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Former Justice Department counterintelligence chief defends leaks probes
The Justice Department’s senior counterspy prosecutor who worked on both the Hillary Clinton email probe and the initial Russian election meddling probe recently criticized Special Counsel Robert Mueller for not completing his team’s investigation.
David H. Laufman, until recently chief of the counterintelligence and export control section of the Justice Department national security division, also defended the government prosecution of leakers, including the recent case of an anti-American former intelligence contractor who provided a top-secret document to a news outlet.
“I can’t substitute my judgement for that of Mueller’s team,” he said. “And I had to hand off my chapter of that [investigation] early on and so I’m not going to stand here and tell you whether I think the evidence does or doesn’t warrant actual charges. But I do think it was wrong of the special counsel’s office not to make the charging decision on obstruction—up or down.”
The redacted 428-page Mueller report concluded there were no Americans involved in the extensive Russian influence and hacking operation to influence the 2016 presidential election.
On the question of whether President Donald Trump interfered with the special counsel probe, the report noted three questionable instances. They include Trump’s order to White House counsel Don McGahn to end the probe; a request of Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland to draft a statement saying the president did not order Michael Flynn to discuss sanctions with Russia’s ambassador; and a request to another aide to ask then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to end his recusal of the Russia probe.
None of the actions were carried out by the aides, who either declined or did not follow through on the requests.
In all, the Mueller investigation noted 10 examples of possible obstruction but made no judgement on whether the president was culpable and should be charged.
Laufman praised what he said was a “rigorous and comprehensive investigation” but sharply criticized Mueller for not making a specific recommendation in his final report on whether Trump should or should not be prosecuted for obstructing the two-year Russian meddling investigation. The report, he said, contained several incidents of “conduct consistent with an effort to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
The former spy prosecutor said Mueller and his team of 19 lawyers, many of them Democrats, were authorized to make a charging decision and news reports stated that both Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were surprised when the Mueller report did not make such a decision.
Trump denied in a tweet that he ordered McGahn to fire Mueller “even though I had the right to do so.”
“Mueller was NOT fired and was respectfully allowed to finish his work on what I, and many others, say was an illegal investigation (there was no crime) headed by a Trump hater who was highly conflicted, and a group of 18 VERY ANGRY Democrats,” Trump stated. “DRAIN THE SWAMP!”
Laufman also said the special counsel report was meant as an internal document and that releasing it to the public, even in redacted form, appeared to violate rules designed to avoid denigrating targets of an investigation who are not charged at the end.
Mueller undermined Trump in the report by stating that investigators could not state with confidence the president did not commit obstruction and that the report does not exonerate him.
“To me those things are consistent with ‘dirtying up’ someone who is uncharged in a way that is not too dissimilar from just coming out and saying it,” Laufman said.
“I understand and I don’t gainsay that this was a principled decision, heartfelt, well-argued internally,” he added. “I just don’t think they made the right decision.”
Laufman also said the Mueller team’s failure to make a clear decision also undermined and politicized the Justice Department.
“It left a vacuum into which the political leadership of the Department of Justice happily stepped in to substitute their judgement in a very politicized manner undermining in my estimation the legitimacy of that decision and undermining public confidence in the integrity and independence of the department. And that’s a bad place to be.”
Worries that the Mueller findings would improperly leak to the press also appeared to have been factor in the handling of the investigation.
“Now I understand there was concern about leaks, but I just don’t think we can be paralyzed by the possibility of leaks in doing what otherwise might seem to be like the right thing to do,” Laufman said.
full story at https://freebeacon.com/national-security/prosecutor-in-charge-of-clinton-email-probe-criticizes-mueller/