A Russian company accused by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of interfering in the 2016 elections, Concord Management and Consulting, is using a curious argument for their legal defense from a very telling source – a court decision made by President Trump’s Supreme Court Justice nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.
In 2011, Kavanaugh argued that the federal government needs to be able to prove that any foreigner being charged with violating political contribution law were aware that the law was being broken — and his memorandum was quoted by Concord’s lawyers in their efforts to get Mueller to drop the charges.
“The Special Counsel found a set of alleged facts for which there is no crime. Instead of conceding that truth, however, the Special Counsel attempts to create a make-believe crime that is in fact no crime at all” argued Concord’s lawyers in their Monday motion.
Concord Management has been charged by the Mueller team with conspiracy to defraud the United States during the 2016 election by providing “funds and oversight” for the Internet Research Agency, the infamous “troll farm” in St. Petersburg from which the social media disinformation campaign against Hillary Clinton was waged.
The company was founded by Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is also known as “Putin’s chef” due to his closeness to the Russian leader and his ownership of an enormous food catering company. Prigozhin is also believed to have created and funded the Internet Research Agency.
Given that we have highly classified information that indicates Vladimir Putin himself ordered the meddling into the 2016 election, it’s safe to say that Prigozhin and his companies definitely broke some laws in their efforts to impugn our democracy and get Trump elected. Whether or not they were aware of it should be a moot point.
The choice of Kavanaugh as the source for their legal defense appears to be a way to leverage his newfound prominence in American politics to their advantage, a conclusion supported by their decision to also cite Trump’s first Supreme Court Justice appointee, Neil Gorsuch, in their arguments that Mueller’s charges are “unconstitutionally vague.”
For such a company to already be invoking Kavanaugh’s past decisions in their defense should be ringing alarm bells across the country for what is in store for our nation if he gets confirmed.