Jack - Stone’s Doc-COUP-mentary (feat. Peter Strzok)

Episode Date: March 6, 2022

This week: Allison talks with Peter Strzok about the FEC and its inability/unwillingness to hold Trump accountable; Roger Stone’s videographers; plus Part 1 of Volume 1 of the Mueller Report. Peter Strzok:https://twitter.com/petestrzokCompromised:https://www.harpercollins.com/products/compromised-peter-strzok?variant=39935652495394Follow AG on Twitter:Dr. Allison Gill https://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?https://dailybeans.supercast.tech/Orhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansPromo CodesSubscribe to SpyTalk: https://link.chtbl.com/SpyTalk

Welcome to Teacher Quit Talk, I'm Miss Redacted, and I'm Mrs. Frazzled. Every week we explore the teacher- Exodus to find out what if anything could get these educators back in the classroom. We've all had our moments where we thought, what the hell am I doing here? From burnout to bureaucracy to soul-secing stressors and creative dead ends, from recognizing when it was time to go, to navigating feelings of guilt and regret afterwards, we're here to cut off a gaslighting and get real about what it means to leave teaching. We've got insights from former teachers from all over the country who have seen it all. So get ready to be disturbed and join us on teacher quit talk to laugh through the pain

of the U.S. education system. We'll see you there. Hey all, this is Glenn Kirschner and you're listening to Mull clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is. I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't

have not have communications with the Russians. What do I have to get involved with Putin for having nothing to do with Putin? I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about a mother than he will respect me. Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. So it is political.'re a communist no mr. Green communism is just a red hairing Like all members of the oldest profession. I'm a capitalist Hello and welcome to Muller She Road. I'm your host AG. You can call me Allison Gil now and today we have a very special episode

of Saved by the Bell, where Jesse gets addicted to caffeine pills. No, what we're gonna be doing today is we're gonna be talking about. First of all, later on in the episode, I'm gonna be sharing with you the first of, I think 10 or 11 episodes that we did in 2019 on Waller She Wrote to go over theer report, volume one, line by line,

which is the Russian interference part of that report. But we do have a couple of stories to get to today and joining me to discuss these stories is Peter Struck, author of the book, Compromise, Get It If You Don't Have It, how's it going Peter? It's going well, how are you doing? It's Friday, it's Friday. It's Sunday. Or do we not suspend disbelief that we're taping on the day of broadcast? Yes, exactly. It's Friday and then Sunday when you hear it. It's a whole weekend vibe.

Excellent. And we're going to need the weekend vibes because there's some pretty angering things that we just found out. This is the first thing I want to talk to you about from Free Speech for People. The headline here is, in a split decision, the FEC over rules career staff and refuses to investigate coordination between the Russian government and Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. This story came out and the documents were released just within the last couple of days. The lead here is that the Federal Election Commission has released records revealing how partisan deadlock, it within the FEC, blocked its investigation

to potential coordination between former President Trump's 2016 election campaign and the Russian Federation, the nonpartisan professional career staff in the General Counsel's office recommended the FEC find reason to believe that the Trump campaign violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by coordinating with the Russian government and soliciting and receiving illegal in-kind donations by the Russian government. And we all remember from the Mueller investigation, for example, the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting

where the Mueller, in the Mueller report, they found that it didn't meet the burden of criminality because there were questions about meet the burden of criminality because there were questions about what the value of the opposition research that was never actually handed over had, if it had any value for an in-campaign contribution. And whether or not, as we used to say, Jr. is too dumb to crime,

that he didn't just know that it was illegal to accept opposition research from a foreign adversary, foreign government. So can you talk a little bit about how the FEC gets these investigations? Do they die there if they're, you know, if they're deadlocked on it, or can they be picked up by the Department of Justice, or is that considered some sort of weird Fourth Amendment double-geparity thing? I'm not quite sure how this works. Yeah, so it's a great question. I'm not an expert on sort of the FEC regulations and rules.

I know that as you indicated, we did look at it. The Mueller investigation looked at it and there was some question exactly what you laid out about, you know, not only the knowing that they were trying to do something that was against the law, but also the whole idea of what constitutes a something of value in a campaign violation, finance violation, so to say. So, is that polling data, is if it is promised polling data that is never delivered, those were difficult things to overcome in the context of particular criminal election laws. But then things get, the FEC has, in my understanding, a whole separate set of administrative laws

and procedures that they look at, and they can go after people in the administrative or civil context for violating these various laws, which DOJ and the FBI don't investigate or prosecute. And that's what it looks like happens here. And what's really interesting is you see, you know, these are all along this announcement, which I was remarkably quiet. And I assume it's, you know, Ukraine is everything in the news these days, but they had statements from the various members and it is split.

I mean, it is there are Democrats and Republicans and what it appears is that they were very, you know, they lay out their reasoning for voting how they did. And what's interesting is that it were very, you know, they lay out their reasoning for voting how they did. And what's interesting is that it's clear, you have these political appointees who are the commissioners, and you have career staff who are nonpartisan people who have been there forever, and what is clear from these letters is that the career staff did recommend fighting against the Russian Federation and for the IRA for violating these various regulations and that they were not pursued because then when it got to a vote at the partisan level

they didn't have enough votes to move forward in that context. But the letters are pretty straightforward. And again, what I place a lot of importance on, of course, a Democratic Republican commissioner are going to say, are going to say things that will potentially like their party affiliation. But when you see them saying, we echo what the staff recommended, we agree with the career professionals. That tells me that that's where the truth lies. I mean,

that's those are the folks who don't who aren't appointed there. They're the ones who look at the precedent. They're the ones who go out and investigate and make these determinations. So that's why it's so very disappointing that these things were not pursued further by the FEC. And I think once it's done, I mean, you don't, my understanding, you don't wipe out on the commissioners. So you still have a split. So you still may not have the, I think, four votes they needed to move forward. Now, why are really these documents now? Because the statute of limitations has expired, and there's no... That's a good question.

I think it might have been for my FOIA request if I recall correctly whoever this group is that they release records. Or maybe it is, I'd have to check on that. I don't know. I don't know if it was in response to a four-request or if it's just something that they ordinarily release. But they did, you know, they do talk about this guy, Todd T.A. U.B., who was running up in Rhode Island against Sicilini for Congress and that it came up probably two or three weeks ago, I think that his name, and there's probably around the time that these statements, maybe mid-February,

that these statements were issued essentially identifying him as the congressman who had reached out to, are there candidate for Congress? So he reached out to Gustav II.0, who was, of course, a Russian intelligence front to get information about Sicilini to help him. And goose for 2.0, it turns out we have much more detail left through these documents.

Responded and gave very specific items of information, including, I think, some, some op-o-friendly, op-o research that was done. In other words, like, I candid it when they're running frequently. We'll have people go out and try and dig up what information is out there about themselves so that they understand where they might have vulnerabilities, where their opponents might attack them. So it looks like through hacking into democratic entities, whether it's the D-truffle C or the DNC, they were able to obtain some internal democratic information about Sicilini

that then shared with TAB. So, you know, there's some information there and the point, of course, that is, you know, the Russians, it wasn't just Trump that they were helping that they were involving themselves and congressional elections as well. So it was much broader than I think people publicly talked about or knew about earlier, certainly,

before the Mueller Report and Senate Report came in. Yeah, before they were spun and hidden and sidelines. Right. For Bill Barr, as he launches into his book tour coming up. He's rehabbed tour. Yeah. He's rehabbed tour. Yeah.

Yeah. He's very excited to hear what he has to say about it himself. Yeah, I'm excited to get it from the news and not by the book. So campaign for accountability executive director Michelle Cuppersmith actually said about this quote, the FEC never fails to disappoint. Even when it comes to Russian interference in American election, three commissioners couldn't bring themselves to vote to uphold campaign finance law. Congress needs to reform this broken agency. I concur with that. And I'm always interested in what wine

trove and brusard have to say. And you have that document. There were a couple of things, four things, I think, that they discussed in their response. Yeah. And again, these are all what they found in supporting the staff attorney's recommendations. So again, these are the recommendations that the non-political personnel in the FEC bought forward to the commissioners to vote on, but they, you know, in this letter and, you know, it's online, so you can read it, you know, we voted to find reason to believe that one, Trump and the Trump Committee knowingly solicited, accepted or received an in-kind contribution from the Russian Federation in connection with Trump's, if you're listening, comment. To the Trump Committee, knowingly solicited

an in-kind contribution from WikiLeaks, three, an unknown congressional candidate, Perens Taub, knowingly solicited, accepted, or received a prohibited in-kind foreign national contribution, and four, Paul Manafort and the Trump Committee, knowingly solicited a prohibited in-kind for national contribution and transferred a campaign committee asset without charge. So, you know, you can, those, the underlying facts there, you know, I'm sure most of your listeners

are, you know, can trace it back to the certainly Trump's, are, you know, if you're listening comment, Manafort's provision of the campaign data to via a constant and climatic to Dereposcan others, presumably, but you can track down the facts supporting those broad things that they voted to find violated FEC rules and regulations. And the sad part is it's pretty clear they did and hence the kind of concern with whether or not the FEC has any tooth to the policies and regulations that they're supposed to be

enforcing. Well, yeah, again, when we don't think about the fact that the person in the White House who appoints these folks or has some sort of dominion over what they do and how they vote, when that person is the corrupt person, then it, you know, the fish rods from the head, so to speak. And, you know, so it goes back to the same discussion we've had over and over and over again. You find these things, who do you tell if the president of the United States is the criminal, or, you know, at least a friendly of the criminals. What do you do? And this is the problem that we keep running into and we'll continue to run into unless

we make these reforms. Yeah, agreed. And I don't think part of the issue is I don't think we're going to get there with this Congress for sure. And I don't know about this administration. I mean, if we're lucky, I think we get some reform to the Electoral Account Act, and that would go a long way to, you know, hopefully, showing up some of the nonsense we saw specifically on January 6th, but when it comes to broader systemic reforms, I just don't think there's enough time and legislative ability to get much done in that regard. So, you know, it doesn't matter so much now because you have a rule following administration, but I don't see that there's a lot that the FEC would be able to do

in the future anything greater than what they were unable to do here. Whether it's another Trump administration or, you know, somebody else who seeks to sort of abuse the rules that the FEC is supposed to uphold. Yeah, I wish we could put a buffer between the president and the FEC, like we have at the post office, you know, like the board of governors. And that's the only group of people. But then of course, the president points the board of governors.

And the joy still there. So yeah. Yeah, still waiting for those final two to be seated that by denominated, I keep trying to refresh that. Like when is that happening? And then the next story I want to touch on today, Pete, who among us hasn't hired a documentary film crew to document us doing a coup?

I mean, who among us? Well, the answer is Roger Stone. There's a really pretty incredible piece out from Washington Post. I think it was today or yesterday. This is just right before the weekend about things that this documentary film crew found. And, you know, you had put out a tweet, hey hey I'm wondering if the DOJ FBI has these, they have screenshots and and film shots of of phone screens of Roger Stone on signal and and it's there's just so much in here. What are your top line thoughts after reading this report? Well it's kind of crazy because it appears that this film crew did fall around for several months. They went prior and around the election,

they went back overseas. They're a European film crew and then it looks like they came back on her about the inauguration date, but we're following Stone, in particular, when he was in town on the January 5th and 6th. And a couple of things. One, Stone was clearly aware that they were taping him.

So a lot of times, I think his statements are going to be very self-serving and probably dis him. So a lot of times I think his statements are going to be very self-serving and probably disingenuous in a lot of ways. But at the same time, anytime you give somebody that much access, you're inevitably going to not be aware of things that you were showing and or that you inadvertently say or do. And one of the things that left out at me was they've got it early on in the article. They've got this screen, they've got a clip or a screen grab picture from the documentary and it's stone sitting in a car. I think he's holding a phone.

Looks like an iPhone, but who knows what it is. But it's signal. And he's got the signal app open and you can go there and it's high-to-fresolution that you can see all these people that, you know, like if you use signal, you can get any it's messaging service. So you have all the various parties that you're talking to and you can read it. So Stone has it up and you can see there's the top line is a FOS with a message 10.4 that appears to be unread.

There's new Pastor Mark Burns with an unread message saying, brother, I just found out about something. You have a guy named Steve, then a Tyler, Tyler Nixon, Tyler Nixon and HRE of Tremendous interest to me, certainly an unread message from Joel Greenberg, saying, I'm available anytime standing by, then you have Palm Beach, Patriots, P.A.C. in Rikitario, Greg Lewis, and then finally Stuart Rhodes down at the bottom. So again, these folks were filming this, and this is one frame from presumably what they're filming. And so even if there's information there, but then the question is if you're making

a documentary, these people will follow it, and it's done for months and months and months. And so presumably there's a tremendous amount of film of media that didn't make the cut into whatever the final product was. And in the article, I think they saw something like 20 hours. But I guarantee you they have more than that. But kind of the immediate thing was, well, okay, so signals have been encrypted app. It's overseas. It can be, some information can be obtained via

SAPI and a search warrant. It's not clear what, if anything, after the fact can be obtained and content wise. And by that, I mean, reading the actual texts or the content of those text messages back and forth. So what's very interesting in the sum indication, I think Stuart Rhodes, there's some allegation that he, in his signal account, deleted messages or deleted the app or did something to remove

data from signal. But to the extent that you and me and everybody else who can log on or pick up a Washington post and pull up that picture and read Stone's messages, it's clearly interesting to us, but certainly if you're an investigator, to get all of that and sit there and see, not only, hey, what was Stone can be read, but he was reading, and they were filming him with his phone. But everything like that, if he's having a conversation on the phone that doesn't sound interesting to a filmmaker, well, if you're an investigator or a prosecutor and you have a certain time,

a conversation that may not be of interest to a filmmaker, if you're a prosecutor and know that stone at some given point in the time was talking to somebody who was up on the capital breaking in, and you can suddenly that conversation might be far more relevant to something you're trying to prove or understand. So, my thought reading this was immediately, okay, if I'm an investigator, I would love I would need, I would do everything in my power to get this information.

And, you know, I don't know, maybe they have already gotten this and maybe agents and investigators and prosecutors already have this information. I have no idea they're a foreign film crew, so you know they're media protections that attach to them. They're not in the US. They may have you know a desire to cooperate and voluntarily provide it. They may say well no just give us something to legally protect us, give us a subpoena so we'll turn it over to you or they may choose to fight it in which case there's going to be a longer process to try and get it. But there's one there was that that it was interesting, but I'll let you talk about all the other stuff that was in the article.

It was a really fascinating article. Yeah, my dream come true is that the film crew is actually FBI. I've often wondered, could the act of using signal to commit crimes be considered obstruction of justice, knowing intentionally that that stuff is going to delete itself? That's an interesting, new technological thing that's never been litigated. But of interest, you bring up that phone screenshot with Stuart Rhodes. We just had Stuart Rhodes, number two right-hand man, Philip, and start cooperating with the government.

He was charged with seditious conspiracy and obstructing an official proceeding among other things. He actually pled guilty to those two huge charges. Seditious conspiracy included and is cooperating. He had very tight communications and with both the stone and Rhodes. He might have information. And then we also know Roger Stone is suing the January 6th committee to prevent them from getting his phone records

because they're, you know, in that article, the Washington Post article, there was a 90 minute gap where he wouldn't let the film crew film him because you said, you know, he's very aware he's on camera. And he's in his room and they're like, no, he's taken a nap, but he was actually on the phone, right? So and so he's suing to prevent phone records now. Yeah, and it's, I mean, it's crazy the amount of information that is there. And, you know, to the whole point of like, he is very, his statements sound entirely

self-serving before and after the attack on the capitalist. Like, oh, this is a horrible, it's a bad idea. It's going to undermine the movement. But yet, so of course, you know, when he's talking to the camera crew while the film was rolling, he's going to say one set of things, whether intentionally or not, I mean, I would argue that my assumption is that was completely probably not accurate and very much self-serving to try and paint himself in an innocent light, that's my opinion. But I think the fact that there's this huge gap

at the height of the attack on the Capitol that he is napping. And in reality, the guy, I think the filmmaker like snuck in with room service and found him like sitting there on the phone instead of, curled up with a pillow and a blanket. So who knows what was going on during that time, but- His nix, his nix and will be-

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So who knows what was going on during that time, but his nix, his nix and will be yeah exactly exactly to yeah Whatever helps him Have sweet dreams, but there's there's a lot I think to come and certainly if you have the folks You know James is a big deal and the fact that he he's the he's the you know one of the guards who is we are the Oathkeeper who was with him for a lot of the time and if he is very Cooperative and provides a lot of information, you know, that puts you into Stone's inner circle. So I think that's a huge deal. And the other instance.

Generally, don't you get the grand jury testimony before you make the pleading or... I mean, I would. I mean, some of it's going to be like, you'll typically do what's called a, a, a, a proper session or, you know, the colored queen for a day where you go in and the government won't want to know. I mean, you can do, at least there are a variety of ways you can do it, right? But one way would be if you're a good defense attorney, you're going to come in and say, Hey, my client wants to plead,

he's going to cooperate. Here are the things if we can reach a plea agreement. Like, if you cut him a good enough deal, he's prepared to tell you about one, two, and three, and four, and five. And in some cases, the government will say, okay, well, then that's fine. Then, you know, we have your word that he's going to cooperate. And if he doesn't cooperate, then that that's going to nullify the plea agreement. Sometimes the government will say, all right, well, we want a little more meat on the bone. So let's talk about before we do it, you know, and or some of this is, you know, we want to hear what he has to say about one, two, and three, and four, and five, or we want to get him into a

grand jury where he can testify about one, two, three, or four, or five. And then so part of that is one to get a little information on the front end from this defendant. Some of it is, too, when you go to the judge and you're trying to argue that there should be a sentence reduction that you want to show cooperation. And it doesn't, again, I am not an expert at all by sentencing guidelines and how, you know, what downward departure, how that varies based on the type of cooperation. But there is one thing to say, my client has agreed to cooperate versus my client has testified in the grand jury, which has led to indictments of three parties and he's going to be testifying at these trials. Because that sort of cooperation

is much more substantive. And so when it comes to what that downward departure might look like, that sort of substantive cooperation is going to carry more weight than sort of the promise of, you know, pay to the day for a hamburger tomorrow, sort of thing. Yeah, and I think it was interesting when I was listening to the hearing that judge was like, you're also, you know, I think you know, I think to go through all the rights that he's waving when he pleads guilty. He says, you know, that also that the judge during sentencing can apply an upward departure on these particular crimes. And I think that's what probably for terrorism or just the fucking coup, whatever it is within the guidelines. And he was like, yep, yep, nope, I know that. But the feeling is somewhere between 8 and 10 to 11 years, and where he was facing 20, maybe concurrently with both charges, maybe consecutively, I'm

not sure. I'm not an expert at sentencing either. But it seems like, you know, first to flip in this seditious conspiracy case. And this could also be important to other potential seditious conspiracy charges in other groups like the Proud Boys or the Three Percenters, because there was apparently coordination between these three groups. And there are still persons one out there for those other two groups that haven't been charged. And so, you know, I think we might see a pattern here for seditious conspiracy, but also

of note, the obstructing and official proceeding, because if you're building a case with this new information that we got from the one six committee about Donald Trump and John Eastman obstructing an official proceeding, 1512 C2, and you have all the underlings that were sent out to do it pleading guilty to that. That can help bolster the case against the hub of the hub and spoke conspiracy. And so this is, I'm with you, this James thing is very big. The phone records thing is big. The 90 minute gap is big, but it's still, we're still going to take a while.

And I keep thinking about you and the things that we've discussed before about Department of Justice coming out and talking about the resources and the urgency and stuff that they haven't really done. And I've seen 20 tweets in the last three days about the Club Docapture program. But nothing about the task force investigating the January 6th coup. Right. And again, you know, you look at what was interesting, you know, how many times did Biden

talk about January 6th to the Union? Talk about it at all, right? So the question is, if you're, you know, I'm certain that was a question or you're, you know, and I'm certain that was a question or debated at some point, and I'm sure that's something that he either said proactively or somebody asked him, and you know, since is I want to, you know, move past that, I want to focus on Ukraine, I want to focus on, you know, things other than, you know, this, the coup attempt that our nation is still investigating. So I don't, you know, that's a political decision, obviously, and I think he would be, what you don't want't, you know, that's a political decision, obviously. And I think he would be what you don't want is the, you know, what we saw last administration, the president going on and

giving a bunch of comments about ongoing criminal investigations isn't something we need in our country. And so I guess he was wise not to, you know, even potentially, you know, certainly not to go in any detail about it. But there was not a, was not a... The question I have is whether or not what the White House wants DOJ to do, not that they would make them do it or encourage them one way or the other, but there are subtle ways to kind of nod one way or nod the other, and it was very interesting to me that there was not that was not at all a focus. There's nothing even even pointing that I don't think. No, I'm in my can that's I had at that concern because I'm saying, you know, Putin wouldn't

be in power for 22 years if he hadn't successfully pulled the shit that Donald tried to pull last year. We are following down that path of that and it's connected. It's all connected, preserving democracy here at home is essential for preserving democracy abroad. And how that is possibly not connected is beyond it. Yeah, no, I agree. And I don't, I mean, we'll see.

I think this clearly, you know, typically you can take Inter into a plea agreement with somebody just because, you know, it serves the, you know, it serves the turn effect of, you know, punishing the person they have there, the punishment for their crime. It saves government resources and that you're not going to have to go investigate them further, but typically for for somebody who's done something so serious to plea, you really want something in return. So, to your point, yeah, it could be these other cells, but I really do think in the case

of, in this case with James, it is to get to stone. It is to look at the leadership of the earth keepers and the proud boys in stone and LA Alexander. So, you know, I- Well, at least Stuart Rhodes, right? That's probably the main. Right, although James James is writing around. I want to say James is writing around the fifth and the sixth with stone if I'm not mistaken.

He was. He was there. So being able to sit there and say, you know, what was he, you know, he wasn't napping. So what was he doing during those 90 minutes? Who did he meet and what was decided? Or what did Stuart Rhodes tell you that he talked to Stonebeard? Exactly.

Exactly. And then one, there's a whole other fascinating, probably beyond the scope of our discussion, the pardon for higher business, which apparently is legal, that you can pay people to lobby the White House and present to get your pardon. And Roger Stone was deep in that. But what was really interesting is obviously, John Greenberg showing up is really interesting

because he was pursuing a pardon and there was a recent, he should have been, if memory serves, he should have been sentenced by now. And there was a filing at some point down in Florida where everybody was waiting to see what's going on with Matt Gates where the, I just saw somebody make this comment on Twitter that there's this odd comment from the Department of Justice essentially words to the effect of Greenberg continues to cooperate and his cooperation has taken us in directions we didn't anticipate. That's not exactly what they said but that was the idea. And so now the question is you look at this and you see okay well he's sitting here talking with Roger Stone on January 5th and 6th. Is that a reference or an illusion to a stone angle potentially?

Now, maybe it is. There could be a hundred other things. Obviously, I think everybody's interested in what Matt Gates was doing with a bunch of his alleged potential, underage girlfriends and things that might have been going on. But if there's a stone angle and a January 6 angle of this, you know, that might explain that comment too. Yeah, true. And his sentencing was pushed back twice, supposed to be in November, and then it was pushed back to March of 2022, which is in a couple of weeks, I think. And so we'll find out whether they're going to push it back again. But it seemed when they pushed it back to March that they thought a trial and an indictment would be done with gates.

So then you could finally sentence Greenberg. But we just don't know. It's been very quiet out of the middle district of Florida. These last couple of months. Can I read the quote that Stone said about Jared Kushner? Do you want to save that for another episode? No, it's fantastic. So he's talking to this guy named Alejandro. read the quote that Stone said about Jared Kushner. Do you want to save that for another episode? No, it's fantastic. So he's talking to this guy named Alejandro, who I forget who Alejandro is.

That's his last name. And he says, quote, in two weeks, he's moving to Miami. Stone told Alejandro before whispering. He's going to get a beating. He needs to have a beating and needs to be told this time we're just beating you. Next time we're killing you. Where the filmmakers were nearby Alejandro urged Stone to say he was joking. No, no, it isn't joking. Not joking. It's not a joke, Stone replied. So something that, you know, what's he talking about? What's it? Oh, because, oh, so all that's coming from. So the basis for all that was stone believed that he had pardons lined up for him, for Bernie Kerrick, another one, right?

For other crimes, and that it came through that Manafort got a pardon, but he had not. And in that regard, it said, the decision in Rage Stone, who called Bannon a quote, grifter scumbag, unquote, and two ex-whosemes while he was filmed, but his belief that Kushner was behind all of that, that whatever was going to go through on the pardon front would have to have Jared on board. And that because it didn't go the way that he expected or wanted it to, that therefore Jared was to blame. And hence needed his, was the phrase needed to get a beating. And the next one later, say, be killed. Yeah.

Yeah, stone. And then also later, Stone said, Kushner needed to be, quote, punished in the most brutal possible way, unquote, and would be, quote, brain dead when I get finished with him. So there you go. The best and the brightest. Yeah, he's got a thing for witness intimidation. I remember with him and credit co and credit co's dog. And didn't the dog die? Yeah, maybe, but not at stoned. Not not, not, not contemporaneously, but more recently, yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Anyway, fascinating story. Everybody check out the Washington Post report and also get the book compromised by Pete Struck.

And if you want to get a little bit more, and this is cool, because this is a flashback. This is a 2019 flashback going over the version of the volume one of the Mueller report that we had in 2019 that Pete worked on. And we're going to talk, we just want to get the Russia, we just want to get volume one out there again, because I think a lot of people have forgotten or never knew in the first place. So we're going to put that out here. If you want to stick around and listen to

that, you're welcome to. Otherwise, Pete, thanks for joining me today. Great. Thank you. Have a great weekend. You too, everybody. Please take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Take care of the planet and take care of your mental health. I've been AG and this is Mola She wrote. Hello, I'm Jeff Stein.

And I'm Gene Mazarv together. We host the Spy Talk podcast. Every week we delve into the worlds of intelligence, foreign policy, military operations, and the intersection of all three in national security issues. Spycraft, cyber security, violent extremism, whether at home or abroad, technologies impact on intelligence gathering. We cover it all and much more. We interview former Spooks, military officers, government officials, journalists and national

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Hello and welcome to Muller She Road. This is part one of the Muller wrote special coverage of the Mueller report. I'm your host A.G. with me as always, or Jalice Johnson. Hello. And Jordan Coburn. Hello. And I'm excited. We're going to do a deep dive and page-by-page into the Mueller report. Probably a 10-part series could end up being 11 or 12 depends on how long this goes and how redacted it is. I tried to do a great breakdown of it, but so far we'll see. I mean, things can come come up new stories drop that could Along get some of the episodes and we want to get every single piece of this for you because this shit's not over

No, it's so far from over These episodes will be released every Thursday evening in our main feed for you So we hope that you enjoy them share them with people You don't need to be a patron to get this these are public episodes share them with people who you don't need to be a patron to get this. These are public episodes. Share them with people who you think need to read the Mueller report that might not have read it, which is probably everybody since only 3% of people have read it. Exactly. You guys, I bet you guys all read it.

So please, feel free to share it with anyone who you say, hey, you want to be entertained and hear what's on the Mueller report. Here you go. Today, we're going to go over the first 13 pages of volume 1, including the introduction, the executive summary of volume 1, and section 1 titled the Special Council's investigation. So let's get right into the introduction, you guys. The opening statement is sobering, and it says the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election

in a sweeping and systematic fashion. Mueller confirms that the Russians hacked the DNC and released the hacked materials through WikiLeaks in July, October, and November of 2016. Mueller also confirms that the investigation into whether Trump coordinated with Russia was opened after a foreign government contacted the FBI regarding an encounter with Papadopoulos in May of 2016. This is important because we know that Trump and his minions

like Nunez and Jim Jordan and Tim Meadows, and countless of his supporters would have you believe that the investigation was opened on the steel dossier and that's simply not true. Do you think that's officially a dead theory? No, people still say that. I got damn it. I've heard it less for sure,

but I cannot wait until the day that that's an unacceptable thing to say. Yeah, I know, it's pretty dumb. And when they say a foreign government contact at the FBI, I'm going to go ahead and assume that's Australia. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Because it was Alexander Downer who heard pop-a-dopoulos pop-a-dopoulos pop-a-dopoulos Oh, yeah. ...as suffigates in the pub in England about his interactions with Mifsood.

Yes, but that had fire AG. I totally stole it from Vlad the Concorde, but thank you. All right, guys, then the report goes on to say that Mueller has determined Russia interfered with the elections and did so through two principal operations. First was the social media campaign that involved the Internet Research Agency, which we'll call the IRA, Russian troll farms, Concord management, and the like, basically favoring Trump and disparaging Clinton. Second, of course, is the hack and release operation

of the stolen documents. The report also concludes that there were several links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. Several links, there were several links, and we'll go over them all in detail for you. But now I'd like to take you back a minute to March 24th, when Bill Barr decided to write the four-page letter summarizing the two-year Mueller investigation in less than 48 hours. In that letter, not one full sentence from this report existed, but there was one sentence,

the one that Barr used to draw his conclusion that there was no collusion, and it seemed to be taken out of context, and the hint that it was taken out of context forusion, and it seemed to be taken out of context. And the hint that it was taken out of context for us, and we talked about this right after the bar summary dropped, was that the no conspiracy sentence began in bars letter with a capital T in brackets, which indicates that the lower, in the original Mueller report, there was a lowercase T, which indicates to us that the sentence had an entire beginning part that was totally removed. So what Bar used in his letter went like this, quote, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated

with the Russian government in its election interference activities. And that's a part of a sentence that he used. The actual sentence, as written in the Mueller report, goes like this. And this is good. Quote, although the investigation established that Russian government, that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome and that the Trump campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that the numbers of the Trump campaign conspired a coordinate with the Russian government. And it's an election.

Real smooth bar, real smooth bar. Just didn't like run on sentences. That was the problem. Oh, that's the problem. Yeah. Yeah. It's probably too confusing for him to understand it. Right.

It's a follow that many clauses along. That's hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So instead of, uh, Mueller says there's no coordination. It's like, although there was a shitload of meetings and tons of wrongdoing, there was

no coordination or conspiracy. That's a front-heavy sentence. It really is, and he removed the entire front. And also notice the word collusion doesn't appear anywhere in that sentence. And that there was an entire set up, like I said, that barge of sort of left out. And we know based on a story about a 1989 office of legal counsel memo he wrote, bar wrote, and then later summarized for Congress, bar has a history and a propensity

for leaving out the important bits. The 1989 memo he wrote basically allowed the US to abduct a foreign person on foreign soil without alerting the foreign state. And he did this pretty much to pave the way for a possible kidnapping of Manuel Noriega in Panama, where President Bush was calling for a coup. Bar then said he promised to summarize his memo to Congress, which he did. And when the actual memo was subpoenaed, it became clear that Bar did then exactly what

he tried to do a month ago, or a couple months ago now, and completely downplayed the seriousness of the findings by omitting consequential details to provide cover for the president. And he should be held accountable for withholding the information from the public. Oh, definitely. I'm starting to realize that maybe Trump hired Barr because, you know, how come he and McCabe had their memos and really pissed Trump off. He's like, they're making up these memos and just means nothing. No credibility. He's like, oh, I up these memos. And this means nothing. No credibility.

He's like, oh, I got memos now. I need a memo guy. I need a memo guy. Who's the most assholary memo guy in the business? That was a cragless post. Asked him what his strength was. And he said, negligence. And I said, perfect.

Also his weakness. There's some missed connections on it. You were the attorney general who wrote a shitty 1989 summary about a office of legal counsel memo about Manuel Noriega. I saw you. We met eyes. I forget your name. Who are you? I need you to be the attorney general. Oh man. They took those away from Craigslist. There's no line right there. Yeah. Probably for the best. Oh yeah. I don't know. I like that part. It's probably getting creepy. It's very fun for everyone else. That was not involved

Yes, exactly. I loved reading through them. Yeah in college. We wouldn't go out. We'd get drunk and read those Yeah, yeah totally. I know and I would always see if I was in there Do you really go in there and see I wonder if someone saw me across the karaoke bar with a glass of wine and my cat shirt, you know, whatever. I love it. No, I was never on there. Let's see, where do we go from here? Oh, then the Mueller Report just kind of gives a roadmap for understanding the report and the underpinnings of the results and Mueller's charging decisions.

And I'm just going to read this to you so that you have a clear understanding about the structure of the findings and how they're presented, which I think is incredibly important to apply to the full report as we move forward discussing both minds. So remember where we're at on the time stamp in this so that you can understand the mission of the report, because whenever I do have a task or a project, I always go back to the mission to understand what the main underpinnings and reasons for me doing something are. And so if you write down the timestamp here, this is basically the mission of the Mueller report.

Below we describe the evidentiary considerations, underpinning statements about the results of our investigation and the special counsel's charging decisions. And then we provide an overview of the two volumes of our report. The report describes actions and events that the special counsel's office found to be supported by the evidence collected in our investigation. In some instances, the report points out the absence of evidence or conflicts in the

evidence about a particular fact or event. In other instances, when substantial credible evidence enabled the office to reach a conclusion with confidence, the report states that the investigation established that certain actions or events occurred. A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts. Very important. I'm going to read that again. A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.

Typically, not something you'd see in a document, I imagine, unless you are anticipating people will interpret it in the other way. Totally. In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of collusion. In so doing, the office recognizes that the word collude was used in communications with acting attorney general, confirming certain aspects of the investigation scope,

and that the term has frequently been invoked in public reporting about the investigation, but collusion is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States code, nor is a term of art in federal criminal law. For those reasons, the office's focus of analyzing questions of joint criminal liability was on conspiracy as defined in federal law. In connection with that analysis, we addressed a factual question whether members of the Trump campaign coordinated a term that appears in the appointment order with Russian election

interference activities. Like collusion, coordination does not have a subtle definition in federal criminal law. We understood coordination to require an agreement, tacit, or express between the Trump campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests. So what he's saying there is that it's not just about two parties taking actions. They have to have a tacit or express agreement. We applied the term coordination in the same sense when stating in the report that the

investigation did not establish that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities. So that's the mission there. That's the whole kind of structure and underpinning. Then there are two brief paragraphs outlining sections of the two volumes, which we will cover as we go. And then page four moves on to the executive summary to volume one. And I think these executive summaries are the summaries that Mueller's team prepared

for the public that they asked five times for Barr to share with the public, and he never did. But I'm not certain that separate ones weren't written. We still kind of don't know. Yeah, that was a bit vague. I always wanted to see those summaries. These might be them. There might be other summaries. But we know that Barr refused to hand out his summaries even after they were fully redacted and handed to them in an envelope on the third

time they asked or the fourth time they asked. And then we've seen that letter from Mueller to Barr saying, I don't like the way you characterize a shit, bro. Here's the summaries release these and he still didn't and we still haven't heard from Muller So that's kind of where we are right now. Oh, what a shitty limbo I know it's a weird place to be in The first section to the executive summary is about the Russian social media campaign What's interesting to me in this section is that there are redactions for things that could cause harm in an ongoing matter in relation to the internet research agency.

Progusion, that's Putin-Chef, and that he's also the guy who runs Concord Management. He'll have us a first descriptor we use for Putin-Chef. Putin-Chef. Nothing else, like murder. Chef. Lip-was-all. We give credit where to do. I think they call him that because he runs Concord Management and Concord Catering and he provides all the meals to the Russian military. So he's the chef.

I've had military food. Wouldn't call you a chef. These redactions are probably about the Concord Management case, which is still being fought in court to be able to get, they want all the Mueller evidence in discovery, which would they would then immediately hand over to the Kremlin and Mueller is fighting that request. This is a court case, by the way, where it seems Concord Management hired American lawyers and they pursued this case in the US just pretty much to be able to get documents from Mueller. And when they couldn't, they forged their own set up an anonymous Twitter account and disseminated

their fake documents claiming they hacked Mueller. That's a Jacob Woolmove. Yeah, it's so desperate. I know, right? Like, did you have a LinkedIn profile too? With pictures of models and your mom's phone number? This is the same court case, by the way, where the judge was fed up with some of the methods employed by the lawyers for Concord Management, the American lawyers, because they were dropping

F-bombs and quoting Bugs Bunny cartoons in their court filings. But in any case, I'm guessing those internet research agency redactions are for the Concord Management Battle that's still in the court. But it could also mean there could be more Russian indictments coming. We just don't know. But we do know Hillary's personal email was targeted after Trump called for Russia to find her missing emails.

And maybe there's more indictments coming for that. Yeah, definitely. And as we've learned later on in the molar report, no spoilers, because we'll get there, there are definitely other entities. Yes, that's for sure. And it's, yeah, it's weird. It's like, are there more Russian indictments coming? There could be. So if you're playing the fantasy indictment league on the main episode, you might want to throw some Russian randos or just a rando, I guess that kind of encompasses Russians. That's his strategy. Yep. All right. So the report goes on to describe the social media disinformation campaign and says the internet research agency

used social media accounts and interest groups to so discord in the United States through information warfare. It favored Trump and it disparaged Clinton and we'll get into the details of that later in the report. We get way into the details of that. All right, guys, then we get to the executive summary of the Russian hacking operation. And Mueller confirms the GRU, which is the main intelligence directorate of the general staff of the Russian Army, carried out the hacking. They began hacking in March 2016, targeting Clinton campaign

staffers in John Podesta, as well as the DNC and D-Triple C. They stole hundreds and thousands, hundreds of thousands of documents, hundreds and dozens and thousands added all together. You get a couple hundred thousand and some twelve. You are not wrong. Hundreds of thousands of documents and disseminated the stolen material through fake online personas known as DC leaks and Gucci for 2.0 and then later through WikiLeaks. Goddamn.

That will still never be something that fully sinks in that entire intelligence unit of a government put everything behind this. Yeah. That's insane. Isn't it? It's crazy. And when you know spoilers, but when we get in deeper into the report, it talks about all the different least computers that they paid money for by mining like stealing Bitcoin and like there are so many arrows on it it gets crazy yeah it just

it gets crazy yeah so stick around for part three which is after part two every okay we're back up black time is linear um let's see Mueller found the Trump campaign showed interest in WikiLeaks Let's see. Mueller found the Trump campaign showed interest in WikiLeaks and interest in their releases and welcomed the damage to Clinton. Cool guy. Totally legal, totally cool. Yeah, seems fine. Totally fine.

Every time WikiLeaks is brought up in this report, we see a lot of redactions indicating there could be harm to an ongoing matter. And that's likely the Roger Stone and Assange cases. Then we get to probably one of the most famous lines in Russian collusion. You hear it in our opening sequence every week, and the Mueller report says, quote, Trump announced he hoped Russia would recover emails, described as missing from a private server used by Clinton when she was Secretary of State. He later said he was speaking sarcastically, and then nearly three full lines of redaction

for harm to an ongoing matter. And I'm thinking that's maybe a future Russian indictment. Yeah, I hope so. And also, how can he... What else would he claim he's speaking sarcastically on if he was actually held accountable for it? He does this all the time. I just joking. Or feed? Yeah. I was just joking. Exactly. Could you just be joking about being president then and believe me? Oh, God, please. Spire is just joking. I'm out of here. He's just a real good comic. Committed to the bit. It is. It's one of those who was the guy with the other

guy that pretended to be the guy. They did a movie called Man the Moon. Oh Jim Carrey? No. He was in it. Okay. And he played into Kaufman. Yeah. Yeah. And he had that persona. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And they were never in the same room together right when Jim Carrey was actually playing him like on set and stuff You mean yeah, but then he shows up later in the movie with after after Andy Kaufman dies and you're like what I thought you were Wow So now you have to go watch that we'll wait Anyway, right after those redactions, it continues with WikiLeaks releasing Podesta's stolen emails less than an hour after the US media outlet released video considered damaging to Trump. The yes, I'm going to assume that's the access Hollywood

grab by the pussy tape. We will get heavy into those details in Section 3. So the question for me is, why did the Mueller probe and if it didn't seem to be finished yet and who now is looking into these things? When we get to the referrals, let's count some of those unresolved cases and call one of them this potential additional Russian hacking indictment

for trying to get into Hillary's deleted emails right after Trump asked the Russians to do it. That could still be an ongoing investigation. Those are just beans. And when I say beans, I'm guessing. You can listen to episode 24 of the main episode with Dallas McClellan to find out what beans means. Or go on our FAQ at mullershearout.com.

What does beans means? I could have probably explained it to you in that time. I told you we were going to go find it. But that was fun. It was fun. But we've had one, you have a mystery. Yeah, I'm sure you guys don't have anything else to do tonight. All right, just a little home-market Simon for you. All right guys, we'll be right back.

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first order. Go to thirdlove.com slash report to find your perfect fitting bra and get 15% off your first purchase. That's thirdlove.com slash report for 15% off today. You'll be glad you did. You'll be glad you did. Hello, welcome back. We are moving on and we get a summary of Russian contacts with the Trump campaign in this section, which is 8 million pages long. No, it's hard to summarize the contacts with the Trump campaign in Russia, but it opens up by saying the hacking operations coincided with a bunch of contacts with the Trump campaign officials and Russians.

And that's interesting to me because no longer are we talking about two wholly disconnected events in the hacking and the Russian meetings, right? Mueller connects the two. He says they're coincided. Because as we've said all along, this was a coordinated attempt. And while the Mueller investigation did not have the criminal link to that coordination, he does say here with confidence that the Russian contacts within the Trump campaign coincided with the hacking operation. And those words are important. If Mueller was just trying to say these things happen around the same time but had nothing to do with

each other, I feel like he would have used a different word like they occurred simultaneously. Coincided says something important here. And I think the words, you know, he's he's super deliberate fellow. So he says, quote, the Russian contacts consisted of business connections, offers of assistance to the campaign, invitations for candidate Trump and Putin to meet in person, invitations for campaign officials and representatives of the Russian government to meet and policy positions seeking improved Russian relations.

In spring of 2016, Papadopoulos made contact with Mifsood, who told him he had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, tens and thousands and dozens. It was, that's what I'm just going to call it from now on. It was May of 2016, when he drunk bragged about it to Alexander Downer, and that's how this whole thing got started. That's all this whole crazy mess got started. Then in summer 2016, we have the Trump Tower meeting, June, the old June 2016, Trump

Tower meeting. We've been talking about it forever. And Mueller said there was no dirt provided in this meeting, but the Trump junior anticipated receiving dirt. And days after that meeting is when the cybersecurity firm announced that the DNC was hacked and got access to the opposition research on Trump among other documents. So that's one of those coinciding things that he thought was important to mention. Not just like, oh, here's what was sort of happening at the same time, interestingly and curiously enough, no, these are coincided events, right?

You could have like blocked them together in a separate way or something. Right, or it's just in a different timeline. Yeah. It's not in the report, by the way, but that cybersecurity firm is CrowdStrike, which we learned about in the book Russian Roulette by Isakoffem Korn, and we also learned about it early on in the fusion GPS Glenn Simpson testimony transcripts. Remember those? He read those. They're great.

They read like a spy novel, if you get a chance. Then we have Carter Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow, where he gave the keynote at the new economic school, the campaign then began distancing itself from Hat Boy and fired him in September of 2016. And while Paige was receiving his, or while Paige was giving his speech over in Moscow, that's when WikiLeaks began releasing emails stolen by the GRU. Within days, the US Intel Agency's reported with high confidence it was Russia and within a week, quote, a foreign government informed the FBI about its May 2016 interaction with

Papa Dopolis. Again, that's Australia, Alexander Downer, though that's not specifically stated here. You do know that the from other reporting now that we've covered in our other episodes. Right. That's why I'm filling in the blanks for you. Totally, totally. They did kind of lag on that too. A little bit on giving us those tips months, couple months. But apparently Alexander Downer isn't the most trustworthy in politician in Australia. Yeah, I guess he has like a weird reputation over there. He's like kind of weird and he, I think, just a funky guy. Yeah, just a weird dude. Yeah. Like laughable. Like a laughable

fella. And not in a good way. Perculeer. Yeah, funny. Perculeer. Yeah, people are very surprised that he was like the beacon of tipping off USar. Yeah, funny. Yeah, people are very surprised that he was like the beacon of tipping off US intelligence. Right, we haven't been our sexy justice calendar. People are like, don't put that weird guy in justice calendar. And I'm like, all right, so I didn't know. Now we know. And on the last day of July, in 2016,

based on the foreign government reporting, the FBI is that's when they open their investigation into Trump Russia. So, and we got that whole timeline from McCabe too, in his book and in his interview on our show, a couple weeks ago. All right, then we have the August second meeting between Kalimnik, constant Kalimnik in Manifort

in the Sagar Bar, I think in the devil building, 666 Fifth Avenue. Mueller says during this meeting, Kalimnik delivered a peace plan for Ukraine that Manifort told prosecutors was a backdoor way for Russia to control part of the eastern Ukraine. Both men figured they would need Trump's ascent, and they also discussed Trump's campaign strategy for winning Democratic votes in midwestern states, or stealing them. Once before that, once before the August 2nd meeting, Manifort had caused internal polling

data to be shared with columbic interesting way to phrase that yes and we now know why he phrased it that way uh... because this is a gates uh... he instructed gates to share the polling data with columbic uh... member when gates came forward with this information during the manifort trial he said i might have some exculpatory information

and he gave it to muller and muller handed it over to the judge and the judge said when she was trying to decide if Manifort breached his plea agreement or not and the judge is like, this doesn't fucking make a difference. Basically, what happened was, I think what Muller was asserting to the judge was that Manifort shared the internal polling data with Kalimnik and Gates was like, oh no, no, no, no. Manifort had me do that. He was like, okay. And so he told the judge and they're like, yeah, he, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, which is plea agreement. But that's why the wording seems weird here. Manifort had caused internal polling data to be shared with Kalimnik. After the election, many Russians tried to make inroads with Trump, including

Carill Dmitriyev, the CEO of the Russian sovereign wealth fund, who is the guy who met with Eric Prince in the Seychelles. Then we learned something we did not know. I did not know this at least. And I hadn't reported on it. We hadn't done that on the show. That doesn't mean somebody else didn't know.

That Demetri have was introduced to a friend of Kushner that wasn't part of the campaign. And Kushner's pal and Demetri have wrote up a reconciliation plan for Russia and the United States that ended up in Kushner's hands who then gave it to Bannon and Rex Tillerson. That's such bullshit too, because Kushner wanted to be the foreign diplomacy guy,

and then he just got his friend to do it and was like, look what I had to do. He just took all the credit. I hate those fuckers that do that. It reminds me of by watching bad men again, and like he takes everyone's ideas and gets paid for it. And like Peggy's like, well how about you just tell them, thank you, say thank you to me. And he's like, that's what the money's for. Maybe Kushner paid this guy. The report doesn't say his name, but we know it, because we're smart and awesome. This guy's name is Rick Gerson. It's actually part of public reporting.

We just picked it up. But Rick Gerson, I don't know if you remember this, but we added him to the fantasy indictment draft in June of 2018 a year ago when we reported that Mueller was investigating Gerson for his contact with NBC prior to the Seychelles meeting with native Princeton Dimitriath. He was also at the mid-December meeting at the four seasons in New York with Kushner, NBC, native Flynn, and Banit.

Dude. He's a good person to keep on that league. Yeah. That is true. Rick Gerson. All right. Maybe. It kind of seems like one of those things that would have come and gone already, but who knows? Yeah, in that meeting wasn't brought up in the Mueller report, at least not in this part. Yeah. Then December 29 after the election Obama imposed the sanctions for election malfeasance and Flynn called kissley, actor Russian ambassador and said, hey, don't do anything. We'll take care of this. And the next day Putin says he wasn't going to retaliate and Trump tweeted it out saying, great move on delay by V. Putin.

I always knew he was smart. No one needs his first initial. V. Putin sounds like very Putin. It sounds like a vagina. It sounds like a euphemism for my thoughts. Yeah. Like my V. Putin. And the next day, Kisley, I cool-toned out.

Sorry, that's a half a second too long. It's worth it. No, sometimes it does. And then the next day, Kisley, I called Flynn back and told him his request was received at the highest levels of the Russian government, Putin. Kisputan shows not to react because of Flynn's phone call. Recently, the judge in the Flynn case has ordered that the transcripts of those calls be released to the public by May 31st.

Today is May 22nd, 2019. In case you're listening 30 years from now. Along with also he's going to release redacted portions of the Mueller report that involve Flynn and the Dow'd voicemail to Flynn. Trump's lawyer called Flynn left a voicemail dangling a pardon and trying to get him to lie to Congress or to Mueller. So far there's no objections to that ruling. So we got nine days to see what happens. We move on to page eight now in the Mueller report with a brief timeline of the subsequent events, including that in January of 2017, after he took office.

The Intel community, actually I think it was right before he took office, the Intel community, or IC, briefed Trump on a joint assessment between the CIA, FBI, and NSA, and they had concluded with high confidence that Russia intervened in our elections to help Trump and harm Clinton, and a declassified version of that report was released the same day. To put this into context, we've heard probably a zillion times that 17 intelligence agencies reached the same conclusion, which isn't quite the case.

The NSA's CIA and FBI reached this conclusion and the rest of the intelligence agencies did not dispute it. Most of those other intelligence agencies don't even look into this stuff. It would be like the airplane intelligence agency or the Air Force Navy has the airplane. Air Force has chairs. Okay. Then from... Sorry, I love you guys. Love the Air Force. Who ya, that's Navy, I don't know what you do, does the Air Force have a noise? You don't know. Oh, you. Yeah, I was singing a bass man, yeah.

A bass man, good bye. That helicopter, yeah, go over earlier. That's their noise. All right, so anyway, sorry. Then from mid-January to mid-February, the HIPSEE, that's the Senate select, the HIPSEE is the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI, and the SISI, the Senate Committee on Intelligence, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate Judiciary Committee announced they would conduct inquiries or had already begun

to look into Russian interference. Comey later confirmed a Congress, the existence of the FBI's investigation into Trump Russia, that had begun before the election with the Australian call about Papadopoulos. On March 20th, 2017, Komi said in an open session before HIPSEE, I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere the 2016 presidential election, and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts.

As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed. The baby introduction to an investigation might come either. And this is interesting because right now we don't know where that counterintelligence investigation went and we know that Mueller's criminal investigation was very narrow. But Komi says here as with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed. So there could be other crimes outlined in the counterintelligence report that have not been charged or discussed or even known about.

Yeah. Because Muller's scope was very narrow. Anyway, I thought that was interesting. This is an important prepared statement because Komi says that the investigation into coordination and conspiracy was not simply a criminal one. It was the criminal investigation to determine if the coordination and conspiracy with Russia rose to the level of illicit criminal activity able to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. What is not in this report, at least as we can see so far, is any of the counterintelligence

portion of the investigation into coordination and conspiracy between the campaign and Russia. But we know from public reporting and information that we've gathered from experts along with information gleaned from this report that counterintelligence investigation went on alongside the criminal investigation conducted by Muller. And again, that counterintelligence information was gathered by FBI agents. And we currently don't know where it is except today. Adam Schiff, head of the House Intelligence Committee, which is this where Komi was testifying when he said this, made a deal with Attorney General Barr that Barr is going to start

handing over counterintelligence investigation information related to the Mueller investigation in exchange for not being held in contempt. So the threat of contempt worked. So he canceled the vote today to hold bar and contempt, and the Department of Justice said, we'll start handing, we'll see what they hand over. We'll see how redacted it is, but he's gonna start handing over

that counterintelligence information to shift. Well, because the question is still yet to be answered, if it's even done or not yet, and we're like, who, which parts have been handed off to who, if any, and then, yeah, how how that would even what map that would even look like. Yeah I haven't it's it's such a mystery. And when I spoke to McCabe he's like I don't even know yeah and I opened it like he would say anything. That's true. But I figure he would probably say I can't tell you that you know but he he's like, dude, I don't know.

That's true. That's a cool dude. All right, let's see here. According to the NBC reporting on April 19th, the NBC, what did the NBC, you kids listen to these days? The FBI and other intelligence agencies are still pursuing a counterintelligence effort

to thwart the Russian influence operations into 2020 interference. Some key aspects of the counterintelligence inquiry, such as the FBI, warning the Trump campaign about Russian interference and the campaign not contacting law enforcement, is missing from the Mueller report. It also doesn't talk about the firing of Comey or other acts of obstructionist counterintelligence issues. It talks about them as obstruction issues, but not national security issues, because we know firing Komi, which kind of inhibited the FBI from investigating, is a national security

and therefore a counterintelligence issue. The volume one summary then goes on to tell us that May 9, 2017, Komi was fired by Trump, and that action is analyzed in volume two. Komi's firing came seven weeks into his investigation of Trump Russia and eight days later, Snoop DAG, that's who we call the Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, appointed special counsel, Robert Mueller, and authorized him to investigate what Comey was looking into as well as matters arising directly from that investigation. And other matters within the scope of 28 CFR Section 600.4A, which generally covers obstruction.

Shout out to Andrew McCabe for playing a huge role in that as well. of 28 CFR section 600.4A, which generally covers obstruction. Shout out to Andrew McCabe for playing a huge role in that as well. Definitely. So when this goes down in history, everyone knows that McCabe was the boy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, McCabe had several meetings with Rosenstein about this particular thing in Rosenstein's, what the fuck do I do? He fired Komi and McCabe's like, gotta get a special counsel.

Man, you gotta get a special counsel man you got to get a special counsel. Kept poking at him, kept poking at him and finally I'm gonna do a special counsel. Hey everyone! I had a great idea all by myself. I'm gonna get a special counsel. Anyway, CFR 28 CFR section 604 point, 600.4A That's the CFR code, code of federal regulations governing special counsel and the specific sections listed outlines their jurisdiction. So you can read that if you want. It's real juicy. Moiton is not. Moiton says Trump reacted negatively to the appointment of special counsel and said it was the end of his presidency. He said, oh, damn it. I think his, I think his actual quote was, uh,

I'm fucked. Yeah, it was definitely that. He sought to have sessions unrecuse himself and fire Mueller. He engaged in efforts to stop the investigation and prevent the disclosure of evidence to it. And that's all outlined in volume two. We are now at the bottom of page eight. Not hold on. That whole middle section took, was page eight.

And this is where the report summarizes Mueller's charging decisions. And he begins by defining what a crime is and what standards he used to determine whether or not to charge anyone with a crime. And they're very high standards. First, he had to determine if the conduct broke federal criminal law, chargeable under the principles of federal prosecution as outlined in the justice manual.

Then Mueller describes where the standards set forth in the manual to determine if something is a crime. And if it is, is the admissible evidence probably sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction? And finally, whether prosecuting the crime would serve a substantial federal interest that couldn't be satisfied elsewhere or by non-criminal alternatives. Inputrate. Mueller reminds us that Section 5 of the Mueller report provides detailed explanations

of the charging decisions which contain three components. Number one, Mueller says two principal interference operations by Russia violated the law. Number two, while Mueller identified numerous links between Russia and the Trump campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges of conspiracy. But Mueller does go on to be a little more specific, saying that among other things, the evidence wasn't sufficient to charge any campaign official under the Foreign Agents Registration Act,

and that the evidence about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting and WikiLeaks release of hacked materials was not sufficient to charge criminal campaign finance violations. Finally, the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any Trump people conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. So that could leave room for counterintelligence information relating to the coordination and conspiracy surrounding WikiLeaks

and also the Trump Tower meeting because only campaign finance violations are mentioned here specifically. But that should be something Congress should ask Mueller when he testifies. So the third component of charging decisions is that Mueller established several Trump aides lied to him and to Congress about their interactions with Russians and related matters, and those lies material impaired the investigation of Russian interference. And here's where I want to bring something up. It was discussed a while back that collusion could be the obstruction when it came to light that firing Komi while its traditional obstruction could also be seen as counterintelligence

national security matter because his firing would have made the investigation into interference difficult. That poses a national security threat. We just sort of mentioned that a minute ago. Here too, where Mueller says that the lies told by Trump associates impaired his investigation into Russian interference and composed a national security threat. Perhaps that's in the counterintelligence report and we haven't seen it. That the people who lied to Mueller are a pose a national security threat and is a counterintelligence problem. And that could we might be able to see that if we ever get any of the

counterintelligence stuff, which I don't know if the public will ever see it. Yeah, that would make me feel a little bit better and sleep a little bit better at night to know that they can't just lie and then get away with it essentially with no follow-up actions, but realistically, that's probably not what it was. Yeah, and they're still walking around, so. Yeah, exactly. Like they have menabbed.

Yeah, that's true. God, I wish they just arrested them all and just were like, just hang on in this tank for a second while we figure this out. Yeah, and Americans are like, why did they get arrested? Like, we can't tell you. Yeah. It's not. Don't worry about it. It's a secret. It looks suspicious. Yeah, totally. And then you, Mueller actually goes on to say he charged some of those lies as violations. Right. So he did charge some people. We know that too. Yeah. Under 2001, which is the false statement statute. Yeah, that's true

That's how he got a lot of plea deals fling pleaded guilty to lying about his interactions with kissley actor in the transition Papadopolis pleaded guilty as well about lying about Misfsood and Cohen pleaded guilty for false statements about Trump Teller Moscow Then of course he talks about Manafort's lies, but only after there's a redacted bit Because of harm to it and open an ongoing investigation. And since it comes after Cohen lies and before Manafort lies, perhaps this redacted part has to do with someone else lying about Trump Tower. We both know Don Jr. did that.

So, and we know Felix Sater did too, but Felix Sater is an FBI informant. He actually helped us catch Ben Laden. Yeah. Interesting, complex guy. Yeah, so he lied to Congress But I don't know if Congress was in on it or if it's still illegal to lie to Congress You asked this question the other day like can you can you lie to Congress just because you help get bin Laden like? Yeah, one lie Like oh, that's just what he does he lies, but he also talks

That's just what he does. He lies, but he also talks. Either that or this is an entire new lie. We haven't even seen a prosecution for it could be Information about Flynn's lies, which are still a matter of an ongoing investigation particularly as they in regards with to stone So you know and he'll be part of that trial coming up in November on to page 10 here, where the special counsel's office says they investigated several other events we've talked about and found that interactions between Trump and the Trump people in Kisleyac at the April 2016 foreign policy speech, and then again,

at the RNC, the Republican National Convention, were non-substantive. Same goes for the passing meeting between sessions in Kisleyak in Senate sessions, Senate office, Senate, say, shells, it's hard to say. But yeah, this is where in the beginning in our opening sequence where I did not have relations with the Russians. I know, I could use it with Clinton.

I did not have sexual relations with the Russians. Yeah, I would would also get a time or two and I did not have communications with Yeah, but you know what he actually said I didn't not He stumbled and said I didn't not have communications with the Russians I might have gotten off the hook. Oh, that's hilarious Right, I'm not sure about that But you know that he had that sort of pass-by meeting at that whatever without a camp member who's the prayer breakfast or some made prayer breakfast. Ironically, yeah. Mayflower, some dumb shit meetings. Yeah. And he like sort of, I just bumped into Kisley Ag. I

did not have conversations. They determined it wasn't substantive. Yeah. Then there's a weird sentence. I'm going to read it verbatim. It says, quote, and the investigation did not establish that one campaign officials efforts to dilute a portion of the Republican party platform on providing assistance to Ukraine were undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia. It's a bit of a time twister. Basically, it says the investigation did not establish that one dude didn't have an effect on the RNC platform.

And I think it's interesting that he says one campaign officials efforts to change the platform at the RNC were not undertaken at the behest of Trump or Putin, which sort of indicates that someone else's efforts were undertaken at the behest of Trump or Putin. And officials undertaken at their behest seems deliberate. So someone should like, first of all, put some beans on it and to ask Mueller about it. Who was the one, this one guy didn't, who's the, is there another dude? Another lady? Who did it? What's up? That's just a weird sentence and it's not, it doesn't explain it. Maybe it does later on the report, but I don't remember.

Yeah, it is weird. It's very different in tone from the rest of it. Yeah. It's just saying in tone from the rest of it. Yeah, it's just saying no officials made any changes. Mm-hmm. It just says one guy. Then he goes on to tell us that lots of Trump's people invoke the fifth amendment and we're not appropriate candidates to grant immunity to. Mueller says he, the reason he says that is because once you grant immunity to somebody,

they aren't allowed to plead to fifth. So these are guys who didn't deserve immunity but pleaded the fifth. Mueller says he limited his pursuit of other witnesses and information. He limited his pursuit of other witnesses and information. So some of the intel was covered by privilege. This is sort of like when you do a dissertation, you have your limitations on your data and what you're drawing conclusion, but here's the limits. I only talk to six people, really. So what he's saying here is we had people plead the fifth, we had people lied to me. Some of the intelligence was covered by privilege, some was screened by investigators, by a taint team to see if it was covered by privilege. Sometimes witnesses provided false

or incomplete information which led to some of the false statements charges mentioned earlier. And of course, the office couldn't always get witnesses or documents like from abroad or overseas. So this section, again, it's mostly him telling you everything that limited his ability to get evidence. And I think it's important that he pointed this out,

not only because, I mean, you should always point out what your limitations are in any investigation and the results, but it could have impacted whether or not he was able to get that final piece to link criminal conspiracy at that level needed to prosecute. Yeah, I appreciate him, including those details. Yeah, me too. And the next paragraph will piss you off because it pissed me off. And I want to know what couldn't be corroborated because of this bullshit.

Basically, Mueller couldn't corroborate some evidence because people either deleted, encrypted, or used temporary messenger apps to communicate. So Mueller quote, couldn't corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully questioned witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with other known facts. And that right there says that there's some shit that people got away with because they tampered with evidence and he couldn't prove it and he couldn't find it.

That sucks. Damn. And Mueller even says so. Quote, while this report is accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given these identified gaps, the office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on or cast new light, sorry, cast in a new light the events described in this report. He's basically saying,

I can't say that there weren't crimes or that there were because there's gaps in the evidence, even though I'm good. He's like, I'm good, but I'm not that good. Yeah. I can't read minds, you know, if they lie to him, they lie. Yeah, that's a great sentence. It's a little weird word. It's... Weirdly weird. Which I can't even say.

Weird thing to say, yeah, yeah. While this report is accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given these gaps, the office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on or cast in a new light, the events described in the report. Boom. Whoa. Way to write a sentence. On to page 11 and section Roman numeral one in volume one entitled the special counsel's investigation basically outlines when and by whom and under what authority Mueller was appointed. It then gives and defines the scope of the investigation with policy citations and gives the

Snoop dad clarifications, Rosenstein's clarifications and his two subsequent memos. This is the fuck off section. Yeah, this is the one we're back. Yeah, yeah. Do you like, here's why I get to do this. Yeah. The August 2nd, 2017 memo for the public that Rosenstein wrote is the one that outlined Mueller's authorization to investigate page, Manafort, and Popodopolis, and if they committed a crime or crimes by colluding with the Russian government officials. And you know what's interesting is when this memo first came out, the word collusion was in there and I was like, oh look, they used the word collusion. So collusion is a crime. And now I'm wondering if Rosenstein didn't use

that word on purpose. Exactly, because I don't trust him. And now that Mueller's coming out saying that they were never considering it by definition collusion, makes me wonder why he would say that from the jump. And he said that too earlier. He's like, even though Rosenstein used this word in his memo, it's not a legal word.

It's almost like, why the fuck did you do that, man? Exactly. Who do you work for? But I think, and I think it's a, it's something Aasha Ran Gopakal's reflexive control. It's an active measure used by Russians, where you change the definitions of words so that you can screw people over later. Wow. And, and collusion is one of those words, and this could have been purposefully planted by Putin in this team. Oh, that would explain a lot because Rosenstein during that press conference with Barra was like a robot, so he's a sleeper agent. That would have totally explained it. It's weird, right? I'm like, why did you put collusion in there if that's not a crime?

But he did. Crimes of collusion. It also went on to discuss Mueller's scope regarding Manifort and crimes arising from payments he got working for Ukraine, along with the loans he got from that guy he promised a job to in the Trump White House. Remember that guy? We have beans on that guy. But then it says Mueller should investigate allegations that Papadopoulos was acting as an unregistered agent of Israel. And that's new to us along with four sets of allegations about Flynn.

So that's what was under those redacted bits in the Snoop Dag memo. Interesting. Excited to hear more about that, Israel stuff? I know. Over time. Israel. Yeah. Huh. Because I wasn't si-ops out of Israel.

Yeah, actually Ukraine, how to say. Oh, you're right. Israel. Yeah, and they just are compromised. You're right. Black, it is really, and they compromised are compromised. You're right. Black Q black is really and they compromise you Korean That's right. Yeah, that's right. And they were trying to use black cube to do some of the internet social media campaigns. Yeah, and Xamol Totally was part of that thing. Yeah, he's Israeli. He's in Israeli sketch his fuck or is he Qatar? No

Preacher, he's Israeli. Uh his fuck. Or is he Qatar? No. Preacher, he's Israeli. He's Israeli. Al-Ahmon, he is. From the Qatar Investment Authority. So maybe that's it. Popodopolis had something to do with Black Cube and Xaml. I don't know, those are beans. I don't even know what I'm talking about. Then there was the October 20th memo,

which confirmed Mueller's investigative authority to include Cohen, Gates, redacted, stone, and redacted. It recognized Mueller's authority to look into Cohen and his establishment and use the essential consultants to receive funds from Russian backed entities. It also allowed Mueller to see if anyone was working with any of these guys, including Manafort, and finally the memo described an FBI investigation opened before Mueller's appointment into whether Sessions lied to the Senate and it allowed Mueller to look into that too and apparently he concluded he did not. Let's see.

Gates, Cohen, Gates, redacted, stone, and redacted. I don't know, Assange. We could get a the law fortune. It is. It's been the wheel of criminal. And the softest of the puzzle. Wheel of criminal. Full of misfortune.

It's literally spinning on a wheel. In handcuffs. Yeah, just put them up there. The report then says that because Mueller had the full authority of a US attorney that he would be privy to any FBI evidence already gathered and since the FBI had been on this for 10 months, Mueller got a significant amount of evidence right off the bat just boxes. It says that the office finished the investigation into links and coordination with Russia, but that certain proceedings associated with Mueller remain ongoing and that those have been transferred to other components of the Department of Justice and FBI and Appendix D lists those transfers. What would be transferred back to the FBI besides counterintelligence stuff I wonder. I just prod just the counterintelligence. Yeah yeah. Then the report describes that Mueller hired 19 attorneys five from private practice 14 on detail along with 40 FBI

agents they were co-located with. Then they give all the numbers that you hear Trump say over and over again. The numbers break down 2800 subpoenas, 500 warrants, 230 requests for records, 50 pen registers, 13 requests for foreign governments, and 500 witnesses including 80 for the grand jury. Yeah, where is the priceless show in there? It's the punchline. And the grand jury is still conven, just so you know, I think they're up in June. Finally, Mueller describes the relationship to the FBI counterintelligence division, and once again makes clear that this report does not contain those findings, still searching for that. Quote from its inception, the office recognized that its investigation could identify foreign intelligence and counterintelligence info relevant to the FBI's broader national security mission. So basically he's saying we had a bunch of FBI guys sitting in the office with us and whenever something counterintelligence would come up, they would catch it, put it in their pocket, and the smile.

No, they would write, give written brief, city FBI or Department of Justice as needed. Set it back to FBI headquarters in the field offices. Those communications and other correspondence between the office and the FBI contain information derived from the investigation, not all of which is contained in this volume. This volume is a summary. It contains, in the office's judgment, the information necessary to account for the special counsel's prosecution and declination decisions and to describe the investigation's main factual results. So there's a lot that's not in this report.

But guys, that's part one! Muller Sheerot is written and produced by Allison Gill in partnership with MSW Media. Sound designed in engineering or by Molly Hockey. Jesse Egan is our copywriter and our art and web designer by Joe Elrider at Moxie Design Studios. Muller She wrote as a proud member of MSW Media, a group of creator-owned podcasts focused on news, justice and politics. For more information, visit MSW Media dot com. They might be giants that have been on the road for too long. Too long. And they might be giants aren't even sorry.

Not even sorry. And audiences like the shows too much. Too much. And now they might be giants that are playing their breakthrough album, FLE. All of it. And they still have time for other songs. They're fooling around. Who can stop? They might be giants and their liberal rocket gender.

Who? No one. Disadvantaged paid for with somebody else's money. M-S-O-W Media you