Special Counsel Mueller Just Added A Top Foreign Bribery Expert To Trump-Russia Team
The Trump-Russia investigation just added another high-profile prosecutor whose specialty as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Obama Administration was enforcing federal laws prohibiting American companies from paying bribes overseas.
Reuters reports that Greg Andres departed white-shoe New York law firm, Davis Polk & Wardwell to join Special Counsel Robert Muller’s team yesterday:
Greg Andres started on Tuesday, becoming the 16th lawyer on the team, said Josh Stueve, a spokesman for the special counsel. Among the cases Andres oversaw at the Justice Department was the prosecution of Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford, who was convicted in 2012 for operating an $8 billion Ponzi scheme.
He was deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division, where he oversaw the fraud unit and managed the program that targeted illegal foreign bribery. He prosecuted several members of the Bonanno organized crime family, one of whom was accused of plotting to have Andres killed.
In fact, Andres obtained a conviction against that mafia murderer in 2010.
If the announcement of another fearless prosecutor to Mueller’s team isn’t concerning enough for the Trump White House, then this statement Andres gave to the Senate Judiciary committee from the start his two-year tenure atop the DOJ’s fraud division about immunity for bribery crimes, should set off four-alarm fire bells:
We don’t believe that immunity is appropriate just as we don’t believe that a bank robber should get immunity for disclosing that he robbed a bank.<
The fact alone that a company discloses their involvement in criminal activity or that of an employee in criminal activity doesn’t amount necessarily to getting a pass for those crimes.
Andres’ new colleague for the second time Andrew Weissmann, chief of the Justice Department’s fraud section, also testified in that Senate hearing, which you can see below.
It’s only been two weeks since President Trump drew a red line about investigations into his financial ties to Russia, which Special Counsel Mueller promptly crossed the very next day.
Tonight’s addition of another top legal mind in illegal foreign bribery to Mueller’s criminal investigation dream team is the first major clue that Trump’s vast foreign business practices are falling into the Special Counsel’s investigation.
You can watch Greg Andres’ Senate testimony which begins at minute 13:
