THE TRUMP NEWS "FIREHOSE'' EFFECT

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There is so much news coming out the Trump White House that important stuff gets under-reported by the media's obsession with the flood of Trump tweets, lies, and reversals.

In the just the last few days, headlines dwelled upon his:

i) suggestion he is going to ignore the Constitution by dismissing Congressional appropriation procedures as "a waste of time" and get money for his wall by executive action,

ii) unilateral withdrawal from an anti-nuke treaty,

iii) rejection of the advice and findings of the intelligence agency heads he appointed, telling them they should "go back to school,"-- a remarkable comment from a person who does not read and gets all his "information" from Fox News,

iv) newly found "distance" from Roger Stone,  

v) various insults addressed to the intelligence and wisdom of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and oh so much more.

vi) And, oh yeah, there are also the headlines and news reports that so much data was recovered from the Stone search warrants, that Mueller told the court the trial needed to be delayed because it would take months go get through the material. (Cannot resist saying, "I told ya so." See prior blog, WHITAKER WHITEWASH. There, I feel better already.)

Obscured by this news firehose is an item of great significance, but our newsies dropped the ball and gave it scant attention.

On January 30, Mueller filed an 18-page document that, when read closely, suggests:

i) His investigation has a long way to go, (More I-told-ya-so's!), and

ii) There are as yet uncharged Russian actors who are continuing "to engage in operations that interfere with lawful U.S. functions"--precisely what the head of the CIA and the FBI told Congress--findings the President dismissed as "naive"), and

iii) Those Russian operations continue to be pro-Trump, and

iv) Most recently, the Russians had the balls to try to use the U.S. justice system to disparage and mock the Mueller investigation. In effect, they adopted Trump's "witch hunt" theme, without using those precise words.

The press missed it because these points are buried in a lengthy document discussing what are normally boring discovery disputes. But this dispute is a shocker. Complicated. I'll try to simplify.

In October, Mueller indicted a string of Russians, led by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who masterminded a campaign in the United States, using Facebook, Twitter and other means, to interfere in our 2016 election by criticizing Clinton and supporting Trump. The Russians spent millions. They stole  American's identities, used the hacked bank accounts to add to the rubles they needed, and they supplemented that by manufacturing false social media identities. The Mueller indictment named  lots of Russians and a Russian-dominated U.S. based company, Concord Management, which is alleged to have been in charge of transactions with U.S. banks in support of the scheme.

Concord appeared by its lawyers, Reed Smith, and pleaded not guilty. All the Russians, including Prigozhin, an officer of Concord, defaulted and stayed in Russia.

Concord, as a criminal defendant, was legally entitled to discovery of information about the charges against it. The court entered what the lawyers call a "protective order." The discovery was broken down into two baskets:

"Sensitive" information could be viewed only by Concord's lawyers, and had to be securely maintained in Reed Smith's offices. It could not be copied, and in no event could it be sent to Russia, or seen by non-appearing defendants. In other words, if Prigozhin wanted to see the discovery documents supporting the charges against him, he had to come to the U.S. to do so. Not a chance of that happening.

"Non-sensitive" discovery could be used solely by Concord, and solely in connection with its defense of the criminal case against it.

But Reed Smith then asked the court to amend the restrictions, and sought permission to send sensitive information to Prigozhin in Russia. Mueller's written objections to that request revealed that the Russians had even misused the non-sensitive material.

A Russian twitter account published 30,000 documents that it claimed was the entire discovery file of the Mueller probe. The post said, in effect, "This is it. It's everything that Mueller has on the subject of Russian collusion," suggesting that the Mueller probe was a meritless witch hunt.

While the Russian site does contain about 1,000 non-sensitive Mueller files given to Reed Smith, that was far less than the sum total of all the proof that Mueller had respecting his investigation into Russia and collusion. Not even close.

The document dump did indeed contain some non-sensitive discovery documents given to Reed Smith (to be used exclusively by Concord in its defense of the charges against it), but the Russian-published file had been altered by salting it with "junk" documents that were manufactured for the purpose of the Russian deception!

Bottom line, the actual Mueller discovery file was altered, misdescribed, and then published as part an effort to discredit the Mueller probe by suggesting it was a witch hunt. This was obviously not a use of the discovery documents exclusively for Concord's litigation defense, and it therefore was a blatant violation of the Court's order.

The significance of all this? The Russian Bear's footprints are all over a continuing effort to interfere with not only our electoral system, but our system of criminal justice as well.

What a coincidence: The Russians not only illegally promoted the election of Donald Trump, they illegally interfered with our legal processes designed to investigate Trump's involvement in their criminality.

So who is the "witch" in this hunt? And what are we going to do about it, Mr. McConnell?

A bientot.