Barr gave a heads up about this last night on Hannity.
I’d assume that as part of the agreement, Clinesmith will be state’s witness against the other coup conspirators. Comey’s been pretty quiet recently, I suspect on advice from his lawyer. It will be interesting to see how, if at all other than Fox, the media covers this.
[Update a while later]
More at The Federalist.
[Update a while more later]
Jonathan Turley’s is unimpressed with the media coverage so far.
[Wednesday-afternoon update]
He’s pled guilty.
Now the question is what the sentence will be, and who he’ll toss under the bus to reduce it.
Oh, and this is fun.
I once said that the first person that needed to be prosecuted was Clinesmith, and apparently that’s where they started. The IG’s report was very damning of Clinesmith egregious activities that it couldn’t be ignored by people wanting to be taken seriously. If he wasn’t prosecuted, then we’d know that Barr and Dunham weren’t serious. Apparently they are.
Have to agree. Still wonder what took them so long. Are they waiting to create October surprises?
Pre covid, Barr suggested Durham would be coming out with developments in early Summer. I thought they late then, but it was early enough to avoid affecting the election, which I thought was a wise choice in the “be taken serious” category. Obviously covid hysteria caused delays (whether intended or not, and I suspect intended by some hyping the hysteria).
It could be an October surprise, but I hope not. It is not really good that this is happening simultaneous to the DNC convention. But Clinesmith and his lawyer do have some control on when he accepts the plea deal, which was this week. I’m sure they had advice to help push the timeline into an October surprise for delegitimizing purposes or even better after the election, in which they hope Biden wins and they can kill the further investigation.
Bottom line, this election has real stakes to Biden and other Democrats. Their personal freedom is in play. Dirty tricks of the worst kind should be expected when those stakes are in play.
I like the fact that the major players have shut up recently. Even a short repreive from their non-sense is a good thing.
Is this sort of like that movie “Z” by Costa-Gavras, where the prosecutor starts indicting the Greek Colonels, but they seize power in a coup and it is all for naught?
We may know by Nov. 4 or if we rely on the Postal Service by Feb. 202x.
Surely, you mean Feb. 202z.
Jonathan Turley’s is unimpressed with the media coverage so far.
That’s because if it’s [MS]NBC or CNN many of it’s paid contributors are likely facing indictment. They have no doubt been advised by council to not comment on the Durham investigation. Nothing like making false testimony to millions of American on nightly TV to sway a jury.
There must be a Babylon Bee or Onion article here somewhere…
Rachael Maddow’s “Higher Loyalty”:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbcs-rachel-maddow-skips-durham-probes-guilty-plea-despite-previous-russia-obsession
Agreed, but lets also be honest and ask the question; is there anything about media reporting these days that’s impressive?
Well I can remember a time when when news outlets provided us with stories on their reporters, editors and commentators winning the Peabody Award, not 5-10 for perjury and evidence tampering.
That’s also impressive…. in a way….
Several generations of staffing the media with college credentialed Journalism majors has brought us here. At least in the old apprentice system where you joined as a “copy boy” and worked your way up there was a certain … competency that was expected.
Now what you get are ideological drones that all go to the same cocktail parties.
I like CV-41 Doc’s comment on the National Review article:
“Why do I feel like Charlie Brown racing toward the football knowing in my heart that Lucy will pull it away at the last second? I want to believe, I want to believe…”
Yup.
Before we get too excited you should read Andrew McCarthy’s description – published yesterday) of how this goes:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/trump-russia-investigation-will-kevin-clinesmith-plead-guilty/
Read it all but this is the important issue:
McCarthy: It is called the allocution. It is the most important part of a guilty plea in federal court. It comes — if it comes — when the judge personally addresses the accused, who has been placed under oath, and asks him to explain in his own words how and why he is guilty of the crime charged.
Is Kevin Clinesmith willing to allocute? Is he willing to admit without reservation that he deceived his FBI colleagues and a federal court? The lack of clear answers to those questions is almost certainly the sticking point — the reason why, to this moment, there is only a false-statement charge against the former Bureau lawyer, not a false-statement guilty plea.
When it comes time to allocute, the court must ensure that the accused acknowledges committing the acts alleged and, just as significantly, doing so with the level of criminal intent prescribed in the relevant penal statute — the mens rea of the crime. If the accused does not admit guilt, and evince that he is doing so voluntarily and in full awareness of the possible consequences, then the judge should not accept the guilty plea.
Under the relevant statute (Section 1001 of the federal penal code), there is no crime unless the suspect acted “knowingly and willfully.” In the law, this is the highest mens rea proof requirement. To be guilty, the accused must have acted with full understanding of what he was doing (i.e., not by accident or mistake) and must have been aware of the wrongfulness of his conduct.
Now…here is what Clinesmith said to the judge:
However, Clinesmith told the court that while he altered the email, he believed that Page was not a source.
“At the time I believed the information I was providing in the email was accurate, but I am agreeing that the information I inserted into the email was not already there,” Clinesmith said during the Wednesday hearing.
I’m no lawyer and I did not stay at a Holiday Inn last night. But it looks to me that Clinesmith did not make a clear statement – his “allocution” did not rise to the level McCarthy says is needed.
Of course that means all bets are off with the DOJ and he could go to the slammer. But maybe the Dem Crime Family told him to do his time and shut up like a good soldier.
I’m with McCarthy. Clinesmith’s duplicity is well documented by the IG, but if he is in any way a lynchpin to others duplicity, then his life and those lives he ever cared about, depend on him protecting others. After all, these people are still trying to ruin Gen. Flynn and were ready to destroy Flynn’s son’s family in the process.
The name of the game now is delay pulling the pin. Once the Biden presidency is arranged, then a new AG can fire Durham and shutdown the investigation.
Conservative Treehouse is saying he got the same plea deal as Wolf. essentially a slap on the wrist, which would indicate that he is not getting squeezed to rat out the others.
In another post he did yesterday, CTH documented his conversation with one of Durham’s investigators. CTH laid out the big picture and connected all the dots with the publically available info. It turns out that each of the investigators working for Barr/Durham and working in isolation and have no idea the scope of this whole thing. That is pretty disturbing.
I just read CTH as well. This sucks. The judge should have been asked to recuse and should have just done so. Funny how little it took for Sessions to recuse on the same issue, but nobody else does so at all. Yet, Clinesmith and his fellows seek to destroy Flynn for a single count of a false statement, and Clinesmith is looking at zero to six months. This isn’t justice.