Two weeks ago Roger Stone’s protege Sam Nunberg did a big media blitz about how he wasn’t going to testify before the Mueller grand jury and provide requested documentation. Then he went ahead and did that anyway.
Today the House Democrats have sent a letter to the DOJ and Mueller requesting criminal charges be filed against long time Trump support and Manafort partner Roger Stone and others.
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee is considering issuing a “criminal referral” of one or more witnesses for potentially committing perjury while testifying behind closed doors,” Mother Jones reported Friday.
“We’re gonna be going through the transcripts and analyzing them for any concerns we have with the greater body of information we have,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) revealed. “We’ll discuss it with the majority and ask whether they’ll join us in a referral, or, if we think one is warranted, then we reserve the right to make a referral even if they don’t.”
A source “close to the committee” told Mother Jones that such criminal referrals could be directed to the Department of Justice and/or special counsel Robert Mueller.
Concerns of perjury are said to involve three witnesses interviewed by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Trump campaign advisor Carter Page, mercenary mogul Erik Prince and longtime Trump advisor Roger Stone.
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Following up on their vow to issue a “Minority Report” which will prove collusion in response to the GOP abruptly ending of the House Intelligence Investigation, Democrats appear to have shed their gloves with this move which counters similar referrals attempted by Senate Republicans against Christopher Steele which prompted Sen. Diane Feinstein to public a document noting that nothing in Steele’s dossier has yet been disproven.
In a statement, Feinstein refuted the committee chairman’s characterization of Steele’s dossier.
“Not a single revelation in the Steele dossier has been refuted,” Feinstein said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the claims in the criminal referral rely on classified information, so it’s difficult to
fully repudiate them here. However, as much as possible using unclassified information, the following points lay out the flaws in the criminal referral.”
“The criminal referral of Christopher Steele has nothing to do with accountability,” Feinstein’s statement reads. “Clearly its goals included undermining the FBI and Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, attacking Christopher Steele and deflecting attention from collusion and obstruction of justice investigations.”
Just a few days ago Devin Nunes wrote Jeff Sessions a letter claiming that the FBI broke the law by requesting a FISA warrant for Carter Page based on a “partisan dossier” even though Sessions has already announced an IG investigation into exactly that, and his claims about the warrant have already been crushed into dust by the Schiff Memo.
Also Sens. Grassley, Graham, Cornyn and Tillis from Judiciary have even called for a Special Counsel for the Special Counsel because Session’s call to have the Inspector General analyze things just isn’t strong enough for them.
“We have the utmost confidence in the Inspector General’s integrity, fairness, and impartiality, and trust that he will complete these reviews in a thorough, unbiased, and timely fashion,” Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) said in a Thursday letter to the Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. “However, by statute, the Inspector General does not have the tools that a prosecutor would to gather all the facts, such as the ability to obtain testimony from essential witnesses who are not current DOJ employees. Thus, we believe that a special counsel is needed to work with the Inspector General to independently gather the facts and make prosecutorial decisions, if any are merited.”
So while the GOP is throwing rocks at the FBI and informants like Steele, Democrats are now countering by going for the jugular against Stone who has admitted contacting Julian Assange in order to gain access to stolen emails by Hillary Clinton, Carter Page who travelled to Russia and has admitted discussing the sale of stock by Russian Oil company Rosneft who happened to be sanctioned and off-limits to anyone from the U.S. and Erik Prince who travelled at the behest of Michael Flynn and Kushner to the Seychelles Islands to meet a Russian financier and members of the UAE in an effort to establish a secret back-channel to Russia for Trump during the transition.
Let’s see who the real criminals turn out to be.