The number of former federal prosecutors who signed this statement was 370 when @anon95374541 posted the announcement just 11 hours ago. According to Huffington Post, that number has shot up to 560!
Here’s the statement and list of signatories. The total is shown at the bottom of the list (# of records). Since I started writing this, six more former prosecutors added their names – we’re now at 566.
Developing story… I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this as analysts pour over the new reasons given for redactions.
The Department of Justice on Monday released a new version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election and President Donald Trump’s campaign, shedding light on why significant portions of the 448-page document were redacted before it was released to the public earlier this month.
The new version was released by the Department of Justice in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and a subsequent lawsuit filed by BuzzFeed News and separately by the Electronic Privacy and Information Center.
Go Buzzfeed! Go EPIC!
Here’s one example of how this updated version sheds additional light on the report while also raising new questions:
…on page 9 of volume one of the version of the report Barr released last month, DOJ explained that a couple of sentences related to Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen are redacted because it would cause “harm to ongoing matter” if details were released. But the copy of the report DOJ released Monday further explains that the sentences were redacted because it relates to an ongoing investigation; “pertains to records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, the release of which would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication”; and personal privacy.
An associate of Roger Stone has agreed to testify to special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury on Friday morning, his attorney and a Mueller prosecutor said in a court hearing before a federal judge.
The development shows parts of the Mueller investigation related to interference in the 2016 presidential election – and the grand jury’s work – may still be alive.
Andrew Miller, Stone’s associate, has fought testifying as he has challenged Mueller’s authority since last summer after Mueller’s team requested information from him about Roger Stone and WikiLeaks. Miller was held in contempt by Chief Judge Beryl Howell in Washington but will not be sent to jail at this time, the judge said. He lost his attempts at appeal. He did not attend the hearing Wednesday. …
It’s not known why Miller’s testimony is still needed by a grand jury examining potential criminal charges, especially since Mueller has announced his work is done and both Stone and Assange have been indicted.
Am I the only one who thinks the Republican computers were hacked at the same time? It’s not logical to not gather info from as many places as possible.
And, in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.
Lisa Desjardins:
Now, many held that interview up as a clear admission that the president fired Comey to obstruct the Russia investigation.
But Mueller’s report says the full NBC interview actually showed the opposite. On page 74: "The president stated that he understood when he made the decision to fire Comey that the action might prolong the investigation."
These videos are on YouTube too. When they finish the series we should do a Mueller Report post with all of them in a row for other readers to watch. YouTube links are watchable in thread on this platform. What do you think?
We already read the transcript, but listening to the voice mail really drives home that Dowd is witness tampering. The question is did Trump direct Dowd to make this call? If so, then Trump himself is guilty of witness tampering. Even if Trump didn’t direct the call, but simply knew about it, he is guilty of obstruction of justice by covering up Dowd’s witness tampering.
@anon95374541 posted about the developing Andrew Miller story on May 31. It is now emerging as a potentially explosive investigation.
Miller has turned over crucial documents covering the time when Stone was at the Republican National Convention – a time when the highly suspicious pro-Russia change was made to the Republican platform. We don’t know for certain, but it’s looking more and more like this investigation is trying to find out who ordered that last minute change and from how far up the ladder it may have come – and did it involve a collaboration with agents of the Russian government? All open questions – we may be getting closer to the answers.
A former aide to political operative Roger Stone has turned over to a grand jury all of his text messages with Stone from October 2016 to March 2017, as well as the written agenda for Stone while he was at the Republican National Convention in 2016.
The aide, Andrew Miller, turned over the documents in response to a federal grand jury subpoena following his two-hour testimony last Friday before the body, according to communications between Miller’s lawyer and the government that were reviewed by POLITICO.
The subpoena offers a glimpse into the government’s ongoing investigation of Stone, an informal Trump campaign adviser who was indicted in January on charges of lying to Congress and the FBI about his dealings with WikiLeaks during the 2016 election. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting a trial, set for November.
Under Justice Department policy and court rulings, grand juries are not supposed to be used to investigate a criminal case that’s already been filed, although they can be used to add new charges or to charge new defendants. Legal experts say it is relatively common for prosecutors to use multiple grand juries for a complex investigation, particularly one that continues over a protracted period.
It’s still unclear what additional crimes D.C. prosecutors are investigating, however. But the prosecutors recently revealed in court filings that they had 18 search warrants approved against Stone — dating back to August 2017 — for potential crimes that he wasn’t charged with earlier this year, including conspiracy, wire fraud, and foreign contribution bans.
Adding to the intrigue is the fact that Miller testified before a new grand jury rather than the one convened by Mueller that Miller was initially fighting, and that he was held in contempt over.
…
The new subpoena suggests that the grand jury wants to know more about Stone’s involvement in the Republican convention — where he gave speeches and schmoozed with journalists — and about his conversations with one of his most trusted aides during a period that included WikiLeaks’ release of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails, the presidential transition and Trump’s inauguration.
Mueller’s team scrutinized the Trump campaign’s activities at the convention after it was reported that it had softened an amendment to the Republican platform to be more favorable to Russia. It was during the Republican convention, moreover, that Russian hackers sent a file to WikiLeaks with instructions on how to download stolen Democratic National Committee documents. WikiLeaks released the internal emails on July 22, 2016, the last day of the convention and just before the start of the Democratic National Convention.
There are eighteen search warrants relating to potential crimes for which Stone has not yet been charged – wow!
BTW, I’m posting this in the Mueller thread mainly because it does my heart good to consider that Mueller created waves that continue to roll through the courts. Technically, though, this is beyond Mueller’s control (he has stepped down, after all) and this is a different grand jury than the one Mueller originally convened. This new grand jury was a surprise, even to the defendant, Miller, and his attorney. Anyway, glad to discover that new grand juries are being convened to pursue the truth about Trump.
P.S. Anytime you read about Stone’s ties to Wikileaks and any other potential crimes he may have committed, recall how close Stone was to Trump throughout the entire campaign – according to this in-depth article from the New York Times, they spoke frequently on the phone. Stone claims they never spoke about Wikileaks. Now come on, Wikileaks was the biggest thing in the news by the end of the RNC and Trump couldn’t stop talking about how much he loved Wikileaks so how could he and Stone (another huge Wikileaks fan with proven ties to the organization) not talk about it? Did they also talk about the pro-Russia change to the Republican platform?
BuzzFeed News sued the US government for the right to see all the work that Mueller’s team kept secret. Today we are publishing the first installment.
Today, in response to a court order, the Justice Department has released the first installment of documents: 500 pages of summaries of FBI interviews with witnesses, available here for the first time. Another installment will be released every month for at least the next eight years.
Known as “302 reports,” these summaries of interviews — which have been conducted with people such as former White House counsel Don McGahn, former attorney general Jeff Sessions, and Trump’s former fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen — 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, his business dealings, and his attempts to impede the special counsel’s investigation.
I’m wondering if there will be any insight into what Flynn has told Mueller about Pence’s seeming complicity in helping cover up his secret payments from Turkey. I still can’t understand why a bigger deal wasn’t made about this at the time and why it has lain dormant for so long. After receiving the payments, Flynn even followed through with his part of the “quid pro quo” by making a military decision that was favorable to Turkey. (BTW, let’s just call “quid pro quo” what it is: payback for a bribe.)
This has been bugging me for a long time and I’ve posted about it before, but if you missed it, here’s a link to an AP article that was published when the story first broke – other news outlets corroborated the cover up at the time – then – radio silence.