Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

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

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed May 09, 2018 8:20 pm

I'm not sure if this has been addressed upthread, but I found Larisa Alexandrovna's observations on Facebook to be very illuminating:

My friends, it all makes sense now. I looked through the documents dropped by Stormy's lawyer. I noticed that Cohen's fraudulent LLC that he used to pay hush money to Stormy also took money from companies and people. The NYT article (link 1 below) lists some of those. I followed the Korean Aerospace Industries trail, which suggests that the CEO (who was forced out last year for fraud) was hoping to get a US contract from Trump (should he become POTUS) during the time the money was paid (link 2 below). And then it clicked. All of it clicked.

Follow me here.

To understand this story, we must go back to Watergate. During the election, Nixon's team ran a slush fund out of CREEP. A Republican donor to CREEP made out a check to what he thought was Nixon's reelection campaign. That check later ended up in the pocket of one of the Watergate burglars. It seems CREEP funds were being used for illegal activities. That one check (they should have used cash) unraveled the whole thing.

This is what we are seeing now. The payment to the porn star unveiled a slush fund. But more than that, it also unveiled a bribe front. Money goes in (bribes) and money also goes out (profit, pay offs, etc.).

No wonder the FBI stormed (no pun intended) Cohen's business, home and hotel like paratroopers. This is so much bigger than that one payment to that one porn star. It's bribery, money laundering and RICO.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/us/p ... ments.html

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/art ... dxno=16863


Stormygate? :clown
"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."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu May 10, 2018 12:20 am

I was just about to post ......oh yes sir eeee bob we have lift off.....the thing is apparently Mueller has know about all of this for months :D

It's bribery, money laundering and RICO baby BIG TIME

and we have Russian money paying off a porn star for the president of the United States :bigsmile

Avenatti says trump will not last long ......he will step down ....and I believe him

then we can whittle all the trump/russia threads into one ......and all will be right with the world

This is the website the Russian-linked company that paid Michael Cohen $500K didn’t want you to see

JUDD LEGUM
8 hours ago

Image
Russian billionaire and businessman Viktor Vekselberg (C) attends the 10th Forum of Interregional Cooperation between Kazakhstan and Russia on November 11,2013 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. (CREDIT: Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images)

A company that paid Michael Cohen $500,000 says it is not controlled by a Russian oligarch. An archived version of that Russian’s website indicates otherwise.

On Tuesday, Michael Avenatti, attorney for Stormy Daniels, revealed that a company called Columbus Nova LLC had paid about $500,000 to Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s longtime attorney and “fixer.” According to Avenatti, this is notable because Columbus Nova is “controlled by” Viktor Vekselberg “a Russian oligarch with an estimated net worth of nearly $13 billion.” Like all Russian oligarchs, Vekselberg has close ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

This payment was one among many that passed through Cohen. Since late 2016, more than $4 million has flowed through Essential Consultants, a shell company that Cohen created to funnel $130,000 to Avenatti’s client, Stormy Daniels.


But since the story broke on Tuesday evening, Columbus Nova has been aggressively pushing back on the Vekselberg connection. In a statement issued through their law firm, the company claimed that it is “solely owned and controlled by Americans.” The company denied Vekselberg or any foreign entity controls its activities, including the decision to pay Cohen.

Image
columbusnova.com, May 9, 2018

In a statement on its website, Columbus Nova claims that while Renova Group — the Russian holding company controlled by Vekselberg — is its biggest client, it is nevertheless a completely separate entity.

Renova’s website is currently “under construction.”

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renova.ru on May 9, 2018
But an archived version of the site from January 2017, the time the payments began, shows that Columbus Nova was listed as part of the “Renova group structure” alongside other subsidiary companies of Renova Group.

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An archive of renova.ru, captured by Archive.org, 1/13/17

The website clearly indicates that, at the time the payments were made to Cohen, Columbus Nova was considered a subsidiary of Renova Group, the Vekselberg company.

Columbus Nova is correct that as a formal legal matter, the company is “owned by Americans.” The current CEO is Andrew Intrater, an American citizen who, according to SEC filings, is Vekselberg’s cousin.

It’s not surprising that today, Columbus Nova is claiming independence from Vekeselberg. On April 6, the United States government imposed sanctions on Vekeselberg and Renova Group. “As a result of the sanctions, all U.S. dollar bank accounts of companies controlled by Renova have been blocked,” Reuters reported. The sanctions were “aimed at penalizing those seen as enriching themselves from Mr. Putin’s government.”

Vekselberg was reportedly questioned by federal agents working for special counsel Robert Mueller when his plane landed in New York earlier this year. Vekselberg also attended Trump’s inauguration. He was provided a ticket by his cousin, Columbus Nova CEO Andrew Intrater.


CLARIFICATION: This article has been updated to clarify which website archive was accessed. It was that of Renova Group.
https://thinkprogress.org/this-is-the-w ... ssion=true




Michael Avenatti

Mr. Ryan’s submission on behalf of Mr. Cohen is baseless, improper and sanctionable. They fail to address, let alone contradict, 99% of the statements in what we released. Among other things, they effectively concede the receipt of the $500,000 from those with Russian ties.


Image
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu May 10, 2018 2:06 am

Justin Elliott

New: The Russian oligarch-linked firm that paid Michael Cohen, was also represented by another Trump personal lawyer: Marc Kasowitz
Russian Oligarch-Linked Firm That Paid Michael Cohen Was Also Represented by Trump Lawyer Marc Kasowitz

The investment firm that the two Trump attorneys worked for, Columbus Nova, calls it a “coincidence.”

by Justin ElliottMay 9, 6:14 p.m. EDT

Michael Cohen leaves the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on April 26. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The news on Tuesday that the same shell company that Michael Cohen, a longtime personal lawyer for Donald Trump, had used to pay $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels had also received about $500,000 in 2017 from a firm linked to a Russian oligarch set off a frenzy of commentary on Twitter and cable TV.

At the heart of the story is an investment firm called Columbus Nova, which has close links to Renova Group, a conglomerate founded by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. A Columbus Nova spokesman has said the payments to Cohen were for unspecified investment consulting.

Now there’s a new wrinkle: Another longtime Trump personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, also represented Columbus Nova in recent years in a commercial case. A spokesman for Kasowitz said the case settled in early 2017.

As ProPublica reported last year, Cohen spent a short period in February 2017 working at the offices of Kasowitz Benson Torres in midtown Manhattan, alarming several lawyers at the firm who worried about the brash attorney’s reputation. That was at the beginning of the period, between January and August 2017, when Columbus Nova made its payments to Cohen.

Cohen told ProPublica last year that he used Kasowitz’s offices “because we were working on several matters together after the inauguration.” Both he and Kasowitz have declined to specify what they collaborated on.

A Columbus Nova spokesman said that the investment firm was not introduced to Cohen by Kasowitz. The spokesman said Kasowitz worked on only one commercial matter for Columbus Nova and that it was a coincidence that the firm had used two lawyers who also represent Trump.

Asked whether any of Cohen’s brief time at the Kasowitz offices related to matters for Columbus Nova, Renova, or Vekselberg, a Kasowitz spokesman said “no.” The spokesman added, “The firm did not do any substantive work with Michael Cohen after he left the Trump Organization.” Cohen resigned from the Trump Organization in January 2017.

Cohen didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Any work Cohen did with Kasowitz in 2017 could take on new relevance since the FBI raided Cohen’s home and office last month. Kasowitz, who was Trump’s lead lawyer in the Russia investigation for a brief period last year, has reportedly still been involved in advising the president in the case.

Kasowitz continues to represent Trump in other matters. That includes a suit by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice” who claims Trump defamed her by calling her a liar after she asserted that he had made unwanted sexual advances. Kasowitz Benson Torres specializes in commercial litigation and has represented many large U.S. and foreign companies.

Kasowitz’s work for Columbus Nova stretches back to at least 2010 in related cases filed in New York and Illinois. In Illinois, Fifth Third Bank sued Columbus Nova and several affiliated entities, alleging that they had caused the bank to lose tens of millions of dollars on loans to a life insurance financing program that was “permeated … by fraud and embezzlement.” In the New York case, Kasowitz and three other attorneys at his firm filed a separate suit alleging that it was Fifth Third Bank that had committed fraud and caused losses.

The name of Andrew Intrater, the CEO of Columbus Nova and the cousin of Vekselberg, comes up repeatedly in the litigation.

Kasowitz’s spokesman said the litigation settled in 2017. The terms do not appear to be public.

“The firm represented Nina Investments LLC and its affiliates, Santa Maria Overseas, Ltd., Columbus Nova Investments IV, Ltd., and Renova U.S. Management LLC, in a commercial litigation with Fifth Third Bank, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, over a failed investment in a company called Concord Capital Management, LLC,” the Kasowitz spokesman said. “The litigation was commenced in 2010 and settled in early 2017.”

A spokesman for Renova, Andrey Shtorkh, told ProPublica that he is not familiar with Kasowitz. He described Renova Group as a client of Columbus Nova. However, Renova’s website previously described Columbus Nova as one of its holdings. Columbus Nova’s website previously described itself “as the US investment vehicle for the Renova Group.”

Vekselberg was among those hit with sanctions last month by the Trump administration in response to “malign activity around the globe” by the Russian government. The New York Times subsequently reported that Vekselberg was questioned by investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller.

Along with the payments from Columbus Nova, Cohen also received payments from corporations including AT&T and Novartis. AT&T said it hired Cohen “to provide insights into understanding the new administration.” ProPublica recently reported that Kasowitz used his access to the Trump administration to help another client, a New York investor, with a casino in Vietnam.


https://www.propublica.org/article/colu ... c-kasowitz


As @eisingerj and I reported last year, Michael Cohen spent a brief time working at the offices of the Kasowitz firm in early 2017 for still unexplained work. Several lawyers at the firm were alarmed by Cohen's presence. https://www.propublica.org/article/trum ... -clearance

Image


Trump’s Shadowy Money Trail

May 9, 2018
By The Editorial Board

The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.


Before there was a hint of collusion with Russia, there were questions about Donald Trump’s finances. In those more innocent days, the questions were mainly about propriety — why wouldn’t he release his tax returns like other presidential candidates had? — and perhaps a hint of ox-goring: “Billionaire? He’s no billionaire!”

This week it has become clearer that questions about Mr. Trump’s finances, and those about whether his campaign cooperated with Russian hacking of the 2016 election, need to be asked in the same breath.

On Tuesday, we learned that a company linked to a Russian oligarch — as well as corporations with business before the administration — gave a total of more than $1 million to a shell company that the president’s fixer, Michael Cohen, set up just before the election to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels, the porn star who says she had sex with Mr. Trump in 2006.

Those corporations — AT&T, the pharmaceutical company Novartis and Korea Aerospace — paid the shell company, Essential Consultants, during last year. All do business with the federal government or can be affected by federal actions, such as possible controls on drug prices or the Justice Department’s lawsuit against AT&T’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner.

On Wednesday, Novartis said it had actually spent $1.2 million in total, $800,000 more than was originally reported, and AT&T said it had paid as much as $600,000, three times what had been reported. Both issued statements denying any wrongdoing but still leaving the impression that they were paying for access to the president or his fixer.

This sort of suspicious cash was at the heart of a recent report by The Washington Post that found that in the decade before the election, Mr. Trump did something unusual for a real estate developer — he all but stopped borrowing money. Multiple bankruptcies had no doubt exhausted his welcome at any reputable bank, so perhaps the man who called himself the “King of Debt” became more prudent, or he simply faced reality. What happened next, though, was more unusual. Beginning in 2006, the Trump Organization spent $400 million in cash on various projects. The president’s son Eric said they were able to do that with cash generated by other Trump businesses, even at the height of the Great Recession. That explanation has raised the eyebrows of business experts.

It also contradicts what Eric and his older brother, Donald Trump Jr., said in the years before the word “Russian” became radioactive for them.

“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Jr. said in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

The golf writer James Dodson said last year that during a visit to a Trump golf course in 2013, Eric told him of his family company’s financing: “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

Around the time Donald Trump said goodbye to American banks, he said hello to Mr. Cohen, a lawyer whose résumé, one might have expected, would have screamed, “Stay away!” to a legitimate businessman.

From at least 1999, according to a recent Times report, Mr. Cohen had dealings with Russian mob figures and began finding business deals in, and with people from, Russia and the former Soviet Union. By 2007, Mr. Cohen was working for the Trump Organization as a fixer and deal maker.

Even during the 2016 campaign, Mr. Cohen pursued plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow, coordinating with Felix Sater, a felon with ties to Russian mobsters who had worked on other deals with Mr. Trump.

After Mr. Trump’s election, while the F.B.I. was investigating whether his campaign helped Russian efforts to put Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, Mr. Cohen visited his boss in the White House. During that February 2017 visit, Mr. Cohen left for the national security adviser, Michael Flynn, a plan to lift sanctions against Russia, which had been imposed for its attacks on Ukraine. These sanctions had squeezed the sorts of people Mr. Cohen dealt with. The plan was proposed by Mr. Sater and a Ukrainian politician with ties to Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign chairman.

Mr. Flynn has since pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with Russians, and Mr. Manafort is under indictment on charges of financial crimes that involved Russians.

At the moment, Americans are lucky to have Robert Mueller, the special counsel, examining all of this. Mr. Mueller was appointed after Mr. Trump fired the F.B.I. director James Comey because of his frustrations with the Russia investigation. Mr. Mueller has been looking at Mr. Cohen’s affairs and records from the Trump Organization. And one question that Mr. Trump’s lawyers say Mr. Mueller wants to ask the president is what communication did he have with Michael D. Cohen, Felix Sater and others, including foreign nationals, about Russian real estate developments during the campaign.

Russians and cash — they’ve been a part of Mr. Trump’s life for years, and now they’re elements of the investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Moscow to corrupt American democracy. Mr. Trump’s affection toward the Russian president has led many to ask, “What does Putin have on Trump?” Maybe the ledgers will tell.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/09/opin ... trail.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 11, 2018 7:57 am

THE SEKULOW QUESTIONS, PART SIX: TRUMP EXACERBATES HIS WOES

May 10, 2018/0 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, emptywheel, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

In this series, it feels like time is marked by big Russian meetings and key firings.

I’m talking, of course, about my efforts to use the Mueller questions as imagined by Jay Sekulow to map out what the structure of the investigation (at least as it pertains to Trump personally) might be. Thus far, I’ve shown:

Russians, led by the Aras Agalarov and his son, cultivated Trump for years by dangling two things: real estate deals and close ties with Vladimir Putin.
During the election, the Russians and Trump appear to have danced towards a quid pro quo agreement, with the Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton in exchange for a commitment to sanctions relief, with some policy considerations thrown in.
During the transition period, Trump’s team took a series of actions that moved towards consummating the deal they had made with Russia, both in terms of policy concessions, particularly sanctions relief, and funding from Russian sources that could only be tapped if sanctions were lifted. The Trump team took measures to keep those actions secret.
Starting in January 2017, Trump came to learn that FBI was investigating Mike Flynn. His real reasons for firing Flynn remain unreported, but it appears he had some concerns that the investigation into Flynn would expose him personally to investigation.
After a failed attempt to quash the investigation into his Administration by firing Flynn, Trump grew increasingly angry that Jim Comey wouldn’t provide a quick exoneration without conducting an investigation first, leading to his firing.

MAY 10, 2017: WHAT DID YOU MEAN WHEN YOU TOLD RUSSIAN DIPLOMATS ON MAY 10, 2017, THAT FIRING MR. COMEY HAD TAKEN THE PRESSURE OFF?

Trump fired Comey just in time to report to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a meeting the next day that doing took the pressure off he felt because of Russia.

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” Remarkably, he also felt the need to reassure the Russians that, “I’m not under investigation.”

The reports that Trump’s lawyers need to have clearance because of the inclusion of this meeting in the list of questions suggests Mueller wants to learn more about the meeting beyond the public reports. That may include Trump’s sharing of classified information provided by the Israelis.

MAY 11, 2017: WHAT DID YOU MEAN IN YOUR INTERVIEW WITH LESTER HOLT ABOUT MR. COMEY AND RUSSIA?

The day after meeting with the Russians, he told Lester Holt he was going to fire Comey regardless of what Rod Rosenstein recommended. [These are excerpts and a little rough; here’s a partial transcript that leaves out a lot of the Russian comments]

He’s a showboat, he’s a grand-stander, the FBI has been in turmoil, you know that. I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil. Less than a year ago. It hasn’t recovered from that.

[in response to a question about Rosenstein’s recommendation] What I did was I was going to fire Comey. My decision. I was going to fire Comey. There’s no good time to do it, by the way. I was going to fire regardless of recommendation. [Rosenstein] made a recommendation, he’s highly respected. Very good guy, very smart guy. The Democrats like him. The Republicans like him. But regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey. Knowing there was no good time to do it.

And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won. And the reason they should have won it is the electoral college is almost impossible for a Republican to win. Very hard. Because you start off at such a disadvantage. So everybody was thinking, they should have won the election. This was an excuse for having lost an election.

I just want somebody that’s competent. I’m a big fan of the FBI. I love the people of the FBI.

As far as I’m concerned, I want that [investigation] to be absolutely done properly. When I did this now, I said I’ll probably, maybe confuse that. Maybe I’ll expand that, you know, lengthen the time because it should be over with, in my opinion, should have been over with a long time ago. ‘Cause all it is, is an excuse but I said to myself, I might even lengthen out the investigation, but I have to do the right thing for the American people.

[in response to question about why he put he was not under investigation in his termination letter] Because he told me that, I mean he told me that. I’ve heard that from others. I had a dinner him, he wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on, we had a very nice dinner at the White House very early on. [He asked to have dinner?] A dinner was arranged. I think he asked for the dinner. And he wanted to stay on as the FBI head. And I said, I’ll consider, we’ll see what happens. We had a very nice dinner. And at that time he told me you’re not under investigation. I knew anyway. First of all, when you’re under investigation, you’re giving all sorts of documents and everything. I knew I wasn’t under — and I heard it was stated at the committee, at some committee level, number one. Then during the phone call he said it, then during another phone call he said it. He said it at dinner, and then he said it twice during phone calls.

In one case I called him, in one case he called me.

I actually asked him, yes. I said, if it’s possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said you are not under investigation. All I can tell you is that I know that I’m not under investigation. Personally. I’m not talking about campaigns, I’m not talking about anything else. I’m not under investigation.

[did you ask him to drop the investigation] No. Never. I want the investigation speeded up. Why would we do that? Iw ant to find out if there was a problem with an election having to do with Russia, or anyone else, any other country, I want it to be so strong and so good.

I want somebody that’s going to do a great job.

I think that looking into me and the campaign, I have nothing to do, his was set up by the Democrats. There’s no collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians. The other things is the Russians did not affect the vote.

If Russia hacked, If Russia had to anything to do with our election, I want to know about it. If Russia or anybody elseis trying to interfere with our elections I want to make sure that will never ever happen

[wiretapping] I was surprised [Comey said no spying] but I wasn’t angry. There’s a big thing going on right now, spying, to me that’s the big story.

I want a great FBI Director. I expect that [they will continue investigation].

[Flynn’s access to secrets] My White House Counsel it did not sound like an emergency. She didn’t make it sound that way either in the hearings the other day. It didn’t sound like it had to be done immediately. This man has served for many years. He’s a general. In my opinion a very good person. It would be very unfair to hear from someone we don’t even know to immediately run out and fire a general. We ultimately fired, but we fired for a different reason. Everything plays into it. We fired him because he said something to the Vice President that wasn’t true. He had clearance from the Obama Administration. I think it’s a very unfair thing that the media doesn’t talk about that.

I just sent a letter from one of the most prestigious law firms in the country that I have nothing to do with Russia, I have no investments in Russia, I don’t have property in Russia. I’m in total compliance in every way.

I had the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow a long time ago. I have a certified letter. I’m not just saying that. I assume he’s gonna give the letter out. No loans, no nothing.

I never thought about it [optics of Lavrov meeting]. What difference does it make.

When I spoke with Putin he asked me whether I’d see Lavrov. I think we had a great discussion having to do with Syria, having to do with the Ukraine. Maybe that discussion will lead to peace.

Ultimately, Trump said several things here (aside from putting into the public record the meetings with Comey, though he got details that can almost certainly be proved wrong wrong). He differentiated between an investigation into himself personally and others, denied asking to halt the investigation into Flynn, provided his bogus self-exoneration claim of not having business ties with Russians. He also reiterated the claim he had been spied on.

MAY 12, 2017: WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR MAY 12, 2017, TWEET?

By this point, Trump and Comey were in a war of credibility. And Trump suggested that he might have tapes of his meetings with Comey.

Image

The White House answers about whether there were tapes have dodged some, so it’s possible.

MAY 17, 2017: WHAT DID YOU THINK AND WHAT DID YOU DO IN REACTION TO THE NEWS OF THE APPOINTMENT OF THE SPECIAL COUNSEL?

In the wake of reporting that Comey had documented a request from Trump to halt the investigation into Flynn, on May 17, Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller to investigate any links between the Russian government and individuals associated with Trump’s campaign and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” The latter phrase made it clear that by firing Comey, Trump had put himself under investigation for obstructing the investigation in chief.

In the middle of a meeting with Sessions, Don McGahn, Mike Pence, and several others on replacing Comey, Rosenstein called McGahn and told him he had appointed Mueller. Trump took it out on Sessions, calling him an idiot and telling him he should resign. Sessions left and sent a resignation letter, but Pence, Steve Bannon, and Reince Priebus convinced him to hold off on accepting it. This piece describes Priebus’ side of that story.

MAY 31, 2017: WHY DID YOU HOLD MR. SESSIONS’S RESIGNATION UNTIL MAY 31, 2017, AND WITH WHOM DID YOU DISCUSS IT?

Mueller has received testimony from most of the people who counseled Trump not to fire Sessions, including McGahn, Bannon, and Priebus (but not Pence). He has also gotten Sessions’ testimony on this point.

I’m particularly interested in whether Trump consulted with people not listed in the NYT story on this, such as Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller (who had counseled him to fire Comey in the first place). I also suspect that Trump had already reached out Flynn by this point to talk pardons.

JUNE 8, 2017: WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT MR. COMEY’S JUNE 8, 2017, TESTIMONY REGARDING MR. FLYNN, AND WHAT DID YOU DO ABOUT IT?

On June 8, Comey testified to SSCI. The night before, he released a statement that reviewed much of what appeared in his memos. The hearing consisted of senators from each party trying to spin Comey’s report of being asked to drop the Flynn investigation, with little news — though Comey did make clear the investigation covered false statements.

BLUNT: On the Flynn issue specifically, I believe you said earlier that you believe the president was suggesting you drop any investigation of Flynn’s account of his conversation with the Russian ambassador. Which was essentially misleading the vice president and others?

COMEY: Correct. I’m not going to go into the details but whether there were false statements made to government investigators, as well.


Comey refuted Trump’s claim that he didn’t ask him to stop the investigation into Flynn.

KING: In his press conference May 18th, the president responded, quote, no, no, when asked about asking you to stop the investigation into general Flynn. Is that a true statement?

COMEY: I don’t believe it is.

Comey said he viewed the Flynn investigation and the Russian one as touching, but separate, though raised the possibility of flipping Flynn.

KING: Back to Mr. Flynn. Would the — would closing out the Flynn investigation have impeded the overall Russian investigation?

COMEY: No. Well, unlikely, except to the extent — there is always a possibility if you have a criminal case against someone and squeeze them, flip them and they give you information about something else. But I saw the two as touching each other but separate.


Comey also revealed that he had shared memos memorializing his conversations with Trump with a friend.

BLUNT: You said something earlier and I don’t want to fail to follow up on, you said after dismissed, you gave information to a friend so that friend could get that information into the public media.

COMEY: Correct.

BLUNT: What kind of information was that? What kind of information did you give to a friend?

COMEY: That the — the Flynn conversation. The president had asked me to let the Flynn — forgetting my exact own words. But the conversation in the Oval Office.


Much of the hearing covered Sessions’ non-involvement. Comey deferred a number of questions to the closed session.

Trump used the Comey hearing — and his confirmation that at the time he left the president wasn’t under investigation — to have Marc Kasowitz make a statement claiming Trump never impeded the investigation and never demanded loyalty.

I am Marc Kasowitz, Predisent Trump’s personal lawyer.

Contrary to numerous false press accounts leading up to today’s hearing, Mr. Comey has now finally confirmed publicly what he repeatedly told the President privately: The President was not under investigation as part of any probe into Russian interference. He also admitted that there is no evidence that a single vote changed as a result of any Russian interference.

Mr Comey’s testimony also makes clear that the President never sought to impede the investigation into attempted Russian interference in the 2016 election, and in fact, according to Mr. Comey, the President told Mr. Comey “it would be good to find out” in that investigation if there were “some ‘satellite’ associates of his who did something wrong.” And he did not exclude anyone from that statement. Consistent with that statement, the President never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone, including suggesting that that Mr. Comey“let Flynn go.” As he publicly stated the next day, he did say to Mr. Comey, “General Flynn is a good guy, he has been through a lot” and also “asked how is General Flynn is doing.”

Admiral Rogers testified that the President never “directed [him] to do anything . . . illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate” and never “pressured [him] to do so.” Director Coates said the same thing. The President likewise never pressured Mr. Comey. .

The President also never told Mr. Comey, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty” in form or substance. Of course, the Office of the President is entitled to expect loyalty from those who are serving in an administration, and, from before this President took office to this day, it is overwhelmingly clear that there have been and continue to be those in government who are actively attempting to undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications.


Kasowitz also accused Comey of leaking in order to lead to a special counsel investigation.

Mr. Comey has now admitted that he is one of these leakers. Today, Mr. Comey admitted that he unilaterally and surreptitiously made unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the President. The leaks of this privileged information began no later than March 2017 when friends of Mr. Comey have stated he disclosed to them the conversations he had with the President during their January 27, 2017 dinner and February 14, 2017 White House meeting. Today, Mr. Comey admitted that he leaked to friends his purported memos of these privileged conversations, one of which he testified was classified. He also testified that immediately after he was terminated he authorized his friends to leak the contents of these memos to the press in order to “prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” Although Mr. Comey testified he only leaked the memos in response to a tweet, the public record reveals that the New York Times was quoting from these memos the day before the referenced tweet, which belies Mr. Comey’s excuse for this unauthorized disclosure of privileged information and appears to entirely retaliatory. We will leave it the appropriate authorities to determine whether this leaks should be investigated along with all those others being investigated. .

In sum, it is now established that there the President was not being investigated for colluding with the or attempting to obstruct that investigation. As the Committee pointed out today, these important facts for the country to know are virtually the only facts that have not leaked during the long course of these events.

This sort of kicked off the official campaign to discredit Comey and those who would back his story.

JUNE 12, 2017: WHAT DID YOU THINK AND DO IN REACTION TO THE NEWS THAT THE SPECIAL COUNSEL WAS SPEAKING TO MR. ROGERS, MR. POMPEO AND MR. COATS?

Public reports date Rogers and Coats’ interviews with Mueller to the week of June 12, 2017, so Pompeo’s must have been around that same time. Rogers and Coats, at least, testified that Trump tried to get them to state publicly that there was no collusion. They said the interaction was odd and uncomfortable, but that he did not order them to interfere.

Clearly, Trump responded to public reports of their being called as witnesses, though we don’t know what the response was. It’s possible that’s when Trump threatened to fire Mueller, only to back off when Don McGahn threatened to quit.

JULY 7, 2017: WHAT INVOLVEMENT DID YOU HAVE IN THE COMMUNICATION STRATEGY, INCLUDING THE RELEASE OF DONALD TRUMP JR.’S EMAILS?

I’ve laid out that I believe the evolving June 9 story is a limited hangout orchestrated by Agalarov lawyer Scott Balber. The strategy would have begun when Jared Kushner wrestled with the need to disclose the meeting, both in response to congressional investigations and for his clearance. Manafort, too, turned over emails backing the event about a month before the story came out publicly. This post talks about the response the weekend of the G-20 in Hamburg, including Ivanka sitting in on a meeting so Trump could strategize, and Hope Hicks suggesting the emails would never come out.

As a reminder, on the same day Trump had a second hour long meeting with Putin, he dictated Putin’s propaganda line that the meeting pertained to adoptions. Importantly, he hid what I’ve suggested was the quo in the quid pro quo, sanctions relief. Mueller undoubtedly would like to know if Putin helped him come up with that message, which would be really damning.

Mueller also wants to know about the decision to leak Don Jr’s emails. Bannon suspects that a Jared aide leaked the emails (his then lawyer Jamie Gorelick would cut back her work with him shortly thereafter). But remember: in a DM, Assange proposed that he give Wikileaks the email.

There’s clearly far more back story to the leaked email we don’t know yet.

If Trump’s involvement here involves coordination with Russians (like the Agalrovs, to say nothing of Putin) or Assange, it would provide damning evidence not of obstruction, but of collusion, an effort to coordinate a story about a key meeting. Trump’s lawyers have always suggested questions about Trump’s role in this statement are improper, which is itself a telling indicator that they don’t understand (or want to spin) the risk of the original June 9 meeting.



JULY 20, 2017: AFTER THE RESIGNATIONS, WHAT EFFORTS WERE MADE TO REACH OUT TO MR. FLYNN ABOUT SEEKING IMMUNITY OR POSSIBLE PARDON?

Mike Flynn tried to get Congressional immunity in March 2017, with Trump’s backing the effort in a tweet.

Image

Mueller’s question seems to suggest even at that earlier period, someone from Trump’s camp reached out and discussed immunity with Flynn.

On July 20, the WaPo reported that Trump’s team was researching pardons. The NYT report first revealing that Trump offered pardons to Mike Flynn (and Manafort, who is curiously not mentioned in this question) describes it happening after John Dowd took over, in the wake of the revelation of the June 9 meeting and the Kasowitz firing. Dowd denied any such thing was happening on July 21, which is probably a good sign such discussions were taking place.

JULY 25, 2017: WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF YOUR JULY 2017 CRITICISM OF MR. SESSIONS? WHAT DISCUSSIONS DID YOU HAVE WITH REINCE PRIEBUS IN JULY 2017 ABOUT OBTAINING THE SESSIONS RESIGNATION? WITH WHOM DID YOU DISCUSS IT?
In late July, 2017, Trump accused Sessions of several sins: failing to crack down on leaks, failing to prosecute Hillary, and failing to fire Andrew McCabe. That must be the same time when Trump ordered Priebus to get Sessions’ resignation, which he dodged by stalling, which probably answers the “what was the purpose” question: to lay predicate to fire Sessions.

I’m particularly interested in the question about who Trump discussed this with, particularly given the provocative timing — the days before George Papadopoulos’s July 26 arrest and Paul Manafort’s July 27 condo search (using a warrant that, unlike a warrant from a May 27 storage unit search, invoked the June 9 meeting). It’s possible Trump had advance knowledge of this stuff (which would be alarming), but likely it’s a coincidence.

In any case, Mueller clearly has reason to believe Trump learned something about the investigation and discussed it with people that led him to try, again, to stop it by firing someone.

WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE OF THE SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER 2017 STATEMENTS, INCLUDING TWEETS, REGARDING AN INVESTIGATION OF MR. COMEY?

On September 1, Trump responded to reports that because Comey had a declination written before interviewing Hillary, he rigged the outcome of the investigation. In mid-October, in the wake of the Manafort indictment and George Papadopoulos plea, Trump returned to this attack. Rudy Giuliani has renewed this attack in recent days, which is presumably an attempt to undercut Comey’s credibility.

WHAT DISCUSSIONS DID YOU HAVE REGARDING TERMINATING THE SPECIAL COUNSEL, AND WHAT DID YOU DO WHEN THAT CONSIDERATION WAS REPORTED IN JANUARY 2018?

The NYT report that Trump tried to fire Mueller in June 2017 made it clear that Mueller had received testimony about it (presumably from McGahn and others). Clearly, Mueller has reason to know that Trump did something else in response. Note that this report came out in the wake of the Michael Wolff book, which would give Mueller an excuse to call several of the relevant witnesses (such as Mark Corallo and Steve Bannon) as witnesses. This time period also closely follows the increasingly aggressive response in Congress.

WHAT IS THE REASON FOR YOUR CONTINUED CRITICISM OF MR. COMEY AND HIS FORMER DEPUTY, ANDREW G. MCCABE?

The assumption is that Trump continues to attack Comey and McCabe because doing so might harm their credibility with regards to an obstruction investigation, and that’s surely true (made all the worse by McCabe’s firing and his criminal referral).

But I increasingly believe (particularly given that the other contemporaneous witnesses to Comey’s concerns, like James Baker, are not named) that’s not the only reason Trump is doing this. My guess is it’s an attempt to undermine their decision to investigate Flynn. We now know, for example, that McCabe set up the interview with Flynn on Comey’s direction. So in addition to discrediting key witnesses against him, it seems possible that Trump is also trying to discredit the decision, at a time when FBI was about to close a counterintelligence investigation into Flynn, to instead interview him, leading to the exposure of Trump’s efforts to undermine US policy during the transition period.

RESOURCES
These are some of the most useful resources in mapping these events.

Mueller questions as imagined by Jay Sekulow

CNN’s timeline of investigative events

Majority HPSCI Report

Minority HPSCI Report

Trump Twitter Archive

Jim Comey March 20, 2017 HPSCI testimony

Comey May 3, 2017 SJC testimony

Jim Comey June 8, 2017 SSCI testimony

Jim Comey written statement, June 8, 2017

Jim Comey memos

Sally Yates and James Clapper Senate Judiciary Committee testimony, May 8, 2017

NPR Timeline on Trump’s ties to Aras Agalarov

George Papadopoulos complaint

George Papadopoulos statement of the offense

Mike Flynn statement of the offense

Internet Research Agency indictment

Text of the Don Jr Trump Tower Meeting emails

Jared Kushner’s statement to Congress

Erik Prince HPSCI transcript
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/05/10/t ... -his-woes/
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 11, 2018 1:31 pm

Some on Capitol Hill are looking to make sure the special counsel's work lives on no matter what happens to the investigators.

WASHINGTON — If Congress can’t protect special counsel Robert Mueller’s job, perhaps it can protect his work.

That’s the thinking among several lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who are discussing ways to safeguard the special counsel’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia amid President Donald Trump’s escalating attacks.

As the probe closes in on the White House, much of the public debate has centered on the fate of Mueller and whether Trump might fire the former FBI director, who’s now led the probe for nearly a year.

But warnings now from Capitol Hill focus on the possibility of Trump replacing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel probe. If Trump takes that step and installs a loyalist in the job, Mueller’s scope could be narrowed, his resources squeezed, and Rosenstein’s successor could withhold the report from Congress and the public.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who helped draft a bipartisan bill to protect Mueller that passed the Judiciary Committee late last month, confirmed to NBC News on Thursday that talks are underway for a “Plan B” after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to bring the original legislation for a floor vote.


The discussions “involve assuring the evidence is preserved and reports are done if the special counsel is fired or other political interference is undertaken by the president,” Blumenthal told NBC News.

Notably, Blumenthal added, some GOP senators are participating in the effort.

“There’s strong interest on the Republican side in avoiding a constitutional crisis,” said Blumenthal, who’s also drafting a measure to protect Rosenstein but declined to provide details.

Some Judiciary Committee members believe the fresh effort would be politically harder for McConnell to reject since it focuses primarily on transparency and not the president’s personnel decisions — and it could apply to all future special counsels.

In the House, where the Republican majority has refused to consider any legislation to protect the Mueller probe, Democrats are debating taking matters into their own hands if Trump acts against Mueller. Some options Democrats are considering include keeping vigil at Mueller’s office.

“We have to do everything we can to make it politically unsustainable for the president to destroy the investigation and accountability and the rule of law,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told constituents in his New York district last week.

Pressuring McConnell

The Senate Judiciary Committee last month voted 14-7 on bipartisan legislation giving Mueller or any special counsel the ability to challenge his or her removal before a three-judge federal panel.

That drew opposition from a number of conservatives including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who say that would overstep Congress’s limited authority over the president’s personnel choices.

Proposals now under discussion focus more on transparency around what Mueller’s team has uncovered so far.

According to three people briefed on the discussions, ideas include: Requiring that Congress receive Mueller’s final report; allowing Mueller, in the event he is fired, to release his findings publicly; or allowing him to resign and release his work if he feels his investigation is being improperly stifled.

The effort builds on one Republican-sponsored provision included in the original bill, the so-called Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act, a compromise measure from Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democrats Chris Coons of Delaware and Cory Booker of New Jersey.


McConnell has repeatedly insisted such legislation isn’t necessary, because, he says, Trump won’t fire Mueller.

And even if Trump “foolishly” considered doing so, McConnell said, he still wouldn’t bring the bill to the floor because it was unconstitutional, wouldn’t pass the House and wouldn’t be signed by the president, he told Fox News Radio on Wednesday.

“I think that's an interesting hypothetical,” he told Fox, “But I don't think that's going to happen.”

McConnell’s office declined comment on any new Mueller-related legislation as he has not yet seen the new proposal.

Some senators say they remain hopeful McConnell might allow a full Senate vote on the original bill.

“The votes are there to approve it,” said Blumenthal. “The constitutional argument, in my view, is a red herring. The bill was changed to meet that objection.”

The new efforts to shield Mueller’s work, if not his job, remain a break-the-glass option — an effort to guarantee transparency around the status of the investigation, even if Mueller or Rosenstein are bounced from their jobs.

Participants in the talks point to Trump’s growing hostility toward Mueller’s investigation in recent weeks, after The New York Times first reported that the FBI had raided offices of Trump’s longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen. That news sent Trump into a tirade, aides say, and froze negotiations between Trump’s lawyers and Mueller’s team over a possible sit-down interview with the president.


Trump has kept up his attacks, and on Thursday Vice President Mike Pence joined in calling for an end to the investigation. “It’s time to wrap it up,” Pence told Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.

In a May 7 tweet, Trump insisted Mueller’s team has “conflicts of interest” while again dismissing the probe as a “phony witch hunt.” In an earlier tweet, Trump said he may have “no choice” but to “get involved” in a disagreement between the Justice Department and Congress related to the investigation.

Both Trump and his new legal advisor, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have also seized on comments by federal Judge T.S. Ellis III last week suggesting Mueller’s pursuit of Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, may be outside the purview of the special counsel.

Trump and Giuliani appear to be floating a trial balloon around the Ellis comments to see how the public would react to a Mueller firing, conservative writer John Podhoretz said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Sen. Coons told NBC News he’s “hopeful that leader McConnell will eventually come to recognize the value … of a bill that strengthens the transparency and reporting of the special counsel and protects future special counsels.”

Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, a Judiciary Committee member who voted against the original Mueller protection bill, has been receptive to the need for transparency and a report to Congress.

“That is the position I have. I’ve said from the very beginning that the investigation needs to proceed to its final conclusion,” Crapo told NBC News. Nevertheless he said he doesn’t believe Congress needs to take action yet.

'A Straitjacket Strategy'

In the House, Democrats have already introduced multiple bills that would limit the president’s ability to remove Mueller, and require the preservation of any evidence of misconduct he uncovered in the event he were fired, or his investigation constrained.

“We have to prepare for a direct decapitation attempt, and also for a straitjacket strategy,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Judiciary Committee. “One thing we’re hoping that the Republicans will agree to is that we must preserve all evidence and all work products in the event of a firing.”

In fact, Trump allies in the House have made repeated demands on Rosenstein and other Justice Department officials to turn over information at the core of Mueller’s probe. And members of the conservative Freedom Caucus have gone so far as to draft articles of impeachment against Rosenstein over his refusal to meet certain demands.

Image: U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff arrives at a press conference
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, in 2017. Democrats in the House are debating how to protect Robert Mueller if the president tries to fire him. Win McNamee / Getty Images
As the minority party with little ability to advance their bills, Democrats have instead begun considering a series of actions they could take if they believe Mueller’s work is under direct threat, starting with building political pressure on the GOP to do more.

As they have gamed out potential scenarios they could take in the near term, Raskin could prove a key figure.

If Trump moves against Mueller or Rosenstein during a congressional recess, when lawmakers are scattered across the country, it would be Raskin, whose district is just outside Washington, who could most immediately travel either to the Capitol in an attempt to compel the House into emergency session, or to the Mueller team’s offices to ensure that officials don’t move to destroy documents relevant to Mueller’s probe.

“We’re trying to hope for the best and be prepared for the worst at every turn,” Raskin said. “But I do get a kind of queasy feeling in my stomach right before we leave for our district work period recesses.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congre ... rk-n873241
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun May 13, 2018 7:25 am

Former Trump campaign aide is helping Russian firm shed sanctions

US slaps new sanctions on Russian oligarchs, government officials (April 2018)
Washington (CNN)A former senior campaign and transition aide to President Donald Trump recently inked a deal to help a Russian oligarch's conglomerate shed sanctions the Trump administration slapped on them last month.

Bryan Lanza, who is in regular contact with White House officials, is lobbying on behalf of the chairman of EN+ Group, an energy and aluminum firm presently controlled by Oleg Deripaska, according to several sources. Deripaska is a billionaire who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and was the target of US sanctions imposed last month. Lanza is also a CNN contributor.

Lanza is representing the chairman of EN+ Group, but not Deripaska directly. The company is seeking to reduce Deripaska's ownership in the company enough to be freed from US sanctions. Deripaska is expected to maintain a substantial stake in the company.

The moves by Lanza and Mercury Public Affairs LLC, the firm where he works as a managing director in its Washington office, on behalf of their client don't appear to be anything more than standard lobbying. But the deal is the latest brazen example of how Trump's "drain the swamp" campaign pledge has led to little change in a town where paying for access is a lucrative industry. In fact, Trump has presided over the expansion of a new generation of influence peddlers who have used their actual or perceived proximity to the President to line their pockets.

Corey Lewandowski, who served as Trump's first campaign manager and touts his close ties to the President, started his own consulting business in Washington after the election. Brian Ballard, Trump's longtime lobbyist in Florida and a GOP fundraiser, opened up a Washington office and brought on Susie Wiles, who led Trump's campaign in Florida. Jason Miller, former communications director for the campaign and transition who is also a CNN contributor, landed a plum gig as a managing director in global consulting firm Teneo's strategy group. He worked in crisis communications before the Trump campaign.

Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has weathered the brunt of the scrutiny for allegedly trying to sell access to the White House. But similar arrangements have been rampant in Washington -- under both Democratic and Republican administrations -- and the old way of doing business has continued to thrive since Trump took office.

Free from sanctions


Deripaska is seeking to sell enough of his stake in EN+ Group -- the group whose chairman hired Mercury to represent it before the Trump administration -- to free the company from sanctions. Under the Treasury Department's rules, companies that are under the majority control of sanctioned people are themselves automatically sanctioned until the person in question reduces their stake in the company below 50%. Lanza's firm legally disclosed the deal to the government last week.
Lanza's involvement with EN+ Group began within the last month or so, according to a source familiar with the transaction. The source said the former Trump campaign aide is not representing Deripaska himself, only the board chairman of the group attempting to free itself from the Russian oligarch's control by helping to reduce Deripaska's stake in EN+ Group from roughly 70% to below 50%. That chairman -- the former British energy minister, Lord Gregory Barker -- is listed as Mercury's client.

The source familiar with the transaction noted Lanza and the Mercury team's first phone call with Barker shortly before the Treasury Department granted Deripaska's companies, including EN+ Group, an additional month to get in compliance with sanctions. The source said Lanza and other Mercury lobbyists presented the extension to the administration officials as a "win for the president" because it would ultimately force a Russian oligarch to cede control of major companies.

Barker declined to comment. A Treasury Department spokesman declined comment.

Michael McKeon, a partner at Mercury, acknowledged Lanza's role on the EN+ Group account.

"He is part of the team," McKeon told CNN, noting that the disclosure form Mercury filed on May 4 "speaks to what Lord Barker is trying to do (regarding) the ownership of the company and our role assisting that effort."

Lanza is not listed as being involved in lobbying for Barker or EN+ Group on the disclosure form.

Mercury's role


Mercury itself has undergone scrutiny over the past year for its role in the Ukrainian lobbying operation that ensnared Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the election and related matters. The firm has denied wrongdoing and has said its employees have cooperated with investigators.

Lanza's work with the Russian-linked firm comes as Mueller continues to investigate whether there was any collusion between Trump campaign aides and Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has denied any collusion during the campaign.

Deripaska has intersected with the Trump orbit on a few occasions, most notably with Manafort. While at the helm of the Trump campaign, Manafort used an intermediary to offer Deripaska private briefings about the election, according to The Washington Post. Mueller's team later noted in a March court filing that the intermediary "has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016."

No evidence has emerged to suggest that Manafort ever briefed Deripaska. But Mueller's team has brought charges against Manafort for his lobbying work and financial reporting before he joined the Trump campaign. Manafort has pleaded not guilty.

While there's nothing illegal about Lanza's work with the Russian-connected firm, it's a stark example of how former Trump campaign aides have continued to enjoy access to Trump and other senior administration officials and have used those ties to benefit clients ranging from defense contractors to foreign governments and media conglomerates.

Even Cohen -- who, according to sources, saw his influence with Trump plummet after Inauguration Day -- earned more than $2 million between Election Day and early 2018, according to companies he has represented, pitching himself aggressively to corporations as someone who could offer them insight into how to approach the mercurial new President.

Over the course of his work, sources said Cohen maintained contact with some senior White House officials.

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, and Ivanka Trump, the President's eldest daughter, both worked to block Cohen from an official role in the Trump administration, sources said. But, according to two sources, Kushner still kept in touch with Cohen once he was in the White House.

But Cohen's direct interaction with Trump appeared to be minimal after the inauguration. They crossed paths at Mar-a-Lago on a couple of occasions and Cohen paid at least one visit to the White House, sources said.

"I got the impression (Cohen) could not get a phone call returned, nor could he get an audience with the President," said a source close to Trump's legal team.

Aggressive pitches


As aggressive as Cohen was in his pitches to prospective clients, one source said, Corey Lewandowski -- Trump's former campaign manager -- was more braggadocious about his access to Trump.

The source claimed Lewandowski had pitched companies by telling them "Trump doesn't make a decision without checking with me."

On Friday, AT&T acknowledged that Lewandowski's firm pitched them, but they said they didn't make a deal. AT&T is seeking government approval to acquire Time Warner, CNN's parent company.

Lewandowski, who has so far avoided registering as a lobbyist, continues to enjoy a high level of access to the President. Two sources confirmed he dined with Trump in the White House residence in March. He also joined Trump at a rally in Michigan in late April.

Meanwhile, even lesser-known Trump aides are making a living off their ties to the White House.

Former New York Republican Rep. John Sweeney has made more than $200,000 lobbying on behalf of a European pipeline venture owned by Gazprom, the state-controlled Russian natural gas company, according to federal lobbying disclosures. The New York Republican previously worked on Trump's campaign and assisted with administration hires during the presidential transition. Sweeney declined to discuss details about the clients he represents.

Unlike some of the newbies to the sphere of Washington influence, David Urban -- a former senior Trump campaign adviser -- has been a registered lobbyist for more than a decade. He works for a firm that represents a roster of top tier companies across the healthcare, telecommunications and utilities fields. Urban, who is also a CNN contributor, declined to comment.

And Barry Bennett, who served for a period as a senior adviser to the campaign, cofounded a firm called Avenue Strategies and represents a number of foreign governments. He was originally partners with Lewandowski, who left the firm amid allegations that he was engaging in lobbying activities without appropriate registration.

"I've been in town for 30 years. Most of my clients are based on my experience here," Bennett told CNN. "President Trump is certainly helpful to my business. But I had clients before that too."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/12/politics ... index.html
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun May 13, 2018 5:51 pm


Michael Avenatti

Warning ignored. So here it goes.
December 12, 2016 - Trump Tower. Details to follow...

Image
Image
Image


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9aLFEC1QfM

Why was Ahmed Al-Rumaihi meeting with Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn in December 2016 and why did Mr. Al-Rumaihi later brag about bribing administration officials according to a sworn declaration filed in court?
2:41 PM - 13 May 2018



Brian Krassenstein


Replying to @MichaelAvenatti
Confirmed! Thanks!!

Ahmed Al-Rumaihi works for the QAI investment fund that the Dossier alleges got a 19.5% stake in Rosneft. Al-Rumaihi allegedly claimed to have bribed Flynn. Ahmed Al-Rumaihi met with Cohen and Flynn at Trump Tower.

Brian Krassenstein

So basically Al-Rumaihi bragged about doing exactly what the Dossier claimed happened? Provided the Trump team with commission on the 19.5% sale of Rosneft. Boom!!Brian Krassenstein added,

Brian Krassenstein


BREAKING: Former Qatari diplomat, and now the head of a $100B Qatari Investment Fund, admitted to bribing Michael Flynn and tried bribing Steve Bannon.

Who is buying that 19% stake in Rosneft? You guessed it, this fund.

Steele Dossier Verification?!?!


See Court Doc:
Image


Al-Rumaihi is a former Qatari ambassador who in 2016 took over as head of the QAI investment fund. QAI is who purchased an 18+% stake in the Russian oil giant Rosneft. The Steel Dossier specifically mentioned Rosneft saying that Trump would be entitled to the commission of sale


The Dossier said 19.5% would be sold. Also note that if the price of oil rises the value of these shares also rise. Note that Trump pulling out of the Iran deal shot the oil price up and any additional conflict will add to this rise
https://twitter.com/krassenstein/status ... 9821457408



BREAKING: Former Qatari diplomat, and now the head of a $100B Qatari Investment Fund, admitted to bribing Michael Flynn and tried bribing Steve Bannon.…
https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti


Trump Russia Dossier Decoded: Yes, There Really Was A Massive Oil Deal (UPDATED)

Grant Stern
Mar 20, 2017


Image
Donald and Melania Trump with Qatari Airlines CEO Akbar Al Baker at the Trump Tower
Circumstantial evidence strongly indicates that President Donald J. Trump and his campaign associates brokered a massive oil privatization deal, where his Organization facilitated a global financial transaction to sell Russian Oil stock to its Syrian War adversary, the Emirate of Qatar.

The Trump Russia Dossier describes a massive privatization deal to deliver a chunk of the state-owned Rosneft Oil company to Qatar and also a secret buyer in the Cayman Islands.

Qatar has been a tenant at Trump Tower since 2008, though recent reports indicate they may have recently vacated their state-run airlines’ corporate campus.

Donald Trump and Russia conducted the transaction in three phases; Phase 1 began in early 2016 with a meeting of the minds at The Mayflower Hotel to start the deal and a due diligence period, Phase 2 began just before the Republican National Convention and continued through Election Day, and Phase 3 happened after Trump’s shocking win and concluding just days before Buzzfeed published the bombshell dossier describing the deal.

The end result allowed Russia to trade stolen emails to help to Donald Trump’s election campaign (as well as that of many Republican Congressmen), in exchange for help circumventing American sanctions to transact the sale of Rosneft, which Putin desperately needed to finance his budget deficit.

The Rosneft transaction also purportedly sent a $500 million dollar brokerage fee to Carter Page, or perhaps the Trump Organization.

The Trump Campaign would’ve been extremely familiar with Rosneft, since top surrogate Rudy Giuliani listed the Russian oil giant as one of his law clients at Bracewell & Giuliani, LLP in 2014 according to Bloomberg.

For the first time here, we’ve broken down the entire Rosneft privatization transaction and US election, by using open source media stories to create a comprehensive timeline of events over three phases in a single graphic.

This is the transaction Ranking House Intel Committee Member Adam Schiff (D-CA) described when kicked off Congress’ Russia hearings discussing Rosneft’s privatization deal, and the many contacts between the Trump campaign and Putin’s allies.

The most deal significant milestone was the “meeting of the minds” which occurred last April 27th at the Center for National Interest gathering in Washington, D.C.

Four Ambassadors convened at The Mayflower Hotel, who represent the three countries definitely involved in the Rosneft privatization deal: Italy, Russia, Singapore, and also the Philippines.

They all attended Donald Trump’s foreign policy campaign speech.

Key players from every country involved were in that one room, for one night, one time only, and even now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions was there.

The former Alabama Senator only admitted that he had two meetings with the Russian Ambassador, publicly excusing his own lies maintaining that contacts both weren’t campaigning discussions, even though one meeting was at the RNC in Cleveland. The April contact makes a third undisclosed meeting by Sessions with Ambassador Kislyak. Former US Ambassador Richard Burt is now a Russian lobbyist, and is thought to have written the speech that night, and serves on the Center’s Board of Directors.

After the-Republican candidate Donald Trump locked down the GOP nomination in early May against Ted Cruz, the plan described in Steele’s dossier leapt into action.

From the look of events, starting in July, a massive international oil privatization transaction began, and it was concluded in early January, right around the time the Electoral College certified Donald Trump as America’s 45th President.

The April 27th campaign speech at CNFI effectively concluded the due diligence or first phase of the Dossier’s privatization transaction and began a ‘quiet period’ before the pace of events quickened.

The second phase of the transaction began just before the Republican Convention and ran through election day.

The third phase happened after election day, and before the January 10th disclosure of the Steele Dossier, itself just a few short days after the Rosneft privatization sale finished.

Here’s our comprehensive infographic, the story continues below:

Image
This week, the Democratic Coalition just released a 40-page report which factually confirms more than a dozen major allegations of the Trump Russia Dossier published by Buzzfeed on January 10th.

Our exhaustive research breaks down the findings of the Dossier chronologically and highlights the ties between Trump and the buyer of Russia’s oil company shares.

Oil-rich Gulf Arab nation of Qatar was the end buyer of a massive stake in the Russian, state-run oil company Rosneft’s privatization deal.

The new Democratic Coalition report (below) reveals that Trump has hosted a Qatari state-run business owned by the QIA — the buyer of Rosneft shares in this transaction — located in the Manhattan Trump Tower for many years, as well as numerous factual confirmations of the dossier’s findings.

Democratic Coalition Senior Advisor Scott Dworkin is set to advise a bipartisan group of Congresspeople this week on his factual findings, which back up the information contained in the Dossier that implicates President Trump in a foreign affair with Vladimir Putin.

He tells us this is his main advice:

“The Dossier and its contents are mostly real.”
The President’s son-in-law and White House advisor Jared Kushner met with the Russian Ambassador during the Transition period, with disgraced General Michael Flynn.

“Carter Page met with Rosneft in December to assist with the deal, and he’s on the record admitting it but claims he didn’t meet Igor Sechin,” said Dworkin incredulously. “Really? It must have been a webcast with an intermediary. Everything in the Dossier adds up, and it still leaves more questions than answers.”

A mighty brokerage fee to one of the Trump campaign advisors, Moscow-based investment banker Carter Page, is highlighted in the former MI-6 operative’s report.

Theoretically, the former Merrill Lynch investment banker, Page, may have only been the “bag man” or go-between and someone else is the recipient of the cash premium in the dossier. Five hundred million dollars is a lot of money, and conceivably, many members of the Trump Organization, or family, could be involved in a deal of that scope.

What is most unusual about the sale is that Qatar is on the opposite sides of the Syrian war from Russia.

Not only that but in 2004 Russian agents openly assassinated a top Chechen rebel in Doha, the capital of Qatar, by bombing his SUV.

However, friendship between Donald Trump and the Qatari state-run airline who paid him anywhere from $19,000–100,000 a month in rent since 2008, must run deep.

Rosneft began taking steps towards a sale in early 2016, which accelerated right around the time of the Republican National Convention.

Russia’s state oil companies both declared that they would not privatize in 2016, right after Trump’s feud with a gold star family whose patriarch Khizr Khan spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

Putin announced the sale after new management changed the Trump campaign’s momentum in an exclusive Bloomberg interview in early September, which set the price at $11 billion dollars.

Image
Reuters: Rosneft stake Ownership Chart
Six countries are known to have participated in the massive privatization deal of Russia’s jewel, its state-run oil company, which left the end ownership of the stake impenetrable, and a purchase price of roughly $10.7 billion dollars, which Reuters reported about in January as:

“How Russia sold its oil jewel: without saying who bought it.”
In early October, once Russia knew about their damaging cache of Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta’s emails, they re-ignited the privatization sales.

Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin had already spent $5 billion dollars to buy out a foreign stake in Bashneft, another massive Russian oil partnership, whose oligarch was compromised, and charged (as Putin often does) with criminal offenses.

The Bashneft deal closed right before the damaging Access Hollywood political scandal, which would’ve swamped a presidential campaign without Trump’s collusive assistance from Putin’s massive propaganda machine.

After the Access Hollywood tape releases had seemed to doom Trump’s campaign, Putin even announced that the companies would buy their own shares if they had to — there was a serious budget hole to fill.

Nineteen and a half percent of Rosneft’s stock was agreed to be transferred on December 7th, before the board was informed of the transaction’s terms only after it took place.

The “matryoshka” (named after the famous nesting dolls) or complex deal structure is most likely designed to avoid American sanctions imposed over the Ukraine invasion against Rosneft, its CEO Igor Sechin, and its parent company Gazprom.

The highlighted yellow company in the below organization chart is a total mystery and based in the Cayman Islands law firm Walkers.

This is the kind of financial engineering it took for the Italian bank Intesa, to lend money to the buyers of the Rosneft stake.

The story continues below:
Image

Anonymous blogger The Trump Watchdog indicates that the Walkers law firm is linked to Trump economic advisor Steven Schwartzman, a co-founder of the Wall Street giant Blackstone, because they own the Intertrust Group, who provided the Singapore holding company (item 17.)

The shelf company owned by Intertrust Group was renamed QHG Holdings — which was discovered after internet sleuths tracked down a scrivener’s error — and which probably links US interests to the international transaction.

Coincidentally, the other co-founder of Blackstone Pete Peterson also happens to be on the Board of Directors for the Center for National Interest who booked The Mayflower Hotel at the last moment for the April 27th meeting with the four ambassadors, Trump, and Sessions.

Image
Left: Convicted felon, former Reagan NSA Robert “Bud” McFarland
Disgraced former Reagan National Security Advisor “Bud” McFarlane also attended The Mayflower Hotel speech on April 27th — in an especially ironic twist, where he attended another speech nearly 30 years earlier by Ronald Reagan, which he attended six short months before another international scandal erupted named Iran-Contra. Reagan’s speech that night demanded House Democrats to fund the Contra’s guerrilla war in Nicaragua, and like Trump’s speech proposing an unusual Russian “peace” deal, 30-years ago that Republican President described a foreign policy wish list, which eventually was revealed to have illegally transpired.

In November, despite Bud McFarlane’s public criticism in April, the Trump Transition team included the ex-felon’s compliments of Fox TV personality KT McFarland’s appointment as a Deputy NSA in their official press release.

Anyone who knows the Trump Administration, knows that they’re hypersensitive to criticism, yet oddly, this Trump critic was allowed to make a national security appointment so signficant that qualified applicants refused the job after Flynn’s dismissal, just to avoid KT McFarland being on their staff.

Then, Bud McFarlane mysteriously re-appeared at Trump Tower on December 5th, just two days before the Rosneft deal was announced, which didn’t make news when Henry Kissinger’s visit — he’s the Chairman Emeritus of the Center for National Interest — drew major headlines that day in Manhattan.

The end game for Russia was to funnel at least $5 billion dollars of new capital into state coffers to staunch some of the red ink expected to plague Putin’s budgets going into his 2018 elections, and through at least 2020 according to economists; and to do the deal while tiptoeing past American financial sanctions.

That’s where the cash-rich Gulf Arab nation stepped in to make a deal. The Qatari sovereign wealth fund (QIA) is the known buyer of 50% of these shares of Rosneft.

Yet still, nobody knows where well over $2 billion dollars of equity for the purchase came from, as Reuters reports:

Although Qatar has never publicly confirmed how much it has contributed to the deal or the size of the stake that it bought, Glencore and Rosneft say it contributed 2.5 billion euros. Along with the 300 million from Glencore and the 5.2 billion loaned by Intesa [an Italian bank], that still leaves a shortfall of 2.2 billion euros.
The QIA is coincidentally also the largest shareholder in the Swiss oil trading firm Glencore, who executed the purchase with a minimal direct investment, and used the “Singapore vehicle” or holding company to hold their Rosneft share.

Glencore guaranteed the Italian bank Intesa’s loan for only 1/3rd of its value.

Donald Trump has had business ties to Qatar’s government for years, according to a Jan. 10th report in Time:

Trump has stakes in four companies that appear to be tied in business in the desert nation. The country’s state-owned carrier, Qatar Airways, has leased an office in Manhattan’s Trump Tower since 2008. Ivanka Trump told Hotelier Middle East in 2015 that the Trump Hotel Collection was eyeing opportunities in Qatar.
It’s unclear when or if Qatari Airlines left Trump Tower, or when their lease actually expires, but a Jan. 28th story in Vox says that their operations have departed the President’s home building in New York.

What is clear is that Qatari Airlines’ CEO has publicly called Donald Trump a “good friend” and it is one of the countries excluded from the Muslim Ban, which coincidentally, does business with the President.

Recently, CEOs of American airliners met with Trump recently to decry government subsidized competition from Qatar and other foreign state-run carriers, which is an obvious conflict for President Trump.

If that wasn’t enough conflicted interest, Trump Organization announced a plan to build or license their brand in Qatar in 2015, but there are no further reports to substantiate the move.

The CEO of Qatari Airlines says that he was one of the first people to give congratulations after election day:

Qatar Airways’ Group Chief Executive Akbar al-Baker, who voiced support for Trump even after his comments about Muslims, welcomed his victory. “Our relationship goes way back, and I was one of the first to commend Donald on his well-deserved new leadership position,” he said in a statement to Reuters.
Qatari Airlines rented pricey office space at President Trump’s tower for many years. If their lease continues today, it would be a violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prevents federal employees and the executive from accepting any foreign payments whatsoever.

Qatar’s complete and total involvement in the Rosneft deal is undeniable.

The small Emirate that just publicly participated in the purchase of Russia’s state-run oil and gas giant — happens to be extremely close to Donald Trump.

It’s unknown if the Philippines had any direct or indirect involvement in the Rosneft transaction, but their President Duarte is a staunch Trump supporter, who assigned one of the President’s business partners as a trade envoy.

The island nation took the unusual step of hosting Russian naval ships in early January, which is extremely out of the ordinary for the longtime US ally and former colony.

What we do know is that the Cayman Islands company investors were conspicuously missing whe Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin and Vladimir Putin met with their new partners at Intesa Bank, the Qatar Investment Authority and Glencore in January.


Why Russia Needed The Money

At the heart of the Dossier’s disclosures is the Russian goal of ending economic sanctions, some of which specifically target Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, who was Putin’s top deputy in government service just a few short years ago, in a country where the lines between business and government can be blurry.

President Obama’s 2014 sanctions have crippled the Russian economy when compounded with low global oil prices.

That caused a massive budget gap last year, which led Putin to privatize assets to pay current costs for the Russian government.

After President Obama leveled retaliatory sanctions in December 2016 and expelled diplomats in late December for meddling in our election, Vladimir Putin announced and then stunningly reserved retaliation.

Last month, disgraced Gen. Michael Flynn was fired as NSA, apparently just for discussing Russian sanctions with the Russian Ambassador in late December.

At the time, Obama’s expulsion of Russian diplomats and spies sparked a highly unusual public “bromance” between the President-elect and the dictator, which sparked speculation about a quid pro quo when Trump tweeted a love letter to the Russian dictator.

Strategically, Russia is desperate to shake the larger economic sanctions, but America’s Congress is seeking more, not less economic retaliation against Putin’s regime.

Shortly after taking office, President Trump did indeed relax sanctions against Russia’s lead spy agency, the FSB, but most observers said was a minor concession.

Into that void, Trump’s lawyer and a group of his Ukrainian family connections and lawmakers, and the notorious Felix Sater appeared with a “peace plan” that would’ve accomplished the end of sanctions.

One of the ‘peacemakers,’ a Ukrainian relative of Trump’s trusted lawyer Michael Cohen, has already perished under mysterious circumstances since then.

If America lifts sanctions against the Putin regime, then the value of Russia’s public oil companies stands to skyrocket.

Already, Donald Trump’s presence has sparked a market rally on Moscow’s MICEX stock exchange.

US Media Is Connecting The Dots On Steele’s Dossier

Open source journalism confirms some of the more important political elements of the Trump Russia Dossier.

My original report two weeks ago revealed a major point of affirmation in CNN’s interview with former Trump campaign associate, J.D. Gordon, whose remarks confirmed a serious political allegation in the Trump Russia Dossier.

Then, Rachel Maddow echoed the essence of our report on MSNBC a few days later and added that Politico linked a participant in the RNC Ukraine policy changes to one of then-Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort’s associates, who is himself a foreign national being investigated by the FBI.

Wikileaks involvement to assist Russia in Trump’s campaign is a cornerstone of the dossier’s claims; it was seen as essential for Putin and Russia to maintain plausible deniability for political interference.

Sure enough, new factual data shows that the anti-secrecy organization switched to their web hosting to use a Russian DNS server right before releasing the most damaging email material during last year’s elections.

That means Vladimir Putin certainly has knowledge of the physical location of Wikileaks’ servers and allows their messages to be broadcast using Russian soil.

Trump’s former top advisor Roger Stone admitted to communicating with Russian hackers in August 2016, during the election about releases of information through Wikileaks.

This month, Gen. Flynn revealed that he was secretly an unregistered Turkish foreign agent ‘volunteering’ his time during the Trump campaign, and Congress revealed proof this week, which he was simultaneously on the payroll of Russian state-sponsored RT “News” and the Kaspersky security firm, who is thought to have been involved in the election hacks.

One must imagine that Flynn’s role as a secret, unregistered foreign agent of two nations (in other words, he’s a SPY) is one of the main targets of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation.

“When the dossier became public it generated more questions than answers,” says Scott Dworkin late at night via chat. “Over the last several months we’ve corroborated the dossier with the facts. The deeper we dig, the more truth we find in it. Just look at the author — Christopher Steele — who is a former MI-6 agent who’s saved more lives than Trump ever has.”

“He’s the real person people imagine James Bond to be.”
The Trump Russia Dossier describes the Rosneft privatization deal almost exactly, and Putin’s resulting purge of Russian allies and ex-officials looks like the kind of deadly cover up a dictator would apply, to erase his friends who knew about the deal.

Scott Dworkin says to expect full confirmation of the report within a week from official sources, or when Steele testifies in front of Congress in person or via remote link.

“A majority of the dossier and its contents are factual,” says the intrepid investigator Dworkin, who began making #TrumpLeaks posts in October. Now, when he tweets @funder 3 million people per day see and share his research. “The dossier is more real than anything Trump’s ever said.”

“A majority of it is factual and news reports over time have proven some of those facts.”

This weekend, the Republican Chair of the House Intel Committee said that only one person is being investigated for treason in the White House by the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence division.

There’s no way a deal of this magnitude would completely envelop the Trump Campaign, its manager, its outside affiliates and inside agents so thoroughly, without the principal or head of a group knowing that something was happening.

Any reasonable person would have to conclude that Donald Trump is the FBI’s target, based upon the bevy of circumstantial evidence tying RNC campaign events to Russian oil, economic sanctions, and the simmering conflict in Ukraine.

Nearly three decades ago, Trump admitted on national television to participating in a straw-man transaction with the Sultan of Brunei and infamous Iran-Contra middleman Adnan Khashoggi, through which he acquired a large yacht, so we’ve got proof that the Trump Organization has engaged these kinds of multi-national transactions in the Middle East.

The most important commodity traded in the oil business or politics is money.

The privatization deal described in Christopher Steele’s dossier has played out on the pages of Bloomberg and Reuters for a year — shows that there was a whole lot of money in brokering oil deals for Donald Trump’s associates, and a rapid profit by Qatar if sanctions are released this year.

The only question that’s not even pondered in these many public reports, and which must be a central focus of the American intelligence community’s investigations:

Where is the $500 million dollar brokerage fee today?

Where did the other $2 billion dollars come from?

What is Donald Trump’s true role in the deal?

Here’s the complete Democratic Coalition report:

Democratic Coalition Report On Trump Russia Dossier by Grant Stern on Scribd

Here’s an infographic which describes many of the key players in the Trump Russian Dossier:

https://thesternfacts.com/trump-russia- ... 3370349b67
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 » Mon May 14, 2018 7:47 am

stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Feb 27, 2018 5:27 pm wrote:So who do you think disappeared Mifsud? :shrug:

Things are getting progressively stranger.



In a new book, the lawyer—who is Mifsud's "partner and best friend," per Simona Mangiante—says that Mifsud has been "requested to hide, not to communicate, and not to speak to the press. He has been ‘put away’ and threatened to stay quiet.”

https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/sta ... 8701957120


Mueller's Probe Is Even More Expansive Than It Seems

The special counsel’s team has interviewed a number of big names. But their interest in more obscure players tells a story, too.

Natasha Bertrand7:00 AM ET
FBI agents working for special counsel Robert Mueller allegedly detained a lawyer with ties to Russia who is closely associated with Joseph Mifsud, the shadowy professor who claimed during the election that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

The revelation was made in a book co-written by that lawyer, Stephan Roh, and set to be published next month. “The Faking of RUSSIA-GATE: The Papadopoulos Case” is the latest in a stream of books aiming to capitalize on the chaos of this political moment. But it sheds new light on the expansive nature of Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election interference and possible ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign team and Moscow. It also highlights Mueller’s interest in answering one of the probe’s biggest outstanding questions: whether the campaign knew in advance that Russia planned to interfere in the election.

Mifsud is one of several key figures among a complicated cast of characters shaping the Russia probe. In the spring of 2016, Mifsud told a young Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” according to the special counsel’s statement of the offense against Papadopoulos, who was indicted for misleading federal agents about his conversations with Mifsud. Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee months earlier, and would soon break into Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s inbox. It is still not clear how Mifsud seemed to know in advance that Russia sought to compromise Clinton’s candidacy.


The lawyer allegedly questioned by Mueller’s team, Stephan Roh, is a German multimillionaire with ties to Russia. He hired Mifsud as a “business-development consultant” in 2015, and is Mifsud’s “partner and best friend” and “the money behind him,” Papadopoulos’s wife, Simona Mangiante, who worked for Mifsud briefly, told me. Roh’s wife is Olga Roh, a Russian fashion designer who appeared on the British reality TV show Meet the Russians. He’s also in the nuclear-energy business: He acquired a small British nuclear consulting firm from scientist Dr. John Harbottle in 2005, according to the BBC, and invited Harbottle on an all-expenses paid trip to Moscow shortly thereafter, Harbottle told the outlet. Harbottle declined the offer because he “smelt a rat,” he said, and was then fired. Within three years, Severnvale Nuclear Services’ turnover went from under $100,000 to $44 million, per the BBC.

Roh intersected with Mifsud at two institutions: the now-defunct London Academy of Diplomacy and Link Campus University, a private institution in Rome that Roh co-owns, and where Mifsud taught briefly. In April 2016, Mifsud and Roh spoke on a panel together at the Kremlin-backed Valdai Club—a think tank that is close to President Vladimir Putin and hosts him every year for a keynote address. The club is described in the book as “one of the most influential Russian think tanks in Moscow, maybe even the most prestigious.”


Roh and his co-author Thierry Pastor, who also knows Mifsud, write in the book that, upon arriving in New York City with his family in October 2017, “one of the co-authors” was “fished from the passport control” line at John F. Kennedy airport while his family “was retained with armed police force.” (Photos posted by Roh’s wife on social media in October 2017 suggest she was visiting New York in late October.) He was then interrogated for “hours,” they write, by “a team of Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating Russia-Gate.” The book alleges that he and his family were then “observed, followed, and taped, at every moment and every place in New York” by the FBI and that his family was assigned to “special rooms at the hotel” while security personnel “patrolled the corridors.”

It is unclear whether Roh was actually surveilled after being interviewed—a spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment. The book further alleges that Mifsud is not a Russian spy but is actually “deeply embedded in the network of Western Intelligence Services.” Papadopoulos, too, is a “western intelligence operative,” the authors assert, who was “placed” in the Trump campaign by the FBI. In that sense, the book is similar to one written recently by another obscure player detained and questioned by Mueller’s team earlier this year: Ted Malloch, a controversial London-based academic with ties to Trump associates Roger Stone and Nigel Farage. In his book The Plot to Destroy Trump: How the Deep State Fabricated the Russia Dossier to Subvert the President, Malloch argues that the apparent covert intelligence activity connected to the Trump campaign was not Russian, but Western.


Roh and Pastor’s prevailing thesis is that Papadopoulos’s “mission” was to bring Trump into contact with Russian officials. “That’s nuts,” Papadopoulos’s wife Mangiante told me in response to the book’s theory. “From ‘coffee boy’ to spy … George has been upgraded!” she joked, referring to the Trump campaign’s claim that Papadopoulos, a young energy consultant who joined the Trump campaign in March 2016, was so low-level that he was basically a “coffee boy.”

Papadopoulos was indicted in October for lying to federal agents about his contact with Mifsud and is now cooperating with Mueller’s investigation. He landed on the FBI’s radar after he drunkenly told an Australian diplomat in May 2016, one month after meeting with Mifsud, that Russia had dirt on Clinton, according to The New York Times. The diplomat purportedly relayed the details of his conversation with Papadopoulos to Australian government officials, who in turn flagged it to the U.S. government shortly after news surfaced that the DNC had been hacked. Papadopoulos’s inadvertent disclosure, combined with the massive data breach, is apparently what triggered the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe.

According to the book, Mueller interviewed another Mifsud associate in the summer of 2017: Ivan Timofeev, a program director at a Russian government-funded think tank who Mueller described in court filings as “connected to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” Mifsud connected Timofeev to Papadopoulos by email in the spring of 2016, according to the filings. Over lunch earlier this year, the book says, Timofeev described being stopped by the FBI at JFK in “mid-2017” and questioned about his relationship with Papadopoulos, the DNC hacks, and about the “thousands of emails with dirt on Hillary Clinton.” His cellphone and laptop were seized, too. Timofeev told the FBI that Papadopoulos “put forth the idea of a possible visit to Russia by Mr. Trump or his team members,” but that such a meeting never materialized. He told Papadopoulos that he was awaiting “an official request from the Donald Trump Campaign,” according to the authors.

Mifsud has virtually disappeared since his name was made public late last year. In their book, Roh and Pastor say that “the head of the Italian secret services contacted the President of LINK Campus, Vincenzo Scotti,” and recommended that Mifsud “disappear.” Since then, Mifsud “has been requested to hide, not to communicate, and not to speak to the press,” Roh and Pastor write. “He has been ‘put away’ and threatened to stay quiet.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ms/560255/




Former Trump campaign aide is helping Russian firm shed sanctions

US slaps new sanctions on Russian oligarchs, government officials (April 2018)
Washington (CNN)A former senior campaign and transition aide to President Donald Trump recently inked a deal to help a Russian oligarch's conglomerate shed sanctions the Trump administration slapped on them last month.

Bryan Lanza, who is in regular contact with White House officials, is lobbying on behalf of the chairman of EN+ Group, an energy and aluminum firm presently controlled by Oleg Deripaska, according to several sources. Deripaska is a billionaire who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and was the target of US sanctions imposed last month. Lanza was a CNN political contributor but is no longer with the network.

Lanza is representing the chairman of EN+ Group, but not Deripaska directly. The company is seeking to reduce Deripaska's ownership in the company enough to be freed from US sanctions. Deripaska is expected to maintain a substantial stake in the company.

The moves by Lanza and Mercury Public Affairs LLC, the firm where he works as a managing director in its Washington office, on behalf of their client don't appear to be anything more than standard lobbying. But the deal is the latest brazen example of how Trump's "drain the swamp" campaign pledge has led to little change in a town where paying for access is a lucrative industry. In fact, Trump has presided over the expansion of a new generation of influence peddlers who have used their actual or perceived proximity to the President to line their pockets.

Corey Lewandowski, who served as Trump's first campaign manager and touts his close ties to the President, started his own consulting business in Washington after the election. Brian Ballard, Trump's longtime lobbyist in Florida and a GOP fundraiser, opened up a Washington office and brought on Susie Wiles, who led Trump's campaign in Florida. Jason Miller, former communications director for the campaign and transition who is also a CNN contributor, landed a plum gig as a managing director in global consulting firm Teneo's strategy group. He worked in crisis communications before the Trump campaign.

Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, has weathered the brunt of the scrutiny for allegedly trying to sell access to the White House. But similar arrangements have been rampant in Washington -- under both Democratic and Republican administrations -- and the old way of doing business has continued to thrive since Trump took office.

Free from sanctions


Deripaska is seeking to sell enough of his stake in EN+ Group -- the group whose chairman hired Mercury to represent it before the Trump administration -- to free the company from sanctions. Under the Treasury Department's rules, companies that are under the majority control of sanctioned people are themselves automatically sanctioned until the person in question reduces their stake in the company below 50%. Lanza's firm legally disclosed the deal to the government last week.
Lanza's involvement with EN+ Group began within the last month or so, according to a source familiar with the transaction. The source said the former Trump campaign aide is not representing Deripaska himself, only the board chairman of the group attempting to free itself from the Russian oligarch's control by helping to reduce Deripaska's stake in EN+ Group from roughly 70% to below 50%. That chairman -- the former British energy minister, Lord Gregory Barker -- is listed as Mercury's client.

The source familiar with the transaction noted Lanza and the Mercury team's first phone call with Barker shortly before the Treasury Department granted Deripaska's companies, including EN+ Group, an additional month to get in compliance with sanctions. The source said Lanza and other Mercury lobbyists presented the extension to the administration officials as a "win for the president" because it would ultimately force a Russian oligarch to cede control of major companies.

Barker declined to comment. A Treasury Department spokesman declined comment.

Michael McKeon, a partner at Mercury, acknowledged Lanza's role on the EN+ Group account.

"He is part of the team," McKeon told CNN, noting that the disclosure form Mercury filed on May 4 "speaks to what Lord Barker is trying to do (regarding) the ownership of the company and our role assisting that effort."

Lanza is not listed as being involved in lobbying for Barker or EN+ Group on the disclosure form.

Mercury's role


Mercury itself has undergone scrutiny over the past year for its role in the Ukrainian lobbying operation that ensnared Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the election and related matters. The firm has denied wrongdoing and has said its employees have cooperated with investigators.

Lanza's work with the Russian-linked firm comes as Mueller continues to investigate whether there was any collusion between Trump campaign aides and Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has denied any collusion during the campaign.

Deripaska has intersected with the Trump orbit on a few occasions, most notably with Manafort. While at the helm of the Trump campaign, Manafort used an intermediary to offer Deripaska private briefings about the election, according to The Washington Post. Mueller's team later noted in a March court filing that the intermediary "has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016."

No evidence has emerged to suggest that Manafort ever briefed Deripaska. But Mueller's team has brought charges against Manafort for his lobbying work and financial reporting before he joined the Trump campaign. Manafort has pleaded not guilty.

While there's nothing illegal about Lanza's work with the Russian-connected firm, it's a stark example of how former Trump campaign aides have continued to enjoy access to Trump and other senior administration officials and have used those ties to benefit clients ranging from defense contractors to foreign governments and media conglomerates.

Even Cohen -- who, according to sources, saw his influence with Trump plummet after Inauguration Day -- earned more than $2 million between Election Day and early 2018, according to companies he has represented, pitching himself aggressively to corporations as someone who could offer them insight into how to approach the mercurial new President.

Over the course of his work, sources said Cohen maintained contact with some senior White House officials.

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, and Ivanka Trump, the President's eldest daughter, both worked to block Cohen from an official role in the Trump administration, sources said. But, according to two sources, Kushner still kept in touch with Cohen once he was in the White House.

But Cohen's direct interaction with Trump appeared to be minimal after the inauguration. They crossed paths at Mar-a-Lago on a couple of occasions and Cohen paid at least one visit to the White House, sources said.

"I got the impression (Cohen) could not get a phone call returned, nor could he get an audience with the President," said a source close to Trump's legal team.

Aggressive pitches


As aggressive as Cohen was in his pitches to prospective clients, one source said, Corey Lewandowski -- Trump's former campaign manager -- was more braggadocious about his access to Trump.

The source claimed Lewandowski had pitched companies by telling them "Trump doesn't make a decision without checking with me."

On Friday, AT&T acknowledged that Lewandowski's firm pitched them, but they said they didn't make a deal. AT&T is seeking government approval to acquire Time Warner, CNN's parent company.

Lewandowski, who has so far avoided registering as a lobbyist, continues to enjoy a high level of access to the President. Two sources confirmed he dined with Trump in the White House residence in March. He also joined Trump at a rally in Michigan in late April.

Meanwhile, even lesser-known Trump aides are making a living off their ties to the White House.

Former New York Republican Rep. John Sweeney has made more than $200,000 lobbying on behalf of a European pipeline venture owned by Gazprom, the state-controlled Russian natural gas company, according to federal lobbying disclosures. The New York Republican previously worked on Trump's campaign and assisted with administration hires during the presidential transition. Sweeney declined to discuss details about the clients he represents.

Unlike some of the newbies to the sphere of Washington influence, David Urban -- a former senior Trump campaign adviser -- has been a registered lobbyist for more than a decade. He works for a firm that represents a roster of top tier companies across the healthcare, telecommunications and utilities fields. Urban, who is also a CNN contributor, declined to comment.

And Barry Bennett, who served for a period as a senior adviser to the campaign, cofounded a firm called Avenue Strategies and represents a number of foreign governments. He was originally partners with Lewandowski, who left the firm amid allegations that he was engaging in lobbying activities without appropriate registration.

"I've been in town for 30 years. Most of my clients are based on my experience here," Bennett told CNN. "President Trump is certainly helpful to my business. But I had clients before that too."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/12/politics ... index.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 14, 2018 6:11 pm

Anna Massoglia

NEW: $1M mystery gift to Trump inauguration from "BH Group" traced to groups & individuals with influence over judicial nominations—including "dark money" nonprofit Wellspring Cmte & FedSoc's Leonard Leo, who listed BH Group as his employer in FEC filings http://www.mcclatchydc.com/latest-news/ ... 76219.html
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$1 million mystery gift to inauguration traced to conservative legal activists

One of the largest contributions to President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee in 2016 appears to have been orchestrated by a set of powerful conservative legal activists who have since been put in the driver’s seat of the administration’s push to select and nominate federal judges.

The $1 million inaugural gift came from a Northern Virginia company called BH Group, LLC. Unlike other generous corporate inaugural donors, like Bank of America and Dow Chemical, though, BH Group was a cipher, and likely was set up solely to prevent disclosure of the actual donor's name.

Almost nothing is known about the company, including who runs it or its reason for being beyond writing a seven-figure check on Dec. 22, 2016, almost a month before Trump was sworn in.

While the source of the money used to make the gift was masked from the public, a trail of clues puts the contribution at the doorstep of some of the same actors — most notably Leonard Leo, an executive vice president at the conservative Federalist Society — who have helped promote Trump’s mission, and that of his White House counsel, Don McGahn, to fill judicial vacancies as quickly as he can with staunchly conservative, preferably young jurists.

Set up four months to the day before it made the donation, BH Group’s address, as given in its Virginia incorporation papers, is a virtual office in Arlington, Va.; the only person identified on the filing is a Donna Smith.

That name, while common, matches the name of a longtime paralegal at the political law firm Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky, whose Warrenton, Va., office was listed as the Trump inaugural committee’s main address on the tax return it filed last February.

Holtzman Vogel is a Republican firm known for specializing in creative legal maneuvers that allow donors to conservative causes to remain anonymous, at least to the public.

In March, when a reporter tried to speak with Donna Smith about the BH Group, Michael Bayes, a partner at the firm, responded instead, saying “We don’t have any comment on client matters.”

Another connection to the BH Group was revealed in November 2017, when a politically active nonprofit called the Wellspring Committee filed tax documents showing a $750,000 payment to the newly-minted firm for “Public Relations.”

That’s a substantial payment, particularly given that the BH Group does not appear to have marketed itself as a public relations firm. The group doesn’t seem to have a website or any listings that advertise its services.

Similarly, the Wellspring Committee is a notoriously secretive Virginia nonprofit, with no demonstrable public-facing operations, no website for publicizing them and only three employees.

It’s also not clear why a group like Wellspring would need costly public relations assistance. Its representatives did not respond to requests to comment for this story.

The group only has a single board member, Neil Corkery, and almost all of its money in 2016 went out the door as grants to other conservative organizations or as payment to the BH Group.

Wellspring was practically the sole funder in 2016, to the tune of nearly $23.5 million, of the Judicial Crisis Network — a group that poured millions into stopping the Senate from confirming former President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick in the last year of his term, leaving an open slot for Trump to fill.

Legally, experts say there would be no problem with the Wellspring Committee giving $750,000 to the inaugural committee directly or, likely, giving it to the BH Group for that purpose; it’s not clear that straw donor rules apply to inaugural committees.

However, Wellspring’s characterization of the payment might raise issues for the nonprofit, if the check wasn't in fact for services rendered.

If Wellspring “intentionally misrepresented the payment” on its tax filing, said Lloyd Mayer, a tax professor at the University of Notre Dame, in an email, “that would in theory raise perjury concerns.” The IRS, however, rarely pursues cases based on inaccuracies in an organization’s tax filings.

At the center of the convoluted network through which the inaugural contribution flowed is Leonard Leo, the executive vice president at the Federalist Society, one of the nation’s most influential conservative legal organizations -- to which some say the White House has outsourced its judicial nomination process.

For example, when then-Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch was asked how he had come to Trump’s attention, he wrote, “On about December 2, 2016, I was contacted by Leonard Leo.”

Steven Calabresi, a Federalist cofounder and board member, told The Hill last year that Leo’s work offering guidance to the White House is solely in his capacity as an individual citizen.

But helping him in this task, according to the New York Times, is lawyer Ann Corkery, the wife of Neil Corkery, the Wellspring Committee’s president. Ann herself was president of Wellspring from its founding in 2008 until 2015.

The assistance between Leo and the Corkerys goes both ways. According to one source close to the three of them, Leo is directly involved in raising much of the anonymous money the Wellspring Committee brings in every year.

None of the three responded to requests for comment.

Though the source couldn’t confirm Leo’s role in the BH Group, Leo himself recently made the connection in a campaign finance filing reported to the Federal Election Commission: He listed “BH Group” as his employer.

It’s unlikely that Leo himself is the source of the $1 million, but his role at the Federalist Society allows him to meet and mingle with some of the wealthiest conservative donors in the country. The organization counts among its funders conservative billionaires like Charles and David Koch, as well as industry groups like the Chamber of Commerce and Fortune 500 companies like Walmart and Pfizer, according to its 2017 annual report.

Leo and another vice president at the Federalist Society, Jonathan Bunch, are also involved in a nonprofit called the BH Fund. A public records request by alumni and students at George Mason University shows that the BH Fund was set up to enforce a donor agreement with GMU’s Antonin Scalia Law School on behalf of an anonymous donor who pledged $20 million to the program, according to a report last year from Buzzfeed.

Last month, GMU’s president Ángel Cabrera — who has come under pressure for allowing donors to dictate conditions in return for financial gifts — said that some agreements the school accepted in return for contributions “fall short of the standards of academic independence.”

The donor providing the $20 million that Leo’s BH Fund administers is “low-profile, very wealthy and on the young side,” a source told McClatchy. But he or she is still anonymous.

As is the $1 million donor to Trump’s inauguration. Anonymous, that is, to the public.

“The public doesn’t know who is behind this million-dollar donation,” Fischer wrote, “but the Trump administration very likely does. Special interests tend to give to an inauguration in order to buy influence, so whomever is behind this $1 million check presumably made their identity known to the incoming administration.”

“It is hard to imagine,” he went on, “that this anonymous donor funded the inauguration simply because they were dying to see 3 Doors Down perform at the Lincoln Memorial.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/latest-news/ ... 76219.html

2:25 PM - 14 May 2018 from Washington, DC

McClatchyDC, Robert Maguire and OpenSecrets.org

Anna Massoglia

Some background from @OpenSecretsDC: The network with influence over Trump admin judicial picks didn't just have ties to mystery money behind Trump's inauguration—it was also involved in a "dark money" nonprofit airing ads & lobbying on SCOTUS confirmation

Wellspring’s dark money crucial to judicial group, helps others in Trump orbit

by Robert Maguire and Anna Massoglia on March 24, 2017
gorsuch (1)Moments after President Trump’s January announcement that Neil Gorsuch was his pick to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat, a small nonprofit that most Americans have never heard of launched ConfirmGorsuch.com. Complete with a tender video telling how Gorsuch “ran a paper route, shoveled snow, worked the night shift” before becoming a judge, the site provides biographical material and recorded lectures from Gorsuch.

The group behind the site, the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) let it be known that it was playing for keeps, pledging to put $10 million into ad campaigns and social media promotion and hiring multiple lobbyists, all meant to pressure senators into approving Gorsuch for the slot.

But don’t expect to soon learn what wealthy individual, corporation, or even, potentially, foreign entity is providing the cash for this pro-Gorsuch push. JCN, as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, can keep its wealthy funders anonymous. Mostly, anyway: The only traceable donors are other 501(c) organizations acting as conduits for the anonymous cash directed at JCN and other groups.

New tax returns obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics show that one such donor group, the Wellspring Committee, keeps the Judicial Crisis Network afloat, as it has for years. The filings also show that Wellspring’s own cashflow comes largely from an $8.5 million contribution from a single anonymous donor.

In addition to pumping millions of dollars into JCN, the Wellspring Committee began to fund a handful of other nascent organizations — like the 45Committee — that have strong ties to the Trump administration and are boosting the White House’s agenda.

Supreme reversal

Anyone familiar with JCN’s activities over the last year may have gotten whiplash in January reading the group’s support for putting “Judge Gorsuch’s tremendous qualifications” over “playing silly partisan political games.” After Scalia’s passing last February, JCN spent millions on ads calling on senators to deny President Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, a hearing or a vote.

But that reversal fits with JCN’s history of supporting Republican nominees and blocking Democratic ones at all costs. Since JCN’s launch in 2005, it established itself as a key player in Supreme Court confirmation fights and longstanding ‘dark money’ conduit that allows monied conservatives to funnel money into these efforts without having their identities disclosed. Originally called the Judicial Confirmation Network, JCN was started by a low-profile conservative fundraiser and lawyer named Ann Corkery (along with her husband Neil Corkery as treasurer). It had substantial early backing from “California foreclosure king” Robin Arkley II to help marshal support for President George W. Bush’s nominees to the federal bench.

Conveniently, the Wellspring Committee is also run by Ann Corkery, who continued to draw a $120,000 salary for her 10 hours of work per week for the organization fiscal year 2015. (The group’s 2016 filings will not be available until later this year.)

JCN rebranded itself the Judicial Crisis Network following President Barack Obama’s election, shifting focus to blocking the new president’s federal court nominees and spreading the network’s reach to state level races. Aiming to influence judges and like-minded attorneys general in several states, JCN began pumping millions into other groups that took big stakes in state Supreme Court and AG races, including Wisconsin Club for Growth, the American Future Fund, and the Republican Attorneys General Association.

Double-dark money

In 2015, the Wellspring Committee continued to bankroll JCN with more than $5.7 million, on top of nearly $7 million it gave the prior year to boost JCN’s spending in the 2014 midterms.

Wellspring’s donors remain a mystery, but their beneficiaries do not, because 501(c)(4) groups are required to report grants they make to other organizations in public portions of their tax returns.

JCN is, and has been for years, Wellspring’s main grantee, and it is safe to say that the JCN would not exist in its current form without Wellspring’s largess. For the period covering January 2012 to December 2015 — the last four years for which data is available — Wellspring reported grants of nearly $15.4 million to JCN, accounting for nearly 67 percent of Wellspring’s total outlays over four years.

During the comparable period, from July 2011 to June 2015, JCN’s total reported revenues approached $17.3 million, meaning that it received around 90 percent of its funds from the Wellspring Committee. (Nonprofit groups like Wellspring and JCN can set their own fiscal years, so it is impossible to track grants and receipts over exact time periods).

Funding GOP data, opposition research and more

Despite its large grant to JCN, Wellspring still had some funds left for other groups. For instance, it also gave $100,000 to “AR2 Inc.,” the 501(c)(4) arm of the “America Rising” network that creates and disseminates opposition research for Republican candidates and groups.

Only a small circle of other groups have reported any funds going to or from AR2. The super PAC arm of America Rising reported receiving funds from AR2. And AR2 received a payment from Ending Spending the same year. A 501(c)(4) that has earned a reputation as a heavy political spender, Ending Spending’s CEO is Todd Ricketts, President Trump’s nominee to be deputy secretary of commerce, and it is chaired by John “Joe” Ricketts, Todd’s father.

One other America Rising connection: Wellspring paid $500,000 to a vendor, the Opportunity Solutions Corp., which is located in a co-working office suite in Arlington and has made only scant information publicly available. No other (c)(4) groups or political committees made payments to the company, but incorporation records reveal that Opportunity Solutions’ treasurer is Rebecca Schuller, who also led America Rising’s initiative to target independent female voters during the 2016 general election.

Wellspring also reported giving $200,000 to Data Trust, a self-proclaimed “Republican and conservative data ecosystem” that is run by former Republican National Committee staff and has become the RNC’s well-curated repository of voter information. Wellspring lists Data Trust as a 501(c)(4) organization, but OpenSecrets Blog could find no record of such a nonprofit. The only client reporting payments to Data Trust, the corporation, during the 2016 election cycle was the RNC.

Grants like those made to America Rising and Data Trust in the first year of the 2016 election cycle show Wellspring’s affinity for groups whose aim it is to elect Republicans to office. Nonprofit “social welfare” groups like Wellspring aren’t supposed to devote the majority of their time and money to electoral activities; they’re also not supposed to work for the benefit of a single group, like a political party.

Coming full circle

In 2015, the Wellspring Committee also became an early backer of a shadowy nonprofit that eventually reported spending over $20 million opposing Hillary Clinton and supporting Donald Trump in the presidential race: the 45Committee. Wellspring gave $750,000 to this rapid-response political operation helmed by Todd Ricketts (remember America Rising and Ending Spending?) and worked in tandem with an affiliated super PAC called Future45.

Ending Spending gave $75,000 to 45Committee, according to newly filed tax documents obtained by OpenSecrets Blog that cover 2015, and Wellspring’s 2015 filings show ten times that, $750,000. And Brian Baker, Ending Spending’s president who also serves on AR2’s board and is the Ricketts family’s political adviser, runs the political operation of 45Committee and Future45.

Together, Future45 and 45Committee spent over $40 million in the 2016 presidential election alone. However, the full amount spent by 45Committee won’t be revealed until its tax forms are filed — possibly later this year, possibly in 2018 — and their donors may remain secret forever.

But the groups are still highly relevant: As Team Trump has made the transition from campaign to administration, 45Committee has likewise shifted from promoting or opposing candidates to spending millions supporting President Trump’s cabinet nominees.

And to bring the whole web back to its center, Wellspring gave $75,000 to the Federalist Society, an organization of conservatives and libertarians who “place a premium on individual liberty, traditional values and the rule of law.”

The Federalist Society is run by longtime Executive Vice President Leonard A. Leo. Leo has been credited with creating Trump’s list of possible Supreme Court nominees and was Gorsuch’s initial point of contact with the Trump administration.

And it’s not much of a coincidence that JCN pledged to spend $10 million to get Gorsuch confirmed. Leo, after all, was a major force behind the creation of Wellspring’s primary beneficiary, attending a formative dinner just after Bush’s re-election with Ann Corkery, Robin Arkley and…Justice Scalia.

Who knew how neatly it would all wrap up?
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/0 ... ump-orbit/


https://twitter.com/annalecta/status/996139463477735424


Ukrainian politician linked to Cohen/Sater plans to testify before Mueller grand jury Friday.


Ukrainian politician behind controversial peace proposal to appear in Mueller probe

JOSH MEYER05/14/2018 05:11 PM EDT

A lobbying campaign by led by Paul Manafort and Rick Gates promoting former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych has caught the attention of Robert Mueller.
Ukrainian politican Andrii Artemenko’s testimony could help special counsel Robert Mueller’s team fill in the gaps on the peace plan. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
KIEV — A Ukrainian politician who communicated with Trump associates about a controversial plan to resolve Ukraine’s conflict with Kremlin-backed rebels said Monday that he has been called to testify before a grand jury connected to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Andrii Artemenko said he could not provide details of his upcoming appearance before the grand jury, which he said is scheduled for Friday. But he said he assumed he would be asked about the peace plan, about which he communicated with Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s longtime personal attorney, in early 2017.

“I received the subpoena last week,” Artemenko told POLITICO by telephone, adding that he intended to comply with the request. He said he would appear in person.

A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.

The Artemenko case is one of the more unusual developments in the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election. The New York Times reported in February 2017 that Artemenko had contacted Felix Sater, a former business associate of Trump’s, to find out how he could make his plan for peace in Ukraine known to the Trump administration. Sater introduced Artemenko to Cohen, who left the plan in the office of then-national security adviser Michael Flynn, The Times reported. (Cohen has denied that, saying he threw the document away.)

When the news broke about the peace plan, it caused a scandal in Ukraine. Among the plan’s proposals was the idea of leasing to Russia the Crimean peninsula — which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014 — for 50 years, in exchange for ending the ongoing war in Ukraine’s Donbass region. The back-channel effort also sought to have the Trump administration drop sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama White House.

Artemenko was ejected from his political party, and Ukraine's top prosecutor launched an investigation into whether he had committed treason. In May 2017, Ukrainian officials stripped him of his citizenship, ostensibly because he also held a Canadian passport. Artemenko said he was being punished politically for opposing President Petro Poroshenko, whom he also accused of corruption.

Artemenko’s testimony could help Mueller’s team fill in the gaps on the peace plan, which he has been investigating in part because of the roles of Cohen and Sater, who also worked together to try and launch a Trump-branded development in Moscow starting in early 2015.

The plan may also be of interest to Mueller because it reportedly was hatched shortly after Flynn discussed dropping sanctions against Russia in a call with the Russian ambassador that was intercepted by intelligence officials. Flynn was fired from the White House after it became clear that he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations about Russian sanctions.

There have been conflicting stories about whether Russian officials were involved in hatching the peace plan.

Cohen told The Washington Post that Artemenko boasted during their January 2017 meeting that the Russian government “was on board” with the proposal. Artemenko denied that, telling The Post that he had not spoken to any Russian officials and that the proposal came about during consultations with Ukrainian officials.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/ ... lan-585653


seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 04, 2017 8:00 pm wrote:another dead guy

New Development on the Michael Cohen 'Peace Plan' Meeting

ByJOSH MARSHALLPublishedMARCH 4, 2017, 7:12 PM EDT
4993Views
There is a startling new development in the ongoing Trump/Russia story.

Last week I wrote about Michael Cohen and his extensive network of personal and business relationships in the Ukrainian-American emigre community. One of those was a man named Alex Oronov, who runs a major agribusiness concern in Ukraine. Oronov was a partner in the ethanol business Cohen and Cohen's brother Bryan set up in Ukraine about a decade ago. Oronov is Bryan Cohen's father-in-law. Today we learned that Oronov apparently organized that 'peace plan' meeting that brought together Ukrainian MP Artemenko, Cohen and Felix Sater. About four hours ago Andrii Artemenko, the Ukrainian parliamentarian who came to New York with that 'peace plan', went on Facebook to announce that Alex Oronov has died.

(I was first alerted to Artemenko's post by Natasha Betrand of Business Insider who has been all over this story.)

The rest of the post is a sort of pained rant, blaming Oronov's death on the reporting of The New York Times. The Times you'll remember published the story on Feb. 19 describing the meeting between Artemenko, Michael Cohen and Felix Sater. Artemenko describes himself as a pawn caught up in a war between the Times and Donald Trump and said the stress created by the article and the subsequent press attention was too much for Oronov to bear.

A notable detail is that Artemenko says that it was Oronov who arranged the meeting described in that initial story by the Times. Here is a loose translation courtesy of a friend who is a Russian speaker: "Yes, I’m guilty …. Alex Oronov, my partner, my friend, my mentor, Alex was a family member of Michael Cohen. And he organized all kinds of stuff, including an introduction and a meeting for me with Michael Cohen."

The remembrance website legacy.com has a listing for an Alex Oronov who died on March 2. The date of birth, June 9, 1948, matches the date of birth listed on Oronov's Florida voter registration records. The condolence page also has one well-wisher describing selling farm equipment to Oronov for transshipment to Ukraine. So there's little doubt that this is the Alex Oronov associated with Michael Cohen. A person who answered the phone Saturday night at an address associated with Oronov’s daughter told TPM the family had no comment.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new ... an-meeting



Natasha Bertrand‏Verified account
@NatashaBertrand

Andrey Artemenko writes on Facebook that Alex Oronov, father of Michael Cohen's sister-in-law, has died. He blames the media. cc @joshtpm
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why 19.5%?
and then Russia buys it back



Jed Shugerman


Jed Shugerman Retweeted All In w/Chris Hayes
I've produced a Google Doc timeline of the alleged Russian bribery scheme, through Qatar’s 12/8/16 purchase of Rosneft, in return for Trump's lifting of Russian sanctions. If Cohen/Flynn met with Qatari Ahmed Al-Rumaihi 4 days later, that's another link.


Russia/Qatar/Trump Timeline

View all posts by Jed ShugermanMay 14, 2018
I have produced a Google Doc timeline, based on publicly available reports and documents, of the alleged bribery scheme between Russia and Trump associates, possibly through Qatar’s purchase of Rosneft.

Summary:

Russia’s sale of Rosneft Gas is the key event in the Steele Dossier’s quid pro quo allegation. On June 2016, Russians allegedly offer Trump associates a massive payout derived from the commissions on Russia’s sale of 19.5% of state energy giant Rosneft ($11 billion), in return for lifting sanctions. Weeks after the election, Flynn and Kushner are in contact with Russian officials. Then Russia sells a 19.5% stake in Rosneft in a concealed deal, eventually revealed to be with Qatar. Immediately after the deal, a Qatari diplomat allegedly met with Cohen and Flynn at Trump Tower.

In January 2017, payments from Russian oligarch to Michael Cohen begin, and Flynn reportedly texts associates that Trump will lift Russian sanctions, opening up huge personal profits. But around this time, the Dossier is published. Kushner sought money directly from Qatar, because it is possible that Qatar was backing off of the deal, wary of its exposure. In April 2017, Kushner reportedly escalated a Gulf state crisis between Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar with a risk of regional war. A few months later, the Qatar-backed Apollo Group delivers $184 million to Kushner, who has been in financial crisis over a disastrous purchase of 666 5th Ave.

The link to the full Google Doc timeline, which I will continually update, is here.

Here is a link to my first blogpost on the Qatar connection on June 3, 2017.

Author: Jed Shugerman

Legal historian at Fordham Law School, teaching Torts, Administrative Law, and Constitutional History. JD/PhD in History, Yale. Red Sox and Celtics fan, youth soccer coach. Author of "The People's Courts: Pursuing Judicial Independence in America" (2012) on the rise of judicial elections in America. I filed an amicus brief in the Emoluments litigation against Trump along with a great team of historians. I'm working on "The Rise of the Prosecutor Politicians," a history of prosecutors and American politics, and another project on the origins of independent agencies in America.
https://shugerblog.com/2018/05/14/russi ... -timeline/


Timeline Summary: Possible Quid Pro Quo
Russia’s sale of Rosneft Gas is the key event in the Steele Dossier’s quid pro quo allegation. On June 2016, Russians allegedly offer Trumper associates a massive payout derived from the commissions on its sale of 19.5% of state energy giant Rosneft ($11 billion), in return for lifting sanctions. A month after the election, Russia sells the stake in Rosneft in a concealed deal, eventually revealed to be with Qatar. A Qatari diplomat allegedly met with Cohen and Flynn at Trump Tower immediately after the deal

January 2017: Payments from Russian oligarch to Michael Cohen begin. But the Dossier is published. Kushner sought money directly from Qatar, because it is possible that Qatar was backing off, wary of its exposure. In April 2017, Kushner reportedly escalated a Gulf state crisis between Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar with a risk of regional war. A few months later, the Qatar-backed Apollo Group delivers $184 million to Kushner, who has been in financial crisis over a disastrous purchase of 666 5th Ave.

TIMELINE STARTING WITH 2016 CAMPAIGN
Dec. 2015: Moscow event: Flynn and Putin are seated at the same table, with Vekselberg in room

June 9, 2016: Trump Tower meeting between Don Trump, Jr., Kushner, Manafort, and Russians Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin. Trump, Jr.’s emails about the meeting are here. Trump’s hint about this meeting on June 7 and his tweet about Clinton’s emails on the day of the Trump Tower meeting are here.

Summer 2016, as Steele Dossier alleges: Russians made a deal in the summer of 2016 to sell 19.5% of fossil fuel giant Rosneft, a multibillion dollar deal, and secretly transfer benefits to Trump officials. The dossier alleged that Carter Page was a campaign intermediary to meet personally with Russians, and that Igor Sechin—the CEO of Rosneft and a close Putin ally—and Page had held a “secret meeting” to discuss “the issues of future bilateral energy cooperation and prospects for an associated move to lift Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia.” The dossier further alleged that Sechin offered commissions from the Rosneft sale in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Russia. (Page appears to have been pushed out of Trump orbit by the fall, but others appear to have followed up on this arrangement).

Nov. 18, 2016: Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, sends a letter to Pence with concerns about Flynn’s links to Russia and Turkey, and requests more information.

Dec. 1, 2016: Flynn and Jared Kushner meet Russia’s Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower. According to Kushner’s own testimony, he proposed a secret communication link with the Kremlin through the Russian Embassy in an effort to find a “secure line.”

Dec. 7, 2016: Consistent with a key allegation in the Steele Dossier, Russia announces their sale of 19.5% of state energy giant Rosneft ($11 billion). The identity of the buyers are initially concealed, and are later revealed to be Qatar and Glencore. The sale is completed on Dec. 8th or 9th, and Qatar and Glencore immediately sell off these assets in smaller parts. (Odd financial twist: Russia later bought back a significant amount of the 19.5% stake, claiming that its intent was that the sale was a temporary measure to bring in cash, like a loan. Alternatively, could the same and buy-back plan be part of a way to create a paper transaction to generate commissions that could be paid without detection or regulation to Trump associates? A Qatar-backed firm later gave Kushner’s family company a $184 million loan). And why 19.5%? A colleague pointed out that the 19.5% in both the Dossier’s description and the actual Qatar on Dec. 9 deal makes sense, because there seems to be a 20% legal threshold rule for reporting financing and investors. These deals are under that 20% threshold because the dealmakers seem to be unusually focused on secrecy and evading regulators and prosecutors. This deal’s framework may have been in place in 2014, even before Trump was running, because Russia intended to shield this deal from scrutiny however it was eventually executed.

Dec. 12: As Michael Avenatti alleges, “Why was Ahmed Al-Rumaihi meeting with Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn in December 2016 and why did Mr. Al-Rumaihi later brag about bribing administration officials according to a sworn declaration filed in court?” Al-Rumaihi is a former Qatari diplomat and currently heads a division of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. A lawsuit alleges he schemed to bribe Trump administration officials.

Dec. 13, 2016: Kushner meets Sergey Gorkov, who chairs Russia’s government-owned Vnesheconombank and is Putin’s close confidant. Vnesheconombank is understood by analysts to be Putin’s slush fund and is under strict U.S. sanctions.

Dec. 14, 2016: Gorkov flies to Japan, where he is reported to have met with Putin.

Dec. 28, 2016: Obama orders new Russian sanctions for election hacking and interference. Kislyak contacts Flynn.

Dec. 29, 2016: According to details later revealed in Flynn’s plea agreement, he calls a “senior official of the Presidential Transition Team” who was with other “senior members of the [team]” at Mar-a-Lago. Flynn and this “senior official” agree that they do not want Russia to “escalate the situation.” Flynn calls Kislyak immediately and afterward reports back to the senior official. Reports suggest that this official was Jared Kushner.

Dec. 30, 2016: Trump tweets to Putin, calling him “very smart” for not responding to Obama’s sanctions in kind.

January 2017: Vekselberg begins sending payments to Michael Cohen’s Essential Consulting account.

Jan. 4, 2017: According to later reporting by the New York Times, Flynn reveals to Don McGahn, chief attorney for the transition effort, that he’s under FBI investigation. Flynn is still appointed national security adviser and receives provisional security clearance.

Jan. 11, 2017: Erik Prince (Trump supporter, founder of Blackwater), met with Kirill Dmitriev (Putin-tied Russian fund manager), in the Seychelles, allegedly to establish a back-channel.

Jan. 15, 2017: In the wake of news reports that Flynn and Kislyak spoke during the sanctions controversy, Pence states on CBS’s Face the Nation that Flynn and Kislyak “did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia.” Pence says he was told this by Flynn—who is now a cooperating witness with Mueller’s probe and the FBI—himself.

Jan. 20, 2017: On Inauguration Day. Flynn allegedly texted a former business associate that their private firm’s plan to build nuclear reactors in the Mideast was "good to go" because U.S. sanctions on Russia -- which had been blocking these plans -- would soon be "ripped up.” This plan would have delivered massive profits to Flynn and others.

Jan. 24, 2017: In an interview with FBI agents, Flynn denies that he spoke about sanctions with Russian officials.

Jan. 26, 2017: Acting Attorney General Sally Yates tells McGahn, now the White House counsel, that Pence, among others, was not correct about Flynn’s Russian contacts. Did McGahn really not tell Pence?

Early February 2017: Michael Cohen reportedly delivers a Ukrainian peace proposal to Flynn that would involve ousting the anti-Putin leader and lifting sanctions against Russia. Whom did Flynn and Cohen share this with?

Feb. 9, 2017: According to Pence’s press secretary’s later account, this is when Pence learnedabout Yates’ warning. The Washington Post also reports on this day that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kislyak. But Flynn continues in office.

Feb. 13, 2017: Flynn resigns.

Feb. 14, 2017: Trump meets privately with FBI Director Jim Comey and allegedly asks him to “let go” of the Flynn “thing.” (Comey testified to this under oath before a Senate panel, but Trump has denied it is true in public statements.)

April 2017: Kushner reportedly escalated tensions between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar into a Gulf state crisis:

The real estate firm tied to the family of presidential son-in-law and top White House adviser Jared Kushner made a direct pitch to Qatar’s minister of finance in April 2017 in an attempt to secure investment in a critically distressed asset in the company’s portfolio, according to two sources. At the previously unreported meeting, Jared Kushner’s father Charles, who runs Kushner Companies, and Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi discussed financing for the Kushners’ signature 666 Fifth Avenue property in New York City. …
The failure to broker the deal would be followed only a month later by a Middle Eastern diplomatic row in which Jared Kushner provided critical support to Qatar’s neighbors. Led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a group of Middle Eastern countries, with Kushner’s backing, led a diplomatic assault that culminated in a blockade of Qatar. Kushner, according to reports at the time, subsequently undermined efforts by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to bring an end to the standoff.

May 8, 2017: According to later reporting in the New York Times, the White House disseminates a draft letter written by Trump and Stephen Miller—described by sources as a “screed”— laying out the reasons for firing Comey, including Trump’s displeasure that Comey wouldn’t publicly say Trump wasn’t being investigated in the Russia inquiry. In the Oval Office, Pence and McGahn reportedly review the draft and McGahn reportedly asks that some sections be removed. A version of this letter is sent to Rod Rosenstein, who crafts a new memo justifying the firing and attributing it to Comey’s conduct during the Clinton investigation, with no mention of Russia.

May 9, 2017: Trump fires Comey.

May 10, 2017: Pence publicly denies that the Russia investigation factored into the decision, strongly suggesting that Trump was merely “accept[ing] the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general” (full video here).

May 10 in Oval Office: Trump to Ambassador Kislyak and Foreign Minister Lavrov: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job… I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

May 11: Trump to NBC’s Lester Holt here: “And in fact when I decided to just do it [fire Comey,] I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.’”

November 2017, as the New York Times reported, Apollo Global, backed by Qatar, makes an unusually large $184 million loan to Kushner’s family company. “One of the largest investors in Apollo’s real estate trust is the Qatari government’s investment fund, the Qatar Investment Authority… Mr. Kushner’s firm previously sought a $500 million investment from the former head of that Qatari fund for its headquarters at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. That investment never materialized.”

Later, in 2018, Qatar also seeks to invest in Trump-linked right-wing media outlet NewsMax.

Dec. 2017: Trump tweets an apparent admission that he knew Flynn had lied to FBI. “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” If he indeed asked Comey to “let Flynn go” on Feb. 14, 2017, this tweet suggests that Trump knew at that time that Flynn had committed a felony, and thus strengthens the obstruction case.

April 2018: Trump delays, undercuts, and sabotages Russian sanctions.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nRv ... ObJMo/edit


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Michael Cohen’s Meetings With Michael Flynn and a Qatari Diplomat Might Be the Key to Unlocking the Steele Dossier

What were all of these men doing together at the same time in Trump Tower in December 2016?

Jeremy Stahl May 14, 20188:39 PM
Jurisprudence

A possible image of Ahmed Al-Rumaihi at a BIG3 basketball game between the Ghost Ballers and Trilogy on July 30 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.

Matthew Visinsky/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
The founder of a three-on-three basketball league who claims he was offered a bribe by a one-time Qatari diplomat to arrange access to Steve Bannon said on Monday that the former diplomat is the same person photographed with Michael Cohen at Trump Tower in December 2016.

BIG3 basketball league co-founder Jeff Kwatinetz told Slate that he recognized Ahmed Al-Rumaihi in photos with Cohen that were tweeted Sunday by attorney Michael Avenatti.

“Yes, 100 percent,” Kwatinetz said when asked if he thought the videos and photos were of Ahmed Al-Rumaihi. Last week, Kwatinetz, who is a co-founder of BIG3 with Ice Cube, accused Al-Rumaihi in a sworn court declaration of making an attempted bribe and of suggestively boasting that Flynn had not refused “our money.”

Sports Trinity, Al-Rumaihi’s sports firm, would not confirm or deny that Al-Rumaihi was at the meeting on Dec. 12, 2016, which occurred less than two hours before a public meeting between Cohen and incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn. “We do not confirm and have no basis to confirm the video,” Sports Trinity said in a statement sent to Slate by Robert Siegfried, vice chairman of Kekst and Co., a communications firm; Siegfried declined to answer questions about whether or not Al-Rumaihi remains in the country at this time. Al-Rumaihi’s lawyer, Brian D. Hershman of Jones Day, did not respond to multiple email and phone inquiries about whether the images were of Al-Rumaihi and about his current whereabouts.

The photos were posted on Twitter on Sunday by Avenatti, who is representing the adult film actor Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit against Cohen that seeks to nullify her confidentiality agreement over an alleged affair with Donald Trump. Avenatti tweeted the images that appeared to show Al-Rumaihi entering an elevator in Trump Tower on Dec. 12, 2016, five days after news broke of the multibillion-dollar sale of 19.5 percent of the Russian fossil fuel giant Rosneft to Swiss trading firm Glencore and Qatar’s sovereign investment fund. (Glencore and Qatar sold off a major stake of Rosneft to China last year, but earlier this month Qatar bought back in to the Russian company for a total stake of 19 percent.)

The allegations in the Steele dossier suggested a future quid-pro-quo deal between Russia and the Trump campaign.
The Rosneft deal features prominently in an investigative dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. A central claim of the Steele dossier was that Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page, during an alleged meeting with Rosneft officials in summer 2016, promised that a Trump administration would undo sanctions against Russia, in part, in exchange for brokerage of the Rosneft deal. In May 2016, Al-Rumaihi reportedly took over as head of a major division of the wealth fund ultimately involved in the Rosneft deal.

The allegations in the Steele dossier, made in October 2016, suggested a future quid-pro-quo deal between Russia and the Trump campaign. Trump has been conspicuously resistant to Russian sanctions despite widespread congressional support from both parties. As Jed Shugerman has noted in Slate, during congressional testimony Page acknowledged meeting with Andrey Baranov, the head of investor relations at Rosneft, during his July 2016 trip to Russia and acknowledged “briefly” discussing the sale of Rosneft as well as there being “some general reference” to sanctions. As Business Insider’s Natasha Bertrand has reported, Page also acknowledged meeting with top Rosneft managers in Moscow on Dec. 8—four days before the apparent Cohen–Al-Rumaihi meeting and one day after the completion of the Rosneft deal.

Avenatti noted in his tweets over the weekend that Cohen was seen meeting with Flynn and incoming Energy Secretary Rick Perry within two hours of apparently entering the elevator with Al-Rumaihi.

Here is a brief rundown of the image comparisons in question.

These are a pair of photos of Al-Rumaihi attending BIG3 basketball games in July 2017:

Actor / rapper Bow Wow looks on during a BIG3 Basketball league game on July 16, 2017 at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
John Jones/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
DALLAS, TX - JULY 30: Trilogy guard James White (#8) dribbles as Ghost Ballers guard Mike Bibby (#10) and forward Ivan Johnson (#44) defend during the Big3 basketball game between the Ghost Ballers and Trilogy on July 30, 2017, at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX. Trilogy won the game 51-36.. (Photo by Matthew Visinsky/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Image zoomed in by Slate. Photo by Matthew Visinsky/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images.
Here is a still of the man Kwatinetz and Avenatti say is Al-Rumaihi, in the elevator with Cohen on Dec. 12, 2016:

Screen capture of Michael Cohen and a man who might be Ahmed Al-Rumaihi on Dec. 12, 2016.
Screen Capture from C-SPAN
Here is footage compiled from C-SPAN’s Trump Tower live feed of Cohen entering the elevator with the figure who appears to be Al-Rumaihi:


Here is footage of the figure who appears to be Al-Rumaihi leaving Trump Tower less than 90 minutes after entering with Cohen.


Here is footage from multiple feeds of Flynn coming down 12 minutes after Al-Rumaihi’s apparent exit, loitering in the lobby for a bit, and waiting to meet with Cohen and Perry a few minutes later:



Last week Kwatinetz, in a sworn declaration filed as part of pending litigation against Al-Rumaihi and a number of BIG3 investors, said that the former Qatari diplomat offered him a bribe for an introduction to Kwatinetz’s friend Steve Bannon during a private hike in January 2018. Kwatinetz claimed in the declaration that he rejected the bribe and told Al-Rumaihi that Bannon would never accept one. At this point, he said Al-Rumaihi “laughed and then stated to me that I shouldn’t be naive, that so many Washington politicians take our money, and stated ‘Do you think [Michael] Flynn turned down our money?’ ”

Al-Rumaihi’s name was also attached to a 90-day $2.5 million lobbying contract with the Ashcroft Law Firm in the summer of 2017, three weeks before he and his investing partners approached Kwatinetz and BIG3. A spokesman for Al-Rumaihi’s sports group has called Kwatinetz’s claims “xenophobic” and “meritless.”

The photos of Al-Rumaihi in Trump Tower come on the heels of news last week, initially revealed by Avenatti and later confirmed by the New York Times and NBC News, that Cohen in the initial months of the Trump presidency had accepted a $500,000 payment from a subsidiary investment arm of a firm owned by Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian oligarch and purported Putin ally who was later sanctioned. (The firm, run by Vekselberg’s cousin, has denied Vekselberg’s involvement in the payment.) That payment was made to the same shell company established by Cohen to pay Daniels $130,000 in exchange for the hush agreement.

The latest revelations could prompt more questions for Flynn, who last year pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and is cooperating with the special counsel’s probe. It also opens the door to possibly corroborate Flynn’s meeting accounts with other potential witnesses, namely Cohen, Perry, and potentially Ahmed Al-Rumaihi.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/201 ... l_dt_tw_ru


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They could still get him out of office.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 15, 2018 10:51 am

Wendy Siegelman


Media outlets have not reported on this, but at the Dec 2016 meeting with Cohen, Flynn and Ahmed Al-Rumaihi @lrozen identified another person who appears to be Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani - if confirmed this escalates the meeting to another levelWendy Siegelman added,


Laura Rozen

@lrozen
Replying to @TomWlost
am pretty certain it is the qatar FM @TomWlost @ScottMStedman @tkarasik

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7:17 PM - 14 May 2018



Wendy Siegelman

Here's another view

yes looks like Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani from another take on C-SPAN at 7:42
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Looks just like him? Plus if you watch the video you can see how they were surrounding him walking out..protecting him.. shielding him..
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Replying to @WendySiegelman @lrozen
@safeagain1 posted this photo yesterday
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25thAmendment4Trump

thanks womensstrongnow ..I found a very clear picture of the elevator last night..
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UsHadrons

Qatar Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani
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https://twitter.com/WendySiegelman/stat ... 0219851776




trump is legally required to file financial this year...facing deadline

what are you going to do about Stormy?



Qatari investor confirms he attended Trump Tower meetings in 2016

Qatari investor admits Trump Tower meetings

Washington (CNN)A Qatari investor referenced in a series of tweets from Michael Avenatti this week confirmed to CNN through a spokesperson on Tuesday that he did attend meetings at Trump Tower in December 2016.

The stated reason: Ahmed Al-Rumaihi wanted face time with Trump transition officials.

"Mr. Al-Rumaihi was at Trump Tower on December 12, 2016. He was there in his then role as head of Qatar Investments, an internal division of QIA, to accompany the Qatari delegation that was meeting with Trump transition officials on that date," said a spokesperson for Sport Trinity, a company that Al-Rumaihi co-owns. "He did not participate in any meetings with Michael Flynn, and his involvement in the meetings on that date was limited."

The spokesperson did not elaborate on which Trump transition officials attended those meetings or the substance of the meetings.

A person familiar with the Qatari delegation's meetings at Trump Tower that day said, "There were several meetings that took place between the delegation and Trump transition officials. During one, Michael Cohen briefly popped in."

The statement is Al-Rumaihi's first acknowledgment of why he was at Trump Tower on December 12, 2016, since Avenatti, a lawyer for Stormy Daniels, made an issue of it in his tweets.

This story is breaking and will be updated.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/15/politics ... index.html
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 15, 2018 5:20 pm

Michael Avenatti

See below, which is included in the @Slate article I posted yesterday. You cannot reconcile this “no basis to confirm the video” with their admission today to @cnn that he was there. This smells really bad. #basta
Image




Mueller: Secret Court Order Suspended Statute Of Limitations On Manafort Charge
By Tierney Sneed | May 15, 2018 11:03 am

Special Counsel Robert Mueller obtained a secret order from a federal magistrate judge to suspend the statute of limitations on one of the charges he ultimately brought against Paul Manafort, a court filing revealed Monday evening. Mueller did not inform Manafort of the secret order until after the former Trump campaign chairman had requested that charge be thrown out, the filing said.

Mueller also disclosed in the Monday court filing that, as recently as April 30 of this year, the government of Cyprus was still turning over documents related to the special counsel’s Manafort investigation.

Because investigators were relying on a foreign government to produce certain evidence, Mueller last June asked a magistrate judge in Virginia to suspend the statute of limitations on the charge that Manafort failed to to file a Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR), according to the filing. Mueller ultimately brought that charge against Manafort in February. The judge’s decision granting Mueller’s request to suspend the statute of limitations was previously under seal, but was included in Monday’s filings.

The revelation came in a response to Manafort’s motion to dismiss the FBAR charge in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he is also facing tax fraud and bank fraud charges. That case is in addition to the one brought in Washington, D.C., where Manafort has been charged with money laundering and failure to disclose foreign lobbying.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

“Because the government secured a timely and valid order in this District to suspend the running of the applicable statute of limitations until at least the date on which the Superseding Indictment was returned, Manafort’s motion should be denied,” Mueller said in his motion.

According to Monday’s filing, investigators first sought the documents from Cyprus in early June 2017. The request is called a mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT), and it was filed through the Office of International Affairs of the United States Department of Justice.

Investigators were seeking “among other evidence, bank records, articles of incorporation, and witness interviews concerning certain of Manafort and Richard Gates’s bank accounts in Cyprus,” according to the filing.

Because the statute of limitations was set to run out on June 29 — five years after the June 29, 2012 deadline Manafort would have faced to file the foreign bank report with the U.S. Treasury — prosecutors on June 26 came to Judge Claude M. Hilton with their request, which was filed ex parte, meaning only the government’s side was aware of it, and not Manafort.

Cyprus’ production of evidence has taken months, according to the filing, and investigators wrote to Cypriot authorities in December informing them that they were still missing some of the Manafort documents they had requested. Cyprus’ government did not respond to the request until April 30 this year, according to Monday’s filing, well after Mueller’s grand jury in Virginia handed down indictments against Manafort in February.

“The bottom line, then, is that Cyprus had not fully satisfied the government’s official request when the original and Superseding Indictment of Manafort were returned on February 13 and 22, respectively,” Mueller said. “As a result, no ‘final action’ had yet occurred as of the date of the operative indictments, and the applicable statute of limitations remained suspended.”

Cyprus began turning over documents in September, 2017, according to the filing.


Mueller’s filing also revealed that, at the time Manafort requested that the FBAR charge be thrown out, the prosecutors had not yet informed him of their successful request to have the statute of limitations suspended.

“The government has now produced that Order to the defense, together with redacted versions of the MLAT requests themselves,” the filing said.

Read the full filing below:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker ... imitations





emptywheel

After dismissing his motion about 4 different ways in the body of the opinion, ABJ kicks him once more in a footnote in case he wasn't paying attention yet.
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Wowee. This would suggest Manafort's "primary client" wasn't actually Trump but the folks hiding out in Russia.

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

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 15, 2018 8:12 pm

Michael Avenatti

This is what I meant by UGLY!!!!! Michael Cohen asked for 'millions of dollars' to 'pass to Trumps'



Michael Cohen asked for 'millions of dollars' to 'pass to Trumps'

Donald Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, is facing claims he asked a Middle Eastern official for millions of dollars to give to 'Trump family members' in a meeting at Trump Tower weeks after the president's election victory, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Cohen is alleged to have asked Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, a former diplomat in charge of a $100bn Qatari investment fund, to send 'millions' through him to Trump family members. A source told DailyMail.com that the Qatari said he refused.

Al-Rumaihi on Tuesday issued a statement agreeing that he was at Trump Tower and a source with knowledge of the daysaid that Cohen had 'popped in' briefly to a meeting. Photographs show that he was part of a group greeted by Cohen, who went up in an elevator with them.

DailyMail.com can disclose that the group also included Qatar's foreign minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

The claims of a demand for 'millions' were made by a senior Kuwaiti government source close to Al-Rumaihi.

Last week DailyMail.com revealed that Al-Rumaihi was accused in court documents of boasting about bribing disgraced Trump former aide Michael Flynn, and attempting to bribe Trump's former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon – charges which the investor denies.

The Kuwaiti source told DailyMail.com that following DailyMail.com's disclosure of the court case, Al-Rumaihi called him and boasted that Cohen had asked him for money in exchange for influence in the Trump administration.

The official said: 'He said Cohen told him to send millions to various members of the Trump family.' Al-Rumaihi did not do so, the official added. The Trump family members were not named.

New claims: A source tells DailyMail.com that a Middle Eastern investor who met Michael Cohen at Trump Tower says Trump's attorney demanded 'millions of dollars' from him for 'Trump family members'. The investor did not make any money transfer

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In the elevator: The investor was the Qatar Investments' Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, who got in the elevator with Cohen and with - DailyMail.com can reveal - Qatar's foreign minister
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New intrigue: DailyMail.com has identified one of the other people who met Michael Cohen in the group as Qatar's foreign minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. His media attache confirmed his presence to DailyMail.com

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Trump Tower visit: Qatar's foreign minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, a former diplomat in charge of a $100bn Qatari investment fund, were both in the president's then headquarters in December 2016.

Trump Tower visit: Qatar's foreign minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, a former diplomat in charge of a $100bn Qatari investment fund, were both in the president's then headquarters in December 2016.

In his role as a senior official in the Qatari Investment Authority, Al-Rumaihi has business dealings with Kuwait, and has become close to several government officials there, sources said.

The Kuwaiti source said Al-Rumaihi informed him of the alleged bribery attempt so that he would not appear to be 'going behind Kuwait's back' in his relationship with the Trump administration.

The latest claim to hit Cohen comes after his sales pitch to a series of blue-chip names was revealed.

He signed up AT&T and Novartis as clients for his 'insight' into the president and tried to get Uber and Ford to do the same, telling the ride-share giant: ''I have the best relationship with the president on the outside, and you need to hire me.' Novartis and AT&T have both called contracting Cohen after Trump's inauguration a mistake.

The Kuwaiti source claimed Al-Rumaihi told him that Cohen tried to get the money during a meeting which also included now disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn at Trump Tower in December 2016.

A representative for Al-Rumaihi's company Sports Trinity said they have 'no comment' on the alleged bribe offer.

The gathering has come under intense scrutiny since Sunday night, when a video emerged of Cohen, Flynn and Al-Rumaihi together at Trump Tower.

Michael Avenatti, a lawyer representing porn star Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit against Trump, tweeted pictures and a link to a video filmed on December 12 of Flynn, Cohen and Al-Rumaihi walking together through the Trump Tower lobby together.

After posting the pictures, Avenatti tweeted: 'Why was Ahmed Al-Rumaihi meeting with Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn in December 2016 and why did Mr. Al-Rumaihi later brag about bribing administration officials according to a sworn declaration filed in court?'

Accompanying the men was another man in a dark suit.

DailyMail.com can disclose that man is Qatari foreign minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who is a member of the country's royal family.

Qatar's media attaché in Washington DC, Jassim Al-Thani, confirmed his presence at Trump Tower to DailyMail.com and said in a statement: 'As a lead-up to the US Presidential election, His Highness had scheduled separate meetings with both major party candidates. His Highness met with then-candidate Donald Trump. The meeting with Hillary Clinton was postponed due to a scheduling conflict.

'In December 2016 during the Presidential transition, His Excellency, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs met with officials from President Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, who was head of Qatar investments at Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) from May 2016 to March 2017, was present at Trump Tower but did not participate in any meetings.

'Since March 2017, Mr. Al-Rumaihi has not represented the State of Qatar in official matters. Nor is Qatar involved in any of his private business matters.'

The presence of the foreign minister raises questions about whether the Qatari government was involved in the meeting.

On Monday evening, Avenatti tweeted: 'When the truth is disclosed relating to this meeting and the story surrounding it, it will redefine 'ugly'! As in very. #BuckleUp #Basta'

On Tuesday however, Al-Rumahi broke his silence to tell CNN in a statement that he was in Trump Tower to 'meet Trump transition officials' and deny meeting Flynn.

'Mr. Al-Rumaihi was at Trump Tower on December 12, 2016,' a spokesperson for Sport Trinity, Al-Rumahi's sports company which is involved in the BIG3 litigation, said.

'He was there in his then role as head of Qatar Investments, an internal division of QIA, to accompany the Qatari delegation that was meeting with Trump transition officials on that date.

'He did not participate in any meetings with Michael Flynn, and his involvement in the meetings on that date was limited.'

A source which CNN called 'a person familiar with the Qatari delegation's meetings at Trump Tower that day' said there were 'several meetings' and added: 'During one, Michael Cohen briefly popped in.'

The statement did not address Al-Rumaihi's presence in the video of Trump Tower's lobby and on Monday Sports Trinity had told Slate: 'We do not confirm and have no basis to confirm the video.'

The claims that Al-Rumaihi boasted about bribing Flynn and attempting to bribe Bannon were made in court documents relating to a $1.2bn libel lawsuit against Al-Rumaihi linked to his business dealings with rapper Ice Cube.

Michael Cohen spotted entering a hotel in New York City

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Start of the intrigue: This was the cryptic tweet by Michael Avenatti which started speculation about who met who at Trump Tower. Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, who can be seen left and top right, denies meeting Mike Flynn (bottom right). A source familiar with the meetings claimed Cohen 'popped in' to one 'briefly' although in fact he escorted both men upstairs in the elevator
Start of the intrigue: This was the cryptic tweet by Michael Avenatti which started speculation about who met who at Trump Tower. Ahmed Al-Rumaihi, who can be seen left and top right, denies meeting Mike Flynn (bottom right). A source familiar with the meetings claimed Cohen 'popped in' to one 'briefly' although in fact he escorted both men upstairs in the elevator

Giuliani says Trump repaid Michael Cohen $130,000 'hush money'



Ice Cube and his partner Jeff Kwatinetz allege that Al-Rumaihi and his business partners only invested a third of their promised $20.5m in the rapper's BIG3 basketball league.

In court documents, Kwatinetz claimed that Al-Rumaihi boasted about bribing Flynn, and asked Kwatinetz to put him in touch with his friend, Bannon, to offer a further 'bribes'.

'Mr Al-Rumaihi requested I set up a meeting between him, the Qatari government, and Stephen Bannon, and to tell Steve Bannon that Qatar would underwrite all of his political efforts in return for his support,' Kwatinetz wrote.

He added that when he refused the offer, Al-Rumaihi told Kwatinetz: 'So many Washington politicians take our money, and stated 'do you think Flynn turned down our money?'.'

The claims were denied by Al-Rumaihi's spokesman as 'pure Hollywood fiction'. The Qatari money man's company, Sports Trinity, is hitting back in court with counter-claims that BIG3 mishandled company finances.

Controversy has previously dogged the Trump administration over its relationship with Qatari officials.

Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, allegedly sought a $500m investment from the Gulf state in a New York skyscraper owned by his company, according to The Intercept, as part of an attempt to raise $1.3bn to bail out the debt-ridden property.

Michael Cohen keeps mum as he wades through crowd of reporters



Basketball move: Ahmed Al-Rumaihi was at a BIG3 basketball fixture in Dallas, Texas, at the time it is alleged he was trying to use the venture to make contact with Steve Bannon
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Explosive claims: Jeff Kwatinetz's claims about Bannon and how the Qatari investor Mohammed Al-Rumaihi wanted to target him
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Big case: Rapper Ice Cube and his co-CEO are suing the Qatari investors for $1.2 billion. They are counter-suing claiming libel and demanding the case be moved to a federal court
Image
Big names: Ice Cube (center) and Jeff Kwatinetz (right) set up BIG3 and have Clyde Drexler as Commissioner along with other Hall of Famers involved. Kwatinetz worked for two years with Bannon and still considers him a friend despite differing political views
Big names: Ice Cube (center) and Jeff Kwatinetz (right) set up BIG3 and have Clyde Drexler as Commissioner along with other Hall of Famers involved. Kwatinetz worked for two years with Bannon and still considers him a friend despite differing political views

Trump blasts FBI raid on his personal attorney Michael Cohen



Former Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, agreed to invest the cash in the building, 666 Fifth Avenue, if Kushner found other investors to raise the total, but the deal failed.

There have been claims - denied by the White House - that Trump's decision to side with a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia that established a blockade against Qatar months later was influenced by al-Thani's withdrawal from his son-in-law's property deal.

The alleged deal is understood to be under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as part of his probe into foreign meddling in the Trump campaign and administration.

A spokesman for Kushner said his meetings involved 'completely appropriate contacts from foreign officials and he did not mix his or his former company's business in those contacts. Any claim otherwise is false.'

Cohen is also at the center of a cash-for-access scandal that has emerged from Trump's court clash with his alleged mistress.

The president's lawyer set up a company, Essential Consultants, which was used to pay off Daniels in an alleged deal to keep quiet about her affair with Trump.

Cohen then used the same company to receive payments from pharmaceutical giant Novartis, telecoms company AT&T, a Korean aerospace company and a firm controlled by a Russian oligarch.

DailyMail.com asked Michael Cohen's own attorney for comment on the claim Monday and has received no response.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... mbers.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 16, 2018 2:02 pm

Thousands of pages of Congressional testimony shed light on 2016 Trump Tower meeting


Donald Trump Jr., waves from the stage at the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum in Dallas on May 4. (Sue Ogrocki/AP)

A music promoter who promised Donald Trump Jr. over email that a Russian lawyer would provide dirt about Hillary Clinton in June 2016 made the offer because he had been assured the Moscow attorney was “well connected” and had “damaging material,” the promoter testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Rob Goldstone told the committee that his client, the Russian pop star and developer Emin Agalarov, had insisted he help set up the meeting between President Trump’s son and the lawyer during the campaign to pass along material on Clinton, overriding Goldstone’s own warnings that the meeting would be a bad idea.

“He said, ‘it doesn’t matter. You just have to get the meeting,” Goldstone, a British citizen, testified.

The intensity with which Agalorov and his father, the billionaire Aras Agalarov, sought the Trump Tower meeting, which has become a key point of scrutiny for congressional inquiries and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was revealed in more than 2,500 pages of congressional testimony and exhibits that were released by the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday morning.

The testimony shows that attendees at the June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting largely agreed with Trump Jr.’s long-standing contention that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, did not transmit dirt about Clinton. She has denied she was acting on behalf of the Russian government.

[Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr. has long history of fighting sanctions]

But the new information helps explain why Goldstone had written the candidate’s son before the meeting that Veselnitskaya would bring “very high level and sensitive information” that was part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” — and why Trump Jr. responded, “if it is what you say, then I love it.”

The testimony also sheds light on the anxiety that rippled through President Trump’s orbit a year later, as news of the meeting became public and his aides and lawyers tried to manage the story.

The testimony also includes new details about Trump’s long interest in building business ties to Russia and a relationship with President Vladi­mir Putin.

An Agalarov employee testified to the committee that the Russian mogul tried to get Trump a meeting with Putin when the Miss Universe pageant, which Trump owned, was held in Moscow in 2013.

The employee told the committee that Agalarov “secretly requested” the meeting through a Russian government official.

Putin agreed to attend a pageant rehearsal, but canceled at the last minute. Though Trump periodically claimed during the campaign that he knew Putin, there is no evidence the two men met until after Trump took office.

Much of the testimony released Wednesday revolves around the Trump Tower meeting when Trump Jr. accepted the sit-down with Veselnitskaya and invited his brother-in-law Jared Kushner and top campaign aide Paul Manafort to attend as well.

Goldstone testified that he, like Trump Jr., attended the meeting expecting Veselnitskaya would deliver a “smoking gun” to help Trump’s campaign. He testified that he was embarrassed and apologetic when she instead used the session to press her view that the sanctions imposed on Russia for human rights abuses, known as the Magnitsky Act, should be lifted.

The president’s son acknowledged he too was disappointed that the Russian lawyer did not provide more information that could be used in the campaign: “All else being equal, I wouldn’t have wanted to waste 20 minutes hearing about something that I wasn’t supposed to be meeting about,” he told the committee.

Though panel Republicans conferred with their Democratic counterparts on point-by-point issues during the preparation of the transcripts, their release is expected to touch off a new wave of partisan bickering.

Months have gone by since committee chairman Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) first promised that the committee would release transcripts of the interviews the panel conducted with some of the participants in the Trump Tower meeting.

Veselnitskaya only agreed to provide written answers from Russia to the panel’s questions. Neither Kushner, now a top White House aide, nor Manafort, who has been charged with financial crimes related to his work before joining the campaign, sat for interviews. But the committee interviewed the five other men who took part in the session, including a Russian American lobbyist who once served in an Soviet counterintelligence unit.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has said she supports the release of the interview transcripts, but panel Democrats contend Republicans did not push witnesses to answer all key questions and are preparing to end their inquiry prematurely.

In a statement, committee Democrats said the Trump Tower meeting was “one piece of a much larger puzzle and confirms that the Trump campaign was willing to accept Russia’s assistance.”

They said there are “more questions that answers given the lack of cooperation by many of the individuals involved” and pressed for their committee’s investigation to continue

Across the Capitol, the Russia probes have been winding down. Last month, the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released the final report of their year-long investigation of Russian interference in the election and the Kremlin’s alleged collusion with the Trump administration, concluding over the protestations of panel Democrats that the Trump campaign did not cooperate with Moscow.

The Senate Intelligence Committee, which continues to press ahead with its investigation, is soon expected to release the second of four interim reports, with its final report expected in the fall.”

President Trump has repeatedly insisted that his campaign did not collude with Russian efforts to interfere in the election, including through the hacking and distribution of Democratic emails.

“I appreciate the opportunity to have assisted the Judiciary Committee in its inquiry,” Trump Jr., said in a prepared statement. “The public can now see that for over five hours I answered every question asked and was candid and forthright with the Committee.”

Shortly after his election, President Trump’s spokeswoman had said that no campaign officials had dealings with Russians during the campaign. Testimony from the newly released testimony show that the president’s lawyers and associates were anxious about any reports on Trump Jr.’s meeting, which contradicted that claim.

“[Trump’s lawyers are] concerned because it links Don Jr. to officials from Russia, which he has always denied meeting,” Goldstone wrote in an email to Emin Agalarov on June 26, 2017, a few weeks before the New York Times first reported on the meeting.

Ultimately, lawyers working for the Trump Organization crafted statements they asked other participants in the meeting to distribute, a move that could draw scrutiny from Mueller if it involved communicating with witnesses or otherwise hiding the true purpose of the meeting from investigators.

Trump himself contributed to an initial statement about the meeting released by his son, Trump Jr. told the committee. It misleadingly stated said the meeting had been “primarily” about the adoption of Russian children by Americans. The Kremlin halted adoptions in retaliation for the Magnitsky Act, the policy issue that appeared to be at the heart of Veselnitskaya’s presentation.

After Goldstone was interviewed by The Washington Post for the first time about his participation in the meeting in July 2017, the promoter tried to assure two Trump organization lawyers that he too had offered a similar account.

“I said only that the meeting appeared to have been about adoption issues and was quickly terminated,” he wrote in an email at the time.

Meanwhile, Goldstone secretly fretted about the scrutiny he predicted would follow.

“I hope this favor was worth it for your dad,” he wrote to Emin Agalarov. “It could blow up.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 33e1bd531d



4:04 PM: Emin Agalarov calls Don Jr. to discuss Veselnitskaya meeting
4:27: Don. Jr has a four minute call with someone at a blocked number
4:31: Don Jr. calls back Agalarov

He told Senate investigators he didn't remember who was on that second call
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trump Jr talked to Emin Agalarov who arranged trump Tower meeting then made 11-minute phone call to a blocked number. trump Jr said he couldn't remember who he called. However, Dems note Corey Lewandowski testified Candidate trump's primary residence has a blocked number.

So much in these Goldstone exhibits
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what
(email from Scaramucci to Goldstone in July 2017)
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Senate Judiciary Dem statement on transcripts released today: “[T]he Committee has found evidence of multiple contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials or their intermediaries, including offers of assistance and purported overtures from Vladimir Putin"
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Senate Intelligence Committee Backs Conclusion that Moscow Attempted to Boost Trump
Panel’s support for intelligence agencies’ findings breaks with earlier House report

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-int ... 1526488842



The Lingering Mysteries of a Trump-Russia Conspiracy
A year of dizzying developments have bolstered both Mueller’s critics, who say he’s on a “fishing expedition,” and his defenders, who believe he’s leaving no stone unturned.


Larry Downing / Reuters / The Atlantic
NATASHA BERTRAND 8:00 AM ET POLITICS



Updated on May 16 9:00 a.m. ET.

The day after Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to lead the investigation into Russia’s election interference, it seemed to some that President Trump’s “worst nightmare” had come true. A year and nearly 20 indictments later, there’s no sign it’s winding down.

Dozens of dizzying developments and near-daily news alerts have bolstered both Mueller’s critics who say he’s on a “fishing expedition,” and his defenders, who believe he’s leaving no stone unturned. All along, Mueller has never said a word, preferring to speak through the criminal charges he’s levied against multiple Trump associates, including Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates. Trump has taken the opposite approach, ramping up his attacks on Mueller’s “witch hunt” and against the special counsel himself in tweets and interviews.

To the president, the investigation may seem like it has dragged on. But the longest special-counsel probe—Iran-Contra under former President Ronald Reagan—lasted nearly seven years. The Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky inquiry involving former President Bill Clinton, which ultimately led to Clinton’s impeachment in the House, lasted four years. And the investigation of the Valerie Plame affair under former President George W. Bush lasted three-and-a-half years. Mueller’s pace has been breakneck, legal experts tell me—especially for a complicated counterintelligence investigation that involves foreign nationals and the Kremlin, an adversarial government.

As the probe wears on, the fundamental legitimacy of Trump’s presidency hangs in the balance: Did his campaign conspire with Russia to undermine Hillary Clinton and win the election?

Here, the most significant revelations the country has learned since Mueller began his probe—revelations that could eventually answer that question.

Jared Kushner Proposed a Secret Backchannel to Moscow

In late May 2017, The Washington Post reported that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to establish a secret line of communication between the Trump team and Russian government officials during the presidential transition after the 2016 election. As part of a series of meetings he held with foreign officials during that period, Kushner spoke with Russia’s then-ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, in December and floated the possibility of setting up a secure channel. He also wanted those talks to take place in Russian diplomatic facilities in the U.S., which would essentially conceal future interactions from the American government, according to The Post. A surprised Kislyak relayed Kushner’s offer back to Kremlin officials, in conversations that were picked up as part of the intelligence community’s routine eavesdropping of monitored foreign agents.

Kushner explained in a statement prepared for the congressional intelligence committees investigating potential collusion that he had simply been wondering aloud whether such a channel existed, so that the incoming administration could securely discuss their military options in Syria with the Russians. But he did not initially disclose the Kislyak meeting to U.S. officials during his background check—the White House only acknowledged it after news outlets reported on it. It was part of a pattern of off-the-books interactions between the Trump campaign and Kislyak. One of Trump’s top surrogates, then-Senator Jeff Sessions, met with Kislyak twice, but told his colleagues during his confirmation hearings for attorney general that he had no contact with Russians during the campaign. Two other campaign aides, Carter Page and J.D. Gordon, spoke to Kislyak following a panel at the Republican National Convention. And Trump’s first national-security adviser, Michael Flynn, was forced to resign after mischaracterizing his conversations with the former ambassador.

The Trump Administration Made Early Attempts to Lift Russia Sanctions

Just days after Trump took office, his administration looked into lifting the sanctions that former President Barack Obama had imposed on Russia over its meddling in the 2016 election. Tom Malinowski, who stepped down in January 2017 as Obama's assistant secretary of state for human rights, told me last June that he and Daniel Fried—then the chief U.S. coordinator for sanctions policy—scrambled to lobby Congress to halt the development of a sanctions-lifting package being considered by the White House after government officials began ringing "alarm bells about possible concessions being made" to Russia. (Malinowski was lobbying unofficially). By that time, the FBI, CIA, and NSA had concluded that the Russians had interfered in the election to derail Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

From the legislative side, Democratic Senator Ben Cardin and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham quickly introduced the Russia Sanctions Review Act on February 8, 2017. The legislation called for new penalties on Russia and included a provision that gave Congress veto power over any sanctions-lifting package proposed by the White House that would affect Russia. It passed that summer with a veto-proof majority, effectively forcing Trump to sign the bill. The administration blew through two deadlines to impose the new sanctions as required by law, but began to implement them in waves in March.

Several of the Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the administration are key players in Mueller’s investigation. At least one, Viktor Vekselberg, was questioned by the special counsel’s team earlier this year about payments he made to Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen between January and August 2017.

A Russia-Linked Professor Offered Dirt on Clinton

In April 2016, a shadowy professor with ties to Russia named Joseph Mifsud told a young Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee months earlier, and would soon break into Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s inbox. It is still not clear how Mifsud seemed to know in advance that Russia sought to compromise Clinton’s candidacy. After his breakfast meeting with Mifsud at a London hotel, Papadopoulos tried several times to organize a meeting between Trump and Putin, according to emails he sent to top Trump campaign aides that were released by the special counsel’s office in October.

Another unknown is whether Papadopoulos explicitly told Trump campaign officials about the “dirt” Mifsud had disclosed; The New York Times reported on Tuesday night that a Trump campaign aide told Senate investigators that he recalls receiving an email from Papadopoulos describing the compromising information Mifsud had alluded to. Mueller charged Papadopoulos in October for lying to federal agents about his conversations with Mifsud. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in exchange for a lighter sentence. Mifsud has virtually disappeared since his name was made public late last year.

Top Trump Campaign Officials Met With Russians to Get Dirt on Clinton

Last July, as Trump and his aides were flying back to the U.S. from a whirlwind trip to Poland and Germany, The New York Times published what seemed like a smoking gun: Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner had attended a meeting at Trump Tower at the height of the election with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Clinton. Emails released by Trump Jr. after the meeting was made public detailed how it had been arranged: Music publicist Rob Goldstone, who represents the pop-star son of one of Trump’s former business partners, offered Trump Jr. information on behalf of “the crown prosecutor of Russia” that would “incriminate” Clinton. “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” Goldstone wrote. “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer,” Trump Jr. replied. Following the exchange, the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya—who acknowledged recently that she works as an “informant” for the Kremlin—was dispatched from Moscow to meet with the trio on June 9, 2016.

Trump Jr., Manafort, and Kushner have said they were disappointed by what she brought with her—that there was little usable opposition research. Still, Manafort took notes on the conversation referencing “active sponsors of the RNC” and “Cyprus offshore.” When news of the meeting broke, Trump helped write a statement for his son that omitted any reference to compromising information about Clinton; it said the meeting was instead about Russia’s adoption policy, a topic the president had discussed the day before with Putin at the G20 summit. Mueller has made that misleading statement a focus of his investigation, according to questions drafted by the president’s lawyers based on their conversations with Mueller’s team.

Manafort and a Former Russian Spy Discussed Repaying a Russian Oligarch

Emails exchanged between Manafort and his longtime business associate Konstantin Kilimnik—a former agent of Russia’s military-intelligence unit known as the GRU—suggest that Manafort was using his high-level campaign role to curry favor with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. In late September, The Washington Post reported that Manafort asked Kilimnik how he could use his position to repay Deripaska, and offered to give him “private briefings” about the campaign. The Atlantic later reported a more complete account of their exchanges. On April 11, 2016, Manafort asked Kilimnik whether he had shown "our friends" the media’s coverage of him since his hiring as a senior campaign strategist. "Absolutely," replied Kilimnik, who has come under FBI scrutiny over his purported ties to Russian intelligence. "Every article."

"How do we use to get whole," Manafort responded. "Has [Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska] operation seen?" According to legal complaints filed in the Cayman Islands, Deripaska's representatives claimed he gave Manafort $19 million in 2014 to invest in a TV business venture. Manafort, the filings say, all but disappeared without paying Deripaska back when the project fell through. Manafort and Kilimnik met in New York on August 2, 2016. Just over two weeks later, Manafort was forced to resign after The New York Times reported that the pro-Russia political party he had worked for had earmarked him $12.7 million for his work between 2007 and 2012.

Top Trump Campaign Aides Received ‘Millions’ From Oligarchs

On October 30, 2017, Mueller filed his first indictments in the Russia investigation against Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, who were accused of laundering the “millions” of dollars they had received from Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs throughout their years advising Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions. That same day, the special counsel’s office revealed that a little-known Trump campaign aide named George Papadopoulos was cooperating with the probe after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a foreign national with ties to Russia. The Manafort and Gates indictment contained 12 counts, including conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Following a second round of indictments against both men in February, Gates decided to cooperate with investigators in exchange for a lesser sentence. Manafort, meanwhile, has maintained his innocence. His trial is scheduled to begin on July 10.

Russian Trolls Worked to Help Trump

In mid-February, Mueller dropped another bombshell: Thirteen Russian nationals connected to the Internet Research Agency—a Kremlin-backed outfit whose employees posed as Americans and spread disinformation online in an attempt to influence the 2016 election—were charged with “knowingly and intentionally” conspiring with each other “to defraud the United States.” The defendants’ operations in 2016, the indictment alleges, included “supporting” Trump’s candidacy and “disparaging Hillary Clinton.”

According to Mueller, the defendants took extra steps to make it look like its social-media campaign was based in the U.S. rather than in Russia, purchasing space on computer servers in the U.S. Individuals associated with the Trump campaign were targeted by the Russians, too, as they sought to “coordinate political activities” like rallies and protests. The indictment reinforced an intelligence community assessment released in January 2017 that said the Russians interfered to hurt Clinton’s candidacy. It was released days after the country’s top intelligence officials warned lawmakers that the Russians plan to target the 2018 midterm elections.

Mueller Questioned a Russian Oligarch About Payments to Trump’s Attorney

One of the biggest scoops in the Russia investigation came just recently, from a lawyer representing the adult-film performer Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against Trump and Michael Cohen. Cohen had been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg between January and August 2017, the attorney, Michael Avenatti, claimed last week. He did not offer any evidence up front to support the claim, but soon CNN reported that Mueller had questioned Vekselberg about the payments. Cohen’s lawyer Steve Ryan acknowledged the Cohen-Vekselberg transaction but told me that it was not “a payment.” Cohen’s New York office and residences were raided by the FBI last month on a tip Mueller gave to the Southern District of New York. Investigators were reportedly looking for evidence of potential bank fraud, wire fraud, and campaign finance violations.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... cy/560465/




FBI launched pre-election investigation into trump called crossfire hurricane
if the facts of the investigation had they surfaced, might have devastated trump campaign

Michael Flynn
Paul Manafort
George Papadopoulos
Carter Page

Mueller issues grand jury subpoenas to Trump adviser's social media consultant

Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller has issued two subpoenas to a social media expert who worked for longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs after briefing the U.S. House Intelligence Committee on his investigation of potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein
The subpoenas were delivered late last week to lawyers representing Jason Sullivan, a social media and Twitter specialist Stone hired to work for an independent political action committee he set up to support Trump, Knut Johnson, a lawyer for Sullivan, told Reuters on Tuesday.

The subpoenas suggest that Mueller, who is probing Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, is focusing in part on Stone and whether he might have had advance knowledge of material allegedly hacked by Russian intelligence and sent to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published it.

Stone appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee last September and denied allegations of collusion between the president’s associates and Russia during the election. “I am aware of no evidence whatsoever of collusion by the Russian state or anyone in the Trump campaign,” Stone told reporters at the time.

According to sources familiar with the ongoing investigation, Mueller also has been probing whether anyone associated with the Trump campaign may have helped Assange or the Russians time or target the release of hacked emails and other social media promoting Trump or critical of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment. Russia has denied interfering in the election. President Trump has repeatedly denied his campaign colluded with Russia.

Sullivan told Reuters that he heads Cyphoon.com, a social media firm, and “worked on the Trump campaign serving as Chief Strategist directly to Roger J. Stone Jr.”

“Welcome To The Age of Weaponized Social Media,” said a strategy document Sullivan prepared for Stone and seen by Reuters. He described a “system” he devised for creating Twitter “swarms” as “an army of sophisticated, hyper-targeted direct tweet automation systems driven by outcomes-based strategies derived from REAL-TIME actionable insights.”

For example, at 6:43 a.m. local time on Election Day in 2016, Trump tweeted, “TODAY WE MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN”. Trump’s message soon was retweeted more than 343,000 times, and in an interview last year, Sullivan told Reuters that the swarm helped overcome a surge in pro-Clinton social media postings and boost voter turnout for Trump.

Stone on Tuesday repeated his public denials that he had an inside track to WikiLeaks or others who hacked or published Democratic Party and Clinton-related emails and said no one from Mueller’s team has tried to contact him.

One of the two subpoenas delivered last week requests that Sullivan appear before a grand jury on May 18 at the Federal Courthouse in Washington, D.C. The other orders Sullivan to bring documents, objects and electronically stored information.

Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by John Walcott and James Dalgleish
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1IH2OB



Jason Sullivan bio states he worked on trump campaign as "Chief Social Media Strategist directly to Roger J Stone Jr."


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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 seemslikeadream » Wed May 16, 2018 6:05 pm

Walter Shaub

This is tantamount to a criminal referral. OGE has effectively reported the president to DOJ for potentially committing a crime. Dave Apol comes through in the end!!



Ari Melber

NEW: Ethics office sending letter to Rod Rosenstein stating that Michael Cohen's payment on behalf of Trump was a debt and may be relevant to "any inquiry" Rosenstein may be pursuing.
Image



Michael Avenatti


Mr. Trump’s disclosure today conclusively proves that the American people were deceived by Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump, Mr. Schwartz, the WH, and Mr. Giuliani. This was NOT an accident and it was not isolated. Cover-ups should always matter. #Basta



BABY IN A CORNER
‘Infuriated’ Jared Kushner Lost His Cool When Russians Didn’t Deliver Hillary Dirt
Kushner claimed he had no idea why he was in that notorious Trump Tower meeting. Newly-released testimony indicates otherwise.

Adam Rawnsley

05.16.18 12:19 PM ET
Jared Kushner became “agitated” and “infuriate[d]” at the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting when a Kremlin-connected lawyer droned on about U.S. sanctions, instead of delivering on a promise to provide damaging information on Hillary Clinton. That’s according to Rob Goldstone, a British music promoter and friend of the Trumps who helped set up the meeting between Natalia Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Jr.—and who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Trump Tower confab.

Goldstone’s testimony stands in contrast to what Kushner said in public about the meeting. In a July 2017 statement, Kushner paints himself as bored and confused by Veselnitskaya’s presentation.

"I had no idea why that topic was being raised and quickly determined that my time was not well-spent at this meeting,” he told the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia inquiry, adding that he texted an assistant and asked for a call on his cell phone to excuse himself from the meeting.

But Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee concluded in their final report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that Kushner, along with Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort, "had expected to receive—but did not ultimately obtain—derogatory information on candidate Clinton" during the meeting.

Goldstone, for his part, testified that Kushner became visibly angry when Veselnitskaya delivered a lengthy diatribe about U.S. sanctions on Russia and their impact on adoptions—instead of handing over dirt on Clinton.

“After a few minutes of this labored presentation, Jared Kushner, who is sitting next to me, appeared somewhat agitated by this and said, I really have no idea what you're talking about. Could you please focus a bit more and maybe just start again?” Goldstone recalled of the meeting according to hearing transcripts released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. “And I recall that she began the presentation exactly where she had begun it last time, almost word for word, which seemed, by his body language, to infuriate him even more.”


The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy in recollections.

“Kushner denied knowing what the meeting was about—despite being copied on the email chain with the subject line, ‘Russia - Clinton - private and confidential.’”

Goldstone told the Judiciary Committee that Aras Agalorov, the father of one of Goldstone’s clients, had met with a “well-connected Russian attorney” who offered “some interesting information that could potentially be damaging regarding funding by Russians to the Democrats and to its candidate, Hillary Clinton.”


In a subsequent email to pitch the Trump campaign on a meeting, Goldstone wrote to Trump Jr. that Russia’s prosecutor general had met with Aras Agalorov and “offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.”

Goldstone further promised that it was “obviously very high-level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump helped along by Aras and Emin [Agalarov]." Emin Agalorov, a popular singer in Russia and a client of Goldstone, and his father Aras, a Russian billionaire with connections to the Kremlin, helped set up the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya.

In his statement on the Trump Tower meeting, Kushner denied knowing any of this—despite being copied on the email chain with the subject line, “Russia - Clinton - private and confidential.” Kushner said his knowledge of the meeting’s topic stemmed from having “quickly reviewed on my iPhone” an email from Donald Trump Jr. inviting him to a meeting scheduled only as “Don Jr.| Jared Kushner."

Goldstone appeared to be chastened by the failure to deliver on his promised Clinton dirt after the meeting and apologized to Donald Trump Jr. “I said to him, Don, I really want to apologize. This was hugely embarrassing. I have no idea what this meeting was actually about,” he told the Senate Russia inquiry.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-u ... ref=scroll





The NRA The Russia Connection
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=40968

Senate Judiciary Committee concludes that Russia used the NRA to help trump, secretly fund trumps camp, and offer a back channel to Russia including a potent meet w Putin

Russia set their eyes on NRA in 2009. How many politicians did Russia fund via NRA
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 BenDhyan » Wed May 16, 2018 7:36 pm

Well folks, if true, this seems to dash the hopes of many, and opens the way for Trump to crow...and whatever..

Giuliani: Mueller's team told Trump's lawyers they can't indict a president

May 16, 2018

(CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller's team has informed President Donald Trump's attorneys that they have concluded that they cannot indict a sitting president, according to the President's lawyer.

"All they get to do is write a report," Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told CNN. "They can't indict. At least they acknowledged that to us after some battling, they acknowledged that to us."

That conclusion is likely based on longstanding Justice Department guidelines. It is not about any assessment of the evidence Mueller's team has compiled.

A lack of an indictment would not necessarily mean the President is in the clear. Mueller could issue a report making referrals or recommendations to the House of Representatives.

The inability to indict a sitting president has been the position of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department since the Nixon administration and reaffirmed in the Clinton administration, but it has never been tested in court.

It had been an open question whether, if investigators found potentially criminal evidence against Trump, Mueller's team would try to challenge those Justice Department guidelines.
CNN reached out to Mueller's team. They declined to comment.

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/16/politics/rudy-giuliani-robert-mueller-indictment/index.html?sr=twCNN051618rudy-giuliani-robert-mueller-indictment0531PMStory

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