Startling
story here re: Mueller’s team update. Amazing stuff – the highlights
follow with this headline:
“Mueller could have done more to hold Trump
accountable, member of special counsel says”
WASHINGTON (September 21, 2020) –
A former prosecutor on special counsel Robert Mueller's team, Andrew Weissman, writes
in a new book that the group failed to fully investigate President Donald
Trump's financial ties and should have stated explicitly that it believed he
obstructed justice.
He says the team's efforts were
limited by the ever-present threat of Trump disbanding its office and by its
own reluctance to be aggressive.
His book offers the most
detailed account yet of what happened behind the scenes during Mueller's
two-year investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Weissman writes of his
frustration that the special counsel did not subpoena the president and
otherwise pulled punches for fear of incurring Trump's wrath. He lays
particular blame on Mueller's top deputy, Aaron Zebley, for stopping
investigators from taking a broad look at Trump's finances, and writes that he
now wonders whether investigators had “given it our all, knowing they left many
important questions unanswered.”
Weissman continued: “As proud as
I am of the work our team did - the unprecedented number of people we indicted
and convicted and in record speed for any similar investigation - I know the
hard answer to that simple question: We could have done more.”
Weissman also is a former
federal prosecutor and DOJ supervisor who now teaches at NYU’s law school. He
also comments as a legal analyst for MSNBC. He is the first prosecutor on
Mueller's team to break his silence about the investigation that dogged Trump's
presidency.
Throughout the probe, Mueller
and the others were famously tight-lipped about what they were finding, and
while some prosecutors have given interviews to reporters upon joining private
law firms, they have revealed little about the special counsel's work.
Weissman’s book is titled: “Where Law Ends” and in it he holds little back, offering colorful observations about other members of the team, their targets and the White House.
He writes that
all Trump White House counsel members referred to the Oval Office as the reality-free
“Magic Kingdom.” He puts in more plain language many of the Mueller report's
conclusions and points to what he saw as the team's failures and the questions
it left unanswered.
Key part that Weissman writes: “We still do not know if there are
other financial ties between the president and either the Russian government or
Russian oligarchs. We do not know whether he paid bribes to foreign officials
to secure favorable treatment for his business interests, a potential violation
of the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA, 1977) that could or would provide leverage
against the president. We do not know if he had other Russian business deals in
the works at the time he was running for president, how they might have aided
or constrained his campaign, or even if they are continuing to influence his
presidency.”
My 2 cents: The full story
continues at the link – It is a real keeper and excellent read. I think the
story stands by itself.
As for me all along from day one I have said and so have many others, as well many articles covering him that imply, and in some cases, prove that Putin is holding money over Trump’s head as a form of potential blackmail: loans, money laundering, and a lot of illegal fraudulent activities with Moscow and Putin’s rich friends as well as Putin himself.
Thanks for stopping by.
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