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The Robert Mueller Investigation

Hugo Stiglitz

By Hugo Stiglitz
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Goredho
Goredho

Just to make sure I have the alternative facts straight...  Our government -- but I'm guessing only the deep state part of it --- is now guilty of torturing a poor, naive Russian exchange student who

Incredulity
Incredulity

liberals suddenly being terrified of Russia and manic for election integrity is just pure comedy gold.

Chooky
Chooky

I don't believe for a moment that any of this is entertaining to you.  I think it gives you a bit of anxiety knowing that your best weapon against a group who you despise is a bumbling fraud as a busi

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23375

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, GRHorn said:

The fix is in @Anastasis  look who FISA court appointed to examine procedures. 
 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-outlines-steps-to-cure-faulty-surveillance-applications-11578702210

 

He’s a “the walls are closing in” guy. Lol

 

I don’t know who that is and don’t really give a shit. The fbi will not fix the problems. In the words of the fisa court, the fbi has demonstrated repeatedly an institutional lack of candor. The fixes, of they are to come, will come from the legislative branch and the judiciary. The cops are simply unwilling or unable to police themselves. Part of wrays corrective action plan in response to the court was that he was going to send an email o the fbi with a video telling them to follow the rules.  And then follow up with another email. It’s literally a joke. 

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DDD Dad

DDD Dad 14167

Posted
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I don’t know who that is and don’t really give a shit. The fbi will not fix the problems. In the words of the fisa court, the fbi has demonstrated repeatedly an institutional lack of candor. The fixes, of they are to come, will come from the legislative branch and the judiciary. The cops are simply unwilling or unable to police themselves. Part of wrays corrective action plan in response to the court was that he was going to send an email o the fbi with a video telling them to follow the rules.  And then follow up with another email. It’s literally a joke. 

What if it is a strongly worded email?
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Chad Fuck

Chad Fuck 17503

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Lol, the GOVERNMENT'S breach of the plea agreement? This reeks of trumpistan fuckery with the justice process just to slow things down for the sake of sand in the gears

It’s what happens when you have a mob boss for president. Flynn thought for a minute justice might prevail so he cooperated. Then he saw us out on the ledge and said, “Nah, I’m gonna go with likely pardon.” Steven Miller already has it drafted and signed. Just waiting to put a date on it.
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NWBuck

NWBuck 8543

Posted
Posted (edited)

Hashtag "Welp"

Trump wins appeal to block McGahn testimony

Quote

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s opinion overturned a lower court decision requiring McGahn’s testimony and told the judge presiding over the case to dismiss it outright. The ruling is a blow to House Democrats’ attempts to break the Trump administration’s intransigent stance that it can block Congress from talking to witnesses. McGahn was a key source of information for Robert Mueller and Democrats have been angling to secure an interview to find out what he told the special counsel.

The 2-1 ruling comes a little more than three weeks after the Senate acquitted Trump on largely unrelated impeachment charges involving his posture toward Ukraine. It’s also not necessarily final. Democrats are expected to appeal and could seek a fast-track Supreme Court review, though the prospects of a final decision before the November election seem remote.

 

 

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23375

Posted
Posted

I guess catching up after a break.

 

giphy.gif

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/28/how-politicos-natasha-bertrand-bootstrapped-dossier-credulity-into-tv-gig/

 

How Politico’s Natasha Bertrand bootstrapped dossier credulity into MSNBC gig

By 

Erik Wemple 

Media critic

Feb. 28, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. CST

Twelfth in a series on the media’s handling of the Steele dossier. Read the rest of the series here.

Russian election interference is back in the news. According to reports from last week, Congress received warnings from intelligence officials that the Kremlin favors the reelection of President Trump. Those sirens prompted a freak-out from Trump himself, who worried that his Democratic detractors would use the information against him.

Where there’s a report on Russian meddling, there’s an MSNBC segment waiting to be taped. Last Thursday night, MSNBC host Joy Reid — subbing for “All In” host Chris Hayes — turned to Politico national security reporter Natasha Bertrand with a question about whether Trump “wants” Russian meddling or whether he can’t accept that "foreign help is there.“ Bertrand responded: “We don’t have the reporting that suggests that the president has told aides, for example, that he really wants Russia to interfere because he thinks that it’s going to help him, right?”

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No, we don’t have that reporting — though there’s no prohibition against fantasizing about it on national television. Such is the theme of Bertrand’s commentary during previous coverage of Russian interference, specifically the dossier of memos drawn up by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. With winks and nods from MSNBC hosts, Bertrand heaped credibility on the dossier — which was published in full by BuzzFeed News in January 2017 — in repeated television appearances. Her written work has appeared on Business Insider, the Atlantic and Politico, where she is now a national security reporter. Along the way, she bootstrapped her punditry into a contributor’s role on MSNBC.

The boosterism dates back years. On Sept. 18, 2017, for example, Bertrand participated in a collective journalistic failure on the MSNBC airwaves. On “All In," Bertrand, who then worked for Business Insider, discussed an apparent scoop from CNN that Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for Trump, had been “wiretapped” before and after the 2016 presidential election under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

To shower context on the apparent news, Bertrand remarked that securing a FISA warrant is “extremely difficult.” And she sandwiched the report with previous reporting that the feds had taken a similar action regarding former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page: “They also got a warrant for Carter Page, who if you remember in the infamous Trump-Russia Steele dossier, it said that Carter Page was actually working as a liaison, being managed by Paul Manafort as kind of a go-between. So these pieces are all starting to come together and it’s really alarming.”

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Not so alarming, as it turned out. For one, CNN was wrong about the Manafort wiretapping story, as made clear in the report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. The network added a weaselly editor’s note to the Manafort story as a means of wishing away the bad news. For another, the Horowitz report made clear that the FBI made numerous omissions and errors in the FISA process and still secured authorizations. For yet another, the “pieces” didn’t particularly “come together": Though Steele’s 35-page dossier alleged that Page was in collusive cahoots with Manafort, the FBI concluded otherwise, according to the Horowitz report.

The Bertrand highlight reel features a great deal of thumb-on-scale speculation regarding the dossier. Some highlights:

Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller reportedly told Congress in November 2017 that on a trip to Moscow in 2013, an unidentified man offered to send “five women” to Trump’s hotel room, though the offer was rejected. The dossier contained an allegation that Russia had kompromat against Trump in the form of video footage of a perverted act in the Moscow Ritz-Carlton. Discussing the matter on “All In,” Bertrand said, “Well, one of the biggest things that I took away was how much it seems to corroborate the part of the dossier, the parts of the dossier that discuss how Russia uses things like this to gain kompromat over people that they want to blackmail in the future,” she said. “I mean, this idea that Russia actually offered up five prostitutes to Trump while he was in Moscow in 2013 really raises additional questions about, well, what may have happened in other instances when Trump was in Russia, for example?”

After details emerged regarding hush-money payments routed to women with whom Trump allegedly had affairs, Bertrand said in January 2018 on MSNBC: “I think that this whole story, what happens from it is that it makes it much more plausible that Trump did go to Russia and he did have these kinds of sexual escapades with prostitutes. I mean, Stormy Daniels was talking to magazines about this as early as 2011. And as we know, Trump has been traveling to Moscow for quite some time and it just makes it all the more plausible that what the dossier says he did actually did occur,” she told host Ari Melber.

In April 2018, McClatchy reported that then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III had evidence that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague in 2016, lending credence to a claim in the dossier about Cohen’s involvement in alleged Trump-Russia collusion. Bertrand’s analysis: “Well, it’s absolutely massive. I mean, this is a rumor that’s been swirling around Washington for months now,” Bertrand (working for the Atlantic at the time) told Hayes. “The idea was that Cohen had flown into Germany in early September of 2016 and then had made his way by a bus or by a train down to the Czech Republic down to Prague. It was never something that anyone has really been able to confirm. But now we know that Mueller has evidence that it did happen.”

Candidate Trump, in a famous moment from the campaign, urged the Russians to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. In a July 2018 edition of “All In,” Bertrand said: “What if Donald Trump actually knew beforehand that the Russians planned to do this and was kind of giving them a signal to proceed? Because former intelligence officials that I spoke to said that this might have been in fact a signal to the Russians to give them kind of political cover in order to hack into Clinton’s emails,” said Bertrand. “Another alternative explanation is that they could do this and use it as leverage later on and say that they were just acting on the president’s orders, essentially.”

In August 2018, the New York Times reported that Trump had hatched a plan to buy up embarrassing material compiled by the National Enquirer and its parent company. Bertrand observed on MSNBC:

The idea is that this is potentially the most blackmail-able president in United States history. I mean, the fact that the National Enquirer had decades of information about his affairs, about his children about even [first lady Melania Trump] speaks volumes about the president’s life and all of the kind of shady things he did throughout his career, many of which, most of which, perhaps all of which he actually never even faced real consequences for.

But I think that this substantiates two big claims in the dossier. The first, of course, is that Michael Cohen was the President’s fixer in all things related to Russia. So just as he was the fixer and all things related to burying stories about Trump’s extramarital affairs, he was also according to the dossier his fixer in burying the story of the Trump’s — of Trump campaign’s conspiracy with Russia to win the election.

He was alleged to have paid off the hackers and to kind of clean the whole thing up at the end of the election.

Cohen was indeed alleged to have paid off the hackers — until that allegation fell apart, a process punctuated by the Horowitz report. The Cohen-Prague claims in the dossier were “not true,” according to Horowitz. Such findings filtered into a more global assessment of the dossier by the FBI: “The FBI concluded, among other things, that although consistent with known efforts by Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections, much of the material in the Steele election reports, including allegations about Donald Trump and members of the Trump campaign relied upon in the Carter Page FISA applications, could not be corroborated; that certain allegations were inaccurate or inconsistent with information gathered by the Crossfire Hurricane team; and that the limited information that was corroborated related to time, location, and title information, much of which was publicly available.”

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Those conclusions may well have surprised anyone who relied on Bertrand’s reporting on MSNBC and elsewhere. In a Politico story about the inspector general’s interview with Steele in June 2019, Bertrand wrote: “The interview was contentious at first, the sources added, but investigators ultimately found Steele’s testimony credible and even surprising. The takeaway has irked some U.S. officials interviewed as part of the probe — they argue that it shouldn’t have taken a foreign national to convince the inspector general that the FBI acted properly in 2016.”

Well, actually, the inspector general wasn’t so convinced. Though Horowitz ultimately concluded that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was properly launched, it bashed the FBI’s work in seeking FISA surveillance for Page, an effort that relied heavily on the dossier.

The speculative mess that Bertrand has left all over Nexis transcripts serves as an indictment of cable-news sensibilities. Incentives on prime-time MSNBC shows point precisely in the direction that Bertrand ventured on too many occasions — that is, toward believing the specifics of a document whose veracity she and others couldn’t begin to assess. Lefty hosts wanted to hear that the Michael Cohen stuff looked plausible, that the Russians had indeed been cultivating Trump, and that it was all coming together. So that’s what she said, and in March 2018, she was rewarded with an MSNBC contributor gig.

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Her statements on MSNBC about the dossier left Bertrand in a bind vis-a-vis the Horowitz report. How to deal with a document that debunks your punditry? Attack!

In a Politico story headlined “Watchdog report a ‘roadmap’ for Russian spooks, intel vets say,” Bertrand questioned a decision by the Justice Department to leave vast portions of the document unredacted. “Experts," according to Bertrand, were sounding alarms about too much information, insisting that “the depiction of sources and vetting in the report could pose problems for the [United States’] information sharing relationships, and undermine the FBI’s recruitment efforts.”

Steven Aftergood, an expert on government disclosures with the Federation of American Scientists, told the Erik Wemple Blog that the inspector general’s report did indeed disclose more information than usual and declared that “this just smells bad.”

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Consider, however, that Beltway reporters for decades have been fighting over-redaction from the national security bureaucracy. Here, Politico was all but clamoring for it. “I cannot fathom being a journalist and complaining that the government isn’t hiding more information,” says the Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald.

The Erik Wemple Blog sent a copy of Bertrand’s dossier-related comments to MSNBC along with a question: Do you stand by this material? MSNBC declined to comment. Politico editor Carrie Budoff Brown issued this statement: "Natasha is an extremely well sourced journalist and her depth of knowledge on national security issues is outstanding.” (Bertrand’s MSNBC dossier-related comments cited above were made before she joined Politico in April 2019). Bertrand herself sent this statement via email: “I stand by everything I’ve said on air and reported.”

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31184

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, NWBuck said:

Hashtag "Welp"

Trump wins appeal to block McGahn testimony

 

That surprises me a bit.

Well, maybe not.  Political question dismissal is always lurking in the background of these deals, which is partly why Congress rarely goes to the mat on these things.

At least I was right that the blanket executive immunity thing was not sustained.

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45477

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Posted
3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

That surprises me a bit.

Well, maybe not.  Political question dismissal is always lurking in the background of these deals, which is partly why Congress rarely goes to the mat on these things.

At least I was right that the blanket executive immunity thing was not sustained.

Yay?

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31184

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Yay?

The end result is the same.  So no yay, really.

Problem is, I got the other subpoenas (NYS and House) for financial information conflated with this one.  In those two, because it's not between two branches of government, the political question doctrine doesn't come into play (mostly, it still might on the House subpoenas).  It's purely a question of Trump's overbroad assertion of executive privilege, which I am quite certain will fail.

It has long been thought that court enforcement of congressional subpoenas between branches or between houses of congress are probably not justiciable as political questions.  So this probably should not have been terribly surprising, I guess.

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DDD Dad

DDD Dad 14167

Posted
Posted
The end result is the same.  So no yay, really.
Problem is, I got the other subpoenas (NYS and House) for financial information conflated with this one.  In those two, because it's not between two branches of government, the political question doctrine doesn't come into play (mostly, it still might on the House subpoenas).  It's purely a question of Trump's overbroad assertion of executive privilege, which I am quite certain will fail.
It has long been thought that court enforcement of congressional subpoenas between branches or between houses of congress are probably not justiciable as political questions.  So this probably should not have been terribly surprising, I guess.

But I was told by the Republicans that Congress should have waited for the courts to rule on subpoenas before impeaching.
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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31184

Posted
Posted
19 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:


But I was told by the Republicans that Congress should have waited for the courts to rule on subpoenas before impeaching.

Totes valid point.

Also, given that intragovernmental congressional subpoenas are subject to political question abstention, this makes the notion of obstruction of congress and government more powerful.  The whole idea behind political question doctrine is that such disputes are better resolved by compromise.

I have to confess that I have never really had a firm handle on what is and what is not a political question.

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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 45513

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, triplehorn said:
well that escalated, finally.

 

Yeah, I just saw this in the NYT:

Judge Calls Barr's Handling of Mueller Report 'Distorted' and 'Misleading'

 

Spoiler

Judge Calls Barr’s Handling of Mueller Report ‘Distorted’ and ‘Misleading’


The judge said the attorney general lacked credibility on the matter and said he would review the report to decide whether to make its redacted portions public.

 

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday sharply criticized Attorney General William P. Barr’s handling of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, saying that Mr. Barr put forward a “distorted” and “misleading” account of its findings and lacked credibility on the topic.

Judge Reggie B. Walton said Mr. Barr could not be trusted and cited “inconsistencies” between his statements about the report when it was secret and its actual contents that turned out to be more damaging to President Trump. Judge Walton said Mr. Barr’s “lack of candor” called “into question Attorney General Barr’s credibility and, in turn, the department’s” assurances to the court.

The judge ordered the Justice Department to privately show him the portions of the report that were censored in the public version so he could independently verify the justifications. The ruling came in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking a full-text version of the report.

“It would be disingenuous for the court to conclude that the redactions of the Mueller Report pursuant to the FOIA are not tainted by Attorney General Barr’s actions and representations,” wrote Judge Walton, a 2001 appointee of President George W. Bush.

 

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31184

Posted
Posted

Although Barr's handling of the report was masterful/diabolical, having reviewed it, I am going to guess that the vast majority of the redactions are legit.

As we have seen in other cases, the grand jury material is pretty sacrosanct, and ongoing investigation material is a longstanding FOIA exemption.  I don't think any massive revelations are going to come from this.

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45477

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

Although Barr's handling of the report was masterful/diabolical, having reviewed it, I am going to guess that the vast majority of the redactions are legit.

As we have seen in other cases, the grand jury material is pretty sacrosanct, and ongoing investigation material is a longstanding FOIA exemption.  I don't think any massive revelations are going to come from this.

9bb66b60-2a12-4f9c-aaf2-f1142b195a4b_tex

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29174

Posted
Posted
23 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Judge Calls Barr's Handling of Mueller Report 'Distorted' and 'Misleading'

  Reveal hidden contents

Judge Calls Barr’s Handling of Mueller Report ‘Distorted’ and ‘Misleading’


The judge said the attorney general lacked credibility on the matter and said he would review the report to decide whether to make its redacted portions public.

 

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday sharply criticized Attorney General William P. Barr’s handling of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, saying that Mr. Barr put forward a “distorted” and “misleading” account of its findings and lacked credibility on the topic.

Judge Reggie B. Walton said Mr. Barr could not be trusted and cited “inconsistencies” between his statements about the report when it was secret and its actual contents that turned out to be more damaging to President Trump. Judge Walton said Mr. Barr’s “lack of candor” called “into question Attorney General Barr’s credibility and, in turn, the department’s” assurances to the court.

The judge ordered the Justice Department to privately show him the portions of the report that were censored in the public version so he could independently verify the justifications. The ruling came in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking a full-text version of the report.

“It would be disingenuous for the court to conclude that the redactions of the Mueller Report pursuant to the FOIA are not tainted by Attorney General Barr’s actions and representations,” wrote Judge Walton, a 2001 appointee of President George W. Bush.

 

why exactly did it take him a year to make this determination?  everyone knew barr was misleading the public as he was talking.

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31184

Posted
Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

why exactly did it take him a year to make this determination?  everyone knew barr was misleading the public as he was talking.

This is a suit by a press organization under FOIA.  They had to request it without redactions and go through the administrative process, then file suit when they weren't happy with the result.  Then each side moved for summary judgment that the government's redactions were supported/not supported.

In ruling on the summary judgment, the judge said he could not take as credible the government's assertions and would have to review the unredacted report "In camera" (his eyes only), to determine the legality of the redactions.

So that's a fairly lengthy process.

It's also the reason I say probably not much new is coming out.  As a purely civilian organization, as opposed to the House or some law-enforcement-type organization (an impeachment committee for example), all of the redaction reasons (grand jury, ongoing investigation, implicates national security) are going to apply with full force. There were some other contexts (impeachment committee, House Intel committee) where some of the redactions might not hold up, but still would not be lawfully released to the public, but only to a selected audience.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand

Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13537

Posted
Posted

My favorite entry in the comically long False Stories And Conspiracy Theories section of Gateway Pundit's Wiki-page is:

In December 2017, The Gateway Pundit published a Reddit post as evidence that Democratic activists were committing voter fraud in the 2017 Alabama Senate special election.[35] The redditor behind the post later said that the post was intended "as an obvious troll."[35

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JustBecause

JustBecause 112

Posted
Posted
26 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

My favorite entry in the comically long False Stories And Conspiracy Theories section of Gateway Pundit's Wiki-page is:

In December 2017, The Gateway Pundit published a Reddit post as evidence that Democratic activists were committing voter fraud in the 2017 Alabama Senate special election.[35] The redditor behind the post later said that the post was intended "as an obvious troll."[35

That’s fair to bring up past issues (all media has that baggage) But is Gateway Pundit’s story wrong? 

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Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand

Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13537

Posted
Posted

Yes, Totally Not A Zavala Sock.

Referring to the findings of Trump DOJ-appointed Mueller Investigation that corroborated the consensus of the intelligence community, that spewed out dozens of indictments, guilty pleas, convictions and prison sentences like confetti cannons at a Flaming Lips concert, that explicitly contradicted Trump's claim that it "totally exonerated"  him but was also "total bullshit" in some pro-level display of dual alternate realities dementia, that included Mueller's sworn testimony that Trump, under oath and with his lawyers' help, failed a take home, open book test, and that over one thousand former federal prosecutors whose careers spanned administrations of both parties said contained multiple open and shut cases of obstruction of justice 

 

as a "fraud"

 

is not just wrong but yet another embarrassingly cringe-worthy example the Right's infantile coping skills when it comes to dealing with reality.

Fraud would be like, oh...i dunno... getting sued for fraud... and having to shell out 25 million, or getting sued for fraud again and having your entire charitable foundation dissolved because it was such ham-fisted scam.

That's actual, real fraud in Reality Land.

Glad I could clear that up for you.

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TwiceHorn

TwiceHorn 31184

Posted
Posted (edited)
26 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

 

This is sort of the corollary to the above FOIA suit.  I don't remember the district court's opinion, but various arms of the House are going to have an easier time getting to grand jury materials and other redactions than civilians.  Don't know how or if this deals with the other reasons for redaction.

Edit:  skimmed the opinion, it's grand jury materials only and because the impeachment committee (which I guess still exists) constitutes "another judicial proceeding" under Fed. R. Crim. P. 6.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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