Mueller's investigation into Trump takes action

[Danoh]

Either way, Trump has ever been the overblown narcissist.

Thus, whether he is guilty or not, or turns out guiltless in all this or not; I'm certain he is somehow enjoying all the attention on him - just like back when things would die down in the press a bit, back when his first adultery was exposed, he himself would set the press abuzz once more, with one tidbit or another.

Heck - were he on TOL, most of his time would be heavily spent over in the "New Mentions" section :chuckle:

 

[Tambora]

Either way, Trump has ever been the overblown narcissist.

The irony.

 

[kmoney]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...ussia-probe-may-face-challenges-idUSKBN1D401W
Manafort money laundering charge in Russia probe may face challenges

When the lawyer for the former campaign manager of President Donald Trump attacked the money laundering charge brought against his client as flimsy, some legal experts say he may have pinpointed a potential weakness in the indictment by U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller.

....

Downing will also be seeking to suppress evidence he said was improperly obtained by search warrant, according to an additional filing on Friday. Manafort’s Virginia home was raided by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents over the summer.

The money laundering statute targets financial transactions involving the proceeds of “specified unlawful activity.” According to the Manafort indictment, the unlawful activity was his violation of the U.S. Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

Though the money laundering statute includes FARA violations, Seattle tax lawyer John Colvin said the charge against Manafort was not as straightforward as most other cases.

“It doesn’t fit the normal paradigm” of money-laundering cases involving criminal activity like drug trafficking, Colvin said. “It seems like a stretch to me.”

FEW FARA PROSECUTIONS

Downing said in his Thursday filing that only six prosecutions have been brought for violating FARA in the last 50 years, producing only one conviction.

By pointing out the lack of previous FARA prosecutions, former federal prosecutor Mark Lee, now a white-collar defense lawyer in Philadelphia, said Downing was likely trying to suggest Manafort may not even have known he was violating the law. The section cited by Mueller requires the FARA violation to be “knowing and willful.”

Successfully casting doubt on whether Manafort intentionally violated FARA could knock out the money laundering charge, Lee said.

“If you don’t have a (specific unlawful activity), you can’t by definition have a laundering,” said Lee.

Former federal prosecutor Michael Padula, now a Miami defense lawyer, said parts of the money laundering statute also require funds to “promote” an ongoing criminal enterprise. That may be hard to show in the Manafort case, where the proceeds went to purchase real estate, expensive suits and Range Rovers for the conspirator’s personal use.

But other lawyers said they doubted defense arguments regarding FARA would gain much traction.

“The idea that somebody of Mr. Manafort’s background and sophistication would not understand that, if he did what he is alleged to have done, he would be required to file as an agent of a foreign government, is, I think, laughable,” said Chicago lawyer and former federal prosecutor Patrick Cotter.

Several lawyers noted that, even without the money laundering counts, Mueller had strong charges based on the failure of Manafort and Gates to report their overseas accounts to the Internal Revenue Service and that the entirety of the case appeared to be backed by strong documentary evidence. They also pointed out that Mueller could add more charges at a later date.

“It’s an argument, not a get out of jail free card,” said Padula of Downing’s money laundering defense. “He’s still got a tough road ahead of him.”

 

[annabenedetti]

“The idea that somebody of Mr. Manafort’s background and sophistication would not understand that, if he did what he is alleged to have done, he would be required to file as an agent of a foreign government, is, I think, laughable,” said Chicago lawyer and former federal prosecutor Patrick Cotter.

Manafort had three passports, each with a different number. Why he would need three passports?

 

[Danoh]

The irony.

So says the supporter of a known and admitted sexual predator: Donald Trump.

You and yours make your so called grace gospel a disgraceful fraud. Plain and simple.

Rom. 5:8.

 

[Tambora]

So says the supporter of a known and admitted sexual predator: Donald Trump.

You and yours make your so called grace gospel a disgraceful fraud. Plain and simple.

Rom. 5:8.

So says the one that is a known overblown graceless narcissist (you).

Take that as you will.
Blessings.
Have a nice day.
Rom 5:8
Peace.

 

[ClimateSanity]

Now that stuff is really happening I thought I'd start a thread to talk about it.

https://lawfareblog.com/robert-muellers-show-strength-quick-and-dirty-analysis
Robert Mueller’s Show of Strength: A Quick and Dirty Analysis

The first big takeaway from Monday morning’s flurry of charging and plea documents with respect to Paul Manafort Jr., Richard Gates III and George Papadopoulos is this: The president of the United States had as his campaign chairman a man who had allegedly served for years as an unregistered foreign agent for a puppet government of Vladimir Putin, a man who was allegedly laundering remarkable sums of money even while running the now-president’s campaign, a man who allegedly lied about all of this to the FBI and the Justice Department. The second big takeaway is even starker: A member of President Trump’s campaign team admits that he was working with people he knew to be tied to the Russian government to “arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government officials” and to obtain “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of hacked emails—and that he lied about these activities to the FBI. He briefed President Trump on at least some of them. Before we dive any deeper into the Manafort-Gates indictment—charges to which both pled not guilty to Monday—or the Papadopoulos plea and stipulation, let’s pause a moment over these two remarkable claims, one of which still must be considered as allegation and the other of which can now be considered as admitted fact. President Trump, in short, had on his campaign at least one person, and allegedly two people, who actively worked with adversarial foreign governments in a fashion they sought to criminally conceal from investigators. One of them ran the campaign. The other, meanwhile, was interfacing with people he “understood to have substantial connections to Russian government officials” and with a person introduced to him as “a relative of Russian President Vladimir Putin with connections to senior Russian government officials.” All of this while President Trump was assuring the American people that he and his campaign had "nothing to do with Russia." The release of these documents should, though it probably won’t, put to rest the suggestion that there are no serious questions of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in the latter’s interference on the former’s behalf during the 2016 election. It also raises a profound set of questions about the truthfulness of a larger set of representations Trump campaign officials and operatives have made both in public and, presumably, under oath and to investigators. And here’s the rub: This is only Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s opening salvo. As opening salvos go, it’s a doozy. Let’s start with the surprise unsealing of the Papadopoulos plea agreement and stipulation of fact. Papadopoulos first became publicly affiliated with the Trump campaign in March 2016. That month, Trump faced significant pressure to announce foreign policy advisers after numerous Republican foreign policy and national security experts publicly vowed never to work for him. In response, Trump produced a list of names of purported experts, a list that included both Papadapoulos and Carter Page. The Washington Post reported in August of this year that Papadopoulos, between March and May of 2016, had “offered to set up ‘a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump,’” but that the campaign had rebuffed his numerous attempts. It turns out he did a lot more than that. His guilty plea is for lying to FBI investigators in a Jan. 27, 2017, interview regarding his conduct and contacts. As we’ve discussed in the past, it isn’t uncommon for false statements to the FBI to be prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 offenses in these sorts of cases. Proving that someone is lying is often easier than proving that the underlying offense violates the law. Here, for example, Papadopoulos’s underlying activity—working with Russian government officials to obtain “dirt” on Clinton and set up a Putin-Trump meeting—may have been legal, if wholly disreputable. Lying about it, however, is a crime. We can assume that Mueller had the goods on Papadopoulos beyond lying to the bureau in some manner. The lying, after all, is merely the charge he pleaded to in the context of a plea deal in which prosecutors have cut him a break. That said, the Papadopoulos stipulation offers a stunningly frank, if probably incomplete, account of what occurred during the spring of 2016 in the Trump campaign. To wit, during that period, Trump campaign officials were actively working to set up a meeting with Russian officials or representatives. And from a very early point in the campaign, those meetings were explicitly about obtaining hacked, incriminating emails. It isn’t clear which emails the various parties might have been discussing here. There are, after all, the hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee, which first became public on June 14, 2016, though the breach had occurred more than a year earlier. There are the hacked emails of Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, a breach that occurred on March 19, 2016, but that did not become public until Oct. 9, 2016. There are also the purported 30,000 emails from Hillary Clinton’s time at the State Department, a matter dating to 2015, which may not have ever been hacked but which Trump campaign folks clearly believed had been. There is also possibly some other category of alleged emails that wasn’t a matter of public discussion. But it’s clear that Trump campaign officials were after emails and, well, let’s just say they didn’t go to the FBI when they found themselves in conversations with Russian officials about them. The stipulation also contains some rather damaging information about President Trump himself. Papadopoulos says he attended a “national security” meeting on March 31, 2016, at which Trump himself was present, along with his other foreign policy advisers. In that meeting, Papadopoulos told the group that he had connections to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Putin. This means that Trump either knew or should have known about his campaign’s effort to interface with Russia, even as news of various criminal hacking and attempts to interfere with the U.S. election were becoming public. The Manafort-Gates indictment is, in a different way, also dramatic. The amount of money allegedly at issue in breathtaking. According to Paragraph 6 of the indictment, “more than $75,000,000 flowed through the offshore accounts” that Manafort and Gates controlled. Eighteen million of these dollars are specifically alleged to have been laundered. This money laundering “to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities” allegedly took place through the entire period of Manafort’s service in the Trump campaign. Manafort’s alleged unregistered foreign agency on behalf of Ukraine and its Party of Regions, by contrast, reportedly ended in 2014, when then-Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych was ousted. So President Trump can at least claim that his campaign manager is not under indictment for being an unregistered foreign agent at the time he was running Trump’s campaign. But that’s about the only good news in the indictment for the president. Because Manafort is alleged to have lied about his foreign-agent status and made false statements into this year. In other words, at the same time Papadopoulos admits he was working Russian government officials for Clinton emails and for a Trump-Putin meeting, Manafort was allegedly still laundering the money he had obtained by illegally representing one of Putin’s allied strongmen. We offer no prediction as to how this will play politically or whether such antics will carry any water with Republicans who must be feeling a little uneasy today. We will say this: Mueller’s opening bid is a remarkable show of strength. He has a cooperating witness from inside the campaign’s interactions with the Russians. And he is alleging not mere technical infractions of law but astonishing criminality on the part of Trump’s campaign manager, a man who also attended the Trump Tower meeting. Any hope the White House may have had that the Mueller investigation might be fading away vanished Monday morning. Things are only going to get worse from here.

Everything I've heard so far has said that the Papadopoulos side of things poses more trouble for Trump. But even this analysis says that the actions may not have been illegal.

It will be interesting to see where things go from here. I'm trying not to react too strongly in either direction so far.

What possible trouble does this pose for Trump??? A big fat zero.

 

[ClimateSanity]

Um, what we are talking about and the title of this thread.



What crime did they commit?



Of course he is.......his order is to find collusion.. he can't find any.

There is no crime other than false statements and money laundering of which Trump has nothing to do with.

Why did you vote them in?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ClimateSanity]

Why did you want a jury nullification?



I asked a very general question about what should happen to them if they broke the law. You said

So it seemed you wanted them to walk regardless of what they did or what the verdict would otherwise be. Again, I am not sure why you are going so far out of your way to defend a guy like Manafort. :idunno:



We're going in circles. There are 12 charges against them in the indictment.

- Between at least 2006 and 2015, MANAFORT and GATES acted as unregistered agents of the Government of Ukraine - MANAFORT and GATES funneled millions of dollars in payments into foreign nominee companies and bank accounts - MANAFORT and GATES concealed from the United States their work as agents of, and millions of dollars in payments from, Ukraine and its political parties and leaders - MANAFORT used his hidden overseas wealth to enjoy a lavish lifestyle in the United States, without paying taxes on that income - GATES aided MANAFORT in obtaining money from these offshore accounts, which he was instrumental in opening. Like MANAFORT, GATES used money from these offshore accounts to pay for his personal expenses, including his mortgage, children's tuition, and interior decorating of his Virginia residence. - In total, more than $75,000,000 flowed through the offshore accounts. MANAFORT laundered more than $18,000,000, which was used by him to buy property, goods, and services in the United States, income that he concealed from the United States Treasury, the Department of Justice, and others. GATES transferred more than $3,000,000 from the offshore accounts to other accounts that he controlled. - Between in or around 2008 and 2017, both dates being approximate and inclusive, in the District of Columbia and elsewhere, MANAFORT and GATES devised and intended to devise, and executed and attempted to execute, a scheme and artifice to defraud, and to obtain money and property by means of false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises from the United States, banks, and other financial institutions. As part of the scheme, MANAFORT and GATES repeatedly provided false information to financial bookkeepers, tax accountants, and legal counsel, among others - In order to use the money in the offshore nominee accounts of the MANAFORT-GATES entities without paying taxes on it, MANAFORT and GATES caused millions of dollars in wire transfers from these accounts to be made for goods, services, and real estate. They did not report these transfers as income to DMP, DMI, or MANAFORT. - From 2008 to 2014, MANAFORT caused the following wires, totaling over $12,000,000, to be sent to the vendors listed below for personal items. MANAFORT did not pay taxes on this income, which was used to make the purchases. - In 2012, MANAFORT caused the following wires to be sent to the entities listed below to purchase the real estate also listed below. MANAFORT did not report the money used to make these purchases on his 2012 tax return - It is illegal to act as an agent of a foreign principal engaged in certain United States influence activities without registering the affiliation. Specifically, a person who engages in lobbying or public relations work in the United States (hereafter collectively referred to as lobbying) for a foreign principal such as the Government of Ukraine or the Party of Regions is required to provide a detailed written registration statement to the United States Department of Justice. The filing, made under oath, must disclose the name of the foreign principal, the financial payments to the lobbyist, and the measures undertaken for the foreign principal, among other information. A person required to make such a filing must further make in all lobbying material a “conspicuous statement” that the materials are distributed on behalf of the foreign principal, among other things. The filing thus permits public awareness and evaluation of the activities of a lobbyist who acts as an agent of a foreign power or foreign political party in the United States. - In furtherance of the scheme, from 2006 until 2014, both dates being approximate and inclusive, MANAFORT and GATES engaged in a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign in the United States at the direction of Yanukovych, the Party of Regions, and the Government of Ukraine. MANAFORT and GATES did so without registering and providing the disclosures required by law - As part of the scheme, in February 2012, MANAFORT and GATES solicited two Washington, D.C., firms (Company A and Company B) to lobby in the United States on behalf of Yanukovych, the Party of Regions, and the Government of Ukraine. For instance, GATES wrote to Company A that it would be “representing the Government of Ukraine in [Washington,] DC.” - Toward the end of that first year, in November 2012, GATES wrote to Company A and Company B that the firms needed to prepare an assessment of their past and prospective lobbying efforts so the “President” could be briefed by “Paul” “on what Ukraine has done well and what it can do better as we move into 2013.” - At the direction of MANAFORT and GATES, Company A and Company B engaged in extensive lobbying. Among other things, they lobbied multiple Members of Congress and their staffs about Ukraine sanctions, the validity of Ukraine elections, and the propriety of Yanukovych's imprisoning his presidential rival, Yulia Tymoshenko (who had served as Ukraine President prior to Yanukovych). MANAFORT and GATES also lobbied in connection with the roll out of a report concerning the Tymoshenko trial commissioned by the Government of Ukraine. MANAFORT and GATES used one of their offshore accounts to funnel $4 million to pay secretly for the report. - To conceal the scheme, MANAFORT and GATES developed a false and misleading cover story that would distance themselves and the Government of Ukraine, Yanukovych, and the Party of Regions from the Centre, Company A, and Company B. For instance, in the wake of extensive press reports on MANAFORT and his connections with Ukraine - In September 2016, after numerous recent press reports concerning MANAFORT, the Department of Justice informed MANAFORT, GATES, and DMI that it sought to determine whether they had acted as agents of a foreign principal under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), without registering. In November 2016 and February 2017, MANAFORT, GATES, and DMI caused false and misleading letters to be submitted to the Department of Justice, which mirrored the false cover story set out above. - For each year in or about and between 2008 through at least 2014, MANAFORT had authority over foreign accounts that required an FBAR report. Specifically, MANAFORT was required to report to the United States Treasury each foreign bank account held by the foreign MANAFORT-GATES entities noted above in paragraph 12 that bear the initials PM. No FBAR reports were made by MANAFORT for these accounts. - Furthermore, in each of MANAFORT's tax filings for 2008 through 2014, MANAFORT represented falsely that he did not have authority over any foreign bank accounts. - In late 2015 through early 2016, MANAFORT applied for a mortgage on the condominium. Because the bank would permit a greater loan amount if the property were owner-occupied, MANAFORT falsely represented to the bank and its agents that it was a secondary home used as such by his daughter and son-in-law and was not a property held as a rental property. - the defendants PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR., and RICHARD W. GATES III, together with others, knowingly and intentionally conspired to defraud the United States by impeding, impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of a government agency, namely the Department of Justice and the Department of the Treasury, and to commit offenses against the United States, to wit, the violations of law charged in Counts Three through Six and Ten through Twelve.

How are you just shrugging this off or going as far to hope for a jury nullification?

Who was in charge at this from 2008 until 2013?????
Mueller. Why didn't he go after them during his tenure?

 

[rexlunae]

There is no crime other than false statements and money laundering of which Trump has nothing to do with.

What's the expressions? The fish rots from the head. Sure, maybe Trump is just the unluckiest man alive, and all the men he surrounds himself with just happen to be corrupt. But it gets harder to explain as the numbers grow. And the criminal charges are just the starkest examples.

 

[WizardofOz]

Who was in charge at this from 2008 until 2013?????
Mueller. Why didn't he go after them during his tenure?

He likely had no idea that it was going on.

Better late then never, right?

 

[drbrumley]

Manafort pleaded not guilty, so now it will go to trial. Right now Manafort is an innocent man. Until proven guilty by a jury. So there is really nothing to discuss.....

 

[Tambora]

Here is a link to a pdf file that has the entire 31 page indictment.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1007271/download

 

[Tambora]

Manafort pleaded not guilty, so now it will go to trial. Right now Manafort is an innocent man. Until proven guilty by a jury. So there is really nothing to discuss.....

Manafort and Gates were placed under house arrest.

Ya know, I sometimes think this is hypocritical of the "innocent until proven guilty".
Why should we be allowed to contain an innocent person?

 

[drbrumley]

Manafort and Gates were placed under house arrest.

Ya know, I sometimes think this is hypocritical of the "innocent until proven guilty".
Why should we be allowed to contain an innocent person?

Interesting question...

 

[patrick jane]

Manafort and Gates were placed under house arrest.

Ya know, I sometimes think this is hypocritical of the "innocent until proven guilty".
Why should we be allowed to contain an innocent person?

And yet an anti-Trump military judge lets a coward deserter who got other soldiers maimed go free.

 

[Danoh]

What's the expressions? The fish rots from the head. Sure, maybe Trump is just the unluckiest man alive, and all the men he surrounds himself with just happen to be corrupt. But it gets harder to explain as the numbers grow. And the criminal charges are just the starkest examples.

Nah, Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed he only picks the best.

And never mind all his past New York Mob ties; nor the various criminals he has knowingly laundered the money of by knowingly selling them his overblown, overpriced condos.

Ten to one, when that fake hair piece of his finally hits the fan; he'll be looking at one heck of a RICO case against him stretching back a few decades.

He's brought all this on himself.

But nope - Trump is as clean as his self-deluded supporters continue to alt-right paint him out to be.

 

[Tambora]

And yet an anti-Trump military judge lets a coward deserter who got other soldiers maimed go free.

Well, yeah.
What's the point of being found guilty?
Big whoop.
Walk on home and have a sandwich and a beer.

 

[rexlunae]

Manafort and Gates were placed under house arrest.

Ya know, I sometimes think this is hypocritical of the "innocent until proven guilty".
Why should we be allowed to contain an innocent person?

Pre-trial detention has a few main purposes: to ensure that the accused shows up to their trial, to ensure that the public is safe from any threat that they pose, things like that. Mueller's team argued successfully that the defendants were flight risks, hence the monitoring requirement. And yet they were allowed to go home and go to church and be with their families on bail that is relatively small compared to their net worth.

When BLM raises this issue of unfair bail for poor black defendants, do you just tune it out? Do you only care when it impacts (very lightly, I might add) two of the most privileged men in America?

 

[patrick jane]

Pre-trial detention has a few main purposes: to ensure that the accused shows up to their trial, to ensure that the public is safe from any threat that they pose, things like that. Mueller's team argued successfully that the defendants were flight risks, hence the monitoring requirement. And yet they were allowed to go home and go to church and be with their families on bail that is relatively small compared to their net worth.

When BLM raises this issue of unfair bail for poor black defendants, do you just tune it out? Do you only care when it impacts (very lightly, I might add) two of the most privileged men in America?

:blabla: