I think all my friends are guilty.
Isn’t it a crime to interfere with that whether or not a crime is found to have been committed? - That is Obstruction Of Justice.
Didn’t I still commit a crime by lying to the FBI - Yes you did, because you did it knowingly and deliberately, to interfere with the investigation, to obstruct justice.
If it was under oath, you now have perjury too.
It very well might be.
Let’s say the FBI comes to question you ( I’m not really clear who “you” is in this scenario, :rolleyes:but whatever) - and I’m in your bedroom because we are having a clandestine affair. So you lie,- because you’re afraid if you tell the truth your wife will find out.
So you say you haven’t seen me. So the FBI gets some helicopters or dogs and launches a full out search. Maybe they search my ex- husbands home and trash his house. Maybe they arrest him, because they believed you and they think my ex was lying about you and me.
So when I come waltzing home unharmed, yes, you might possibly be in some trouble. Because they wasted a lot of time and resources. And yes, you might be arrested. And you might have some civil liability, too - if my ex starts filing lawsuits.
ETA : I just realized your last sentence began with “didn’t “, not “did”. So the phrasing and tone of my response may seem off. But the point still stands
Hey look, Mueller just charged some guy for this exact thing.
If you read the actual information itself, it’s fairly apparent that when the FBI interviewed this Van Der Zwaan character, they already knew perfectly well when he’d spoken to Rick Gates and already had a copy of the e-mails that Van Der Zwaan denied having. So this presented no actual obstacle to the investigation itself, it was just a chance for him to pick up a felony charge for lying about it.
So does that put the current count at 18 people indicted with 2 (soon potentially to be 3) guilty pleas entered?
19 people, don’t forget Richard Pinedo, who sort of got overshadowed by the 12 Russians. Alex Van Der Zwaan is expected to plead guilty this afternoon, and Rick Gates is reported to have made a deal, so that would be 2 more pleas if so.
But I think it’s established that, even if NONE of this happened, I still committed a crime.
In the case of the Mueller probe, there are now people indicted for committing actual crimes against actual Americans. If (when) more people are charged, the fact that these initial 13 indictments are out there… I’m sure it helps prosecutors a lot in terms of public perception of the case. It helps politically, is what I’m saying.
But strictly speaking, they’re not necessary for the case against anybody else, am I right? The FBI was doing its job, trying to find out whether any crimes were committed, when the thing in the oval office asked the director to “let it go.” When the director didn’t comply, he fired him. And he brazenly told the world it was because of “the Russia thing.” There’s your obstruction, right there.
The 13 indictments support the obstruction charges, obviously. Maybe there’d be no chance of getting them to stick if without them. Obstructing an investigation that uncovered actual crimes is much worse than obstructing a fruitless investigation.
There is a Wiki page to help keep up with the investigation Richard Pinedo isn’t in it. Yet. Zwaan is though.
You’ll need a few hours to start, and it looks like a few hours a day.
Just another day with trump as president.
Goldwater was a different cat even by the standards of his era.
They should have taken him more seriously when he spoke out against the religious right, whom he loathed, and predicted would do enormous harm.
[quote=“cuauhtemoc, post:2668, topic:800093”]
…The FBI was doing its job, trying to find out whether any crimes were committed, when the thing in the oval office asked the director to “let it go.” When the director didn’t comply, he fired him. And he brazenly told the world it was because of “the Russia thing.” There’s your obstruction, right there.
The 13 indictments support the obstruction charges, obviously. …QUOTE]
Yes yes yes.
Alex Van Der Zwaan “is the son-in-law of Russian billionaire German Khan, who is one of the most prominent businessmen in Russia. Khan co-founded Alfa Group, a large financial conglomerate, and was recently named in the Treasury Department’s list of Russian oligarchs”
Alfa group. Where do I remember that name? Oh yeah, the secret server communicating between Russian banks and Trump Tower.
Weird coincidence.
I’m seeing headlines but no stories yet that van der Zwaag [del]is going to agree to plead guilty[/del] has already entered a guilty plea.
Wow! Is this being discussed elsewhere in the media? It seems like a pretty significant connection.
The 2016 article from Slate where the communications between the Trump organization and Alfa Bank were first reported is well worth reading (Was a server registered to the Trump Organization communicating with Russia’s Alfa Bank?). It’s a bit long, but very readable and compelling.
I’m a computer security guy, though the intricacies of DNS traffic are a bit outside my area of expertise. It does sound like the Trump organization and Alfa Bank were exchanging a lot of email in 2016, then abruptly stopped when the communication became publicly known.
Some quotes from the Slate article:
Hmmm. Bankers who are influential and in Putin’s orbit, and who can operate easily inside the US. The son-in-law of one of them is pulled into the Mueller investigation and lies about his contacts with a mysterious “Person A”. The guy is a lawyer and must know that he can’t get away with lying to Mueller. This is probably not the last we’ll hear of this guy.
We’ll probably hear more about him but he did think that he could get away with it, or he wouldn’t have been in court today pleading to a felony charge. You would think a lawyer would know better than to ever voluntarily talk to Mueller’s people.
I can’t help but be really impressed with a guy who would throw away a law license and a career at one of the world’s most prestigious law firms just to be a third-tier schmuck in an organization of schmucks.
Yeah. German Khan is mentioned on page 25 of the Dossier by the by -
Also, consider this -
van der Svann (great name!) is in trouble because, a while back, Yulia Timoschenko led a revolution in Ukraine to throw off their ties to Moscow. She was named Prime Minister until 2010, when she ran for President against Victor Yanukovich, who was pro-Russian and a client of Paul Manafort. Yanukovich won.
A year later, she was arrested and tried for abuse of office. This was widely regarded as a political move. The Ukrainian government hired Skadden Arps(van der Svann’s law firm) to write a reported declaring that the arrest was not political. van der Svann (the son of a Russian Oligarch and head of Alfa bank, remember) was one of a group responsible for authoring the report.
In other news, Paul Manafort’s daughter went to work for Skadden Arps in 2012. Just FYI.
February 2014 - Yanukovich is run out of Ukraine. Putin invades Ukraine, reinstalls Yanukovich and annexes Crimea. Fighting continues.
A bunch of backstory I don’t feel like deleting:
[spoiler]
In March 29, 2016, Paul Manafort joins the Trump campaign. The Russian trollnet starts buying pro-Donald ads and other pro-Donald actions.
April 2016 - regular meetings between Republican Trump supporters and various Russians. Pappadopoulus is running around showing off his Trump credentials.
April 26 - Papadopoulus is told that the Russians have Hillary’s emails
April 29th - suspicious activity found on DNC servers, later connected to Russian Hackers
May 6 - first recorded activity between Alfa Bank and the server at Trump tower.
May 19 - Manafort named Trump’s campaign chair
Jun 3 - Don Jr is told about meeting to hand over Russian dirt on Hillary; replies Love it!
June 9 - the Big Meeting
June 10 - Alfa Bank - Trump server activity increases dramatically
July 14 - Trump campaign lobbies the RNC to change their platform to be more supportive of ongoing Russian efforts to attack Ukraine
July 31 - Trump & Manafort separately deny having anything to do with platform change. Manafort also denies that Putin annexed Crimea (LOL).
Aug 14 - Manafort is exposed by the NYT as appearing in a ledger which claims that he recieved millions of dollars from the Yanukovich, uh, party, I guess I’d say
Aug 19 - Manafort resigns from the Trump Campaign (And sets up a shell company to handle money from assorted Russian parties. But that’s a different post.) [/spoiler]
August 2016 - Rick Gates, Manafort’s business partner, goes to work for hte RNC, and eventually, for the Trump transition team.
September 2016 - Gates and someone listed as Person A in the van der Swann indictment call van der Swann with questions about that Yukrainian report. Gates recorded the call.
This is where van der Swann screws up. Fast forward and Rick Gates is arrested and trying to make a deal with Mueller. He tells Mueller about this conversation in re the report on Timoshcenko’s arrest. Mueller asks van der Swann about it. He claims that he didn’t talk to Gates or Person A at the time of the recording. van der Swann also tried to hide an email exchange.
All of this to say - yup, total hoax. All a coincidence.
I don’t know if this is part of the same weird coincidence or a separate weird coincidence, but German Khan is also suing Buzzfeed for libel for publishing Steele’s dossier.
When your father-in-law is a billionaire, you got options.
While married to the daughter of a billionaire. He sold out but was dreaming big.
Tool.
ETA: ninja’d!!