The agreement was never signed by Iran so it isn't legal anyhow.
Have you seen the new problem Mueller has??
Mueller believed he could get away with the showmanship while keeping alive the hoax that Team Trump and Moscow got together to “steal the election” .
That’s because he leveled his charges safe in the belief that the 13 Russians were well outside U.S. jurisdiction. So there’d never be a trial — only more sensational collusion headlines and accusations.
OOPS!
Lawyers for Russian company Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, formally entered a “not guilty” plea in federal court Monday in a case special counsel Robert Mueller probably never thought would happen.
Mueller may now have to try the case, and Concord’s lawyers have put the special counsel on notice.
The Russian company’s lawyers intend to invoke “discovery” to obtain U.S. intelligence about what they knew of Russian activities.
Mueller thought he had a freebie and could make his case without being challenged. BUT Concord retained the services of two attorneys at mega law firm Reed Smith, and the company is demanding a speedy trial.
The lawyers indicated they were going to exercise Concord’s rights under discovery to examine all of Mueller’s “evidence” of the conspiracy.
In starting Wednesday’s trial, Eric A. Dubelier, a Reed Smith law partner, entered a “not guilty” plea in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He also repeated his client’s interest for a “speedy trial.”
Russian Firm Pleads Not Guilty to Election Meddling Charge A Russian company charged as part of a conspiracy to meddle in the 2016 presidential election has pleaded not guilty in federal court in Washington.
Attorneys Eric Dubelier, right, and Katherine Seikaly, left, representing Concord Management and Consulting LLC, walk out of federal court in Washington, Wednesday, May 9, 2018, after pleading not guilty on behalf of the company, which has been charged as part of a conspiracy to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election.
The company is controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy businessman who was placed on a U.S. sanctions list earlier this year and who has ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During a brief afternoon hearing, attorney Eric Dubelier, who represents the company, entered the not guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, but neither Prigozhin nor a company representative appeared.
Dubelier told U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey that he did not represent any other defendants, including Prigozhin or another company identified as "Concord Catering," which he said didn't exist during the time period laid out in the indictment.
"We're dealing with the government indicting the proverbial ham sandwich," Dubelier said, referring to the inclusion of the other company in the indictment.
In response, prosecutor Jeannie Rhee revealed that Mueller's investigators had reviewed documents submitted by the company's attorneys to the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers U.S. sanctions. Those documents, Rhee said, showed Dubelier's law firm represented both companies.
Prigozhin — who has been referred to as "Putin's chef" because his restaurants and catering businesses have hosted the Russian president — and 12 other Russians are personally charged in the indictment. It lays out a broad conspiracy that prosecutors say was carried out by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian social media troll farm, to sow discord in the U.S. political system from 2014 through 2017. Concord is accused of overseeing and providing millions of dollars in funding to the troll farm.
Management and Consulting, LLC also demanded a speedy trial and said they intend to invoke “discovery” to obtain U.S. intelligence about what the agencies knew of Russian activities in the “collusion” case, The Daily Caller reported.
Concord’s moves were the second legal headache for Mueller in two weeks. Last week, federal Judge T.S. Ellis threatened to throw out the special counsel’s indictment of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Mueller had tried to delay a May 10 hearing, claiming Concord had not been properly served notice.
“Until the Court has an opportunity to determine if Concord was properly served, it would be inadvisable to conduct an initial appearance and arraignment at which important rights will be communicated and a plea entertained,” Mueller’s lawyers filed in federal court.
Concord opposed the motion. “The Special Counsel is not entitled to special rules and is required like the Attorney General to follow the rules of the Court,” Dubelier stated in his response to Mueller.
U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich agreed with Concord and rejected Mueller’s request for a delay.
Russian Company in Troll Farm Case Pleads Not Guilty in U.S
A U.S. lawyer entered a not guilty plea Wednesday on behalf of a firm controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian caterer nicknamed Putin’s chef, to charges accusing it of interfering in the 2016 elections.
The 37-page indictment describes how hundreds of Russians used social media, fake rallies and secretive operatives in the U.S. to create “political intensity” among radical groups, opposition social movements and disaffected voters. In 2014, the indictment says, several Russians traveled to the U.S. under false pretenses “to collect intelligence for their interference operations.”
The next hearing in the case will be on May 16.
The case is U.S. v. Internet Research Agency LLC, 18-cr-32, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
Trump has likely been violating the Iran deal from the beginning of his administration. Why? Because it was a good deal for all concerned, but you know Trump. In his sorry mind anything Obama was involved in has to be bad. That's why Trump has been determined to do his utmost to sabotage it from the beginning.
The deal’s opponents keep saying Tehran has failed to live up to its commitments to the U.S. But what if it’s the other way around?
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
Peter Beinart Apr 29, 2018 Global
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As anyone who reads the news knows, Donald Trump will decide by May 12 whether to “withdraw from” or “pull out of” or “abandon” or “scrap” or “jettison” (the synonyms keep coming) the nuclear deal with Iran. Why May 12? Because last October, Trump declared that Iran isn’t complying with the agreement. Under a law passed by Congress, that “decertification” means Trump can reimpose the sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear activities that were waived as part of the deal. Trump hasn’t reimposed those sanctions yet. But he’s demanded that Iran make vast new concessions. And he’s threatened that if Iran does not do so by May 12, “American nuclear sanctions would automatically resume.”
There’s an irony here. For all of the drama surrounding Trump’s decision to decertify Iranian compliance with the deal, there’s little doubt that Iran is complying. The International Atomic Energy Agency has said so nine times. America’s European allies have said so. So has Trump’s own defense secretary, James Mattis .. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iran-nuclear/mattis-says-iran-fundamentally-in-compliance-with-nuclear-deal-idUSKCN1C82GK . This very month, Trump’s State Department issued a report .. https://www.state.gov/t/avc/rls/rpt/2018/280532.htm#IRAN .. declaring that “Iran continued to fulfill its nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” the technical name for the nuclear deal. (The deal’s opponents often cite the two times Iran narrowly exceeded the agreement’s 130-metric-ton cap on heavy water, which is used in nuclear reactors: In both cases Iran shipped the excess out of the country, and it remains in compliance with the deal.)
The more interesting question isn’t whether Iran has been complying with the nuclear deal. It’s whether America has. American journalists often describe the agreement as a trade. In the words of one CNN report, it “obliges Iran to limit its nuclear program in exchange for the suspension of economic sanctions.” But there’s more to it than that. The deal doesn’t only require the United States to lift nuclear sanctions. It requires the United States not to inhibit Iran’s reintegration into the global economy. Section 26 commits .. https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/245317.pdf .. the U.S. (and its allies) “to prevent interference with the realisation of the full benefit by Iran of the sanctions lifting specified” in the deal. Section 29 commits .. https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/245317.pdf .. the U.S. and Europe to “refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalisation of trade and economic relations with Iran.” Section 33 commits them to “agree on steps to ensure Iran’s access in areas of trade, technology, finance and energy.”
The Trump administration may have committed other violations as well. Section 22 .. https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/245317.pdf .. of the deal specifically obliges the United States, subject to some restrictions, to “allow for the sale of commercial passenger aircraft and related parts and services to Iran.” To do business with Iran, any U.S. company—or even any foreign company that gets more than 10 percent of its components from U.S. companies .. https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/02/iran-bombardier-ofac-licens-trump-aircraft-deals-qeshm.html —must get a permit from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). OFAC must certify, for instance, that the transaction isn’t with an Iranian company designated under other U.S. sanctions programs such as those targeting terrorism. And under the Obama administration, OFAC began issuing these permits, albeit slowly. In November 2016, for instance, OFAC allowed the sale of 106 planes by Airbus to Iran Air.
But since Trump took over, notes .. https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/02/iran-bombardier-ofac-licens-trump-aircraft-deals-qeshm.html .. Al-Monitor, “requests concerning permits to export planes to Iran have been piling up … OFAC has not responded to aircraft sales licensing requests since the first of such licenses were issued during the Barack Obama administration.” Erich Ferrari, a lawyer in Washington who works on sanctions issues, told me there’s “definitely been a shift. Certain transactions that we’ve seen licensed in the past under the Obama administration are now being denied.”
The Trump administration still issues licenses for routine personal divestment transactions: for instance, people who want to sell off their property or close their bank accounts in Iran. But as far as Ferrari can tell, the Trump administration has issued few, if any, licenses for commercial transactions. That’s hard to verify: There is no public database of OFAC licenses, and the Treasury Department didn’t respond to my request for comment. But in recent months, two close observers of the Iran deal have echoed Ferrari’s observation. As the pro–nuclear deal National Iranian American Council’s Reza Marashi reported earlier this year, “To hear senior Western diplomats tell it, the Trump administration has not approved a single Iran-related OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) license since taking office.” If true, this too likely violates the Iran deal.
We’ve seen a version of this movie before. In 1994, the Clinton administration signed a nuclear deal with North Korea. Pyongyang promised to freeze its nuclear program. In return, the U.S. promised to provide “heavy fuel oil” to compensate for the electricity North Korea would lose by shutting down its plutonium reactor; to help build an entirely new, “light water” reactor; and to move toward normalizing relations. But that November, Republicans—many of whom were skeptical of the deal—took control of the House and Senate. And in the following years Congress hindered both America’s promised delivery of fuel oil and its promised help in building a light-water reactor. The North Koreans warned that if the U.S. didn’t abide by the deal, they wouldn’t either.
And they didn’t. While North Korea mostly met its promises not to build a bomb using plutonium, it secretly operated an alternative nuclear program based on enriched uranium.
Whether North Korea cheated in response to U.S. cheating, or intended to cheat all along, is a subject of debate. Either way, the Bush administration in 2002 confronted Pyongyang about its uranium-enrichment program. North Korean officials conceded its existence, while falsely claiming the deal covered only the plutonium route to a bomb. And they proposed a new, more comprehensive agreement, which would also cover uranium enrichment and require the U.S. to recognize North Korea, stop threatening it militarily, and lift sanctions. But the hawks in the Bush administration, who had opposed the 1994 deal from the beginning, refused to negotiate seriously .. https://www.38north.org/2017/08/lsigal082217/ . As John Bolton explained, the uranium-enrichment program “was the hammer I had been looking for to shatter the Agreed Framework.”
Now Bolton is back, and looking for another hammer. If Trump stops him from wielding it, and the U.S. doesn’t reimpose nuclear sanctions on Iran, many in the media will celebrate America’s decision to continue complying with the nuclear deal. But that will be wrong. The Trump administration has never fully complied with the nuclear deal, and likely never will. The real question isn’t whether Trump violates it, but how.
The truth is that, at least in the post–Cold War era, the United States hasn’t always been very good about keeping the promises it makes in nuclear deals. It’s important Americans know that. It might be nice to think that the U.S., as a democracy, is more trustworthy than its authoritarian adversaries. But America’s government won’t hold itself to a higher standard unless its people do.
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