Posted on 12/14/2018 7:48:12 PM PST by Moseley
More questions were raised than answered Friday in the Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigation. Most reporting has it wrong.
Judge Emmett Sullivan had ordered Mueller to file FBI interview notes in the prosecution of Michael Flynn. Sullivan is scheduled to decide on a sentence for Flynn’s guilty plea on December 18 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Mueller’s office filed a “Government’s Reply To Defendant’s Memorandum In Aid Of Sentencing” on December 14, 2018. That covering transmittal is pure rhetoric.
As a criminal defense attorney, let me explain that those statements by Mueller attorneys Brandon Van Grack and Zainab Ahmad are spin, essentially a closing argument. These are only the prosecutors’ opinions. Yet Trump critics like Fox News’ Shepard Smith were reading that document on air as if it were evidence.
What really counts is two documents that Sullivan ordered the FBI to cough up. Exhibit A and Exhibit B raise serious questions. Both are heavily redacted, but the context of the blacked-out sections suggests that there is “no there there.”
(Excerpt) Read more at bigleaguepolitics.com ...
As an attorney, I believe that nothing in Exhibit A would allow Judge Sullivan to sustain a criminal conviction of Flynn under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 for lying to the FBI coup-plotters. We don’t know what is blacked out, but the context around those redactions leave it improbable that any lie by Flynn is recorded in those interview notes.
Exhibit B is a formal FBI Form FD-302 from August 22, 2017, of an interview with Peter Strzok This is not a Form 302 of an interview with Michael Flynn. This is an interview taken of Peter Strzok. The August 22, 2017, FD-302 starts out “(U/FOUO) FBI Deputy Assistant Director (DAD) Peter P. Strzok was interviewed in his office in the Special Counsel’s office in Washington D.C.”
Inside of Exhibit B, the August 22, 2017, Form 302 states that Peter Strzok wrote a different Form 302 earlier about the January 24, 2017, interview with Flynn.
I'd throw out all FIB cases based on their 302s ilo actual transcripts of taped interviews.
It's an ethical nightmare to continue this nonobjective internal reporting.
I'd suggest that these daze the FIB are operating in a totally UnConstitutional manner.
Muller’s self serving addition to the memorandum really pissed me off. Condescending SOB.
Also please watch this video: “Never talk to the PoPos, and Why.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
It’s pretty compelling.
We need to get rid of the idea of 302’s as standalone evidence. If it’s not recorded, then it should be treated as hearsay.
Just watched the discussion on this on Laura Ingraham with Dershowitz and Greg Jarrett. It was real good.
You are assuming DemocRats are ethical.
Also please watch this video: “Never talk to the PoPos, and Why.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
It’s pretty compelling.
“We need to get rid of the idea of 302’s as standalone evidence. If it’s not recorded, then it should be treated as hearsay.”
Agree. Especially 302s that are NOT CONTEMPORANEOUS.
https://etwof.com/images/public-servant-questionnaire.pdf
If you are ever questioned by the FBI, have a recording device and announce you are recording for your own purposes. They will shut the questioning down immediately.
Now have iPhones (actually WiPhones as they are hand-me-downs that no longer are officially hooked up to the 4G phone networks) that record video and audio just fine.
Excellent.
I have been day-dreaming about answering as follows:
“I only going to say three things: Everything I say is a lie. I am lying to you right now. That’s all I am going to say. Sorry”
Good point.
Now have iPhones (actually WiPhones as they are hand-me-downs that no longer are officially hooked up to the 4G phone networks, but do work over the home and mobile hotspot networks) that record video and audio just fine.
There is not going to be much to record as I will immediately clam up.
He used fraudulent documents to get a FISA court subpoena.
He never went back and notified the court it was fraudulent.
If he couldn’t figure that out, just how qualified, and just how moral a man is he?
This guy is corrupt.
He couldn’t get trump, so he’s going to take everyone down he can with process violations.
Only one of these crimes took place before his investigation. ONE!
Every other crime was a process crime, after they got entangled with him. And he can’t prove they did anything else wrong.
The man is a nightmare of an investigator. He’s just a corrupt individual.
Good article.
Really hope the judges dismisses the case. What a Christmas present that would be. Especially to the Flynns.
And a real kick in the nuts to Mueller.
Just listening to the Tucker rerun on this.
If Flynn’s lie was not remembering everything, then Comey just lied to Congress over 200 times by not remembering during his testimony.
Just listening to the Tucker rerun on this.
If Flynn’s lie was not remembering everything, then Comey just lied to Congress over 200 times by not remembering during his testimony.
Prof. Jonathan Turley (GWU), now a more legally conservative commentator than before, said what I knew from years ago in reading 302’s, namely that they were supposed to be written Contemporaneously to the interview date, not much later.
If I recall correctly, it had to be written no later that 24-36 hours after the interview in order to keep the “memory” fresh for the agent to flush out his notes.
Remember, Det. Mark Furman in the OJ case, kept a vile of blood evidence in his car trunk overnight, thus not only possibly letting it spoil, but also breaking the continuing Chain of Custody protocol on getting evidence speedily into the proper custodial hands and logged in a case evidence book.
Now, as this FR lawyers states, the second 302 was NOT a write-up of the original Jan. 24 interview per a 302 format, but a recollection by Strzok in Aug, 2017 that was made to seem like a second 302.
While the difference may seem minor to some, it makes all the difference in the world to Flynn because if the Jan 302 said that the agents didn’t feel that Flynn had been lying to them, and the Aug. 24th one did, then Captain Obvious says Strzok was tampering with the interview report for political reasons. Otherwise he would have had not justifiable reason to rewrite, even verbally, the original 302.
Strzok is corrupt. Need to hear what the other agent said/heard or even wrote on Jan. 24th and whether he was interviewed on Aug. 22nd like Strzok was. Make him an offer he can’t refuse - telling the whole truth or jail time, loss of job, loss of pension, banned forever from any kind of govt service.
Time to take names and heads, not necessarily in that order.
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