Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 15, 2017 7:02 pm

Head of British intelligence flew to US to brief CIA director about Trump-Russia connections


How Trump walked into Putin’s web

Luke Harding
Wednesday 15 November 2017 11.17 EST
Moscow, summer 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev is in power. Official relations with the west have softened, but the KGB still assumes all western embassy workers are spooks. The KGB agents assigned to them are easy to spot. They have a method. Sometimes they pursue targets on foot, sometimes in cars. The officers charged with keeping tabs on western diplomats are never subtle.

One of their specialities is breaking into Moscow apartments. The owners are always away, of course. The KGB leave a series of clues – stolen shoes, women’s tights knotted together, cigarette butts stomped out and left demonstratively on the floor. Or a surprise turd in the toilet, waiting in grim ambush. The message, crudely put, is this: we are the masters here! We can do what the fuck we please!

Back then, the KGB kept watch on all foreigners, especially American and British ones. The UK mission in Moscow was under close observation. The British embassy was a magnificent mansion built in the 1890s by a rich sugar merchant, on the south bank of the Moskva river. It looked directly across to the Kremlin. The view was dreamy: a grand palace, golden church domes and medieval spires topped with revolutionary red stars.

One of those the KGB routinely surveilled was a 27-year-old diplomat, newly married to his wife, Laura, on his first foreign posting, and working as a second secretary in the chancery division. In this case, their suspicions were right.

The “diplomat” was a British intelligence officer. His workplace was a grand affair: chandeliers, mahogany-panelled reception rooms, gilt-framed portraits of the Queen and other royals hanging from the walls. His desk was in the embassy library, surrounded by ancient books. The young officer’s true employer was an invisible entity back in London – SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6.

His name was Christopher Steele. Years later, he would be commissioned to undertake an astonishing secret investigation. It was an explosive assignment: to uncover the Kremlin’s innermost secrets with relation to Donald Trump. Steele’s findings, and the resulting dossier, would shake the American intelligence community and cause a political earthquake not seen since the dark days of Richard Nixon and Watergate.

Steele had arrived in Moscow via the usual establishment route for upwardly mobile British spies: the University of Cambridge. Cambridge had produced some of MI6’s most talented cold war officials. A few of them, it turned out – to great embarrassment – had secret second jobs with the KGB. The joke inside MI6 was that only those who had never visited the Soviet Union would wish to defect.

Steele had studied social and political sciences at Girton College. His views were centre-left; he and his elder sister were the first members of his family to go to university. (Steele’s paternal grandfather was a coal miner from Pontypridd in south Wales; his great-uncle died in a pit accident.) Steele wrote for the student newspaper, Varsity. He became president of the Cambridge Union, a debating society dominated by well-heeled and well-connected young men and women.

It’s unclear who recruited Steele. Traditionally, certain Cambridge tutors were rumoured to identify promising MI6 candidates. Whatever the route, Steele’s timing was good. After three years at MI6, he was sent to the Soviet Union in April 1990, soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the communist bloc across eastern Europe.

It was a tumultuous time. Seventy years after the Bolshevik revolution, the red empire was crumbling. The Baltic states had revolted against Soviet power; their own national authorities were governing in parallel with Moscow. In June 1991, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic elected a democratic president, Boris Yeltsin. Food shortages were not uncommon.

There was still much to enjoy. Like other expatriates, the Steeles visited the Izmailovsky craft market, next to an imperial park where Peter the Great’s father, Tsar Alexei, had established a model farm. Here you could buy lacquered boxes, patchwork quilts, furry hats and Soviet kitsch. Steele acquired samovars, carpets from central Asia, a papier-mache Stalin mask and a hand-painted Tolstoy doll set.

Much of the Soviet Union was off-limits to diplomats. Steele was the embassy’s “internal traveller”. He visited newly accessible cities. One of them was Samara, a wartime Soviet capital. There, he became the first foreigner to see Stalin’s underground bunker. Instead of Lenin, he found dusty portraits of Peter the Great and the imperial commander Mikhail Kutuzov – proof, seemingly, that Stalin was more nationalist than Marxist. Another city was Kazan, in Tatarstan. There a local correspondent, Anatoly Andronov, took a black-and-white photo of Steele chatting with newspaper editors. At weekends, Steele took part in soccer matches with a group of expats in a Russian league. In one game, he played against the legendary Soviet Union striker Oleh Blokhin, who scored from the halfway line.
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Christopher Steele in early 1991, with newspaper editors in the Tatar city of Kazan.
Christopher Steele in early 1991, with newspaper editors in the Tatar city of Kazan. Photograph: Anatoly Andronov
The atmosphere was optimistic. It seemed to Steele that the country was shifting markedly in the right direction. Citizens once terrified of interacting with outsiders were ready to talk. The KGB, however, found nothing to celebrate in the USSR’s tilt towards freedom and reform. In August 1991, seven apparatchiks staged a coup while Gorbachev was vacationing in Crimea. Most of the British embassy was away. Steele was home at his second-floor apartment in Gruzinsky Pereulok. He left the apartment block and walked for 10 minutes into town. Crowds had gathered outside the White House, the seat of government; thus far the army hadn’t moved against them.

From 50 yards away, Steele watched as a snowy-haired man in a suit climbed on a tank and – reading from notes brushed by the wind – denounced the coup as cynical and illegal. This was a defiant Yeltsin. Steele listened as Yeltsin urged a general strike and, fist clenched, told his supporters to remain strong.

The coup failed, and a weakened Gorbachev survived. The putschists – the leading group in all the main Soviet state and party institutions – were arrested. In the west, and in the US in particular, many concluded that Washington had won the cold war, and that, after decades of ideological struggle, liberal democracy had triumphed.

Steele knew better. Three days after the coup, surveillance on him resumed. His MI6 colleagues in Hungary and Czechoslovakia reported that after revolutions there the secret police vanished, never to come back. But here were the same KGB guys, with the same familiar faces. They went back to their old routines of bugging, break-ins and harassment.

The regime changed. The system didn’t.

By the time Steele left Moscow in April 1993, the Soviet Union had gone. A new country, led by Yeltsin, had replaced it: the Russian Federation. The KGB had been dissolved, but its officers hadn’t exactly disappeared. They still loathed the US and were merely biding their time.

One mid-ranking former KGB spy who was unhappy about this state of affairs was Vladimir Putin. Putin had been posted to Dresden in provincial East Germany in the mid-80s, and had missed perestroika and glasnost, Gorbachev’s reformist ideas. He had now returned to the newly renamed St Petersburg and was carving out a political career. He mourned the end of the USSR, and once called its disappearance “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”.

A post-communist spy agency, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, had taken over the KGB’s main functions. Back in the UK, Steele would soon move into MI6’s purpose-built new office – a large, striking, postmodern pile of a building overlooking the River Thames in London. Staff called it Vauxhall Cross. This gaudy Babylonian temple was hard to miss; in 1994, the government officially acknowledged the existence of MI6 for the first time. The FSB would become its bitter adversary.

From London, Steele continued to work on the new Russia. He was ambitious, keen to succeed, and keen to be seen to succeed. He was also, perhaps, less posh than some of his upper-class peers. Steele’s father, Perris, and his mother, Janet, both from London, met when they worked together at the UK Met Office. Perris was a forecaster for the armed services. The family had lived on army bases in Aden, where Steele was born, on the Shetland Islands (where he found an interest in bird-watching) and – twice – in Cyprus.

Steele’s education had been varied. He went to a British forces school in Cyprus. He did sixth form at a college in Berkshire. He then spent a “seventh” or additional term at Wellington College, an elite private boarding school. There he sat the entrance exam for Cambridge.

At MI6, Steele moved in a small world of Kremlin specialists. There were conferences and seminars in university towns like Oxford; contacts to be made; émigrés to be met, lunched and charmed. In 1998 he got another posting, to the British embassy in Paris. He had a family: two sons and a daughter, born in France, where Steele was officially First Secretary Financial.

At this point, his career hit a bump. In 1999, a list of MI6 officers was leaked online. Steele was one of them. He appeared as “Christopher David Steele, 90 Moscow; dob 1964”.

The breach wasn’t Steele’s fault, but it had unfortunate consequences. As an exposed British officer, he couldn’t go back to Russia.

In Moscow, the spies were staging a comeback. In 1998 Putin became FSB chief, then prime minister, and in 2000, president. By 2002, when Steele left Paris, Putin had consolidated his grip. Most of Russia’s genuine political opposition had been wiped out, from parliament as well as from public life and the evening news. The idea that Russia might slowly turn into a democracy had proved a late-century fantasy. Rather, the US’s traditional nuclear-armed adversary was moving in an authoritarian direction.

At first, George W Bush and Tony Blair viewed Putin as a respectable ally in the war against terror. But he remained an enigma. As Steele knew better than most, obtaining information from inside the presidential administration in Moscow was tough. One former member of the US National Security Council described Putin as a “black box”. “The Brits had slightly better assets than us. We had nothing. No human intelligence,” the source said. And, with the focus on fighting Islamists, Russia was downgraded on the list of US-UK intelligence priorities.

By 2006, Steele held a senior post at MI6’s Russia desk in London. There were ominous signs that Putin was taking Russia in an aggressive direction. The number of hostile Russian agents in the UK grew, surpassing cold war levels. Steele tracked a new campaign of subversion and covert influence.

And then two FSB assassins put a radioactive poison into the tea of Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer turned London-based dissident. It was an audacious operation, and a sign of things to come. MI6 picked Steele to investigate. One reason for this was that he wasn’t emotionally involved with the case, unlike some of his colleagues who had known the victim. He quickly concluded the Russian state had staged the execution.
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Alexander Litvinenko, whose poisoning in London in 2006 Christopher Steele was chosen to investigate.
Alexander Litvinenko, whose poisoning in London in 2006 Christopher Steele was chosen to investigate. Photograph: Natasja Weitsz
Steele’s gloomy view of Russia – that under Putin it was not only domestically repressive but also internationally reckless and revisionist – looked about right. Steele briefed government ministers. Some got it. Others could scarcely believe Russian spies would carry out murder and mayhem on the streets of London.

All told, Steele spent 22 years as a British intelligence officer. There were some high points – he saw his years in Moscow as formative – and some low ones. Two of the diplomats with whom he shared an office in the embassy library, Tim Barrow and David Manning, went on to become UK ambassadors to the EU and the US respectively.

Steele didn’t quite rise to the top, in what was a highly competitive service. Espionage might sound exciting, but the salary of a civil servant was ordinary. And in 2009 he had faced a personal tragedy, when his wife died at the age of 43 after a period of illness.

That same year, Steele left MI6 and set up his own business intelligence firm, Orbis, in partnership with another former British spy, Christopher Burrows. The transition from government to the private sector wasn’t easy. Steele and Burrows were pursuing the same intelligence matters as before, but without the support and peer review they had in their previous jobs. MI6’s security branch would often ask an officer to go back to a source, or redraft a report, or remark: “We think it’s interesting. We’d like to have more on this.” This kept up quality and objectivity.

Steele and Burrows, by contrast, were out on their own, where success depended more on one’s own wits. There was no more internal challenge. The people they had to please were corporate clients. The pay was considerably better.

The shabby environs of Orbis’s office in London’s Victoria, where I first met Christopher Steele, were a long way away from Washington DC and the bitterly contested 2016 US presidential election. So how did Steele come to be commissioned to research Donald J Trump and produce his devastating dossier?

At the same moment Steele said goodbye to official spying, another figure was embarking on a new career in the crowded field of private business intelligence. His name was Glenn Simpson. He was a former journalist. Simpson was an alluring figure: a large, tall, angular, bear-like man who slotted himself easily on to a bar stool and enjoyed a beer or two. He was a good-humoured social companion who spoke in a nasal drawl. Behind small, oval glasses was a twinkling intelligence. He excelled at what he did.

Simpson had been an illustrious Wall Street Journal correspondent. Based in Washington and Brussels, he had specialised in post-Soviet murk. He didn’t speak Russian or visit the Russian Federation. This was deemed too dangerous. Instead, from outside the country, he examined the dark intersection between organised crime and the Russian state.

By 2009, Simpson decided to quit journalism, at a time when the media industry was in all sorts of financial trouble. He co-founded his own commercial research and political intelligence firm, based in Washington DC. Its name was Fusion GPS. Its website gave little away. It didn’t even list an address.

Simpson then met Steele. They knew some of the same FBI people and shared expertise on Russia. Fusion and Orbis began a professional partnership. The Washington- and London-based firms worked for oligarchs litigating against other oligarchs. This might involve asset tracing – identifying large sums concealed behind layers of offshore companies.

Later that year, Steele embarked on a separate, sensitive new assignment that drew on his knowledge of covert Russian techniques – and of football. (In Moscow he had played at full-back.) The client was the English Football Association, the FA. England was bidding to host the 2018 soccer World Cup. Its main rival was Russia. There were joint bids, too, from Spain and Portugal, and the Netherlands and Belgium. His brief was to investigate the eight other bidding nations, with a particular focus on Russia. It was rumoured that the FSB had carried out a major influence operation, ahead of a vote in Zurich by the executive committee of Fifa, soccer’s international governing body.

Steele discovered that Fifa corruption was global. It was a stunning conspiracy. He took the unusual step of briefing an American contact in Rome, the head of the FBI’s Eurasian serious crime division. This “lit the fuse”, as one friend put it, and led to a probe by US federal prosecutors. And to the arrest in 2015 of seven Fifa officials, allegedly connected to $150m (£114m) in kickbacks, paid on TV deals stretching from Latin America to the Caribbean. The US indicted 14 individuals.

The episode burnished Steele’s reputation inside the US intelligence community and the FBI. Here was a pro, a well-connected Brit, who understood Russian espionage and its subterranean tricks. Steele was regarded as credible. Between 2014 and 2016, Steele authored more than 100 reports on Russia and Ukraine. These were written for a private client but shared widely within the US state department, and sent up to secretary of state John Kerry and assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, who was in charge of the US response to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine. Many of Steele’s secret sources were the same people who would later supply information on Trump.

One former state department envoy during the Obama administration said he read dozens of Steele’s reports. On Russia, the envoy said, Steele was “as good as the CIA or anyone”.

Steele’s professional reputation inside US agencies would prove important the next time he discovered alarming material.

Trump’s political rise in the autumn of 2015 and the early months of 2016 was swift and irresistible. The candidate was a human wrecking ball who flattened everything in his path, including the Republican party’s aghast, frozen-to-the-spot establishment. Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz – all were batted aside, taunted, crushed. Scandals that would have killed off a normal presidential candidate made Trump stronger. The media loved it. Increasingly, so did the voters. Might anything stop him?

In mid-2015, the Republican front-runner had been Jeb Bush, son of one US president and brother of another. But as the campaign got under way, Bush struggled. Trump dubbed the former Florida governor “low-energy”. During the primaries, a website funded by one of Trump’s wealthy Republican critics, Paul Singer, commissioned Fusion to investigate Trump.

After Trump became the presumptive nominee in May 2016, Singer’s involvement ended and senior Democrats seeking to elect Hillary Clinton took over the Trump contract. The new client was the Democratic National Committee. A lawyer working for Clinton’s campaign, Marc E Elias, retained Fusion and received its reports. The world of private investigation was a morally ambiguous one – a sort of open market in dirt. Information on Trump was of no further use to Republicans, but it could be of value to Democrats, Trump’s next set of opponents.

Before this, in early spring 2016, Simpson approached Steele, his friend and colleague. Steele began to scrutinise Paul Manafort, who would soon become Trump’s new campaign manager. From April, Steele investigated Trump on behalf of the DNC, Fusion’s anonymous client. All Steele knew at first was that the client was a law firm. He had no idea what he would find. He later told David Corn, Washington editor of the magazine Mother Jones: “It started off as a fairly general inquiry.” Trump’s organisation owned luxury hotels around the world. Trump had, as far back as 1987, sought to do real estate deals in Moscow. One obvious question for him, Steele said, was: “Are there business ties to Russia?”

Paul Manafort, who Steele started investigating in spring 2016. Last month Manafort was indicted on 12 charges including conspiracy against the United States.
Paul Manafort, who Steele started investigating in spring 2016. Last month Manafort was indicted on 12 charges including conspiracy against the United States. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
Over time, Steele had built up a network of sources. He was protective of them: who they were he would never say. It could be someone well-known – a foreign government official or diplomat with access to secret material. Or it could be someone obscure – a lowly chambermaid cleaning the penthouse suite and emptying the bins in a five-star hotel.

Normally an intelligence officer would debrief sources directly, but since Steele could no longer visit Russia, this had to be done by others, or in third countries. There were intermediaries, subsources, operators – a sensitive chain. Only one of Steele’s sources on Trump knew of Steele. Steele put out his Trump-Russia query and waited for answers. His sources started reporting back. The information was astonishing; “hair-raising”. As he told friends: “For anyone who reads it, this is a life-changing experience.”

Steele had stumbled upon a well-advanced conspiracy that went beyond anything he had discovered with Litvinenko or Fifa. It was the boldest plot yet. It involved the Kremlin and Trump. Their relationship, Steele’s sources claimed, went back a long way. For at least the past five years, Russian intelligence had been secretly cultivating Trump. This operation had succeeded beyond Moscow’s wildest expectations. Not only had Trump upended political debate in the US – raining chaos wherever he went and winning the nomination – but it was just possible that he might become the next president. This opened all sorts of intriguing options for Putin.

In June 2016, Steele typed up his first memo. He sent it to Fusion. It arrived via enciphered mail. The headline read: US Presidential Election: Republican Candidate Donald Trump’s Activities in Russia and Compromising Relationship with the Kremlin. Its text began: “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in the western alliance.”

“So far TRUMP has declined various sweetener real estate business deals, offered him in Russia to further the Kremlin’s cultivation of him. However he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.

“Former top Russian intelligence officer claims FSB has compromised TRUMP through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him. According to several knowledgeable sources, his conduct in Moscow has included perverted sexual acts which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB.

“A dossier of compromising material on Hillary CLINTON has been collated by the Russian Intelligence Services over many years and mainly comprises bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls rather than any embarrassing conduct. The dossier is controlled by Kremlin spokesman, PESKOV, directly on Putin’s orders. However, it has not yet been distributed abroad, including to TRUMP. Russian intentions for its deployment still unclear.”

The memo was sensational. There would be others, 16 in all, sent to Fusion between June and early November 2016. At first, obtaining intelligence from Moscow went well. For around six months – during the first half of the year – Steele was able to make inquiries in Russia with relative ease. It got harder from late July, as Trump’s ties to Russia came under scrutiny. Finally, the lights went out. Amid a Kremlin cover-up, the sources went silent and information channels shut down.

If Steele’s reporting was to be believed, Trump had been colluding with Russia. This arrangement was transactional, with both sides trading favours. The report said Trump had turned down “various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia”, especially in connection with the 2018 World Cup, hosted by Moscow. But he had been happy to accept a flow of Kremlin-sourced intelligence material, apparently delivered to him by his inner circle. That didn’t necessarily mean the candidate was a Russian agent. But it did signify that Russia’s leading spy agency had expended considerable effort in getting close to Trump – and, by extension, to his family, friends, close associates and business partners, not to mention his campaign manager and personal lawyer.

On the eve of the most consequential US election for generations, one of the two candidates was compromised, Steele’s sources claimed. The memo alleged that Trump had unusual sexual proclivities, and that the FSB had a tape. If true, this meant he could indeed be blackmailed.

When I met Steele in December 2016, he gave no hint he had been involved in what was the single most important investigation in decades.

Steele’s collaborators offered salacious details. The memo said that Russian intelligence had sought to exploit “TRUMP’s personal obsessions and sexual perversion” during his 2013 stay at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel for the Miss Universe beauty pageant. The operation had allegedly worked. The tycoon had booked the presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton hotel “where he knew President and Mrs OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia”.

There, the memo said, Trump had deliberately “defiled” the Obamas’ bed. A number of prostitutes “had performed a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him”. The memo also alleged: “The hotel was known to be under FSB control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to.”

As well as sex, there was another fascinating dimension to this alleged plot, categorically denied by Trump. According to Steele’s sources, associates of Trump had held a series of clandestine meetings in central Europe, Moscow and elsewhere with Russian spies. The Russians were very good at tradecraft. Nonetheless, could this be a trail that others might later detect?

Steele’s sources offered one final devastating piece of information. They alleged that Trump’s team had co-ordinated with Russia on the hacking operation against Clinton. And that the Americans had secretly co-paid for it.

Donald Trump and Gabriela Isler, winner of Miss Universe 2013, in Moscow.
Donald Trump and Gabriela Isler, winner of Miss Universe 2013, in Moscow. Photograph: Kommersant/Getty
Steele wrote up his findings in MI6 house style. The memos read like CX reports – classified MI6 intelligence documents. They were marked “confidential/sensitive source”. The names of prominent individuals were in caps – TRUMP, PUTIN, CLINTON. The reports began with a summary. They offered supporting detail. Sources were anonymous. They were introduced in generic terms: “a senior Russian foreign ministry figure” or “a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin”. They were given letters, starting with A and proceeding down the alphabet.

How certain was Steele that his sources had got it right and that he wasn’t being fed disinformation? The matter was so serious, so important, so explosive, so far-reaching, that this was an essential question.

As spies and former spies knew, the world of intelligence was non-binary. There were degrees of veracity. A typical CX report would include phrases such as “to a high degree of probability”. Intelligence could be flawed, because humans were inherently unreliable. They forgot things. They got things wrong.

One of Steele’s former Vauxhall Cross colleagues likened intelligence work to delicate shading. This twilight world wasn’t black and white; it was a muted palette of greys, off-whites and sepia tones, he told me. He said you could shade in one direction – more optimistically – or in another direction – less optimistically. Steele was generally in the first category.

Steele was adamant that his reporting was credible. One associate described him as sober, cautious, highly regarded, professional and conservative. “He’s not the sort of person who will pass on gossip. If he puts something in a report, he believes there is sufficient credibility in it,” the associate said. The idea that Steele’s work was fake or a cowboy operation or born of political malice was completely wrong, he added.

The dossier, Steele told friends, was a thoroughly professional job, based on sources who had proven themselves in other areas. Evaluating sources depended on a critical box of tools: what was a source’s reporting record, was he or she credible, what was the motivation?

Steele recognised that no piece of intelligence was 100% right. According to friends, he assessed that his work on the Trump dossier was 70-90% accurate. Over eight years, Orbis had produced scores of reports on Russia for private clients. A lot of this content was verified or “proven up”. As Steele told friends: “I’ve been dealing with this country for 30 years. Why would I invent this stuff?”

In late 2015 the British eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, was carrying out standard “collection” against Moscow targets. These were known Kremlin operatives already on the grid. Nothing unusual here – except that the Russians were talking to people associated with Trump. The precise nature of these exchanges has not been made public, but according to sources in the US and the UK, they formed a suspicious pattern. They continued through the first half of 2016. The intelligence was handed to the US as part of a routine sharing of information.

The FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of these contacts between Trump’s team and Moscow. This was in part due to institutional squeamishness – the law prohibits US agencies from examining the private communications of US citizens without a warrant.

But the electronic intelligence suggested Steele was right. According to one account, the US agencies looked as if they were asleep. “‘Wake up! There’s something not right here!’ – the BND [German intelligence], the Dutch, the French and SIS were all saying this,” one Washington-based source told me.

That summer, GCHQ’s then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at “director level”, face-to-face between the two agency chiefs. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, later confirmed the “sensitive” stream of intelligence from Europe. After a slow start, Brennan used the GCHQ information and other tip-offs to launch a major inter-agency investigation. Meanwhile, the FBI was receiving disturbing warnings from Steele.

At this point, Steele’s Fusion material was unpublished. Whatever the outcome of the election, it raised grave questions about Russian interference and the US democratic process. There was, Steele felt, overwhelming public interest in passing his findings to US investigators. The US’s multiple intelligence agencies had the resources to prove or disprove his discoveries. He realised that these allegations were, as he put it to a friend, a “radioactive hot potato”. He anticipated a hesitant response, at least at first.

In June, Steele flew to Rome to brief the FBI contact with whom he had co-operated over Fifa. His information started to reach the bureau in Washington. It had certainly arrived by the time of the Democratic National Convention in late July, when WikiLeaks first began releasing hacked Democratic emails. It was at this moment that FBI director James Comey opened a formal investigation into Trump-Russia.

Trump and Putin at the Apec summit in Vietnam this week.
Trump and Putin at the Apec summit in Vietnam this week. Photograph: Mikhail Klimentyev/TASS
In September, Steele went back to Rome. There he met with an FBI team. Their response was one of “shock and horror,” Steele said. The bureau asked him to explain how he had compiled his reports, and to give background on his sources. It asked him to send future copies.

Steele had hoped for a thorough and decisive FBI investigation. Instead, it moved cautiously. The agency told him that it couldn’t intervene or go public with material involving a presidential candidate. Then it went silent. Steele’s frustrations grew.

Later that month, Steele had a series of off-the-record meetings with a small number of US journalists. They included the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo! News, the New Yorker and CNN. In mid-October he visited New York and met with reporters again.

Comey then announced he was reopening an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. At this point, Steele’s relationship with the FBI broke down. The excuse given by the bureau for saying nothing about Trump looked bogus. In late October, Steele spoke to the Mother Jones editor David Corn via Skype.

The story was of “huge significance, way above party politics”, Steele said. He believed Trump’s Republican colleagues “should be aware of this stuff as well”. Of his own reputation, Steele said: “My track record as a professional is second to no one.” Steele acknowledged that his memos were works in progress, and was genuinely worried about the implications of the allegations. “The story has to come out,” he told Corn.

At this point Steele was still anonymous, a ghost. But the ghost’s message was rapidly circulating on Capitol Hill and inside Washington’s spy agencies, as well as among certain journalists and thinktanks. Democratic senators now apprised of Steele’s work were growing exasperated. The FBI seemed unduly keen to trash Clinton’s reputation while sitting on explosive material concerning Trump.

One of those who was aware of the dossier’s broad allegations was the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, a Democrat. In August Reid, had written to Comey and asked for an inquiry into the “connections between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign”. In October, Reid wrote to Comey again. This time he framed his inquiry in scathing terms. In a clear reference to Steele, Reid wrote: “In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors and the Russian government … The public has a right to know this information.”

But all this frantic activity came to nought. Just as Nixon was re-elected during the early stages of Watergate, Trump won the presidential election, to general dismay, at a time when the Russia scandal was small but growing. Steele had found prima facie evidence of a conspiracy, but by and large the US public knew nothing about it. In November, his dossier began circulating in the top national security echelons of the Obama administration. But it was too late.

The same month a group of international experts gathered in Halifax on Canada’s eastern seaboard. Their task: to make sense of the world in the aftermath of Trump’s stunning victory. One of the delegates attending the Halifax International Security Forum was Senator John McCain. Another was Sir Andrew Wood, the UK’s former ambassador to Russia. Wood was a friend of Steele’s and an Orbis associate. Before the election, Steele had gone to Wood and shown him the dossier. He wanted the ambassador’s advice. What should he do, or not do, with it? Of the dossier, Wood told me: “I took it seriously.”

On the margins of the Halifax conference, Wood briefed McCain about Steele’s dossier – its contents, if true, had profound and obvious implications for the incoming Trump administration, for the Republican party, and for US democracy. The implications were alarming enough to lead McCain to dispatch a former senior US official to meet Steele and find out more.

Christopher Steele in London in March.
Christopher Steele in London in March. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA
The emissary was David Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state in the Bush administration. He was sufficiently troubled to get on a flight to London. Steele agreed to meet him at Heathrow airport. The rendezvous involved some old-fashioned spycraft. Kramer didn’t know what Steele looked like. He was told to look for a man with a copy of the Financial Times. After meeting Kramer, Steele drove him to his home in Surrey. They talked through the dossier: how Steele compiled it, what it said. Less than 24 hours later, Kramer returned to Washington. Glenn Simpson then shared a copy of the dossier confidentially with McCain, along with a final Steele memo on the Russian hacking operation, written in December.

McCain believed it was impossible to verify Steele’s claims without a proper investigation. He made a call and arranged a meeting with Comey. Their encounter on 8 December 2016 lasted five minutes. Not much was said. McCain gave Comey the dossier.

McCain’s intervention now made some kind of bureaucratic response inevitable. This was no longer just an FBI affair; it required co-ordination across the top levels of US intelligence. A highly classified two-page summary of Steele’s dossier was compiled. It was attached to a longer, restricted briefing note on Russian cyber interference in the 2016 election. The US’s most senior intelligence chiefs mulled what to do.

Their next task was an unenviable one. As former CIA director Michael Hayden put it to me, the situation was “off the map in terms of what intelligence is asked to do. I didn’t envy them”. Of the dossier, Hayden said: “My gestalt idea, when I saw it, was that this looks like our stuff.”

The dossier was on its way to the desk of the man who was still, for now, the world’s most powerful person: President Barack Obama.

It was also going to his successor, the next guy in the Oval Office. He wasn’t going to like it much.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/n ... s-web-luke



elfismiles » Thu Aug 31, 2017 9:25 am wrote:Wow! :shock: Thanks SonicG and SLAD for the links.

And welcome to our new poster thankyouberrymuch over in this related thread:

This Bizarre Chuck C. Johnson/Rohrabacher/Assange Situation
post by thankyouberrymuch » 31 Aug 2017 03:45
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40671

SonicG » 30 Aug 2017 00:45 wrote:You don't know Chuck Johnson? Maybe you just forgot hearing about him because of the generic name...busted for being a general POS a few years ago
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... ing-stone/

Here is flashing the WP hand sign with Rohrbacher
Image
<snip>
https://www.yahoo.com/news/alt-right-fi ... 20121.html


He is not to be confused with the Charles Johnson who runs the Little Green Footballs blog.
[/quote]

A notorious far-right blogger may have provoked WikiLeaks' outreach to Donald Trump Jr.

Natasha Bertrand
Julian Assange WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange PA Images

Far-right blogger Charles Johnson may have played a role in WikiLeaks' eventual outreach to Donald Trump Jr.

Trump Jr.'s exchanges with WikiLeaks have earned him new scrutiny this week.

Johnson published a story about an anti-Trump website that WikiLeaks then sent to Trump Jr.


A far-right blogger who set up a meeting between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and US Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in August may have tipped Assange off to an anti-Trump website that WikiLeaks then sent to Donald Trump Jr. in September 2016.

Charles Johnson, who calls himself an independent journalist and runs a site called GotNews, published an article around 9:30 p.m. ET on September 20, 2016, claiming he had "obtained a memo from a George Soros-tied PR firm that is launching a website to spread conspiracy theories about Donald Trump’s connections to Russia." Soros is the investor and business magnate who has become a favorite bogeyman of the far right.

"The site, PutinTrump.org, is set to be launched tomorrow morning on Wednesday, September 21, by public relations firm Ripple Strategies," Johnson wrote.

Johnson updated his article again to include the password for PutinTrump.org, which was still locked at that point. He said he had obtained it from a "GotNews researcher."
Image
Charles Johnson
Charles Johnson Twitter/@ChuckCJohnson
About two hours after Johnson's article was published, WikiLeaks shared the PutinTrump.org site and its password in a tweet.

"'Let's bomb Iraq' Progress For America PAC to launch 'http://PutinTrump.org ' at 9.30am.," WikiLeaks tweeted at 12:07 a.m. ET on September 21, 2016. "Oops pw is 'putintrump' http://putintrump.org/.

Johnson took credit.

"About 2 hours after our original article, Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks repeated our discoveries," he wrote. "Guess which big leaks organization reads GotNews & WeSearchr on the downlow! Come on Julian, let’s work together. WikiLeaks & WeSearchr is a match made in heaven. We can take down Hillary together."

WikiLeaks sent the 'discoveries' to Donald Trump Jr.

Perhaps unbeknownst to Johnson at the time, WikiLeaks had also "repeated" his "discoveries" in a private message to Trump Jr. — about 10 minutes before tweeting it out publicly. Trump Jr. has come under renewed scrutiny this week amid revelations that he exchanged private messages with the anti-secrecy group during the campaign.

“A PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” WikiLeaks wrote just before midnight on September 20. “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who is behind it. Any comments?”

Trump Jr. replied: “Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around."

It is unclear whether Johnson's TrumpPutin.org story in September marked the beginning of his contact with Assange, who has been living in asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London since 2012.

The timing could be significant

Roger Stone
Roger Stone Hollis Johnson
But the timing of Johnson's article and WikiLeaks' outreach to Trump Jr. is significant given some later tweets by longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, and subsequent revelations about Johnson's role in arranging a meeting between Assange and Rohrabacher in August 2017.

On October 2, five days before WikiLeaks published the first set of emails stolen from the inbox of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta, Stone tweeted: “Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done. #WikiLeaks.”

Two days later, he tweeted: “I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp.”

Stone told the House Intelligence Committee in September that he knew of Assange's plans via a "journalist" who was in touch with Assange. To the committee's frustration, however, Stone would not reveal the journalist's identity.

"I have referred publicly to this journalist as an, 'intermediary,' 'go-between' and 'mutual friend,'" Stone testified. "All of these monikers are equally true."

About a month before Stone's House interview, Johnson met with Assange and Rohrabacher in London. The meeting, Johnson told reporters at the time, stemmed from a "desire for ongoing communications" between the congressman and the WikiLeaks founder.

Stone didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Assange reiterated during the meeting that Russia did not give WikiLeaks the stolen Democratic National Committee emails that it dumped in July 2016. Rohrabacher says he has been trying to meet privately with President Donald Trump to relay Assange's message. He told Business Insider last month that chief of staff John Kelly was blocking him from meeting with Trump.

The Senate Intelligence Committee sent Johnson a letter on July 27 asking him to turn over documents containing
"any communications with Russian persons, or representatives of the Russian government, business, or media interests" that relate to Russia's election meddling and the 2016 presidential campaign more broadly.

Johnson told Yahoo that he had no plans to cooperate.

“They’re going to have to subpoena me and then they’ll be sorely disappointed,” he said.

Johnson didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileak ... on-2017-11
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Dec 19, 2017 5:45 pm

Jim Clapper Just Nuked the Trump Presidency
By John R. Schindler • 12/19/17 10:40am

Image
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Spy bosses are by nature the most tight-lipped of people. Those who head our intelligence agencies got there in no small part by knowing precisely what to say to whom, when. In recent decades, as the heads of Western intelligence have emerged from the shadows and are expected to make occasional public statements, their utterances are customarily vague, requiring extensive tea-leaf analysis to derive their actual meanings.

Even in retirement, spymasters remain habitually enigmatic, and none has been more so than James Clapper, who is our nation’s most experienced spy boss. He retired as the Director of National Intelligence at the beginning of 2017, after over six years in that job—a record. That capped off a career in our Intelligence Community that lasted more than a half-century and included the directorships of two of our nation’s spy agencies. Nobody knows the IC better than Clapper.

While his career had its ups and downs—you don’t work in any trade for over 50 years without missteps—the former far outweighed the latter. Clapper, a retired Air Force three-star general, is widely respected in national security circles, across partisan lines, as a guy who knows his stuff and focuses on the job. Naturally, he’s exceptionally discreet as well.

That changed yesterday, when Clapper went on CNN to drop an unimaginably large bombshell on President Donald Trump. Since the inauguration in January, Clapper has made a few critical comments regarding the president and his strange ties to Moscow, but these have been largely anodyne. Clapper began showing his hand in September, with a comment that the IC assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election raised questions about why Trump was in the White House: it “cast doubt on the legitimacy of his victory in the election,” he stated.

At the end of October, in an interview with Politico, Clapper added more about Kremlin interference in the 2016 election: “The Russians have succeeded, I believe, beyond their wildest expectations.” Clapper dismissed President Trump’s repeated attacks on the investigation of his Moscow links as “fake news” with a warning that the Russians “have been emboldened and they will continue to do this.”

Clapper went considerably further yesterday in his appearance on CNN’s The Lead, in which he finally let his top secret mask drop to say what he really thinks about our 45th president:

I think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer Vladimir Putin is. He knows how to handle an asset, and that’s what he’s doing with the president … You have to remember Putin’s background. He’s a KGB officer. That’s what they do. They recruit assets. And I think some of that experience and instincts of Putin has come into play here in his managing of a pretty important account for him, if I could use that term, with our president.

When pressed about what exactly he was saying, Clapper explained that he meant his words “figuratively,” but that barely mitigates the shock value of what he said. To be perfectly clear: America’s most experienced spy boss publicly termed our president an asset—that is, a witting agent—of the Kremlin who is being controlled by Vladimir Putin. Even if meant only “figuratively,” this is the most jaw-dropping statement ever uttered about any American president by any serious commentator.

Besides, there’s not much difference between literally and figuratively when we’re talking about the inhabitant of the Oval Office. If the American president is being controlled or unduly influenced by a country that’s hostile to us, that’s a big deal. This, of course, is precisely what Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation are trying to get to the bottom of—and, not coincidentally, what President Trump and his supporters are trying just as hard to prevent Team Mueller from unraveling.

It needs to be stated that Jim Clapper’s words, while shocking to the public, are utterly uncontroversial in American intelligence circles (or with our spy partners worldwide, for that matter). In our Intelligence Community, it’s widely understood that Donald Trump possesses longstanding ties to the Kremlin which are at best suspect and at worst reflective of an unsettling degree of Russian influence over our commander-in-chief.

Although I’ve been out of the IC for more than a decade, even then it was known in counterintelligence circles that some of Trump’s Kremlin connections were questionable. Although Trump is too psychologically unstable to be a bona fide spy for anybody, that he possessed strange linkages to Moscow was hardly a big secret.

In particular, Trump’s flashy 1987 trip to the Soviet Union – an obvious KGB operation to anyone versed in Chekist matters – led to his becoming an apparent agent of influence for Moscow. That is, a conduit for political favors and information, often in exchange for commercial deals of the sort Trump has always prized. Knowing this, the history of the Trump Organization over the last few decades takes on a different coloration.

What exactly is Donald Trump’s relationship to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin? It seems likely that nobody outside Moscow knows the full story, and we should expect it will take years of investigation by Team Mueller and the IC to unravel this murky three-decade saga. The well-honed Chekist habit of planting disinformation to throw Western counterspies off course, which already seems to be at work in the Trump investigation, promises to drag this inquiry out even longer. Don’t plan on pleasant answers either.

Regardless, Jim Clapper has done our country a valuable service by stating the plain truth about our president. On CNN, he was speaking for all our intelligence professionals who must remain silent because of the lifetime secrecy oaths they took to join the Intelligence Community. After months of public White House attacks on the IC, which have now escalated into all-out war on America’s spies by Team Trump, there is finally some open pushback by the spooks.

This isn’t the mythical Deep State, which Trumpists detect lurking behind every tree in Washington. This was Jim Clapper, now a private citizen, speaking his mind as a highly experienced intelligence officer. The impact of his words can be fairly assessed as devastating to anyone who’s paying attention. Nor will Clapper be the last former spook to go public with his thoughts on Donald Trump and the Russians.


OTOH, Schindler is obscuring the reality: just because you're a "private citizen" doesn't mean Clapper is not a highly influential member of the Deep State. But he does make an important point that for someone who normally operates in the shadows to call the President an asset or agent of a foreign country is unprecedented.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Dec 21, 2017 1:32 pm

Mueller Is Looking Into a U.S. Foundation Backed by Russian Money

December 21, 2017, 3:00 AM CST

Rinat Akhmetshin, center, arrives at the Capitol for a closed door meeting with the House Intelligence Committee Nov. 13.

Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images North America
Sara Peterson flew to Moscow in 2012 to take home two Russian orphans just as the Kremlin, angry about sanctions on Russian officials, banned U.S. adoptions. For the next four years she knocked on doors in Washington to no avail. So when she read about a foundation “to help restart American adoption of Russian children,” she set up a meeting.

It was August 2016 when Peterson, of Maryland, traveled to Washington and waited at a train station sandwich shop for a Russian-American man named Rinat Akhmetshin. He wanted to know which members of Congress he should approach, she said. At that meeting and later ones, he said “things would change” after the upcoming elections.

Peterson didn’t know it but Akhmetshin, a former Soviet intelligence officer, had recently met with senior officials of the Donald Trump campaign in New York: the candidate’s son, son-in-law and campaign manager. It didn’t take long for her to realize that the foundation wasn’t all it seemed. As she put it, “I don’t think adoptions were their primary agenda.”


Photographer: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Now Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into the foundation. Robert Arakelian, a lobbyist and employee of the foundation, recently testified to the special counsel’s office about the organization and its funding, two people familiar with the probe said. Arakelian didn’t respond to requests for comment, and a Mueller spokesman declined to comment.

Russian Influence Efforts

The foundation, called the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative (HRAGI), offers a window into Russian efforts to influence U.S. politics before the presidential election. It was financed by $500,000 in donations, mostly from wealthy Russians with ties to Petr Katsyv, deputy director of Russian Railways and a longtime acquaintance of Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika. Rather than a nonprofit helping unite Americans with Russian adoptees, the foundation was a lobbying vehicle against sanctions.

“This whole organization is a sham and a front to pursue the Russian government’s objectives,” said Bill Browder, a U.S.-born fund manager whose accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian prison after accusing Russian officials of fraud. Browder, founder of Hermitage Capital Management, persuaded the U.S. to pass the Magnitsky Act sanctioning Russian officials implicated in his death. He also got other countries, including the U.K. and Canada, to pass variations of it.


Photographer: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
On Wednesday, the U.S. added five new Russian nationals to the list of sanctioned individuals under the Magnitsky Act.

Read more: Understanding the Trump-Russia saga -- a QuickTake Q&A

The foundation’s website shows pictures of hugging families, but most of its pages have been "under construction" since its inception in 2016. Its Washington address was a building hosting several hundred small organizations and businesses. By setting up a U.S. nonprofit, the foundation effectively concealed its sources of financing, which may have required registering as a foreign agent. The foundation hired high-powered lobbyists such as former Representative Ron Dellums of California to push for repeal of the Magnitsky Act.

Putin Ordered the Ban

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the adoption ban, and Chaika have made repealing the U.S. sanctions law a priority.

The Magnitsky Act was atop the agenda when Akhmetshin joined Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer, for the Trump campaign meeting in June 2016. Akhmetshin told Peterson that the way to reopen adoptions would be to persuade lawmakers to drop the name “Magnitsky” from the global version of the act then being considered by Congress to punish foreign government officials implicated in human rights abuses worldwide. Peterson said she also met with Veselnitskaya on Jan. 21, 2017 in Washington.


Photographer: Yury Martyanov/AFP via Getty Images
Most of the Russians financing the foundation said in interviews that they knew nothing about U.S. adoptions of Russian children, contradicting the foundation’s U.S. disclosure forms.

The foundation didn’t disclose those donations as a source of funding in lobbying disclosure forms. It reported spending just $50,000, less than the amount reported by outside lobbyists it hired. It disclosed to the Internal Revenue Service $526,740 in contributions and spending of $413,831 on “campaigns relating to human rights issues including foreign adoption."

Money Laundering Accusation

The idea for the foundation dates to December 2015, when Denis Katsyv, Petr’s son and a Moscow businessman, was fighting charges issued by the U.S. Justice Department that his company, Prevezon Holdings Ltd., helped launder money connected to the fraud Magnitsky said he had uncovered. His U.S. lawyers at Baker & Hostetler LLP introduced him to Akhmetshin and the American lobbyist Ed Lieberman, according to a person familiar with the effort.

While discussing how to lobby against the Magnitsky law, Lieberman proposed setting up a foundation for American families caught up in the Russian adoption ban, the person added. Lieberman declined to comment. Akhmetshin didn’t respond to requests for comment. Prevezon agreed to pay $5.9 million in fines to settle the Justice Department case in May without admitting any guilt.

‘Denis Needed Help’

Katsyv kicked in $150,000 for HRAGI, making him the biggest donor, according to the person. He then began soliciting donations from his friends who were introduced to him by his father. His two business partners in Russia, Mikhail Ponomarev and Albert Nasibulin, each gave $100,000. Ponomarev, who owns a network of gas stations and a real estate business in the Moscow region, said he contributed his personal funds. "Denis needed help, so we provided this help,” Ponomarev said. "We all help each other."

Nasibulin said he never heard anything about adoptions when Katsyv asked him for money. "He explained that a campaign was organized against him, and he needed money to resist it," he said. "I don’t know what the foundation was doing."

Vladimir Lelyukh, deputy general director of Sberbank Capital LLC, a subsidiary of state-controlled Sberbank, said he kicked in $50,000 of his own money to support Denis Katsyv. Lelyukh, a former Moscow regional government official, said he’s known the Katsyv family for a long time.

"I just backed him up as a friend, a man who had become a victim of the Magnitsky Act,” he said in an interview.

The foundation got another $100,000 from a company called Berryle Trading Inc. via an account in Germany, according to a person familiar with the foundation. It is unclear who owns the company or where it’s registered. Ponomarev, Nasibulin and Lelyukh all said they’d never heard of Berryle Trading. The special counsel, however, had. He questioned Arakelian about Berryle’s sources of funding, according to the person.

— With assistance by Bill Allison, and Alexander Sazonov
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... r-scrutiny


Mueller Probing Foundation Linked To Trump Tower Meeting Attendees


By TIERNEY SNEED Published DECEMBER 21, 2017 12:35 PM

The creation and funding of a foundation ostensibly seeking to lax Russia’s ban on U.S. adoption is being examined by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Rinat Akhmetshin — a Russian-American lobbyist with ties to Russian intelligence who attended the 2016 Trump Tower meeting — is a registered lobbyist for the foundation, the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative. Another employee at the foundation, Robert Arakelian, has testified in front of Mueller’s team, Bloomberg reported.

The foundation was reportedly part of a larger crusade to roll back a U.S. sanctions program known as the Magnitsky Act. Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer who also attended the Trump Tower meeting, was part of that endeavor on behalf of one of her clients, Denys Katsyv, who is listed on the lobbying registration documents for the foundation.


While the lobbying forms say the foundation’s goal was to “restart US adoptions of Russian children,” previous reporting as well as Bloomberg’s latest story suggest that Russia’s adoption policy was a fig leaf to obscure its larger agenda to alter the Magnitsky Act, which was initially enacted in 2012. A broader version, known as Global Magnitsky Act, became law in 2016. The legislation levies targeted sanctions and visa bans on foreign individuals responsible for human rights violations.

Russia banned U.S. adoptions in its country to retaliate against the law, particularly because it was named after an accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison in 2009. The law’s supporters say Magnitsky’s was beaten to death by Russian authorities after Magnitsky exposed an alleged money-laundering scheme implicating Kremlin allies, including Katsyv.

Katsyv had retained Veselnitskaya to represent him a money laundering case brought by U.S. government brought against his company Prevezon Holdings LTD. The case was settled without an admission of guilty, but litigation has continued surrounding the enforcement of the settlement. Veselnitskaya, according to CNN, established the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative.

According to the Bloomberg report, Veselnitskaya in January met with Sarah Peterson, who had reached out to the foundation seeking to work on the adoption issue.

“I don’t think adoptions were their primary agenda,” Peterson said of a meeting she held with Akhmetshin in August 2016 about the foundation.

A meeting that Veselnitskaya, Akhmetshin and other figures held with Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower in June 2016 has become the focal point of the multiple investigations into Russian meddling.

Trump Jr.’s initial statement explaining the meeting — which was reportedly dictated to him by President Trump from Air Force One — claimed that the primary subject discussion was adoptions. Revelations after that initial statement, including emails sent to Trump Jr. setting up the meeting promising incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, proved the explanation to be misleading. A memo Veselnitskaya reportedly took to the meeting focused on criticizing the Magnitsky Act and rebuking the claims by the law’s champion, Bill Browder, who had hired Magnitsky to investigate his Russian business dealings.

Browder would go on to be a key witness in the Prevezon case.

“They were trying to get in touch with anybody who had any power,” Browder told TPM in July, about Veselnitskaya’s outreach to the Trump campaign. “I’m sure they’d have tried to contact the Clinton campaign if they thought they would help.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/ ... elnitskaya
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Dec 21, 2017 2:59 pm

Putin’s Man in the White House? Real Trump Russia Scandal is Not Mere Collusion, U.S. Counterspies Say

By Jeff Stein On 12/21/17 at 10:16 AM
Last May, a top White House national security official met in Washington with senior Russian officials and handed over details of a secret operation Israel had shared with its U.S. counterparts. The meeting shocked veteran U.S. counterspies. The American official was not arrested, and he continues to work in the White House today, albeit under close scrutiny.

That official, of course, was Donald Trump. The president’s Oval Office meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and its then-ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak—which only Russian photographers were permitted to record—sparked a media brushfire that was quickly overtaken by more revelations of secret contacts between Trump associates and Kremlin agents. But the incident was not forgotten by American and Israeli security officials, or by longtime foreign intelligence allies of the U.S., who now wonder if the president can be trusted to protect their most guarded secrets.

For over a year, the question of collusion has driven various investigations into what’s become known as Russiagate. Special counsel Robert Mueller has been pursuing questions of whether Team Trump, which included the president’s son Donald Jr. and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, actively coordinated the Trump campaign with the Kremlin to hurt Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. That suspicion was bad enough, but now a far more grim consensus is developing in the topmost circles of the U.S. national security establishment: The president has become a pawn of America’s adversary, Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s a nightmare scenario even the writers of House of Cards would have discarded as implausible.

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Until now. In a December 18 interview on CNN, retired Air Force Lieutenant General James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, virtually called Trump a Putin puppet. The Russian president, Clapper noted, is a former KGB “case officer,” or spy recruiter, who “knows how to handle an asset, and that's what he's doing with the president. That’s the appearance to me.” (Pressed to clarify his “asset” comment, Clapper said, “I’m saying this figuratively.”)

“Wow,” tweeted former CIA Russian hand John Sipher. “The rest of us try to find other clever ways to say the same thing. Good on him for having the courage to call out Putin’s behavior. Our president shouldn’t have fallen for it.”

Veteran spy handlers have judged Trump an easy mark for Putin, who spent years in the KGB sizing up and exploiting a target’s vulnerabilities. They note how easily he falls for praise, as when Putin thanked him and the CIA for helping him thwart a bomb attack plot in St. Petersburg. “POTUS is a [spy] handlers’ dream,” Asha Rangappa, a former special agent in the FBI’s counterintelligence division, said. “He responds, without fail, to praise and flattery and telegraphs his day-to-day thoughts on Twitter. Likewise, said Harry “Skip” Brandon, a former FBI deputy assistant director of national security and counterterrorism. “He often very publicly states he goes by his instincts. If that is accurate, he may be the ultimate unwitting asset of Russia.”


And so on. The steady drip of revelations emerging from multiple Trump investigations—his business deals with Russian investors, his associates’ many undeclared meetings with Kremlin agents, his resistance to accepting evidence of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and his indiscretion with Israeli intelligence—draws a far darker picture.

Some veteran intelligence operators think it’s well past time to shift the narrative on Trump’s disturbing affinity for Putin, which the president insists is innocent and good for world peace. “Everyone continues to dance around a clear assessment of what’s going on,” says Glenn Carle, a former CIA national intelligence officer responsible for evaluating foreign threats. “My assessment,” he tells Newsweek, “is that Trump is actually working directly for the Russians.”

The Israelis can’t say they weren’t warned. In January 2017, a few weeks before Trump’s inauguration, top U.S. intelligence officials welcomed a delegation of their Israeli counterparts to Washington. The meeting proceeded uneventfully, according to veteran Israeli intelligence journalist Ronen Bergman, although the Americans vented their dismay over a president who had loudly disparaged their past work. “Just as their meeting was wrapping up,” according to Bergman and a later report in Vanity Fair, “an American spymaster solemnly announced there was one more thing: They believed that Putin had ‘leverages of pressure’ over Trump.” His advice: “Be careful.”

Five months later, the Israelis came to rue what they had shared with Trump’s new CIA director, former Republican Representative Mike Pompeo. They were astonished to read media reports that Trump had told the Russian foreign minister and ambassador about their top secret operation in Syria to penetrate a cell of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS). U.S. intelligence experts assumed the Russians had shared the information with their allies in Iran, Israel’s mortal enemy .

Clapper, now writing a book about his intelligence career, told Newsweek by email that “the Israelis were/are upset about it, since it proves once again we can’t be trusted to keep the secrets we share with them.”

Some of America’s closest intelligence allies were also upset by Trump’s leak, a top former national security official tells Newsweek, on the condition he not be identified when discussing such sensitive issues. “I hear the Brits are reluctant to share” intelligence on Russian subversion, he says, “not as much for security reasons as for political—they don’t wish to get crosswise with [Trump].”

Another analyst, Joseph Fitsanakis, co-editor of the Intel News blog, said relations between the U.K.’s spy chiefs and the Trump administration “are extremely tense.” During the 2016 campaign, he recalled, Trump riled London with an unsubstantiated claim that its version of the National Security Agency, the Government Communication Headquarters (better known as GCHQ), had eavesdropped on his communications. He refused to apologize.

Lower-level U.S. and foreign intelligence officials customarily find ways to deal with such high-level friction. But Trump’s repeated attacks on NATO have not only frustrated Washington’s closest allies but also raised questions as to whether the president has been duped into facilitating Putin’s long-range objective of undermining the European Union. “Some Western European colleagues are saying that sharing has been strictly limited to [counterterrorism] and some maritime [intelligence],” Fitsanakis says. “There's almost no sharing on Russia.”

How Trump’s attacks on “radical Islamic terrorism” will play out in the CIA’s relations with the spy services of Arab, African and Asian nations is not known. Historically, Langley has relied on such local partners to share its insights and intelligence on militant groups—sometimes to its regret when double agents wormed their way into their ranks.

Israeli officials uncharacteristically howled publicly about Trump’s “betrayal” in May and have only recently calmed down. Still, their anger could be detected months later, when a former Mossad deputy director, Ram Ben Barak, did an interview with The Cipher Brief’s Kim Dozier. “The rule is, if I give you information to help you, you do not give this information to another side without my permission,” Ben Barak said. “I am sure he will not do it again because, you know, it hurts the relationship.”

But all signs point to Trump not caring who gets hurt if it serves his interests—and vanity. Despite constant evidence of Russian interference throughout the summer of 2016, culminating in a January report by Clapper and Jeh Johnson, his Department of Homeland Security counterpart, saying the Kremlin had worked to put Trump in office, the president evidently permitted his incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, to intrigue with the Russians over lifting sanctions—and apparently didn't care enough to fire him after learning Flynn had lied about it to the FBI. Flynn’s later indictment and plea deal, Trump tweeted, was “a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!”

All this was going on, despite an explicit warning from the FBI to Trump soon after his nomination about potential espionage threats from Russia, according to NBC News. FBI agents also visited longtime Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks only days after the inauguration, saying that certain named Russian agents were trying to penetrate the new administration. Hicks, who says she forwarded the warning to White House counsel Donald McGahn, has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

Continually jousting with Trump over his denial that any of this amounted to “collusion” with the Russians is a distraction, say veteran intelligence hands. It amounts to looking for an explicit quid pro quo that may not exist. It misses, moreover, “what is right under our noses,” wrote Rangappa, the former FBI counterintelligence agent, along with Sipher, the onetime CIA Moscow station chief, and Alex Finley, a former CIA operations officer, in a joint piece for the Just Security website. “There is no question that Russia made multiple, unprecedented attempts to penetrate a U.S. presidential campaign, that its approaches were not rebuffed, and that its contacts were sensitive enough that everyone, to a person, has concealed them.

“These facts might never be adjudicated inside a courtroom,” they added. “They may not even be illegal—but they present a clear and present national security threat that we cannot ignore.
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-putin-man ... lin-755321
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Dec 21, 2017 5:59 pm

‘Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win’
Image

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeaEwTHpcu8
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: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby Rory » Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:33 pm

Luke Harding is a plagiarist and a hack - he knows as much about Russia as I do about Micronesia (the Wikipedia entry, namely).

Shameless grift on his part.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:49 pm

very funny....unlike Rory

who makes stuff up

:lol:

oh you're upset about Wikileaks......I see...understandable coming from you...no surprise

Roger Stone’s Go-Between With WikiLeaks Takes the Fifth
Randy Credico was scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Friday.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... the-fifth/


Why Robert Mueller May Be Interested in Trump's Deutsche Bank Records

'Collusion' author Luke Harding discusses the saga that appears to be at the center of the special counsel's latest move

December 5, 2017

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed Donald Trump's records with Deutsche Bank. Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images, Alex Wong/Getty Images
If anyone was going to be the Forrest Gump of the Russia investigation, we're lucky it was Guardian reporter Luke Harding. Harding has spent years reporting on Russia, a career that's meant he's happened to be in certain important places at certain critical times, during which he's happened to interview central figures in the still-unfolding political drama gripping the United States.

For instance, weeks before news broke of a salacious dossier detailing alleged leverage Russia may hold over then President-elect Donald Trump, Harding and a colleague were in a London pub meeting with an ex-British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele about a story they were working on. And a few years earlier, Harding happened to be on assignment in Ukraine, where he happened to interview an American political consultant named Paul Manafort about the work he was doing for Russia's preferred presidential candidate. Then there was the day he spent driving around with Aras Agalarov – the Russian oligarch who connected Donald Trump Jr. with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Now Harding has incorporated those stories, along with other relevant experiences – such as the time the FSB broke into his home in Moscow, presumably to bug it, and left a book on sex and relationships on his bedside table – into a book, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russian Helped Donald Trump Win. Among its most interesting chapters is one relating to Tuesday's news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed Trump's records with Deutsche Bank.

In Collusion, Harding details Trump's attempts in 2008 to default on some $330 million he owed Deutsche Bank for its help financing the construction of the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. The bank sued to force Trump to pay a portion of the debt: $40 million plus legal fees and interest. This was the middle of the financial crisis, a fact Trump tried to leverage in court, arguing he should not have to repay money he owed Deutsche Bank because it was "one of the banks primarily responsible for the economic dysfunction we are currently facing." In fact, Trump went on, because of the bank's role in creating this "once-in-a-century credit tsunami," Deutsche Bank owed him money, to the tune of $3 billion in damages.

Trump's case, of course, was thrown out. But that's where this story gets interesting: After a judge ordered Trump to repay the money he owed Deutsche Bank, Trump did it using money he borrowed from... Deutsche Bank. He paid the bank's real estate division back with money borrowed from its personal wealth division.

Harding writes:

"The decision to keep lending to Trump was unusual, bizarre even. Deutsche Bank employees in New York were surprised. Asked whether it was normal to give money to a customer who was a bad credit risk and a litigant, one former senior Deutsche Bank staff member said: ‘Are you fucking kidding me?'"

After the original loan, the same division of the bank continued to lend to Trump: "He took out two mortgages against Trump National Doral resort in Miami. And a $170 million loan to finish his hotel in Washington in the old post office tower." Bloomberg estimates that upon his inauguration, Trump owed Deutsche Bank $300 million, loans that were due in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

Most interesting of all, though, is what Harding goes on to detail: Around the same time Deutsche Bank's private wealth division was granting these extraordinary loans to Trump, business in the bank's new Moscow branch was booming, thanks to the fact that it owned basically all of the business of Vneshtorgbank, or VTB – the Kremlin bank. (The then CEO of Goldman Sachs Moscow told Harding, "the nature and concentration of their business with VTB [was] quite galling. Nobody else could touch VTB.") It would later emerge that during this time, Deutsche Bank Moscow was laundering billions of dollars for friends of the Kremlin, money that ultimately flowed through the bank's New York and London branches.

It's clear, Harding tells Rolling Stone, that Deutsche Bank Moscow "was compromised" and did this "unseemly, Faust-like deal with VTB to make very big profits, very quickly and to stun its rivals in Moscow, other investment banks, just by having the right people with the right FSB connections."

Deutsche Bank would ultimately be fined $475 million by the New York State Department of Financial Services, and an additional £163 million by London's Financial Conduct Authority, over the money-laundering scheme.

"There are these two parallel lines," Harding says. "One is the capture of Deutsche Bank Moscow by VTB – which is basically the FSB, the Russian spy agency. [VTB] practically took over Deutsche Bank Moscow. And the other line is Deutsche New York's extraordinary lending to Trump.

"Deutsche Bank New York, even though he sued them, even though he wrote them one of the most ridiculous writs in legal history, continued to lend very large sums to Trump, while simultaneously its Moscow division was running a – I was going to say elaborate, but in fact it was actually quite crude – large-scale money laundering scheme for Kremlin VIPs, who are still anonymous, from which Deutsche Bank London and Deutsche Bank New York made big profits," he says.

The lines, Harding says, don't converge – at least not yet. But that point of convergence is no doubt what Robert Mueller is after with his Tuesday subpoena request
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/f ... ds-w513399
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Dec 21, 2017 10:15 pm

McCabe is CORROBORATING Comey’s testimony


McCabe just revealed that he’s a material witness to obstruction of justice a crime, as he’s able to corroborate Comey’s version of events.

Top FBI official grilled on Comey, Clinton

FBI Deputy Director comes to Comey's defense

Washington (CNN)FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe faced numerous questions this week about his interactions, conversations and correspondence with his onetime boss, former FBI Director James Comey, spanning both the FBI's Russia investigation and its probe into Hillary Clinton's private email server, according to multiple sources from both parties with knowledge of his testimony.

In private testimony before the House Intelligence Committee this week, McCabe told lawmakers that Comey informed him of conversations he had with President Donald Trump soon after they happened, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.

Congressional Russia investigators grill FBI deputy director
The testimony suggests McCabe could corroborate Comey's account, including Trump's ask that Comey show him loyalty, which the President has strongly disputed. Comey previously testified that he briefed some of his senior colleagues at the FBI about this conversation with Trump.

RELATED: Tracking the Russia investigations
McCabe appeared for more than 16 hours of testimony behind closed doors in two sessions this week before members of the House Intelligence, Oversight and Judiciary committees, amid growing calls for his firing from Republicans critical of the FBI's handling of both investigations.

Intelligence Committee Republicans also grilled McCabe about how the FBI used the dossier compiled by a British agent alleging collusion between Trump and Russia. Some Republicans were dissatisfied with the responses, according to the sources.

Thursday, before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, McCabe faced intense questioning from Republicans about the FBI's handling of the Clinton email investigation, which many in the GOP believe was unfair. The panel's Republicans forced McCabe to answer questions about internal emails they believe showed Comey mishandled the investigation, according to multiple sources.

The mood, according to Illinois Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, was "tense."

"All this time on Clinton emails and dragging the FBI in to talk about Clinton instead of the real crime: Russian interference in our democracy," said Krishnamoorthi, who sits on the House Oversight Committee.

The FBI declined to comment.

But two Republicans emerged from the Thursday hearing saying McCabe's testimony did not change their belief that Clinton got favorable treatment by the FBI when it decided not to pursue criminal charges last year over the handling of her private email server. They declined to provide details about what McCabe said, citing the confidential nature of the interview.

In the heat of the presidential campaign last summer, Comey publicly announced that Clinton would not be charged in the email server investigation. Comey said "no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case," primarily because investigators didn't determine that Clinton intentionally schemed to break federal law.

Drawing the ire of Republicans, Comey also said the investigation found "evidence of potential violations" of the statutes that dictate how classified information should be handled.

Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican who was been a sharp critic of the FBI's handling of the Clinton email investigation, told CNN: "Everything that I've heard reinforces what I believed before" McCabe came in for the Thursday interview.

On Thursday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte defended the two panels' focus on the Clinton email investigation, saying it is consistent with their focus on FBI decisions made in the 2016 elections. McCabe was the first witness.

"This investigation was announced two months ago, and this is the first interview and we are gathering documents," Goodlatte, R-Virginia, told CNN.

Told that Democrats called the probe an effort to distract from the Russia investigation, Goodlatte said: "That's definitely not right."

Criticism of FBI from Republicans


McCabe has come under fire in recent days from Republicans amid the release of anti-Trump text messages sent between FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was removed from Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller's team when the messages were discovered, and FBI lawyer Lisa Page. The text messages also criticized liberals, including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Chelsea Clinton.

Several Republicans, including Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, have called for his removal.

The criticism of McCabe comes as a growing number of Republicans are questioning the credibility of Mueller's investigation into possible collusion between Trump's team and Russian officials.

Republicans have pointed to the anti-Trump texts as well as connections between the FBI and Fusion GPS, the firm that paid for the opposition research dossier on Trump and Russia.

But Democrats argue that the Republican criticisms of McCabe and the FBI are an effort to undermine Mueller as his investigation ramps up, and to give Trump cover should he try to remove Mueller, a step the White House insists is not on the table.

"This hearing is part of an ongoing Republican attempt to divert attention," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. "I mean, this hearing occurred with very little prior notice, with weeks before the relevant documents are obtained, but although we're expecting the relevant documents. And suddenly we're told we have an emergency hearing."

First in a series with FBI witnesses


Thursday's hearing is the first connected to the joint investigation into Comey's handling of the Clinton email case that was launched earlier this year by the Oversight and Judiciary committees.

Both sides say they expect this is the first in a series of hearings involving FBI witnesses, and the two committee have asked for at least two other senior FBI officials to appear.

Thursday's hearing behind closed doors was considered "confidential," but not classified, according to Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight panel.

As part of the agreement, McCabe did not discuss topics that touched on Mueller investigation, Cummings said.

But the House Intelligence Committee's hearing, which lasted roughly eight hours Tuesday, did touch on topics Mueller's inquiry appears to be covering, sources said.

In particular, the panel pressed McCabe to discuss his interactions with Comey, who contended that on multiple occasions Trump reached out to him, including over dinner.

Earlier this year, Comey testified that he briefed senior FBI officials about at least two conversations with Trump: The January dinner where Trump asked for loyalty, and the February meeting where Trump asked Comey to go easy on former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was under FBI investigation. In his bombshell testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June, Comey did not identify McCabe by name, only saying that he briefed "the FBI leadership team" about his interactions with Trump.

McCabe testified this week that Comey did in fact tell him about these conversations.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/politics/ ... index.html



This means Donald Trump will be committing another act of obstruction of justice tomorrow if he does fire Andrew McCabe from the FBI.


tonight Senator Warner confirmed that “more” indictments are coming.


The only names remaining: Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Mike Pence, and Donald Trump himself.

WARNING SHOTS

Adam Schiff stated that he feared Trump would put someone new in charge at the Department of Justice who would tell Mueller that he’s not allowed to investigate Trump for laundering Russian money, or for having loans guaranteed by Russia.

Ron Wyden of the Senate Intelligence Committee spoke on the Senate floor tonight and vowed to block one of Trump’s key nominees until the Treasury Department finally cooperates by turning over Trump’s financial records in relation to Russian money laundering and other financial antics.
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: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Dec 22, 2017 10:31 am

Seth Abramson‏Verified account
@SethAbramson

BREAKING: On Tuesday, Trump summoned Reince Priebus to the White House to chat. On Wednesday, Foreign Policy revealed Priebus lied on national TV on February 19 about what Trump and McGahn knew about Flynn and when—a lie that, if he maintained it in his FBI interview, is a crime.



1/ Foreign Policy has revealed that Don McGahn started researching The Logan Act and Making False Statements shortly after he learned about Flynn's FBI interview, and communicated his concerns to Trump. This contradicts Trump and Priebus' prior statements.

2/ The Washington Post reports Trump and Priebus had a White House chat less than 24 hours before the Foreign Policy story broke—presumably *after* FP had contacted people mentioned in the story for a quote. That suggests Trump may have known it was coming.

3/ "A White House official briefed on Trump's lunch with former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said they mainly strategized about 2018, and Priebus gave Trump warnings about the electoral landscape. Afterward, Trump told others Priebus expressed concerns about the midterms."

Hmm.

4/ So far, Trump has sought to tamper with almost every witness he thinks can hurt him: Comey, Yates, Trump Jr., Sessions, and Flynn, for instance. He's had inappropriate conversations about the investigation with at least 10 members of the House and Senate. So this *is* his M.O.

5/ Reince Priebus has been quiet seemingly forever, and certainly no part of Trump's orbit. There's no evidence Trump greatly respects Priebus' advice, and Priebus certainly isn't Trump's go-to advisor—or within a mile of that position—when it comes to winning midterm elections.

6/ So Priebus suddenly showing up at the White House within 24 hours of America learning that one of two things happened—(1) Priebus effectively threw Trump under the bus during his FBI interview, or else (2) he committed a federal felony in that interview—is pretty significant.

7/ Trump would want to know what Priebus told the FBI, and also what he'll tell them in any return interview prompted by future McGahn disclosures. Trump already has ready access to *McGahn*, it's *Priebus* he'd need an excuse to talk to. This smells like a bad excuse for a chat.

8/ Feel free to consider this thread baseless conjecture (a) if you think neither Priebus nor Trump had *any* inkling the Foreign Policy story was coming out *or* that Priebus lied on February 19, *and* (b) if you think Trump could talk to Priebus now without bringing up Russia.

9/ Priebus was a latecomer to Trump's orbit and was never truly embraced by the president—he has deep ties to mainstream DC Republicans—and we know how much Trump loves checking on everyone's loyalty. With his Cabinet, Pence, McGahn, or his family that's easy—not so with Priebus.

10/ Mueller *will* swing back around to interview former and current White House staff a second time; Trump's wrongly been told by his lawyers all White House interviews are done.

When Mueller returns to Priebus, he *will* ask about this lunch—and lying to him will be a crime.
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: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Dec 22, 2017 6:34 pm

22 former federal prosecutors sent a letter directly to Donald Trump today in support of Robert Mueller. They applaud the fact Trump said he wouldn’t fire Mueller, but they also go on to ask that he “adhere” to his word. So I take this as a clear warning to him.

Image


20 Republicans who are former Members of Congress and/or Senior Officials wrote this open letter today in support of Robert Mueller & the Russia probe.
Image
Image
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: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Dec 22, 2017 10:45 pm

NEW: Trump quietly reassigns top FBI lawyer James Baker, who reportedly witnessed Trump's attempt to pressure Comey before firing him.

... obstruction²


Image


Ivanka Trump's Old Jewelry Business Is Now Caught Up in an Alleged Fraud Scheme
Image
Ben Schreckinger11 hours ago


Why do people looking to launder money seem to find Trump family businesses so appealing? Ben Schreckinger reports.

Throw a dart at a map of the world and there’s a solid chance it will land near a spot where a Trump family business has allegedly gotten caught up in a money laundering scheme.

There’s Panama, where the Trump Ocean Club is said to have washed dirty cash for Russian gangsters and South American drug cartels. There’s Azerbaijan and the Trump Baku, where the money allegedly being laundered was said to belong to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. And of course, there’s the Trump Soho in Manhattan, a magnet for money from Kazakhstan and Russia, and a property that one former executive on the project now calls “a monument to spectacularly corrupt money-laundering and tax evasion."

In each of those cases, the Trump Organization has denied any wrongdoing and has sought to distance itself—and the Trump family—from the property, saying they merely licensed ​the Trump name. But as it turns out, it’s not just Trump-branded real estate developments that perhaps have attracted the wrong kinds of money.

Thanks to an overlooked filing made in federal court this past summer, we can now add a jewelry business to the list of Trump family enterprises that allegedly served as vehicles to fraudulently hide the assets of ultra-rich foreigners with checkered backgrounds. In late June, the Commercial Bank of Dubai sought—and later received—permission to subpoena Ivanka Trump’s now-defunct fine jewelry line, claiming its diamonds were used in a massive scheme to hide roughly $100 million that was owed to the bank, according to filings at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

High-end real estate is a common vehicle for money laundering, in part because, until recently, the industry was effectively exempt from many of the laws that prevent laundering through other types of assets, such as the “Know Your Customer” laws that apply to banking. But diamonds, too, hold an important place in the money launderer’s toolkit. Mountains of dirty money can be converted into tiny diamonds, which are easy to store or smuggle across national boundaries, and convert back into cash when the opportunity arises.

The Trumps are not the only Western business owners whose ventures have been tied to alleged money laundering and fraud schemes, but they are the only ones who are also in charge of American foreign policy, making the entanglements—and possible points of leverage—that arise from such ventures matters of national security.

Ivanka Trump launched Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry roughly a decade ago, partnering with a young real estate and diamond heir named Moshe Lax. It was her first independent business venture. She licensed her name for use by Madison Avenue Diamonds, which did business under Trump’s name in exchange for royalties. Trump also owned an equity stake in the business for an unspecified period. Around the time they were going into business together, Lax introduced Trump to Jared Kushner, the man who would become her husband, at a luncheon for real estate heirs he convened in Midtown Manhattan.

Trump and Lax set up a flagship boutique on Madison Avenue and publicly showered praise on each other, but the partnership eventually soured. Lax has been accused of all kinds of wrongdoing, from stiffing creditors to extortion, in numerous lawsuits, some of them related to Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry and some of them unrelated.

Trump terminated her relationship with Lax late last year, and according to the Trump Organization, Lax still owed her money as of August. Meanwhile, the defunct diamond line is getting dragged into court proceedings like this latest Dubai case, which alleges a plot by the family of prominent Emirati oil traders named the Al-Saris.

A decade ago, the high-flying Al-Saris controlled a multibillion-dollar oil-trading empire, but then hit a rough patch, reportedly becoming mired in legal battles over unpaid bills and sanctions imposed in 2012 on the family’s firm, FAL Oil, for selling oil to Iran.

Apparently strapped for cash, the Al-Saris are alleged to have borrowed over a $100 million from the Commercial Bank of Dubai. They defaulted on the debt and, according to court documents, proceeded to hide their assets in a network of shell companies, through which they bought diamonds and Las Vegas real estate. In addition, to Ivanka’s line, the bank—which filed a fraud suit in 2014—says the Al-Saris purchased diamonds from Jacob Arabo—better known as “Jacob the Jeweler”—for the same purpose. As “Jacob the Jeweler,” Arabo became famous as a diamond dealer to the stars (he was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2008 for lying to investigators about Detroit’s “Black Mafia Family” drug trafficking ring).

In this new case, the Commercial Bank of Dubai has not accused the jewelry line or Arabo of any wrongdoing. Arabo’s business did not respond to requests for comment, nor did FAL oil, the Al-Sari- owned enterprise at the center of the dispute. Lawyers for the Dubai bank, which is being represented in New York by Mayer Brown LLP, declined to comment.

Josh Raffel, a White House spokesman who fields Ivanka-related inquiries, did not respond to questions about the subpoena request, nor did Alan Garten, the general counsel of the Trump Organization.

The attempt to subpoena the jewelry business has so far escaped public notice, likely in part because court documents name only “Madison Avenue Diamonds”—the corporate entity that was registered to do business as “Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry”—and do not mention the Trump name. Though Trump has since cut all ties to Madison Avenue Diamonds, the timeline of the underlying case suggests any alleged transactions would have taken place when the company was still doing business as Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry.

As a practical matter, such a subpoena request—from the Commercial Bank of Dubai—now potentially injects the business dealings of the first family into a vicious legal fight between Arab world power players at a time when the Trumps are also using the power of the presidency to influence the region.

In recent months, Trump’s father, President Donald Trump, and her husband, fellow White House adviser Kushner, have waded aggressively into a civil war within the Arab world. In June, shortly after a trip to Saudi Arabia, Trump endorsed a move by the Saudis, the Emiratis, and others to blockade Qatar even as his own State and Defense departments struck a more conciliatory tone.

As it so happens, the Commercial Bank of Dubai—which was created by royal decree and remains partly owned by the Emirati government—made its subpoena request around the same time.

Then, in August, a judge granted the bank permission to issue a subpoena to the jewelry business. According to Lax, who along with his wife presides over Madison Avenue Diamonds, the bank hasn’t yet served one.

In an email, Ivanka Trump’s old business partner, Moshe Lax, cast any possible business relationship with the Al-Saris as limited to a single retail transaction. “They might have bought a piece of fashion jewelry at our former boutique,” he wrote. “We will fully comply in verifying and providing info the court might ask from us.”

​Ben Schreckinger is a GQ correspondent in Washington D.C.​
https://www.gq.com/story/ivanka-trump-j ... al_twitter


Sen. Mark Warner says he’s seen damning evidence against Trump — but Mueller has much worse

Travis Gettys
The ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee suggested he’s seen damning evidence in the investigation of Russian campaign interference — but he hinted special counsel Robert Mueller had even more proof.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said he’s more convinced than ever that the investigation is crucial to preserving U.S. democracy, according to Axios.

The Virginia Democrat told the website that, “based on witness testimony and documents that he has seen behind closed doors, the Russia probe is ‘the most important thing I will ever work on.'”

But Warner said the special counsel investigation had likely uncovered even more conclusive evidence linking the Trump campaign to Russian interference.

“I feel that more strongly today than even a year ago, and we don’t even have near the tools that Robert Muller has in his investigation,” Warner said.

This week, Warner warned Trump would be triggering a “constitutional crisis” by having Mueller removed from the investigation, and he expressed concerns about Republican efforts to undermine the special counsel probe.

“Any attempt by this president to remove special counsel Mueller from his position or to pardon key witnesses in any effort to shield them from accountability or shut down the investigation would be a gross abuse of power and a flagrant violation of executive branch responsibilities and authorities,” Warner said in a speech. “These truly are red lines and simply cannot allow them to be crossed.”

Warner told Axios that the Senate Intelligence Committee plans to pressure Facebook to turn over more social media ads sponsored by Russia during the 2016 campaign.

He also intends to call back Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and other “principals involved in some of these activities” for more questioning about targeting specific social media users, likely with the help of Cambridge Analytica.

Those key campaign officials were previously interviewed by congressional staffers, but Warner once a chance to question them himself.

“We could debate whether they come back in public or private,” Warner said. “I would lean more towards public.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/sen-ma ... q0.twitter
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: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Dec 24, 2017 11:03 am

Image

Image
FBI investigates Russian-linked Cyprus bank accused of money laundering

Request for financial information may be connected to inquiries into possible conspiracy between Trump and Kremlin

Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Last modified on Sun 24 Dec ‘17 07.44 EST
Robert Mueller
Robert Mueller is investigating a possible conspiracy between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin. Photograph: J. Scott Applewhite/AP
The FBI has asked officials in Cyprus for financial information about a defunct bank that was used by wealthy Russians with political connections and has been accused by the US government of money laundering, two sources have told the Guardian.

The request for information about FBME Bank comes as Cyprus has emerged as a key area of interest for Robert Mueller, the US special counsel who is investigating a possible conspiracy between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin.

People familiar with the FBI request told the Guardian that federal investigators and the US Treasury approached the Central Bank of Cyprus in November seeking detailed information about FBME, which was shut down this year.

One person familiar with the FBI request said it appeared to be connected to Mueller’s ongoing examination of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign manager who was indicted in October, and money that flowed between former Soviet states and the US through Cypriot banks.

The Central Bank of Cyprus, which in 2014 placed FBME under administration in a direct response to US action and obtained full access to the bank’s data, declined to comment. The US special counsel’s office also declined to comment.

FBME has vigorously denied accusations that it has been a conduit for money laundering and other criminal activity.

The owners, Lebanese brothers Ayoub-Farid Saab and Fadi Michel Saab, issued a statement following a series of recent critical articles about the bank and denied all wrongdoing.

Bloomberg reported last week that FBME was the subject of two US investigations: one into the bank’s credit card unit, and another into alleged laundering of money from Russia. Bloomberg said the Russia-related investigation, which is being led by the US attorney’s office in New York, was connected to a flow of illegal Russian funds into the New York real estate market.

FBME, previously known as the Federal Bank of the Middle East, was based in Tanzania but about 90% of its banking was conducted in Cyprus. A report by the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in 2014 said the bank was an institution of “primary money laundering concern”.

The report found that the bank was evading efforts by the Central Bank of Cyprus to supervise its activities, and that FBME was facilitating money laundering, terrorist financing, transnational organised crime, fraud, sanctions evasion, weapons trading and political corruption.

A 2014 internal report by the Central Bank of Cyprus about FBME that was obtained by the Guardian found that FBME had banking relationships with several Russians who were considered to be politically sensitive clients and that about half of the bank’s clients were Russian nationals, including Vladimir Smirnov, who is close to Putin, and Aleksandr Shishkin, a member of Putin’s political party.

FBME was subjected in 2016 to what is known as a “fifth special measure”, a hard-hitting US regulatory tool that was established after the 9/11 attacks to address law enforcement concerns in the banking sector. The move prohibited the bank from doing business in the US or using US dollars, and barred US banks from opening or using any bank accounts on FBME’s behalf. In effect, it shut the bank down. FBME has challenged the decision but US courts have so far upheld the move.

It is not clear why Mueller and his team of investigators appear to be interested in FBME’s financial data. But it indicates that the special counsel is continuing to examine money flows from Cyprus.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to charges that he laundered millions of dollars through foreign banks as part of a scheme to hide his work for political parties in Ukraine. He is accused of funnelling the funds through foreign shell companies, including many that were based in Cyprus.

Manafort’s attorney, Kevin Downing, has called the charges, including those related to his use of offshore accounts, “ridiculous”.

A spokesman for FBME bank told the Guardian that Manafort was never a client of FBME.

Mueller’s team has separately issued a subpoena for information from Deutsche Bank. According to a person close to the bank, the subpoena was issued in the autumn. The German bank is Trump’s biggest lender.

Deutsche also worked as a correspondent bank for FBME. Internal emails seen by the Guardian show that executives from both banks were in contact in 2014 discussing accounts that were “on the radar” of US law enforcement.

Deutsche Bank said in a statement: “We severed our relationship with FBME in 2014 and have added more than 1,000 anti-financial crime staff in recent years to make our business safer and increase our controls.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... are_btn_tw


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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 26, 2017 11:47 pm

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Seth Abramson

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1h1 hour ago

BREAKING NEWS: The Washington Post snickered at my November 22nd thread referencing Tom Arnold and Scott Stedman, but Congress didn't—REUTERS reports publication of Stedman's research led the House and Senate Intel Committees to question Irakly Kaveladze.


U.S. lawmakers question businessman at 2016 Trump Tower meeting: sources

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Georgian-American businessman who met then-Miss Universe pageant owner Donald Trump in 2013, has been questioned by congressional investigators about whether he helped organize a meeting between Russians and Trump’s eldest son during the 2016 election campaign, four sources familiar with the matter said.

FILE PHOTO: Russian singer Emin Agalarov (C) speaks as his father Aras Agalarov and Donald Trump (L), co-owner of the Miss Universe Organization, look on during a news conference after the 2013 Miss USA pageant at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada June 16, 2013. REUTERS/Steve Marcus
The meeting at Trump Tower in New York involving Donald Trump Jr. and other campaign advisers is a focus of probes by Congress and Special Counsel Robert Mueller on whether campaign officials colluded with Russia when it sought to interfere in the U.S. election, the sources said. Russia denies allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that it meddled in the election and President Donald Trump denies any collusion.

The Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees recently questioned behind closed doors Irakly Kaveladze, a U.S. citizen born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, the sources said. He is a U.S.-based representative of Azerbaijani oligarch Aras Agalarov’s real estate firm, the Crocus Group.

The panels knew Kaveladze was at the June 9, 2016 meeting but became more interested in him after learning he also attended a private dinner in Las Vegas in 2013 with Trump and Agalarov as they celebrated an agreement to hold that year’s Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, the sources said.

Committee members now want to know more about the extent of Kaveladze’s contacts with the Trump family and whether he had a bigger role than previously believed in setting up the Trump Tower meeting when Trump was a Republican candidate for president.

The White House declined to comment. Mueller’s office also declined to comment.

Scott Balber, a New York lawyer who represents Kaveladze, confirmed that his client attended both the dinner in Las Vegas and the Trump Tower meeting but said he did not set up the second meeting. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, other Trump campaign aides, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya were also at that meeting.

Lawyer Balber also said the committees were only seeking Kaveladze’s input as a witness and were not targeting him for investigation.

“No-one has ever told me that they have any interest in him other than as a witness,” Balber said.

Lawyers for Trump Jr. and Kushner did not respond to requests for comment about their contacts with Kaveladze. A lawyer for President Trump declined to comment.

One photograph from the 2013 dinner, when Trump still owned the Miss Universe pageant, shows Agalarov and his pop singer son Emin along with Trump, two Trump aides and several other people at the dining table. Another shows Kaveladze standing behind Trump and Emin Agalarov as they speak.

The pictures were found by a University of California at Irvine student and blogger Scott Stedman, who posted them on Nov. 22. Aras Agalarov is a billionaire property developer in Russia who was awarded the Order of Honor by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mueller’s team and the committees are looking for any evidence of a link between the Trump Tower meeting and the release six weeks later of emails stolen from Democratic Party organizations.

They are also trying to determine whether there was any discussion at the New York meeting of lifting U.S. economic sanctions on Russia, a top priority for Putin, the officials said.

Rob Goldstone, a British publicist, told Trump Jr. ahead of the New York meeting that Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya would be bringing damaging information about donations to a charity linked to Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, according to emails later released by Trump Jr.

Trump Jr. initially said the meeting was about Russian adoptions but later said it also included Veselnitskaya’s promises of information on the donations to the Clinton charity. He said he ultimately never received the information, although it was later posted on the Internet.

In a statement issued after meeting with the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 7, Trump, Jr. said Goldstone and Veselnitskaya were in a conference room with him as well as Kaveladze and a translator.

Balber said Kaveladze attended expecting to serve as a translator, although he did not do so in the end because Veselnitskaya brought her own.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... ium=Social


Seth Abramson

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@SethAbramson
1h1 hour ago
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Seth Abramson Retweeted Seth Abramson
2/ Here's the thread Old Media got a chuckle from—amazed I championed the young Stedman's research from Day 1 and cited Arnold.

But Stedman's research is solid, and Arnold is a longtime Trump pal who's a witness in the Mueller probe. Catch up, Old Media!Seth Abramson added,

Seth Abramson
Verified account

(THREAD) BREAKING: Allegations Trump spoke to Putin via speakerphone at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, discussing both his plan to run for president and his desire to see Trump Tower Moscow built with Putin''s blessing—implying a quid pro quo—are 90% confirmed. Please read/share.
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3/ Two weeks ago, this feed's research on the "True Pundit Hoax" was cited in a letter published by House Judiciary Committee Democrats.

My point: Congress understands the value of legitimate New Media research, even as The Washington Post uses it for chuckles and cheap clicks.

4/ @ScottMStedman deserves this recognition. The same is true for other New Media Trump-Russia researchers. I know—because I've been told by multiple Congressional staffers—that members of Congress and their aides read this feed.

I hope they continue to—the best is yet to come.

5/ Aspiring journalists have been DMing me to offer leads and links to their research for months. Scott was one; his research was sound; Old Media was ignoring it; I put it out there.

The Washington Post should be ashamed that Twitter randoms like me have to be doing this work.


Seth Abramson‏Verified account
@SethAbramson

(THREAD) BREAKING: Allegations Trump spoke to Putin via speakerphone at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, discussing both his plan to run for president and his desire to see Trump Tower Moscow built with Putin's blessing—implying a quid pro quo—are 90% confirmed. Please read/share.

10:24 PM - 22 Nov 2017

WARNING/ This thread will be long, and there are a number of news items in it not yet reported by major media—though they will be—which will also make this thread confusing. "Confusing" is not "far-fetched." The facts in this thread have been drawn from public, reliable sources.

1/ The first thing to understand is that in January 2017, a celebrity friend of Trump made a startling accusation that never got picked up by the media—that Trump spoke with Putin via speakerphone at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, others heard the call, and it was incriminating.

2/ On January 9, 2017, Tom Arnold tweeted to Trump, publicly, that "Chuck LaBella [NBC Talent Development Executive] was not only listening on speakerphone when Putin called (you lied to 60 Minutes, by the way) but he knows everything else, and just in case, Putin filmed it all."

3/ Subsequent tweets from Arnold referencing LaBella, in January and thereafter, confirmed that Arnold was speaking of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant. It should be emphasized that Trump has never acknowledged this phone call or this contact with Putin in any way, shape, or form.
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4/ The next things one has to understand are: (a) the so-called "pee tape" does not involve any sexual behavior by Trump; (b) a tape "of a sexual nature" from this night has been confirmed by the CIA to the BBC (January 2017); (c) there are eight confirmed witnesses...

5/ ...who've been located by major media or intelligence agencies who can speak to events relevant to these allegations from the Steele Dossier (because they immediately preceded them); (d) this issue has nothing to do with sex—and everything to do with Trump being compromised...

6/ ...by a blackmail-enabling video that is confirmed to exist *and*—the evidence now suggests—a phone call that directly suggests a "quid pro quo" smoking gun connecting Trump's run for the presidency and his thirty-year desire to build Trump Tower Moscow; and (e) we now have...

7/ ...so much more intel about the events of November 9, 2013—and the wee hours of November 10, 2013—than has been reported in U.S. media that to relay it creates the sense I'm making it up. *I am not*. The media is behind on this story and you can either accept that fact or not.

8/ Here is the first thing we know that hasn't been widely reported: the roster of people Trump spent his self-described "lost weekend in Moscow with" (November 8 to the morning of November 10, 2013, during which time he held business meetings and attended a pageant and a party):

9/ Here are the people who were with Trump for all or some of his 2013 trip to Moscow:

Keith Schiller
Phil Ruffin
Emin Agalarov
Aras Agalarov
Chuck LaBella
Bob Van Ronkel
Yulya (Yulia) Alferova
Artem Klyushin
Herman Gref
Vladimir Kozhin
Alex Sapir
Rotem Rosen
Roustam Tariko

10/ Several other people had brief, consequential encounters with Trump—like Miss Hungary 2013, Kata Sarka—and their stories are part of this story as well. There are many fine articles about this weekend, and here's a particularly good one:

11/ Here's another good article about that weekend (note that Trump referring to this as a "weekend in Moscow" itself underscores a key lie that he's now telling about it, as once the Russia scandal began he changed it from a "weekend" to a one-day trip):

12/ And here's a third and final (for now) article about the events of that weekend in Moscow.

Public reporting gets us many of the names of the people in Trump's entourage, but several others were discovered by independent journalists. More on that now.

13/ First, we have to see Trump's November '13 entourage as "paired": Schiller the ever-present bodyguard, Ruffin the ever-present friend; Emin and Aras Agalarov, father and son; Yulya Alferova and Artem Kluyshin, husband and wife; Herman Gref and Vladimir Kozhin, Putin agents...

14/ ...Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen, Trump's "Trump Soho" business partners; Chuck LaBella and Bob Van Ronkel, Hollywood fixers; Roustam Tariko, a vodka magnate who had a brief encounter with Trump, much like Kata Sarka (and she deserves to be added to this group of key figures).

15/ I'm going to start with LaBella and Ronkel because they get us directly to the Putin phone call and I'm not trying to stall here—just trying to explain things clearly—so to prove that I'll go right to them, then discuss the others. First, you have to know who these guys are.

16/ Ronkel (pictured here with Trump at the pageant) is an American expat who lived in Moscow for 10 years with one job: get Hollywood talent to Russia. Ronkel's specific talent is selling Hollywood stars on the idea that they can get rich by doing business in and with Russia.

17/ Ronkel is good at his job—which is why when you go to his site you're assaulted immediately by several photos of him with Vladimir Putin. Ronkel and Putin became friendly in part because Ronkel does a great service for Russia by bringing the world's biggest celebrities there.

18/ Here's is Ronkel's November 2013 list of accomplishments, taken directly from his website:
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19/ At least three of those events—the bottom three—occurred at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which LaBella and Trump attended. It's not clear if Van Ronkel met with Seagal at the pageant or elsewhere—though in either case it should be noted that Seagal is Putin's good pal now.

20/ LaBella—who Arnold claims was with Trump the entirety of the pageant—was then an NBC Talent Development Executive. But beyond that, he'd been involved as producer in several Miss Universe pageants (2010, 2011, 2012) and a judge in others (particularly Miss Teen USA pageants).

21/ LaBella's role with respect to the 2013 Miss Universe pageant is unclear: IMDB doesn't list it at all for him, but other sites say he was a producer for that show as he was in 2012, 2011, and 2010. We do know he worked on five episodes of "The Apprentice" with Trump in 2013.

22/ Again, Tom Arnold has claimed—repeatedly—that LaBella was also tasked with being NBC's liaison to Trump during the pageant (NBC co-owned the pageant with Trump) and was therefore with him for any and all incriminating behavior that may have occurred during Trump's 2013 trip.

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23/ Going back to Van Ronkel, it's important to understand not just that he met with LaBella in Moscow and was tasked with helping stars like Trump find business opportunities in Moscow—he also was a Putin favorite because he tried to make a glowing TV show about the KGB in 2001:

23 SOURCE/ A 2001 newsletter published by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and available online.
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24/ In 2015, Buzzfeed News published an article that spoke in some detail about Van Ronkel, and established that his job is not just to get stars like Trump to Russia, but to be certain they understand that doing so will lead to *business deals with Russians* and *lots of money*:
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25/ So this is the part of the thread where I remind you that Van Ronkel—the Hollywood fixer who gets U.S. stars big-time Russian money—didn't just go to the 2013 Miss Universe pageant and hang out briefly with Trump, he had a meeting with him (and seems to have been a VIP, too):
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26/ Here's a fuller shot of Van Ronkel with Trump at the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow (November 9, 2013):
Image
27/ Did I mention that Van Ronkel's professional calling-card as a Moscow-based fixer is not just the ability to get U.S. celebrities like Trump big Russian money but *also* to connect them with Putin himself? Well, it is, as the Financial Times noted in a July 14, 2017 article:
Image
28/ But FT goes even farther, noting Van Ronkel was at the VIP-only post-pageant party with Trump *and* "worked on the pageant" itself. So now we have a Putin pal who introduces celebrities like Trump to Putin and gets them Russian deals partying and working with Trump in Moscow.
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https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status ... 0327177216




‘Not a conspiracy theory’: Roger Stone says he has proof ‘members of the cabinet’ are plotting to remove Trump

David Edwards
Longtime Trump ally Roger Stone revealed that he has evidence that members of Donald Trump’s cabinet have talked about using the 25th Amendment to remove the 45th president from office.

During an interview on C-SPAN’s program, Associated Press reporter Tom LoBianco asked Stone if he had “any evidence” that anyone inside Trump’s cabinet was actively discussing using the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office for being unable to discharge his duties.

“I have sources,” Stone explained. “And yes, I believe there are some who have had this discussion. This is both outside the cabinet and in. I think it’s the fallback plan for the establishment. That’s why I’m trying to sound the clarion call.”

“Who are we talking about?” LoBianco wondered. “Is this it the secretary of state, the defense secretary, the vice president?”

“Like you, Tom, I cannot reveal those sources,” Stone insisted. “This is not a conspiracy theory… There are members of the cabinet who have had this discussion. Let me just leave it at that.”

“I will probably report that fully at some point,” he added. “There is a plan afoot that is broader than just the cabinet. The 25th Amendment requires a majority of the cabinet and the vice president [to remove the president]. I don’t think that is achievable today, not on the heels of the historic tax cut, not on the heels of the disintegration of the credibility of [Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation]. But we have seen what happens when a hysteria is whipped up among the people by some in the mainstream media. And I have always thought this is plan B for the two party duopoly that has run this country into the ground.”

Watch the video below from C-SPAN.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/not-a- ... ove-trump/
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: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 27, 2017 5:58 am

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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: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby SonicG » Wed Dec 27, 2017 7:31 am

Damn. Can't believe Trump is harping on the dossier. Lots of it has panned out. Salacious and juicy but seriously, who gives a fuck, because even his close personal security guard claims he went to be early the night of the piss party...

Thought it was his son, see now it's his brother but still...Wonder if Mueller can still charge Flynn with attempted kidnapping and making an under the table nuclear power deal with KSA that would benefit Russia...
"a poiminint tidal wave in a notion of dynamite"
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