There’s a scene in “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation” by Andrew Weissmann (Random House, 2020) in which Vietnam Veteran Robert Mueller leads his Special Counsel team in a celebration of the Marine Corps Birthday, something Mueller had done since his days as director of the FBI. Semper Fi.
“On November 10, [2018], Mueller held his last U.S. Marine Corps Birthday celebration –– an annual event he had commemorated at the Bureau and now in the Special Counsel’s Office. The whole office attended, cake was served, and –– as tradition would have it –– the first piece was handed from Mueller to Ben Cohen (our security officer), symbolizing the passing of the torch from the oldest to the youngest marine. The tradition was lovely, and we all knew it would be our last with the office and Mueller.”
Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, was accused of coordinating a meeting at the Trump Tower in June 2016 between Russian operatives, including Natalia Veselnitskaya and other Russians, and members of the Trump campaign, including Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner.
Manafort coordinated also with Russian intelligence officer Constantin Kilimnik, providing internal polling information to a foreign entity; Manafort pleaded guilty in federal court to obstruction of justice and conspiracy. He comes across in “Where the Law Ends” as a simultaneously pathetic loser, smooth Svengali, and evil liar.
Weissmann outlines how Manafort worked with Ukrainian oligarchs and Russian officials in an attempt to divide Ukraine after the Ukrainian people voted Russia’s puppet Viktor Yanukovych out of office. We see the seeds of Putin’s invasion plans –– planted years ago and fertilized during the Trump administration.
“Russia had sought for years to control Ukraine, as Putin needed that territory to transmit oil and gas to Europe. But Ukraine needed Russia even more, as it obtained basically all of its energy from that nation. Russia had enjoyed de facto control of Ukraine when Yanukovych was president, funneling him millions of dollars in bribes to curry his favor. But after Yanukovych’s overthrow, Russia no longer had such a willing puppet under its control. Thus, Russia had turned to brute force: its infamous invasion of Crimea, a region of eastern Ukraine, in 2014 –– the one that had outraged most Western democracies, but which candidate Trump oddly had regarded as no big deal.
“The proposal for Russia to take over the eastern half of Ukraine was the Crimea invasion on steroids. Russia would annex the country, reinstall its favorite figurehead, and thus control the economic heart of the country. Notably, Manafort and Kilimnik’s proposal explained that, for such a move to succeed, it would need the consent of the United States. It called on Trump to give Russia an approving ‘wink’ –– the word the proposal used –– and, furthermore, to appoint Manafort to negotiate the logistics with Russia on America’s behalf. In a separate email, Kilimnik endorsed Manafort for this role; Manafort would be able to deal with Russia at the ‘very top level,’ Kilimnik explained…
“The facts we’d established, even amid Manafort’s attempts to muddy them were staggering. On August 2, if not earlier, Russia had clearly revealed to Manafort –– and, by extension, to the Trump campaign –– what it wanted out of the United States: ‘a wink,’ a nod of approval from a President Donald Trump, as it took over Ukraine’s richest region.
“It was a tremendous thing for Russia to ask for. It would seem to require significant audacity –– or else, leverage –– for another nation to even put such a request to a presidential candidate. This made what we didn’t know, and still don’t know to this day, feel monumentally disconcerting: namely, why would Trump ever agree to this? Why would Trump ever agree to this Russian proposal if the candidate were not getting something in return? Both Manafort and Trump were too transactional to give away something for nothing.”
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| Trump, Manafort and Ivanka Trump (Shealah Craighead) |
Regarding Manafort, Weissmann says Judge Jackson’s expression of disapproval of Manafort’s crimes were incisive and “managed to articulate a central and dismaying truth about our entire experience at the Special Counsel’s Office.”
“She spoke of Manafort’s numerous lies, and his multiple obstructions of our investigation –– both through his own willful deceit and by coaching witnesses to lie for his protection. He’d done the latter, Judge Jackson noted, while he was under indictment and out on bail. Finally, she explained that Manafort had even lied to the government about telling the truth: claiming that he would finally cooperate with our investigation only to obfuscate and impede it further. ‘It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved,’ she said. Manafort had not lived an exemplary life. Here was a chastening recognition that his conduct was serious and flagrant, and repeated over years.”
Working with the Russians and on behalf of the Trump campaign, it seems Manafort had sowed the political terrain for an invasion of Ukraine.
The title of Weissmann’s book comes from a John Locke quote, “Where law ends, tyranny begins.”Weissman outlines how Mueller's team faithfully and methodically defended the Constitution (from enemies, both foreign and domestic).
He introduces us not only to key actors in the limelight such as Manafort, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and Bill Barr, but also to various members of the Mueller team who worked behind the scenes, sometimes at odds over how to present to the courts the corruption they encountered.
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| Trump and Barr (Shealah Craighead) |
Barr had emasculated the special counsel, which he alluded he would do in an AG audition memo he wrote as a private citizen.
“Barr’s gambit –– enabled by [Rod] Rosenstein and his staff –– gave the president a green light to resume conducting himself beyond legal confines,” Weissmann contends.
“And it worked. Three months later [after release of the Mueller Report], on the day after Mueller testified about our report in Congress, the president held up hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to aid Ukraine in its war against Russia –– funding that had been authorized by Congress and previously signed off on by the president himself. Why? Because he wanted the Ukrainian government to open an investigation into his political opponent Joe Biden and his son…
“Still, it is a different investigation that Trump sought from Ukraine that I find even more disturbing. The president leaned on the Ukrainian government to investigate Ukraine’s purported interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. These allegations are rooted in Russian disinformation. The unanimous conclusion of our Intelligence Community and Trump’s own experts, like Dr. Fiona Hill, is that Russia interfered with the election; our indictments laid out clear and extensive proof, replete with Russian emails detailing the efforts. We had the facts. Why would Trump raise the boogeyman of Ukraine election interference other than to distract from what Russia had done (and would continue to do)?
“Did Ukraine help Trump in the 2016 election? Of course not. And nothing about Trump’s Ukraine allegations diminished the proof against Russia.”
Historians will value this book a hundred years from now for its first-person findings, eventually leading to the first impeachment (of two) of former President Donald Trump, who solicited a foreign entity (Ukraine) for help in an election campaign. And he would solicit foreign help again and again.
Trump, who previously and recently called Putin a savvy genius, lamented not being able to coerce Ukraine for information. And the former president offered this shocking comment about China: “And I won’t even talk about China because they haven’t gone into Taiwan yet.”
At the end of March, two hundred U.S. Marines were deployed to Lithuania on the eastern edge of the NATO alliance. The deployment includes a command-and-control unit for Marine Air Control Group 28 out of Cherry Point, North Carolina.
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| NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 1 ships sail in formation in Geiranger Fjord, Norway, March 9, 2022, during Exercise Cold Response. NATO |
Meanwhile, for more than a month valiant Ukrainian military members and civilians are defending their country and are now beating back the Russians, who are committing war crimes against their neighbor.
NATO, reunited and stronger, is supporting the courageous Ukranians. Semper Fi.
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