The 302 reports

BuzzFeed filed and won a lawsuit to get the DOJ to release some Mueller documents. The first installment has been received.

The documents revealed Saturday, known as “302 reports,” are summaries of interviews with former White House official and Trump campaign manager Stephen Bannon, Cohen, Gates, and more. They are some of the most important and highly sought-after documents from Mueller’s investigation. They reveal what key players in the campaign told FBI agents about Russia, Trump, the email hack during the 2016 presidential campaign, and Trump's associates’ handling of the special counsel’s investigation.

Mueller’s 448-page report last March [...] reflected only a small fraction of the billions of primary-source documents that the government claims Mueller’s team may have amassed over the course of its two-year investigation.

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After years of speculation and accusation, these documents offer a chance for everyone to view a key function of American democracy. That opportunity — hard-won, but enshrined anew with each additional FOIA release — commences today. It will last long after all the players have departed.

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In an April 2018 interview with the special counsel’s office, Rick Gates, who had served as deputy Trump campaign chair and had long been Paul Manafort’s right hand, told investigators that after the campaign learned the DNC had been hacked, Manafort pushed the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had orchestrated the attack. It’s a conspiracy theory that’s persisted in right-wing circles, even after the US Intelligence Community concluded Russia was involved, and one that Trump brought up in his July 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

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The documents reveal how [Michael] Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer who spent years in his inner circle, worked through how to talk about issues related to Trump and Russia.

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Cohen also "learned the message to have the Russia investigations end early from discussions with TRUMP, SEKULOW" and a third person whose name is redacted.

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[Rick] Gates, who served as Trump’s deputy campaign chair, told Mueller’s team in late 2018 that the release of the hacked [DNC] emails “offered a mode of deflection for the campaign after a sink in polling numbers following Trump's comments about Ted Cruz's father at the end of the Republican National Convention.”

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in June 2016 that the group had an upcoming email leak related to Hillary Clinton. After that, Manafort instructed Gates to “periodically call” someone whose name is redacted from the documents “to check in on where the information was and when it would be coming,” Gates told the FBI.

  BuzzFeed

I believe that's Roger Stone, who is going on trial in two days, November 5, in DC federal court for lying to Congress about his interactions with Wikileaks, obstruction of justice and witness-tampering. Should be a good time. And these newly released documents could come in handy for the prosecution.

Bannon told FBI investigators that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were on vacation in Croatia with a “Russian billionaire” in August 2016 — appearing to confirm a long-suspected and long-denied connection between Trump world and a Russian oligarch.

Messages between Bannon and an unnamed individual with a Breitbart domain email address — exchanged in July 2017, one month before Bannon was fired from his position as White House chief strategist — revealed that they were hoping to leverage this information against Kushner. Bannon cofounded the far-right Breitbart and rejoined it in August 2017.

So I wonder who squealed to Trump/Kushner.

In a Feb. 14, 2018, interview with the special counsel’s office, Bannon said that Kushner had been on vacation with a Russian oligarch when he took over the Trump campaign in August 2016.

In the documents released Saturday, Bannon told investigators that Kushner had been in Croatia with the unnamed Russian billionaire, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife Wendi Deng, and the Russian’s girlfriend, whom Bannon said his sources in the intelligence community found to be “questionable.”

Kushner and his family’s Croatian vacation in August 2016 was widely covered in the media.

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Bannon appeared to indicate that the information, if reported and confirmed, could be valuable against Kushner, his rival for power in the Trump administration.

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The same day as these emails, Bannon exchanged messages with someone at Breitbart about a Guardian story reporting that Kushner secured a real estate deal with another Soviet-born oligarch.

“Don’t touch yet,” Bannon said.

“k this is big though isn’t it? It’s the ball game…” the Breitbart person responded.

“All and everything,” Bannon replied.

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Gates said Trump's "Russia if you're listening" line was an "ad lib."

He's actually very good at stepping on his own dick by ad libbing.

"Bannon first met Trump in August of 2010. Their first meeting was approximately 2 hours long. David Bossie was present and said that Trump was thinking of running for president in 2012. Bannon said 'for what country?'"

Good one.

Back to Roger Stone:

Stone’s trial could yield evidence (beyond his emails with Bannon) indicating whether Stone was talking to Trump or anyone else in the campaign about WikiLeaks—and whether he was viewed within Trump’s inner circle as a conduit to Assange. If Trump and the campaign in any way had tried to reach out to WikiLeaks through Stone while WikiLeaks was facilitating a Russian assault on an American election, that would be a big deal.

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The Stone trial could also produce material that challenges what Trump told the special counsel. The president refused to be interviewed by Mueller, but Trump agreed to answer a set of written questions—as long as the queries only covered what happened during the campaign, not any activity that occurred after he became president (meaning actions related to the allegations that Trump obstructed justice).

  Mother Jones

How many criminal defendants would like to have the right to tell the prosecution what questions they could ask? I think he should have been given the interrogatories and forced to take the fifth where he didn't want to answer. As it was, he used the Reagan defense in some answers: I do not recall. Which is as good as an admission in my book. Maybe not legally, but logically. If the answer is no, you say no.

Unless there’s a character in the story who has yet to be revealed, it seems probable that Stone was the guy trying to gather information from WikiLeaks for the Trump campaign—and that Trump knew about this.

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[A]ny material presented in the courtroom that fills in the redactions would go far toward resolving all this. The evidence could also reveal whether Trump lied to the special counsel—which would be obstruction of justice and a crime.

Not if he never said anything other than he didn't recall.

This trial of a conniving Trump confidante who specializes in the political dark arts will be a reminder of the original scandal of the Trump administration that has tainted and undermined his presidency, and it could add another big lie—and a possible crime—to Trump’s long record of wrongdoing.

Prepare for Trump to make what he's already done seem pale in comparison.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: