Deripaska bak

main broke guard UK

MERRI OK

SEE EPSTEIN

SEE MANAFORT COLLUSION

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santos cuz? 1 23 intrater

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sw 3 26

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Bill Gates has said he had affairs with two Russian women, which Epstein later discovered.

Somewhere along the way, Epstein struck up a relationship with Sergei Belyakov, Russia’s former deputy minister of economic development and a graduate of the FSB – Russian intelligence – academy. Epstein introduced him to contacts like Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire who would go on to give $10 million to the super PAC that helped elect now-Vice President JD Vance to the Senate in 2022.

In 2015, Epstein warned Belyakov that “a Russian girl from Moscow … is attempting to blackmail a group of powerful biznessmen [sic] in New York.” It was, Epstein said, “bad for business for everyone involved.” Belyakov responded back with information about the woman who he said worked in the “sex and escort” business. The FSB academy graduate said he would meet with someone who knows her.

The following year, Belyakov told Epstein that he had a new position at the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the Russian sovereign wealth fund, headed by current Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev – the same guy who was caught in those friendly leaked phone calls with Steve Witkoff that I mentioned.

Masha Drokova, a former spokesperson for Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth movement, was in regular touch with Epstein in the last couple of years before his death in prison, ostensibly helping Epstein with his public relations. According to the Washington Post, she was “the subject of the 2011 documentary ‘Putin’s Kiss,’ whose title refers to a widely publicized awards ceremony in which she received a medal from Putin and spontaneously kissed him on the cheek.” In a 2017 email, Drokova asked Epstein to connect her with “adequate Russian oligarchs.” The Post reported in 2022 that her fundraising pitches highlighted her ties to wealthy Russians, although Drokova denied writing those emails and said she did not receive Russian funding. Epstein advised Drokova as she launched her Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and she introduced Epstein to the contacts she had made in the tech world.

In one emailed interaction in 2017, Drokova, after claiming to meet billionaire Jeff Bezos, tells Epstein she is “trying to understand what she is not understanding about him.” Epstein writes back that Bezos is “smart, fun, and visionary. He is a very nice person. Probalty [sic] the best in the valley among the Bs.”

The files also indicate that Epstein had dealings with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire who the Treasury Department has identified as a money launderer for Putin. Deripaska also cultivated a friendship with Peter Mandelson, a senior figure in Britain’s Labour Party. It appears that Mandelson tried to use Deripaska’s contacts to acquire a last-minute Russian visa for Epstein in 2010. Correspondence also shows Epstein’s assistant trying to set up a meeting for Epstein and Deripaska in Moscow or Paris.

There’s also audio of Epstein advising then-Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak to have dinner with Putin to line up work after he leaves government.

There is at least one itinerary for a lengthy trip across Russia, and photos of Epstein and Ghislaine in what is believed to be Russia, including with people who appear to be Russian soldiers. Umar Dzhabrailov, a former Russian senator who committed suicide in recent days, described Maxwell as “a soulmate.” Epstein had a series of Russian visas between 2011 and his death in 2019.

...

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In January, former FBI agent Charles McGonigal was arrested on federal charges that included money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions against Russia. The charges pertained to his connection to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.

Federal prosecutors, according to ABC News, had accused McGonigal of "receiving payments through shell companies and forging signatures in order to keep it a secret that Deripaska was paying" him. In court, McGonigal pleaded "not guilty" to all charges.

Now, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the Rhode Island Democrat who chairs a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, is reaching out to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding the issues that McGonigal’s case raises about Russia and the United States' 2016 presidential election. McGonigal reportedly worked on the FBI’s Trump/Russia probe that year.

In a letter to Garland, Whitehouse wrote, "McGonigal’s arrest raises the potential for a plea and the possibility of a debrief. In the event that debrief occurs, I would like your assurance that someone independent of the FBI will be involved."

In his letter to Garland, Whitehouse CC’d Michael E. Horowitz, inspector general of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Whitehouse went on to express concerns that because of his work in the FBI’s New York Field Office in 2016, McGonigal "may have knowledge of or have participated in political activities to damage then-candidate Hillary Clinton and help then-candidate Donald Trump."

"The situation is even more troubling given that McGonigal was arrested for, among other things, allegedly working with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whom McGonigal was assigned to investigate while working for the FBI," Whitehouse told Garland. "Deripaska, a known associate of Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort, was sanctioned for interfering with the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump."

In the letter, the Rhode Island Democrat told Garland it was "vital" that "any plea" in McGonigal’s case "be accompanied by a full debrief."

Whitehouse, a former federal prosecutor, served as Rhode Island’s state attorney general before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 and unseating moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chaffee.

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i beat new an paywall

no lnx

did Charles McGonigal sabotage the 2016 election?

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JANUARY 23: Charles McGonigal, the former head of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York office, stands silently as his Attorney Seth Ducharme gives a statement to the media after leaving Manhattan Federal Court on January 23, 2023 in New York City. McGonigal is being charged with money laundering, and conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions against Russia while secretly working with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Sergey Shestakov, a former Soviet and Russian diplomat, has also been charged in the case.

Lindsay Beyerstein February 07, 2023

The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee is pressing the Department of Justice for details about a former FBI agent who was indicted for working for a sanctioned Russian oligarch and laundering the proceeds.

Charles F. McGonigal retired as special agent in charge of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York office in 2018. McGonigal allegedly began cooperating with an agent of aluminum baron Oleg Deripaska while he was still working for the FBI. Deripaska is under indictment for allegedly evading sanctions and obstructing justice.

Dick Durban raised urgent questions in his open letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.As Durban noted, McGonigal was promoted to special agent in charge just before the FBI’s October 2016 announcement that it saw no ties between Trump and Russia.

READ MORE: 'Corrupt, fixable and usable': Why Trump’s 'decades-old playbook' is finally losing its appeal

Durban is asking the questions that are on everyone’s mind:

Did McGonigal do anything to tip the scales of justice in favor of anyone he’s now linked to in the indictments? What roles did McGonigal play in the 2016 FBI’s Trump-Russia probe and the Mueller investigation? Is there any chance that McGonigal compromised sources, methods or evidence? How did one of the most elite counterintelligence operations not notice that one of its main guys was allegedly doing favors for a sanctioned Russian oligarch while he was still on the FBI payroll.

Deripaska’s history with the FBI is long and bizarre. The FBI has investigated Deripaska for links to Russian organized crime.

Nevertheless, 2007, the FBI colluded with Deripaska to spring a kidnapped CIA contractor from captivity in Iran. His name is Robert Levinson and he was an FBI agent before he went to work for the CIA.

Deripaska reportedly spent $25 million of his own money on the mission.You might wonder why the FBI needs a Russian oligarch’s money. The idealistic answer is that Iran is under economic sanctions, so Americans couldn’t legally spend money there. Realistically, it’s probably because some of that money went to bribe people the FBI regards as terrorists. Deripaska went along with this scheme because the FBI was supposed to make his US visa problems go away.

They didn’t.

And Levinson didn’t get to come home.

The US State Department had barred Deripaska from the country because of his alleged ties to Russian organized crime. Evidently, they were on the cusp of a deal to release Levinson when the mean-old State Department scuttled the visa scheme once and for all – possibly because they didn’t want to be in the debt of a man like Deripaska.

Undeterred, the FBI tried to enlist Deripaska’s help again in 2014, first as an informant on Russian organized crime and in 2016 as a source for their probe into the ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Two months before Donald Trump was elected, FBI agents reportedly visited Deripaska in New York City and asked him whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia. Deripaska put on his best innocent face and insisted that the agents were making something out of nothing.

By this point, campaign manager Paul Manafort had been feeding sensitive campaign and polling data to Deripaska’s associate for months, information that made its way to Russian intelligence. It’s unclear how much impact Deripaska’s denial had on the FBI’s later announcement that it knew of no links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

:{:{}:

Did the FBI’s attempts to recruit Deripaska ultimately result in Deripaska recruiting a top FBI agent? A recent story in the Times strongly implies as much, albeit without providing much in the way of supporting evidence.

Let’s hope that answers are forthcoming.

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After leaving the FEC, McGahn returned to the law firm Patton Boggs.^[16] In 2014 he moved to the law firm of Jones Day in Washington, D.C.^[17] He also worked for the Koch affiliated Freedom Partners.^[20] McGahn brought five Jones Day lawyers with him to the White House, and six more were appointed to senior posts in the Trump Administration.^[21] Jones Day has represented Alfa-Bank and done work for businesses belonging to a long list of Russian oligarchs, including Oleg Deripaska, Viktor Vekselberg, and Alexander Mashkevich.^[21]

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why does gop deride any ref to russian disinfo campaign help? b/c barr "cleared"? trump tower mtg doesn't ct? or it's OK to get dirt on hillary?

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday announced the indictment of Elena Branson (a.k.a Elena Chernykh) who is being described as a "Russian spy."

Branson, who is facing five charges, is accused of being yet another alleged Russian spy who worked to promote former President Donald Trump and attract potential voters for his rallies. The latest development follows The Daily Beast's previous report detailing the FBI's investigative probe into Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots of the U.S. — typically known for its Russian acronym, (KSORS) — and their work to promote Russian policies.

"Branson, 61, is also alleged to have tried to get Trump to attend the 2016 World Chess Championship, which was being held at New York’s South Street Seaport," NBC News reported Tuesday evening. "Prosecutors said she emailed a Trump adviser on Nov. 10, 2016, asking that Trump, then the president-elect, attend the event. The FBI said in the court filing that it publicly released photos from the event to show it was attended by Dmitry Peskov, who is now Putin's press secretary. There is no indication that Trump attended."

Per the federal complaint explained in a report published by The Independent, the U.S. Attorney's Office claims Branson corresponded "with a high-ranking Russian, as well as Vladimir Putin himself, in an effort to open a 'propaganda center' in New York City." She also "received tens of thousands of dollars in funding from the Russian government" as she held events and worked on messaging directed by Russian officials," according to the complaint.

The British monthly Byline Times also reported similar findings as it noted that Branson and her colleague Sergey Gladysh shared Facebook promotions for the “Trump 2020 Labor Day Cruise Rally” held in Portland, Ore., on Russian organization's social media page.

"The news website featured articles with the titles such as 'Second Trump term is crucial to prospect of better U.S.-Russia relations, safer world,' and “Biden victory will spell disaster for U.S.-Russia relations, warns billionaire," noted Stedman. "The billionaire referenced by the outlet is Oleg Deripaska, a key figure in the 2016 Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia."

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A retired chief Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) official who reportedly worked on the Trump-Russia probe was arrested and charged in federal court for allegedly having close ties to a U.S. sanctioned Russian billionaire and stealing $225,000 in cash while investigating high-profile cases, The Washington Post reports.

Over the course of his 22 years as a top official at the agency, Charles McGonigal served in many roles including the chief of the FBI’s cybercrimes office in Washington, D.C., and chief of the FBI’s New York Counterintelligence office, in which he was responsible for investigatingRussian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

McGonigal, Fox News reported, was one of the original FBI officials to discover Trump advisor George Papadopoulos’ claim that “he knew Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton,” which led to the start of the Trump-Russia probe, known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane, and allegations of election interference. A source revealed to Fox News that McGonigal “likely was briefed on Crossfire Hurricane at the time the investigation was launched.”

However, unbeknownst to McGonigal’s colleagues, in 2019 — one year post-retirement — the former top agent teamed up with former Soviet and Russian official-turned U.S. citizen, Sergey Shestakov, to work alongside Derispaska in an attempt to remove him from the U.S. sanctioned list.

As a result, according to Fox News, McGonigal, 54, and Shestakov, 69, have both been charged with “one count of conspiring to violate and evade U.S. sanctions, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act ("IEEPA"); one count of violating the IEEPA; one count of conspiring to commit money laundering; and one count of money laundering,” with the possibility of a “maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.”

McGonigal’s money laundering charge is a result of his “hiding payments totaling $225,000 that he allegedly received from a New Jersey man employed decades ago by an Albanian intelligence agency,” according to The Post.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams confirmed in a statement to Fox News that both McGonigal and Shestakov “previously worked with Deripaska to attempt to have his sanctions removed, and, as public servants, they should have known better.” Williams noted, “This Office will continue to prosecute those who violate U.S. sanctions enacted in response to Russian belligerence in Ukraine in order to line their own pockets.”

Speaking to the seriousness of sanctions, FBI Assistant Director in Charge Michael J. Driscoll said, "After sanctions are imposed, they must be enforced equally against all U.S. citizens in order to be successful." He continued, “There are no exceptions for anyone, including a former FBI official like Mr. McGonigal. Supporting a designated threat to the United States and our allies is a crime the FBI will continue to pursue aggressively."

McGonigal pleaded not guilty to the charges earlier this week through his attorney and former Department of Justice official, Seth DuCharme, who claims to have “a lot of confidence” that his client will prevail. “As you all know, Charlie’s had a long distinguished career with the FBI. He served the United States for decades,” DuCharme noted. “This is obviously a distressing day for Mr. McGonigal and his family.”

The case may be distressing for McGonigal and his family, but it is also distressing for current agency officials.

"The FBI is committed to the enforcement of economic sanctions designed to protect the United States and our allies, especially against hostile activities of a foreign government and its actors," Driscoll said. "Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska perform global malign influence on behalf of the Kremlin and are associated with acts of bribery, extortion, and violence."

Addressing McGonigal’s alleged disloyalty, Donald Alway, FBI assistant director at the Los Angeles field office, contended that “McGonigal is alleged to have committed the very violations he swore to investigate while he purported to lead a workforce of FBI employees who spend their careers protecting secrets and holding foreign adversaries accountable.”

But despite distress, FBI director Christopher A. Wray is confident that the agency upheld its responsibility with integrity. “The way we maintain the trust and confidence of the American people is through our work — showing, when all the facts come out, that we stuck to the process and we treated everyone equally, even when it is one of our own,” Wray said. “We hold ourselves to the highest standard, and our focus will remain on our mission and on doing the right thing, in the right way, every time.”

an 820

Rusal, a Russian aluminum company, has invested heavily in a mill that the North American company Braidy Industries has planned for Eastern Kentucky — and according to a Senate Intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Rusal is a “proxy for the Kremlin.”

In 2019, journalist Morgan Watkins reports in the Louisville Courier Journal, Rusal agreed to invest $200 million in Braidy’s mill. And the bipartisan Senate Intelligence report, released on August 18, describes Russian oligarch and Rusal co-owner Oleg Deripaska’s ties to the Kremlin.

According to the report, “Deripaska’s companies, including Rusal, are proxies for the Kremlin, including for Russian government influence efforts, economic measures and diplomatic relations.”

Watkins notes that according to a Securities and Exchange Commission report that Braidy filed in June, Rusal had provided $75 million for the mill as of December 31, 2019 but had discontinued contributions until Braidy could secure another $300 million in funding.

the U.S. government has imposed sanctions on Rusal, but Kentucky’s two Republican senators — Sen. Rand Paul and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — have voted against keeping the sanctions in place. Watkins notes that on August 19, the Kentucky Democratic Party “questioned McConnell’s decision to support lifting the sanctions on Rusal in light of the Senate Intelligence Committee report’s identification of Rusal as a proxy for the Kremlin.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-million-dollar-question-finance-editor-breaks-down-dojs-bizarre-abandonment-of-a-russian-money-laundering-case-against-deutsche-bank/

no lnx

‘The million-dollar question’: Finance editor breaks down DOJ’s bizarre abandonment of a Russian money laundering case against Deutsche bank

Written by Alex Henderson February 18, 2020

When other banks weren’t making generous loans to Donald Trump and the Trump Organization, Deutsche Bank was. David Enrich, finance editor of the New York Times and author of the new book, “Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction,” discussed Deutsche’s relationship Trump and a seemingly abandoned U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) case against the bank during a Monday night, February 17 appearance on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

Maddow, noting that Trump “probably owes hundreds of millions of dollars to this one institution,” asked Enrich “whatever happened to” a possible U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) case against Deutsche Bank that involved a “Russian money laundering scandal.” And Enrich responded, “That is the million-dollar question.”

Enrich explained that during the final months of the Obama Administration, the DOJ was “close” to bringing a “criminal case” against Deutsche Bank “for its involvement in Russian money laundering” — but after Trump became president, the case fell by the wayside.

“Deutsche Bank executives became convinced that this was just too hot to handle for the Trump Administration,” Enrich told Maddow. “They did not want anyone in the Administration to bring more public attention to thevery close relationship between Deutsche Bank and Russia on the one hand and Deutsche Bank and Trump on the other hand.”

Maddow asked Enrich what Deutsche Bank has told him about either the Trump Administration or the bank’s ties to Russia. And Enrich responded, “They’ve publicly refused to speak (or) say much of anything in public about their client. They acknowledge that Trump is a client. Trump has disclosed, in his limited White House disclosures, the amounts that he owes and what those loans are.”

Enrich went on to say, “They are trying to — desperately, I think — make this very bad situation, where they are kind of the public face of Donald Trump’s finances…. go away.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/relentless-corruption-and-sheer-madness-are-donald-trumps-super-powers/

no lnx

random 220 what fresh hell

Relentless corruption and sheer madness are Donald Trump’s super powers

President Donald J. Trump delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2020, in the House Chamber in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.. (Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen)

Written by Joshua Holland / Raw Story February 16, 2020

This article was paid for by AlterNet subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

Welcome to another edition of What Fresh Hell?, Raw Story’s roundup of news items that might have become controversies under another regime, but got buried – or were at least under-appreciated – due to the daily firehose of political pratfalls, unhinged tweet storms and other sundry embarrassments coming out of the current White House.

Seven days after he took office, Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13769 which barred migrants from a handful of Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. Hundreds of travelers were detained as they arrived here and tens of thousands of people had their visas suddenly revoked. For many Americans, it was clearly a bridge too far. Some had hoped that he would grow into the job, or that his bigoted campaign rhetoric would give way to a more responsible tone after he won, and the Muslim ban was evidence that those hopes had been misplaced as Trump moved to codify xenophobia.

With minimal organizing, thousands of people took to the nation’s airports to protest the policy.

Today, three years and three weeks later, Trump is crowing on Twitter about a New York Times story detailing how he’s basing his re-election campaign on his simmering resentments and paranoia. He is using customs and immigration enforcement to openly extort New York state into dropping investigations into his personal businesses. He’s brazenly retaliating against his own regime officials for testifying in his impeachment hearings. Meanwhile, his Attorney General, hand-picked after writing a brief arguing that it’s kosher for a president to exercise his or her powers toward corrupt purposes, is overruling career prosecutors to grant leniency to Trump’s henchmen when their crimes are unearthed. While federal investigators look at potential crimes committed by Trump’s personal attorney as he sought to fabricate a scandal about one of Trump’s Democratic foes, others within the agency are simultaneously colluding with that very attorney to advance that effort. Our nation’s top law enforcement agency has adopted a relentless focus on finding support for the president’s* unhinged conspiracy theories.

As Trump rants and raves, there are no crowds gathering spontaneously outside of US Attorney’s offices around the country to protest Bill Barr’s unprecedented corruption of the Department of Justice, . We may be outraged, but we seem to run out of gas. Trump’s behavior is so consistently venal and outrageous that we’ve become inured to it. Abuses of power that would be huge scandals under any other president of either party elicit ritualistic condemnations, but are ultimately just Trump being Trump.

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Overwhelming our sense of decency with a constant stream of outrageous comportment is Trump’s super-power. It’s impossible to even keep up.

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David Axelrod

@davidaxelrod

In this crazy world, almost nothing is said about the fact that @realDonaldTrump is rehiring his 29-yr-old former body man, forced from the WH earlier for failing a vet & with no personnel background, to direct hiring ACROSS THE ENTIRE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT!https://www.axios.com/johnny-mcentee-white-house-d1c29eee-8b0a-4c4d-8ba4-9355f3c27f4f.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top …

Johnny McEntee

Ex-Trump aide John McEntee to lead White House office of personnel - Axios

He's been hand selected by Trump, who sees him as the ultimately loyalist.

axios.com

9,798

4:49 AM - Feb 14, 2020

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*****

Speaking of the DOJ, an agency “anti-human trafficking grant program is facing internal complaints, after two nonprofits were denied funding in favor of two less established groups whose applications were not recommended by career DOJ officials.” According to Reuters, “the awarding of more than $1 million total to the two groups, Hookers for Jesus in Nevada and the Lincoln Tubman Foundation in South Carolina, has triggered a whistleblower complaint filed by the Justice Department’s employee union to the department’s Inspector General.”

*****

In related news, the FBI is revamping its efforts to curb homegrown terrorism after years of criticism that it downplayed or turned a blind eye to violent right-wing extremism. As part of those efforts, reports The Daily Beast, the FBI will now focus on “abortion violent extremism.” But they mean terrorists on “both sides” of the debate, despite the fact that the FBI could point “to just one episode of pro-choice-inspired terrorism—one that did not involve an actual act of violence, but rather a threat in an online comments section.”

*****

It’s hard to say whether these people are just trolling us at this point…

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday in an encounter the American side apparently wanted to keep under wraps.

The State Department made no announcement of the meeting, which took place in Lavrov’s own dedicated meeting room at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where the major annual conference of politicians, policymakers and security experts is held. Pompeo’s aides also did not provide any readout after the meeting ended.

Russian journalists traveling with Lavrov were aware of the meeting in advance, and wrote about it afterward.

*****

Probably not…

Something strange happened in mid-December involving Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch.

Late last year, the U.S. government signaled that it was about to level a new round of sanctions targeting people and entities linked to Deripaska, according to two Western officials with knowledge of the communication. Back in April 2018, the U.S. sanctioned the oligarch, who once lent millions of dollars to convicted Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort as part of a decades-long relationship between the two men. Over the following months, Deripaska’s allies made a deal with Treasury to limit Deripaska’s control over the companies in exchange for sanctions relief…. In the year since then, it’s been all quiet on the Deripaska sanctions front.

Until December, that is. What’s strange is that despite the signal, Treasury didn’t follow through and the sanctions—which would have targeted the unnamed people and entities because of their proximity to Deripaska—didn’t materialize. It’s been two months since the U.S. indicated that the new sanctions were about to come out, and there’s been no movement from Treasury on the oligarch. The two months of inaction has stirred suspicions of political interference in the sanctions process.

*****

Return on investment…

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“Trump has proposed a 25 percent cut to the signature military fund designed to offset Russian aggression in Eastern Europe, according to the Defense Department’s budget documents unveiled Monday.”

Rep. Val Demings

@RepValDemings

Today Senate Republicans blocked THREE election security bills.

Two would require that illegal foreign election interference be reported to the authorities.

The other would make voting machines harder to hack.

All blocked.

52.5K

11:15 AM - Feb 11, 2020

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*****

We are fortunate that these malignant and corrupt ideologues aren’t more competent…

Caitlin McCoy

@CaitlinMcCoy_

The final rule that went to OMB last month is "...sprinkled with glaring numerical and spelling errors (such as “Massachusettes”), with 111 sections marked 'text forthcoming.' The cost-benefit analysis showed that consumers would lose more money than they would gain." YIKES.https://twitter.com/CoralMDavenport/status/1228065396554653696 …

Coral Davenport

@CoralMDavenport

The Trump administration has rolled back nearly 100 environmental rules. But Trump's attempt to take down his top regulatory target,the US's largest #climate change rule, are in meltdown. "They look like they’re headed to a legal train wreck."https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/climate/trump-fuel-economy-rollback.html …

2:29 PM - Feb 13, 2020

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See Caitlin McCoy's other Tweets

*****

Type Investigations has an important story about how the Bureau of Land Management has, “over the past several years, ignored longstanding requirements that stem from the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act; approved mines and drilling without adequate review, turning the region into a ‘clearinghouse for federal permits’; and taken personnel off mining inspections in order to expedite development.”

*****

This will disappear down the memory hole in short order….

“A White House memo justifying the U.S. strike that killed Iranian military leader Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in January makes no mention of an imminent threat, which was President Trump’s rationale for the attack.

*****

Children aren’t born into this world harboring bigotry.

Since Trump’s rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.

*****

Last week, we mentioned that a 65-degree temperature recorded at Antarctica’s Trinity Peninsula set a new record for the continent.

That record appears to have held up for four days. This week, “a weather research station on Seymour Island in the Antarctic Peninsula registered a temperature of 69.3 degrees (20.75 Celsius) on Feb. 9.”

*****

And we leave you this week with a couple of pieces of good news, via the courts…

Washington Monthly

@monthly

#BREAKING:The D.C. Circuit Court just shot down Trump’s Medicaid work requirement. Last week, @r_m_larochelle & @lsdeprez wrote about this move as part of the administration's war on the social safety net. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/02/07/donald-trumps-assault-on-the-social-safety-set/ …

Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s Assault on the Social Safety Net

It's a policy of death by a thousand cuts.

washingtonmonthly.com

9:11 AM - Feb 14, 2020

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16 people are talking about this

Stephen Wolf

@PoliticsWolf

Whoa, this is a major win for Native American voting rights in North Dakota.The GOP passed a voter ID law that blatantly excluded most tribal-issued IDs, but the backlash against it helped activists raise money to provide free IDs in 2018 & Native turnout hit historic highs https://twitter.com/kira_lerner/status/1227989452838010880 …

Kira Lerner

@kira_lerner

New: The North Dakota secretary of state settled two lawsuits brought by Native American tribes over the state’s strict voter ID law. The state agreed to accept tribal IDs and allow people who don’t have a residential address to vote https://campaignlegal.org/press-releases/secretary-state-agrees-settle-voter-id-lawsuits-entering-consent-decree-north-dakota …

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DERI BUILDS ALUM PLANT IN MOSCOW MITCH'S DEPRESSED APPALACHIAN STATE AFTER COAL REVIVAL FAILS; MCCONN BLOCKS ALL EFFORTS TO DEFEND 2020 ELECTIONS?!

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gates gave polling data to Deri pal of putin; another oligarch pal funds IRA; trolls need info on US elections to weaponize DNC server hacked info; active measures are mostly about delegimatize US elections, but hillary has been tough/hawkish [who went for reset button?] but trump kissing putin's ass since...? Putin can kill rivals and press, but needs economy to stay in power? [sanctions could kick off recession). he has no economy, minor petro state, so sanctions matter (deal with exxon Rex biggest in history?)

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TRUMP REPEATS PUTIN LINE THAT CRIMEA WANTS TO BE RUSSIAN

MANAFORT WAS UNEMPLOYED AND THUS OFFERED TO WORK FOR TRUMP CAMP FOR FREE (but owed millions to deripaska oligarch,so feed info; why wd that be worth millions unless putin could use it to get trump aND RID of sanctions, even early crimea ones could set off russian recession?!

impeach BS BO gave blankets while trump gave javelins (actually extortion)

maidan revo 20124, YaNU dic fled to russia 2/22/14; replaced in election by poroshenko

invaded 2014; RNC convention 2015, trump back channels to putin kremlin multiple, NRA, blackwater...

The Ukrainian revolution of 2014 (also known as the Euromaidan Revolution or Revolution of Dignity; Ukrainian: Революція гідності, Revoliutsiia hidnosti) took place in Ukraine in February 2014, when a series of violent events involving protesters, riot police, and unknown shooters in the capital, Kiev, culminated in the ousting of the elected Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, MANAFORT and the overthrow of the Ukrainian Government.^[34]

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2014 Ukrainian revolution - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › 2014_Ukrainian_revolution

Jump to Advance toward **Maidan - The Ukrainian revolution of 2014 (also known as the Euromaidan Revolution or Revolution of Dignity; Ukrainian: Революція гідності, Revoliutsiia hidnosti) took place in Ukraine in February 2014, when a series of violent events involving protesters, riot police, and unknown shooters in the capital, Kiev, culminated in ...

List of people killed during the ... · ‎Berkut (special police force) · ‎Arseniy Yatsenyuk

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/mitch-mcconnell-screwed-over-kentucky-miners-to-fund-russia-linked-aluminum-

no lnx

Here’s how Mitch McConnell screwed over Kentucky miners to fund Russia-linked aluminum plant: report

Written by Travis Gettys / Raw Story September 10, 2019

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a measure that would have funded pensions and health care for coal miners in his home state of Kentucky, not long after steering almost the same Treasury Department funds to an aluminum plant linked to a Russian oligarch.

The Kentucky Republican doesn’t like the “Moscow Mitch” nickname that’s been stuck to him, but these latest revelations might make it difficult to shed, reported The Daily Beast.

McConell voted in January to lift sanctions on Rusal, a Russian aluminum company formerly headed by Putin ally Oleg Deripaska, and just days after the Treasury Department officially de-listed the company — it announced a $200 million investment in an aluminum plant in northeastern Kentucky.

Democrats have raised questions about how much McConnell knew about the investment before he voted to lift sanctions, but a Braidy Industries spokesperson told The Daily Beast the company never lobbied Congress about sanctions, and said no employee or director of the company ever spoke to McConell about Rusal, the only outside investor in the plant.

But, the website reported, McConnell’s connection to the Rusal-Braidy deal is deeper than previously understood.

While Rusal was lobbying the Trump administration to remove sanctions, the Kentucky Republican was pushing for federal funds to be used to help build the Braidy plant near Ashland, back in his home state.

The federal government has been giving Appalachian states millions of dollars since 2016 to help clean up abandoned coal mining land, and to assist in economic development there.

But McConnell and other Kentucky lawmakers, including Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY), helped steer $4 million away from sewer and road repair in October 2018 to preparing for construction on the aluminum plant.

It’s not clear when Braidy Industries and Rusal began, but two sources with direct knowledge told The Daily Beast that McConnell was instrumental in helping them secure the federal funding that had been earmarked for community development in his state.

McConnell then blocked a bill sponsored by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) that would have pumped $4 million federal money into miner pensions.

The Treasury Department collects fees from coal companies each year that are then distributed to the Department of the Interior to clean up abandoned mines and improve the communities they’ve left behind.

McConnell argued that he wanted a more permanent fix to the pensions when he blocked Manchin’s bill, but he seemingly raided $4 million the Treasury fund to help start construction on the aluminum plant.

The Senate majority leader’s office defended the move, saying pensions should be addressed through a broader bipartisan measure, but coal miners are furious.

“We’re not ever going to quit until they give us what we’ve earned. We’re not going to quit until we get it,” said Dwayne Thompson, a retired Peabody Energy coal miner from Kentucky. “I hope Senator McConnell gets that. If he supports us, we will support him.”

Some miners believe McConnell blocked the pension funding because some union members had supported his 2014 opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, and one union leader said Congress has been stalling on assistance to them for years.

“Coal miners understand something — when people tell us ‘we’re going to pass legislation’… we don’t believe it,” said Cecil Roberts, president of the UWMA. “Anyone who understands how Congress works knows that that’s a fight.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/somethings-rotten-in-the-state-of-kentucky/

mcconnell

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/how-deep-does-the-russia-collusion-go-to-mcconnell/

On this Mueller collusion report day,it’s worth remembering the lengths to which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell went to cover up what he knew before the election. The Russians were working to elect Donald Trump, and American intelligence agencies knew it. They told McConnell that. He threatened them with all-out political warfare if they tried to make that information public.

In the report, Mueller details Paul Manafort, then Trump campaign manager, instructing his deputy Rick Gates to get internal polling information from battleground states to Oleg Deripaska, the oligarch and friend of Putin, through go-between Konstantin Kilimnik. “Manafort expected Kilimnik to share that information with others in Ukraine and with Deripaska,” Mueller found. And Gates did it.

So what does this have to do with McConnell? Good question. Fast forward to January of this year, when Democratic leader Sen. Chuck Schumer forced a vote in the Senate on Trump’s Treasury Department’s decision to lift sanctions on companies linked to—you got it—Oleg Deripaska. One of those companies is aluminum manufacturing giant Rusal. The vote failed, with McConnell voting no.

Fast forward again to this week, and this: “Russian aluminum giant Rusal spent most of last year under US sanctions. Now it’s pumping $200 million into a new project in Kentucky.” Home state of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. What a shock, huh? By the way, Rusal is co-owned by Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard (Len) Blavatnik, who donated $2.5 million to McConnell’s GOP Senate Leadership Fund through two of his holding companies during the 2016 campaign and a further $1 million in 2017.

Meanwhile, McConnell launched his re-election campaign Thursday morning, conveniently just as Attorney General William Barr was frantically trying to spin the upcoming disaster of the Mueller report release away. The cornerstone of his announcement was that he’s introducing legislation to raise the age for buying tobacco products to 21. As of now, Kentucky reporter Joe Sonka has tweeted that McConnell hasn’t been asked about the report and the new big investment from Russia in his state.

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dmn no lnx chart

GOP campaigns took $7.35 million from oligarch linked to Russia

FILED UNDERCOMMENTARY AT AUG 2017 SHARE

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Ruth May, Contributor

Connect with Ruth May Email

Editor's note: Ruth May wrote this column in August 2017. Click here for an extensive update.

Party loyalty is often cited as the reason that GOP leaders have not been more outspoken in their criticism of President Donald Trump and his refusal to condemn Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election. Yet there may be another reason that top Republicans have not been more vocal in their condemnation. Perhaps it's because they have their own links to the Russian oligarchy that they would prefer go unnoticed.

Donald Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain accepted $7.35 million in contributions from a Ukrainian-born oligarch who is the business partner of two of Russian president Vladimir Putin's favorite oligarchs and a Russian government bank.

During the 2015-2016 election season, Ukrainian-born billionaire Leonard "Len" Blavatnik contributed $6.35 million to leading Republican candidates and incumbent senators. Mitch McConnell was the top recipient of Blavatnik's donations, collecting $2.5 million for his GOP Senate Leadership Fund under the names of two of Blavatnik's holding companies, Access Industries and AI Altep Holdings, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org.

How Putin's proxies helped funnel millions into GOP campaigns

Marco Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC and his Florida First Project received $1.5 million through Blavatnik's two holding companies. Other high dollar recipients of funding from Blavatnik were PACS representing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at $1.1 million, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham at $800,000, Ohio Governor John Kasich at $250,000 and Arizona Senator John McCain at $200,000.

In January, Quartz reported that Blavatnik donated another $1 million to Trump's Inaugural Committee. Ironically, the shared address of Blavatnik's companies is directly across the street from Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in New York.

Len Blavatnik, considered to be one of the richest men in Great Britain, holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and the U.K. He is known for his business savvy and generous philanthropy, but not without controversy.

In 2010, Oxford University drew intense criticism for accepting a donation of 75 million pounds from Blavatnik for a new school of government bearing his name. Faculty, alumni and international human rights activists claimed the university was selling its reputation and prestige to Putin's associates.

Blavatnik's relationships with Russian oligarchs close to Putin, particularly Oleg Deripaska, should be worrisome for Trump and the six GOP leaders who took Blavatnik's money during the 2016 presidential campaign. Lucky for them no one has noticed. Yet.

How some evangelical Christians are complicit in the cruelty of politics

Oleg Deripaska is the founder and majority owner of RUSAL, the world's second largest aluminum company, based in Russia. Len Blavatnik owns a significant stake in RUSAL and served on its Board until November 10, 2016, two days after Donald Trump was elected.

Deripaska controls RUSAL with a 48 percent majority stake through his holding company, EN+ Group, and the Russian government owns 4.35 percent stake of EN+ Group through its second-largest state owned bank, VTB. VTB was exposed in the Panama papers in 2016for facilitating the flow of billions of dollars to offshore companies linked to Vladimir Putin and is under sanctions by the U.S. government.

Cyprus is at the center of a circle of corruption surrounding Trump

Deripaska has been closely connected to the Kremlin since he married into Boris Yeltsin's family in 2001, which literally includes him in the Russian clan known as "The Family."According to the Associated Press, starting in 2006, Deripaska made annual payments of $10 million to Paul Manafort through the Bank of Cyprus to advance Putin's global agenda.

Len Blavatnik's co-owner in RUSAL is his long-time business partner, Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. Blavatnik and Vekselberg hold their 15.8 percent joint stake in RUSAL in the name of Sual Partners, their offshore company in the Bahamas. Vekselberg also happens to be the largest shareholder in the Bank of Cyprus.

Another oligarch with close ties to Putin, Dmitry Rybolovlev, owns a 3.3 percent stake in the Bank of Cyprus. Rybolovlev is known as "Russia's Fertilizer King" and has been in the spotlight for several months as the purchaser of Trump's 60,000 square-foot mansion in Palm Beach. Rybolovlev bought the estate for $54 million more than Trump paid for the property at the bottom of the crash in the U.S. real estate market.

The convoluted web that links Putin's oligarchs to Trump's political associates and top Republicans is difficult to take in.

Trump and Putin have a common approach to governance. They rely heavily on long-term relationships and family ties. While there have been tensions between Putin and Deripaska over the years, the Kremlin came to Deripaska's rescue in 2009 when he was on the verge of bankruptcy by providing a $4.5 billion emergency loan through state-owned Vnesheconombank (VEB), where Putin is chair of the advisory board.

VEB, known as President Putin's "pet bank," is now in crisis after sanctions applied by Europe and U.S. in 2014 have isolated it from the international banks that were the sources of its nearly $4 billion in hard currency loans that, according to Bloomberg, mature this year and in 2018.

Russia's international currency reserves are near a 10-year low, which has put further pressure on the president of VEB, Sergey Gorkov, to find sources of international rescue capital. Notably, it was Gorkov who met secretly with Jared Kushner in December at Trump Tower. Kushner's failure to report the meeting with Gorkov has drawn the attention of the Senate intelligence committee that now wants to question Kushner about the meeting.

Ruth May is a business professor at the University of Dallas and an expert on the economies of Russia and Ukraine. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News. Twitter: @ruthcmay

CORRECTION, 12:11 p.m., August 7: The headline on an earlier version of this column incorrectly said Blavatnik is Russian. He was born in Urkraine during the Soviet era.

An earlier version of this column used the name Leonid "Len" Blavatnik. He changed his first name to Leonard.

The column has also been updated to remove language describing the online presentation of a press release about Blavatnik resigning from the RUSAL board because it lacked context.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/why-a-shady-meeting-in-a-cigar-bar-could-provide-key-evidence-of-a-trump-russia-conspiracy/

Since the release of heavily redacted court documents on Feb. 7, another get-together has been vying to beat out the Trump Tower meeting as the most important face-to-face between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives. That meeting took place at the Grand Havana Room, a private cigar club that apparently also serves food, for those who can stand to eat in the presence of cigars. And while the meeting may have lacked the presence of Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, it does seem to have what the House and Senate investigations into Trump have suggested was missing from their data—direct evidence of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The Grand Havana gathering took place on Aug. 2, 2016, less than two weeks after the Republican convention. It featured Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, his deputy Rick Gates, and the Russian political operative who makes frequent appearances in other Manafort-related documents, Konstantin Kilimnik. Both Kilimnik and Manafort have maintained that the meeting was a “personal” meeting about “clients” they shared, but investigators are not buying it.

According to the *Washington Post*, prosecutors with the special counsel’s office believe that at that meeting, Manafort and Gates provided Kilimnik with “key information” in the form of internal polling data from the Trump campaign. That information could have been vital to assisting Russia in its social media attacks on the U.S. election.

Kilimnik also seems to have brought to the meeting a few topics of discussion that weren’t exactly client-related, including a resolution to the Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine—a topic that had just been debated at the Republican convention, where the Trump campaign insisted on a softer position toward Russia. It’s not clear if they also discussed the Magnitsky Act, which was a major topic at the Trump Tower meeting.

The information about the Grand Havana meeting is not appearing now because it’s emerged as part of a leak or a deliberate release by the special counsel. It’s because Manafort’s statements about the meeting are a key feature of charges that he continued to lie to investigators even after agreeing to provide evidence to the special counsel in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. And one of the things that Manafort appears to have lied about was just how much of a two-way street there was between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Before, during, and after the campaign, Kilimnik acted as the go-between for Manafort and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.There have been still-unconfirmed stories that Manafort met with Kilimnik in Europe for the same reason that they were in the Grand Havana: to exchange data. On multiple occasions, Manafort offered to “brief” Deripaska on behind-the-scenes aspects of the Trump campaign. He certainly briefed Kilimnik.

But even if he didn’t meet with Deripaska during the campaign, Manafort does seem to have deliberately given Russia information from the Trump campaign. And Manafort clearly thought that information had value, as he offered it to Kilimnik in recognition that he still owed millions to Deripaska.

Whatever information was exchanged at the Grand Havana Room, there’s a very good reason to believe that it wasn’t just “a personal meeting.” The attendees of the meeting knew they were doing something wrong at the time the meeting was held — because they all make a point of leaving the building alone, through separate entrances,

There’s also a very good reason why the special counsel’s office might be suspicious about this particular incident, and might have a firm basis to believe that Manafort lied. Rick Gates was there, and Gates has also agreed to provide information in return for a reduced sentence. If the story that Gates is telling disagrees with the story being shopped by Manafort they both could be lying, but one of them certainly is.

Russia timelines have noted that Deripaska’s private jet landed briefly at a New Jersey airport on Aug. 3, just one day after the cigar room meeting. It seems likely that Kilimnik left on this plane to make a swift return to Moscow with the data provided by Manafort. Or maybe Deripaska got his through an in-person briefing from Manafort after all.

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But the big action on Capitol Hill is on the Democratic side. And they got off to quite a start yesterday when Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was called to the House up for both a classified briefing and a closed-door hearimg for the whole House to explain why in the world he decided to lift sanctions on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum company practically in the dead of night. (If you haven’t been keeping score, Deripaska is a former associate of Paul Manafort, who reportedly owed him a large sum of money.)

We don’t know what was said in the classified briefing, but the Democrats were hopping mad about the other one. Apparently Mnuchin was completely unresponsive, reading out a prepared comment and offering up nothing else. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “It’s stiff competition, mind you, but this was one of the worst briefings we’ve received from the Trump administration. The secretary barely testified.” Mnuchin had better get used to a lot more scrutiny.

6/18

10m$ more loan found to manafort

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salon manafort timeline:

...

2008: Rick Davis arranged for Deripaskato meet then–presidential candidate John McCain at an international economic conference in Switzerland. At the time, Davis was McCain’s campaign manager, having taken a leave from his company with Manafort.

June 2008:CMZ Ventures, described as “one of the more bizarre development teams ever assembled in the city,” forms and attempts to buy the Drake Hotel in Manhattan for $850 million. CMZ was made up of Manafort, Arthur G. Cohen, a former top developer in the city, and Brad Zackson, who had served as a right-hand man to Fred Trump Sr. Zackson had been “the exclusive broker and manager for Fred Trump of the original Trump Organization.”

Zackson gained “access to society’s inner circle through the Trumps.” According to the Commercial Observer, Zackson had wanted to buy a property in the Bahamas, but needed help navigating the bureaucracy there, so he teamed up with Cohen and Manafort.

The Real Deal reported:

Manafort and Zackson were neighbors in the Hamptons, and soon became friends and business associates. Zackson says he invested in Manafort’s film production business, Manhattan Pictures, best known for the 2005 film The Dying Gaul.

Manafort had “an uncanny ability to conjure investors, such as Ukrainian billionaire gas king Dmitry Firtash, for projects,” the Commercial Observerreported in 2011.

Mr. Manafort then met withUkranian billionaire Mr. Firtash,a part owner of Eural Transgas, in Kiev, and secured the promise of an initial $112 million for the project, but that fell apart when Mr. Firtash became distracted by an investment in troubled Bank Nadra back home. Grasping, Mr. Zackson wrote in an email in March 2009: “I have an idea to bring [Donald] Trump in on the Drake. I think it solves a lot of issues right away.”

Court documents show Deripaska was also “set to make a $56 million investment in the Drake,” through the Pericles fund.

But the company, designed to be a billion-dollar fund to buy distressed luxury real estate, never made a single purchase.

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko allegedin a lawsuit that “Firtash used CMZ as a front in order to hide income illegally skimmed from his natural gas company RosUkrEnergo,” but a judge ultimately dismissed the suit.

2010: Manafort helps elect Yanukovych as president of Ukraine.

2014:Yanukovych is forced to flee Ukraine for Russia in the face of widespread public protests.

2014:Deripaska dissolves the private equity fund being managed by Manafort. He accuses Manafort in a Cayman Islands court of taking nearly $19 million.

Feb. 29, 2016:Manafort reportedly reaches out to Trump via their mutual friend Tom Barrack with two memos, which laid out the case for why he’d be a good fit for the campaign. These memos were reported on by the New York Times in April 2017. In one of them, Manafort “refers vaguely to work he performed, years ago, to clear noisy airspace over Mr. Trump’s Florida resort.” He stresses that he’ll work for free.

The*Washington Post:* “ ‘I really need to get to’ Trump, Manafort said, according to Barrack. He told Barrack he wanted to work as Trump’s convention manager, helping him navigate what they expected would be a contentious affair.”

March 2016: Manafort meets Barrackat the Montage hotel in Beverly Hills to talk about joining the Trump campaign.

March 28, 2016: Trump campaign hires Manafort to work unpaid.

May 2016: Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Manafort in his Kiev political consulting operation since 2005, and Manafort meet.

May 19, 2016: Manafort is named chairman of the Trump campaign.

July 2016:Manafort reportedly offers private briefings on the campaign to Deripaska over email.

Aug. 2, 2016: Manafort and Kilimnik meetat the Grand Havana Club, an upscale cigar bar in Manhattan, to talk “caviar,” which is believed to be a reference to earlier payments made to Manafort by Deripaska.

August 2016: A phone belonging to one of Manafort’s daughters is hacked and hundreds of her text messages are eventually posted on a darknet website. The texts reveal Manafort’s daughters were worried about the work he did in Ukraine and that someone had tried to blackmail him, suggesting they could reveal a secret meeting Manafort had supposedly arranged for Trump in 2012 with a Yanukovych ally.

Aug. 19, 2016:Manafort submits his resignation from the Trump campaign.

...

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/paul-manafort-may-hold-key-who-was-he-really-working

... We've known the outlines of this before, but the details of Mueller's requests show that he's stepping up the pressure on the White House and will be focusing on individual staff members to testify about what they saw and heard during this entire period. Notably, Mueller's staff has requested information from former White House press secretary Sean Spicer about his public comments pertaining to Comey's firing.

That request has in turn led to the revelation that Spicer has kept copious notes going all the way back to the Republican convention, the Trump campaign, the transition and into the administration. Those will undoubtedly be of great interest to the special counsel and possibly the congressional committees. When asked about these notebooks, Spicer told his old friend Mike Allen of Axios to stop texting and calling him or he'd "call the proper authorities." As the Mueller investigation starts to close in on the White House, things are getting tense in Trump world.

But for all that intrigue, it wasn't the biggest Russia investigation story of the week. Since he was the man who ran what was known as "The Torturer's Lobby" in Washington for many years, it's only fitting that Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is slowly roasting over a very hot spit. This week CNN confirmed that Manafort had been under a FISA surveillance warrant by American intelligence services from 2014 through 2016 under suspicion of ... something. The warrant wasn't in effect during the period Manafort worked for Trump's campaign, but the government reportedly began to track his communications once again from the fall of 2016 through at least the spring of this year.

Manafort has been involved with a lot of shady characters over the years (and I do mean a lot), so it's difficult to know specifically why he was a surveillance target. But the Washington Post reports that among the documents Manafort turned over to the congressional committees are emails he sent to an employee named Konstantin Kilimnik,who allegedly has ties to Russian intelligence. In those emails, Manafort appears to be offering to set up meetings between Trump and a notorious Russian oligarch namedOleg Deripaska, who has previously been denied entry into the U.S. because of ties to organized crime.

These emails seem to be written in a sort of code to obscure Deripaska's identity, but nobody has had much trouble figuring it out. At one point Manafort wonders if arranging this meeting will make him "whole." Manafort's spokesman said that he was just trying to collect some money owed to him, but since Deripaska had filed suit against Manafort in 2014 for $17 million, it might make more sense to conclude that Manafort was offering to trade contact with Trump for a relief of his debt, rather than the other way around.

This raises the the question once again as to why in the world Manafort was supposedly working for a billionaire candidate for free. It's not as if Manafort was a longtime Trump friend or a true believer in Trump's ideology, whatever that is. He's a hired gun and hired guns don't work for nothing. He is not the type of guy who doesn't get paid.

Natasha Bertrand at Business Insider put together a narrative of Manafort's tenure with the Trump campaign that's very useful in drawing the bigger picture. The bottom line is that it is starting to look very much as if Manafort was working for someone other than Donald Trump.

What we don't know is what other people on the campaign knew, including Trump himself. To this day he can't bring himself to say anything negative about Vladimir Putin. His irrational attempts to shut down the investigation do not suggest the behavior of a man with nothing to hide.

Manafort left his job as campaign chair in August 2016, but continued to be involved. He made one key decision before his official departure: He made sure that Trumpchose Mike Pence as his running mate. When Pence took over the presidential transition team after Chris Christie was let go, according to the Daily Beast, Manafort came back in the tent, helping to choose cabinet members and speaking with Trump and Pence on a regular basis. He even advised the incoming administration on how to handle the Russia investigation.

So Manafort, who had resigned after a wave of reports detailing his shady relationships with Russia-aligned Ukranian politicians, was up to his neck in the Trump transition. During the same period when Jared Kushner was meeting with Russian bankers and talking to the Russian ambassador about back channels at the Russian embassy, and Mike Flynn was on the horn promising to lift the Russia sanctions. Nobody remembered to put any of these meetings on their applications for security clearance.

It's not clear whether Trump has stayed in contact with Manafort since he became president. I'm sure his lawyers go to bed every night praying that he didn't.

digby

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/manafort-offered-to-give-russian-billionaire-private-briefings-on-2016-campaign/2017/09/20/399bba1a-9d48-11e7-8ea1-ed975285475e_story.html?utm_term=.082f2c8f19a2

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/manafort-offered-to-give-russian-billionaire-private-briefings-on-2016-campaign/2017/09/20/399bba1a-9d48-11e7-8ea1-ed975285475e_story.html

ess than two weeks before Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination, his campaign chairman offered to provide briefings on the race to a Russian billionaire closely aligned with the Kremlin, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Paul Manafort made the offer in an email to an overseas intermediary, asking that a message be sent to Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum magnate with whom Manafort had done business in the past, these people said.

“If he needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote in the July 7, 2016, email, portions of which were read to The Washington Post along with other Manafort correspondence from that time.

The emails are among tens of thousands of documents that have been turned over to congressional investigators and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team as they probe whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia as part of Moscow’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.

There is no evidence in the documents showing that Deripaska received Manafort’s offer or that any briefings took place. And a spokeswoman for Deripaska dismissed the email exchanges as scheming by “consultants in the notorious ‘beltway bandit’ industry.”....

Paul Manafort

A lobbyist out of central casting, Manafort has repped some of the world’s shadiest autocrats and dictators, once flying to Angola in the ’80s amid the country’s bloody civil war to pitch warlord Jonas Savimbi. (In hacked text messages made public in February, Manafort’s daughter Andrea allegedly said her father had “no moral or legal compass” and described her family’s wealth as “blood money.”) Brought on to the Trump campaign at the urging of his former business partner Roger Stone, Manafort helped to guide it through the Republican convention. Manafort was ousted in August, as details emerged about his work for deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally, which allegedly involved $12.7 million in secret cash payments earmarked for Manafort. Scrutiny of Manafort, who is reportedly under investigation by the FBI and the Treasury Department, has expanded to include his business dealings with Oleg Deripaska, the Russian aluminum magnate and Putin ally who was denied a visa to the United States because of alleged ties to organized crime.

Roger Stone

The 64-year-old, who proudly sports a tattoo of Richard Nixon across his back, has made a career of political subterfuge. He cut his teeth at 19 as a Nixon dirty trickster, once hiring a GOP operative to infiltrate George McGovern’s campaign. He later co-founded the lobbying firm of Black, Manafort, Stone & Atwater in the early 1980s. He has advised Trump for decades, lobbying on behalf of Trump’s casino interests and serving as campaign manager of the real estate mogul’s short-lived presidential campaign in 2000. During the 2016 campaign, Stone seemed to possess uncanny knowledge of what WikiLeaks had in store for Hillary Clinton. On October 1, he tweeted, “Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.” Less than a week later, WikiLeaks began publishing the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Stone claimed he was in touch with WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, and that he exchanged direct messages with Guccifer 2.0—the handle for the alleged Russian hacker(s) who posted the stolen DNC emails. Reportedly under investigation by the FBI, Stone has strenuously denied any collusion with Russians and has volunteered to testify before Congress. But anything he says should be taken with a grain of salt—his mantra, after all, is: “Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack.”

Michael Cohen

In the dossier produced by the ex-British spy Steele, Trump’s pugnacious personal lawyer surfaced as an alleged liaison to Russian officials—a charge he strongly denies. He has long-standing business and family ties to Ukraine. In January, he hand-delivered a peace plan for Ukraine and Russia to then-national security adviser Flynn, according to the New York Times. The effort also involved Trump’s business associate Sater and Andrii V. Artemenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker.

J.D. Gordon

The former Navy officer and Pentagon spokesman, who advised the Trump campaign on national security policy, has reportedly acknowledged advocating a controversial platform change at the Republican National Convention: removing language calling for the provision of “lethal defensive weapons” to Ukraine to protect the country from Russian aggression. Gordon was also one of several Trump campaign aides who met with Ambassador Kislyak during the Republican convention.

Rick Gates

As Manafort’s right-hand man, Gates helped him lobby on behalf of Putin-allied Ukrainian President Yanukovych and was involved in at least two multimillion-dollar deals with Russian oligarchs—one with Deripaska and another with Ukrainian natural-gas titan Dmitry Firtash. Like Manafort, Gates did not disclose his work as a foreign agent to the Justice Department last year, a possible violation of the law. Following the election he helped form a nonprofit promoting Trump’s agenda, but he departed after the Associated Press reported Manafort’s business dealings with Deripaska.

Michael Caputo

The veteran PR consultant ran communications for Trump’s 2016 primary campaign in New York. But before that, he spent years working in Russia, first for the US Agency for International Development and then for his own Moscow PR firm. In 2000, he was hired by Gazprom Media to burnish Putin’s image in the United States. At one point, fearing Russian organized-crime figures were hunting him, Caputo (and his parrot, August West) took refuge on a boat in Florida.

(AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.

Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.

Manafort pitched the plans to Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.

"We are now of the belief that this model can greatly benefit the Putin Government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitment to success," Manafort wrote in the 2005 memo to Deripaska. The effort, Manafort wrote, "will be offering a great service that can re-focus, both internally and externally, the policies of the Putin government."

Manafort's plans were laid out in documents obtained by the AP that included strategy memoranda and records showing international wire transfers for millions of dollars. How much work Manafort performed under the contract was unclear.

The disclosure comes as Trump campaign advisers are the subject of an FBI probe and two congressional investigations. Investigators are reviewing whether the Trump campaign and its associates coordinated with Moscow to meddle in the 2016 campaign. Manafort has dismissed the investigations as politically motivated and misguided. The documents obtained by AP show Manafort's ties to Russia were closer than previously revealed.

In a statement to the AP, Manafort confirmed that he worked for Deripaska in various countries but said the work was being unfairly cast as "inappropriate or nefarious" as part of a "smear campaign."

"I worked with Oleg Deripaska almost a decade ago representing him on business and personal matters in countries where he had investments," Manafort said. "My work for Mr. Deripaska did not involve representing Russia's political interests."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of Trump's critics in the Senate, called the disclosures about payments to Manafort from the Russian billionaire "very disturbing if true."

"That's basically taking money to stop the spread of democracy, and that would be very disturbing to me," he said Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Democrats on the House intelligence committee said the new revelations will feature in the congressional investigations. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., said on MSNBC on Wednesday that Manafort should appear before the committee, and he raised the specter of a subpoena should Manafort not appear on his own.

Another member of the intelligence committee, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., said the disclosure "undermines the groundless assertions that the administration has been making that there are no ties between President Trump and Russia. This is not a drip, drip, drip" situation, she said. "This is now dam-breaking with water flushing out with all kinds of entanglements."

Deripaska became one of Russia's wealthiest men under Putin, buying assets abroad in ways widely perceived to benefit the Kremlin's interests. U.S. diplomatic cables from 2006 described Deripaska as "among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis" and "a more-or-less permanent fixture on Putin's trips abroad." In response to questions about Manafort's consulting firm, a spokesman for Deripaska in 2008 — at least three years after they began working together — said Deripaska had never hired the firm. Another Deripaska spokesman in Moscow last week declined to answer AP's questions.

When asked Wednesday about Manafort's work for Deripaska, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "We do not feel it's appropriate to comment on someone who is not an employee at the White House," although Press Secretary Sean Spicer discussed Manafort earlier this week during a televised news briefing.

Manafort worked as Trump's unpaid campaign chairman last year from March until August, a period that included the Republican National Conventionthat nominated Trump in July. Trump asked Manafort to resign after AP revealed that Manafort had orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation until 2014 on behalf of Ukraine's ruling pro-Russian political party.

The newly obtained business records link Manafort more directly to Putin's interests in the region. According to those records and people with direct knowledge of Manafort's work for Deripaska, Manafort made plans to open an office in Moscow, and at least some of his work in Ukraine was directed by Deripaska, not local political interests there. The Moscow office never opened.

Manafort has been a leading focus of the U.S. intelligence investigation of Trump's associates and Russia, according to a U.S. official. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the investigation are confidential. Meanwhile, federal criminal prosecutors became interested in Manafort's activities years ago as part of a broad investigation to recover stolen Ukraine assets after the ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych there in early 2014. No U.S. criminal charges have ever been filed in the case.

FBI Director James Comey, in confirming to Congress the federal intelligence investigation this week, declined to say whether Manafort was a target. Manafort's name was mentioned 28 times during the hearing of the House intelligence committee, mostly about his work in Ukraine. No one mentioned Deripaska.

On Monday, Spicer had singled out Manafort when asked about possible campaign contacts with Russia. He said Manafort "played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time" in the campaign, even though as Trump's presidential campaign chairman he led it during the crucial run-up to the Republican National Convention.

Manafort and his associates remain in Trump's orbit. Manafort told a colleague this year that he continues to speak with Trump by telephone. Manafort's former business partner in eastern Europe, Rick Gates,has been seen inside the White House on a number of occasions. Gates has since helped plan Trump's inauguration and now runs a nonprofit organization, America First Policies, to back the White House agenda.

Gates, whose name does not appear in the documents, told the AP that he joined Manafort's firm in 2006 and was aware Manafort had a relationship with Deripaska but was not aware of the work described in the memos. Gates said his work was focused on domestic U.S. lobbying and political consulting in Ukraine at the time. He said he stopped working for Manafort's firm in March 2016 when he joined Trump's presidential campaign.

Manafort told Deripaska in 2005 that he was pushing policies as part of his work in Ukraine "at the highest levels of the U.S. government — the White House, Capitol Hill and the State Department," according to the documents. He also said he had hired a "leading international law firm with close ties to President Bush to support our client's interests," but he did not identify the firm. Manafort also said he was employing unidentified legal experts for the effort at leading universities and think tanks, including Duke University, New York University and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Manafort did not disclose details about the lobbying work to the Justice Department during the period the contract was in place.

Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, people who lobby in the U.S. on behalf of foreign political leaders or political parties must provide detailed reports about their actions to the department. Willfully failing to register is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000, though the government rarely files criminal charges.

Deripaska owns Basic Element Co., which employs 200,000 people worldwide in the agriculture, aviation, construction, energy, financial services, insurance and manufacturing industries, and he runs one of the world's largest aluminum companies. Forbes estimated his net worth at $5.2 billion. How much Deripaska paid Manafort in total is not clear, but people familiar with the relationship said money transfers to Manafort amounted to tens of millions of dollars and continued through at least 2009. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the secret payments publicly.

In strategy memos, Manafort proposed that Deripaska and Putin would benefit from lobbying Western governments, especially the U.S., to allow oligarchs to keep possession of formerly state-owned assets in Ukraine. He proposed building "long term relationships" with Western journalists and a variety of measures to improve recruitment, communications and financial planning by pro-Russian parties in the region.

Manafort proposed extending his existing work in eastern Europe to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Georgia, where he pledged to bolster the legitimacy of governments friendly to Putin and undercut anti-Russian figures through political campaigns, nonprofit front groups and media operations.

For the $10 million annual contract, Manafort did not use his public-facing consulting firm, Davis Manafort. Instead, he used a company, LOAV Ltd., that he had registered in Delaware in 1992. He listed LOAV as having the same address as his lobbying and consulting firms in Alexandria, Virginia. In other records, LOAV's address was listed as Manafort's home, also in Alexandria. Manafort sold the home in July 2015 for $1.4 million. He now owns an apartment in Trump Tower in New York, as well as other properties in Florida and New York.

One strategy memo to Deripaska was written by Manafort and Rick Davis, his business partner at the time. In written responses to the AP, Davis said he did not know that his firm had proposed a plan to covertly promote the interests of the Russian government.

Davis said he believes Manafort used his name without his permission on the strategy memo. "My name was on every piece of stationery used by the company and in every memo prior to 2006. It does not mean I had anything to do with the memo described," Davis said. He took a leave of absence from the firm in late 2006 to work on John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign.

Manafort's work with Deripaska continued for years, though they had a falling out laid bare in 2014 in a Cayman Islands bankruptcy court. The billionaire gave Manafort nearly $19 million to invest in a Ukrainian TV company called Black Sea Cable, according to legal filings by Deripaska's representatives. It said that after taking the money, Manafort and his associates stopped responding to Deripaska's queries about how the funds had been used.

Early in the 2016 presidential campaign, Deripaska's representatives openly accused Manafort of fraud and pledged to recover the money from him. After Trump earned the nomination, Deripaska's representatives said they would no longer discuss the case.

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Associated Press writers Jack Gillum, Eric Tucker, Julie Pace, Ted Bridis, Stephen Braun and Julie Bykowicz contributed to this report in Washington; Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed from Moscow and Kiev, Ukraine; and Jake Pearson contributed from New York.

http://www.newsweek.com/who-oleg-deripaska-paul-manafort-russian-putin-572157

Russian aluminum magnate is now at the center of a major U.S. political controversy. The Associated Press exclusively reported Wednesday that Paul Manafort, former campaign head for President Donald Trump, worked with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska to advance the interests of the Kremlin. Deripaska, estimated by Forbes to be worth $5.1 billion, is a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The 49-year-old Deripaska runs Basic Element Co., which employs some 200,000 people globally across a number of industries. In a profile of the billionaire in 2011, Canada's Globe and Mail called the Russian oligarch "Putin's [favorite] industrialist."

Manafort, who was Trump's campaign chairman from March to August, had previous plan to advance Putin’s interests http://apne.ws/2nJha9i

6:30 AM - 22 Mar 2017

AP Exclusive: Manafort had plan to benefit Putin government

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimi

apnews.com

Deripaska brought Rusal, a major Russian aluminum company, back from the brink of failure in 2008 by persuading banks to let him keep control of the massive enterprise.

"The deal was very simple," he told the Globe and Mail. "We never tried to screw the banks. I said 'You keep the debt and I will manage the company and deliver for you.'"

Others have pointed out, however, that Deripaska's connections in the Kremlin might have landed him a massive bailout loan that allowed Rusal to survive foreign debts.

This month, in an interview with CNBC, the tycoon said Trump's relationship with Moscow might not prove as rosy as some might think. "We all tend to believe [in this] kind of fairytale but there is a reality... You know Trump and his administration needs to prove that they would be capable to change [the] economic reality in the U.S.," Deripaska told CNBC.

It was alleged in the Associated Press story Wednesday that Deripaska paid Manafort some $10 million annually starting in 2006. The business relationship lasted through at least 2009, a source told the AP. The former Trump campaign chairman reportedly worked to influence politics, business dealings and the media to benefit Putin's interests.

Manafort rejected the allegations in the AP story, telling the wire service that his work had been inaccurately presented as "inappropriate or nefarious."

Manafort was let go from the Trump campaign in August after it was revealed he had covertly lobbied for pro-Russia interests in Ukraine.