Once more, with feeling: shipwreckedcrew on Durham and Russiagate

The New Neo Posted on by

Shipwreckedcrew knows a lot about law, and this is what he has to say about Durham’s indictment of Sussman. He finds it very unusual:

Typically, a “false statement” indictment will consist of a brief description of how the federal investigators came to ask the question, the answer given by the defendant which is alleged to be false, and what a truthful answer would have been. …

That is all one needs for a single count indictment charging a defendant with a violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1001. That paragraph tells the defendant the date and location of the offense and the specifics of the offense conduct.

Paragraphs 1 through 44 were not necessary to charge Sussmann. That makes what Durham returned a “speaking indictment.” It discloses information in a public document that would not otherwise be known if the indictment set forth only facts needed to meet the requirements of due process.

A “false statement” charge does not require a litany of factual allegations regarding the conduct and statements of the defendant and numerous third parties over the course of weeks or months leading up to the making of the false statement. In over 30 years of practice as both a federal prosecutor and a defense attorney specializing in federal cases, I’ve never before seen anything remotely resembling the Sussmann indictment in a single count “false statement” case.

John Durham is far too serious of a career prosecutor, with a very long and established record of meticulous investigation and preparation, to have rolled out an indictment in this fashion if he was intending to wrap up the remainder of his work with a report to the Attorney General….

Trying to understand the new information in the indictment against the backdrop of what was uncovered about the original story in 2016 and 2016 — and then cross-referencing the timeline and actors against what is now known about Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller Special Counsel Investigation — is a task worthy of a book.

He thinks this indictment took so long because there was a fight over getting the billing records from Perkins Coie, which were central evidence against Sussman.

First, as part of this fight, I believe it’s highly likely that Durham suggested to the Perkins Coie law firm that the firm itself might be — or is/was — a “target” of the investigation. Sussmann and “Campaign Attorney-1” — presumably Marc Elias based on the description — were doing legal work for firm clients as part of their employment when that legal work crossed the boundary into criminal conduct as alleged with regard to Sussmann at least.

Any corporation can be subject to criminal liability for crimes committed by managers or employees performing work within the course and scope of their employment. One way a corporation can seek to avoid criminal liability is to cooperate completely in the government’s investigation into the suspected criminal conduct of the employees.

Or perhaps it was the DNC, Clinton Campaign, and/or Tech Executive-1 who fought the disclosure, rather than the Perkins Coie law firm.

Why were the Durham investigation’s actions on this kept so quiet till now? “Disputes over the production of documents to a federal grand jury — and I was involved in just such a matter earlier this year — take place behind closed doors.” Of course, that doesn’t explain why it wasn’t leaked – although I suppose it wasn’t in the left’s interests to have it leaked, so even if it was leaked I would guess the MSM would be inclined to sit on it.

More on what it all might mean (accent on the “might”):

…[T]he most likely justification for ordering production of the records to Durham was the “crime-fraud” exception to the Attorney-Client privilege.

Simply stated, the exception applies when the communications or records at issue involve a future crime or fraud under consideration or a crime or fraud that is currently underway and continuing.

A crime by the client, that is, not the firm. And the clients here were the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and/or Tech Executive 1. Shipwreckedcrew thinks these fights for disclosure took place in a district court other than DC, for various reasons.

I still am very skeptical that this will lead to anything further. And I think that, whatever happens, Biden will probably pardon everyone. But it’s still quite fascinating. I have to say that I wasn’t even expecting this much from Durham at this point, so who knows?

Babylon Bee: Trump playing 4D chess

The New Neo Posted on by

From the Babylon Bee:

Trump has revealed to reporters that Biden’s so-called “victory” in the 2020 election was actually a 4D chess plot by himself to make his own presidency look good. According to Trump, every time there’s a major crisis now, people will look back fondly on the years 2016-2020, remembering the last great golden age of America when everything was great and we had a “really handsome, extremely smart president.”

I wonder whether any NeverTrumpers are having buyer’s remorse. I doubt it, for the most part, although there’s this:

The Biden administration: lying with impunity

The New Neo Posted on by

What does it mean to lie with impunity? It means to lie with no bad consequences, with “freedom from punishment, harm, or loss.”

Commenter “physicsguy” writes of the Biden administration, the Democrats, and the left as a whole:

It is rather amazing to take an objective view and watch what is happening: Install a puppet as president through massive voting fraud. Then use the puppet as a means to initiate all the programs. The puppet can also distract from the real agenda by the comical bumbling that the puppet displays. Blatantly lie about everything, and keep repeating all the lies; no need to worry as the MSM is in their corner. An example: Raggedy Ann saying no need to be concerned with the vaccination status of all those streaming across the border as most of them will not be staying in the US, all the while shipping them all off to various US cities. Such a laughable lie, but never challenged.

They really have totally won, and continue to consolidate their power.

I have noticed this same thing about the administration’s lies: they are absurd and are not meant to convince. They are meant to do a number of other things, and the collusion of the MSM is the key to making it work. If the majority of our “journalists” were doing their jobs correctly, it would not be difficult at all for them to successful point out the lies and disseminate that information t the public. But they see their task as propping up the left and also keeping their jobs.

So what are the lies for, if not to persuade? They are meant to give the already-convinced – the Democratic rank-and-file voter – their ready-made excuses for not paying attention to whatever objections the right may make or point out. The Democratic voter can shrug off any concerns they themselves may have, too, in a shallow and facile way. They also give the many pundits on the left their talking points, and if the talking heads on TV and the columnists hammer them home enough, the repetition makes the lies sound more like truths. After all, if all these smart people agree, who is the listener to differ?

Lastly, these lies have a function that is similar to what was going on with the Soviets – the lie as mockery and insult and sadistic tease. In that regard, obvious lying is a feature, not a bug, and it helps that the lie is absurd. It’s a show of power meant for the opposition to view, a way to say, “we can state any stupidity we want as truth, things both you and I know are ridiculous, and will we say it with a straight face to illustrate the extent of our power over you. We don’t have to pretend to make sense. We’re in control and you’re not. We are laughing at you.”

That’s the point we have reached.

Let me add that not only was Psaki’s statement absurd because obviously most of the illegal aliens streaming across the border will be staying indefinitely, but also because even if they were to stay only a few weeks or so, if infected with COVID they could pass it on in short order. So her statement was absurd on several levels.

RIP Angelo Codevilla

The New Neo Posted on by

Sad news:

Terrible news out this morning of the death of Angelo Codevilla, at age 78, reportedly the victim of a drunk driver.

It is hard to overstate the importance and brilliance of Angelo. If you only knew him by his many books and columns (including this 2015 piece he wrote for Power Line on Trump’s significance and prospects), it would be sufficient to establish his greatness. But he was also at the storm center of key aspects of American intelligence and foreign policy going back more than 40 years.

The entire post is worth reading, if you’re largely unfamiliar with Codevilla’s work (as I have mostly been). Here’s an except from an interview with Codevilla:

David Samuels: In 2010, you wrote an article, which then became a book, in which you predicted the rise of someone like Donald Trump as well as the political chaos and stripping away of institutional authority that we’ve lived through since. Did you think your prediction would come true so quickly?

Angelo Codevilla: I didn’t predict anything. I described a situation which had already come into existence. Namely, that the United States has developed a ruling class that sees itself as distinct from the raw masses of the rest of America. That the distinction that they saw, and which had come to exist, between these classes, comprised tastes and habits as well as ideas. Above all, that it had to do with the relative attachment, or lack thereof, of each of these classes to government.

David Samuels: One of the things that struck me about your original piece was your portrait of the American elite as a single class that seamlessly spans both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Angelo Codevilla: Of course, yes. Not in exactly the same way, though; what I said was that the Democrats were the senior partners in the ruling class. The Republicans are the junior partners…

…As the junior members of the ruling class, they are not nearly as tied to government as the Democrats are. And therefore, their elite prerogatives are not safe.

We have seen that play out very dramatically in the phenomenon of the NeverTrumpers. As I’ve said many times, it made some basic sense to be very worried about Trump before he became president ; I voiced my own worries here, which amounted to a lack of trust and a feeling that he was a loose cannon. But it didn’t take long, once he was acting as president, for those fears to quiet, and to be replaced by a feeling that he was doing some very good things. The failure of the NeverTrumpers to come to that realization, too, and in particular their seemingly incomprehensible alliance with the left that was working for everything these “conservatives” had professed to stand for, caused me to think a great deal about what was causing the persistence of their detestation of Trump.

I decided it has been due to three things. The first is that it’s hard to publicly change your mind, once you’ve staked out a strong position. It needs to be done if you’ve been wrong, but it’s something most people have trouble doing. The second is snobbery and elitism, as Codevilla (whom, alas, I don’t think I’d read) has been pointing out. And the third is related to that – and for all I know, Codevilla explained this as well – and it is the elevation of that identification as a person of a certain class and a certain intellectual standing above all other considerations. If that identity, and the preservation of that identity and sense of self, is paramount to a person’s feelings of value and self-worth, then supporting Donald Trump was apparently a bridge too far and could not be contemplated.

Codevilla sounds as though he was a man of exceptional brilliance and insight, and he will be sorely missed. RIP.

The Senate Parliamentarian..

The New Neo Posted on by

…says that the Democrats are barred from including in the spending bill a plan to give out 8 million green cards, because “the policy changes of this proposal far outweigh the budgetary impact scored to it and it is not appropriate for inclusion in reconciliation.”

But will the Democrats respond with the equivalent of, “How many divisions does the Senate Parliamentarian have?”

Looking back: predictions about our Afghanistan withdrawal

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not sure many of us were paying a whole lot of attention to what was being said about our withdrawal from Afghanistan before it occurred, but I think it’s instructive to look back and see what people in government were saying. For example, consider this article from April 22, written very shortly after Biden announced his withdrawal schedule.

One of the most curious bits of Congressional testimony to reflect on now was by General MacKenzie [emphasis mine]:

The top U.S. general in the Middle East expressed concern Thursday about Afghan forces’ ability to fend off the Taliban after U.S. troops withdraw from the country.

“My concern is the ability of the Afghan military to hold the ground that they’re on now without the support that they’ve been used to for many years,” Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“I am concerned about the ability of the Afghan military to hold on after we leave, the ability of the Afghan air force to fly, in particular, after we remove the support for those aircraft,” he added.

Pressed later in the hearing on continuing to fund Afghan forces when U.S. troops withdraw, McKenzie said that without “some support,” the Afghan forces “certainly will collapse.”

It says later on that MacKenzie expressed “great concern” about the future of the embassy, and that he refused to state what he told Biden about the withdrawal. But one can imagine. Perhaps MacKenzie didn’t think the collapse would happen in a matter of days, but I bet he wasn’t in favor of the way this was done. Is anyone aware of what he’s said more recently?

Then there’s this:

“The arbitrary Sept. 11 deadline for troop drawdown risks a power vacuum that terrorists will dominate and use to threaten our homeland again,” Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said at Thursday’s hearing.

And Elizabeth Warren should be reminded of this [emphasis mine]:

By contrast, while pressing McKenzie on Taliban gains over the past decade, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Thursday, “It’s clear there is little for us to be gained by a continued U.S presence there.”

“We should have learned by now that a conditions-based withdrawal is just a recipe for staying in Afghanistan forever,” she said.

Sure, Liz. That’s all it was – no need to worry about holding the Taliban to any conditions, like those silly warmongering Republicans were advocating.

Still more on the Sussman indictment and what it signifies

The New Neo Posted on by

People have continued to opine on the subject of Durham’s indictment of Sussman. While I’m inclined to be very skeptical that it will lead to much, more legally informed minds are expressing at least somewhat greater optimism than I. And even if they’re not especially optimistic, they are saying things that shed further light on Russiagate, one of the biggest political crimes in our history and perhaps the biggest.

So I bring you Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection. In a post entitled “Indictment of Campaign Lawyer Demonstrates How Hillary Clinton Is The Most Systemically Manipulative Politician Of Our Lifetime,” he connects the dots to Hillary Clinton via two articles, one by Andrew C. McCarthy (yes, I know; he hasn’t exactly been a favorite since this past January) and one by Glenn Greenwald.

The post is long, but it’s quite fascinating and I recommend it even if you think you know a lot on the subject, and even if you are pessimistic about where it’s all leading. If nothing else, it will inform you in detail if you ever want to argue on the subject of Russiagate with a liberal Democrat.

Open thread 9/20/21

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s the awning that surprised me.

A little stroll down memory lane. I was at the Colosseum in 2018. There was a huge downpour, and right afterward I took this selfie and put it on the blog:

California on their minds

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night I was thinking how the Mamas and Papas song “California Dreamin’,” with its very 60s idealization of California as a magical place for which a person might yearn, could not possibly be written now.

That segued into thoughts of another Mamas and Papas song from that era, “Twelve Thirty,” in which the singer has returned to that idealized sunlit California world after living in New York. It’s less well-known, but I think it probably is familiar to a lot of you:

And then I remembered still another Mamas and Papas song, “Strange Young Girls.” That one’s even more obscure, and although I already was familiar with it I only recalled snatches of the words. What I did remember was a feeling the song gave me of wistfulness and creepiness. For me, the 60s always had that creepiness, that sense that things had spiraled out of control and the final result would not be good.

This is how the song begins:

Strange young girls
Covered with sadness;
Eyes of innocence
Hiding their madness.
Walking the strip–
Sweet, soft, and placid—
Offering their youth
On the alter of acid…

[NOTE: After I composed this post, I noticed this article at American Thinker entitled, “Gone Is the Romance of California.”]

[NOTE II: If you want to read a good but terrifying story about the 60s and the phenomenon described in that last song, I recommend the story “Xavier Speaking” by Charles Baxter. The one-page excerpt at that link is the beginning of the story, which is quite dull (actually, very dull). The story picks up considerably as it goes on and packs quite a wallop, to the best of my recollection. It seems to have been written in the 1970s, but the collection of short stories in which I originally read it was published in 1984.]

More on the Sussman case…

The New Neo Posted on by

…from John Solomon:

In painstaking detail, Durham laid out in the indictment Thursday how Democrat superlawyer Michael Sussmann used Clinton campaign funds to construct a now-debunked memo and other evidence alleging that computer communications between a server at the Alfa Bank in Russia and the Trump Tower in New York might be a secret backdoor communication system for Trump and Vladimir Putin to hijack the 2016 election.

Sussmann delivered the package in mid-September 2016 — just weeks before Election Day as Trump and Clinton were locked in a tight race — to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker, even after the team of computer experts warned the theory was a “red-herring,” according to the indictment.

And then Sussmann falsely told Baker, the prosecutors alleged, he was providing the information to the FBI solely as a good citizen, and not on behalf of any client.

In fact, Sussmann was working on behalf of a tech executive and the Clinton campaign and charged nearly all the work on the Alfa Bank narrative to the Democratic presidential campaign, including his meeting with Baker, the indictment stated.

The alleged lying, Durham argued, deceived the FBI into thinking the allegations were coming from a neutral source — Sussmann had been a cybersecurity expert — and not an election-motivated client.

“In truth, and in fact, and as Sussmann well knew, Sussmann had acted on behalf of and in coordination with two specific clients of the law firm: tech executive 1 and the Clinton campaign in assembling and conveying these allegations,” the grand jury indictment charged.

“Sussman’s false statement to the FBI general counsel was material to that investigation because among other reasons it was relevant to the FBI whether the conveyor of these allegations was providing them as an ordinary citizen merely passing along information or whether he was instead doing so as a paid advocate for clients with a political or business agenda.”

The article also contains somewhat of a summary of Russiagate, which can be helpful to refresh your memory at this point. It’s still both astounding and disheartening that all of this actually happened, that it affected the 2020 election and the country tremendously, and that virtually no one has been punished – and it’s doubtful that anyone ever will be. That includes Sussman, who was a big player but by no means one of the biggest.

If I’m wrong and there’s a snowball effect here, I’ll be pleased. But I very much doubt it.

About that Tuskegee syphilis study – and about COVID

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve seen it over and over – assertions that researchers involved in the Tuskegee study of syphilis, back in middle third of the 20th Century, gave black men syphilis in order to study them. I saw the claim again the other day in an article on COVID and the government and medical establishment, but unfortunately I didn’t take note of where the article was and can’t find it now. However, I do recall that it was by a writer on the right, so this Tuskegee “fact” is hardly limited to dissemination by the left. The “gave black men syphilis” assertion is deeply embedded in the American consciousness at this point and is considered the truth by most people who know little else about the Tuskegee study.

I happen to have written a post on the subject way back in ancient times: 2008. I call your attention to it now. I hope it sets the record straight. The truth about the study was bad enough without lying to make it seem even worse.

The present-day reaction of the government, the politicians, and the health agencies and much (although not all) of the medical establishment to the COVID pandemic has been shocking in its willingness to impose Draconian measures using unknowns or even falsehoods, and in its intense politicization of an issue that should always have been above politics but never was. The corruption, mendacity, and incompetence involved has made it even more likely that people will believe that all the previous horror tales were true. A great deal of mistrust is, alas, justified. But I still think it’s important to try to get the stories straight.

Oh, and while we’re at it, you might want to read my 2007 post on the similar story that the US army purposely gave the native Americans smallpox-infected blankets in order to start an epidemic to help decimate their population.