Of the thousands of attorneys in the Department of Justice, it should be possible to find one who was not so closely associated with a project to use the Foreign Agents Registration Act as a pretext to meddle in and undermine the results of an American election.
Adam Mill – October 29th, 2019
Did the FBI tamper
with the record of what former Trump campaign official and National
Security Advisor Michael Flynn said to FBI agents? According to documents
filed by Flynn’s attorney last week, it appears that none other than
former FBI attorney Lisa Page participated in the editing of Flynn’s
statement.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team then used the edited statement as proof of Flynn’s “lie.”
How can Brandon Van Grack, the lead prosecutor in the Flynn case,
possibly defend a conviction of Flynn for lying to the FBI when the
“lie” Flynn supposedly told was actually a statement edited and altered
without Flynn’s participation? This latest bombshell is disturbing
evidence that the U.S. Department of Justice remains a weapon in the
hands of Democrats and the permanent bureaucracy.
Van Grack is more than just the tip of the spear for a particularly egregious
operation to criminalize the Justice Department’s political targets—in
this case, members of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. He’s also a
key veteran of the Mueller investigation. Unlike his colleagues who
returned to private practice, Van Grack stayed behind to assume a
powerful position within the Justice Department.
Van Grack currently wears two hats. In one of Attorney General Barr’s less-considered decisions, he placed Van Grack in charge of enforcing the very law that the Justice Department (and later the Mueller team) used
as a pretext to spy on and leak against Trump in the 2016 election and
his subsequent administration. Yes, Van Grack now wields the awesome and
highly discretionary power of the unit that investigates and prosecutes
violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
To understand what a colossal mistake it is to put Van Grack in
charge of FARA, it is helpful to review the FARA statute and its
history.
In 1938, Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act,
which was intended to force agents of enemy governments such as Nazi
Germany or the Soviet Union to self-identify so the public could
evaluate their speech or propaganda in light of their stated loyalties.
Between 1966 and 2015, the Justice Department brought a total of seven cases, only one of which resulted in a conviction.
Beginning in 2016, however, FARA cases became all the rage.
The Justice Department recently created a new unit dedicated to
sniffing out potential violators. On its surface, the statute has a
politically neutral objective of informing the public of foreign
influence. In practice, however, the law has become the go-to tool for
partisan federal prosecutors. FARA prosecutions have tended to focus on Republicans even when Democrats commit the mirror image of the same violations.
One obvious recent example was the blatantly political selection of Paul Manafort as a FARA defendant, while politically connected Tony Podesta received an immunity deal for essentially the same behavior involving the same foreign clients.
Fusion GPS, which famously underwrote the Russia collusion hoax dossier, has piled up multiple FARA complaints (including unregistered work for Russia) that the Justice Department continues to ignore.
FARA is vague and subject to unbridled prosecutorial discretion. To
demonstrate how vague, travel agents now register as “foreign agents”
under the theory that marketing a tourist trip is a legally reportable act. It’s a perfect weapon to invoke
secret surveillance pursuant to FISA and can be used against anyone
with an international clientele. Nobody really knows what’s illegal
until the Justice Department targets you.
A Potent Political Weapon in the Wrong Hands
Van Grack, who donated
to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, will also have enormous
power in 2020 to decide whether candidate Joe Biden’s family should be
investigated for foreign entanglements. For example, if Biden
represented Ukraine natural gas company Burisma’s interests in demanding
that the Ukrainian prosecutor be fired, Van Grack might be the person
evaluating whether to charge that conduct.
FARA is a potent political weapon. Candidate Hillary Clinton hired Fusion GPS to gin up
suspicions of a Trump-Russia association in order to create a hook for
the Justice Department to launch a surveillance operation. The
department predicated
the application for the Carter Page FISA warrant upon supposed
suspicions that he worked as an “agent” of a foreign power. Once the
intelligence community had its surveillance in place, it repeatedly and
illegally leaked the fruits (or supposed fruits) to undermine the insurgent candidate and later the new president.
Many of those illegal leaks appear to have come directly
from the Mueller team during Van Grack’s tenure. It’s highly
problematic that Barr would place Van Grack in charge of the kind of
sensitive FARA-related information the Mueller team may have leaked
during the investigation.
Indeed, Van Grack is a logical witness in potential investigations
into those leaks. Guilt by association with foreigners remains such an
irresistible weapon that Hillary Clinton recently (and improbably) accused
Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. military veteran Tulsi
Gabbard of being groomed by the Kremlin to run as a third-party spoiler
in 2020.
But Van Grack’s participation in the abuse of the FARA law might not
have begun with the Mueller team. Prior to working as the head of the
FARA Unit and on Mueller’s team, Van Grack worked in the Justice Department’s national security division. There he worked with John Carlin, the architect of the Carter Page FISA warrant application. Carlin also signed one of the FISA court certifications that the court later found to be deceptive.
Conflicts of Interest
The Trump-hating press has already started cheerleading the prospect
of Van Grack opening up a new front against Trump. A few days ago, The New Republic ran a story, “The Law that Could Take Down Rudy Giuliani,” referring to Van Grack’s new area of responsibility, the FARA law.
The New Republic is not alone. The corporate leftist legacy media, including the Washington Post, NPR, and Politico, have pushed Justice Department to use FARA to take down the president’s current attorney. Politico
asks, “Is Rudy Giuliani Going To Jail?” The author is optimistic that
Van Grack is well positioned to stick it to Giuliani. Another author
drew up a mock indictment
of Giuliani incorporating allegations related to the recent arrest of
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two non-citizens the media have tied to the
former New York City mayor.
Van Grack’s role as the Flynn prosecutor is totally incompatible with
the role of prosecuting new FARA violations. Flynn’s attorney has accused Van Grack’s prosecution team of several acts of misconduct. I profiled a number of these violations here.
Flynn’s legal defense team alleged multiple incidents of the government
failing to disclose and/or preserve evidence. Remember the text
messages between Lisa Page and her lover, former FBI counterintelligence
chief Peter Strzok? There were actually two sets of cell phones, one
issued by the FBI and a second the couple used while working for
Mueller. When Mueller learned of the disturbing text messages sent
between the first set of cell phones, he allowed the second set to be wiped of their data.
Flynn’s attorneys have alleged Van Grack committed misconduct in
failing to ensure those cell phones were preserved and disclosed before
Flynn’s plea. Questions about the political motivations of the Flynn
prosecution persist. Flynn’s attorney also accused
Van Grack’s team of attempting to coerce Flynn into lying, threatening
to prosecute Flynn’s son, and hiding and even destroying evidence.
Thus, Van Grack brings all of that baggage into any new FARA
prosecution which makes him less effective at catching real criminals
posing real security threats to the United States. Indeed, Van Grack
(who considers himself to be a “trial attorney”) has already lost two high profile cases in his new role.
Mueller’s entire investigation will be forever tainted
by the blatant political corruption that infected it from the very
beginning. Under Mueller, the spying and surveillance that began against
candidate Trump continued against our sitting president (sometimes in
coordination with Mueller and likely Van Grack).
In the Summer of 2017, Justice Department agents raided
the offices of Trump’s private attorney, Michael Cohen, securing audio
recordings that later leaked to the press. Justice officials obtained
warrants for surveillance against Cohen. Mueller seized thousands of the Trump transition team’s emails without a warrant. Roger Stone complained that the Mueller’s team pressured him to lie in the headlong effort to get Trump at any cost.
Of the thousands of attorneys in the Department of Justice, one hopes
it would be possible to find one to supervise the FARA unit who was not
so closely associated with a project to use FARA as a pretext to meddle
in and undermine the results of an American election. Van Grack should
not be in a position to meddle in the 2020 election until he is cleared
of any involvement in the FARA abuses and leaking of sensitive
FARA-related information.
