For the dodos who still don’t get why bringing criminal charges in a counterintel investigation is difficult, here’s the latest filing from Mueller in the Concord Management case which runs Russia’s troll farm and is owned by an oligarch close to Pooty http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/01/30/2019-1-30concord.2.pdf
Basically the goals of CI (keep your adversary from knowing what you know) and criminal (show your adversary all the evidence you have) are diametrically opposed
Russia knows this. So, while they won’t send the actual defendants to the U.S. to be tried, they’ve hired lawyers...do they can use the discovery process to find out how the FBI and Mueller caught them
So Mueller now has to argue that some of the discovery should be limited/protected, bc they don’t want it to get back to Russia – we are still monitoring them so if they find out our sources and methods they can switch tacks, kill people giving us info, etc.
This filing is basically telling the court that his fears are well-founded: Turbs out that the non-sensitive docs that they have shared with opposing counsel has mysteriously shown up in a rando Russian website claiming to have “hacked” Mueller’s files
Troll farm lawyers claim that they have no idea how that happened and really those are irrelevant unrelated docs from a long time ago (Mueller says no dude, those are the same docs we gave you and shared with no one else and P.S. we haven’t been hacked)
These are the same lawyers who have been insulting Mueller and the judge (who is a Trump appointee, btw), in court, and putting sensational things in filings (like the claim that Mueller possesses nude selfies of ppl) in order to get media attention
So basically, the twist here is that in addition to creating the normal tensions you’d expect from a CI investigation turned criminal, Russia is now trying to use the court proceedings itself to further its active measures/disinformation campaign
And, it also turns out that those efforts (to discredit Mueller) happen to be the same narrative promulgated by the WH and Fox. Coincidence? You decide.
Thread by @AshaRangappa_: "For the dodos who still don’t get why bringing criminal charges in a counterintel investigation is difficult, here’s the latest filing from […]"