Trump is going to fire Sessions, and put in someone who will not recuse himself (it will be a he). Then Rosenstein will no longer be in charge of Mueller, and the new AG will be able to limit the investigation. So, if Rosenstein is pressuring Mueller to hurry up, it’s because he sees the writing on the wall here. The only way the probe doesn’t get stomped on by a new AG is if Dems win the Senate or Trump actually feels threatened enough by a massive Democratic House win to not rock the boat.
Rod Rosenstein Defends Mueller Probe as ‘Appropriate and Independent’ (WSJ)
In an expansive interview with The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Mr. Rosenstein offered a forceful defense of the inquiry, saying the public would have faith in its findings.
“People are entitled to be frustrated, I can accept that,” Mr. Rosenstein said, in a nod to attacks on the probe from some conservatives and Republicans. “But at the end of the day, the public will have confidence that the cases we brought were warranted by the evidence and that it was an appropriate use of resources.”
Mr. Rosenstein said the investigation has already revealed a widespread effort by Russians to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, an assertion that has been played down by the president and repeatedly called into question by other members of the administration.
“I have a solemn responsibility to make sure that cases like that are pursued and prosecuted, and I’m pleased the president has been supportive of that,” Mr. Rosenstein said.
A Russian woman has been indicted for ‘meddling’ in the 2018 midterms.
Here’s the complaint:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1102316/download?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
The details of their methods start on page 14. Still reading it, but pretty crazy stuff. (mostly so far social media manipulation.)
Note that Project Lakhta was also part of the earlier Russian Indictments. So not restricted to 2018 here:
The Kremlin, operating through its so-called Internet Research Agency, began monitoring American social media accounts and other sources of information pertinent to the 2016 election in May 2014, Mueller stated in an indictment revealed Friday that brings charges against 13 Russian nationals.
The IRA was in turn overseen by a company called Concord Management and Consulting, which is owned and controlled by oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who has been dubbed “Putin’s chef” because of his close ties to the Russian president.
Using the codename “Project Lakhta” — which roughly translates to “bay” or “inlet” — the IRA sought to influence elections around the globe, with its preeminent focus being the 2016 election in the United States.
Thread:
Jakob Wohl (he of the “banned by federal regulators from ever trading again” and “I was in a hipster coffee shop in LA…” twitter fame) appears to be one of the numbskulls behind this. This was so ham-fisted that they left multiple digital trails to their nonsense of offering money to women to allege sexual misconduct against Mueller.
He’ll be very fortunate to not escape prison for this.
Twitchy has the skinny (though I almost never read their stuff):
A swing and a miss for the ratfuckers.
Are they referring to the harassment story being fishy or that the story of someone attempting to solicit false accusations against Mueller is fishy? I feel like there is some sort of meta-accusation that might go on here to discredit journalists that fell for it (or journalists in general).
“MA, did I get any call from Fox News?”
As multiple people across the internet have speculated, the plan was probably this:
- try to bribe people to claim they were harassed by Mueller.
- if successful, put out an “accusations against Mueller” story and see if anyone reports it.
- if they do, make a big stink about it.
- if they don’t, make a big stink about it.
- regardless of what happens, claim that Mueller has been compromised and the fake media are trying to protect him.
The “genius” of the plan is you don’t need to actually succeed in steps 1 or 2 to jump to step six. You just have to be louder than the people calling you out on step 1. But they don’t seem to have thought about the whole “conspiring to obstruct justice” angle.
This sure is some 11th dimensional chess