Trump lashes out at Gov. Doug Ducey following certification

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Ex-boyfriend [Pedro Vilarva] of George Santos speaks out to CNN
by Erib Burnett
CNN
Jan 26, 2023

CNN's Erin Burnett talks to the former boyfriend of embattled Rep. George Santos (R-NY) about their relationship and the many false claims Santos has publicly made. #CNN #News



Transcript

0:00
New video tonight of embattled
0:01
Republican Congressman George Santos
0:03
under fire
0:04
for telling a long list of lies
0:05
to voters.
0:06
Dodging questions from our Manu
0:07
Raju, specifically refusing to say why
0:09
among many other lies,
0:11
he falsely claimed to be a member
0:13
of the Baruch College volleyball team.
0:15
Here's Santos, his response.
0:17
Why did you lie
0:18
about being on a volleyball
0:20
you're like American people.
0:22
When you stop
0:25
reporting, I'll start to show
0:26
where you actually were on a volleyball
0:28
team.
0:28
Is that right?
0:29
In college, Baruch College.
0:30
Is that true?
0:32
Is that true?
0:34
This is Santos
0:35
ex-boyfriend is speaking
0:36
to OUTFRONT
0:37
for his first television interview
0:39
and an OUTFRONT exclusive.
0:40
Pedro Vilarva
0:41
shared this photo with us of him
0:43
celebrating Christmas with Santos
0:45
and other loved ones in 2014.
0:48
He told me that Santos went by the name
0:49
Anthony Devolder when they dated.
0:51
They lived together for about a year.
0:53
And the Lava says
0:54
he repeatedly turned down
0:55
Santos proposals to get engaged
0:59
Pedro joins me now from Brazil.
1:01
And Pedro,
1:02
I very much appreciate your time
1:03
and I know
1:04
that you're
1:05
deciding to speak out
1:06
was a very careful decision
1:09
Does this George Santos,
1:11
the one that we are now all seeing, sound
1:14
like the man that you dated
1:15
and lived with?
1:17
No.
1:18
Not at all.
1:20
Completely different person.
1:23
How so?
1:26
It's just
1:27
at the beginning of the relationship.
1:29
It was fine.
1:31
He was so sweet, caring
1:35
He actually showed
1:37
that he actually cared, you know?
1:39
But later on,
1:40
like when I started finding out the lies,
1:43
I thought that was it.
1:45
That it was my phone.
1:46
The ones that he stole, that
1:49
you ponded that I believe
1:52
the jewelry as well from from our friend
1:55
that used to live with us.
1:57
And so,
1:58
like the tickets to Hawaii that he had
2:01
purchased for us to
2:02
go where he was planning
2:03
to be
2:04
proposing for the third time as well.
2:07
Well, the engagement never happened.
2:09
Nothing like that.
2:11
I know you say Santos
2:14
repeatedly asked you to get engaged
2:16
before you broke up,
2:17
and he appears, Pedro,
2:18
to reference you
2:19
in an Instagram post
2:20
that you shared with us from 2015
2:23
he writes,
2:24
This is my family that I managed to
2:26
screw up.
2:27
I will not give up.
2:28
I will fight till the end.
2:29
I love you, PvE.
2:31
I miss you now.
2:33
Pedro, you were 18
2:34
and Santos was 26 when you met him.
2:37
When did you know
2:39
that you couldn't trust him?
2:42
Towards the end of the relationship.
2:44
It was more started.
2:45
Like I started finding out
2:46
about the lights in December
2:48
and then it went on till February.
2:52
And then
2:53
that's when I broke up with them.
2:55
And then I went on my way.
2:58
But then later on,
2:59
like we still had contact with each other
3:01
because he didn't like,
3:02
I found out about the lies,
3:03
but we still kept
3:05
in contact with each other
3:06
just being like, Oh, how are you?
3:09
How's your mom and stuff?
3:10
Because when I found out
3:10
that she was sick, I still cared for her.
3:13
And then I went to visit her
3:14
a couple of times later on.
3:16
But then
3:17
when I found out about the other stuff,
3:19
I was like, What a psycho
3:22
You know,
3:23
I want to share a picture of you
3:24
that you shared
3:25
with us of you and his mother.
3:27
You say you were close.
3:28
And besides, you know,
3:30
he said she's was a survivor of the nine
3:32
11 terror attacks, right? She was.
3:33
He also claims
3:34
she was an executive at Citigroup.
3:36
She was a part of many of his lies there.
3:38
There you are with her.
3:39
This is a picture you shared with us.
3:42
Did did she ever discuss
3:43
these these lives with you?
3:45
Did she know any of this?
3:47
Oh, I never
3:50
know. Nine 11? No.
3:52
Citigroup, nothing like that
3:54
from when I was with them.
3:56
I never saw her going to work
3:57
at Citigroup. Or anything.
3:59
And they never mentioned anything
4:01
about nine 11,
4:02
even because I was born on nine 11.
4:05
And if I see if they knew that
4:08
I was born in nine 11,
4:09
I think they were going to reference that
4:11
and say something about it,
4:13
but never heard anything about it.
4:16
I want to play Jorge Santos
4:18
what we've all now heard
4:19
Pedro explaining
4:20
who he is
4:21
in his own words over the years.
4:24
My grandparents survived the Holocaust.
4:27
I'm a Latino, too.
4:28
My mom was a nine elevenths survivor.
4:31
They sent me to a good prep school, so
4:33
and which was harassment.
4:34
Prep in the Bronx.
4:35
I actually went to school on
4:38
on a volleyball scholarship.
4:39
And when I was in Peru,
4:40
we were the number one volleyball.
4:42
But I put myself through college
4:44
and got an MBA from
4:45
NYU and also founded my own
4:47
nonprofit organization.
4:49
Prior to running, I decided to close it.
4:52
It was an animal rescue
4:53
We had a great organization.
4:55
We were able to save animals, dogs,
4:57
cats, horses.
4:58
I've lived an honest life.
4:59
I've never been accused, sued of anything
5:04
bad doing.
5:06
I do want to
5:07
note, of course,
5:07
he was charged with embezzlement.
5:09
So he has obviously been
5:10
accused of bad doing.
5:11
But you know, Pedro,
5:12
the point is
5:13
some of these lies were so minor
5:15
and yet so specific.
5:16
I mean, the volleyball one. Right.
5:18
Not just saying that
5:19
he played volleyball,
5:20
but he had a scholarship
5:21
that he slayed teams
5:22
from Harvard and Yale
5:23
that he was the smallest player
5:24
on the team, that he needed
5:25
to get two knee replacements.
5:27
I mean, you know,
5:27
he went deep with the lies.
5:30
Why does he do this?
5:31
I think he was I don't know.
5:33
I think he's just out of his mind.
5:35
And one lie led to the other.
5:38
And now this.
5:39
Everybody found out.
5:40
Like they're finding out
5:42
like the little stuff as well.
5:44
I just think
5:46
he should now be in Congress.
5:49
And one.
5:51
Oh, my God.
5:51
It was so many things that I found out
5:53
afterwards as well.
5:55
Things that I did not know
5:56
because I still believe that
5:57
he actually went to college.
5:59
Like like he used to say
6:01
I already knew about the Citigroup.
6:03
They he said that he used to work in
6:05
like those investments.
6:06
And so so I already knew that
6:08
those were lies
6:09
because I never saw him working actually.
6:13
But then
6:15
the other stuff,
6:16
like the stuff about the part
6:19
he actually did used to say
6:21
about the organization,
6:22
about football as well,
6:24
that he used to do like
6:28
he there was another person.
6:30
They also had a pet organization,
6:32
so they used to have like a little
6:34
picking fights with each other as also
6:38
But then I never saw
6:39
anything going towards there like
6:44
charity stuff when we were together.
6:47
He never used to do anything.
6:48
So for his dad.
6:49
So it was so it's.
6:51
You know, what do you say?
6:52
Are you surprised he's
6:53
now a member of Congress?
6:55
That
6:56
that was that was an ambition that he had
7:00
always what he always looked for
7:03
was fame and power.
7:06
That's all the all he cared about.
7:09
And he got it.
7:09
He got the thing
7:11
of the lies
7:12
and he got the power
7:13
that he's in Congress now.
7:14
But it's a he shouldn't be there.
7:17
Well, the story has gotten so big, right?
7:19
Everyone everyone
7:20
is paying attention to it.
7:21
You know,
7:21
he's being spoofed by late
7:23
night shows and other comedians.
7:26
Here's a clip from this
7:27
weekend's Saturday Night Live.
7:28
Don't know if you saw it,
7:29
but I'll play it for you, Peter.
7:32
You lied about your mom dying in nine 11.
7:34
I think I said seven 11.
7:36
No, you know,
7:38
you even lied about being Jewish.
7:39
No, I said I was Jewish.
7:42
Jewish people need to know who you are.
7:44
Okay, well,
7:44
I am George
7:45
Santo's mischievous older sister.
7:48
Nasty.
7:50
I graduated on a volleyball scholarship
7:52
from Baraka tomorrow night.
7:53
University
7:57
I see you laughing.
7:58
People are laughing.
7:59
But obviously, you know,
8:01
this is serious stuff.
8:02
I mean,
8:02
do you think that he'll ever resign?
8:06
I don't think so.
8:07
His ego's too is too big.
8:10
Isn't too high.
8:11
He's not going to resign
8:13
if they don't find out
8:14
something to get him off
8:15
he's not going to do it, that's for sure.
8:17
All right.
8:18
Well, Pedro, I appreciate your time.
8:19
Thank you very, very much.
8:22
I appreciate your time as well.
8:24
Thank you so much.

[admin]

George Santos is a ‘perfect monument’ to House GOP lies
by Lawrence O'Donnell
MSNBC
Jan 26, 2023

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains how George Santos’s newest lie that his response to the press will be “comprehensive,” along with his failure to answer questions about his possible campaign finance crimes, shows how “House Republicans are fully accepting of lies told to them that they know are lies.”



Transcript

0:01
WASHINGTON D.C. AND WE WILL
0:02
SHOW YOU THAT IN THE MID THANK
0:05
YOU ALEX EMIGRATE TO.
0:07
>> THANK YOU.
0:09
WELL IT EXACTLY THE SAME LAST
0:10
NIGHT WHEN WE BEGAN THIS
0:11
PROGRAM WITH THE NEWS THAT
0:13
GEORGE ANTHONY TO SANTOS DID
0:14
NOT ACCEPT AN INVITATION TO
0:17
WHITE HOUSE RECEPTION FOR ALL
0:18
MEMBERS OF CONGRESS BOTH
0:20
PARTIES.
0:21
PROBABLY BECAUSE THE WHITE
0:23
HOUSE TOXICITIES.
0:24
THEY DO BACKGROUND CHECKS OF
0:26
EVERY VISITOR.
0:27
WE NOW KNOW EXACTLY WHERE
0:30
CONGRESSMAN DEVOLDER SANTOS WAS
0:33
WHEN WE DELIVER THAT REPORT.
0:35
ALONG WITH THE BREAKING NEWS
0:36
LAST NIGHT THAT THE PERSON
0:37
LISTED AS THE NEW TREASURE
0:46
GEORGE SANTOS WAS NOT SIGNED BY
0:48
THE PERSON HE'S SERVED AS A
0:59
TREASURE ON MANY CAMPAIGNS.
0:59
HE HAD A WRITTEN STATEMENT OF
1:01
THE NEW CAMPAIGN FINANCE
1:02
DARTMOUTH BEARING ELECTRONICS
1:05
INTEREST COMPLETELY WRONG.
1:06
HE DIDN'T AUTHORIZE THE SANDERS
1:09
CAMPAIGN TO LOSE THE SIGNATURE.
1:11
HE DOES NOT VOTE FOR ANY
1:12
INFORMATION AND THAT NEW
1:16
CAMPAIGN.
1:17
IT CHANGES THE DESCRIPTION THAT
1:19
FLOWED INTO THE CAMPAIGN.
1:23
IT CAME FROM THE CANDIDATES
1:24
PERSONAL FUNDS.
1:29
THEY DO NOT REVEAL.
1:32
FROM 99% OF POLITICIANS, THAT
1:37
NEWS BREAKING LAST NIGHT
1:40
WOULD'VE BEEN THE VERY WORST
1:42
NEWS OF THEIR LIVES.
1:45
IT WOULD'VE BEEN THE DARKEST
1:46
MOMENT OF THEIR LIFE AS
1:47
POLITICIANS FOR 99% OF THE
1:50
POLITICIANS.
1:53
THEY NEVER LIED ABOUT WHERE
1:54
THEIR INTO SCHOOL, WHERE THEY
1:54
WORK, OR RANDOMLY THROWN
1:57
SOMEONE ELECTRONICS IGNORANT TO
1:58
THEIR CAMPAIGN FINANCE FILINGS.
2:01
IT SEEMS TO HAVE A POSSIBLE
2:04
CAMPAIGN FINANCE CRIME.
2:07
MOST POLITICIANS NEVER COME
2:10
CLOSE TO SCANDAL MOMENT.
2:11
GEORGE ANTHONY FOUND HIMSELF IN
2:13
THIS AT EXACTLY THIS TIME, THIS
2:17
VERY MINUTE LAST TIME.
2:23
WHEN THEY ARE THIS FAR DOWN THE
2:24
TEE POLAND SCANDAL, THE
2:26
POSSIBLE CRIME.
2:27
IT HAS STATE FEDERAL
2:28
PROSECUTORS CLOSING IN ON IT.
2:31
WE KNOW EXACTLY WHERE GEORGE
2:33
SANTOS WAS LAST NIGHT.
2:38
WHEN I WAS REVEALING THE LATEST
2:39
ELEMENTS OF WHAT MAYBE THE
2:42
CAMPAIGN.
2:43
WHEN HE WAS OUT OF THE TUNNEL
2:44
WASHINGTON D.C., YOU WOULD
2:46
THINK BY NOW THE GEORGE SANTOS
2:49
MIGHT TAKE A CERTAIN PLEASURE
2:51
IN WEARING AN N95 MASK, EVEN IF
2:53
HE THINKS HE'S NOT AT RISK OF
2:57
COVID-19.
2:58
JUST TO MAKE IT THAT MUCH
2:59
HARDER TO RECOGNIZE MELTED ON
3:00
THE WORLD, YOU WOULD THINK BY
3:02
NOW.
3:06
IT'S WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
3:07
ANOTHER PAIR OF GLASSES.
3:09
THEY WOULDN'T GO OUT THERE
3:11
TOWARDS ON MYSTICAL TRADEMARK
3:15
EYEGLASSES.
3:15
AT THIS TIME LAST NIGHT, HE WAS
3:18
IN PLACE WHERE MOST PEOPLE
3:19
DON'T LOOK AT THAT CAME FROM
3:21
THE OFFICE.
3:21
MOST PEOPLE ARE VERY CASUALLY
3:22
JESS THERE BUT GEORGE ANTHONY
3:25
DEVOLDER SANTOS PROVING ONCE
3:28
AGAIN THAT HE DESPERATELY
3:28
CRAVES AND PATHOLOGICALLY
3:30
THRIVES THE TENSION IS GETTING
3:35
INTO A KARAOKE BAR IN
3:36
WASHINGTON D.C..
3:37
HE WENT JUST AS GEORGE SANTOS.
3:42
HE WENT TO A PLACE CALLED HILL
3:43
COUNTRY JUST OF PENNSYLVANIA
3:47
AVENUE BETWEEN THE CAPITOL AT,
3:48
HOUSE EAST UP TO WEIGH --
3:53
SNOT THE NEIGHBORHOOD YOU GO TO,
3:55
NOT THE PLACE TO GO TO MIDNIGHT
3:57
IN WASHINGTON D.C..
4:01
YOU CAN DO THIS IF YOU WANT TO
4:03
BE SEEN.
4:03
HE WAS SEEN.
4:05
HE WAS VIDEOED EXACTLY 10:10
4:08
PM.
4:11
WHO'S BEEN NBC NEWS STAFFER.
4:13
IT WENT LIKE THIS.
4:16
>> YOU ARE NOT GOING TO TRY TO
4:18
INTERVIEW ME.
4:19
>> I WILL TELL YOU THIS, YOU
4:21
ARE RECORDING.
4:23
I WILL SAY THIS, --
4:29
>> SO, OUT OF THE TOWN AS
4:38
EXACTLY WHAT HE DOES THE OFFICE
4:40
BUILDING.
4:41
HE REVELED IN TENSION OF THE
4:43
CAMERA, IF YOU JUST ANSWER
4:45
QUESTIONS.
4:48
HE LIES HE JUST ATTORNEY
4:52
RESPONSE TO THE PRESS IS GONNA
4:53
BE COMPREHENSIVE.
4:54
THAT IS A LOT.
4:54
I WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE.
4:56
HE WILL NOT ANSWER EVERY
4:57
QUESTION WITH ASKED HIM.
5:00
HE MIGHT NEVER ANSWER ANY
5:02
QUESTIONS ASKED OF HIM OUTSIDE
5:07
OF A COURTROOM.
5:08
YOU HAVE A RIGHT NOT TO TESTIFY,
5:09
WE MAY NEVER HEAR GEORGE SANTOS
5:12
ANSWER A SINGLE QUESTION ABOUT
5:15
WHERE HE GOT THE $700,000.
5:19
IT'S NOW OFFICIALLY LISTED AS
5:23
AN ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN
5:27
CONTRIBUTION.
5:28
THEY DID NOT COME FROM THE
5:29
CANDIDATES PRECIP FUND.
5:32
IT'S ONLY SOURCE RUN AMOK THAT
5:36
LARGE CAN COME FROM.
5:39
THERE ARE TWO REASONS THAT
5:40
SANTOS STILL A MEMBER OF THE
5:43
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
5:45
KEVIN MCCARTHY IS THE WEAKEST
5:48
WEAKER DESPERATELY NEEDS
5:52
SANTOS.
5:53
HE NEEDS THE MONEY.
5:54
AT THIS POINT THERE IS NO
5:56
EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER THAT GEORGE
5:59
SANTOS HAS EVER EARNED MORE
6:03
MONEY THAN THE PAYCHECK HE'S
6:05
GETTING RIGHT NOW.
6:12
WE HAVE NEVER SEEN A SANTOS TAX
6:15
RETURN.
6:16
SO, WE HAVE NO IDEA IF HE HAS
6:18
EVER MADE THAT MUCH MONEY
6:20
BEFORE AN'S LIFE.
6:21
HE IS NEVER LIVED LIKE SOMEONE
6:23
MAKING THIS MUCH A YEAR.
6:28
HE'S NEVER HAD THE HOME OF THAT
6:32
INCOME HAS PROVIDED FOR AN
6:33
INDIVIDUAL.
6:33
YOU SEE POLITICIANS LIKE GEORGE
6:35
SANTOS, NOT THAT WE'VE EVER
6:36
SEEN ONE LIKE HIM BEFORE.
6:39
WHEN YOU SEE A POLITICIAN AND
6:43
THIS MUCH HOPE WAS TROUBLE WITH
6:43
HIS PREVIOUS SUPPORTER BECKHAM
6:45
DEMANDING HERE IS NINE, ALONG
6:47
WITH HIS FELLOW REPUBLICAN
6:49
DEMANDING HE RESIGN.
6:54
ALL THESE POLITICIANS NEED THE
6:56
MONEY, THEY ONLY THE PAYCHECK.
7:00
THEY ONLY THEN CAN FROM THE
7:01
JOB.
7:02
EVERYONE IS DEMANDING THE
7:03
RESIGNED FROM IT.
7:05
EVERY DAY THAT GEORGE ANTHONY
7:06
REMAINS IN THE HOUSE OF
7:07
REPRESENTATIVES, HE DOUBLE
7:09
UNDERLINES THE HOUSE REPUBLICAN
7:13
PARTY'S RELATIONSHIP TO LYING.
7:14
AND WHAT HE SHOWS IS THAT LINE
7:18
IS A COMFORTABLE TWO WAY STREET
7:20
FOR HOUSE REPUBLICANS.
7:22
YES A LOT OF THEIR VOTERS FOR
7:25
2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.
7:26
THE REPUBLICANS OF ALWAYS LIKE
7:27
TO VOTERS ABOUT TAX CUTS FOR
7:28
THE RICH.
7:30
ACTUALLY, IT SOMEHOW INCREASES
7:31
REVENUE TO THE TREASURY.
7:35
IN FACT, THAT DRAMATICALLY CUTS
7:37
THE REVENUE TO THE TREASURY AS
7:38
IT HAS OVERTIME.
7:40
IT'S CREATING HUGE DEFICITS.
7:42
CREATES NATIONAL DEBT AS TAP
7:44
CUTS HAVE EVERY TIME.
7:46
MANY OF YOU COULD SPEND THE
7:48
NEXT SEVERAL MINUTES RATTLING
7:49
OFF LIES HOUSE REPUBLICANS HAVE
7:51
TOLD, WITHOUT EVEN INCLUDING
7:52
THE DANGEROUS QANON MADNESS.
7:58
BUT THE LESS EMPHASIZED PART OF
8:00
THE REPUBLICAN LIE, THAT HOUSE
8:03
REPUBLICANS ARE FULLY ACCEPTING
8:05
OF LIES TOLD TO THEM.
8:11
THANK MINERALIZE.
8:13
MOST OF THE HOUSE REPUBLICANS
8:15
KNEW THAT EVERYTHING DONALD
8:17
TRUMP AND RUDY GIULIANI SAID
8:18
ABOUT THAT ELECTION WAS A LIE.
8:21
BUT THEY WANTED TO BE LIED TO.
8:28
GEORGE SANTOS LYING TO THEM IS
8:32
SOMETHING THAT REPUBLICANS IN
8:33
THE HOUSE EXCEPT EVERY DAY FROM
8:35
DONALD TRUMP.
8:36
AND OTHER REPUBLICANS.
8:37
BUT I LIKE DONALD, TRUMP GEORGE
8:38
SANTOS HAVE SNOW FALLING IN THE
8:40
REPUBLICAN PARTY.
8:41
HE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A
8:41
FOLLOWING ANYMORE IN HIS LONG
8:43
ISLAND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
8:45
PUBLIC.
8:48
CONGRESSMAN SANTOS DOES NOT
8:49
REPRESENT THE THINKING OF A
8:51
MAJORITY OF THE REPUBLICAN
8:52
PARTY VOTERS.
8:53
THEY FEEL NOTHING FOR GEORGE
8:53
SANTOS.
8:54
NOTHING POSITIVE.
8:55
AND SO, GEORGE SANTOS WHO HAS
8:59
BECOME THE MOST FAMOUS
9:01
REPUBLICAN FRESHMAN CONGRESSMAN
9:04
HISTORY POSTAL PREVENTATIVE
9:07
CENTER EVERY DAY IN THE HOUSE
9:08
OF REPRESENTATIVES IS THE
9:10
PERFECT MONUMENT THE LIVES
9:13
PUBLICANS TELL TO THEIR VOTERS
9:19
AND EACH OTHER.
9:19
THE HOUSE REPUBLICAN POSITION
9:23
IS ALLY.
9:23
THEY TELL ONLY WHEN WE HAVE A
9:27
DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT.
9:32
ON THE DEBT CEILING, WHEN THERE
9:35
IS A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT --
9:37
>> SO, WHEN THEY START TALKING
9:39
ABOUT USING THE DEBT CEILING AS
9:43
A WATCH TO NEGOTIATE FOR THINGS
9:44
THAT THEY WANT, THEY HAVE TOLD
9:45
ME VERY STRONGLY THAT THEY
9:48
WOULD NEVER USE

***************************************

Man [Christian Lopez] says George Santos pitched investment in firm Feds call a Ponzi scheme
by Laura Coates
CNN
Jan 26, 2023

CNN's Laura Coates speaks with Christian Lopez and his attorney Tiffany Bogosian about a 2020 dinner during which Lopez says George Santos tried to get him to invest $300,000 in a firm that Federal authorities say is a Ponzi scheme. Santos has denied any wrongdoing.



Transcript


0:01
In that case, stick around,
0:04
please come back and it is a
0:08
business dinner, back in 2020.
0:10
That was attended by Christian
0:12
Lopez, and his attorney with
0:14
iffy because Ian.
0:17
Santos, looking for harbor city
0:20
capital, which is a Florida
0:22
-based investment firms.
0:24
Lopez says, he was pitching him
0:26
to invest $300, 000, but Lopez
0:30
declined.
0:30
The exchange commission is
0:35
accused of being a Ponzi
0:36
scheme.
0:36
Santos denied any knowledge,
0:39
but Cynthia because in, and
0:41
Andrew Lopez joins us now.
0:42
I want to begin with you and,
0:44
welcome to the program.
0:45
Christian, let me begin with
0:47
you here.
0:49
Per the reporting, Santos
0:50
brought you to a restaurant,
0:53
the hidden November of 2020.
0:56
He want to do to invest about
0:59
$300,000.
0:59
Can you tell us what happened
1:01
in that instance?
1:01
>> Yes.
1:03
He was trying to pitch me some
1:05
ideas that, basically, is
1:10
giving 300, 000, and every tool
1:13
in a few weeks, and is not make
1:17
any sense to me, honestly.
1:18
>> You describe the situation
1:20
out of a scene from goodfellas.
1:22
Tell me about what you mean?
1:24
>> When you go into this
1:27
restaurant we, were greeted
1:29
very good.
1:29
We were like family.
1:30
I've never step foot in there
1:31
in my life.
1:32
I neither had my lawyer, or my
1:34
girlfriend.
1:34
We go in there is going on to a
1:39
second floor, and it's a big
1:41
room.
1:41
One table, a butler, and George
1:45
Santos.
1:46
Right there I would say, what?
1:48
This is different.
1:49
This is nice.
1:52
I had never been treated this
1:55
nice before, but we are going
1:56
to see what's going on here.
2:00
They went they ordered some
2:02
food, they went to order the
2:05
business, and that is looking
2:08
at it all along there.
2:10
It makes no sense.
2:12
>> What were the red flags that
2:13
made you suspicious about this
2:15
venture?
2:15
>> Basically, he was saying,
2:19
the worst thing you could say
2:20
to anybody.
2:21
If you give us 300, 000, you
2:23
are not allowed to know what
2:25
you are investing into.
2:26
Basically, I give money to him,
2:28
and I don't know if he is
2:30
making bombs, I don't know,
2:32
drugs, whatever he invest this
2:34
money into, I don't know where
2:35
he sending it.
2:36
He said, it has nothing to do
2:37
with you.
2:37
All you need to do is give me
2:39
the money, and then every 2 to
2:41
3 weeks, I will give you
2:44
$3,000.
2:44
And I said, how?
2:45
How does this make sense?
2:47
It just doesn't sound right.
2:49
And then he tried to use the
2:52
fact that he was in line with
2:55
trump, and he had people, and
2:56
all of these other things, and
2:57
they would do good.
3:01
It is things like that.
3:02
>> Let's bring you in here,
3:04
Tiffany.
3:04
You should know that the sec is
3:06
looking into this as a Ponzi
3:08
scheme, and of course, any
3:12
criminal activity suggested as
3:14
what's being purchased, what
3:15
the money has been going for.
3:16
So we will, note of course, we
3:18
did reach out to George Santos
3:19
for comment, and did not
3:20
receive it in this instance.
3:22
Tiffany, you know Santos, and
3:25
you agreed to dinner is the
3:29
liaison in the two, it could be
3:31
a scam.
3:31
What set off alarm bells to you?
3:35
>> Unfortunately, I was the
3:37
mediary between Christian and
3:39
George.
3:39
I read tread data, 1000%, but
3:42
thankfully, it did not go
3:43
further.
3:45
So, essentially, for junior
3:50
high school with me we,
3:53
attended I.S. 1:25 and sunny
3:55
side queens.
3:57
After junior high school, we
3:59
lost touch, and we reacquainted
4:02
ourselves in 2019.
4:06
In this case, Christians case
4:09
occurred in 2018.
4:10
By the time it came to
4:12
settlement, it was 2020, and as
4:14
a closer to a settlement, I
4:16
mean, this was my first, large
4:19
case, out of law school, on my
4:21
own.
4:21
I was excited about it, and I
4:23
was telling everybody.
4:26
Everywhere that I had worked,
4:27
with different annuity
4:28
companies, and this is as far
4:32
as they go with it.
4:33
Harbor city capital, which I
4:35
find so ironic he says, fake
4:37
news, fake media, disingenuous
4:40
reporting.
4:43
He never said anything about
4:45
harbor city capital, at that
4:46
center.
4:46
He led us to believe, and lead
4:49
Christian to believe that at
4:50
the time, they worked for
4:54
Goldman Sachs.
4:55
The personal banker on behalf
4:57
of Goldman Sachs, and all of
4:59
these representations is on
5:02
behalf of Goldman Sachs.
5:03
In fact, so the red flags came
5:07
up as far as, you don't know
5:09
what you are investing in.
5:10
For me, the red flags came up a
5:13
media immediately, and when I
5:16
read $300,000 a month on an
5:18
interest and investment.
5:19
I have worked with several
5:20
annuity companies, with large
5:23
investments.
5:27
$3,000 a month is unheard of.
5:29
That was a huge red flag, and
5:32
there after, he followed up
5:33
with Christian sending
5:35
confidence, and memorandums,
5:36
again, from harbor city
5:38
capital.
5:38
Acting at the dinner is on
5:43
behalf of Goldman Sachs.
5:46
It was an employee of Goldman
5:49
Sachs, and the fact that
5:51
Christian is applying to this
5:54
is, essentially, him calling me,
5:56
and was very upset.
5:57
That was the last conversation
5:59
they had at home, which is
6:01
where, he said, he was very
6:04
upset.
6:05
It was an embarrassment to
6:06
covax, and was a cpany
6:08
current.
6:08
I said, listen this is the
6:11
nature business, clients have
6:14
to choose who to not vote with
6:17
you.
6:18
And so, essentially, he never
6:20
spoke to me after that we'll
6:23
have these lines were exposed,
6:26
he never worked for Goldman
6:28
Sachs, for citigroup, or
6:29
anything like that, I was
6:31
beyond belief.
6:31
Now, you are thinking, somebody
6:33
is pulling into their own
6:35
pockets to disperse this kind
6:36
of money, to create these,
6:38
bells and these whistles, to
6:39
essentially take advantage.
6:40
He was, essentially, going to
6:44
make off with, it essentially.
6:46
>> At one point, I would say --
6:48
sorry to interrupt you, but all
6:50
three of us were to shaking our
6:51
head, throughout the story, and
6:53
just thinking that this is what
6:54
you are describing, and what
6:56
you are telling here.
6:56
Especially, it is not in a
6:58
vacuum.
6:58
We talk about this as a sitting member of congress. Thank you so much all of you for joining us today. I appreciate it.

[admin]

How Barr’s Quest to Find Flaws in the Russia Inquiry Unraveled: The review by John Durham at one point veered into a criminal investigation related to Donald Trump himself, even as it failed to find wrongdoing in the origins of the Russia inquiry.
by Charlie Savage, Adam Goldman and Katie Benner
New York Times
Jan. 26, 2023

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[x]
The veteran prosecutor John H. Durham was given the job of determining whether there was any wrongdoing behind the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Credit Samuel Corum for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — It became a regular litany of grievances from President Donald J. Trump and his supporters: The investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia was a witch hunt, they maintained, that had been opened without any solid basis, went on too long and found no proof of collusion.

Egged on by Mr. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr set out in 2019 to dig into their shared theory that the Russia investigation likely stemmed from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. To lead the inquiry, Mr. Barr turned to a hard-nosed prosecutor named John H. Durham, and later granted him special counsel status to carry on after Mr. Trump left office.

But after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Mr. Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep state plot alleged by Mr. Trump and suspected by Mr. Barr.

Moreover, a monthslong review by The New York Times found that the main thrust of the Durham inquiry was marked by some of the very same flaws — including a strained justification for opening it and its role in fueling partisan conspiracy theories that would never be charged in court — that Trump allies claim characterized the Russia investigation.

Interviews by The Times with more than a dozen current and former officials have revealed an array of previously unreported episodes that show how the Durham inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes as it went unsuccessfully down one path after another even as Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr promoted a misleading narrative of its progress.

** Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump. The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.

** Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.

** There were deeper internal fractures on the Durham team than previously known. The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)

Now, as Mr. Durham works on a final report, the interviews by The Times provide new details of how he and Mr. Barr sought to recast the scrutiny of the 2016 Trump campaign’s myriad if murky links to Russia as unjustified and itself a crime.

Mr. Barr, Mr. Durham and Ms. Dannehy declined to comment. The current and former officials who discussed the investigation all spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the legal, political and intelligence sensitivities surrounding the topic.

A year into the Durham inquiry, Mr. Barr declared that the attempt “to get to the bottom of what happened” in 2016 “cannot be, and it will not be, a tit-for-tat exercise. We are not going to lower the standards just to achieve a result.”

But Robert Luskin, a criminal defense lawyer and former Justice Department prosecutor who represented two witnesses Mr. Durham interviewed, said that he had a hard time squaring Mr. Durham’s prior reputation as an independent-minded straight shooter with his end-of-career conduct as Mr. Barr’s special counsel.

“This stuff has my head spinning,” Mr. Luskin said. “When did these guys drink the Kool-Aid, and who served it to them?”

[x]
Attorney General William P. Barr took office in 2019 with suspicions about the origins of the Russia investigation. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

An Odd Couple

A month after Mr. Barr was confirmed as attorney general in February 2019, the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III ended the Russia investigation and turned in his report without charging any Trump associates with engaging in a criminal conspiracy with Moscow over its covert operation to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election.

Mr. Trump would repeatedly portray the Mueller report as having found “no collusion with Russia.” The reality was more complex. In fact, the report detailed “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign,” and it established both how Moscow had worked to help Mr. Trump win and how his campaign had expected to benefit from the foreign interference.

That spring, Mr. Barr assigned Mr. Durham to scour the origins of the Russia investigation for wrongdoing, telling Fox News that he wanted to know if “officials abused their power and put their thumb on the scale” in deciding to pursue the investigation. “A lot of the answers have been inadequate, and some of the explanations I’ve gotten don’t hang together,” he added.

While attorneys general overseeing politically sensitive inquiries tend to keep their distance from the investigators, Mr. Durham visited Mr. Barr in his office for at times weekly updates and consultations about his day-to-day work. They also sometimes dined and sipped Scotch together, people familiar with their work said.

In some ways, they were an odd match. Taciturn and media-averse, the goateed Mr. Durham had spent more than three decades as a prosecutor before Mr. Trump appointed him the U.S. attorney for Connecticut. Administrations of both parties had assigned him to investigate potential official wrongdoing, like allegations of corrupt ties between mafia informants and F.B.I. agents, and the C.I.A.’s torture of terrorism detainees and destruction of evidence.

By contrast, the vocal and domineering Mr. Barr has never prosecuted a case and is known for using his law enforcement platform to opine on culture-war issues and politics. He had effectively auditioned to be Mr. Trump’s attorney general by asserting to a New York Times reporter that there was more basis to investigate Mrs. Clinton than Mr. Trump’s “so-called ‘collusion’” with Russia, and by writing a memo suggesting a way to shield Mr. Trump from scrutiny for obstruction of justice.

But the two shared a worldview: They are both Catholic conservatives and Republicans, born two months apart in 1950. As a career federal prosecutor, Mr. Durham already revered the office of the attorney general, people who know him say. And as he was drawn into Mr. Barr’s personal orbit, Mr. Durham came to embrace that particular attorney general’s intense feelings about the Russia investigation.

[x]
President Donald J. Trump openly suggested that Mr. Durham should charge his adversaries with crimes. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

‘The Thinnest of Suspicions’

At the time Mr. Barr was confirmed, he told aides that he already suspected that intelligence abuses played a role in igniting the Russia investigation — and that unearthing any wrongdoing would be a priority.

In May 2019, soon after giving Mr. Durham his assignment, Mr. Barr summoned the head of the National Security Agency, Paul M. Nakasone, to his office. In front of several aides, Mr. Barr demanded that the N.S.A. cooperate with the Durham inquiry.

Referring to the C.I.A. and British spies, Mr. Barr also said he suspected that the N.S.A.’s “friends” had helped instigate the Russia investigation by targeting the Trump campaign, aides briefed on the meeting said. And repeating a sexual vulgarity, he warned that if the N.S.A. wronged him by not doing all it could to help Mr. Durham, Mr. Barr would do the same to the agency.

Mr. Barr’s insistence about what he had surmised bewildered intelligence officials. But Mr. Durham spent his first months looking for any evidence that the origin of the Russia investigation involved an intelligence operation targeting the Trump campaign.

Mr. Durham’s team spent long hours combing the C.I.A.’s files but found no way to support the allegation. Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham traveled abroad together to press British and Italian officials to reveal everything their agencies had gleaned about the Trump campaign and relayed to the United States, but both allied governments denied they had done any such thing. Top British intelligence officials expressed indignation to their U.S. counterparts about the accusation, three former U.S. officials said.

Mr. Durham and Mr. Barr had not yet given up when a new problem arose: In early December, the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, completed his own report on the origins of the Russia investigation.

The inspector general revealed errors and omissions in wiretap applications targeting a former Trump campaign adviser and determined that an F.B.I. lawyer had doctored an email in a way that kept one of those problems from coming to light. (Mr. Durham’s team later negotiated a guilty plea by that lawyer.)

But the broader findings contradicted Mr. Trump’s accusations and the rationale for Mr. Durham’s inquiry. Mr. Horowitz found no evidence that F.B.I. actions were politically motivated. And he concluded that the investigation’s basis — an Australian diplomat’s tip that a Trump campaign adviser had seemed to disclose advance knowledge that Russia would release hacked Democratic emails — had been sufficient to lawfully open it.

[x]
Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, found no evidence that the F.B.I.’s actions in opening the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia were politically motivated. Credit Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

The week before Mr. Horowitz released the report, he and aides came to Mr. Durham’s offices — nondescript suites on two floors of a building in northeast Washington — to go over it.

Mr. Durham lobbied Mr. Horowitz to drop his finding that the diplomat’s tip had been sufficient for the F.B.I. to open its “full” counterintelligence investigation, arguing that it was enough at most for a “preliminary” inquiry, according to officials. But Mr. Horowitz did not change his mind.

That weekend, Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham decided to weigh in publicly to shape the narrative on their terms.

Minutes before the inspector general’s report went online, Mr. Barr issued a statement contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s major finding, declaring that the F.B.I. opened the investigation “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient.” He would later tell Fox News that the investigation began “without any basis,” as if the diplomat’s tip never happened.

Mr. Trump also weighed in, telling reporters that the details of the inspector general’s report were “far worse than anything I would have even imagined,” adding: “I look forward to the Durham report, which is coming out in the not-too-distant future. It’s got its own information, which is this information plus, plus, plus.”

And the Justice Department sent reporters a statement from Mr. Durham that clashed with both Justice Department principles about not discussing ongoing investigations and his personal reputation as particularly tight-lipped. He said he disagreed with Mr. Horowitz’s conclusions about the Russia investigation’s origins, citing his own access to more information and “evidence collected to date.”

But as Mr. Durham’s inquiry proceeded, he never presented any evidence contradicting Mr. Horowitz’s factual findings about the basis on which F.B.I. officials opened the investigation.

By summer 2020, it was clear that the hunt for evidence supporting Mr. Barr’s hunch about intelligence abuses had failed. But he waited until after the 2020 election to publicly concede that there had turned out to be no sign of “foreign government activity” and that the C.I.A. had “stayed in its lane” after all.

[x]
Mr. Barr later wrote that his relationship with Mr. Trump eroded because his “failure to deliver scalps in time for the election.” Credit Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

An Awkward Tip

On one of Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham’s trips to Europe, according to people familiar with the matter, Italian officials — while denying any role in setting off the Russia investigation — unexpectedly offered a potentially explosive tip linking Mr. Trump to certain suspected financial crimes.

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham decided that the tip was too serious and credible to ignore. But rather than assign it to another prosecutor, Mr. Barr had Mr. Durham investigate the matter himself — giving him criminal prosecution powers for the first time — even though the possible wrongdoing by Mr. Trump did not fall squarely within Mr. Durham’s assignment to scrutinize the origins of the Russia inquiry, the people said.

Mr. Durham never filed charges, and it remains unclear what level of an investigation it was, what steps he took, what he learned and whether anyone at the White House ever found out. The extraordinary fact that Mr. Durham opened a criminal investigation that included scrutinizing Mr. Trump has remained secret.

But in October 2019, a garbled echo became public. The Times reported that Mr. Durham’s administrative review of the Russia inquiry had evolved to include a criminal investigation, while saying it was not clear what the suspected crime was. Citing their own sources, many other news outlets confirmed the development.

The news reports, however, were all framed around the erroneous assumption that the criminal investigation must mean Mr. Durham had found evidence of potential crimes by officials involved in the Russia inquiry. Mr. Barr, who weighed in publicly about the Durham inquiry at regular intervals in ways that advanced a pro-Trump narrative, chose in this instance not to clarify what was really happening.

By the spring and summer of 2020, with Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign in full swing, the Durham investigation’s “failure to deliver scalps in time for the election” began to erode Mr. Barr’s relationship with Mr. Trump, Mr. Barr wrote in his memoir.

Mr. Trump was stoking a belief among his supporters that Mr. Durham might charge former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. That proved too much for Mr. Barr, who in May 2020 clarified that “our concern of potential criminality is focused on others.”

Even so, in August, Mr. Trump lashed out in a Fox interview, asserting that Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden, along with top F.B.I. and intelligence officials, had been caught in “the single biggest political crime in the history of our country” and the only thing stopping charges would be if Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham wanted to be “politically correct.”

Against that backdrop, Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham did not shut down their inquiry when the search for intelligence abuses hit a dead end. With the inspector general’s inquiry complete, they turned to a new rationale: a hunt for a basis to accuse the Clinton campaign of conspiring to defraud the government by manufacturing the suspicions that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, along with scrutinizing what the F.B.I. and intelligence officials knew about the Clinton campaign’s actions.

Mr. Durham also developed an indirect method to impute political bias to law enforcement officials: comparing the Justice Department’s aggressive response to suspicions of links between Mr. Trump and Russia with its more cautious and skeptical reaction to various Clinton-related suspicions.

He examined an investigation into the Clinton Foundation’s finances in which the F.B.I.’s repeated requests for a subpoena were denied. He also scrutinized how the F.B.I. gave Mrs. Clinton a “defensive briefing” about suspicions that a foreign government might be trying to influence her campaign through donations, but did not inform Mr. Trump about suspicions that Russia might be conspiring with people associated with his campaign.

[x]
The Durham inquiry looked for evidence that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign had conspired to frame Donald J. Trump. Credit Doug mills/The New York Times

Dubious Intelligence

During the Russia investigation, the F.B.I. used claims from what turned out to be a dubious source, the Steele dossier — opposition research indirectly funded by the Clinton campaign — in its botched applications to wiretap a former Trump campaign aide.

The Durham investigation did something with parallels to that incident.

In Mr. Durham’s case, the dubious sources were memos, whose credibility the intelligence community doubted, written by Russian intelligence analysts and discussing purported conversations involving American victims of Russian hacking, according to people familiar with the matter.

The memos were part of a trove provided to the C.I.A. by a Dutch spy agency, which had infiltrated the servers of its Russian counterpart. The memos were said to make demonstrably inconsistent, inaccurate or exaggerated claims, and some U.S. analysts believed Russia may have deliberately seeded them with disinformation.

Mr. Durham wanted to use the memos, which included descriptions of Americans discussing a purported plan by Mrs. Clinton to attack Mr. Trump by linking him to Russia’s hacking and releasing in 2016 of Democratic emails, to pursue the theory that the Clinton campaign conspired to frame Mr. Trump. And in doing so, Mr. Durham sought to use the memos as justification to get access to the private communications of an American citizen.

One purported hacking victim identified in the memos was Leonard Benardo, the executive vice president of the Open Society Foundations, a pro-democracy organization whose Hungarian-born founder, Mr. Soros, has been vilified by the far right.

In 2017, The Washington Post reported that the Russian memos included a claim that Mr. Benardo and a Democratic member of Congress, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, had discussed how Loretta E. Lynch, the Obama-era attorney general, had supposedly promised to keep the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s emails from going too far.

But Mr. Benardo and Ms. Wasserman Schultz said they had never even met, let alone communicated about Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

Mr. Durham set out to prove that the memos described real conversations, according to people familiar with the matter. He sent a prosecutor on his team, Andrew DeFilippis, to ask Judge Beryl A. Howell, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, for an order allowing them to seize information about Mr. Benardo’s emails.

But Judge Howell decided that the Russian memo was too weak a basis to intrude on Mr. Benardo’s privacy, they said. Mr. Durham then personally appeared before her and urged her to reconsider, but she again ruled against him.

Rather than dropping the idea, Mr. Durham sidestepped Judge Howell’s ruling by invoking grand-jury power to demand documents and testimony directly from Mr. Soros’s foundation and Mr. Benardo about his emails, the people said. (It is unclear whether Mr. Durham served them with a subpoena or instead threatened to do so if they did not cooperate.)

Rather than fighting in court, the foundation and Mr. Benardo quietly complied, according to people familiar with the matter. But for Mr. Durham, the result appears to have been another dead end.

In a statement provided to The Times by Mr. Soros’s foundation, Mr. Benardo reiterated that he never met or corresponded with Ms. Wasserman Schultz, and said that “if such documentation exists, it’s of course made up.”

[x]
Nora R. Dannehy in 2009. A longtime aide to Mr. Durham, Ms. Dannehy resigned from his team in 2020 after disputes with him over prosecutorial ethics. Credit Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Internal Strife

As the focus of the Durham investigation shifted, cracks formed inside the team. Mr. Durham’s deputy, Ms. Dannehy, a longtime close colleague, increasingly argued with him in front of other prosecutors and F.B.I. agents about legal ethics.

Ms. Dannehy had independent standing as a respected prosecutor. In 2008, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey assigned her to investigate whether to charge senior Bush administration officials with crimes related to a scandal over the firing of U.S. attorneys; she decided in 2010 that no charges were warranted.

Now, Ms. Dannehy complained to Mr. Durham about how Mr. Barr kept hinting darkly in public about the direction of their investigation. In April 2020, for example, he suggested to Fox News that officials could be prosecuted, saying that “the evidence shows that we are not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness. There is something far more troubling here.”

Ms. Dannehy urged Mr. Durham to ask the attorney general to adhere to Justice Department policy and not discuss the investigation publicly. But Mr. Durham proved unwilling to challenge him.

The strains grew when Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to go after Mr. Benardo’s emails. Ms. Dannehy opposed that tactic and told colleagues that Mr. Durham had taken that step without telling her.

By summer 2020, with Election Day approaching, Mr. Barr pressed Mr. Durham to draft a potential interim report centered on the Clinton campaign and F.B.I. gullibility or willful blindness.

On Sept. 10, 2020, Ms. Dannehy discovered that other members of the team had written a draft report that Mr. Durham had not told her about, according to people briefed on their ensuing argument.

Ms. Dannehy erupted, according to people familiar with the matter. She told Mr. Durham that no report should be issued before the investigation was complete and especially not just before an election — and denounced the draft for taking disputed information at face value. She sent colleagues a memo detailing those concerns and resigned.

[x]
Cracks formed in Mr. Durham’s team as the scope of his investigation shifted. Credit Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press

Two people close to Mr. Barr said he had pressed for the draft to evaluate what a report on preliminary findings would look like and what evidence would need to be declassified. But they insisted that he intended any release to come during the summer or after the Nov. 3 election — not soon before Election Day.

In any case, in late September 2020, about two weeks after Ms. Dannehy quit, someone leaked to a Fox Business personality that Mr. Durham would not issue any interim report, disappointing Trump supporters hoping for a pre-Election Day bombshell.

Stymied by the decision not to issue an interim Durham report, John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s national intelligence director, tried another way to inject some of the same information into the campaign.

Over the objections of Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, Mr. Ratcliffe declassified nearly 1,000 pages of intelligence material before the election for Mr. Durham to use. Notably, in that fight, Mr. Barr sided with Ms. Haspel on one matter that is said to be particularly sensitive and that remained classified, according to two people familiar with the dispute.

Mr. Ratcliffe also disclosed in a letter to a senator that “Russian intelligence analysis” claimed that on July 26, 2016, Mrs. Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal tying Mr. Trump to Russia.

The letter acknowledged that officials did “not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.” But it did not mention that there were many reasons that suspicions about the Trump campaign were arising in that period — like the diplomat’s tip, Mr. Trump’s flattery of President Vladimir V. Putin, his hiring of advisers with links to Russia, his financial ties to Russia and his call for Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton.

The disclosure infuriated Dutch intelligence officials, who had provided the memos under strictest confidence.

[x]
Mr. Durham accused Michael Sussmann of lying in a meeting with an F.B.I. official. He was acquitted. Credit Samuel Corum for The New York Times

‘Fanning the Flames’

Late in the summer of 2021, Mr. Durham prepared to indict Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer who had represented Democrats in their dealings with the F.B.I. about Russia’s hacking of their emails. Two prosecutors on Mr. Durham’s team — Anthony Scarpelli and Neeraj N. Patel — objected, according to people familiar with the matter.

Five years earlier, Mr. Sussmann had relayed a tip to the bureau about odd internet data that a group of data scientists contended could reflect hidden communications between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank of Russia. The F.B.I., which by then had already launched its Russia investigation, briefly looked at the allegation but dismissed it.

Mr. Durham accused Mr. Sussmann of lying to an F.B.I. official by saying he was not conveying the tip for a client; the prosecutor maintained Mr. Sussmann was there in part for the Clinton campaign.

Mr. Scarpelli and Mr. Patel argued to Mr. Durham that the evidence was too thin to charge Mr. Sussmann and that such a case would not normally be prosecuted, people familiar with the matter said. Given the intense scrutiny it would receive, they also warned that an acquittal would undermine public faith in their investigation and federal law enforcement.

When Mr. Durham did not change course, Mr. Scarpelli quit in protest, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Patel left soon after to take a different job. Both declined to comment.

The charge against Mr. Sussmann was narrow, but the Durham team used it to make public large amounts of information insinuating what Mr. Durham never charged: that Clinton campaign associates conspired to gin up an F.B.I. investigation into Mr. Trump based on a knowingly false allegation.

Trial testimony, however, showed that while Mrs. Clinton and her campaign manager hoped Mr. Sussmann would persuade reporters to write articles about Alfa Bank, they did not want him to take the information to the F.B.I. And prosecutors presented no evidence that he or campaign officials had believed the data scientists’ complex theory was false.

After Mr. Sussmann’s acquittal, Mr. Barr, by then out of office for more than a year, suggested that using the courts to advance a politically charged narrative was a goal in itself. Mr. Durham “accomplished something far more important” than a conviction, Mr. Barr told Fox News, asserting that the case had “crystallized the central role played by the Hillary campaign in launching as a dirty trick the whole Russiagate collusion narrative and fanning the flames of it.”

And he predicted that a subsequent trial, concerning a Russia analyst who was a researcher for the Steele dossier, would also “get the story out” and “further amplify these themes and the role the F.B.I. leadership played in this, which is increasingly looking fishy and inexplicable.”

[x]
Mr. Durham’s prosecution of Igor Danchenko, a Russia analyst who was a researcher for the Steele dossier, ended in acquittal. Credit Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

That case involved Igor Danchenko, who had told the F.B.I. that the dossier exaggerated the credibility of gossip and speculation. Mr. Durham charged him with lying about two sources. He was acquitted, too.

The two failed cases are likely to be Mr. Durham’s last courtroom acts as a prosecutor. Bringing demonstrably weak cases stood in contrast to how he once talked about his prosecutorial philosophy.

James Farmer, a retired prosecutor who worked with Mr. Durham on several major investigations, recalled him as a neutral actor who said that if there were nothing to charge, they would not strain to prosecute. “That’s what I heard, time and again,” Mr. Farmer said.

Delivering the closing arguments in the Danchenko trial, Mr. Durham defended his investigation to the jury, denying that his appointment by Mr. Barr had been tainted by politics.

He asserted that Mr. Mueller had concluded “there’s no evidence of collusion here or conspiracy” — a formulation that echoed Mr. Trump’s distortion of the Russia investigation’s complex findings — and added: “Is it the wrong question to ask, well, then how did this get started? Respectfully, that’s not the case.”

The judge interrupted him: “You should finish up, Mr. Durham.”

William K. Rashbaum and Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting.

[admin]

The ugly truth EXPOSED about the Durham/Barr investigation of those who investigated Trump-Russia
by Glenn Kirschner
Jan 26, 2023 #TeamJustice

The New York Times just published a remarkable deep-dive piece ,pulling back the curtain on the John Durham investigation of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, exposing the ugliness and lack of ethics that apparently ran rampant through the Durham investigation.

This video surveys some of the most troubling aspect of the Durham probe revealed in The New York Times reporting.



Transcript

0:00
so friends remember the John Durham
0:02
investigation
0:04
that's the one where Bill Barr appointed
0:07
this guy John Durham as a special
0:09
counsel to investigate the investigators
0:12
who investigated Donald Trump
0:16
well the New York Times just pulled back
0:18
the curtain on the Durham investigation
0:22
and what we see behind that curtain
0:25
is ugly
0:28
let's talk about that
0:30
because Justice matters
0:40
[Music]
0:42
thank you
0:47
hey all Glenn kirschner here
0:49
so friends there's some great reporting
0:51
out by the New York Times specifically
0:54
by investigative journalists Katie
0:56
Benner Adam Goldman and Charlie Savage
0:58
about the John Durham investigation
1:03
you recall the one
1:04
Donald Trump was really angry about the
1:08
Bob Mueller investigation into the
1:11
coordination between the Trump campaign
1:13
and the Russians an investigation that
1:16
revealed more than 140 contacts between
1:21
Trump campaign officials and Russians an
1:25
investigation that meticulously detailed
1:28
and documented multiple counts of
1:30
obstruction of justice by Donald Trump
1:33
and Donald Trump didn't like it one bit
1:37
so what did he do he convinced his then
1:41
attorney general Bill Barr
1:43
to appoint a special counsel to
1:47
investigate the investigators that had
1:50
investigated him and documented all that
1:53
dirt
1:54
specifically Bill Barr's mandate was to
1:57
try to undermine the origins of the
2:01
trump-russia investigation
2:04
well now the New York Times has pulled
2:07
the curtain back on the John Durham
2:10
investigation of the investigators and
2:14
boy it's ugly behind that curtain
2:17
here is some of that new reporting by
2:21
the New York Times
2:22
headline how Barr's quest to find flaws
2:26
in the Russia inquiry unraveled
2:30
the review by John Durham at one point
2:32
veered into a criminal investigation
2:35
related to Donald Trump himself
2:38
even as it failed to find wrongdoing in
2:42
the origins of the Russia inquiry
2:45
and that article begins
2:47
it became a regular Litany of grievances
2:50
from president Donald Trump and his
2:52
supporters
2:54
the investigation into his 2016
2:56
campaign's ties to Russia was a Witch
3:00
Hunt they maintained that had been
3:02
opened without any solid basis went on
3:05
too long and found no proof of collusion
3:09
egged on by Mr Trump Attorney General
3:12
William Barr set out in 2019 to dig into
3:16
their shared theory that the Russia
3:19
investigation likely stemmed from a
3:22
conspiracy by intelligence or law
3:25
enforcement agencies
3:27
to lead the inquiry Mr Barr turned to a
3:30
hard-nosed prosecutor named John Durham
3:32
and later granted Him special counsel
3:35
status to carry on after Mr Trump left
3:39
office
3:40
but after almost four years far longer
3:44
than the Russia investigation itself Mr
3:47
Durham's work is coming to an end
3:49
without uncovering anything like the
3:52
Deep State plot alleged by Mr Trump and
3:56
suspected by Mr Barr
3:59
Mr Trump would repeatedly portray the
4:02
Mueller report as having found no
4:04
collusion with Russia
4:06
the reality was more complex in fact the
4:10
report detailed numerous links between
4:13
the Russian government and the Trump
4:16
campaign indeed I think it documented
4:19
more than 140 contacts between the Trump
4:23
campaign and Russians
4:26
and it established both how Moscow had
4:29
helped to work Mr Trump win and how his
4:32
campaign had expected the benefit from
4:35
the foreign interference
4:37
plus as I mentioned the Mueller report
4:40
documented multiple instances where
4:43
Donald Trump obstructed Justice
4:46
now I'm not going to go through the
4:48
whole parade of horribles cataloged in
4:51
the New York Times article it's a
4:53
lengthy piece and I urge you to read it
4:56
for yourself
4:58
but there are a few things that jump out
5:00
like
5:01
several prosecutors senior prosecutors
5:05
on on John Durham's team resigned quit
5:09
left the investigation
5:12
because of concerns they had about the
5:15
ethics of the investigation that was
5:17
being conducted by Durham one of the
5:19
prosecutors who quit was a long time
5:22
colleague of mine at the DC U.S
5:25
attorney's Office his name is Anthony
5:27
scarpelli and I will take Mr scarpelli's
5:30
ethics to the bank
5:32
every day of the week and he quit rather
5:35
than follow what John Durham wanted to
5:39
do
5:40
the article also talked about a former
5:42
Federal prosecutor who left the
5:44
Department of Justice and became a
5:46
defense attorney and he was representing
5:48
some of the Witnesses in the Durham
5:51
probe and he said what he saw of the
5:54
conduct of John Durham quote made his
5:57
head spin
5:59
then the article talked about how the
6:02
the Department of Justice Inspector
6:04
General had conducted a full
6:07
investigation into the origins of the
6:11
Trump Russia investigation and found it
6:13
was properly opened
6:16
so what does Bill Barr do he tries to
6:19
undermine
6:20
the results the conclusion of the
6:24
Department of Justice inspector
6:26
General's investigation why because it
6:28
didn't comport with where he wanted
6:31
things to go and more importantly where
6:33
Donald Trump wanted things to go I'm not
6:36
going to continue to catalog the entire
6:38
parade of horribles laid out in the New
6:40
York Times article but friends I want to
6:43
focus on one horrible in particular
6:46
and in the New York Times piece you can
6:49
find it under the heading of an awkward
6:52
tip let me set it up Bill Barr and John
6:54
Durham were globetrotting
6:57
asking foreign officials if you know
7:00
they had any dirt about the origins of
7:04
the trump-russia investigation you know
7:07
that would comport with the narrative
7:10
they were looking for
7:12
and here is what the article relates in
7:15
the section titled an awkward tip
7:18
on one of Mr Barr and Mr Durham's trips
7:21
to Europe according to people familiar
7:23
with the matter Italian officials while
7:27
denying any role in setting off the
7:29
Russia investigation
7:31
unexpectedly offered a potentially
7:34
explosive tip linking Mr Trump to
7:39
certain suspected Financial crimes
7:42
Mr Barr and Mr Durham decided that the
7:45
tip was too serious and credible to
7:48
ignore but rather than assign it to
7:51
another prosecutor which is what should
7:53
have been done
7:55
Mr Barr had Mr Durham investigate the
7:58
matter himself
8:00
giving him criminal prosecution powers
8:03
for the first time even though the
8:06
possible wrongdoing by Mr Trump did not
8:10
fall squarely within Mr Durham's
8:12
assignment to scrutinize the origins of
8:15
the Russia inquiry the people said Mr
8:19
Durham after investigating something he
8:22
should not have been investigating
8:24
Mr Durham never filed charges
8:28
and it remains unclear what level of an
8:31
investigation it was what steps he took
8:34
what he learned and whether anyone at
8:37
the White House ever found out
8:40
the extraordinary fact that Mr Durham
8:42
opened a criminal investigation that
8:45
included scrutinizing Mr Trump has
8:49
remained secret until it was Unearthed
8:53
by those investigative reporters let me
8:57
name them again Katie Benner Adam
8:59
Goldman and Charlie Savage of the New
9:02
York Times but let me just recap that
9:04
friends
9:07
so Durham had a mandate to investigate
9:13
the origins of the Trump Russia
9:16
investigation that was his jurisdiction
9:18
that was his authority
9:21
and and bar and Durham together went
9:23
globetrotting looking for the kind of
9:25
evidence and information that would
9:28
support their narrative you know that
9:30
would give Mr Trump what he wanted
9:33
evidence that the trump-russia
9:35
investigation never should have been
9:37
opened in the first place there was no
9:40
such evidence because it was properly
9:43
opened and it bore fruit
9:47
while they were globetrotting meeting
9:50
with Italian government officials those
9:53
government officials said I can't help
9:55
you on the origins of the Trump Russia
9:58
investigation but we do have evidence of
10:01
financial Crimes by Donald Trump
10:04
at that point what should have happened
10:08
was a prosecutor not Mr Durham who had a
10:13
narrow jurisdictional mandate about what
10:16
he was supposed to be investigating
10:18
another doj prosecutor or team should
10:21
have been assigned to follow up on the
10:24
information the awkward tip
10:27
presented by the Italian government
10:29
officials that's not what Bill Barr did
10:32
no he said the John Durham uh why don't
10:35
you just look into this one yourself
10:38
and it was serious they said they even
10:40
opened a criminal investigation into
10:42
this allegation of financial Crimes by
10:44
Donald Trump
10:46
and then it got buried
10:51
we know nothing about it
10:54
we don't know whether charges should
10:56
have been brought but were killed by
10:59
some combination of Durham and Bill Barr
11:03
we have no idea
11:05
what happened we do know
11:08
that wasn't John Durham's to investigate
11:10
in the first place given his
11:14
jurisdictional mandate what he was
11:15
supposed to be looking at the whole
11:18
thing stinks
11:21
to use a legal term friends
11:24
so I suspect this is just one of the
11:27
first big old shoes to drop
11:30
about what was going on in this Durham
11:32
investigation let me finish with this
11:35
though friends what we do know
11:38
is that when this whole attempt to
11:42
undermine the Trump Russia investigation
11:45
failed
11:47
what did Durham do well then he kind of
11:49
shifted Focus over to the Hillary
11:52
Clinton campaign yeah yeah maybe they
11:55
were the ones who were you know putting
11:58
disinformation in the mix about Donald
12:00
Trump maybe they were the ones that we
12:03
should investigate and remember when
12:06
Durham went down that second path
12:09
he actually brought charges against not
12:12
one but two people and he took those
12:14
people to trial and he failed miserably
12:17
in fact some of the prosecutors walked
12:20
off the investigation because they
12:22
didn't even believe those cases should
12:25
be brought to trial
12:27
you know to say the Durham debacle was
12:30
an embarrassment a fiasco from start to
12:33
finish as an understatement it looks
12:35
like it was worse than a debacle worse
12:37
than a fiasco
12:40
you know friends when I was a federal
12:42
prosecutor if somebody had assigned me
12:45
an investigation and I put a team
12:48
together and I investigated that case
12:50
that was assigned to me as well as
12:53
exhaustively as aggressively as
12:56
honorably as ethically as I possibly
13:00
could and I came to a conclusion
13:03
and after I came to that conclusion
13:06
I had somebody from the Trump
13:08
Administration say you know what Glenn
13:10
now we're going to investigate you for
13:15
conducting that investigation
13:18
make no mistake about it that is what
13:20
Donald Trump and Bill Barr and John
13:23
Durham did
13:24
to say that's a recipe for governmental
13:26
and investigative disaster
13:30
is a gross understatement
13:33
you know it feels like
13:36
the whole concept of Justice was nowhere
13:39
near what Trump and Barr and Durham did
13:43
and justice
13:46
matters
13:48
and friends as always please stay safe
13:50
please stay tuned and I look forward to
13:52
talking with you again soon

[admin]

Lawmakers file to expel Rep. George Santos from Congress
by CBS New York
Feb 9, 2023

Rep. Ritchie Torres was among the lawmakers who have filed for Rep. George Santos to expelled from Congress, citing his lies.



Transcript

0:00
We are following a breaking story in
0:01
Washington D.C lawmakers have filed for
0:03
the expulsion of embattled Congressman
0:06
George Santos let's take a listen to
0:08
what they had to say earlier this
0:09
afternoon
0:10
well I think you all for uh for joining
0:12
us today uh just uh just a few minutes
0:15
ago we filed uh in the house floor an
0:18
expulsion of George Santos of
0:21
Congressman Santos it's really important
0:23
for us to recognize that George Santos
0:25
is a fraud
0:27
a liar he has lied about the most
0:29
horrific shooting in the lgbtq modern
0:32
history the Pulse Nightclub shooting
0:34
he's lied about 9 11. he's lied about
0:36
the Holocaust he's lied about his
0:38
education he's lied about his career and
0:41
as we all know just recently he's been
0:43
now given classified access to important
0:45
information and classified information
0:47
that he should not have there's been
0:49
numerous Republicans that have called
0:51
for his uh Expo expulsion or a
0:53
resignation from Congress I want to also
0:56
note that today myself
0:59
and the two other freshman members that
1:01
are lgbtq uh congresswoman Becca ballen
1:05
uh Congressman Eric Sorensen have been
1:07
talking about this explosion resolution
1:09
uh to get George Santos out of Congress
1:12
in addition to that uh two other members
1:14
have been leading efforts uh to really
1:17
take on uh George Santos and of course
1:19
that has been Congressman Dan Goldman
1:21
who's also a freshman and Congressman
1:22
Richie Torres and they have been leading
1:24
efforts as well with the house Ethics
1:26
Committee and so those have been things
1:27
been really really important for us
1:28
particularly as freshmen in their
1:30
leadership and so again we have filed an
1:33
official expulsion resolution What The
1:35
Hell House Ethics Committee uh to get
1:37
rid of George Santos it is time for him
1:39
to go we give him plenty of time to
1:41
resign and he has chosen not to do so so
1:43
I want to first turn this over to
1:45
Congressman Becca ballant who's going to
1:46
say a few words and then we're gonna
1:47
have a few folks I'll also engage thank
1:49
you Robert really
1:51
happy to be out here today to say
1:54
that so many of us ran on a platform of
1:58
Shoring up the Democracy of making it
2:01
possible for Americans to believe in
2:05
government again and right now many of
2:07
you know we're at an all-time low
2:09
confidence in government 60 years ago 75
2:12
percent of Americans polled said that
2:14
they had trust that the government would
2:16
most of the time
2:18
take care of them do right by them right
2:21
now only two in ten Americans will say
2:23
that having George Santos in congress
2:26
with us is not at all helping us to
2:29
rebuild trust in government and as
2:31
Robert said as as a proud member of the
2:34
LGBT community
2:36
excuse me the lgbtq community
2:38
outraged that he lied about the Pulse
2:41
Nightclub shooting as the granddaughter
2:43
of someone killed in the Holocaust
2:45
outraged that he used that to get
2:48
elected and um you know I didn't ever
2:50
thought I'd say this but I stand with
2:52
Mitt Romney he has to go
2:54
and Congressman Eric Sorensen
2:57
I stand here today to speak on behalf of
3:00
those who are trustworthy in our
3:02
government
3:03
I was a kid growing up different in
3:07
Rockford Illinois not thinking that
3:09
anyone was going to allow me growing up
3:11
gay to be the meteorologist on my
3:13
television in my hometown not only did I
3:16
get to do that but over 20 years I
3:19
earned the trust of the people that have
3:22
sent me here to represent them I'm the
3:25
very first lgbtq member of Congress from
3:27
the state of Illinois and it happened
3:30
outside of Chicago
3:32
but incredibly I'm only here because the
3:36
people have learned that they can trust
3:38
me I'm not saying I got the weather
3:40
right when I was on television every day
3:43
but the people could trust me when they
3:45
had to make life-saving decisions to
3:47
take their families to the basement
3:48
because the tornado was real
3:50
I stand here with other members of
3:53
Congress who are trustworthy we're here
3:56
to serve the constituents in our
3:58
district we're here to to serve the
4:01
people of the United States of America
4:03
and we need to make sure that everyone
4:06
in this body in this incredible body of
4:08
the House of Representatives does the
4:10
same and clearly there's one of us that
4:13
does not I think the congressman
4:14
Congressman Dan Goldman thank you uh
4:17
Congressman Garcia
4:18
um and thank you for for filing this
4:20
motion uh this resolution rather it is a
4:23
shame that it has come to this uh it is
4:26
a shame that the Speaker of the House
4:29
the Republican conference chairwoman
4:31
Elise stefanik who was George Santos's
4:34
biggest supporter during his campaign
4:37
and helped him rehire staff after many
4:40
resigned because of his lies it is a
4:43
shame that they did not ask George
4:46
Santos to resign from Congress and
4:48
instead thought that they could stem the
4:51
wave of opposition based on making him
4:54
resign from his committees he should
4:56
have resigned he should not be a member
4:59
of Congress and we are left with no
5:02
choice but to put a resolution on the
5:05
house floor to expel him from Congress
5:08
he defrauded his voters he defrauded the
5:11
state of New York he had as used in the
5:16
most Shameless fashion his uh the the
5:21
true uh monuments or I should say the
5:24
true travesties of so many different
5:26
communities including the LGBT community
5:29
and the Pulse Nightclub including the
5:32
Jewish Community by claiming falsely
5:34
that he is Jewish in a district that is
5:37
more than 20 percent Jewish and claiming
5:40
that his ancestors escaped the Holocaust
5:42
this is not just a simple liar this is a
5:45
con man who does not belong in Congress
5:48
and he needs to go so we will put this
5:51
resolution on the floor and we will have
5:54
an up or down vote on whether or not
5:56
George Santos a Serial fraudster belongs
6:00
as a member of Congress thank you thank
6:03
you now looking through Congressman
6:04
Richard Torres
6:06
you know yesterday George Santos said
6:08
that he refuses
6:10
to go to the back of the room or the
6:12
back of the bus and
6:13
you know it's plausible that Mr Santos
6:15
is so delusional that he's mistaking
6:16
himself for Rosa Parks but he is not a
6:19
victim here we're the victim of his
6:21
fraudulent Behavior
6:23
you know Senator Mitt Romney spoke for
6:25
the majority of Americans he spoke for
6:28
both Democrats and Republicans when he
6:30
referred to George Santos as a sick man
6:33
there was something sick about a man who
6:36
lies about his mother dying on 9 11 who
6:39
lies about his employees dying in the
6:41
pulse mass shooting who lies about his
6:43
ancestors surviving the Holocaust who
6:45
lies about struggling with brain cancer
6:48
there's something sick about a man who
6:50
not only lies pathologically but
6:53
violates almost every law imaginable
6:55
house ethics campaign Finance law
6:57
Securities Law and so we're here to send
7:00
a clear message that if Kevin McCarthy
7:02
refuses to hold George Santos
7:04
accountable we will
7:06
we will hold George Santos accountable
7:08
for conduct Unbecoming of a congressman
7:11
we are going to expel George Santos
7:13
because he is a deep rot at the very
7:16
core of the United States Congress in a
7:19
country of 330 million people
7:22
only 535 have the high honor of serving
7:26
in the United States Congress
7:27
one of those people should not be George
7:29
Santos period
7:31
absolutely and just uh just to conclude
7:33
we want to just also note
7:35
um that uh Congressman Torres
7:36
congresswoman ballot Congressman
7:38
Sorensen myself we're all lgbtq and
7:41
George Santos of course uh is is gay uh
7:45
we think and uh he had he has uh
7:48
disgraced our community and what we hear
7:51
within our community is a huge disgust
7:54
and shame for his behavior and his lies
7:57
within our own community so it's
7:59
important for us as gay people as queer
8:01
people minus 10 gold of course and an
8:04
ally and an ally which is which uh with
8:06
Mr Goldman uh to uh to take on um really
8:09
this liar and this fraud and so this has
8:12
already been filed today or we look
8:14
forward to working we've been talking of
8:15
course to uh House Republicans we
8:17
already know many of those who have
8:19
already
8:20
um asked for his resignation and so
8:22
we're going to get this onto the floor
8:23
and we're going to expel George Santo so
8:25
thank you very much are there any quick
8:26
questions
8:27
for an indictment or for ethics to bring
8:29
charges well I think it's pretty clear
8:31
obviously that he's violated campaign
8:33
Finance rules he's violated ethics rules
8:35
I mean he's practically admitted to them
8:38
and he is lying about everything that we
8:40
know him as a person and so it's it's uh
8:42
it's pretty obviously the time to expel
8:43
himself he had plenty of time to resign
8:45
and he's chosen not to
8:48
know I would just add one thing the law
8:51
doesn't actually preclude him from lying
8:55
about his education his employment
8:58
history his religion any of the other
9:01
his uh his qualifications for the job
9:04
the law is very focused on financial
9:09
disclosures and campaign finances and he
9:11
should be held accountable because even
9:14
his own statements have revealed that
9:17
his financial disclosures are false but
9:20
we cannot wait for him to be indicted or
9:24
for an Ethics investigation because
9:26
those things will not address the things
9:29
that he has already admitted to lying
9:31
about he is a Serial liar who does not
9:34
have the trust of his constituents 78
9:37
percent of whom have said that he should
9:39
not be in Congress and should resign and
9:41
he does not have any credibility to walk
9:44
these Halls of Congress he does not
9:46
belong here and his own constituents by
9:48
the way and uh Congressman Goldman and
9:49
Carson Torres know this they've called
9:51
for his expulsion and resignation and so
9:52
we've heard that from his constituents
10:00
obviously almost I think 10 Republicans
10:01
have called for a resignation and so
10:03
that's something that we're all going to
10:03
be working on so the majority of House
10:05
Republicans in New York
10:07
have called for George Santos to resign
10:09
and Mr Goldman and I just had a meeting
10:11
with the governor of the New York
10:12
delegation George Santos was not invited
10:14
like his colleagues want nothing to do
10:16
with him his constituents want nothing
10:17
to do with them he's persona non grata
10:19
to every single Republican except the
10:21
leadership that's protecting him that
10:22
was a bipartisan delegation so New York
10:25
Congress members and bottom line he was
10:28
elected under false pretenses
10:30
we don't need to wait for an indictment
10:33
that's right any other questions yeah
10:34
are you just
10:36
are interested this might set in the
10:37
future if Republicans decide that a
10:39
democrat's a liar yeah this is an
10:42
unprecedented person I mean I mean
10:43
there's nothing that we know about him
10:45
that we know is truthful he's lied
10:47
literally about his entire background
10:48
and so I think this is an unprecedented
10:49
moment uh and the house should come
10:51
together to expel we also do want to set
10:53
a precedent for excluding a future
10:54
George Santos that's the kind of
10:56
precedent we want to set absolutely I
10:57
can guarantee that all five of us would
11:00
be standing here we wouldn't need to be
11:02
standing here if there was a Democrat
11:04
who lied up and down like George Santos
11:07
did we as Democrats would never accept
11:10
this within our own party and it's time
11:12
for the Republican party to do the right
11:14
thing absolutely any final questions
11:17
I I have not personally spoken directly
11:20
to him I've passed him in in the halls
11:22
but I I we have not jacked out I look
11:23
forward to talking to him I told him
11:24
about space and he should be expelled
11:27
uh he's attacked me on Twitter yeah
11:30
um I think what did he say stop
11:31
obsessing about me I'm married uh you
11:34
know
11:35
I'm I'm I will admit that I'm fully
11:37
obsessed with driving Mr Santos out of
11:39
Congress because he has no business
11:40
being here
11:49
yes absolutely so we've been actually uh
11:52
talking to the leader he's aware of
11:54
what's happening today
11:55
thinking it's 70 Republicans founded
11:57
this stuff I I think we should I think
11:59
we're going to work to get several
12:00
Republicans we're gonna we're gonna work
12:01
to expel them I think that's the goal
12:02
regardless of where the Republicans the
12:04
American people have a right to know
12:05
where each and every member of Congress
12:08
stands with respect to George Santos
12:09
right it's one thing to condemn him
12:11
behind the scenes it's something else to
12:13
force a vote and see where everyone
12:15
stands I think we need transparency
12:17
absolutely we need to restore the full
12:19
faith and trust of the government that
12:23
is representing the people
12:28
we're going to demand a vote and I think
12:30
at the end of the day we want to know
12:31
also where Kevin McCarthy stands I mean
12:33
clearly he's giving him actions to
12:34
classified briefings unacceptable so
12:36
it's time to expel George Santos I think
12:38
one last thing that related to Kevin
12:41
McCarthy and Elise stefanik they have
12:44
not asked him to resign now some people
12:46
have said that's because they have such
12:48
a narrow majority but there's been
12:51
extensive reporting that they both were
12:53
aware of George Santos's lies during the
12:55
campaign and the question then is are
12:57
they not asking him to resign because
13:00
they are worried about what their
13:01
involvement was and that that might come
13:03
out so that's an open question that has
13:06
yet to be answered they have not
13:07
addressed that
13:08
and Kevin McCarthy forced him out of his
13:10
committee we're just saying why stop
13:11
there we should force him out of
13:13
Congress absolutely

[admin]

Trump lawyers hand over laptop, more classified documents to feds
by Victor Nava
New York Post
February 10, 2023 9:55pm

Former President Donald Trump’s legal team has given federal prosecutors more documents with classified markings and an aide’s laptop in recent months, according to a report.

The handovers happened in December of last year and in January, according to CNN. Also turned over to investigators was an empty folder marked “Classified Evening Briefing,” the news outlet reported.

Lawyers for the 76-year-old former commander-in-chief reportedly discovered the documents during a search of boxes at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in December and turned them over to the Justice Department.

The laptop, which belongs to an aide employed by Save America PAC, reportedly contained copies of the same documents found by Trump’s lawyers in December, and it was given to investigators in January, along with a thumb drive.

In November, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed veteran prosecutor Jack Smith to lead two investigations into the former president, including one related to Trump’s mishandling of presidential documents and classified records.

FBI agents seized hundreds of pages of classified documents and other presidential records during a raid of Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., residence and private club last August.

President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence have also faced classified document scandals since Trump’s issues surfaced.

Last month, it was uncovered that lawyers for the 80-year-old president discovered several classified documents at the Penn Biden Center think tank in Washington, DC, in November 2022. More classified material was later discovered at Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home, which was searched by the FBI in January.

On Friday, FBI agents searched Pence’s Indiana home for five hours, removing one document with classified markings more than three weeks after the former vice president turned over two boxes of records marked as sensitive to the bureau.

[admin]

Trump campaign paid researchers to prove 2020 fraud but kept findings secret: An outside firm’s work was never released publicly after researchers uncovered no evidence that the election had been rigged for Joe Biden
by Josh Dawsey
The Washington Post
February 11, 2023 at 2:29 p.m. EST

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

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Former president Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral-fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group, the people said, to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts. Among the areas examined were voter machine malfunctions, instances of dead people voting and any evidence that could help Trump show he won, the people said. None of the findings were presented to the public or in court.

About a dozen people at the firm worked on the report, including econometricians, who use statistics to model and predict outcomes, the people said. The work was carried out in the final weeks of 2020, before the Jan. 6 riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump continues to falsely assert that the 2020 election was stolen despite abundant evidence to the contrary, much of which had been provided to him or was publicly available before the Capitol assault. The Trump campaign’s commissioning of its own report to study the then-president’s fraud claims has not been previously reported.

“They looked at everything: change of addresses, illegal immigrants, ballot harvesting, people voting twice, machines being tampered with, ballots that were sent to vacant addresses that were returned and voted,” said a person familiar with the work who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private research and meetings. “Literally anything you could think of. Voter turnout anomalies, date of birth anomalies, whether dead people voted. If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it.”

The findings were not what the Trump campaign had been hoping for, according to the four people. While the researchers believed there were voting anomalies and unusual data patterns in a few states, along with some instances in which laws may have been skirted, they did not believe the anomalies were significant enough to make a difference in who won the election.

The research also contradicted some of Trump’s more conspiratorial theories, such as his baseless allegations about rigged voting machines and large numbers of dead people voting.

A person familiar with the findings said there were at least a dozen hypotheses that Trump’s team wanted tested.

“None of these were significant enough,” this person said. “Just like any election, there are always errors, omissions and irregularities. It was nowhere close enough to what they wanted to prove, and it actually went in both directions.”

Senior officials from Berkeley Research Group briefed Trump, then-chief of staff Mark Meadows and others on the findings in a December 2020 conference call, people familiar with the matter said. Meadows showed skepticism of the findings and continued to maintain that Trump won. Trump also continued to say he won the election. The call grew contentious, people with knowledge of the meeting said.

The research group’s officials maintained privately that they did not come into the research with any predetermined conclusions and simply wanted to examine the data provided by the Trump campaign in the battleground states.

Through a spokesman, Meadows declined to comment.

“President Trump received a record-breaking 74 million votes, the most of any sitting president in the history of the country. Anyone who takes a look at Joe Biden glitching through his presidency knows who really won the election,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said. Biden won 81 million votes and won the electoral college, 306 to 232.

Cheung did not answer a question about Trump’s reaction to the researchers’ findings.

A spokesperson for Berkeley Research Group said, “Our experts provide independent and objective factual analysis and as a matter of firm policy, we do not comment on client engagements or on privileged and confidential matters.”

The findings from Berkeley were among the many streams of information after the election that showed Trump he lost. According to testimony presented to the Jan. 6 committee, Trump was repeatedly told by advisers that he did not win the election but continued to cast about for others who would entertain his theories and say that he had won. Dozens of judges — including many Trump appointees — rejected his campaign’s attempts to challenge election results in court.

Trump has continued to spread false claims that he won the election, frustrating some of his advisers who wish he would move to a forward-looking message as part of his 2024 bid to reclaim the presidency.

The Berkeley research came about, according to people familiar with the matter, after Trump as well as some of his advisers became convinced the election was stolen. Others on his team wanted a sober analysis of what they could say and prove, some of the people said. Some of Trump’s advisers even hoped that a definitive report from Berkeley Research Group might tamp down some of the false claims.

“The goal was to find out what actually happened,” one of these people said. “If you remember in that time, there were all sorts of crazy things being said. We wanted to sort it out.”

The Berkeley research was done through a subsidiary company called East Bay Dispute and Advisory. Federal Election Commission filings show the Trump campaign paid East Bay Dispute and Advisory more than $600,000 in the final weeks of 2020. A person familiar with the matter said there were also other researchers commissioned to help prove electoral fraud from outside Berkeley Research Group. The payments were described as consulting fees.

The states studied by the analysts over a period of several weeks included Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada, according to people familiar with the matter. All but Nevada had been won by Trump in 2016 but flipped to the Democratic nominee four years later.

The Washington Post has not reviewed a copy of the report, but three people familiar with its contents described the findings.

Those who worked on the report included Janet Thornton, who has about 40 years of experience in accounting and investigations, according to Berkeley Research Group’s website. Others included Craig Freeman and John Auerbach, the people said. Their professional biographies describe decades of experience in accounting, investigating corporate fraud and handling other complicated inquiries.

Auerbach, who is now with a different firm, declined to comment. Freeman, who left Berkeley as well, and Thornton did not respond to requests for comment.

Josh Dawsey is a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017 and previously covered the White House. Before that, he covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal.

[admin]

Mike Pence will fight a grand jury subpoena to testify about Trump's election crimes, & he will lose
by Glenn Kirschner
Feb 14, 2023 #TeamJustice

Mike Pence was happy to reveal Donald Trump's election crimes for profit in his book, titled, "So Help Me God." But now, Pence has announced that he will not comply with a grand jury subpoena directing him to testify about Trump's crimes. In support of his efforts to avoid having to testify before the grand jury, Pence is claiming an absurd privilege, as is discuses in this video.

But in a sweet bit of irony, after Pence loses his court battle and a judge orders him to testify, Pence's book title will come in hand, as the last words that will be administered to him when he is sworn in before the grand jury will be, "so help me God."



Transcript

so friends former vice president Mike
Pence has tons of incriminating
information and evidence about Donald
Trump's efforts to try to overturn the
results of the 2020 presidential
election so naturally special counsel
Jack Smith has subpoenaed Mike Pence to
the grand jury to testify about Donald
Trump's crimes.
And now we've learned Mike Pence will
fight that grand jury subpoena.
Let's talk about that,
because justice matters.
Hey all, Glenn Kirchner here.
So friends, special counsel Jack Smith
has subpoenaed former vice president
Mike Pence to testify before the grand
jury investigating Donald Trump's
election crimes. And now we've learned
that Mike Pence will fight that grand
jury subpoena.
Mike Pence is determined to conceal from
the grand jury the evidence, the
information he has, about Donald Trump's
pressure campaign trying to get him -- Mike
Pence -- to refuse to certify Joe Biden's
win.
Mike Pence has decided he's not
interested in sharing that incriminating
evidence with the grand jury. And we know
Mike Pence has incriminating evidence
against Donald Trump. How do we know that?
Well, he revealed it in a book.
Put a pin in that. We're going to come
back to that.
But let's start with a new reporting by
Politico about Mike Pence's decision to
fight the grand jury subpoena.
Headline: Pence to fight special counsel
subpoena on Trump's 2020 election denial.
And that article begins: Mike Pence is
preparing to resist a grand jury
subpoena for testimony about former
president Donald Trump's push to
overturn the 2020 election. According to
two people familiar with the vice
president's thinking,
Pence's decision to challenge special
counsel Jack Smith's request, has little
to do with executive privilege, the
people said.
Rather, Pence is set to argue that his
former role as president of the Senate --
therefore a member of the legislative
branch -- shields him from certain Justice
Department demands.
Pence allies say he's covered by the
Constitutional provisions that protects
Congressional officials from legal
proceedings related to their work,
language known as the speech or debate
clause.
Now friends, if you're saying to yourself,
that makes no damn sense,
I'm with you. Because here's Mike Pence's
argument.
Mike Pence is saying, well, yes, I'm a
member of the executive branch -- heck, I
was vice president of the United States --
but I'm also a member of the legislative
branch.
And because members of the legislative
branch have this thing called speech and
debate clause protection,
I'm going to claim that too. So I can
claim executive privilege in some
circumstances -- because after all, I'm a
member of the executive branch -- and I can
claim speech and debate clause
privileges, because I'm also a member of
the legislative branch. How does Mike
Pence justify this hare-brained scheme,
this claim that he's a member of
Congress? Well, he says, you know, once
every four years I am called in to
perform the ceremonial duty of, you know,
opening the envelopes on January 6th and
counting the Electoral College votes. Of
course, we already know what the votes
are, and what the count and the tally
will be, but that duty makes me a member
of the legislative branch.
Friends, there's a legal term for an
argument like that:
horseshit!
And no, I usually don't use language like
that,
but the arrogance,
and the faux superiority of these ruling
class criminals, like Donald Trump, and
Mike Pence,
you know, trying to assert that they're
just above the law -- they're above the
rules by which the rest of us commoners
must live.
You know, his argument that he's a member
of the executive branch and the
legislative branch
earns that, you know, descriptive term:
horseshit. Maybe he's a member of the
Judiciary, too!
You know, maybe he's a member of all
three branches of government!
Yes friends, I'm exasperated, and
infuriated. Not just because Mike Pence
is making a bogus argument -- an argument
he will lose -- he will be ordered to
appear and testify before the grand jury.
We'll talk about that near the end of
this video. But it is so exasperating
because, whereas Mike Pence is saying, I
couldn't possibly reveal this
incriminating evidence and information
to the grand jury, he's already revealed
it in a book for profit!
Arguably, he's waived the right to
claim it enjoys any kind of privilege.
So what I want to do
is, I want to take a minute to just go
through some of what Mike Pence has
already revealed in his book for profit
about his conversations with Donald
Trump, in which Donald Trump incriminates
himself -- indeed, in which Donald Trump
commits crimes -- because Donald Trump was
urging Mike Pence to violate the law, to
violate the Electoral count act, to
obstruct Congress's official proceedings,
of certifying Joe Biden's election win.
And when you are urging, and demanding,
and pressuring, and threatening, a
government official to violate the law,
you're committing a crime. And Mike Pence
has already revealed the crimes of
Donald Trump in his book, which he has
titled
"So help me God."
So friends, let's have a look at some of
what Mike Pence revealed in his book
about the crimes of Donald Trump.
Because Mike Pence wrote at length about
the conversations he had in which Donald
Trump was insisting that he -- Mike Pence --
violate the law --
violate the Electoral Count Act.
Donald Trump was threatening him,
urging him to obstruct the official
Congressional proceedings -- the
certification of Joe Biden's election
win. And when you are urging, and you are
threatening, and you are insisting, that a
government official should violate
federal law, you are committing a crime.
In advance of Mike Pence publishing his
book, which is titled, "So help me God,"
The Hill did an article. And it related
some of the highlights -- I would call them
the low lights --
of what Mike Pence wrote in that book
about his incriminating conversations
with Donald Trump. And I want to tick
through
some of what Mike Pence revealed in his
book -- the same information he's trying to
now conceal from the Grand Jury, claiming
it enjoys all sorts of nonsensical
privileges.
Here is some of what The Hill wrote
about Mike Pence's book. Headline: Pence's
new book details Trump's lengthy January
6 pressure campaign. And that article
reads in part:
Then vice president Mike Pence was
getting on the phone with then president
Trump the evening of December 13, 2020,
just as chatter was exploding on the
internet that he -- Pence -- could delay, or
block, the certification of Trump's
electoral loss to Joe Biden.
In his new memoir, "So help me God,"
Pence wrote about how Trump told him
during that call that he should decline
to participate in Congress's
certification of that vote if he -- Pence --
wanted to be
popular. "So Mike, I need you to violate
the law. I need you to commit federal
crimes. I need you to ignore your
Constitutional responsibilities,
because it'll make you popular.
The article continues: Quote, 'he told me I
was trending number two on Twitter,' as
people began speculating whether I was
going to participate in the January 6
proceedings at all. Pence wrote,
quote, 'given the widening concern of so
many people about election fraud,
supporters around the country were
arguing that I should decline to
participate altogether.
The President concurred.' Pence wrote,
quote, 'if you want to be popular, don't do
it,' he -- Trump -- suggested. Pence's Memoir
stated,
quote, He then went a step further.
I might convene the session, and then at
some point walk out.
'It would be the coolest thing you could
do,' he -- Trump -- said jokingly. 'Otherwise,
you're just another Rino.' We laughed at
the controversy, and at his crack. Ah -- just
two high government officials enjoying
a laugh over the prospect of killing
our democracy!
Pence continues at that point: 'There was
no angst between us, and there was no
talk of rejecting electors, or returning
votes to the States. But the friction
grew in the following days and weeks.'
Pence wrote in his book,
On Christmas day of 2020, Pence said he
called Trump -- as he had in previous years --
but the conversation quickly turned to
talk of the election.
Quote, 'As we ended the call, he -- Trump -- said
with a sigh, 'If we prove we won a state,
and speaker Nancy Pelosi certifies
anyway, I don't think we can let that
happen.
You'll figure it out', he -- Trump -- added,
Pence wrote.
But Pence just can't stop disclosing
stuff in this book, can he, incriminating
information about Donald Trump, that
Pence now wants to conceal from the
Grand Jury.
The article continues: Pence spoke again
with Trump on New Year's Day of 2021,
when the president, quote, 'came on strong'
about why Pence had opposed a lawsuit
from representative Louis Gohmert that
sought to establish the vice president
had the power to reject electoral votes.
After Pence explained that he did not
believe the argument in the lawsuit was
consistent with the Constitution, Trump
told him, 'you're too honest,'
and predicted that, quote, 'hundreds of
thousands are going to hate your guts.'
Think about it friends. Donald Trump is
pressuring Mike Pence, saying 'hundreds of
thousands of people will hate your guts
if you abide by the law,
if you follow the Constitution,
if you certify Joe Biden's election win.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans will
hate your guts. Don't do it.'
The next day. Pence wrote Trump -- called
him in the morning -- and said, 'You have the
absolute right to reject electoral votes.'
That was a lie. That was counseling Mike
Pence to commit a crime.
'You can be a historical figure,' he -- Trump --
said, his tone growing more
confrontational. 'But if you wimp out,
you're just another somebody.' Pence wrote
of the conversation
in an oval office conversation that day.
Trump told Pence he had the power to
decertify, which Pence pushed back on. At
that point, Pence wrote, Trump called his
vice president naive, and suggested Pence
lacked the courage needed to reject the
votes. And Trump said, quote, 'You'll go
down as a wimp,' he predicted, adding, 'If
you do that, I made a big mistake five
years ago,' Pence wrote.
So yes, friends, Mike Pence, as revealed in
his book, has sharply incriminating
evidence about and against Donald Trump.
And he was happy to reveal it in his
book for profit, but he's fighting to
conceal it from the Grand Jury. In a very
real sense,
he is fighting to shield Donald Trump
from being held accountable for his
crimes.
You know, Mike Pence has proven himself
to be the smallest, most cowardly man in
America.
But let's finish with some sweet irony,
because Mike Pence decided to title his
book, "So help me God,"
and you know what?
Those are the exact last words
of the oath he will be administered,
after the courts reject his absurd
privilege claim, and compel him to
testify before the Grand Jury. "So help me
God."
And that is precisely what the courts
will do: reject his privilege claim, and
compel him to testify.
Because justice
matters.
Friends, as always, please stay safe,
please stay tuned, and I look forward to
talking with you all again soon.

[admin]

Lev Parnas Says Trump Knew Everything In Ukraine Scandal: The former Giuliani associate suggested Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr and former national security adviser John Bolton were all in the know.
by Nick Visser
Huff Post
Jan 15, 2020, 07:39 PM EST
Updated Jan 16, 2020

Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani at the center of the Ukraine scandal that led to President Donald Trump’s impeachment, said both men were fully aware “of all my movements” and that the president knew “exactly what was going on” as he waged a pressure campaign to dig up dirt on a presidential campaign rival.

“President Trump knew exactly what was going on,” Parnas told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in an interview that aired Wednesday. “He was aware of all my movements. I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president. I have no intent, I have no reason to speak to any of these officials.”

The explosive comments come the same day the House voted to send two articles of impeachment against the president to the Senate for trial. The House voted largely along party lines to impeach Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress last month. He is just the third American president to be impeached.

"He lied," Parnas says of President Trump's denial that he knows him. "He knew exactly who we were. He knew exactly who I was especially because I interacted with him at a lot of events... I was with Rudy when he would speak to the president — plenty of times." pic.twitter.com/Y3D51xtSTi

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 16, 2020

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham on Thursday shrugged off the Parnas accusations, claiming once again that “the president did nothing wrong.”

“These allegations are being made by a man who is currently out on bail for federal crimes and is desperate to reduce his exposure to prison,” Grisham said in a statement to NBC News.

“The facts haven’t changed — the president did nothing wrong and this impeachment, which was manufactured and carried out by the Democrats has been a sham from the start,” she added.

The pressure campaign in Ukraine was a central fixture of the House impeachment vote after a parade of current and former Trump administration officials detailed an effort by the White House to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for political favors.

“It was all about Joe Biden, Hunter Biden,” Parnas said Wednesday. “It was never about corruption.”

Aside from Giuliani and the president, Parnas alluded that Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr and former national security adviser John Bolton were involved in some way with the pressure campaign.

At one point, Parnas detailed efforts to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation into the Bidens, saying Giuliani instructed him to threaten to withhold “all aid” to the country as well as a visit by Pence to Zelensky’s inauguration.

“At our meeting, I was very, very stern. It was a heated conversation basically telling him what needs to be done,” Parnas said. “At the end of the conversation, I told him that if he didn’t announce an investigation, that Pence would not show up, nobody would show up to his inauguration.”

When Maddow asked if Pence was aware of the campaign, Parnas responded that “everybody was in the loop.” He also said Bolton would be one of the most knowledgeable people about the episode who has not yet spoken publicly (although he has said he will testify if subpoenaed by the Senate).

“Bolton, 100%,” Parnas said. “He knows what happened there.”

Parnas emerged as a key figure in that effort during the House inquiry. He was indicted last fall on campaign finance charges and has since split with Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, pledging to speak openly about his efforts with Ukraine.

In the interview with Maddow, Parnas elaborated that members of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s team were told to meet with him because he was on the ground as a representative of the Trump administration “doing their work.”

“I mean they have no reason to speak to me,” Parnas said. “Why would President Zelensky’s inner circle, or Minister [of Internal Affairs Arsen] Avakov, or all these people or [former] President Poroshenko meet with me? Who am I? They were told to meet with me.”

“That’s the secret that they’re trying to keep,” he added.

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U.S. President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has coffee with Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, U.S. September 20, 2019. REUTERS/Aram RostonREUTERS STAFF / REUTERS

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released a trove of records on Tuesday that Parnas’s attorneys turned over to congressional investigators. The cache includes previously unseen handwritten notes by Parnas that demonstrate how Giuliani communicated with Zelensky on behalf of Trump. The documents also include letters and WhatsApp messages between Parnas and a man who may have tracked the location of then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

One note has instructions to get Zelensky to “announce that the Biden case will be investigated.”

The details are sure to complicate the Senate’s impeachment duties. Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have been attempting to hold a speedy trial with no new witnesses, but pressure has been building to hear from members of Trump’s orbit who have so far remained quiet about what they know.

This article has been updated to include White House response.

Hayley Miller contributed reporting.

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Former judge [Michael Luttig] critiques Pence's rejection of special counsel's subpoena
Story by Robert Legare
msn.com
Feb 17, 2022

Washington —When former Vice President Mike Pence was subpoenaed by special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating any involvement by former President Donald Trump in the events surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, he soon announced his opposition to testifying. He called the subpoena "unconstitutional," arguing that under the Constitution, "the executive branch cannot summon officials in the legislative branch into a court in any other place."

As vice president, Pence was a member of the executive branch during the Trump administration but also held the unique role of president of the Senate and presided over the joint session of Congress that certified the 2020 Electoral College votes. On the basis of the responsibilities related to the election, he is invoking the Constitution's Speech or Debate clause, which protects members of Congress from being questioned about their legislative actions by other branches of the federal government. Pence's legal team plans to argue that he should not have to testify, in part because of the duty he fulfilled on Jan. 6, 2021.

"On the day of January 6, I was acting as president of the Senate, presiding over a joint session described in the Constitution itself. So I believe that that Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution actually prohibits the executive branch from compelling me to appear in a court, as the Constitution says, or in any other place," Pence said this week in Iowa, "We'll stand on that principle and we'll take that case as far as it needs to go, if it needs be to the Supreme Court of the United States."

This argument is likely to result in sealed court hearings and legal briefs filed under seal, as Pence's team and federal prosecutors try to convince a federal judge in Washington, D.C. that their interpretation of the law is the right one.

One prominent conservative legal voice — whose counsel Pence sought after the 2020 election — has cast doubt on Pence's legal strategy. Former federal Judge Michael Luttig, a staunch conservative jurist who personally advised Pence that he did not have the unilateral power to overturn Joe Biden's victory, wrote on Twitter that while the issue raised is an "unsettled question of constitutional law," any privileges a vice president obtains from his or her role in Congress are "few in number and limited in scope."

Luttig, who testified before a House Jan. 6 select committee hearing about his advice to Pence regarding the presidential electors, wrote on Thursday that any immunity Pence would have under the Speech or Debate Clause would not be sufficient to reject the subpoena.

"If there are privileges and protections enjoyed by a Vice President when he or she serves as the President of the Senate during the Joint Session to count the electoral votes, those privileges and protections would yield to the demands of the criminal process," Luttig wrote. The protections Pence plans to invoke, he contended, will likely not apply.

CBS News has reached out to Pence's team for any reaction to Luttig's analysis.

Scott Fredericksen, a former federal prosecutor and independent counsel, says Luttig's skepticism is warranted.

"I don't think it's viable," he said of Pence's claim of privilege. "Is it an open question? Technical yes, because there has never been a ruling from a court, let alone the Supreme court" on the issue.

But he continued, "I think it is highly unlikely that it would be viable, highly unlikely that it would be sustained by a court."

Fredericksen says a few factors weigh heavily against Pence's claim of privileged status as a legislator: Pence was not an elected member of Congress at the time, and he has repeatedly asserted that his role on Jan. 6 was a ceremonial one.

After a concerted pressure campaign by Trump and his allies to convince Pence to deny Mr. Biden's victory in the joint session of Congress and return the issue to the states, Pence publicly revealed some of his conversations with Trump and characterized his role that day as merely presiding over the lawmakers, both of which Smith's team of prosecutors have likely taken into consideration.

The unique legal strategy Pence is now taking, according to Fredericksen, may still be a smart one politically because it could delay any testimony against his former boss just as the presidential primary season is getting underway.

A former senior Justice Department official, who spoke with CBS News on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, differs from Luttig and suggests that Pence's legal theory is "credible."

"The notion that he should enjoy a legislative immunity seems likely to be correct," the former official said, "To the extent that the question is, 'was the Vice President seeking to get information on how to carry out his legislative duties,' that would apply."

Still, the former Justice Department official said many questions are raised by Pence's assertion of this broad and novel privilege, like the scope of his duties in the Senate and the issues prosecutors seek to cover in the questioning.

"I think it's credible but, whether it will apply is something the courts will figure out," the former official added.

Pence is not the first official in Trump's orbit to claim legislative immunity in an attempt to quash a subpoena. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham asked the courts to block him from testifying before a special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, investigating allegations of election interference by Trump and his allies. Ultimately, a federal judge ruled Graham had to testify, but could avoid questions that explicitly dealt with his role as a lawmaker. The Supreme Court declined the senator's request to further consider the issue.

The former vice president himself was sued in a civil action brought by Texas GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert over Pence's role in certifying the results of the presidential election. The Justice Department during the Trump administration, in defending Pence, wrote that the Speech or Debate clause could offer protection to the vice president "in his official capacity as the President of the Senate."

And the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., is reportedly adjudicating a secret case concerning Rep. Scott Perry and the seizure of his cell phone by federal investigators. The Pennsylvania Republican had previously argued similar legislative immunity shielded him from such acts. A hearing is set for late next week.

Both Fredericksen and the former Justice Department official agree it is likely some of these legal issues were raised by Smith's team, but not issuing a subpoena to Pence could have left them vulnerable if they decide to bring a case against Trump.

"You learn as a prosecutor you have to bring every important witness in or face the prospect of a defense attorney pointing out their absence" to a jury, Fredericksen noted.

"They fully expect to have this challenge," he said, echoing Luttig's analysis, but the demands of the criminal investigation could surmount any attempt by Pence to avoid testifying.

Smith's office declined to comment.