by Tom Fitton
A few days later after he misled the FBI, Comey took digital photos of the February 14 memo, texted the photos to his friend Daniel Richman, and directed Richman to disclose the contents of the memo, but not the memo itself, to New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt. Richman reportedly passed on the contents of the February 14 memo to Schmidt, by telephone, “very quickly” after receiving Comey’s text.
Comey later admitted that he believed making the contents of the Flynn memo public would cause a special counsel to be appointed to investigate Trump. He confessed to this admission in an interview with investigators from the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) and on other occasions. He told OIG that disclosing the memo would “change the game” and create “extraordinary pressure on the Department of Justice, which [Comey did] not trust, to appoint someone who the Country can trust.” He also told OIG that he sent the Flynn memo to his buddy Richman because Comey “had a specific assignment for him” and wanted to “spur [the appointment of a special counsel] by putting this out.” In the interview with IG, leaker Comey confirmed Richman as “acting at [his] direction to release something to the media.”
On May 16, 2017, the New York Times published a report by Schmidt titled “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation,” about the Flynn memo and its contents. The next day, May 17, 2017, Rosenstein, in his capacity as acting attorney general, had his excuse to appoint former FBI director Robert Mueller to serve as special counsel.
As far as Comey was concerned: mission accomplished. No matter that it involved leaks and lies in violation of law. The DOJ inspector general, by the way, referred Comey for possible prosecution but the Justice Department, under Attorney General William Barr, refused.
So the Mueller operation, corruptly formed from coup discussions and illegal leaks, went on to harass the president of the United States and victimize many others for nearly two years.
COUP—MUELLER PHASE
The appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel was a key goal of the seditious coup cabal at the Justice Department and FBI. The agencies already had an active criminal and spy operation targeting President Trump, operations that began in 2016.
Using the illegal release of President Trump’s FBI files as a corrupt pretext, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein appointed Mueller in May 2017 under DOJ regulations created during the Clinton administration after the independent counsel law lapsed.
In theory, a special counsel subject to daily supervision by a Senate-confirmed official might be kosher. But the Clinton-era special counsel regulations effectively prohibited the day-to-day supervision of any special counsel. In fact, the regulations suggest that Rosenstein or any other constitutionally accountable supervisor of Mueller could only countermand special counsel decisions after the fact, which gave the Mueller special counsel operation latitude and lack of accountability available to no other “career prosecutor” in the Justice Department. This resulted in an uncontrolled investigation by what effectively is a DOJ temporary employee into the official actions of the president of the United States. This was wildly unconstitutional.
The attorney general has no power to appoint “inferior officers,” such as a special counsel, unless Congress authorizes such appointments. As acting attorney general because of then–attorney general Sessions’s precipitous recusal, Rosenstein’s authority to appoint a special counsel flowed from laws and appropriations passed by Congress. This arrangement is constitutionally untenable for a special counsel appointed to target the president.
This congressional special counsel scheme, as applied to Mueller’s investigation of President Trump for his official acts, is unconstitutional because it disrupted the proper balance between the coordinate branches of the federal government. Mueller’s investigation, made possible only by appointment authority vested by Congress in the attorney general and by expenditures of money specifically appropriated by Congress for the investigation, impaired (and arguably continues to impair) the president’s exercise of his core constitutional duties, including the enforcement of federal law, the conduct of foreign affairs, and management of the executive branch.
So the Mueller special counsel was corruptly formed and unconstitutional. But it was also corruptly pursued, as President Trump repeatedly pointed out, by a group of “angry Democrats” who opposed him. A top deputy of the Mueller brigade is Andrew Weissmann, a “career” Justice Department prosecutor notorious for his aggressive approach to prosecutions.
In an October 2017 article describing Andrew Weissmann as Robert Mueller’s “Pit Bull,” the New York Times wrote, “He is a top lieutenant to Robert S. Mueller III on the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign. Significantly, Mr. Weissmann is an expert in converting defendants into collaborators—with either tactical brilliance or overzealousness, depending on one’s perspective.”19 Weissmann, under Mueller, oversaw the predawn home raid of former Trump aide Paul Manafort in what one former federal prosecutor described as “textbook Weissmann terrorism.”20
Weissmann should never have been near a special counsel operation that was put in place supposedly to increase confidence in the fair administration of justice. He is an anti-Trumper who had reportedly attended the Hillary Clinton election night party in New York.
And Weissmann seemed to bring his politics to the office. As mentioned above, Judicial Watch uncovered an illuminating email from Weissmann that exposed him as a cheerleader for Obama holdover Acting Attorney General Sally Yates’s undermining of the rule of law and President Trump.21
Sally Yates was appointed by President Obama as U.S. attorney in northern Georgia and was later confirmed as deputy attorney general. In January 2017 she became acting attorney general for President Trump. Rather than serve as an honest caretaker for her president’s incoming attorney general, on January 30 Yates unethically ordered the Justice Department not to defend President Trump’s January 27 executive order seeking a travel ban from seven Middle Eastern countries. That same day, President Trump rightly fired her for refusing to defend the action.
Judicial Watch immediately began investigating Yates’s lawlessness and asked for and then had to sue for Yates’s emails for the few weeks she was acting attorney general. We found strong support by top DOJ officials for Yates’s refusal to enforce President Trump’s Middle East travel ban executive order. In one email, Andrew Weissmann applauds Yates, writing: “I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects.” The other Deep State emails detail the anti-Trump activism at senior levels of the Justice Department:
Thomas Delahanty, then the United States attorney for Maine wrote: “You are my hero.”
Liz Aloi, a career service employee and chief of the Justice Department’s Special Financial Investigations Unit, told Yates she was “Inspirational and heroic.”
Emily Gray Rice, then the U.S. Attorney for New Hampshire and an Obama appointee, said: “AAG Yates, thank you, as always, for making us proud. It is truly an honor to work for you.”
Obama appointee Barbara McQuade, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, told Yates, “Thank you for your courage and leadership. This is wonderful news.”
DOJ Civil Division appellate attorney Jeffrey Clair wrote: “Thank you AG Yates. I’ve been in civil/appellate for 30 years and have never seen an administration with such contempt for democratic values and the rule of law. The President’s order is an unconstitutional embarrassment and I applaud you for taking a principled stand against defending it.”
These emails from Weissmann and his colleagues helpfully illustrate how the rule of law and legal ethics were of little mind to too many anti-Trump bureaucrats in DOJ.
So, Mr. Weissmann, this pro–Hillary Clinton, vocally anti-Trump activist, was placed in a key leadership slot of the Mueller special counsel operation. How key? Judicial Watch found, through yet another lawsuit, that Weissmann did the hiring for Muell
er! Weissmann’s calendar shows that he began interviewing people for investigator jobs on the Mueller operation almost immediately after it was announced that he had joined the team in early June.
On June 5, 2017, he interviewed former chief of the Public Corruption Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York Andrew Goldstein. Goldstein was a Time magazine reporter. Goldstein contributed a combined $3,300 to Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012. His wife, Julie Rawe, was a reporter and editor for Time for thirteen years, until 2013. He became a lead prosecutor for Mueller.
The next day, on June 6, 2017, Weissmann had a meeting with “FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] counsel.”
Weissmann interviewed another prosecutor, Kyle Freeny, from the DOJ Money Laundering Section for the team on June 7, 2017. She contributed a total of $500 to Obama’s presidential campaigns and $250 to Hillary Clinton’s. She was later detailed to the Mueller investigation.
He interviewed a trial attorney who worked with him in the Criminal Fraud Section, Rush Atkinson, on June 9, 2017. Records show that Atkinson donated $200 to Clinton’s campaign in 2016. He is a registered Democrat and contributed $200 to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Atkinson also became part of the Mueller team.
Weissmann interviewed DOJ deputy assistant attorney general Greg Andres for the team on June 13, 2017. Andres donated $2,700 to the campaign for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) in 2018 and $1,000 to the campaign for David Hoffman (D) in 2009. Andres is a registered Democrat. His wife, Ronnie Abrams, a U.S. district judge in Manhattan, was nominated to the bench in 2011 by Obama. He joined the Mueller team in August 2017.
(Our 2018 analysis of Mueller hires found 14 registered Democrats on the Mueller team out of 18 lawyers identified. None could be identified as currently registered Republicans. Nine of the 18 are donors to the Hillary Clinton and/or Obama campaigns! One was a donor to Republicans but none to President Trump.)
These documents show Andrew Weissmann helped lead the hiring of key members of Mueller’s team—who also happened to be political opponents of President Trump. No wonder it took us well over a year to get this basic information, and then only after the Mueller operation had largely shut down!
Weissmann retired from the Justice Department after the Mueller operation shut down to become a virulently anti-Trump commentator on cable television’s MSNBC. It became known that he would be the star attraction in a “fireside chat” fund-raiser for President Trump’s campaign opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. Evidently, even this was too much for an anti-Trump world desperate to protect the tattered credibility of the Mueller special counsel jihad, and the fund-raiser was canceled.
MEDIA–DEEP STATE ALLIANCE
The anti-Trump media have been active co-conspirators with the Deep State in the attack on the republic. We’ve uncovered myriad examples of leaks and media management to media friendlies by anti-Trump government officials, but perhaps nothing as shocking as details of the venerable Associated Press’s active efforts to get Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman.
We were generally aware from public reports of an unusual spring 2016 meeting between AP reporters and the Justice Department about Manafort, and we followed up with a freedom-of-information request. Getting the typical runaround from the Justice Department, we sued. And hit pay dirt.
We uncovered about sixty-five pages of FBI documents about an April 11, 2017, “off-the-record” meeting set up by then–chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Fraud Section Andrew Weissmann, between the DOJ, the FBI, and the Associated Press in which AP reporters provided information on former Trump campaign director Paul Manafort, including the actual numeric code to Manafort’s storage locker.22
You read that correctly. The far-left Associated Press deliberately and openly crossed a number of ethical lines in an attempt to damage the Trump campaign in general and Paul Manafort specifically. It’s one thing when political hacks such as Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi try to take down a president for partisan and personal reasons. It’s quite another when members of the liberal media morph into activist operatives to “get Trump.”
Two months later, in early June, Weissmann was hired to work on Robert Mueller’s special counsel operation against President Trump. Weissman then reportedly spearheaded the subsequent investigation and prosecution of Manafort.
Included among the documents are two typed write-ups of the meeting’s proceedings and handwritten notes taken during the meeting by two FBI special agents.
According to a June 11, 2017, FBI write-up: “The purpose of the meeting, as it was explained to SSA [supervisory special agent, redacted] was to obtain documents from the AP reporters that were related to their investigative reports on Paul Manafort.”
No such documents, by the way, were included in the documents released to us.
During the meeting, the AP reporters provided the FBI information about a storage locker Manafort had (the Mueller special counsel operation raided the locker on May 26, 2017):
The AP reporters advised that they had located a storage facility in Virginia that belonged to Manafort.… The code to the lock on the locker is 40944859. The reporters were aware of the Unit number and address, but they declined to share that information.
The reporters shared the information that “payments for the locker were made from the DM Partners account that received money from the [Ukraine] Party of Regions.”
The notes suggest the AP reporters actually pushed for criminal prosecution of Manafort:
AP believes Manafort is in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), in that Manafort send [sic] internal U.S. documents to officials in Ukraine AP has documentation proving this, as well as Manafort noting his understanding doing so would get him into trouble.
AP asked about the U.S. government charging Manafort with violating Title 18, section 1001 for lying to government officials, and have asked if the FBI has interviewed Manafort. FBI and DOJ had no comment on this question.
Also, according to the FBI write-up, “The AP reporters asked about FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act] violations and they were generally told that they are enforceable.”
Although, according to the FBI write-up, “no commitments were made [by DOJ] to assist the reporters,” Andrew Weissmann, incredibly, asked the AP to contact foreign authorities to follow up:
[A]fter the meeting was started and it was explained to the reporters that there was nothing that the FBI could provide to them, the reporters opted to ask a series of questions to see if the FBI would provide clarification. No commitments were made to assist the reporters in their further investigation into the life and activities of Paul Manafort and the AP reporters understood that the meeting would be off the record.
They [AP reporters] reiterated what they had written in their article, which was a response from the Cypriot Anti-Money Laundering Authority (MOKAS) that they [MOKAS] had fully responded to Department of Treasury agents in response to [Treasury’s] request. The AP reporters were interested in how this arrangement worked and if the U.S. had made a formal request. FBI/DOJ did not respond, but Andrew Weissman [sic] suggested that they ask the Cypriots if they had provided everything to which they had access or if they only provided what they were legally required to provide.
The AP reporters asked if we [DOJ/FBI] would be willing to tell them if they were off based [sic] or on the wrong traack [sic] and they were advised that they appeared to have a good understanding of Manafort’s business dealings.
The reporters asked about any DOJ request for the assistance of foreign governments in the U.S. government’s investigation of Manafort:
The AP reporters asked if there had been any official requests to other countries. FBI/DOJ declined to discuss specifics, except to state that the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty requests are negotiated by diplomats, so they should remain at that level.
AP reporters told the FBI about payments in the “black ledger,” a Ukrainian recor
d of allegedly illegal off-the-books payments:
The reporters advised that their next report, which was scheduled to come out in the next day or so after the meeting, would focus on confirming, to the extent that they could payments in the so called “black ledger” that were allegedly made to Manafort.
The FBI material continues:
The impression that their sources give is that Manafort was not precise about his finances, specifically as it related to the “black ledger.” The AP reporters calculated that he received $60 to $80 million from his work in Ukraine, during the time period the ledger was kept. According to their review of the ledger, it appears that there is a slightly lesser amount documented based on all of the entries. The AP reporters accessed a copy of the ledger online, describing it as “public” document. (Agent’s note—the ledger has been published in its entirety by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, after it was given to them by Sergei Leshenko, Ukrainian RADA member [Ukrainian parliament] and investigative reporter.)
The AP reporters discussed an extensive list of issues, companies, and individuals that they felt should be investigated for possible criminal activity, including a $50,000 payment to a men’s clothing store; a 2007 meeting with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska; Loav Ltd., which was possibly incorporated by Manafort; NeoCom, which the AP reporters implied was incorporated solely to cover up money laundering; and other matters.
The reporters also described an “internal U.S. work product that had been sent to Ukraine.” The reporters described it as an “internal White House document.” The FBI report stated that it “was not clear if the document was classified.”
These shocking FBI reports evidence a corrupt collusion between the DOJ and the media, specifically the Associated Press, to target Paul Manafort.
These documents are also further reason for President Trump to pardon Manafort and others caught up in Mueller’s abusive web. Remember, under Mueller, Weissmann became known as “the architect of the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort,” which produced no evidence of collusion between Manafort, the Trump campaign, and Russian operatives. The Mueller-Weissmann operation indicted Manafort on unrelated charges… but connected to some of the very topics that the AP and Weissmann collaborated on in that April 2017 meeting!