WaPo/ABC News poll released today shows stunningly bad news for Trump and good news for Mueller; Sam Patten, a GOP operative with close relations with pro-Russian interests and Russian intelligence in the Ukraine, cooperates with Mueller and is indicted; some interesting nuggets from Bruce Ohr’s testimony before Congress about Russian kompromat on Trump and Carter Page.
2018–08–31 Daily Notes
1/ Those hoping for a blue wave in November have been elated by WaPo/ABC News poll showing that 49 percent of Americans want Congress to start impeachment hearings now; that large majorities support the ongoing Mueller investigation etc. etc. The poll shows a stunning negative disapproval rating for Trump of 24 points! (Approve 36%; Disapprove 60%).
Questions have been raised about the validity of the poll. The poll surveyed anyone who answered the phone (all voters vs registered voters or likely voters). A comparison of the polling results with other recent polls at RCP and 538 shows that so far, anyway, the WaPo/ABC poll is something of an outlier, and until other polls show similar results in the next couple of days I myself am hesitant to believe that public opinion is really THAT good for us. But at the very least, it is perfectly reasonable to accept that this poll shows that Mueller’s support remains strong, that Trump’s approval is historically weak etc. , and that Trump isn’t getting the momentum he needs to prevent a D takeover of the House or the public support he needs to stop the Mueller probe.
2/ I predicted late last night that Mueller would meet a deadline of 5:00 PM today by getting his grand jury to issue a subpoena to Trump to testify. That didn’t happen. But we did get from Mueller and the feds another important development — albeit not as dramatic as a subpoena would have been.
Sam Patten, a GOP operative, has entered into a plea agreement for failure to register under FARA as a foreign agent for a pro-Russian political party in the Ukraine, and for channeling oligarch money from the Ukraine secretly and illegally into Trump’s inauguration fund. Mueller has handed over the prosecution of Patten to the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice National Security Division, but in order to get a reduced sentence Patten has agreed to cooperate with the Mueller probe.
Patten’s indictment and cooperation agreement is intriguing and potentially quite important.
First, Patten worked for Republican candidates in the midterm elections in 2014 for SCL, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company. Patten has described his work then as carrying “microtargeting” to an entirely new level. (Cambridge Analytica has been shuttered, but the parent company SCL is still alive and active.) Since then, Patten had worked on a political campaign for a West African politician with Cambridge Analytica. It is interesting to speculate that Patten’s cooperation agreement involved providing Mueller with cooperating witness testimony about Cambridge Analytica, which we know (from other sources) has been in Mueller’s sights for well over a year. (CA was involved in the Trump campaign, and operated with FB in the “digital campaign operations” that were run out of Parscale’s San Antonio office.)
Second, Sam Patten had for many years, like Manafort, a close working relationship with Konstantin Kilimnick, an “ex”-KGB agent who has been indicted by Mueller in a “conspiracy to defraud the US,” and who Mueller has alleged was involved in Russian intelligence as late as 2016. It is significant, therefore, that Patten is alleged by Mueller to have served as a secret and unlawful conduit for Russian oligarch money into Trump’s inauguration committee, and that it is suggested that he may have done so for Russian money during the campaign itself. This, of course, is reminiscent of claims by BBC correspondent Paul Wood that a joint task force involving the CIA and the FBI (put together by then acting CIA-director John Brennan) was investigating SIGINT showing that Russian money was going into the Trump campaign.
3/ Contrary to what several Trump minions and attack dogs in Congress have said, Bruce Ohr seems to have acquitted himself very well in his testimony before a joint hearing there. Most Congressmen who attended the session (few did, and then only for parts of it, apparently) seem to have been favorably impressed with Ohr as a cooperative and informative witness.
Ohr said that he was demoted for failing to tell superiors — especially Sally Yates — of his continuing contacts with Christopher Steele, a long-time friend and acquaintance of Ohr’s who shared Ohr’s interest in the Russian mafia, Russian oligarchs, Russian organized crime, and the seamless interactions of these with the Kremlin’s “active measures” intelligence operations.
Ohr said he didn’t notify Yates about his further contacts with Steele because he regarded Steele’s work as “raw source material.” Furthermore, there was nothing barring Ohr from funneling Steele’s ongoing research to the FBI, as his “firing” by the FBI only meant that Steele could no longer represent himself as working *for* the FBI in any of his work in business intelligence. That didn’t bar the FBI or any other federal agency from obtaining and learning about Steele’s own work after that.
Finally, AP reported today that Steele told Ohr that “Russian intelligence believed it had Donald Trump ‘over a barrel,’ echoing the Steele dossier allegations of Russian kompromat on Trump. Ohr also reportedly told the committees that “Steele told him former Trump campaign aide Carter Page had met with higher-ranking Russian officials than he has previously stated.”
