THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE SECRET SUBPOENA (COURTHOUSE FIFTH FLOOR SHUT DOWN)
Six Experts Speculate:
‘That the mystery subpoena could relate to several countries is itself what is significant’
<Alex Whiting, professor at Harvard Law School, and former federal prosecutor with the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division and the US Attorney’s Office in Boston.
‘Two possibilities seem realistic’
<Paul Rosenzweig, Senior Fellow, R Street Institute, and former senior counsel to Kenneth Starr during the Whitewater investigation.
1.a sovereign wealth fund in the Middle East (like Qatar, UAE or Saudi Arabia)
or
2.Rosneft, the Russian oil and gas giant
‘Mueller is trying to complete the circle’
<Patrick Cotter, defense attorney, former federal prosecutor and a trial prosecutor in the case U.S. v. John Gotti.
Mueller is, quite appropriately, trying to complete the circle of all those involved in the conspiracy to attack our electoral process.
This is what all good prosecutors do. For example, you do not want to just identify and arrest the guys who received the shipment of illegal drugs; you want to identify and, if possible, indict and even arrest the people who sent the drugs, even if they were, and are, outside the USA. Any prosecutor wants to be able to tell the whole story of the crime, if possible, because that makes for the strongest case. And that is what Mueller is doing.
‘This could relate to Russia, Turkey, or UAE’
<Barbara McQuade, professor at University of Michigan Law School, and former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
‘Rosneft, the state-owned oil company?’
<Harry Sandick, defense attorney and former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York.
The mystery corporation’s argument is similar to those ‘advanced by Chinese banks’
^^^^^^^THIS
<Nick Akerman, former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and member of the Watergate prosecution team.
My most informed guess is that this was a subpoena for documents from a bank in China or another country that owns a bank and has a branch office in the United States. It would appear that Mueller served a subpoena on a bank in the US (the Corporation) that is the branch of a foreign bank owned by the foreign government in order to obtain records maintained in the bank outside of the US.
The Circuit Court reviewed an “ex parte submission” from the government, presumably Mueller’s office, and found that it “satisfied its burden of establishing a reasonable probability that this ‘action is based upon . . . an act outside the territory of the United States in connection with a commercial activity of the foreign state elsewhere’ and that the act cause[d] a direct effect in the United States.”
The other clue is the claim by “the Corporation” that complying with the subpoena “would require the Corporation to violate Company A’s law.” This is typically the argument advanced by Chinese banks in opposing US civil and criminal subpoenas for customer information held in China. A similar argument might also apply to other countries with state-owned banks.
sauce:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/12/26/six-experts-explain-robert-muellers-impending-supreme-court-showdown/