The whistleblower issue

I originally remembered my complaint about the way people talk about whistleblowers as one that belonged to Renato Mariotti, and Asha Rangappa. But, I listened again, and it  belongs to Preet Bharara and  Susan Hennesey.

It squeezed my corpuscles when Hennessey, defending the unknown whistleblower on the current Trump-Ukraine presidential abuse/criminal conduct issue by contrasting him or her with Edward Snowden.  Hennessey (at the 50 minute mark) claimed this whistleblower went properly through channels and didn't fly off to Russia (and Bharara made a kind of agreeing snort), completely ignoring the fact that Edward Snowden also went through channels and didn't get anywhere, so he leaked the information to the press.  That's pretty much exactly what happened with this whistleblower, only for some reason, now that's okay and even heroic.

Aggravates me every time I hear some Democrat or anti-Trumper say things like that.

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

Interesting interview with presidential candidate Julián Castro

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

The Mueller report: analysis by Preet Bharara and Anne Milgram

This is a good first look at the report.  Their conclusion (in rougher terms than they put it): Mueller intended to leave Congress and future prosecutors a clear accounting, Barr is a liar, and Trump is guilty as sin of obstruction.

Prison reform

Even harder than the underlying question of justice, I think perhaps the most difficult question for society is penal policy.  Compounding the difficulty is the importance of the issue.  In today's Stay Tuned podcast, former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara talks with prison reform advocate/Rikers Island monitor/Texas death row officer Steve Martin.  It helped me to think about these things.

Maybe you want to have a listen.

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

Preet & Jeffrey Toobin

Preet Bharara has a podcast that I find always interesting because of the guests and topics he chooses.  This one, I think, is especially interesting and entertaining at the same time:  Live from Town Hall (with Jeffrey Toobin).



Check it out.

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

Preet Bharara on the Rosenstein cyclone

That has no bearing on whether Rosenstein did what he's being accused of doing.  You need to go further and remind everyone that the whole Trump cabal lies as they breathe and will pull out all the stops to end this investigation, because it ensnares them, too.

We also know that Rosenstein "was used" to cover Trump's firing of Comey, which doesn't give me a lot of confidence in Rosenstein.

UPDATE

There's still the Southern District of New York

Donald Trump’s firing of the U.S. attorney for Manhattan [Preet Bharara] once rattled the president’s critics, who predicted the end of the office’s famously fierce independence.

What a difference a year makes.

On Tuesday, officials at the New York outpost squeezed guilty pleas out of Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen. While admitting to crimes including campaign finance violations, Cohen said some of his actions had been directed by Trump. At a press conference minutes later, Deputy U.S. Attorney Robert Khuzami announced, “We are here, prosecutors are here, law enforcement is here, the Department of Justice is here.”

[...]

“We are a nation of laws and the essence of this case is justice, and that is an equal playing field for all persons in the eyes of the law,” Khuzami said. “And that is the lesson that Mr. Cohen learned today, and it is a very harsh one for him.”

[...]

“There’s a culture there that’s been there for a long time, and it persists through political winds. It’s strong,” said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Duke University School of Law.

When Trump put forth Geoffrey Berman to succeed Bharara, Democratic lawmakers derided the president’s decision to meet with Berman before the nomination.

[...]

Berman’s appointment also raised questions for other reasons. He was a partner at Greenberg Traurig LLP, a law firm where his colleagues included Rudolph Giuliani.

[...]

Beyond that, one of Berman’s primary clients at the law firm was Deutsche Bank AG, the embattled German company that loaned some $300 million to Trump from 2012 to 2015.

  Bloomberg

There was plenty of reason to worry. But, so far, it looks like the SDNY attorneys are still willing to take on whatever comes their way.

Two weeks ago, the Manhattan office brought insider-trading charges against a Republican congressman who was among Trump’s earliest and staunchest supporters on Capitol Hill. Then on Tuesday, it prosecuted Cohen.

One way Berman has preserved independence is by relying on Khuzami, his hand-picked deputy.

[...]

[The Cohen investigation] burst into public view in April with a highly unusual raid of the lawyer’s home and offices. Berman recused himself from the matter.

And for that, I'm surprised Trump hasn't railed against Berman like he has Sessions. Perhaps it's only because he hasn't personally been called up in the New York attorney's bailiwick. Yet.

Helsinki meeting speculation

I think this is one of the best Preet Bharara podcast interviews yet.  Interesting discussion and speculation about what Trump talked to Putin about (which happens to coincide with my own belief 😉).  Check it out here (it's the July 26, 2018 episode).



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

Why Trump fired Preet Bharara

A major money-laundering case set to go to trial last week in New York was suddenly settled three days earlier, with both the US government and the defendant, the Russian firm Prevezon Holdings, claiming victory.

[...]

"It was a surprise," said John Dillard, a spokesman for Prevezon's attorneys. "We were getting ready for opening statements and fully expected to try the case. In fact, we were looking forward to it."

"We reluctantly agreed to accept the government's offer when it became clear that the fine proposed was no more than we would have spent fully litigating the case, and that no admission of guilt, forfeiture or continued seizure of any assets was required," Dillard added. "Essentially, the offer was too good to refuse."

The investigation into whether Prevezon, a real-estate company incorporated in Cyprus, laundered millions of dollars into New York City real estate garnered high-profile attention given its ties to a $230 million Russian tax-fraud scheme and Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose suspicious death aroused international media attention.

Magnitsky uncovered the scheme in 2008 on behalf of one of his clients at the time, the investment advisory firm Hermitage Capital. He was later thrown in jail and died in custody.

[...]

The US government had been investigating the $230 million scheme that Magnitsky uncovered — and what happened to the proceeds — for nearly four years.

[...]

The trail ultimately led to Manhattan, where Preet Bharara, then the US attorney there, accused Prevezon in September 2013 of receiving "at least $1,965,444 in proceeds from the $230 million fraud scheme" in early 2008 via wire transfers from at least two suspected shell companies through the Southern District of New York.

[...]

he Russian government declined to provide the US government with evidence of Russian money flows that would strengthen the case against Prevezon. Nikolai Gorokhov, a lawyer representing Magnitsky's family, was able to photograph documents contained in a Russian case file targeting two people involved in the $230 million scheme that traced the money to Russia.

Gorokhov mysteriously fell from a window in Moscow just over a month before he was due to testify in the Prevezon case.

[...]

Louise Shelley, an illicit-finance expert who was set to testify in support of the US government, told CNN the day after the case was settled that she was concerned about the possibility that "political pressure" had been applied to the US attorney's office.

  Business Insider

Trump did fire the prosecutor and replaced him with someone more compliant.

A spokesman for the US Attorney's office said the settlement saved taxpayers the expense of a trial, and reiterated that the settlement was for "many multiples more" than the amount of proceeds of the Russian tax fraud alleged to have been laundered through real-estate purchases in New York. He characterized it as a "very good outcome" for the government.

If you think of Trump as the government.

"I would have liked to see the case come to a public trial so that sun could shine on the evidence and details of the alleged wrongdoing," said John Cassara, a former intelligence officer who served in the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and its Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

[...]

"According to estimates approximately $5 trillion is laundered globally every year. In comparison, what is $5.9 million?" Cassara said. "We probably recover about 1% of the money laundered globally. We have to keep things in perspective. Our efforts to combat international money laundering are failing, and this case did nothing to turn the tide."

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

Preet's revenge

I bet Trump thought he was home free when he fired Preet Bharara from the US attorney's position for the Southern District of New York.



Now, let us hope that Geoffrey Berman is a stand-up attorney.

UPDATE:  Addressing my concerns about Berman:  he is recused.

Excerpts from "Collusion"

I'm going to post a few excerpts from Luke Harding's "Collusion: Secret meetings, dirty money, and how Russia helped Donald Trump win"

"Below the fold" in this post are bits and pieces of information from the book around Trump's money laundering and collusion with Russian mobsters and government officials that I don't have much on elsewhere, mostly to give me a reference for future posts. The book's very interesting. Check it out.

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

Excerpts available by clicking "read more" below.

Coincidence?

That does seem a bit odd.

The sentencing of alleged Russian hacker Vladimir Drinkman, who pleaded guilty to his role in the largest data hack scheme ever prosecuted in the United States, has been once again rescheduled indefinitely, a spokesperson for the US District Court of New Jersey told Sputnik.

[...]

The case has been rescheduled at least six times in the past and was due to be heard on Thursday. The court's spokesperson told Sputnik on Wednesday that further delays are possible.

  Sputnik

This was a case that was held in September of 2015. I can't find any discussion of why this is being handled this way. Preet Bharara was in charge of the case. Maybe he'll talk about it.

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

Good luck to Preet Bharara and Christine Todd Whitman

It’s not enough to fret. We're launching a bipartisan project to mend the gaps in our system and make sure our government is competent and trustworthy.

One year into the Trump presidency, it’s clear that the norms and boundaries traditionally guiding American political behavior have deeply eroded. That matters greatly. A workable democracy can thrive only when there are basic rules, often unwritten, that curb abuse and guide policymakers. Though the two of us are from different political parties, we both believe that now is the time to ensure the president and all our public officials adhere to basic rules of the road. It’s time to turn soft norms into hard law.

[...]

Everyone in the political process must act as if limited by invisible guardrails to avoid abuse of power. But at moments of stress or executive impudence, what was assumed to be a solid restriction on improper conduct turns out to be flimsy, relying too much on goodwill or unspoken understandings.

[...]

Public confidence in our institutions is plummeting, and with an ever-quickening news cycle that turns on every tweet, we have to take on these challenges in short order.

[...]

Today, we’re launching an independent democracy task force at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's School of Law to holistically review these informal rules, which ones should remain guidelines, and perhaps which ones should be enshrined into law. We’ll examine norms surrounding financial conflicts, political interference with law enforcement, the use of government data and science, the appointment of public officials and any other issues that may arise in the coming months. We will be joined by experts and former officials from both parties. The goal is to issue a set of recommendations, policies that can be enacted that mend the gaps in our system and ensure we have a government that functions ably, competently and with the trust of the American people.

[...]

Already some leaders — at least outside Washington — are having these conversations. Legislators in Massachusetts and California have proposed bills that would require the disclosure of tax returns to appear on the state’s presidential election ballots (though California Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed one of those attempts). While we may not agree with their proposed solutions, the fact that states — our laboratories for democracy — are beginning to generate their own debates about norms gives us hope that there’s room to have these discussions on a national level.

  USA Today

I think it is extremely optimistic to hope there will be biparrtisan agreement on these things. In the past, after serious abuses of power, there may have been, but we're several presidents past any bipartisanship on anything other than war and corporate/financial deregulation. And, given Jerry Brown's reaction to something as tame as tax return disclosures, I think it's pretty fair to say that anything this panel comes up with will be vetoed by the president.

But I wish them the very best of luck.

Why Trump fired Preet Bharara

He had to get someone in that position favorable to him, because that's where the money laundering trial will take place. Which is just as much evidence of obstruction of justice as anything directly involving White House and FBI personnel.

[T]he recent appointments at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York are particularly alarming. U.S. Attorney offices across the United States prosecute the criminal and civil cases in their jurisdiction in which the United States is involved. Because Donald Trump’s questionable business dealings and campaign activities occurred mainly in New York, and he has a residence there at Trump Tower, it is most likely that this would be the U.S. Attorney’s office prosecuting any charges of crimes brought against him, his businesses or his family.

Given Trump’s past demands for loyalty, alarm bells sounded earlier this month when Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General of the U.S. Justice Department, announced that he was naming Geoffrey Berman to replace Preet Bharara as U.S. Attorney for the SDNY on an interim basis. Trump had fired Bharara 20 hours after Bharara had declined to return a phone call to Trump that he feared would involve an inappropriate request from the president.

Berman has been able to skip Senate confirmation due to his interim appointment and would serve for 120 days as U.S. Attorney at the SDNY unless he is formally nominated for the position, in which case he would have to undergo Senate confirmation.

  Wall Street on Parade

And with the Seenate we have now, I don't see how that would be a problem.

At the time of his appointment, Berman was also a fellow shareholder and law partner of Rudy Giuliani at Greenberg Traurig. Berman has worked there for more than a decade. (Giuliani is a Trump ally and loyalist.) Berman’s LinkedIn profile shows that he remains a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig.

Berman is the son of Ronald Berman, a major real estate developer in New Jersey.

But, here's the clincher:

Just two days after Berman was named U.S. Attorney for the SDNY, he named Robert Khuzami to be his Deputy U.S. Attorney for that jurisdiction. More sirens went off. Khuzami was General Counsel to Deutsche Bank-Americas from January 2002 to February 2009. Deutsche Bank has been a major lender to Trump’s businesses for decades, even as other major Wall Street banks refused further lending to him. In January of last year, Deutsche Bank was charged with laundering billions of dollars out of Russia and paid approximately $630 million in fines.

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

What about the Logan Act

Lots of banter about the Logan Act - barring anyone outside the government from making deals to favor foreign countries - as it might apply to the Trump cabal has been flying around. Since we've not heard about it earlier, I don't know why it's come up, but here's a bit of one attorney's explanation of the Act and why it might matter:

So why do we say ignorance of the law is no excuse?  And why doesn't, "I wasn't watching my spedometer" work as a pass for speeding?

Anyway...

Okay, it all sounds reasonable. But I have to add that Trump went off on ABC because they said something disparaging about him. That's all it takes for Trump to go off on you. (So why didn't he ever tweet something nasty about Eminem?) But, we really don't know what charges Mueller is pursuing against Trump. We just have to wait.

Although I don't think it was ever proven, and I know it was never legally pursued, the first one to do that - that we know about - was Ronald Reagan when he (allegedly?) made a deal with Iran to hold the American hostages until after the election, to foil Jimmy Carter.

Bingo on that.

Here's the link to Abramson's thread if you want to read it all.

I appreciate attorney Abramson's knowledge and analysis, but note, Trump-fired attorney Preet Bharara - definitely not a Republican, and someone whose knowledge and analysis I also appreciate - has weighed in on the Logan Act only with a link to this New York Times article that he tweets is a good one. The conclusion of the article would make it seem Bharara doesn't think the Logan Act will be used by Mueller.

“There is no reason why the Logan Act would not apply to the president-elect since it applies to all private citizens, and the people working on the transition are all working in a private-citizen capacity. They have not taken the oath, so they are covered by the act — to the extent that matters.”

[...]

A study by the Congressional Research Service in 2015 said nobody has ever been prosecuted under the statute and identified only one instance of an indictment under the law: in 1803, the United States attorney in Kentucky obtained from a grand jury an indictment of a Kentucky farmer who had written an article in support of creating a separate nation in the territory west of the fledgling United States that would be an ally to France. But the prosecutor dropped the case. A recent draft scholarly paper posted online by a Federal Appeals Court law clerk identified a second apparent such indictment, involving the reported arrest in 1852 of a man who wrote a letter to the president of Mexico.

[...]

When White House opponents, usually in Congress, encroach on diplomatic matters, invoking the Logan Act enables the pro-White House party to denounce the other side as not just wrongheaded but lawbreakers.

During the Reagan administration, for example, the Democratic speaker of the House, Jim Wright of Texas, tried to help develop a peace deal in Nicaragua by interacting directly with its president, Daniel Ortega Saavedra, even as the Reagan administration took a harder line and supported overthrowing the Sandinista government. Similarly, during the Obama administration, 47 Republican senators signed a letter to the government of Iran warning the ayatollahs that President Obama’s successor might not follow through on promises Mr. Obama was making as part of negotiations over a deal to end Iran’s nuclear program. During such debates, some White House defenders portrayed the congressional opposition as having violated the Logan Act.

[...]

Given its history, it seems highly unlikely that the Justice Department under Mr. Trump will try to prosecute Mr. Flynn for violating the Logan Act.

  NYT

And, by the way, Bharara doesn't think Mueller's single charge against Flynn means he has other charges to use later on, or that it's the only charge he could make against Flynn. He has given his take on a special episode of his podcast.  He thinks Mueller didn't want to file charges that might apply to others in the Trump cabal before he has the charges against those people fully fleshed out.  And if he wants Flynn to testify against those people, he wouldn't want to have given him a pass on those charges himself.  He says "very smart people" he talked to, also think that's the case.  He does have to do some unprovable speculation to get there, though.

Again, we will have to wait and see. Hard, isn't it?

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

UPDATE 12/6:  This article may substantiate Bharara's analysis of how Mueller is working on the case:

Robert Mueller may not be through with Rick Gates, a deputy Trump campaign aide and one of the four people who have been charged as part of the special counsel probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

In a court appearance Monday in Manhattan, Gates' attorney Walter Mack said that federal prosecutors have told him that more charges, called superseding indictments, may be coming.

[...]

Mack represents both Gates in DC and his business partner in New York. Neither is a witness or co-defendant in the other's case, federal prosecutors say, but attorneys from Mueller's special counsel investigation have raised the possibility that a conflict of interest could arise between the two men and their attorney.

[...]

"We don't know what the government is going to do," Mack said in court, referring to both Gates' case and a white-collar case in New York involving one of Gates' business partners. "I mean, in both cases we've been told that there may be a superseder. We don't know what's happening."

  CNN

Discussion/Analysis of Mueller investigation

Preet Bharara, the Attorney General for the Southern District of New York who was fired by Trump (and who was involved with some of the money laundering cases that should eventually snare Old Lard Ass), talked with another AG, Anne Milgram, shortly after the bombshell Mueller indictments were recently handed down.  It's quite an interesting and enlightening discussion by people who know how Mueller will be thinking about his investigation.

Listen to it here.

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

As if Mueller didn't already have enough to investigate

Twitter is abuzz this morning with the WSJ story [...] that Mike Flynn and his spawn hoped to make up to $15 million for kidnapping Fethullah Gulen and delivering him to Turkey.

[...]

And mostly, the focus has been on the kidnapping part of the story (perhaps, in part, because Republicans tried to attack James Woolsey for his involvement in it a few weeks back).

[...]

The story has already been told; what’s new about this iteration of it is the eye-popping pay-off [$15M], as well as more details about the timing and location of a second meeting.

[...]

I think the far more interesting side of it is the inclusion of a deal on the Reza Zarrab prosecution — because that implicates Trump’s decision to fire Preet Bharara, substantiating a parallel case to his firing of Jim Comey.

As noted, [Southern District of New York] is prosecuting Zarrab for laundering Turkish gold into Iranian coffers. Rudy Giuliani and Michael Mukasey are representing Zarrab, with Giuliani going so far as brokering a deal that would trade foreign policy cooperation for Zarrab’s release even while defying pressure from DOJ about explaining his role in it. Because the case implicates Recep Tayyip Erdogan personally, the impending trial has led to increasing diplomatic tensions with Turkey.

  Marcy Wheeler

When everything shakes out - or at least everything that will - history books are going to have to hold an extra ten volumes to cover everything tha The Most Notable Loser has gotten himself into.

The one other important detail of this story, which follows on stories from yesterday, is that Mueller has implicated Flynn Jr in this deal. That reportedly is already making Flynn Sr consider pleading, to protect his son.

But if he does that, he may be forced to disclose how closely Trump was involved in these discussions to sell US policy to Turkey to enrich a staffer.

Talk about your tangled webs.

Oh, and, Jared Kushner is in this one, too.

Continue reading.

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

Trump Lawyer: The Most Thankless Job in DC

President Donald Trump impressed senators Wednesday with a cogent, engaged pitch on health care that didn’t veer wildly from the script.

Within an hour, without seeking advice from his lawyers or his senior aides, Trump was in the Oval Office telling reporters from The New York Times that he regretted hiring Jeff Sessions as his attorney general and discussing a sensitive investigation his lawyers have told him to keep quiet about — a performance that once again left his most senior aides startled and scrambling to respond.

Because only one staffer, Hope Hicks, was in Trump’s interview, others were left to hurriedly transcribe a tape recording of the meeting after the fact — just so they could know what the president had said.

  Politico

And Hope was hopeless. She couldn't stop him. If there were no tapes or hidden cameras signaling to others to send in Ivanka and the kid to stop Trump from incriminating himself further, maybe Hope sent an SOS text.  (BTW...where are Melania and Barron?  Hiding?)

It was another sharp reminder that no matter what policy initiatives the president says he wants to focus on — or how well he sticks to his talking points — that trouble is always right around the corner thanks to the Russia probe.

Thanks to Donald J Trump, you mean.

Most of the sentiments Trump expressed in the interview did not come as a surprise to his top aides, but they recognized that the president putting those views on the record in such pointed terms was certain to trigger a media firestorm and increase tensions with the Justice Department.

[...]

Trump has blamed Sessions for much of the mess he now finds himself in and sees the recusal as a pivotal moment in his presidency, advisers and aides say. And he thinks Sessions hasn't always presented himself well in public.

😯

“If you’re Jeff, you have to say, why am I sticking around and getting kicked like this?” the official said. “He’ll have to have a conversation with the president about it, though I’m not sure when.”

The Elf? He's already proven he has no spine. He'd wet his pants if he had to stand up for himself before Trump.

“You got to be looking at Sessions and thinking this is ‘The Green Mile.’ This dude is walking down the hall for execution at some point, so how much are you going to worry about this guy as your boss?” said one ex-prosecutor who spent more than two decades at the department. “It’s unsettling and it’s weird.”

I guess that's as good a description of what it is as anything. Unsettling and weird. Life in the United States these days can be described in the same way.

And, speaking of Trump lawyers...

FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008, the person said.

John Dowd, one of Trump’s lawyers, said on Thursday he was unaware of this element of the investigation. "Those transactions are in my view well beyond the mandate of the Special counsel; are unrelated to the election of 2016 or any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and most importantly, are well beyond any Statute of Limitation imposed by the United States Code," he wrote in an email.

  MSN

Seriously? Unaware? Beyond the mandate of the speical counsel? A real quality lawyer, that John Dowd.

The roots of Mueller’s follow-the-money investigation lie in a wide-ranging money laundering probe launched by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara last year, according to the person.

Whom Genius Trump fired. Obviously he thinks he can simply fire people to get rid of troublesome investigations. I bet when he got elected President he thought all his troubles were over forever.

Mueller’s team is looking at the Trump SoHo hotel condominium development, which was a licensing deal with Bayrock Capital LLC. In 2010, the former finance director of Bayrock filed a lawsuit claiming the firm structured transactions in fraudulent ways to evade taxes.

[...]

The 2013 Miss Universe pageant is of interest because a prominent Moscow developer, Aras Agalarov, paid $20 million to bring the beauty spectacle there.

[...]

Another significant financial transaction involved a Palm Beach, Florida estate that Trump purchased in 2004 for $41 million, after its previous owner lost it in bankruptcy. In March of 2008, after the real estate bubble had begun losing air, Russian fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev bought the property for $95 million.

[...]

The Bharara probe was consolidated into Mueller’s inquiry, showing that the special counsel is taking an overarching approach to his mandated investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Altogether, the various financial examinations constitute one thread of Mueller’s inquiry, which encompasses computer hacking and the dissemination of stolen campaign and voter information as well as the actions of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Joshua Stueve, Mueller’s spokesman, declined to comment, as did Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Kushner and a Manafort spokesman.

Because they're light years smarter than Trump's lawyers.

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

Who Can't Guess the Answer to This One?

Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday asking why the Department of Justice settled a major money-laundering case involving a real-estate company owned by the son of a powerful Russian government official whose lawyer met with Donald Trump Jr. last year.

[...]

That attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, represents the family of Pyotr Katsyv, the former vice governor of the Moscow region, whose son, Denis, owns the real-estate company Prevezon. The DOJ had been investigating whether Prevezon laundered millions of dollars through New York City real estate when the case was unexpectedly settled two days before going to trial in May.

[...]

"It was a surprise," John Dillard, a spokesman for Prevezon's attorneys, told Business Insider at the time. "We were getting ready for opening statements and fully expected to try the case. In fact, we were looking forward to it.

"We reluctantly agreed to accept the government's offer when it became clear that the fine proposed was no more than we would have spent fully litigating the case, and that no admission of guilt, forfeiture, or continued seizure of any assets was required," Dillard added. "Essentially, the offer was too good to refuse."

[...]

"We write with some concern that the two events may be connected — and that the Department may have settled the case at a loss for the United States in order to obscure the underlying facts."

  Business Insider

You think? Also, no doubt, why New York attorney Preet Bharara was fired.

These people need to be stopped.

Leaky, Leaky

Two weeks after Donald J. Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination last year, his eldest son arranged a meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan with a Russian lawyer who has connections to the Kremlin, according to confidential government records described to The New York Times.

The previously unreported meeting was also attended by Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, as well as the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, according to interviews and the documents, which were outlined by people familiar with them.

While President Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed meetings between his associates and Russians, this episode at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, is the first confirmed private meeting between a Russian national and members of Mr. Trump’s inner circle during the campaign. It is also the first time that his son Donald Trump Jr. is known to have been involved in such a meeting.

Representatives of Donald Trump Jr. and Mr. Kushner confirmed the meeting after The Times approached them with information about it. In a statement, Donald Jr. described the meeting as primarily about an adoption program. The statement did not address whether the presidential campaign was discussed.

  NYT

An adoption program?

The Russian lawyer invited to the Trump Tower meeting, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is best known for mounting a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian human rights abusers. The law so enraged Mr. Putin that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian children.

So this was so important to the Trump team that before he was even elected president, they called a meeting with a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin to talk about it at Trump Tower?

[I]n addition to banning American adoptions, compiled what became known as an “anti-Magnitsky” blacklist of United States citizens.

Among those blacklisted was Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney in Manhattan, who led high-profile convictions of Russian arms and drug dealers. Mr. Bharara was abruptly fired in March, after previously being asked to stay on by Mr. Trump.

For one thing, Bharara was too close to the cases that are most likely to reveal the Trump organization (and perhaps the Trumps themselves) were involved in money laundering with Russian gangsters. And perhaps somebody with a Russian name "suggested" Bharara be fired to get him out of the way of the Russian gangsters, and Trump obliged.

Ms. Veselnitskaya is married to a former deputy transportation minister of the Moscow region, and her clients include state-owned businesses and a senior government official’s son, whose company was under investigation in the United States at the time of the meeting. Her activities and associations had previously drawn the attention of the F.B.I., according to a former senior law enforcement official.

Sure, that'd be the person I'd suggest they bring in. Whether the Trumps intentionally and knowingly colluded with the Russians to get Trump elected can be argued - personally, at this point, I now think they did.  But if they didn't, it is without a doubt they're not smart enough to know when they're being played by the Russians.  Not the people you want heading the US government either way.

In his statement, Donald Trump Jr. said: “It was a short introductory meeting. I asked Jared and Paul to stop by. We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up.”

So why the eff would you have that meeting about it then?

The Trump Tower meeting was not disclosed to government officials until recently, when Mr. Kushner, who is also a senior White House aide, filed a revised version of a form required to obtain a security clearance. The Times reported in April that he had failed to disclose any foreign contacts, including meetings with the Russian ambassador to the United States and the head of a Russian state bank. Failure to report such contacts can result in a loss of access to classified information and even, if information is knowingly falsified or concealed, in imprisonment.

[...]

In a statement on Saturday, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said: “ [...] Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included, out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person, which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law Donald Trump Jr. As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to cooperate and share what he knows.”

Jared's suddenly crossing his t's and dotting his i's. Can you say "Special Prosecutor"?

Mr. Manafort, the former campaign chairman, also recently disclosed the meeting, and Donald Trump Jr.’s role in organizing it, to congressional investigators who had questions about his foreign contacts, according to people familiar with the events.

[...]

[A] quick internet search would have revealed Ms. Veselnitskaya as a formidable operator with a history of pushing the Kremlin’s agenda.

[...]

“She’s not just some private lawyer,” Mr. Browder said of Ms. Veselnitskaya. “She is a tool of the Russian government.”

And frankly, I don't even know what the hell this means:

It's all the Democrats' fault???  Who is "the person who sought the meeting?"  Was it not Donnie Jr.? Did he mention anyone else asking for the meeting?

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