Bill Of Impeachment: Article I, Obstruction Of Justice

[Lord Jim]

tic toc, tic toc...

Mueller impanels grand jury in Russia probe: report

Special counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly impaneled a grand jury in Washington as part of the ongoing investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Such a move would signal that the investigation is growing and entering a new phase. The special counsel is looking into Russia's efforts to influence the election and any ties between President Trump's campaign and Moscow.

Mueller’s spokesman declined to comment to the newspaper, while White House special counsel Ty Cobb said he was unaware of the new development.

“Grand jury matters are typically secret. The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly," Cobb told the Journal. "The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller."

The grand jury, located in Washington, D.C., follows a separate grand jury previously convened in Alexandria, Va., by federal prosecutors investigating former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The news follows efforts from some in Congress to protect Mueller from Trump and his administration’s ability to fire him.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) introduced a bill on Monday that would require the Justice Department to seek a request from a federal judge before firing Mueller or any other special counsel.

"Our bill allows judicial review of any decision to terminate a special counsel to make sure it’s done for the reasons cited in the regulation rather than political motivation. I think this will serve the country well," Graham said in a statement.

Booker added that special counsel should never be subjected to "interference or intimidation because of where an investigation takes them."

Mueller continues to expand the team investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election with the addition of former Justice Department official Greg Andres, who became the 16th lawyer to join Mueller’s team. Andres previously worked in the Justice Department’s criminal division.

Trump has ratcheted up attacks on Mueller as the investigation proceeds. In an interview with The New York Times in July, Trump warned Mueller against investigating his family’s finances.

“I think that’s a violation. Look, this is about Russia,” Trump told The Times.

Trump also argued that Mueller has hired “Hillary Clinton supporters” and is good friends with former FBI Director James Comey.

“Well he’s very, very good friends with Comey. Which is very bothersome,” Trump told Fox News. “We’re going to have to see. But there has been no obstruction, there has been no collusion. There has been leaking by Comey. And virtually everyone agrees on that.”

“The people who have been hired are all Hillary Clinton supporters,” he said. “Some of them worked for Hillary Clinton. I mean the whole thing is ridiculous if you want to know the truth from that standpoint."

Trump’s own legal team has reportedly been looking into Mueller’s team for potential conflicts of interest to potentially undermine or discredit the investigation.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administrat ... obe-report

[Scooter]

"The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller."

Yeah, repeatedly threatening to fire the guy is a clear sign that the WH intends to cooperate fully with him.

[Lord Jim]

They need to get that Graham/Booker bill on the fast track...

[Lord Jim]

Not wasting any time...

Grand jury issues subpoenas related to June 2016 Trump Tower meeting: Report

A grand jury has issued subpoenas related to a June 2016 meeting that took place at Trump Tower between members of President Trump's family and campaign representatives, and a Russian lawyer, according to a report.

Donald Trump Jr., former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya on June 9, 2016, after Trump Jr. was promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

At least three others were also in the meeting, which was orchestrated by a British publicist, Rob Goldstone, who worked with the Trump family in the past.

According to emails exchanged between Trump Jr. and Goldstone, Goldstone told the president's eldest son that the information on Clinton was part of the Russian government's efforts to aid Trump's candidacy during the 2016 presidential campaign.

News of the grand jury subpoenas, reported by Reuters, comes after the Wall Street Journal reported that Robert Mueller, the special counsel overseeing the investigation into Trump campaign ties to Russian officials, has impaneled a federal grand jury to look into Russia's involvement in the 2016 election.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/grand ... le/2630570

ETA:

Mueller Plunges Across Trump's Red Line

...Separately, CNN reported that Mueller’s probe has now expanded well past the 2016 election. “Sources described an investigation that has widened to focus on possible financial crimes, some unconnected to the 2016 elections, alongside the ongoing scrutiny of possible illegal coordination with Russian spy agencies and alleged attempts by President Donald Trump and others to obstruct the FBI investigation,” the report said, adding that investigators were combing over Trump’s business empire.

The CNN report adds detail to earlier reports from The New York Times and Bloomberg that the probe had widened to look at potential financial crimes. Mueller is said to be investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the election, business dealings of Trump and his associates, and whether Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey, asking him to drop an investigation into Michael Flynn, and other moves.

The news of a grand jury is perhaps less a surprise than the speed with which it was impaneled. It suggests that Mueller’s team has moved past an exploratory phase. A grand jury hears testimony about potential wrongdoing and decides whether to charge people with crimes. It allows a prosecutor to subpoena documents and to put witnesses under oath for testimony. Mueller has also rapidly expanded his team, hiring a slew of high-profile lawyers, including several with experience in money laundering, organized crime, bribery, and witness-flipping. He recently added Greg Andres, a partner in a prominent white-shoe New York firm, to his group.

More:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ry/535875/

In another thread I observed that Trump had managed to dial back on the crazy with his tweeting over the past week...

I suspect that today's Russiagate investigation developments will sorely test his powers of restraint...

[Big RR]

This just in from Trump: "This is the greatest witch hunt in pursuit of the greatest president this republic has ever seen. The foundations of this great nation are at stake, and I vow to fire the Grand Jury which convenes and tries to investigate anyone I choose not to have investigated. Remember, when the president does it, it's not illegal; but when the greatest president even does it, it is ordained by god himself, and I will not stand by while someone tries to subvert god's and my will".

[Bicycle Bill]

This just in from Trump: "This is the greatest witch hunt in pursuit of the greatest president this republic has ever seen. The foundations of this great nation are at stake, and I vow to fire the Grand Jury which convenes and tries to investigate anyone I choose not to have investigated. Remember, when the president does it, it's not illegal; but when the greatest president even does it, it is ordained by god himself, and I will not stand by while someone tries to subvert god's and my will".

You know, I'm not sure if this is supposed to be satire or not.

-"BB"-

[Lord Jim]

You can tell it's not real because he mentions God before himself...

[BoSoxGal]

[MajGenl.Meade]

How appropriate is it that Trump chooses the phrase "red-line"?

[Econoline]

[Scooter]

[Scooter]

And just to remind everyone of what they will be getting instead:

[BoSoxGal]

I'm already prepared with a title for him: Christofascist in Chief.

[Lord Jim]

It’s been clear for weeks now that President Donald Trump is unhappy with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And in public, Trump has framed his unhappiness in terms of the legislative agenda, complaining in tweets about the Senate’s failure to pass a health bill, tax reform, or an infrastructure program.

But a juicy new report from the New York Times’s Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin suggests there’s another, familiar reason for Trump’s irritation: the Russia scandal, and specifically, McConnell’s failure to protect him from investigations into it.

It’s already been reported that in a tense phone call between Trump and McConnell on August 9, Trump was angry about the health care bill’s failure.

However, Burns and Martin add a new key detail — that Trump “was even more animated about what he intimated was the Senate leader’s refusal to protect him from investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to Republicans briefed on the conversation.”

Yet again, it seems, the president of the United States is intimating in private conversations with other government officials that investigations that could incriminate him or his associates should be bottled up — at a time when he’s already reportedly under investigation for obstruction of justice.

In his criticism of McConnell specifically, Trump is likely referring to the Senate committees investigating the Russia scandal.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has already held several high-profile hearings on the topic this year, getting testimony from fired FBI Director Jim Comey and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, among other officials. Lately, the Senate Judiciary Committee has also been stirring, pushing for documents from Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the scandal as “fake news” and claimed that there was no collusion between his campaign and the Russian government. But he certainly keeps acting like he thinks he needs protection from the unfolding investigations, as we’ve seen in his firing of Comey, his complaints about Sessions’s recusal from the Russia probe — and now his reported private comments to McConnell.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... ia-scandal

[Guinevere]

Doubling down on stupid.

Please Bob, keep up the pressure!

[Guinevere]

More good news

A key figure behind the so-called [Steele] dossier featuring uncorroborated and salacious allegations [depends on who you talk to] about then-candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia will be questioned by investigators from the Senate Judiciary Committee today about the funding and sources for the document.

During last year’s heated Republican primary race, Fusion GPS, a private research firm founded by former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson, was initially paid about a million dollars by wealthy Republicans and then later worked for Democrats, all of whom wanted to dig up dirt on Trump and plant negative news stories, according to political operatives.

Simpson, who will appear in a closed session on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, hired the former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to compile the now infamous dossier, which alleged that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian agents to damage Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent.

...

According to people briefed on the developments, Steele has met with the FBI and provided agents with the names of his sources for the allegations in the dossier.

[Guinevere]

This is key because the Steele dossier was used by the FBI to get its FISA warrant, which means some facts had to be cooroborated:

The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump's campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.

The dossier has also been cited by FBI Director James Comey in some of his briefings to members of Congress in recent weeks, as one of the sources of information the bureau has used to bolster its investigation, according to US officials briefed on the probe.
This includes approval from the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor the communications of Carter Page, two of the officials said. Last year, Page was identified by the Trump campaign as an adviser on national security.
Officials familiar with the process say even if the application to monitor Page included information from the dossier, it would only be after the FBI had corroborated the information through its own investigation. The officials would not say what or how much was corroborated.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/politics/ ... index.html


This is the path that leads directly to Page, the campaign, Manafort, and Russia.

http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-p ... ier-2017-1

I wonder what exactly was recovered in the raid of Manfort's home, earlier in the summer. I hope we get to see it as evidence, some time soon.

[Lord Jim]

Chuck Grassley will order committee vote on releasing testimony on Trump dossier

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley on Wednesday said he will hold a committee vote to release the transcripts of a 10-hour hearing with Glenn Simpson, the former reporter for the Wall Street Journal whose firm helped compile the infamous "dossier" about President Trump's campaign team and Russia.

Grassley was put on the spot during a town hall meeting in Mount Air, Iowa, Wednesday when a man in the audience asked what he and his committee discovered during an all-day closed-door meeting with Simpson on Tuesday and whether they would share those findings.

"The answer is, it will take a vote of the committee to do it, but I presume that they will be released," Grassley said, even adding later that he would "of course" call for the vote.

The Iowa senator warned the committee would have to give Simpson and his lawyer a copy of the transcript for them to look over before potentially making it public.

"First of all, it takes a long time for the court reporter to get it ready to go, but we'll have to give it to them before the thing you're asking me about can be done," Grassley added.

Grassley said he expects to vote for the release of the transcript, but will need time to consider how to tread through this unprecedented political matter.

"I don't know why I wouldn't. But I don't want to say so because I've never -- in all the years I've been in Congress, well, I guess I've only been chairman of two committees, I've never gone through this process before. So I'm not going to answer your question until I get a firm footing of what the precedent is," Grassley said.

Simpson, after leaving the Wall Street Journal then helped create Fusion GPS — a company that does political opposition research that hired former British spy Christopher Steele, who produced the "Russia Dossier," Most of its claims have either been debunked, or are no longer taken seriously.

The chairman subpoened Simpson last month after he had refused to testify. Simpson later agreed to talk before the group of senators in a private setting on Tuesday.

Grassley said it may be of greater interest to the public to have former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Simpson testify on-the-record before his committee.

"But here's what might happen as a result of this: We have not given up the possibility that we would have Simpson and Donald Trump Jr. And Manafort, it depends what comes out of the transcripts. There has to be an open session. That's something we're going to wait for until we get done," Grassley finished.

Manafort and Trump Jr. made deals with the committee to also speak with them in private.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/senat ... le/2632426

Well, I'm sure Donald can call his good friend Mitch to intervene to stop the transcript from being released...

Oh wait...

[Sue U]

"First of all, it takes a long time for the court reporter to get it ready to go, but we'll have to give it to them before the thing you're asking me about can be done," Grassley added.

Horsehit. I can get "roughs" of trial testimony emailed to me the same day or at the latest overnight, and finished transcripts with complete word index in a couple of days.

Also, I note that the right-wing-billionaire-controlled Washington Examiner throws a bit of gratuitous and not-exactly-truthful commentary into its story in an effort to discredit the Trump-Russia "Steele Dossier":

Most of its claims have either been debunked, or are no longer taken seriously.

The truth is the dossier has plenty enough verified and/or plausible information in it to be taken quite seriously by both the FBI and the FISA Court in advancing the investigation into Trump's ties to Russia and Russia's influence in the 2016 election:

According to Paul Wood of BBC News, the information in Steele's report is also reported by "multiple intelligence sources" and "at least one East European intelligence service". They report that there is "more than one tape, not just video, but audio as well, on more than one date, in more than one place, in both Moscow and St. Petersburg".[48][36] He added that "the CIA believes it is credible that the Kremlin has such kompromat—or compromising material— on the next US commander in chief" and "a joint taskforce, which includes the CIA and the FBI, has been investigating allegations that the Russians may have sent money to Mr Trump's organisation or his election campaign".[49][50][48] On March 30, 2017, Wood revealed that the FBI was using the dossier as a roadmap for its investigation.[51] On April 18, 2017, CNN reported that corroborated information from the dossier had been used as part of the basis for getting the FISA warrant to monitor former Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page during the summer of 2016.[52]

Former Los Angeles Times Moscow correspondent Robert Gillette wrote in an op-ed in the Concord Monitor that the dossier has had at least one of its main factual assertions verified. On January 6, 2017, the Director of National Intelligence released a report assessing "with high confidence" that Russia's combined cyber and propaganda operation was directed personally by Vladimir Putin, with the aim of harming Hillary Clinton's candidacy and helping Trump.[53] Gillette wrote: "Steele's dossier, paraphrasing multiple sources, reported precisely the same conclusion, in greater detail, six months earlier, in a memo dated June 20."[54]

***

On February 10, 2017, CNN reported that some communications between "senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals" described in the dossier had been corroborated by multiple U.S. officials. Sources told CNN that some conversations had been "intercepted during routine intelligence gathering", but refused to reveal the content of conversations, or specify which communications were detailed in the dossier. CNN was unable to confirm whether conversations were related to Trump. U.S. officials said the corroboration gave "US intelligence and law enforcement 'greater confidence' in the credibility of some aspects of the dossier as they continue to actively investigate its contents".[60]

According to Business Insider, the dossier alleges that "the Trump campaign agreed to minimize US opposition to Russia's incursions into Ukraine".[61] In July 2016, the Republican National Convention made changes to the Republican Party's platform on Ukraine: initially they proposed providing "lethal weapons" to Ukraine, but the line was changed to "appropriate assistance". J. D. Gordon, who was one of Trump's national security advisers during the campaign, said that he had advocated for changing language because that reflected what Trump had said.[61][62]

Source: Wickedpedia.

[Lord Jim]

Trump clashed with multiple GOP senators over Russia

The conversations are evidence of rising tensions between the president and congressional Republicans heading into a critical legislative span.

President Donald Trump privately vented his frustration over Russia-related matters with at least two other Republican senators this month, according to people familiar with the conversations — in addition to the president's public admonishments of Mitch McConnell, John McCain and Jeff Flake.

Trump expressed frustration over a bipartisan bill sanctioning Russia and tried to convince Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) that it wasn't good policy, according to three people familiar with the call. Trump argued that the legislation was unconstitutional and said it would damage his presidency. Corker was unrelenting, these people said, and told Trump the bill was going to pass both houses with bipartisan support.

"He was clearly frustrated," one person said of Trump’s call with Corker earlier this month. The bill cleared Congress overwhelmingly last month and Trump grudgingly signed it on Aug. 2.

Trump dialed up Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Aug. 7, two days before a blunt call with the Senate majority leader that spilled over into a public feud. Tillis is working with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) on a bill designed to protect Robert Mueller, the independent counsel investigating the president's Russia connections, from any attempt by Trump to fire him.

The Mueller bill came up during the Tillis-Trump conversation, according to a source briefed on the call — the latest signal of the president's impatience with GOP senators' increasing declarations of independence from his White House. Trump was unhappy with the legislation and didn't want it to pass, one person familiar with the call said.

The earlier, private calls offer more evidence of Trump's uneasy relationship with congressional Republicans. Trump has angered McConnell with a damning critique of the Kentucky Republican's performance on repealing Obamacare and threats to try to take out Flake (R-Ariz.) — a vocal Trump critic — in a Republican primary next year.

Trump's chewing out of GOP senators, according to people briefed on the calls, reflected the president's frustration that fellow Republicans would make moves that could damage him, particularly on an investigation that he detests. [I can explain that one for you Don...it's because they're so fed up with you, they'd be delighted if these investigations resulted in your early departure...]Trump also complained about the Russian sanctions measure in a call with McConnell earlier this month that devolved into shouting. The New York Times first reported that Trump discussed the Russia probe with McConnell.

"It seems he is just always focused on Russia," one senior GOP aide said. [I wonder why that is...]

Since coming into the West Wing, chief of staff John Kelly has tried to curb Trump's unscheduled interactions with legislators, senior administration officials say. [Yeah, how's that workin' out for you John?]Trump has been known to see a senator on TV or think about an issue and immediately ask White House assistant Madeleine Westerhout to dial the senator.

But Kelly has asked that senior White House aides, such as legislative affairs head Marc Short, be present for the calls‚ and for Trump to be briefed in advance on the topic.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/2 ... lls-241950