The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 08, 2017 5:51 pm

House Intel Committee asks why Donald Trump surrogate Sheriff David Clarke met with Russia
By Bill Palmer | March 8, 2017 | 0
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Palmer Report has previously reported that Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke, a prominent Donald Trump campaign surrogate, had curiously turned up in Moscow in December 2015. Clarke made no real effort to hide the trip, even tweeting a photo of himself with a Russian guard. Trump adviser Michael Flynn and third party presidential candidate Jill Stein were also simultaneously in Moscow. And now the House Intelligence Committee has begun asking why.

Officially, Sheriff Clarke went to Moscow on behalf of a group called The Right to Bear Arms. He ended up meeting with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. But that doesn’t add up , because Rogozin was on a U.S. sanctions list and couldn’t have legally done business with the gun group. This means that yet another Donald Trump campaign figure met with a Russian government representative for reasons can’t easily be explained away.

House Intelligence Committee member Mike Quigley is now referring to David Clarke’s meeting with Rogozin as “disconcerting.” The committee begins its Trump-Russia hearings on March 20th with an initial witness roster which includes FBI Director James Comey and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates.

Other Trump campaign figures including Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, J.D. Gordon, Carter Page, and Jared Kushner also met with Russian officials during the campaign season — with many of them lying to cover their tracks – while several other Trump campaign figures have also been tied to the Russian government.

The House Intel Committee may also want to take a look at why David Clarke, Michael Flynn, and Jill Stein were all in Moscow simultaneously. Flynn has since resigned as National Security Adviser after getting caught lying about his contact with the Russian government. The New York Daily News has also reported that Flynn was paid $40,000 to be there. And as Palmer Report has previously pointed out, Stein sat at the same dinner table as Flynn and Vladimir Putin, making her a material witness to whatever they discussed.
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/ho ... ssia/1832/


Jeff Sessions now admits he met twice with Russian Ambassador. But there were at least three meetings.
By Bill Palmer | March 8, 2017 | 0

After Attorney General Jeff Sessions was caught having twice met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak while he was a Donald Trump campaign adviser, and having lied about it under oath, he’s now admitting that those two meetings happened. But here’s the thing: it turns out there were at least three documented meetings between Sessions and Kislyak, suggesting he merely copped to what he’d been accused of, and he still hasn’t disclosed the real story.

Jeff Sessions met with the Russian Ambassador at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July of 2016, and he met with Kislyak again in his Senate office in September of that year. These two meetings were exposed by the Washington Post last week, setting off a firestorm of controversy and accusations that Sessions plagiarized himself during his Senate confirmation hearings. Sessions has since claimed he misunderstood the question, and has admitted to the two meetings. But that’s not the whole story.

Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions both met the Russian Ambassador during a backstage private reception before Trump’s first-ever foreign policy speech in April of 2016, a meeting which was quietly documented in the latter paragraphs of articles from Politico and the Wall Street Journal. This means there were at least three meetings between Sessions and Kislyak during the campaign, and that he’s still holding back the truth. So what else is he hiding?

At this point Jeff Sessions has lied about having met with Kislyak at all, then admitted to two meetings with Kislyak after he was caught having those meetings. But why admit to just the two meetings? Why didn’t he admit to all three and get it over with? This strongly suggests that Sessions is still hiding a lot more about his involvement with the Russian government while serving as a Donald Trump surrogate. The only other explanation would be that Sessions can’t count to three
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/jef ... imes/1834/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 08, 2017 6:29 pm

Sally Yates is testifying about Donald Trump’s Russia scandal to House Intelligence Committee
By Bill Palmer | March 7, 2017 | 1

Even as it continues to appear that the investigation into Donald Trump’s Russia scandal will ultimately be spearheaded by the Senate Intelligence Committee, it turns out its counterpart in the House is the first to formalize a witness testimony list and schedule for its hearings. Two of the names which stand out on the House Intel Committee witness list: current FBI Director James Comey and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates.

The inclusion of Yates is notable in that when Donald Trump fired her five weeks ago, it was believed at the time to have been related solely to their differences over Trump’s Muslim ban. It was later revealed that Yates had alerted Trump’s White House that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was a potential blackmail risk due to the secret communications he’d been having with the Russian Ambassador. In hindsight it appears Trump may have fired Yates partly to try to protect Flynn, who ended up resigning over the matter anyway. And now Yates will get her say.

It’s customary for the initial round of testimony in Congressional hearings to consist of officials and witnesses who are willing to fully cooperate and who are not targets of the investigation, so as to establish the facts and circumstances, before moving on to witnesses who may be uncooperative or suspects.

So it’s not surprising to see that that the initial House Intelligence Committee witness roster includes Sally Yates, James Comey, recently retired director of national intelligence James Clapper, and recently retired CIA director John Brennan, who are all set to testify in hearings beginning on March 20th (source: Bloomberg). Any investigation targets, such as Michael Flynn or other Trump advisers, would presumably be called to testify afterward. But for those who have been waiting for Sally Yates to get her chance at exposing Donald Trump over Russia, that wait time is now less than two weeks
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/sa ... ntel/1828/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:24 am

Report: Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone was in direct contact with Russian government hackers
By Bill Palmer | March 8, 2017 | 0

Roger Stone, a former Donald Trump campaign adviser and decades-long Trump friend, has come into focus as one of the advisers suspected of collaborating with the Russian government during the election. In fact the New York Times claims the FBI is investigating him over it. And Stone himself has long admitted he’s kept a “backchannel” open with hacker group WikiLeaks. But now The Smoking Gun is reporting that Stone was also communicating directly with Russian government hackers.

The report says that Roger Stone communicated with the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0, a self identified lone wolf who has since been revealed by U.S. intel to have been a creation of the secretive GRU arm of the Russian government. This stands out as noteworthy because up to now, there has been a wide swath of evidence that half a dozen Donald Trump advisers communicated with the Russian Ambassador, but no firm evidence that Trump’s advisers were communicating with Russian government hackers. Stone has admitted communication with WikiLeaks, which was allegedly given the Democratic Party emails by Russian hackers, but he had not admitted communication with the Russian hackers themselves.

Why does the distinction matter? All that’s been confirmed thus far is that the Trump campaign changed the Republican Party platform for Russia’s benefit, and that Russia hacked and published the emails of Democratic Party targets. What’s not been confirmed is whether this was a quid pro quo agreement. Even though Trump and his advisers met with the Russian Ambassador and ostensibly agreed on platform changes, they can claim they had no knowledge that the election was coincidentally being rigged for them by Russian hackers. That won’t pass the smell test, but it might pass for reasonable doubt.

That all changes, however, if it can be demonstrated that Trump or his advisers were in communication with the Russian hackers during the election, which would not be able to explain away. And according to this new article from The Smoking Gun, Roger Stone was allegedly in regular communication with Russian government hacker collective Guccifer 2.0. We presume Stone will jump on Twitter shortly to issue his usual “fake news” blanket denial.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/rep ... tion/1848/



Intercepted Russian Communications Part of Inquiry Into Trump Associates
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, MATTHEW ROSENBERG, ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZOJAN. 19, 2017

WASHINGTON — American law enforcement and intelligence agencies are examining intercepted communications and financial transactions as part of a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of President-elect Donald J. Trump, including his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, current and former senior American officials said.

The continuing counterintelligence investigation means that Mr. Trump will take the oath of office on Friday with his associates under investigation and after the intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government had worked to help elect him. As president, Mr. Trump will oversee those agencies and have the authority to redirect or stop at least some of these efforts.

It is not clear whether the intercepted communications had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s campaign, or Mr. Trump himself. It is also unclear whether the inquiry has anything to do with an investigation into the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computers and other attempts to disrupt the elections in November. The American government has concluded that the Russian government was responsible for a broad computer hacking campaign, including the operation against the D.N.C.

The counterintelligence investigation centers at least in part on the business dealings that some of the president-elect’s past and present advisers have had with Russia. Mr. Manafort has done business in Ukraine and Russia. Some of his contacts there were under surveillance by the National Security Agency for suspected links to Russia’s Federal Security Service, one of the officials said.

Russians Ridicule U.S. Charge That Kremlin Meddled to Help Trump JAN. 7, 2017
Mr. Manafort is among at least three Trump campaign advisers whose possible links to Russia are under scrutiny. Two others are Carter Page, a businessman and former foreign policy adviser to the campaign, and Roger Stone, a longtime Republican operative.

The F.B.I. is leading the investigations, aided by the National Security Agency, the C.I.A. and the Treasury Department’s financial crimes unit. The investigators have accelerated their efforts in recent weeks but have found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, the officials said. One official said intelligence reports based on some of the wiretapped communications had been provided to the White House.

Counterintelligence investigations examine the connections between American citizens and foreign governments. Those connections can involve efforts to steal state or corporate secrets, curry favor with American government leaders or influence policy. It is unclear which Russian officials are under investigation, or what particular conversations caught the attention of American eavesdroppers. The legal standard for opening these investigations is low, and prosecutions are rare.

“We have absolutely no knowledge of any investigation or even a basis for such an investigation,” said Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition.

In an emailed statement Thursday evening, Mr. Manafort called allegations that he had interactions with the Russian government a “Democrat Party dirty trick and completely false.”

“I have never had any relationship with the Russian government or any Russian officials. I was never in contact with anyone, or directed anyone to be in contact with anyone,” he said.

“On the ‘Russian hacking of the D.N.C.,’” he said, “my only knowledge of it is what I have read in the papers.”

The decision to open the investigations was not based on a dossier of salacious, uncorroborated allegations that were compiled by a former British spy working for a Washington research firm. The F.B.I. is also examining the allegations in that dossier, and a summary of its contents was provided to Mr. Trump earlier this month.

Representatives of the agencies involved declined to comment. Of the half-dozen current and former officials who confirmed the existence of the investigations, some said they were providing information because they feared the new administration would obstruct their efforts. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the cases.

Numerous news outlets, including The New York Times, have reported on the F.B.I. investigations into Mr. Trump’s advisers. BBC and then McClatchy revealed the existence of a multiagency working group to coordinate investigations across the government.

The continuing investigation again puts the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, in the middle of a politically fraught investigation. Democrats have sharply criticized Mr. Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Mrs. Clinton has said his decision to reveal the existence of new emails late in the campaign cost her the election.

The F.B.I. investigation into Mr. Manafort began last spring, and was an outgrowth of a criminal investigation into his work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine and for the country’s former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. In August, The Times reported that Mr. Manafort’s name had surfaced in a secret ledger that showed he had been paid millions in undisclosed cash payments. The Associated Press has reported that his work for Ukraine included a secret lobbying effort in Washington aimed at influencing American news organizations and government officials.

Mr. Stone, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump’s, said in a speech in Florida last summer that he had communicated with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that published the hacked Democratic emails. During the speech, Mr. Stone predicted further leaks of documents, a prediction that came true within weeks.

In a brief interview on Thursday, Mr. Stone said he had never visited Russia and had no Russian clients. He said that he had worked in Ukraine for a pro-Western party, but that any assertion that he had ties to Russian intelligence was “nonsense” and “totally false.”

“The whole thing is a canard,” he said. “I have no Russian influences.”

The Senate intelligence committee has started its own investigation into Russia’s purported attempts to disrupt the election. The committee’s inquiry is broad, and will include an examination of Russian hacking and possible ties between people associated with Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Investigators are also scrutinizing people on the periphery of Mr. Trump’s campaign, such as Mr. Page, a former Merrill Lynch banker who founded Global Energy Capital, an investment firm in New York that has done business with Russia.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Page expressed bewilderment about why he might be under investigation. He blamed a smear campaign — that he said was orchestrated by Mrs. Clinton — for media speculation about the nature of his ties to Russia.

“I did nothing wrong, for the 5,000th time,” he said. His adversaries, he added, are “pulling a page out of the Watergate playbook.”

The lingering investigations will pose a test for Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, who has been nominated for attorney general. If Mr. Sessions is confirmed, he will for a time be the only person in the government authorized to seek foreign intelligence wiretaps on American soil.

Mr. Sessions said at his confirmation hearing that he would recuse himself from any investigations involving Mrs. Clinton. He was not asked whether he would do so in cases involving associates of Mr. Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/p ... ation.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:32 am

Roger Stone's Russian Hacking "Hero"

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Trump loyalist communicated with "Guccifer 2.0," target of FBI probe


MARCH 8--In the months before Election Day, a longtime confidante and political consultant for Donald Trump was in contact with the Russian hacking group that U.S. intelligence officials have accused of illegally breaching the Democratic National Committee’s computer system and the e-mail accounts of Hillary Clinton campaign officials in a bid to aid Trump, The Smoking Gun has learned.

The contact between Roger Stone, the Trump associate, and the Russian influence operation came via private messages exchanged on Twitter, according to a source. Stone’s contact was with “Guccifer 2.0,” an online persona that U.S. officials say was created by Russian government officials to distribute and publicize material stolen during hacks of the DNC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Gmail accounts used by Clinton staffers like John Podesta, the campaign's chairman.
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Though “Guccifer 2.0” maintained that he was a lone “hacktivist” committed to “fight all those illuminati,” a U.S. intelligence assessment concluded with “high confidence” that the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence service, was operating the “Guccifer 2.0” persona, which communicated through Twitter, a WordPress blog, and a series of burner e-mail accounts.

Asked if he had exchanged private Twitter direct messages with “Guccifer 2.0,” Stone said in a text, “don’t recall.” In reply to a question about whether anyone else had access to his Twitter account, Stone--who has called “Guccifer 2.0” his “hero”--said, “Numerous people who work for me have access to my twitter feed.”

Stone said he thought his “entire communication” with “Guccifer 2.0” “was on twitter for the world to see.” The “brief exchange was public,” Stone contended. The 64-year-old Stone, who revels in his reputation as a dirty trickster, added he was unsure that the “Guccifer 2.0” on Twitter “is really him.” With the exception of “Guccifer 2.0” replying to one Stone tweet and directing a second tweet at the Republican operative, their Twitter accounts reflect no public back-and-forth communication.

Stone has mocked assertions that Democrats were targeted by Vladimir Putin’s government, saying that Clinton and her supporters could not admit being hacked by “one person” because that “didn’t look sinister enough.”

The “@GUCCIFER_2” Twitter account was used by the hackers to publicize material stolen in the DNC, DCCC, and Gmail incursions. The account also hyped the publication of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s e-mails on Wikileaks and retweeted calls for support for Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. In late-July, “Guccifer 2.0” began following Stone, the only Trump World figure among the small group followed by the hackers.

Beginning in mid-June, for nearly four months TSG had intermittent contact with “Guccifer 2.0” via the “@GUCCIFER_2” Twitter account and several e-mail accounts (from which hundreds of stolen documents were transmitted to the site).

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In late-August, TSG asked “Guccifer 2.0” about contact with Stone. After wondering, “why r u asking?,” “Guccifer 2.0” then accused TSG of receiving reportorial guidance from federal investigators: “the fbi’s tracing me, reading my dm [direct messages] and giving u hints. no?” When further pressed, “Guccifer 2.0” said, “i won’t comment on my conversations with other ppl.” The self-professed “freedom fighter” added, “why r u so interested in stone? he’s just a person who wrote a story about me. or i don’t know some important stuff?”

“Guccifer 2.0” surfaced on June 15, a day after The Washington Post reported that the DNC had been hacked and that security experts concluded that the Russian government was behind the intrusion.

In an e-mail to TSG, the hackers wrote, “Hi. This is Guccifer 2.0 and this is me who hacked Democratic National Committee.” After bragging that the DNC hack was “easy, very easy,” “Guccifer 2.0” noted that, “The main part of the papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to Wikileaks.” Attached to the introductory e-mail were an assortment of documents stolen from the DNC’s servers.

While “Guccifer 2.0” subsequently shared additional documents with TSG and other reporters (and posted stolen material to the WordPress blog), the most damaging DNC material appeared on Wikileaks in late-July, days before the Democratic National Convention opened in Philadelphia.

After “Guccifer 2.0” took credit for the DNC attack--as well as the provision of stolen goods to Wikileaks--the FBI opened a criminal investigation into the hack. As part of the probe being run out of the bureau’s office in San Francisco, agents have obtained detailed records for the “Guccifer 2.0” Twitter and WordPress accounts, according to two sources. It is unknown whether the account records were obtained via search warrant or grand jury subpoena, or whether federal agents have gathered enough evidence to seek an indictment against “Guccifer 2.0” or, perhaps, individuals connected to the online persona.

Records obtained from Twitter and WordPress--both of which are headquartered in San Francisco--would include IP addresses from which the accounts were accessed. But barring an operational security mishap, those IP logs likely lead to an assortment of proxies spread across Europe. “I took all the measures so that they won't track me!” Guccifer wrote in one e-mail to TSG.

Stored Twitter records, however, would include tweets and direct messages, according to the company. “Guccifer 2.0” also used ever-changing e-mail accounts (he corresponded with TSG from three addresses, including an encrypted ProtonMail account).

The FBI also has an ongoing counterintelligence investigation that is examining possible links between several Trump loyalists, including Stone, and Russian officials. That investigation, aided by a multiagency working group including CIA and National Security Agency officials, has involved the review of intercepted communications and financial records, according to press reports.

Responding to media reports about the counterintelligence probe, Stone recently told the pro-Kremlin RT network that he had read that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had approved the wiretapping of his phone calls and the monitoring of his e-mail accounts. “I don’t know if that’s true. I’m told that there’s a grand jury convened,” said Stone, who did not specify where he had learned about the supposed interception of his communications.

Among the Trump associates being investigated by the FBI, Stone has known the 45th president the longest. For more than 30 years, Stone has worked, on and off, for Trump as a lobbyist, strategic advisor, and political consultant. Stone, who urged Trump to run for president in 1988, 2000, and 2012, wrote in 2011 that the real estate developer was a “middle class phenomenon,” adding that, “The higher your level of education the more likely you are to loathe Trump.”

Like Trump, Stone is vain, vindictive, and prone to declarations untethered to the truth. Both men are protégés of Roy Cohn, the reptilian attorney whose career initially blossomed at the elbow of Senator Joseph McCarthy and ended in disbarment weeks before his death from AIDS in 1986.
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Stone began working for Trump’s presidential campaign months before the Republican candidate famously descended Trump Tower’s escalator in June 2015. Two months after Trump’s announcement, Stone--who had clashed with campaign manager Corey Lewandowski--was gone. Stone told reporters he quit, while Trump said he fired the veteran consultant, who was paid a total of $50,000 for his campaign work, Federal Election Commission records show.

Though no longer on the campaign payroll, Stone eventually resumed contact with Trump, according to numerous media reports describing Stone as an informal advisor to the Republican candidate (whose campaign was briefly chaired by Paul Manafort, a former partner of Stone’s in a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm).

Four months after Stone quit/was fired, he got Trump to agree to an interview with Alex Jones, the crackpot conspiracy theorist. During that notorious December 2015 Skype conversation--broadcast live on Jones’s Infowars program--Trump told the loony host, “Your reputation’s amazing” and pledged, “I will not let you down. You will be very, very impressed, I hope.” Sitting at his Trump Tower desk, Trump also saluted Stone as a “patriot” and “tough cookie” who “has been so loyal and so wonderful.”

In light of Stone’s relationship with Trump (whom Stone paid a congratulatory Trump Tower visit in December), some of the operative’s campaign pronouncements have come under close scrutiny by federal investigators. Especially since Stone appeared to have an inside line on upcoming Wikileaks e-mail dumps.

During an August 8 speech, Stone said, “I actually have communicated with Assange” and then referred to a Wikileaks “October surprise.” Stone subsequently stated that while he had never met or spoken to the Wikileaks founder, the men had a “mutual friend” who served as an “intermediary.”

Days after Stone’s speech, he told Jones that he had been the victim of a hack targeting “My personal accounts, my business accounts, my political work, a number of my bank accounts have been accessed.” Stone claimed that the hack occurred “as soon as it became publicly known that I was in communication with Julian Assange.”

When asked about Stone’s claim that he had a “back channel communications with Wikileaks,” a spokesperson for Assange issued a flat denial: “Wikileaks has had no contact with Roger Stone.”



On August 21, Stone tweeted that it would soon be Podesta’s “time in the barrel.” Stone’s Twitter predictions became more precise in the days before Wikileaks began publishing the contents of Podesta’s Gmail account on October 7. On October 1, Stone declared that “Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done.” Two days later, Stone tweeted that he was confident that “my hero Julian Assange” would soon “educate the American people.” In an October 5 tweet, Stone reported that, “Payload coming” and included the hashtag “Lockthemup.”

Stone also went on Jones’s show on October 2 to declare that, “I’m assured the motherlode is coming Wednesday.” He added, “I have reason to believe that it is devastating.” Stone also claimed that Assange was fearful that “the globalists and the Clintonites are trying to figure out how to kill him.”

Though Stone missed the Wikileaks release date by two days, Podesta told reporters that it was a “reasonable conclusion” that “Mr. Stone had advanced warning and the Trump campaign had advanced warning about what Assange was going to do.” During his October 11 remarks, Podesta added, “I think there’s a reasonable belief that Mr. Assange may have passed this information onto Mr. Stone.” For his part, Stone dismissed Podesta’s collusion charge as “categorically false.” When asked by a TV interviewer if he was being used to pass information to the Trump campaign, Stone replied, “No. I’m using them to write a blog that more people read than watch MSNBC.”

Like many of his supporters, Trump repeatedly promoted the Wikileaks disclosures during the campaign’s final months (and mentioned them at all three presidential debates). A few days into the month-long drip of Podesta’s 55,000 e-mails, Trump called the stolen material “incredible,” “unbelievable,” and “big stuff.” On October 10, Trump told a Pennsylvania audience, “Wikileaks. I love Wikileaks.” A day later he gushed to Bill O’Reilly, “Wikileaks is amazing.”

On October 7, one of the presidential campaign’s most consequential days, The Washington Post published the 2005 “Access Hollywood” video showing Trump having a lewd conversation about grabbing women “by the pussy.” About two hours after the video’s uploading, Wikileaks posted its first installment of the Podesta e-mails. That Friday afternoon also saw the release of a statement from the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence about Russian efforts to “interfere with the US election process.”
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The joint statement reported that the U.S. intelligence community was confident that the Russian government “directed” the hacking of the DNC, Podesta, and other Clinton campaign officials. Charging that “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement noted that the distribution of hacked material via “Guccifer 2.0” and the web site DC Leaks was “consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.”

Like “Guccifer 2.0,” DC Leaks first appeared online last June and was used to house the correspondence of Clinton campaign officials who fell for a spear phishing e-mail. TSG learned of the DC Leaks site in a late-June e-mail from “Guccifer 2.0.” The hackers falsely claimed DC Leaks was a Wikileaks affiliate and later provided a reporter with a password allowing access to a protected part of the web site.

While Stone’s prescient comments about Podesta’s “time in the barrel” and the Wikileaks “motherlode” have justly prompted scrutiny by federal agents (and suspicious Democratic officials), the Trump associate’s contact with “Guccifer 2.0” is worthy of even closer review. Because while Stone’s claim of a “back channel” to Wikileaks rests solely on his shaky credibility, his admiration for “Guccifer 2.0”--Russian operatives peddling purloined goods--is well documented.

In an August 13 Twitter post, Stone called “Guccifer 2.0” a “HERO.” After the “@GUCCIFER_2” Twitter account was banned in response to the distribution of a spreadsheet containing the private phone numbers and e-mail addresses of hundreds of Democratic officeholders, Stone called the punishment “Outrageous!” and wondered, “why are those exposing the truth banned?” When Twitter restored the “Guccifer 2.0” account, Stone exclaimed, “Thank You, Sweet Jesus. I’ve prayed for it.”
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While “Guccifer 2.0” was briefly bounced from Twitter, Stone declared that the “Clintonistas” needed to “censor their critics to rig the upcoming election.” Stone’s reference to “Guccifer 2.0” as a Clinton “critic” came after published reports had already identified “Guccifer 2.0” as a G.R.U. invention. Additionally, multiple cybersecurity firms had by then issued reports concluding that the DNC breach was the handiwork of Russian government hackers.

Stone’s declaration that “Guccifer 2.0” was his hero came about a week after Breitbart.com published a story by Stone which excoriated Clinton for accusing the Russian government of hacking the DNC. Declaring that Clinton’s “dishonest blame-casting is so dangerous,” Stone blasted the Democratic nominee for using “rhetoric that poses a dangerous threat to out democracy and even world peace.”

Stone then identified the “real culprit” as a lone operator using the handle “Guccifer 2.0.” While the exploits of “Guccifer 2.0” had been widely reported for nearly two months, Stone wrote that “our pathetic press patsies” had mindlessly opted to “keep repeating Hillary’s spin” about a Russian cyber attack. Stone, you see, took claims from “Guccifer 2.0” that he was just a Romanian guy with a laptop at face value. “The DNC being hacked by one person didn’t look sinister enough,” wrote Stone, who has no tech expertise or history of analyzing hacking methodology. “Time for the victim card! Blame the Russians! Blame Putin! Blame Trump!”

Stone’s piece on Breitbart--which was then still being run by Stephen Bannon--contended that “common sense” dictated that “if Russia were doing what Hillary says they were doing they simply would have gone straight to Wikileaks” with the stolen DNC documents. Which, of course, is exactly what “Guccifer 2.0” said was done, a fact Stone neatly avoided.

After posting the Breitbart story to his personal web site, Stone tweeted out a link to his 100,000-plus followers along with the claim that, “Roger Stone shows Russians didn’t hack Hillary.”

Despite Stone’s shoddy reporting and harebrained analysis, his piece was a hit with at least one reader: “Guccifer 2.0.”

In an August 12 tweet, the hackers wrote, “@RogerJStoneJr thanks that u believe in the real #Guccifer2.” This was Russia’s military intelligence agency saluting a Trump associate for his work as a signal booster when it came to the fiction that “Guccifer 2.0” was a Romanian laptop warrior battling the Illuminati. The G.R.U. was likely equally pleased when--the following day--Stone rushed to the defense of his “HERO” when Twitter briefly banned the “@GUCCIFER_2” account.

On August 16, Stone posted a link to a story he authored about how the presidential election could be “rigged against Donald Trump” through the manipulation of electronic voting machines. This piece of fantasy stirred “Guccifer 2.0” to reply directly to Stone’s tweet.

“paying u back,” wrote “Guccifer 2.0.” The hackers then retweeted Stone’s tweet on the “@GUCCIFER_2” Twitter account.
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During the course of the presidential campaign, Stone, like Trump, denied that Russian agents were behind the coordinated attacks on the Democratic party and the Clinton campaign. It could have been anyone, they reasoned, from China to a fat guy on a couch.

But following a two-hour briefing on January 6 by the director of national intelligence and the heads of the FBI and CIA, Trump grudgingly conceded Russia was the culprit. “I think it was Russia,” was the best Trump could muster at a January 11 press conference.

Stone, however, is less convinced. Days after Trump’s classified briefing and the release of an intelligence assessment that identified “Guccifer 2.0” as a G.R.U. asset used to distribute hacked material, Stone dismissed accounts of “a massive Russian conspiracy.” In a blog post, Stone blamed “Clinton Cohorts in the media,” among others, for mounting a distraction campaign aimed at vilifying Russia and inciting a “global conflict.”

In mid-January, Stone even claimed that he was “poisoned to stop me from exposing the ‘Russian Hacking’ LIE” before a congressional committee. During an Infowars appearance with Jones, Stone said that he became extremely ill before Christmas and suffered “over 14 days of high fevers, delirium, night sweats, I had lesions on my chest and my face. I had extreme diarrhea. I had vomiting that could not be stopped with medication.”

The “general consensus” of doctors, Stone claimed, was that he was poisoned with polonium or a substance with the characteristics of the radioactive agent (which was famously used to kill Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko). Stone told Jones that “the conjecture of all the doctors” was that he did not receive “a large enough dose to kill me.” He went on to spin a conspiracy theory involving George Soros, David Brock, and enemies in the “Deep State” who manufactured “this Russian fraud.”

Jones said it was a “stroke of luck” that Stone did not drink the “full potion,” thus dodging a poisoning death. It remains unclear, however, if the polonium survived its encounter with Stone.

* * *

Trump’s presidential campaign and ascendancy to the White House have provided Stone with something of a late-career resurgence. While he relishes media pieces describing him as “Possibly The Most Dangerous Man In Politics,” Stone has long been marginalized in top-tier Republican circles. Stone, who splits his time between rentals in Manhattan and Ft. Lauderdale, has recently been limited to handling smaller campaigns in south Florida.

Running on the fumes of dirty tricks dating to Richard Nixon’s Committee for the Re-Election of the President, Stone has pivoted from being a political consultant to a media firebrand peddling books and other merch.



In the process, Stone has become a darling of the alt-right thanks to his nonstop disparagement of members of the Obama, Bush, and Clinton families. He is pictured in one of the most popular right-wing memes of the campaign season, a Photoshopped reworking of a poster for the Sylvester Stallone movie “The Expendables.” Stone, one of “The Deplorables,” is seen flanking Trump along with the candidate’s sons, Jones, Rudolph Giuliani, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Pepe the Frog.

Stone has delighted the Breitbart and Infowars crowd with a stream of misogynistic, racially charged Twitter slurs. He has called a TV commentator a “stupid negro,” a former Clinton cabinet member a “disgusting lesbian dwarf,” and labeled former Rep. Michele Bachman a "tranny" with a "mincing, lisping husband."

In a Twitter tirade this weekend, Stone called one female detractor a “stupid ignorant ugly bitch” and told a journalist, “go fuck yourself, u talentless asswipe.” These comments prompted author J.K. Rowling to tweet, “This man is an advisor to the leader of the free world. This guy, right here. #rogerstone.” Stone, no doubt, was thrilled to be upbraided by the creator of Harry Potter, who has nearly 10 million Twitter followers.

When confronted about his online antics, Stone has described the slurs as “intemperate” and “two-martini tweets.” But Stone offers no apologies, because smearing is like breathing for him.

An aging bottle blonde with an overbite and a suspicious hairline, Stone is a dandy who enjoys discussing his Anderson & Sheppard threads and the proper top hat to be matched with a morning suit. He is partial to vintage Jaguars and Citroens and his Instagram feed reflects his fondness for playing dress up.

That Stone has succeeded in marketing himself to the coarse Infowars and alt-right crowd is a testament to his talents as a chameleon and world-class media manipulator.
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In 1996, Stone was forced to resign a top post with Bob Dole’s presidential campaign after the National Enquirer reported that he and his wife Nydia, now 69, had placed numerous ads online and in swingers magazines seeking single men and couples for group sex. One ad described Stone as a bodybuilder and included a shirtless photo of him with a black bar over his eyes. His wife is pictured topless in an accompanying image.

Stone initially denied placing the ads, claiming that they were the work of a “very sick individual.” But years later he admitted to The New Yorker that the ads were authentic, and described himself as a “libertine.”

Undaunted by the Dole disaster, the Stones continued swinging. In a December 2006 post on the Dark Cavern web site, the couple advertised for a male partner who “must be 22-40, lean, muscular and hung like a horse.” The ad, which included Stone’s Hotmail address, offered a graphic description of Nydia’s body and the notation that “Obidient husband shares her cunt.” Respondents were directed to “Contact me/us with a photo of face/body/meat.” The Stone ad was found on a meetup page for Florida swingers.

Dark Cavern (motto: “We unite black and white”) is dedicated to facilitating and chronicling sexual encounters between “black studs” and white women (usually while the husband looks on). The site offers recaps from couples about “going black” and has a section where “wives and studs” can suggest “new ways to humiliate the wimp hubbies.”

The news that one of their beloved “Deplorables” once advertised for “huge hung black Cock” might not go over well in alt-right circles, where masculinity, virility, and racial prominence are prized. In fact, there is a favorite pejorative used by Breitbartians when they sense that someone is weak, effeminate, or a supporter of someone other than Trump. If only Pepe & Co. knew there was a real-life cuck in their midst.

Since Stone has been banned from many cable TV programs, his relationship with Jones--and access to the conspiracy theorist’s large audience--has become central to his ability to maintain his profile and sell his slipshod books about the Bush crime family, LBJ’s plot to murder JFK, and Bill Clinton’s war on women. Stone and Jones even jointly marketed a Bill Clinton “RAPE” t-shirt (now marked down to $9.99 on Stone’s online store) and a Clinton rape whistle (available for just $6.99 in the Infowars shop).

Stone’s latest tome, a 363-page slog about Trump’s march to the White House, is titled “The Making of the President 2016.” Stone stole the book’s title from the late journalist Theodore White, whose four-book series chronicled the 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972 presidential elections.

Stone’s grave robbing is not limited to White, who died in 1986. He also publishes an “International Best and Worst Dressed” list, an annual compilation made famous by Richard Blackwell, who died in 2008. Stone, whose bio lists him as “Men’s Fashion Editor” of The Daily Caller, a political web site without a fashion section, this year named Yiannopoulos, Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, and conservative commentator Tomi Lahren to his best dressed list. Oddly, many of those on Stone’s worst dressed list also double as his political enemies: Hillary Clinton, David Brock, Michael Moore, and Lena Dunham. And, of course, CNN political commentator Ana Navarro, whom Stone has delighted in denigrating on Twitter as “fat,” “stupid,” “borderline retarded,” and an “entitled diva bitch.”

While Stone promoted his books and merch during the 2016 campaign, he was also operating a pro-Trump Super PAC called the Committee to Restore America’s Greatness. Launched in December 2015--four months after Stone left the Trump campaign--the PAC promised to target Trump’s GOP rivals, particularly Senator Marco Rubio.
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Upon learning of Stone’s PAC, Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski branded it a “Big league scam.” Stone responded on Twitter, saying that he was “a volunteer” and was “uncompensated” by the PAC, which had just started to solicit donations.

But Stone did not volunteer for long, according to Federal Election Commission records. Beginning in March 2016, two Stone companies were paid a total of $159,000 by the PAC for consulting services and “voter fraud research and documentation.” The PAC, which was terminated last month, raised about $500,000.

Stone’s PAC paid $141,000 to Jensen & Associates, a two-lawyer personal injury firm in Costa Mesa, California. The firm is run by Paul Rolf Jensen, 58, an anti-gay activist and Obama birther who has previously represented Stone. FEC filings report that the payments to Jensen’s firm were for “legal and accounting” services provided to Stone’s PAC.

In 2008, weeks after The New York Times reported that Eliot Spitzer was ensnared in a prostitution investigation, Stone claimed responsibility for tipping off the FBI about the New York governor’s weakness for hookers. The claims of Stone, a Spitzer nemesis, were detailed in a letter that was signed by Jensen and purportedly sent to the FBI in late-2007. A copy of Jensen’s letter somehow found its way to a Miami Herald reporter, who noted that while the missive was addressed to the FBI, the names of the supposed recipients were blacked out. Which, of course, would make it difficult to determine whether the letter was actually sent.

Jensen’s letter stated that Stone learned about Spitzer paying for hookers from a call girl he met at a Miami strip club. The letter noted that Spitzer “did not remove his mid-calf length black socks during the sex act.” This tawdry detail, now lodged in the public record as if it were demonstrably true, reads like a trademark Stone fabrication, an allegation spoon fed to the media in a bid to humiliate a political adversary.

Stone’s tendency to exaggerate his accomplishments--and to take credit for things he did not do--once prompted GOP consultant Ed Rollins to say, “I don’t think you’ll find anyone in the business who trusts him. Roger was always a little rat.” Stone last year called Rollins a “talentless buffoon” and, in an appearance on Jones’s show, charged that Rollins was running a pro-Trump PAC that was a “scam” and a “fraud.”

What Stone forgot to mention was that the Trump campaign--at Lewandowski’s direction--had, weeks earlier, sent the FEC a “disavowal letter” stating that both the Stone and Rollins PACs were not authorized by Trump. When Lewandowski was fired by Trump last June, Stone rejoiced since his ex-partner Manafort was taking over as campaign manager. After Lewandowski was deposed, reporter Matt Labash wrote in The Weekly Standard, “Stone called me, singing ‘Back In The Saddle Again.’”

In addition to his Super PAC, Stone also formed Stop The Steal, a tax-exempt organization that, due to Internal Revenue Service rules, could raise and spend unlimited amounts, but was barred from supporting (or opposing) a specific candidate. Stop The Steal, Stone explained, was initially formed to help safeguard against Republican Party insiders denying Trump the party’s nomination. The group subsequently alleged that the Clinton campaign was



plotting to steal the general election--a warning echoed by Trump and Jones--and claimed to be arranging for independent exit polls to be conducted on November 8.

Stop The Steal, IRS records show, raised about $40,000. While the group has not been disbanded, visitors to stopthesteal.org are redirected to Stone’s personal web site.

For an organization purportedly dedicated to preserving the sanctity of the voting process, Stone’s group made a series of odd expenditures in December:

* Stop The Steal paid $4000 to Steven Gray, a North Little Rock, Arkansas resident, for “fundraising expenses.” Gray is the best friend of Danney Williams, 31, who claims to be Bill Clinton’s illegitimate black son (a story that Stone and Jones have vigorously pushed). Williams and Gray appeared together at a press conference before the final presidential debate in Las Vegas in mid-October. After announcing his intention to file a paternity suit seeking a DNA sample from Clinton, Williams was asked how he paid for the Nevada trip. Williams, a jobless ex-con, and Gray replied that they had saved their own money and raised other funds from neighbors. When a journalist asked Williams about his relationship with Stone--who wrote about Williams in his 2015 book “The Clintons’ War on Women”--Williams replied, “I don’t have no relationship with Roger Stone.” Stone’s new book includes an undated photo (seen at right) of him posing with Williams.
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* On December 27, Stone’s group paid $3500 to Kristin Davis for “fundraising expenses.” Davis, 41, is a twice-convicted felon who has served prison time for running a high-end prostitution business and then for selling controlled substances. Davis, a close friend of Stone’s, ran for governor of New York in 2010 at Stone’s urging and claimed that she once supplied hookers to a rough sex-loving Spitzer. Released from federal custody in May 2016, Davis will remain on probation until 2018. The former pimp/pusher gave birth to a son in late-September (she says she was impregnated while serving the final portion of her sentence in a halfway house). Davis has declined to identify the father of her son, Carter Stone Davis. But she has said that Stone is one of the baby’s two godfathers. Davis and Stone are pictured below.

* Stop The Steal paid Alejandro Vidal $5000 for “fundraising expenses.” Vidal, a 31-year-old Floridian, is the founder of Freenauts, a hip-hop group whose catalog consists of raps about the “Clinton Crime Cartel,” the “Bush Crime Family,” and Williams’s plight. The group’s video for “Justice for Danney Williams” was released two days before the final Clinton-Trump debate and was heavily promoted by Stone, Jones, and their cohorts. Vidal’s web site reports that he helps produce Stone’s weekly “Stone Cold Truth” radio show.

* A Virginia PR firm headed by Stone pal Christian Josi was paid $3500 by Stop The Steal (and another $3000 by Stone’s PAC). In his Trump book, Stone credits Josi with running “the Clinton Rape T-shirt campaign for me,” a “crude guerilla tactic” that “Alex Jones then kicked off into the stratosphere.” Josi’s tasks apparently included running the “@ClintonRapeTee” Twitter account, which included a link to clintonrapeshirt.com (which redirected visitors to Stone’s online store).
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Stop The Steal and Stone’s PAC also paid a total of $14,000 to Andrew Miller, a veteran Stone henchman who ran Davis’s gubernatorial campaign. Miller, who started as Stone’s chauffeur, has moved to California, where, along with his wife (another Stone crony) he is operating a medical cannabis firm that cultivates and delivers product to clients in Anaheim and Yorba Linda. Stone and Miller have talked about developing “Tricky Dick,” a pot strain that would honor Richard Nixon, who was born in Yorba Linda. Like Assange and “Guccifer 2.0,” Nixon is another of Stone’s heroes.

Stone has been surrounded for years by a ragtag coterie of operatives who execute the boss’s astroturfing and smear campaigns. One Stone sidekick was convicted of smuggling 19 illegal aliens into the country via a 25-foot cabin cruiser he piloted from the Bahamas. The man got his sentence reduced by providing federal agents with “valuable information concerning individuals involved in narcotics trafficking and alien smuggling,” according to court records.

While competitors like Rollins, Mike Murphy, Steve Schmidt, and Karl Rove handled high-profile GOP campaigns, Stone and his troupe mucked around with sleazier pursuits. When a south Florida TV reporter began probing Stone’s operation, Miller published a story on his Broward County news blog that claimed an unidentified “peeper” was on the prowl. The item was accompanied by an artist's sketch of the newsman. A pending lawsuit accuses Stone of smearing a Libertarian Party candidate in an election mailer labeled “SEXUAL PREDATOR ALERT.” The piece included a photo of the pol, his home address, and the warning that the man was a “sick twisted pervert” who was a danger to children.

A typical stealth Stone operation occurred in early-2015, just before the launch of the Trump campaign.

A proposal to pay $500 million for nearly 50,000 acres of land in the Florida Everglades was backed by environmental activists. But the taxpayer-funded purchase was not supported by the land’s owner, the U.S. Sugar Corporation (which, years earlier, had retained Stone to help kill a one-cent sugar tax earmarked for Everglades restoration).

While the land purchase had the support of actual Floridians, some of the opposition was manufactured by Stone, who stayed in the shadows. Tea Party Miami joined with a new outfit, Florida Citizens Against Waste, to oppose the land deal. The tea party group--which claimed a membership in excess of 26,000--was a shell operation founded by Stone’s longtime executive assistant. Florida Citizens Against Waste was fronted by another Stone crony and launched a web site at stopthelandgrab.org that urged citizens to join a protest outside the South Florida Water Management’s Palm Beach office. Signs would be provided, the group noted, and there would be “Free lunch afterwards.”

The “protesters” that subsequently showed up one Thursday morning were actually 50 members of a Broward County acting group who were paid $75 each (and learned of the gig via a Facebook post). Contacted by a Palm Beach Post reporter, a U.S. Sugar spokesperson said the firm had no involvement with the rally.

[Two months after Stone & Co. staged the Palm Beach protest, Trump announced his presidential campaign in front of a Trump Tower audience that was papered with dozens of extras who were paid $50 to cheer, wear “Make America Great Again!” t-shirts, and hold signs (which were provided).]

The Everglades land purchase was eventually rejected by state Republican leaders. Florida Citizens Against Waste--victorious in its public debut--quickly disappeared, as if there was no further need to ferret out governmental profligacy. As for the group’s web site, it sat dormant for a spell before ultimately redirecting visitors to rogerstone.net, one of Stone’s personal web sites. But in the last month, traffic was rerouted to a new url, floridiansagainstwaste.org. The web site urges the defeat of a new piece of Everglades legislation being pushed by Joe Negron, the moderate Republican who is president of the Florida Senate. Negron’s legislation is opposed by U.S. Sugar.

* * *

Following his two-martini tantrum this past weekend, Stone received a 12-hour timeout from Twitter for violating company rules regarding abusive behavior. Stone, of course, decried the wrist slap as a move by the “Censorship brigade” at Twitter to “stymie free speech. Shameful!” Jones, a one-man force multiplier, quickly jumped to Stone’s defense. “If they silence him,” Jones tweeted to his 580,000 followers, “We're all in danger of loosing our voices.”

Since unspooling his tales about a) being hacked after revealing his purported “communication” with Assange and b) his miraculous survival after a polonium attack, Stone has frequently spoken about how patriots like him and Jones are under siege by the “Deep State,” the shadow government that purportedly is seeking to undermine Trump’s authority and legitimacy.
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During one Infowars appearance, Stone disclosed that he was being harassed by the Internal Revenue Service. Stone said that he was being accused of failing to pay his 2014 taxes, which he denied. Jones replied that the IRS audit of his pal was “all part of a war,” adding that, “They’re pulling out all the stops.”

According to a series of federal tax liens filed by the IRS in Florida, Stone and his wife owe nearly $1.5 million in unpaid taxes. Several of the liens, which cover six separate years, were filed in Dade County when the Stones resided in Miami Beach. The most recent lien, recorded in mid-2014, was filed in Broward County since the couple had relocated to a rented home in Ft. Lauderdale. The liens remain active in both counties, where no satisfaction or release documents have been docketed.

In Stone’s estimation, investigations into campaign hacking are a “witch hunt.” Likewise, those calling for an examination of ties between Trump associates and Russian government figures are engaging in “the new McCarthyism.” It must be difficult for Stone, one of Roy Cohn’s golden boys, to make those claims with a straight face.

Like Trump, Stone is a master of distraction who prefers to avoid accountability, especially when someone else can be blamed. It would not be surprising if Stone chalked up the lagging sales on his new book to a conspiracy hatched by Jeff Bezos and Obama holdovers at the CIA.

As federal agents continue to probe “Guccifer 2.0” and the Russian influence operation, Stone assures reporters that his vindication is near. Of course, this is coming from a man who has long counseled clients under siege to “Admit nothing. Deny everything. Launch counterattack.” (7 pages)

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/ ... fer-913684
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby kool maudit » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:42 am

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Very strange proportions to this man.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 09, 2017 10:55 am

think it had something to do with steroids! :P

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Graham and Whitehouse went around Grassley and sent a letter directly to Justice Dept. signed as chairman of sub committee

Graham, Whitehouse ask government for evidence Obama wiretapped Trump
Thomson Reuters
RICHARD COWAN
Mar 8th 2017 2:14PM

WASHINGTON, March 8 (Reuters) - Two senior senators asked the FBI and Justice Department on Wednesday for any information they have on President Donald Trump's unsubstantiated claim that his predecessor Barack Obama wiretapped him during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

In a letter to James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse wrote:​​​​​

"We request that the Department of Justice provide us copies of any warrant applications and court orders...related to wiretaps of President Trump, the Trump campaign, or Trump Tower."

Under U.S. law, presidents cannot direct wiretapping. Instead, the federal government can ask a court to authorize the action, but it must provide justification.

Critics of Trump in Congress have accused him of issuing the wiretap allegation to try to deflect attention from investigations into his administration's possible ties to Russia. Some have likened it to Trump's long-held contention that Obama was not born in the United States and thus did not legitimately hold the office of president - an accusation he did not withdraw until 2016.

Graham later told CNN that if the Justice Department does not cooperate with the senators' request, subpoenas would be issued.

"I expect them to come forward as to whether or not a warrant was obtained or sought," Graham said. He chairs a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism, and Whitehouse is the senior Democrat on the panel.

On Saturday, Trump accused Obama of phone surveillance, amid a swirl of questions about possible ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian President Vladimir Putin. U.S. intelligence agencies have found that Russia tried to influence the election.

An Obama spokesman said on Saturday that neither Obama nor any White House official had ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. The spokesman's statement did not address the possibility that a wiretap of the Trump campaign could have been sought by the Justice Department.

In their letter, Graham and Whitehouse wrote: "We would take any abuse of wiretapping authorities for political purposes very seriously."

The senators added: "We would be equally alarmed to learn that a court found enough evidence of criminal activity or contact with a foreign power to legally authorize a wiretap of President Trump, the Trump campaign, or Trump Tower."

On Tuesday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes told reporters his panel would consider issuing subpoenas if information being sought on Russia's possible role influencing the election was not forthcoming.

The committee has scheduled a March 20 hearing and Trump's wiretap allegation is part of that probe.

Democrats, questioning the commitment of the Republican-controlled Congress, have been calling for an outside investigation, which so far has been rejected. (Reporting By Richard Cowan, Tim Ahmann and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Howard Goller)

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/0 ... /21876534/



Get your popcorn: Sally Yates gets her revenge on Donald Trump on March 20th
By Bill Palmer | March 9, 2017 | 0

All along it’s seemed evident that the Senate Intelligence Committee is the only committee in either house of Congress in which a majority of members are serious about getting to the bottom of Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. It’s largely seemed as if the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee want to do just enough to not be accused of sitting on their hands, as its Senate counterpart does the heavy lifting. But House Intel did something surprising this week when it signed off on a star witness: Sally Yates.

Yates, the former acting Attorney General who was fired by Donald Trump earlier this year, is one of a handful of witnesses who are scheduled to testify in the first day of public hearings being held by the House Intel Committee on Trump-Russia. Smart money says it was the Democrats on the committee who insisted on her inclusion. But nonetheless, the Republican majority signed off on it.

This means that the Democrats can use their allotted time to allow Sally Yates to publicly spell out the sequence of events behind closed doors that led to her firing. It initially appeared that Trump had fired her due to their differences over his Muslim ban, which was later struck by federal appeals court. But it was subsequently revealed that Yates tried to warn Trump that his National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was compromised over Russia. Just a few days later, Trump used the Muslim ban as an excuse to fire Yates, while doing nothing about Flynn until after his Russian collusion leaked to the media.

Because these hearings are public, the television cameras will be rolling, and Sally Yates will indeed get an opportunity for a measure of revenge by helping expose Donald Trump’s Russia scandal. And the fascinating part is that there will be nothing Trump can do about it, other than to jump on Twitter and whine about Yates as she exposes how he refused to act on the knowledge that Michael Flynn was dirty. Be sure to mark the March 20th hearings on your calendar
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/get ... 20th/1850/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 09, 2017 12:14 pm

Cork Wine Bar Sues Trump Hotel Over Unfair Competition
The restaurant says the president's continued affiliation with the government-owned property puts competing businesses at a disadvantage.
By Jessica Sidman on March 9, 2017

Cork Wine Bar owners Khalid Pitts and Diane Gross filed an unfair competition lawsuit against Donald Trump and the Trump International Hotel in DC Wednesday night, alleging that the president’s continued affiliation with the government-owned property puts competing businesses at a disadvantage.
Scott Rome, one of Cork Wine Bar’s attorneys, says government officials, lobbyists, foreign dignitaries, and others seeking political influence—part of the restaurant’s clientele—now “feel pressure” or an “obligation” to frequent the hotel. “If they have a party to book, they’re going to book it there first, whether to gain influence with the president, to gain influence with the administration,” Rome says. “And he shows up there on weekends, so you get personal face time by going there. It seems to us to be a clear situation in which he’s using his office of the president to get a financial gain at the expense of local businesses.”
Cork Wine Bar, which hosts political fundraisers and international law firms, saw “significantly less income” after this inauguration than they’ve seen after other inaugurations, but Rome says the crux of the case isn’t going to be “look at our balance sheet” or pointing to a single specific incident in which a dinner was booked at Cork Wine Bar then switched to the Trump hotel. “It’s just that there’s more business that could be going to them and it’s not,” he says. “We feel like every place in town now is second place if you want to do business with the government in any way.”
Pitts and Gross are no strangers to politics. Gross was a civil rights attorney who worked as counsel to former US Senator Barbara Mikulski; Pitts has a rich history in the field, including a stint as a campaign director for Service Employees International Union and another as a political director at the Sierra Club. He ran for DC Council in 2014.
As part of their case, Cork Wine Bar’s attorneys point to a clause in the hotel’s lease with the General Services Administration that says no elected official should have “any share” or “any benefit” from the agreement. Legal experts have argued that when Trump became president, the hotel was in breach of contract of the lease.
“It’s our position that the Trump organization and Trump himself are using those conflicts of interests to get an unfair advantage against DC businesses,” Rome says.
Plenty of stories have been written about the Trump hotel becoming a destination for those looking to gain favor with the president. In November, the Post covered a gathering over about 100 foreign dignitaries at the hotel. “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel blocks from the White House, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’” one anonymous diplomat told the Post. Trump has previously said hotel profits from foreign governments will be donated to the US Treasury, but it’s unclear exactly how that’s working in practice.
The hotel owns its restaurant, BLT Prime, which is why the steakhouse itself isn’t named as a defendant. BLT Prime’s parent company Esquared Hospitality has a management agreement to oversee its operations.
Rome says that the lawsuit isn’t just an anti-Trump stunt. “From my position, if a Democratic politician was hurting clients in this way, I would have the same response,” he says. His co-counsel, Mark Zaid, known for representing whistleblowers, journalists, and others wronged by the government, has brought lawsuits against past administrations as well. Bolstering the legal team will be two George Washington University law professors: Alan Morrison, who specializes in public interest law, and Steven Schooner, an expert in government contracting.
All the lawyers are working on the case pro bono, and the lawsuit isn’t seeking any money. Rather, they’re looking for a court order to stop the “unfair competition,” whether that means Trump divests or sells the hotel or takes his name off of it and transforms it into something else.
Cork Wine Bar may not be the last DC restaurant to file such a lawsuit against the Trump hotel either. Rome says the lawyers are actively talking to other potential plaintiffs as well. A press conference about the lawsuit is scheduled this morning, so stay tuned for more information.
The lawsuit comes amid two other ongoing legal battles between restaurants and the Trump hotel. Celebrity chefs Geoffrey Zakarian and José Andrés have been locked in litigation since they pulled plans to open restaurants in the hotel in 2015 after Trump kicked off his presidential campaign with disparaging remarks about Mexican immigrants. So far, there are no signs of settling. Pretrial conferences in both cases are scheduled for May.https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/03/0 ... mpetition/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 09, 2017 7:06 pm

FBI Director James Comey meets with Congress 'Gang of Eight'

By Manu Raju and Tom LoBianco, CNN
Updated 5:09 PM ET, Thu March 9, 2017

Officials: Sessions had contacts with Russians

Comey's visit comes after Schiff accused the FBI director of stonewalling House members
Lawmakers have amped up their investigations into Russia's interference in the US elections

Washington (CNN)FBI Director James Comey spent Thursday afternoon on Capitol Hill meeting with the eight lawmakers who have access to the most highly classified information, sources told CNN.

Comey was scheduled to meet with the House members of the so-called Gang of Eight at 5 p.m., and he met earlier in the afternoon with the senators in the group -- including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence committee, Republican Sen. Richard Burr and Democrat Mark Warner respectively.
The House members include House Speaker Paul Ryan, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes and House Intelligence Ranking Member Adam Schiff.
Comey's visit comes after Schiff accused the FBI director of stonewalling House members in a briefing last week and both Schiff and Nunes aired their concerns that Comey had been withholding information from the group through last year.
Lawmakers have amped up their investigations into Russia's interference in the US elections and communications with the campaign of President Donald Trump. The House Intelligence Committee set an aggressive timeline of gathering intelligence by March 17 and hosting its first public hearing March 20.
Trump's own accusations that he was wire-tapped by the administration of former President Barack Obama only added fuel to the fire -- Republican lawmakers largely stepped away from Trump's unverified allegations, but lawmakers have said they plan to investigate whether surveillance of Trump's Manhattan headquarters was conducted last year.
Meanwhile, some Democrats said they may be ready to issue subpoenas for Trump's tax returns in order to find more answers in their continuing investigations.
Sources on the Senate Intelligence Committee said they want all the potential Trump associates who allegedly spoke with Russian officials to testify before the committee. This includes former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and former adviser Carter Page. It's unclear when they would come before the committee, but senators say they haven't ruled out the prospect of subpoenas if those Trump associates don't comply.
This is partly because senators who have gone to CIA headquarters in Langley said they have reviewed information about the extent of the aggressive Russian attacks trying to influence the US election. But the senators have not yet pieced together the information to determine any potential collusion between Trump associates and Russian officials.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a veteran Democrat on the intelligence panel, said she wants Trump's tax returns as part of this investigation.
"The tax returns become a primary lead into a Russia connection -- and that would be Russian money in his businesses. He's visited Russia six times by his own voice on television. Who knows what the situation is?"
Warner told CNN that the Senate committee is getting access to classified intelligence usually reserved for the "Gang of Eight," part of an effort to dig deeply into the issue of Russia's meddling with the US election last year.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/09/politics/ ... -of-eight/




headlines of stories from the other thread that really do not belong there...my bad ...they needed to be here in the impeachment thread ..they have NOTHING to do with election hacking which I see as two separate issues with only one connecting factor trumpty dumbty

-- Trump Tower shut down its Russia email server just before FISA warrant was allegedly granted


-- Dmitry Rybolovlev’s flight patterns suggest he played role in Trump-Russia blackmail negotiations

-- DONALD TRUMP’S WORST DEAL
The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

-- Donald and Ivanka Trump’s phony Baku Azerbaijan hotel was front for Iranian money laundering

-- Other deals Trump has said he has ended, but are still noteworthy

-- Trump Hotel in Baku Partnered With ‘Notoriously Corrupt’ Oligarch Family With Ties to Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps

-- CIA provides binders full of classified evidence on Donald Trump and Russia to Senate Intel Committee

-- CIA providing raw intelligence to senators for Trump-Russia probe

-- Donald Trump’s jet setting Russian pal Dmitry Rybolovlev hires spokesman from Breitbart

-- Donald Trump met Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during campaign, greeted him warmly

-- FBI, NSA called to testify on Trump-Russia investigation

-- Donald Trump campaign signed off on adviser Carter Page’s trip to Moscow during campaign

-- Russian diplomat under U.S. scrutiny in election meddling speaks

-- Trump Knows the Feds Are Closing In on Him

-- Sally Yates is testifying about Donald Trump’s Russia scandal to House Intelligence Committee


page 30
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40179&start=435
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:08 pm

FBI still investigating Russian email server inside Trump Tower; Betsy DeVos connection confirmed
By Bill Palmer | March 9, 2017 | 0

Four months after it was first reported elsewhere that the FBI had gained a FISA warrant to investigate an alleged Russian email server inside Trump Tower, it’s now being confirmed by CNN that the FBI is still investigating the server in question. And one month after Palmer Report first reported that the server was connected to Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, this is also being confirmed. It appears these new confirmations have surfaced as a direct result of Trump’s recent false accusations about President Obama.

Here’s the timeline as we now know it. Back on October 31st of last year, Slate was the first to report that internet traffic patterns pointed to a private email server inside Trump Tower whose primary purpose was to communicate with a Russian bank. Then on November 7th, Heat Street was the first to report that a federal judge had granted a FISA warrant allowing the FBI to monitor that server. These reports were both solid, but neither report was taken seriously by most other news outlets at the time, and the story faded.

But over the weekend, Donald Trump began touting a warped version of the story, falsely insisting that there were phone wiretaps involved and that President Obama had ordered them. Trump has been quickly debunked on this claim by nearly everyone involved. However, it’s brought renewed interest to the original reporting on the Trump Tower email server. And now CNN is confirming today that the FBI investigation into the server is still ongoing, thus vindicating those who first broke the story last year.

In addition, CNN is now reporting on the connection between the Trump Tower Russia email server and the Betsy DeVos-controlled company Spectrum Health. Palmer Report first reported on the DeVos-Russia server story a month ago. Palmer Report also reported earlier this week that the email server in question was shut down three days before Russia-tainted campaign adviser Carter Page quit the Donald Trump campaign, although CNN has yet to acknowledge this detail.
http://www.palmerreport.com/news/fbi-st ... rmed/1854/



Trump-Russia conspirator Michael Flynn registers as foreign agent, admits he took half million dollars

By Bill Palmer | March 8, 2017 | 0

Former Donald Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has officially registered with the United States government as a foreign agent today, in the process admitting that he took more than half a million dollars in lobbying funds from Turkey during the U.S. election. Flynn’s paid work for Turkey had long been reported, but he’s now acknowledging it. This raises the question of what endgame Flynn is playing amid the exploding Trump-Russia scandal.

By registering as a foreign agent today and reporting himself for having taken the $530,000 from Turkey, Michael Flynn is essentially admitting guilt on the matter, and appears to be trying to position himself for some kind of leniency. This move suggests that after years of unsanctioned international freelancing on his part, Flynn is now suddenly trying to get his legal ducks in a row. Today’s action was likely taken on the advice of an attorney. But Flynn is also facing the fact that he lied to the FBI about Russia, a felony. So what has his attorney instructed him to do about that matter?

Flynn’s next move now becomes crucial in terms of telegraphing how he plans to try to survive the Trump-Russia scandal and who he’s willing to give up. His sudden desire to “go straight” legally today may be a pretext for cutting a deal with the FBI in which he agrees to share what he knows about the involvement of higher-ups such as Donald Trump or Jeff Sessions.

But whether Michael Flynn is planning to drop another shoe on Trump’s head over Russia, today’s decision to register as a foreign agent (source: AP) marks yet another black eye for the Donald Trump campaign. It was employing a foreign policy adviser who was simultaneously working as a paid foreign agent, and it likely knew it at the time. Now all eyes are on Flynn to see what his next steps are for trying to save himself.
https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/tr ... lars/1836/


Former Trump aide Flynn says lobbying may have helped Turkey
By STEPHEN BRAUN and CHAD DAY
Mar. 8, 2017 8:09 PM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who was fired from his prominent White House job last month, has registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for $530,000 worth of lobbying work before Election Day that may have aided the Turkish government.

Paperwork filed Tuesday with the Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Unit said Flynn and his firm were voluntarily registering for lobbying from August through November that "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey." It was filed by a lawyer on behalf of the former U.S. Army lieutenant general and intelligence chief.

After his firm's work on behalf of a Turkish company was done, Flynn agreed not to lobby for five years after leaving government service and never to represent foreign governments.

Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, U.S. citizens who lobby on behalf of foreign government or political entities must disclose their work to the Justice Department. Willfully failing to register is a felony, though the Justice Department rarely files criminal charges in such cases. It routinely works with lobbying firms to get back in compliance with the law by registering and disclosing their work.

A Turkish businessman who hired Flynn's consulting firm told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the amended filings were made in response to pressure from Justice Department officials in recent weeks. The businessman, Ekim Alptekin, said in a phone call from Istanbul that the changes were a response to "political pressure" and he did not agree with Flynn's decision to file the registration documents with the Justice Department.

"I disagree with the filing," he said. "It would be different if I was working for the government of Turkey, but I am not taking directions from anyone in the government."

Flynn's attorney did not respond to questions about whether the Justice Department or FBI had contacted Flynn about his lobbying activities.

Flynn's consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group Inc., had previously disclosed to Congress that it worked for Inovo BV, a Dutch-based company owned by Alptekin. But neither Flynn nor his company had previously filed paperwork with the Justice Department, which requires more extensive transparency about work that benefits foreign governments and political interests.

In the filings with the Justice Department, Flynn's attorney, Robert Kelner, noted they served as a termination of the registration, saying the firm had ceased operations in November, the same month the lobbying contract ended.

Calls to phone numbers associated with Flynn and his firm weren't answered. Kelner, his attorney, declined to comment through a spokesman for his law firm, Covington & Burling.

Reached Wednesday afternoon, an official at the Turkish embassy in Washington said he would refer the questions to the embassy spokesman. The spokesman did not immediately respond.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday afternoon.

Trump fired Flynn last month for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

As a key member of Trump's transition team last December, Flynn spoke by phone several times with Kislyak during the period when former President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S. and levied new sanctions in response to Russian election-related hacking.

According to the new paperwork, Flynn's firm took on the Turkish-related lobbying work in August while he was a top Trump campaign surrogate. Flynn Intel disclosed in its filing that in mid-September, the company was invited by Alptekin to meet with Turkish officials in New York.

Alptekin acknowledged Wednesday that he had set up the meeting between Flynn and the two officials. He said they met at an undisclosed hotel in New York. Alptekin said Flynn happened to be in New York while the Turkish officials were attending United Nations sessions and a separate conference Alptekin had arranged.

"I asked one of Gen. Flynn's staff if he was in town and would be available to meet and they got in touch with him," said Alptekin, who owns several businesses in Turkey.

Among those officials, the documents said, were Turkey's ministers of foreign affairs and energy. Flynn's company did not name the officials but reported the two worked for Turkey's government "to the best of Flynn Intel Group's current understanding."

Alptekin, who previously told The Associated Press he has no relationship with the Turkish government, is a member of a Turkish economic relations board run by an appointee of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president.

Erdogan's power base is Turkey's Islamic voters, and since a failed coup in July, he has accelerated a crackdown against the nation's weakening secularist faction. Erdogan has accused cleric Fethullah Gulen of orchestrating the aborted coup and called for his extradition from the U.S., where he lives. The Obama administration did not comply, and Gulen still lives in a compound in Pennsylvania.

According to the filing, Flynn Intel's work involved collecting information about Gulen and pressuring U.S. officials to take action against the cleric, including a meeting in October between Flynn's firm and a representative of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Flynn Intel arranged the meeting to discuss a technology developed by another Flynn Intel client. But after discussing the technology, the firm changed the subject to Gulen, pressuring the committee to hold congressional hearings to investigate the cleric, said a U.S. official with direct knowledge of Flynn Intel's work. That request was rebuffed. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The official said Flynn Intel never revealed whom it was representing during the meeting.

The October meeting came as Flynn was working on an op-ed promoting Turkey's political and business affairs that was later published in The Hill, a Washington-based political newspaper. Flynn wrote that Turkey needed support and echoed Erdogan's warnings about Gulen, whom he called a "shady" Turkish Muslim cleric living in Pennsylvania. Flynn argued that Gulen should not be given safe harbor in the U.S.

In the new filing, Flynn disclosed that in writing the op-ed, he relied on research conducted as part of the Inovo BV contract. Flynn's firm also admitted it conducted "open-source research," directed by Inovo, focusing on Gulen.

The results "were provided to Inovo" and to a separate lobbying firm, S.G.R. LLC Government Relations and Lobbying, a public relations company retained by Flynn Intel. The materials were aimed for distribution to "third parties," but because the project terminated early, "the full scope of the contract was not performed," according to the filings.

In the filings, Flynn emphasized that neither Inovo BV nor the Turkish government directed him to write the op-ed. He also said he was not paid for the op-ed. Alptekin said he had been opposed to Flynn's writing the op-ed, although he agreed with its anti-Gulen and pro-Turkley stances.

Alptekin added that he had asked for some of the $530,000 in payments to the Flynn Intel Group to be returned to him because of his dissatisfaction with the company's performance.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/former-t ... y-lobbying


headlines from pages 28 and 29 NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Investigate

-- Trump Jr. likely paid $50K for event hosted by Russian allies: report

-- Trump-Russia conspirator J.D. Gordon begins ratting out Donald Trump

-- Gorka says criticizing Trump's newly created crime office is "un-American"

-- Report: High-ranking Trump official has extensive ties to European neo-fascists

-- Sebastian Gorka reportedly co-founded a new party with prominent anti-Semites.

-- Hey, Look, Another Russian Connection in Trump's Cabinet

-- Two Trump Companies Discovered In Cyprus, EU’s Russian Off-Shore Banking Haven

-- Trump’s pick for commerce leaves Russia questions unanswered

-- Trump Ally Drastically Changes Story About Altering GOP Platform On Ukraine

-- This is important if you care about the Trump Russia story

-- The March Meeting

-- Senator Chris Coons believes FBI has transcripts that show Russian leaders at highest levels colluding w/ Trump campaign to impact election

-- The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections

-- New Development on the Michael Cohen 'Peace Plan' Meeting

-- Andrey Artemenko writes on Facebook that Alex Oronov, father of Michael Cohen's sister-in-law, has died. He blames the media. cc @joshtpm

-- Donald Trump wiretapped? FBI did gain Russia-related Trump Tower FISA warrant in October

-- Donald Trump appears to have illegally leaked classified info in his Trump Tower wiretap tweets

-- Jeff Sessions and Russian Ambassador both cancel Saturday plans, as Sessions flies to Mar-a-Lago

-- We have the tweets Donald Trump’s Russia conspirator Roger Stone deleted after melting down

-- Trump-Russia conspirator Roger Stone melts down, hurls vulgar sexist attacks at female pundits

-- The Innocent Explanation, Part #2: The Mailer Standard

-- Trump Tower’s Russia email server was shut down three days before Carter Page quit campaign

-- Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?


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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 10, 2017 7:46 am

Russian bank accessed Trump Tower’s Russian email server 2800 times during campaign

By Bill Palmer | March 9, 2017 | 0

CNN has confirmed today that the FBI is still investigating what appears to have been a Russian email server inside Trump Tower during the campaign, and in the process it confirmed a four month old Slate report alleging the server’s existence. But this may just be the beginning of the story, because a number of details about the server – some of which we’ve previously reported – line up with other suspicious aspects of the Trump campaign.

For instance we’ve previously reported that a scientist writing for Daily Kos was able to sleuth out that traffic on the Trump Tower email server spiked while Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was visiting Moscow. And three days after that server was summarily shut down, Page announced that he had quit his role with the campaign.

Had the server been set up so the campaign could communicate with Page while he was in Russia? The Trump campaign now admits it signs off on Page’s Moscow trip. Page has since also admitted to having met with the Russian Ambassador in person in Cleveland during the campaign.

There’s also another bizarre aspect to the story. CNN is now confirming that, as Palmer Report first pieced together a month ago, the Trump Tower email server was set up to only accept traffic from a very small number of internet addresses – and one of them belonged to Spectrum Health, a company controlled by the DeVos family. After Trump won the election he picked Betsy DeVos as his Secretary of Education, despite her total lack of suitability for the job. Were Trump and DeVos connected through ties to Russia, and if so how?

And here’s the part that Donald Trump and his campaign won’t be able to explain away by continuing to pretend it was merely a spam email server: this new CNN report says that the Russian Alfa Bank looked up the internet address of the Trump Tower email server a total of 2,820 times during a five month period during the campaign. That’s an average of around once per hour. It suggests that contact between Trump Tower and the Russian bank was as frequent as it was prolonged.
https://www.palmerreport.com/politics/r ... aign/1857/


Sources: FBI investigation continues into 'odd' computer link between Russian bank and Trump Organization

By Pamela Brown and Jose Pagliery, CNN
Updated 6:00 AM ET, Fri March 10, 2017
Sources: FBI investigates 'odd' computer link

Source: CNN

Sources: FBI investigates 'odd' computer link 08:27
(CNN)Federal investigators and computer scientists continue to examine whether there was a computer server connection between the Trump Organization and a Russian bank, sources close to the investigation tell CNN.

Questions about the possible connection were widely dismissed four months ago. But the FBI's investigation remains open, the sources said, and is in the hands of the FBI's counterintelligence team -- the same one looking into Russia's suspected interference in the 2016 election.
One U.S. official said investigators find the server relationship "odd" and are not ignoring it. But the official said there is still more work for the FBI to do. Investigators have not yet determined whether a connection would be significant.
The server issue surfaced again this weekend, mentioned in a Breitbart article that, according to a White House official, sparked President Trump's series of tweets accusing investigators of tapping his phone.
CNN is told there was no Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant on the server.
The FBI declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
In addition, companies involved have provided CNN with new explanations that at times conflict with each other and still don't fully explain what happened.
The story -- of a possible connection between computer servers -- is a strange tale because there are no specific allegations of wrongdoing and only vague technical evidence.
Internet data shows that last summer, a computer server owned by Russia-based Alfa Bank repeatedly looked up the contact information for a computer server being used by the Trump Organization -- far more than other companies did, representing 80% of all lookups to the Trump server.
It's unclear if the Trump Organization server itself did anything in return. No one has produced evidence that the servers actually communicated.
Slate and The New York Times were first to report the unusual server activity.
The Times said the FBI had concluded there could be an "innocuous explanation." And cybersecurity experts told CNN this isn't how two entities would communicate if they wanted to keep things secret.
But for those who have studied the data, the activity could suggest an intent to communicate by email during a period of time when ties between the Trump Organization and Russia are being closely scrutinized because of Russia's alleged involvement in hacking the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta.
This issue intrigued a dozen computer researchers at a recent business conference in Washington, D.C. that pulled together the world's top network operators, the ones who help run the internet. To them, it's a strange coincidence that merits further scrutiny.
Another computer researcher, Richard Clayton of Cambridge University, said it's just plain weird.
"It's not so much a smoking gun as a faint whiff of smoke a long way away. Maybe there's something else going on. It's hard to tell," said Clayton, who has independently examined the scant evidence available.
What is known:
Last year, a small group of computer scientists obtained internet traffic records from the complex system that serves as the internet's phone book. Access to these records is reserved for highly trusted cybersecurity firms and companies that provide this lookup service.
These signals were captured as they traveled along the internet's Domain Name System (DNS).
These leaked records show that Alfa Bank servers repeatedly looked up the unique internet address of a particular Trump Organization computer server in the United States.
In the computer world, it's the equivalent of looking up someone's phone number -- over and over again. While there isn't necessarily a phone call, it usually indicates an intention to communicate, according to several computer scientists.
What puzzled them was why a Russian bank was repeatedly looking up the contact information for mail1.trump-email.com.
Publicly available internet records show that address, which was registered to the Trump Organization, points to an IP address that lives on an otherwise dull machine operated by a company in the tiny rural town of Lititz, Pennsylvania.
From May 4 until September 23, the Russian bank looked up the address to this Trump corporate server 2,820 times -- more lookups than the Trump server received from any other source.
As noted, Alfa Bank alone represents 80% of the lookups, according to these leaked internet records.
Far back in second place, with 714 such lookups, was a company called Spectrum Health.
Spectrum is a medical facility chain led by Dick DeVos, the husband of Betsy DeVos, who was appointed by Trump as U.S. education secretary.
Together, Alfa and Spectrum accounted for 99% of the lookups.
This server behavior alarmed one computer expert who had privileged access to this technical information last year. That person, who remains anonymous and goes by the moniker "Tea Leaves," obtained this information from internet traffic meant to remain private. It is unclear where Tea Leaves worked or how Tea Leaves obtained access to the information.
Tea Leaves gave that data to a small band of computer scientists who joined forces to examine it, several members of that group told CNN, which has also reviewed the data.
Possible explanations
The corporations involved have different theories to explain the server activity. But they haven't provided proof -- and they don't agree.
Alfa Bank has maintained that the most likely explanation is that the server communication was the result of spam marketing. Bank executives have stayed at Trump hotels, so it's possible they got subsequent spam marketing emails from the Trump Organization. Those emails might have set off defensive cybersecurity measures at the bank, whose servers would respond with a cautious DNS lookup. Alfa Bank said it used antispam software from Trend Micro, whose tools would do a DNS lookup to know the source of the spam.
Alfa Bank said it brought U.S. cybersecurity firm Mandiant to Moscow to investigate. Mandiant had a "working hypothesis" that the activity was "caused by email marketing/spam" on the Trump server's end, according to representatives for Alfa Bank and Mandiant. The private investigation is now over, Alfa Bank said.
Computer scientists agree that such an explanation is possible in theory. But they want to see evidence.
Alfa Bank and Mandiant could not point to marketing emails from the time period in question. "Mandiant has found evidence of an old marketing campaign, which... is too old to be relevant," Alfa Bank said in a statement.
CNN reached out to the Trump Organization with detailed technical questions but has not received answers.
Cendyn is the contractor that once operated marketing software on that Trump email domain. In February, it provided CNN a Trump Organization statement that called the internet records "incomplete" and stressed that they do not show any signs of "two-way email communication." That statement lends credibility to the spam marketing theory, because it says the Trump server was set up in 2010 to deliver promotional marketing emails for Trump Hotels. But Cendyn acknowledged that the last marketing email it delivered for Trump's corporation was sent in March 2016, "well before the date range in question."
Spectrum Health told CNN it "did find a small number of incoming spam marketing emails" from "Cendyn, advertising Trump Hotels." But it pointed to emails sent in 2015, long before the May-through-September 2016 time period examined by scientists. Spectrum Health said that it "has not been contacted by the FBI or any government agency on this matter."
Having the Trump Organization server set up for marketing also doesn't explain why Alfa Bank and Spectrum would stand out so much.
"If it were spam, then a lot of other organizations would be doing DNS lookups. There would be evidence of widespread connectivity with devices," said L. Jean Camp, a computer scientist at Indiana University who has studied the data.
Cendyn has also provided another possible explanation, suggesting a highly technical case of mistaken identity.
Cendyn routinely repurposes computer servers -- like the one used by the Trump Organization.
Cendyn's software, like its event planning tool Metron, sends email and thus relies on the 20 different email servers rented by the company. After "a thorough network analysis," Cendyn has said that it found a bank client had used Metron to communicate with AlfaBank.com.
But Alfa Bank starkly denies "any dealings with Cendyn." And, it says, it's unlikely that it received any emails from that server. "Mandiant investigated 12 months of email archives and it found no emails to or from any of the IP addresses given to us by the media."
On Wednesday, Cendyn provided another explanation to CNN. Cendyn claims the Trump Hotel Collection ditched Cendyn and went with another email marketing company, the German firm Serenata, in March 2016. Cendyn said it "transferred back to" Trump's company the mail1.trump-email.com domain.
Serenata this week told CNN it was indeed hired by Trump Hotels, but it "never has operated or made use of" the domain in question: mail1.trump-email.com.
Upon hearing that Cendyn gave up control of the Trump email domain, Camp, said: "That does not make any sense to me at all. The more confusing this is, the more I think we need an investigation."
Other computer experts said there could be additional lookups that weren't captured by the original leak. That could mean that Alfa's presence isn't as dominant as it seems. But Dyn, which has a major presence on the internet's domain name system, spotted only two such lookups — from the Netherlands on August 15.
Alfa Bank insists that it has no connections to Trump. In a statement to CNN, Alfa Bank said neither it, bank cofounder Mikhail Fridman and bank president Petr Aven "have had any contact with Mr. Trump or his organizations. Fridman and Aven have never met Mr. Trump nor have they or Alfa Bank had any business dealings with him. Neither Alfa Bank nor its officers have sent Mr. Trump or his organization any emails, information or money. Alfa Bank does not have and has never had any special or exclusive internet connection with Mr. Trump or his entities."
Scientists now silent
The bank told CNN it is now trying to identify the person or entity who disseminated this internet traffic. "We believe that DNS traffic in mainland Europe was deliberately captured - in a manner that is unethical and possibly illegal -- in order to manufacture the deceit," it said.
Fear has now silenced several of the computer scientists who first analyzed the data.
Tea Leaves refused to be interviewed by CNN and is now "hiding under a rock," according to an intermediary contact.
Paul Vixie, who helped design the very DNS system the internet uses today, was quoted in the Slate story saying that Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization "were communicating in a secretive fashion." Vixie declined to go on the record with CNN.
Even the skeptics have unanswered questions.
Robert Graham is a cybersecurity expert who wrote a widely circulated blog post in November that criticized computer scientists for premature conclusions connecting the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank.
But he's still wondering why Alfa Bank and Spectrum Health alone dominated links to this Trump server.
"It's indicative of communication between Trump, the health organization and the bank outside these servers," he told CNN. "There is some sort of connection I can't explain, and only they are doing it. It could be completely innocent."
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/09/politics/ ... index.html


Russian intel officer flew in for Republican Convention to oversee Donald Trump’s platform change
By Bill Palmer | March 9, 2017 | 0

Yesterday we brought you yet another name that now must be added to the list of alleged Trump-Russia conspirators: Konstantin Kilimnik. Politico has exposed that Kilimnik had flown in for the Republican National Convention and then bragged about his role in getting the GOP party platform changed in Russia’s favor. But now Rachel Maddow has pieced together that Kilimnik was a Russian intel officer.

Maddow made the connection during her Thursday evening MSNBC program, and oddly enough, she did so by connecting Politico’s latest reporting with an older Politico report on Kilimnik. In a separate development this week, two former Donald Trump campaign aides, Carter Page and J.D. Gordon, are now both asserting that it was Donald Trump himself who personally pushed them to make the GOP platform change.

This all adds up to a newly startling big picture: Donald Trump personally spearheaded the Republican Party platform change to a pro-Russian stance during the Republican Convention, even as three of his campaign advisers were meeting with the Russian Ambassador during the convention, and a Russian intel officer from the Putin-controlled GRU flew in to the convention to personally oversee the entire chain of events.

This now raises so many vital questions that it’s not even clear which should be asked first: Just how important was this GOP platform change to Vladimir Putin that he had two of his top people on the ground in Cleveland to make sure it happened? How inept was the Trump campaign that they needed this much direct adult supervision from the Russians just to change one line of text?

And perhaps most importantly, how can Donald Trump claim not to have known his advisers were all conspiring with Russia, when the conspiracy – including a Russian intel officer mysteriously showing up in Cleveland to work with his team at the convention – was playing out so blatantly in front of him? Trump’s narrow window for plausible deniability about the Russian conspiracy continues to close by the day.
https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/ru ... ange/1859/



White House Demonstrably Lying About Flynn

Evan Vucci
ByJOSH MARSHALLPublishedMARCH 9, 2017, 9:27 PM EDT
19406Views
3/9/17, AP: "President Donald Trump was not aware that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had worked to further the interests of the government of Turkey before appointing him, the White House said Thursday."

Here is a selection of published reports from November and December detailing Flynn's lobbying on behalf of Turkish interests before Flynn was appointed.

12/21/16, Intelligence Online: "When he was a private consultant, Flynn worked for Inovo, a Dutch firm owned by Kamil Ekim Alptekin, the Turkish chairman of the U.S.-Turkey Business Council (USTBC) and a close advisor to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Alptekin is very well-connected to the Turkish government security apparatus. He is the chairman of the board of ATH Defence and Security Solutions Co, which sells monitoring and intelligence equipment. According to our sources, ATH supplies materiel to the Turkish intelligence service MIT (Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, and the Turkish police force's intelligence units."

12/15/16: Bloomberg: "[Flynn Intelligence Group] worked as a lobbyist for Inovo BV, a Dutch company with close ties to Turkish President Recep Erdogan."

11/29/16, Al-Ahram Weekly: "[Trump's] national security adviser, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, a former head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), has been outed for signing a contract with a Dutch company operating as a front for a Turkish government contractor with close ties to the Erdogan regime."

11/19/16, AP: "[Flynn's] his private consulting firm has lobbied for a company headed by a Turkish businessman tied to Turkey's authoritarian, Islamist-leaning government, which cracked down on dissent and jailed thousands of opponents after a failed coup in July against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan."

11/19/16, CNN: "According to the official document, Kelley was working on behalf of Inovo BV, a Dutch firm owned by Turkish businessman, Kamil Ekim Alptekin.
Alptekin told CNN in an email that the firm works to strengthen 'the transatlantic relationship and Turkey's future in that alliance.'"

11/18/16, Letter, Rep. Elijah Cummings to Vice President-Elect Mike Pence: "Lt. Gen. Flynn’s General Counsel and Principal, Robert Kelley, confirmed that they were hired by a foreign company to lobby for Turkish interests, stating: “They want to keep posted on what we all want to be informed of: the present situation, the transition between President Obama and President-Elect Trump.”

LATE UPDATE - 12:44 am, Special Bonus Addition: here's Vice President Pence twice volunteering, unasked, that this was 'the first I'd heard of it'.


11/14/16, Politico: "Donald Trump wants to forbid his officials from lobbying for foreign governments, but one of his top national security advisers is being paid by a close ally of Turkey's president."


seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 08, 2017 9:28 pm wrote:
Trump-Russia conspirator Michael Flynn registers as foreign agent, admits he took half million dollars

By Bill Palmer | March 8, 2017 | 0

Former Donald Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has officially registered with the United States government as a foreign agent today, in the process admitting that he took more than half a million dollars in lobbying funds from Turkey during the U.S. election. Flynn’s paid work for Turkey had long been reported, but he’s now acknowledging it. This raises the question of what endgame Flynn is playing amid the exploding Trump-Russia scandal.

By registering as a foreign agent today and reporting himself for having taken the $530,000 from Turkey, Michael Flynn is essentially admitting guilt on the matter, and appears to be trying to position himself for some kind of leniency. This move suggests that after years of unsanctioned international freelancing on his part, Flynn is now suddenly trying to get his legal ducks in a row. Today’s action was likely taken on the advice of an attorney. But Flynn is also facing the fact that he lied to the FBI about Russia, a felony. So what has his attorney instructed him to do about that matter?

Flynn’s next move now becomes crucial in terms of telegraphing how he plans to try to survive the Trump-Russia scandal and who he’s willing to give up. His sudden desire to “go straight” legally today may be a pretext for cutting a deal with the FBI in which he agrees to share what he knows about the involvement of higher-ups such as Donald Trump or Jeff Sessions.

But whether Michael Flynn is planning to drop another shoe on Trump’s head over Russia, today’s decision to register as a foreign agent (source: AP) marks yet another black eye for the Donald Trump campaign. It was employing a foreign policy adviser who was simultaneously working as a paid foreign agent, and it likely knew it at the time. Now all eyes are on Flynn to see what his next steps are for trying to save himself.
https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/tr ... lars/1836/


Former Trump aide Flynn says lobbying may have helped Turkey
By STEPHEN BRAUN and CHAD DAY
Mar. 8, 2017 8:09 PM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who was fired from his prominent White House job last month, has registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for $530,000 worth of lobbying work before Election Day that may have aided the Turkish government.

Paperwork filed Tuesday with the Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Unit said Flynn and his firm were voluntarily registering for lobbying from August through November that "could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey." It was filed by a lawyer on behalf of the former U.S. Army lieutenant general and intelligence chief.

After his firm's work on behalf of a Turkish company was done, Flynn agreed not to lobby for five years after leaving government service and never to represent foreign governments.

Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, U.S. citizens who lobby on behalf of foreign government or political entities must disclose their work to the Justice Department. Willfully failing to register is a felony, though the Justice Department rarely files criminal charges in such cases. It routinely works with lobbying firms to get back in compliance with the law by registering and disclosing their work.

A Turkish businessman who hired Flynn's consulting firm told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the amended filings were made in response to pressure from Justice Department officials in recent weeks. The businessman, Ekim Alptekin, said in a phone call from Istanbul that the changes were a response to "political pressure" and he did not agree with Flynn's decision to file the registration documents with the Justice Department.

"I disagree with the filing," he said. "It would be different if I was working for the government of Turkey, but I am not taking directions from anyone in the government."

Flynn's attorney did not respond to questions about whether the Justice Department or FBI had contacted Flynn about his lobbying activities.

Flynn's consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group Inc., had previously disclosed to Congress that it worked for Inovo BV, a Dutch-based company owned by Alptekin. But neither Flynn nor his company had previously filed paperwork with the Justice Department, which requires more extensive transparency about work that benefits foreign governments and political interests.

In the filings with the Justice Department, Flynn's attorney, Robert Kelner, noted they served as a termination of the registration, saying the firm had ceased operations in November, the same month the lobbying contract ended.

Calls to phone numbers associated with Flynn and his firm weren't answered. Kelner, his attorney, declined to comment through a spokesman for his law firm, Covington & Burling.

Reached Wednesday afternoon, an official at the Turkish embassy in Washington said he would refer the questions to the embassy spokesman. The spokesman did not immediately respond.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday afternoon.

Trump fired Flynn last month for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

As a key member of Trump's transition team last December, Flynn spoke by phone several times with Kislyak during the period when former President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the U.S. and levied new sanctions in response to Russian election-related hacking.

According to the new paperwork, Flynn's firm took on the Turkish-related lobbying work in August while he was a top Trump campaign surrogate. Flynn Intel disclosed in its filing that in mid-September, the company was invited by Alptekin to meet with Turkish officials in New York.

Alptekin acknowledged Wednesday that he had set up the meeting between Flynn and the two officials. He said they met at an undisclosed hotel in New York. Alptekin said Flynn happened to be in New York while the Turkish officials were attending United Nations sessions and a separate conference Alptekin had arranged.

"I asked one of Gen. Flynn's staff if he was in town and would be available to meet and they got in touch with him," said Alptekin, who owns several businesses in Turkey.

Among those officials, the documents said, were Turkey's ministers of foreign affairs and energy. Flynn's company did not name the officials but reported the two worked for Turkey's government "to the best of Flynn Intel Group's current understanding."

Alptekin, who previously told The Associated Press he has no relationship with the Turkish government, is a member of a Turkish economic relations board run by an appointee of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president.

Erdogan's power base is Turkey's Islamic voters, and since a failed coup in July, he has accelerated a crackdown against the nation's weakening secularist faction. Erdogan has accused cleric Fethullah Gulen of orchestrating the aborted coup and called for his extradition from the U.S., where he lives. The Obama administration did not comply, and Gulen still lives in a compound in Pennsylvania.

According to the filing, Flynn Intel's work involved collecting information about Gulen and pressuring U.S. officials to take action against the cleric, including a meeting in October between Flynn's firm and a representative of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Flynn Intel arranged the meeting to discuss a technology developed by another Flynn Intel client. But after discussing the technology, the firm changed the subject to Gulen, pressuring the committee to hold congressional hearings to investigate the cleric, said a U.S. official with direct knowledge of Flynn Intel's work. That request was rebuffed. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The official said Flynn Intel never revealed whom it was representing during the meeting.

The October meeting came as Flynn was working on an op-ed promoting Turkey's political and business affairs that was later published in The Hill, a Washington-based political newspaper. Flynn wrote that Turkey needed support and echoed Erdogan's warnings about Gulen, whom he called a "shady" Turkish Muslim cleric living in Pennsylvania. Flynn argued that Gulen should not be given safe harbor in the U.S.

In the new filing, Flynn disclosed that in writing the op-ed, he relied on research conducted as part of the Inovo BV contract. Flynn's firm also admitted it conducted "open-source research," directed by Inovo, focusing on Gulen.

The results "were provided to Inovo" and to a separate lobbying firm, S.G.R. LLC Government Relations and Lobbying, a public relations company retained by Flynn Intel. The materials were aimed for distribution to "third parties," but because the project terminated early, "the full scope of the contract was not performed," according to the filings.

In the filings, Flynn emphasized that neither Inovo BV nor the Turkish government directed him to write the op-ed. He also said he was not paid for the op-ed. Alptekin said he had been opposed to Flynn's writing the op-ed, although he agreed with its anti-Gulen and pro-Turkley stances.

Alptekin added that he had asked for some of the $530,000 in payments to the Flynn Intel Group to be returned to him because of his dissatisfaction with the company's performance.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/former-t ... y-lobbying
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 10, 2017 9:00 am

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby Iamwhomiam » Fri Mar 10, 2017 8:20 pm

A creative person would turn that graphic in toilet tissue and market it.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 10, 2017 8:31 pm

Roger Stone now admits he communicated directly with Russian hacker who stole DNC emails
By Bill Palmer | March 10, 2017 | 0

Two days ago, investigative site The Smoking Gun uncovered evidence that former Donald Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone had communicated directly with the Russian hacker who stole DNC emails. Today, Stone himself is admitting in an interview with the Washington Times that the conversations did indeed happen. This marks the first official documentation that the Trump campaign communicated directly with Russian hackers during the election – and it’s a big deal.

Roger Stone had admitted in a Twitter post months ago that he’d been keeping a “backchannel” open with international cyberterrorist group WikiLeaks, which went on to release the stolen DNC emails in question — an admission he repeated last week in a twitter post he later deleted. It’s long been suspected that a Russian hacker nicknamed Guccifer 2.0 stole the DNC emails and then fed them to WikiLeaks for public release. And now Stone is finally admitting that he was communicating directly with Guccifer 2.0, and not merely with the WikiLeaks intermediary.

So where does this leave us? Several of Donald Trump’s campaign advisers, including Jeff Sessions and J.D. Gordon and Carter Page, have now admitted to having met privately with the Russian Ambassador during the course of the election. According to recent admissions by Page and Gordon, those meetings were related to Trump’s personal insistence that the Republican Party platform be changed to favor Russia.

While that’s suspicious in its own right, proving a conspiracy to rig the election would require demonstrating that the Trump campaign knowingly made the platform change in exchange for Russia hacking the election. Thus it’s a big deal that Roger Stone is now admitting to the Washington Times (after he’d just been outed by The Smoking Gun) that he was in direct contact with the Russian hacker responsible.

This means the Donald Trump campaign was in direct contact with both the Russian diplomat who wanted the party platform changed and the Russian hacker who rigged the election, connecting the campaign to both sides of the conspiracy and making it nearly impossible for the campaign to argue that it wasn’t a quid pro quo arrangement. Roger Stone was a Trump campaign adviser, and Trump and Stone are close friends going back decades, making it nearly impossible for Trump to claim that he didn’t know about the Russian plot his campaign was carrying out.
http://www.palmerreport.com/news/roger- ... ails/1868/


Why is Donald Trump’s State Dept. using “diplomatic immunity” to protect a dead Russian?
By Bill Palmer | March 10, 2017 | 0

“Diplomatic immunity” is a privilege granted to foreign diplomats and ambassadors to make sure the host nation can’t falsely charge them with a crime in the name of gaining political leverage over their home nation. But Donald Trump’s State Department appears to have an entirely different understanding of the term, as it’s invoking diplomatic immunity today in the name of not revealing the cause of death of Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin.

Churkin unexpectedly died in New York three weeks ago, making him the seventh out of eight prominent Russians to drop dead since the Trump-Russia scandal exploded. And now we’re suddenly being told that we’re not allowed to know how Churkin died, because the information needs to be protected under diplomatic immunity.

The claim is absurd on its face for two reasons. One is that an ambassador’s diplomatic immunity is not generally considered to be still intact after his death, as its sole purpose was to protect him from being falsely charged with crimes while he was alive. But even if one were to stipulate to the odd notion that Vitaly Churkin still enjoys diplomatic immunity from the grave, it would still only apply with regard to protecting him from criminal charges.

As such, suppressing his cause of death would only fall under “diplomatic immunity” if revealing his cause of death would implicate him in a crime in the process. To pick an arbitrary hypothetical example, if Churkin were killed by police while attempting to rob a 7-Eleven, then his cause of death couldn’t be revealed without accusing him of the robbery. But even then, accusing Churkin of that crime wouldn’t be the same as trying to charge him with a crime. In other words, this is a fully nonsensical claim.

And yet the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner announced today that it can’t publicly reveal Vitaly Churkin’s cause of death because it’s been instructed not to by the city’s legal department. It’s referring any further questions to the State Department, which just happens to be run by longtime Vladimir Putin ally and recently appointed Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. This suggests Churkin’s cause of death is being covered up for purely political reasons.

Is the Donald Trump administration attempting to cover up the death of Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin because he was involved in the Trump-Russia conspiracy and he was murdered over it? Or did Churkin die of harmless causes, and the Trump administration doesn’t realize how much suspicion it’s bringing down on itself by absurdly invoking “diplomatic immunity” to suppress his cause of death? Now we find out if we can force the cause of death to be publicly released under the Freedom of Information Act.
https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/wh ... sian/1866/


After watchdog asks U.S. attorney to launch Donald Trump probe, Jeff Sessions fires him
By Bill Palmer | March 10, 2017 | 0

Two days ago, an ethics watchdog group formally asked U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara to launch an investigation into Donald Trump’s financial ties, which are in clear violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Today, in what it highly unlikely to be a coincidence, Attorney General has asked Preet Bharara to resign. In fact Sessions is now pushing out dozens of Bharara’s colleagues in a seeming attempt at ensuring no one is left to investigate Trump.

The political watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington sent a letter to Preet Bharara on Wednesday, which was reported at the time by NPR. Bharara was appointed by President Barack Obama. And now, according to a report from the LA Times today, Jeff Sessions is asking for all forty-six U.S. Attorneys appointed by Obama to immediately resign.

This is a staggering break from protocol, as new presidents have generally handled these things in a staggered manner to ensure that enough U.S. Attorneys remain on the job at any given time. The timing is also highly suspicious. Jeff Sessions was confirmed as Attorney General more than a month ago, yet he saw no urgency in pushing out holdover U.S. Attorneys until one of them was asked to investigate his boss Trump – and now Sessions suddenly wants them all gone.

This stands out as even more suspect in light of the Donald Trump administration’s inability to staff up the federal government with its own people on any level. Hundreds of key federal government positions are sitting vacant because Trump hasn’t nominated anyone to fill them. He’s filled virtually none of the U.S. Ambassador positions. And the State Department in particular has no current leadership team in place at all.

And yet Jeff Sessions woke up today and suddenly decided to simultaneously create forty-six new high level vacancies within his DOJ that he’ll have great difficulty filling. If he tries to argue that he didn’t make the brash and reckless move as a last ditch effort at protecting Donald Trump’s increasingly obvious financial violations of the Constitution, he’ll look foolish doing so.
https://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/wa ... sign/1869/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby JackRiddler » Sat Mar 11, 2017 3:46 pm

.

Those charts are like exhuming Mark Lombardi and murdering him again.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 11, 2017 6:53 pm

Mapping the Trump-Russia network

Applying data visualization tools to the onslaught of information about team Trump’s ties to Russia helps us understand what’s happening.
Updated by Jennifer N. Victorjvictor3@gmu.edu Mar 6, 2017, 11:00am EST

Vladimir Putin (left image) and Donald Trump (right image). Presidents of Russia and US, respectively.
(Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP/Getty Images and Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images)
In recent days, the number of revelations about connections between President Donald Trump and Russia have been expanding. The rate and identity of these connections have already caused one White House adviser to resign and the attorney general to recuse himself from further investigations. The story has been advancing so quickly that it’s difficult for even avid news consumers to keep track of the identities and type of connections between team Trump, his associates, and Russian government agents and businesses.

Of course, a president, his staff, or his Cabinet meeting with foreign leaders is not unusual. But in this context, it is. It’s important to remember that the intelligence services of the US government have concluded that Russia was involved with hacking the Democratic National Committee and interfering with the US 2016 election, which Trump won.

Recently, the Washington Post began mapping the connections between Trump and his affiliates and the Russians. This is a challenging task that, at this stage of limited public information, is nearly impossible to master. There is still more that we don’t know about these relationships than what we do know, and new information is coming out all the time. However, the Post’s efforts are worthy of recognition and encouragement because understanding the relationships between political actors helps us better understand their motivations and behaviors.

Image
Washington Post graphic of Trump’s ties to Russian actors (published March 3) Philip Bump/Washington Post

Mapping connections can provide insights

An entire academic field of political networks exists for this purpose. When our questions about politics are about relationships, or the connections between people, groups, and institutions, we need network methods to find answers. Applying non-relationship-based tools to questions that are about relationships results in incorrect conclusions. Moreover, the eagle-eye view provided by a whole network analysis can often provide insights that cannot be uncovered using a traditional analytical tool that focuses on individuals. Think of the clichéd crime investigator with clippings and notes on a cork board connected by pushpins and string. An approach like this can be useful in helping an analyst develop insights that are difficult to see otherwise.

Fortunately, advances in technology and methodology provide us with techniques that go well beyond the cork board. The Post made a good effort to piece together such an analysis with its graphic. However, there is room for improvement. For example, the layout of this graphic has been imposed by the designer. In other words, the Post wanted to show that Trump was at the top of this hierarchy, and so it placed him there. But it’s far better to use the strength of ties between the actors to show how “close” they are to one another.

The Post was careful to make a number of caveats, which also apply here. We do not have complete information about who is involved and how all the actors are connected to one another. In a technical sense, the models we can create have omitted actors, and we don’t know who they are. This missing data may be consequential, or it may not. If the missing actors and connections are highly important to drawing conclusions from the graph, then the incompleteness will be problematic.

For example, suppose there was evidence of direct contact between Trump and Putin — which, to be clear, no one is saying exists — but it if were true, and such a link were missing from the graph, we would not be able to draw accurate conclusions from the data. The omission of important actors or connections makes it nearly impossible to draw conclusions from the graph. Since we are certain we do not yet have all the actors and connections, we really cannot draw any conclusions. Still, there may be some utility in the exercise, and the data can be updated as new information becomes available — as it has, nearly every day.

Scholars have developed a series of best practices or rules to follow when displaying data of this type. Following these rules can help us gain insights into the network. The very first rule of creating a network map is to be thoughtful about layout. While some graphs look a bit like a mess of spaghetti, appropriate layout can reveal overall structure between relationships. It can help find cliques, factions, or communities.

It can also reveal which actors are most central to the network or to parts of the network. In politics, centrality is often associated with power. Graphing a network can help us check to see if the people we think are in power are actually central to the relationships in a network. Layout can also help us identify those who might act as brokers, or provide a bridge between two components that would otherwise be unconnected.

The principles of proper layout that can help us make these discoveries include the following. First, minimize crossing lines. When too many lines cross in a graph (as in the Post’s), it can be difficult to see structure or to visually follow the paths. Second, maximize angles. Too many acute angles make the graph tighter and denser, and contribute to complexity that may be unnecessary. Third, optimize line lengths and path distances. Actors that are more tightly connected in the network should appear closer together on the graph, and those who are not very well-connected should be farther apart. Computers use layout algorithms to achieve this effect.

Useful network graphs of the Trump-Russia connections
Applying these principles alone to the graph the Post produced makes the network look like this:
Image
Trump-Russia network
Redrawn network graph of Trump-Russia connections as displayed in the Washington Post. Jennifer N. Victor
This graph is a rough sketch and is not as slick as the Post’s — for example, I didn’t use photographs for the nodes, which is a nice added visual — but the layout provides a more accurate depiction of the connections between the actors. Trump appears at the center of this graph in part because the data we are collecting is all about how all of these people are connected to Trump. He may be truly at the center of this network, but that may not mean very much about his role because we are in fact trying to determine how all of these people are connected to him.

The above graph also shows each node (or actor) as a circle that is sized proportionally to the actor’s centrality in the network. These nodes are sized by eigenvector centrality, which is a measure of centrality that takes into account how each actor is connected to every other actor in the network to show which are the most prominent.

We can improve this further by including some obvious additional connections. The Post’s graph for example, didn’t show Trump connected to Tillerson (his secretary of state) or his son Donald Trump Jr. The Post was not particularly careful about defining the relationships between these actors. In some cases, the connections are employer-employee, or business partners, or campaign co-workers, or simply that two people were known to have had conversations (such as with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak).

For the purposes of this analysis, it seems okay to be somewhat liberal about these associations because we are simply using the graphing strategy to be somewhat exploratory about these connections. But we should keep in mind that they are not all equal. Future iterations may seek to be more exact about the strength and type of the relationships.

Reading through the Post’s careful write-up, we can add some additional meaningful actors and connections, and we can be deliberate about the direction of the connections. For example, we know that the Russian government was involved with hacking the DNC, which would indicate a connection from Russia to the DNC, but not the other way around.

Also, there are “nodes” on the graph that are not individuals but rather collections of individuals (e.g., Russian government and Russian business). It’s not typical to include two types of nodes in the same graph. It’s confusing to have some nodes as individual people and some nodes as groups. For example, Kislyak is clearly part of the Russian government. However, in this case, I think the Post (and I) are assuming that the nodes for Russian government and Russian business are stand-ins for individuals that are still unknown.

Adding in some of these connections makes the graph look like this:
Image
Trump-Russia ties
Improved network graph of Trump-Russia connections. Jennifer N. Victor
The above graph is more complex than the previous, and it provides more information. While not as slick, it’s considerably more informative than the Post’s. The strength of the relationship between President Trump and Russian business is both central and prominent in this map. This happens because Trump and many of his associates have done business in Russia. It’s notable that the Russian government is much more closely tied to its economy and national business interests compared with the US. For instance, the Russian government has been heavy-handed in using government tools to develop regional dominance over access to oil and natural gas.

Additionally, we can ask the software to find “factions” or closely connected components within the graph. There is not much to go on (yet) with respect to finding distinct communities in the graph, but I suspect this approach may be more fruitful as more information becomes available.
Image

Faction analysis of Trump-Russia network. Graph produced in NetDraw. Jennifer N. Victor
Here you can see that there is one component (in blue) that includes the White House but also Russian business. The red (Russian) component includes the government and the actors it has most closely associated with, including the DNC via the hacking. The third component, in black, mostly appears to be made of those connected to foreign policy and diplomatic affairs. This analysis is exploratory and does not lead to any causal mechanisms or revelations, but as a descriptive analysis it helps us better understand the nature of the associations in this complex web.

The above graphs were produced in NetDraw, which is a user-friendly graphing software for networks. Importantly, the algorithm NetDraw uses lays out the nodes to reflect their level of closeness or connectivity. Other software uses slightly different algorithms and features. Gephi makes the graph look like this:
Image

Alternative presentation of Trump-Russia network. Graph produced in Gephi. Jennifer N. Victor
The graph created in Gephi is a bit more stylish, but has more crossing lines, making it harder to read, in my opinion. The size and color of each node indicates its centrality to the network, larger and darker being more central.

Ultimately, there is still much we don’t know about the relationship between Trump and Russia. As more information is revealed about more connections between Trump associates and Russians, the picture gets both murkier (because of complexity) and clearer (because of marginal transparency). So far there is no evidence of Trump’s direct involvement in anything illegal, but his denials and attempts to misdirect add to the air of suspicion around him.

Journalists and network scholars can help add to revealing relationships by investigating the extent of the connections between the myriad actors apparently involved in these complex scandals. Applying statistical tools and data visualizations to the complex web of relationships can help us better understand what’s happening.
http://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction ... ork-mapped




Askold Krushelnycky: The truth about Trump’s murky Russia connections will come out

By Askold Krushelnycky. Published March 10 at 6:03 pm

Protesters march against President Trump outside the Embassy of Russia on March 4 in Washington, DC.
Photo by AFP
Several weeks ago I reported here that at the core of US President Donald Trump’s perplexing defense of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin might be that most banal of motives – greed and the desire to turn a quick buck. Perhaps hundreds of millions of them.

As Trump’s Russian morass deepens recurring elements in allegations involving the US president, some of the colorful characters connected to him, and to Russia are bound up with large sums of money and property deals.

Many dubbed “oligarchs” from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet empire have sought to transform vast piles of dirty dollars, sometimes amassed through crime and corruption, into legitimate property assets in Western countries.

Many Russian oligarchs, despite professing undying love for it, don’t want to live in their largely impoverished, primitive, oft-brutish, country where they might lose their wealth at the whim of a kleptocratic, repressive regime. They – and these include many Putin cronies – want luxury homes in the West, their children educated in the US or UK, and their wives and mistresses to be able to shop in New York, London and Paris, not Moscow, Minsk or Ashgabat.

The tried and tested way to exfiltrate their money is to buy property abroad – the more outrageously expensive, the better.

And it’s not important to turn a profit on that asset. Say you have paid $200 million stolen from your country for a collection of overpriced Manhattan or London flats and can sell it for only $150 million. It doesn’t matter because for a commission of $50 million, that wasn’t yours anyway, you now have a freshly-laundered $150 million embedded in the pukka western fiscal system.

US intelligence agencies are already investigating Kremlin computer hacking intended to influence last November’s presidential election in favor of Trump and looking at allegations – some in a report by a former British MI6 agent – that Moscow holds compromising material exposing Trump to blackmail.

Intriguing financial information and connections, some of which were known before Trump ran for president and others now coming to light, will need to come within the ambit of any investigations if Trump hopes to be cleared of the Russia- related allegations swirling around him.

Democrat Congressional members don’t trust the committees of inquiry currently being mooted as their composition will reflect the Republican majority in the Senate and House of Representatives. Democrats are skeptical Republicans will pursue rigorously enough a president from their own party and fear some damaging evidence may remain secret.

That fear mirrors concerns in the former administration of President Barrack Obama that information relating to Russian electoral interference and ties to Trump might be buried by the incoming administration. For that reason, Obama’s administration in its last weeks, it has emerged, distributed, declassified and leaked information so that it would become public. Similarly the Democrats are pressing for a high-powered, politically independent inquiry that will make its findings public.

Trump has repeatedly tried to make it appear there are no financial connections between him and Russia. He chooses his words very carefully saying he has no investments or properties in Russia or loans from there. But his statements don’t exclude Russian investments into Trump businesses. And they certainly don’t exclude past business dealings with Russia.

Indeed, Trump and family members have made many trips to Russia seeking investors there. And they have met with success, as the president’s son, Donald Jr, boasted in 2008 when he said: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets…. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Helping to enable Russian oligarchs to clean their money by providing opportunities to buy very expensive properties and not asking awkward questions about the source of the money may not be in the same territory as being a money-launderer. Many western countries and financial institutions, including Europe’s largest financial center, the City of London, have been accused of profiting from and being tainted by billions of dollars in corruptly-generated Russian funds.

But the sparse undergrowth on the no-man’s land between the two territories may not provide sufficient cover for an American president seeking to preserve an unimpeachable reputation.

If there is an independent inquiry it might strip Trump of the camouflage about his business dealings provided by his refusal – unprecedented in modern times for presidential candidates – to open up his tax returns for perusal.

More information about his Russian dealings may figure in those tax records. Many are already known about. One or two such transactions might be explained away. But add to that the fact that so many others linked to Trump have Russian financial connections and a disturbing pattern emerges revolving around Russian money, with much of that, in turn, linked to Putin and his cronies.

Some examples:

One of Trump’s business partners was chairman of a company called Bayrock: a Kazakh emigre called Tevfik Arif. Kazakhstan, nominally independent after the 1991 disintegration of the Soviet Union, is still largely controlled by Moscow and Arif was closely tied to its oppressive elite of corrupt politicians and businessmen looking for safe havens to invest in.

Another former senior Bayrock member is Russian born, now US citizen, Felix Sater, who was a middleman for investments into Trump’s property business and says he guided Donald Trump Jr on visits to Moscow and made a large money donation to Trump’s presidential campaign.

Sater was convicted of assault in 1991 and in 1998 he pled guilty to stock racketeering in a Russian gangster-connected fraud. Around 2000 Sater was indicted on a $40 million stock fraud. He struck a deal where he provided the CIA and FBI with information about national security in return for not having to serve jail time.

There were allegations, denied, that Bayrock was involved in a large fraud with an Icelandic-based investment fund. More than a decade ago US intelligence uncovered links of huge amounts of Russian money, including large sums of Putin’s personal loot, in companies with opaque ownership structures in Iceland – a country previously not known as a haven for dodgy money.

In 2008 Trump purchased for $40 million a luxury property in Florida. Two years later a Russian oligarch, Dmitry Rybolovlev, with extremely close ties to Putin, bought it for $100 million.

Rybolovlev partly owned the Bank of Cyprus, one of the largest conduits for Russian oligarch money. Wilbur Ross, Trump’s Commerce Secretary, invested $400 million in the bank in 2014 – an 18 percent holding. He also appointed a former Deutsche Bank chief executive Josef Ackermann, to be BoC chairman.

After Trump suffered financial problems, including bankruptcies, and few serious western financial institutions would lend to him, Deutsche Bank loaned hundreds of millions of dollars. For a long time DB was dogged by allegations that it had helped Russian clients launder money. Earlier this year the US and UK fined DB $630 million for Russian money-laundering.

One of Trump’s chief campaign advisers was professional political operative Paul Manafort who had to leave the Trump campaign last summer after allegations he had received undeclared millions from Ukraine’s former pro-Putin President, Viktor Yanukovych. Manafort had worked for years grooming the corrupt and repressive Yanukovych. Yanukovych was driven out in a 2014 revolution after his security forces shot dead 100 unarmed protesters. Manafort continued to advise the pro-Russian remnants of Yanukovych’s party.

Manafort has worked for quite a few unsavory characters. Those include Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, who was the key figure in a scheme laundering billions of dollars siphoned off by Putin and his coterie from the country’s main revenue source, gas. Firtash is now awaiting extradition to the US on financial bribery charges.

Ukraine’s pro-western former Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, who was jailed by Yanukovych, began court proceedings in the US in 2011, which included allegations Manafort helped Firtash launder large sums of money by sham investments in New York property. That case was dismissed in 2014. But it is likely Tymoshenko will be asked by US authorities to support the prosecution against Firtash.

Manafort claims he did not work for Moscow but his close assistant in Ukraine was Konstantin Kilimnik, a former member of Soviet military intelligence, GRU, who some suspect never completely severed his ties with Russian intelligence. Manafort’s efforts helped keep Yanukovych, Putin’s puppet, in power and thus helped to stifle democracy and moves to integrate with the West.

And so the list goes on.

The Trump camp has already suffered casualties because of Russian connections. The most important so far has been Trump’s National Security adviser, General Michael Flynn, in February. He was forced to resign for lying about talks with the Russian ambassador in Washington, Sergey Kislyak. It was illegal for him to discuss with Kislyak possibly easing US Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia prior to Trump’s inauguration.

Now Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is facing calls for his resignation because, in testimony under oath to the Senate, he failed to mention meetings with Kislyak last year when Sessions was a leading member of Trump’s campaign team.

Wilbur Ross is now also under pressure. Many honorable people have vouched for Sessions and Ross. And they may well be wonderful people. But the financial links are troubling not just because the president and some of his influential and powerful associates must (unless they haven’t been paying attention to the news since the fall of the USSR) suspect they are involved with tainted Russian money, but because Putin might be trading political considerations in return for allowing access to the Russian oligarchs.

Two of Putin’s priorities are the lifting of US sanctions imposed after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Flynn was discussing that in his secret conversations with the Russian ambassador, it is alleged.

Another Putin priority was that the US should not provide lethal weapons to Ukraine’s military for use against Russian forces. Last year both Republicans and Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly voted to supply such weapons to Ukraine and probably would have if another Republican candidate had become president or even Clinton.

Manafort, during his time as Trump adviser, is credited with watering down the Republicans’ support for Ukraine and eliminating from party policy the provision about lethal weapons. All in all? A magnificent triumph for Putin.
https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinio ... -come.html


Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions fire U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who busted Russian spy ring
By Bill Palmer | March 11, 2017 | 0

Donald Trump and his Attorney General Jeff Sessions have fired U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara today, one day after he refused their request to resign, and just weeks after Trump had assured Congress that he would be keeping Preet. The sudden change may be because a watchdog group asked Preet to investigate Trump’s finances two days ago. But it may also be that Trump and Sessions are specifically trying to protect Russian interests.

Just two years ago, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara made a name for himself by charging three Russian nationals who were posing as businessmen in New York City, but who were actually alleged Russian spies. The case brought enough attention that Bharara’s name and picture were atop the New York Daily News article announcing the charges at the time. And a year ago today, one of the three spies pled guilty to being a Russian spy, according to the New York Times. And so if there’s one attorney in the U.S. government whom the Kremlin would want to see gone, it’s Bharara.

To be clear, Preet Bharara is one of forty-six U.S. Attorneys originally appointed by President Barack Obama who were asked to resign yesterday. But he’s become the focal point of controversy because Donald Trump had previously told Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer that Bharara would be staying on. And simultaneously firing dozens of U.S. Attorneys, with no replacements in place, is so unprecedented and bizarre that it suggests they were all fired as an excuse just to get Bharara out the door.

Considering how deeply beholden Trump is to the Kremlin, and considering how much hot water Sessions is in for having met repeatedly with the Russian Ambassador while he was a Trump campaign adviser and then having lied about it while under oath, this Russian wrinkle in Preet Bharara’s firing cannot be ignored. Considering that he’s best known for having busted three Russian spies in New York, it must now be investigated whether his sudden unexpected firing is a result of ongoing Kremlin influence over the Trump administration
http://www.palmerreport.com/news/donald ... ring/1884/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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