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Trump Russia Tag

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on December 13, 2017 10 Comments
In an infamous one-liner aimed at then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney (R-MA), then-candidate Obama and incumbent president (D) said, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back . . . the Cold War is over.”  This was after Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bungled the "Russian reset" by skewering the translation on her symbolic "reset" button.  This was also before Obama promised, in an equally-infamous hot mic moment,  "flexibility" with Russia after the 2012 election.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 05, 2017 72 Comments
On May 17, 2017, Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel, after the firing of FBI Director James Comey amid accusations by Comey, leaked to the NY Times, that Comey had resisted Trump's desire to "let go" of the investigation of Michael Flynn:
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 05, 2017 32 Comments
Judicial Watch released emails from the Department of Justice today and some of them showed support for former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates when she refused to support President Donald Trump's travel restrictions from some Middle East countries. It sounds like no big deal, right? Well, it turns out one of the supporters is Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Deputy Andrew Weissman. He is one of the top prosecutors in Mueller's investigation into possible collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia.

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 05, 2017 11 Comments
A new report has shown that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe has cost taxpayers almost $7 million from May 17 to September 30, which is when the federal fiscal year ended. This news comes after outlets reported that Mueller sent a subpoena to Deutsche Bank earlier this fall for documents about President Donald Trump's accounts and dealings.

Posted by Mike LaChance on December 05, 2017 16 Comments
ABC News suspended Brian Ross for his incorrect report last Friday about former Trump adviser Michael Flynn. Ross is currently enjoying a four week long suspension without pay. Now the network has decided he won't cover stories related to President Donald Trump.

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 04, 2017 34 Comments
This past summer, Special Counsel Robert Mueller removed an FBI agent from his investigation into possible collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump's campaign due to anti-Trump messages he sent. The news was only made public over the weekend. This agent, Peter Strzok, is also the man who changed former FBI Head James Comey's description of Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information on her private server when she served as secretary of state. Strzok also served as the No. 2 official in the counterintelligence division and led the investigation into her server.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 03, 2017 62 Comments
Michael Flynn pleaded guilty last week to lying to FBI investigators regarding conversations Flynn had with the Russian Ambassador in late December 2016, barely three weeks before the Trump administration was sworn into office. Such transitions contact with foreigners are routine, and took place during prior administrations, including the Obama administration. That makes perfect sense, since an incoming administration needs to hit the ground running with its foreign policy. Certainly there would have been howls of outrage from the media and Democrats had the incoming Trump administration waited until after the inauguration to make contact with our primary geo-political foes; it would have been portrayed as a sign of incompetence and amateurishness. There was nothing illegal about Flynn speaking with the Russian ambassador and others. But he ran afoul of the law when he lied about it to the FBI.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 02, 2017 51 Comments
Do not trust anti-Trump mainstream media reports based on anonymous sources. That's something we have learned time and again as the motive and pressure to generate headlines on supposed Russia campaign collusion is enormous. It's not just a matter of bad faith, although there's plenty of that. It's competition, and the desire to break news that will dominate news cycles.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 01, 2017 54 Comments
Today was another spectacular speculative day on Twitter and in the media due to Michael Flynn's guilty plea to one count of lying to the FBI regarding Flynn's communications with the Russian Ambassador in late December 2016. A somewhat moribund Russia-collusion conspiracy community sprang back to life instantaneously.The treason-choir found its voice again. Pundits speculated endlessly about what it all means -- in a distinctly binary manner: Trump is a gonner, or it's a big nothing burger.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 01, 2017 59 Comments
As predicted, Robert Mueller's investigation was more likely to find process crimes, such as making false statements to federal investigators, or crimes unrelated to alleged Russia collusion, than crimes related to actual collusion. Mueller just charged Michael Flynn with lying to the FBI during a January 2017 interview (which predated Mueller) about conversations with the Russian ambassador in late December 2016, during the transition. Media reports are blurring this timeline, implying it was during the campaign.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 14, 2017 16 Comments
Monday, Donald Trump Jr. published a series of tweets which included screen shots of Twitter private messages between himself and Wikileaks. According to a report in The Atlantic, the messages, along with thousands of documents were turned over by Trump Jr.'s lawyers to the congressional committee investigating Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 14, 2017 30 Comments
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is currently facing the House Judiciary Committee over the DOJ's decision to review the Uranium One deal and the Clinton Foundation. Of course, the subject has strayed and others have asked about special counsel on FBI's handling of failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's email investigation. One of the biggest revelations so far is that Sessions now remembers a meeting he had with an advisor on President Donald Trump's campaign about Russian contacts. Sessions previously testified "he knew of no such contacts with the campaign."

Posted by Mary Chastain on November 08, 2017 8 Comments
A judge has issued a gag order in the case of former President Donald Trump chairman Paul Manafort and his protege Rick Gates. From Politico:
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson's directive Wednesday doesn't ban such statements outright, but prohibits any remarks that "pose a substantial likelihood of material prejudice to this case."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 07, 2017 23 Comments
Remember the meeting Donald Trump, Jr. had with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya? The meeting that Veselnitskaya arranged on the promise of dirt on Hillary Clinton, but which appears to have been just a means of lobbying Trump on the Magnitsky Act. The leak about the meeting set off several news cycles of speculation. It turned out she had a connection to the firm, Fusion GPS, doing oppo research for the Clinton campaign. That put the meeting in an odd light, but it wasn't clear whether this was a Fusion GPS operation. When I covered it on July 13, 2017, I cautioned:

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on November 05, 2017 25 Comments
Earlier this week, Professor Jacobson noted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation is focused on process crimes and other things unrelated to the purpose of the Trump campaign-Russia collusion investigation. He wrote:
So I’ve had to watch several news cycles without being able to jump in. One of those cycles was the indictment of Paul Manafort and the guilty plea disclosure for George Papadopoulos. Certainly this is not the end of the Mueller investigation story, but so far, it’s proceeding as predicted: Rounding up the usual suspects close to Trump and process crimes.
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