Concord Management and Concord Consulting sound as American as "the rude bridge that arched the flood." But they are Russian disinformation shops who financed interference in our 2016 election. Although hardly anyone bothered to pay attention to them when Robert Mueller investigated the election, he and his team did get the two Concords indicted.
And the Justice Department did take them to court. Although hardly anyone bothered to pay attention, the Justice Department dropped the case on Monday.
Since the indictments against them were products of a presidentially-designated "witch hunt," and were drawn up by the presidentially-designated "hoax," there was no reason to think the pursuit of the Concords would go anyplace after Robert Barr became attorney general. Actually, it took him awhile to get where the president wanted him -- off their backs.
But he came up with a good, plausible excuse. It's one that will send one class of criminal attorneys to their law books to see if they can cash in.
Concord -- according to the articles of Barr's surrender -- was using the documents it obtained from the U.S government under discovery and other legal means to expose "how the United States detects and prevents foreign election interference." It also wasn't forthcoming about its methods of interfering.
So the case against the Concords was helping them and others they may share the information with to do more efficiently what they were on trial for.
No alternative. Have to let the bad guys go if they do that. Any problems?
Barr's surrender excuse has the air of plausibility.
ReplyDeleteEXCEPT, it's hard to credit that miscreants publicizing of US methods and intelligence practices haven't know all of this for a long time as does Putin et al. Was their releasing it publicly what drove Barr? Or Trump handing a party favor to Putin? Hard to know. Fake News? Confusing News?