The key #TrumpRussia point today was that Mueller anticipated Trump and Manafort would violate the Joint defense agreement, and allowed them to entrap themselves with the written response to questions. Because coordinated lies do not equal the truth when there’s other evidence available.
The Jerome Corsi revelations are the icing on a cake thrown at a kid’s birthday party, as Corsi made a bad choice to resist, and lied in the process, having served as a check on the fabrication of other lies among Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and others including Julian Assange. Essentially Trump has now committed to statements that demonstrate a collusive connection to numerous efforts by Manafort and others like Stone to influence the 2016 election with Russian assistance.
Conveniently, Alan Dershowitz does not opine extensively on the obstruction of justice aspect that now seems more obvious as #TrumpRussia gains clarity.
President Trump on Monday launched what some interpreted as a preemptive PR attack against special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s final report — a day after one of Mueller’s most prominent critics said he expects the investigation’s conclusion will be politically “devastating to the president.”
[...]
“What I think Mueller’s going to do if he’s smart is connect the open dots,” Alan Dershowitz, who has defended clients in some of the most famous cases in modern history, told The Washington Post. “He’s going to lay out everything that relates to contacts between anyone in the campaign and the Russians, and the same thing with obstruction of justice. None of these things by themselves are compelling, but when you lay it out and see it all in one document, I think it will be on its face very critical of the president.”
www.washingtonpost.com/...
Strange is how Manafort thought he could be a spy for Trump by pleading guilty to get access to Mueller’s side of the prosecution with some expectation of a pardon. It’s already been pointed out that Mueller put in counter-measures in the agreement but Manafort seems to have believed that could be bypassed.
Renato Mariotti tweet-threads a useful summary of the “coordination” of Manafort and Trump’s attorneys and why Manafort’s plea violation has now hemmed in 45* on what is now “ironclad” proof of collusion in #TrumpRussia.
1/ Today @nytimes reported that Manafort's lawyer repeatedly briefed Trump's lawyers about Manafort's discussions with Mueller *after* Manafort had already begun to cooperate. This arrangement is extremely unusual and highly questionable.
2/ Before a defendant pleads guilty, his interests typically align with other people who are under investigation. In this investigation, before Manafort pleaded guilty, his interests were roughly aligned with Trump's because both of them are under investigation.
3/ Once Manafort pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller, his interests shifted. Typically cooperators / flippers are viewed as part of the prosecution team. They are trying to help the prosecution by providing information and potential testimony.
4/ It is common for attorneys representing subjects of an investigation to enter into what is called a "joint defense agreement." That is a way that lawyers for different people under investigation agree to exchange information and keep that information privileged.
5/ That agreement works because of something called the "common interest" doctrine, which says that when two people have a common interest in a legal matter, they can exchange information about that matter and keep it privileged.
6/ Those agreements are routine in complex white collar criminal cases, and I often enter into those agreements with other attorneys when I represent people under investigation. (And when I was a federal prosecutor, white collar defense attorneys usually had those agreements.)
7/ A common provision of those agreements, whether they're written or not, is that the person is required to notify everyone else that is part of the agreement if their client agrees to cooperate with the government, because that ends the common interest.
8/ Once someone flips, as Manafort did, his interests are against everyone else under investigation because the prosecutors will require him to cooperate against everyone else and tell them everything he knows. So communications from other subjects to him aren't privileged.
The weirdness, not unlike the Dershowitz opinions, is how clueless is the Giuliani sourcing of this.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, an attorney for Trump, said the president does not recall ever speaking to either Stone or Corsi about WikiLeaks. He said the president’s legal team obtained a copy of the Corsi document earlier this month and lodged a complaint with the Justice Department about the inclusion of Trump’s name in the draft filing. The episode delayed the delivery of Trump’s written responses to questions posed by the special counsel.
A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.
Corsi’s release of the draft filing provides a rare window into the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team, which has conducted its investigation in extraordinary secrecy.
www.washingtonpost.com/...