If it's Friday, it's time for more devastating Trump/Russia leaks, and this week was no exception. We've got a twofer this time around, one for Paul Manafort and one for Michael Flynn. First up: Robert Mueller is zeroing in on Paul Manafort's Ukrainian PR work.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued grand jury subpoenas in recent days seeking testimony from public relations executives who worked on an international campaign organized by Paul Manafort, people directly familiar with the matter told NBC News.
This is the first public indication that Mueller's investigation is beginning to compel witness testimony before the grand jury — a significant milestone in an inquiry that is examining the conduct of President Donald Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, among others.
It is also further indication that Manafort, Trump's onetime campaign chairman, could be in serious legal jeopardy.
According to one executive whose firm received a subpoena, Mueller's team is closely examining the lobbying campaign, which ran between 2012 and 2014. Some of the firms involved in the campaign received subpoenas for documents weeks ago, the executive said, and now the Mueller team is seeking testimony.
"We think they are trying to figure out, was this a legitimate project?" the executive said. "From our perspective it was — we did a lot of work. We took it seriously."
Manafort, whose Alexandria, Virginia, apartment was raided by FBI agents last month, has emerged as a key figure in the Mueller probe. The inquiry into the lobbying campaign appears to be part of a larger investigation into his work for a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party, his offshore banking transactions, his tax compliance and his real estate dealings, people familiar with the probe have told NBC News.
Manafort also was present at a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lobbyist and a Russian lawyer, along with Donald Trump Jr. and Kushner. NBC News has previously reported that Kushner is under scrutiny by investigators, and that Mueller is examining whether President Trump obstructed justice.
The executive said six firms participated in the public relations effort that Manafort coordinated, paid for by a Brussels-based non-profit called the European Center for a Modern Ukraine. The stated goal was to build support for Ukraine's entry into the European Union.
So Mueller is actually to the point of compelling grand jury testimony to put Manafort in the dock. That's massive. And the second story? Even worse. Mueller is checking into Michael Flynn's relationship with Russian election hackers.
Back in June, a tantalizing set of reports from Shane Harris of the Wall Street Journal gave us one indication that collusion may have occurred, or was at least attempted, between supporters of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russian hackers who targeted Democrats’ emails.
And the reports raised serious questions about whether fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was involved in these efforts to contact hackers — questions that, per a new report by Harris published this Friday, special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into.
At issue is an effort by Peter Smith, a Trump-supporting GOP operative and private equity executive, to track down Hillary Clinton’s infamous 30,000 or so deleted emails during the fall of 2016.
The effort, described on the record to Harris by Smith (the 81-year-old man died a week and a half after their interview), entailed outreach to several hacker groups, including at least two that Smith believed to be Russian-tied, to see if they had hacked the emails and could release them.
The emails — which Clinton said she deleted because they were personal and unrelated to her work as secretary of state — never surfaced. And Smith didn’t work for the Trump campaign.
But there is a potential connection to the campaign — through Flynn. Smith repeatedly claimed that he was in contact with Flynn about the effort to find Clinton’s emails, per Harris’s sources:
“He said, ‘I’m talking to Michael Flynn about this — if you find anything, can you let me know?’” said Eric York, a computer-security expert from Atlanta who searched hacker forums on Mr. Smith’s behalf for people who might have access to the emails. ...
... In phone conversations, Mr. Smith told a computer expert he was in direct contact with Mr. Flynn and his son, according to this expert. ... The expert said that based on his conversations with Mr. Smith, he understood the elder Mr. Flynn to be coordinating with Mr. Smith’s group in his capacity as a Trump campaign adviser.
Harris also described, apparently for the first time, US intelligence reports claiming Russian hackers discussed how to get hacked emails to Flynn through a third party.
Investigators have examined reports from intelligence agencies that describe Russian hackers discussing how to obtain emails from Mrs. Clinton’s server and then transmit them to Mr. Flynn via an intermediary, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the intelligence.
All this clearly raises serious questions about just what Flynn knew about this or any other attempted outreach to Russian hackers.
Mueller is clearly closing in on Trump. Trump is scare and his reaction last night? Pardon Joe Arpaio as a clear signal that "he takes care of his own".
Trump is clearly willing to use his pardon power whenever and however he wants. If we see information that Manafort and Flynn have stopped cooperating with Mueller, then you'll know the message from Arpaio's pardon was received loud and clear.
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