Tim Donaghy Drops A New Name

In Sunday's post, I mentioned Tim Donaghy, a former NBA referee who in 2007 pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to transmit wagering information across state lines. After his inbitial plea in 2007 but before his sentencing in 2008, he made a number of allegations regarding overall corruption in NBA refereeing. According to Wikipedia,

On June 11, 2008, Donaghy alleged in a statement through his lawyers that several series in the NBA Playoffs had been improperly refereed according to the NBA's instructions. He alluded specifically to a playoff game where "personal fouls [resulting in obviously injured players] were ignored even when they occurred in full view of the referees" because "it was in the NBA's interest to add another game to the series." . . . Donaghy also referred to a playoff series where "Team 3's Owner alleged that referees were letting a Team 4 player get away with illegal screens. NBA Executive Y told Referee Supervisor Z that the referees for that game were to enforce the screening rules strictly against that Team 4 player." . . . Federal authorities investigated Donaghy's claims and found no evidence to support them.

In the context of the new NBA scandal, in which similar allegations have been raised about players and coaches relaying insider information to organized crime, which in turn uses it to bet on games, Donaghy has made several public appearances, in which he renews claims that both the NBA and the Justice Department covered up evidence that the 2007 scandal was much wider than represented. At 3:45 in the video embedded above, he says,

You know, I think David Stern [then-NBA Commissioner] was basicaslly able to put a lid on it and paint me as one bad apple, the only guy involved, and nobody else did anything but me, and we're gonna move on from it. The FBI said that there was six or seven other people that they wanted to indict, and this got shut down from the highest level. And then I find out, after I go to jail, a guy by the name of Greg Andres, who was the head of the Eastern District of New York, took a job at a law firm and all of a sudden got all the outside legal counsel work for the NBA, so it was a situation where David Stern really ran that whole investigation, and it got shut down by the highest level people.

When he says "this got shut down from the highest level", it may refer also to David Stern, but Stern had no authority to shut down an investigaion. Robert Mueller, who was FBI Director at the time, did have this authority "at the highest level". According to Wikipedia,

Greg Donald Andres is an American attorney, who most notably served as an Assistant Special Counsel for Russian interference in 2016 United States elections under Robert Mueller. He rejoined the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell in June 2019.

. . . Andres previously served as . . . an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, where he rose to be Chief of the Criminal Division, and a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell.

According to Davis Polk's website, during the period Donaghy refers to, Andres was

Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 2010-2012

Chief of the Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York, 2007-2010

Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, 2009-2011

Deputy Chief, Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York, 2006-2007

Although Andres is variously listed as leading several significant prosecutions during this period, including of the Bonnano crime family, the Donaghy gulty plea apparently hasn't been one of his major cases. But it's also reasonable to infer that he got to know Robert Mueller, who was FBI Director from 2001 to 2013, during this time. Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate Russian election interference in May, 2017. Andres left Davis Polk in 2017 to work for Mueller as an Assistant Special Counsel, where he led the prosecution of Paul Manafort.

According to Wikipedia,

The FBI reportedly began a criminal investigation into Manafort in 2014, shortly after Yanukovych was deposed during Euromaidan. That investigation predated the 2016 election by several years and is ongoing. In addition, Manafort is also a person of interest in the FBI counterintelligence probe looking into the Russian government's interference in the 2016 presidential election.

. . . Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed on May 17, 2017, by the Justice Department to oversee the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and related matters, took over the existing criminal probe involving Manafort. On July 26, 2017, the day after Manafort's United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing and the morning of his planned hearing before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, FBI agents at Mueller's direction conducted a raid on Manafort's Alexandria, Virginia home, using a search warrant to seize documents and other materials, in regard to the Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

. . . The Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier, is a private intelligence report comprising investigation memos written between June and December 2016 by Christopher Steele. Manafort is a major figure mentioned in the Steele dossier, where allegations are made about Manafort's relationships and actions toward the Trump campaign, Russia, Ukraine, and Viktor Yanukovych.

. . . On October 30, 2017, Manafort was arrested by the FBI after being indicted by a federal grand jury as part of Mueller's investigation into the Trump campaign.

. . . Manafort was jailed from June 2018 until May 2020. . . . On May 13, 2020, Manafort was released to home confinement over COVID-19 concerns. On December 23, 2020, Trump issued Manafort a full pardon.

Why would a white-shoe law partner leave his firm to work as an assistant special counsel? I have no ides, but there must have been a really, really compelling reason. In 2019, Andres returned to Davis Polk, making this statement:

In an interview, he declined to discuss any aspect of his work with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's team, other than to say, “I’m proud of the special counsel office’s work, and it was truly a professional privilege for me to work with the men and women of the FBI and IRS and Department of Justice, and obviously I have a great deal of respect for Director Mueller.”

However, by the time of Mueller's 2019 congressional testimony, it had become clear that he had undergone significant mental decline:

“It was a painful reminder that age catches up to all of us,” one unnamed House Democrat who questioned Mueller said, according to the Washington Examiner. “Here you have this Vietnam hero and this post-Sept. 11 FBI director. You could tell he was having a hard time hearing, and it was like, ‘Ugh! This is not how I want him to be remembered.'”

It's hard not to surmise that Andres during this period was able to act in Mueller's name with near-complete discretion, and he must have been fully aware of Mueller's condition. Nor is it difficult not to conclude that from the NBA to the Russia investigation, Greg Andres has been knee-deep in covering up shady enterprises. I suspect his name will pop up again.