Buzzfeed Gets 500 of 18 Billion Pages From Mueller Investigation

From Buzzfeed:

"Beginning last April, BuzzFeed News has pursued five separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to pry loose all the subpoenas and search warrants that Mueller’s team executed, as well as all the emails, memos, letters, talking points, legal opinions, and interview transcripts it generated. In short, we asked for all the communications of any kind that passed through the special counsel’s office. We also requested all of the documents that would reveal the discussions among Attorney General Bill Barr, former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, and other high-ranking officials about whether to charge President Donald Trump with obstruction.

Justice Department lawyers said the volume of records at issue could total 18 billion pages and could take centuries to produce. . .

Today, in response to a court order, the Justice Department has released the first installment of documents: 500 pages of summaries of FBI interviews with witnesses, available here for the first time. Another installment will be released every month for at least the next eight years."

They ask readers to look through the documents and send tips to one of their reporters, Jason Leopold.

So I browsed a little.   Thought I'd skip toward the end.  But scrolling down I landed in the middle.  There was an email from Steve Bannon to Jared Kushner warning him off of Paul Manafort a few days before the 2016 election:

"We need to avoid this guy like the plague
They are going to try and say the russians worked with wiki leaks to give this victory to us
Paul is a nice guy but can't let word get out he is advising us.
Get Outlook for IOS."

This is on page 238.  But when I went back and read the rest of the Buzzfeed article, they'd already highlighted this email and several others in the range of pages I was looking at.


But here's one on page 286, that is ironically interesting.  It's an email from Sergei Millian, the head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce to Catherine Belton, a reporter for the Financial Times.  She had sent him questions and he was answering them one by one.

Sorry, It was hard getting clear copies.

This is Sept 2016.  This Russian-American promotor of business between the US and Russia is telling the reporter that Obama built favorable business climate.  Was this what he really thought or was this a way to make him not seem a Trump supporter?

And here he warns that policies such as 'using trade as a threat'  are the instruments of "politically weak minds."  Again, are these his real thoughts or his Chamber of Commerce pitch?I Or is this prescient jab at Trump?

I picked up my handy guide to all the players in the Mueller and Impeachment investigations, Seth Abramson's Proof of Conspiracy.  The index gives me "Millian, Sergei, 36-37."

There we learn that Millian, "a Kremlin-linked Russian national, Soviet-born businessman Sergei Millian - who will shortly "offer to serve as a go-between for a Belarusian author with ties to the russian government and the Trump campaign" - contacts George Papadopoulos and says he has "inside knowledge and direct access to the top hierarchy in Russian politics,"  Later he contacts him via Facebook "telling him he wants to 'share with [him] a disruptive technology that might be instrumental in your political work for the campaign."

[I'd note that in an earlier page to Belton, he denied being Russian.  Is this an error in Abramson's source?  He was from Belarus, and would have been born into the Soviet Union, not Russia.]

Abramson also says that "Millian is later revealed to be a key source - if an 'unwitting' one - for much of the dossier complied by former M16 Russia desk chief Christopher Steele in 2016 an published in January 2017 by Buzzfeed News.


There's a lot in just the 500 pages.  And Buzzfeed says after this first 500 page document

"Another installment will be released every month for at least the next eight years."

Here's the link to the documents.


I'd note that emptywheel says this is just the DOJ releasing documents just before and pertinent to the Donald Stone trial and that it will be a way to hide other information.  I didn't quite understand how it puts other info out of reach of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Why Everyone Should Turn Off Online Movies Until They Finish Reading Proof Of Conspiracy - Plus A Brief Twitter Explanation

OK, it's hard to read Proof of Conspiracy because it doesn't come out until Tuesday September 3.  So you have the weekend to binge view.

I've already posted about Seth Abramson's previous book, Proof of Collusion which was like the background guide for the Mueller Report.

Here's an overview of what you'll get in Proof of Conspiracy from the author via a 15 Tweet thread:   [*For those who don't know a Tweet from a Thread, skip down to the bottom of this post]

Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson
·
Aug 30
1/ Two things are simultaneously true:
(1) PROOF OF CONSPIRACY will shock you and profoundly alter your understanding of what the Trump presidency means for the whole world.
(2) PROOF OF CONSPIRACY is fully sourced: 3,250 endnotes and 4,330 citations are being published online.
2/ In fact, for the first time, I'm going to direct people to the website for the 378 pages (not a typo) of endnotes and citations for PROOF OF CONSPIRACY that are available for free online. All stem from the endnotes in the print book, which is 592 pages: https://static.macmillan.com/static/macmillan/proofofconspiracy/endnotes.pdf

3/ The Trump collusion narrative that lay outside the scope of the Mueller Report is larger by a factor of 5—at least—than what even those who've read the full Report have seen. Mueller focused on 1 crime and 1 country; PROOF OF CONSPIRACY looks at *many* crimes and 10 countries.
4/ Every day, America is rediscovering the narrowness of the Mueller Report. Not merely because the Report says at its beginning that Trumpworld witnesses withheld, hid, and destroyed evidence—making a proper, conclusive investigation impossible—but because the probe ended early.

5/ I'm not criticizing Mueller. I believe there were pressures/anxieties in play in his investigation we will one day discover. But the investigation ended with *all* counterintelligence information—a far greater stock of information than what was in the Report—being farmed out.

6/ The Mueller probe ended with key subpoenas unfulfilled, key witnesses unquestioned, key issues unlitigated, key cooperation deals wantonly broken, key lines of inquiry that lay outside the narrow scope of the investigation wholly—seemingly carelessly—unexplored. That's a fact.
7/ The problem we have is that not only did media do nothing to consider, explore, or reveal to news-watchers the *vast* narrative that lay outside the scope of the Mueller Report, it didn't even educate viewers on the *Mueller Report*.
Not Volume 1, at least. *That* it ignored.
8/ Tell most people that the Mueller Report reveals that Trump's top Russia adviser for the entirety of the 2016 campaign was a Soviet-born man who currently works for the Kremlin in Moscow and who Putin has described as a "friend," and they'll say, "No it doesn't."
But it does.

9/ Tell most people that the Mueller Report reveals that weeks before the 2016 election a Kremlin ally wrote Trump's lawyer to confirm the existence of blackmail videos of Trump, thereby issuing an implicit threat from the Kremlin, and they'll say, "No it doesn't."
But it does.

10/ Tell most people that the Mueller Report proves that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin—and that an indictment undergirded by that collusion couldn't be brought only because Trump convinced Manafort to lie to the feds—and they'll say, "No it doesn't."
But it does.


11/ Media has so ill-prepared us to understand the foundation upon which PROOF OF CONSPIRACY was written that the book must, at points, remind readers of these facts—with citations to the Report and elsewhere—in order to unfold its even-more-terrifying (and fully sourced) story.
10/ Tell most people that the Mueller Report proves that the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin—and that an indictment undergirded by that collusion couldn't be brought only because Trump convinced Manafort to lie to the feds—and they'll say, "No it doesn't."
But it does.

11/ Media has so ill-prepared us to understand the foundation upon which PROOF OF CONSPIRACY was written that the book must, at points, remind readers of these facts—with citations to the Report and elsewhere—in order to unfold its even-more-terrifying (and fully sourced) story.

12/ What we've gotten, instead, is 1,000+ Trump propagandists like John Solomon or anyone at Fox News or Chuck Ross who are lying—bald-facedly lying—every day about what Volume 1 does and does not say, likely because they *haven't read it* and they assume no one else has, either.

13/ If you want to know how carefully documented PROOF OF CONSPIRACY is, consider that whereas most in media ignored Vol. 1 of the Mueller Report—and some lied about having read it and what's in it—I publicly live-tweeted my first reading of it in a thread spanning 500 tweets.

14/ What we're getting:
@ChrisCuomo
—a smart, dedicated journalist—arguing with profoundly dishonest Trump cultist
@KayleighMcEnany
.
What we deserve: Deep dives on the Saudi- and Emirati-funded Israeli disinformation campaign that the Trumps knew about and that helped Trump win.

15/ Upshot: I'm a ride-or-die Mueller-Report-Volume-1 nerd who owes nothing to corporate bosses or advertisers and will offer long-form analysis of a national emergency whether some scoff or not. I worked harder on PROOF OF CONSPIRACY than anything I've worked on in my life. /end

I'm thinking of sending this Tweet to my US Senators.  Dan Sullivan has said his staff has been reading the Mueller Report, but he hasn't.  Murkowski says it's slow, but she's plowing through it.    It should be high a priority.

And so should Proof of Conspiracy.  Maybe this author written set of Cliff Notes might help Sullivan.



*Tweets And Threads

Twitter is a kind of social media where members can post mini-blog posts of up to 280 characters. It used to be 140 characters but eventually they doubled it.

https://www.lifewire.com/twitter-slang-and-key-terms-explained-2655399is a post on Twitter.  They look like this:

EARTH TO DAN SULLIVAN @SenDanSullivan
Critically ill Immigrant kids are being cut-off from medical treatment by the Trump Administration! @POTUS
Do you care?@lisamurkowski @DrAlGrossAK @adn @JuneauEmpire @FDNMPolitics

— Elstun (@ElstunL) September 1, 2019

People can add photos and videos.  And people can comment as well.  But you're limited, as I said, to 280 characters.  People can have a Twitter name (here, it's Elstun) and a @elstonL is how you find him.  The @SenDanSullivan in this post will let Sullivan know he's been mentioned in a Tweet.  There's lots more.  Here's a page which explains key Twitter terms.  I mention all this because I know many people never look at Twitter, even though they hear about the President tweeting every day.

A Thread is a series of Tweets all connected.  This is a way to say more than you can with just 280 characters.

I chose not to 'embed' Seth's Twitter Thread (then it would have looked like it does on Twitter) so I could edit out things that you really don't need, including all the comments.  But if you want, here's the same link as in the beginning which will take you to Seth's Twitter Thread on Twitter.  And no, you don't have to be a member of Twitter to read Tweets there.

"Someday, and that day may never come. . ." How To Avoid Admissible Evidence

When teaching ethics, I found this clip from The Godfather to be invaluable.





What evidence is there here of a bribe?  I'm forgiving you a debt in honor of my daughter's wedding.  Someday.  Someday in the distant future, or maybe not so distant, or maybe never at all, I may ask you to return the favor.

Imagine the Mueller investigation trying to present this transaction to the grand jury.  Well, unless there was a recording of this, there's nothing to present.  Only the evidence.  Well, this guy had a debt that was never recorded.  And . . . maybe he does this other thing for the Godfather.  Is that quid pro quo?  Or is it just a favor?  Is it a bribe?  Is it illegal?  Is it collusion?  Would a grand jury say it was beyond a reasonable doubt?

Here's a Tweet that picks up on this ambiguity.

Resuming my live-tweet of Mueller Report. Shout out to my massage therapist who fixed my back from the first half of the reading.

Now then: Note passage says they didn't find ADMISSIBLE evidence Jr acted willfully on June 9 meeting. Suggesting they have inadmissible evidence? pic.twitter.com/burV92XDIy

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) April 19, 2019

Two Reading Tips - EPA Climate Change Report And William Barr's History Misleading Congress With A Summary

This post offers an introduction to two articles that I think are worth reading.  One is about an EPA report on economic impacts of Climate Change and how we can reduce them.  The other gives some background on William Barr and how he mischaracterized to Congress an internal Justice Department memo in 1989.

The Climate Change one isn't news to people immersed in the topic, but adds the weight of Trump's EPA giving the warning. And it's something to pass on to skeptics.   The Barr piece is important context ( that I haven't seen elsewhere)  for his summary of the Mueller Report

Part 1:  Climate Change

Even when the fire is raging and police and firefighters issue mandatory evacuation orders, there are people who refuse to leave their homes.   Climate change happens more gradually than raging wildfires, but the devastation is more extensive and the damage will continue to increase if we don't slow things down.   Here's an LA Times article* about a recent EPA report on the future economic impact of climate change and how a carbon pricing scheme could reduce the future impacts by half.

"By the end of the century, the manifold consequences of unchecked climate change will cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars per year, according to a new study by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Those costs will come in multiple forms, including water shortages, crippled infrastructure and polluted air that shortens lives, according to the study in Monday’s edition of Nature Climate Change. No part of the country will be untouched, the EPA researchers warned.
However, they also found that cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and proactively adapting to a warming world, would prevent a lot of the damage, reducing the annual economic toll in some sectors by more than half."

This is from the Trump administration's EPA!!!!!  (Do I need more than the exclamation points, each of which represent another outrageous decision by the EPA to loosen standards that help individual companies and compromise the future for the rest of us?)

Who could sit around, unconcerned about climate change?  I ask that question daily.  Here's my current version of the answer:

• people who don't know - they only know what's on the news and the media's 'balanced' coverage which gives the 1% deniers equal time with the 99% of scientists who know that climate change is real, gives them a false sense that it's still up for debate
• people who have a vested interest in not knowing - they have corporations or jobs or investments in those corporations that are maintaining their current lifestyle  (this includes politicians who get significant funding from those oil and coal interests)
• people who don't care - they think that they will be gone before the real impacts hit and they don't have kids or grandkids who will be affected; or they, for whatever reasons, can't concern themselves with the fate of others

I'm convinced that Climate Change is the most serious challenge to human existence (both in terms of surviving, and for those who survive, living in a world with a regular life with access to food, housing,  and safety.)   That's why I belong to Citizens Climate Lobby and why our local chapter was pleased that we got the Anchorage Assembly to pass a resolution endorsing the current Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act.  It's true, the Assembly's resolution, by itself, does little.  But as part of the CCL's webpage of all the other endorsers, it's like a signature on a petition with many, many others.  It's telling legislators who are concerned about the politics of Climate Change, that there are many people and organizations out there that have their backs.

In any case, I'd recommend reading the LA Times article so when you talk to deniers or avoiders you have data to push them closer to understanding why we can't dawdle on this.

*Note:  There are two LA Times articles.  One was a last week in something called LA Times Science Now and it includes a useful chart.  The other is a shortened version in today's regular LA Times.

As if that weren't enough for one post, here's another piece to help people understand William Barr and his history of writing summaries for Congress.


2.  William Barr's Past Summarizing For Congress

Just Security  has an article on a 1989 situation where then Attorney General William Barr misled Congress with a summary of a Justice Department document that, when finally made public, showed Barr's deception. An excerpt:

"Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller’s final report, he wrote that he would “summarize the principal conclusions” of the special counsel’s report for the public.
When Barr withheld the full OLC opinion in 1989 and said to trust his summary of the principal conclusions, Yale law school professor Harold Koh wrote that Barr’s position was “particularly egregious.” Congress also had no appetite for Barr’s stance, and eventually issued a subpoena to successfully wrench the full OLC opinion out of the Department.
What’s different from that struggle and the current struggle over the Mueller report is that we know how the one in 1989 eventually turned out."

It got Barr off the hook in the short term and he was no longer Attorney General when it was finally made public.  My experience is that people tend to use the same strategies that served them in the past.  If Barr can keep the Mueller Report hidden until after the 2020 election, he'll have done his job.  Compare this good-old-boys-protecting-their-own behavior with the tell-it-like-it-is language of people like Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!

We need to see the Mueller Report!  

Remember, you're not helpless.  You have power.  You can let your Congressional Rep and your Senators see these documents and let them know how you feel.  No, your one contact (phone, email, or mail) won't change things, but along with thousands of others, it will.  (The links help you connect with your members of Congress.)