Howie Carr on Mueller’s involvement… — 21 Comments
Muller and Weissmann
i.e., birds of a feather flock together
See the Levin interview of Sidney Powell
I generally do casual surfing using one of my three Fires (and I confess I like my 2012 vintage Kindle Fire the best). And whenever I read a story that seems particularly damning of Democrats and/or Progressives, the Silk browser will dump its memory and slam shut. This was one such. Never happens with anything else, but hey, can only be a coincidence, right? Of course never happens with my underpowered Win10 NuVision tablet. Maybe Amazon has a nice tinfoil hat for me to wear?
So in this version of events, “Mueller did not railroad four innocent men into prison”, but rather “absolutely stonewalls the release of the information” that shows that they were framed.
His argument hinges on the opinion of U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner who, according to Carr, alleged that…
Mueller’s stonewalling, Gertner wrote, was a “serious problem.”
Absolutely nothing in the record that I saw suggested Mueller’s involvement in any way in either the initial acts that led to the four men’s imprisonment, or the acts that ended in their continued imprisonment and denying them parole or the coverup
That’s quite a disconnect.
Mueller’s stonewalling, Gertner wrote, was a “serious problem.”
I noticed that Mueller’s name was not in quotes, unlike “serious problem”.
…I was unsparing in my criticism of the F.B.I. and Justice Department officials who were responsible for this wrongful imprisonment. I named names where the record supported it. I resoundingly condemned the government in an unusual court session in which I read my conclusions.
Mr. Mueller is mentioned nowhere in my opinion…
Highlights mine
Manju’s banking on no one having read the article.
Leopards don’t change their spots.
It gets worse.
I looked at the show-cause order from U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner that Carr references. In it, she rips the FBI, sometimes using names but not Meuller’s, with one caveat.
She “ORDERS that this matter be brought to the personal attention of the Director of the FBI…” That would be Robert Meuller.
Six days later, according to Carr, the Feds file this:
“This matter has been brought to the personal attention of the Director of the FBI… (the innocent men and the DOJ) have been provided with unredacted copies of the FBI documents.”
It appears that once Meuller got involved, justice was served.
This aligns with what Judge Gertner says here:
It wasn’t until the late 1990s that another federal judge, Mark Wolf, held hearings that revealed the F.B.I.’s refusal to inform the United States attorney in Boston that Mr. Bulger and his confederate Stephen Flemmi, brother of Vincent, were informants. In a report by the House Committee on Government Reform, which looked into the F.B.I.’s use of secret informants, the only reference to Mr. Mueller was a favorable one. He offered, as F.B.I. director, to work with the committee to reform the agency’s informant practices.
Digital media has always been a turbulent business, but last week’s layoffs suggest a reason for panic.
Farhad Manjoo
By Farhad Manjoo
Opinion Columnist
Looking for a new job here, Manju ?
Manju’s first article from the Boston Globe is behind a paywall; anyone have a clear access to it, or any of their source data?
His second link to the NYT op-ed by Gelernter from April 2018 includes this additional information, which I excerpt because I have seen recent references to the charge that there is a letter from Mueller objecting to the prisoners’ release.
They continued to withhold the truth during commutation hearings for the men; each time the F.B.I. could have disclosed Mr. Barboza’s lie, it did not. In fact, the agency lobbied against clemency.
Much has been made about an assertion made by Michael Albano, the former mayor of Springfield, Mass., who served on the Massachusetts Parole Board in the 1980s. He has said repeatedly that he saw a letter from Mr. Mueller, written during the period while he was in the United States attorney’s office in Boston, opposing the release of one of the four men.
But no copy of that letter has ever been produced, and Mr. Dershowitz now says in a statement that several days after making his remarks on the Catsimatidis show, The Boston Globe “revealed for the first time to my knowledge that no such letter has been found. I never repeated the allegation after that.” Still, he said, “further investigation seems warranted, since absence of evidence is not conclusive evidence of absence, especially in government files.”
Perhaps. But an accusation of such gravity demands more. I found no such letter from Mr. Mueller in the commutation files in the court record. Neither did the lead trial lawyer for the plaintiffs, Ms. Balliro, who has a complete copy of the parole board files of all four men, which were produced in response to a subpoena before the trial. Other letters from federal prosecutors are in those files. But there was nothing from Mr. Mueller.
The show cause order doesn’t mention Mueller by name, just the “director of the FBI” as quoted; cut and paste only generates gibberish.
Right now, advantage Manju; however, the case still shows that the FBI as an organization is prone to malfeasance when they want to be.
Whoops – Judge Gertner, not Gelernter.
And of course EDIT is AWOL.
More background on Mueller and the case can be found here, including the origins of the “serious problem” quote. On the latter point:
Nancy Gertner, the now-retired federal judge who presided over the civil case for damages that ended with the $102 million award, then wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times accusing Dershowitz and Fox News host Sean Hannity, among others, of “smearing” Mueller.
Gertner, who was appointed to the bench by her Yale Law School classmate Bill Clinton, claimed Mueller “had no involvement in that case.”
However, in December 2006, during the civil trial, Judge Gertner wrote a show-cause order accusing Mueller of stonewalling production of exculpatory evidence – “a serious problem,” she wrote…
Much more at the link.
Howie Carr is somewhat of an expert on the Whitey Bulger case. He wrote a couple of books about it (I’ve not read the books): this as well as this.
Consider the issue of criticizing Robert Mueller, the special counsel. Any criticism or even skepticism regarding Mueller’s history is seen as motivated by a desire to help Trump. Mueller was an assistant U.S. attorney in Boston, the head of its criminal division, the head of the criminal division in Main Justice, and the director of the FBI during the most scandalous miscarriage of justice in the modern history of the FBI. Four innocent people were framed by the FBI to protect mass murdering gangsters who were working as FBI informers while they were killing innocent people. An FBI agent, who is now in prison, was tipping off Whitey Bulger as to who might testify against him so that these individuals could be killed. He also tipped off Bulger, allowing him to escape and remain on the lam for 16 years.
What responsibility, if any, did Mueller, who was in key positions of authority and capable of preventing these horrible miscarriages, have in this sordid incident? A former member of the parole board — a liberal Democrat who also served as mayor of Springfield, Mass. — swears he saw a letter from Mueller urging the denial of release for at least one of these wrongfully convicted defendants. When he went back to retrieve the letter, it was not in the file. This should surprise no one since Judge Mark Wolf (himself a former prosecutor), who conducted extensive hearings about this entire mess, made the following findings:
“The files relating to the Wheeler murder, and the FBI’s handling of them, exemplify recurring irregularities with regard to the preparation, maintenance, and production in this case of documents damaging to Flemmi and Bulger. First, there appears to be a pattern of false statements placed in Flemmi’s informant file to divert attention from his possible crimes and/or FBI misconduct….
“Second, contrary to the FBI’s usual policy and practice, all but one of the reports containing Halloran’s allegations against Bulger and Flemmi were not indexed and placed in an investigative file referencing their names. Thus, those documents were not discoverable by a standard search of the FBI’s indices. Similar irregularities in indexing and, therefore, access occurred with regard to information that the FBI received concerning an extortion by Bulger of Hobart Willis and from Joseph Murray concerning the murder of Brian Halloran, among other things.
“Third, when documents damaging to the FBI were found by the Bureau, they were in some instances not produced to the defendants or the court at the time required by the court’s Orders.
“Wolf also made a finding that directly references Mueller’s state of knowledge regarding the ‘history'”…
Much more at the link.
FBI sniper Horiuchi murdered Vicky Weaver who was holding her baby in the doorway of her home. No consequences beyond paying Randy Weaver 3 million as a payoff for his loss. Nothing about the FBI is honorable.
Neo quotes Howie Carr:
…Judge Gertner wrote a show-cause order accusing Mueller of stonewalling production of exculpatory evidence…
In it, you will see the Judge criticizing FBI and DOJ officials by name. But not Mueller. Indeed, at the end of the filing, she orders that this matter be bought to the attention of the head of the FBI, who happened to be Robert Meuller.
When this happened, justice was served.
Since we are on the subject..sort of..I had heard the metadata CC news before, but the bolded excerpt was news to me:
When Michael Horowitz, the DOJ Inspector General testified before Congress in June 2018 he was asked about the metadata evidence and conceded that he knew about the lead never followed. Mark Meadows (R-NC) asked why it wasn’t in his report about the FBI’s Clinton Investigation he had issued, and Horowitz said he would get back to the committee with the answer.
Apparently, Meadows believes that the person who led the FBI’s Clinton investigation Peter Strzok, who was fired from the agency last year after his anti-Trump text messages became known, ignored the lead about the Clinton emails/foreign country, never following up with the ICIG regarding the information. Nobody at the FBI interviewed anyone from the ICIG’s office.
In fact, according to Meadows, Strzok called the ICIG office 10 minutes after Comey gave his speech exonerating Clinton in July 2016, and asked them to close out their inspector general’s referral about China hacking into Hillary’s server.
(via Instapundit)
(also via Instapundit)
Was she lying then, or lying now?
A Belarusian woman who claimed to possess insider information about Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election — and what role President Donald Trump’s campaign played in the disinformation campaign — now admits her story was a hoax.
What is the background?
Anastasia Vashukevich, whom the New York Times described as an “escort,” grabbed headlines last year when she claimed to possess secret audio recordings that she said would prove a link between Russian officials and the Trump campaign. She said she obtained the recordings while engaging in an affair with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
According to the Times, Vashukevich sought to use the recordings as leverage to free herself from a Thai jail, where she wrote to U.S. officials asking for political asylum in exchange for the alleged evidence.
…
Vashukevich revealed to CNN in an interview Tuesday that she made up her story about the recordings to generate media attention, which she believed would save her life.
“I think it saved my life, how can I regret it? If journalists had not come at that time and that story had not come to the newspapers, maybe I would [be dead by] now,” she said.
Her admission comes only after she said “Russian agents” spoke to her while she was detained in Russia earlier this month. <bVashukevich said the agents warned her to stop talking about her relationship with Deripaska.
“I had some talk when I was in Russian jail. And they explained to me very clear what should I do, what should I say and what I shouldn’t say,” she said. “They said to me, ‘Don’t touch Oleg Deripaska anymore.”
Deripaska is known to be a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He also has a past business association with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who is currently due to be sentenced to prison after being convicted of fraud, conspiracy against the U.S., and making false statements to investigators.
Seems that the Obama-Clinton-Lynch-Comey-Strzok-McCabe-Ohr-Rosenstein cover-up is also becoming the Mueller cover-up.
Well, why not….
(If only government employees were always so ingenious…though to be fair, not all government employees have wall-to-wall media protection.)
That Dershowitz op-ed is well worth reading.
It looks to me that Neo and Manju are “watching the same movie on different screens” — talking around the real problem of Mueller’s complicity or lack thereof.
The real question is, to give it the classic formulation, “What did Mueller know and when did he know it?”
Daily Caller:
Mueller was an assistant US attorney in Boston in the 1980’s as the imprisoned men futilely tried to get their convictions overturned. Greco passed a lie detector test on live national TV.
But the FBI was adamant that they should remain behind bars. Mueller served briefly as US attorney in Boston in 1986-87. Both his predecessor and his successor as US attorney wrote letters to state authorities demanding that the innocent men not be released.
Albano, the former parole board member, has said that he has seen a similar letter written by Mueller during his brief stint as US attorney. But that letter, if it ever existed, appears to have disappeared from state files.
Maybe US Attorney Mueller wrote a letter; maybe not.
Maybe he knew the men were innocent; maybe not.
As FBI Director later, same question.
Three options:
(1) Mueller actually did not know that the FBI & Boston & MA police framed the convicted men.
He took his predecessor’s & successor’s letters at face value. His opposition to clemency in 2002 is explained by the timing of his appointment as Director in August 2001, only a few days before 9/11 — he had more important things on his plate, and accepted a white-wash from his subordinates.
Given what we know now about how many people were in on the “conspiracy” and how early doubts were raised about the conviction, that increasingly seems unlikely.
(2) Mueller was an active part of the conspiracy from the beginning of his service in Boston in 1986-1987, but either didn’t leave a paper trail or executed a cover-up by removing letters and other documents incriminating him.
That would formerly have seemed unthinkable to most people, especially his friends like Andrew McCarthey, but his current stint as Special Counsel is eroding that kind of support.
(3) Mueller was aware of the “rumors” of malfeasance from the beginning, and willingly ignored them by cultivating an environment of “don’t tell me anything I don’t want to know” in Boston and as FBI Director.
Regardless, Gertner forced his hand in 2006.
I read her “show cause” order as a discrete word to the wise at the FBI, not naming Mueller because that allowed him to save face if he wasn’t actively suborning the conspiracy but only passively refraining from washing his Bureau’s blood-stained filthy linen in public. She may have believed in my #3 above.
He responded with the stereotypical, “Now that this has finally been brought to my attention, here’s the information you asked for”, with the subtext of “I was so surprised!” that is typical of that diplomatic game-playing.
This seems the most likely to me, although I don’t pretend to be an expert after three days and a few media reports and Wikipedia.
I’m just a fan of espionage fiction.
I wondered why Howie Carr was being the attack bulldog here, but Wikipedia provided the answer.
In his memoirs, Kevin Weeks related his participation in an attempt to assassinate reporter Howie Carr at his house in suburban Acton. Weeks stated that Carr was targeted because he was “writing nasty stories about people, he was an oxygen thief who didn’t deserve to breathe.” Carr has been among the most aggressive critics of the Bulger brothers, Whitey and Billy, for their careers in the Boston area; among his works is the book The Brothers Bulger, detailing the Bulger brothers’ 25-year period of controlling Boston politics and the Boston underworld.[29]
Weeks stated that, although several plans were considered, all were abandoned because there was too much risk of injuring Carr’s wife and children. The plans climaxed with Weeks’ own attempt to shoot Carr with a sniper rifle as he came out of his house. However, when Carr came out the front door holding the hand of his young daughter, Weeks could not bring himself to shoot. He wanted another opportunity to “finish the job,” but Bulger advised him to forget about Howie Carr.[33]:205–206 In his 2006 memoir Weeks said that, although he was aware of the public outcry that would have followed, he regretted not murdering Carr. “His murder would have been an attack on the system, like attacking freedom of the press, the fabric of the American way of life, and they would have spared no expense to solve the crime. But in the long run, Jimmy and I got sidetracked and the maggot lived. Still, I wish I’d killed him. No question about it.”[33]:206
I was assured, at the time of his appointment to the position of special counsel for the investigation of foreign tampering in our 2016 election, that Mueller is a man of special talents and unimpeachable integrity and honesty. These assurances came from leadership and members of both political parties.
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Muller and Weissmann
i.e., birds of a feather flock together
See the Levin interview of Sidney Powell
I generally do casual surfing using one of my three Fires (and I confess I like my 2012 vintage Kindle Fire the best). And whenever I read a story that seems particularly damning of Democrats and/or Progressives, the Silk browser will dump its memory and slam shut. This was one such. Never happens with anything else, but hey, can only be a coincidence, right? Of course never happens with my underpowered Win10 NuVision tablet. Maybe Amazon has a nice tinfoil hat for me to wear?
So in this version of events, “Mueller did not railroad four innocent men into prison”, but rather “absolutely stonewalls the release of the information” that shows that they were framed.
His argument hinges on the opinion of U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner who, according to Carr, alleged that…
Well, I happen to have the Judge right here:
That’s quite a disconnect.
I noticed that Mueller’s name was not in quotes, unlike “serious problem”.
So did Judge Gertner criticize Meuller? Not according to the Judge:
Highlights mine
Manju’s banking on no one having read the article.
Leopards don’t change their spots.
It gets worse.
I looked at the show-cause order from U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner that Carr references. In it, she rips the FBI, sometimes using names but not Meuller’s, with one caveat.
She “ORDERS that this matter be brought to the personal attention of the Director of the FBI…” That would be Robert Meuller.
Six days later, according to Carr, the Feds file this:
It appears that once Meuller got involved, justice was served.
This aligns with what Judge Gertner says here:
Highlight mine.
Show cause order referenced above.
Hey, I discovered where Manju gets his/her comments!
Digital media has always been a turbulent business, but last week’s layoffs suggest a reason for panic.
Farhad Manjoo
By Farhad Manjoo
Opinion Columnist
Looking for a new job here, Manju ?
Manju’s first article from the Boston Globe is behind a paywall; anyone have a clear access to it, or any of their source data?
His second link to the NYT op-ed by Gelernter from April 2018 includes this additional information, which I excerpt because I have seen recent references to the charge that there is a letter from Mueller objecting to the prisoners’ release.
The show cause order doesn’t mention Mueller by name, just the “director of the FBI” as quoted; cut and paste only generates gibberish.
Right now, advantage Manju; however, the case still shows that the FBI as an organization is prone to malfeasance when they want to be.
Whoops – Judge Gertner, not Gelernter.
And of course EDIT is AWOL.
More background on Mueller and the case can be found here, including the origins of the “serious problem” quote. On the latter point:
Much more at the link.
Howie Carr is somewhat of an expert on the Whitey Bulger case. He wrote a couple of books about it (I’ve not read the books): this as well as this.
Some more from Dershowitz can be found here
Much more at the link.
FBI sniper Horiuchi murdered Vicky Weaver who was holding her baby in the doorway of her home. No consequences beyond paying Randy Weaver 3 million as a payoff for his loss. Nothing about the FBI is honorable.
Neo quotes Howie Carr:
She did not. She says she did not and if you don’t believe her you can read the show-cause order yourself.
In it, you will see the Judge criticizing FBI and DOJ officials by name. But not Mueller. Indeed, at the end of the filing, she orders that this matter be bought to the attention of the head of the FBI, who happened to be Robert Meuller.
When this happened, justice was served.
Since we are on the subject..sort of..I had heard the metadata CC news before, but the bolded excerpt was news to me:
https://lidblog.com/china-clinton-emails/
(via Instapundit)
(also via Instapundit)
Was she lying then, or lying now?
https://www.theblaze.com/news/belarusian-escort-trump-russia-truth
Seems that the Obama-Clinton-Lynch-Comey-Strzok-McCabe-Ohr-Rosenstein cover-up is also becoming the Mueller cover-up.
Well, why not….
(If only government employees were always so ingenious…though to be fair, not all government employees have wall-to-wall media protection.)
That Dershowitz op-ed is well worth reading.
It looks to me that Neo and Manju are “watching the same movie on different screens” — talking around the real problem of Mueller’s complicity or lack thereof.
The real question is, to give it the classic formulation, “What did Mueller know and when did he know it?”
Daily Caller:
Maybe US Attorney Mueller wrote a letter; maybe not.
Maybe he knew the men were innocent; maybe not.
As FBI Director later, same question.
Three options:
(1) Mueller actually did not know that the FBI & Boston & MA police framed the convicted men.
He took his predecessor’s & successor’s letters at face value. His opposition to clemency in 2002 is explained by the timing of his appointment as Director in August 2001, only a few days before 9/11 — he had more important things on his plate, and accepted a white-wash from his subordinates.
Given what we know now about how many people were in on the “conspiracy” and how early doubts were raised about the conviction, that increasingly seems unlikely.
(2) Mueller was an active part of the conspiracy from the beginning of his service in Boston in 1986-1987, but either didn’t leave a paper trail or executed a cover-up by removing letters and other documents incriminating him.
That would formerly have seemed unthinkable to most people, especially his friends like Andrew McCarthey, but his current stint as Special Counsel is eroding that kind of support.
(3) Mueller was aware of the “rumors” of malfeasance from the beginning, and willingly ignored them by cultivating an environment of “don’t tell me anything I don’t want to know” in Boston and as FBI Director.
Regardless, Gertner forced his hand in 2006.
I read her “show cause” order as a discrete word to the wise at the FBI, not naming Mueller because that allowed him to save face if he wasn’t actively suborning the conspiracy but only passively refraining from washing his Bureau’s blood-stained filthy linen in public. She may have believed in my #3 above.
He responded with the stereotypical, “Now that this has finally been brought to my attention, here’s the information you asked for”, with the subtext of “I was so surprised!” that is typical of that diplomatic game-playing.
This seems the most likely to me, although I don’t pretend to be an expert after three days and a few media reports and Wikipedia.
I’m just a fan of espionage fiction.
I wondered why Howie Carr was being the attack bulldog here, but Wikipedia provided the answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Bulger
I was assured, at the time of his appointment to the position of special counsel for the investigation of foreign tampering in our 2016 election, that Mueller is a man of special talents and unimpeachable integrity and honesty. These assurances came from leadership and members of both political parties.