Who is Bill Palmer?

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Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby Elvis » Sat Apr 15, 2017 5:54 pm

Bill Palmer and The Palmer Report have kind of emerged from nowhere and become rather widely shared and quoted sources of news, so I'm curious about Bill Palmer. This may all be a little overwrought on my part, but then, all news sources need to scrutinized more than ever before. (And let me make this perfectly clear, this is not a criticism of anyone posting or sharing a Bill Palmer article, it's an inquiry into Bill Palmer and his work.)

Palmer's info & sourcing seems generally sound, but the somewhat sensational nature of his headlines suggested to me that he's aiming for lots of "shares" & clicks and the consequent revenue; hence my earlier remark about the name "Bill Palmer"—it struck me as a pun: "bill palmer"—get it?—palming the bill$ as they roll in from ad revenue. However! neither of his main sites, Palmer Report and Daily News Bin, appear to take ads! So apologies to Bill Palmer if I leapt to conclusions about that. And, there is now a photo to go with Bill Palmer, in the links below.

One effect of Palmer's sensationalized "this one spells the end for Trump et al." sort of headlines is that they stir hope and glee (the correct response, after all) among many anti-Trump folks who then eagerly share them on Farcebook, Twitter etc...and then nothing happens and it's on to the next hopeful "reveal." The two main results of this, I suppose, would be 1) more clicks for Palmer's sites (nothing especially Wrong about that, in itself), and 2) the potential for a disillusioned and ultimately powerless progressive base, worn-out and ground-down by repeated disappoinments. I could be wrong about (2), in that it might instead serve to really buoy the liberal/Democratic masses along, keeping hope alive and so on—but for how long?

In any event, what finally made me pose the question of who is Bill Palmer, was a peripheral remark of Palmer's, caught by JackRiddler:

JackRiddler wrote:Two-Bit 'Russiagate' Propagandist Bill Palmer wrote:
international cyberterrorist group WikiLeaks


Myself, I get off the boat when someone says Wikileaks is a terrorist organization. So, to start, a cursory Internet search for "who is Bill Palmer?" coughs up the following selected items—a charge, an assessment, and rebuttals by Bill Palmer:


Palmer Report is Not a Credible Source of Information
by jensalittleloopy | Dec 4, 2016
http://www.jensalittleloopy.com/palmer- ... le-source/


MediaBiasFactCheck
"The Palmer Report is typically well sourced and usually points to credible sources. However, there is a very strong liberal bias in reporting and story content. The Palmer Report uses loaded words and sensational headlines that don’t always reflect the content of the article."
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/palmer-report/


I’m Bill Palmer. Let me set the record straight about my publication Daily News Bin.
By Bill Palmer | April 6, 2016
http://www.dailynewsbin.com/opinion/set ... bin/24384/


Fake security site “Media Bias Fact Check” is just one guy running a malicious scam
By Bill Palmer | December 16, 2016
http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/phony- ... cam/26758/


I didn't really have a big problem with Palmer Report until he called Wikileaks a terrorist organization. Now, I think Palmer and the thrusts of his articles should come under more critical scrutiny.
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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby SonicG » Sat Apr 15, 2017 10:20 pm

Yeah, I started following him on Twitter and he is pretty incessant with his own retweets...I agree with the MediaBias statement above, he just underlines and rehashes things from other sites...I do wonder what will happen as these continued "Frog-marched out of the WH next week..." expectations continue to get dashed...Of course, actual arrests/impeachment coming down also has frightening consequences...
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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby Elvis » Sun Apr 16, 2017 7:59 pm

SonicG wrote:I started following him on Twitter

Good idea, and for many other subjects, now that you mention it. I'm not very hip to Twitter and still don't get "#" and how that all works, but I think I'll look into following some Twits. Also it looks like a great way to lash out in real time at NPR hosts when they repeat lies and such.




DISCLAIMER :arrow: This is The Atlantic interviewing Snopes

Brooke Binkowski sez:
It’s more wish-fulfillment stuff. “Trump About to be Arrested!” Well, yeah, when’s that gonna happen? And we know it’s coming from the left because I know it’s coming from known players. Bill Palmer used to run the Daily News Bin, and it was basically a pro-Hillary Clinton “news site.” It was out there to counter misinformation. Which, okay, fair enough. But then he started to reinvent it as a news site, more and more, and he changed the name to the Palmer Report. The stuff that he puts out there, it’s nominally true. When you click on it, it’s some innocuous story [with an outlandish headline]. That is very harmful, I think.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ ... nt/515532/


(There should be a "WTF is Snopes?" thread, I think.)
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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby Elvis » Sun Apr 16, 2017 8:16 pm

It should be noted that Palmer also joined the chorus trying to smear Jill Stein:

A blogger named Bill Palmer went even further in a Feb. 24 post at the “Palmer Report.” Pointing to a New York Daily News article which alleges that Michael Flynn was paid $40,000 to attend the dinner with Putin in Dec. 2015, Palmer notes that “this raises a serious question which Jill Stein must now answer: did the Kremlin also pay her to be at the dinner?”

https://consortiumnews.com/tag/democrat ... int-search


DailyNewsBin starting as a pro-Hillary site explains this much. Of course the basis for this "charge" against Stein was along the lines of the Hillbot Internet outrage over (a guy who kinda looks like) Bernie Sanders being so greedy and corrupt as to actually own and even drive an automobile. (Did Palmer write about that, too? Stay attuned.)
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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby Elvis » Sun Apr 16, 2017 8:39 pm

I looked at Palmer's Twitter and what do you know, this from a few hours ago today:

Palmer Report‏ @PalmerReport

Hey Bernie, either you're on our side or you're not. And if you are, then knock this divisive shit off. You're not helping.

The Hill‏Verified account @thehill

Sanders: Dems didn't do enough to help their candidate in Kansas special election http://hill.cm/dzHUDF4

https://twitter.com/PalmerReport/status/853740005168214016


Whose side is "our side" exactly?
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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby SonicG » Sun Apr 16, 2017 10:16 pm

Oh yeah, he is definitely partisan...It is easy to see exactly where people fall these days...

I mostly follow comedians on Twitter but have recently become more and more addicted...it is a bizarre phenom and one really needs to think about it through a McLuhan optic...
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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby Rory » Mon Apr 17, 2017 10:55 am

Elvis » Sun Apr 16, 2017 4:39 pm wrote:I looked at Palmer's Twitter and what do you know, this from a few hours ago today:

Palmer Report‏ @PalmerReport

Hey Bernie, either you're on our side or you're not. And if you are, then knock this divisive shit off. You're not helping.

The Hill‏Verified account @thehill

Sanders: Dems didn't do enough to help their candidate in Kansas special election http://hill.cm/dzHUDF4

https://twitter.com/PalmerReport/status/853740005168214016


Whose side is "our side" exactly?


You're with us, or you're with the terrorists.

Palmer is a piece of shit propagandist
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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Apr 17, 2017 1:29 pm

SonicG » Sun Apr 16, 2017 9:16 pm wrote:Oh yeah, he is definitely partisan...It is easy to see exactly where people fall these days...


Where they fall, or how they will be pigeonholed.
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The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Apr 17, 2017 2:29 pm

^^^ Or eliminated.
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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby Elvis » Mon Apr 17, 2017 2:54 pm

SonicG » Sun Apr 16, 2017 7:16 pm wrote:Oh yeah, he is definitely partisan...It is easy to see exactly where people fall these days...


Palmer's rather up-front partisanship isn't what bothers me. I wonder whether he might have some deeper agenda than simply supporting Clinton Democrats and opposing Trump and Republicans. So far, I can see that Palmer's anti-Assange, anti-Sanders, anti-Russia stances etc. can be explained by his support for Hillary—but—could his reports partly be a covert effort to slip in little poison pills to infect liberal/progressives with fear and loathing of figures like Assange?

I haven't had time to analyze much (there's a lot of material), hence this exploratory thread.
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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Nov 10, 2017 11:17 pm

Palmer Report fully vindicated for its reporting on Michael Flynn and Devin Nunes
Bill Palmer
Updated: 8:49 pm EST Fri Nov 10, 2017
Home » Opinion

Back in early 2017, Palmer Report reported that Congressman Devin Nunes and Donald Trump adviser Michael Flynn had jointly met with representatives of the Turkish government during the transition period. Although our reporting was thoroughly sourced, some larger political sites tried to dispute our reporting for what can only be described as competitive reasons. Now our reporting on Flynn-Nunes has been fully vindicated – and it may have a major impact on the Trump Russia scandal.



Palmer Report reported on March 25th of this year that Flynn and Nunes had attended a breakfast meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu at a Trump-branded hotel in Washington, DC (link). Our source was a respected Turkish political news site called Daily Sabah (link). Fact checking site Snopes, which has faced significant controversy over the past year after a shift in its ownership, dismissed our article as “Unproven” despite not being able to contradict a word of it. Weeks later, Business Insider published a vicious attack piece on Palmer Report, which was based largely on claims made by Snopes. Now, Business Insider has published an article today about Flynn and Nunes, which has the exact same premise that Palmer Report laid out eight months ago, and even cites the same Turkish source.

To be clear, we are not accusing Business Insider reporter Natasha Bertrand of stealing our story. She’s the only respectable political journalist at Business Insider, so our assumption is that she just now coincidentally encountered the same Turkish online source that Palmer Report used eight months ago. However, this does prove that Snopes was being wildly disingenuous when it claimed our Flynn-Nunes reporting was “unproven.” Moreover, as Business Insider is now belatedly reporting the same story that Palmer Report reported long ago, using the exact same sourcing, it disproves Business Insider’s own prior negative assertions about the legitimacy of Palmer Report’s reporting. In other words, we’ve been fully vindicated. Why should you care? This incident may have had a major impact on the manner in which the Trump-Russia scandal and investigation have played out since.



For the past several months, Devin Nunes has been wielding unchecked unilateral power by running his own personal investigation into the Trump-Russia scandal, with the clear aim of derailing his committee’s official Trump-Russia investigation. When Snopes tried to sabotage Palmer Report’s earlier reporting about Nunes and Michael Flynn, it may have served to prevent the mainstream public from fully learning about Nunes’ connections to the scandal at the time. This in turn may have allowed Nunes to get away with his unchecked behavior over the past several months.



We believe that, in their overzealous desire to falsely smear Palmer Report for craven competitive reasons, Snopes and Business Insider materially harmed the progress of the Trump-Russia investigation overall. These two unprofessional sites clearly owe Palmer Report a public apology for their false and misleading claims about us, which in hindsight appear to have been intentional. Far more importantly, Snopes and Business Insider owe the American people an apology for whatever role their antics may have played in preventing the public from learning the truth about Nunes and Flynn sooner, and whatever impact it’s had on the investigation since.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/pal ... unes/5997/


Michael Flynn met with Turkey at Donald Trump’s hotel. Guess who else attended? Devin Nunes.
Bill Palmer
Updated: 4:17 pm EST Sat Mar 25, 2017
Home » Politics


Earlier this week former Donald Trump campaign adviser James Woolsey publicly revealed that he had attended a meeting between Michael Flynn and the Turkish government which involved discussions so legally dubious that he reported it to the U.S. government. But guess who else tagged along for a meeting between Flynn and the Turkish government? House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, who this week inserted himself into the Trump-Russia scandal in bizarre fashion.



To be clear, these were two different meetings. Woolsey says the Flynn-Turkey meeting he attended, in which the kidnapping of Pennsylvania resident Fethullah Gülen was discussed, took place in the summer of 2016. But after Donald Trump was named the winner of the election, late in the transition team period, Flynn met with the Turkish government yet again. By this time James Woolsey had already resigned two weeks earlier. So instead, Flynn took another Trump transition team member with him, Devin Nunes.

It’s not publicly known what was discussed during the Flynn-Nunes-Turkey meeting on January 18th. But confirmation of the meeting has been hiding in plain sight all along. Earlier today respected political pundit T. R. Ramachandran posted a lengthy tweet storm (link) which included a reference to a previously overlooked article from Turkish news publication Daily Sabah (link). The article reports that “[Turkish] Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu met with designated U.S. National Security adviser Rt. Gen. Mike Flynn on Wednesday at Trump Hotel in Washington” and goes on to add that “House Intelligence Committee Congressman Devin Nunes, a Republican heavyweight, also attended the breakfast.”



James Woolsey now says that Michael Flynn offered to put him on his consulting payroll during their meeting with Turkey, an offer which Woolsey declined (source: Wall Street Journal). Flynn has since admitted that he was on Turkey’s payroll to the tune of half a million dollars during the campaign. This newly unearthed revelation about Flynn and Nunes having also met with Turkey raises a number of new questions about the events we’ve all witnessed this week. What was the relationship between Flynn and Nunes? Did Flynn also offer money to Nunes, as he’d done with Woolsey? Did Nunes have his panicked meltdown this week because he saw his own name in the classified eavesdropping intel that was fed to him?



And perhaps most keenly, why did James Woolsey go running to the media this week to reveal his six-months-ago meeting with Flynn and Turkey? Does he now suspect, as I do, that Flynn has already cut a deal with the FBI against Donald Trump, and that these details are all going to come out soon anyway, and Woolsey wanted to make sure his side of the story was heard first? If so, what will Flynn reveal about the involvement of Devin Nunes with the Turkish government? And will it help us understand why Nunes is suddenly trying and failing to make Trump’s entire scandal go away? And if Flynn is blabbing, will anyone in Trump’s orbit be left standing when the smoke clears? Contribute to Palmer Report
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/de ... rkey/2054/


FM Çavuşoğlu meets Trump’s top national security advisor

RAGIP SOYLU
@ragipsoylu
WASHINGTON D.C.
Published
January 18, 2017

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu met with designated U.S. National Security adviser Rt. Gen. Mike Flynn on Wednesday at Trump Hotel in Washington.

"Met with General Flynn, who will assume the position of National Security Advisor, and other officials at a working breakfast in Washington D.C.," Çavuşoğlu tweeted.

The meeting marks a first direct reachout between the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan administration and the incoming Donald Trump administration, other than a phone call between two leaders last November.

House Intelligence Committee Congressman Devin Nunes, a Republican heavyweight, also attended the breakfast.

An aide of the foreign minister didn't provide additional details on the meeting, but said that Çavuşoğlu was the only foreign leader at the breakfast and the topics on the U.S.-Turkish agenda were discussed by the attendees.

A invitation letter for the breakfast, obtained by Daily Sabah, said the breakfast would be a small event for about 50-60 guests. It also said White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus might join the meeting. It was not immediately clear whether he attended.

An official at the Trump Organization, and two other fundraisers were presented as co-hosts, according to the letter.

Çavuşoğlu previously told Turkish media that he would attend the incoming Trump administration's inauguration ceremony, which is due to be held on the West Front of the United States Capitol Building in Washington D.C. on Friday.

The official announcement comes as questions over whether the Trump administration will be able to normalize relations between Turkey and the U.S. are increasing.

Turkish officials have previously stated that Turkey can cooperate with the new U.S. administration since many of Turkey's views overlap with the incoming president.
https://www.dailysabah.com/diplomacy/20 ... ty-advisor


Devin Nunes attended a breakfast with Michael Flynn and Turkey's foreign minister just before the inauguration

Natasha Bertrand

7h 151,336

Devin Nunes
Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. J. Scott Applewhite/AP

Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, attended a breakfast meeting at which Michael Flynn and Turkey's foreign minister were also present.
The breakfast took place just before President Donald Trump's inauguration in January.
A Wall Street Journal report published Friday indicated the special counsel Robert Mueller was scrutinizing Flynn's dealings with the Turkish government.

Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, attended a breakfast meeting in January that Michael Flynn, then the incoming national security adviser, and Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, also attended.

The breakfast event, held on Wednesday, January 18, was closed to the press, and it is still unclear what exactly was discussed.

The Washington correspondent for the Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah, which tends to be pro-government, reported at the time that an aide to Cavusoglu said he "was the only foreign leader at the breakfast and the topics on the US-Turkish agenda were discussed by the attendees."

The invitation, obtained by the newspaper, said the breakfast would "be a small event for about 50-60 guests" and that the incoming White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, "might join the meeting," Daily Sabah reported.

Nunes' spokesman, who did not return a request for comment on Friday, issued a statement earlier this year downplaying the importance of the breakfast.

"Chairman Nunes was a speaker at that event, but it was a large breakfast event, not a small, private meeting as described in that article," the spokesman, Jack Langer, told the fact-checking website Snopes.

He continued:

"Mr. Cavusoglu was one of about 40 attendees at the event, which included 20-30 ambassadors to the U.S. and about 10 other foreign dignitaries and officials. The attendees heard some remarks from Flynn, Chairman Nunes, and other representatives on national security issues — the discussion topic was not Turkey or any other single country ... if [Nunes did speak to Cavusoglu], it would've been among all the other ambassadors and officials at the event. There was no separate, private meeting."

Nunes' attendance at the event is newly relevant amid revelations that the special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating a meeting that another congressman, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, took with Flynn in September 2016. Flynn had begun lobbying on behalf of Turkish government interests one month earlier.

New scrutiny of Flynn's dealings with Turkey
FILE PHOTO - U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn boards Air Force One at West Palm Beach International airport in West Palm Beach, Florida U.S. on February 12, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Files
Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser. Thomson Reuters
That lobbying work continued into the presidential transition and through December, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Friday. Mueller is scrutinizing an alleged plot involving Flynn to return an exiled Turkish cleric to the country, the report said.

It is unclear whether Flynn was still being paid to lobby for Turkish government interests when he attended the breakfast meeting on January 18.

But on January 10, Flynn reportedly met with the national security adviser at the time, Susan Rice, and asked her to hold off on implementing an anti-ISIS plan that involved arming the Syrian Kurds. The Turkish government vehemently opposes any plan that would empower the Kurds, whom Ankara views as a threat to Turkey's sovereignty.

Nunes, meanwhile, has been at the center of a series of controversies since the House Intelligence Committee began investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 US election.

The California Republican stepped aside from the investigation in early April after it emerged that he had briefed Trump and the press on classified intelligence without first telling his fellow committee members. But he quickly began conducting his own investigations into "unmaskings" by the Obama administration and the credibility of a dossier, compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele, alleging ties between Trump's campaign team and Russia.

In June, Nunes angered the Democrats when he demanded more details from the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency about why Obama administration officials requested the unmasking of Trump associates last year. He also threatened in September to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Chris Wray in contempt of Congress if they did not respond to a subpoena for documents relating to the Steele dossier.
http://www.businessinsider.com/devin-nu ... ia-2017-11


seemslikeadream » Thu Oct 12, 2017 9:53 pm wrote:
seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 07, 2017 8:38 am wrote:Superseding Indictment Further Alleges that Nine Defendants Conspired to Lie to U.S. Government Officials About International Financial Transactions for the Government of Iran and Used the U.S. Financial System to Launder Bribes Paid to Conceal the Scheme

U.S. Attorneys » Southern District of New York » News » Press Releases

Department of Justice
U.S. Attorney’s Office
Southern District of New York
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
Former Turkish Minister Of The Economy, Former General Manager Of Turkish Government-Owned Bank, And Two Other Individuals Charged With Conspiring To Evade U.S. Sanctions Against Iran And Other Offenses

Superseding Indictment Further Alleges that Nine Defendants Conspired to Lie to U.S. Government Officials About International Financial Transactions for the Government of Iran and Used the U.S. Financial System to Launder Bribes Paid to Conceal the Scheme

Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Dana Boente, the Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security, William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced today the filing of a superseding Indictment charging MEHMET ZAFER CAGLAYAN, a/k/a “Abi,” SULEYMAN ASLAN, LEVENT BALKAN, and ABDULLAH HAPPANI with conspiring to use the U.S. financial system to conduct hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of transactions on behalf of the Government of Iran and other Iranian entities, which were barred by United States sanctions; lying to U.S. government officials about those transactions; laundering funds in connection with those illegal transactions, including millions of dollars in bribe payments to CAGLAYAN, ASLAN, and others used to facilitate the scheme; and defrauding several financial institutions by concealing the true nature of these transactions. The superseding Indictment further alleges that CAGLAYAN’s co-defendants – REZA ZARRAB, a/k/a “Riza Sarraf,” MEHMET HAKAN ATILLA, MOHAMMAD ZARRAB, a/k/a “Can Sarraf,” a/k/a “Kartalsmd,” CAMELIA JAMSHIDY, a/k/a “Kamelia Jamshidy,” and HOSSEIN NAJAFZADEH, who previously were charged in this case with the same offenses – participated in the same overarching scheme to violate and evade prohibitions against Iran’s access to the U.S. financial system. The case is assigned to United States District Judge Richard M. Berman.

REZA ZARRAB was arrested on March 19, 2016, and ATILLA was arrested on March 27, 2017. REZA ZARRAB and ATILLA are scheduled to begin trial on October 30, 2017, before Judge Berman. CAGLAYAN, ASLAN, BALKAN, HAPPANI, MOHAMMAD ZARRAB, JAMSHIDY, and NAJAFZADEH remain at large.

According to the allegations contained in the superseding Indictment filed today in Manhattan federal court[1]:

The scheme functioned largely by using the Turkish government-owned bank (“Turkish Bank-1”) at which ASLAN was the General Manager, ATILLA was the Deputy General Manager of International Banking, and BALKAN was an Assistant Deputy Manager for International Banking, to engage in transactions that violated U.S. sanctions against Iran. The defendants used Turkish Bank-1 to facilitate REZA ZARRAB’s ability to use his network of companies to supply currency and gold to the Government of Iran, Iranian entities, and SDNs using Turkish Bank-1, while concealing Turkish Bank-1’s role in the violation of U.S. sanctions from regulators. HAPPANI was an employee of REZA ZARRAB’s and assisted him in operating the scheme through this network of companies. CAGLAYAN, who was serving as Minister of the Economy in Turkey at all times relevant to the Superseding Indictment, received tens of millions of dollars’ worth of bribes in cash and jewelry from the proceeds of the scheme to provide services to the Government of Iran and to conceal those services from U.S. government officials. Using his position as Minister of the Economy, CAGLAYAN directed other members of the scheme, including officers of Turkish Bank-1, to engage in certain types of deceptive transactions, approved the steps taken by other members to implement the scheme, and protected the scheme from competitors as well as from scrutiny. As a result of this scheme, the co-conspirators induced U.S. banks to unknowingly process international financial transactions in violation of the IEEPA.

* * *

CAGLAYAN, 59, is a resident and citizen of Turkey. REZA ZARRAB, 33, is a resident of Turkey and dual citizen of Turkey and Iran. ASLAN, 47, ATILLA, 47, BALKAN, 56, and HAPPANI, 42, are residents and citizens of Turkey. MOHAMMAD ZARRAB, 39, is REZA ZARRAB’s brother and is a resident of Turkey and dual citizen of Turkey and Iran. JAMSHIDY, 31, is a resident of Turkey and dual citizen of Turkey and Iran. NAJAFZADEH, 67, is a resident of Iran and the UAE and a citizen of Iran. Each defendant is charged with conspiracies to defraud the United States, to violate the IEEPA, to commit bank fraud, and to commit money laundering, as well as substantive counts of bank fraud and money laundering. The conspiracy to defraud the United States count carries a maximum term of imprisonment of five years. The conspiracy to violate the IEEPA, money laundering conspiracy, and substantive money laundering counts each carry a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years. The bank fraud counts each carry a maximum term of imprisonment of 30 years. The maximum potential sentences are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendants will be determined by the judge.

Mr. Kim praised the outstanding investigative work of the FBI and its New York Field Office, Counterintelligence Division, and the Department of Justice, National Security Division, Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.
The prosecution of this case is being handled by the Office’s Terrorism and International Narcotics Unit. Assistant United States Attorneys Michael D. Lockard, Sidhardha Kamaraju, and David W. Denton, Jr., and Special Assistant United States Attorney Dean C. Sovolos, are in charge of the prosecution, with assistance from Trial Attorneys Elizabeth Cannon and David Recker of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.
The charges contained in the superseding Indictment are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

[1] As the introductory phrase signifies, the entirety of the text of the superseding Indictment, and the description of the superseding Indictment set forth herein, constitute only allegations, and every fact described should be treated as an allegation.


Image

Why Giuliani Held a Secret Meeting With Turkey’s Leader
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/nyre ... ml?mcubz=0



Judge Seeks to Clarify Rudy Giuliani’s Role on Gold Trader’s Team
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/nyre ... ml?mcubz=0



A Mysterious Case Involving Turkey, Iran, and Rudy Giuliani
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... y-giuliani


Judge: Giuliani, Mukasey Are Dismissive Of Charges Against Turkish Businessman They Represent
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/05/02/ ... an-zarrab/


Rudy Giuliani, the jailed Turkish gold trader and the secret meeting with Erdogan
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/u ... -1.3056527


Feds accuse Giuliani of undermining officials in Turkish banker case
http://nypost.com/2017/03/31/feds-accus ... nker-case/


A judge wants Rudy Giuliani to disclose who's paying him in Iran sanctions case
The former mayor has teamed up with ex-U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to defend Turkish businessman Reza Zarrab

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20 ... -sanctions


Rudy W. Giuliani: Defending an Iranian Sanctions Evader
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/rud ... 5a227cb6cf



Rudy Giuliani Swears He Held A Secret Meeting With Turkey’s Dictator
Image
Left: Turkish President Erdogan, Middle: Alleged felon Reza Zarrab, Right: Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s “Cyber Czar”
Rudy Giuliani just swore to a federal judge that he has violated the Logan Act while representing a client in New York, who is accused of violating sanctions against Iran.
It seems an obvious attempt to circumvent the federal legal process, and involves the Republican former-Mayor playing diplomat.
Federal law prohibits US citizens from conducting any private foreign policy with a government with which America has a dispute, under the Logan Act.
Trump named Giuliani as his “Cyber Czar” in January, but no further reports indicate the job’s duties or work products or if the position exists anywhere outside news reports.
The former New York Mayor tried to cut a deal with Turkey’s dictator in a secret meeting held in February, which he intimates was to exchange an Iranian-Turkish citizen accused of criminally violating American economic sanctions against Iran for something of value to the United States.
Rudy Giuliani admitted holding the secret meeting with Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with ex-Bush attorney general Mike Mukasey, in an extraordinary attempt to move the criminal case in a New York federal court against a Turkish gold trader into the diplomatic arena.
The New York Times reports:
The purpose of the visit by Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Mukasey was rather extraordinary: They hoped to reach a diplomatic deal under which Turkey might further aid the United States’ interests in the region. In return, the United States might release the two men’s client, Reza Zarrab, a Turkish gold trader being held in a Manhattan jail whose case had attracted Mr. Erdogan’s interest.
Ironically, the sworn statements were only filed, because federal prosecutors noticed that Giuliani’s firm, and the Bush-era former attorney general Mike Mukasey had previously represented the banks who are victims of the crime, and notified the judge of the obvious legal conflict of interest.
The Turkish trader’s lawyers told the federal judge presiding over the felony trial that Giuliani and Mukasey’s work “would not require them to appear in court” in an attempt to keep the matter under wraps.
But he judge required Rudy Giuliani and Mukasey to explain themselves and released their sworn statements, which are embedded below.
Both lawyers claim that the defendant Zarrab is paying their bills, and not the Turkish state.
If the Turkish state were in any way involved with sponsoring Zarrab’s defense, the lawyers could be forced to register as Foreign Agents themselves.
The affidavits filed show that Giuliani firm Greenberg Traurig employs a Turkish Foreign Agent named Robert Mangas, who is lawfully registered under FARA to represent their Ambassador to the United States.
That places Giuliani’s firm Greenberg Traurig effectively on the side of Turkey in this dispute, even though Rudy purports to represent Zarrab.
Even more bizarre, two private lawyers then obtained a State Department briefing before meeting with Turkish President Erdogan and as they stated under oath to the court, their efforts were more or less diplomatic in nature and not legal representation in the normal sense of the word.
The Times also reported that Turkey’s Foreign Minister complained to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson about former Obama appointee Preet Bharara’s job performance as a US Attorney, just a couple of weeks after Trump removed him from office, reversing an earlier public decision to keep the highly regarded attorney in place:
The subject of Mr. Zarrab came up again three weeks ago during a visit to Ankara, Turkey, by Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. During that visit, Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, accused Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney in Manhattan, whose office first charged Mr. Zarrab, of being a pawn of anti-Turkish forces. Mr. Bharara, who was fired by President Trump last month, had characterized Mr. Cavusoglu’s remarks as “political propaganda.”
Preet Bharara responded to the revelation that Giuliani had undertaken a diplomatic mission outside of government service on Twitter with a finger-wagging statement, which is polite legalese for “this stinks.”

Turkey’s authoritarian ruler even harangued former-VP Joe Biden last year at a UN meeting over the Zarrab case, so plainly there is a diplomatic dispute over this case.
Ever since the 9/11 terror attacks Rudy Giuliani has traded on his fame obtained through government service to transform himself into an international oil and gas lawyer, a security consultant and apparently now, a freelance diplomat for hire.
Giuliani’s client list includes nearly all of the major players in the Trump Russia dossier, and his giddy, pre-election interviews admitting foreknowledge about the FBI’s role in last year’s election have raised numerous red flags.
Trump’s former surrogate and Muslim Ban advisor is playing hard and fast with legal ethics, and now too with one of the earliest laws Congress passed to delegate diplomatic power exclusively to the federal government’s executive branch.
Today’s admission raises serious legal questions about Rudy Giuliani’s conflicted interests, about the legality of pursuing diplomacy outside of government service, and even worse, makes it difficult to determine which country he is actually representing in these negotiations.
If all of that is not enough, Giuliani is still Trump’s “cyber czar” and hasn’t done anything about it, failing to meet the self-imposed deadline of creating a plan with the National Security Counsel in his first 90-days on the job.

Perhaps it’s better that Giuliani is spending most of his time being an illegal diplomat, rather than making serious national security plans in DC, which his foreign ties would render instantly insecure upon arrival.
Read all about Rudy Giuliani’s admission of a secret mission to Turkey’s President here:
https://thesternfacts.com/rudy-giuliani ... 812684dbee


seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:07 pm wrote:This will connect to General Yellowkerk's intervention on Turkey's behalf, as well as PLANNING INTEL OPS ON US SOIL FOR CASH.


Flynn Delayed Anti-ISIS Plan That Turkey Opposed
by COURTNEY KUBE

A former senior Obama official confirmed to NBC News that after months of disagreement, the Obama administration had decided to arm the Syrian Kurds — but in January incoming National Security Adviser Mike Flynn asked his counterpart, Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice, not to do it.

McClatchy first reported that Flynn had blocked the plan to arm the Syrian Kurds for an attack on Raqqa, the ISIS capital in Syria, a move that was opposed by the Turkish government, which Flynn had been paid $500,000 to represent.

Related: Flynn Attended Intel Briefings While Taking Money To Lobby For Turkey

Flynn had not yet registered as a foreign agent or disclosed that Turkey had paid him as a lobbyist. After he was fired as national security adviser, Flynn registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department.

The former Obama official told NBC News that several senior officials in the outgoing administration had lobbied for months to arm the Syrian Kurds, known as the YPG, but both President Obama and adviser Ben Rhodes were against it. The administration went back and forth with the Turks about the issue until December 2016, when Obama decided it was “the right thing to do,” the official said.

Since the implementation would extend past Trump's inauguration, Rice told Flynn of the decision in early January. Flynn told her not to move forward with the plan. He said he didn’t trust the Obama administration’s decision-making process and the Trump administration would undertake its own review of ISIS policy, according to the official.

After Flynn was fired as national security adviser on Feb. 13, the Trump administration opted to arm the YPG after all.

Image: National security adviser General Michael Flynn arrives to deliver a statement during the daily briefing at the White House
National Security Adviser Michael Flynn arrives to deliver a statement during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington on February 1, 2017. Carlos Barria / Reuters file
The Obama White House was surprised Flynn opposed the plan to arm the YPG, according to two former Obama officials. The former Obama officials insist the review by Trump officials delayed the final encirclement and then assault on Raqqa, the ISIS capital, by anti-ISIS forces.

A U.S. military official also said the decision slowed the assault on Raqqa, but not by much. Anti-ISIS forces would not have been ready to go into Raqqa in January. Now the city is encircled, but the Syrian Kurds still don’t have the equipment they need to start moving into the city.

“It certainly caused an operational slowdown, but not one that they can’t recover from,” the U.S. military official said.

A lawyer for Flynn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fl ... ed-n761656




https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... ceBvMsnY2I



The U.S.–Turkey Spat Is Becoming a Full-Blown Diplomatic Crisis
By Joshua Keating

President Donald Trump reaches to shake Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hand before a meeting on Sept. 21 in New York City.
AFP/Getty Images

A Turkish court’s sentencing of a Wall Street Journal reporter, in absentia, to two years in prison on Tuesday is both the latest example of the Turkish government’s ongoing crackdown on freedom of the press as well as another flare-up in an escalating diplomatic crisis between Ankara and Washington. The reporter, Ayla Albayrak, a dual Finnish–Turkish citizen, was charged with spreading terrorist propaganda for an article about urban warfare in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast. The well-reported and balanced article included quotes from members of the PKK, the Kurdish militant group considered a terrorist organization by both Turkey and the United States. Albayrak is currently in the United States so thankfully won’t join the dozens of other reporters jailed in Turkey in an unprecedented recent crackdown—but won’t be able to return to Turkey..

The charge against a reporter for an American newspaper comes a little over a week after the arrest of a Turkish employee of the U.S. embassy in Ankara. That arrest prompted the United States to suspend non-immigrant visa services to Turkish citizens. Less than a day later, Turkey issued an identical suspension targeting Americans. This means that with some exceptions, Turks and Americans are now indefinitely barred from traveling to each other’s country.

The embassy employee, Metin Topuz, has been accused of espionage and links to Fethullah Gulen, the exiled U.S.-based cleric whom Turkey accuses of masterminding last year’s failed coup attempt.* Hundreds of people in Turkey accused of Gulen ties have been purged from their jobs or arrested since the coup attempt.

These include about a dozen Americans. Among them are Serkan Golge, a NASA scientist of Turkish descent who was arrested while vacationing with family. The evidence against him is that he had an account at a Gulen-linked bank and possessed a $1 bill—supposedly a kind of calling card for members of the Gulenist conspiracy. Andrew Brunson, an American Christian pastor who had lived in Turkey for 23 years, has been in jail since October accused of Gulenist links. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan more or less admitted last month that Brunson is being used as a bargaining chip in Turkey’s ongoing efforts to get the U.S. to extradite Gulen.

“ ‘Give us the pastor back’, they say. You have one pastor as well. Give [Gulen] to us,” Erdogan said. “Then we will try [Brunson] and give him to you.” (The U.S. government is not convinced by Turkey’s claims that Gulen masterminded the coup, and even if it were, a court would have to approve the extradition request.)

Jailing U.S. citizens, embassy employees, and reporters for American media organizations on dubious charges, not to mention holding them for ransom, would be a blatant provocation to any U.S. administration. Given Trump’s proclivities, you might expect him to go ballistic about this. Last fall, when Iran charged two Americans with espionage, Trump tweeted, “This doesn't happen if I'm president!”

Yet as recently as Sept. 21, Trump described Erdogan as a “friend of mine” and said the U.S. and Turkey are “as close as we’ve ever been.” This was after Erdogan had rebuffed his request to release Brunson and after Erdogan’s bodyguards had been charged in the videotaped beating of protesters on U.S. soil.

To be fair, most of the current crisis with Turkey isn’t Trump’s fault. Erdogan’s main grievances against the United States—the unwillingness to extradite Gulen and the support for Kurdish fighters in Syria—predate the current administration.

But U.S.–Turkish relations are important. Finding a diplomatic solution to the breakdown—one that doesn’t involve just giving Erdogan everything he wants—should be a major priority for the administration. If the president’s limited attention span wasn’t currently occupied with blundering toward unnecessary conflicts with North Korea and Iran and feuding with both his own secretary of state and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, there’d be a lot better chance of resolving the crisis.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/ ... risis.html



seemslikeadream » Wed May 17, 2017 6:40 pm wrote:
Then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his deputy, K.T. McFarland, watch the daily news briefing at the White House on Feb. 1, 2017. Flynn told the briefing that the administration was putting Iran “on notice” after Iran tested a ballistic missile. Carolyn Kaster AP
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
MAY 17, 2017 6:27 PM
Flynn stopped military plan Turkey opposed – after being paid as its agent
BY VERA BERGENGRUEN
vbergengruen@mcclatchydc.com

One of the Trump administration’s first decisions about the fight against the Islamic State was made by Michael Flynn weeks before he was fired – and it conformed to the wishes of Turkey, whose interests, unbeknownst to anyone in Washington, he’d been paid more than $500,000 to represent.

The decision came 10 days before Donald Trump had been sworn in as president, in a conversation with President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, who had explained the Pentagon’s plan to retake the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa with Syrian Kurdish forces whom the Pentagon considered the U.S.’s most effective military partners. Obama’s national security team had decided to ask for Trump’s sign-off, since the plan would all but certainly be executed after Trump had become president.

Flynn didn’t hesitate. According to timelines distributed by members of Congress in the weeks since, Flynn told Rice to hold off, a move that would delay the military operation for months.

If Flynn explained his answer, that’s not recorded, and it’s not known whether he consulted anyone else on the transition team before rendering his verdict. But his position was consistent with the wishes of Turkey, which had long opposed the United States partnering with the Kurdish forces – and which was his undeclared client.

Trump eventually would approve the Raqqa plan, but not until weeks after Flynn had been fired.

[READ MORE: Trump will arm Syrian Kurds to fight ISIS, over Turkey’s fierce objections]

Now members of Congress, musing about the tangle of legal difficulties Flynn faces, cite that exchange with Rice as perhaps the most serious: acting on behalf of a foreign nation – from which he had received considerable cash – when making a military decision. Some members of Congress, in private conversations, have even used the word “treason” to describe Flynn’s intervention, though experts doubt that his actions qualify.

WE NEED TO ADJUST OUR FOREIGN POLICY TO RECOGNIZE TURKEY AS A PRIORITY. IN THIS CRISIS, IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT WE REMEMBER WHO OUR REAL FRIENDS ARE.
Michael Flynn in an opinion piece for The Hill

But treason or not, Flynn’s rejection of a military operation that had been months in the making raises questions about what other key decisions he might have influenced during the slightly more than three weeks he was Trump’s national security adviser, and the months he was Trump’s primary campaign foreign-policy adviser.

Even three months after he was fired, for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about a call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, his role in the White House resonates.

With word that the president may have asked FBI Director James Comey to drop any criminal probe of Flynn – failure to register as a foreign agent is a federal crime – there is renewed focus on getting to the bottom of what Flynn did, and what Trump knew.

Despite the Trump administration’s attempts to downplay the red flags, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the administration was repeatedly warned about Flynn’s foreign involvement.

“This was a serious compromise situation that the Russians had real leverage,” former acting Attorney General Sally Yates said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday, after White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer downplayed her warning about Flynn’s interactions with Russian officials as just “a heads up.”

Flynn’s actions were also the subject of discussion just last week at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on national security threats, with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., zeroing in on the 18 days that passed between Yates’ warning that Flynn might be subject to Russian blackmail and Flynn’s forced resignation.

“Blackmail, by an influential military official, that has real ramifications for global threat,” he said. “So this is not about a policy implication, this is about the national security adviser being vulnerable to blackmail by the Russians.”

Flynn’s connections to Russia have been widely discussed. In 2015, he was paid more than $33,000 to speak at a gala dinner in Moscow where he was seated next to President Vladimir Putin. That alone may have exposed him to criminal charges: As a retired U.S. military officer, Flynn was required to seek permission to travel and to receive payment from a foreign entity, something the State Department and the Pentagon have told Congress he did not do.

But it is his paid work on Turkey’s behalf that offers the clearest evidence of his role as a foreign agent – and of his legal problems, since he did not declare his foreign agent status till weeks after he’d left the Trump administration.

After he was fired, Flynn disclosed work as foreign agent

It was a fact Flynn disclosed himself in a declaration to the Foreign Agent Registration Unit of the Justice Department in early March. According to Flynn’s paperwork, he was paid $530,000 for work that “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The contract ended last November.

Under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, U.S. citizens who lobby on behalf of foreign governments or political entities must disclose their work to the Justice Department within 10 days.

Ekim Alptekin, the Turkish businessman whose company paid Flynn, disputes that he was “taking directions from anyone in the government” of Turkey. But Flynn’s filing shows he set up a meeting with Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, and energy minister, Berat Albayrak, who is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law, at a New York hotel last September.

As then-candidate Trump’s national security adviser, Flynn sat in on classified briefings in the summer and fall of 2016. According to the filing, he signed the contract with Alptekin’s firm on Aug. 9. Trump received his first classified intelligence briefing on Aug. 18 – a meeting that Flynn attended. As Trump’s national security adviser in the White House, Flynn had access to even more highly classified intelligence. He sat in on most, if not all, of Trump’s phone conversations and meetings with foreign leaders.

How much Trump knew about Flynn’s paid foreign-agent work is uncertain. When Flynn’s firm filed the Justice Department paperwork in March, the White House said Trump was unaware that Flynn had been paid to lobby on Turkey’s behalf. But Flynn’s lawyer has said he called Trump’s transition team before the inauguration, asking whether Flynn should register as a foreign agent.


When asked why the call had not been an obvious indication to act quickly, the White House tried to smooth it over by saying their legal counsel had considered it a private decision the transition team should not get involved in.

“No, it’s not a question of raising a red flag,” Spicer said at a news briefing. “It is not up to – nor is it appropriate, nor is it legal – for the government to start going into private citizens seeking advice and telling them what they have to register or not.”

Flynn’s lobbying work also involved a meeting on Oct. 27 with a representative of the House Homeland Security Committee, according to the filing.

Despite Alptekin’s denials that he had hired Flynn to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government, in an interview published in Hurriyet newspaper on Nov. 14 he said he had conversations with Trump officials about Syria.

“We have spoken with his advisers and security team to understand what their vision is for the Middle East and Syria,” Alptekin was quoted as saying. He said he was optimistic that the Trump administration would be more sympathetic to Turkish interests.

“It is not just that we were in disagreement with some Obama policies like Syria . . . (but) on the Trump side, we saw a willingness to look at these things differently,” he said.

The view from Ankara

Turkey has angrily objected to U.S. support of Syrian Kurdish fighters, arguing that to arm the YPG is to help a group that is carrying out attacks on a key ally and fellow NATO member. The YPG has ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey as well as the U.S. and the European Union. However, the U.S.-led coalition considers the YPG the most effective military partner against ISIS in Syria.

Turkey has insisted that the only feasible option to retake the terrorist group’s capital of Raqqa is for its own forces to participate in the U.S.-led coalition. The promise has been viewed skeptically by the Pentagon, where it’s been dismissed as “Erdogan’s ghost army.”

The plan to arm the Kurdish fighters had been seven months in the making when it was presented to Flynn.

“Don’t approve it,” Flynn said, according to an account in The Washington Post that was included in a timeline prepared by the office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “We’ll make the decision.”

Whether Flynn consulted with anyone before making the decision is also unknown. The White House did not respond to questions about whether Trump or his secretary of defense nominee, Jim Mattis, signed off on the decision.

What is known is that a few days later, Flynn again met with Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, for a breakfast at which they discussed U.S.-Turkish interests, according to a copy of the invitation. Cavusoglu attended Trump’s inauguration.

After Trump made Flynn his national security adviser, there were high hopes in Ankara that the new administration would give in to Turkey’s wishes “since many of Turkey’s views overlap with the incoming president,” in the words of an article in the Daily Sabah, a pro-government newspaper. In interviews with visiting foreign journalists in March, Turkish officials repeatedly expressed optimism about working with the Trump administration after years of withering relations with the Obama administration.

Turkey would finally have someone who listened to the two things they wanted: to nix any plans of working with the YPG once and for all, and to extradite Fethulah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania. Erdogan’s government suspects Gulen and his followers of masterminding a failed coup attempt last July.

In the September meeting with Turkish officials, they discussed with Flynn how to remove Gulen without going through the extradition process, according to former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey.

The idea was “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away,” Woolsey told The Wall Street Journal.

In the disclosures filed by Flynn, the meeting was “for the purpose of understanding better the political climate in Turkey at the time.”

Flynn also wrote an opinion piece in The Hill on Election Day titled “Our ally Turkey is in crisis and needs our support,” slamming the Obama administration for not taking Turkey’s Gulen concerns seriously. He described Gulen as a “shady Islamic mullah” he compared to Osama bin Laden.

“We need to adjust our foreign policy to recognize Turkey as a priority,” he wrote. “In this crisis, it is imperative that we remember who our real friends are.”

Asked about Flynn’s work for the Turkish government in an interview on March 9, the day the news broke of his Justice Department registration, Turkey’s justice minister just laughed.

It “wouldn’t be appropriate . . . to make any revelation,” Bekir Bozdag said through a translator.

In another indication of the close ties between the new administration and Turkey under Flynn, the Turkish-U.S. Business Council’s annual summit, which is chaired by Alptekin, moved its meeting to the Trump International Hotel in Washington this year. The summit, which is in its 36th year, had in previous years been at the Ritz-Carlton. The new location was announced the day before Flynn was fired.

Is it treason?

Treason is the only crime that is defined in the Constitution, where it’s described as levying war against the U.S. or “adhering to” an enemy – helping them, in other words. An enemy is a nation or organization against whom the U.S. has declared war, said Carlton Larson, a law professor at the University of California at Davis who specializes in treason.

While non-state actors like ISIS probably fit the definition, Flynn’s action not to support a specific group against them does not legally fit the bill, Larson said. Even at the height of the Cold War, when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg handed over nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, they were tried and executed not for treason but for espionage.

[READ MORE: Democrats want to investigate if Flynn’s paid Russia speech violated Constitution]

However, given Flynn’s many connections to Russia and Turkey, with documented payments, Democrats have dusted off a chain of little-known ways he could have violated the Constitution.

In February they asked the Pentagon to look into whether he had violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause by accepting money for his 2015 Moscow speaking engagement at a gala marking the 10th anniversary of the state-owned RT television channel. The clause prohibits former military officers from accepting gifts from foreign governments without the approval of Congress.

After he was fired, many Democrats also pointed to the Logan Act, an obscure 1799 statute that bars private citizens from interfering with diplomatic relations between the U.S. and foreign governments.

MATTHEW SCHOFIELD CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REPORT.
http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-gov ... rylink=cpy


seemslikeadream » Fri Mar 24, 2017 2:46 pm wrote:BY Removal THEY MEAN KIDNAPPING

Why did James Woolsey wait so long to tell anyone about this?



Ex-CIA Director: Mike Flynn and Turkish Officials Discussed Removal of Erdogan Foe From U.S.
James Woolsey says he attended a September meeting where other participants, including then-Trump adviser Mike Flynn, talked of moving Fethullah Gulen back to Turkey without going through U.S. extradition process
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, center, consulted last September with Turkish government ministers about the case of a controversial Muslim cleric.

By JAMES V. GRIMALDI, DION NISSENBAUM and MARGARET COKER
Updated March 24, 2017 2:35 p.m. ET
83 COMMENTS
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, while serving as an adviser to the Trump campaign, met with top Turkish government ministers and discussed removing a Muslim cleric from the U.S. and taking him to Turkey, according to former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey, who attended, and others who were briefed on the meeting.

The discussion late last summer involved ideas about how to get Fethullah Gulen, a cleric whom Turkey has accused of orchestrating last summer’s failed military coup, to Turkey without going through the U.S. extradition legal process, according to Mr. Woolsey and those who were briefed.

Mr. Woolsey told The Wall Street Journal he arrived at the meeting in New York on Sept. 19 in the middle of the discussion and found the topic startling and the actions being discussed possibly illegal.

The Turkish ministers were interested in open-ended thinking on the subject, and the ideas were raised hypothetically, said the people who were briefed. The ministers in attendance included the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the country’s foreign minister, foreign-lobbying disclosure documents show.

Mr. Woolsey said the idea was “a covert step in the dead of night to whisk this guy away.” The discussion, he said, didn’t include actual tactics for removing Mr. Gulen from his U.S. home. If specific plans had been discussed, Mr. Woolsey said, he would have spoken up and questioned their legality.

It isn’t known who raised the idea or what Mr. Flynn concluded about it.

Price Floyd, a spokesman for Mr. Flynn, who was advising the Trump campaign on national security at the time of the meeting, disputed the account, saying “at no time did Gen. Flynn discuss any illegal actions, nonjudicial physical removal or any other such activities.”

Mr. Flynn served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser for 24 days and resigned after he misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about his contact with a Russian diplomat. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into whether Trump campaign officials collaborated with the Russian government to influence the presidential election.

Former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey said attendees at the September meeting discussed removing a Muslim cleric from the U.S. and taking him to Turkey.
Former Central Intelligence Agency Director James Woolsey said attendees at the September meeting discussed removing a Muslim cleric from the U.S. and taking him to Turkey. PHOTO: DAVID HUME KENNERLY/GETTY IMAGES
On March 2, weeks after Mr. Flynn’s departure from the Trump administration, the Flynn Intel Group, his consulting firm, filed with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for the government of Turkey. Mr. Trump was unaware Mr. Flynn had been consulting on behalf of the Turkish government when he named him national security adviser, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said this month.

In its filing, Mr. Flynn’s firm said its work from August to November “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” The filing said his firm’s fee, $530,000, wasn't paid by the government but by Inovo BV, a Dutch firm owned by a Turkish businessman, Ekim Alptekin.
U.S.-Turkish relations deteriorated in the final year of the Obama administration over disagreements about extraditing Mr. Gulen and U.S. support for Syrian Kurdish forces battling Islamic State. The Turkish government has been demanding Mr. Gulen’s extradition to face charges that he was the architect of an unsuccessful military coup last summer to overthrow Mr. Erdogan.

Mr. Gulen, who since 1999 has lived in the Pocono Mountains north of Philadelphia and has a green card giving him permission to live in the U.S., denies involvement. Mr. Erdogan has been trying for years to undermine Mr. Gulen, a one-time ally whom Turkey has now branded as a terrorist leader.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Tuesday he had given the White House and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions new evidence linking Mr. Gulen to the coup.


Mr. Woolsey said he attended the Sept. 19 meeting at the urging of the Flynn Intel Group’s chairman and president, Bijan Kian. Mr. Woolsey said he had agreed to be on the group’s advisory board and was offered a consulting fee for his work, but turned it down because of what he heard at the meeting. He held no stake in the firm.

“It seemed to be naive,” Mr. Woolsey said about the discussion. “I didn’t put a lot of credibility in it. This is a country of legal process and a Constitution, and you don’t send out folks to haul somebody overseas.”

The meeting, held at the Essex House hotel in Manhattan, included Mr. Cavusoglu and Berat Albayrak, Mr. Erdogan’s son-in-law and the country’s energy minister, according to the disclosure documents. Also present were Messrs. Alptekin and Mr. Kian.

Cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey has accused of orchestrating last summer’s failed coup, at his home in Pennsylvania last year.
Cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey has accused of orchestrating last summer’s failed coup, at his home in Pennsylvania last year. PHOTO: CHARLES MOSTOLLER/REUTERS
Mr. Woolsey said he didn’t say anything during the discussion, but later cautioned some attendees that trying to remove Mr. Gulen was a bad idea that might violate U.S. law. Mr. Woolsey said he also informed the U.S. government by notifying Vice President Joe Biden through a mutual friend.

The mutual friend confirmed to the Journal he told Mr. Biden about the meeting. Mr. Biden’s spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter, other than to say Mr. Biden felt the Gulen matter should be handled through the courts.

Mr. Flynn’s spokesman, Mr. Floyd, said that at the meeting “Gen. Flynn did discuss the Flynn Intel Group’s work for Inovo that included gathering information that could lead to a legal case against Mr. Gulen.”

Messrs. Kian and Alptekin didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comment, nor did a spokesman for Mr. Albayrak. Mr. Cavusoglu’s spokesman referred the Journal to the Turkish Embassy in Washington.

In a written statement, the Turkish Embassy acknowledged that Turkish officials met with Mr. Flynn but declined to discuss the conversation. Referencing the Flynn Intel Group’s client, Inovo, the embassy said: “We are not in a position to comment on any engagement between a U.S. consultancy firm and a private company owned by a Turkish businessman.”

The disclosure Mr. Flynn’s firm filed with the U.S. government this month said the meeting was “for the purpose of understanding better the political climate in Turkey at the time.”

Inovo hired Mr. Flynn on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey, the filing said, and Mr. Alptekin wanted information on the U.S.-Turkey political climate to advise the gas company about its Turkish investments.

Mr. Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton, offered in September to advise the Trump campaign and opposed Hillary Clinton for president. He briefly served as a senior adviser to the transition team.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ex-cia-dir ... 1490380426




seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 21, 2016 1:58 pm wrote:from VOA News


Erdogan: 'No Doubt' Russian Envoy's Killer Linked to Gulen
December 21, 2016 1:25 PM
VOA News

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the assassination of Russia's ambassador earlier this week was "no doubt" carried out by a member of the network of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.

"There is no need to make a secret out of the fact he was a member of FETO," Erdogan said at a news conference, using Ankara's preferred acronym for the group run by the U.S.-based preacher and political figure.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in a phone call earlier this week that Turkey believes the killer is linked to Gulen, whom Ankara also blames for being July's failed coup in Turkey.

But Wednesday's news conference marked the first time the president had publicly made the claim of Gulen's connection of to Monday's assassination of Andrei Karlov at a photo exhibit in the Turkish capital.

Gulen condemned the attack earlier this week, and the United States has rejected what it called "absolutely ridiculous" suggestions that it was involved in or supported the assassination because of Gulen's presence in the U.S.

Turkey has been demanding Gulen's extradition from the U.S.

Russia said earlier Wednesday it is too early to draw conclusions about the shooter responsible for Karlov's assassination.

Karlov was shot by Mevlut Altintas, a 22-year-old Turkish off-duty police officer who is believed to have gained access to the exhibit by using his badge. A witness told VOA that during the shooting Altintas shouted: "Don't forget Aleppo! Don't forget Syria! As long as our lands aren't safe, you will not be safe!"

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday there should be no rush to conclusions before a joint investigation of the assassination is complete.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that Secretary Kerry raised concerns about "some of the rhetoric coming out of Turkey" in his call with Cavusoglu.

"We need to let the investigators do their job," " Kirby told reporters. "And we need to ... let the facts and the evidence take them where it is before we jump to conclusions. But any notion that the United States was in any way supportive of this or behind this or even indirectly involved is absolutely ridiculous."

Karlov's body arrived in Moscow on Tuesday, accompanied by his widow.

Cavusoglu said on Twitter the street outside the Russian embassy in Ankara will be named after Karlov. The Turkish foreign minister was in Moscow Tuesday for talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, and the two diplomats laid flowers next to portrait of Karlov.

"Turkish people are mourning this loss as much as Russia and the people of Russia," Cavusoglu said.

Cavusoglu, Lavrov and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met in Moscow to discuss the Syrian crisis, and according to Lavrov, they agreed to facilitate a deal between the Syrian government and the opposition.

Both Russian and Turkish leaders have said the assassination will not divide them. Analysts say they do not see the killing driving a wedge in Russia-Turkey relations.

"For a while now, Turkey and Russia had agreed on many issues in northern Syria, including evacuation of civilians from eastern Aleppo, and this convergence could be undermined by the assassination attempt but I think that will not happen," said TWI Turkish Research Program Director, Soner Cagaptay.

"At this stage for Russia to act aggressively on this assassination issue would mean that Russia would lose what it has," he told VOA Turkish. "So I think ... Turkey will respond by running a thorough investigation of the assassination."

“Russia has been giving Turkey the benefit of the doubt because of the broader interests developing the region regarding Syria and Iraq,” said political columnist Semih Idiz of the Al Monitor website.

“As you see now, Russia has brought Turkey to its side," he added. "It's trying to capitalize on the deepening division between Turkey and the West, and it sees an advantage in this and it would not want to endanger at this moment in time.”


Ambassador Karlov was making a speech at the opening of an art exhibition as the well-dressed gunman stood on the side of the stage, leading many in the audience to assume he was a bodyguard. The entire scene was captured on video.

Three other people were wounded before security officers shot the gunman dead. Ambassador Karlov died at a hospital. He had been Russia's ambassador to Turkey since 2013.

Six people have reportedly been detained in connection with the investigation, including the shooter's' roommate, parents and other relatives.
http://www.voanews.com/a/erdogan-says-n ... 45340.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: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 16, 2018 8:20 am

of course this fucking thread is about me since I am the only one to link to Bill Palmer here and of course you know that ......still waiting for your "mod" to chime in if he is so worried about Palmer destroying this place...jesus H. christ .....he is one link out of hundreds that I post here...get over yourself...Bill Palmer is NOT WND.... Alex Jones....Sean Hannity or Caitlin Kissy Face

yes I remember Womby saying something "bad" about Palmer in another thread but I don't think he has banned linking to him yet

Palmer is NOT a fucking fasicst ...he isn't out to destroy the world

yea he is political but he is not a preveyor of crap he just summarizes what is happening....

let's get down to exactly what Palmer has posted that is a lie or incorrect ...we can go statement by statement if you want ....I don't believe he has ever promoted playing kissy face with fascists like Caitlin

derailing the Assange thread with Syria for two pages was not good enough for you now you're going to do it with Palmer?



Elvis » Mon Apr 17, 2017 1:54 pm wrote:
SonicG » Sun Apr 16, 2017 7:16 pm wrote:
I haven't had time to analyze much (there's a lot of material), hence this exploratory thread.


Analyze away Elvis.......you've had time...you've had almost a year to figure out what Palmer is ...just what is Palmer's deeper agenda? what's the problem did you lose interest? I am sorry he doesn't hate Clinton enough for you or is your problem with Palmer is that he doesn't hate Clinton at all and for that reason his site should be banned from here?

sorry Palmer wasn't pushing pizzagate shit

am I correct to assume you are an accepter of Ms. Pizzagate Caitlin (I have legitimate concerns about child safety) since you did not seem to find the need to start a thread on her?

maybe it's time for a Caitlin thread...or you Caitlin lovers can keep her and I can post Palmer links once in awhile and we can call a truce to this
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: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby Marionumber1 » Fri Feb 16, 2018 12:49 pm

Aside from my disagreement with Bill Palmer's support for Clinton, I don't have much of an opinion on him or the Palmer Report. However, there is one particularly egregious aspect of Palmer's reporting that sticks in my mind. Following the 2016 election, he embraced the belief that electronic vote counts were rigged in favor of Trump, which the evidence certainly indicates. I actually appreciated his coverage of the recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Yet Palmer also refused to believe that the Democratic primaries were rigged for Hillary Clinton, something the evidence also points to. In fact, he argued the opposite: that Bernie's upset win in Michigan was the result of fraud: http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/mic ... ssia/2624/ Literally no credible election integrity expert holds that position, and his claim that "No other state in the democratic primary race had results that were anywhere near that far off from the polls" conveniently ignores the exit polls, which showed Bernie winning Michigan, and doing better than the official results in countless other states. (It was the exit polls, by the way, that provide a major piece of evidence for pro-Trump fraud in the general election.) In that regard, he showed the same kind of hackery as Richard Charnin, just for the opposite candidate. I don't think this points to some nefarious agenda, but it shows how Palmer's partisan bias causes him to take a massively flawed and contradictory view of election integrity. What matters to Palmer is not the legitimate winner but who he wants to be the winner.
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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby Rory » Fri Feb 16, 2018 3:56 pm

Slad, your paranoid, egregious bullying is out of control. Elvis is one of the sweetest, go out of his way to not offend people on this board. You're actively a menace and toxic presence here. Smdh
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Re: Who is Bill Palmer?

Postby Rory » Fri Feb 16, 2018 3:57 pm

seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 16, 2018 4:20 am wrote:of course this fucking thread is about me since I am the only one to link to Bill Palmer here and of course you know that ......still waiting for your "mod" to chime in if he is so worried about Palmer destroying this place...jesus H. christ .....he is one link out of hundreds that I post here...get over yourself...Bill Palmer is NOT WND.... Alex Jones....Sean Hannity or Caitlin Kissy Face

yes I remember Womby saying something "bad" about Palmer in another thread but I don't think he has banned linking to him yet

Palmer is NOT a fucking fasicst ...he isn't out to destroy the world

yea he is political but he is not a preveyor of crap he just summarizes what is happening....

let's get down to exactly what Palmer has posted that is a lie or incorrect ...we can go statement by statement if you want ....I don't believe he has ever promoted playing kissy face with fascists like Caitlin

derailing the Assange thread with Syria for two pages was not good enough for you now you're going to do it with Palmer?



Elvis » Mon Apr 17, 2017 1:54 pm wrote:
SonicG » Sun Apr 16, 2017 7:16 pm wrote:
I haven't had time to analyze much (there's a lot of material), hence this exploratory thread.


Analyze away Elvis.......you've had time...you've had almost a year to figure out what Palmer is ...just what is Palmer's deeper agenda? what's the problem did you lose interest? I am sorry he doesn't hate Clinton enough for you or is your problem with Palmer is that he doesn't hate Clinton at all and for that reason his site should be banned from here?

sorry Palmer wasn't pushing pizzagate shit

am I correct to assume you are an accepter of Ms. Pizzagate Caitlin (I have legitimate concerns about child safety) since you did not seem to find the need to start a thread on her?

maybe it's time for a Caitlin thread...or you Caitlin lovers can keep her and I can post Palmer links once in awhile and we can call a truce to this


:shock:
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