country to house all the Obama people who need to be incarcerated.
“Didn’t IG Horowitz say this weekend that he has the memos as they were delivered to his office last Aug. Am I missing something?”
The question is did he get “all” the memos?
Of course manafort can use this. I’m sure he will. Trump has no charges against him. Why would he file Motions if there is no case pending? Doesn’t make any sense. It would be better if trump just shut down the Probe. I think a release of the FISA Memo would be a good and quick start.
I believe all this came about when they wanted the text messages between those two related to the clinton e-mail stuff
and that’s when they found the “insurance policy” type texts
now that have asked for all comms between the two
Yep...If any of the charges against Manafort are based on the timeline when the messages have gone missing, a partial judge could throw out the charges, AFAIK!
Have we not learned anything in the last 9 years?
E-mails just don’t ‘disappear’ into the ether.
They can be gotten, if you know where to look.
The NSA, National Archives, other places within the FBI IT infrastructure, back-ups of back-ups, etc.
The idea that they are ‘gone’ is ludicrous on its face. Heck, even Wikileaks may have copies and most certainly our enemies................
OK I figured out MY error. The term is Texts — not as I stated “memos”.
Rush just confirmed that the IG Horowitz says he received the texts last August.
Try telling that to the FBI when they're investigating YOU.
The dismissal motions would come from anyone who is prosecuted by the Mueller team.
It’s full of Obamabots................
Or it might have been that the IG is the one who noticed the missing texts during his investigation, which prompted the FBI to say they have been lost.
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