RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/is-durhams-case-on-clinton-tied-lawyer-michael-sussmann-collapsing/

To put it mildly, this is going to be a very tough case for Durham.

D efense counsel for Michael Sussmann, the former Perkins-Coie lawyer indicted by Russiagate special counsel John Durham for lying to the FBI, now claim that information they have received in pretrial discovery substantially undermines the prosecution’s case.

In the one-count indictment, filed in mid September, Durham alleges that Sussmann misleadingly concealed the identities of his clients when he brought the FBI information that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was secretly communicating with the Kremlin.

According to the indictment, Sussmann told the bureau’s then-general counsel, James Baker, that he was not representing any client. This is now said to have been false because Sussmann was representing both the campaign of Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, and a cyber expert who was hoping to land a top tech job in the anticipated Clinton administration. At the meeting, Sussmann told Baker that Alfa Bank, a major Russian financial institution, was the conduit for Trump-Kremlin communications, with its servers transmitting messages to and from a server at Trump Tower in Manhattan. The FBI looked into the Alfa Bank allegation and ultimately rejected it.

According to the New York Times, Sussmann’s attorneys claim that prior statements by Baker indicate that he knew Sussmann was representing clients. At a minimum, he has said different things at different times. The critical September 19, 2016, meeting between Baker and Sussmann was short – less than 20 minutes in all – and they were the only two people in the room. The false-statement charge thus hinges on Baker’s memory; because it appears faulty, Sussmann’s lawyers contend that the prosecution will not be able to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/where-john-durhams-investigation-is-heading/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=second

Reading the tea leaves, it appears the special counsel’s end game is something other than a sweeping indictment.

L ast week’s indictment of Igor Danchenko has the commentariat buzzing. If special counsel John Durham has cracked the core of the Russiagate case, if he has established that the Steele dossier on which the FBI substantially based its spy warrants was fraudulent, does that mean he is nearing a sweeping conspiracy indictment? Will there be criminal charges that target the real 2016 collusion — not between the Trump campaign and Russia, but between the Clinton campaign and U.S. officials who abused government investigative powers for political purposes?

Almost certainly not.

All signs are that Durham will end his investigation with a narrative report. It has looked that way for a long time. There are reasons why then-attorney general Bill Barr appointed then-Connecticut U.S. attorney Durham as a special counsel shortly before the Trump administration ended.

Unlike ordinary federal prosecutors, who either file charges or close investigations without comment, special counsels are required by regulation to write a report for the attorney general. As we saw with special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in 2019, there is typically great outside pressure on the AG to make such reports public (though doing so is not required). Barr obviously knew enough about Durham’s investigation to grasp that there was unlikely to be a grand, overarching criminal-conspiracy case; there had, however, been rampant malfeasance and abuse of power that might never come to light absent a comprehensive investigative report.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/12/07/california-is-the-only-state-to-hide-its-spending/?sh=706e7d5f72b7

In 2018, California resident Steven Childs wanted to know how much the state paid to a single vendor over a five-year period. Instead of the data, California Controller Betty Yee sent him an invoice for $1,250.

Childs asked more questions and the Controller’s chief counsel, Rick Chivaro, admitted the state held electronic records and “warrant records” akin to “maintaining a checking account online.”

Today, in a Sacramento superior court, the controller denies having a checkbook and claims the warrant register doesn’t contain vendor information. The Golden State is the only state in the nation not to produce state spending under open records laws.

Our organization at OpenTheBooks.com is battling the controller in this case over our freedom of information request for the entire line-by-line state vendor checkbook. When the controller rejected our request, we sued.

Yee is claiming her office “couldn’t locate” a single payment. No, that’s not fake news, or a comedy punch line. California’s top financial officer actually argued this in court recently, despite admitting she paid 50 million individual bills last year.

Furthermore, the controller now claims that transparency itself is an “undue burden.” She swears it’s necessary to take 72,000 work hours to go through each of the 50 million payments by hand.  

Here are some of the arguments Yee is making to stonewall our request: 

“In order to produce checkbook level data as requested … staff would need to manually review the estimated 50 million transactions …” (Emphasis added.) 
“The public interest served by not disclosing the requested records and data clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure. As such, the [State Controller’s Office] is relieved of any obligation to produce the requested records.” (Emphasis added.)  

Do we have a representative republic if the representatives get to hide all transactions from the people—and claim that it’s for their own good? 

Controller Yee acts like she has something to hide. Here are just a couple items we learned during discovery about how taxpayer dollars are spent by the controller:

1. Using paper and string. An estimated 200,000 bills — submitted only on paper — were paid during the fiscal year. Incredibly, the justification for each payment contains even more paper — between 15-20 pages and is bound and physically tied together with string. It takes 7-10 minutes to deconstruct, copy, and reconstruct each file.