Mueller attempts to revise federal law by withholding information to which defendants are legally entitled and offers no evidence to support his accusation of ongoing 'interference operations'-Law and Crime, Kalmbacher

6/12/18, "Mueller is Trying to Hide Evidence from Defendants in Russian Trolls Case," lawandcrime.com, Colin Kalmbacher, opinion

"Special counsel Robert Mueller and his deputy Rush Atkinson filed a 14-page motion Tuesday arguing that the government shouldn’t have to release certain evidence to indicted Russian company Concord Management and Consulting LLC due to ongoing “interference operations” against the United States....

Concord Management’s attorneys aren’t requesting public or unauthorized disclosure. Rather, they’re simply using the Federal Code of Criminal Procedure to request documents and evidence which should be provided to their clients as matter of federal law, Constitutional right and legal custom. The problem appears to be that the Russians’ attorneys are simply using U.S. law too effectively. 

Additionally, the accusations are conclusory and unsupported. It’s one thing for Mueller’s team to state “the government believes [uncharged individuals] are continuing to engage in interference operations.” It’s another thing entirely to offer any sort of evidence to support such an accusation. Mueller has provided no evidence here.

The second aspect of Mueller’s argument is even weaker. Again, the motion: 

"Second, information within this case’s discovery identifies sources, methods, and techniques used to identify the foreign actors behind these interference operations, and disclosure of such information will allow foreign actors to learn of these techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security investigations."

This is a rehashed refrain from government attorneys and law enforcement when they try to prevent information from being released. The basic verbiage is more or less cribbed from the Freedom of Information Act’s Exemption (7)(E), part of the general law enforcement exemption. 

Instead of using the exemption’s language–again, roughly–to protect bad cops from the prying eyes of journalists and citizens, however, Mueller’s team has offered another conclusory and self-serving statement in order to keep a criminal defendant from accessing information necessary to mount an adequate defense.

No matter one’s position on the named Russian defendants in the private sector troll farm case, these heavy-handed information-hiding tactics in order to secure a conviction against internet trolls accused of frustrating the democratic is an ironic use of the U.S. legal system....

Supreme Court jurisprudence has frequently favored the rights of the accused to know what they’re up against, too. And yes, this even goes for foreign nationals because the U.S. Constitution applies to anyone under the jurisdiction of the United States. Not just citizens and not just people on the landmass.

The proposed protective order expressly forecloses against that right. At the same time, the Mueller’s proposal purports to offer Concord Management the mere possibility of seeing those discovery materials sometime down the road. This would maybe occur by way of extremely complicated and burdensome permission-seeking regime under circumstances which could accurately be described as theoretical at best. Mueller’s team, of course, makes pains to appear the reasonable actor.

The aforementioned allegations of “interference operations” comprise most of Mueller’s argument for why this wide-ranging protective order should be granted."...
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Mueller Motion vs. Concord Consulting and Management, LLC by LawNewz on Scribd


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