Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

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

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 27, 2017 7:36 am

SonicG » Wed Dec 27, 2017 6:31 am wrote:Damn. Can't believe Trump is harping on the dossier. Lots of it has panned out. Salacious and juicy but seriously, who gives a fuck, because even his close personal security guard claims he went to be early the night of the piss party...

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


yes he can ....it is part of the plea deal...Gen.Yellowkerk can be charged with any crime at any time if Mueller decides to


If Flynn blows the cooperation — meaning, Mueller concludes that he is holding back or dissembling — Mueller simply drops the other shoe. That is, the shoe that kicks Flynn and his son where it does the most damage. Specifically, he indicts them for the offenses that might put them in jail for an extended number of years.


and as always Gen. Yellowkerk can be indicted at any time in the state of New York


There’s another peculiar nuance: Section 3 of the plea agreement leaves Flynn unprotected against certain future prosecutions. The section is titled “Additional Charges” and states in its entirety that “In consideration of your client’s guilty plea to the above offense, your client will not be further prosecuted criminally by this Office for the conduct set forth in the attached Statement of the Offense” (emphasis ours). The office, in other words, seems to be reserving the right to prosecute Flynn for conduct not set forth in that document, which is to say all of the other conduct on which he might be vulnerable. It is hard to know what to make of this language. It could mean nothing at all. It could mean that the threat of further prosecution is being held over Flynn’s head if he does not hold up his end of the bargain. It could mean that another plea agreement covering other matters is coming.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/flynn-plea- ... y-analysis



NY AG Schneiderman Pretty Much Confirms That He Could Become Trump’s Biggest Nightmare
by Elura Nanos | 12:03 pm, December 26th, 2017

Today’s New York Times laid out some harsh words for the president and his legal future. New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said:

“We try and protect New Yorkers from those who would do them harm. The biggest threat to New Yorkers right now is the federal government, so we’re responding to it.”

Ouch.

And so continues the chess game that is federalism under Donald Trump. In more normal times, prosecutors on the state level would refrain from even discussing hypothetical prosecutions of a sitting president or those around him. State attorneys general would typically defer to the feds – doubly so in instances for which a special counsel has been appointed. But as most of us have come to accept, the 45th presidency is anything but typical. Individual states seem to be mustering their artillery in preparation for the day when Trump takes action against Robert Mueller. Whether that action will take form in the shape of a pardon (or five), or a direct (or indirect) firing of Mueller himself is anyone’s guess – but we do know that New York State plans to put itself on the front lines when necessary. California, led by its Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, won’t be far behind either.

During his New York Times interview, Schneiderman wasn’t exactly bragging about his plans to take down the federal government, saying, that he had “a lot of respect” for Mueller’s work, and that, “watching it from the outside, like everybody else, it seems like they’re doing a very thorough and serious job.” Still, Schneiderman’s message was clear: if an effort to derail Mueller’s work surfaced, New York will do “whatever we can do to see that justice is done.”

Those who are legally informed won’t mistake Schneiderman’s low-key attitude for impotence. The reality is that if a state were to initiate prosecution against Trump or his associates, that prosecution would likely be stronger than the corresponding federal one. For one reason, grand jury proceedings, usually secret, could potentially be unveiled during a state prosecution if that state action were to follow a prematurely stifled federal action.

Of course, as we’ve written many times at Law & Crime, President Trump lacks legal authority to issue a pardon for a state crime. Therefore, if Mueller’s investigation exposes individuals, including Trump himself, to state criminal liability, states like New York, Virginia, and Illinois may find themselves cast as the key defenders of the realm. Russian collusion in the election would almost certainly violate election laws in at least those states, not to mention the 39 others that have potentially applicable laws against election interference.

So it may be that the Schneidermans and the Becerras of America become the forces to ultimately stop the Trump machine in its tracks; such an outcome would be deliciously ironic. Conservative states’-rights enthusiasts would need to twist themselves into unrecognizable shapes to explain why a federal official should not submit to state authority, or alternatively, why a state prosecution isn’t grounds for impeachment. For years, Trump sold himself as the ultimate New Yorker. It’s only fair that the Empire State would be the one to finally take him down.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/ny-ag-s ... nightmare/


Devin Nunes attended a breakfast with Michael Flynn and Turkey's foreign minister just before the inauguration
http://www.businessinsider.com/devin-nu ... ia-2017-11



GOP’s smear campaign against the FBI is exactly what Putin wants
By Caroline Orr |
DECEMBER 26, 2017
Republicans are actively trying to undermine public confidence in the U.S. intelligence community. So is Putin.

Republican efforts to sabotage the ongoing Russia probe have reached a fever pitch in recent weeks, with GOP lawmakers calling for purges at the FBI, slinging baseless accusations against special counsel Robert Mueller, and even running secret investigations aimed at exposing unspecified “corruption and conspiracy” within the FBI and Department of Justice.
These efforts, which have been amplified by pro-Trump media outlets like Fox News and Breitbart, are aimed at discrediting the findings of the Russia investigation by sowing doubt and undermining public confidence in the individuals and institutions in charge of the probe — namely, U.S. intelligence agencies and officials.

But the GOP and right-wing media aren’t the only ones who want to tarnish the reputation of the U.S. intelligence community. That’s also what the Russian government has been trying to do since the Cold War — and now they have help.
As former CIA head Michael Morell and ex-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Michael Rogers reported in the Washington Post on Monday, Russia’s interference in American democracy didn’t stop after the 2016 election. Rather, it just changed appearances.
The Kremlin’s latest goal, Morell and Rogers wrote, is to undermine the capabilities of the U.S. intelligence community by discrediting the Russia probe:
Russia’s information operations tactics since the election are more numerous than can be listed here. But to get a sense of the breadth of Russian activity, consider the messaging spread by Kremlin -oriented accounts on Twitter, which cybersecurity and disinformation experts have tracked as part of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy.
In a single week this month, Moscow used these accounts to discredit the FBI after it was revealed that an agent had been demoted for sending anti-Donald Trump texts; to attack ABC News for an erroneous report involving President Trump and Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser; to critique the Obama administration for allegedly “green lighting” the communication between Flynn and then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; and to warn about violence by immigrants after a jury acquitted an undocumented Mexican accused of murdering a San Francisco woman.
Make no mistake: Russia is not pro-Trump. Russia is anti-America, and they’re using Trump as a vehicle to undercut the very agencies that are in charge of stopping their attacks on the U.S. democratic process.
But instead of empowering U.S. intelligence agencies to develop new methods of deterrence, Republicans and pro-Trump media outlets are joining in on Russia’s attempts to divide American society and weaken our institutions.
The latest example of this happened on Tuesday, when Rep. Francis Rooney (R-FL) issued a conspiratorial warning about “deep state” employees working at the FBI and called for a “purge” of the agency. That followed a series of attacks by Trump this weekend on FBI leadership including Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and top FBI lawyer James Baker.
Russia’s goal in all of this is to inflict damage on American society and disrupt our democratic process. This has been their goal for decades, but now the Kremlin has found a new ally to help achieve it — the Republican Party.
https://shareblue.com/gops-smear-campai ... tin-wants/
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 RocketMan » Wed Dec 27, 2017 4:50 pm

Did no one post this yet?

I wonder if Luke Harding has a copyright on "collusion rejectionist". :lol: :lol: :lol:



https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/what ... 796f620a4a

Harding: Look, I’m a journalist. I’m a storyteller. I’m not a kind of head of the CIA or the NSA. But what I can tell you is that there have been similar operations in France, most recently when President Macron was elected — 
Maté: Well actually Luke that’s not true. That’s straight up not true. After that election the French cyber-intelligence agency came out and said it could have been virtually anybody.
Harding: Yeah. But, if you’ll let me finish, there’ve been attacks on the German parliament — 
Maté: Okay, but wait Luke, do you concede that the France hack that you just claimed didn’t happen?
Harding: [pause] What — that it didn’t happen? Sorry?
Maté: Do you concede that the Russian hacking of the French election that you just claimed actually is not true?
Harding: [pause] Well, I mean… that it’s not true? I mean, the French report was inconclusive, but you have to look at this kind of contextually. We’ve seen attacks on other European states as well from Russia, they have very kind of advanced cyber capabilities.

Maté: Where else?
Harding: Well, Estonia. Have you heard of Estonia? It’s a state in the Baltics which was crippled by a massive cyber attack in 2008, which certainly all kind of western European and former eastern European states think was carried out by Moscow. I mean I was in Moscow at the time, when relations between the two countries were extremely bad. This is a kind of ongoing thing. Now you might say, quite legitimately, well the US does the same thing, the UK does the same thing, and I think to a certain extent that is certainly right. I think what was different last year was the attempt to kind of dump this stuff out into kind of US public space and try and influence public opinion there. That’s unusual. And of course that’s a matter of congressional inquiry and something Mueller is looking at too.
Maté: Right. But again, my problem here is that the examples that are frequently presented to substantiate claims of this massive Russian hacking operation around the world prove out to be false. So France as I mentioned; you also mentioned Germany. There was a lot of worry about Russian hacking of the German elections, but it turned out — and there’s plenty of articles since then that have acknowledged this — that actually there was no Russian hack in Germany.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 27, 2017 5:18 pm

nope you beat Rory to it... :P

I wonder if we could find The Real News interviews with some of the other folks involved in this matter.....not just someone reporting on it...has The Real News done it's own investigating on trump? I wonder what Jays thinks about trump revoking news channels licenses

Jays talks about the wealthy people so I would imagine he's taken on trump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6zVvrplDPU

yes the Mercers...yes I do like Jays

Mueller is targeting the RNC for its connections to Cambridge Analytica.

Image

The Bizarre Far-Right Billionaire Behind Trump's Presidency

When all seemed to be falling apart for Trump this summer, one shadowy billionaire offered up his own massive political infrastructure, which included Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, and saved Trump’s campaign from demise


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQUkaEVe7II&t=312s

ok here ya go...here's a bit

Paul Jay On The Trump Administration: One of the Most Dangerous Times in Human History


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuvkjIkd6FI


TAYA GRAHAM: The Real News Network has covered the white supremacy, terrorism and murder in Charlottesville, as well as the heartfelt outpouring of solidarity in cities like Baltimore and beyond. As our country reels from these symbols of hatred and acts of violence, our president, Donald Trump, has offered few words and scant evidence of a desire for American unity. Here to discuss the remarks of our president is our senior editor, Paul Jay of The Real News Network. Paul, thank you so much for joining me.
PAUL JAY: Thank you.
TAYA GRAHAM: Now, before we go into an in-depth analysis of the president's remarks, I want to ask you something about the editorial process of The Real News. How do we choose what to cover in a controversy like what occurred in Charlottesville.
PAUL JAY: Well, we do some breaking news. When the first thing first happened, we try to do some of what's happening. We didn't have anybody there on the Friday, I think it was a Friday, when it broke. A lot of what we do is we try to get to the real issues at stake, what are the underlying forces and try to make some sense of it because why do we do news? Most news operations do news because they need to do something in the realm of news to sell advertising. The objective is to sell advertising because you have to make money. It's a business model. It doesn't mean there aren't serious journalists working in many of the organizations, there certainly are, but the first motive is ratings equal more advertising dollars. That's an underlying force that affects much of the news decision. We don't sell advertising so the way we go at stories is quite different.
I've said before in The Real News, why are we doing this? Most, many of us, working at The Real News could be working in corporate media and making a heck of a lot more money than we're making in a non-profit. We're doing it because we want change in the world so we have to keep struggling with the issue, and it's not an easy one, but who are we talking to and how does that help people make change? We're not the organizers of the kind of movements that were in the streets in Charlottesville. We do want to help people fight for their own interest. We know that when we do news, we're doing it for, we could say, ordinary people, working people. What are the real issues in Charlottesville as it effects most people, then we approach the story. Was the taking down of the monument the issue?
I think, obviously, monuments are symbols so the monument itself is symbolic. One of the things we were saying over this period is that it's easy to attack Nazis, it's easy to denounce Nazis even if it wasn't so easy for Trump. It's easy for everybody else. I mean, that's like shooting fish in a barrel. Some of the worst racists can say they're against the Nazis, racists in real terms. Real terms, I mean, if you advocate laws and support an economic social structure that perpetuates terrible poverty amongst people of color and then you say, "I'm against the Nazis," I don't care that much. The media liked to have a big feeding fest about, "Trump wouldn't say the word Nazi on the first night." We all know he stands for racist policies so why don't we focus on that except it gets clickbait, it's great clickbait. "He didn't say Nazi," and the Democrats can have partisan advantage by jumping on that one thing even though we know the economic disparity under Obama got worse. How about talking about why there was a Trump in the first place?
TAYA GRAHAM: Well, when you talk about corporate media, who you are you referring to? Are you talking about The New York Times? Are you talking about The Washington Post? Who are you targeting here?
PAUL JAY: Well, we, first of all, targeted television because we, more or less, play in that field. There is a difference between the way some of the leading print publications deal with things as compared to television. Television, on the whole and under Trump, it's gotten even worse.
TAYA GRAHAM: It's a circus.
PAUL JAY: It's a total circus, it's a total ratings clickbait craziness. CNN used to pretend to have some kind of newsiness to it. I saw the show after Trump's Phoenix speech and Trump is actually right to talk about how he was being treated by CNN. It's become a war but it's a war for mutual benefit. His base loves when he attacks CNN and now, CNN is fighting for this anti-Trump base. They love when every commentator goes off on how terrible Trump is, except they don't talk about any of the real issues. What was the big thing about the Phoenix speech? That he was out of control.
The actual content of the speech wasn't actually analyzed, it was just that he didn't listen to his handlers because he went after McCain. The night before the Afghan speech, all of a sudden, he seems presidential. The story of the Afghan speech wasn't the substance of US policy in Afghanistan, primarily, on these television shows. It was that he read his teleprompter and that's some great victory that he actually stayed to the teleprompter. We try not to get involved in some of the superficial nonsense, even though it draws a lot of views. We'd have more views if we played this game.
TAYA GRAHAM: Very true. Now, The Real News, I think people would argue is a left leaning or progressive organization. Do you think that we can affectively report on the alt-right and the sort of militant white supremacist movements when people have pointed out, what they believe, is a progressive bias?
PAUL JAY: Well, a lot of labels in that statement. What is progressive? What is left? What actually is alt-right? We try to go where facts lead and we step on a lot of people's toes, on the left and the right, and don't much care. How would anyone not define themselves as progressive if you take what the word progress means? Progress means that society should move forward. Progressive means you shouldn't hold on to old past institutions, one of which, was slavery. Maybe there are some people who would rather bring back slavery or they would like to maintain some of the institutions and ideology that were born from slavery.
TAYA GRAHAM: Right, the traditionalists.
PAUL JAY: Well, it's somewhat different because some people who would consider themselves traditionalists, what they are concerned about, and I share that concern, which is there is a loss of some basic values as society supposedly has progressed. Which means as this economy has gotten totally consumerist and finance has taken over and the culture has zero value other than money making. There is some nostalgia and sentimental desire, legitimately so, of what people imagine, earlier, there were some values, where families matter, where being honest matters, this sort of things. I mean, all of that is out the window now. There's barely a politician that most people don't consider a liar. Now, it's like a relative thing between which one is the most of the liars, then you get [crosstalk 00:07:47] ...
TAYA GRAHAM: Which one is the most egregious liar.
PAUL JAY: No, the ultimate liar is okay because, at least, everyone knows he's lying so he's not so bad. Progressive, sure, we consider ourselves progressive but it doesn't lead us to some ideological determination that we won't report a fact or we will skew a story. We don't do that. We've said many positive things about Donald Trump like the whole Russia-gate thing. We have not bought into Russia-gate, whether Russia interfered in the US elections or not. My joke about that has been that the only reason the American elites don't like that the Russians interfered in the US elections and rigged the elections is because only the American elites are allowed to rig American elections. How dare a foreigner do it. I mean, the democracy they claim that Russia has undermined, if, in fact, they did and I'm still not persuaded that we've seen the evidence that they did, but say they did, it's a sham most of that democracy. What did they expose? WikiLeaks exposed that the DNC sabotaged Bernie Sanders' campaign.
TAYA GRAHAM: Aren't Trump's business practices fair game? I mean, shouldn't those be explored and investigated?
PAUL JAY: Everything is fair game. If Russia, in fact, deliberately tried to mess around in the US elections, of course, it should be reported. Of course, it would be wrong except the hypocrisy of the US talking about it after Americans interfere with every single election and organized coups and regime changes. What's wrong with the way the media deals with the story is they don't tell you the whole story. Sure, it's a worthy story if the Russians did this but contextualize it with the crimes the United States has committed. Even if Putin is everything they claim he is, let's say, he has not committed anywhere near the crimes on the global stage that the American government has, I mean like the Iraq war and on and on.
TAYA GRAHAM: President Trump actually said a similar thing when he said, "We're not so innocent, are we?" when referring to the Russians.
PAUL JAY: We gave him credit for that, he was right and like I'm saying, that's true. There are other things that Trump said more, before he was elected than after, but there was some validity to it and we recognize it when there is.
TAYA GRAHAM: Well, I guess, what I'd like to do now is play a clip about Trump's remarks on Afghanistan. Then, I'd like to get your take on it so I'd like to run clip six.
DONALD TRUMP: I've already lifted restrictions the previous administration placed on our war fighters that prevented the Secretary of Defense and our commanders in the field from fully and swiftly waging battle against the enemy. That's why we will also expand authority for American armed forces to target the terrorist and criminal networks that sell violence and chaos throughout Afghanistan. These killers need to know they have nowhere to hide, that no place is beyond the reach of American might and American arms. Retribution will be fast and powerful. As we lift restrictions and expand authorities in the field, we're already seeing dramatic results in the campaign to defeat ISIS including the liberation of Mosul in Iraq.
TAYA GRAHAM: I just want to remind my audience that we are live on Youtube, Facebook and of course, TheRealNews.com and Periscope. Please put your question in the comments and we'll be happy to answer it. Paul, let me get your response to Trump's remarks.
PAUL JAY: Well, we've been doing a lot of coverage of this Trump speech over the last week. We've interviewed people who know more about it than I do. Let's just start with the issue of the way corporate media covered this speech and again, it was mostly about his style. When I say corporate media, you asked me this question, and I didn't completely answer it. You do get more serious analysis in print whether you agree or not, The New York Times, The Washington Post, McClatchie, there's print that you will find far more serious analysis in. The reason you do is because they're taking to the elites and the elites have investment decisions to make and the elites, actually, have some influence on it when it comes to power. In the higher level, more sophisticated newspapers, not that only elites read them but the elites do rely on them especially The Times.
TAYA GRAHAM: That's a really interesting point because Noam Chomsky always said, "If you want to know what's going on in the world, read The Wall Street Journal because businessmen need to know what's happening so that they can make investments."
PAUL JAY: Exactly, that was actually going to be my next sentence. Even better than The New York Times and The Post is the financial press where they really talk about stuff quite unabashedly. Then, you go one more step and read the military press which is addressed to the industrial military complex which is all public and available and is all about how much money they can make by selling guns. Anyway, all that being said, there is some serious analysis in print but if you look at television, it was mostly just squabbling over style. Let's talk a bit of some of the substance of what he says in that clip and the rest of the speech. First of all, he did make some noises in his campaign about withdrawing from Afghanistan and there were certain amount of support, a certain amount of people voted for him because they considered him, actually, less militarist than Hillary Clinton. I never believe that. If you really look at Trump's history, he actually was always really pro-intervention, it was just which intervention.
TAYA GRAHAM: I see, because there are a lot of his tweets that people have pointed to that show him expounding on a very isolationist, kind of protectionist policy, at least, when it comes, maybe not to Afghanistan, but to [crosstalk 00:13:39].
PAUL JAY: Well, he did it during the campaign. I think part of the reason he framed his candidacy that way is because he thought his real opposition was going to be Jeb Bush. In fighting Jeb Bush, he was going to fight George Bush and he was going to fight interventionism. He had framed his foreign policy that way except it's a fraud. In the beginning of the Iraq war, I think, people, lots of people, have seen that clip where he was kind of talking about, "Yes, we probably should go into Iraq." I'd give Trump that one in a sense that he wasn't full on going to Iraq but Trump was full on going to Libya. In fact, I think you've got a clip here. This is a clip of Donald Trump at the time of the Libyan intervention. Later, he claimed he was against that intervention. I think we've got a clip of this, do we? Yes.
TAYA GRAHAM: Yes, we do.
PAUL JAY: It's a very important clip because hardly anybody have seen this and this is Trump vigorously advocating intervention at Libya.
TAYA GRAHAM: Okay, we'll go to that clip right now.
DONALD TRUMP: Gaddafi in Libya is killing thousands of people, nobody knows how bad it is and we're sitting around. We have soldiers all over the Middle East and we're not bringing them in to stop this horrible carnage. That's what it is, it's a carnage. You talk about all of the things that have happened in history, this could be one of the worst. Now, we should go in, we should stop this guy which would be very easy and very quick, we could do it surgically. Stop him from doing it and save these lives. This is absolute nuts.
We don't want to get involved and you're going to end up with something like you've never seen before. Now, ultimately, the people will appreciate it. They're going to end up taking over the country, eventually, but the people will appreciate it and they should pay us back. We should do, on a humanitarian basis, immediately go into Libya, knock this guy out very quickly, very surgically, very effectively and save the lives. After it's all done, we go to the protestors who end up running the country, they're going to like us a lot better than they will if we don't do it. More importantly, we're going to save lives and we should then, say, "By the way, from all of your oil, we want reimbursement."
TAYA GRAHAM: What's your reaction to his remarks on Libya?
PAUL JAY: Well, he claimed in that speech on Afghanistan, I guess it was Monday night, that his instinct was to get out of Afghanistan and he's trying to portray himself, especially, during the election campaign is that his instinct is non-interventionist or maybe more isolationist. It's simply not true and the Libya clip shows it. His instinct is, actually, a militarist. In his Inaugural Speech, his speech was it's time for a war against Islamic terrorism he called it.
Steve Bannon, Bannon may be out of the White House but Bannon and Trump are on the same page. It's a war against the East. Bannon talked about defending the traditional values of Western Christian liberalism against Eastern and that Eastern can mean anything from Islam to China but particularly, they're targeting Islam. When they say Islam, what do they really mean?
What they really mean is Iran because if they really mean Islam, then how are they cozying up to the Saudis? How does Trump go to Saudi Arabia and so play ball that it enables and strengthens the Saudis to the point that they have a fight with Qatar and up the stakes against Iran. That's the real play. The real play, and Trump has said it, he went to the CIA a few days after his inauguration and joked that the CIA was going to have a second chance to grab Iraqi oil. The real play is Iraq. The real play is the destabilization undermining of Iran.
The real play is, in fact, to continue and even increase the use of the military in developing American hegemony in the Middle East and in South Asia. The issue of Afghanistan, it was always a crock that he was going to get out. What they really wanted, and certainly what Bannon really wanted and Bannon tried to portray himself as a non-militarist and non-interventionist, and when Bannon left the White House and went to Breitbart, the next day after Trump's speech, Bannon was attacking Trump for going back on his Afghan promises on so on.
Except according to numerous news reports, and I have not seen Bannon refute this, Bannon wanted to make a deal with Erik Prince, the guy that used to own Blackwater, the private mercenary army, and now he has one called Frontier something, I can't remember Prince's new company. They want to give them a $10 billion contract to send 5,000 mercenaries into Afghanistan. According to the proposal that came from Erik Prince that's been widely reported, they wanted to create something like the East India Company in Afghanistan with a viceroy. In other words, the mercenary army would put in an American-supported viceroy that would rule Afghanistan.
There is nothing more interventionist than that and that apparently, was Bannon's plan. The point is these guys are all liars. I do this show on The Real News called Reality Asserts Itself and part of what that means is the real economics of things, the real way power plays out, asserts itself. I really urge people to watch the interview I did yesterday with Larry Wilkerson. When you look at how the strategic interest of the US industrial military complex and the idea of America continuing to be the dominant world superpower, if that's the underlying assumption of your foreign policy which it is, then you'd never leave Afghanistan. That is the basic interest.
It's not a question of going in until the Taliban negotiates with you and maybe you'll have a new government. This is a situation like South Korea or a situation like Germany or Japan, American troops are there, in their minds forever because it's part of a strategy of trying to isolate China, it's a leverage against Pakistan which he's now threatening for getting too close to China. He's kind of saying to Pakistan, "Don't get so cozy with China or we're going to really bring India into Afghanistan," which he openly did in that speech.
He said, "We want India to come in and play a bigger economic role." That's like threatening to stab Pakistan in the heart. Of course, much of what he said about Pakistan was true. Pakistan does collaborate with sections of the Taliban, they do create safe havens to sections of the Taliban and the Pakistani intelligence agencies and sections of the armed forces help bring Al Qaeda and the Taliban into being in Afghanistan. I guess the underlying thing here, and this is what's, again, so terrible of corporate television news and to a large extent, even the major print publications, it is such a dangerous situation.
You have the nuclear powers of Pakistan, India and China and the United States, you have all of them having an interest in that region. Not only because of oil pipelines and China is building a major naval port in Pakistan and billions of dollars, maybe it may go up to about a trillion dollars of Chinese investment in Pakistan, there are attentions on the Indian-Chinese border, Pakistan and India are still very tense in Kashmir.
In other words, Trump and the people around him which is a section of the US military are really playing with fire. The problem is it's not just an underlying assumption of how to maintain US power in the region and the world, this is very much driven by the most benow, money-making motives which is the arms manufacturers are going to make a killing. India looks like maybe the biggest new arms market in the world. I read this military press from time-to-time, they're salivating over the amount of arms they're going to sell to India.
Of course, Pakistan's upping their arms purchases, all through the Middle East with the tensions with Iran, the Saudis are buying more guns, the Qataris. There used to be a guy, his name was Zaharoff and this is in the lead up to the First World War, I believe my date's right. He was a Russian arms dealer. He used to sell the most advanced weapons of the time where it's the early stages of machine guns and things like that. He would go to the Germans and tell them, "The French are buying this," and he would plant newspaper articles and then, he'd do the same thing with France, "The Germans are buying it." He would be selling arms to all sides, planting newspaper articles, deliberately trying to format political tensions and he later became known as the Merchant of Death. That became his nickname and he made his fortune. Well, things haven't changed that much.
TAYA GRAHAM: We actually have a question from Daphne on Facebook, she asked, "Didn't Obama destabilized countries too?"
PAUL JAY: Obama listened to the professional foreign policy and the more professional military class. He believed in empire, he believed in the need for American hegemony, he was certainly no pacifist. I would say what differentiates Obama from a Trump is not Obama's unwillingness to kill civilians, he up the drone program far more than it ever existed before. If there's ever a court where you can put people in charge as war criminals, Obama belongs there. He is a war criminal. He committed crimes on two levels.
One, untold number of civilians, the numbers are in the thousands of civilians, that had been killed under drone attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, perhaps Yemen. Two, by the way, it was Obama's responsibility to investigate, and potentially prosecute, Bush Cheney for an illegal war in Iraq. Instead, while he was against the invasion of Iraq, he later started apologizing for it and to some extent, even defending it. I'm not here to say defend Obama and call him some kind of a peacemaker or something but there was some sense of a broader systematic vision, some sense of it, mostly on Iran.
The Iran policy was rational. There were certainly elements in the White House and the Pentagon, certainly the Bush White House, that wanted a war with Iran, certainly the Saudis wanted a war, the Israelis wanted a war, in terms of understanding the systematic good for the empire. It's still was good for everyone else not to have a war with Iran, he understood that. He understood what was wrong with the Iraq war, not because he's against war, he said it himself, he is no pacifist, he was against the Iraq war because he said it was a stupid war.
What was stupid about it is that it actually weakened American influence because it opened the door for Iranian influence in Iraq. That's Obama but Trump is worse. Trump is a neo-fascist, Trump is an upcoming kind of Mussolini, Trump is going to enable the most militarist sections of the Pentagon and not all the Pentagon are equals either, there are some rational people in the Pentagon. The worst sections of the Pentagon, the most anti-Iranian sections of the Pentagon, the people that are thirsting for a fight and for a big military increase in Afghanistan, he's going to enable those sections of the elite. This is not suggesting Obama didn't commit many crimes but Trump is going to be on a whole another level.
TAYA GRAHAM: Now, I have another question from [Nag111 00:26:08] from Youtube, "Would like to know how are the elites divided on the Trump administration from a business perspective and which side is really against Trump and his administration?" It's a good question.
PAUL JAY: It's a great question. I'll take a stab at it. I'm not in the elites but I'm going to say this in all seriousness because if I had some time, I would hang out more with them if I could because you hear stuff. I think the preponderance of the elites are only interested in making money and just about everything else is not so important. They're not fanatical about any kind of ideas, but some are. Some are. The guy that Robert Mercer, who's the billionaire, we did a whole documentary on this, which people should watch, called The Bizarre Right-Wing Billionaire That Brought Bannon and Trump to Power, he's a real idealogist.
He funds climate denial, he funds people like John Bolton who's this foreign policy, far, far right militarist foreign policy guy who was even being talked about as being a UN rep for the Trump administration and was an undersecretary in the Bush administration, who wants to invade Iran and wanted to have a war in Syria. Mercer is a very ideological billionaire and there's others that are really fundamentalist Christian, the Coke Brothers are fundamentalist capitalists and they're activist billionaires who really believe in, not just making money, but they seemed to have a whole philosophy of government, they claim smaller government, but I think it's just government that makes them money.
I think most of the elite just want to make money and here's their problem with Trump and the same problem they had with George Bush, I did ask somebody who was in the elites about George Bush after the Iraq War. I said, "I don't understand why you guys supported him again in the second election. He was a mess. I mean the Iraq war is a complete disaster, everyone's calling it one of the great strategic, THE greatest strategic mistakes in US history, the administration is in chaos. Why do you guys support this guy?" He says, "Because he opened up the piggy bank." Any regulation you don't want, "Can you get rid of that regulation?" Done. Anything loophole, you wanted a tax policy, done. "We would like to have a tax cut," done. It was an orgy of money-making and that's what Trump is doing. Trump has promised everything to the military industrial complex.
TAYA GRAHAM: He's promised tax cuts.
PAUL JAY: Tax cuts, financial deregulation, kill the fossil fuel industry, he's killing the climate change policies. Every major sector of the economy except, maybe, maybe IT who I'm not sure they're getting something so special but they might in deregulation, those that have broadcast interests. The FCC is going to make it a free-for-all for a concentration of ownership of television and radio and things like that. That's already beginning. Sinclair Broadcast [crosstalk 00:29:35].
TAYA GRAHAM: Just bought a huge swath of the spectrum.
PAUL JAY: Yeah, so every major sector of the economy. Why are there regulations? There's regulations because the role of the state, of government and these big capitalist countries is to make sure that the system keeps working. In fact, Hillary Clinton actually said it in a debate with Bernie Sanders early on in the primary, she says, "Our job is to reign in the excesses of capitalism." Why? Not because they care about how those excesses might hurt people, the excesses threaten the system itself.
TAYA GRAHAM: It threatens the stability of the system, something [crosstalk 00:30:14].
PAUL JAY: [crosstalk 00:30:15] financial regulation and the banks go crazy like they did in '07, '08 again and then, you have another massive financial meltdown. Very possible. Of course, finance doesn't care because they figured, "The public are going to bail us out again." The elites are, on the other hand, they are concerned and increasingly concerned that Trump is mad, that he's really not just showing off. Trump used to say that he wanted people to think he was unpredictable, that it's good in negotiations.
TAYA GRAHAM: To throw people off balance so they don't know where you're coming from [crosstalk 00:30:52].
PAUL JAY: Yeah, you'll do the unthinkable because you're so crazy and it keeps your people off balance.
TAYA GRAHAM: Their word he's not faking it.
PAUL JAY: Their word he's not faking it. There are sections of the elites, especially in finance, that don't like him associating with real fascists. A lot of these hedge fund guys, they're very smart and while, I think, they're helping drive the economy and the country over a cliff because they're so narrow-minded in their moneymaking, they don't want America to be a fascist country. The military industrial complex, I'm not so sure, they might not mind getting close to that kind of super reactionary politics. There's divisions in the elites, they're on the fence but the problem is, look at the stock market, historic highs. If you're cashing in on that gravy train, you can put up with a lot of craziness in the White House.
TAYA GRAHAM: I wanted to go to another audience question. I hope I say this right, [Akila Skygladder 00:31:51] from Youtube asked, "Paul Jay, it is my understanding that Trump is in Afghanistan to mine and takeover the drug trade." It's interesting.
PAUL JAY: I don't think so. I think the various sections of the American, probably, military and I'm saying this without hard evidence but lots of anecdotal evidence, 65% of Afghan GDP is the poppy trade. It is the only real economy of Afghanistan, other than selling things to soldiers. Most of the indigenous agriculture are gone.
TAYA GRAHAM: It's just the cash crop.
PAUL JAY: Yeah. You cannot get industrial quantities of poppies or if it's been processed into hashish or heroin or whatever, you can't get it out of the country in those sizes without everybody knowing. The authorities are all in on it, the Afghan government, the warlords are all in on it, the people that run the country are all in on it, the Taliban are now in on it, everybody is in on it. The US has actually kind of officially said in many ways that they're going turn a blind eye to it.
One suspects it's more than just a blind eye, turning a blind eye. I think, at some levels, some people are in on this but I don't think there's a way to directly control the narcotics business in Afghanistan, that Trump is somehow is going to grab it. If there is a grab, and I think there may be a grab and there's a little piece in his speech where he said this, he said, "The Afghan prime minister has assured us that we can participate in the Afghan economy in order to recover some of our costs."
TAYA GRAHAM: That's something he's promised in other scenarios too. He said, "They're going to reimburse us for going into the country," he's mentioned that again and again.
PAUL JAY: I think what that means, and I doubt it's drugs, because there'd be no way to hide taking over the drug trade. As I say, I would suspect some of the CIA and others already have something. There's a long history of American intelligence agencies being in cahoots with the Latin American Columbian drug trade and using some of that money to finance off-the-books operations. Who knows what's going on with the Afghan drug trade. In terms of motive, I don't put anything off the table but I think what they're really talking about is there's tremendous mineral wealth in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's been called the Saudi Arabia of lithium and lithium is critical to computer chips [ed: should have said batteries]. One of the other major sources is Bolivia but there's not a lot of lithium in this world. There's all kinds of minerals in Afghanistan.
TAYA GRAHAM: Sounds like a treasure trove.
PAUL JAY: It is a treasure trove of minerals, thank you but you can't get at it when there's such chaos and disorder there. Maybe what Trump's saying, and it's kind of funny because it's one sentence buried in the speech, maybe what he's saying is that we are making a deal as part of this staying in Afghanistan, that we are going to have access to these minerals and we'll have enough military might to protect that kind of mineral operation.
The way Trump has worked in Iraq is that the Americans should have, and he said this many times, "Seize the Iraqi oil. Use US troops just to protect the oil and let the rest of the country, go to hell." Well, maybe in his head, that's what happens in Afghanistan. That you can seize some of the mineral deposits, actually exploit them, protect them and let the rest of the country go to hell because in Africa, in many places, that's exactly what's happening.
They have private security firms protecting gold mines and diamond mines and the rest of the country is in chaos. Maybe that's what he has in mind with it. I highly doubt it's about some direct grab of the drug trade but who knows, in the sense, that the more military involvement gets involved and the more corruption gets instilled, there may be some grabs in that way but I wouldn't call that a main motivator.
TAYA GRAHAM: Well, you're talking about the Afghanistan remarks, his new policy on Afghanistan. You're basically saying it's going to be a forever war, that's his plan and that's probably always been his plan.
PAUL JAY: I'm not sure whether it's his plan or always been his plan but it will be THE plan because it's in the strategic interest of the empire. The people that really determine these policies, out of the Pentagon and the US foreign policy establishment, which exists in the leadership of both parties as well, that's how they see it because this is all about China.
TAYA GRAHAM: Then, what about the timing of his announcement? I mean, isn't there something that you can see with the timing that, perhaps, he's doing this very specifically to change the conversation, to change the tone of the national discussion? I mean, this timing has to be purposeful. He could've waited a month or done it a month earlier.
PAUL JAY: Yeah, it could well be. I think there was some dissension in the White House about what the Afghan policy would be. I'm just going on reading the mainstream press but apparently, there were two camps. There was the McMaster-Kelly camp that wanted a kind of conventional increase in troops and what I would say, the way Wilkerson is talking, this bigger geo-strategic vision of keeping a base, bases, in Afghanistan. The Bannon group, apparently, wanted this private mercenary army. I'm not sure exactly if that may have held up the decision, I think they did need a decision that specific week. Sure, I don't think there's a single announcement that gets made that doesn't take domestic politics and PR into account, so sure, there must have been an element to that.
TAYA GRAHAM: There is a viewer on Periscope, unfortunately, I can't quite see their name but thank you. Just One Fix 2004 from Periscope wanted to know, "Does Paul think that Trump is really in charge?"
PAUL JAY: Well, one, I don't really know so I'll speculate along with everybody else. Yes and no but to some extent, you can yes and no about any president. It's a very legal structure on the whole as far as I can understand it. There is always some fear that some day, somebody will be charged with something criminal, there will be an investigation, there will be hearings. There's a certain amount of that kind of structure that gets maintained and within the structure, he's in charge, he makes decisions. A president can more push that or doesn't push it.
Apparently, people claim Nancy Reagan was practically running the White House in the last days of Ronald Reagan and some presidents assert themselves more than others. I don't know, I mean when it comes to Afghanistan, I don't know what Trump really planned except he clearly seems to have enormous deference to the generals. He's picked certain kinds of generals that are real militarists and he listens to them. Does that make him not in charge? I think it's probably would still be his final decision but I don't know that they gave him a whole lot of choice on Afghanistan.
It's a yes and no. He is in charge, he can say crazy things and when he's told not to, he can sign executive orders and he has different sections in the White House some of which, when Bannon was there or Stephen Miller who are way out there on the far right, and he signed a lot of executive orders, maybe he'll be able to push some of the wall through. The crazier it gets, the harder it is for him to get the Republican Party onboard. I think a lot will be determined by polling. If it looks like the Republicans really might get trounced in 2018, he will have less and less power and he will be less and less in charge.
The party might really turn on him. I know there's a lot of talk about removing him with the 25th Amendment, it's hard to see it happening. The 25th Amendment allows the vice-president and a majority vote in cabinet not to just remove him. If I understand it correctly, they have to, then, go to Congress and get two-thirds of Congress to agree to remove him. It's a very big process. If he went really, completely mad and completely out of control, I think they would do it but Pence and the Republican Party are very, very scared of really pissing off the Trump base.
If we start getting closer to 2018 and he really looks like he's going to trounce the Republican Party, either they may try to find a way to dump him or they will maneuver and manipulate the White House and power where he starts having less and less power. I would guess there are ways that they can start asserting Vice-President Pence and give him Cheney-esque kind of power. Let's not forget when Pence was asked, "What kind of vice-president you want to model yourself after?" He said, "Dick Cheney." They might be able to shift increasing decision-making power to Pence, threatening Trump that if you don't allow this, we will go down the road of the 25th Amendment. We may see more of a play like that where he can't pass anything through Congress so they might weaken him. If you're asking me, yeah, in a way he's in charge.
TAYA GRAHAM: Well, we have another question, I believe, it's McCullough from Facebook. The question is, "Who would've been a better successor to President Obama?"
PAUL JAY: Who you asking? From the interest of the elites which ain't me, from the interest of the elites, I think they would've done better with Joe Biden. I think Joe Biden would've done what the elites needed to have done and would have charmed everybody and would have continued the Obama charm offensive. He would've defended the status quo. People think he says things he shouldn't but he's relatively a disciplined politician.
TAYA GRAHAM: He's Uncle Joe.
PAUL JAY: Yeah. I mean, if Hillary hadn't had things locked up and maybe if Biden didn't have these personal issues going on with his, I guess, it was his son that died. From the point of view of the elites, I think Biden would've been a better choice. From the point of view of the people, of someone who had any chance of winning, then I think it would've been Sanders. Sanders' policy is, at least on some critical issues, does challenge concentrated wealth in the way income is distributed, certainly a healthcare or Medicare for all and I think on taxes, he would've reformed taxes. A lot of his measures were reforms that are kind of and sort of in line with some European social democracy. They would've been an advance for people.
For foreign policy, well, I think Sanders has some blind spots on foreign policy, at least, it seemed in the campaign although overtime that also seemed to change. Certainly, he voted against the Iraq war. Just recently, in the Senate, when there was a vote to have new sanctions on Russia, Iran, it was only two people that voted against it: Him and Rand Paul. He voted against it because he thought it would undermine the nuclear agreement with Iran. While I don't think he has really come out and denounced the underlying assumption of being the world hegemon, which I wouldn't mind seeing, on the other hand if he did, maybe he wouldn't be able to even contend for the presidency given the power of those guys. Anyway, I would think Sanders, of someone who had a chance to win. I'm sure there's all kinds of people out there that might have made a better president but nobody that was in the realm of winning an election.
TAYA GRAHAM: Certainly. I think you made a good point with Biden being a good establishment Democrat and with him using his Uncle Joe charm, I think he might have been a successful [crosstalk 00:44:34].
PAUL JAY: Well, I think Jill Stein had a much more coherent policy on all kinds of issues including foreign policy issues in the Green Party. Given the way politics works in this country, at least for now, there's no way that the Green Party had any chance for power in that last election.
TAYA GRAHAM: Now, you mentioned something interesting when you were talking about President Trump's respect for the military generals that he's surrounding himself with. His had this very strong pro-military rhetoric but do you think it's going to actually translate into any positive reforms for our vets who are often left homeless and without proper mental healthcare in our country?
PAUL JAY: I haven't seen it.
TAYA GRAHAM: You haven't seen any signs of them?
PAUL JAY: There are lots of talk but I think there's some kind of new GI bill they're talking about. There may be a little bit. Trump proposed a $54 billion increase in military funding and actually, was critique by the military industrial complex that it wasn't enough and they said it's only 2% or 3% more than Obama would've done anyway. I'm not sure that's true but the Republicans are now going to up it by $15, $20 billion. The money is mostly flowing to arms manufacturing, and I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but as you mentioned, the number of vets that are homeless, it is beyond disgraceful. The rhetoric about, "Thank you for your service. Thank you for your service, now, go live on the street." It's such a crock that people can look other people look in the face that will go off and die so they can live in extravagance. That the worst kind of war crimes can be accepted so they can live on their big yachts and fly their private airplanes. Then, at a baseball game, a soldier gets to throw out a ball.
TAYA GRAHAM: Right or they take a video of him coming home and his kids seeing him.
PAUL JAY: To preserve our way of life. What is the way of life? To have 350 homicides in Baltimore, soldiers should die to preserve that way of life? The hypocrisy, it's beyond imagining. Again, popular culture and particularly television news and a lot of print, they make all this feel normal. Just complete hypocrisy, practically kissing the feet of soldiers when they're going to go off to fight and then, treating them like crap when they get home.
TAYA GRAHAM: Right. Well, the US Military voted overwhelmingly for President Trump so do you think there is going to be a chance for these Trump voters to see a disconnect between what he promised and what he's actually delivering?
PAUL JAY: I hope so. I mean, the thing with the US Military is they've gone through boot camp and boot camp is brainwashing. All out brainwashing. We did a story with a guy, his name was Josh, I can't remember his last name but we interviewed him after he had gone to boot camp, gone to the Iraq war and then refused to fight, was a conscientious objector, while he was over there. He told stories how in boot camp they were taught to march to a chant and in the chant it was, I can't remember the exact words, but essentially, "Went down to the market, chop, chop, chop. Saw some people, chop, chop, chop." It's like chopping people up.
He told us in the interview that in the boot camp training, you're given scenarios to see whether you pass or not. One of the scenarios is you're in a market and you see somebody with a gun, then fired at you but the market is full of people. You know that if you shoot, you're going to kill women and children, what do you do? If you don't say you'll shoot and kill women and children, you fail the test. The military goes through a process of fascistization because they're taking ordinary people, who had been taught their whole life not to kill people and brought up with values, do not kill whether it's a Christian or Jewish or Islamic, the value is don't kill people. Now, they're trained to follow orders and kill people whenever we tell you to.
If that mindset, then votes for people that want to go to war and are militarists and have this kind of racist and fascist ideology, it's no wonder what's happened to people when they've been through such a process. On the other hand, a lot of soldiers get it especially once they go over and actually do the fighting. When you're sitting in your camp and you actually haven't experienced the war, that's one thing but a lot of people went to Iraq and saw the lies they've been told and came back and actually many of them became anti-war activists. There are a lot of thinking soldiers.
I think you're right, when it comes to Trump voters, the disconnect, because Trump is not going to raise wages, Trump is not going to create really more jobs, the Rust Belts aren't going to get better. Yeah, I think overtime, many of the Trump voters will become very disillusioned with unkept promises but, and this is the big BUT, the solution isn't go back to corporate Democrats which help create these conditions for this, this wealth disparity. I mean, Clinton is the one that helped usher in the Rust Belt, Bill Clinton. The issue is will there be an alternative that actually, really, represents the interest of the kind of working people that voted for Trump.
Also, it's really important because everyone keeps talking about the workers that voted for Trump, that wasn't the main place his votes came from, the main place his votes came from were traditional Republicans who just want to pay less taxes. He didn't win the majority of the working class. He increased the Republican vote in the working class, so that increase combined with the traditional Republican and in certain swing states, made the difference. Do I think those people get disillusioned with him? Yeah but the concern will be is that a worse version of Trump emerges and maybe, it's Pence. That version of Trump is yes, Trump didn't deliver because he was an incompetent clown, because he couldn't work with the Republican Party, he couldn't get anything passed.
TAYA GRAHAM: Why do you consider Pence a worse version of Trump? Is it because of his Christian zealotry? Why do say he's a worse version? Is he more a palatable version?
PAUL JAY: Yeah, he looks like a president. He's disciplined. He's a relatively disciplined politician, he knows how to play the game, he knows how to act like a president. He will be like a Cheney and he knows how to work the levers of power, he'll work with the Republican Party. They'll maybe get some of this horrible legislation passed but mostly, he just won't look incompetent but the objectives will be similar. Except on Russia, I think Pence probably buys in to the more traditional geo-political view, "Let's make Russia an enemy and let's make lots of arms using that as the narrative." They may have some actual concern about Russian power in Eastern Europe but they blow it up way out of proportion because it's in their interest to do so.
Pence is more dangerous because he could pull it off. It wouldn't be a sideshow one expects and he's waiting on the wings to do it. The reason Trump even got to become president, really, is because he made a deal to allow Pence, Pence is a Koch Brother guy, Pence is a Republican Party guy, so that the corridors of power said to Trump, "Yeah, we won't bring you down in favor of Hillary Clinton," which some even did. Some of the neocons even went over to Hillary. But Pence is there and he is our ace in the hole.
TAYA GRAHAM: We are live on YouTube, Facebook, Periscope, and TheRealNews.com, and if you have a question, please write it in the comments section. I have a question from Ross Progress from YouTube. Would like to know, does Africa matter to Trump? Will we see a vast shift in the US national interest for the African continent? Interesting question. Thank you, Ross Progress.
PAUL JAY: It's a really interesting question. I'm not sure what this administration thinks of Africa. They don't seem to talk about it much.
TAYA GRAHAM: No, they haven't. Haven't addressed it.
PAUL JAY: I suspect it will be a continuation as is, except maybe worse, if it's possible to be worse.
TAYA GRAHAM: That's a good prediction.
PAUL JAY: Meaning enable the dictators, continue to enable them, continue to enable mining companies to take whatever they want. You know, Trump's made a point of not caring about human rights anywhere and that's not going to affect our US foreign policy. I don't think the Obama administration, other than some rhetoric, cared all that much about human rights in Africa either. It will be worse under Trump because there won't even be a pretense.
TAYA GRAHAM: Yeah, I don't even think he's really acknowledging the continent and its countries at all.
PAUL JAY: He doesn't need to, in a sense that these things run themselves. They're sections of the ... There's AFRICOM. The American military has a whole section directed towards Africa. State department has its sections. The embassies, and mostly all the various mining companies and other commercial interests, they all do what they do. They don't need Trump to do anything.
It may become an issue as things move on. Geo-strategically, the issue for the administration of Trump in the shorter term is Iran but the longer term is China, and China's gaining influence in Africa by leaps and bounds. And I must say, it's not like China gives a damn about human rights in Africa either.
TAYA GRAHAM: No, they don't.
PAUL JAY: In fact, sometimes even less than the Americans do. But it may become an issue of the rivalry with China but, so far, I at least personally have not heard much of Trump and his gang on Africa. It ain't going to get any better, that's for sure.
TAYA GRAHAM: It'll be interesting to see if he responds to Africa because he wants to actually counter China's progress in the country. So basically, we're predict-
PAUL JAY: Well, one other thing might be. I mean, because he's got this war on Islamic terrorism, you might see an increase of attacks on African countries where there's active Islamic fighters there.
TAYA GRAHAM: I think I have another question. I have DC from YouTube in regards to Hurricane Harvey. Significant gas, oil refineries are, there's talk about the disastrous, toxic environmental impact, aside from the economic and the natural disasters often break or make a president. Comment please.
PAUL JAY: This is what's happening today.
TAYA GRAHAM: I think so.
PAUL JAY: Well, I don't know enough about this to say anything too specific. All I can say is what we said about George Bush's reaction to Katrina, and this is typical-
TAYA GRAHAM: Yes. A huge stain on his presidency.
PAUL JAY: But it's typical, and it's this phrase. I wrote a piece about this at the time called "Après moi, le déluge". After me, come the floods. They don't care. There's no short-term, not enough short-term profit making in building up infrastructure. They know this stuff is coming. It's just written off, you know? Rich won't pay the price.
Same with climate change as a whole. The majority of the elites believe the human-caused climate change. Are they demanding Trump do something about it? No, because they don't think they're going to be the ones that suffer. They figure, "We'll live in ... If we have to, we'll live on stilts and enclaves that are protected from all this."
It's the people that pay the price for these storms and extreme weather events. And sometimes some coastal mansion might get wiped out, sure, but they won't put in what it takes to protect people from things that everyone knows are coming. Everyone knows that climate change is going to cause increasingly severe weather. That we're going to have more and more severe hurricanes and droughts and other kinds of these events, and they're doing nothing because they make more money somewhere else. Doing something else. And then this administration doesn't even want to believe there is such a thing as human-caused climate change.
I mean, the bottom line of all these issues, all these issues, is these elites are not fit to rule. They're not fit to govern and people have to stop allowing them to govern, and stop voting for people who are just fraudsters and actors that play out these roles, these theatrical roles, and are driving the whole planet and species over a cliff.
I mean, the whole fate of human civilization is at stake over this next four, five, six, seven, eight years because of climate change, and they're playing with fire, in terms of foreign policy and nuclear powers and nuclear weapons. I mean, it could not be a more dangerous moment for us right now, and to a large extent because of the media and culture making everything seem like it's, "Oh, it's just another day. Everything will be okay. Go watch some entertainment programming and laugh about that and get on with your life."
TAYA GRAHAM: And look at the spectacle of our governance, as opposed to the actual subject matter at hand, which is that we are hurtling towards environmental disaster. You know, I wanted to ask you something about Breitbart. Steve Bannon. Breitbart immediately started lashing out again against President Trump as soon as Bannon was dismissed.
They called Trump's decision, his new policy on Afghanistan, a total flip-flop, so what do you think the future between Bannon's alt-right or the alt-right as a whole that's cultivated by the Breitbart nation and Trump? What's the future of that relationship because there's the severing between the parents here? There's a divorce.
PAUL JAY: Well, Bannon's base is Robert Mercer, the billionaire. That's his main lever of power. It's an enormous amount of money behind him ... Although Bannon's quite wealthy in his own right. But let's remember Bannon did not support Trump in the Republican primary, and neither did Mercer. Mercer supported Cruz. And these guys jumped on Trump after he won the nomination.
Trump's a vehicle for a lot of different forces. Why did Christian evangelicals vote for Trump, even over somebody like a Cruz, who in theory is more a believer than Trump because I don't think anyone believes that Trump is a believer?
TAYA GRAHAM: Right. He drinks the wine, he eats the little cracker, he doesn't repent or go to confession. It didn't seem that he was truly engaged with the Christian faith.
PAUL JAY: He's about moneymaking. Everybody knows that. The way he talks about women. What serious evangelical could listen to the way he talked on that tape ...
TAYA GRAHAM: Right. On the Access Hollywood bus, yes.
PAUL JAY: ... and think this guy is an actual believer? He's a posturer. He's a con-man. But a lot of different forces saw him as a vehicle because he's a good con-man and was able to swing sections of the working class that normally wouldn't vote for such stuff to vote for him. So he's a vehicle. He's a vehicle for Bannon and Mercer, he's a vehicle for the evangelicals, he's a vehicle for the far right militarist like the John Boltons. He's a vehicle for some sections of the militarists in the Pentagon. He's a vehicle.
He's a vehicle that if he isn't a good vehicle, they'll find another vehicle. So the Bannon-Trump relationship, I think Trump believes in a lot of what Bannon believes in, and I think Bannon, I'm guessing here but I'm sure Bannon, who may be actually quite religious. Bannon is connected to Opus Dei and the Catholic Church. We did a story, more than one story about this. We actually showed some video of Bannon Skyping into a meeting that took place-
TAYA GRAHAM: This is for those who might not know. Can you tell a little bit about Opus Dei because it sounds like the Da Vinci Code?
PAUL JAY: Well, it is. It more or less is. I mean, Opus Dei is essentially a fascist organization within the Catholic Church. Far, far, far right. In the United States, the guy most connected with it is Cardinal Burke, who's been fighting against Pope Francis. Pope Francis, in the church, they have buyer's remorse. They never thought Francis, with his history, would be as much of a social democrat essentially as he is. He's on climate change, he's demanding real reform on inequality, and he uses language that's almost out-and-out anti-capitalist.
TAYA GRAHAM: Very true.
PAUL JAY: It's horrendous to the right-wing of the church.
TAYA GRAHAM: Sounds very New Testament, actually.
PAUL JAY: And, well, yeah. I mean, imagine a pope actually talking like Jesus.
TAYA GRAHAM: I know. It's kind of throwing them for a loop.
PAUL JAY: It's completely outrageous. So Opus Dei all over the world. They have tremendous influence in the Vatican, they have lost significant influence because of Pope Francis, and Burke got into kind of ... Cardinal Burke was getting into an open fight with Francis but it's very interesting. There's this institute that's called Institute for the Family or Family Values or something like this. Held this meeting in the Vatican. They invited Bannon to speak at it. He came in through Skype because he was in the US.
When you go to the webpage of this Institute for the Family, I'm not remembering the name but it's something like that, and who's on their website? Steve Bannon. So the Bannon-Opus Dei connection is I think, it could be Bannon is sincere about that, who knows?
TAYA GRAHAM: It's possible.
PAUL JAY: But Bannon doesn't depend on Trump. Trump is a great vehicle, and then after a while, Bannon didn't have enough influence in the White House because the bigger powers, the bigger guys, kind of asserted themselves. So he'll go back to Breitbart and he will fight for what he wants. But, again, it's so hypocritical. Bannon's claiming that he doesn't like the flip-flop on Afghanistan but if the reporting's true, Bannon wanted mercenaries in Afghanistan. So even Bannon's supposed non-interventism isn't really there.
But what does Bannon want? He wants a war against Islamic terrorism. I don't think the Trump Saudi strategy was against Bannon's wishes. Bannon wants to focus on Iran, and he wants to focus aggressively against China. He wants a trade war with China. He advocates it openly, and that interview he gave to Bob Kuttner in American Progress that helped trigger his final leaving the White House. Fired, resignation, probably fired.
The main thing he does is he calls Bob Kuttner and says, "Oh, I see you're on my page. You want a trade war with China too," which is actually not true. Bob Kuttner does not want a trade war with China. He just raises it. Says there are some legitimate critiques of China on US-China economic relations.
Anyway, what will happen with Bannon? Bannon is backed by a lot of money. On climate denial, on aggressiveness towards Iran, China. His interest also converge with Koch, the Koch Brothers, and maybe some other ... Sheldon Adelson. Militantly, militantly pro-Netanyahu and Likud in Israel. The worst of the worst of the right-wing politics in Israel. Bannon's very connected to it.
So he represents a very fascistic section of interest and ideology, and they will do what they do. As long as Trump remains a vehicle for them, they will keep supporting him, even if they critique certain things. They will try to threaten Trump. That if you don't stay mostly on our page, you're going to lose your base, and who knows? Maybe next time it will be Bannon that runs himself.
TAYA GRAHAM: That's possible.
PAUL JAY: [crosstalk 01:05:33] except he kind of looks a little decrepit. I don't like usually making these kinds of comments. I mean that in all seriousness, but it's hard to win an election when you kind of look like your falling apart. But who knows? He could lose some weight and look better. Go to the gym. Or they'll find another vehicle, even more likely, but it's probably better for Bannon to be the power behind someone and have a proxy fight. And maybe it will be Pence. I mean, maybe Pence runs against Trump if he even stays on in 2020.
I can't believe, it's hard to believe, unless something happens, and this something is a real threat. If these guys engineer another 9/11, and we really should not rule that out. As the more this gets into crisis, this administration, the economy, the geopolitics, as more as ... How could this Trump mobilize the country for war now? Who's going to want to go to war led by this commander-in-chief? Very few people. There may be some but very few. The same was with George Bush. People forget that before 9/11, there was, I believe it was ABC, a television show called "That's my Bush."
TAYA GRAHAM: Yes, that's right. I do remember that too.
PAUL JAY: And it ridiculed the Bush family.
TAYA GRAHAM: Yes.
PAUL JAY: Well, after 9/11, all of a sudden, let's rally around George Bush.
TAYA GRAHAM: Right. We have to support our executive commander.
PAUL JAY: He's [crosstalk 01:06:58]. So the danger right now amongst many different dangers is that there could be another 9/11 engineered and create this fervor of aggression. If they did it, they'll probably tie it to Iran and people should be on guard for that.
TAYA GRAHAM: I think it's understandable that people, very concerned that there would be a tail wagging the dog scenario where an event, a terrorist attack, is engineered or allowed to happen in order to rally the country behind an unpopular commander in chief in order to do his bidding and to follow him into war wherever he wants.
PAUL JAY: Yeah. This last season of Homeland on HBO, it had a scenario very close to what's going on here, and there's a Steve Bannon character in that who is a master of lying propaganda and campaigns of lies, and Steve Bannon made all these documentary films, which were essentially just lie after lie. Watch again this film we did about Mercer because we show clips from Bannon's documentaries. But in the Homeland episode, they have an enormous troll farm that has been set up. Hundreds and hundreds of people at their computers spilling out lies, political lies, to influence the outcome of elections.
The real story is going to come out more likely. It's not about the Russians and Wikileaks and their trolls and troll farms, of which maybe there are. But the troll farms that were connected to Bannon and Mercer's company, Cambridge Analytica, and the extent to which they're using the internet to help create this movement through lie after lie after lie, echoed and echoed and echoed. Created with industrial strength. Again, people better be wary of this.
TAYA GRAHAM: Well, Paul, I want to thank you and I want to thank the audience that joined us when we were live on YouTube, Facebook, Periscope, and of course TheRealNews.com. I'm your host, Taya Graham, and I want to thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.


Donald Trump: The Raw and Naked Face of a System That Showers Speculators with Obscene Riches
Paul Jay says the enablers of Trumpism are the leaders of both major parties and the corporate media

Donald Trump is not an aberration. He's the raw and naked face of an economic system that showers speculators with obscene riches and political power.


"I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few." That’s a quote attributed to Adolf Hitler. Donald Trump is not the only actor on the political stage who ascribes to such methods. The enablers of this surging far right “populism” are the leaders of both major political parties and the corporate media.


Whether it’s the charming smile of leading Democrats or the religious fervor and patriotic zeal of establishment Republicans, they both ensure super-profits for the super-rich.


According to an IPS report, the Forbes list of the top 400 American billionaires hold more wealth than the bottom 61% of the nation combined. In the years of the Obama administration, the top 1% of the population captured 95% of the post-recession increase in income. This is the legacy Hillary Clinton promised to continue.


For most people living conditions are more insecure and for many desperate. No wonder some turn to a snake oil salesman. The growth of such inequality, managed by the Democratic and Republican Party leadership, has facilitated conditions for the election of this dangerous caricature.


Corporate media focuses on the horse race. A contest they need to feed their treasuries with the more than 6 billion dollars they reap in political advertising. They talk about Trump's temperament and showmanship as he surrounds himself with the dregs of the far political and religious right.


His VP and cabinet choices are war mongers and climate change deniers of the worst sort. He is poised to undo what's left of the New Deal, and in spite of his promises to American workers, he will intensify their exploitation.


The liberal media mostly ignores the complicity of their own political heroes. Instead they feast on a morbid fascination with Trump’s outrageous racism and xenophobia. They make a furor about the alleged role of Russia in the release of emails, yet the more important issue here are the revelations about Clinton and her campaign.


The corporate media hide the underlying truth. The rise of such a dangerous farce to the White House is a sign of the deep decay of the system itself.


Capitalism has lost its dynamism. Too few people own far too much. More profits are generated from parasitical speculation than productive investment. The elites who revel on the deck of the Titanic have next to no interest in the well-being of the majority of people.


Trump's major billionaire backer Robert Mercer made his fortune in high frequency stock trading, gaming the stock market using advanced algorithms and data analysis to create unprecedented profits.


Mercer's daughter Rebecca helps run the Trump transition team, and key Trump advisors Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon both worked for Mercer.


Another major backer is Sheldon Adelson, who made his billions owning Las Vegas casinos. Adelson, a close ally of Israeli PM Netanyahu, reportedly gave Trump twenty-five million dollars.


From climate disaster to the destructive orgy of unrestrained finance, the billionaire class and their political minions are not even capable of dealing with threats to the very system that made them so wealthy. It's the whole of humanity that will pay the price.


The ruling elites are dysfunctional. Their answer in times like these has always been war. They are not fit to rule.


A critical piece of this rotting politics is the corporate news media that makes the rule of billionaires seem so reasonable, civilized, and inevitable.


TV news, the gatekeeper of mass consciousness, is necessary to the elite’s ability to maintain control. If we are to transform this country, we have to break the corporate monopoly on daily video news.


We need to speak to the real concerns of working people and focus on what real effective solutions look like.


We must create a Global Climate Change Bureau.


We need a global platform to discuss and debate what to do next.


In 2016, the movements for the Sanders campaign, to defend black lives and fight to save the planet, have challenged the politics of the powerful at an unprecedented scale.


If a broad front is built that can contest the elites’ control of the political process, it could usher in a new phase of struggle of the American people. As this fight develops, TRNN will be there.


http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?opt ... ew&id=2996





it does not bother me....Gen. Yellowkerk still plead guilty and spilling his guts about trump and Pence...Manafort is about to be indicted AGAIN

and then on to Kushner

and the republicans little scam to discredit Mueller is not going to work

Mercer's plot to save him from paying 7 billion dollars in taxes is in the toilet

Putin is NOT going to get those sanctions lifted ...poor guy will have to sit on all that money he stole from the people of Russia


WaPo confirms NY Times report that federal prosecutors in EDNY issued subpoenas for records related to the $285 million loan that Deutsche Bank gave to Jared Kushner's family business one month before the 2016 election.

where did Deutsche gets that money to lend Kushner? Russian money laundering
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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seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Dec 28, 2017 11:29 pm

Unreal ...Awkward


NEW: Devin Nunes' Campaign Donor Was Original Funder Of Trump-Russia Dossier

By Scott Dworkin
Thursday Dec 28, 2017 · 5:33 PM CST

Republican Congressman Devin Nunes received a $5,400 contribution to his campaign committee from the owner of the Washington Free Beacon, the original funder of the Trump-Russia Dossier. The contribution was made on April 7th, 2015. It was reported in the NY Times in late October that Paul Singer’s conservative website originally funded the research for what became known as the Dossier: http://www.nytimes.com/...

One thing is certain: it’s time for Nunes to be removed from the House Intelligence Committee. #RemoveNunes

Here is a link to the original record of the contribution with an image of it below: docquery.fec.gov/...


Image

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1 ... ia-Dossier




Wash. FreeBeacon (web based) originall funded by Paul Singer in Oct. 2015 hired Fusion GPS for oppo research on ALL Republican candidates (17). They stopped May 3, 2016 once presumptive nominee was known.


Devin Nunes’ Latest Scam, Explained

By JOSH MARSHALL Published DECEMBER 27, 2017 8:10 PM

From the Devin Nunes Intelligence Agency, we have theory 14 why Donald Trump should be immune from the rule of law. Remember, Nunes is the House intelligence committee chair who got involved with Mike Flynn’s effort to surveil and disrupt the Russia investigation in the first days and weeks of the Trump presidency. Nunes was bounced from running the House Russia probe in part because of that. But now he’s back, largely in the form of mounting a counter-probe, a probe into alleged bias in the probe itself. To that end, he has subpoenaed a man named David Kramer, who played a role in Sen. John McCain’s bringing a copy of the Steele ‘dossier’ to then-FBI Director James Comey in late 2016. (Comey already had a copy.) This is all prologue to a new, or newly refined theory: the Steele dossier was not a perhaps imperfect guide to Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. It was the interference itself.

Byron York approvingly lays out the theory in a new column here in The Washington Examiner.

There is a growing belief among some congressional investigators that the Russians who provided information to Steele were using Steele to disrupt the American election as much as the Russians who distributed hacked Democratic Party emails. In some investigators’ views, they are the two sides of the Trump-Russia project, both aimed at sowing chaos and discord in the American political system.

Let’s begin with some caveats.

This is not an inherently nonsensical idea. Indeed, it’s possible. In a more limited form, it’s been suggested before – not that the whole dossier is a disinformation effort but that some of the Russians Steele spoke to may have fed him misinformation. Again, that is not inherently nonsensical. In this limited sense it may even be probable. The broader point is that we shouldn’t assume the Russian interference campaign was entirely ‘logical’ and linear. It could have worked on multiple fronts to create chaos and confusion. Indeed, we know that its operatives were simultaneously pushing racist and xenophobic memes while also creating ersatz Black Lives Matter-inspired front groups on the other side of the equation. They were backing Trump; they were also pushing Jill Stein.

My point is that we shouldn’t think that because Russia wanted to elect Donald Trump that they couldn’t simultaneously be involved in undermining Trump.

But there are numerous reasons to doubt this new theory. First and foremost is that it comes from Devin Nunes and House ‘investigators’ working on his behalf. But let’s get to more specifics. First, Steele is known as a 1st tier spy with deep experience in Russia and contacts with Russians. Could he have been duped? Certainly. But this wasn’t some random guy with no area experience. Quite the opposite. So it’s possible but we should be skeptical.

Next, when counter-intelligence agents at the FBI first got hold of Steele’s materials this is basically the first trap they would have run. Is this legit or is it disinformation? Either from Russia or some other country? They have lots of avenues to probe that question. There’s simply working to confirm claims in the dossier. There’s human and signals intelligence. It’s probably the first question they would have looked at. And it’s pretty clear they did not think this was the case.

Could they have been duped? Of course. Intelligence agencies are literally in the business of duping other intelligence agencies. But it’s not likely.

And this unlikeliness is where we get back to point one – the belief of “some congressional investigators.” This is rather transparently the Republican investigators working with and for Devin Nunes. So what this requires of us is to believe that the ‘congressional investigators’ have a better take on this than either Steele or the counter-intelligence agents at the FBI. Nunes’ staffers have figured this out even though they’re doing the investigating at least one step of remove, even though they almost certainly have less area knowledge than Steele and the FBI agents on the case and even though they clearly have a deep investment in discrediting the Russia probe itself. (I might have added that they have less experience with intelligence work; but that’s not necessarily the case. Some of these staffers are ex-spies or intelligence analysts.) When you line it all up like this, with all the moving pieces exposed, you can pretty easily dismiss this as a crock. Could the Russians have loaded up Steele with a lot of disinformation? Sure, these ‘congressional investigators’ thinking it tells us basically nothing.

Now let’s round back to the even bigger overarching point: it doesn’t matter.

Congressional Republicans have increasingly focused in on the Steele dossier as the lynchpin undergirding the entire Russia probe. Discredit its origins or invalidate its claims and the whole Russia probe falls apart. But that’s clearly not true.

The Steele dossier may have played a role at the outset of the investigation. But nothing Mueller’s team is doing now relies on Steele’s work, unless it’s been independently validated. We don’t know which things have been. But it’s clear that various claims either have been validated or have lead to other findings which validate the broad outlines. But Don Jr’s meeting with that Russian lawyer in June 2016 wasn’t in there. George Papadapoulos’s hijinx aren’t in there. The dossier doesn’t even include most of the evidence we now have that multiple Trump family members or associates were at least meeting with Russian officials looking for dirt on Hillary Clinton.

We know those things mainly because of the investigations. There’s no evidence or reason to believe the Steele Dossier was the product of disinformation from Russian intelligence. But even if it were, it would count more as irony than any discrediting smoking gun since it played a part in triggering investigations which uncovered numerous instances of Trump family members and associates trying to work with Russian intelligence officials and cut outs to defeat Hillary Clinton. We don’t need the Steele dossier for those. We have emails, testimony, wire intercepts, admissions.

It just doesn’t matter and it’s not even true. From January forward Chairman Nunes has worked doggedly not to oversee the executive branch but rather to obstruct investigations into the executive branch – both congressional investigations and the criminal investigation itself.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/dev ... re-1102260





Laurence Tribe
‏Verified account
3h3 hours ago

Laurence Tribe Retweeted Brian Krassenstein
I’m willing to bet @krassenstein is right: Nunes is headed to federal prison.



Brian Krassenstein

I have no doubt in my mind that before all is said and done Devin Nunes will be headed to prison.

You can save this tweet and rub it in my face if I'm wrong.






Donald Trump

Devin Nunes

TRANSITION EMAILS

General Yellowkerk Flynn

Nunes guilty of conspiracy against the United States.


Image



AND trump said today


“I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,”

the whole interview was very disturbing/delusional


Excerpts From Trump’s Interview With The Times

By THE NEW YORK TIMESDEC. 28, 2017


President Trump arriving in Florida last week. Tom Brenner/The New York Times
President Trump spoke on Thursday with a reporter from The New York Times, Michael S. Schmidt. The interview took place in the Grill Room of his golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla., whose noise made some portions at times hard to hear.

The following are excerpts from that conversation, transcribed by The Times. They have been lightly edited for content and clarity, and omit several off-the-record comments and asides.

Read more coverage and analysis of the interview »

__________

The interview started with a discussion of an interview Mr. Schmidt conducted with Mr. Trump in July, when Mr. Trump said he would not have appointed Jeff Sessions as attorney general had he known that Mr. Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

DONALD J. TRUMP: I thought it was a terrible thing he did. [Inaudible.] I thought it was certainly unnecessary, I thought it was a terrible thing. But I think it’s all worked out because frankly there is absolutely no collusion, that’s been proven by every Democrat is saying it.

MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT: You’re O.K. with me recording, right?

TRUMP: Yeah. Virtually every Democrat has said there is no collusion. There is no collusion. And even these committees that have been set up. If you look at what’s going on — and in fact, what it’s done is, it’s really angered the base and made the base stronger. My base is stronger than it’s ever been. Great congressmen, in particular, some of the congressmen have been unbelievable in pointing out what a witch hunt the whole thing is. So, I think it’s been proven that there is no collusion.

And by the way, I didn’t deal with Russia. I won because I was a better candidate by a lot. I won because I campaigned properly and she didn’t. She campaigned for the popular vote. I campaigned for the Electoral College. And you know, it is a totally different thing, Mike. You know the Electoral College, it’s like a track star. If you’re going to run the 100-yard dash, you work out differently than if you’re going to run the 1,000 meters or the mile.

And it’s different. It’s in golf. If you have a tournament and you have match play or stroke play, you prepare differently, believe it or not. It’s different. Match play is very different than stroke play. And you prepare. So I went to Maine five times, I went to [inaudible], the genius of the Electoral College is that you go to places you might not go to.

And that’s exactly what [inaudible]. Otherwise, I would have gone to New York, California, Texas and Florida.

SCHMIDT: You would have run completely differently.

TRUMP: It would have been a whole different thing. The genius is that the popular vote is a much different form of campaigning. Hillary never understood that.

SCHMIDT: What’s your expectation on Mueller? When do you —

TRUMP: I have no expectation. I can only tell you that there is absolutely no collusion. Everybody knows it. And you know who knows it better than anybody? The Democrats. They walk around blinking at each other.

SCHMIDT: But when do you think he’ll be done in regards to you —

TRUMP: I don’t know.

SCHMIDT: But does that bother you?

TRUMP: No, it doesn’t bother me because I hope that he’s going to be fair. I think that he’s going to be fair. And based on that [inaudible]. There’s been no collusion. But I think he’s going to be fair. And if he’s fair — because everybody knows the answer already, Michael. I want you to treat me fairly. O.K.?

SCHMIDT: Believe me. This is —

TRUMP: Everybody knows the answer already. There was no collusion. None whatsoever.

_________

TRUMP: Maybe I’ll just say a little bit of a [inaudible]. I’ve always found Paul Manafort to be a very nice man. And I found him to be an honorable person. Paul only worked for me for a few months. Paul worked for Ronald Reagan. His firm worked for John McCain, worked for Bob Dole, worked for many Republicans for far longer than he worked for me. And you’re talking about what Paul was many years ago before I ever heard of him. He worked for me for — what was it, three and a half months?

SCHMIDT: A very short period of time.

TRUMP: Three and a half months. [Inaudible] So, that’s that. Let’s just say — I think that Bob Mueller will be fair, and everybody knows that there was no collusion. I saw Dianne Feinstein the other day on television saying there is no collusion. She’s the head of the committee. The Republicans, in terms of the House committees, they come out, they’re so angry because there is no collusion. So, I actually think that it’s turning out — I actually think it’s turning to the Democrats because there was collusion on behalf of the Democrats. There was collusion with the Russians and the Democrats. A lot of collusion.

SCHMIDT: Dossier?

TRUMP: Starting with the dossier. But going into so many other elements. And Podesta’s firm.

_________

SCHMIDT: That’s true. But in terms of, the lawyers said it would be done by, your guys said, it would be done by Thanksgiving, it would be done by Christmas. What are they telling you now? What are they telling you?

TRUMP: [Inaudible.] There was tremendous collusion on behalf of the Russians and the Democrats. There was no collusion with respect to my campaign. I think I’ll be treated fairly. Timingwise, I can’t tell you. I just don’t know. But I think we’ll be treated fairly.

SCHMIDT: But you’re not worked up about the timing?

TRUMP: Well, I think it’s bad for the country. The only thing that bothers me about timing, I think it’s a very bad thing for the country. Because it makes the country look bad, it makes the country look very bad, and it puts the country in a very bad position. So the sooner it’s worked out, the better it is for the country.

But there is tremendous collusion with the Russians and with the Democratic Party. Including all of the stuff with the — and then whatever happened to the Pakistani guy, that had the two, you know, whatever happened to this Pakistani guy who worked with the D.N.C.?

Whatever happened to them? With the two servers that they broke up into a million pieces? Whatever happened to him? That was a big story. Now all of sudden [inaudible]. So I know The New York Times is going to — because those are real stories. Whatever happened to the Hillary Clinton deleted 33,000 emails after she got [inaudible] — which you guys wrote, but then you dropped — was that you?

_________

SCHMIDT: You control the Justice Department. Should they reopen that email investigation?

TRUMP: What I’ve done is, I have absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department. But for purposes of hopefully thinking I’m going to be treated fairly, I’ve stayed uninvolved with this particular matter.

_________

TRUMP: For purposes of the Justice Department, I watched Alan Dershowitz the other day, who by the way, says I, says this is a ridiculous —

SCHMIDT: He’s been very good to you.

TRUMP: He’s been amazing. And he’s a liberal Democrat. I don’t know him. He’s a liberal Democrat. I watched Alan Dershowitz the other day, he said, No. 1, there is no collusion, No. 2, collusion is not a crime, but even if it was a crime, there was no collusion. And he said that very strongly. He said there was no collusion. And he has studied this thing very closely. I’ve seen him a number of times. There is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime. But there’s no collusion. I don’t even say [inaudible]. I don’t even go that far.

_________

TRUMP: So for the purposes of what’s going on with this phony Russian deal, which, by the way, you’ve heard me say it, is only an excuse for losing an election that they should have won, because it’s very hard for a Republican to win the Electoral College. O.K.? You start off with New York, California and Illinois against you. That means you have to run the East Coast, which I did, and everything else. Which I did and then won Wisconsin and Michigan. [Inaudible.] So the Democrats. … [Inaudible.] … They thought there was no way for a Republican, not me, a Republican, to win the Electoral College. Well, they’re [inaudible]. They made the Russian story up as a hoax, as a ruse, as an excuse for losing an election that in theory Democrats should always win with the Electoral College. The Electoral College is so much better suited to the Democrats [inaudible]. But it didn’t work out that way. And I will tell you they cannot believe that this became a story.

SCHMIDT: So they had to do this to come after you, to undercut you?

TRUMP: No, no, they thought it would be a one-day story, an excuse, and it just kept going and going and going. It’s too bad Jeff recused himself. I like Jeff, but it’s too bad he recused himself. I thought. … Many people will tell you that something is [inaudible].

SCHMIDT: Do you think Holder was more loyal to. …

TRUMP: I don’t want to get into loyalty, but I will tell you that, I will say this: Holder protected President Obama. Totally protected him. When you look at the I.R.S. scandal, when you look at the guns for whatever, when you look at all of the tremendous, ah, real problems they had, not made-up problems like Russian collusion, these were real problems. When you look at the things that they did, and Holder protected the president. And I have great respect for that, I’ll be honest, I have great respect for that.

SCHMIDT: Tell me about what you were saying that the Democrats. … [Inaudible.] … Tell me about the Democrats on the tax bill, which you were telling me about. Explain that to me, I thought that was interesting.

TRUMP: So. … We started taxes. And we don’t hear from the Democrats. You know, we hear bullshit from the Democrats. Like Joe Manchin. Joe’s a nice guy.

SCHMIDT: He is a very nice guy.

TRUMP: But he talks. But he doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t do. “Hey, let’s get together, let’s do bipartisan.” I say, “Good, let’s go.” Then you don’t hear from him again. I like Joe. You know, it’s like he’s the great centrist. But he’s really not a centrist. And I think the people of West Virginia will see that. He not a centrist. … I’m the one that saved coal. I’m the one that created jobs. You know West Virginia is doing fantastically now.

SCHMIDT: It’s a big. … It’s a very popular place for you.

TRUMP: It’s the biggest turnaround. West Virginia, their average, their G.D.P. is the biggest turnaround after Texas. Texas [inaudible]. … The second percentage gain in G.D.P. [Inaudible.] And I won that state by 43 points against crooked Hillary Clinton. And I’ll tell you, I think Joe, ah. … I think there’s a lot of talk. … A lot of talk. I think we have four or five senators that [inaudible]. Just so you understand, Alabama. … I wasn’t for him. I was for Strange.

SCHMIDT: Do you think he should stop the recount? You know he said that they’re. … He was protesting the election today. Moore.

TRUMP: Well, I. … Look. … Let him do whatever he wants to do. I was for Strange, and I brought Strange up 20 points. Just so you understand. When I endorsed him, he was in fifth place. He went way up. Almost 20 points. But he fell a little short. But I knew what I was doing. Because I thought that. … If you look at my rhetoric, I said the problem with Roy Moore is that he will lose the election. I called it. But as the head of the party, I have a choice: Do I endorse him or not? I don’t know. Um. …

SCHMIDT: Was it a mistake?

TRUMP: And by the way, when I endorsed him, he went up. It was a much closer race.

SCHMIDT: Was it a mistake to endorse him?

TRUMP: I feel that I have to endorse Republicans as the head of the party. So, I endorsed him. It became a much closer race because of my endorsement. People don’t say that. They say, Oh, Donald Trump lost. I didn’t lose, I brought him up a lot. He was not the candidate that I thought was going to win. If you look at my statements, you’ve seen them, I said, “Look, I’m for Luther Strange because I like him, but I’m also for Luther Strange because he’s going to win the election.” There wouldn’t have been an election. He would have won by 25 points.

SCHMIDT: He would have won big?

TRUMP: The problem with Roy Moore, and I said this, is that he’s going to lose the election. I hope you can straighten that out. Luther Strange was brought way up after my endorsement and he almost won. But. … Almost won. … He lost by 7 points, 7 or 8 points. And he was way behind. Because of two things, you know, what happened. … [Inaudible.] … But I never thought Roy was going to win the election, but I felt. … I never thought he was going to win the election, but I felt. … And I said that very clearly. … And I wish you would cover that, because frankly, I said, if Luther doesn’t win, Roy is going to lose the election. I always felt Roy was going to lose the election. But I endorsed him because I feel it’s my obligation as the head of the Republican Party to endorse him. And you see how tight it was even to get a popular. … In Republican circles, to get a very popular tax cut approved, actually reform. Two votes. Now we have one vote, all right?

O.K., let’s get onto your final question, your other question. Had the Democrats come through. …

SCHMIDT: Tell me about that, yeah.

TRUMP: Had they asked, “Let’s do a bipartisan,” Michael, I would have done bipartisan. I would absolutely have done bipartisan.

SCHMIDT: But they didn’t. … They didn’t …

TRUMP: And if I did bipartisan, I would have done something with SALT [the state and local tax deduction]. With that being said, you look back, Ronald Reagan wanted to take deductibility away from states. Ronald Reagan, years ago, and he couldn’t do it. Because New York had a very powerful group of people. Which they don’t have today. Today, they don’t have the same representatives. You know, in those days they had Lew Rudin and me. … I fought like hell for that. They had a lot of very good guys. Lew Rudin was very effective. He worked hard for New York. And we had some very good senators. … You know, we had a lot of people who fought very hard against, let’s call it SALT. Had they come to me and said, look, we’ll do this, this, this, we’ll do [inaudible]. I could have done something with SALT. Or made it less severe. But they were very ineffective. They were very, very ineffective. You understand what I mean. Had they come to me for a bipartisan tax bill, I would have gone to Mitch, and I would have gone to the other Republicans, and we could have worked something out bipartisan. And that could’ve been either a change to SALT or knockout of SALT.

But, just so you understand, Ronald Reagan wanted to take deductibility away and he was unable to do it. Ronald Reagan wanted to have ANWR approved 40 years ago and he was unable to do it. Think of that. And the individual mandate is the most unpopular thing in Obamacare, and I got rid of it. You know, we gained with the individual. … You know the individual mandate, Michael, means you take money and you give it to the government for the privilege of not having to pay more money to have health insurance you don’t want. There are people who had very good health insurance that now are paying not to have health insurance. That’s what the individual mandate. … They’re not going to have to pay anymore. So when people think that will be unpopular. … It’s going to be very popular. It’s going to be very popular.

Now, in my opinion, they should come to me on infrastructure. They should come to me, which they have come to me, on DACA. We are working. … We’re trying to something about it. And they should definitely come to me on health care. Because we can do bipartisan health care. We can do bipartisan infrastructure. And we can do bipartisan DACA.

SCHMIDT: What are you willing to do on infrastructure? How far are you willing to go? How much money?

TRUMP: I actually think we can get as many Democrat votes as we have Republican. Republicans want to see infrastructure. Michael, we have spent, as of about a month ago, $7 trillion in the Middle East. And the Middle East is worse than it was 17 years ago. … [Inaudible.] $7 trillion. And if you want $12 to fix up a road or a highway, you can’t get it. I want to do a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, at least. We want to fix our roads, our highways, our bridges, which are in bad shape. And you know some of them are actually, they’re x-ed out, they have, you know, possibilities of collapse under bad circumstances. And in 10 years they will collapse. So, I want a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. I think it can be bipartisan. I believe we can do health care in a bipartisan way, because now we’ve essentially gutted and ended Obamacare.

[Cross talk.]

SCHMIDT: But what’s the goal? What’s the goal?

TRUMP: Wait, wait, let me just tell you. … Also, beyond the individual mandate, but also [inaudible] associations. You understand what the associations are. …

[Cross talk.]

TRUMP: So now I have associations, I have private insurance companies coming and will sell private health care plans to people through associations. That’s gonna be millions and millions of people. People have no idea how big that is. And by the way, and for that, we’ve ended across state lines. So we have competition. You know for that I’m allowed to [inaudible] state lines. So that’s all done.

Now I’ve ended the individual mandate. And the other thing I wish you’d tell people. So when I do this, and we’ve got health care, you know, McCain did his vote. … But what we have. I had a hundred congressmen that said no and I was able to talk them into it. They’re great people.

Two things: No. 1, I have unbelievably great relationships with 97 percent of the Republican congressmen and senators. I love them and they love me. That’s No. 1. And No. 2, I know more about the big bills. … [Inaudible.] … Than any president that’s ever been in office. Whether it’s health care and taxes. Especially taxes. And if I didn’t, I couldn’t have persuaded a hundred. … You ask Mark Meadows [inaudible]. … I couldn’t have persuaded a hundred congressmen to go along with the bill. The first bill, you know, that was ultimately, shockingly rejected.

I’ll tell you something [inaudible]. … Put me on the defense, I was a great student and all this stuff. Oh, he doesn’t know the details, these are sick people.

So, the taxes. … [Inaudible.] … The tax cut will be, the tax bill, prediction, will be far bigger than anyone imagines. Expensing will be perhaps the greatest of all provisions. Where you can do something, you can buy something. … Piece of equipment. … You can do lots of different things, and you can write it off and expense it in one year. That will be one of the great stimuli in history. You watch. That’ll be one of the big. … People don’t even talk about expensing, what’s the word “expensing.” [Inaudible.] One year expensing. Watch the money coming back into the country, it’ll be more money than people anticipate.

But Michael, I know the details of taxes better than anybody. Better than the greatest C.P.A. I know the details of health care better than most, better than most. And if I didn’t, I couldn’t have talked all these people into doing ultimately only to be rejected.

Now here’s the good news. We’ve created associations, millions of people are joining associations. Millions. That were formerly in Obamacare or didn’t have insurance. Or didn’t have health care. Millions of people. That’s gonna be a big bill, you watch. It could be as high as 50 percent of the people. You watch. So that’s a big thing. And the individual mandate. So now you have associations, and people don’t even talk about the associations. That could be half the people are going to be joining up. … With private [inaudible]. So now you have associations and the individual mandate.

I believe that because of the individual mandate and the associations, the Democrats will and certainly should come to me and see if they can do a really great health care plan for the remaining people. [Inaudible.]

SCHMIDT: And you think you can do it?

TRUMP: Well, we’re perfectly set up to do it. See, it was hard for them to do it as long as the individual mandate existed. But now that the individual mandate is officially killed, people have no idea how big a deal that was. It’s the most unpopular part of Obamacare. But now, Obamacare is essentially. … You know, you saw this. … It’s basically dead over a period of time.

SCHMIDT: Yeah.

TRUMP: But the Democrats should come to a bipartisan bill. And we can fix it. We can fix it. We can make a great health care plan. Not Obamacare, which was a bad plan. We can make a great health care plan through bipartisanship. We can do a great infrastructure plan through bipartisanship. And we can do on immigration, and DACA in particular, we can do something that’s terrific through bipartisanship.

SCHMIDT: It sounds like you’re tacking to the center in a way you didn’t before.

TRUMP: No, I’m not being centered. I’m just being practical. No, I don’t think I’m changing. Look, I wouldn’t do a DACA plan without a wall. Because we need it. We see the drugs pouring into the country, we need the wall.

SCHMIDT: So you’re not moving. You’re saying I’m more likely to do deals, but I’m not moving.

TRUMP: I’m always moving. I’m moving in both directions. We have to get rid of chainlike immigration, we have to get rid of the chain. The chain is the last guy that killed. … [Talking with guests.] … The last guy that killed the eight people. … [Inaudible.] … So badly wounded people. … Twenty-two people came in through chain migration. Chain migration and the lottery system. They have a lottery in these countries.

They take the worst people in the country, they put ‘em into the lottery, then they have a handful of bad, worse ones, and they put them out. ‘Oh, these are the people the United States. …” … We’re gonna get rid of the lottery, and by the way, the Democrats agree with me on that. On chain migration, they pretty much agree with me.

[Cross talk with guests.]

CHRISTOPHER RUDDY, the president and chief executive of Newsmax: Canada, U.K., Australia. … All do best and brightest. …

TRUMP: Yeah, they have a merit system, we’ll eventually go to a merit-based system. When we bring people in. … That No. 1, don’t need our resources and No. 2, have great capabilities.

SCHMIDT: Do you think I’m wrong to think next year could be the year of you being a real deal maker, in a way you maybe weren’t in the past year?

TRUMP: I was. I make deals with the Republicans. I had nobody to make a deal with the Democrats. The Democrats could have made a much better tax deal for Democrats if they came to see us, but they didn’t come. They never thought I’d be able to get this over the line. And especially when McCain, when John McCain left and went to Arizona, they thought they had it made.

_________

SCHMIDT: Explain your North Korea tweet to me today.

TRUMP: Which one?

SCHMIDT: You said about the oil, that China. …

[Cross talk.]

SCHMIDT: What’s going on there. Tell me about that.

TRUMP: Yeah, China. … China’s been. … I like very much President Xi. He treated me better than anybody’s ever been treated in the history of China. You know that. The presentations. … One of the great two days of anybody’s life and memory having to do with China. He’s a friend of mine, he likes me, I like him, we have a great chemistry together. He’s [inaudible] of the United States. …[Inaudible.] China’s hurting us very badly on trade, but I have been soft on China because the only thing more important to me than trade is war. O.K.?

[Cross talk with guests.]

_________

SCHMIDT: Can you finish your thought on North Korea. What’s going on with China?

TRUMP: I’m disappointed. You know that they found oil going into. …

SCHMIDT: But how recently?

TRUMP: It was very recently. In fact, I hate to say, it was reported this morning, and it was reported on Fox. Oil is going into North Korea. That wasn’t my deal!

SCHMIDT: What was the deal?

TRUMP: My deal was that, we’ve got to treat them rough. They’re a nuclear menace so we have to be very tough.

RUDDY: Mr. President, was that a picture from recent or was that months ago? I don’t know. …

TRUMP: Oil is going into North Korea, I know. Oil is going into North Korea. So I’m not happy about it.

SCHMIDT: So what are you going to do?

TRUMP: We’ll see. That I can’t tell you, Michael. But we’ll see. I can tell you one thing: This is a problem that should have been handled for the last 25 years. This is a problem, North Korea. That should have been handled for 25, 30 years, not by me. This should have been handled long before me. Long before this guy has whatever he has.

SCHMIDT: Do you think we’ve been too soft on China on North Korea?

TRUMP: No, look, I like China, and I like him a lot. But, as you know, when I campaigned, I was very tough on China in terms of trade. They made — last year, we had a trade deficit with China of $350 billion, minimum. That doesn’t include the theft of intellectual property, O.K., which is another $300 billion. So, China — and you know, somebody said, oh, currency manipulation. If they’re helping me with North Korea, I can look at trade a little bit differently, at least for a period of time. And that’s what I’ve been doing. But when oil is going in, I’m not happy about that. I think I expressed that in probably [inaudible].

TRUMP, as aides walk by: And, by the way, it’s not a tweet. It’s social media, and it gets out in the world, and the reason I do well is that I can be treated unfairly and very dishonestly by CNN, and, you know, I have — what do have now, John, 158 million, including Facebook, including Twitter, including Instagram, including every form, I have a 158 million people. Reporting just this morning, they said 158 million. So if they a do a story that’s false, I can do something — otherwise, Andy, otherwise you just sort of walk around saying what can I do? What, am I going to have a press conference every time somebody, every time Michael writes something wrong?

So, China on trade has ripped off this country more than any other element of the world in history has ripped off anything. But I can be different if they’re helping us with North Korea. If they don’t help us with North Korea, then I do what I’ve always said I want to do. China can help us much more, and they have to help us much more. And they have to help us much more. We have a nuclear menace out there, which is no good for China, and it’s not good for Russia. It’s no good for anybody. Does that make sense?

SCHMIDT: Yeah, yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

TRUMP: The only thing that supersedes trade to me — because I’m the big trade guy, I got elected to a certain extent on trade. You see, I’m renegotiating Nafta, or I’ll terminate it. If I don’t make the right deal, I’ll terminate Nafta in two seconds. But we’re doing pretty good. You know, it’s easier to renegotiate it if we make it a fair deal because Nafta was a terrible deal for us. We lost $71 billion a year with Mexico, can you believe it? $17 billion with Canada — Canada says we broke even. But they don’t include lumber and they don’t include oil. Oh, that’s not. … [Inaudible,] … My friend Justin he says, “No, no, we break even.” I said, ‘Yeah, but you’re not including oil, and you’re not including lumber.” When you do, you lose $17 billion, and with the other one, we’re losing $71 billion. So the only thing that supersedes trade to me is war. If we can solve the North Korea problem. China cannot. …

SCHMIDT: You still think there’s a diplomatic solution?

TRUMP: China has a tremendous power over North Korea. Far greater than anyone knows.

SCHMIDT: Why haven’t they stood up?

TRUMP: I hope they do, but as of this moment, they haven’t. They could be much stronger.

SCHMIDT: But why not?

TRUMP: China can solve the North Korea problem, and they’re helping us, and they’re even helping us a lot, but they’re not helping us enough.

_________

TRUMP: We’re going to win another four years for a lot of reasons, most importantly because our country is starting to do well again and we’re being respected again. But another reason that I’m going to win another four years is because newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes. Without me, The New York Times will indeed be not the failing New York Times, but the failed New York Times. So they basically have to let me win. And eventually, probably six months before the election, they’ll be loving me because they’re saying, “Please, please, don’t lose Donald Trump.” O.K.
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 » Sat Dec 30, 2017 4:41 am

Mueller Probing Whether Trump Team Aided a Russian Disinformation Campaign

Did the Trump digital operation help Russian trolls target their ads on Facebook? The special counsel wants to find out.

Adam K. RaymondDecember 28, 2017 4:01 pm


Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s influence on the 2016 election has begun to zero in on the joint digital operation that got Donald Trump elected, Yahoo News reports.

Mueller’s team is trying to determine if members of the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee, who worked together on the digital arm of Trump’s campaign, provided assistance to Russian trolls attempting to influence voters. It’s the latest scare for Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who managed the digital campaign and has already come under scrutiny by the special counsel for his foreign contacts.

Mueller’s move appears to concern the disproportionate targeting of swing districts by Russian trolls during the presidential campaign. CNN reported in October that ads placed by Russia-linked Facebook accounts targeted Michigan and Wisconsin in particular, with many “geared at swaying public opinion in the most heavily contested battlegrounds.”

Experts don’t think the trolls behind Russian Facebook accounts could have determined who to target on their own, but the question is whether the help they got came from Trump’s orbit. The leading suspects at this point are Kushner and Brad Parscale, the head of Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm that worked closely with the campaign.

For months, the House Intelligence Committee has been probing this question. “Obviously, we’re looking at any of the targeting of the ads … to see whether they demonstrate a sophistication that would be incompatible with not having access to data analytics from the campaign,” Representative Adam Schiff said on CNN in October. “At this point, we still don’t know.”

Now, Mueller is probing the same issue and interviewing RNC staffers about the finer points of the campaign’s digital operation, Yahoo News reports. Whether that leads to any more clarity on the issue is an open question, but if there is evidence that the campaign handed over data to help Russian trolls target voters, expect to hear a lot of people using the “C-word.”
http://amp.nymag.com/daily/intelligence ... rolls.html



The ‘Did Trump’s Campaign Collude’ Debate Is Over. The Only Question Now Is How Much.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... -much.html


Mueller is seeking to prove that the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee provided this voter data to the Russians.

By his own admission, Jared Kushner was deeply involved in the Trump campaign’s voter data analysis effort, which was largely handled by a company called Cambridge Analytica. Steve Bannon ran that company just before he took over the Trump campaign. Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort called Trump just before election day and told him to go to Michigan. Any of these people can provide evidence that Donald Trump was in on the treasonous plot, which is why Robert Mueller is targeting them all.

http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/mi ... ller/7029/
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 » Sat Dec 30, 2017 6:44 pm

Mifsud➡️Papadopoulos➡️Steven Miller➡️Jeff Sessions

The most important revelation in today’s NYTs article is that emails show that Papadopoulos continued to pursue arranging a meeting with Russia, despite Jeff Sessions’ recent statements that he told Papadopoulos not to do so.


Trump aide Papadopolous knew Russia had a tranche of stolen Clinton emails TWO MONTHS before they were leaked.

and the FBI knew he knew



Image


Report: Trump aide’s drunken night kicked off Russia investigation

George Papadopoulos got drunk in May 2016 and told an Australian diplomat the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Emily Stewart
Dec 30, 2017, 5:27pm EST

A former Trump aide’s drunk bragging to an Australian diplomat may have kicked off the entire Russia investigation, according to a new report in The New York Times.

On Saturday, the paper reported that George Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that Russia had political dirt on Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, after a night of heavy drinking in May 2016. Less than a month earlier, he had been told that Russia had emails that would embarrass the former Secretary of State. That information came courtesy of Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor with contacts in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who, in April 2016, told Papadopoulos he’d learned the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”

When leaked Democratic emails began appearing online in July, apparently timed to the Democratic national convention, Australian officials passed on the information about Papadopoulos to the United States, according to the Times, citing four current and former American and foreign officials. Australia is one of the United States’ closest intelligence allies.

Papadopoulos, 30, has become a central figure in the FBI’s ongoing Russia probe and the investigation being headed by special counsel Robert Mueller. When Mueller in October announced several charges against former Trump staffers Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, he also unsealed a weeks-old document revealing that Papadopoulos had been arrested in July. He pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with the Russians during the campaign, apparently as part of a cooperation deal.

Some of Trump’s advisers have sought to distance themselves from Papadopoulos and continue to insist his role in the campaign was insignificant. (Former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo in October said he was essentially a volunteer, nothing more than a “coffee boy.”) Trump in a 2016 interview with the Washington Post mentioned Papadopoulos by name while listing out his foreign policy advisers and called him an “excellent guy.”

According to the Times’ account, Papadopoulos appears to have been doing a bit more than fetching coffee. A couple of months before the election, he helped arrange a meeting between Trump and the president of Egypt. Per the Times:

It was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign. Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America’s closest intelligence allies.

Interviews and previously undisclosed documents show that Mr. Papadopoulos played a critical role in this drama and reveal a Russian operation that was more aggressive and widespread than previously known. They add to an emerging portrait, gradually filled in over the past year in revelations by federal investigators, journalists and lawmakers, of Russians with government contacts trying to establish secret channels at various levels of the Trump campaign.

So it looks like it wasn’t the dossier after all

Trump and many of his allies have alleged that it was the now-infamous Steele dossier, a document filled with lurid allegations about Trump’s links to Russia, that drew the FBI’s interest. The Times’ reporting convincingly disputes that account.

The Times notes that it is unclear whether Papadopoulos shared the information with anyone else in the campaign, though it seems a little unlikely he’d share it in conversation at a bar and not with anyone in the campaign for which he worked.
https://www.vox.com/2017/12/30/16833954 ... rump-times




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(THREAD) BREAKING: The NYT has published a bombshell report on George Papadopoulos—the biggest Trump-Russia news since Flynn's plea. This thread dissects the new revelations—as well as some major implications for the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.

1/ First, here's the article. The NYT foregrounds the story's significance as a rebuttal of Trump's claims the Russia investigation began with the Steele Dossier. But in fact, anyone who knows criminal investigations knew long ago Trump's claim was untrue.

2/ As has been discussed by @AshaRangappa_, the Steele Dossier alone would never have been enough to earn the FBI the July 2016 FISA warrant it was granted to monitor Carter Page. So attorneys and those in intelligence long ago knew the Dossier didn't launch the probe by itself.

3/ The NYT story gives us—it appears—an additional piece of the warrant application the FBI filed to get a FISA warrant in July '16. But again, this is merely a piece—as was the Dossier. We know multiple intelligence agencies, not just Australia's, provided the FBI with evidence.

4/ So Trump's claim that the FBI grabbed a dossier of raw intelligence it hadn't yet confirmed and ran to the FISA court to secure a warrant to wiretap Americans connected to the Trump campaign has been laughably false from Day 1. And media has not done enough to underscore that.

5/ What we learn from the NYT (though again it's not—contrary to what the NYT seems to believe from its headline—what makes today's breaking news significant) is that the Australians informed U.S. law enforcement in July 2016 that Papadopoulos had made covert contact with Russia.

6/ In fact, while today's NYT story is indeed this month's second-biggest Trump-Russia revelation—after the December 1 guilty plea by Mike Flynn—what makes it significant isn't that it rebuts Trump's false claims but that it may have *sealed the Trump-Russia collusion narrative*.

7/ If the NYT understood this, it would've led with it. But one must know the *prior* reporting on Papadopoulos to understand why today's news constitutes one of the biggest revelations in the 18-monthy history of the Trump-Russia probe. So I'll *briefly* summarize what we know.

8/ On September 22—40 days before we learned Papadopoulos was cooperating with the Mueller probe—I said that he had directly identified himself to Trump as a Kremlin agent in March 2016. This led to major-media coverage of the now-infamous "TIHDC meeting."Seth Abramson added,

(THREAD) This is a picture of one of the biggest moments in the Trump-Russia scandal—and no one has reported on it until now. Please SHARE.

Image
1/ Thanks to independent journalism, we learned in early spring about a key Trump campaign-Russia contact: the Mayflower Hotel (April 2016).

2/ But a meeting a month before the Mayflower—on March 31, 2016, at the then-unfinished Trump International Hotel in D.C.—is more important.

3/ It took mainstream media three months to latch onto the Mayflower story; unfortunately, it hasn't reported on the TIHDC meeting *at all*.

4/ But the TIHDC event may answer two key questions about Trump and Vladimir Putin—questions involving George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.

5/ Let's very briefly set up the March 2016 Trump campaign timeline that led to the picture atop this thread.

6/ 3/3/16: Trump names Sessions his foreign policy head. Sessions' team is also called the "national security" team.
Trump names Sessions chairman of national security committee
https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop ... tee-220220

7/ 3/21/16: Trump for the first time names members of his foreign policy/national security team. Five men are named.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/po ... 642767281e

8/ So as of March 21, 2016, this was Trump's foreign policy/national security team: Sessions, Papadopoulos, Schmitz, Phares, Page, Kellogg.

9/ 5 days later, in a NYT interview on March 26, 2016, Trump adds 3 names to the team: Harrell, Kubic, and Mizusawa.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/us/p ... BF&gwt=pay

10/ But on March 24, Papadopoulos had revealed himself to be "acting as an intermediary for the Russian government."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 09ce095181


11/ So on March 21, Trump had a six-man team; on March 24, one member of that team said he had messages to give to Trump from the Kremlin.

12/ Papadopoulous, whose credentials—and fitness for the team—had immediately come under heavy media scrutiny, was the Kremlin intermediary.

13/ The Washington Post deconstructed Papadopoulos' credentials at length—and critically—the day he was announced.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/che ... ddaf0baa31

14/ Many other media outlets asked the same question—what did this recent college grad do to achieve such a lofty position in Trump's orbit?

15/ What Papadopoulos did—according to the WP—is send an email to seven key Trump advisors just 72 hours after he was named to the campaign.

16/ We know three of the seven high-level Trump advisors who got the email, because the Washington Post named them: Kubic, Clovis, and Page.

17/ Page makes sense—he'd been named to the foreign policy/national security team. And Clovis made sense—as he'd recruited Page to the team.

18/ Kubic was officially announced to the foreign policy/national security team just 48 hours later—see Tweet 9 above—so he makes sense too.

19/ Who were the 4 others? We know this: as of March 24th, there were 4 other members of the FP/NS team: Schmitz, Phares, Sessions, Kellogg.

20/ We can't know if the four other members of the team Papadopoulos was on were the four others who got his email—though it'd make sense.

21/ What was in the March 24th email? WP says "Papadopoulos offered to set up a meeting between [Trump's team] and the Russian leadership."

22/ The topic of the proposed Trump camp-Russia meeting would be as follows: "to discuss U.S.-Russia ties under President Trump" (says WP).

23/ WP reports the Trump team—that is (it appears, at least) the FP/NS team—then discussed whether and how such a meeting would be possible.

24/ One reason we can assume the email recipients were Trump's FP/NS team is something Kubic wrote in his email response to Papadopoulos.

25/ Kubic wrote, "Just want to make sure that no one on *THE TEAM* outruns their headlights and embarrasses the campaign" (emphasis added).

26/ We don't know what Clovis responded in late March, but we know where his head was at on this issue just a few weeks later, in early May.

27/ Clovis in a May email to Papadopoulos—"There are legal issues we need to mitigate, meeting with foreign officials as a private citizen."

28/ So sometime between March 24, 2016, and May 4, 2016, the FP/NS team was discussing how a "private citizen" might meet with the Kremlin.

29/ As it happened, someone who received the March 24 Papadopoulos email was planning a trip to Moscow as—in his words—a "private citizen."

30/ That person was Carter Page, who U.S. intelligence would later conclude had met with Putin's right-hand man (Sechin) while in Moscow.




9/ It hadn't previously been discussed that Papadopoulos was at the first meeting of Trump's national security (NatSec) team at the Trump International Hotel in DC (TIHDC) on March 31, 2016. But he was there—a *week* after revealing himself as a Kremlin agent to the NatSec team.

10/ So when (per the NYT) Papadopoulos revealed in May '16 to an Australian diplomat that he knew Russia had committed major federal crimes against the U.S.—via computer theft and fraud—it was two months after he told Trump's NatSec team *and Trump* he was in contact with Russia.

11/ The nature of the contact that Papadopoulos revealed in March 2016 to Trump and his team was that he was a *legal* agent—in the law we'd say "special agent"—of the Kremlin. He was authorized to represent the Kremlin's interests in setting up a clandestine Trump-Putin meeting.

12/ That authority came to Papadopoulos—from Kremlin officials—through another Kremlin agent, Joseph Mifsud. This is why Papadopoulos, per public reporting by WP, identified himself to Trump on March 31, 2017 as a Kremlin "intermediary" designated not by Trump but by the Kremlin.

13/ As has been exhaustively detailed by WaPo (WP), Trump's NatSec team spent *two months*—from March to May of 2016—discussing how to handle Papadopoulos' "offer" of acting as an intermediary between Trump and Putin. They did *not* dismiss the offer in March, whatever some say.

14/ It was in the *middle* of this deliberation by the NatSec team that Papadopoulos, in April 2016, was told the Kremlin had committed federal computer crimes by stealing emails from a presidential candidate. Papadopoulos *knew* his team was then deliberating a Trump-Putin meet.

15/ During this period, Papadopoulos was *personally* hounding top Trump officials—per the WP—to give him more authority and allow him to travel abroad to arrange a Trump-Putin meeting. His April intelligence on the Clinton emails was *without a doubt* a card he would've played.

16/ So while Australian law enforcement knew of the stolen Clinton emails in May 2016, and the FBI knew by July 2016 (via Australia), it's a *lock* that Papadopoulos gave this intel to Trump and his campaign—from whom he wanted present authority *and* a future job—in April 2016.



:lol:
BREAKING: @DevinNunes calls for Special Counsel investigation of Australia. Claims entire country, including wallabies & @Outback Steakhouse, part of pro-Clinton, anti-Trump conspiracy


Thanks to Papa G getting drunk with an Aussie diplomat, Trump and his presidency are going down under!
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 » Tue Jan 02, 2018 10:11 pm

It is time to stop chasing rabbits. The public still has much to learn about a man with the most troubling business past of any United States president. Congress should release transcripts of our firm’s testimony, so that the American people can learn the truth about our work and most important, what happened to our democracy.


It was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign. Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America’s closest intelligence allies.



The Republicans’ Fake Investigations

By GLENN R. SIMPSON and PETER FRITSCH

JAN. 2, 2018


Harry Campbell
A generation ago, Republicans sought to protect President Richard Nixon by urging the Senate Watergate committee to look at supposed wrongdoing by Democrats in previous elections. The committee chairman, Sam Ervin, a Democrat, said that would be “as foolish as the man who went bear hunting and stopped to chase rabbits.”

Today, amid a growing criminal inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, congressional Republicans are again chasing rabbits. We know because we’re their favorite quarry.

In the year since the publication of the so-called Steele dossier — the collection of intelligence reports we commissioned about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia — the president has repeatedly attacked us on Twitter. His allies in Congress have dug through our bank records and sought to tarnish our firm to punish us for highlighting his links to Russia. Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, The Wall Street Journal, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers.

We are happy to correct the record. In fact, we already have.

Three congressional committees have heard over 21 hours of testimony from our firm, Fusion GPS. In those sessions, we toppled the far right’s conspiracy theories and explained how The Washington Free Beacon and the Clinton campaign — the Republican and Democratic funders of our Trump research — separately came to hire us in the first place.

We walked investigators through our yearlong effort to decipher Mr. Trump’s complex business past, of which the Steele dossier is but one chapter. And we handed over our relevant bank records — while drawing the line at a fishing expedition for the records of companies we work for that have nothing to do with the Trump case.

Republicans have refused to release full transcripts of our firm’s testimony, even as they selectively leak details to media outlets on the far right. It’s time to share what our company told investigators.

We don’t believe the Steele dossier was the trigger for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russian meddling. As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp.

The intelligence committees have known for months that credible allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia were pouring in from independent sources during the campaign. Yet lawmakers in the thrall of the president continue to wage a cynical campaign to portray us as the unwitting victims of Kremlin disinformation.

We suggested investigators look into the bank records of Deutsche Bank and others that were funding Mr. Trump’s businesses. Congress appears uninterested in that tip: Reportedly, ours are the only bank records the House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed.

We told Congress that from Manhattan to Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., and from Toronto to Panama, we found widespread evidence that Mr. Trump and his organization had worked with a wide array of dubious Russians in arrangements that often raised questions about money laundering. Likewise, those deals don’t seem to interest Congress.

We explained how, from our past journalistic work in Europe, we were deeply familiar with the political operative Paul Manafort’s coziness with Moscow and his financial ties to Russian oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin.

Finally, we debunked the biggest canard being pushed by the president’s men — the notion that we somehow knew of the June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower between some Russians and the Trump brain trust. We first learned of that meeting from news reports last year — and the committees know it. They also know that these Russians were unaware of the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s work for us and were not sources for his reports.

Yes, we hired Mr. Steele, a highly respected Russia expert. But we did so without informing him whom we were working for and gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: Why did Mr. Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun?

What came back shocked us. Mr. Steele’s sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive — and now confirmed — effort by the Kremlin to help elect Mr. Trump president. Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the F.B.I.

We did not discuss that decision with our clients, or anyone else. Instead, we deferred to Mr. Steele, a trusted friend and intelligence professional with a long history of working with law enforcement. We did not speak to the F.B.I. and haven’t since.

After the election, Mr. Steele decided to share his intelligence with Senator John McCain via an emissary. We helped him do that. The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power. We did not, however, share the dossier with BuzzFeed, which to our dismay published it last January.

We’re extremely proud of our work to highlight Mr. Trump’s Russia ties. To have done so is our right under the First Amendment.

It is time to stop chasing rabbits. The public still has much to learn about a man with the most troubling business past of any United States president. Congress should release transcripts of our firm’s testimony, so that the American people can learn the truth about our work and most important, what happened to our democracy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/opin ... n-gps.html



Seth Abramson‏Verified account
@SethAbramson

BREAKING NEWS (New York Times): Fusion GPS Founders Say They Told Senate It Was Other Sources Besides Steele's Dossier—Including a Traitor Within the Trump Campaign—Who Fed Trump-Russia Intel to the FBI in Summer 2016 and Initiated the Russia Investigation

6:33 PM - 2 Jan 2018

2/ So it turns out that Trump's "Deep State" conspiracy was COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE.

3/ Other key facts—Steele did his research without knowing who he was working for; his sources weren't paid; Fusion told the Senate that it believes Trump laundered Russian money (as Mueller seems to); Steele went to the FBI of his own accord and without telling Fusion's clients.



Trump laundered Russian money

Image

Image

How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt

By SHARON LaFRANIERE, MARK MAZZETTI and MATT APUZZODEC. 30, 2017


George Papadopoulos was working as an energy consultant in London when the Trump campaign named him a foreign policy adviser in early March 2016. via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WASHINGTON — During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.

About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign.

Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said that night at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear. But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role.

The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired.

If Mr. Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and is now a cooperating witness, was the improbable match that set off a blaze that has consumed the first year of the Trump administration, his saga is also a tale of the Trump campaign in miniature. He was brash, boastful and underqualified, yet he exceeded expectations. And, like the campaign itself, he proved to be a tantalizing target for a Russian influence operation.

While some of Mr. Trump’s advisers have derided him as an insignificant campaign volunteer or a “coffee boy,” interviews and new documents show that he stayed influential throughout the campaign. Two months before the election, for instance, he helped arrange a New York meeting between Mr. Trump and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt.

The information that Mr. Papadopoulos gave to the Australians answers one of the lingering mysteries of the past year: What so alarmed American officials to provoke the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign months before the presidential election?

It was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign. Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America’s closest intelligence allies.

Interviews and previously undisclosed documents show that Mr. Papadopoulos played a critical role in this drama and reveal a Russian operation that was more aggressive and widespread than previously known. They add to an emerging portrait, gradually filled in over the past year in revelations by federal investigators, journalists and lawmakers, of Russians with government contacts trying to establish secret channels at various levels of the Trump campaign.

The F.B.I. investigation, which was taken over seven months ago by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has cast a shadow over Mr. Trump’s first year in office — even as he and his aides repeatedly played down the Russian efforts and falsely denied campaign contacts with Russians.

They have also insisted that Mr. Papadopoulos was a low-level figure. But spies frequently target peripheral players as a way to gain insight and leverage.

F.B.I. officials disagreed in 2016 about how aggressively and publicly to pursue the Russia inquiry before the election. But there was little debate about what seemed to be afoot. John O. Brennan, who retired this year after four years as C.I.A. director, told Congress in May that he had been concerned about multiple contacts between Russian officials and Trump advisers.

Russia, he said, had tried to “suborn” members of the Trump campaign.

‘The Signal to Meet’

Mr. Papadopoulos, then an ambitious 28-year-old from Chicago, was working as an energy consultant in London when the Trump campaign, desperate to create a foreign policy team, named him as an adviser in early March 2016. His political experience was limited to two months on Ben Carson’s presidential campaign before it collapsed.

Mr. Papadopoulos had no experience on Russia issues. But during his job interview with Sam Clovis, a top early campaign aide, he saw an opening. He was told that improving relations with Russia was one of Mr. Trump’s top foreign policy goals, according to court papers, an account Mr. Clovis has denied.

Traveling in Italy that March, Mr. Papadopoulos met Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor at a now-defunct London academy who had valuable contacts with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Mifsud showed little interest in Mr. Papadopoulos at first.

But when he found out he was a Trump campaign adviser, he latched onto him, according to court records and emails obtained by The New York Times. Their joint goal was to arrange a meeting between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Moscow, or between their respective aides.



Sam Clovis, a former co-chairman of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, denies that he told Mr. Papadopoulos that improving relations with Russia was one of Mr. Trump’s top foreign policy goals during Mr. Papadopoulos’s interview for a job with the campaign. Win Mcnamee/Getty Images
In response to questions, Mr. Papadopoulos’s lawyers declined to provide a statement.

Before the end of the month, Mr. Mifsud had arranged a meeting at a London cafe between Mr. Papadopoulos and Olga Polonskaya, a young woman from St. Petersburg whom he falsely described as Mr. Putin’s niece. Although Ms. Polonskaya told The Times in a text message that her English skills are poor, her emails to Mr. Papadopoulos were largely fluent. “We are all very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” Ms. Polonskaya wrote in one message.

More important, Mr. Mifsud connected Mr. Papadopoulos to Ivan Timofeev, a program director for the prestigious Valdai Discussion Club, a gathering of academics that meets annually with Mr. Putin. The two men corresponded for months about how to connect the Russian government and the campaign. Records suggest that Mr. Timofeev, who has been described by Mr. Mueller’s team as an intermediary for the Russian Foreign Ministry, discussed the matter with the ministry’s former leader, Igor S. Ivanov, who is widely viewed in the United States as one of Russia’s elder statesmen.

When Mr. Trump’s foreign policy team gathered for the first time at the end of March in Washington, Mr. Papadopoulos said he had the contacts to set up a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump listened intently but apparently deferred to Jeff Sessions, then a senator from Alabama and head of the campaign’s foreign policy team, according to participants in the meeting.

Mr. Sessions, now the attorney general, initially did not reveal that discussion to Congress, because, he has said, he did not recall it. More recently, he said he pushed back against Mr. Papadopoulos’s proposal, at least partly because he did not want someone so unqualified to represent the campaign on such a sensitive matter.

If the campaign wanted Mr. Papadopoulos to stand down, previously undisclosed emails obtained by The Times show that he either did not get the message or failed to heed it. He continued for months to try to arrange some kind of meeting with Russian representatives, keeping senior campaign advisers abreast of his efforts. Mr. Clovis ultimately encouraged him and another foreign policy adviser to travel to Moscow, but neither went because the campaign would not cover the cost.

Mr. Papadopoulos was trusted enough to edit the outline of Mr. Trump’s first major foreign policy speech on April 27, an address in which the candidate said it was possible to improve relations with Russia. Mr. Papadopoulos flagged the speech to his newfound Russia contacts, telling Mr. Timofeev that it should be taken as “the signal to meet.”

“That is a statesman speech,” Mr. Mifsud agreed. Ms. Polonskaya wrote that she was pleased that Mr. Trump’s “position toward Russia is much softer” than that of other candidates.

Stephen Miller, then a senior policy adviser to the campaign and now a top White House aide, was eager for Mr. Papadopoulos to serve as a surrogate, someone who could publicize Mr. Trump’s foreign policy views without officially speaking for the campaign. But Mr. Papadopoulos’s first public attempt to do so was a disaster.

In a May 4, 2016, interview with The Times of London, Mr. Papadopoulos called on Prime Minister David Cameron to apologize to Mr. Trump for criticizing his remarks on Muslims as “stupid” and divisive. “Say sorry to Trump or risk special relationship, Cameron told,” the headline read. Mr. Clovis, the national campaign co-chairman, severely reprimanded Mr. Papadopoulos for failing to clear his explosive comments with the campaign in advance.

From then on, Mr. Papadopoulos was more careful with the press — though he never regained the full trust of Mr. Clovis or several other campaign officials.

Mr. Mifsud proposed to Mr. Papadopoulos that he, too, serve as a campaign surrogate. He could write op-eds under the guise of a “neutral” observer, he wrote in a previously undisclosed email, and follow Mr. Trump to his rallies as an accredited journalist while receiving briefings from the inside the campaign.

In late April, at a London hotel, Mr. Mifsud told Mr. Papadopoulos that he had just learned from high-level Russian officials in Moscow that the Russians had “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” according to court documents. Although Russian hackers had been mining data from the Democratic National Committee’s computers for months, that information was not yet public. Even the committee itself did not know.

Whether Mr. Papadopoulos shared that information with anyone else in the campaign is one of many unanswered questions. He was mostly in contact with the campaign over emails. The day after Mr. Mifsud’s revelation about the hacked emails, he told Mr. Miller in an email only that he had “interesting messages coming in from Moscow” about a possible trip. The emails obtained by The Times show no evidence that Mr. Papadopoulos discussed the stolen messages with the campaign.

Not long after, however, he opened up to Mr. Downer, the Australian diplomat, about his contacts with the Russians. It is unclear whether Mr. Downer was fishing for that information that night in May 2016. The meeting at the bar came about because of a series of connections, beginning with an Israeli Embassy official who introduced Mr. Papadopoulos to another Australian diplomat in London.

It is also not clear why, after getting the information in May, the Australian government waited two months to pass it to the F.B.I. In a statement, the Australian Embassy in Washington declined to provide details about the meeting or confirm that it occurred.

“As a matter of principle and practice, the Australian government does not comment on matters relevant to active investigations,” the statement said. The F.B.I. declined to comment.



A House Judiciary Committee session last month at which Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified. Mr. Sessions was head of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team. Al Drago for The New York Times
A Secretive Investigation

Once the information Mr. Papadopoulos had disclosed to the Australian diplomat reached the F.B.I., the bureau opened an investigation that became one of its most closely guarded secrets. Senior agents did not discuss it at the daily morning briefing, a classified setting where officials normally speak freely about highly sensitive operations.

Besides the information from the Australians, the investigation was also propelled by intelligence from other friendly governments, including the British and Dutch. A trip to Moscow by another adviser, Carter Page, also raised concerns at the F.B.I.

With so many strands coming in — about Mr. Papadopoulos, Mr. Page, the hackers and more — F.B.I. agents debated how aggressively to investigate the campaign’s Russia ties, according to current and former officials familiar with the debate. Issuing subpoenas or questioning people, for example, could cause the investigation to burst into public view in the final months of a presidential campaign.

It could also tip off the Russian government, which might try to cover its tracks. Some officials argued against taking such disruptive steps, especially since the F.B.I. would not be able to unravel the case before the election.

Others believed that the possibility of a compromised presidential campaign was so serious that it warranted the most thorough, aggressive tactics. Even if the odds against a Trump presidency were long, these agents argued, it was prudent to take every precaution.

That included questioning Christopher Steele, the former British spy who was compiling the dossier alleging a far-ranging Russian conspiracy to elect Mr. Trump. A team of F.B.I. agents traveled to Europe to interview Mr. Steele in early October 2016. Mr. Steele had shown some of his findings to an F.B.I. agent in Rome three months earlier, but that information was not part of the justification to start an counterintelligence inquiry, American officials said.

Ultimately, the F.B.I. and Justice Department decided to keep the investigation quiet, a decision that Democrats in particular have criticized. And agents did not interview Mr. Papadopoulos until late January.

Opening Doors, to the Top

He was hardly central to the daily running of the Trump campaign, yet Mr. Papadopoulos continuously found ways to make himself useful to senior Trump advisers. In September 2016, with the United Nations General Assembly approaching and stories circulating that Mrs. Clinton was going to meet with Mr. Sisi, the Egyptian president, Mr. Papadopoulos sent a message to Stephen K. Bannon, the campaign’s chief executive, offering to broker a similar meeting for Mr. Trump.

After days of scheduling discussions, the meeting was set and Mr. Papadopoulos sent a list of talking points to Mr. Bannon, according to people familiar with those interactions. Asked about his contacts with Mr. Papadopoulos, Mr. Bannon declined to comment.

Mr. Trump’s improbable victory raised Mr. Papadopoulos’s hopes that he might ascend to a top White House job. The election win also prompted a business proposal from Sergei Millian, a naturalized American citizen born in Belarus. After he had contacted Mr. Papadopoulos out of the blue over LinkedIn during the summer of 2016, the two met repeatedly in Manhattan.

Mr. Millian has bragged of his ties to Mr. Trump — boasts that the president’s advisers have said are overstated. He headed an obscure organization called the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, some of whose board members and clients are difficult to confirm. Congress is investigating where he fits into the swirl of contacts with the Trump campaign, although he has said he is unfairly being scrutinized only because of his support for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Millian proposed that he and Mr. Papadopoulos form an energy-related business that would be financed by Russian billionaires “who are not under sanctions” and would “open all doors for us” at “any level all the way to the top.”

One billionaire, he said, wanted to explore the idea of opening a Trump-branded hotel in Moscow. “I know the president will distance himself from business, but his children might be interested,” he wrote.

Nothing came of his proposals, partly because Mr. Papadopoulos was hoping that Michael T. Flynn, then Mr. Trump’s pick to be national security adviser, might give him the energy portfolio at the National Security Council.

The pair exchanged New Year’s greetings in the final hours of 2016. “Happy New Year, sir,” Mr. Papadopoulos wrote.

“Thank you and same to you, George. Happy New Year!” Mr. Flynn responded, ahead of a year that seemed to hold great promise.

But 2017 did not unfold that way. Within months, Mr. Flynn was fired, and both men were charged with lying to the F.B.I. And both became important witnesses in the investigation Mr. Papadopoulos had played a critical role in starting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/p ... oulos.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 » Wed Jan 03, 2018 6:57 pm

Trump Spokesman Mark Corallo Quit in July 2017 Because He Believed Trump Committed a Crime—Obstruction of Justice—Aboard Air Force One


News of the day: Rod Rosenstein is meeting with Paul Ryan about the Russia investigation right now. The meeting was made at Rosenstein’s request. FBI Director Chris Wray was invited too. You know who wasn’t invited? Donald Trump & Mike Pence.
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.
User avatar
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Posts: 32090
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Mr. Trump then asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jan 04, 2018 9:16 pm

FBI Special Counsel has substantiated claims by Comey about interactions with trump



The special counsel has received handwritten notes from Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, showing that Mr. Trump talked to Mr. Priebus about how he had called Mr. Comey to urge him to say publicly that he was not under investigation. The president’s determination to fire Mr. Comey even led one White House lawyer to take the extraordinary step of misleading Mr. Trump about whether he had the authority to remove him.


Among the other episodes, Mr. Trump described the Russia investigation as “fabricated and politically motivated” in a letter that he intended to send to the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, but that White House aides stopped him from sending. Mr. Mueller has also substantiated claims that Mr. Comey made in a series of memos describing troubling interactions with the president before he was fired in May.

Legal experts said that of the two primary issues that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, appears to be investigating — whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice while in office and whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia — there is currently a larger body of public evidence tying the president to a possible crime of obstruction.
The special counsel has received handwritten notes from Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, showing that Mr. Trump talked to Mr. Priebus about how he had called Mr. Comey to urge him to say publicly that he was not under investigation. The president’s determination to fire Mr. Comey even led one White House lawyer to take the extraordinary step of misleading Mr. Trump about whether he had the authority to remove him.






Mr. Trump then asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”

Obstruction Inquiry Shows Trump’s Struggle to Keep Grip on Russia Investigation

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
JAN. 4, 2018


President Trump’s belief that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should protect him provides an important window into how he governs.
Tom Brenner/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election.

Public pressure was building for Mr. Sessions, who had been a senior member of the Trump campaign, to step aside. But the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, carried out the president’s orders and lobbied Mr. Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry, according to two people with knowledge of the episode.

Mr. McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. Mr. Trump said he had expected his top law enforcement official to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric H. Holder Jr. had for Barack Obama.

Mr. Trump then asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was referring to his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had been Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s top aide during the investigations into communist activity in the 1950s and died in 1986.

The lobbying of Mr. Sessions is one of several previously unreported episodes that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has learned about as he investigates whether Mr. Trump obstructed the F.B.I.’s Russia inquiry. The events occurred during a two-month period — from when Mr. Sessions recused himself in March until the appointment of Mr. Mueller in May — when Mr. Trump believed he was losing control over the investigation.

Among the other episodes, Mr. Trump described the Russia investigation as “fabricated and politically motivated” in a letter that he intended to send to the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, but that White House aides stopped him from sending. Mr. Mueller has also substantiated claims that Mr. Comey made in a series of memos describing troubling interactions with the president before he was fired in May.



Legal experts said that of the two primary issues that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, appears to be investigating — whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice while in office and whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia — there is currently a larger body of public evidence tying the president to a possible crime of obstruction. Doug Mills/The New York Times
The special counsel has received handwritten notes from Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, showing that Mr. Trump talked to Mr. Priebus about how he had called Mr. Comey to urge him to say publicly that he was not under investigation. The president’s determination to fire Mr. Comey even led one White House lawyer to take the extraordinary step of misleading Mr. Trump about whether he had the authority to remove him.

The New York Times has also learned that four days before Mr. Comey was fired, one of Mr. Sessions’s aides asked a congressional staff member whether he had damaging information about Mr. Comey, part of an apparent effort to undermine the F.B.I. director. It was not clear whether Mr. Mueller’s investigators knew about this incident.

Mr. Mueller has also been examining a false statement that the president dictated on Air Force One in July in response to an article in The Times about a meeting that Trump campaign officials had with Russians in 2016. A new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by Michael Wolff, says that the president’s lawyers believed that the statement was “an explicit attempt to throw sand into the investigation’s gears,” and that it led one of Mr. Trump’s spokesmen to quit because he believed it was obstruction of justice.

Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer dealing with the special counsel’s investigation, declined to comment.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have said the president has fully cooperated with the investigation, and they have expressed confidence that the inquiry will soon be coming to a close. They said that they believed the president would be exonerated, and that they hoped to have that conclusion made public.

Legal experts said that of the two primary issues Mr. Mueller appears to be investigating — whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice while in office and whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia — there is currently a larger body of public evidence tying the president to a possible crime of obstruction.

But the experts are divided about whether the accumulated evidence is enough for Mr. Mueller to bring an obstruction case. They said it could be difficult to prove that the president, who has broad authority over the executive branch, including the hiring and firing of officials, had corrupt intentions when he took actions like ousting the F.B.I. director. Some experts said the case would be stronger if there was evidence that the president had told witnesses to lie under oath.



Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, argued to Mr. Sessions that he did not need to recuse himself from the Russia investigation until it was further along. Al Drago/The New York Times
The accounts of the episodes are based on documents reviewed by The Times, as well as interviews with White House officials and others briefed on the investigation. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.

Regardless of whether Mr. Mueller believes there is enough evidence to make a case against the president, Mr. Trump’s belief that his attorney general should protect him provides an important window into how he governs. Presidents have had close relationships with their attorneys general, but Mr. Trump’s obsession with loyalty is particularly unusual, especially given the Justice Department’s investigation into him and his associates.

It was late February when Mr. Sessions decided to take the advice of career Justice Department lawyers and recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

A Lawyer’s Gambit

The pressure to make that decision public grew days later when The Washington Post reported that Mr. Sessions had met during the presidential campaign with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. The disclosure raised questions about whether Mr. Sessions had misled Congress weeks earlier during his confirmation hearing, when he told lawmakers he had not met with Russians during the campaign.

Unaware that Mr. Sessions had already decided to step aside from the inquiry, Democrats began calling for Mr. Sessions to recuse himself — and Mr. Trump told Mr. McGahn to begin a lobbying campaign to stop him.

Mr. McGahn’s argument to Mr. Sessions that day was twofold: that he did not need to step aside from the inquiry until it was further along, and that recusing himself would not stop Democrats from saying he had lied. After Mr. Sessions told Mr. McGahn that career Justice Department officials had said he should step aside, Mr. McGahn said he understood and backed down.

Mr. Trump’s frustrations with the inquiry erupted again about three weeks later, when Mr. Comey said publicly for the first time that the Justice Department and the F.B.I. were conducting an investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia. Mr. Comey had told Mr. Trump in private that he was not personally under investigation, yet Mr. Comey infuriated Mr. Trump by refusing to answer a question about that at the hearing where he spoke publicly.



James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, refused to answer questions from lawmakers about whether Mr. Trump was under investigation during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in May. Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
After that hearing, Mr. Trump began to discuss openly with White House officials his desire to fire Mr. Comey. This unnerved some inside the White House counsel’s office, and even led one of Mr. McGahn’s deputies to mislead the president about his authority to fire the F.B.I. director.

The lawyer, Uttam Dhillon, was convinced that if Mr. Comey was fired, the Trump presidency could be imperiled, because it would force the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether Mr. Trump was trying to derail the Russia investigation.

Longstanding analysis of presidential power says that the president, as the head of the executive branch, does not need grounds to fire the F.B.I. director. Mr. Dhillon, a veteran Justice Department lawyer before joining the Trump White House, assigned a junior lawyer to examine this issue. That lawyer determined that the F.B.I. director was no different than any other employee in the executive branch, and that there was nothing prohibiting the president from firing him.

But Mr. Dhillon, who had earlier told Mr. Trump that he needed cause to fire Mr. Comey, never corrected the record, withholding the conclusions of his research.

Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, called the incident “extraordinary,” adding that he could not think of a similar one that occurred in past administrations.

“This shows that the president’s lawyers don’t trust giving him all the facts because they fear he will make a decision that is not best suited for him,” Mr. Vladeck said.

Searching for Dirt

The attempts to stop Mr. Trump from firing Mr. Comey were successful until May 3, when the F.B.I. director once again testified on Capitol Hill. He spent much of the time describing a series of decisions he had made during the bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s personal email account.



Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and questioned his loyalty. Doug Mills/The New York Times
Once again, Mr. Comey refused to answer questions from lawmakers about whether Mr. Trump was under investigation.

White House aides gave updates to Mr. Trump throughout, informing him of Mr. Comey’s refusal to publicly clear him. Mr. Trump unloaded on Mr. Sessions, who was at the White House that day. He criticized him for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, questioned his loyalty, and said he wanted to get rid of Mr. Comey. He repeated the refrain that the attorneys general for Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Obama had protected the White House.

In an interview with The Times last month, Mr. Trump said he believed that Mr. Holder had protected Mr. Obama.

“When you look at the I.R.S. scandal, when you look at the guns for whatever, when you look at all of the tremendous, aah, real problems they had, not made-up problems like Russian collusion, these were real problems,” Mr. Trump said. “When you look at the things that they did, and Holder protected the president. And I have great respect for that, I’ll be honest.”

Two days after Mr. Comey’s testimony, an aide to Mr. Sessions approached a Capitol Hill staff member asking whether the staffer had any derogatory information about the F.B.I. director. The attorney general wanted one negative article a day in the news media about Mr. Comey, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said the incident did not occur. “This did not happen and would not happen,” said the spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores. “Plain and simple.”

Earlier that day, Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, had pulled one of Mr. McGahn’s deputies aside after a meeting at the Justice Department. Mr. Rosenstein told the aide that top White House and Justice Department lawyers needed to discuss Mr. Comey’s future. It is unclear whether this conversation was related to the effort to dig up dirt on Mr. Comey.

Mr. Trump spent the next weekend at his country club in Bedminster, N.J., where he watched a recording of Mr. Comey’s testimony, stewed about the F.B.I. director and discussed the possibility of dismissing him with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his senior policy adviser, Stephen Miller. He had decided he would fire Mr. Comey, and asked Mr. Miller to help put together a letter the president intended to send to Mr. Comey.

In interviews with The Times, White House officials have said the letter contained no references to Russia or the F.B.I.’s investigation. According to two people who have read it, however, the letter’s first sentence said the Russia investigation had been “fabricated and politically motivated.”

On Monday, May 8, Mr. Trump met with Mr. Sessions and Mr. Rosenstein to discuss firing Mr. Comey, and Mr. Rosenstein agreed to write his own memo outlining why Mr. Comey should be fired. Before writing it, he took a copy of the letter that Mr. Trump and Mr. Miller had drafted during the weekend in Bedminster.

The president fired Mr. Comey the following day.

A week later, The Times reported that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Comey in February to shut down the federal investigation into Michael T. Flynn, who at the time was the national security adviser. The following day, Mr. Rosenstein announced that he had appointed Mr. Mueller as special counsel.

Once again, Mr. Trump erupted at Mr. Sessions upon hearing the news. In an Oval Office meeting, the president said the attorney general had been disloyal for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, and he told Mr. Sessions to resign.

Mr. Sessions sent his resignation letter to the president the following day. But Mr. Trump rejected it, sending it back with a handwritten note at the top.

“Not accepted,” the note said.





Seth Abramson
34m34 minutes ago

BREAKING: Trump Ordered White House Counsel to Keep Sessions From Recusing Himself, Said Sessions Was Obligated to Protect Him From the Russia Probe

5:09 PM - 4 Jan 2018

2/ That a White House lawyer lied to the president to keep him from firing Jim Comey confirms that legal experts in his employ, along with everyone else, considered it necessary to save the country from the president rather than permitting him to govern in his current condition.

3/ The fact that Sessions' team secretly queried GOP members of Congress for damaging info on Comey—to use as cover for firing him over Russia—confirms, yet again, that Sessions was/is one of Mueller's primary targets for indictment alongside Manafort, Flynn, Kushner, and Don Jr.

4/ This NYT story makes clear that Sessions, with the assistance of at least one aide—and was it Gordon or Dearborn, both implicated in the Russia probe?—was trying to cover up what he knew as an attorney (much like Corallo knew) was a course of conduct constituting Obstruction.

5/ I did a long thread on "consciousness of guilt" recently, and Jeff Sessions ordering aides to find pretextual reasons to fire Comey, so that it wouldn't be obvious the firing was over the Flynn case—which Trump knew from McGahn was *valid*—is definitely consciousness of guilt.

6/ As for Mueller needing proof the president instructed someone to lie for an Obstruction case, (a) no, you don't, and (b) remember that a Flynn confidant told ABC that Flynn says Trump ordered him to negotiate with Russia—then tried to end the probe that would reveal that fact.

7/ So even if Trump didn't tell Flynn to lie to the FBI, his intent was that the truth of what occurred not be known to the FBI or public—that's why he didn't fire Flynn for 3 weeks, immediately threatened to rehire him, tried to end his prosecution, then told him to stay strong.

8/ Remember too that the period during which Trump was trying to avoid firing Flynn, and then trying to get Comey to drop Flynn's case, was also the period when the "blank check" job offer Trump gave George Papadopoulos was suddenly taken away. Trump knew justice was closing in.

9/ I've said this over and over, as have many other attorneys (Laurence Tribe being a prominent example): the Obstruction of Justice case against Trump is extremely strong even if Mueller *only* has the evidence that's been made public—but as we learned today, he has *much* more.

10/ So this is a good time to repeat what I've said on the subject of a future Special Counsel referral to the DOJ: Bob Mueller *will* refer at *least* one impeachable offense to Rod Rosenstein at DOJ, because he *will* refer Obstruction of Justice (i.e., recommend that charge).



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

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jan 05, 2018 7:12 pm

Why are Republicans more upset about Christopher Steele than Vladimir Putin?


Image


Senate Republicans become Trump accomplices in manipulating the system

The Post reports:

The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended Friday that the Justice Department investigate for possible criminal charges the author of the now-famous “dossier” alleging the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin during the 2016 election.

The move by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) marks a major escalation in conservatives’ challenges to the FBI’s credibility as the agency investigates whether any Trump associates committed crimes. Another Republican, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), joined in the letter to the Justice Department.

Their letter makes what is called a criminal referral to the Justice Department, suggesting it investigate the dossier author, former British spy Christopher Steele, for possibly lying to the FBI. It is a crime to lie to FBI agents about a material fact relevant to an ongoing investigation.

This is an outrageous political stunt, one with no legal ramifications and obviously designed to take the heat off the White House as damning reports bolstering an obstruction-of-justice claim and questioning the president’s mental fitness have sent the White House spinning.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a member of the Judiciary Committee and a former prosecutor, tells me, “I cannot understand why it would be necessary for members of Congress to make a criminal referral to the FBI concerning information we know the FBI already has.”

[Schiff: The case that Trump obstructed justice just got stronger]

The referral itself is devoid of any particulars, simply accusing Steele of making false comments relating to the dossier. Were these under oath? How do they have knowledge of such comments? It’s hard to imagine who other than the FBI itself — in which case the FBI and Justice Department have the relevant facts — Steele spoke to. He has not to our knowledge spoke to any Senate committee, although the Intelligence Committee chairman has attempted to reach him.

Opinion | Congress faces a government shutdown and decisions on DACA, health care and more, but don't hold your breath for anything to get done. (The Washington Post)

Democrats were never consulted on this. “Sadly, the first major action taken by the Republican majority on the Judiciary Committee seems to be aimed at someone who reported wrongdoing, rather than committed it,” emails former prosecutor Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). ” This action was taken without any bipartisan cooperation, or even consultation. These vaguely stated, secret allegations seem designed more to distract attention from the priority issues for investigation, and discredit the FBI and other law enforcement.”

Moreover, the statute that Grassley and Graham cite — 18. U.S.C. 1001 — requires that a misstatement be intentionally wrong and material. It is ironic that the Justice Committee chairman who witnessed now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions repeatedly make false statements under oath would ignore these misstatements of fact and choose instead to vaguely point to ones apparently made to other people. “In order to violate 18 USC 1001 in this context Steele would have had to make a false statement to either a congressional committee or the FBI,” says Susan Hennessey of Lawfare blog. “Reportedly, Steele hasn’t met with Congressional committees and it’s difficult to see what information Grassley and Graham would have about what statements Steele made to the FBI. So the committee is making a referral for criminal investigation without offering any basis for why it would even be aware of the conduct at issue.” She adds, “Bottom line, this is essentially just an empty suggestion. There is nothing that compels DOJ or the FBI to actually open or pursue an investigation based on this kind of letter.”

[Michael Wolff shows his nuclear button is ‘bigger’ and ‘more powerful’ than Trump’s]

The lack of specificity is a telltale sign that Grassley and Graham are, like the president, manipulating the justice system for partisan purpose. It is telling that this letter does not come from all Republicans on the committee, let alone any Democrats.

Renato Mariotti, former federal prosecutor and a Democratic candidate for attorney general in Illinois, tells me, “If this wasn’t done for political reasons, why make the referral public? All it does is alert Steele. This looks like a political stunt.” He continues, “A legitimate referral would provide information to the FBI that it doesn’t otherwise possess for the purpose of alerting it to potential criminal activity.”

The gambit from Grassley and Graham, something one would expect of Trump’s lawyers, raises more questions than answers. The country should be told that if the White House requested this or got a heads-up, why Democrats were not included and why a referral with no new facts is necessary. Grassley and Graham have inadvertently demonstrated what critics of the GOP have claimed — namely, that Republicans are hopelessly partisan and uninterested in performing their constitutional role as a check on the executive branch. They are helping Trump quite obviously in an effort to smear a witness, although not a critical one. “I have never before heard of Congress or any other investigative entity making a criminal referral to DOJ about activities that did not involve the body making the referral,” says former Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller. “And it’s even more absurd given that the supposed false statement would have been made to the FBI. History will record who stood up for the rule of law during this trying time for our country and who tried to weaken it, and Graham and Grassley just guaranteed that they will be on the wrong side of the ledger.”

[‘The Trump Show,’ Week 50: ‘Sloppy Steve’]

Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, tells me: “Just once, I’d like to see the Chairman express concern about the link between the sitting President’s campaign and a hostile foreign government, rather than calling for investigations either of people looking into that link or of a woman who may be the world’s most investigated human, hasn’t been in government for 5 years, and isn’t running for anything.”

Moreover, as has been established, Steele did not prompt the FBI to investigate the Russia connection. Any allegations made therein would need to be investigated and confirmed directly. All this does is smear Steele and out the senators as hopeless hacks. “One point of indisputable fact is that the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in our election — and Trump campaign collaboration with it — was triggered by information completely independent from the dossier or Christopher Steele or Fusion GPS,” says Blumenthal. “This disappointing step seems to deflect from the genuinely urgent and critical topics of our Committee’s inquiry: Russian meddling in our democracy, Trump campaign collusion with it, and possible obstruction of justice.”

Steven Schooner of George Washington University Law School points out to me what thin gruel this all is. “Putting aside the political infighting, gamesmanship, showmanship, and potential for distraction (none of which, necessarily, should be disregarded as possible drivers here), it’s easy to be skeptical about this,” he said. “The question that immediately comes to mind is, why wouldn’t the Justice Department — under AG Sessions — already have initiated charges, if the FBI reports (that, apparently form the basis for the Judiciary Committee members’ actions) demonstrate that a crime had been committed?” The answer one comes back to is that this is a stunt unbecoming of two senior senators.

Here, however, is a challenge for other Republicans. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who recently spoke out about the need for a common set of facts and the need to leave partisanship aside, has a perfect opportunity to restrain his fellow Republicans, chide them for this stunt, express the imperative to let the investigation play out and reiterate a commitment to the rule of law. Will he? Don’t hold your breath.

UPDATE: “I know of no basis for believing that Steele may have lied to the FBI and thus no basis for the Grassley/Graham referral.,” says constitutional lawyer Laurence H. Tribe. “I’ve been following this closely and am also unaware of any basis for Senators Grassley or Graham to suspect such lying. Thus it’s hard not to view this referral as an abuse of power designed to undermine and thus obstruct the Mueller investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia in last year’s presidential election.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ri ... c25b325741


GOP Senators Refer Trump-Russia Dossier Author for Criminal Probe

4 hours ago

Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters


In a shocking move Friday afternoon, GOP Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham referred the so-called “Trump dossier” writer Christopher Steele for criminal investigation. They are referring him to the Justice Department for what they say are potential violations regarding inconsistencies Steele made in statements provided to authorities. “I don’t take lightly making a referral for criminal investigation. But, as I would with any credible evidence of a crime unearthed in the course of our investigations, I feel obliged to pass that information along to the Justice Department for appropriate review,” Grassley said in a statement. Yesterday evening, according to a release from the Committee on the Judiciary, Grassley and Graham delivered to the Senate Security a letter and classified memorandum to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray that formed the basis of this referral. They note, however, that the referral does not pertain to the “veracity of claims contained in the dossier,” but rather “is for further investigation only, and is not intended to be an allegation of a crime.”

2. SO?

2 hours ago

Twitter: We Can’t Ban Trump Because He’s a ‘World Leader’

Twitter on Friday afternoon finally addressed widespread calls for a banning of President Trump from the platform over his tweets threatening nuclear war. Without specifically naming Trump, the social-media giant wrote in a statement that “Elected world leaders play a critical role in that conversation because of their outsized impact on our society,” and therefore, “Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets, would hide important information people should be able to see and debate. It would also not silence that leader, but it would certainly hamper necessary discussion around their words and actions.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/grassley- ... estigation


'Romantic encounter' set off Australia's role in triggering Donald Trump investigation

January 5 2018 - 11:45PM
David Wroe

It was a chance romantic encounter by George Papadopoulos that set in train the events that led to the Australian government tipping off Washington about what it knew of Russian hacking efforts to swing the US presidential election.

Fairfax Media can reveal a woman in London with whom Papadopoulos became involved happened to know Alexander Downer and told the Australian High Commissioner about Papadopoulos, a newly signed staffer for Donald Trump. Downer, being a canny diplomat, followed it up and arranged a meeting with the young American, who was mostly living in London at the time.

Alexander Downer linked to Russia probe

Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that Russia had political dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

What followed was the now infamous May 2016 conversation over many glasses of wine at the swanky Kensington Wine Rooms, during which the 28-year-old Papadopoulos spilled to Downer that he knew of a Russian dirt file on the rival Clinton campaign consisting of thousands of hacked emails.

That night was a key moment that helped spark the FBI probe - since taken over by respected former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special counsel - into possible Trump campaign collusion with the Kremlin, including its hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

As former US director of national intelligence James Clapper told CNN this week: "I think it was probably one of several stimulants for the investigation but was not the only factor."

It is almost certain Downer has since been interviewed or at least debriefed by Mueller's team.

As remarkable as it seems that Papadopoulos would be so reckless as to tell Downer - a foreign diplomat he'd just met - that he knew about the Russian hacking, Downer is known for his fondness for expansive conversation over wine, so it is plausible Downer had the young man talking well past the point at which he should have stopped.

The romantic link explains that it was a random connection of Papadopoulos to Australia's High Commission that sparked the meeting. One unanswered question is whether Papadopoulos had boasted to the woman of his Russian connections and this was a subject of interest to Downer. But Trump was the presumptive Republican nominee by the start of May 2016, so Downer would have seen value in meeting with one of his campaign team anyway.

Downer, insiders agree, was doing his job, though it's understood he didn't send an official cable to Canberra reporting the conversation until July after Wikileaks published the hacked emails.

Canberra then shared the conversation with Washington. It was well aware it was in the fraught position of telling authorities under a Democratic administration that a staffer from the Republican nominee's campaign had foreknowledge of the Russian hacking. But most experts have said the government did the right thing and is unlikely to have damaged the relationship with the now-Trump administration.

"Alexander was doing what a High Commissioner should do, finding pathways into the campaign team," said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

"He professionally reported it back to head office. If you had what seemed to be reasonable information about the possibility of collusion, you would want to tell American internal intelligence appropriately. What seems to have happened is we've done the right thing."

It is understood that Australia's ambassador to Washington, Joe Hockey, talked to the FBI as part of managing the information flow.

Some close observers have pointed out that Canberra wasn't informing on Papadopoulos as such but simply passing on to an ally useful information about Russia's hacking. By late July 2016, US intelligence had reportedly "high confidence" Russia was behind the Democrats hack, but it wasn't until October that it publicly said it was certain.

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation.

Papadopoulos declined to comment, referring Fairfax Media to his lawyers, who did not respond by deadline.

Papadopoulos has since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. In his January interview, he didn't deny knowing Joseph Mifsud, a mysterious Maltese professor with links to the Russian government, nor having met with Russian officials to whom Mifsud introduced him. Nor did he deny that Mifsud had told him the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails".

But he falsely claimed all this happened before he joined the campaign team, downplaying any suggestions of collusion. These calculated denials - revolving around the timing, not the fact of his knowledge - suggest Papadopoulos guessed someone had already told the FBI he had been boasting of his knowledge of the emails.

Mr Jennings said that while there were likely multiple starting points for the Mueller probe, the Downer conversation could explain why the FBI zeroed in on Papadopoulos.

"We can now say we played a part."
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/ ... y28zsr6qiq



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

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 08, 2018 6:50 am

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emptywheel


@emptywheel
18h18 hours ago

Stephen Miller Spends 12 Minutes Refusing to Answer Whether Trump Met with Russians Offering Dirt

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/01/07/s ... ring-dirt/

As you contemplate Miller's inability to deny that Trump met the Russians from the June 9 meeting, remember that Miller was the FIRST person George Papadopoulos emailed after learning the Russians were dealing dirt in the form of Hillary emails.

Miller denied:
Knowing anything about the meeting

Miller did not deny:
Knowing anything about Russians offering Hillary emails as dirt
Knowing whether Trump met any of the Russians who visited Trump Tower on June 9

43 days before the Trump Tower meeting, the day after learning Russians had email dirt, George Papadopoulos told Miller, “Have some interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right.”





THE PAPADOPOULOS DELAY

January 1, 2018

Mueller Probe /by empty wheel

We now know that sometime after July 22, 2016, Australian Ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, told the FBI that George Papadopoulos got drunk with Australia’s Ambassador to the UK, Alexander Downer, two months earlier and told him he had learned the Russians had dirt, emails, on Hillary Clinton.

That revelation has led a lot of people to ask why it took so long — January 27, 2017 — for the FBI to interview Papadopoulos.

I don’t have an answer for that. But I want to point to some dates from his arrest affidavit and information that are newly of interest giving that timing.

As numerous people have pointed out, those documents provide the outlines of the dates when FBI first interviewed Papadopoulos, on January 27, when they had a follow-up interview, on February 16, and when, the day after, he deleted his Facebook account. The follow-up would have happened in the wake of FBI interviewing Joseph Mifsud while he was in the US for the Global Ties conference on February 8. They didn’t arrest Papadopoulos until July 27, roughly a year after the Australians first informed the FBI that he had foreknowledge of what may have been the hacked emails.

But I’m at least as interested in how the other dates from the documents on Papadopoulos relate to that timeline as laid out in the two timelines below.

Note that every Facebook message is to Ivan Timofeev — a legal target under 702. Even in the July arrest affidavit, some emails between Americans are cited. Thus, the need for the warrant.

Importantly, there are no texts cited, at all. In the arrest affidavit, just Papadopoulos’ shutdown of his Facebook account is mentioned. The information explains that, “On or about February 23, 2017, defendant PAPADOPOULOS ceased using his cell phone number and began using anew number.” Whatever texts he might have had on his phone (including more secure Signal texts) would have been destroyed. While Papadopoulos wasn’t using particularly good operational security (particularly in that he was communicating with Timofeev over a PRISM provider), it is possible that the most sensitive communications with the Trump campaign involved texts that got destroyed after his first interview with the FBI.

My guess is that the FBI didn’t start pursuing warrants against Papaopoulos until after that first interview (remember, he remained involved with Trump up until he wasn’t given the energy portfolio on the National Security Council). It’s possible, too, they used FISA orders at first (which would take some time to obtain, unless they got emergency ones), then obtained search warrants to parallel construct the evidence.

“EMAILS OBTAINED THROUGH A JUDICIALLY AUTHORIZED SEARCH WARRANT”

March 24, Papadopoulos to campaign

Papadopoulos: “just finished a very productive lunch with a good friend of mine, [Mifsud] . . . ‐ who introduced me to both Putin’s niece and the Russian Ambassador in London ‐ who also acts as the Deputy Foreign Minister.”

“The topic of the lunch was to arrange a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss U.S.-Russia ties under President Trump. They are keen to host us in a ‘neutral’ city, or directly in Moscow. They said the leadership, including Putin, is ready to meet with us and Mr. Trump should there be interest. Waiting for everyone’s thoughts on moving forward with this very important issue.”


Early April: Papadopoulos writes multiple emails about his “outreach to Russia.”

April 10, Papadopoulos to Olga Vinogradova

“We met with [Mifsud] in London. The reason for my message is because [Mifsud] sent an email that you tried contacting me.”

“it would be a pleasure to meet again. If not, we should have a call and discuss some things.”


April 11:

Vinogradova: “now back in St. Petersburg” but would be “very pleased to support your initiatives between our two countries and of course I would be very pleased to meet you again.”

Papadopoulos, cc’ing Mifsud: “I think a good step would be for me to meet with the Russian Ambassador in London sometime this month” would “like to discuss with him, or anyone else you recommend, about a potential foreign policy trip to Russia.”

Mifsud: “This is already been agreed. I am flying to Moscow on the 18th for a Valdai meeting, plus other meetings at the Duma.”

Vinogradova: “I have already alerted my personal links to our conversation and your request. . . . As mentioned we are all very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump. The Russian Federation would love to welcome him once his candidature would be officially announced.”


April 12, Vinogradova to Papadopoulos:

I have already alerted my personal links to our conversation and your request. The Embassy in London is very much aware of this. As mentioned we are all very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump. The Russian Federation would love to welcome him once his candidature would be officially announced.”


April 18, Mifsud to Papadopoulos, cc’ed to Ivan Timofeev

“long conversation in Moscow with my dear friend [Timofeev] . . . about a possible meeting between the two of you. [Timofeev] is ready to meet with you in London (orUSA or Moscow). I am putting the two of you in touch to discuss when and where this potential meeting can actually take place.”


April 18, Papadopoulos to Timofeev

“try and come to Moscow,” sets up Skype call for 3PM Moscow time


April 22, Timofeev to Papadopoulos

Thanks him “for an extensive talk!” and proposing “to meet in London or Moscow”


April 22, Papadopoulos to Timofeev:

Suggests “we set one up here in London with the Ambassador as well to discuss a process moving forward.”


April 25, Papapopoulos to Stephen Miller

“The Russian government has an open invitation by Putin for Mr. Trump to meet him when he is ready []. The advantage of being in London is that these governments tend to speak a bit more openly in ‘neutral’ cities.”


April 26: Papadopoulos learns of the “dirt” in the form of emails

April 27, Papadopoulos to Miller

“Have some interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right.”

April 27: Papadopoulos to Corey Lewandowski

“to discuss Russia’s interest in hosting Mr. Trump. Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right.”


April 27: Papadopoulos authored speech that he tells Timofeev is “the signal to meet”

April 29:

Papadopoulos “I am now in the process of seeing if we will come to Russia. Do you recommend I get in touch with a minister or embassy person in Washington or London to begin organizing the trip?”

Vinogradova: “I think it would be better to discuss this question with [Mifsud].”

Papadopoulos: “0k. I called him.”


April 30, Papadopoulos to Mifsud:

Thanks for the “critical help” in arranging a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government

“It’s history making if it happens.”

May 4 [this gets forwarded to Lewandowski, Clovis, and Manafort by May 21]:

Timofeev to Papadopolous “just talked to my colleagues from the MFA. [They are] open for cooperation. One of the options is to make a meeting for you at the North America Desk, if you are in Moscow.”

Papadopolous to Timofeev: “Glad the MFA is interested.”


May 4, Papadopoulos to Lewandowski (forwarding Timofeev email):

“What do you think? Is this something we want to move forward with?


May 5: Papadopoulos has a conversation with Sam Clovis, then forwards Timofeev email, with header “Russia updates.”

May 8, Timofeev to Papadopoulos:

Emails about setting Papadopoulos up with the “MFA head of the US desk.”


May 13, Mifsud to Papadopoulos:

“an update” of what they had discussed in their “recent conversations,” including: “We will continue to liaise through you with the Russian counterparts in terms of what is needed for a high level meeting of Mr. Trump with the Russian Federation.”


May 14, Papadopoulos to Lewandowski:

“Russian govemment[] ha[s] also relayed to me that they are interested in hostingMr. Trump.”


May 21, Papadopoulos to Paul Manafort, forwarding May 4 email:

“Request from Russia to meet Mr. Trump”

“Regarding the forwarded message, Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite some time and have been reaching out to me to discuss.”


June 1: Papadopoulos to Clovis, after having been told Clovis was “running point” by Lewandowski

“Re: Messages from Russia”: “I have the Russian MFA asking me if Mr. Trump is interested in visiting Russia at some point. Wanted to pass this info along to you for you to decide what’s best to do with it and what message I should send (or to ignore).”


June 9: Trump Tower meeting

June 15: Guccifer 2.0 starts releasing emails

June 19: Papadopoulos to Lewandowski

“New message from Russia”: “The Russian ministry of foreign affairs messaged and said that if Mr. Trump is unable to make it to Russia, if a campaign rep (me or someone else) can make it for meetings? I am willing to make the trip off the record if it’s in the interest of Mr. Trump and the campaign to meet specific people.”


July 14, 2016, Papadopoulos to Timofeev:

Proposes “meeting for August or September in the UK (London) with me and my national chairman, and maybe one other foreign policy advisor and you, members of president putin’s office and the mfa to hold a day of consultations and to meet one another. It has been approved from our side.”


August 15, Clovis to Papadopoulos

“I would encourage you” and another foreign policy advisor to the Campaign to “make the trip[], if it is feasible.”

FACEBOOK MESSAGES “OBTAINED THROUGH A JUDICIALLY AUTHORIZED SEARCH WARRANT”


July 15:

Papadopoulos: “We can chat on this, this weekend if you can’t tonight.”

Timofeev:


July 21, Papadopoulos to Timofeev:

“How are things [Timofeev]? Keep an eye on the speech tonight. Should be good.”


July 22: Wikileaks starts releasing DNC emails

July 22, Papadopoulos to Timofeev [Particularly given NYT’s confirmation they spent a lot of time together, I wonder if this is about Sergei Millian?]:

“If you know any background of him that is noteworthy before I see him, kindly send my way.”


October 1, Papadopoulos sends a link to this Interfax article.
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 The Consul » Mon Jan 08, 2018 1:29 pm

This is a much more complicated blowjob than what Slick Willie went through.
It involves a lot of heavy players, not just two. Plus the initial terms of the investigation are much closer to the OOffice than shady real estate.
It remains to be seen if Mueller can PROVE that it is more than a blowjob and how any of this insane drama will be used to stop the GOP from raping the environment and destroying everything progressives fought and died for over the course of the last 80 years. Otherwise it's just a ratings bonanza for media to keep the masses off the streets.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 09, 2018 4:11 pm

Image

Despite testifying under oath that he "wouldn't know Felix [Sater] if he ran into him in the street," Trump "knew him well and, in fact, continued to associate with him long after he learned of Felix's organized crime ties," according to Glenn Simpson's testimony.



In his testimony, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson talks about Trump's pattern of lying about his relationship with Felix Sater — something that David Corn from Mother Jones wrote a great piece about several months ago.



Dianne Feinstein blows Trump-Russia scandal wide open by releasing the full transcripts
Bill Palmer
Updated: 2:04 pm EST Tue Jan 9, 2018



More than four months ago, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS testified privately before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his company’s role in bringing the Trump-Russia dossier to life. Republican Chairman Chuck Grassley promised to release the transcripts to the public, but went on a stalling campaign. Grassley went full traitor this month when he pushed for phony criminal charges against the dossier’s author. This has led his Democratic counterpart Dianne Feinstein to simply blow the whole thing wide open today.



In a stunning move, Senator Feinstein has released all three hundred-plus pages of Simpson’s testimony transcripts, with Simpson’s blessing, to the public today. Even as recently as last night, no one on the outside was quite sure how or if the Democrats could get these transcripts to the public, as the Republican majority on the committee was blocking approval for such a move. But it turns out Feinstein is past the point of caring about the rules.



The breaking point appears to have been when Grassley and another Republican member of the committee, Lindsey Graham, demanded last week that criminal charges be brought against former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier. It was a final, criminal, and objectively evil attempt at subverting democracy for the sake of trying to protect Donald Trump and destroy those who have dared to investigate him. This led the Democrats on the committee to begin calling for the transcripts of Simpson’s related testimony to be publicly released.

https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public ... dacted.pdf

http://www.palmerreport.com/news/feinst ... ssia/7275/

Last edited by seemslikeadream on Tue Jan 09, 2018 5:00 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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 » Tue Jan 09, 2018 4:22 pm

Now that Feinstein has forced this into the open, it makes it:

1. Very clear why her Republican colleagues were suppressing it.

2. Very shameful that her Republican colleagues were suppressing it. They knew the dossier story taking over Fox was a lie.


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If it turns out true, that in the end Russia investigation started from a Trump campaign whistleblower, a tip from the Aussies and later 3rd source a dossier pushed by McCain, @GOP will be forever sullied for going after Mueller to protect Trump



1. DOSSIER

2 hours ago

FBI Had ‘Walk-In’ Whistleblower From Trump Campaign, Dossier Firm’s Founder Told Senate

ERIC THAYER/REUTERS
Senate Democrats on Tuesday released the transcripts from a closed-door Senate Judiciary interview with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson as part of the committee’s Russia probe. Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a Republican, had previously denied multiple Democratic requests to make public the transcripts. Among the highlights from within the transcripts: Simpson claimed that the FBI informed Trump dossier author Christopher Steele that the bureau had a “walk-in” whistleblower “from within the Trump organization or campaign,” possibly on issues related to alleged collusion between the campaign and Russian officials. Read the documents below:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/fusion-gp ... ssia-trump


Newly released Senate testimony debunks a key conservative theory on Trump and Russia

The big news Republicans didn’t want you to see.

Matthew YglesiasJan 9, 2018, 3:00pm EST
Photo by Russian Presidential Press and Information Office / Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The FBI was already investigating potential links between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government before they heard anything about Christopher Steele’s famous dossier on the matter. That’s the key takeaway from Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson’s extensive testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, released Tuesday by ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) over the objections of her Republican colleagues.

Simpson’s hearing lasted for hours, and the transcript is extremely long and mostly fairly tedious. But Simpson does clearly state that when Steele spoke to the FBI about his findings, the bureau “believed Chris’s information might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing, and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization.”

That sounds like Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who, according to a recent report in the New York Times, accidentally kicked off the Trump-Russia investigation by telling Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that Russia had political dirt on Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, after a night of heavy drinking in May 2016.

Conservatives have recently been pushing a theory that the basis for the FBI investigation was an opposition research document compiled at the behest of Clinton’s campaign. Simpson’s testimony seems to confirm the Times account and thereby debunk a conservative counternarrative that places the dossier itself at the center of the story.

Wait, who are these people?

Glenn Simpson is one of the co-founders of Fusion GPS, a “strategic intelligence” firm that was hired first by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news publication, and later by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump. Fusion, in turn, contracted with former MI-6 Russia specialist Christopher Steele to look specifically at Trump and Russia.

Steele’s investigation ended with a number of allegations, including that Trump is possibly being blackmailed by Russian security services with a recording of him paying prostitutes to pee on a bed at a luxury hotel at Moscow, and also that Trump’s campaign was the beneficiary of a multifaceted Kremlin plot to interfere in the 2016 US election.

BuzzFeed published Steele’s dossier in January 2017, setting off a firestorm of controversy and intriguing many liberals. But in recent months, the dossier has taken on new life as the centerpiece of a conservative counter-conspiracy theory, which holds that the whole Trump-Russia investigation was cooked up by the president’s political enemies. Simpson’s testimony is significant in the present context primarily for debunking that narrative.

The dossier is now the centerpiece of a conservative counternarrative

On January 3, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) — a key House conservative — rolled out a tweetstorm asking 18 questions about the FBI and Russia, many of them centering on the dossier.


Jordan, joined by another leading House conservative, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-SC), is also calling for Trump to fire Jeff Sessions so he can put a new attorney general in place who would oversee (and presumably quash) the Russia investigation. This is part of a broader conservative effort to discredit the Mueller investigation, which in turn is part of a broader conservative counternarrative on the whole Russia scandal.

And the dossier plays a key role in this conspiracy theory.

Because conservatives are “just asking questions” about the FBI and Steele, they tend not to explicitly state what they think happened. But in broad strokes, the theory is something like this:

Trump’s political enemies paid Fusion GPS to write a dossier full of debunked claims about his connections to Russia.
“Deep state” anti-Trump elements in the FBI used this false opposition research document to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant targeting Michael Flynn.
The Flynn surveillance, which never should have been allowed because it was based on the phony dossier, was used to catch him in a lie about a meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that was completely innocuous.
This got Flynn fired and, by making meetings with Kislyak into a hot-button issue, also forced Sessions into recusing himself, which in turn gave Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (whom Trump has decided is “a Democrat,” though it’s not clear why) the opportunity to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel.
Mueller, in turn, is buddies with former FBI Director James Comey, who is bitter about having been fired by Trump (Comey under this theory is a bad guy because he went too easy on Hillary Clinton over the email server, and we’re not supposed to pay attention to the fact that Trump’s stated reason for firing him was that he was too hard on Clinton) and is therefore leading an anti-Trump witch hunt.
There are, of course, other penumbras and emanations around the conservative account of the Steele dossier. Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz was on Fox recently, for example, arguing that it’s against the law to hire a foreign national to do work for a campaign (this is not true) and therefore the existence of the dossier is just another example of Crooked Hillary’s lawbreaking.

The reality, however, is that while Steele is well-regarded in intelligence circles, there is no indication that his work has ever been the basis of the FBI’s Russia investigation.

Papadopoulos was the start of the investigation

A New York Times report earlier this month indicated that the investigation began not with Steele’s dossier but with Papadopoulos’s drunken conversation with Downer, Australia’s ambassador to the UK and a former Australian foreign minister.

Simpson’s testimony appears to independently corroborate what the New York Times already reported — the FBI listened to Steele because they already had an investigation into this question underway, an investigation that was launched because Papadopoulos’s conversation with Downer was shared with other Australian officials, who ultimately passed word of it to their American counterparts once the hacking of Democratic email accounts became a big deal.

As best as we can tell, this, rather than Steele’s memo, was the start of the investigation.

And while the investigation has not yet proven the existence of anything like the vast conspiracy that Steele alleges, it certainly has uncovered real evidence of wrongdoing — including a guilty plea from Papadopoulos himself, and serious charges against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

We’ve also learned from the investigation that key Trumpworld figures, including Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr., were, at a minimum, eager to potentially collaborate with the Russian government on revealing anti-Clinton “dirt,” rather than emulating Downer in alerting the authorities to the existence of an active Russian intelligence effort aimed at the United States.

It also, obviously, continues to be an ongoing investigation that might yet reveal other criminal activity. Or it might not. But either way, Simpson’s testimony — which Republicans on the committee didn’t want released to the public — is more evidence that the question was taken seriously by law enforcement for reasons that had nothing to do with Steele or his dossier.
https://www.vox.com/2018/1/9/16870106/s ... transcript





Fusion GPS founder told Senate investigators the FBI had a source in Trump’s network

Glenn R. Simpson, former Wall Street Journal journalist and a founder of the research firm Fusion GPS, arrives to appear before a closed House Intelligence Committee hearing in November. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
By Devlin Barrett and Tom Hamburger January 9 at 1:53 PM
The British ex-spy who authored a dossier of allegations against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was told the FBI had someone inside Trump’s network providing agents with information, according to a newly released transcript of a congressional interview.

Glenn R. Simpson, a founder of the research firm Fusion GPS, spoke to investigators with the Senate Judiciary Committee for 10 hours in August. As the partisan fight over Russian interference in the 2016 election has intensified, Simpson has urged that his testimony be released, and a copy of the transcript was made public Tuesday.

It was released by the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. That decision marks the most serious break yet in the cooperative relationship she has had with the Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).

[Read the full transcript of Glenn Simpson’s Senate testimony]

Fusion GPS was hired in mid-2016 by a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to dig into Trump’s background. Earlier that year, the firm had been probing Trump for a conservative website funded by a GOP donor, but that client stopped paying for the work after it became clear Trump would win the GOP nomination, according to people familiar with the matter.

2:50
What you need to know about Christopher Steele, the FBI and the Trump 'dossier'

The Russia probe got its start with a drunken conversation, an ex-spy, WikiLeaks and a distracted FBI. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)
After Democrats began paying for the research, Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele, a former senior officer with Britain’s intelligence service, MI6, to gather intelligence about any ties between the Kremlin and Trump and his associates. Steele’s reports were eventually compiled into a dossier alleging the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin — a claim the president has repeatedly denied.

Steele first reached out to the FBI with his concerns in early July 2016, according to people familiar with the matter. When they re-interviewed him in early October, agents made it clear, according to Simpson’s testimony released Tuesday, that they believed some of what Steele had told them.

“My understanding was that they believed Chris at this point — that they believed Chris might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization,” Simpson said. Using the parlance of spies and law enforcement officials, Simpson said the FBI had a “human source from inside the Trump organization.” Simpson added that his understanding was the source was someone who had volunteered information to the FBI or, in his words, “someone like us who decided to pick up the phone and report something.”

[Senior Republican refers Trump-Russia dossier author for possible charges]

In recent weeks, as the political fights about the Russia investigation and the dossier have intensified, Simpson has urged the committee to release the full transcript of his interview, arguing that Republicans are trying to obscure, rather than reveal, what happened in 2016.


Through much of 2017, Feinstein and Grassley made joint requests for information about Russia and the FBI’s investigation of election interference. In the fall, however, tensions between Grassley and Feinstein spilled out into the open as Grassley requested information from the FBI and other sources without Feinstein’s support.

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Increasingly, the Democrats and Republicans on the committee are going in different directions — with Grassley moving to investigate matters involving Clinton when she was secretary of state and Feinstein concentrating on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

12:09
How Trump fought the intelligence on Russia and left an election threat unchecked
The Washington Post examines how, nearly a year into his presidency, Trump continues to reject evidence that Russia supported his run for the White House. (Dalton Bennett, Thomas LeGro, John Parks, Jesse Mesner-Hage/The Washington Post)
While Simpson has accused conservative lawmakers of acting in bad faith, Republicans have accused Steele, while working for Fusion GPS, of misleading the FBI. Last week, Grassley made a criminal referral to the Justice Department, suggesting Steele may have lied to the FBI. While details of the referral are classified, it appears to be related to Mr. Steele’s contacts with reporters during the election campaign.


Republicans have attacked the credibility of Steele’s dossier. Democrats say such attacks are an effort to discredit the ongoing probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into whether any Trump associates coordinated with Russian agents to interfere in the presidential election.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... fe14f0aa88



stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Jan 09, 2018 3:27 pm wrote:
Fusion GPS attorney drops bombshell: ‘Somebody’s already been killed as a result of this dossier’

Travis Gettys

09 Jan 2018 at 14:18 ET

Image
Christopher Steele (Telegraph)

At least one person has been killed as a result of the Trump-Russia dossier, according to congressional testimony.

Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August that he could not describe what steps his firm and the dossier’s author had taken to verify the credibility of their sources.

The firm’s attorney, Joshua Levy, explained to lawmakers why Simpson was reluctant to reveal much about their sources or methods.

“It’s a voluntary interview, and in addition to that he wants to be very careful to protect his sources,” Levy told the panel. “Somebody’s already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work.”

Image


Is this another curious death? Or a reference to Peter W. Smith?
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 » Tue Jan 09, 2018 5:21 pm

NYT Report On No Trump-Russia Link Led Steele To Cut Off Contact With FBI


Victoria Jones/PA Wire
By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published JANUARY 9, 2018 3:30 PM

The former British spy behind an infamous dossier alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia apparently broke off communication with the FBI because of a October 2016 New York Times story claiming that no such ties had been found, according to newly released testimony.

Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson, who assembled the dossier based on research by the former spy, Christopher Steele, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Times article made Steele feel “concern about what was going on at the FBI.”

Simpson’s testimony took place in August. An interview transcript was made public Tuesday.

“There was a concern that the FBI was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump people and we didn’t really understand what was going on,” Simpson testified, calling the Oct. 31 article “a real Halloween special.”

The Times story reported at a critical moment in the 2016 election campign that the FBI had found no “conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government” during a months-long inquiry. The story has come under fire in light of subsequent reporting, much of it by the Times’ own reporters, detailing contacts between the two.

Simpson testified that the article contradicted Steele and Fusion’s own research into Trump’s connections with Russia.

“Chris was confused and somewhat disturbed and didn’t think he understood the landscape and I think both of us felt like things were happening that we didn’t understand and that we must not know everything about, and therefore, you know, in a situation like that the smart thing to do is stand down,” Simpson said.

Simpson testified that Steele had two previous contacts with the FBI about his findings, one that he initiated in early July 2016, and another in Rome in September 2016 that Simpson said he believed was requested by the bureau.

The Fusion GPS founder said that passing information on to the FBI was not an aim of the initial project investigating Trump’s Russia connections. But Simpson said that Steele felt compelled to do so because of his “grave concern” about his findings.

The full transcript of Simpson’s interview was released Tuesday by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the committee. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had argued against making it public and referred Steele to the FBI for allegedly lying to federal investigators about his contacts with the media. Grassley said Feinstein’s decision to release the transcript “undermines the integrity of the committee’s oversight work.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/ ... k-away-fbi








Sunny Isles Florida....a Russian Lawyer.......Gazprom and the Russian Embassy all in the one paragraph.

Image


trump Campaign SOURCE met with the FBI attaché in Rome summer 2016

FBI had a source INSIDE the trump campaign that also expressed grave concern that trump was being blackmailed...this was BEFORE FUSION HIRED STEELE


All right here
Pages 67-71
Sater
Money from Kazakhstan
MOGILEVICH

Image
Image
Image
Image

Donald Trump would never do anything to go against Mogilevich’s wishes. Unless and until Vladimir Putin takes care of Mogilevich for Donald Trump, Trump would never expose his boss.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35937&start=15




Trump Campaign Had a Mole Who Talked to the FBI, Alleges Fusion GPS Founder
KEVIN DRUMJAN. 9, 2018 1:41 PM



Bryce Vickmark via ZUMA

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has released the testimony of Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, who testified to Congress last year about the origins of the infamous Trump-Russia “dossier.” He says the FBI took it seriously when Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, talked to them:

The ex-British spy who authored a dossier of allegations against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was told the FBI had someone inside the Trump campaign providing agents with information, according to a newly-released transcript of a congressional interview.

….“My understanding was that they believed Chris at this point — that they believed Chris might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing and one of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization,” Simpson said. Using the parlance of spies and law enforcement officials, Simpson said the FBI had a “walk-in’’ whistleblower from someone in Trump’s organization.

Who’s the mole? Let the guessing games begin!

UPDATE: Wait! Maybe there was no mole after all:

Ken Dilanian‏Verified account
@KenDilanianNBC
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A source close to Fusion GPS tells me there was no walk-in source -- that was a mischaracterization by Simpson of the Australian diplomat tip about Papadopoulis.



UPDATE: Plus this:
Image

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2 ... o-the-fbi/



FBI knew of possible Trump-Russia collusion, according to Glenn Simpson’s Senate testimony

by Ken Dilanian and Mike MemoliJan 9 2018, 4:24 pm ET
WASHINGTON — By the time the FBI sat down in September 2016 for a full interview with the ex-British spy who had been researching Donald Trump’s Russia connections, the bureau had already received information raising concerns about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to a transcript made public Tuesday.

Glenn Simpson, a former newspaper reporter and the founder of a research firm called Fusion GPS, spoke to the Senate Judiciary Committee for more than 10 hours in August about his research into Trump, and on Tuesday more than 300 pages of his testimony were released by the committee’s ranking Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California.

Simpson told the committee that his associate, the former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele, sat down for a “full debriefing” with an FBI contact in Rome in September 2016. During the debriefing, Steele shared information from his Russian sources, who said Trump had been coordinating with the Russian election-interference campaign of hacking and leaking.

For the FBI, it wasn’t entirely new information, Simpson testified.

Image: Glenn Simpson, Partner of Fusion GPS
Glenn Simpson, Partner of Fusion GPS, speaks on a panel at the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival and Symposium on October 7, 2016 in Washington DC. Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival and Symposium
“They believed Chris might be credible because they had other intelligence that indicated the same thing," Simpson said. "One of those pieces of intelligence was a human source from inside the Trump organization." He added that the FBI had a “walk-in" whistleblower who was someone in Trump’s orbit.

However, two sources close to Fusion GPS told NBC News that Simpson’s testimony inaccurately conflated what he had been told, and that the human source was actually George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign aide who has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller.

By the time Steele sat down with the FBI in September, an Australian diplomat had passed to U.S. officials details of his conversation with Papadopoulos, who seemed to know that the Russians possessed hacked Democratic emails.

Steele first reached out to the FBI in early July 2016, because he was alarmed by the information he collected in June and felt obligated to step forward, Simpson said.

“He said he was professionally obligated to do it,” Simpson testified. “Like if you’re a lawyer and, you know, you find out about a crime, in a lot of countries you must report that.”

Steele was concerned that Trump could be blackmailed by the Russians over an alleged 2013 sexual escapade Steele believed had been recorded at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Moscow, Simpson testified.

The FBI responded to Steele “by September,” Simpson said, and Steele then met in mid- or late September with an FBI legal attaché in Rome.

Steele broke off contact with the FBI sometime between Oct. 31, 2016, and the election on Nov. 8, Simpson said, because Steele concluded that the information he had given to the FBI was not elevated to the highest levels of the bureau and was not being vigorously pursued.

A front-page New York Times article on Oct. 31 about the Trump-Russia investigation said the FBI had found no conclusive link between Trump and Russia.

After the article was published, Simpson said, Steele severed his relationship with the FBI. “There was a concern that the FBI was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump people and that we didn't really understand what was going on,” Simpson said.

It has since emerged that there was an active FBI counterintelligence investigation, which began in July 2016 but which the bureau kept secret.

Simpson said a dossier, which contained unverified allegations that Russia had been cultivating Trump for years and had gathered compromising information on Trump, contained all the memos Steele had produced for Fusion GPS, and that neither Fusion nor Simpson selected the content or edited the memos. The dossier was published by Buzzfeed.

Simpson said when he began his research into Trump, he was struck by Trump’s many connections to people linked to Russian organized crime, including Felix Sater, who pleaded guilty in 1998 to a mafia stock swindle and later helped Trump develop the Trump Soho hotel.

Simpson said he found Steele’s reports that the Russians were coordinating with the Trump campaign credible.

During the Senate hearing, he was asked to respond to a comment from a White House spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, that his was a “Democrat-linked firm” that “took money from the Russian government” and “created the phony dossier that's been the basis for all of the Russia scandal fake news."

“It's a false allegation,” he said. “It's political rhetoric to call the dossier phony. The memos are field reports of real interviews that Chris's network conducted and there's nothing phony about it. We can argue about what's prudent and what's not, but it's not a fabrication.”

Simpson acknowledged that at the time he was working with Steele he was also working with a law firm that was defending a Russian oligarch in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Attorney in New York. But he testified that the two cases were entirely separate, and did not influence one another.

Two of the people working on the New York case with Simpson were Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, both of whom attended a now-notorious June 2016 Trump Tower meeting that had been billed as an attempt by Russian officials to give negative information about Hillary Clinton to the Trump campaign. Simpson said he was unaware of that meeting at the time it occurred.

Simpson said he concluded from his research that Trump was not as rich as he has claimed, and that he had a lot of questionable business entanglements that bear further scrutiny.

“There were various allegations of fraudulent business practices or dishonest business practices or connections with organized crime figures,” Simpson said. "It was a long history of associations with people accused of involvement in criminal activity.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fb ... ny-n836216



What didn’t Republicans want you to see in the Fusion GPS transcript?
By Jennifer Rubin January 9 at 3:51 PM

Glenn R. Simpson, co-founder of the research firm Fusion GPS, arrives for a scheduled appearance before a closed House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) made a fateful decision acting unilaterally with a phony “criminal referral” of Christopher Steele, a Brit over whom the United States has no jurisdiction anyway and whom they never saw testify, not just because it made them look like partisan hacks. They set a new standard that anyone on the committee could act independently and without bipartisan consent of their colleagues. So Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Cal.) did them one better. The Post reports:

The British ex-spy who authored a dossier of allegations against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was told the FBI had someone inside Trump’s network providing agents with information, according to a newly released transcript of a congressional interview.

Glenn R. Simpson, a founder of the research firm Fusion GPS, spoke to investigators with the Senate Judiciary Committee for 10 hours in August. As the partisan fight over Russian interference in the 2016 election has intensified, Simpson has urged that his testimony be released, and a copy of the transcript was made public Tuesday.

It was released by the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.

3:28
What you need to know about Fusion GPS, the Trump dossier and Russian interests

How is Fusion GPS connected to the Trump dossier, Donald Trump Jr.'s Trump Tower meeting and the 2016 election? The Fact Checker explains. (Video: Meg Kelly/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
You can understand why the Republicans were furiously trying to suppress the transcript, which contains no classified information.

First, it makes clear that Steele was engaged because of his expertise and contacts. He was not told to find anything in particular, but just to research the totality of Trump’s involvement in Russia.
Second, according to Simpson, Trump was doing business all over the former Soviet states of Georgia and Azerbaijan. Interestingly, Trump repeatedly denied having financial ties in Russia itself but never publicly denied operations in states in which Russians exercised substantial influence.
Third, in investigating Trump’s finances they found his properties were not as highly valued as he suggested and, in the case of several golf courses, weren’t making money.
Fourth, Steele took it upon himself to report his finding to the FBI because he believed there was a “crime in progress” and matter of national security. He later relayed to Simpson that the FBI already had information from a campaign source.
Fifth, Trump lied about not knowing who Felix Sater is. Simpson testified, “This was something he didn’t want to talk about and testified under oath he wouldn’t know Felix if he ran into him in the street. That was not true. He knew him well and, in fact, continued to associate with him long after he learned of Felix’s organized crime ties. So, you know, that tells you something about somebody.” We do not know if Sater was in fact tied to organized crime.
Sixth, Simpson called it a reasonable “interpretation” that the Trump Tower meeting was designed by Russian officials to reach out to and cooperate with the Trump team.
Seventh, far from interfering in the election to benefit Hillary Clinton, the FBI did not publicly disclose during the campaign the wealth of information it was learning about Trump and Russia.
What stands out most from an initial perusal of the transcript is the professionalism and seriousness of Fusion GPS and Steele. By attempting to suppress a candid look into the dossier (really a series of memos, Simpson explains), Republicans once again are caught acting like Trump henchmen, trying to play down the investigation into Russia, not unearth and air what they learn.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ri ... 72a9b7381f
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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