Mueller's unforced prosecutorial error is a victory for 63,000,000 Americans who voted for Donald Trump

Robert Mueller’s Gaping Self-Inflicted Wound

Spectator

On February 16, 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller obtained a federal indictment of 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian companies for conspiring to wage “information warfare” by “impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable Defendants to interfere with U.S. political processes, including the 2016 presidential election.”

According to the indictment, in 2014 the defendants, posing as U.S. persons, contacted American political and social activists on social media sites. Using information derived from these contacts, they structured disinformation operations to be used in the upcoming presidential election.

Once the presidential campaign started, they used stolen Social Security numbers and birth dates of real U.S. persons to set up bank and PayPal accounts. Through these, the defendants funded their “operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.”

Quoting from the defendants’ communications, the indictment avers that they set up social media accounts to spread content that focused on “politics in the USA” and to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except [Bernie] Sanders and Trump — we support them).” The indictment outlines a number of online media postings and other efforts that attacked Clinton and encouraged support for Sanders, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Trump.

Also while posing as U.S. persons, the indictment says they contacted Trump campaign operatives to provide support. The indictment makes clear that the Trump organizers were unaware of the Russians’ true identities and motives.

Not until page 23 of the 37-page indictment does the defendants’ true purpose come into focus. As stated there, after the election, they organized and promoted rallies “in support of president-elect Trump, while simultaneously using other false U.S. persons to organize and coordinate rallies protesting the results of the 2016 presidential election.”

For example, on November 12, 2016, the defendants and their unnamed co-conspirators organized a rally in New York designed to “show your support for President-Elect Donald Trump” while on the same date they organized a rally in New York called “Trump is NOT my President.” Three days later, they organized a North Carolina rally entitled “Charlotte Against Trump.”

In addition to undercutting the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, these anti-Trump measures make apparent that, rather than achieve any particular electoral outcome, the defendants intended to sow dissension, bitterness, and distrust among the American electorate. They were trying to do in America what Russia has done in other countries by mounting disinformation campaigns to undermine trust and confidence in democratic institutions.

In announcing the indictment, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein emphasized that it neither alleges that any American knowingly acted in concert with the defendants nor that the defendants’ efforts changed the outcome of the election. While all of that is undoubtedly true, it must be recognized that the defendants had to have known that their efforts described in the indictment would not have any material effect on the election results. Like everyone else, they could read the polls. Hillary was going to win, and Trump was guaranteed to lose. That solid and inescapable political consensus limited what they could hope to accomplish.

So causing one candidate to win and another to lose was not their goal. Instead their mission was to weaken and erode Americans’ confidence in our democratic institutions and to poison and sabotage the acceptance of the election outcome by millions of Americans who supported the losing candidate. In short, they wanted to cause turmoil, dissension, and disorder and to cripple our government. Given the post-election chaos, division and bitterness, they certainly seem to have achieved their purpose.

The indictment was heralded by the media as a major achievement by Team Mueller. But a few observers questioned whether Mueller truly expected any of the defendants to appear in a U.S. court to answer the charges. Others asked if the indictment was merely an empty public relations move by Mueller attempting to show that his investigation was producing solid results.

The answers to these questions have started to emerge. Against all expectations, in April, lawyers for one of the Russian corporate defendants, Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, entered their appearances in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. They followed up by serving extensive discovery requests on Team Mueller seeking full disclosure of the government’s case and investigation including sensitive national security and intelligence information.

This type of discovery is called “graymail” (as distinguished from blackmail) in which the government is faced with having to disclose closely guarded state secrets in order to proceed with the prosecution. The alternative is to drop the charges.

Given that the maximum penalty against Concord is an uncollectable $500,000 fine or equally uncollectable compensation to anyone damaged by the alleged conspiracy, the choice is all the more bitter for Team Mueller. Should they litigate the discovery requests? If they lose and are faced with having to disclose sensitive intelligence information about the case and their investigation, should they withdraw the indictment against Concord? And, if they drop the charges, are they prepared for the resulting public mockery and howls of derision?

On Friday May 5, 2018, Team Mueller immediately began backtracking by filing a motion asking U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich to postpone Concord’s arraignment set for May 9, 2018.

They claimed that it was unclear whether Concord had formally accepted the court summons related to the case. In their motion, they included Concord’s discovery requests.

“Until the Court has an opportunity to determine if Concord was properly served, it would be inadvisable to conduct an initial appearance and arraignment at which important rights will be communicated and a plea entertained,” wrote the prosecutors. “That is especially true in the context of this case, which involves a foreign corporate defendant, controlled by another, individual foreign defendant, that has already demanded production of sensitive intelligence gathering, national security, and foreign affairs information.” [Emphasis added]

Team Mueller proposed that the arraignment be postponed while the parties briefed the issue of whether the court summons has been properly served on Concord.

The next morning, Concord’s lawyers replied, “Defendant voluntarily appeared through counsel as provided for in [the federal rules], and further intends to enter a plea of not guilty. Defendant has not sought a limited appearance nor has it moved to quash the summons. As such, the briefing sought by the Special Counsel’s motion is pettifoggery.” [Emphasis added]

Defense counsel argued that Team Mueller was trying “to usurp the scheduling authority of the Court” by waiting until Friday afternoon to try to delay a proceeding scheduled for the following Wednesday. They also stated that the special counsel’s office has not replied to Concord’s discovery requests and, ratcheting up the pressure on the Muellerites, stated that their client intends to assert its speedy trial rights.

Judge Friedrich, a Trump appointee, denied Team Mueller’s request and ruled that the arraignment would proceed as scheduled on May 9.

So what happened at the arraignment? Did things get better for Team Mueller? Hardly.

At the arraignment, Concord’s lead counsel, Eric Dubelier, was asked whether he represents Concord Catering, another one of the charged Russian companies. He replied that he did not and added, “I think we’re dealing with the government having indicted the proverbial ham sandwich. That company didn’t exist as a legal entity during the time period alleged by the government.” [Emphasis added]

Then, hinting at more of the graymail yet to come, he remarked darkly that, “We now know that the special counsel apparently has access to [Concord’s] confidential filings at the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which in and of itself is a disturbing fact.”

Dubelier stated, “Your Honor, we waive formal reading of the indictment. We enter a plea of not guilty. We exercise our right to a speedy trial.” [Emphasis added]

So, what does all of this mean? Metaphorically speaking, it would appear that the yapping dog chasing the car has sunk its teeth into the spinning tire. There is no way for Rover to escape injury. Even if Mueller and his pit bulls win the discovery battle and the case at trial, what’s the prize? A $500,000 fine or compensation to victims? How will they collect?

This is a no lose situation for Concord and a self-inflicted wound for Mueller. And, as the saying goes, self-inflicted wounds are always the most painful.

More importantly, this unforced prosecutorial error is a victory for 63,000,000 Americans who voted for Donald Trump and strongly oppose having the outcome of the election undone by Mueller’s politically motivated and rigged investigation. It will be a pleasure to see Team Mueller dragged kicking and squealing into an American courtroom where for it the process will be the punishment.

George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor who practices law in Philadelphia. He blogs at knowledgeisgood.net and may be reached at kignet1@gmail.com.

FBI and DOJ: "Lying Through Their Teeth"

HAT TIP: Bob

Trust but Verify

Suzanne Massie, a writer in Russia, met with President Ronald Reagan many times between 1984 and 1987.^[1] She taught him the Russian proverb "Доверяй, но проверяй" {Doveryai, no proveryai} (trust, but verify), advising him that "The Russians like to talk in proverbs. It would be nice of you to know a few. You are an actor – you can learn them very quickly."^[2] The proverb was adopted as a signature phrase by Reagan, who subsequently used it frequently when discussing U.S. relations with the Soviet Union. Using proverbs that the Russians could relate to may have helped relations between the two leaders.^[3]

After Reagan used the phrase to emphasize "the extensive verification procedures that would enable both sides to monitor compliance with the treaty",^[4] at the signing of the INF Treaty, on 8 December 1987,^{[notes 1]} his counterpart General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev responded, "You repeat that at every meeting," to which Reagan answered, "I like it."^[5][6] While Reagan quoted Russian proverbs, Mr. Gorbachev quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had been popular in the USSR when Gorbachev was in college, saying that "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it."^[4][3]

Following the 2013 Ghouta attacks, Secretary of State John Kerry told a news conference in Geneva on September 14, 2013 that the United States and Russia had agreed on a framework to dispose of Syria's chemical weapons. He said "President Reagan's old adage about 'trust but verify' ... is in need of an update. And we have committed here to a standard that says 'verify and verify'."^[7][8]

Wikipedia

------------------------------------

How Obama loyalists conspired to undermine the Trump transition

By Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times - Sunday, May 13, 2018

Republican-driven investigative reports on Russia have provided an unanticipated view into secret anti-Trump maneuvers by Obama loyalists during the span of the presidential transition.

Congress set out in early 2017 to investigate Moscow election interference and any coordination with the Donald Trump campaign.

As the collusion avenues led to dead ends, Republican investigators for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Judiciary Committee traveled on a new lane. They discovered a number of behind-the-scenes moves that they said transformed a traditionally acrimony-free transition into a partisan transfer of presidential power.

Among the findings: Obama appointees relied on Democratic opposition research to push Trump collusion claims into the public domain. They also leaked sensitive material to news media, some of it grossly misleading.

In addition, House intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes, California Republican, is seeking access to Justice Department documents to determine whether the FBI inserted a spy into the Trump campaign.

Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary to President George W. Bush, said Obama aides “made life extremely difficult for the incoming team.”

“In retrospect, we now know this is one of the worst transitions in American history,” Mr. Fleischer told The Washington Times. “On the surface, they played nicely and said nice things. But below the surface, it is clear several people in the Obama administration were doing everything they could to leave time bombs behind that would detonate all around Donald Trump and his administration.”

He pointed to an Obama operative who “unmasked” the name of retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in a U.S.-intercepted call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The Obama person then leaked the call to The Washington Post, causing immediate upheaval inside the new White House.

Mr. Fleischer also talked of a stream of Obama press leaks about supposed Trump-Russia collusion, a charge that remains unproven, at least publicly.

“The Obama administration did many things in their power to harm the Trump administration as they got their feet on the ground,” Mr. Fleischer said. “All these things revolve around a tight circle that have access to the highest levels of intelligence, and they all have a common theme: Trump colluded, when there’s no evidence of it. But they were so spooked by what they saw, I think, it’s highly likely the Obama people rushed to conclusions and made life extremely difficult for the incoming team.”

At the White House, partisanship generally recedes during a transition.

Not at the Obama White House. Press secretary Josh Earnest continued airing the Hillary Clinton campaign themes by bashing Mr. Trump during daily briefings.

“It was the president-elect who, over the course of the campaign, indicated that he thought that [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin was a strong leader,” Mr. Earnest told reporters on Dec. 12, 2016. “It was the president-elect who indicated the potential that he would withdraw from some of our critically important NATO commitments. It was the president-elect who refused to disclose his financial connections to Russia. It was the president-elect who hired a campaign chairman with extensive, lucrative, personal financial ties to Russia. It was the president-elect who had a national security adviser on the campaign that had been a paid contributor to RT, the Russian propaganda outlet.”

Nick Shapiro, who was an adviser to CIA Director John O. Brennan, said that, contrary to conservative charges, the White House and the CIA kept a close hold on information about Trump-Russia suspicions and Moscow computer hacking.

“Senior Obama administration and career intelligence and law enforcement officials were all very worried about the Russian interference in the election, as they should have been, but they have in fact been heavily criticized for not being vocal enough with the public about it,” Mr. Shapiro told The Washington Times. “Many former senior Obama officials have been out defending why they didn’t do more publicly, and that was because of what Trump himself said during the campaign, that he wouldn’t accept the results of the election if he lost. They took extraordinary steps to avoid letting the very legitimate concerns about the Russian interference be characterized as partisan.”

Republicans cite the following examples of Obama supporters undermining Mr. Trump:

Opposition research dossier

The Obama Justice Department and the FBI hierarchy embraced the list of collusion charges leveled by former British spy Christopher Steele. He was paid by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign to investigate Mr. Trump and his campaign.

The FBI deployed the Steele dossier to obtain at least one wiretap on a Trump volunteer and made its charges a blueprint for questioning and targeting Trump associates. James B. Comey, who was FBI director when the bureau bought into the dossier, said he tried to “replicate” its charges.

Now on a book tour, he has offered no criticism of Mr. Steele’s work.

The FBI and Steele

The FBI hierarchy made a commitment to hire Mr. Steele and then a paid Democratic Party operative to continue investigating the president-elect and possibly the presidency. Mr. Steele told a Justice Department contact that he was “desperate” to sink the Trump campaign. The bureau fired him after he lied about talking to news media.

The contact, senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, continued to receive anti-Trump data from his wife’s employer, Fusion GPS, the investigative firm that hired Mr. Steele.

Mr. Steele continues to investigate Mr. Trump via the Penn Quarter Group, run by Daniel Jones, a former senior staffer to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat. Mr. Jones acquired $40 million from a small group of donors and has told the FBI that he is paying Fusion GPS and Mr. Steele.

Peter Strzok and Lisa Page

Perhaps no other narrative is emblematic of a “deep state” than the text messages of FBI lovers — Special Agent Peter Strzok and counselor Lisa Page.

Mr. Strzok led the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign. Ms. Page served as a senior counsel to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired in March for lying under oath about a leaked news story.

In 50,000 text messages during and after the election, Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page railed against candidate Trump andspoke of a mysterious “insurance policy” should Mr. Trump become president.

Special counsel Robert Mueller immediately fired Mr. Strzok when apprised by the Justice Department inspector general. Ms. Page has resigned.

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected. But I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Mr. Strzok texted in August as his counterintelligence investigation got under way. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

The agent’s explanation for how he planned not to “risk” a Trump presidency has not been revealed publicly.

James Clapper

President Obama’s top intelligence officer leaked dossier material to CNN at about the same time Mr. Comey privately briefed the president-elect on Jan. 6, 2017, about the dossier’s prostitution charge. Mr. Comey withheld from Mr. Trump the fact that the charge came from Democratic opposition research. In his memos for the record, Mr. Comey wrote that it was Mr. Clapper who urged him to brief Mr. Trump on the salacious material.

CNN ran a story on Jan. 10, 2017, saying the Russians had compromising material on the president-elect. Mr. Clapper first denied but later admitted that he had leaked to CNN, according to the Republican majority report of the Houseintelligence committee.

Mr. Clapper is a fierce Trump foe, having cast him as an agent of Mr. Putin. CNN hired Mr. Clapper as an analyst in August 2017.

State Department

An Obama political appointee at the State Department brought Mr. Steele together with Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton operative who briefed him on supposed Trump dirt. Mr. Steele delivered the material to the FBI.

Leaks

Washington media wrote a number of articles on Trump-Russia collusion and quoted unidentified Obama officials. The New York Times greeted Mr. Trump on Inauguration Day with a story claiming conspiracy. The next month, it again relied on Obama people to report that there was a huge number of intercepts and phone records between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence.

Mr. Comey later told Congress that the story was wrong.

Evelyn Farkas, the Pentagon’s top Russia analyst during the Obama era, said on MSNBC last year that she urged her former colleagues to secure as much intelligence material as they could to protect it from destruction by Trump aides. She left the Pentagon in 2015 and advised the Clinton campaign.

“That’s why you have the leaking, because people were worried,” said Ms. Farkas, who is now a scholar at the Atlantic Council.

Michael Flynn

Conservatives often point to Flynn’s fate as a prime example of the Obama “deep state” bushwhacking a Trumpperson.

The retired three-star Army intelligence officer held phone discussions with Mr. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, on an upcoming U.N. vote on Israel and Moscow’s response to Obama-imposed punitive sanctions for election meddling.

On Jan. 12, 2017, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported on the phone calls, quoting an unidentified Obama official. Other stories followed. The Obama administration was leaking top-secret intercepts.

When interviewed by two FBI agents in his first week as national security adviser, Flynn said those topics were not discussed. The agents told their superiors that they didn’t believe Flynn was deceptive.

Sally Q. Yates, a holdover deputy attorney general from the Obama administration, visited the White House and told officials that Flynn was at risk for Russian blackmail. She believed he violated the 1799 Logan Act, an obscure law preventing private citizens from working with foreigners against government policy.

Mr. Trump fired Ms. Yates when she failed to follow his Muslim immigration ban.

Suddenly, a law that few had heard of became weaponized in the liberal media against Flynn. Conservatives said it was an example of Obama people spinning the media in unison against the new administration.

The Republican report from the House intelligence committee disclosed that Flynn in December 2016 was the subject of the counterintelligence investigation. Mr. Comey had decided to close the investigation in December 2016 but he kept it open because of the Kislyak phone calls.

The House committee interviewed Mr. Comey, Ms. Yates and two other FBI officials. They gave “conflicting testimony” on why agents were dispatched to interview Flynn, the report said.

Flynn resigned that February because of discrepancies in his answers versus the call transcripts. He opted to plead guilty in December to giving false statements to the FBI.

The plea deal with Mr. Mueller did not mention any conspiracies. There has been much press speculation about why Flynn chose to admit guilt, some of it centering on his huge legal costs.

Since then, Flynn has made public statements in support of at least two Republican House candidates and praised Mr. Trump in one of them.

Sen. Harry Reid

As the campaign raged in August 2016, Mr. Brennan, the CIA director, briefed eight senior members of Congress on two issues: ongoing Russia election interference and his bombshell assertion that Trump people may be part of the conspiracy.

Harry Reid, Senate minority leader at the time, promptly wrote an Aug. 27 letter to Mr. Comey, the FBI director, laying out the collusion theory without quoting Mr. Brennan. The letter was leaked to The New York Times and migrated into other media, marking what appears to be the first official Democratic charge of a Trump-Moscow conspiracy.

“The evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to mount,” wrote Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat.

Mr. Shapiro, the former CIA director’s adviser, told The Times that Mr. Brennan had urged Mr. Reid not to write the letter because the information was sensitive.

J.D. Gordon, a Trump campaign national security adviser, said he wants Congress to investigate Obama people’s conduct.

“Congress should hold hearings to investigate Obama administration officials who worked behind the scenes to sabotage Trump and associates during the campaign, transition and administration,” Mr. Gordon said. “In some countries, their actions might be considered a coup attempt. And like they enjoy saying about us, ‘Let the investigation follow the facts, wherever they may lead.’”

Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC.  Click here for reprint permission.

Cheer up! Things could be worse, Trump could have lost to Clinton

Trump Time

Washington

President Donald Trump has the White House running on fast forward. He is pushing the once crusty and creaky foreign policy apparatus to move at the speed of Twitter.

Is Trump’s at-a-blur pace for better or worse?

Consider Trump’s action-packed Thursday:

At 3 a.m., the president and first lady shared a triumph at Joint Base Andrews as they greeted three buoyant American prisoners released by the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in advance of June’s big meeting between Trump and Kim.

“This is a wonderful thing that he (Kim) released the folks early. That was a very big thing,” Trump exclaimed. Fast is good.

Hours later, Trump tweeted more big news: “The highly anticipated meeting between Kim Jong Un and myself will take place in Singapore on June 12th. We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!”

That’s right. Trump scheduled a summit that leaves his national security staff and the hollowed-out State Department bureaucracy about a month to prepare for complicated negotiations involving highly technical issues. It would have been nice if Trump were this quick at filling vacant positions in Foggy Bottom.

Did he schedule the summit too fast?

“Yes,” answered Ty Cobb, a foreign policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan now with the National Security Forum. In Cobb’s experience, summits follow extensive preparation over minute details — all resolved before a summit begins, so that the summit itself is simply a ceremony. Trump is leapfrogging over the usual order.

And yet, Cobb finds himself thinking maybe Trump has found a smart approach with North Korea. Cobb said he had just finished a panel discussion with two other national security veterans, and all three “were struck at the success this president has had relying on his instincts instead of the bureaucracy.”

Americans pretty much had become used to the glacial pace of statecraft. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are ripping up the old playbook.

While Trump was announcing U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear pact on Tuesday, Pompeo was already on to the next thing. “At a Key Moment, Trump’s Top Diplomat Is Again Thousands of Miles Away,” read a disapproving headline in the New York Times.

The Times didn’t look all that hot when Pompeo returned from Pyongyang with three freed prisoners in tow.

In December, when Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — and said he would move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the Holy City — D.C.’s chattering class expected the move to take years.

Wrong. On Monday, some six months after Trump’s declaration, the United States will open the new embassy — and thus make good on a promise in legislation enacted in 1995.

Yes, the new Jerusalem embassy will be carved out of an old compound — a few rooms inside what has been the U.S. consulate office in Arnona, a suburb of Jerusalem.

“It’s not real,” scoffed former Obama Under Secretary of State Ellen Tauscher. “This is like changing the sign on a hotel.”

Tauscher added there will not be enough room for most of the staff stationed at the long-standing embassy in Tel Aviv, so “I don’t think that the embassy is moving.”

Cobb posited that past administrations would have moved at a snail’s pace to relocate the embassy. Various staffs would have picked through all the angles, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and then “would have reached a compromise decision that satisfies no one.”

James Carafano, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, offered that he would have recommended against the embassy move. “Nobody really cares about the embassy,” Carafano said, “not even the Palestinians. It’s all symbolic.”

Trump? He “does it anyway,” Carafano continued — to show the Palestinians that Trump is serious about their leaders’ need to change.

If year two of Trump’s foreign policy seems to be moving fast, Carafano added, it’s because Trump is an intuitive decision-maker. In the first year, America didn’t see these rapid-fire moves because, “You can’t be an intuitive decision-maker if you don’t know the issues.” But now Trump is up to speed.

Trump brought Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton on board, said Carafano, “to get the government to move on Trump time.”

Trump time — those two words no doubt send shivers through the saggy spines of foreign policy solons.

Cobb sees an executive “overturning decades of tradition and caution.” Is he worried? “Yes, we’re all worried about that,” said Cobb. But to Trump’s credit, “it’s worked out so far.”

Despite all the doomsday predictions, Carafano noted, “He hasn’t started World War III yet. That’s good.”

Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.

COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM

New York, New York

The Rise and Fall of Shakedown Schneiderman

SPECTATOR

Well.

So his antics finally caught up with him.

The other day, someone who was discussed in this space a couple times way back there in the primordial mists of 2013 suddenly resigned his job as Attorney General of New York. That would be one Eric Schneiderman, who was discussed here in a blog post from August, 2013 titled: “New Obama Scandal Erupts: Trump Targeted.” (In which a meeting between then-President Obama and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman — Trump haters both — was discussed.) Then there was this one, a column titled “Shakedown Schneiderman,” and also another, “The Malversation of Eric Schneiderman.” 

In all of which I had come to the thoroughgoing conclusion that Mr. Schneiderman’s conduct as Attorney General indicated he was, simply put, a fraud — and a dangerous fraud at that. This was no dedicated public servant of the liberal variety. This was someone who, as the words of a leftist columnist for the Village Voice described it, saw his job as being “transactional.” Which is to say — “You do something for me, and I will use the powers of my job as Attorney General to do something for you.”

Mr. Schneiderman had come to my attention as I was reading the public prints and learning that Schneiderman was suing a private citizen in New York named… Donald Trump. The lawsuit was over what was called in the day “Trump University,” a typical organization of motivational-style instructors who were experts in the real estate business. One paid to hear from the speakers and learn the how-to of real estate but then… horrors! — one had actually to go out and do the work. As is to be expected with such a venture, some people succeeded, others failed. So the grousings from the latter group, which was small, were quickly focused on by Schneiderman and suddenly Donald Trump’s name was giving Schneiderman lots of PR as the figurative defender of the little guy.

Having been around the political block, to me, something was, as they say, “rotten in Denmark.” Or Albany as the (frequent) case seems to be. Of all the things going on in New York State — why zero in on someone as hugely successful as Donald Trump? The idea that a billionaire ten times over was trying to defraud a handful of people out of a few thousand dollars made no sense. So, I began to look. In fact, Donald Trump took the time to speak with me directly on the issue. He was indignant. And what did I learn?

I learned that — yes, indeed — Schneiderman had been after Donald Trump for a campaign contribution. Receiving it, Schneiderman was not satisfied. Now the arm was being put on Trump family members — daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared specifically. Not satisfied there, Schneiderman was going to Trump Organization staff. And then… the hook.

Still not satisfied with what he was getting from the family Trump, he began to take another approach once elected and actually becoming the sitting attorney general. I wrote this:

Let’s begin specifically by thinking of Donald Trump’s multi-billion-dollar, resoundingly successful company — The Trump Organization — as Khartoum the race horse.

Khartoum the race horse?

You remember Khartoum the race horse. The scene is immortalized in the Oscar-winning film The Godfather.

The rich and famous Hollywood producer Jack Woltz, owner of the $600,000 Secretariat-like race horse Khartoum, refuses to put Mafia Don Vito Corleone’s favored godson Johnny Fontane in a movie. One fine morning, Woltz awakens, horrified, to find the severed head of his beloved race horse — whom he has lovingly described beforehand as “the greatest racehorse in the world” — in his blood-soaked bed. As seen here in the legendary scene from the film version of Mario Puzo’s bestselling novel. Message delivered, Don Corleone’s god son Johnny Fontane gets his movie part from the thoroughly terrified movie producer.

Now.

Think of Eric Schneiderman, the Attorney General of New York, supposed progressive “icon of the left” and a wannabe governor — as a dime store Godfather. Vicious, but Vito Corleone without the gravitas.

I went on:

The core of Shakedown Schneiderman’s Don Corleone-style method of operation is captured by the famous line from the Don himself. As Puzo immortalized the line in The Godfather, the Don would get Johnny Fontane the desired movie part in unique fashion, saying of producer Woltz: “He’s a businessman. I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

The offer, of course, was Khartoum’s severed head. The blunt message? Next time it would be Woltz’s head.

What was Schneiderman’s “offer he can’t refuse” to businessman Donald Trump?

In Schneiderman’s own words to Trump’s counsel, as documented in the Trump filing, Donald Trump would be forced to settle the lawsuit Schneiderman was threatening because Trump would not “want all of the bad press.”

As in: Nice business ya got there Mr. Trump. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

To say the least, this kind of thing does not speak well of an Attorney General. I looked further into Schneiderman’s past to discover this:

The AG’s career also depends on Schneiderman keeping his coattails free of corruption charges, which thus far has been dicey. A federal sentencing memorandum on Schneiderman’s ex-State Senate colleague Shirley Huntley prompted Huntley’s attorney, according to the New York Daily News, to allege her client had information “about corruption involving Eric Schneiderman.”

This doesn’t even count the murmurs from Schneiderman’s political base of New York’s hard left that he is, among other things, a “water boy” and “transactional.”

A few weeks later I followed up with another column, “The Malversation of Eric Schneiderman.” In which I reported this:

Uh-oh.

New York Attorney General Eric “Shakedown” Schneiderman has just been walloped with an ethics complaint.

A long and meticulously detailed 228-page ethics complaint.

Filed by… Donald Trump.

Suffice to say, that ethics complaint was detailed to the max. It was chapter and verse what I suspected — that the transactional Mr. Schneiderman was unhappy he had not gotten the Trump campaign contributions he thought were his due. And so I ended the column this way:

The fix was in for Donald Trump.

And according to the Constitution of New York State?

That is malversation — cause for removal from office.

Your move, Governor Cuomo.

Well, finally, Governor Cuomo moved. Five years late, but he finally did something. Cuomo acted after a major assist from the New Yorker and reporters Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow, the latter the journalist who uncovered the massive Harvey Weinstein story. Their story is remarkable in the detailed portrait of an abuser of women who was frequently so drunk he couldn’t stand up. The ultimate of empty vessels. Amazing. Yet, it must be said, so terribly predictable to me and certainly to President Trump. 

In fact, the future president had tweeted this in 2013: “Weiner is gone, Spitzer is gone — next will be lightweight A.G. Eric Schneiderman. Is he a crook? Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner”

As it happens, as I well recall, this tweet came a matter of days after I had spoken with Mr. Trump about this very subject. He was clearly of the view that Schneiderman was a crook and especially angry at the Attorney General for the slimy game being played with Ivanka, Jared, and his staff. And as is so often the case, Donald Trump was unerringly right.

Here we are five years later and there is this as written by Mayer and Farrow, writing about Michelle Manning Barish, one of the women who has come forward with her accusations. Bold print for emphasis is supplied:

Since the #MeToo movement began, Manning Barish has been active on social-media platforms, cheering on women who have spoken out, including those whose accusations prompted the resignation of the Minnesota senator Al Franken, a widely admired Democrat. Once, she made an oblique reference to Schneiderman on social media, in connection with a political issue. He called her and, in a tone that she describes as “nasty,” said, “Don’t ever write about me. You don’t want to do that.” Manning Barish says that she took his remarks as a threat, just as she took seriously a comment that he’d once made after she objected to him “yanking” her across a street. She recalls saying to him, “Jaywalking is against the law,” and him responding, “I am the law.” Manning Barish says, “If there is a sentence that sums him up, it’s that.”

In other words? In other words this was the pattern of Schneiderman’s transactional approach to his job as Attorney General. He was the law, and he would use the law to get what he wanted. What did he want from Donald Trump? Money — and if not enough money he would use Trump and the Trump family to get publicity by going after Trump with the powers of the New York Attorney General. What did he want with Ms. Manning Barish and the other women? Sex. And if they stood up to him — as did Donald Trump — they would be reminded by Schneiderman: “I am the law.”

This was a person seriously unfit for public office of any kind. He abused his office and the public trust just as he abused women.

The real question here? As with Harvey Weinstein, it simply isn’t possible that Schneiderman was conducting himself in this fashion and people did not know. In the Schneiderman case, Albany was Hollywood. The idea that Governor Cuomo, the leaders of the State Legislature, New York City Mayor de Blasio and others (where was the New York media???) were clueless about Schneiderman’s problems doesn’t even come close to passing the smell test. Cuomo is frequently mentioned as a possible candidate for president. If that comes to pass, the Schneiderman episode is surely going to cause him a problem of the “what did you know and when did you know it” variety.

Is this a tragedy for Eric Schneiderman the human being, and his family? Of course. He will spend one very long time dealing with this — possibly the rest of his life — with no small irony being that he will find out that no, actually, he is not the law.

In the world of cosmic justice? Eric Schneiderman may be going to jail.

And Donald Trump is President of the United States.