RussiaDidIt: Cheap Meddling, Closet Marxists and Racial Tensions
By Ricardo Vaz | Investig’Action | November 2, 2017
Are you a western journalist or analyst with an issue you cannot explain? Do your symptoms include an unwillingness to learn anything from history and an unconditional embrace of western exceptionalism? Then we have just the thing for you: RussiaDidIt! Taken in the appropriate dosage, RussiaDidIt can be used for just any issue, small and large, old and new, near and far. Call your local US embassy or EU office and order your RussiaDidIt talking points. Side effects may include total paranoia, loss of credibility and a desire to wear the EU flag as a cape.
It seems like all the evils that plague the western world these days have a common cause. Brexit, Catalonia, Trump, racial tensions, the lack of credibility of the EU, all of these have a simple explanation, if we are to believe the mainstream media and pundits: Russia is behind it. And not just Russia, but Putin himself. He must be the busiest villain in history.
True journalists like Robert Parry have analysed and exposed the rise of this new McCarthyism, and how uncorroborated, or sometimes outrightly false, allegations gradually become unquestionable facts.(1)
Screenshots from the Washington Post and Politico
In this piece we examine three articles that have different angles of this RussiaDidIt approach. They have the paranoia of Russian meddling in US elections as a background, but everything applies just as well to similar stories about the EU. Inevitably it all ties back to an inability, or unwillingness, to learn anything from history, and this disgusting myth that everyone should look up to the West as a beacon of superior values. We start of course with the ineffable Guardian.
Cheap journalism and cheap meddling
One day journalism students will study the spiral of lowering standards that took hold of the Guardian. One can sense the denial taking hold of the newspaper as their liberal centrist paradise crumbles. They yearn for a knight in shining armour who can come and save them from Brexit, even if it is Tony Blair, because, believe it or not, the idea of the EU has been here since the Renaissance!(2)
As expected, the Guardian has embraced the idea that the Russians “hacked” the 2016 US elections (whatever that means) wholeheartedly. And it recently reported on new, ground-breaking revelations:
“Russian trolls posing as Americans made payments to genuine activists in the US to help fund protest movements on socially divisive issues […]
[…] the newspaper RBC published a major investigation into the work of a so-called Russian “troll factory” since 2015, including during the period of the US election campaign, disclosures that are likely to put further spotlight on alleged Russian meddling in the election.”
So far it sounds very serious. We then learn that the main “socially divisive issue” was race relations.
“RBC counted 16 groups relating to the Black Lives Matter campaign and other race issues that had a total of 1.2 million subscribers. The biggest group was entitled Blacktivist and reportedly had more than 350,000 likes at its peak.
Last month, CNN also reported that US authorities believed the Blacktivist Facebook group and Twitter account were the work of Russian impostors.”
The liberal media have often thrown these outrageous suggestions that activism like Black Lives Matter is part of a foreign agenda, as opposed to a reaction to the structural racism that exists in the US (more on this later). But the main point that needs to be addressed about this cunning plan is the following: how much did the Russians spend in these devious activities of inflaming tensions in the US? A whopping… 80,000 dollars! The Guardian thinks the activities of some alleged troll factory engaging in social media activity and paying activists a grand total of $80,000 represents unacceptable Russian “meddling”!
Billboard accusing Martin Luther King Jr. of being a communist
Let us put this number in perspective. Hillary Clinton made $3 million out of 12 speeches to big banks. The entire spending in the US presidential election was almost $2 billion. And the Guardian is worried about $80,000 worth of meddling. For comparison USAID spent $4.2 million advancing US interests in Venezuela in 2015 alone. Even if these $80,000 had been spent in a single year, it would still be 50 times smaller than what one of the US empire’s foreign policy branches spent only in Venezuela.
The Guardian piece closes by mentioning that the evil Russians also bought ads on Google and Facebook for “tens of thousands of dollars” and “$100,000”, respectively. So in essence, the Guardian is reporting that it found suspicious grains of sand in the desert.(3) It would seem Putin is not just an evil mastermind, he is also a legendary bargain hunter. It should also be clear that the tech giants are more than happy to play their part in the witch-hunt and the crusade against “fake news”, which is nothing but an attempt by the dominant classes to monopolise their control over information.
Trump is a closet Marxist!
Next we look at an opinion column which has got to be one of the most ludicrous texts ever written. At first glance it could be mistaken for satire, but it was actually written by Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard and former member of the Obama administration, for Bloomberg News. The title is “Russia Is Using Marxist Strategies, and So Is Trump”!
While the entire piece should be framed for posterity, we will just quote some of the highlights:
“Karl Marx and his followers argued that revolutionaries should disrupt capitalist societies by “heightening the contradictions.” Russia used a version of that Marxist idea in its efforts to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign. […]
What is more surprising, and far more important for American politics, is that President Donald Trump is drawn to a similar strategy.
Marx contended that as the conditions of workers started to improve, they would cease to be content with their lot, or to regard their alienation as inevitable. Lenin seized on this idea and transformed it into a revolutionary strategy. […] The job of the communist revolutionary was to “heighten” or “accelerate” those contradictions.
During the 2016 campaign, Russians did something very much like that, not to produce a revolution, but to deepen and intensify social divisions (and to help elect Donald Trump).
In short, the Russians tried to foster a sense of grievance and humiliation on all sides. […] Lenin would have been proud.”
The Russian actions that Sunstein is talking about are none other than the buying of social media ads and fostering of activism that we described in the previous section. But how about that for a deep understanding of Marx and Lenin? Sunstein does try to shield himself with a footnote that says:
“I am giving a brisk summary of some famously complex and ambiguous arguments from both Marx and Lenin.” (my emphasis)
Marx, Engels, Lenin… and Trump? Cass Sunstein of Harvard University and Bloomberg News is on the maximum dosage of RussiaDidIt !
There is nothing ambiguous about Marx and Lenin. Sunstein’s argument, on the other hand, is unambiguously idiotic. The fundamental contradiction in capitalist society is that one (large) group, the working-class, sells its labour, while another one, the bourgeoisie, profits from it because it owns the means of production. These two groups have fundamentally different interests and are irrevocably at odds, this is called class struggle. Marx’s work is monumental because it was the first truly scientific analysis of the capitalist system, which meant it also explained how it could be destroyed.
The “accelerating of these contradictions” means accelerating this class conflict in order to do a little more than “disrupting” capitalism. The goal is to overthrow capitalism altogether, have the workers seize power and the means of production, and have a society free of exploitation(4) and where production is directed to satisfy human need and not the profit of capitalists. In other words, socialism.
Lenin’s contributions to Marxism, both in theory and practice, are of course way beyond the childish arguments in this piece, from his understanding of capitalism’s inevitable development into imperialism, to his development of the role of the vanguard party. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were responsible for the October Revolution of 1917, the first time that capitalism was overthrown, and the starting point for all the liberation movements that followed.
The whole argument, if it were taken seriously, would be about the strategy to “divide and conquer”, which has nothing to do with Marxism. Just like Trump, the real-estate mogul and reality-TV star, has nothing Marxist about him. If anything, Trump is the highest embodiment of western capitalism.
Surely among the vast libraries at Harvard there must be a “Marx for dummies” book that Professor Sunstein can read. But of course, writing these disingenuous pieces is much easier. The goal of course is to simultaneously push the RussiaDidIt argument and discredit a true alternative to the (capitalist) system, which has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton and a lot (or everything!) to do with Marx and Lenin.
Black Power and Red Baiting
The final article we wish to examine appeared in The Atlantic magazine, and it focuses on the long history of Russia’s “involvement in America’s race wars”. First of all, for a country with a history of slavery and segregation of African-Americans, not to mention the internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2, the term “race wars” seems like an awful understatement. One thing that actually has not changed is the red-baiting practices of the mainstream media, accusing anyone who deviates from the approved narrative of being a Soviet/Russian agent.
The article explores the history of the Soviet Union taking advantage of racial injustice in the United States for propaganda purposes. How dare those commies bring up the plight of black people in the US? Anyone who knows a bit of history knows that this is not entirely out of place. For example, in the struggle against apartheid, notably in the war in Angola, the US was on the side of apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union was on the side of the Angolans (and of black South Africans), even if their hand might have been forced by the Cubans.
Soviet posters about the struggle against colonialism: Left: “Capitalism is doomed!” (Artsrunyan, 1966); Right: “People of Africa Will Overpower the Colonizers!” (Kukryniksy, 1960)
There is plenty to be said about the Soviet Union’s foreign policy, but the fact is that there was not a single liberation struggle in the Third World in which the Soviet Union was on the side of the oppressor/colonist and the US on the side of the liberation movement. In fact it is the opposite that was true in most cases, if not all.
This takes us to the crux of the matter. According to historian Mary Dudziak, quoted in this piece,
“Early on in the Cold War, there was a recognition that the U.S. couldn’t lead the world if it was seen as repressing people of color,”
Dudziak and all these analysts and journalists take for granted that the US, and the west in general, are supposed to lead the world. According to them, these issues of treating black people as second class citizens are a problem mainly because they make the US look bad, and its noble mission of spreading freedom and democracy becomes much harder! It would seem that if racism was a little more polite (or if the Soviets did not bring it up!), then the Sandinistas would have been happy with Somoza, the Viet Cong would have had nothing to fight for, etc.
This unquestioned embrace of US exceptionalism, coupled to a complete ignorance of history, is what ensures that these analysts completely miss the point. For them, people rejecting and resisting US imperialism, or rejecting the EU after years of austerity policies, is just a misunderstanding, which needs to be explained by nonsense such as RussiaDidIt. Had these people actually read Marx and Lenin, as opposed to spewing these idiocies, they would understand that backlash against neoliberalism, or resistance against US imperialism, is to be expected. And there is no amount of fancy speeches by the likes of Obama, saying “freedom” and “democracy” in every other sentence, that will fix that.
The loyal flag-bearers of the imperial establishment are outraged at the idea of someone paying $80,000 to US activists, but the US spending tens of millions funding NGOs and political parties all over the world is more than natural. They are outraged that RT reports on Occupy Wall Street or Ferguson, but Voice of America and Radio Martí are supposed to be welcomed by the rest of the world. Because they stand for the better values… Apart from all the death and misery that is caused by US imperialism, it is this belief in American exceptionalism that makes the US so despised around the world.
Finally, we should stress that our argument is not whataboutism. We are not saying that this issue in place X should not be discussed because there is this other issue in the US. Outlets like RT and Sputnik should have their editorial lines and journalism standards analysed and criticised. The same holds true for Russia’s foreign policy. But, paraphrasing someone who was also accused of being a Soviet agent, it cannot be the greatest purveyor of meddling in the world and media outlets with ever lowering standards bringing these charges forward and pretending to be the Guardians of truth.
Notes
(1) We have also written on the ridiculous report published by the CIA, FBI and NSA on the Russian “hacking” of US elections.
(2) One wonders why the EU is symbolised by the Medici paying Leonardo da Vinci or by Erasmus and Thomas More being friends and not, for example, by the bubonic plague or Lucrezia Borgia’s antics. You know what else was common to all of Europe before the EU? The slave trade.
(3) More recently the Guardian published another bombshell piece, saying that Russia’s Facebook posts reached 126 million Americans. But we are talking about 80,000 posts, only 0.004% of news feed content according to Facebook, during a two year period. The big number is perfect for propaganda, but conveniently it is not made clear whether 126m different users saw the posts, or if for example 10m users on average saw 120 of these posts.
(4) We should clarify that exploitation does not mean having an evil boss that pays low salaries and forces workers to work weekends. Workers in capitalism are exploited simply because there is a value difference between what they earn and what they produce. In other words, profit comes from unpaid labour. Exploitation is the foundation of capitalism and should not be framed in moral terms, which imply that the problem is not the system but a matter of finding “good capitalists”.
My World, My Rules? US Creates Another Base in Syria, SDF Reveals
Sputnik – November 4, 2107
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) welcome the US’s ever-increasing presence in Syria, although all this technically constitutes an invasion and has never been condoned by the country’s government in Damascus.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the SDF’s senior official said that the US had created a military base in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which was recently liberated from Daesh terrorists.
“The United States is building military bases in the areas freed by our forces from terrorists. We consider it to be the right strategy. Recently, America created a military base at the entrance to the territory of Raqqa, in the Jezra neighborhood,” the official said.
He explained that the neighborhood was chosen by the Americans because it was slightly damaged during a military operation in Raqqa and can now be seen as the city’s safest area. In addition, there are no mine traps or explosives in Jezra, according to him.
“The base and the adjacent territory are reliably protected by American soldiers. No one, except these soldiers and SDF fighters, has access to the base,” the official concluded.
In an interview with Sputnik on Friday, Muhammed Kheir al-Akkam, professor of international relations at the University of Damascus, specifically pointed to the US’s “fully coordinated move to replace Daesh with the SDF” in Syria.
Al-Akkam accused the US of paying lip-service to fighting terrorism and financing both Daesh and the SDF. He emphasized that “the US does not want the end of the Syrian war until their goals [there] are achieved.”
In another development on Friday, the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria said that the US had established a military base near the town of At Tanf on the Syria-Iraq border without the Syrian government’s permission and banned anyone from coming within 55 kilometers. According to the Center, the base’s proximity to the Rukban refugee camp precludes humanitarian access and may be considered a war crime.
On October 20, Washington declared the liberation of Raqqa, Daesh’s self-proclaimed capital, from terrorists. US President Donald Trump called the operation to free the city a “critical breakthrough”, claiming that a “transition into a new phase” would follow it.
READ MORE: Russian MoD: West Wants to Cover Tracks of ‘Barbaric’ Bombings in Raqqa
US Actions in Syria’s At Tanf Violate Humanitarian Law – Reconciliation Center
Sputnik – 03.11.2017
The humanitarian situation in At Tanf, Syria on the nation’s border with Iraq remains extremely difficult, as refugees in the neighboring Rukban camp cannot get access to humanitarian and medical aid.
The US established a military base in Syria without the government’s permission and banned anyone from coming within 55 kilometers; its proximity to the Rukban refugee camp may be considered a war crime, the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria said Friday.
The center reports that, according to witnesses, the US has recently deployed another camp near Rukban where militants gather in order to join its latest attempt to create a so-called moderate opposition, the “National Syrian Army.” The cost of recruitment in each faction is defined by the US after bargaining with field commanders, which is why income differences can be considerable among militants from different groups. On October 29, in clashes between two militant groups, thirteen refugees were killed and over twenty were injured.
The military base was established by the US in April 2017 near the town of At Tanf on the Syria-Iraq border has also become a problem for Syrian forces fighting the terrorist group Daesh (ISIS). The United States justified the setting up of a military base there in terms of the need to carry out operations against Daesh; however, since the establishment of the base, there have been no reports of American anti-terrorist operations, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
The spokesman of the Russian Defense Ministry has warned that refugees living in the Rukban camp are being used as a “human shield” for the US military base near At Tanf. The base has twice been used to strike Syrian government-aligned forces fighting Islamic militants.
The Russian Defense Ministry has also accused the United States and illegal armed groups of preventing the Syrian government from setting up a safe corridor for deliveries of humanitarian supplies for refugees in the Rukban camp in Homs province. However, Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon refuted the accusation as “false” and “baseless,” assuring that the coalition’s partner force allowed deliveries to pass.
First Deputy Chairman of the Russian upper house’s Committee on Defense and Security Frants Klintsevich told Sputnik on Friday that Russia would introduce the issue of a humanitarian situation in Syria’s At Tanf for the consideration of the UN Security Council adding that “future US plans to dismember Syria” were the reason behind the suffering of the refugees.
Russia, US craft rival UN resolutions on extending chemical probe in Syria
Press TV – November 3, 2017
Russia and the United States have drawn up rival UN Security Council resolutions on extending the mission of a body of international experts probing chemical attacks in Syria.
The Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) was formed by a Security Council resolution in 2015, and is run jointly by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the world body’s chemical weapons watchdog.
Russia, however, has been exceedingly critical of JIM’s reports, finding faults with its evidence gathering techniques.
On October 14, Russia vetoed a US-sponsored Security Council resolution that would have renewed the experts’ mandate for a year. It said it would wait for an official report on an alleged sarin gas attack last year in northwestern Syria by the mission to decide whether it would back extending its mandate.
The report came out two days after the veto, blaming Syria for the incident which took place in April 2016 in the town of Khan Shaykhun and killed over 90 people.
Both Russia and Syria have rejected the report.
Reacting to the report on Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry said the JIM experts had produced it without even turning up on site despite being offered guarantees of safety.
Mikhail Ulyanov, the head of the ministry’s arms control and non-proliferation department, said, “Imagine a criminal investigation in which police refuse to visit the site of the crime. No court will ever accept it.” “But they consider it possible to do such thing at the UN Security Council,” he noted.
According to a draft resolution obtained by news agencies, both the American and Russian versions demand the JIM mission’s extension, but under totally different conditions.
According to AFP, Russia wants the UN Security Council to shelve the latest JIM report and launch a new investigation into the Khan Shaykhun incident.
The Russian draft also urged a six-month extension of the UN-led panel’s mission, while the version put forward by the US calls for a two-year extension of the mandate, the report added.
The Associated Press also reported that the Russian draft resolution on the future of JIM’s mandate urges the mission to send investigators to Khan Shaykhun, where the attack reportedly happened, and the Shayrat airfield in Syria’s central Homs Province, which the US attacked later in April with missiles under the pretext of punishing Syria.
The accusations against the Damascus government come while Syria has turned over its entire chemical stockpile under a deal negotiated by Russia and the United States back in 2013. The OPCW supervised that removal process.
US Gambit: How Daesh Could Be Replaced for Continuation of Syrian War
Sputnik – November 3, 2017
With Syria making big strides toward victory and terrorists controlling ever-diminishing areas in the country, Muhammed Kheir al-Akkam, professor of international relations at the University of Damascus, told Sputnik how the US may meddle in the Kurdish issue.
“The US does not want the end of the Syrian war until their goals are achieved. Their main tool for the war in Syria, called Daesh, is living out their last days. So now they are switching to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which have to do what Daesh failed to fulfil,” Syrian political analyst Muhammed Kheir al-Akkam said.
According to him, “the US wants to extend the war in Syria as long as possible to implement its plans in the region.”
“Russia is trying to put an end to this war and along with the Syrians is seeking a peaceful solution. The Americans do not do it, paying lip-service top fighting terrorism; in fact, they are financing both Daesh and the SDF,” al-Akkam added. He pointed out that “what we see in Raqqa is a fully coordinated move by the US to replace Daesh with the SDF.”
“We might ask why the US is not fighting the al-Nusra Front and other similar organizations? The answer is simple: because the US supports them,” he said.
He recalled that the SDF carries out ethnic cleansing in Raqqa and discriminates against some Syrian peoples in the occupied territories, which is why the SDF cannot be called “democratic” or “Syrian”.
“The Syrian Kurds need to remember that the Americans will betray them as soon as their interests diverge, something that occurred to Masoud Barzani after Iraqi Kurds failed to secede from Baghdad,” al-Akkam said.
According to him, “the Syrian Kurds also should bear in mind that their strength depends on Syria’s unity.”
Al-Akkam added that the seventh round of the Syrian peace talks in Astana in many respects continued the course of the talks’ sixth round. At the same time, it is worth noting that there has been a new turn, according to him.
During the Astana talks, the sides managed to resolve many issues related to the military situation in Syria, something that he said the parties failed to do in Geneva. In Astana, the sides, in particular, agreed on exchanging prisoners and the holding of the Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi, where Syria’s integrity will be high on the agenda.
“As for the Syrian opposition groups that will not attend the Sochi congress, they are dealing with the interests of those who finance their activities rather than those of the Syrian people,” al-Akkam concluded.
Manafort Indictment Underwhelms, Poses No Immediate Threat to Trump
By Jerri-Lynn Scofield | Naked Capitalism | November 2, 2017
On Monday, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and business partner Richard Gates on twelve counts, including conspiracy against the United States and conspiracy to launder money, and various charges of failure to file Reports of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR), and failure to register as a foreign agent, concerning activities in the Ukraine that ended in 2014. (Read the indictment here.)
I’m not alone in pointing out that absent Manafort’s involvement in Trump’s campaign, his failure to register as a foreign agent– would not have been targeted, as many lobbyists are not conscientious in fulfilling this reporting requirement. See, for example, this National Review account:
The offense of failing to register as a foreign agent (Count Ten) may be a slam-dunk, but it is a violation that the Justice Department rarely prosecutes criminally. There is often ambiguity about whether the person’s actions trigger the registration requirement, so the Justice Department’s practice is to encourage people to register, not indict them for failing to do so.
Much has been made of the absence of any tax charges in the present indictment, one which alleges conspiracy to commit money laundering. The lawyers I spoke to weren’t unduly concerned about such seemingly missing counts, pointing out that the indictment can be amended later to include tax charges, as investigations proceed.
In fact, this indictment should probably be read as a warning shot– the first step in a lengthy, wide-ranging investigation. I was reminded by one lawyer I spoke to yesterday that special prosecutors have virtually limitless powers, and certainly no major lobbyist could expect to survive unscathed the level of scrutiny that will be brought to bear in this investigation.
Unsurprisingly, the New York Times published a piece reinforcing that line, Andrew Weissmann, Mueller’s Legal Pit Bull, that reads like the work of a legal fanboy, and the message of which is Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid:
Two decades later, Mr. Weissmann has turned his attention to a more prominent set of prospective conspirators: He is a top lieutenant to Robert S. Mueller III on the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign. Significantly, Mr. Weissmann is an expert in converting defendants into collaborators — with either tactical brilliance or overzealousness, depending on one’s perspective.
It is not clear if President Trump and his charges fear Mr. Weissmann as they gird for the slog ahead. It is quite clear, former colleagues and opponents say, that they should.
The million dollar question: Will this implicate or threaten Trump? So far, I think no. But we must all stay tuned– and pass the popcorn.
Bottom Line for Trump
One goal in indicting Manafort was to force him to give up the goods on Trump regarding alleged Russian collusion in the election campaign. Yet the offenses alleged in the indictment concerned activities in the Ukraine during a specific time period ending before Manafort’s campaign involvement. (The indictment also include a charge of making false statements to prosecutors in 2016, concerning these earlier activities.)
As the Wall Street Journal opined:
The most striking news is that none of this involves the 2016 election campaign. The indictment makes clear that Mr. Manafort’s work for Ukraine and his money transfers ended in 2014. The 2016 charges are related to false statements Mr. Manafort made to the Justice Department.
There’s reason to think Manafort might not have such goods to deliver. Recall that Trump initially brought Manafort into his campaign in March 2016, elevated him to campaign manager in June, and tied [cut loose] him in August, according to The Washington Post.
Now, there’s no denying that Manafort kept some very sleazy company (see, for example, this September post from John Helmer). The Journal noted (drily): “Mr. Manafort has lobbied for a rogues gallery of dictators, with the occasional domestic scandal (HUD contracts).” But lobbying on behalf of unsavory foreign clients isn’t per se illegal (reminding me of Michael Kinsley’s quip, “The scandal isn’t what’s illegal, the scandal is what’s legal”.)
The Journal further notes:
One popular theory is that Mr. Mueller is throwing the book at Mr. Manafort so he will cop a plea and tell what he knows about Russian-Trump campaign chicanery. But that assumes he knows something that to date no Congressional investigation has found. Prosecutors typically try to turn witnesses before they indict, and Messrs. Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty on Monday.
Issues With Manafort Indictment
In the interests of keeping this post of readable length, I’m going to limit my focus.
The National Review account cited above is worth reading in full. I am of course aware of the ideological slant of that publication, but I found little to fault in its analysis– admittedly, making the case for the defense and summarized thus: “On first glance, Mueller’s case, at least in part, seems shaky and overcharged.” Since Manafort has pleaded not guilty, he can and will draw on high-priced legal talent that will certainly make these and similar arguments, zeroing in on weaknesses in the government’s case.
In particular, while even this National Review account concedes that the failure to register as a foreign agent seems to be a slam-dunk (leaving aside the clear political motivation of taking a particularly Javertian line on this lapse), whether this will result in a win for the government isn’t wholly clear, due to possible prosecutorial overreach:
Specifically, Congress considers false statements in the specific context of foreign-agent registration to be a misdemeanor calling for zero to six months’ imprisonment. (See Section 622(a)(2) of Title 22, U.S. Code.) That is the offense Mueller charges in Count Eleven. But then, for good measure, Mueller adds a second false-statement count (Count Twelve) for the same conduct — charged under the penal-code section (Section 1001 of Title 18, U.S. Code) that makes any falsity or material omission in a statement to government officials a felony punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.
Obviously, one cannot make a false statement on the foreign-agent registration form without also making a false statement to the government. Consequently, expect Manafort to argue that Mueller has violated double-jeopardy principles by charging the same exact offense in two separate counts, and that the special counsel is undermining Congress’s intent that the offense of providing false information on a foreign-agent registration form be considered merely a misdemeanor.
Possible Fourth Amendment Violations Taint Manafort Evidence?
Continuing with another potential defense argument, I’ll mention another possible problem with the government’s case, discussed in a Rachel Stockman opinion piece published by LawNewz. Again, lest I be accused of pro-Manafort or– shudder– pro-Trump bias, I want to emphasize if I can spot these issues and develop such arguments, based on on-line research, assorted back and forth email exchanges, and telephone calls conducted over the last couple of days, certainly Manafort’s defense team will do this and more– so please do not shoot your humble messenger.
While calling the indictment “very detailed and well-documented” Stockman continued:
… there is one area that could hurt Mueller’s investigation. Mueller’s team may have obtained evidence in the raid of Paul Manafort’s home that was not covered by the search warrant. That could be problematic.
In a surprise raid on July 26th, FBI agents busted into Manafort’s home in Alexandria, Virginia to collect documents and other materials related to the FBI probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. At the time, Manafort’s attorney raised concerns about how the raid was conducted. In order for the feds to obtain a warrant, a federal judge would have to determine that probable cause existed that a crime was committed. As part of the warrant, investigators attached an affidavit which contained a list of items that FBI agents hoped to collect. That’s where the trouble appears to be in Manafort’s case.
The key issue is whether this constituted an illegal search, and exactly what was seized. Here, the Stockman piece relies on a September CNN report:
During that raid, Mueller’s investigators took documents considered to be covered by attorney-client privilege, sources told CNN.
Lawyers from the WilmerHale law firm, representing Manafort at the time, warned Mueller’s office that their search warrant didn’t allow access to attorney materials. The documents in question have now been returned, the sources say.
The episode raised questions about whether investigators have seen materials they weren’t entitled to obtain.
“You can’t unsee something,” one source said.
It’s not an uncommon problem in FBI investigations. US attorneys typically have separate document-review teams to prevent investigators from handling materials they aren’t allowed to have. It’s not clear what procedures Mueller’s office uses.
I’m not taking a position on this issue one way or another, but merely flagging this as a potential problem for the government’s case.
Attorney-Client Privilege Pierced
Finally, I’d like to mention a another LawNewz opinion piece, this by Elura Nanos, which spotlights a potential problem for the defense. The piece discusses a Memorandum Opinion, unsealed at the end of October, in which D.C. federal district court chief judge Beryl A. Howell compelled grand jury testimony from a lawyer representing Manafort and Gates under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege. The attorney-client privilege isn’t absolute, and judges can order an attorney’s testimony if it falls within certain exceptions.
Over to Nanos:
Now we know that the grand jury proceedings culminated in indictments, and Judge Howell’s ruling on the this motion to compel testimony is more than a little foreshadowing. The Court’s opinion on this issue allows us to peek into the generally secret grand jury proceedings, and that peek isn’t looking so good for the defendants.
Now, frustratingly, Judge Howell’s opinions was heavily redacted– interested readers may wish to click the link above to see just how extensively for themselves. I’ll again rely on the Nanos account which lays out the key concern:
The court’s memorandum was heavily redacted, so at this point, it’s unclear which statements the judge meant, but this portion of the document sure sounds bad for the defendants:
“… the above statement is false, a half-truth, or at least misleading because evidence shows that Target 1 and Target 2 were intimately involved in significant outreach in the United States on behalf of the ECFMU, the Party of Regions and/or the Ukrainian government.”
Yeah, things can change at trial, but even at a preliminary phase, it’s not good for a judge to make a finding that you’re “intimately involved” in sinister foreign misdealings. Oh, and there was also this:
“Through its ex parte production of evidence, the [Special Counsel’s Office] has clearly met its burden of making a prima facie showing that the crime-fraud exception applies by showing that the Targets were “engaged in or planning a criminal or fraudulent scheme when [they] sought the advice of counsel to further the scheme.”
Those seven little letters should strike fear in the hearts of Manafort, Gates, and their lawyers. The SCO hasn’t just met its burden – it’s done so clearly. Allow me to translate from judge-to-English: “You guys are screwed. Take a plea or watch everyone around you– even your own lawyers — go down.”
For more in a similar vein lauding Mueller’s “serious, deliberative, and far-sighted inquiry”, see this Atlantic account, which extensively discusses the plea agreement of Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulus– and which I lack space to discuss further in this Manafort indictment post.
Trump Response
I’d like to point to a New York Times piece, headlined In Call With Times Reporter, Trump Projects Air of Calm Over Charges that suggests that Trump is managing to keep it together, and dare I say it, respond to the Manafort indictment in a ‘presidential’ way– in the traditional pre-Trumpian sense of that word.
Permit me to quote from the Grey Lady’s account at length:
President Trump projected an air of calm on Wednesday after charges against his former campaign chief and a foreign policy aide roiled Washington, insisting to The New York Times that he was not “angry at anybody” and that investigations into his campaign’s links to Russia had not come near him personally.
“I’m not under investigation, as you know,” Mr. Trump said in a brief telephone call late Wednesday afternoon. Pointing to the indictment of his former campaign chief, Paul Manafort, the president said, “And even if you look at that, there’s not even a mention of Trump in there.”
“It has nothing to do with us,” Mr. Trump said.
He also pushed back against a report published Monday night by The Washington Post, which the president said described him as “angry at everybody.”
“I’m actually not angry at anybody,” Mr. Trump told The Times.
The phone call seemed intended to dispel the impression of a president and a White House under siege. The indictment of Mr. Manafort and his longtime deputy, Rick Gates, on Monday came as little surprise to Mr. Trump or his team, and they were relieved that the charges were not directly related to last year’s campaign. Instead, both were indicted on charges including money laundering, tax evasion and failing to properly disclose lobbying on behalf of foreign governments.
Jerri-Lynn Scofield has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She now spends much of her time in Asia and is currently working on a book about textile artisans.
Zero evidence, but… DOJ source says it ‘knows identities of Russians involved in DNC hack’
RT | November 2, 2017
Just days after the Mueller investigation came up short on Kremlin involvement in the US presidential election, a source in the Department of Justice says the names of the Russians who hacked the DNC computers are known, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In yet another effort to make a connection between the Kremlin and Hillary Clinton’s loss in the November 2016 US presidential elections, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department “has identified more than six members of the Russian government involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computers and swiping sensitive information.” The leaked materials divulged a mountain of unsavory information related to the Clinton campaign.
Although relations between the world’s two preeminent nuclear powers hang in the balance over the charges, the accusations about “Russian meddling” in the US democratic process come without the outlet offering any evidence to support the claims. This much was admitted by the authors of the WSJ article early in the report.
“US intelligence agencies have attributed the attack to Russian intelligence services, but haven’t provided detailed information about how they concluded those services were responsible, or any details about the individuals allegedly involved,” authors Aruna Viswanatha and Del Quentin Wilber wrote.
Curiously, the US mainstream media has only shown interest in pursuing the “Russian hack” narrative regarding the release of thousands of the DNC’s emails, which were made public by WikiLeaks last year. Yet there were possible other suspects in this case, not least of all Seth Rich, former Voter Expansion Data Director, who was gunned down on July 10, 2016, in Washington DC.
WikiLeaks offered $20,000 reward for information regarding Rich’s death, while saying their offer should not be taken as implying Rich had been involved in leaking information to them. At the same time, however, WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, stated emphatically that Russia was not the source of the DNC data leak.
“We can say, we have said, repeatedly over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party,” he said in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News.
Nevertheless, despite providing zero evidence to support these extremely severe charges, the Obama administration took the unprecedented step of expelling 35 Russian diplomats right before the New Year, and the changing of the presidential guard, as well as imposing sanctions.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time the Wall Street Journal has produced “evidence” allegedly incriminating Russia in some conspiracy, only to be debunked later.
In early October, the influential business newspaper reported that the Russian government used software, created by the Moscow-based company Kaspersky Lab, to “secretly scan computers around the world for classified U.S. government documents and top-secret information.”
Without identifying its sources, WSJ accused the respected anti-virus company of being aware of “an adjustment to its normal operations,” allowing the company to search for terms as broad as “top secret,” as well as the “classified code names of US government programs.”
These accusations were immediately refuted by Germany’s BSI federal cyber agency.
“There are no plans to warn against the use of Kaspersky products since the BSI has no evidence for misconduct by the company or weaknesses in its software,” BSI said in an emailed response to questions about the latest media reports. “The BSI has no indications at this time that the process occurred as described in the media.”
The unsubstantiated report by the WSJ comes as Robert Mueller’s investigation into “Russian interference” in the 2016 presidential election has failed to turn up any evidence.
Attempts by US investigators to find alleged Russian collusion with President Donald Trump’s campaign have led to the discovery of a “Ukrainian trail,” Russia’s FM Sergey Lavrov said, suggesting Washington should now investigate Kiev’s role.
Over the past several years, Washington has attempted to blame any negative world events on Russia, “be it political protests, companies going bankrupt, or man-made disasters,” Lavrov said. “I’ve already heard we’ll soon be not only interfering in elections, but also manipulating the environment in order to create floods,” he added.
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New Book
The Vaccine Mafia: Pfizer’s Former Chief Toxicologist Proves How Toxic Substances Were Unlawfully Sold to Us as a Solution for COVID-19
By Helmut Sterz
Former Pfizer chief toxicologist Helmut Sterz presents a critical examination of the development, approval, and global rollout of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines—particularly those produced by Pfizer/BioNTech. The Vaccine Mafia details the failure of pharmaceutical companies, regulatory authorities, politicians, and international organizations to follow established scientific and ethical standards during the pandemic. Drawing on the author’s decades of experience in pharmaceutical toxicology, Sterz reveals the many ways the vaccines’ inadequate or omitted preclinical safety testing put the world’s population at risk.
Sterz demonstrates how “emergency” approvals allowed manufacturers to bypass long-standing international guidelines governing toxicity testing, especially with regard to reproductive and cancer risks. They also allowed governments and health authorities to ignore or conceal evidence of serious adverse effects that occurred, including myocarditis, reproductive harm, and other long-term health risks.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- The ‘Gaza Treatment’: How Media Headlines Obscure Who is Bombing Yemen
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- Why Iran designated British MI6, Royal Navy, and RAF as hostile, terrorist organizations
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- US still trying to recycle failed hypersonic missile programs
- France’s ‘Cold War’: Paris blames Tehran for supermarket fridge hacks
- Psywar no more? 77th Brigade’s sudden death
- Ukraine Already Carved Up… Before Talks Begin? /Prof. Richard Sakwa
- The vindication of Marjorie Taylor Greene
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- If Americans Knew
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- No Tricks Zone
- German Authorities Start Initiative To Evaluate Public Register For Climate “Disinformation” Spreaders!
- Zonal Asymmetry of Temperature Change in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
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- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
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- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
