Mueller Files First Charges

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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby tinyrick » Mon Oct 30, 2017 6:41 pm

IamNotCreepy wrote:Also, keep in mind what has happened the 9 months. Every time the specter of the Russia investigation appears, Trump self-destructs and starts tweeting and saying self-incriminating things.

This previously led to Comey being fired and some potential grounds for Obstruction of Justice. Charging someone with Trump campaign will likely cause Trump to tip his hand. He may even take additional steps to try to obstruct justice.


Someone on reddit said that if Trump were to try to fire Mueller now that he has placed people under arrest, it would pretty much be the end of him. The obstruction of justice would be clear to anyone who isn't a true believer. There's a bipartisan bill on the table that protects Mueller. It hasn't been passed, but it's clearly been put on the floor to remind Trump it's not just Democrats he has to fear. So for now, I think Mueller is untouchable.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Crimson847 » Mon Oct 30, 2017 6:57 pm

Heard the news earlier this morning. I'm not sure which camp has been annoying me more so far: the "ZOMG THE HOUSE OF CARDS IS COMING DOWN HERE COMES IMPEACHMENT" camp, or the "NO BIG DEAL NOTHING TO SEE HERE FAKE NEWS" camp. I don't know why we bother holding investigations when we could just ask randos on Twitter who in the administration is definitely guilty of a crime and who definitely isn't.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby sunglasses » Mon Oct 30, 2017 7:04 pm

Look, crimson, the real issue is cheeseburger emojis.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby tinyrick » Mon Oct 30, 2017 7:15 pm

sunglasses wrote:Look, crimson, the real issue is cheeseburger emojis.


Is there a nothingburger emoji?
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Absentia » Mon Oct 30, 2017 7:22 pm

A Combustible Lemon wrote:So in other words, they're not charging MANAFORT with influencing the election. The shadiest guy, directly worked on Ukraine, HE isn't being charged with anything related to the election.


...yet. It's still early in the investigation, and Mueller is leaning on people to see what breaks loose. The fact that he has enough dirt on Manafort to pressure him without publicly revealing any evidence about the election itself works to Mueller's advantage.


What do you guys think, they'll indict him again, seperately, in two months on interference with election charges?


I expect they'll threaten to indict him again unless he flips. Whether or not it actually happens depends on a lot of factors, but it's certainly on the table. If they're going to indict him on election charges they would likely prefer to wait until they can charge all the co-conspirators at once.


What exactly are they waiting for?

Evidence. Lots and lots of evidence. Evidence that corroborates the evidence they already have. They're not going to go public with election charges that aren't 100% provable.


And to be clear: it's still entirely possible that Trump didn't know anything and walks away from this clean. We just don't know yet. It's going to take some time.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Tue Oct 31, 2017 10:38 am

It's actually been somewhat disappointing to see the House probes going to shit and slowly becoming a "LET'S INVESTIGATE EVERY DEMOCRAT THAT EVER HAS BEEN SINCE 2000 (and Comey too, because why not? Let's investigate the women accusing Trump of sexual assault, while we're at it)" investigation, because with this being a criminal investigation and the Senate investigation being so slow moving, there's not a lot of high-profile investigation actually into the Russians interfering in our elections and how to ward it off next time. Do I think Russia swayed people's votes? Maybe, although if you're getting all your news from articles your dumbass friends share on Facebook, perhaps Russia isn't your biggest problem.

Granted, I still doubt that Trump did anything explicitly illegal(although the thing with his son really bothers me, and Don Jr. should be indicted if for no other reason to send a warning shot to future candidates), but the amount of deflection he goes through each time there's news is staggering (BTW, no, a special counsel should not investigate Clinton, who's a private citizen now. That's the FBI's job). It's kinda funny watching him lose his mind every time this happens.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby tinyrick » Tue Oct 31, 2017 4:42 pm

Mueller won battle to force testimony from Manafort's and Gates's lawyers.

For those of you from outside the US, you can straight up tell your lawyer you killed and raped all those women, and the lawyer is obligated by the oath of his/her profession to not speak of your confession. In D&D terms, lawyers are supposed to be Lawful Neutral. But if you use a lawyer to commit or cover up a crime, he/she can be subject to testimony. This is why Saul Goodman had to assume a new identity as a humble Cinnabon manager in Omaha, Nebraska. A lawyer can be anywhere on the good-evil axis, but once they slip from Lawful to Neutral, there's a problem.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby blehblah » Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:11 pm

tinyrick wrote:Mueller won battle to force testimony from Manafort's and Gates's lawyers.

For those of you from outside the US, you can straight up tell your lawyer you killed and raped all those women, and the lawyer is obligated by the oath of his/her profession to not speak of your confession. In D&D terms, lawyers are supposed to be Lawful Neutral. But if you use a lawyer to commit or cover up a crime, he/she can be subject to testimony. This is why Saul Goodman had to assume a new identity as a humble Cinnabon manager in Omaha, Nebraska. A lawyer can be anywhere on the good-evil axis, but once they slip from Lawful to Neutral, there's a problem.


My "Law & Order" legal pedigree tells me that if a lawyer has knowledge of a crime that has not yet been committed, privilege on the matter is out. A client can lie all day long about a past crime, but if a lawyer has a solid reason to believe their client is about to commit another crime, they have to squeal. To me, that's reasonable.

This seems to be somewhere in the middle, where the lawyer is used as part of a crime. I can see how that would be tricky. Saul, to follow the example, clearly took part in the crimes, and profited quite nicely. There was no way he could reasonably claim to have been duped; he was knowingly an active participant. The lawyers filing paperwork for Manafort, Flynn, etc. surely took steps to confirm that the information they were providing was accurate, a la, "Hey, Paul, the information you provided is accurate and complete, right?" While it's not a crime, if they clearly were used as an instrument in committing a crime, they have to dish. It's not their job to investigate the veracity of what their clients tell them, but it is certainly part of the whole "law-er" thing to take basic steps to avoid facilitating a crime.

In my mind, banks have the same onus of performing due diligence; they may not actually be laundering money, but if there is boatloads of clearly suspicious activity, they should be required to report it. In the US, banks have to report transfer over $10K (a Nixon law, IIRC from the Narcos part of my legal training), for example. From the perspective of the banks, that's not good for business... and simultaneously explains why places like Cyprus make tons of money. Likewise on corporate governance, which is why Panama does quite nicely (and Delaware, for that matter).

The difference is law-ing isn't as transmutable as money. One can't hire a lawyer from Cyprus to take advantage of loose laws, while the movement of good ole moola is a cornerstone of the global economy, for better and for worse.

Anyhow, there seems to be the belief that attorney-client privilege is like diplomatic immunity in Lethal Weapon II. It ain't.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby tinyrick » Wed Nov 01, 2017 1:59 pm

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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby blehblah » Sun Nov 05, 2017 5:07 pm

This is an interesting article.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/manafort-m ... -1.4385860

The indictment this week of former Donald Trump presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his aide Richard Gates, runs to 31 pages.

Much of it reads like a bank ledger, listing dozens of wire transfers both men allegedly made over several years, moving millions of dollars into the United States without paying taxes. Most of those wire transfers came from roughly a dozen bank accounts in Cyprus.

For anyone familiar with the money-laundering tale uncovered by Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, that's an interesting coincidence. The financial fraud case he discovered in Moscow in 2007 also saw millions passed through bank accounts in Cyprus.


Magnitsky's name has come-up quite a bit lately.

In Canada, the government passed sanctions which are very similar to the American Magnitsky Act. Russia is not pleased.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/r ... 33644.html

Canada's move to impose sanctions on 30 Russian officials was "senseless and reprehensible" and has led to retaliatory measures, Russian officials said.

Canada announced the sanctions on Friday against Russian officials it accused of complicity in the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009 while he was in prison after alleging state tax fraud.

Kirill Kalinin, a spokesman for the Russian diplomatic mission in Ottawa, told the official TASS news agency late on Friday retaliatory actions against Canadians had already been set in motion.

"Canada's decision on extending anti-Russian sanctions under a false pretext of a hypocritical protection of human rights is absolutely senseless and reprehensible," said Kalinin.

Ottawa's move "is isolating itself from one of the key global powers" and "pushes Canada's foreign policy back to the narrow black-and-white world view, incompatible with modern geopolitics", he added.


Kirill, if you have to say you're 'one of the key global powers'... eh, whatever. You be you, KK.

Back to the first article.

"Cyprus is, effectively, the money-laundering country of choice for criminals from Russia," says U.K. hedge fund manager Bill Browder. "And the reason … is because the Cypriot authorities turn a very active blind eye to the money-laundering."

Magnitsky was working for the fund manager when he discovered several of Browder's companies had been effectively stolen by Russian criminals with ties to the country's judiciary, netting them $230 million US ($293.2 million Cdn).


Magnitsky uncovered a $230 million dollar tax scheme. For his efforts, he was jailed in Russia, and somehow up and died while there.

Angered by the U.S. government's decision in 2012 to pass the Magnitsky Act, seizing the U.S. assets, and barring the travel of Russians connected to his death, Russian President Vladimir Putin retaliated by cancelling the pending adoptions of Russian children by U.S. families.


Remember that Donald Trump Jr. meeting? The story which the administration tried to spin was that it was about the adoption thingy, related to the Magnitsky act.

The Russian lawyer who attended the meeting was apparently there to encourage Trump Jr. to convince his father to repeal the Magnitsky Act if he won the presidency.


To add to the fun, the Russian lawyer with whom these jackasses met has been denied entry into the US, and the judge wasn't exactly subtle about the background of the case.

http://www.businessinsider.in/A-federal ... 500736.cms

A federal judge in New York has denied a request by the Russian-owned real-estate firm Prevezon to grant temporary immigration parole to its lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, according to a court document filed late Friday afternoon.

[..]

Pauley implied in his ruling on Friday that Prevezon should have been eager to pay the $5.9 million because, absent settlement, "the trial would have showcased a tale of international intrigue - a massive tax fraud in Russia resulting in the transfer of $230 million through a Byzantine web of shell companies."

The investigation into whether Prevezon, which is incorporated in Cyprus, laundered millions of dollars into New York City property 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.


And it gets better!

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. The company then invested those funds "in various New York properties," according to the complaint.


Remember Preet Bharara? Yeah, Trump fired him in March. Who has done some shady real estate deals in New York? Manafort, who was found-out at least in part by a local Brooklyn blogger who dug into the goings-on behind a multi-million dollar building. New York, shady real estate dealings with international intrigue... hmmm.

We have a $230 million dollar Russian scheme revealed in the midst of a kleptocracy, and one of the key guys - Magnitsky - doesn't end-up a celebrated hero of the people, but instead ends-up dead in a Russian jail. Multi-hundred-million dollar schemes in Russia don't happen without the boss, Putin, giving his okay, and taking a cut.

Russia is plenty sensitive about this whole thing.

But why would Putin be so concerned about repealing the act? Browder believes he knows why.

"He hates it because it affects him personally. It affects his personal money. His net worth. He thinks that his money will eventually be frozen under the Magnitsky Act.

[...]

In an attempt to turn the tables, the Russian government posthumously convicted Magnitsky, accusing him of engineering the very fraud he had found, and convicted Browder in absentia, for the same thing. It has several times tried unsuccessfully to get Interpol to return Browder to Russia to serve a prison sentence. "


So far, we have Cypriot banks who earn mucho bucks by turning a blind eye toward money laundering, and a Russian ruler who profits, bigly, from said scams (the likes of which he's been pulling since he was running Saint Petersburg), and is understandably concerned about keeping such schemes under wraps, to the point that the Magnitsky act comes-up over and over again.

On the other side, we have Manafort, who was deeply connected to a notoriously corupt leader of Ukraine, who also happened to be a Russian puppet, while Manafort seems to have been pushing millions through banks in Cyprus. We also have the son of a presidential candidate, along with Manafort and Kushner, attending a meeting with a Russian lawyer about (drum roll) the Magnitsky act, apparently leveraged by being able to deliver dirt on the presidential candidate's opponent.

Trump and Putin are quite similar in that neither has an ideological bone in their body, unless making money - via any available means - is an ideology. I don't know if Trump directly colluded, or ordered/accepted collusion. However, he surrounded himself with questionable people, and also has had questionable dealings in highly corrupt countries. Large American banks stopped dealing with Trump a while ago, yet he squirmed through debt crunches. Kushner also has a looming debt problem.

Trump's own family has said they do a lot of business with Russia - not necessarily in Russia, but with Russian money (the very, very rich in Russia are constantly looking for ways to get their money out of Russia), while Trump stated he has no deals in Russia (which may be true, but is not the same as not having deals with Russian interests).

It will be the money that pulls it all down. Mueller has an A-Team of international money laundering investigators. There is now demonstrable momentum, and these investigators are going to turn-over every slimy rock they find. Trump stands to lose money, and his ever-coveted love of his base. Putin may also end-up out a few billion (unlike Trump, Putin can afford it, and will remain in power). Cyprus needs to be very careful, because if the Western world turns it's ire toward Cypriot banking, a lot of very rich people will be in a bit of a pinch (and not only Russians).

Trump didn't need to run for POTUS, but in some way, he was compelled. Manafort didn't need to run the Trump campaign - and for free, no less - but he did it anyway (perhaps looking to leverage the position to get a few million back from Russian-controlled parties, since Manafort wasn't in a good place, financially ). It is obvious that Trump didn't understand the level of scrutiny to which he'd be subjected, or he figured he'd be able to deal with it by being what he thought of as CEO of the USA.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby tinyrick » Fri Nov 24, 2017 8:11 am

Flynn's lawyers are no longer in contact with Trump's lawyers.

According to the article, two separate teams of lawyers can no longer share information with each other if doing so would present a conflict of interest. So what's likely happening is Michael Flynn's team is negotiating with Mueller on what he will get in exchange for working with Mueller's team.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby reallifegirl » Fri Dec 01, 2017 3:40 pm

Michael Flynn Expected to Plead Guilty to Lying to the F.B.I.

Here's hoping this is a good sign that more and more shit's about to come out and it's not just Flynn going down.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby tinyrick » Fri Dec 01, 2017 4:17 pm

reallifegirl wrote:Michael Flynn Expected to Plead Guilty to Lying to the F.B.I.

Here's hoping this is a good sign that more and more shit's about to come out and it's not just Flynn going down.


Flynn is likely guilty of multiple crimes, including treason, but is only pleading to one. That should tell you something about the plea deal.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Absentia » Sat Dec 02, 2017 3:52 am

Sources say Flynn is telling the special counsel that J-Kush directed him to establish contact with Russia.

Mueller's moving right up the ladder and Kushy is the last degree of separation. If anybody has anything on Trump it's probably him, so Flynn fingering him is huge.
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Re: Mueller Files First Charges

Postby Cobra-D » Sat Dec 02, 2017 4:24 am

Absentia wrote:so Flynn fingering him is huge.


Yeah he is ;).

I gotta say this Christmas is turning out to the best one yet.
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