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, Trumps 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 years worth of text messages between Strzok and Page during the time leading up to Robert Muellers appointment as Special Counsel werent preserved by the Justice Department will surely fuel motions from Team Trumps lawyers against the investigation.
Months of text messages dont 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. Trumps 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. Hes already fighting his indictment, claiming that Mueller is overstepping his authority and shouldnt 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. Manaforts 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 FBIs 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, theyll 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 doesnt look good and will only further embolden conspiracy theorists I dont 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 Strzoks dismissal was proof that politics have no place in the Russia probe.
NSA are the white hats. and they have the texts and they are coming out.
Then they should send them to Wikileaks, asap...........
IIRC, the Rosenstein letter to Mueller did not order him to start a new investigation starting May 17, 2016. He was to continue the already started investigation which was going on well before May 17 and during the period of the missing texts and probably the fisa abuse.
We know, then, that the entire 1st stage of the investigation was corrupt and that this 2nd stage was built on it.
Therefore, the entire investigation is the fruit of the poisoned tree.
Spoliation evidence is just about the worst thing a trial lawyer wants to be accused of.
It’s almost an automatic lose I think. Or dismissal. Would be nice to know of some cases where the prosecutor spoliated evidence and went on to win the case anyway.
Of course the NSA still has these Text messages, but NSA data is barred from use in Domestic law enforcement/court proceedings.
So the Government can subpoena the records from the commercial carrier, but that will take time, allowing Mueller more time for mischief. Also, the commercial carrier might only have metadata, not content.
DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE IS A CRIME.....................
“It wouldnt be a court which would dismiss the special counsel.”
It would be the guy who appointed the Special Counsel - Rod Rosenstein. If he gets fired over the new four page memo, his replacement can make Mueller dance like an organ grinder’s monkey, or dismiss him on day one.
The emails are either retained and preserved or they are not.
If they are not, that is a violation of federal law.
Bttt.
5.56mm
Devin Nunes should call in sick with a cold today, then release all the evidence he can on Tuesday.
Turnabout is fair play
These five months worth of emails between key players in this "let's get Trump" scheme, have not been lost.
There is a server somewhere that has them on it.
Now for sure there is someone "obstructing justice" and it ain't our man Trump.
I've worked in industry and for both federal and state institutions and you don't just "lose" this stuff, and it isn't just "backups". There are very strict legal requirements for retention that are codified by institutional Counsel, and you don't treat them as suggestions or recommendations. There is an infuriating tendency for the ignorant - I'm talking about you, Hillary - to dismiss this sort of thing as a "glitch" and pretend that it doesn't matter, that it happens all the time. Five months of data? Nobody did any QA on software "upgrades" for five months? Nobody tested records retention for five months?
Sorry, not buying it. This isn't some Mom and Pop auto parts store, this is the FBI. Whether these text messages were processed entirely internally is unknown, but generally a cell phone carrier is involved, who has its own set of records retention policies. Whether the NSA collects this is also unknown, which is one difference between this and Hillary's email scandal. But it's very obviously official business, and if it's being conducted on private personal cell phones or on private personal servers, it's not legal.
p
Quite True !
The "lost information" should be provided at 'Discovery'.
It was just such an issue, among others, that resulted in dismissal of Federal charges against the Bundy family.
Since the texts are 'lost', the FBI would have had time to 'find' them.
Could this be one of the false flag incidents that 'Q' spoke of a few days ago ?
lol. You think the NSA isn't the deepest part of the deep state?
Or, do you think they really care about terrorism?
Unless your name is Hillary Clinton
Depends on who's in charge of the NSA. If it's a deep state Obama holdover, they'll likely lose their copies too.
They all have standard retention periods of at least two years for such items. In some cases they hold them longer.
All it takes is a court order to retrieve them.
Logs of all phone calls are also retained by the phone companies for varying periods of time. There are supposedly records preserved of long-distance calls that date back to the early 1960's or late 1950's.
Most likely the NSA already has a complete collection (illegally) of the "missing" text messages.
Woods demonstrates the "Rose Mary Stretch", which purportedly led to the erasure of 18-plus minutes of the Watergate tapes.
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