General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWittes, Lawfare: What if the Obstruction Was the Collusion? On the New York Times's Latest Bombshell
https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-if-obstruction-was-collusion-new-york-timess-latest-bombshellLate last year, I wrote a memo for Schmidt outlining how I read all of this material, a memo from which this post is adapted.
Today, the New York Times is reporting that in the days following the firing of James Comey, the FBI opened an investigation of President Trump. It wasnt simply the obstruction investigation that many of us have assumed. It was also a counterintelligence investigation predicated on the notion that the presidents own actions might constitute a national security threat:
-snip-
The following is an adaption of the memo I sent Schmidt. I have updated it in important respects in light of the reporting in the Timess actual story. The analysis remains, however, tentative; I want to be careful not to overread the threads of evidence I am pulling together here.
The analysis that follows is lengthy and takes a number of twists and turns before laying out what I think is the significance of the whole thing. Heres the bottom line: I believe that between todays New York Times story and some other earlier material I have been sifting through and thinking about, we might be in a position to revisit the relationship between the collusion and obstruction components of the Mueller investigation. Specifically, I now believe they are far more integrated with one another than I previously understood.
-snip-
Would not a sequence of overt interferences in the investigation by Trump himself, culminating in the decapitation of the investigations leadership and boasted about both on national television andlaterin an Oval Office meeting to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and flagged in a draft letter to Comey as specifically connected to the Russia probe, raise all kinds of red flags within the parameters of the existing investigation the FBI was already conducting? This was, after all, one heck of link between an individual[] associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government!
The reporting Schmidt shared with me about Bakers testimony suggests rather strongly that the FBI did not think of the Comey firing simply as a possible obstruction of justice. Officials thought of it, rather, in the context of the underlying counterintelligence purpose of the Russia investigation. At one point, Baker was asked whether firing Director Comey added to the threat to national security the FBI was confronting.
Yes, Baker responds.
-snip-
Put simply, I dont believe the FBI, having an open counterintelligence investigation, simply opened a new criminal investigation of obstruction in the wake of the Comey firing. I think there likely wasand still isone umbrella investigation with a number of different threads. That one investigation was (and is) about Russia. And it had (and still has), as a subsidiary matter, a number of subsidiary files open about people on the U.S. side who had links to Russian government activity. Each of these files had (and still has) all of the counterintelligence and criminal tools available to the U.S. government at its disposal.
So when the president sought to impair the investigation, having declared both in the draft letter dismissing Comey and to Lester Holt that his action was connected in some way to the Russia investigation, that raised both potential criminal questions and major counterintelligence questionsquestions that could only have been reinforced when Trump later announced to senior Russian government officials that he had relieved pressure on himself by acting as he did. It did so both because it threatened the investigation itself and because it fit directly into a pattern of interface between Trump campaign officials and Russian government actors that they were already investigating.
-snip-
dem4decades
(11,296 posts)highplainsdem
(49,001 posts)RHMerriman
(1,376 posts)Trying to simplify it...
The FBI is charged with counterintelligence investigations - meaning, trying to learn what a foreign power is attempting to do against the United States, which may or may not lead to anything criminally... it may simply lead to intelligence, i.e. information.
The FBI is also charged with criminal investigations - if there is an ongoing counterintelligence effort, and a U.S. individual acts to slow down or confuse the situation the counterintelligence investigators are examining, is that individual obstructing the investigation - meaning obstruction of justice, which is a criminal offense.
Unlike some countries (the UK, for example) where the law enforcement function, counterintelligence function, and intelligence function are the responsibilities of three different agencies, in the US, the FBI is responsible both for counterintelligence within the US and criminal justice investigations.
Little more clear?
Gothmog
(145,306 posts)Link to tweet
?s=20