Special Counsel Robert Mueller has obtained “tens of thousands” of emails from the Trump Transition team, including many messages that they mistakenly thought would be kept secret. Trump’s lawyers and Fox News – acting effectively as Trump’s official propaganda outlet – just blew a gasket over the prosecutor getting a legitimate public record request fulfilled.
An exclusive Axios report reveals that the General Services Administration handed over a dozen key email accounts from the official Presidential Transition Team email addresses (@ptt.gov). The wide-ranging emails provide Special Counsel Mueller’s team with the most intimate look at the key time period when appointments were made, after the election and before Inauguration.
Just one particularly chatty Trump Transition team member alone sent over 7,000 emails. Axios’ co-founder Mike Allen reports:
The transition emails are said to include sensitive exchanges on matters that include potential appointments, gossip about the views of particular senators involved in the confirmation process, speculation about vulnerabilities of Trump nominees, strategizing about press statements, and policy planning on everything from war to taxes.
The transition sources said they were surprised about the emails because they have been in touch with Mueller’s team and have cooperated.
The sources say that transition officials assumed that Mueller would come calling, and had sifted through the emails and separated the ones they considered privileged. But the sources said that was for naught, since Mueller has the complete cache from the dozen accounts.
Fox News, for its part, has engaged in a desperate campaign to smear Mueller by reporting that Mueller inappropriately obtained “private” documents about the public’s business during the Trump Transition.
BREAKING NEWS: Trump transition team sends letter to lawmakers; claims Mueller team inappropriately obtained private documents. pic.twitter.com/fWAqEdnz09
— Fox News (@FoxNews) December 16, 2017
Mueller’s investigation of the Trump Transition includes matters like General Flynn’s hiring even though Chairman Mike Pence probably knew he was the secret agent of a foreign power or about Flynn’s, Steve Bannon’s and Jared Kushner’s many meetings with Russian agents and government officials.
A top Democratic Senator just recently demanded that Vice President Pence answer a series of questions about General Flynn’s Turkish paymasters and plots to drop sanctions for a massive Russian nuclear deal he pitched during the election and the transition.
Flynn was ostensibly fired by Trump for lying about discussing dropping sanctions with Russia’s Ambassador during the transition. Last week, a whistleblower revealed that Flynn was even texting one of his Russian deal partners during Trump’s horrid inaugural speech that he’d reverse sanctions immediately when installed in office.
If Pence knew that Flynn committed a felony like violating the Logan Act, which prevents unauthorized diplomacy or the General’s secret lobbying for Turkey, before approving his appointment as National Security Advisor, then his statements to cover up the crime might land him one of Mueller’s criminal indictments.
Additionally, former Trump Transition Team member Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Just last night the Ranking Democrat on the panel just sounded the alarm that Nunes and Republicans are trying to spike the panel’s Russia investigation, which is coincidentally also looking into the California lawmaker’s role in the Transition.
In just the last six weeks, two former Trump Campaign members have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Robert Mueller has “tens of thousands” of new tips to investigate the Trump Transition team, and six months worth of interviews from which to compare notes and see who has been telling the truth and who’s been lying to the Special Counsel’s probe.
Now, the Special Counsel has numerous reasons to suspect that after a brutal political campaign during which the Trump Campaign knew about Russia’s influence operation, other major crimes may have been committed in New York during the Trump Transition period.
