Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg said Monday that he has been subpoenaed to appear in front of a federal grand jury investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 but that he will refuse to go.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Nunberg said he was asked to come to Washington to appear before the grand jury on Friday. He also provided The Washington Post a copy of his two-page grand jury subpoena seeking documents related to President Trump and nine other people, including emails, correspondence, invoices, telephone logs, calendars and “records of any kind.”
Nunberg forwarded an email from the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III seeking his appearance in front of the panel on Friday.
Among those the subpoena requests information about are departing White House communications director Hope Hicks, former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and adviser Roger Stone.
Nunberg said he does not plan to comply with the subpoena, including either testimony or providing documents.
“Let him arrest me,” Nunberg said. “Mr. Mueller should understand I am not going in on Friday.”
Remember what I said yesterday about the mystery witness that Mueller subpoenaed not being Donald Trump Jr. because there was no way that he would keep his mouth shut about it? Turns out I was right about that logic, I just had the wrong person. Looks like Nunberg was the mystery witness target...or at least one of them. His circumstances in this Washington Post story and the Axios subpoena leak story from Monday match up.
If you need a reminder of who this guy is, he's the Roger Stone protege who was fired by Trump's campaign in August 2015 after making racist statements on Facebook. If you'll recall, the Mueller subpoena leak specified all communication between the mystery witness and the ten Trump regime folks, including Trump and Stone, since November 2015, that would have been months after Nunberg was fired.
This also means that it would make perfect sense now for Nunberg to be the leaker to Axios in the first place, and that smells of Roger Stone being involved. The question is why.
Nunberg apparently met with Mueller last month, too.
So that sets up an interesting situation. Refusal to comply with a federal grand jury subpoena is the kind of thing that makes you cool your heels in prison for a while.
Does Mueller call Nunberg's bluff, knowing that the Trump regime is waiting for a very public martyr? Can he not call Nunberg out on this?
Things just got really interesting round these parts, especially as Nunberg then called into nearly a half-dozen cable TV news shows to plead his case, and it became performance art of the highest degree before he started backtracking and whined he was eventually going to give in to Mueller, maybe, sorta, kinda.
Meanwhile, the Daily Beast is reporting that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen received leaked info directly from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee.
On Dec. 19, 2017, a former staffer for Sen. John McCain named David Kramer testified before the House intelligence committee behind closed doors. He’d played a role in bringing the salacious and unverified Steele dossier to the FBI’s attention, and members peppered him with questions about it.
Then something unusual happened.
The following, based on conversations with multiple sources familiar with the matter, illuminates the extraordinary breakdown of trust between committee investigators and the witnesses they call. It also suggests that some people working on the committee investigation may be trying to covertly assist one of the president’s closest allies—when the president’s inner circle is ostensibly a focus of their probe.
A few days after Kramer’s testimony, his lawyer, Larry Robbins, got a strange call. The call was from Stephen Ryan, a lawyer who represents Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen. Cohen is facing scrutiny from Special Counsel Robert Mueller and congressional investigators regarding potential coordination between Trump’s team and the Kremlin. He featured prominently in the Steele dossier—the document that Kramer handled—and is currently suing Buzzfeed for publishing it.
Ryan told Robbins he reached out because someone from the House told him that Robbins’ client, Kramer, had information about the Steele dossier that could help Cohen.
Robbins declined to help. Ryan then asked Robbins not to tell the House intelligence committee about their conversation.
Robbins told the committee anyway. CNN reported in February that Robbins wrote a letter to the committee complaining about leaks to another client’s lawyer. The Daily Beast can now confirm that this letter was regarding Stephen Ryan and Michael Cohen.
Seems the Steele dossier is true enough to have Trump's lawyer try to intimidate witnesses about it, huh? And let's not forget Cohen is up to his neck in the Russia side of this, too.
Stay tuned.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment