Andrew Weissmann Wants Kevin Clinesmith to “Stop Snitchin”
September 1, 2020
Really long article on why Clinesmith is valuable to Durham
“Mr. Weissmann, when did you stop violating the civil rights of members of the Trump campaign?”
• That might be the first question Attorney General Barr could ask Andrew Weissmann if given the chance to inquire about his role as “Mueller’s Pit Bull” in the Special Counsel’s Office.
•Andrew Weissmann is a relative
Generally speaking, a “criminal conspiracy” is an agreement by two or more people to commit one or more crimes, combined with an overt act taken by one or more conspirators “in furtherance” of carrying out the purpose of that agreement.
• But for purposes of understanding the importance of Clinesmith to Durham (and others), the most significant factor to understand is the question of “how” a prosecutor builds and proves a conspiracy case.
• Complicating Durham’s investigation is the fact that the various actors involved will all profess they were simply conducting a criminal investigation. They will claim that all the actions taken by them in the course of conducting that investigation were legitimate law enforcement inquiries.
• Durham needs someone who tells the same story the targets would tell, but maybe tells it in a way that is not so “self-serving.” This is where the evidentiary rules for “proving” a conspiracy come into play.
• First, the “agreement” between two or more persons to commit one or more crimes does not need to be an “express” agreement. It is not necessary for the evidence to be that the co-conspirators talked about the crime then intended to commit, and then verbalized – or memorialized in a writing – an agreement to commit that crime. A typical “Jury Instruction” in federal court on the crime of conspiracy includes some form of the following language:
• For a conspiracy to have existed, it is not necessary that the conspirators made a formal agreement or that they agreed on every detail of the conspiracy.
• One becomes a member of a conspiracy by willfully participating in the unlawful plan with the intent to advance or further some object or purpose of the conspiracy, even though the person does not have full knowledge of all the details of the conspiracy.
• An overt act does not itself have to be unlawful. A lawful act may be an element of a conspiracy if it was done for the purpose of carrying out the conspiracy. The government is not required to prove that the defendant personally did one of the overt acts.
• Against the backdrop of what a jury would be told, there are many, many appellate court decisions on the subject, which have some form of the following comment:
• “An agreement to commit a crime can be explicit or tacit, and can be proved by direct or circumstantial evidence, including inferences from circumstantial evidence.”
THAT is why Kevin Clinesmith is of value to an investigation. It is highly unlikely that Durham or any other prosecutor going back through the CH investigation is going to find overt or direct evidence that any of the participants entered into an explicit agreement to violate a federal statute. But in many instances, that is not the method by which the existence of a conspiracy is proven in a federal criminal trial
• Concerted actions, circumstantial evidence, and inferences that can be drawn therefrom are the foundations upon which federal criminal conspiracies are often proven.
• What about “intent” to commit a crime a reader might ask? Again, the law recognizes that “intent” is a matter of what was in the defendant’s mind at the time the action was taken and is not subject to “direct” evidence unless the defendant confesses. So “intent” is most often established by circumstantial evidence and the reasonable “inferences” that can be drawn from such evidence.
• That takes us back again to what Clinesmith can tell Durham about what he heard from others, and what he saw while working on CH. All of that is potentially “circumstantial evidence” that could support a “concerted action” or “tacit agreement” approach to proving the existence of a “conspiratorial agreement.”
•When you look at the history of the investigation, and Clinesmith’s function and role over time, you see the potential for Clinesmith to have been a wealth of information – much greater than if you just focused on his job function.
• Clinesmith, like Strzok and maybe only a small handful of others, was involved for nearly the entirety of the “Russian Hoax”
• Clinesmith was with CH from “Day 1”, and lasted 8 months with the SCO before he too was removed in February 2018. Combined, Clinesmith was on the CH investigation for 20 months. That is a lot of ground to cover, and likely involved a lot of meetings where he sat in on or participated in the discussions.
https://uncoverdc.com/2020/09/01/andrew-weissmann-wants-kevin-clinesmith-to-stop-snitchen/