L'Emmerdeur wrote:Seems like the Democratic members of the House Committee on the Judiciary think that something
smells funny:
Oh, well, if Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee say it smells funny, well that's clearly indicative that it's a problem. Democratic members of Congress have no political ax to grind.
Last summer, Donald Trump, Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected attorney
Word choices word choices.... lol ... "Kremlin-connected attorney." Meaningless. What's it mean to be "connected" to the Kremlin. She's a Russian lawyer and former prosecutor. It's about as meaningful as calling an assistant US attorney for the district of Kansas a "White House connected attorney."
in an attempt to obtain information "that would incriminate Hillary."
Good! If there is incriminating information about any candidate, it should be released. And, it does not seem at all unusual for one political candidate to try to find incriminating information on his or her opposition. Meeting with a former government lawyer now working on, essentially, lobbying and political issues in the US, is not wrong.
Earlier this year, on May 12, 2017, the Department of Justice made an abrupt decision to settle a money laundering case being handled by that same attorney in the Southern District of New York. We write with some concern that the two events may be connected—and that the Department may have settled the case at a loss for the United States in order to obscure the underlying facts.
Oh, o.k., so the $6,000,000 settlement, which was triple the amount of money the government alleged was directly traceable to the defendants, is an "abrupt decision to settle?" "This payment represents triple the value of the proceeds that the Government alleged could be traced directly from the Russian treasury fraud to the defendants ($1,965,444.55), and more than ten times the amount of proceeds the Government alleged could be traced directly to property in New York (approximately $582,000)."
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/ac ... dering-and
So, now the Democrats on the Judiciary committee think that the US District Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and three or four Assistant US District Attorneys, are keeping their mouths shut about being forced to settle a money laundering case they wouldn't otherwise have settled? These honest, and trustworthy career Justice Department officials who toil away honestly, apolitically and without much reward, are dropping cases like they're hot, to benefit "their guy" Donald Trump, whom now the assistant US attorneys love?
A few months ago, we went through lengthy debates here where some of you were claiming that the FBI and the Justice Department were basically apolitical (under Obama). Now, not so much, I guess. LOL. But, that's beside the point. The point is, cases like this settle, and if the settlement is far more than the amount of money the government is claiming was "directly traceable" to the defendants, then there is not much more they would be expected to get in a trial.
And the allegation that this matter is squelched in order to keep a lid on the underlying facts is absurd. The government has the underlying facts and made detailed allegations in the case. Now that it's closed, the files are open to Freedom of Information Act requests, and the government's evidence can and will be obtained. What about the DJT,Jr. meeting with Valeria is going to be elucidated by some facts in a several years old investigation and case against some Russian companies trying to launder some proceeds of a tax scheme that occurred in Russia?
wrote:
Accordingly, we respectfully request information about the settlement of United States v Prevezon Holdings Ltd., et al. (SDNY No. 13-CIV-6326). An explanation for your decision to settle just two days before trial was set to begin is long overdue.
Fair enough. I have no doubt that an explanation for a decision to settle before trial can be presented. Many cases are settled on the eve of trial. The courthouse steps is a great place to settle,because that's where the game of chicken ends. Parties love to make the other side think they are happy to go to trial and be vindicated. Parties love to "not pay" until the last possible minute. At the beginning of a case, a party may drive a hard bargain, trying to convince the opposition that a settlement needs to be a sweet deal or "we're going to trial." However, if the bluff is called, then they settle.
On June 9, 2016, Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with Natalia Veselnitskaya—a Russian lawyer described to the Trump campaign as a "Russian government attorney who is flying over from Moscow."
Yes, and being a Russian government attorney doesn't mean anything. Being assistant US attorney for the district of Idaho is being an "American government attorney" -- but, if candidate Medvedev got a call that the American government attorney had juicy information on Vladimir Putin, and Medvedev then met with that American government attorney, it would not be a criminal conspiracy.
An intermediary promised that Ms. Veselnitskaya would provide the campaign with "official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russian and would be very useful" to then-candidate Donald Trump.
Sounds good. Can you fax them over? Oh, you want to meet first? O.k., sure. What do you have?
The offer was "part of Russia and its government support for Mr. Trump." That the President's inner circle was willing to accept this kind of assistance from a foreign adversary is, at best, deeply troubling.
This is the part that sounds really weird. Why wold the writer of the email say this in the email? Who writes that? The writer was this Mr. Goldstone -- not associated with Russia -- so, it's not Russia or Russians saying it. What was Goldtone putting that in there for? Odd.
And, the article says that this is deeply troubling? Why? "Hey, a government lawyer has some official documents that are INCRIMINATING to Hillary Clinton [i.e. evidence of the commission of a crime]. Do you want to meet with the lawyer to see what it is?" And, then "sure, I'd LOVE to meet with the lawyer and find out what evidence of what crimes Hillary Clinton committed." That's "deeply troubling?" I mean - that's tame. That's not just tame, it's a big yawn.
News flash! Political operative agrees to meeting with lawyer who he's told has evidence that the opposition candidate committed a crime. Film at 11.
According to emails released by Mr. Trump, this meeting was delayed at least once because "the Russian attorney" was "in court." We now understand that Ms. Veselnitskaya was othewise engaged as counsel for Denis Katsyv, owner of Prevezon, and that she could not meet with Mr. Trump because she was scheduled to be in federal court defending her client against charges of fraud and money laundering.
We "now" know that. So what? Even if DJT, Jr. knew that THEN, so what? She's a lawyer. Representing a defendant.
I looked up the case on pacer.gov, and Ms. Veselnitskaya is not an attorney of record, and never was an attorney of record, on that case at all for any party. She had no obligation, ever, to appear at any hearing at any time in that case. What's more interesting is that there no scheduled hearings in that case after early January, 2016. Nobody was "scheduled to be in federal court defending her client against charges of fraud and money laundering" because there were no hearings scheduled. No hearings held. So, not only would she not have been defending her client in court, since she was not representing a client in court - -she was only retained to ASSIST the counsel of record for one of the Defendants, but there were no hearings scheduled during that time frame, so NONE of the defense attorneys had to appear.
She did sign an affidavit in the case, under oath, declaring that she represented Mr. Katsyv, privately. This affidavit was signed and filed with the court in January, 2016 (so, a good four or five months before the supposed meeting with DJT, Jr. It was public knowledge, therefore, and nothing that was hidden, that she graduated law school in 1998 and worked for a short time in the prosecutor's office in Moscow. She then moved to private practice, defending money laundering and white collar crime cases, and she swore under oath that she "argued and won over 300 cases on corporate, tax and property law..."
Veselnitskaya also discusses in her declaration how in 2015, and into 2016 she was denied visas to enter the United States, but that she was "paroled" into the US specially in order to work with Mr. Katsyv on this case and "assist" his attorneys. However, she claims that she was harassed by the Obama immigration service, when she tried to reenter the country in the first week of January she was detained and strip searched.
So much for news articles getting it right. I find this kind of basic lack of research very commonplace on legal issues. They just don't even bother looking up the case.
That case was filed on March 9, 2013, so it was "abruptly settled" more than four (4) years after it was commenced.
Before President Trump summarily fired him, Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, explained the Prevezon case this way:
In 2007, a Russian criminal organization engaged in an elaorate tax refund fraud scheme resulting in a fraudulently-obtained tax refund of approximately $230 million from the Russian treasury....
Yes, that's a nice case to be prosecuted in Russia, not the Southern District of New York. I doubt the Obama Justice Department was prosecuting companies who robbed the Russian Treasury, in Russia.
Members of the criminal organization, and associates of those members, have also engaged in a broad pattern of money laundering in order to conceal the proceeds of the fraud scheme. In a complex series of transfers through shell corporations, the $230 million from the Russian treasury was laundered into numerous accounts in Russia and other countries....
Yes, but only about $1.5 or so million were at issue in the case in the Southern District of New York. That's the money traceable to the defendants.
PREVEZON HOLDINGS laundered these fraud proceeds into its real estate holdings,
"these proceeds" is not the $230 million. It's the approximately $1.5 million.
including investment in multiple units of high-end commercial space and luxury apartments in Manhattan, and created multiple other corporations, also subject to the forfeiture action, to hold these properties.
Sure, but when the settlement is for 3 times the amount of the directly traceable funds, then there's not much more of an upside at trial.
The facts underlying the Prevezon case—including the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who uncovered the fraud, in a Russian prison—led to the passage of unprecedented sanctions against the Russian officials thought to be complicit.
Awesome, and the Magnitsky Act is still in force.
Nevertheless, two days before trial was set to begin, the Department agreed to settle this $230 million case for less than $6 million with no admission of wrongdoing.
Only, it's not a $230 million case. The $230 million, as they flat out said in the article, was the amount alleged to have been taken from the Russian Treasury. That is not the amount that was at issue in the prosecution in this case.
Ms. Veselnitskaya told one Russian news outlet that the penalty was so light that it seemed "almost an apology from the government."
LOL. Case closed, then, I guess. Can't be that the case wasn't as ironclad as the government would have hoped, or that the money at issue in the Southern District of New York case was not super-high.
The case at issue is not a criminal prosecution, by the way. It's brought under civil asset forfeiture laws. So the case is not criminal. Not a money laundering case, per se, and not a case involving tax fraud in the Russian Federation. The only assets they can grab are the ones in the jurisdiction and which are directly traceable to the defendant entities. They would never get a judgment for $230,000,000 dollars - the government itself said that the only directly traceable moneys were the approximately $1.5 million. So, to settle for 3 times that amount doesn't seem like an unreasonably small settlement.
Now, if you wanted to paint this as "suspicious" in some way, you'd point to the alleged $230,000,000 russian tax fraud, and then highlight the $6,000,000 settlement and imply that there is some "abrupt" settlement for such a small amount.
Background on the Prevezon settlement:
"'The offer was too good to refuse': A major Russian money-laundering case was unexpectedly settled in New York"
The investigation into whether Prevezon, a real-estate company incorporated in Cyprus, laundered millions of dollars into New York City real estate garnered high-profile attention given its ties to a $230 million Russian tax-fraud scheme and Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose suspicious death aroused international media attention.
Magnitsky uncovered the scheme in 2008 on behalf of one of his clients at the time, the investment advisory firm Hermitage Capital. He was later thrown in jail and died in custody, and an independent human-rights commission found he had been illegally arrested and beaten. The Kremlin maintains that Magnitsky died of a heart attack.
...
The Russian government declined to provide the US government with evidence of Russian money flows that would strengthen the case against Prevezon. Nikolai Gorokhov, a lawyer representing Magnitsky's family, was able to photograph documents contained in a Russian case file targeting two people involved in the $230 million scheme that traced the money to Russia.
Gorokhov mysteriously fell from a window in Moscow just over a month before he was due to testify in the Prevezon case. But the documents he photographed were admitted into evidence just days before Prevezon agreed to settle.
[/quote][/quote]
So, what? What?
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar
He must have a nervous tic or something...
Such sweet innocence!
