That’ll earn you a warning. You should know you can’t accuse other posters of lying.
There are definitely things in the plea agreement that show the portrayal is incorrect.
I hedged a bit in writing “pretty uniformly”. All that stuff looks like early stage non-committals to me (and the 8/15 response seems to be oral rather than an email), and when stacked against the overall tenor and the fact that none of these trips actually happened suggests overall resistance to his attempts.
No, I meant that they would be arguing on the basis of the chaos of the Yeltsin years, which they would be blaming on the influx of Western advisers, the rush to privatisation/marketisation, before Putin came along. Not that I would agree with them, of course, but BS or not, it’s not difficult to see how they would spin it to try to make the likes of Soros and assorted campaign advisers’ activities the moral equivalent of whatever they’ve been up to. I wouldn’t put it past them to drag in the Western effort to persuade the Italians not to vote Communist in 1947 and argue it was hypocrisy to say they’re doing anything different.
I agree with your assessment of the Washington Post article. It seemed like he was acting on his own, sending a few emails and being ignored.
In the case of the FBI testimony, the picture is a bit more clear. GP is in London and has a given task to form ties with Russia. Everyone else is on the other side of the Atlantic and harried with the campaign. Overall, a little less “coffee boy” and a little bit more “out of sight, out of mind”. It’s also less, “He’s just trying to make himself look good”, and more, “He’s doing what we have asked, we’re happy with what’s going on, but we’re unable to pay attention.”
All of which is largely immaterial to anything anyone has said though. While your takeaways are not far off from wrong, they’re about a detail that no one cares about - for basically the reason that you’ve stated.
The information that has been revealed, that is of interest, is that:
- The Trump campaign was made aware of Russian crimes, and was lead to believe that the crimes had given Russia access to materials that would be damaging to their opponent.
- The Trump campaign did meet with the Russians, in the hope that they would provide materials that would be damaging to their opponent, knowing that those materials would probably be the product of cybercrimes.
- Papadopoulis was given a wire to wear.
And on that 3rd point, it’s probably also worth wondering who fed the Washington Post the information about the GP emails back in August, and for what purpose. That seems like a great thing for a prosecutor to do, hoping to create a situation where GP will be called in talk to the people in Trump’s inner circle about Russia, while wearing a wire.
I’ll also note that if you reply to this with a reassertion that nothing changed between time A and time B, because everyone on the campaign was ignoring him, that yes, we’re both clear on that point. Either address items 1-3 or move on.
Depends on who GP shared it with, but possible.
I don’t know about that. The DTJ meeting was supposedly to get evidence of (illegal?) Russian funding to Clinton. It’s not necessarily the case the source of this was emails, hacked or otherwise.
AFAIK that’s (reasonable-seeming) speculation, at this point. But I don’t know in what context you’re saying this is significant. OK, so he wore a wire. Did he get anything incriminating on the wire? We don’t know. And until we do, then that doesn’t say anything one way or the other, tantalizing though it may be.
(post shortened)
Who has confirmed that Papadopoulis was actually wearing a wire? I’ve heard people speculating that Papadopoulis was/could have been/must have been wearing a wire, but has anyone actually involved in the investigation verified that Papadopoulis was wired?
If you were Mueller and you had someone like him agree to cooperate, and that cooperation was, until now, a secret, wouldn’t you have him wear a wire? Why would he not? What other forms of secret cooperation are there? If it was just telling him information why keep it a secret?
A few of the sources making the speculation make it sound like there’s little doubt, based on the wording of the document. Conceivably, it’s not something that Mueller did, but he certainly had the option to do so.
This is a valid point – AFAIK, there is no actual confirmation that Papadapoulos ever wore a wire. I’ve seen widespread speculation that his “cooperation agreement” likely involved wearing a wire, and that anyone who had a conversation with Papadapoulos after a certain date (i.e. when he struck the agreement with Mueller) should now be operating under the assumption that the conversation was recorded. However, I don’t believe that we’ve seen any confirmation of this – nor are we likely to until all the dust settles, which may be years down the road.
I wonder if Popodopolus will end up in the witness protection program.
I don’t know, but I reckon it’s going to take us the entirety of this investigation to agree on how to spell ‘P-A-P-A-D-O-P-O-U-L-O-S.’
So he’ll jump a the chance to become “Bob Smith, Head Accountant, Smith Industrial Implements, Inc. Gladtameetcha!”
Mueller has filed a second document related to Manafort that is quite interesting:
Here’s a couple of articles that pull out and explain some interesting points:
Basically, he’s a legitimate supercriminal/spy and, counter to that, Mueller is breaking out all the stops to track down everything he can on the sleazebag.
Go Mueller!
One immediate benefit may be that Sam Clovis, who has no scientific credentials, will not become the USDA’s top scientist. Following his pattern of nominating the worst possible people to important administrative posts, Trump nominated Clovis for that position, and he was supposed to have a Senate confirmation hearing next week. But now Clovis has been outed as the senior Trump advisor who gave Papadopoulos encouragement to pursue contacts with Russians, and it was revealed today that he has already testified before Mueller’s grand jury. There is speculation that he may have been turned.
As Lawrence O’Donnell put it this evening, Trump may not know it yet, but he will withdraw his nomination to prevent Clovis from being publicly grilled by Democratic senators next week.
Papadop.
No doubt!! 
That does seem particularly appropriate.
So… here’s another hmmmmm…
I didn’t catch this on Monday (though I’m sure some of our lawyers did), and maybe someone has referred to it elsewhere in the forum. But did anyone notice that the Manafort/Gates indictment was called, ‘Indictment B?’
I wonder who is named in sealed ‘Indictment A?’
My best guess is Flynn.
I noticed that and have been somewhat confused by my inability to figure out what it means. (I have seen a lot of information that is plainly wrong). Since I don’t know, I will observe that the “(B)” was a designation added by the Clerk’s office (along with the case number and assigned judge). Which suggests to me that it’s an internal recordkeeping notation (and not evidence of another indictment), but if that’s true, then I assume I would be able to find that procedure. But I can’t.
I’ve seen it argued that it’s probably a superseding indictment (to correct/add information) but, in my experience, those are titled “Superseding Indictment” for that reason.
A google search reveals a handful of indictments (from D.D.C.) with the “Indictment (B)” notation on that, but I can’t determine looking at them whether or not there is reason to believe that those cases have an indictment (A). A google search revealed (to me) no documents marked “Indictment (A)” or “Indictment (C)”.
In my experience two indictments that are related are marked “related” (i.e., it would case “case related to 1:17-cr-123”). I’ve never handled anything criminal in D.D.C., but I’ve never seen this “Indictment A” or “Indictment B” thing. Have others had a different experience?
I was a judge’s assistant/paralegal for many years. Procedure is what I know best, and that’s why I’m a bit ashamed I didn’t notice the ‘B’ designation right away. I can tell you that how items are numbered/marked in any given Clerk’s Office will vary widely. One thing is fairly consistent, however: Things are almost always marked sequentially.
Clerks often accommodate attorneys to the greatest extent they can, so if there is no good reason to deny an attorney’s request to number things in a way they (the attorney) finds helpful, the clerks will do it.
Also worth noting, the more complex the case, the more open judges and clerks are to labeling things in unique ways to help keep it all straight. Example: When doing routine criminal cases in my little jurisdiction, by our custom and practice I always used numbers for the People’s exhibits and letters for the Defendant’s exhibits. However, if the case was to be lengthy and/or complex with lots of exhibits on both sides, I would assign blocks of numbers, like People’s 1-4000 and Defendant’s 5001-9000. Same if there were multiple defendants. If a group of exhibits was meant to be used together, I would sub them with letter designations, such as 357A, 357B, 357C and so on.
Your idea about a superseding indictment is a good one and equally plausible to the idea that several indictments were filed simultaneously for different people. But I agree it is curious that the document was not entitled, ‘Superseding Indictment’ if that was the circumstance.
Just an interesting observation about the ‘B’… we’ll have to wait to find out if it means anything.
I will say I believe Mueller has more than one sealed indictment already in the bag.
So it sounds like you guys just pull it out of your ass?