How Mueller's team fears Russia could learn US secrets in court case

Authored by abcnews.go.com and submitted by maxwellhill
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Special counsel Robert Mueller's team argued Thursday that if it's forced to hand over millions of "sensitive" documents to Russian individuals as part of court proceedings, Russia could mine the material for operational secrets and use them against the U.S.

Prosecutor Jonathan Kravis made the argument at a pre-trial hearing for a case against a Russian firm accused of funding a St. Petersburg troll farm that allegedly conducted a widespread propaganda and disinformation campaign ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Kravis said that while most of the 3.2 million "sensitive" documents that have been collected in discovery for the case were relatively innocuous on their own, a shrewd reading of the whole lot could reveal important U.S. investigative secrets.

It might be possible, for instance, to determine from the information the government has what information the government does not have -- the "gaps in the coverage." One could also potentially use the information available to "recreate the steps of the investigation," Kravis said.

"That information, used by a foreign adversary, could be used to avoid detection in the future," he told the court.

The argument is the closest the government has come yet to articulating a concern that legal and national security experts shared with ABC News back in October. They said then that Russia might be using the U.S. court system to gather intelligence on Mueller's investigation or other U.S. secrets through the discovery process.

Prosecutors say the Russian firm, Concord Management and Consulting, is controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Previous court filings from the Mueller team indicate they're concerned that sensitive information provided to any officers of Concord, including Prigozhin, for its defense could take a detour to Moscow.

Concord is the only one of three Russian businesses and 13 individuals, including Prigozhin, charged by the special counsel in the troll factory case to answer the accusations in court. The firm has pleaded not guilty to a fraud-related charge and has mounted a spirited pre-trial defense through the American law firm Reed Smith.

All of the Russian individuals charged in the case are believed to be in Russia, beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement, but U.S. law allows a corporate entity to defend itself without any individual officers ever being in court.

Early in the case U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich placed tight restrictions on discovery in the case, including provisions that the sensitive material had be housed at Reed Smith offices in the U.S. and could not be shared with individuals in Russia. A so-called "firewall counsel" was appointed to help determine what information could be shared with whom.

CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images, FILE

But for months Mueller's team and the defense have tussled in various motions over the question of sharing information.

Concord's lead attorney, Eric Dubelier, has vehemently argued that it would be virtually impossible to mount an effective defense without being able to show -- or even discuss -- the millions of documents of potential evidence with any actual officers of Concord in Russia. He said the government’s labeling of the millions of documents as “sensitive” was overly broad.

Dubelier said Thursday that if the government didn't think that many of the 3.2 million "sensitive" documents were actually that sensitive on their own, they should go back and reclassify them.

He also said idea that Concord officers would come to the U.S. to view the documents, which is allowed by the judge's restrictions, was a "non-starter." Prigozhin, for example, presumably would be arrested the moment he set foot in the U.S. since he's a co-defendant in the case.

Dubelier indicated that he has made a sealed filing suggesting a secure way to share information with individuals in Russia -- a matter that the Friedrich said the court would discuss in a closed session that immediately followed the public hearing today.

Kravis said the government was willing to work with the defense to identify documents or groups of documents they’d be willing to share, and to redact some information more closely related to the investigative process - like search warrant information or metadata on some documents.

Whatever the outcome of the closed hearing, it appeared that after months of wrangling the two sides still had a long way to go to finding an agreement on the discovery question. No trial date has been set.

U.S. intelligence officials have warned that online influence campaigns emanating from Russia have continued long after the 2016 election and are expected to continue into the race for 2020.

MadWlad on March 8th, 2019 at 10:15 UTC »

Here is a list what Mueller already found, for all of you saying there is nothing to investigate.. it's not just about your god Trump who hired all the criminals.

The full list of known indictments and plea deals in Mueller’s probe

1) George Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, was arrested in July 2017 and pleaded guilty in October 2017 to making false statements to the FBI. He got a 14-day sentence.

2) Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, was indicted on a total of 25 different counts by Mueller’s team, related mainly to his past work for Ukrainian politicians and his finances. He had two trials scheduled, and the first ended in a conviction on eight counts of financial crimes. To avert the second trial, Manafort struck a plea deal with Mueller in September 2018 (though Mueller’s team said in November that he breached that agreement by lying to them).

3) Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide and Manafort’s longtime junior business partner, was indicted on similar charges to Manafort. But in February 2018 he agreed to a plea deal with Mueller’s team, pleading guilty to just one false statements charge and one conspiracy charge.

4) Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to making false statements to the FBI.

5-20) 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies were indicted on conspiracy charges, with some also being accused of identity theft. The charges related to a Russian propaganda effort designed to interfere with the 2016 campaign. The companies involved are the Internet Research Agency, often described as a “Russian troll farm,” and two other companies that helped finance it. The Russian nationals indicted include 12 of the agency’s employees and its alleged financier, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

21) Richard Pinedo: This California man pleaded guilty to an identity theft charge in connection with the Russian indictments, and has agreed to cooperate with Mueller. He was sentenced to 6 months in prison and 6 months of home detention in October 2018.

22) Alex van der Zwaan: This London lawyer pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with Rick Gates and another unnamed person based in Ukraine. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and has completed his sentence.

23) Konstantin Kilimnik: This longtime business associate of Manafort and Gates, who’s currently based in Russia, was charged alongside Manafort with attempting to obstruct justice by tampering with witnesses in Manafort’s pending case last year.

24-35) 12 Russian GRU officers: These officers of Russia’s military intelligence service were charged with crimes related to the hacking and leaking of leading Democrats’ emails in 2016.

36) Michael Cohen: In August 2018, Trump’s former lawyer pleaded guilty to 8 counts — tax and bank charges, related to his finances and taxi business, and campaign finance violations — related to hush money payments to women who alleged affairs with Donald Trump, as part of a separate investigation in New York (that Mueller had handed off). But in November, he made a plea deal with Mueller too, for lying to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

37) Roger Stone: In January 2019, Mueller indicted longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone on 7 counts. He accused Stone of lying to the House Intelligence Committee about his efforts to get in touch with WikiLeaks during the campaign, and tampering with a witness who could have debunked his story.

Finally, there is one other person Mueller initially investigated, but handed over to others in the Justice Department to charge: Sam Patten. This Republican operative and lobbyist pleaded guilty to not registering as a foreign agent with his work for Ukrainian political bigwigs, and agreed to cooperate with the government.

and btw. the confiscated money that got in was more than what the investiagion has costed so far

Actinolite_ on March 8th, 2019 at 07:31 UTC »

What Mueller's team is warning could happen has already happened previously[1][2][3][4].

The special council handed over over a million documents to "Concord Management and Consulting". The firm accused of funding the troll farm, cited in this news story. Those documents were handed to the Russian government and intelligence services, who poured through them, edited them and selectively leaked them in order to damage the special council's investigation.

Heres the memo. Read it for yourself. Its almost as if the company tried to weaponize the US court system to uncover useful information and hamper the special council investigation into Russian election meddling. Heres what the judge of this case had to say regarding something similar.

On another note, wierd how so many comments in this thread are lining up to advocate the legal right to discovery for this russian company.

BackSeatGremlin on March 8th, 2019 at 06:52 UTC »

Why the fuck would a United States court order a special investigstion to relinquish information to a country that's not even a fucking ally of the state?