If Congressman Trey Gowdy is to be believed, and I see no reason not to believe him, this should be an interesting week in Washington. According to Gowdy, Speaker Paul Ryan read the riot act to the DOJ and FBI on Friday night about the Bureau's stonewalling and foot dragging in the face of longstanding subpoenas issued by the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. If the subpoenas are not complied with, Gowdy warned that the full constitutional powers of the House will be employed by week's end. It is clear that Gowdy was not just talking about holding people in contempt. Gowdy's comments are significant, because he has been one of the few House Republicans to consistently support the work of Bob Mueller and to give the benefit of the doubt to the Bureau regarding the origins of the Russian investigation. This has often put him on the outs with the many Trump shills on the GOP side. What apparently pushed Gowdy over the edge was the Horowitz Report's revelation of Peter Strzok's text response to Lisa Page that "we'll stop" Trump from being elected President. Astonishingly, it appears that this text had not been provided to the House prior to the release of the Horowitz Report. I suspect as well that Gowdy was enraged to read in the Report that the Bureau, with the active involvement of Deputy Director McCabe, sat on its knowledge of the Weiner laptop materials, even keeping it from the DOJ prosecutors who had been involved in the Clinton email server investigation (dubbed "Midyear Exam"), until alarmed officials in the SDNY U.S. Attorney's Office tipped off an attorney at Main Justice. It is clear that at the time Strzok was leading and ramping up the Russia investigation, he and a large group of DC FBI officials were suppressing the discovery of 347,000 potentially relevant emails on Weiner's laptop. This is why even the rather tame Horowitz Report "did not have confidence that Strzok's decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias." But make no mistake about it, Strzok did not act alone. As many as 39 FBI officials were likely to have participated in a September 28, 2016 secure video teleconference (SVTC) in which the discovery of 141,000 emails potentially relevant to Midyear Exam was discussed. (McCabe was informed of the 347,000 figure later that evening.) This was an FBI conspiracy of silence. The irony is that the FBI's attempt to suppress the Weiner emails almost certainly aided Trump's electoral victory. If the emails had been processed in a timely fashion, without publicity, their ultimate irrelevance would have been established prior to the election and Comey would not have needed to make the damaging announcement that he was reopening the Midyear investigation. It will be doubly ironic if there were wholly legitimate reasons to open the Russia investigation, but the FBI's misguided efforts to hide its own mistakes ends up tainting and derailing the entire project. Byron York reports here on the growing House GOP suspicion that the FBI is hiding even bigger bombshells.
Tag: Russia investigation
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The first thing to ask, if CNN's Friday night report is accurate, is who leaked? Because if the leak came from the government or court staff it is almost certainly an illegal violation of a sealed court order and/or grand jury proceedings. And if it came from the defense attorney of the party to be charged, who told him or her? The whole point of sealing something is so that the public doesn't know about it. All a courthouse staffer, moonlighting as media lookout, could have legitimately told the press is that "we saw so and so going into the court's chambers" or something along those lines.
Second, why would charges be sealed in the first place? Perhaps because the prosecution is afraid that someone will flee. That is the only legitimate reason I can think of to place an indictment under seal. If it was placed under seal to give government agents the opportunity for an early morning arrest it wouldn't surprise me one bit, given Andrew Weissman's dismal track record for hardball, heavy-handed tactics. (It will be interesting to find out someday just exactly what the government told a federal magistrate in order to get that no-knock warrant to search Paul Manafort's residence.)
Is it possible that the sealing was done in order to protect a defendant from having to spend the weekend (or at least one night) in DC jail? Unlikely. For defendants who do not turn themselves in by mid-morning in DC, the possibility of a night in jail is real. But if the prosecutors really cared about that, why not bring the charges on a weekday morning and allow the defendant to turn himself in the next day? This is done all the time.
Is it possible that the pending indictment report, true or false, is a deliberate ruse to see who will attempt to flee? In other words, does the government actually want someone to try to flee? After all, flight can be used as evidence of guilt in court. Unlikely, but anything is possible with Weissman in the number two slot.
We should find something out today. Here is Politico's excellent background piece by Darren Samuelsohn.
If there are any charges, expect them to be ancillary in nature. Look for false reporting violations or false statements to government agents. More to come.
UPDATE:
The Indictment is out and we will try to get it up as soon as possible. It is obvious that the prosecutors did the right thing in allowing Paul Manafort and Rick Gates to turn themselves in and that, in all likelihood, one of the defense attorneys leaked the news to CNN. Grand jury secrecy rules do not apply to witnesses or to those who receive their information from witnesses.
MattBray.net 