Beat a damn confession out of these lying bastards.
A federal judge Thursday denied a request by Fusion GPS to void a House Intelligence Committee subpoena to provide bank records as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian activities during the 2016 election campaign.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon found Fusion’s objections to the subpoena to be “unavailing” and denied the research firm’s request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction that would have prevented it from handing over the documents.
Fusion GPS attorney Theodore Boutrous Jr. said the firm would appeal Leon’s ruling.
“Instead of focusing its efforts on Russian meddling in the presidential election, the Committee continues to misuse its investigatory power to punish and smear Fusion GPS for its role in uncovering troubling ties between #Russia and the Trump campaign,” Boutrous said in a statement.
The committee, chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., had subpoenaed the records in an effort to determine who paid for a now-infamous “dossier” outlining various claims about President Donald Trump’s connections with various Russian officials. The dossier, commissioned by Fusion GPS and compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, was published in full by BuzzFeed in January of last year.
Among a number of unconfirmed allegations about Trump and his associates, the dossier included sordid claims about the president’s sexual proclivities.
“Although the records sought by the Subpoena are sensitive in nature,” Leon wrote in a 26-page ruling, “the nature of the records themselves, and the Committee’s procedures designed to ensure their confidentiality, more than adequately protect the sensitivity of that information.”
Leon also rejected Fusion’s claim that the subpoena would have a chilling effect on its work for political clients and violate the firm’s First Amendment rights.
“While the opposition research Fusion conducted on behalf of its clients may have been political in nature,” Leon wrote, “Fusion’s commercial relationship with those clients was not, and thus that relationship does not provide Fusion with some special First Amendment protection from subpoenas … the First Amendment is not a secrecy pact!”
In October, Fox News confirmed that Fusion GPS was retained by Marc Elias, an attorney representing the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The DNC and the Clinton campaign paid Fusion to produce the dossier.
Earlier this week, Fusion GPS founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch wrote a New York Times opinion piece accusing congressional Republicans of being “in the thrall of the president” and waging a campaign to portray Fusion GPS “as the unwitting victims of Kremlin disinformation.”
In response, a spokesman for Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, noted that Simpson “has refused to answer dozens of questions voluntarily, and has failed to provide the Committee with documents and responses to follow-up questions …”
A lawyer for the Trump presidential transition team is accusing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office of inappropriately obtaining transition documents as part of its Russia probe, including confidential attorney-client communications, privileged communications and thousands of emails without their knowledge.
In a letter obtained by Fox News and sent to House and Senate committees on Saturday, the transition team’s attorney alleges “unlawful conduct” by the career staff at the General Services Administration in handing over transition documents to the special counsel’s office.
The transition legal team argues the GSA “did not own or control the records in question” and the release of documents could be a violation of the 4th Amendment – which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Kory Langhofer, the counsel to Trump for America, wrote in Saturday’s letter that the GSA handed over “tens of thousands of emails” to Mueller’s probe without “any notice” to the transition.
The attorney said they discovered the “unauthorized disclosures” by the GSA on December 12th and 13th and raised concerns with the special counsel’s office.
“We understand that the special counsel’s office has subsequently made extensive use of the materials it obtained from the GSA, including materials that are susceptible to privilege claims,” Langhofer writes.
The transition attorney said the special counsel’s office also received laptops, cell phones and at least one iPad from the GSA.
Trump for America is the nonprofit organization that facilitated the transition between former President Barack Obama to President Trump.
The GSA, an agency of the United States government, provided the transition team with office space and hosted its email servers.
“We continue to cooperate fully with the special counsel and expect this process to wrap up soon,” Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Saturday.
The special counsel’s office declined to comment Saturday.
Langhofer wrote that some of the records obtained by the special counsel’s office from the GSA “have been leaked to the press by unknown persons.”
The transition lawyer also argued the actions “impair the ability of future presidential transition teams to candidly discuss policy and internal matters that benefit the country as a whole.”
Langhofer requests in the letter that Congress “act immediately to protect future presidential transitions from having their private records misappropriated by government agencies, particularly in the context of sensitive investigations intersecting with political motives.”
The letter was sent to the Senate Homeland Security and House Oversight Committees.
The committees did not immediately return a request for comment.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12/16/trump-lawyer-mueller-improperly-obtained-transition-documents-in-russia-probe.html
