SEE UPDATE BELOW
Aaron Maté reveals on Twitter that a judge has issued a major rebuke of the Special Counsel in tying Concord, a private Russian company, to the Russian government:
Federal judge has issued a significant rebuke of a core Mueller claim. Mueller claims that the IRA — a Russian troll farm — was the 2nd of “two principal interference operations” by Russian gov’t. But as judge notes, Mueller’s implied link between IRA & Russian gov’t was false: pic.twitter.com/UyzApdP5BH
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) July 9, 2019
The judge notes that the Mueller report says it “established” that the Russia government interfered in the 2016 election via the actions of Concord. But he then notes that Mueller didn’t establish anything because he never actually linked Concord to the Russia government.
Maté continues…
This is a major blow not just to Mueller but to the entire “Russian Active Measures” talking point. As the judge acknowledges, the IRA (which, btw, put out juvenile clickbait mostly unrelated to the election) is a private entity & Mueller never establishes a Kremlin connection. pic.twitter.com/WT2n5nZ5Fy
— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) July 9, 2019
This is important because the the judge says the Special Counsel’s office violated a rule in telling the public something that was not true:
UPDATE: This is apparently more nuanced than Maté had indicated on his reading of the court opinion. The main issue was not that Mueller hadn’t proven that Concord was tied to the Russian government, but that he and his report had publicly claimed that they were connected, without actually proving it.
The court wasn’t therefore rebuking Mueller for not proving that Concord was connected to the Russian government, but for saying they were connected when he hadn’t made the connection.
Thus, the judge ordered no more public statements of this under threat of sanctions by the court, noting that contempt would not be appropriate at this time:
Here’s the full order from the judge if you want to read it.