collusion2 bak
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</font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a </font><span style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">seasoned Federal Bureau of Investigation counterintelligence officer told the United States Senate Judiciary Committee that he was ordered by his superiors to "stop investigating Rudy Giuliani and to cut off contact with any sources who reported on corruption by associates of former President Donald Trump,"</span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> according to a</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23903968/wed-redact.pdf" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">whistleblower complaint</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">that was</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-whistleblower-senate-judiciary-russia-giuliani-leak-trump-allies-fuks-biden-2023-8" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">exclusively obtained</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">by</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"> </span><span style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">Business Insider</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">'s Mattathias Schwartz.</span></div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">"The agent, who served 14 years as a special agent for the bureau, including a long stint in <b>Russia-focussed counter-intelligence</b>, claims in a 22-page statement that his bosses interfered with his work in 'a highly suspicious suppression of investigations and intelligence-gathering' aimed at <b>protecting 'certain politically active figures and possibly also FBI agents' who were connected to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs</b>," Schwartz writes. "Those figures, the statement claims, explicitly included 'anyone in the [Trump] White House and any former or current associates of President Trump.'"</span></p><div id="story_page_incontent_p2_target" style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-5155643920455169" data-ad-slot="6339868799" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); text-decoration-line: none; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 20px; display: block;" /></div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Schwartz explains that the employee's account was "apparently leaked and posted in mid-July to a Substack newsletter. <em>Insider</em> has independently obtained a copy of the complaint and verified its authenticity, but has not corroborated all of its claims."</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/theyre-coming-for-everyone/" target="self" title="view post: 'They’re coming for everyone': Looming Georgia indictments send Trump allies running for cover" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">'They’re coming for everyone': Looming Georgia indictments send Trump allies running for cover</a></strong><a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/license/1438263772?adppopup=true" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;" /><a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/license/1438263742?adppopup=true" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;" /></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The unnamed individual said in an interview with Insider that he was motivated by the desire to "policymakers accountable, whether they're on the left or the right." <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-whistleblower-senate-judiciary-russia-giuliani-leak-trump-allies-fuks-biden-2023-8" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">According to Schwartz</a>, the whistleblower felt the FBI was at "a decision point" and wondered, "Are we going to do public corruption or not?"</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Schwartz continues, "The whistleblower told Insider that he was finally ordered to stop investigating Giuliani and the rest of the Trump White House in August 2022, after months of what he says <b>were persistent efforts to frustrate his work, </b>at a meeting with three FBI supervisors at a bureau field office. Insider was able to confirm the agent's account of the meeting with a second source with knowledge of what took place."</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Schwartz notes that "the directions he received included a strict prohibition on filing intelligence reports relating to Giuliani or any other Trump associate" during an August 2022 meeting where he was fed "performance issues and concerns" despite having "eight consecutive years of "excellent" or "outstanding" work.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"In one case, the statement says, the agent developed information from confidential informants that Giuliani had allegedly done paid work for Pavel Fuks, a Ukrainian oligarch and 'asset of the Russian intelligence services.' (That charge was <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/putin-russia-ukraine-invasion-nazi-operation-1325817/" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">previously reported</a> by Rolling Stone.) The whistleblower also looked into claims that Giuliani had fraudulently raised money from investors to produce a never-completed film about Joe Biden in the months before the 2020 election," <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-whistleblower-senate-judiciary-russia-giuliani-leak-trump-allies-fuks-biden-2023-8" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Schwartz explains</a>. "The agent's reporting on Giuliani wasn't received well in the bureau's New York field office</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, his statement says. 'In the midst of my reporting involving Giuliani, which had previously been identified by my supervisor as 'high impact,' my management told me they received a call from a supervisor in [the New York field office], who they did not identify,' the statement says. 'This supervisor had taken issue with my reporting.'"</span></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 2 23</font></div><div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In January, former FBI agent Charles McGonigal was <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/former-fbi-official-charles-mcgonigal-arrested-ties-russian/story?id=96609658" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">arrested on federal charges</a> that included money laundering and violating U.S. sanctions against Russia. The charges pertained to his connection to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Now, <a href="https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1628444208821329928" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse</a>, 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.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/fbi-official-russian-ties-stealing/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Retired chief FBI official involved in Trump-Russia probe arrested for ties to Russia, stealing $225K</a></strong></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">In a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23687189-sen-whitehouse-seeks-an-independent-briefing-on-charles-mcgonigal-feb-22-2023" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">letter to Garland</a>, 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.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In his letter to Garland, Whitehouse CC’d Michael E. Horowitz, inspector general of the U.S. Department of Justice.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">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 <b>damage then-candidate Hillary Clinton and help then-candidate Donald Trump."</b></span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"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."</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>READ MORE: </strong><a href="https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/charles-mcgonigal-sabotage-2016-election/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><strong>Did Charles McGonigal sabotage the 2016 election?</strong></a></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">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."</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">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.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>READ MORE: </strong><a href="https://www.alternet.org/putin-ukraine-2658988377/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"><strong>Russian court orders seizure of billionaire oligarch’s luxury hotel following criticism of Ukraine invasion</strong></a></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">i beat new an paywall</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><b>did Charles McGonigal sabotage the 2016 election?</b></div><div>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. </div><div>
</div><div>Lindsay Beyerstein February 07, 2023</div><div><b>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</b>.</div><div>
</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Dick Durban raised urgent questions in his open letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. </b>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.</div><div>
</div><div>READ MORE: 'Corrupt, fixable and usable': Why Trump’s 'decades-old playbook' is finally losing its appeal</div><div>
</div><div>Durban is asking the questions that are on everyone’s mind:</div><div>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.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Deripaska’s history with the FBI is long and bizarre. The FBI has investigated Deripaska for links to Russian organized crime.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Deripaska reportedly spent $25 million of his own money on the mission. </b>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.</div><div>They didn’t.</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And Levinson didn’t get to come home.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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</span>.</div><div>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.</div><div><b>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.</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">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.</span></div><div>Let’s hope that answers are forthcoming.</div><div>
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/michael-flynn/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/michael-flynn/</a></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/dhs-report-manipulated-trump-ally/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/dhs-report-manipulated-trump-ally/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">collusion rept buried? says IG</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">not sure why collusion in title</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/proof-congressional-republicans-subvert-election/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/proof-congressional-republicans-subvert-election/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">recording made by a disgruntled election conspiracist is the strongest evidence yet that operatives in Donald Trump’s orbit summoned supporters to Washington on January 6 for the express purpose of coercing lawmakers into overturning the 2020 election.</span></b></font></div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">News broke late Tuesday afternoon, whereupon this <a href="https://nyti.ms/3jBVarO" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">bombshell</a> of a story was promptly buried under an avalanche of other news.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The main characters aren’t household names, but this story is every bit as important as the earlier revelation that Donald Trump, Jr, was pushing a detailed <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/08/politics/donald-trump-jr-meadows-text/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">plan for a coup</a> to his father’s chief of staff before the election had even been decided. <b>And it’s even more important than the late-breaking news that Sen. Mike Lee talked up Trump lawyer John Eastman’s plan for <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/15/politics/read-mark-meadows-texts-mike-lee-chip-roy/index.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">a procedural coup</a> in late November.</b></font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The star of the secret recording is Jason Sullivan, one-time aide to dirty trickster and longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sullivan told the <b>Times</b> he was invited to speak by a group of anti-vaccine activists, who were planning a permitted event in the capital on J6. (By amazing coincidence, Stone was scheduled to speak at an <a href="https://twitter.com/CCDHate/status/1346894921467363332?s=20&t=3KrNB5xzrAznUD_IoTbpBw" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">anti-vax event</a> on the afternoon of J6, an engagement he missed, for reasons that are surely of great interest to the J6 committee.)</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The call was made a week before the insurrection.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Sullivan repeatedly urged the other callers to intimidate the lawmakers who were meeting to certify the election. He told them they needed to make them feel like the people were “breathing down their neck.”</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“If we make the people inside that building sweat and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” Sullivan said.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“We have to put that pressure there.”</b></font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This recording was made by a woman named Staci Burk, a former school board official turned election conspiracist. Burk filed an anonymous affidavit supporting one of Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s many election conspiracy theories. Whereupon heavily armed paramilitary operatives calling themselves the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">1st Amendment Praetorian (1AP)</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="https://arizonaagenda.substack.com/p/she-spread-election-conspiracies?s=r" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">moved into her home</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> for several weeks, ostensibly to guard her. Burk told the </span><em style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Times</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> a 1AP member joined the call, and she made the recording because the armed men were making her feel unsafe. Members of 1AP were in the capital during the insurrection and members of the group have been subpoenaed by the J6 committee.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This recording partially corroborates previous claims by Ali Alexander, another one of Roger Stone’s associates. He said he schemed with members of the Congress to gather a crowd to pressure lawmakers into overturning the election during the certification ceremony.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a video made before the insurrection, Ali Alexander claimed that he and US Reps. Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar “schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The video circulated on social media but was later deleted. The plan was to “change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside,” Ali Alexander said.</b></font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">The Sullivan call proves there was an inside-outside game on J6.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The inside game was the procedural coup devised by John Eastman that was unfolding inside the Capitol on J6 as GOP legislators raised spurious claims of election fraud to overturn a free and fair election.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The outside game was the mob deliberately assembled in order to pressure legislators to go along with Trump’s illegal scheme.</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/russia-intelligence-trump/">
</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/russia-intelligence-trump/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/russia-intelligence-trump/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DC rept</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Lost in the news on the day of Trump's Insurrection was a <a href="https://fas.org/irp/eprint/politicization.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">devastating new watchdog report</a> to Congress on the politicizing and distorting of intelligence during Donald Trump's time in office.</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The analytic ombudsman, career intelligence community veteran Barry A. Zulauf, determined that under Trump national intelligence reports had become highly politicized. Important findings were suppressed to appease Trump's refusal to acknowledge Russian interference in American elections.</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Zulauf's unclassified report paints a frightening picture of just how much the Trump administration skewed intelligence to suppress knowledge of interference by Russia in our 2020 elections.</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">From March 2020, in the critical months leading up to the elections, Zulauf "identified a long story arc of—at the very least—perceived politicization of intelligence."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zulauf works in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), a Cabinet-level position created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to oversee all U.S. intelligence operations. Zulauf's job within the ODNI was created by Congress to assist analysts throughout the intelligence community with complaints and concerns about politicization, biased reporting or lack of objectivity in intelligence analysis.</font></p><h4 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is the first of a two-part series. Coming in Part 2: The intelligence community under Trump was not alone in diverting focus from Russian interference.</font></h4><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Zulauf determined that Trump's ODNI took "willful actions that… had the effect of politicizing intelligence, hindering objective analysis or injecting bias into the intelligence process."</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While Zulauf tried to avoid specifically naming individuals responsible for much of the political heavy-handed rewriting, he repeatedly calls out actions taken by two recent Trump appointees, neither of whom had any chops as intelligence experts.</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One is former an acting director, Richard Grenell. He had been a Fox News commentator and Trump-appointed ambassador to Germany, and took over the ODNI in February 2020 then relinquished the post the following May.</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The second was the Texas congressman Trump appointed to replace Grenell, John Ratcliffe, best known as a fervent defender of the ex-president in his first impeachment.</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In one particularly egregious example, Zulauf wrote, Ratcliffe insisted on highlighting Chinese election interference while downplaying Russian efforts.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Ratcliffe just disagreed with the established analytic line on China, insisting 'we are missing' China's influence in the US and that Chinese actions ARE intended to affect the election," Zulauf wrote. "Ultimately the DNI insisted on putting material on China in…. As a result, the final published [assessment], analysts felt, was an outrageous misrepresentation of their analysis."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The intelligence community has procedures to make sure assessments are based on sound judgment by seasoned analysts, not rogue points of view especially when they are not supported by facts.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate Intelligence Committee requested the ombudsman review possible politicization of intelligence. Interestingly, Zulauf notes, he had his own review under way when the Senate Intelligence Committee request arrived. The ombudsman started his own investigation after he was approached by ombudsmen at three other agencies within the intelligence community. They acted because intelligence agency professionals and managers perceived problems and were getting internal complaints about the politicization of intelligence.</font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Helsinki Betrayal</font></h3><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The findings come 29 months after Trump declared in Helsinki, standing next to Vladimir Putin, that he trusted the Russian leader, but not the American intelligence services.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>By putting his trust in Putin, a former KGB colonel</b>, saying that he took him at his word when he denied interfering in the 2016 presidential election, Trump reiterated his denunciations of American intelligence services.</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-briefings-232479" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">refused</a> on most days to sit for his intelligence briefing, a closely guarded summary of worldwide threats to America and its allies. The report is prepared by experienced analysts based on reports from 17 American intelligence agencies, which feed material to Central Intelligence Agency for consideration.</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Presidential Daily Brief is tailored to each sitting president's style. Trump's brief was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/us/politics/presidents-daily-brief-trump.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">reduced</a> to <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/02/dumbed-down-security-briefings-still-too-difficult-for-trump.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">simplistic points</a>, often illustrated with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/breaking-with-tradition-trump-skips-presidents-written-intelligence-report-for-oral-briefings/2018/02/09/b7ba569e-0c52-11e8-95a5-c396801049ef_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">graphics</a>. Russian actions against the United States were often left out or described obliquely to avoid provoking <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/responding-to-news-of-russian-interference-trump-sends-chilling-message-to-us-intelligence/2020/02/22/1c63faec-5502-11ea-929a-64efa7482a77_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Trump.</a></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump would have found even simplified daily briefings difficult to grasp given his ignorance about geopolitical affairs and history. For example, he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/19/finns-aghast-that-trump-could-think-their-country-is-part-of-russia" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">once asked</a> aides if Finland was part of Russia. He met with the Baltic presidents and <a href="https://www.baltictimes.com/trump_confused_baltics_with_balkans_at_a_meeting_with_baltic_presidents_in_april-newspaper/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">confused</a> their countries with the Balkans.</font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mueller's Warning</font></h3><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">While Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III was barred from investigating Trump's conduct as a counterintelligence matter, his office did look into Russian interference in the 2016 election.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On July 24, 2019, Mueller told the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees that Russia would continue interfering in our elections. "It was not a single attempt, [Russia's] doing it as we sit here," he testified. "And they expect to do it during the next campaign."</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Yet eight months later, on March 10, 2020, in presenting the views of the intelligence community, Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), briefing members of Congress on election interference, <b>said the opposite</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>.</b> He <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/richard-grenell-trump-intelligence-election-security/2020/03/10/6504cc36-62d6-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">told lawmakers</a> in a closed-door session for which summaries were released that there was no evidence that Russia had taken steps to help any candidate in the 2020 elections.</span></font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Analysts refer to talking points in these March statements, as well as subsequent statements in July, August and October of last year, as examples of "gross misrepresentation" of established intelligence community views.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ombudsman's report attributes the rationale for these distortions and lies to the opposition they faced "getting their views on election interference across…in a confrontational environment."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it does not assert that Trump directly ordered them. Several House managers noted during impeachment and Trump's better biographers have long noted, Trump gives direction the way mob bosses do, not by direct order but by relying on people to interpret a wink and a nod or even just tone of voice.</font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Misleading Congress</font></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The March assessment delivered to a House and Senate all-members meeting was delivered by Evanina. Zulauf called this "the most egregious example" he uncovered of distorted intelligence.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When interviewed by the ombudsman, Evanina said he received his talking points from ODNI and National Intelligence Council (NIC) officials. He said that since they were directly from the ODNI and NIC he assumed the talking points represented the coordinated views of the intelligence community.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zulauf could not find anyone at ODNI who wrote or contributed to the talking points Evanina used. The various individuals laid the distortions off on various excuses and reasons. Zulauf did not accuse them directly of lying and denying.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, Zulauf said "red flags" were ignored. He took note of "widespread reluctance among intelligence professionals to deliver" assessments. "This reluctance on the part of seasoned IC [intelligence community] officers should have been a red flag but did not stop the statement from being issued."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite leadership's efforts to downplay any threat of Russian interference, the report was unequivocal on what U.S. intelligence analysts who specialized in Russia were seeing: "Russia analysts assessed that there was clear and credible evidence of Russian election influence activities."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Analysts expressed frustration that political appointees were suppressing the actual intelligence because it was not well received at the Trump White House. The analysts told the ombudsman that their intelligence was being suppressed and politicized as the ODNI leaders cherry-picked intelligence supporting a narrative that Trump wanted rather than presenting facts.</font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mulvaney's Warning</font></h3><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The information contained in the report further supports reporting in April 2019 by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/us/politics/russia-2020-election-trump.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The New York Times</a> about what Mick Mulvaney, then-White House chief of staff, told Kirstjen Nielsen during her stint as head of the Department of Homeland Security. Mulvaney warned Nielsen not to speak with Trump about Russian attempts to interfere in future U.S. elections.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That revelation by journalists, now buttressed by Zulauf's report, illustrates how Trump's disregard for and suppression of intelligence assessments about Russian interference consistently made its way from the White House to his cabinet and the highest levels of the intelligence community where it had a clear impact of how intelligence was written up and disseminated.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zulauf wrote that in May 2020, the acting director of National Intelligence, Grenell, delayed the release of a memo for "politically motivated editing."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The changes "buried the lead," Zulauf wrote, regarding known election security threats. Analysts found intelligence community leadership consistently "watered down conclusions" and were "boosting the threat from China."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Overstating the threat from China also minimized, and distracted from, actual threats from Russia. Instead of speaking on Russia, leaders regularly pivoted instead to China.</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In an interview on Oct. 6, 2020, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who heads the House Intelligence Committee, addressed similar statements by then Attorney General William P. Barr. Schiff is one of the "Gang of Eight," the bipartisan leaders in Congress who are regularly copied into the highest levels of intelligence. The attorney general had just asserted that China posed the greatest threat to U.S. elections based on intelligence he had seen.</font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barr Called a Liar</font></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"That's just a plain false statement by the attorney general, a flat-out false statement," Schiff said. "You can tell that Bill Barr is just flat-out lying to the American people, and it's tragic but it's as simple as that."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The United States spends hundreds of millions of dollars each day to monitor activities around the world, including efforts by China, Iran, Russia and other countries to probe government and business computer networks. The Russians are known to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/03/16/594371939/u-s-accuses-russia-of-cyberattacks-on-energy-infrastructure" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">have the ability to open and close floodgates</a> on American hydroelectric dams. That prompted us to quietly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/us/politics/trump-cyber-russia-grid.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">take actions</a> against the Russian electric grids to make clear that any disruption of the dams would come with consequences.</font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Decades-Long Seduction</font></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For decades,, the Russians courted Trump, one of many prominent people around the globe sought by intelligence services as potential assets. A former KGB spy who had a cover working in Washington for the Russian government-controlled news agency TASS, recently told <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Guardian</a> that Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset during 40 years.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Trump became president, the Kremlin hit the biggest intelligence jackpot imaginable. The first known payoff came in May 2017, just weeks after Trump took his oath to defend America against foreign enemies.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump held an unannounced meeting in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/05/10/the-strange-oval-office-meeting-between-trump-lavrov-and-kislyak/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Oval Office with the Russian foreign minister</a> and the Russian ambassador. In that meeting Trump revealed the most <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">sensitive intelligence material</a>, known as sources and methods.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Disclosing sources and methods would naturally discourage friendly governments from sharing many of their own intelligence findings since their spies and ways of uncovering information could be compromised, even ruined, with the potential that the spies would be assassinated by the Russian government.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We know this because the Russians announced what Trump had done. The same government-controlled TASS news agency released photos of a smiling Trump with the two grinning Russian officials taken by a Russian photographer who was let into the Oval.</font></p><p style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Russian officials, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, are, like Putin, trained spies.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Joe Biden's announcement on <a href="https://twitter.com/CBSEveningNews/status/1357837030282133506?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Feb.</a> 5 that he will not grant Trump the courtesy of intelligence briefings was summarized by Schiff as an important move to protect America's national security.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1358098922376474626" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Schiff tweeted</a>: "Donald Trump politicized and abused intelligence while he was in office. Donald Trump cannot be trusted with America's secrets. Not then, and certainly not now. Americans can sleep better at night knowing he will not receive classified briefings as an ex-president."</font></p><div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="from-your-siteheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</font></div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; width: 589.446px; list-style: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><li class="from-your-siteitem"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/the-intelligence-community-erupts-as-trump-purges-everyone-opposed-to-russian-election-interference/" class="from-your-sitelink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-line: none; 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</font></div><div><a href="https://www.cre8noh8.org/us-government/team-trump/russiagate/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.cre8noh8.org/us-government/team-trump/russiagate/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Transnational Mob & Regressive Authoritarianism vs. Liberal Democracy & Personal Freedom</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Timeline</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Investigated & Connected</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conspiracy – The Meetings</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Tower Moscow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Investigators</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Mueller Report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Christopher Steele Dossier</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russiagate Financial Crimes Investigations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Emoluments</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Cover-up and Case for Obstruction of Justice</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Defense the Trump Way: Diversion and Counter-attacks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Impeachment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Oligarchs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Mercers–Libertarian Big Data Big Money Medallion Fund & Rennaissance Tech, Funded Tea Party, Citizens United, Milo Yiannapoulos at Breitbart, Glittering Steel, Cambridge Analytica with Leninist Steve Bannon, Secure America Now Islamophobic Dark $ Ads, White Supremacy, Making America Great, America First, Make America Number 1 (Roughly $30m in 2016), John Bolton, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, pollster Kellyanne Conway from Keep The Promise</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Kochs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian Agenda</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hybrid Warfare & Active Measures</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brexit-testing ground for US Election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ukraine – Paul Manafort combined manipulative talents with Russia after the 2004 Orange Revolution protesting a rigged election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Canadian Far-Right–Trumpism spreading North</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2016 Social Media Campaign</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Facebook</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cambridge Analytica</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bernie Sanders</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jill Stein</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2020 Trump Campaign</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right Wing Rumors</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Antifa</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fake News and Propaganda</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Project Veritas-generates fake news, entraps legit journalists to discredit, fake demonstrations, etc.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RT-Russia Today & Sputnik Russian state media, Forced to file a FARA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Breitbart–Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos both fired from the Mercer-backed site</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">r_The_Donald-Reddit trolls & memes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Internet Research Agency</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Big Data</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yandex-Charged with Treason in Ukraine for stealing user data and giving to Russian Intelligence</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kaspersky Labs- Russian antivirus company plants malware/spyware</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Psy-Group -Joel Zamel‘s Israeli Intelligence Psyops</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">George Nader Lebanese Putin liaison paid Zamel $2m after election, set August 3, 2016 meeting and several between Trump Campaign, UAE, and Saudi Arabia Cooperating Witness; Pedophile</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Newt Gingrich–Zamel told the former House Speaker, to offer PSY Group services to Jared Kushner</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cambridge Analytica-British– Trump Campaign & Brexit</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SCL Elections/Emerdata-parent co. of Cambridge Analytica Global campaigns and black ops using</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Black Cube- Israeli private security/intelligence </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">i360-Koch Brothers’ American data</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pioneer Solutions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Big Data Dolphins</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Data Trust</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hacking</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wikileaks–Julian Assange–the GRU also released under DCLeaks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DNC Hack 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RNC Hack</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NRA National Rifle Association</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Maria Butina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Provocateurs & Meme Warriors: The Alt-Right </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Charlottesville “Unite The Right” August 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Voting Machine Issues </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Voter Suppression</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right Wing Media</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Magnitsky Act Sanctions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prevezon Holdings</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sanctions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian Energy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gazprom</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rosneft</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oleg Deripaska-RusAl, dropped by Trump to build plant in Kentucky</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Money Laundering & Financial Crimes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Deutsche Bank </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Panama Papers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Paradise Papers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Danske Bank</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alfa Bank</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Mercenaries</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Russians</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ed Lozansky–Russia House founder first infiltrated the Republican Party</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian Orthodox Church–Initial outreach via the Religious Right who lobbied for Soviet Jews’ and Christians’ asylum</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian Mob–Criminal gangs came with the religious, established in</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brighton Beach-Brooklyn under Semion Mogilevich whose lieutenant was father of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Felix Sater, Michael Cohen’s fiancé introduced them at Cohen’s uncle’s mob hangout & frequented the Brooklyn</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chabad social center, Sater busted for Pump & Dump by coordinating the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Five Families of NY with the Russian mob, became an FBI informant and joined the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Organization, financing</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bayrock in partnership with</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tevfik Arif, Bayrock Founder</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani – KazBay BV Netherlands 2007- Bayrock/Arif + Khrapunov’s Helvetic Capital S.A (Swiss)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sapir Organization-Trump SoHo investor</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FL Group-Iceland BV (Bank) investment into Trump SoHo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alexander Mashkevich–Trump SoHo investor</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sam Kislin-Tamir Sapir’s business partner in electronics retail, Fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Julius Schwarz Bayrock’s executive vice president May 2007 letter obtained by FORBES. Khrapunov and Bayrock Group created KazBay B.V. in the Netherlands in 2007, with the legal advice of Bracewell & Giuliani.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lev Leviev</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moscow in Miami, Sunny Isles, FL-Between Drugs and Cuban Casinos, the Russian mob moved in, and Upscale</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Palm Beach, FL-birthplace of electronic voting machine hacks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alexander Torshin moved in his military-trained biker muscle</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Night Wolves-Military Biker Gang in FL</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russiagate Deathwatch</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In parallel timeframe:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ed Lozansky–Russia House founder, and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dmitri Simes’ Council for National Interest, first infiltrated the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican Party and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Religious Right, with Initial outreach via Christians lobbying for Soviet Jews’ asylum.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rev. Moon “Moonies”, conspiracy cult normalized under Reagan & establishing RW Propaganda in the US</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian-Republicans</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lobbyists</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Polling–Manafort shared data with Deripaska, and Michael Cohen paid Liberty University‘s IT DIr. to falsify Drudge Report polls</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donors</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sexual Abuse & Kompromat</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">United In Purpose</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Council for National Policy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Team Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Advisers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Cabinet </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Campaign 2016 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Campaign 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Donors</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Family</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Inauguration</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Lawyers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Lawsuits </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jeffrey Epstein</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Sexual Abuse</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Models</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Mafia Ties</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Organization</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Properties</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Tenants</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Transition Team</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Must-Read: Disseminated on January 6, 2017, “Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution“</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you have never watched Rep. Adam Schiff‘s opening statement on March, 20, 2017, it is a good place to start.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE CHRISTOPHER STEELE/Orbis DOSSIER published on Buzzfeed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The December 13, 2016 Steele update and statement filed April 14, 2017 that Orbis warned Sen. McCain immediately after the election of its findings</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Moore launches “?TrumpiLeaks” website for whistleblowers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CLICK ON NAMES FOR LINKS TO PAGES ON THIS WEBSITE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Putin’s Real Long Game Politico</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The world order we know is already over, and Russia is moving fast to grab the advantage. Can Trump figure out the new war in time to win it? By MOLLY K. MCKEW POLITICO January 01, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some call it a Global War on Liberal Democracies. Rich authoritarians who can’t get enough, at peoples’ expense. It sure seems like they’re all friends, doing business and laundering each other’s money. They use established religion to gain more power, and in the case of Russian Chabad, to conduct mob activities via its established network.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZED CRIME NETWORK are the ones who deal in drug, sex and human trafficking, arms dealing,and more. Semion Mogilevich is the FBI’s most wanted man, hunted by Robert Mueller, James Comey, Peter Strzok and Bruce Ohr for decades. The Trump Organization has been laundering the Russian mafia’s money since the 80s, and the NY mafia before that. He did a lot of business with the Italian mafia as well. His dad went from whorehouse owner to slum lord. Manafort’s dad was into demolition with mafia ties, and Kellyanne Conway’s grandpa was a hitman for the NJ mob. Ironically, Giuliani was a mob buster when he took down many of New York’s “Five Families” and became Mayor in 1989. He prosecuted “the Mafia’s international heroin and cocaine ring in the “Pizza Connection” case” before signing off on a Mogilevich associate, Felix Sater‘s deal with Trump, convicted criminal blood diamond smuggler Lev Leviev and Alex Sapir in Bayrock.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SANCTIONS for the Occupation of Crimea and the Global Magnitsky Act Russia needs sanctions dropped in order to complete the largest business deal ever, between Rosneft and ExxonMobil, referenced in the Steele Dossier with a pending 19.5% stake for Team Trump. Exxon’s lifelong CEO/employee Rex Tillerson, former US Secretary of State, broke tradition by meeting with Turkey’s Erdogan without an interpreter.The House passed the Sanctions bill, but Trump has not signed it and the office which enforces sanctions has been closed. Trump did sanction Nicaragua and Turkish men for detaining Christian minister Andrew Brunson, followed by Khashoggi’s death on their soil and the minister’s release, but not before bringing up the release of Gulen, whom Michael Flynn was charge with taking $500,000 for taking in a kidnapping coup. Turkey wants Fethullah Gulen. Russia wants Bill Browder who created The Magnitsky Act sanctions discussed during the June 9, 2016, meeting and pivotal to this day because they threaten the personal wealth of Putin, the Oligarchs, and others. Saudi Arabia brutally murdered Jamal Khashoggi on October 2, 2018. Putin tried to take control of INTERPOL, who has arrested Browder on numerous occasions at Putin’s request.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oleg Deripaska‘s company</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ENERGY Global Pipelines have global impact. The East Med Pipeline has been a Papadopoulos project for years. The approvals, deals and support following pipeline deals gets deeply political. European Energy Nuclear Power in MENA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The US “Why”, Mercer and the Kochs want a Convention of States to re-invent the Constitution.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. Constitution Threatened as Article V Convention Movement Nears Success</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Common Cause March 21, 2018 BY JAY RIESTENBERG</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HOW </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FSB (Former KGB) and RISS, the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies think tank devised a plan to weaken our democracy and manipulate a right-wing government into power. Steve Bannon‘s “The Movement”, political consulting, is attempting to spread right-wing authoritarianism globally. He was Director of Cambridge Analytica, closed May 1, 2018, whose parent company, SCL (Social Limited), is involved with the Trump 2020 campaign and others internationally. The RNC will absorb the Trump 2020 Campaign. Brexit was its trial before the Trump Campaign, Ukraine before that. Robert Mercer invested in Cambridge Analytica, the Trump and Cruz campaigns, and more. Russia has done this with the help of Paul Manafort in Ukraine and Turkey; Brexit and separatist movements, and attempted to throw the French election towards LePen with Alt-Right trolls and a hacked and altered email dump. Montenegro and unknown numbers of elections have been influenced in the same manner.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conspiracy: The secret meetings and identifying the players who arranged, participated, and had knowledge of the Russian plan to influence the US election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Money Trail: Money laundering of Russian oligarchs through the Trump Organization and associates including Paul Manafort, Felix Sater of Bayrock. Russian campaign financing of key Republicans made possible by Citizens United, and also via the NRA (National Rifle Association). The most powerful Russian mobster is Semion Mogilevich. His lieutenant was Felix Sater’s father, who established the Russian mob in Brighton Beach. Felix Sater was busted for a pump and dump scheme during an historic unification of the Five Families of NYC and the Russian mob. Trump’s mentor was NY mafia consigliere Roy Cohn, and Trump Tower was built using mob concrete with the mob labor union looking the other way while Trump hired Polish immigrants to do the demolition prep. Many Italian Mafia and Russian criminals have been Trump property owners and tenants. Trump has a long history of business ties to people from former Soviet states. Sater went to Russia and became an FBI informant. When he returned to the US, Felix Sater formed Bayrock with the FL Group. One of his primary funding partners has been Bayrock, which built Trump Soho and many other Trump-branded properties, Bayrock is under investigation in the Netherlands for money laundering and tax evasion. Deutsche Bank: Several members of the Trump and Kushner families hold accounts at DB. Mueller has requested information. The Bank of Cyprus is connected to many questionable transactions, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross led it through the financial crisis. FINCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) investigation for money laundering. In March, 2015, Trump Taj Mahal settled for a civil money penalty of $10,000,000 for having “willfully violated the program, reporting, and recordkeeping requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act and its implementing regulations”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Data Trail: The DNC Hack, RNC Hack, Hacking of Voter roll information, United in Purpose and Pioneer Solutions; Facebook;Trump subdomains; Trump, Kushner and Ivanka‘s private email servers; GOP MegaDonors Robert and Rebekah Mercer-owned and Bannon-directed Cambridge Analytica/SCL, and Parscale’s “Project Alamo”, which optimized the advertising and memes under Jared Kushner. Officially no one has said that Russia changed actual votes (as pro-Trump media has falsely stated). The existence of malware and other direct Russian activity in our voting system and machines is also being investigated. Although Trump was calling elections “rigged” for years, he closed the agency responsible for protection elections and the voting process. Instead, Trump nominated Kris Kobach (CrossCheck) to lead an organization requesting an illegal amount of voter data from States, including voting history. Paul Manafort delivered Polling Data to Russia. Mueller said he didn’t believe the interpretation of data involving Betsy DeVos‘s Spectrum Health and Russian Alfa Bank through a Trump server were true, and the public has yet to fully understand the data.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Propaganda, Disinformation and Active Measures-Hybrid Warfare, The Russians have broken it down and made it a science. The goal is to cause division, get favorable candidates elected, and dominate from within. Social and Right Wing Media: Hacking and release of emails and information through Wikileaks and DC Leaks dumps of DNC / Clinton hacked emails. Having returned from Russia himself, now-guilty cooperating witness Michael Flynn spread Pizzagate conspiracies from Podesta emails to weaken Clinton. Alt-Right Meme Warriors on Reddit and Gab funded by American tech billionaire Peter Thiel (who has since left “liberal silicon valley”) with now-fired from Breitbart and disgraced hate speech provacateur Milo Yiannopoulos as the conduit; Russian Bots and Trolls employed by the Internet Research Agency posing as American Trump supporters and protestors; and the US social (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc) & traditional media and Trump Campaign which furthered Russian-generated propaganda. The Hamilton 68 dashboard tracks Russian bots real-time. Russians have invested in these companies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a move of fraudulent informational self-dealing, these Fake News stories sometimes use Breitbart backer’s Robert and Rebekah Mercer & Peter “Clinton Cash” Schweizer’s unaccounted for “Governmental Accountability Institute“ as source “factual” material to back its fake news claims.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Cover Up, Diversion, Obstruction of Justice and Impeachment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Emoluments violations: New and Ongoing enrichment of the Administration since the Inauguration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other Trump lawsuits, including Michael Cohen‘s payoff to a Playmate and Porn Star for silence before the election (and Trump’s friend David Pecker from American Media who bought story rights for the purposes of silencing it).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump suggested a joint US-Russia cyber security task force at the G20 Summit which would entail sharing our system with them so they could hack us even more. At the end of January 2018, the heads of the FSB and RISS had a meeting with CIA Dir. Pompeo and DNI Dan Coats, despite one of them being on the sanctioned list and prohibited from entering the US.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Tower Moscow. Trump’s business sought deal on a Trump Tower in Moscow while he ran for president Trump’s business sought deal on a Moscow Trump Tower during campaign While campaigning during the 2016 election, President Trump’s company was pursuing a plan to develop a massive Trump Tower in Moscow, according to several people familiar with the proposal. The Washington Post August 27, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New York Daily News’ “A Very Simple Guide To Everyone In The Trump-Russia Investigation”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">July 10, 2017: White House Press Briefing Started Clinton Russian Hacking Rumors, Again “Don Jr. took a very short meeting from which there was absolutely no follow-up. Frankly, I think something that may make sense is looking at the Democrat National Committee coordinated opposition research directly with the Ukrainian Embassy. This is not an accusation, that’s an on-the-record action that they took. So if you’re looking for an example of a campaign coordinating with a foreign country or a foreign source, look no further than the DNC who actually coordinated opposition research with the Ukrainian Embassy. And no one in this room to my knowledge really had a big problem with that. The only thing I see inappropriate about the meeting was the people that leaked the information on the meeting after it was voluntarily disclosed. “</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">July 12, 2017 Cyber Berkut started publishing emails continued rumor that was played on Fox News for the next 5 days. It is believed to be an alter ego of Fancy Bear, pro-Russian hacker group It’s Not Over..Rachel Maddow Show In Ukraine, a Malware Expert Who Could Blow the Whistle on Russian Hacking NY Times</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rachel Maddow Show GOP Operative Peter Smith created scandals for Bill Clinton similarly to how Flynn has for Hillary. He tried to obtain the 33,000 Clinton emails on behalf of Flynn.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Election Hackers Altered Voter Rolls, Stole Private Data, Officials Say</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In one case, investigators found there had been a manipulation of voter data in a county database but the alterations were discovered and rectified, two sources familiar with the matter tell TIME. Investigators have not identified whether the hackers in that case were Russian agents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fact that private data was stolen from states is separately providing investigators a previously unreported line of inquiry in the probes into Russian attempts to influence the election. In Illinois, more than 90% of the nearly 90,000 records stolen by Russian state actors contained drivers license numbers, and a quarter contained the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, according to Ken Menzel, the General Counsel of the State Board of Elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Congressional investigators are probing whether any of this stolen private information made its way to the Trump campaign, two sources familiar with the investigations tell TIME. “If any campaign, Trump or otherwise, used inappropriate data the questions are, How did they get it? From whom? And with what level of knowledge?” the former top Democratic staffer on the House Intelligence Committee, Michael Bahar, tells TIME. “That is a crux of the investigation.” Time June 22, 2017 Massimo Calabresi</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Who is investigating?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Intelligence Committees, and the Department of Defense are investigating the Russian interference in the 2016 Election. “Keith Olbermann – nonetheless confirmed last night, Tuesday, May 9th, that subpoenas were issued from the Eastern District of Virginia against associates of General Flynn.” Patribotics</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The US Treasury Department Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) which tracks money laundering worldwide and is sharing information with the investigation. The FinCEN is under Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">US Justice Preet Bharara was fired in January, after being personally assured by Trump in November after the election that he would not. Bharara was investigating Trump’s money laundering connections from Russians through his real estate. His jurisdiction was the headquarters of Trump and therefore the court for multiple lawsuits and ALSO presided over the Money Laundering Division in the Southern District of New York. Two days before going to trial, Jeff Sessions dropped the case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Inspector General at the Defense Department was the first to officially investigated Michael Flynn, the announcement of which was followed by Jeff Sessions recusing himself from that investigation. The Inspector General at Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department started by investigating Clinton’s emails but has not stated if Sessions has recused himself from the Paul Manafort investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as well as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. also have been examining real-estate transactions by Mr. [Paul] Manafort, who has spent and borrowed tens of millions of dollars in connection with property across the U.S. over the past decade” WSJ </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“A member of the Federal Election Commission is calling on the agency to investigate whether Russian agents paid for Facebook ads to spread damaging stories about Hillary Clinton ahead of last fall’s presidential election. “I think there is potential there for finding a violation, but I don’t want to suggest that I have prejudged anything that could potentially come before me,” said FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democratic appointee to the commission. Her assertion comes as agency staff is already moving to investigate a related complaint filed in December by a pair of watchdog groups against President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.” Politico There are more. 17 US Intelligence agencies and the Netherlands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, described on Tuesday a nerve-fraying few months last year as American authorities realized that the presidential election was under attack and feared that Donald J. Trump’s campaign might be aiding that fight. Mr. Brennan, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, said he was concerned by a series of suspicious contacts between Russian government officials and Mr. Trump’s associates. The C.I.A. learned about those meetings just as it was beginning to grapple with Russian hackers and propagandists trying to manipulate the presidential race.” May 23, 2017 NY Times</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">June 2, 2017 Trump Reviewing Whether to Block Comey Testimony to Senate “Independent analysts have said they don’t believe Comey, now a private citizen, can be stopped if he is intent on telling his story.” Bloomberg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">May 26, 2017: NSA CHIEF Admiral Mike Rogers Admits Donald Trump Colluded with Russian “According to multiple reports, the president approached top intelligence bosses to coax them into joining Trump’s personal war with Comey. In particular, Trump is reported to have asked Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence (DNI), and Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, to go public in denying that Team Trump had any ties to Russia during the 2016 election campaign. Admiral Rogers anecdotally flatly denied Trump’s request, which—if true—was inappropriate, unethical and dubiously legal, while Coats, a Trump appointee who’s only been in the DNI job since mid-March, likewise refused to back the president against the FBI. This was a stunning setback for Trump, who seems to view our nation’s top security officials as his personal employees who ought to follow his presidential whim rather than the law and the Constitution, which all of them take an oath to defend.” Observer Exclusive</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following are different resources of compiled information written as evidence has been revealed: Salon, 4/9/17</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PutinTrump.org: Mother Jones’ even deeper dive</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE CHRISTOPHER STEELE DOSSIER The current investigation became widely known upon release of the 35-page memo which was authored by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele of Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd. “was hired between June and November last year by Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research consultancy to look into Trump’s links with Russia.” Read the original “Golden Showers” intelligence report here courtesy Buzzfeed, released a month later. A second Steele memo was drafted December 13, 2016, including intelligence which had continued to come in unsolicited after the November election. Court docs embedded in The Guardian Buzzfeed</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Christopher Steele/Orbis memos reference Source A, Russian Foreign Ministry who had been feeding Trump intelligence on opponents including Clinton for several years, confirmed by Source D. Source B, an active top-level Russian intelligence officer “who asserted that the TRUMP operation was both supported and directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Its aim was to sow discord and disunity both within the US itself, but more especially within the Transatlantic alliance which was viewed as inimical to Russia’s interests. ” In June 2016, Source B asserted there was enough “embarrassing material on the now Republican presidential candidate to be able to blackmail him if they so wished.” Source B confirmed a dossier of “kompromat” on Hillary Clinton but it was mainly recorded phone calls “and focused on things she had said which contradicted er current position on various issues.”.”Source C, a Senior Russian Financial Official said the TRUMP operation should be seen in terms of PUTIN’s desire to return to Nineteenth Century ‘Great Power’ politics anchored in countries’ interests rather than the ideals-based international order established after World War Two.” “Source D, a close associate of Trump who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow, and who reported, also in June 2016, that this Russian intelligence had been “very helpful.” Source E (most likely hotel staff) confirmed the Moscow Ritz-Carlton Presidential Suite “Golden Showers” prostitute party in 2013 and introduced Source F, a female hotel staffer who worked there at the time. “Source G, a senior Kremlin official, confided that the CLINTON dossier was controlled exclusively by chief Kremlin spokesman, Dmitriy PESKOV, who was responsible for compiling/handling it on the explicit instructions of PUTIN himself.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the main tactics used by the Kremlin to control politicians is through “Kompromat”: compromising material and dossiers kept on individuals under the control of Dmitriy Peskov and/or Department K of the FSB. Steele</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Putin controlled a think tank to sway the US Elections, and the knowledge thereof started the FBI Investigations called the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies or RISS [en.riss.ru/] “Neither of the Russian institute documents mentioned the release of hacked Democratic Party emails to interfere with the U.S. election, according to four of the officials. The officials said the hacking was a covert intelligence operation run separately out of the Kremlin. The overt propaganda and covert hacking efforts reinforced each other, according to the officials. Both Russia Today and Sputnik heavily promoted the release of the hacked Democratic Party emails, which often contained embarrassing details.” Reuters Exclusive</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Congressman Eric Swalwell (CA-15) has an excellent introduction to the initial 15 men involved in the scandal and the history of known Russian global cyber attacks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">capt</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">collusion1020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MAIN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">belated? premature? see whole bunch:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SEE COLLUSION2 2/19</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see active measures</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">html: owns the future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see IRA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">twit2 twitterbot</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">neglected/ see nodes eg torshin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see money launder, trump real estate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MUELLER WENT AFTER OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE, TOLD FBI DOING CTR-INTELL BUT NO ONE DID?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/former-fbi-agent-on-the-mueller-team-says-trump-was-badly-compromised-in-2016/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">peter strock</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/hhs-official-who-manipulated-cdc-reports-on-19-has-deep-russian-ties-report/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On September 11, Politico reported that Michael Caputo, assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, interfered in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s reports on COVID-19 in order to make them conform to President Donald Trump’s claims about the pandemic. And Caputo, journalist Mary Papenfuss reports in HuffPost, is drawing scrutiny for another reason as well: his ties to the Kremlin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Caputo, Papenfuss notes, lived in Russia for six years and served as an adviser to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin from 1995-1999 before Vladimir Putin became Russia’s president. The HHS assistant secretary was an adviser to a subsidiary of Gazprom, an energy company owned by the Russian government — and Papenfuss points out that Caputo “reportedly helped shore up Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reputation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Caputo’s Kremlin ties were so concerning that he became a target of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election,” Papenfuss explains. “He was questioned but was not charged with any offenses. He also testified before the House Intelligence Committee that he had no contact with Russians while serving on the Trump campaign.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Caputo, a long-time ally of veteran GOP operative Roger Stone, has promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that it was the Ukrainian government, not the Kremlin, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election — and that the interference was in support of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, not Trump.Papenfuss notes that Caputo “has spread baseless accusations concerning activities in Ukraine by Joe and Hunter Biden. A key source of that Ukrainian smear, Andrii Derkach, turned out to be a Russian spy attempting to interfere in the current U.S. election, the Treasury Department revealed last week.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, Trump denounced the impeachment as “phony” — and he was also highly critical of the Russia investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Mueller report says of Caputo, “In the spring of 2016, Trump campaign advisor Michael Caputo learned through a Florida-based Russian business partner that another Florida-based Russian, Henry Oknyansky — who also went by the name Henry Greenberg — claimed to have information pertaining to Hilary Clinton. Caputo notified Roger Stone and brokered communication between Stone and Oknyansky. Oknyansky and Stone set up a May 2016 in-person meeting.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/senate-panel-referred-trump-family-members-to-doj-over-suspicions-of-misleading-russia-testimony-report/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wapo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee last year notified the Department of Justice that members of President Donald Trump’s family and close circle “might have presented misleading testimony” to the panel during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Washington Post reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the Post, then-Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-VA) referred a list of individuals, including Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner to federal prosecutors after their accounts of a pre-election meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya “were contradicted by the president’s former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates” during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a separate section, the congressional panel said it had reason to believe Steve Bannon, Erik Prince and former campaign co-chair Sam Clovis “had lied to congressional investigators — a potential felony,” the Post reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the referrals and viewed a copy of the panel’s letter, the committee believes Bannon may have lied about his knowledge of a meeting Prince held in the Seychelles with a Russian official tied to the Kremlin. Per the Post, “Prince had told Mueller’s team that he briefed Bannon on the meeting, which occurred before Trump’s inauguration in early 2017; Bannon denied the conversation took place.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/newly-released-fbi-documents-reveal-extent-of-roger-stones-direct-communications-with-julian-assange-report/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">veteran GOP operative and long-time Donald Trump ally Roger Stone, who was sentenced to three years in federal prison in February for felonies that included witness tampering and lying to Congress, continues to vie for a presidential pardon. Meanwhile, FBI documents continue to offer insights on Stone’s past communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: according to FBI documents made public this week, Stone asserted in a 2017 direct message via Twitter that if prosecutors came for him, “I will bring down the entire house of cards.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that FBI documents show that Stone sent that message weeks after former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed to head the Russia investigation. According to AP reporters Eric Tucker, Colleen Long and Michael Balsamo, the FBI records “reveal the extent of communications between Stone and Assange, whose anti-secrecy website published Democratic e-mails hacked by Russians during the 2016 presidential election, and underscore efforts by Trump allies to gain insight about the release of information they expected would embarrass Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI records, according to AP, show that in a direct Twitter message sent in June 2017, Stone “reassured Assange that the issue was ‘still nonsense’ and said, ‘As a journalist, it doesn’t matter where you get information — only that it is accurate and authentic.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone, AP reports, mentioned a 1971 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for newspapers and magazines to publish the Pentagon Papers — documents about the Vietnam War that had been classified. The Trump ally, via Twitter, told Assange, “If the US government moves on you, I will bring down the entire house of cards. With the trumped-up sexual assault charges dropped, I don’t know of any crime you need to be pardoned for — best regards. R.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone, in that message, appeared to be referring to the Swedish government’s sexual assault case against Assange, which was dropped.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.npr.org/2018/09/21/648803459/russias-2016-twitter-campaign-was-strongly-pro-gun-with-echoes-of-the-nra</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">many lnx, also graphs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russia's influence campaign on Twitter pushed pro-gun and pro-National Rifle Association messages during the 2016 election and beyond — a rare example of consistency in a scheme that mostly sought to play up extremes on the left and right.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On every issue, from race to health care, women's rights to police brutality, gay marriage to global warming, accounts associated with the Internet Research Agencysought to amplify controversy by playing up conflict.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Except when it came to guns and the NRA.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That's according to a new analysis of millions of now-deleted Twitter posts connected to the group, done by NPR in collaboration with an outside data firm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last year, Twitter notified the House intelligence committee about thousands of accounts it linked to the Internet Research Agency; the social media company has deleted millions of tweets associated with those accounts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/mueller-subpoenas-director-of-controversial-data-firm-cambridge-analytica-in-russia-probe/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brittany Kaiser, a director of data company Cambridge Analytica, has been subpoenaed as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, the Guardian reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokesman for Kaiser confirmed she is fully cooperating with Mueller, according to the Guardian, and that she is working with separate “US congressional and legal investigations into the company’s activities.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kaiser is the second person from Cambridge Analytica who has been subpoenaed by Mueller. As the Guardian notes:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In August, Sam Patten, a US political consultant who had worked for Cambridge Analytica on campaigns in the US and abroad, struck a plea deal with Mueller after admitting he had failed to register as a foreign agent for a Ukrainian oligarch.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Patten worked with Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who Mueller on Friday recommended spend up to 24 years in prison for “serious, longstanding, and bold” financial crimes,” and with Russian oligarch Konstantin Kilimnik, a subject of Mueller’s probe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Kaiser, however, is the first person connected directly to both the Brexit and Trump campaigns known to have been questioned by Mueller,” the Guardian reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/why-a-shady-meeting-in-a-cigar-bar-could-provide-key-evidence-of-a-trump-russia-conspiracy/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/new-evidence-suggests-the-new-york-times-was-tricked-into-retracting-a-major-russia-probe-bombshell/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former deputy assistant attorney general Harry Litman told MSNBC on Monday that “the glue” tying together all the actors in the Russia probe is the finances of President Donald Trump and those of his convicted campaign manager Paul Manafort and his convicted National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The remark occurred during a larger discussion of Paul Manafort’s role in the conspiracy, including his “work on behalf of pro-Russian figures in Ukraine” and his subsequent lying about it to the special prosecutor after he got caught.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If you’re looking for the quid pro quo, you see the quid, you see the work by Russia, and the meddling in the election. What is the quo?” fellow guest Ken Vogel, who broke the story for the New York Times. “You have at least the potential of building a theory around the idea that the quo would be a peace deal that would favor Russia and potentially result in the lifting of U.S. sanctions against Russia which, of course, is the biggest driving foreign policy objective of the Russians.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Litman noted that prosecutor Andrew Weissman’s refusal to share specific details “even in a closed door hearing” showed that the special counsel was getting close to the “radioactive core” of the case, but offered tantalizing hints.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What [Weissman] is proposing, even though it is heavily redacted, as Ken says, seems a kind of grand bargain involving not simply a sweetheart deal for Russia and Ukraine, but the lifting of sanctions, which Putin dearly wanted,” Litman said. “And the glue that holds it all together on the U.S. side are the personal financial interests of the actors. Manafort to make money from [pro-Russian former President of Ukraine, Viktor] Yanukovych, Flynn to do something with the sanctions, and Trump to build his big crown jewel of the Trump Tower.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“So it really seems to be getting toward quite a grand scheme,” he added, “where officials are feathering their nests at the expense of U.S. national interests, and doing Russia’s bidding.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Super cool, important,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">well made, great for</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">discussing argument and</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rhetorical stuff set of</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">video essays on the New</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">York Times on Russian</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">disinformation:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Operation Infektion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(thanks Maggie!)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/12/opinion/russia-meddling-disinformation-fake-news-elections.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/blockbuster-manafort-revelations-should-finally-end-witch-hunt-talk-conservative-columnist/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A conservative Washington Post columnist has written a column in which she argues the latest revelations about former Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort sharing confidential campaign polling data with accused Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik is “a blockbuster revelation should end talk of a ‘witch hunt.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jennifer Rubin points to the apparent exchange between Trump’s inner circle and the Russians, in what appears to now be a two-way street.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is not the first piece of evidence of collusion between the Trump camp and Russian figures, to be sure,” she said. “The Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 between Manafort, Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr., and Russians promising ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton has been known for some time. But here we see Manafort giving something of value (insider polling data) to a Russian.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Rubin notes, we need to know why Manafort wanted to pass polling to Kilimnik. She quotes former Department of Justice spokesman Matthew Miller in explaining that there likely isn’t an innocent explanation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s hard to see what good polling data would be to a Russian oligarch, so it raises the question of whether Manafort’s actual goal was to get the information to the Russian government itself,” Miller said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Rubin notes, this is yet another bullet-hole in Trump’s original claim to have nothing to do with Russians during the campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We have, at the very least, yet another previously undisclosed contact between the Trump campaign and Russians,” she writes. “We’ve come a long way since Trump claimed neither he nor anyone on the campaign had contacts with Russians… It’s hard to describe how bizarre this many contacts between a campaign and a hostile foreign government — one trying to influence the campaign to that side’s favor — truly is. Keep in mind that no major party presidential campaign of which we are aware ever had a single contact with the Russians.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read the full column here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> cell phone signal obtained by Eastern European intelligence suggests that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was near Prague during the summer of 2016. The cell phone records were first reported…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A cell phone signal obtained by Eastern European intelligence suggests that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was near Prague during the summer of 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The cell phone records were first reported by McClatchy on Thursday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the report, “Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen met secretly there with Russian officials, four people with knowledge of the matter say.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the same period of late August or early September, electronic eavesdropping by an Eastern European intelligence agency picked up a conversation among Russians, one of whom remarked that Cohen was in Prague, two people familiar with the incident said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The phone and surveillance data, which have not previously been disclosed, lend new credence to a key part of a former British spy’s dossier of Kremlin intelligence describing purported coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s election meddling operation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although President Donald Trump has referred to the dossier as a “pile of garbage,” much of it has been authenticated by news and intelligence services.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The cell phone signal intelligence has reportedly been shared with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read the entire McClatchy report here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2018/12/the-purchase-of-donald-trump-new-report-details-how-russian-money-poured-in-to-save-trumps-businesses/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump’s celebrity was cemented in the American mind with the show “The Apprentice,” which sold him as a real estate mogul and business genius imparting his wisdom to a new generation of entrepreneurial hopefuls. But the show’s fundamental premise is a lie.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Far from a business genius, Trump was largely a flop in business. As a recent investigative piece in Foreign Policy explained, Trump’s repeated failures in the ’90s made him virtually radioactive to any American banks looking to fund new ventures. Lenders were wary of trusting the most prominent son of actual real estate titan Fred Trump, because Donald Trump’s businesses were consistently going belly up — most famously, the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So how was Trump able to recover his image from its ’90s battering? Trump’s sons have repeatedly offered not-so-subtle clues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2008, for instance, Donald Trump Jr. said at a New York conference: “In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And in 2014, Eric Trump reportedly told golf writer James Dodson of the family business: “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” (Eric Trump has since denied saying this.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reporters Jonathan O’Connell, David Fahrenthold and Jack Gillum at the Washington Post reported back in May on the Trump Organization‘s curious shift from funding projects almost entirely with debt in the ’90s to employing large bushels of cash by the mid-2000s.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Hirsch, writing for Foreign Policy, found significant corroboration for Trump’s reliance on foreign funds. Multiple anonymous sources, former associates of the president, told Hirsch that Trump especially used Russian funds when American sources ran dry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some of this, it seems, came in the form of direct real estate purchases. Despite repeatedly denying any ties to the Kremlin, Trump has even admitted to one major deal with a Russian, Dmitry Rybolovlev, who is believed to be close to Putin. Rybolovlev bought a Palm Beach house from Trump for $100 million — $60 million more than what the president had initially paid for it, according to an ABC interview with Trump. This is a remarkably high profit for any such deal — but it is even more startling because it happened in 2008, when the American real estate market was cratering.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“That deal delivered so much cash to Trump, it almost has to be seen as a campaign contribution, or the purchase of Donald Trump,” Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio told Hirsch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A former business associate told Hirsch that this was not the only property Trump sold to a Russian national.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I think part of it was he was toxic to the banks. I think he also probably learned that personal guarantees [on loans] weren’t a brilliant idea either,” the anonymous associate told Hirsch. “So he was saying to himself, ‘What else could I do in the world? I’ll just convince people to buy my brand.’ And the only people who were willing to buy it were tasteless Russians, people who like the absurd, ostentatious gold-leaf lifestyle he has. You’re not going to sell that brand to blue bloods in Greenwich, Connecticut.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the Russian connection is also hiding in plain sight. In the early 2000s, Trump started his comeback by partnering with the Bayrock Group, a financial firm run, in part, by Felix Sater. Sater had pleaded to guilty to participating in a fraudulent scheme with the Russian mafia in the ’90s, became an informant to the FBI, and was a key player along with Michael Cohen is brokering a deal to build Trump Tower Moscow in 2016 before the negotiations mysteriously went quiet after Trump secured the GOP presidential nomination.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hirsch explained:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bayrock’s money sometimes came from sources outside Russia and the former Soviet republics, according to one of the firm’s former employees, including an obscure Icelandic investment bank called the FL Group. But those roads too sometimes appeared to lead back to Russia. In 2017, real-estate developer Jody Kriss, whom Sater hired to help him run Bayrock, told Timothy O’Brien of Bloomberg what happened after an Icelandic competitor of the FL Group contacted him to invest in Bayrock. When Kriss brought that offer to Sater and Arif, they told him that the money behind Icelandic banks “was mostly Russian”—and they had to take FL’s funds for deals with Trump because FL was “closer to [Vladimir] Putin,” according to O’Brien. (Kriss confirmed this account to FP.) In 2007, the FL Group invested $50 million in several Bayrock projects linked to Trump, including a development in Whitestone, Queens, and Trump SoHo in Manhattan. FL Group dissolved in 2014.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kriss told Bloomberg’s O’Brien that he eventually left Bayrock because he became convinced that the firm was a front for money laundering.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of these connections are almost certainly being scrutinized by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, federal prosecutors at the Southern District of New York, and any of the other agencies investigating the president’s past.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/heres-why-media-scholar-changed-her-mind-and-now-thinks-theres-very-strong-case</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cdv khj</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian government's campaign to interfere in the 2016 American presidential election in order to install Donald Trump in the White House may be one of the greatest intelligence operations in modern history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What is publicly known is damning. Russia intelligence operatives and other foreign parties working in conjunction with them were able to influence (if not infiltrate) the highest levels of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign staff and other parts of his inner circle. Many of those relationships may have continued well past his election as president. The apparent goal was to manipulate Trump and by extension America's foreign policy in order to advance Russia's and Vladimir Putin's interests to the disadvantage of the United States and the West.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Russian government also wanted to undermine faith in Western democracy by creating domestic chaos, uncertainty and a crisis of faith in liberal democratic social and political institutions. As special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump-Russia scandal continues, public evidence suggests that the worst case scenario seems much more likely than not to be correct: Donald Trump, either directly or because he was manipulated by his closest aides and advisers, may be doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin and other Russian interests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Russian effort to elect Donald Trump went beyond compromising Trump's closest aides and advisers -- and perhaps even the candidate himself. Russian intelligence services waged an information warfare influence campaign against the American people. This involved circulating disinformation and outright lies through social media and other online conduits with the goal of demobilizing key Democratic constituencies such as African-Americans while simultaneously encouraging white conservatives to vote for Donald Trump. These latter were apparently focused on shattering Hillary Clinton's support in key battleground states such as Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian operatives also used information stolen from the Democratic National Committee to shape the American news media's narrative about Hillary Clinton in such a way as to advantage Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Russian campaign was successful, at least insofar as Donald Trump is now in the White House. But how much did their various strategies actually influence Donald Trump's voters? Why are some individuals and groups more susceptible to being influenced by propaganda, disinformation and other types of inaccurate information? How does the right-wing echo chamber threaten American democracy? Is it possible to actually quantify the number of votes that were won by Donald Trump -- and lost by Hillary Clinton -- because of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election? Would Donald Trump be president today if the Russians and their intelligence operatives had not helped his campaign?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an effort to answer these questions I recently spoke with Kathleen Hall Jamieson. She is the Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor at Annenberg School for Communication of the University of Pennsylvania and director of its Annenberg Public Policy Center.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jamieson is the author of many books, including "Packaging the Presidency," "Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment," "Eloquence in an Electronic Age," "Presidents Creating the Presidency" and "The Obama Victory." She is also the co-founder of FactCheck.org. Her newest book is "Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President." This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the narratives that has become common over the past two years is that Donald Trump's election is unprecedented and that there has never been such a partisan environment as exists now in the country. What do we actually know, empirically, about partisanship and American politics? </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We've had times in which the country was deeply divided. The country was deeply divided over Vietnam. The country was polarized over civil rights. The 1968 election comes to mind in that regard. In the 1960s there were also political assassinations of national leaders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The country survived those challenges. And then there was the Watergate scandal and the public becoming aware that presidents of both parties have lied to them about the war in Vietnam. Again, this shows that the American people are resilient and the country's institutions are resilient as well. I look at those past situations and draw hope from them. That doesn't mean that we're out of the woods yet, but we've navigated some pretty tough times as a country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How does social media and the internet more generally influence partisanship and polarization, especially in regard to the Trump-Russia scandal?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the things that is intriguing about a social media environment is that the same content can be trafficked through very different sources to reach an audience. For example, when we examine the information that is put into the body politic by Russian trolls and other operatives in cyberspace, that information was often coming from the American right wing and the Republican Party. Sometimes that information and those talking points were refashioned and in other instances they were not. This information was amplified by bots and other means to increase the likelihood that the public believes that support for a position is more widespread than it actually is.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We get the illusion that attitudes and beliefs are more widespread than they are, when in reality they are from the fringe and are extreme. The Russians come into the American political environment and use trolls and other technological means to skew people's perceptions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What role does the right-wing media's echo chamber play in circulating disinformation?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Research shows that disinformation is fed within the fairly narrow confines of the right-wing echo chamber.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The synergy among Breitbart and Fox News and Rush Limbaugh is very real and the likelihood that any one of them would be citing the Russian information that was released through WikiLeaks, for example, is extraordinarily high relative to mainstream news outlets and other sources. The amplification power for its audience is higher on the conservative end of the ideological sphere than for those people who pay attention to more mainstream news media outlets and other sources.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Information has to be received and processed and evaluated as being somehow "political" in order for it to have an impact in this context. What does political psychology teach us about why some people and some groups are more susceptible to disinformation and other types of propaganda?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some people are more predisposed towards accuracy. When confronted with new information they are more likely to ask, "How do I know that? Is that correct?" To the extent that we, as individuals, feel and become more partisan in our identity, we are less likely to emphasize accuracy, to question the motivations about the information that we seek out and subsequently use. Confirmation bias is also very important here, as human beings are often critical and highly analytic about anything that we disagree with and uncritically accept information that may be more suspect when it agrees with our priors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social media is very important here. Because people are increasingly involved with social media, it's more likely their partisan and other political identities are being triggered in those spaces. In turn this means that people are less likely to be concerned with what is accurate. The result is that we are much more vulnerable to propaganda.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That is a direct threat to a healthy democracy. If people cannot agree on the facts and the nature of empirical reality then political legitimacy and good political decision-making are made very difficult if not impossible. When did you decide that you needed to research the role and impact of Russian interference on how Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I originally thought that the idea that the Russians could have used social media to create a substantial impact on the election was absurd. I started to change my mind when I saw the first release of Russian social media and troll campaign ads and messaging during the U.S. Senate hearings in October and November of last year. These ads were a coherent plan and understanding of the presidential election which was consistent with Donald Trump's political needs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If acted on systematically, these ads would have produced a communication effect that on the margins could have affected enough votes to change the outcome of the election in his favor. If the Russians didn't have a coherent theory of what it took for Donald Trump to win -- or what it would take to make it more likely that Hillary Clinton would lose -- then all their machinations would not have mattered. But the Russians knew who to mobilize.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Russians were trying to mobilize evangelicals and white conservative Catholics. The Russians also knew that they needed to mobilize veterans and military households. The Russians knew they had to demobilize Bernie Sanders supporters and liberals, especially young people. The Russians were also attempting to shift the voters they could not demobilize over to Jill Stein.[RT dinner w/ flynn?]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You add that together with demobilizing African-American voters with messaging that Hillary Clinton is bad for the black community, and then Clinton's whole messaging strategy is at risk. If Hillary Clinton can’t mobilize the black vote at levels near Barack Obama's, although not the same level, then she is in trouble.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I then started to examine where the Russians and their trolls spent their time and attention. They were spending more of it on trying to demobilize African-American voters by emphasizing things that group may not like about Hillary Clinton. When a person casts a vote they are not thinking about every detail or issue relative to a candidate. Voters make decisions based on what is most important in that moment of time, what is on the top of their mind.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So if you remind voters who are African-American that at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency there was a very high level of increased incarceration of African-Americans on drug charges then an African-American voter may say, “Maybe I should think about Hillary Clinton differently.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you remember her "superpredator" comment and take it to be about black people in general and not about gangs specifically, then you as an African-American voter may be less likely to support her.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By featuring these types of messages, the Russians were increasing the likelihood that while you may not be likely to cast a vote for Donald Trump, you are more likely to stay home and not vote for Hillary Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I then started to wonder whether maybe there was enough troll activity that was addressed to the right constituencies to have impacted the margins of the vote. The question then becomes, did the Russians and their trolls target the right voters in the right places? We still don't know that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The social media platforms know the answer, but they have not released the information. The trolls alone could have swung the electorate. But in my judgment the WikiLeaks hacks against the DNC is a much stronger case. There we see a clear effect on the news media agenda. We know from decades of communication scholarship that if you change the media agenda you then change the criteria that people vote on. The shift in the media agenda from October forward was decisively against Hillary Clinton. And the questions in the presidential debates which were based on information stolen by WikiLeaks and the Russians disadvantaged Clinton and, looking at the polling data, predicted the vote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How did the 2016 presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump reflect what the Russians were doing?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the things I point out in my new book, "Cyberwar," is that the 2016 presidential election was different than past elections. Usually, we can pretty much predict the eventual vote by knowing where people are as of the conventions, because political party identification is such a strong determinant. Plus, voters know their candidates well enough by that point that they pretty much have logged in their vote. In all, there are not enough votes up for grabs in the last week of an election to shift the outcome and make a difference -- except in a very close election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Debates will matter in close elections. The 2016 presidential election also demonstrated a very interesting phenomenon: Not simply that there were a lot of votes still available, but there were many Americans who were going to cast a vote and who did not like either of the major-party candidates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We don't ordinarily have voters who are as conflicted as they were in 2016. And we had a higher percent of people self-identifying as "independent," which meant they were less anchored to a political party. When you come into those final weeks and you see that almost one out of eight voters hasn't decided yet, that's unusual. There were enough people able to be influenced when the hacked content gotten illegally by the Russians from the Democratic campaign headquarters burst into the news after Oct. 7, 2016 -- and that's when early voting is taking place.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There were enough undecided voters watching those last two debates to make an impact on the election. For example, one of the questions that was based on the hacked information was about Hillary Clinton saying one thing in public and another thing in private. In reality, Clinton was using an example from the Steven Spielberg movie about Abraham Lincoln when she said, “Sometimes you need to do some things with one constituency and some with another.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She was talking about all the maneuvering that Abraham Lincoln did to ensure that he could protect the country through the Civil War. She was not saying, “Well, when I was behind closed doors, I told Goldman Sachs one thing while I'm telling the public something else.” When that statement about the Lincoln film is taken out of context, it seems to be an admission that she was saying things in private that did not agree with her public statements. Hillary Clinton is thrown onto the defensive in that presidential debate and Trump gains a major advantage out of that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The evidence for this is reflected in responses made by debate viewers as compared to non-viewers. Debate viewers think Clinton is more likely to say one thing in public and another in private.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the last debate, the issue was what Clinton said about trade and immigration. The statement in the hacked speech was actually about energy transfer. What Chris Wallace implied was that Clinton had conceded that she stood for open borders. Donald Trump makes this immediately about immigration in the debate, but in reality the hacked speech had nothing to do with immigration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She's disadvantaged in that exchange as well. In total this shows how the Russian hackers got this into the mainstream of American political discourse. Journalists took it out of context and this information was used to hurt Hillary Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the dominant narratives about the 2016 presidential election was that the result reflected "economic anxiety" among working-class white voters. The evidence has shown that it was in fact racism and not class-based "anxiety" that over-predicted the 2016 election and Trump voters' behavior. A related narrative is that there were many "Obama to Trump" voters whom Hillary Clinton lost. What do we actually know about these things?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We know that there are about 200 or so counties where the majority gave its vote to Obama in at least one of the two previous elections [in 2008 and 2012] and then gave its vote to Trump. Now the question is, how much in- and out-migration was there in those counties? Does that explain the difference? I haven't seen a good analysis to answer that piece of the question. You can set up a scenario in which there is an economic factor at play. You can also create a model where there is a socio-cultural factor as well. All those variables melt together in an environment in which there is a high level of anxiety which makes it plausible that a given person might say, “I voted for Obama because I want change, and now I'm voting for Trump because I want change.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Race might not be driving that vote in either case, or it might be there in different ways in those same two cases. But one should not draw the simple inference that race was not a factor in the vote for Donald Trump in those counties.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As one of the leading scholars in political communication, how would you assess the messaging strategy of the Democrats and the Republicans? Is Donald Trump some type of savant or genius in terms of how he communicates generally, and how he motivates his public, in particular?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We know that after elections people are influenced by what is called "status quo bias," where the outcome had a certain kind of inevitability and was the result of things that we are able to observe. As a result, we tend to assume that the candidate who won the Electoral College must have been strategically adept in some ways that can be isolated. But Donald Trump lost the popular vote by an overwhelming margin, so he could not have been that strategically adept. In a presidential election that close there are so many different factors at play that I would be hesitant to say that a close defeat in the Electoral College demonstrated the strategic superiority of one candidate or the inferiority of the other.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump is better at commanding the agenda than he is at any other single thing that he as a communicator does. The press has been an accomplice in the process of ceding agenda control to him by virtue of his tweeting -- and having the press respond immediately, as if every tweet is presumed to be newsworthy. Donald Trump has the capacity to get whatever he wants the public to focus on by directing the cable news agenda. We really should ask: Aren't there other things we ought to be paying more attention to? How often are we being distracted from something that Trump does not want us to pay attention to? Being distracted by his effective use of tweets to set an alternative agenda.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fox News is de facto Trump's state-sponsored media. How does this impact American political culture?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We are increasingly going into ideological enclaves to get our news. To the extent that people find the news compatible with what they already believe, that means they are not being exposed to alternative interpretations of reality and alternative points of view. What is unprecedented about the relationship between Fox News and the president of the United States is the extent to which what is said and shown on Fox News appears to influence what is said and featured by the president of the United States. The traditional model of agenda-setting is that the president sets the agenda and the news media follows. This reversal with Donald Trump and Fox News is something new.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How has the 2016 election challenged longstanding assumptions about American politics and the ways that people actually behave and make political decisions? </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We learned that the capacity to mobilize and demobilize voters is greater than one might have expected previously. We've confirmed that when you change the balance of messages so that you get more messaging on one side, then elections can be impacted. The 2016 presidential election confirmed the power of agenda-setting.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you were to explain to the average American how the Russians were able to impact the 2016 presidential election, what would say?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Russians were able to change the climate of communication for some voters and members of the public through social media in ways that disadvantaged Hillary Clinton. The Russians were able to change the media agenda and questions asked during two presidential debates in ways that disadvantaged Hillary Clinton. The Russians and their disinformation campaign may have influenced a consequential decision by James Comey to make public the reopening of the FBI investigation into the Clinton email server on Oct. 28, 2016, in ways that decisively impacted the election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is it reasonable to conclude that the Russians were able to swing the election in favor of Donald Trump and against Hillary Clinton, thus securing a victory for him?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yes, it is probable although not certain. The case for the Russian trolls is more tentative because we don't have the targeting information from the social media companies. The information hacked and leaked by the Russians is a stronger case. Adding in the impact of Russian disinformation and its influence on James Comey makes the case very strong that the Russians were able to swing the 2016 presidential election in Donald Trump's favor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">sum IRA:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finally, here’s an official report that says there were dirty tricks in the 2016 elections, just as we’re hearing about more localized dirty tricks in the elections in November.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report by cybersecurity experts hired by the Senate Intelligence Committee released on Monday says without hesitation that it was the Russians who used a wide variety of social media outlets to spread disinformation aimed at suppressing the black vote in America and to move conservatives toward candidate Donald Trump. It wasn’t a 400-pound guy on a couch in New Jersey, no matter what Trump says.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The report adds new details to the portrait that has emerged over the last two years of the energy and imagination of the Russian effort to sway American opinion and divide the country, which the authors said continues to this day,” concluded The New York Times.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, dirty tricks have been part of American elections since there was an American election. Just ask Richard Nixon. Or maybe John Adams.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But suppressing the black vote? That, as any number of critics would note, has been an American tradition all of its own. Just this last cycle, we saw Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp win his election over Democrat Stacy Adams, who is black, simply by a series of actions aimed at disenfranchising black voters all around the state. There’s a congressional race still being contested in North Carolina with dirty tricks so bad for the Republican candidate that the GOP is thinking of disowning the candidate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The remarkable thing here is the breadth of effort that the Russians undertook to target African-Americans, to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and to promote the Trump campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was no attempt to explain exactly why – other than the obvious – that Russians were targeting African-American voters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On MSNBC yesterday, pundits were talking about the suppression allegations while simultaneously showing televised clips of candidate Donald Trump repeating much of the same messages as in the Russian voter campaigns. But, there is nothing here in writing to suggest that there was more than a topical link, or “collusion.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, “Active and ongoing interference operations remain on several platforms,” says the report by New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company based in Austin, Tex. One continuing Russian campaign, for instance, seeks to influence opinion on Syria by promoting Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president and a Russian ally in the brutal conflict there. A second report was written by the Computational Propaganda Project at Oxford University along with Graphika, a company that specializes in analyzing social media.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Russian influence campaign in 2016 was run by a St. Petersburg company called the Internet Research Agency, owned by a businessman, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who is a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Prigozhin and a dozen of the company’s employees were indicted last February as part of the investigation of Russian interference by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel. Both reports stress that the Internet Research Agency created social media accounts under fake names on virtually every available platform. A major goal was to support Donald Trump, first against his Republican rivals in the presidential race, then in the general election, and as president since his inauguration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Russian campaign was the subject of Senate hearings last year and has been widely scrutinized by academic experts. The new reports largely confirm earlier findings: that the campaign was designed to attack Hillary Clinton, boost Trump and deepen divisions in American society.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Washington Post reported last night that the Senate report also detailed efforts by Russia’s disinformation teams to target Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III as a threat to Trump, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Knowledge gave particular attention to the Russians’ focus on African-Americans, which is evident to anyone who examines collections of their memes and messages.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us. On YouTube, the largest share of Russian material covered the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality, with channels called “Don’t Shoot” and “BlackToLive.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report does not seek to explain the heavy focus on African Americans. But the Internet Research Agency’s tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States, as well as recent Russian influence operations in other countries that sought to stir ethnic strife.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Funny how our longtime embrace of dirty tricks actually comes full circle to show us that they were exploiting our most divisive American politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Maybe that’s the worst of it. Russians do American dirty tricks better than we do ourselves.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">long nyt overview on collusion</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/us/russia-interference-election-trump-clinton.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The candidate favored by the Russians alternated between denying their help and seeming to welcome it. On June 15, the day after the D.N.C. hack was disclosed, the Trump campaign pitched in with a novel idea to deflect blame from the Russians: The D.N.C. had somehow hacked itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We believe it was the D.N.C. that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate,” the statement said. Later, Mr. Trump tried out other alternative theories: Perhaps the hack had been carried out by “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” or a “some guy in his home in New Jersey,” or the Chinese, or almost anyone.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But at other times, he appeared to accept that Russia was responsible.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The new joke in town,” Mr. Trump tweeted on July 25, “is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC emails, which should have never been written (stupid), because Putin likes me.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And two days later, he famously invited the Russians to try to retrieve 30,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton had deleted from her computer server on the basis that they involved personal matters and not State Department business.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a Florida news conference. The Mueller investigation discovered that the Russians were evidently listening: The same day as the news conference, the G.R.U. hackers began sending so-called spearphishing emails to accounts associated with Mrs. Clinton’s personal office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Video</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Associated PressPublished OnSept. 17, 2018]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Trump’s pronouncements stood in striking contrast to the responses of past presidential candidates who had been offered assistance by foreign powers. In 1960, both Adlai E. Stevenson and John F. Kennedy refused quiet offers of help from Khrushchev.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Because we know the ideas of Mr. Stevenson, we in our hearts all favor him,” Khrushchev said in a message passed on by the Soviet ambassador. “Could the Soviet press assist Mr. Stevenson’s personal success? How?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Stevenson declined the offer, in language that reflected the broad American political consensus about foreign election interference. “I believe I made it clear to him,” Mr. Stevenson wrote, “that I considered the offer of such assistance highly improper, indiscreet and dangerous to all concerned.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russia did not deliver on Mr. Trump’s request for Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. But it had obtained something just as useful: 50,000 emails of John Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, stolen via a phishing attack by the G.R.U. Roger Stone, a political operative and longtime Trump friend, seemed to have advance word. “Trust me,” he wrote on Twitter on Aug. 25, it would soon be “Podesta’s time in the barrel.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But WikiLeaks withheld the Podesta emails for months after receiving them from “Guccifer” in June, evidently waiting for the right moment to have the biggest impact on the race. The time came on Oct. 7, amid two blows to the Trump campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">See the timeline of events that surround the release of the emails.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That day, American intelligence agencies made their first official statement that the Russian government, with the approval of its “senior-most officials,” was behind the hacking and leaking of the Democratic emails.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And then came a potentially lethal disclosure for the Trump campaign: the shocking “Access Hollywood” recording in which Mr. Trump bragged of groping and sexually assaulting women. The candidate desperately needed to change the subject — and that was the moment WikiLeaks posted the first of thousands of Mr. Podesta’s emails.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They were invaluable for political journalists, offering embarrassing comments from staffers about Mrs. Clinton’s shortcomings and the full texts of her highly paid speeches to banks and corporations, which she had refused to release. WikiLeaks assisted by highlighting interesting tidbits in yellow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Soon, Mr. Trump was delighting his supporters by reading from the stolen emails on the campaign trail. “Now, this just came out,” he told a fired-up crowd in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in October, brandishing a page of highlights. “WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Crooked Hillary” had said “behind closed doors,” Mr. Trump declared, that terrorism was “not a threat”; that she had “a great relationship with the financial industry”; that ISIS might infiltrate groups of refugees coming to the United States; that a politician needed to have “both a public and private position” on policies; and on and on.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The quotes were taken out of context, of course, and subjected to the most damaging interpretation. But they seemed to offer a glimpse of Mrs. Clinton’s hidden views.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For the last month of the campaign, in daily releases that kept the Clinton team on the defensive, WikiLeaks delivered the Russians’ gift. If the July D.N.C. dump had been an explosion, the October series was more like unrelenting sniper fire. Whether the timing was decided by the Russians or by Mr. Assange, it proved devastatingly effective.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Imaginary Americans</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian trolls, using fake accounts on social media, reached nearly as many Americans as would vote in the election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Michael Smith, a Houston political scientist and activist, spotted the alarming call on Facebook. A group called Heart of Texas was suddenly urging Texans to come at noon on May 21, 2016, to protest a 14-year-old Islamic center in downtown Houston.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Stop Islamization of Texas,” the post declared, with a photo of the Islamic Da’wah Center, which it called a “shrine of hatred.” It invited protesters to prepare for battle: “Feel free to bring along your firearms, concealed or not!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We immediately asked, ‘What the blank is the Heart of Texas’?’” recalled Mr. Smith, who started calling friends to organize a counterprotest.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Months later, he would find out.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heart of Texas, which garnered a quarter-million followers on Facebook, was one of 470 Facebook pages created 5,000 miles from Houston at the Internet Research Agency, the oddly named St. Petersburg company that would become the world’s most famous manipulator of social media. The two Russian employees who had visited Texas during that 2014 American tour, Ms. Bogacheva and Ms. Krylova, evidently had returned home with big ideas about how to exploit the emotional chasms in American politics and culture.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just as the Russians’ Guccifer character had reached out to American activists, journalists and WikiLeaks, the Russian online trolls understood that their real political power would come from mobilizing Americans. The Russian company’s formula was simple: tap into a simmering strain of opinion in the United States and pour on the fuel.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consider the Texas protest. After the Russians put up the “Stop Islamization” Facebook post, several dozen like-minded Texans added their own incendiary comments. “Allah Sucks,” wrote one, adding a threat to kill any Muslim who tried to visit him. Another wrote of the Islamic center, “Need to Blow this place up.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A dozen yelling white supremacists turned out for the protest, at least two of them with assault rifles and a third with a pistol. Others held Confederate flags and a “White Lives Matter” banner.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Houston police managed to keep them away from a much larger crowd of counterprotesters — some of whom had responded to a second Russian Facebook call. In a blatant attempt to create a confrontation, another Internet Research Agency page, this one called United Muslims of America, had asked people to rally at exactly the same time and place to “Save Islamic Knowledge.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The event had no lasting consequences, though clearly it could have ended in tragedy. Still, it demonstrated that young Russians tapping on keyboards in 12-hour shifts could act as puppet masters for unsuspecting Americans many time zones away.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Facebook first acknowledged last year the Russian intrusion on its platform, it seemed modest in scale. The $100,000 spent on ads was a trivial sum compared with the tens of millions spent on Facebook by both the Trump and Clinton campaigns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">See the timeline of events that shows Russia’s social media campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it quickly became clear that the Russians had used a different model for their influence campaign: posting inflammatory messages and relying on free, viral spread. Even by the vertiginous standards of social media, the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of 126 million Americans on Facebook alone. That was not far short of the 137 million people who would vote in the 2016 presidential election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tweets from Russian Trolls, by Day</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the Wall Street Journal has doggedly pursued a strand of the Russa investigation that has largely flown under the radar as other avenues of investigation such as President Donald Trump's financial ties to Moscow and Paul Manafort's dealings in Ukraine garnered more attention. But a new report from the paper on Friday reveals that it not only the Journal that's been paying attention — Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team has zeroed in on the curious case of GOP operative Peter Smith as well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Smith, who died shortly before the Journal first began reporting on his actions in 2017, was conducting a wide-ranging effort in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to track down Hillary Clinton's emails. Along the way, he developed a relationship with disgraced Trump campaign aide and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And now, the Journal says there is evidence that could tie Smith to WikiLeaks' dispersal of stolen emails from Hillary Clinton's Campaign Chair John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Investigators also have evidence that the late GOP activist Peter W. Smith may have had advance knowledge of details about the release of emails from a top Hillary Clinton campaign official by WikiLeaks, one person familiar with the matter said," the Journal wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The article also says that the investigators have pursued related lines of inquiry, including examining Trump ally Roger Stone's and conservative pundit Jerome Corsi's connections with WikiLeaks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait explained the significance of these potential connections:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If true, this would mean that Smith wasn’t merely attempting to get ahold of stolen Clinton emails. He got through to WikiLeaks and was, in some form, a channel of collusion between the hackers and the Trump campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Flynn long ago started cooperating with Robert Mueller. So if Flynn discussed any of this information with Trump during the campaign, the special counsel probably knows about it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/california-man-charged-mueller-sentenced-six-months-prison-helping-russian-interference</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">California resident Richard Pinedo is the latest person to receive a prison sentence as a result of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia-related investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Wednesday, October 10, the former computer science student was sentenced to six months in prison, followed by six months of home confinement, for selling fraudulent bank account information to Russian operatives. Pinedo, now 28, had no connection to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, but according to federal prosecutors, he earned tens of thousands of dollars selling fraudulent bank account information to anonymous buyers from 2014-2017—and some of those buyers were Russian operatives linked to the Kremlin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After Mueller’s probe led to Pinedo, he agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors—who have noted that when Pinedo sold fraudulent bank account information, he didn’t know that some of the people he was selling it to were Kremlin-connected operatives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an official statement, Pinedo said, “Never did it cross my mind that the services I was providing were to be used in crimes at the highest level. My life has been turned upside down.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich sentenced Pinedo, he described his cooperation with prosecutors as “significant” but said that the “widespread scale” of his crimes merited at least some incarceration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pinedo’s attorney, Jeremy Lessem, told the court, “Mr. Pinedo obviously should have invested more thought into the possible nefarious intentions of those that sought his services. However, never in his wildest dreams could he have foreseen that providing bank account information to set up PayPal accounts could be used to interfere with a presidential election.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mueller’s Russia-related investigation has led to several of President Trump’s closest associates being convicted of or pleading guilty to major crimes. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, recently agreed to a plea deal and agreed to cooperate in the investigation after being convicted of multiple counts of tax fraud and bank fraud—and the prosecution’s star witness in Manafort’s trial, Rick Gates, was a Trump campaign aide who admitted to a long list of financial crimes in court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael D. Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, pled guilty to multiple tax and bank fraud charges in August and has also been cooperating fully with federal prosecutors. And in September, former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos was sentenced to two weeks of incarceration and a $9500 fine after admitting to lying to the FBI.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/pulitzer-winning-reporter-reveals-smoking-gun-trump-and-russia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">salon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It might be the ultimate journalistic cliché to announce that Donald Trump’s presidency is not normal. Indeed, it’s just as likely that this is what normal looks like now, and that the naked power politics of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation — embraced by Republicans for many reasons, but most of all as a smackdown to feminists and liberals and everyone else perceived as preachy and condescending and threatening to the old order — is a sign of the times.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To use another overused phrase of the moment, conservatives will surely reap the whirlwind for this fateful decision, to an extent they cannot now imagine. They don’t appear to care. Meanwhile, the Republican Party as we once knew it — the party of middle American businessmen, upstanding New England ladies and the Presbyterian Church — has been fully digested by the Trumpian virus. Susan Collins, Ben Sasse and Jeff Flake make polite, mournful noises about this, but most Republicans appear to be delighted. All of that is the new normal too.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greg Miller’s painstakingly researched new book, “The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy,” is an attempt to explain how we arrived at this new normal, and beneath the surface a lament for the old one. Numerous other books have been written about the history-shaping 2016 presidential election and Trump’s mysterious relationship to the Russian oligarchy and Vladimir Putin. Miller, who is a national security correspondent for the Washington Post, does not go nearly so far as some reporters in alleging conspiracy or — yes! — collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, or in building a thesis that Putin holds compromising personal information about Trump. (He raises a valid point, both in the book and in conversation: Given what we already know about the president, how bad could the kompromat we don’t know possibly be?)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, Miller builds an exhaustive and authoritative case, as suggested in his subtitle, that a Rubicon was crossed in American political history during that campaign, quite likely without anyone consciously intending to cross it. A mendacious demagogue with an incompetent, unprofessional campaign operation conquered a political party that had come untethered from its philosophical moorings, and then became both the target and the pawn of a highly capable foreign adversary who wanted to sow as much chaos as possible. We can all see the results around us in the ruined state of American political life and civic culture, and most of us would agree (Miller included) that this was the culmination of a long process for which Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin cannot be blamed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Miller is a consummate institutional journalist, and I mean that to be descriptive rather than pejorative. He has won two Pulitzers as a team member at one of America’s most venerated daily newspapers (probably the best of those, at the moment) and has spent much of his career covering the national security establishment, an especially shadowy institution governed by an arcane set of unwritten codes. As befits that background, he’s a somewhat sphinxlike presence, a handsome, well-dressed white man of indeterminate middle age, whom you might pass on the street without quite registering. (I spent about an hour with him, and I’m not sure I could pick him out of a police lineup.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along with that institutional identity perhaps comes a certain myopia, especially in an age when all institutions are in crisis. During our casual conversation before our Salon Talks interview in New York, Miller mentioned a “thought experiment” in which Trump’s conciliatory victory speech on election night in November 2016 actually set the tone for his presidency, and was followed by the customary “honeymoon” and a lot of conventional rhetoric about healing and unity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I thought that was a startling thing for a reporter of Miller’s experience to say, and even more so for the one who wrote this book. That’s not a thought experiment; it’s an ahistorical fantasy, a middle-path version of making America great again. Donald Trump could no more have become a unifying, “presidential” president than he could have built Trump Tower with his own meaty little hands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As “The Apprentice” makes clear, Trump’s presidency was born out of poisonous division, and all along that has been the core of his political brand. Virtually none of the incoherent promises he made to his followers will be fulfilled, but they are nonetheless delighted with his xenophobic vitriol and his sweeping contempt for all the formerly sacred norms and institutions of democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trumpian masses will evidently tolerate any number of betrayals and reversals, from selling out the country’s fiscal future to the richest of the rich to embracing a prep school graduate and Yalie from an ultra-privileged background as (in some symbolic way) a man of the people. But if their hero had tried to “pivot” himself into yet another vaguely benevolent White House father figure — that might have been the one thing they could not forgive. In Michael Moore’s famous phrase, they wanted to extend a giant middle finger to the American establishment, and didn’t much care about the details.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even Miller would not claim that there are explosive new revelations about the Trump-Russia connections in “The Apprentice.” But it is researched and sourced at vastly more depth than any other book on the subject to date, and as Miller puts it, almost every page features a nugget of new reporting or reveals a previously hidden connection.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you had forgotten that the Russian spear-phishing attack on the Democratic National Committee began two or three hours after Trump invited the Russians, in July 2016, to release Hillary Clinton’s emails, that is documented here. If you didn’t know that circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that Trump knew about the infamous Trump Tower meeting of June 2016 in advance, and understood its intended purpose, that’s here as well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the bigger picture, Miller means to banish any remaining doubt, on both the Trumpian right and the radical left, about whether Russian agents interfered extensively in the 2016 election with the aim of helping Trump, and about whether they succeeded. In the end, I believe that latter question remains subjective, and likely unanswerable. Given the flukish nature of the final outcome, it’s reasonable to claim that any one of dozens of marginal factors was decisive. Even Miller clearly agrees that to point the finger exclusively at Putin and his troll army is a way of avoiding the massive failures of American political culture and American society that made this possible in the first place.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As for whether there was an active, conscious conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russians, or whether Putin is blackmailing Trump with the “pee tape” or a trail of bribes and payoffs or something else — as befits a journalist of his background and temperament, Miller gestures at all those things but renders no judgment. Instead he offers an Occam’s-razor explanation that’s about as good as any other that I have heard: The “smoking gun” that explains Trump’s obvious and puzzling subservience to Putin is no secret, and has been visible the whole time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our conversation has been lightly edited here for clarity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greg, your book obviously addresses a loaded topic. And considering your background and reputation, the subtitle is striking.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yeah, these words, believe it or not, are chosen pretty carefully, right? I mean, “the subversion of American democracy.” I just don't think you can dispute that this combination of things, Trump and Russia, have subverted aspects of our democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To be fair, this is mostly a coherent narrative built from known facts and existing reporting, right? There's not like some bombshell revelation in this book?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yeah. I wouldn't claim to have a bombshell, but I would say that if not on every page then in every chapter there is new material, previously unreported details and material about the most important developments from this story. My goal here was to write a book that would help people, including people I work with, and including myself in some ways, try to come to terms with and comprehend the magnitude of this moment that we're living through. And understand and put it together in a coherent narrative.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And I have to say that the exercise in organizing myself for this book was really eye-opening. Just putting things on a single timeline and making, drawing connections from things that were unfolding too fast for us to understand.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Well I can testify to the power of organizing the information into a timeline. Just to cite one example, which has certainly been mentioned before, on the day when Donald Trump asked the Russians, jokingly or not, to find Hillary Clinton's emails, what was the timeframe between that and the spear-phishing attack on the Democratic National Committee?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's almost immediate. It’s hours, right? It is, “Russia, if you're listening?” And then Russia is listening. And there are these incoming spear-phishing attacks within hours.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We don't know that at the time, what Russia does. We only know that now because Robert Mueller has told us that, through this indictments, right? There is so much material out now already, that help to sustain a comprehensive narrative like this that wasn't available when we were writing about this in real time. Those indictments from Mueller, including his indictment of the Internet Research Agency and the GRU and all the named hackers from Russia, tell us extraordinary things about what was unfolding in Moscow as we were watching this presidential race unfold here in the U.S.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For the last couple of years we've heard critics, on both the right and in some cases the left, arguing that we don't have proof that the Russians actually stole this stuff. And we don't have proof that they tried to influence the outcome of the election. You would say conclusively that those two things happened, right?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I would say that for sure. I don't think there's any serious national security official from the Obama administration or even the Trump administration, save for the president, who would dispute either of those things. Where you find a little more argument is whether that affected the outcome. So I would even go a step farther at this point and say it seems increasingly evident that this was among several decisive factors during that election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's no longer, I don't think, realistic to argue that the Russian interference didn't have an impact. I mean, we now know that Russia, through its propaganda network, was reaching more than 100 million Americans on Facebook alone. And this was an election decided by fewer than 80,000 voters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are other decisive factors: Hillary Clinton's flaws as a candidate, Jim Comey's inserting himself and the [FBI] into this drama, are also big factors. But I think at this point it's hard to argue that Trump didn't benefit significantly from Russia's involvement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Having interviewed Jim Clapper [the director of national intelligence under Barack Obama] when his book came out earlier this year, I know that he has reached the same conclusion, when in the immediate aftermath of the election he said he wasn’t sure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yeah, exactly. I've talked to Clapper, we’ve covered him for many years now. And when he says something like that, I mean, he's such a serious guy, he doesn't say these things lightly. He doesn't say these things because of some hidden political agenda. There's also a line in his book that I love, where he expresses some frustration with Obama and Obama's reluctance to call out Russian interference early enough in the election for it to make a difference. He's talking about how Obama just seemed hamstrung, so nervous about putting his thumb on the scale. And here's Putin on the other end of the scale, jumping up and down on it, Clapper says. It's a beautiful line.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another thing I know you've talked about is that when the Obama administration finally did try to engage with this issue, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, among other Republicans, was completely uninterested in pursuing it. Is that fair?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I would go even further and say that he did everything he could to prevent that from happening. I think when we look back on this period in history, obviously everybody's going to focus on Trump and his conduct and what he's done and the implications of that for the United States, for our system of government and for institutions like the FBI and the CIA. But he's been abetted in certain, in key instances, by allies who have their own partisan agendas. And McConnell's one of those.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The book goes into great detail on this. There are scenes that we never reported in the paper, a shouting match for example, when John Brennan, the CIA director, becomes convinced that Russia's playing a bigger game here and they're doing something that is much more dangerous than anybody realizes. He proceeds to set up one-on-one meetings with all the congressional leaders. Very unusual for him to do.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He gets to McConnell, starts to lay out the evidence, what Russia's doing, they're trying to help Trump, they're really messing things up. McConnell not only says he will not go along with calling out Putin, he then warns, “I am however prepared to call you out and and call out Obama if you try to do this, if you try to say that Russia's helping Trump. I'll accuse you of interfering in the election. I'm not prepared to accuse Russia of doing that.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You could argue that sets the table for what comes later. You’re seeking to avoid being understood as a partisan political commentator, I understand that. But a political culture where that kind of thing becomes an acceptable tactic opens the door to all kinds of other stuff that has happened since then.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exactly. Right. It's a threshold moment. I think it wasn't always this way. If you look back at Watergate, it was the Republicans who turned on the president, who were putting concern for the country ahead of their partisan interest, right? It’s much harder to find examples of that in this day and age.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just in that moment, choosing your party over taking any meaningful steps whatsoever to safeguard what has to be one of the most precious things about American democracy, a presidential election. I mean, what could be more sacred?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mitch McConnell also refused to consider a legitimate Supreme Court nomination from the elected president, which was also without precedent as far as I know. All this stuff created a climate ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yeah, there are all of these overlapping currents and trends. Even now, we're in the middle of uncertainty over what happens with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Again, the Republicans are, instead of trying to get as many facts as possible and treating that as the overriding objective, they are trying to short-circuit the process to get any of those facts. Even to collect them, let alone to offer them to the public.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Let's address the question of what the collective effect of Russian Facebook messaging and other social media messaging may have been. Because one of the counterarguments all along has been, well, OK, there were all these fake posts that got read and forwarded, some of which were cleverly constructed and some of which were laughably absurd and obvious, to my mind and perhaps yours. But in the overall universe of all the stuff that people saw and people shared throughout the 2016 campaign, it wasn't a very large proportion probably and probably didn’t have much effect.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ASSANGE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://YYY.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/21/julian-assange-russia-ecuador-embassy-london-secret-escape-plan</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/exactly-how-deep-are-ties-between-russia-and-trumps-republican-party</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Recent events have driven home the point that Russian influence in American Republican politics is more prevalent than previously thought.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The examples are numerous—and very serious:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump’s rejection of the conclusion of U.S. intelligence services about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and Trump’s embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denial of that interference (and no, the “would/wouldn’t” attempt at a take-back doesn’t cut it).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The arrest of Russian agent Maria Butina, who is facing multiple charges and is being held without bail. The details of story and the reports of her offering sex to infiltrate groups like the National Rifle Association and the Republican Party read like a bad spy novel.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Threats of Russian prosecution against—or “interrogation” of—11 U.S. citizens. They include longtime Kremlin critic and financier Bill Browder, who was born in the U.S. but is now a British citizen and whose Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in Russian custody; Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, who, of course, had diplomatic immunity; and Kyle Parker, a congressional staffer who wrote most of the Magnitsky Act imposing sanctions on Russia, which has been a thorn in Putin’s side for years. Trump officials pointedly failed to deny that they might cooperate in such prosecution, saying only that it was “discussed” by the two leaders when they met in Helsinki. They have since backed down.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report that Russians were asked for and sent stolen documents about the Democratic opponent of a sitting Republican U.S. congressman during the 2016 election. Some reports identify that congressman as California’s Dana Rohrabacher, who met with Butina in Russia in 2015 and is sometimes described as “Putin’s favorite congressman.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Condemnation by media, Democrats, and many Republicans has been swift and severe. Trump has made it crystal clear that he has no problem sucking up to Putin, described as his KGBFF by comedian Jimmy Kimmel on his late-night show on ABC. But exactly how deep are the claws of the Russian bear dug into the GOP?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The threats against Americans—especially the former ambassador—are beyond outrageous, and for any member of the Trump administration to play coy about cooperating with such a plan is despicable. Here’s what California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell tweeted about it:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...tweet</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacyhe U.S. State Department was quick to label the Russian claims against the Americans as absurd. Given the strong backlash by the diplomatic and intelligence community, Trump officials abandoned the idea, and the U.S. Senate voted 98-0 on a resolution condemning the proposal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the damage has been done. The Daily Beast compiled comments from several current and former U.S. diplomats, who were all horrified at the prospect of turning over a former ambassador to Putin, even quoting one current diplomat who chose to remain anonymous but said he was “at a fucking loss.” From the story:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">David Wade, who was Secretary of State John Kerry’s chief of staff, said that the White House refusal to disavow Putin on McFaul crossed a line “from demoralizing to dangerous” for American diplomats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“To even hint that there’s some element of credibility to Russian disruptions and distractions puts a bullseye on the back of any diplomat and invites authoritarian regimes to bully and threaten American public servants for the crime of doing their job. No administration should require a lesson or reminder in why this is reprehensible,” Wade said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What Trump is willing to admit about Russian interference into the 2016 election is anyone’s guess on any given day, depending on whether he’s standing on a stage in Putin’s shadow or whether he’s half a world away, trying to sound tough with laughable damage control. Trump has made more conflicting claims on the charges of Russian cyberhacking than there are ingredients in borscht.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the story of Maria Butina gets more bizarre with each new set of details. And it’s a tale that reaches further into the GOP, touching many GOP officials, many of whom had photos taken with Butina at NRA conventions, the National Prayer Breakfast, and other instances, which she posted on social media.But there’s no question about what’s true—and that Trump knew it was true. The New York Times reports that, two weeks before his inauguration in January 2017, Trump was shown detailed, highly-classified intelligence reports that Putin personally ordered cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns to sway the election. All along, Trump knew it wasn’t China or some 400-pound guy sitting on his bed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Butina faces two charges: conspiracy and acting as a covert agent for Russia’s FSB spy agency. According to a story in The Washington Post:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Butina is accused of trying to cultivate relationships with American politicians to establish “back channel” lines of communication and seeking to infiltrate U.S. political groups, including an unnamed “gun rights organization,” to advance Russia’s agenda. Descriptions in court papers match published reports about Butina’s interactions with the NRA. …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Butina was allegedly assisted in her efforts by a U.S. political operative who helped introduce her to influential political figures. That person was not charged and is not named in court papers, but the description matches that of Paul Erickson, a GOP consultant who sought to organize a meeting between then-candidate Donald Trump and Alexander Torshin, Butina’s Russian colleague and a former Russian senator, at a May 2016 NRA convention.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Butina is described as “a former furniture store owner from Siberia and gun-rights activist.” She questioned Trump during a 2015 town hall meeting (no coincidence, I’m sure) about his plans for Russia; met with Donald Trump Jr. at the 2016 NRA convention; and met with many Republican officials at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Deemed a flight risk, she is being held in custody before her trial.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And speaking of the NRA, the gun industry’s reported ties to Russia also are documented. According to a story from Newsweek: </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The National Rifle Association has accepted contributions from at least 23 Russia-linked donors since 2015, the gun rights group revealed in a letter addressed to Congress. The admission came after Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, prodded the NRA as part of an investigation into what political organizations may have been used by Russia to influence the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The money totaled $2,500, with most of it coming from subscriptions or membership dues, according to the letter, which was ... first reported on by NPR. About $525 of that money came from "two individuals who made contributions to the NRA," wrote John Frazer, the general counsel for the gun rights group. The 23 people "may include U.S. citizens living in Russia," the NRA said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sure, $2,500 sounds like chump change when you consider the fact that the NRA gave more than $30 million to the Trump campaign and other Republicans. But it goes deeper than that. According to reporting by NPR, Alexander Torshin, now deputy governor of the Russian Central Bank and someone who is currently barred from entering the U.S., has spent six years building relationships with multiple NRA officials and past presidents, trying to gain greater access to GOP politicians.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Top GOP officials know all this and don’t care. According to an analysis in The Nation:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russiagate isn’t just the narrow story of a few corrupt officials. It isn’t even the story of a corrupt president. It’s the story of a corrupt political party, the one currently holding all the levers of power in Washington. After Trump groveled before Putin in Helsinki, many Republicans in Washington proclaimed their solemn concern, just as they did when the president expressed his sympathy for the white supremacists in Charlottesville last year. But all of them are fully aware that they are abetting a criminal conspiracy, and probably more than one. ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Special Counsel Robert] Mueller, who knows more than anyone in the media about the extent of the Russiagate scandal and never leaks, isn’t telling us that Trump colluded and obstructed justice—we already know that, because we literally saw Trump request on camera, in the summer of 2016, that Russia hack the Clinton campaign, just as we later saw him bluntly admit to the world that he fired James Comey to end the Russia investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead, we are being told something much more frightening: that Russiagate doesn’t end with Trump and his inner circle, that some members of Congress may be implicated, and that the Republican leadership therefore has a personal stake in preventing anyone beyond [former Trump campaign Chair Paul] Manafort and a few other flunkies from being held accountable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So Donnie, I hope you enjoy your friendship with Vlad, however one-sided it might be. This satire of a Facebook clip, made a few months after the 2016 election by the comedy filmmaker team of Evan and Adam Nix (the Nix Bros.), sums it up perfectly.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/justice-department-releases-fisa-applications-accused-trump-adviser-carter-page-conspiring-russian</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Justice Department Releases FISA Applications That Accused Trump Adviser Carter Page of 'Conspiring With the Russian Government'</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"That the FISA materials hurt the GOP narrative is not surprising since Rep. Devin Nunes admitted he never read the source documents on Carter Page. In fact, the first Nunes memo was such a disaster that I can't wait for the second one."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Jake Johnson / Common Dreams July 22, 2018, 2:42 AM GMT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an unprecedented and unusually timed document dump Saturday night, the Justice Department released a 412-page, partially redacted version of the FBI's 2016 FISA application requesting authorization to wiretap former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government," reads the FBI's application, which was ultimately approved by a federal court. The application goes on to accuse Page of "collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The documents can be viewed here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Common Dreams reported, the FBI's surveillance of Page became a subject of "partisan sniping" earlier this year when Democrats and the GOP latched onto competing narratives about how Obama's Justice Department obtained permission to wiretap the former Trump campaign adviser.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Aligning with President Donald Trump, Republicans alleged in a memo drafted by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) that the FBI's surveillance of Page amounted to an abuse of power—an abuse Republicans don't typically care about when the privacy rights of ordinary Americans are at risk.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But as Splinter's Dell Cameron and Jack Mirkinson note, the Nunes memo "turned out to be self-defeating for the GOP for several reasons." They explain:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, it charged that in seeking the secret surveillance warrant, federal investigators had failed to inform judges that key evidence was obtained from a biased source—the so-called Steele dossier, which was initially written by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of Democrats. But a response memo published by the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee later debunked the accusation, revealing that the court had in fact been informed of the source’s political bias.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The memo also backfired by inadvertently confirming that the Steele dossier was not the primary factor jumpstarting the Russia inquiry. Instead, it acknowledged events previously reported by the New York Times: A former Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, came under the scrutiny of investigators in July 2016 after boasting that Russia had dirt on then-candidate Hillary Clinton to an Australian diplomat in London.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Responding to the newly released FISA documents on Saturday, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) wrote: "That the FISA materials hurt the GOP narrative is not surprising since Rep. Devin Nunes admitted he never read the source documents on Carter Page. In fact, the first Nunes memo was such a disaster that I can't wait for the second one."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a tweet early Sunday morning, Trump asserted—citing the right-wing advocacy group Judicial Watch—that the documents actually prove that the GOP's narrative was correct, and that the FBI "misled the courts."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam!" Trump added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FISA documents were released on Saturday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests by numerous news outlets and advocacy groups.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Charlie Savage of the New York Times observes, "The spectacle of the release was itself also noteworthy, given that wiretapping under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, is normally one of the government's closest-guarded secrets. No such application materials had apparently become public in the 40 years since Congress enacted that law."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">bannon sez money laundering russian:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">putin real estate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/heres-why-trump-tries-so-hard-be-putins-good-side</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump's insistence on a summit with Vladimir Putin, disregarding the advice of aides and worries of allies, is consistent with his obsession with the Russian leader. But it’s inconsistent with his pattern of choosing policies that resonate with his supporters -- there’s no indication that Trump's followers condone this bromance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So why does Trump pander to Putin? He won’t criticize him and incessantly flatters and coddles him. He has winked at the annexation of Crimea, threatened NATO, suggested that the G7 should readmit Russia, and done nothing to prevent Russian meddling in U.S. elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many fear Trump will hand Putin unwarranted concessions, like unraveling U.S. sanctions against Russia. Trump was always soft on them anyway. After Russia requested a secretary of state who favored lifting them, Trump obliged, appointing Rex Tillerson instead of Mitt Romney. When Congress enacted sanctions on 15 Russian entities and individuals in 2017, Trump delayed implementing them for seven months and reversed a decision to impose more. What could be motivating Trump's largesse toward Russia? It's hard to argue that it's what’s best for America. A pattern of reported facts suggest it could be personal financial gain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Throughout the 2000s, Russians bought many apartments in Trump Tower and $100 million worth of Trump properties in Florida. But these sales dropped precipitously in 2014 after the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs for the Crimean incursion. Lifting sanctions would likely restore these sales, and the profits would flow through a trust run by Trump's sons, with the president as sole beneficiary. Indeed, Trump admitted that he’d “be looking at” lifting them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has many business aspirations in Russia that Putin can make or break. In 1986, Trump met with the Soviet ambassador about building a luxury hotel in Moscow, and announced a potential Trump International complex there. At the 2008 Russian Real Estate Summit, Trump touted plans for condos and hotels in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi. In 2011, he licensed his name to an aborted Azerbaijan hotel for $1 million and promoted a Trump Tower in Kazakhstan. Even as he campaigned for the Republican nomination, Trump signed a letter of intent to build Trump Tower in Moscow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s business depends heavily on Russian money. Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008 that “Russians make up a … disproportionate cross-section of … our assets,” and later added, “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” Eric Trump told a journalist, “We don’t rely on American banks; we have all the funding we need out of Russia.” (He later denied saying that.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2008, Deutsche Bank’s real estate group stopped lending to Trump after he defaulted on a $330 million loan. Inexplicably, he subsequently borrowed $75 million from another DB group. European and American regulators punished DB for laundering billions from Moscow. It’s not a huge leap to suspect that Trump’s DB money came from Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The blackmail potential in all these financial shenanigans is abundant. Implicating Trump in almost any of these schemes could expose him to charges of money laundering and bank fraud.Since Trump’s nomination, 70 percent of Trump sales were to limited liability companies frequently used by Russians to hide their identity, stow cash and, most likely, violate U.S. sanctions. Hundreds of millions of dollars from unidentified sources funded Trump’s unprofitable golf courses in Ireland and Scotland. Testimony before Congress suggests they were used to launder money for the Russian mafia. Steve Bannon told Michael Wolff, in speaking of White House corruption: “This is about money laundering … the path to …Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Junior and Jared Kushner.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“America first” ideology has actually put Russia first. Leaving the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Iran nuclear deal and Paris Climate Agreement lost America international forums where it communicated, led and influenced. Cutting the State Department’s budget and foreign aid weakened America’s global clout and allowed Putin to expand Russia's sphere of influence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s threat to cut aid to Central America damaged trust in the U.S. Now Putin is providing aid there, reopening military bases and building a satellite-tracking station that could spy on the U.S. Trump’s rejection of Obama’s soft Cuba policy may result in a repeat of Cuba’s pivot to Russia after Dwight Eisenhower rejected Cuban efforts for diplomatic and trade ties. Trump’s trade tariffs and insults of EU and Canadian leaders threatens relationships with our closest allies. His escalating criticism of NATO make some worry the United States might actually leave the alliance – the ultimate gift to Putin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Congressional Republicans are muting their nervousness about Trump giving away the store, settling for bromides about how there's nothing wrong with just talking to Russia. It's hard to imagine how talking under these conditions will serve America's interest, but on the other hand, we may finally see Trump Tower built in Moscow. In keeping his stakes in 500 foreign businesses -- no other president had any – Trump has unprecedented cause to tailor foreign policy for personal gain. He promised to “drain the swamp,” but there are more reptiles in it than ever, and many speak Russian</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mueller-probing-why-russian-billionaires-were-given-unusual-access-invitation-only</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NEWS & POLITICS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mueller is Probing Why Russian Billionaires Were Given 'Unusual' Access to 'Invitation-Only' Trump Inauguration Parties</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the individuals was sanctioned by the U.S. government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Chris Sosa / AlterNet June 28, 2018, 7:36 AM GMT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ABC News has obtained a guest list that shows several "billionaires with deep ties to Russia attended exclusive, invitation-only receptions during Donald Trump’s inauguration festivities."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The billionaires reportedly had access to events usually "reserved for top donors and close political allies" and included at least one individual now sanctioned by the U.S. government. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This reflects a Russian strategy of gaining access to our political leaders at a time when they are just forming a government,” Matthew Olsen, a former senior national security official who now serves as an ABC News consultant, said. “They don’t need to be spies in the James Bond sense. They are powerful people with significant wealth who are in a position to exert influence on U.S. policy makers. And they’re in a position to report back to Russian intelligence services on what they’re able to learn.” </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Inauguration guests included Victor Vekselberg, billionaire leader of the global conglomerate Renova Group, who was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury “for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is now looking into the suspicious inauguration activity. The Washington Post had originally reported that individuals with Kremlin ties were at Trump's inauguration, but the obtained guest list demonstrates a new level of public detail about the connections</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/special-counsel-eyeing-russians-granted-unusual-access-trump/story?id=56232847</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch: Special counsel eyeing Russians granted unusual access to Trump inauguration parties</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Special counsel eyeing Russians granted unusual access to Trump inauguration parties</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By MATTHEW MOSK JOHN SANTUCCI Jun 28, 2018, 11:41 AM ET</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PHOTO: President Elect Donald Trump arrives on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 20, 2017, in Washington.Scott Olson/Getty Images, FILE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WATCHSpecial counsel eyeing Russians granted unusual access to Trump inauguration parties</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Email</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Several billionaires with deep ties to Russia attended exclusive, invitation-only receptions during Donald Trump’s inauguration festivities, guest lists obtained by ABC News show.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These powerful businessmen, who amassed their fortunes following the collapse of the Soviet Union -- including one who has since been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department -- were ushered into events typically reserved for top donors and close political allies and were given unprecedented access to Trump’s inner circle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their presence has attracted the interest of federal investigators probing Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matthew Olsen, a former senior national security official who now serves as an ABC News consultant, said their presence at inaugural events is “very concerning.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This reflects a Russian strategy of gaining access to our political leaders at a time when they are just forming a government,” Olsen said. “They don’t need to be spies in the James Bond sense. They are powerful people with significant wealth who are in a position to exert influence on U.S. policy makers. And they’re in a position to report back to Russian intelligence services on what they’re able to learn.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former FBI Director Robert Mueller at an installation ceremony at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., October 28, 2013.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The presence of people with Kremlin ties in Washington for Trump’s inaugural celebration was first reported by The Washington Post. But the guest lists obtained by ABC News offer a new glimpse at the level of access granted to several well-connected oligarchs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Several donated enough to the Presidential Inaugural Committee to qualify for tickets to a “Candlelight Dinner” in Washington’s Union Station on the eve of the inauguration, a perk for $1 million contributors, the list of attendees show. Guests were treated to a preview performance by singer Jackie Evancho, a one-time runner-up on "America's Got Talent," who would go on to sing at the inauguration the following day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A handful celebrated Trump’s surprise victory at the black-tie “Chairman’s Global Dinner,” an exclusive 500-guest affair held the same night in the Greek-columned Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium whose attendees included close Trump friends, high-ranking campaign aides, and an array of foreign ambassadors and dignitaries. The inaugural committee treated them to a dinner of butter-poached lobster, coffee-crusted beef tenderloin and chocolate raspberry dome. For entertainment, casino mogul and Trump pal Steve Wynn flew in Las Vegas show girls to perform a Broadway-style rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to a source with knowledge of the congressional investigations, at least one oligarch was ushered into Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol for the traditional Inaugural Day luncheon, hosted by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies – an event typically out of reach to donors and even most rank-and-file members of Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s incredibly unusual,” said Stephen Kerrigan, who planned the 2009 and 2013 Obama inaugural festivities and said every guest was scrutinized for foreign ties. “Particularly if they were going to be within arm’s reach of the President, they went through an intensive vetting process.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Names on the guest lists of the Candlelight Dinner included Victor Vekselberg, the billionaire head of the global conglomerate Renova Group, who was later sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury “for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy,” and his American cousin Andrew Intrater. Late last year, Vekselberg was stopped at a New York airport by federal agents working for Special Counsel Robert Mueller and questioned, according to the New York Times. The Times also reported that Intrater was separately interviewed by the special counsel.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vekselberg and Intrater were seated at the dinner next to Michael Cohen and his family, according to a source familiar with the arrangements. Intrater’s firm, Columbus Nova, later signed Cohen to a $1 million consulting contract. Emails to Renova Group went unanswered. A spokesperson for Intrater declined to comment when reached by ABC News.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PHOTO: Renova Group Chairman Viktor Vekselberg attends a session during the Week of Russian Business, held by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), in Moscow, Feb. 7, 2018. Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Renova Group Chairman Viktor Vekselberg attends a session during the Week of Russian Business, held by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), in Moscow, Feb. 7, 2018. more +</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Investigators for both the Mueller team and the congressional probes have also expressed interest in several of the other Russian guests who had no obvious place in Trump’s diplomatic orbit, three sources told ABC News.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some had given money to past Republican candidates, including Leonard Blavatnik, a Ukrainian-born billionaire philanthropist who holds American and British citizenship. He appeared on guest lists for both the Candlelight Dinner and the Chairman’s events. His global company, Access Industries, which holds a majority stake in Amedia, Russia’s largest producer of television series, gave $1 million to the inaugural fund.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokeswoman at Access Industries directed questions from ABC News to a company official who was not immediately available for comment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alexander Shustorovich, a Russian-born American music industry mogul with a background in nuclear energy, also donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration and attended Chairman’s Dinner. Nearly two decades ago, the Republican National Committee returned a six-figure political contribution from Shustorovich because of his past ties to the Russian government, according to the Wall Street Journal, which quoted a GOP official saying it wasn’t “worth the trouble.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to questions from ABC News, John Evans, the chief operating officer of IMG Artists, a company owned by Shustorovich, said the wealthy businessman was maligned by that report and has since made sizable gifts to the Republican Party. He said Shustorovich has actually been under attack in Russia, where he has faced allegations of being an agent of American influence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Alex Shustorovich has not been contacted by anyone regarding his attendance at the Trump inauguration, except the press,” Evans said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Soviet-born billionaire Alexander Mashkevitch, who built a metals and mining empire in Kazakhstan, appears on the guest list for the Candlelight Dinner. Flight records show his private jet flew into Washington, D.C. on Jan. 19, 2017 and out two days later. European media reports indicate he settled money laundering charges with Belgian authorities in 2011 with no finding of wrongdoing by him. He has held an ownership stake in Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, one of the world’s largest mining and metals concerns, based in London.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ABC News has attempted to reach Mashkevitch through his companies for comment but they have not responded.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PHOTO: President Elect Donald Trump arrives on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 20, 2017, in Washington.Scott Olson/Getty Images, FILE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Elect Donald Trump arrives on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 20, 2017, in Washington.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak joined numerous other ambassadors on the invite list for the Chairman’s dinner.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guests dined alongside some of Trump’s closest friends and advisors, including private equity investor Thomas Barrack Jr., who chaired the inaugural fundraising effort; investment tycoon Carl Ichan, a longtime Trump friend; and Wynn, the casino boss who also became the Republican National Committee’s finance chairman. He stepped down earlier this year amid a swarm of sexual misconduct allegations, which he has denied.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump advisors who have faced criminal charges – such as former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI, and former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who awaits trial on charges related to financial crimes, were at the dinners. Manafort pleaded not guilty and is in jail awaiting trial.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Invited guests also included since-departed White House aide Steve Bannon and campaign advisor and Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, both of whom have since been questioned in the Special Counsel’s probe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Trump inauguration brought in more than $107 million, double the amount of President Obama, to finance a week of festivities that was filled with far fewer events than past inaugurations – only three Presidential balls. In May, ABC News reported that the Special Counsel had questioned several witnesses about millions of dollars in donations from donors with connections to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Andrew Intrater was stopped at a New York airport alongside Victor Vekselberg. Only Vekselberg was stopped. The person who declined to comment on Intrater’s behalf was his spokesperson, not his lawyer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WATCH Government investigators to inspect shelters for immigrant kids</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Email</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First lady Melania Trump traveled to Tucson, Arizona Thursday where she is set to make her second visit in a week to a border detention facility holding undocumented immigrants arrested at the southern border.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This facility is about two hours away from the actual U.S. border, but is the first place individuals (parents and children together) are brought immediately after detention at the border," the first lady's communications director Stephanie Grisham said Thursday, according to a pool report. "At the facility, she will participate in a roundtable with U.S. Marshalls, U.S. Border Patrol Agents, and local ranchers who will share their stories about what they have seen across the border, like the story of a 6-year-old boy who was found alone in the desert in Arizona."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first lady's office revealed Tuesday that she would be making another visit to a detention facility as the administration continues to face questions over the status of the more than 2,000 children separated from their parents due to the president's 'zero tolerance' policy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Tuesday, a federal judge in California ordered a temporary halt to the separation of families at the border and ruled that children taken from their parents must be reunited within 30 days. The court also prohibited, absent a waiver, the deportation of parents without their children, and it said that in the future children can only be separated from a parent if that parent poses a threat to the child.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first lady's visit last week drew significant controversy regarding her choice of a jacket that included a graphic on her back reading, "I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mrs. Trump's office said in a statement that the jacket was in no way intended as symbolic or sending a message, but that claim was immediately undermined by a tweet from President Trump who reacted to the mounting criticism with a tweet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald J. Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@realDonaldTrump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” written on the back of Melania’s jacket, refers to the Fake News Media. Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2:51 PM - Jun 21, 2018</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">160K</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">115K people are talking about this</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(MORE: Slideshow: Melania Trump through the years)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(MORE: First lady wears jacket to visit immigrant children that reads 'I REALLY DON'T CARE, DO U?')</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(MORE: Federal judge rules children, parents separated at border must be reunited within 30 days)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ABC's Lauren Pearle and Justin Doom contributed reporting to this article.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Comments</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Interior Dept. watchdog looking at Zinke's involvement in real estate development connected to oil company executive</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By STEPHANIE EBBS Jun 28, 2018, 12:45 PM ET</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> PHOTO: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke testifies before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, March 13, 2018, in Washington.PlayWin McNamee/Getty Images</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WATCH Who is Ryan Zinke?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Email</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Interior Department's internal watchdog has opened a preliminary review into reports that Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke was involved in a real estate deal in his hometown and met with a Halliburton executive about that deal in his office in Washington.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Interested in Trump Administration?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Add Trump Administration as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Trump Administration news, video, and analysis from ABC News.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Administration Add Interest</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The investigation was requested by House Democrats on committees with oversight of Interior who say that Zinke's conversation with the executive and developers on the project could violate ethics rule about using his office for personal gain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a letter to the inspector general that Zinke met with Halliburton CEO David Lesar and a developer for the project in his office at Interior, raising questions about whether Zinke was still involved in a foundation that the department said he recused himself from.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Secretary Zinke doesn’t seem to take his responsibility to the public seriously,” Grijalva said Thursday in a statement about the investigation. “He’s turned it into the Ryan Zinke show, which is more about waving his own flag above the building and doing personal business deals with his friends instead of protecting public lands and improving our environmental quality.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Grijalva's letter, also signed by Rep. Donald McEachin, D, Va., and Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Ca., cited a Politico report that first reported the real estate deal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokeswoman for the Interior inspector general's office Nancy DiPaolo said they opened a formal complaint on June 20 and that a preliminary review is underway.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PHOTO: Rep. Raul Grijalva speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 17, 2018.Susan Walsh/AP, FILE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Raul Grijalva speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 17, 2018.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zinke confirmed that he met with Halliburton Chairman David Lesar and his son about the background of the project in an interview this week.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We go out to dinner. We talk about the background of the park. What are the neighbors like, what was the vision of the park, where the boundaries are, where the water table is because the water table has changed over time, what the railroad is. You know, so they have the background," Zinke said in an interview on Voices of Montana radio show. "And clearly, I'm not on the board anymore. My wife runs the board. And they make a letter of intent for my wife that you know what, the community is for this project, the city approves it. It's a good project for Whitefish. We'll share some parking lots with you. That's it."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Democrats say that Zinke met with Halliburton chairman and CEO David Lesar and a developer for the project in his office at the Interior Department last August, even though Zinke is recused from the foundation that is involved in the project.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zinke founded the Great Northern Veterans Peace Park Foundation in 2008 to create a park in his hometown Whitefish, Montana. Plans shared with Zinke show the property would include sled runs, retail space, and a microbrewery.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zinke's spokeswoman provided documents to ABC News showing that Zinke resigned his position at the foundation in March, but the Democrats say that meeting with people involved with the development five months later raises questions about whether Zinke was really recused from the foundation's work and whether he used his office at Interior for personal gain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Though he has claimed that he is no longer involved with the foundation, he continues to be involved with the fate of the foundation's land, which was initially donated more than a decade ago to be a Veterans Peace Park," Grijalva wrote in the letter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zinke's wife, Lola, is still listed as an officer of the foundation in public records and their daughter is the treasurer. The nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen wrote to Interior's ethics office this week calling for them to investigate whether Zinke's or his family's business relationship with Halliburton violated federal ethics rules.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Public Citizen</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@Public_Citizen</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> We're urging the Office of Ethics of the Interior to conduct a conflict of interest investigation into Ryan Zinke's connection to a land deal with the chairman of the oil giant Halliburton. The deal stands to be a financial windfall for the Zinke family. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/20/probe-zinke-halliburton-chairman-638327 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1:49 PM - Jun 20, 2018</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Public Citizen seeks probe of Zinke connection to Halliburton chairman</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Public Citizen is asking the Interior Department’s top ethics officer to determine whether the arrangement violates any federal laws.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">politico.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">265</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">246 people are talking about this</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokeswoman for Halliburton said the meeting was not related to the company and that Lesar's investment in the deal is personal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The Company is confident that any actions of the Interior Department will not be influenced by Mr. Lesar’s personal investment," spokeswoman Emily Mir told ABC News in a statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Internal agency emails released by Interior Department show that Zinke had a scheduled meeting with David Lesar, the chairman of Halliburton, John Lesar, and Casey Malmquist on August 3 of last year. On a version of his calendar that was also released the same time frame that day was marked only as "HOLD."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zinke's spokeswoman Heather Swift said the meeting was on Zinke's personal time and that the three men talked to the secretary about the history and previous work on the project.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The two gentlemen talked on the Secretary’s personal time about the history of the site, previous studies, promised access and uses of the park, and the work that had gone into the park up to the point of the Secretary’s resignation. The Secretary adheres to all applicable laws, rules and regulations. He goes above and beyond mere technical compliance and strives for full transparency," Swift said in a statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The meeting was scheduled from 4:30pm to 6pm on August 3 of last year, according to documents publicly released by Interior.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Democrats cite an email from the developer for the project to Zinke after that meeting as evidence Zinke might still be involved in the project. The developer emailed Zinke's personal email account on August 13 calling the project a "grand slam" and saying they are "honored" to be associated with the secretary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I know you are extremely engaged and consumer with your role as Interior Secretary. I want you to know that whatever assistance you need to protect and promote your vision for the park, please let me know and I will make sure it is communicated and executed," Malmquist wrote in the August 13 email.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The email was included in emails publicly released by the Interior Department because it was forwarded from Zinke's personal account to his department account.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Swift said the developer emailed Zinke's personal email to get background info on the park project that no one else had. She also said Zinke forwarded Malmquist's email from his personal account out of an abundance of caution and to be transparent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ABC News Soorin Kim contributed to this report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Comments</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mma</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">was already reported that Russian authorities were potentially attempting to use the NRA as a means to help the Trump campaign. We know that the FBI is investigating whether a Russian banker and lifetime NRA member used the NRA to illegally funnel money to support Trump's election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This week more information came to light as an NRA source confirmed that meetings between an NRA representative and a person closely linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin were held during the election. These revelations come as NRA figures have been downplaying the Russia investigation and launching attacks against Robert Mueller’s investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/ivanka-trump-facilitated-contact-between-michael-cohen-and-russian-offering-facilitate-trump-putin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mueller and congressional investigators tasked with probing the 2016 presidential election have questioned witnesses about contact between Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and a Russian contact offering to “expedite a Trump tower in Moscow,” BuzzFeed News reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to BuzzFeed, Ivanka Trump “connected her father’s personal lawyer,” Michael Cohen, with Russian athlete Dmitry Klokov, “who offered to introduce Donald Trump to [Vladimir] Putin to facilitate a 100-story Trump tower in Moscow.” Cohen is under investigation in the Southern District of New York for bank fraud, among other alleged crimes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">frum bk:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">press: hannity and new say no indep media eg CNN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">local fox crew said gianforte guilty, but not asked to be on nat'l; rush applaid, 116K$ ON election day 113</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">russian dis-info 400 ppl, 20m ri8bles (400K$ per mo; 40 rooms0 russian version of FB, made fake ppl on US soc media 115; 100K ads; target 10 m ppl in slected districts and states; msg reached 126M FB users 116.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">russia ~ Fr Macron, so vidfeo ell cut hand wash inverted; rebel media posobiec got adv notce of email dump; big overlap betw anti-marcon and pro djt, 18K bots; 118</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cernovich pizzagate guy got WH leaks (susan rice unmasked)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trad media tried to be balaced, so any crumb or djt normalcy touted 120</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">media restriction 1st sign of decline of democ 122</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/former-nsa-analyst-claims-us-spy-agencies-have-known-trump-was-russian-agent-2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mueller sanction 13 oligarchs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stefan Halper was identified this week as the alleged “informant” who Donald Trump accused of spying on his 2016 presidential campaign and kicking off an FBI investigation into possible collusion with Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But several weeks ago, a news outlet with deep ties to Trump himself had already identified Halper as the likely information. The Daily Caller, a right-leaning news outlet founded by Trump supporter and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, had actually reported back on March 25 that Halper had reached out to members of Trump’s campaign in an effort to learn about their communications with Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">clapper</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/they-swung-election-trump-win-msnbcs-maddow-stunned-ex-intel-directors-revelation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">teaser? trms? 5/18</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...ven before the appointment of Mueller as special counsel in May 2017, FBI agents investigating Russia’s interference in the election learned that Cohen was in frequent contact with foreign individuals about Trump Moscow — and that some of these individuals had knowledge of or played a role in 2016 election meddling, according to two FBI agents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"That is new," Maddow said Thursday night. "That is new information that adds a whole new dimension to the Trump Tower Moscow story that had been kept secret for a very long time, and then diminished, and we were all told it was nothing. And now it turns out that it was more than nothing, the FBI was interested in it. and it involved people who were part of the 2016 election meddling by the Russian government."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The direct ties between a key member of the Trump's orbit and the efforts to disrupt American democracy would seem to suggest a plausible path for some sort of "collusion" to have occurred and also completely contradicts any number of denials from the president and his allies of any connections to Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/senate-intel-committee-splits-nunes-led-house-panel-agrees-putin-interfered-2016-help-trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trump-lawyer-ty-cobb-just-announced-his-exit-hes-being-replaced-clinton</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">e flood</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://investigaterussia.org/media/2018-03-23/boltons-cambridge-analytica-connection</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://investigaterussia.org/key-players/russians-and-ukrainians</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russians and Ukrainians</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vladimir Putin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President of Russia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sergey Lavrov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sergey Kislyak</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Russian Ambassador to the United States</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sergei Gorkov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Head of Vnesheconombank (VEB), Russia’s State Investment Bank</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dmitry Peskov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kremlin Spokesman</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Aras Agalarov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Billionaire Real Estate Developer/Trump Friend</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Emin Agalarov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Real Estate Executive and Pop Singer/Trump Friend</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Natalia Veselnitskaya</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian Lawyer/June 9th Meeting Attendee</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rinat Akhmetshin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian-American Lobbyist/June 9th Meeting Attendee</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Viktor Yanukovych</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Pro-Kremlin President of Ukraine/Paul Manafort Client</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dmytro Firtash</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ukrainian Oligarch/Former Paul Manafort Business Partner</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Konstantin Kilimnik</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Manafort’s Ukrainian Protégé</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oleg Deripaska</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian Oligarch/Putin Friend/Former Paul Manafort Client</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Irakly (Ike) Kaveladze</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Crocus Group VP/June 9th Meeting Attendee</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Igor Diveykin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian Deputy Chief for Internal Policy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Igor Sechin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Executive Chairman, Rosneft/Former Soviet Spy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alexander Mashkevich</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kazakhstan Mining Billionaire/Possible Trump Investor</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">General Valery Gerasimov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Services of the Russian Federation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Viktor Khrapunov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Kazakh Government Official/Trump SoHo Apartment Owner</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sergey Shoygu</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russia’s Minister of Defence</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sergei Ivanov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Putin Chief of Staff</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Herman Gref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chief Executive, Sberbank/Putin Ally</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sergei Ryabkov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian Deputy Foreign Minister</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Evgeny Buryakov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Convicted Russian Spy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dmitry Rybolovlev</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Russia’s Fertilizer King”/Purchased Trump’s Overpriced Palm Beach Mansion</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">more</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yevgeniy Prigozhin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian Oligarch and Putin's Chef</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, President Trump's incoming national security advisor, hired Cambridge Analytica in August 2014 to work for his political committee called the The John Bolton Super PAC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The New York Times:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/connections-trump-putin-russia-ties-chart-flynn-page-manafort-sessions-214868</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">canal map</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://littlesis.org/maps/2928-cambridge-analytica-trump-brexit-fossil-fuels-and-climate-science-denial</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/books/review/russian-roulette-michael-isikoff-david-corn.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...In one scene inside Trump Tower, the candidate’s aides debate how to respond to the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape in which the future president boasts about grabbing women by their genitals. According to the authors, Trump’s daughter Ivanka, her face reddening and eyes filling with tears, urged her father to make a full-throated apology. He did not. He simply dismissed what he said as “locker room banter” without denying anything he did.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It should have been a moment for Team Clinton to celebrate a knockout blow to Trump’s insurgency — except that the video landed on an inauspicious day for them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barely an hour earlier, the director of national intelligence and secretary of homeland security issued a statement saying that the intelligence community was “confident that the Russian government directed” the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email system. The subsequent leak of thousands of emails was a tactic “consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was the Watergate burglary of the internet age, yet the revelation was all but drowned out by the release of the tape. “The Clinton staffers hit the phones, calling reporters they had worked with, urging them to give more attention to the Russia story. They weren’t having much luck.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And still to come was the third October surprise of the day. WikiLeaks announced that it would begin dribbling out thousands of emails to and from John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, that proved hugely embarrassing to the candidate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That day — Oct. 7 — may prove to be a turning point in American history. It was, by some unearthly coincidence, also Vladimir Putin’s 64th birthday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Russian Roulette” is best when describing how the country’s intelligence agencies were slow to recognize Russia’s effort and the frustration among Clinton’s supporters of the failure of the administration, the F.B.I. and the media to trumpet it for what it was. (Some reporters did, in fact, including Corn and Isikoff, but much more became clear only after Trump’s It was President Obama, however, who set the administration’s tone: He did not want to be seen as trying to tip the scales of the election by suggesting a foreign leader was intervening in support of one side. “We were wearing self-imposed handcuffs,” one agonized aide tells the authors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...Still another anonymous source reveals one of the book’s most significant revelations. A Russian insider had been providing the American Embassy in Moscow with unconfirmed but what turned out to be prescient information about Putin’s inner circle around the same time Trump was presiding over the pageant. Among the disclosures was the racially tinged disdain senior Russians felt for Barack Obama, all dutifully reported back to Washington in top-secret cables.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This source — described not as an intelligence asset but as a sympathetic political insider, who as a young man had been “heartened by Ronald Reagan’s anti-Soviet rhetoric” — told his interlocutor as early as 2014 that the Kremlin was planning to undermine democracy in the West. It was, the authors suggest, one of many missed signals of what was coming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Anybody who had any doubt about Putin’s intentions,” the source’s American interlocutor is quoted as saying, “just wasn’t reading what we reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wapo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Manafort wanted back in the game,” begins the chapter on the Washington power lobbyist who did indeed want back into Republican Party politics and would find his chance as Trump’s campaign manager.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Run away!” you want to yell, because we know what is to come: FBI raids on the Manafort home, grand juries and indictments and charges of money laundering and tax crimes and bank fraud and — well, who knows? Even as I type, this sentence is probably being overtaken by the latest turn of events in the Mueller probe. Isikoff and Corn unpack the foreign consulting transactions for which Manafort raked in millions; if you want to dive deep, deep into the weeds of his business contacts in Ukraine, this is your book. But for all the detail, Manafort the man remains inscrutable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.politico.com/interactives/2018/trump-russia-investigation-ties/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.politico.com/interactives/2018/trump-russia-investigation-ties/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">infographic</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nra mojo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">May 2016: In an email to Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn, with the subject line “Kremlin Connection,” Erickson says Russia is “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.” and proposes using the NRA convention to set up “first contact” with the Trump team. According to a New York Times report, Erickson writes that he’s in a position to “slowly begin cultivating a back-channel to President Putin’s Kremlin.” The email doesn’t name Torshin but appears to reference him as “President Putin’s emissary” who planned to attend a dinner hosted by conservative Christian activist Rick Clay. Meanwhile, Clay sends an email to Dearborn with the subject line “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite,” seeking a meeting between Trump and Torshin. Dearborn forwards Clay’s email to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who reportedly nixes the proposal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">also mashburn on rnc platform change:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Dearborn and Mashburn were also the recipients of phone calls made by campaign foreign policy aide J.D. Gordon as delegates to the Republican National Convention were debating what the party's platform on Ukraine should be. The party ultimately elected to adopt language that endorsed providing ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mueller-wikileaks-foundation-russia-case</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Robert Mueller’s emerging focus on Donald Trump’s knowledge of hacked Democratic National Committee emails shows he’s “laid the foundation” for a collusion case against Donald Trump, a former White House lawyer said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wednesday, NBC News reported Mueller’s team is probing how much Trump knew about the stolen DNC emails and whether he was aware the radical transparency organization WikiLeaks planned to publish those exchanges.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrew Wright, who served for two years as Barack Obama’s associate counsel, told Business Insider that line of questioning is a bad sign for the president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The one specious thing about Trump’s lawyers’ strategy is that they’re saying there’s no substantive focus on Trump when it comes to the collusion inquiry, that this is all about obstruction of justice, and that Mueller already has everything he needs from other witnesses and documents for the obstruction case,” Wright said, referring to reported attempts by Trump’s attorneys to shield their client from sitting for an interview with the special counsel.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Setting the obstruction case aside, what has happened over the last couple of weeks is that Mueller laid the foundation [for a collusion case] by showing the crimes of the Russians, in at least some form,” Wright continued. “And now we’re seeing his focus on Trump about the hacked emails. At this point, it’s a matter of proving whether Americans were participants in this conspiracy to commit these crimes, and whether they aided or abetted these acts.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WikiLeaks—which the U.S. intelligence community considers an arm of the Russia government—played a pivotal role in the 2016 presidential election, releasing troves of DNC emails during times of peak tumult for then-candidate Trump. As the Atlantic reports, the organization was in touch with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., from September 2016 to at least July 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to leaked private Twitter messages, longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone also corresponded with WikiLeaks—despite assertions from both parties they’d never communicated during the campaign. Mueller has asked witnesses about Trump’s interactions with Stone throughout the campaign, Business Insider reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump, meanwhile, publicly touted the emails leaked by WikiLeaks, using them as proof of his claim former rival Hillary Clinton was “corrupt.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a July 27, 2016, press conference.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last month, Mueller indicted 13 Russian nationals and three corporations on conspiracy charges for their role in interfering in the 2016 presidential election. Robert Deitz, former general counsel at the National Security Agency, told Business Insider the charges could be a stepping stone in Mueller’s quest to find whether any Americans aided Russia’s effort.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In these kinds of investigations, prosecutors typically move up the food chain,” Deitz said.”I suspect that Mueller, through earlier interviews or documents, finally has sufficient evidence to begin putting a story together that involves Trump.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Deitz told Business Insider Mueller “will continue to fill in the dots until he has enough to seek an interview with [or indictment or] Trump.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/mike-rogers-gives-warning-trumps-swamp-drowns-washington</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">random update</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">.... We learned that Jared Kushner has had his top security clearance downgraded — and it was likely because National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster found out that he has been having meetings with foreign dignitaries on the sly, while certain governments have been keenly interested in taking advantage of his inexperience, debt and blatant conflicts of interest. And that's not even counting the fact that he's up to his neck in the Russia investigation. The White House insists that he's still got his portfolio of bringing Middle East peace and handling relations with China and Mexico, among other things, but nobody can figure out how he can possibly do it if he is not privy to the top U.S. intelligence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The president could, of course, just slip him the paperwork — he has that power — but it appears that Trump is trying to put a little public distance between himself and his son-in-law, only mustering a lame defense that he's been "treated unfairly" and that he's a good person who works for nothing. (Trump doesn't seem to realize that we all know that rich people in great debt who work for free, like Kushner and Paul Manafort, might be getting something else out of the deal.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, White House Communications Director Hope Hicks testified before the House Intelligence Committee and, like Steve Bannon before her, apparently just refused to answer most of their questions. The White House has not claimed executive privilege and she didn't plead the Fifth — so normally this would result in a witness being held in contempt of Congress. But this committee is run by Devin Nunes and his Trump coverup band of Republicans, so that was that. She did admit to telling some "white lies" on her boss's behalf sometimes, so that's something.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, the Atlantic's Natasha Bertrand got a hold of private Twitter messages revealing that Trump pal and Nixon dirty trickster Roger Stone was actually in touch with Wikileaks during the campaign, even though he said he wasn't. Joshua Partlow and David A. Fahrenthold at the Washington Post reported that police arrested a security guard at a Trump hotel in Panama when the hotel’s majority owner tried to fire the Trump Organization and Trump employees wouldn't leave. Now the Panamanian government is involved in the dispute, which causes exactly the kind of conflict of interest that might be expected when a president refuses to divest himself of properties and interests in foreign countries.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But perhaps the most important story of the day was a rather stunning appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command. On the verge of retirement and clearly not pulling any punches, he let it all hang out, testifying that the president hasn't issued any special directives to counter Russian election interference and saying “Clearly, what we’ve done hasn’t been enough.” He specifically criticized the administration’s decision not to bother implementing sanctions mandated by Congress as punishment for their intrusion in 2016:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not just the sanctions but more broadly, my concern is, I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion there’s little price to pay here, and that therefore I can continue this activity... everything, both as the director of NSA and what I see on the Cyber Command side, leads me to believe that if we don’t change the dynamic here, this is going to continue and 2016 won’t be viewed as something isolated. This is something that will be sustained over time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One can only surmise that President Trump is fine with that, assured for some reason that he will be the beneficiary. In fact, he is so fine with it that he announced he had hired his controversial digital guru from 2016, Brad Parscale, as his campaign manager for 2020.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You may be wondering why in the world Trump is announcing his campaign manager already — after only a year in office. But Trump seems to love campaigning more than being president, which he isn't very good at. There is also the matter of a lot of fundraising already being done for the campaign, large amounts of it being spent on salaries for relatives and cronies of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, along with big bucks for rent in Trump Tower. It's best to have someone "managing" all that money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parscale would normally be an odd choice for such a job. He is enmeshed in some very shady business deals, although that seems to be a requirement for any job with Donald Trump. He had no political experience before 2016; he basically was a webmaster who fell into the job of working with Jared Kushner and the shadowy digital company Cambridge Analytica on their social media strategy, which was the only sophisticated aspect of their operation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Parscale took credit for developing the Facebook and Twitter strategies that he claims won Trump the election, so choosing him for a top Trump 2020 campaign job while the Russia investigation is ongoing is simply mind-boggling. After all, special counsel Robert Mueller just indicted 13 Russians for using those platforms for their propaganda effort, and there is plenty of suspicion that more Americans may have been involved in targeting and strategy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nobody knows if Parscale was involved — but he was very, very close to the action. And it's not as if there aren't any other campaign operatives Trump could turn to. After all, the person who really ran his campaign is right there in the White House — Kellyanne Conway.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The criminal information document released by special counsel Robert Mueller ahead of Trump campaign aide Rick Gates’ guilty plea on Friday contains prominent references to “a member of Congress” who met in 2013 with future Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and another lobbyist.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HuffPost has identified that member as Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a loudly pro-Russia lawmaker who has drawn the attention of Mueller and congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mueller has not yet interviewed Rohrabacher, the congressman’s spokesman told HuffPost on Friday in a message that also confirmed the 2013 meeting with Manafort. But Mueller’s team wanted to interview Rohrabacher as of late last year, according to news reports, and the criminal information released in advance of Gates’ plea suggests they were asking about Rohrabacher recently. The congressman has already been interviewed by the House and Senate Intelligence committees.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gates has told a court that he lied to federal investigators on Feb. 1, 2018, about his knowledge of the meeting between Rohrabacher, Manafort and lobbyist Vin Weber when he falsely claimed he did not know Ukraine was discussed. Ukraine is one of the top foreign policy concerns of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Manafort spent years working for Ukrainian politicians close to Moscow. And Rohrabacher was one of only a few U.S. lawmakers to oppose American assistance to a new government in Ukraine established in 2014 after protests against Putin’s allies in that country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rohrabacher has become notorious for being what The New York Times calls “an apologist” for Putin. “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said during a 2016 meeting of the GOP’s top brass, according to a secret recording shared with The Washington Post. (McCarthy later said he was joking.) Russian intelligence officials gave Rohrabacher a code namebecause they viewed him as a valuable source, The New York Times revealed last year.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rohrabacher maintains that he is simply motivated by a sincere desire for better relations between Washington and Moscow. In a 2014 Twitter exchange, the congressman wrote, “Have known Manafort 35 years. As in all matters, I make up mind based on truth & right, not donations or even friendship.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Officials speaking with The New York Times last year said they did not believe Rohrabacher was actively working with the Russians.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As both chair of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee covering Europe and a former anti-Soviet hawk, the congressman argues that the two countries with the world’s largest nuclear arsenals need to get along and that Americans should have more sympathy for Russia’s priorities and its fears of Western encirclement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://thegrio.com/2018/01/29/nra-russia-ties/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Did Russia infiltrate the NRA? Did the NRA launder Russian money for Trump? If the answer to these questions is yes, then the problem of guns in America—and why we can’t seem to discuss it, address it or solve it–starts to make more sense.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FBI is investigating whether a Russian banker, mafia boss and politician with close ties to Vladimir Putin illegally funneled millions to the NRA to help Trump win the presidency.Alexander Torshin, a former Russian senator with connections to the Kremlin, is the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank—and a lifetime NRA member, as reported by McClatchy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Torshin is reportedly the godfather of the Russian criminal syndicate Taganskaya. Authorities in Spain were prepared to arrest him in 2013 on the resort island of Mallorca for money laundering, until he cancelled his travel plans. Torshin has been a subject of a number of Congressional investigations, including the House intelligence committee.Torshin, a gun enthusiast, has attended several NRA conventions, including the May 2016 convention in Kentucky, where he spoke with Donald Trump Jr. and the gun rights organization endorsed Trump for president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In November 2017, the committee interviewed Glenn Simpson, cofounder of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that hired British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to compile a dossier on ties between Trump and Russia. Steele went to the FBI in September 2016 because he was concerned the Russians were blackmailing Trump. In the interview, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) asked Simpson about Russia’s interest with the NRA:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">–Shocking new details emerge about the infamous Trump dossier–</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Simpson’s own words: SIMPSON:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It appears the Russians, you know, infiltrated the NRA. And there is more than one explanation for why. But I would say broadly speaking, it appears that the Russian operation was designed to infiltrate conservative organizations. And they targeted various conservative organizations, religious and otherwise, and they seem to have made a very concerted effort to get in with the NRA. And so there is a Russian banker-slash-Duma member-slash-Mafia leader named Alexander Torshin who is a life member of the NRA. And we spent a lot of time investigating Mr. Torshin."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Simpson also mentioned Maria Butina, a “big Trump fan in Russia” who worked with Torshin, and “then suddenly showed up here and started hanging around the Trump transition after the election.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 2016 election, the NRA spent a record of at least $55 million, possibly more than $70 million, including $30 million on Trump—three times the amount the gun rights organization had spent on Mitt Romney in his 2012 presidential bid.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But why should we care about any of this?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NRA’s overwhelming political influence</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Already, there have been at least eleven school shootings in the U.S. in 2018, and no one seems to care. America lacks the will to solve its problems, and gun violence is certainly one of them. Money has corrupted politics, and the signs are all around us.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As the Dallas Morning News has reported, oligarchs tied to Putin have funneled millions of dollars into Republican campaigns, filling the coffers of politicians such as Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain, and Govs. John Kasichand Scott Walker. Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan received $500,000 from the Koch Brothers immediately after Congress passed the infamous tax bill that amounts to a huge gift to the top 1 percent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in America, and has been operating like an arm of the Republican Party, with the GOP opposing any and all gun control measures. For the NRA, gun regulations have become far more than a matter of policy. Rather, the group has become a solider in the “culture wars,” branding liberals, progressives, Black Lives Matter protesters and those who oppose Trump as their enemy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last year in an NRA ad, Dana Loesch called for a civil war against the left, who in her words “use their media to assassinate real news,” “use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler,” and “smash windows, burn cars, shut down interstates and airports, bully and terrorize the law-abiding — until the only option left is for the police to do their jobs and stop the madness.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One critic, activist Samuel Sinyangwe, tweeted that the ad was “the white equivalent of an ISIS recruitment video.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[vid]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On NRATV, NRA’s media outlet, two men accused Black Lives Matter of committing mass violence against whites, making parallels to “South Africa where white families are being tortured and killed almost every day in racist violence.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[img] One of the men, NRA host Grant Stinchfield, once suggested North Korea should bomb California instead of Guam, and insisted we “blame minorities killing each other” for gun violence rather than “law abiding conservatives. Let’s look harder at broken families not gun laws.” In another video called “We Stand,” the NRA inserted itself into the NFL protests against police brutality.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[img vid]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">he NRA, like the GOP, has jumped head first into the pool of fascism and racism, making it increasingly more difficult to distinguish between white supremacist militias and hate groups, gun lobbyists and Republican lawmakers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Things get very serious when this all translates into policy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why is the NRA so mum on Russia ties?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Everytown for Gun Safety, which has created an interactive website on ties between the NRA, Russia and Trump World, notes that the NRA forged ties with Putin as Russia meddled in the U.S. election. “Not only are they Trump’s #1 ally, the NRA’s leadership has been building relationships with Russian officials since at least 2011,” said Jamie Schell, Political Research Director for Everytown for Gun Safety in a Dec. 29 email to supporters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schell called out the NRA for promoting a “guns everywhere” agenda. “It’s no surprise that the NRA doesn’t want to talk about their ties to Russia. How can the NRA be protecting freedom when they cozy up to Putin’s authoritarian regime?” he wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The gun lobby has enabled gun proliferation in America, a land where there are as many firearms as there are people. The U.S. has 4.4 percent of the world population, but 42 percent of the guns. This reality translates into 30,000 gun-related deaths each year, and it should be regarded as a major public health crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gun violence has taken a particular toll on the Black community in terms of homicides, creating a vicious cycle of trauma. Through its legalized bribery of elected officials, the NRA has stood in the way of solutions to America’s gun problem, blocking gun violence research for 20 years. Their answer has been guns everywhere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In December, the House voted to extremely expand the right to carry concealed weapons just about anywhere in the country, requiring any state to recognize a concealed carry permit from another state. Who benefits from this? Obviously, the NRA, the Republicans, and Russia. Because if you want to disrupt another country, weaken it internally and undermine it, what better way to accomplish this than to bring in all the guns and turn it into the Wild West?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moreover, GOP leadership refuses to accept the Russia investigation, led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as legitimate. In some cases they’ve even attempted to impede and undermine it. For example, Trump attempted to fire Mueller last June, ordering the prosecutor’s termination, which White House lawyer Don McGahn refused to carry out.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">–Obstruction? Trump reportedly ordered firing of Russia special counsel Mueller–</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many Republicans in Congress oppose legislation making it more difficult to fire Mueller. The president also launched a campaign to discredit potential FBI witnesses in Mueller’s probe. GOP lawmakers have promoted a conspiracy theory that there is a “deep state” FBI plot to bring down Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who reportedly recused himself in the Russia investigation because he was a member of the Trump transition team, has exhibited strange behavior for months. Recently, against the objection of the Justice Department, Nunes has called for the release of a Republican memo alleging the FBI abused the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by obtaining a warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The memo targets Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein–who oversees Mueller and who Trump wants removed–and deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe–who worked under fired FBI Director James Comey and has just stepped down–for their role in the investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These and other examples of obstruction and efforts to protect Trump only point to GOP culpability, given what is known about the NRA’s–and by extension the Republican Party’s–ties to Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, if the NRA did take the Russian money and gave it to Trump and other Republican campaigns, that would certainly explain some things.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes is actively blocking his own committee’s investigation, refusing to subpoena Trump’s financial records or compel new testimony from key witnesses like Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump Jr, despite new information emerging.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham are doing the White House’s bidding by calling for a criminal investigation -- not against those who worked with the Russians to interfere in the 2016 election, but against a whistleblower who compiled a research document exposing that interference.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Investigative reporter Michael Isikoff of Yahoo News dropped a small bombshell this quiet holiday week that hasn't really exploded yet but might just explain the GOP's recent full-court press to discredit the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller's team. Rep. Francis Rooney, a Florida Republican, explained:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I would like to see the directors of those agencies [the DOJ and FBI] purge it and say, "Look, we’ve got a lot of great agents, a lot of great lawyers here." Those are the people to see and know the good work’s being done, not these people who are kind of the deep state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Wednesday, Rep. Ron DeSantis, another Florida Republican, went on "Fox & Friends" and backed up his colleague's sentiments, saying, "You look at a guy like Peter Strzok [the FBI agent demoted for sending derogatory texts about many politicians including Trump]. If he’s gonna say that it’s his job as an FBI to prevent a certain candidate from getting elected. ... Anyone who turns up in that situation, I think they should get another line of work.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For what it's worth, Strzok is a counterintelligence agent who appeared concerned that the "certain candidate" might be acting as an agent of a foreign adversary, which was important information the nation didn't have before the election. In any case, from what we can gather, these Republican congressmen identify nefarious "deep state" actors as those who cannot swear that they are not now and have never been a... Democrat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As one can imagine, the use of the word "purge" brought forth some rather unfortunate historical images. We haven't seen evidence that they plan the usual accompanying show trials, but give them time. Republicans in Congress are working feverishly to prepare hearings on the Hillary Clinton "Russian uranium email treason" hearings so there's a chance we'll see some kind of facsimile before 2018.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The hysteria that's now raging seems a bit of an outsized reaction for this particular phase of the scandal, especially considering that Mueller actually did remove the offending "deep-staters." Isikoff may have come across a different motivation than simple loyalty to President Trump. He wrote:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In just the last few weeks, his prosecutors have begun questioning Republican National Committee staffers about the party digital operation that worked with the Trump campaign to target voters in key swing states. They are seeking to determine if the joint effort was related to the activities of Russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the American electorate, according to two of the sources.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It would not be surprising if certain Republicans were to become a bit nervous when the investigation into Russian interference turned in that particular direction. It's flown under the radar since the election, but the fact is that it wasn't only the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta's email accounts that were hacked. The intelligence community identified the same group of Russian-affiliated hackers as behind the hacking of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I've been intrigued by this aspect of the Russian hacking story since the New York Times published an early report about it back in November of 2016. Recall that at first the hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 released personal information that was used to intimidate Democratic candidates, but then he/she/they suddenly became more sophisticated and targeted, dumping valuable tactical information:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The seats that Guccifer 2.0 targeted in the document dumps were hardly random: They were some of the most competitive House races in the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People have wondered ever since if the hacker(s) might have gotten some expert assistance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps it's a coincidence that so much of the information in question was republished on a website called HelloFLA by a Florida Republican and former congressional staffer named Aaron Nevins, who was connected to Trump associate and longtime political operative Roger Stone. It could be completely random that among the core group of Mueller antagonists, those calling the probe a "coup d'état" and demanding purges of members of the "deep state" are Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who proposed that Mueller's funding be cut off, and the aforementioned Rep. Francis Rooney, who's been all over TV talking about purging the FBI.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, as journalist Marcy Wheeler pointed out a while back, one of the ringleaders of the movement to discredit the Department of Justice and Robert Mueller, Rep. DeSantis, directly benefited from Guccifer 2.0’s leak to Nevins after the latter published five documents regarding the DCCC’s recruitment of DeSantis’ Democratic opponent, George Pappas. According to The Wall Street Journal, Guccifer 2.0 even sent a link with a HelloFLA article directly to Roger Stone, who told reporters he didn’t forward the hacked material to anyone -- the answer to a question nobody asked,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump may think their vociferous attacks on Mueller are all about loyalty to him personally. After all, this group all flew down to Florida together on Air Force One earlier this month. But these guys have skin in the game now and may very well be caught up in the maw of the Russia investigation themselves.If Mueller's team is looking into the digital operation and Roger Stone's interactions with Guccifer 2.0, as one would expect them to do, then these shenanigans in Florida are also coming into view. That may explain why this little circle of Sunshine State GOP congressmen are so anxious to shut him down.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They might not be the only ones. According to The New York Times, material from the DCCC hack was first used by Miami-area Democrat Joe Garcia, a former congressman, to win a tight primary race. Then "the National Republican Campaign Committee and a second Republican group with ties to the House speaker, Paul Ryan, turned to the hacked material" to undermine Garcia and re-elect Rep. Carlos Curbelo, the Republican incumbent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It should be noted that there were some candidates who refused to use the hacked material against their opponents. This gang of Florida Republicans who are now so loudly attacking the FBI for its supposedly unethical behavior were not among them. As we all know, neither was Donald "I love WikiLeaks" Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">digby</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://billmoyers.com/story/trump-russia-timeline/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Maybe you saw it, too. On Thursday, I read a post from Facebook executivestouting their determination to reel in the propaganda monster their platform had enabled in 2016’s election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We are committed to protecting legitimate political discussion within our community,” Facebook said, citing its “action plan against foreign interference,” which includes “hiring 10,000 people including ad reviewers, engineers and security experts and combining their skills with advances in AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning to identify and remove content violations and fake accounts.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Facebook’s moves come as congressional hearings continue on how Russians, with (as we now know) a more sophisticated understanding of social media than Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, planted thousands of propagandistic memes on dominant online platforms including Facebook. These moves come as the Federal Election Commission is mulling new disclosure requirements for the election platforms. (Unless anticipated upcoming FEC vacancies stall this action.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But what’s most important, amid the recent news surrounding Facebook’s role as one of 2016’s top political propaganda platforms, is what is missing from Facebook’s statements. It's also missing from the few media accounts about possible federal regulation of Facebook. What's missing is the role of another communication platform owned by Facebook: Instagram. This is what Jonathan Albright, a Columbia University Journalism School professor and researcher recently told the Senate Intelligence Committee, and detailed in a long article on Medium.com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “most important development about the ongoing Facebook investigation isn’t the tenfold increase in the company’s updated estimate of the organic reach of ‘ads’ on its platform," Albright wrote. "While the estimate increasing the reach of IRA content from 10 million people to 126 million people is surely a leap, after last week’s [Senate] testimony, the real question we should be asking is: how did we suddenly arrive at 150 million? The answer is Instagram.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“My following analysis shows that Facebook’s sibling property, Instagram—a service larger than Twitter and Snapchat combined—should be seen as a major influence, targeting and engagement hub for the spread of political propaganda,” Albright continued. “How do I know? Because I amassed a huge trove of content, analytics numbers, and did the analysis to prove it. To show the reach and use of Instagram for political propaganda the last two years, I’ve collected the following evidence: First, the full profile analytics, post 'like' history and comment statistics, and the complete content—including text, dates and original URLs—for a sample of Instagram posts from 28 of the 170 removed accounts. These posts accounted for 2.5 million recorded interactions (not estimated 'shares') and 145 million projected total interactions based on Socialblade, Klear, and Keyhole influencer data.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Albright is one of the foremost investigative reporters, dealing with millions of real recorded social media posts and interactions, including tracing how content spreads. His latest conclusion is that Instragram, which Facebook owns, has been overlooked in the congressional scrutiny of its parent company and Google and Twitter in understanding how social media fanned and exploited propagandistic divisions among the electorate in 2016. More important, what Albright highlights remains online today—including what he labels the thousands of “zombie” memes and other posts from 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instagram More Influential Than Twitter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I argue here that Instagram is more pervasive than Twitter for political meme-spreading as well as viral outrage video-based behavioral re-targeting,” he said. “Part of the reason for this is because it uses the same range of Facebook’s universe of sophisticated ad targeting infrastructure—including Lookalike and Custom Audiences. The Instagram platform can even link even video views to direct response and campaign objectives.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Albright goes further, explaining that Silicon Valley top coders built the communications network that not only spreads viral content, but leaves it lingering online, and mines user interactions and compiles psychological profiles to further this provocative dynamic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Let’s take these step by step. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Instagram is also a major re-distributor of IRA [Internet Research Agency, a Russian company] memes: Two unofficial third-party 're-sharing' apps on Instagram have circulated and pushed IRA content far beyond the realm of Instagram and Facebook, and embedded it all over the internet. This includes cross-posting of memes and posts from removed accounts from Instagram back into Facebook, Instagram, and also into Twitter. These apps also helped the memes get over to Pinterest.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This recycling has led to a stunning observation—one that partly accounts for the deepening poisonous nature of arch-partisan politics—which is the observation that much of 2016’s political propaganda is still circulating, despite Facebook and other sites taking steps to close these accounts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/dncs-emails-werent-only-hacked-they-were-edited-report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Emails hacked from the Hillary Clinton campaign may not have been as reliable as the anti-Clinton camp would like to believe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first document published by hacker Guccifer 2.0 had been tampered with prior to being published, according to the Associated Press. In addition to not coming from the Democratic National Committee as Guccifer had promised it would be (it instead came from the email inbox of John Podesta, former chairman for the Clinton campaign), the document had the word "CONFIDENTIAL" written on it. Yet a former DNC official has said that the word "confidential" was not on the original document, indicating that Guccifer had airbrushed it in to spice it up for journalists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If one document from the Clinton emails was altered, it stands to reason that others may have been as well. After all, releasing tainted leaks would hardly be a new practice for Russian hackers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2017 researchers at the Citizen Lab group released a study indicating that Russian hackers have a pattern of tampering with documents leaked by its hackers to serve the purposes of its propaganda.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This report describes an extensive Russia-linked phishing and disinformation campaign," the authors wrote. "It provides evidence of how documents stolen from a prominent journalist and critic of Russia was tampered with and then 'leaked' to achieve specific propaganda aims. We name this technique 'tainted leaks.'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The authors added, "The report illustrates how the twin strategies of phishing and tainted leaks are sometimes used in combination to infiltrate civil society targets, and to seed mistrust and disinformation. It also illustrates how domestic considerations, specifically concerns about regime security, can motivate espionage operations, particularly those targeting civil society."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/paul-manafort-may-hold-key-who-was-he-really-working</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... 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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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 named Oleg Deripaska, who has previously been denied entry into the U.S. because of ties to organized crime.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">digby</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/investigations/rachel-maddow-traces-russia-collusion-scandal-back-republican-national-convention</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">new report from the Daily Beast sheds more light on how Russian intelligence operatives used Facebook to organize support for Donald Trump’s candidacy during the 2016 presidential election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the report, a Russian-sponsored Facebook group called “Being Patriotic” helped organize and promote multiple Trump rallies and events throughout the election campaign, including a pro-Trump “flash mob” in Florida that was promoted by a local Trump campaign chairman, who posted photos from the event on his Facebook page.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“On August 20, we want to gather patriots on the streets of Floridian towns and cities and march to unite America and support Donald Trump!” said the Facebook event page for the events. “Our flash mob will occur in several places at the same time; more details about locations will be added later. Go Donald!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “flash mobs” weren’t the only events that the Being Patriotic group organizer, either. The Daily Beast also found that “events promoted by the page last year included a July “Down With Hillary!” protest outside Clinton’s New York campaign headquarters, a September 11 pro-Trump demonstration in Manhattan, simultaneous “Miners for Trump” demonstrations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in October, and a pro-Trump rally outside Trump Tower last November, after his election victory.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At its peak, Being Patriotic had 200,000 followers on Facebook. It was shut down last month, shortly before Facebook publicly disclosed that it had received cash from Russian groups for political ads during the 2016 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brad Reed </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-appear-to-use-facebook-to-push-pro-trump-flash-mobs-in-florida</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no link img</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.thedailybeast.com/russians-appear-to-use-facebook-to-push-pro-trump-flash-mobs-in-florida</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">xclusive: Russians Appear to Use Facebook to Push Trump Rallies in 17 U.S. Cities</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘Being Patriotic,’ a Facebook group uncovered by The Daily Beast, is the first evidence of suspected Russian provocateurs explicitly mobilizing Trump supporters in real life.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BEN COLLINS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GIDEON RESNICK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">KEVIN POULSEN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">SPENCER ACKERMAN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">09.20.17 11:39 AM ET</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Suspected Russia propagandists on Facebook tried to organize more than a dozen pro-Trump rallies in Florida during last year’s election, The Daily Beast has learned.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The demonstrations—at least one of which was promoted online by local pro-Trump activists— brought dozens of supporters together in real life. They appear to be the first case of Russian provocateurs successfully mobilizing Americans over Facebook in direct support of Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Aug. 20, 2016, events were collectively called “Florida Goes Trump!” and they were billed as a “patriotic state-wide flash mob,” unfolding simultaneously in 17 different cities and towns in the battleground state. It’s difficult to determine how many of those locations actually witnessed any turnout, in part because Facebook’s recent deletion of hundreds of Russian accounts hid much of the evidence. But videos and photos from two of the locations—Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs—were reposted to a Facebook page run by the local Trump campaign chair, where they remain to this day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“On August 20, we want to gather patriots on the streets of Floridian towns and cities and march to unite America and support Donald Trump!” read the Facebook event page for the demonstrations. “Our flash mob will occur in several places at the same time; more details about locations will be added later. Go Donald!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Florida flash mob was one of at least four pro-Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton demonstrations conceived and organized over a Facebook page called “Being Patriotic,” and a related Twitter account called “march_for_trump.” (The Daily Beast identified the accounts in a software-assisted review of politically themed social-media profiles.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Being Patriotic had 200,000 followers and the strongest activist bent of any of the suspected Russian Facebook election pages that have so far emerged. Events promoted by the page last year included a July “Down With Hillary!” protest outside Clinton’s New York campaign headquarters, a September 11 pro-Trump demonstration in Manhattan, simultaneous “Miners for Trump” demonstrations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in October, and a pro-Trump rally outside Trump Tower last November, after his election victory. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FACEBOOK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ‘Next Level’ of Election Interference</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Being Patriotic Facebook page was closed in August 2017—right when Facebook purged accounts secretly operated by a notorious St. Petersburg troll factory called Internet Research Agency. According to a public report by U.S. intelligence agencies (PDF), Internet Research Agency is financed by “a close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence.” Being Patriotic’s posts included scores of pro-Trump or anti-Clinton memes framed and watermarked in the same style as those found on the Heart of Texas and Secured Borders Facebook pages previously identified as Russian operations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Being Patriotic Twitter account was suspended at around the same time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Facebook spokesman told The Daily Beast the company was “not able to confirm any of the details here,” in response to a question about the Russian origin of Being Patriotic, but did not challenge The Daily Beast’s reporting.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Sept. 6, Facebook acknowledged for the first time that inauthentic accounts from 2015 to 2017 promoted what the company’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, characterized as “divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum.” But Stamos said that most of the fraudulent activity it found—some 3,000 ads connected to 470 now-shuttered accounts linked to Russian troll farms—“didn’t specifically reference the U.S. presidential election, voting, or a particular candidate.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After The Daily Beast found known Russian accounts that used Facebook’s Events tool to promote rallies inside the United States, the company said that it was not well positioned to determine “if something like coordination occurred” between the Trump campaign and Russia—something investigators and security researchers doubt because of the social network’s massive trove of information on its customers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the discovery of the Being Patriotic rallies suggests that the fraudulent activity on Facebook did indeed involve messaging on behalf of Trump, did prompt at least some Americans to rally on Trump’s behalf, and did result in the Trump campaign volunteers subsequently sharing material from those events.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The pro-Trump events represent “the next level” of suspected Russian influence operations, said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who has testified about those operations to a Senate committee investigating them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This would be a direct effort that they attempted that’s more than online promotion,” Watts told The Daily Beast. “‘Let’s organize and try to get people to move to events in a proactive way around a candidate. Again, if it traces back to Russia, you can’t deny that’s foreign influence in an election.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Railing Against #BLM, Too</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The extent of Being Patriotic’s impact is not clear. In June of last year, for example, the Being Patriotic Facebook page asked participants to “gather in front of Trump Tower, N.Y.” The event received call-outs on Facebook and Twitter, and 138 people marked themselves as “attending” on Facebook. Over 400 marked themselves as interested.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">March_For_Trump specifically reached out to Nick Toma, a local news anchor in Scranton, Pennsylvania, for coverage of a “Miners for Trump” rally it promoted last October, only a month before the election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“@NickTomaWBRE Hi, Nick! We're holding a ‘Miners for Trump’ rally tomorrow. If you're interested in covering it, please let us know,” March_for_Trump wrote on October 1st.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Toma was emailed the link to the tweet, he told The Daily Beast: “Don’t recall ever seeing it before.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Facebook has turned over some of the illicit ads to special prosecutor Robert Mueller after a federal judge issued a search warrant for the material, according to CNN. Facebook also showed congressional investigators that material but did not leave it with them. Legislators investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 election have expressed frustration over what they describe as insufficient disclosures to Congress, and have indicated that they will seek public testimony from Facebook and other social-media companies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watts, the former FBI agent and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, noted that “plausible deniability is built into any Russian active-measures strategy,” such as using troll farms in St. Petersburg or Macedonia to conceal influence campaigns. But compelling unsuspecting Americans to gather in the streets on behalf of Trump shows the reach and efficacy of those efforts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The page earned such a large following, a known Macedonian fake news distributor, Nikola Tanevski, purchased BeingPatriotic.com this year, but the page is currently dormant. Tanevski runs popular, pro-Trump fake news factories USATwentyFour.com and TheAmericanBacon.com. Attempts to reach Tanevski did not receive a response.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The layers of deception went beyond Facebook posts and manufactured rallies. When it wasn’t organizing events, Being Patriotic encouraged violence against minorities in incendiary posts. “Arrest and shoot every sh*thead taking part in burning our flag! #BLM vs #USA,” Being Patriotic’s Twitter account posted in April 2016, using the hashtag for the Black Lives Matter protest movement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The account also advertised a toll-free “Being Patriotic Hotline” to report instances of voter fraud on Election Day.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Detected a voter fraud? Tell us about it! Call 888-486-8102 or take photo/video and send it to us,” the account wrote on Nov. 8. Being Patriotic’s sister account, @March_for_Trump, plugged the same phone number, as well as a hotline for the “Trump Lawyer Team.” The number is now disconnected.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘Broward’s Most Famous Trump Fan’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When asked for comment, the White House referred The Daily Beast to the Trump campaign, which, in turn, did not respond to emailed questions. But Susie Wiles, who served as Trump’s campaign manager in Florida, told The Daily Beast that the Broward County portion of the flash mob “was not an official campaign event.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That’s despite the fact that the event was promoted on “Official Donald J. Trump for President Campaign Facebook Page for Broward County, Florida.” Photos and videos of the demonstration were posted there afterward.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When emailed the link to the Facebook posting, Wiles told The Daily Beast: “There are groups such as this across the state—and maybe other places, too. Groups of people get together and establish a presence such as this but it is unaffiliated with the campaign, per se. The photos ring no bells with me.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wiles also said that the Trump campaign’s purported Broward County Facebook page, which markets itself as being “official,” was not set up by the campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Donald Trump campaign did not set these Facebook pages up,” she told The Daily Beast. “Rather, supporters (like the lady registered as the contact) set them up to support the campaign and subsequently the president.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “lady” registered as the contact is Dolly Trevino Rump, the Trump campaign’s chairwoman for Broward County who, until this April, was also the secretary of the local Republican Party. The Miami Herald described her as “perhaps Broward’s most famous Donald Trump fan.” Rump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast. Neither did the chairman of the Broward County Republican Party.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">View image on TwitterView image on Twitter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Follow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dolly Trevino Rump @dollytrump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Huge, enthusiastic crowd greeted the Trump RV at Wings Plus in Coral Springs Fl</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5:29 AM - Sep 1, 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Being Patriotic event listings for its Florida flashmobs included the names and phone numbers of people listed as local volunteer coordinators. When contacted by The Daily Beast, two of those coordinators vaguely recalled the events taking place, but not much else.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Betty Triguera, who was listed as a coordinator for a gathering in Sarasota, Florida, told The Daily Beast that she recalled but didn’t attend the event.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We got the information from it on Twitter but I didn’t go,” Triguera said unable to remember other details.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jim Frische, who was listed as a coordinator for an event in Clearwater, Florida, told The Daily Beast that he was called about organizing an event and put one together.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He said he was unsure if it was organized by the campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I don’t recall the group’s name,” Frische said. “I know somebody called and said would you organize something so I put together a group. “I remember doing it and I think we had a dozen or so people out on the street corner. I remember afterward hearing it had happened all over the state."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.democracynow.org/2017/9/7/headlines/facebook_says_russian_troll_farm_bought_ads_to_polarize_us_electorate</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Capitol Hill, representatives of Facebook told lawmakers Wednesday the company unwittingly sold $100,000 worth of advertisements to a Russian company that aimed to polarize the U.S. electorate on issues of gun rights, immigration, LGBTQ rights and racism. The company was described as a Russian "troll farm" with a history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda. Democratic Congressmember Adam Schiff cited the move as evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LAT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> House Intelligence Committee issued seven subpoenas Wednesday, ramping up its investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and into whether names of President Trump’s associates were improperly revealed in classified intelligence reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Subpoenas went to Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, and to the president’s longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen. The Senate Intelligence Committee and a federal grand jury in Virginia also have issued subpoenas for Flynn’s business records.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a statement, the House committee said it had issued subpoenas seeking “testimony, personal documents and business records” from Flynn and Cohen. It also approved subpoenas for the Flynn Intel Group LLC and for Michael D. Cohen & Associates PC.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We hope and expect that anyone called to testify or provide documents will comply with that request, so that we may gain all the information within the scope of our investigation. We will continue to pursue this investigation wherever the facts may lead,” Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas), the committee chairman, and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), the ranking member, said in a statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">factcheck farley march 28</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Adam Schiff laid out a series of “coincidences” to build a circumstantial case that President Trump’s campaign associates may have colluded with the Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign. But one of his “coincidences” is not an established fact.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Is it a coincidence that Roger Stone predicted that [Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman] John Podesta would be a victim of a Russian hack and have his private emails published, and did so even before Mr. Podesta himself was fully aware that his private emails would be exposed?” Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in his opening statement at a March 20 hearing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is nothing in the public record so far that proves Stone, a political operative and longtime Trump associate, predicted the Podesta email hack.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rather, Schiff is making an assumption, based on connecting two events: a tweet that Stone sent out on Aug. 21 saying that it would soon be “Podesta’s time in the barrel,” and the release of Podesta’s emails by WikiLeaks two months later.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On ABC’s “This Week” on March 26, Stone denied that he predicted Podesta’s emails would be hacked, adding — correctly — that his tweet never “made any reference to John Podesta’s email.” Stone said his tweet referred to Podesta’s business dealings with Russia, and the expectation that that would become a news story.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schiff’s Case</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On March 20, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a hearing at which FBI Director James Comey took the unusual step of publicly confirming that the FBI investigation of Russian influence into the presidential campaign “includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the start of the hearing, Schiff, the committee’s ranking Democrat, laid out what he later called “circumstantial evidence of coordination,” and highlighted the need for a full investigation into collusion between the Russians and people connected to the Trump campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone featured prominently in Schiff’s list of “coincidental” events — including the allegation that Stone knew in advance that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would release Podesta’s hacked emails to damage Democratic presidential nominee Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schiff, March 20: On August 8th, Roger Stone, a longtime Trump political advisor and self-proclaimed political dirty trickster, boasts in his speech that he has communicated with Assange and that more documents would be coming, including an October surprise. In the middle of August, he also communicates with the Russian cut out Guccifer 2.0 and authors a Breitbart piece denying Guccifer’s links to Russian intelligence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then later, in August, Stone does something truly remarkable when he predicts that John Podesta’s personal emails will soon be published. “Trust me,” he says, “it will soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel. #crookedHillary.” In the weeks that follow, Stone shows remarkable prescience. “I have total confidence that WikiLeaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon,” he says, #LockHerUp.” “Payload coming,” he predicts and two days later it does.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WikiLeaks releases its first batch of Podesta emails. The release of John Podesta’s emails would then continue on a daily basis, up until the election. On Election Day in November, Donald Trump wins. …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is it a coincidence that Roger Stone predicted that John Podesta would be a victim of a Russian hack and have his private emails published and did so even before Mr. Podesta himself was fully aware that his private emails would be exposed?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schiff concluded that while it is possible the events he listed were “unhappy coincidence,” it “is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated and that the Russians use the same techniques to corrupt U.S. persons that they employed in Europe and elsewhere. We simply don’t know, not yet. And we owe it to the country to find out.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whether some of the events highlighted by Schiff amount to anything may be left to the FBI and congressional investigators to determine. But on the issue of Stone predicting the hack of Podesta’s emails, Schiff makes a factual leap — one not established in publicly shared evidence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Timeline</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone, a longtime political operative who says he has no problem being called “a dirty trickster” with “sharp elbows,” was employed by the Trump campaign for several months early in the presidential campaign. Stone parted ways with the campaign in August 2015 — Trump said he fired him; Stone said he resigned because he felt he could more effectively help Trump’s cause outside the campaign, and that he remained in regular contact with Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schiff notes that Stone communicated with both Guccifer 2.0 and Assange (both of whom were deemed to have acted as proxies for Russian intelligence to release emails damaging to the Clinton campaign, according to a declassified intelligence community assessment released on Jan. 6).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone did communicate with Guccifer 2.0 in 2016 in a series of Twitter messages between Aug. 14 and Sept. 9 that Stone says he has since published in their entirety. In a lengthy interview with Stone published by Politico on March 27, Stone said that after he posted his Breitbart article, he learned that Guccifer 2.0 — who he said he does not believe to be a Russian agent — was banned from Twitter, and then was reinstated. Stone said he reached out to give Guccifer a social media “high-five,” expressing his support for Guccifer’s reinstatement “because I’m against censorship.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The rest of the messages, Stone says, are pretty innocuous. In one, Guccifer 2.0 writes, “please tell me if I can help u anyhow.” But there is no record that Stone replied to that message. Twice, Stone asks Guccifer 2.0 to retweet his articles, and in one, Guccifer makes a benign comment about an article on election strategy, which Stone replies is “Pretty Standard.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone also revealed during a speech to the Southwest Broward Republican Organization on Aug. 8 that he had “communicated with Assange.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be,” Stone said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone later clarified that he never spoke directly with Assange, but that the two have a mutual journalist friend — or what Stone referred to in a tea party speech as a “back-channel intermediary” — who told him in August that Assange “has the mother lode on Hillary [Clinton]” and that those emails would be released in October.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone said the information he received was no more specific than that, but enough to prompt him to make repeated statements and social media messages predicting upcoming bombshells related to Clinton. Stone said he also speculated that the hacked emails were related to the Clinton Foundation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone says his Aug. 21 tweet about Podesta — that it would soon be Podesta’s “time in the barrel” — had nothing to do with hacked emails, though. Two days prior, Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, quit the campaign amid media reports about prior business dealings with Russia-aligned leaders in Ukraine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone said he was aware that Podesta also had business ties to Russia, and that journalists were beginning to look into those. That’s what prompted the tweet, he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, earlier that year, media accounts based on the so-called Panama Papers reported that Podesta’s company, the Podesta Group, had been hired to lobby on behalf of one of Russia’s biggest financial institutions. And in October, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece on business ties between Podesta and a Russia-backed investment firm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an Oct. 19 story for Breitbart, Stone said Podesta’s business ties to Russia were the motivation for the tweet.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone, Oct. 19, Breitbart: This because of a tweet I posted in August at the time my boyhood friend and colleague Paul Manafort was under attack for his perfectly legal work in Ukraine for a democratic political party. I predicted that Podesta’s business dealings would be exposed. I didn’t hear it from WikiLeaks, although Julian Assange and I share a common friend. I reported the story on my website.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> So let’s be clear. I had no advance notice of WikiLeaks’ hacking of Podesta’s e-mails.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There is no foreshadowing of Podesta’s email,” Stone said in his interview with Politico. “That’s speculation. It’s conjecture.” Stone said any claim that he “orchestrated or strategized or knew the scope of what they [WikiLeaks] had and the scope of what they intended to release is false.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone has volunteered to testify before the House intelligence committee, and he says he’d like it to be in public.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokesperson for Schiff emailed us this statement: “During his opening statement, Ranking Member Schiff laid out the public record of Mr. Stone’s statements, including his tweeted prediction regarding Podesta, his direct communications and defense of Guccifer 2.0, and his claims to be in contact with Julian Assange, either directly or through an intermediary. Along with a host of other issues of concern, Mr. Schiff stated that these matters could be completely coincidental – or they may not – but they do bear examination in any thorough investigation; in the context of the Russian Active Measures campaign during the election, these are questions that must be answered. At an appropriate time, the Committee will call Mr. Stone to testify, and Mr. Stone can answer these questions and others based on both public reporting and any other pertinent evidence.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schiff is free to question what Stone meant by the tweet. But in the intelligence hearing, Schiff stated as a matter of fact that Stone predicted the release of Podesta’s hacked emails, and questioned whether Stone’s prediction was a coincidence or evidence of collusion with Russia. More information may emerge as a result of FBI and congressional investigations, but based on what is currently in the public domain, it’s not an established fact that Stone knew in advance that Podesta’s emails were hacked and would be published in October.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Share The Facts</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Adam Schiff</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democratic Congressman</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Roger Stone predicted that John Podesta would be a victim of a Russian hack and have his private emails published and did so even before Mr. Podesta himself was fully aware that his private emails would be exposed."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">House intelligence committee hearing – Monday, March 20, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s campaign was working in parallel with Russian anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda efforts, although the specific nature of their cooperation has yet to emerge, according to new analyses connecting the dots between Russia’s theft of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails and Trump campaign social media messaging.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As congressional investigators and journalists compare timelines of anti-Clinton social messaging on FaceBook and Twitter in October 2016 with statements by officials high up in Trump’s campaign and some family members, it's becoming clear that the micro-targeting of Clinton voters in swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin was certainly done by the Trump campaign—and also possibly done by Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The big unanswered question is just how closely coordinated those operations were.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will Bunch, writing for PhillyNews.com, pulled this together in a piece that ran Sunday, July 16, declaring that the old journalist maxim of “follow the money” has turned into “follow the data” under Trump. He writes, “The campaign’s data effort was overseen by President Trump’s son-in-law and arguably his closest adviser, Jared Kushner.” Bunch points to investigative reporting by the McClatchy News Service published last week. McClatchy wrote:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Investigators at the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the Justice Department are examining whether the Trump campaign’s digital operation—overseen by Jared Kushner—helped guide Russia’s sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016. Congressional and Justice Department investigators are focusing on whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states—areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton, according to several people familiar with the parallel inquiries.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bunch reminds his readers that there have been a handful of investigative reports that probed exactly what the Trump campaign was doing to target Clinton’s supporters on social media—the new go-to political advertising media for 2016. What was different about last year’s political messaging, however, was the proliferation of fake news: stories, memes, attacks and websites all intentionally designed to discourage Clinton voters via Facebook and Twitter. These put a new twist on an old political campaign tactic: slinging mud via negative ads. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Bloomberg.com’s Joshua Green and Sasha Issenberg reported in late October 2016, Trump’s social media operation targeted Clinton supporters on FaceBook and Twitter to discourage them from voting for the former secretary of state. As FaceBook revealed in an April 2017 report on how its platform had been abused by propagandists during the election, “Social media accounts and pages were created to amplify news accounts of and direct people to the stolen data. From there, organic proliferation of the messaging and data through authentic peer groups and networks was inevitable.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, Donald Trump’s campaign bombarded swing-state Democrats with political ads/fake news, some of which was content based on stolen information gained by Russian hacks of the DNC and Clinton campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bunch cites a May report by Kate Brannen at JustSecurity.org, where in a podcast, Tommy Vietor, a former spokesman for the National Security Council, asked Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA, the Intelligence Committee vice-chair, about one-half of this scenario: how Russia used social media to attack the Clinton supporters. Here’s the podcast excerpt:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vietor: One thing I’ve heard about the focus of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the Russian hacking is that the sophistication and the preciseness of the targeting is something that’s being looked at closely. Specifically that Russian bots were targeting Clinton voters at the precinct level to suppress their vote with fake news, and that that level of expertise would require data from a targeting firm, like Cambridge Analytica, for example. Is that true? And can you tell us anything about the nature of these Russian hacks that I’m hearing about?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Warner:When you see some of the explanation and some of the fact that it appears that, for example, women and African Americans were targeted in places like Wisconsin and Michigan, where the Democrats were too brain-dead to realize those states were even in play.… It was interesting that those states seem to be targeted where the bots — where they could create a lot of these fake Twitter and Facebook accounts, could in fact overwhelm the targeted search engines that would end up saying on your news feed, you suddenly got stuff that “Hillary Clinton’s sick” or “Hillary Clinton’s stealing money from the State Department.” I get the fact that the Russian intel services could figure out how to manipulate and use the bots. Whether they could know how to target states and levels of voters that the Democrats weren’t even aware of really raises some questions. I think that’s a worthwhile area of inquiry. How did they know to go to that level of detail in those kinds of jurisdictions?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vietor: I wonder if they just asked Jared [Kushner] like Trump does with all of his questions. We’ll find out.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Warner: We’ll find out. More to come on that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Next, JustSecurity.org’s report goes to the data-mining operation the Trump campaign used, Cambridge Analytica, which was underwritten by the reclusive billionaire investor Robert Mercer. His daughter, Rebekah, was instrumental in the Trump campaign’s makeover in mid-summer 2016. Brannen then cites Paul Wood's take, a BBC reporter “who’s been ahead of the pack on the Russia-Trump investigation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last March, Wood wrote, “Firstly, hackers steal damaging emails from senior Democrats. Secondly, the stories based on this hacked information appear on Twitter and Facebook, posted by thousands of automated 'bots,' then on Russia’s English-language outlets, RT and Sputnik, then right-wing U.S. ‘news’ sites such as Infowars and Breitbart, then Fox and the mainstream media.” </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You are correct if you think this sounds like Trump’s campaign and the Russians were running in similar circles to attack the Clinton campaign. That is essentially what Timothy Snyder, a Yale historian of early-20th-century authoritarian regimes, said in a mid-June speech. Snyder explained that Russia didn’t need to hack America’s voting machinery to mess with voters or the counts, even though they were probing those computer database systems. That’s because the Russians found a much more effective way to influence the election: bombard voters on social media. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The main element of the Russian intervention in the election had to do with gathering political data about tens of millions of Americans, and then using Facebook and other platforms to target fake news to people who were regarded as susceptible, especially in the last weeks before the election, which probably determined the outcome in critical states that were targeted,” Snyder said. “This isn’t to say that there aren’t other reasons, and in my view, good reasons, why people could vote for Mr. Trump. It isn’t to say that Hillary Clinton ran a wonderful campaign either. It’s just to say that in a very close election, that probably made the difference.” </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The question that is emerging now is not whether Trump and the Russians were targeting swing-state Democrats on social media in 2016, but whether they were operating in parallel or coordinating closely. Brad Parscale, the digital director of the Trump campaign, accepted an invitation on Friday to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I am unaware of any Russian involvement in the digital and data operation of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign,” he said in a statement posted on Twitter, in which he said the campaign worked with the Republican National Committee, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Cambridge Analytica. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America's democracy and voting rights. He is the author of several books on elections and the co-author of Who Controls Our Schools: How Billionaire-Sponsored Privatization Is Destroying Democracy and the Charter School Industry (AlterNet eBook, 2016).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dont-look-now-investigators-are-exploring-if-russia-colluded-pro-trump-sites</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The spread of Russian-made fake news stories aimed at discrediting Hillary Clinton on social media is emerging as an important line of inquiry in multiple investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Investigators are looking into whether Trump supporters and far-right websites coordinated with Moscow over the release of fake news, including stories implicating Clinton in murder or paedophilia, or paid to boost those stories on Facebook.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The head of the Trump digital camp, Brad Parscale, has reportedly been summoned to appear before the House intelligence committee looking into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 US election. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee carrying out a parallel inquiry, has said that at least 1,000 “paid internet trolls working out of a facility in Russia” were pumping anti-Clinton fake news into social media sites during the campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Warner said there was evidence that this campaign appeared to be focused on key voters in swing states, raising the question over whether there was coordination with US political operatives in directing the flow of bogus stories..Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed by the justice department to oversee the investigation into the Russian role in the election, is thought to be looking into all these issues, as well as possible links between Russian fake news factories and far-right sites in the US.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is a wide-ranging investigation that is examining the unusually large number of contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials during the campaign, as well as the possibility that the Kremlin has personal or financial leverage over members in the Trump camp, including the president himself according to his own remarks on Twitter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The role of Russian generated fake news is a separate strand which has gained less attention up to now, but the part it played in depressing the Clinton vote in key states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in the critical last days of the 2016 campaign could have helped change the course of recent American history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A huge wave of fake news stories originating from eastern Europe began washing over the presidential election months earlier, at the height of the primary campaign. John Mattes, who was helping run the outline campaign for the Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders from San Diego, said it really took off in March 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In a 30-day period, dozens of full-blown sites appeared overnight, running full level productions posts. It screamed out to me that something strange was going on,” Mattes said. Much of the material was untraceable, but he tracked 40% of the new postings back to eastern Europe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Four of the Facebook members posting virulent and false stories about Clinton (suggesting, for example, that she had profited personally by arming Islamic State extremists) had the same name, Oliver Mitov. They all had a very small number of Facebook friends, including one which all four had in common. When Mattes tried to friend them and contact them there was no reply.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many websites producing anti-Clinton fake news were based in Albania and Macedonia. A pro-Sanders Facebook page with nearly 90,000 followers was run by an Albanian IT expert who, when interviewed by the Huffington Post, appeared to speak very little English, although his page consistently published polished English prose.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mattes, a former Senate investigator, did some digging into the sudden phenomenon of eastern European Sanders enthusiasts. He found that was a spike in activity on the anonymous browsing tool Tor in Macedonia that coincided with the launch of the fake news campaign, which he believes could represent Russian handlers contacting potential east European hosts to help them set up automated websites.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is a cost-effective hands-free method with no blowback to you if you are in St Petersburg creating this product,” Mattes said. He argued that if the pro-Sanders websites in east Europe had been primarily motivated by maximising clicks they would have moved on to another viral subject</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What I found was that 95% of them has gone dark,” he said. “So my question is: what are they hiding and why did they run as soon as the investigation began?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mattes believes that the aim of the campaign was to damage Clinton, who Vladimir Putin saw as his arch foe, and then, after the primaries were over, to minimise the number of Sanders voters who switched their support to Clinton in the face-off against Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He was particularly struck by a report on 10 August that formed part of the dossier on the Russian interference campaign compiled by the former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, which quoted an unnamed Trump associate discussing a Russian-driven campaign to alienate Sanders supporters from Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He was writing in real time about things I was seeing happening in August, but I couldn’t articulate until September,” he said. Because the Sanders online campaign was so open, democratic and relatively unregulated, Mattes says he now realises: “We basically set ourselves up to be victims of an international cyberwarfare campaign. We were pawns in this but very effective pawns.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clint Watts, a former FBI counter-terrorism expert, said that a Russia-driven influence campaign also became apparent in the Republican primaries.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He told the Senate intelligence committee the campaign “may have helped sink the hopes of candidates more hostile to Russian interests long before the field narrowed”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He saw the same pattern that Mattes had observed, of seemingly independent operators across Europe suddenly starting to propagate similar messages consistent with messaging from Moscow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What you have to look at now is how were these sites financed and you have look at their ownership. How did they get the funds to get started?” said Watts, now a senior fellow at the Centre For Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He has also found a high degree of apparent coordination in the dissemination of fake news between official Russian propaganda outlets and “alt-right” sites in the US.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They synchronise so quickly it looks as if they know when a particularly story was going to come out,” he added. “And they all parrot the Kremlin narrative.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The U.S. intelligence community has long since concluded Russia meddled in the 2016 election, and it was reported shortly after the 2016 presidential election that a GOP superPAC linked to Paul Ryan used illegally hacked material to attack Democratic House candidates. But a bombshell report published on Thursday confirms that Republican political operatives were working with the Russian government to hurt Hillary Clinton and Democrats during the election — the first direct evidence of so-called collusion. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Wall Street Journal reported that hacked information was posted on a blog run by Aaron Nevins, the political operative, and then passed along to top Trump adviser Roger Stone during the campaign. The Republican operative in Florida received a trove of Democratic documents from the allegedly Kremlin-linked hacker, Guccifer 2.0. For months, both Congress and the FBI have been scrutinizing evidence that associates of Trump may have colluded with Russia during the campaign. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nevins confirmed to the Journal that he told hacker Guccifer 2.0 to “feel free to send any Florida based information” after learning that the hacker had tapped into Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) computers last summer. From the DCCC, Guccifer 2.0 released internal assessments of Democratic congressional candidates, known as “self-opposition research,” to GOP operatives using social media. Nevins told the Journal that, after receiving the stolen documents from the hacker, he “realized it was a lot more than even Guccifer knew that he had.” The stolen DCCC documents also contained sensitive information on voters in key Florida districts, breaking down how many people were considered dependable Democratic voters, undecided Democrats, Republican voters and the like. Nevins made a war analogy, describing the data he received to Guccifer 2.0 as akin to a “map to where all the troops are deployed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After Nevins published some of the material on the blog HelloFLA.com, using his own pseudonym, Guccifer 2.0 sent a link of the information to close Trump associate Roger Stone — who is currently under federal investigation for potential collusion with Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I just threw an arrow in the dark,” Nevins, who set up a Dropbox account for Guccifer 2.0 to transfer data, told the Journal. “If your interests align,” the operative concluded, “never shut any doors in politics.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone told the Journal that while he did receive a link to Nevins’s blog from Guccifer 2.0, he didn’t share the stolen data published on the blog with anyone.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to receiving hacked information about Democratic races in Florida, Nevins also received internal details about congressional districts in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC with close ties to House Speaker Paul Ryan, eventually used the material that was stolen by hackers in attack ads against several Democrats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anthony Bustamante, a Republican campaign consultant for Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), told the Journal that he used the stolen information to plan ad buys and better target a mailer effort: “I did adjust some voting targets based on some data I saw from the leaks.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans ignored Democrats’ pleas not to use the hacked material for political gain.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After Guccifer 2.0 targeted the chair of the DCCC, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Paul Ryan arguing that “the NRCC’s use of documents stolen by the Russians plays right into the hands of one of the United States’ most dangerous adversaries,” and if the National Republican Campaign Committee continued using the materials, the GOP “will be complicit in aiding the Russian government in its effort to influence American elections.” Ryan never responded.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For his part, Trump has repeatedly denied any coordination with Russian officials. The Kremlin has also rejected any connection to Guccifer 2.0. But both the Department of Homeland Security and Director of National Intelligence believe Guccifer 2.0 is tied to Russian military intelligence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sophia Tesfaye is the Deputy Politics Editor at Salon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/313108-declassified-report-putin-ordered-election-interference-to-help</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Declassified report: Putin ordered election interference to help Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 01/06/17 03:59 PM EST 16,308</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Declassified report: Putin ordered election interference to help Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a widespread influence campaign intended to help elect Donald Trump, the intelligence community said in a declassified report released Friday afternoon. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” the report reads. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The bombshell document details the intelligence community's findings but provides little in the way of forensic evidence backing up its assessment, citing the need to protect sources and methods. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“While the conclusions in the report are all reflected in the classified assessment, the declassified report does not and cannot include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence and sources and methods,” the report reads. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The document is made up of publicly available information, painting a portrait of Moscow as making a shrewd decision to back a candidate it saw as friendlier to its interests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the document, Putin “most likely” wanted to discredit Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, because “he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the former KGB agent saw Trump as having “Russia-friendly positions on Syria and Ukraine” and approved of his stated policy to work with Russia. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moscow also reportedly saw the election of Trump as “a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition” against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Officials note that Putin publicly contrasted the president-elect’s approach to Russia with Clinton’s “aggressive rhetoric” — but the report offers no previously unknown information. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is some level of minor disagreement among intelligence agencies as to the strength of its judgment that Russia intended to help Trump. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The CIA and FBI have high confidence in the judgment, while the National Security Agency has moderate confidence, the report acknowledges. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report — devoid of a “smoking gun” — is unlikely to silence skeptics who are unconvinced that the intelligence community can prove Russia’s motivations. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has repeatedly refused to accept the community's conclusions and has treated its assessment as an attack on the legitimacy of his presidency. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The president-elect has instead focused on the intelligence community's long-public assessment that no physical voting machines were impacted by the Russian campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After receiving a briefing from senior intelligence officials earlier on Friday, Trump issued a statement claiming that the hacks had “absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prominent Republicans echoed the approach following the release of the report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We must also be clear that there is no evidence that there was any interference in the voting or balloting process,” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a statement. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We cannot allow partisans to exploit this report in an attempt to delegitimize the president-elect’s victory. Donald Trump won this election fair and square because he heard the voices of Americans who felt forgotten.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian intelligence did obtain access to multiple state and local electoral boards, according to the report, but the Department of Homeland Security assessed that none of the systems the hackers targeted or compromised were involved in vote tallying. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats immediately pushed back on the assertion that the campaign had no impact on the election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It is one thing to say that there was no tampering with vote tallying — which is true — it is another thing to say that the daily dumping of documents disparaging to Secretary Clinton that was made possible by Russian cyber operations had no effect on the campaigns,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Whether [Russia] had a decisive impact on the outcome will never be known and was certainly not the subject of the intelligence community's analysis, but that they were of great consequence is undeniable."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Russian campaign involved more than just hacking. According to the report, it also included propaganda campaigns in the media and a “troll campaign” on social media. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian state-run outlets Sputnik and RT both amped up campaigns to delegitimize the Clinton campaign, including English-language videos like one headlined “Clinton and ISIS Funded with the Same Money,” and promoted the idea that WikiLeaks had an email that would “put Clinton in Prison.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In August, Kremlin-linked political analysts suggested avenging negative Western reports on Putin by airing segments devoted to Secretary Clinton’s alleged health problems,” said the report, which describes Clinton’s health as a focal point of the campaign. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russia’s “Internet Research Agency,” a paid army of social media “trolls,” also got in on the act. Accounts once devoted to supporting Russian annexation of the Ukraine flipped to support Trump. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to officials and lawmakers who have seen both, the report is identical to the classified version of the document prepared for President Obama.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The so-called Gang of Eight — House and Senate leaders and the heads of the two Intelligence committees — reviewed the complete document earlier on Friday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday morning lamented that more of the document would not be made public, perhaps hinting at frustration that the Obama administration hasn’t done more to silence doubters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I would hope that we could get more," she said Friday morning. "I know we have to respect sources and methods. But I think that even Congress has the right to know more than they want to disclose to Congress, beyond the Gang of Eight."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"So this will be interesting in terms of what the disclosure is, of this report," she added. "But suffice to say, it's stunning in its conclusions, and you'll see some of it."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...just three words — not even uttered in real life but in a Hollywood movie — that nevertheless came to define American politics over the last 40-plus years. ...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Follow_the_money" ...>Follow the money.” That’s what the fictional portrayal of the whistleblower “Deep Throat” told Bob Woodward in the 1976 movie version of “All the President’s Men” was the key to tracing the real roots of the Watergate scandal — follow the flow of illegal campaign money into Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign…who it came from and where it was going. It turned out, of course, that the money from favor-seeking millionaires paid for illegal bugging, break-ins and other dirty tricks, and Nixon became the first and only president to resign in disgrace (so far). Despite that, the role of money in propelling political power in America grew only stronger....Now it’s 2017 and things have changed. Money is still important, and more dark money flows into our politics than ever before. But that’s because money helps campaigns buy the real source of political power: Knowledge. And in the computer era, knowledge means data: Where to find your voters, how to reach them, what to tell them that will guarantee they turn out to vote for your candidate … or how to make the other side stay home.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If there was a Deep Throat in the Trump-Russia scandal, this is what he’d be telling today’s Woodwards and Bernsteins:..."Follow the data.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With all the drama over this week’s bombshell disclosures of Donald Trump Jr.’s emails and a previously unknown Trump Tower meeting between top campaign officials and a woman who’d been pitched to them as “a Russian government lawyer,” there was another investigative report that arguably could have equal or greater significance in the ongoing probes of wrongdoing in the 2016 campaign. It said probers are now taking a much closer look at possible cooperation between Russia ...http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/russian-trolls-hilary-clinton-fake-news-election-democrat-mark-warner-intelligence-committee-a7657641.html..."The" campaign="campaign" s="s" data="data" effort="effort" was="was" overseen="overseen" by="by" president="President" trump="Trump" son-in-law="son-in-law" and="and" arguably="arguably" his="his" closest="closest" adviser="adviser" jared="Jared" kushner...http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article160803619.html...Here’s what the McClatchy News Service reported Wednesday...Investigators at the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the Justice Department are examining whether the Trump campaign’s digital operation – overseen by Jared Kushner – helped guide Russia’s sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016....Congressional and Justice Department investigators are focusing on whether Trump’s campaign pointed Russian cyber operatives to certain voting jurisdictions in key states – areas where Trump’s digital team and Republican operatives were spotting unexpected weakness in voter support for Hillary Clinton, according to several people familiar with the parallel inquiries....<...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/12/the-investigation-goes-digital-did-someone-point-russia-to-specific-online-targets/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...The Washington Post also took a deep dive into the important of the “fake news” blitz in helping bring out Trump’s surprise victory in November....>In October of last year, Bloomberg News that the campaign’s digital arm, run by Brad Parscale, would target possible Hillary Clinton voters for an inverse pitch. The Trump campaign would not show them ads making the case for voting for Trump; instead, they showed videos that they hoped would dampen enthusiasm for Clinton — and get the voters to stay home....[A] young staffer showed off a South Park-style animation he’d created of Clinton delivering the “super predator” line (using audio from her original 1996 sound bite), as cartoon text popped up around her: “Hillary Thinks African Americans are Super Predators.” The animation will be delivered to certain African American voters through Facebook “dark posts” — nonpublic posts whose viewership the campaign controls so that, as Parscale puts it, “only the people we want to see it, see it....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.newsweek.com/did-russians-target-dem-voters-kushners-help-613612...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia back in May questioned how the Russian fake-news-spreaders knew which voters to contact. He said: “When you see some of the explanation and some of the fact that it appears that, for example, women and African Americans were targeted in places like Wisconsin and Michigan, where the Democrats were too brain dead to realize those states were even in play … It was interesting that those states seem to be targeted where the bots — where they could could create a lot of these fake Twitter and Facebook accounts, could in fact overwhelm the targeted search engines that would end up saying on your news feed, you suddenly got stuff that “Hillary Clinton’s sick” or “Hillary Clinton’s stealing money from the State Department.”...It’s fascinating: Most of the media attention has focused on the emails that were hacked — i.e., stolen … a felony — from Democratic sources, allegedly by the Russians, and then leaked to help Trump’s campaign. The key points in the Trump Jr. emails bombshell were that 1) Russia wanted Trump to win the election and 2) Trump’s inner circle seemed eager to cooperate with them. And so if the Trump campaign somehow provided data to...http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/russian-trolls-hilary-clinton-fake-news-election-democrat-mark-warner-intelligence-committee-a7657641.htm...Russia’s “fake news” content farms, that would suggest an even closer level of cooperation between the winning presidential campaign and an adversarial foreign power that wanted a new president to lift economic sanctions...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s where it really gets interesting. The Trump campaign, including Kushner (who also took part in the Trump Tower confab with the Russian lawyer) worked closely with a data firm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica" ...Cambridge Analytica — connected to Trump’s richest, most secretive and arguably most influential backer, hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and his daughter Rebekah. That circle also includes another top Trump adviser, Steve Bannon, who was on the Cambridge Analytica board of directors, and Kellyanne Conway, who did consulting work for the Mercers before she connected with Trump...Much of this scenario was spelled out...https://www.justsecurity.org/41199/connecting-dots-political-microtargeting-russia-investigation-cambridge-analytica/...in an article that appeared on the website Just Security in May. After the election, Kushner bragged that micro-targeting was Trump’s secret weapon, and </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> https://YYY.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> A deeply reported investigative piece in the Guardian, also published in May, made two explosive claims about Cambridge Analytica’s work over the course of 2016 that go well beyond Kushner’s claims. The first was that a key part of the Mercers’ firm’s work was indeed to suppress the Democratic turnout last November....Cambridge Analytica worked on campaigns in several key states for a Republican political action committee....Its key objective, according to a memo the Observer has seen, was “voter disengagement” and “to persuade Democrat voters to stay at home”: a profoundly disquieting tactic. It has previously been claimed that suppression tactics were used in the campaign, but this document provides the first actual evidence....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Second, it claims that Cambridge Analytica also playeda critical role in the other 2016 vote that shocked the world: The successful Brexit campaign to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union. Both that result and Trump’s election achieved the key strategic goal of Russia: Destabilizing the Western alliance. That’s no proof of collusion, of course. But you can see why investigators are stepping up their probes. In the case of hacking, we know that the Trump campaign was seeking dirt on Hillary Clinton and the Democrats and that dirt — courtesy, it is alleged, of Russian hackers — appeared just weeks later. In the case of data, we know that Jared Kushner wanted to target specific voters and the Russians set up an operation to create “fake news” content for exactly those readers. Either it’s the world’s greatest coincidence, or something darker was going on. This take by the Guardian’s writer Carole Cadwalladr is as dark as it gets:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are three strands to this story. How the foundations of an authoritarian surveillance state are being laid in the US. How British democracy was subverted through a covert, far-reaching plan of coordination enabled by a US billionaire. And how we are in the midst of a massive land grab for power by billionaires via our data. Data which is being silently amassed, harvested and stored. Whoever owns this data owns the future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">xx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> COLLUSION TWO BAK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see main</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2/19</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see meddling active measures/disinfo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see also mueller</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see ukraine 2 crowdstrike, efforts to say it was not russian that meddled 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">this should include GRU IRA efforts to steal the election, not just direct ties to trump campaign</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see butina NRA</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">html longstanding and bold</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MUELLER WENT AFTER OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE, TOLD FBI DOING CTR-INTELL BUT NO ONE DID?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">also fresh air</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-putin-soul-crushing-summit-showed-muellers-team-russia-benefited-from-the-2016-election-report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Federal prosecutors and FBI agents for special counsel Robert Mueller's Department of Justice (DOJ) office were left reeling after President Donald Trump publicly sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin following the Helsinki summit in 2018, according to memoir written by former Mueller prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The memoir titled, "Where Law Ends[tyranny begins, enscribed on doj/ bldg]: Inside the Mueller Investigation" details the timeline of events that transpired just days after Mueller's office 12 Russian military intelligence officers were indicted for their alleged role in the alleged "hack and dump" leak operative carried out against Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite the charges and evidence presented to support the indictments, Trump defended Putin as he insisted the president simply said that his country was not responsible.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I have President Putin," Trump said at the time. "He just said it's not Russia I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"By this time, Trump not only had the conclusions of the original intelligence assessment, but the incontrovertible proof" from Mueller's team "to expand on and corroborate it," Weissmann wrote. "Still, Trump said, Putin 'was extremely strong and powerful in his denial,' and that was apparently enough for him."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the memoir, prosecutors in Mueller's office saw Trump's remarks as "surreal" and "soul crushing." Many found Trump's remarks to be relatively alarming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It was like they'd built up a mountain of incriminating evidence only to watch the prosecutor suddenly decide to call off the case and go home, just because the defendant said he wasn't guilty," Weissman added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weissmann continued, "The scene in Helsinki should have been stunning to the average American viewer, but for those within our office who'd poured energy into pinning down these facts, it was profoundly alarming. Here was our own president kowtowing to Putin, denying the election interference he had perpetrated on our nation and siding with a bloody dictator over a bipartisan consensus in the Senate and the nonpartisan conclusions of the IC that Putin had attacked our democracy."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weissman's memoir, "Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation" was released on Tuesday, September 29.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 920</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/ex-top-prosecutor-mueller-didnt-investigate-trump-finances-or-interview-ivanka-over-fears-of-a-blowback/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ex-top prosecutor: Mueller didn’t investigate Trump finances or interview Ivanka over fears of a blowback</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Igor Derysh / Salon September 23, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A former prosecutor on Robert Mueller’s team said in a new book that the special counsel decided not to pursue President Donald Trump’s finances or interviews with his children over…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a former prosecutor on Robert Mueller’s team said in a new book that the special counsel decided not to pursue President Donald Trump’s finances or interviews with his children over fears that the president would shut down the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Andrew Weissmann, who led the prosecution of former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, blamed Aaron Zebley, Mueller’s top deputy in the investigation, for stopping investigators from looking into the president’s finances in his new book “Where the Law Ends,” according to excerpts published by The Washington Post.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weissmann wrote that Zebley also pushed another prosecutor to “stand down” from pursuing Trump Organization documents because it risked affecting the negotiations with the president’s legal team to set up an interview with Trump. Trump ultimately did not appear for an interview and submitted written answers largely claiming not to recall key details.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Aaron had a way of gaslighting you, of making you question your own reality, that you were being too aggressive in your drive to pursue leads and push harder — like you were not enough of an adult,” he wrote. "Repeatedly during our 22 months in operation, we would reach some critical juncture in our investigation only to have Aaron say that we could not take a particular action because it risked aggravating the president beyond some undefined breaking point,” he added, according to a New York Times report on the book.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weissmann also argued that Mueller was wrong not to issue a subpoena to compel Trump’s testimony.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What are we saying to future presidents, and to future investigators, who will have our decision thrown in their face?” Weissmann said he told Mueller. “If we do not subpoena the president in this investigation, how can others justify the need to do so?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weissmann said he wonders whether the team had “given it our all” in light of the questions left unanswered by the probe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As proud as I am of the work our team did — the unprecedented number of people we indicted and convicted and in record speed for any similar investigation — I know the hard answer to that simple question: We could have done more,” Weissmann wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The former prosecutor listed a number of unanswered questions left open by the decision not to pursue Trump’s financial records.”We still do not know if there are other financial ties between the president and either the Russian government or Russian oligarchs,” he wrote. “We do not know whether he paid bribes to foreign officials to secure favorable treatment for his business interests, a potential violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that would provide leverage against the president. We do not know if he had other Russian business deals in the works at the time he was running for president, how they might have aided or constrained his campaign, or even if they are continuing to influence his presidency.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weissman noted elsewhere in the book that the same business account used to send hush money payments to Stormy Daniels after her alleged affair with Trump was also used to receive “payments linked to a Russian oligarch,” according to excerpts published by The New York Times.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref 2</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/us/politics/andrew-weissmann-mueller.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mueller’s Team Should Have Done More to Investigate Trump-Russia Links, Top Aide Says</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A new book by one of the special counsel’s top deputies, Andrew Weissmann, is the first inside account of the investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We could have done more,” Andrew Weissmann, who was one of the top aides in the special counsel’s office, writes in a new book.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Charlie Savage</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sept. 21, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WASHINGTON — The team led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, failed to do everything it could to determine what happened in the 2016 election, shying away from steps like subpoenaing President Trump and scrutinizing his finances out of fear he would fire them, one of Mr. Mueller’s top lieutenants argued in the first insider account of the inquiry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Had we used all available tools to uncover the truth, undeterred by the onslaught of the president’s unique powers to undermine our efforts?” wrote the former prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, in a new book, adding, “I know the hard answer to that simple question: We could have done more.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The team took elaborate steps to protect its files of evidence from the risk that the Justice Department might destroy them if Mr. Trump fired them and worked to keep reporters and the public from learning what they were up to, Mr. Weissmann wrote in “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation,” which Random House will publish next week.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While he speaks reverently of Mr. Mueller, he also says his boss’s diffidence made him ill-suited for aspects of shepherding the politically charged investigation. He saw Mr. Mueller and his deputy, Aaron M. Zebley, as overly cautious.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann also defended against accusations by the president and his allies that he and other investigators were politically biased “angry Democrats”; Mr. Weissmann said his personal views had no bearing on the crimes that Russian operatives and Trump aides committed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And he elevates particular details — for example, emphasizing that the same business account that sent hush payments to an adult film star who alleged an extramarital affair with Mr. Trump had also received “payments linked to a Russian oligarch.” The president has denied the affair; his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen controlled the account. Mr. Mueller transferred the Cohen matter to prosecutors in New York.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Previously a mafia and Enron prosecutor and then a lawyer at the F.B.I. for Mr. Mueller, who was the bureau’s director for 12 years, Mr. Weissmann ran one of three major units for the special counsel’s office. His “Team M” prosecuted Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort for numerous financial crimes. The goal was to flip him and learn whatever he knew about any Trump campaign links to Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Manafort had worked for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine, and the investigation uncovered ties by his business partner, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, to Russian intelligence. The book builds toward investigators’ discovery that Mr. Manafort had shared internal campaign polling data with Mr. Kilimnik, who flew to the United States to meet with Mr. Manafort during the campaign, asking whether Mr. Trump would permit a peace plan for Russia to essentially take over all of eastern Ukraine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But while admitting this much, Mr. Manafort — seeing the dangle of a potential pardon from Mr. Trump — refused to cooperate further. Investigators did not obtain any final puzzle pieces and lacked the evidence to charge anyone in the campaign with a criminal conspiracy involving Russia’s covert electoral assistance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It would seem to require significant audacity — or else, leverage — for another nation to even put such a request before a presidential candidate,” Mr. Weissmann wrote of Mr. Kilimnik’s request. “This made what we didn’t know, and still don’t know to this day, monumentally disconcerting: Namely, why would Trump ever agree to this? Why would Trump ever agree to this Russian proposal if the candidate were not getting something from Russia in return?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann explained the significance of Mr. Manafort’s interactions with Mr. Kilimnik — also a major focus of a recent bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, which explicitly labeled Mr. Kilimnik a Russian intelligence agent — more clearly than the Mueller report did.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Mueller had strictly forbidden leaks, and the special counsel team took extraordinary care to protect the high-profile, high-stakes investigation, Mr. Weissmann wrote. They kept window blind slats tilted at an angle to keep out prying eyes, shutting out natural light. They concocted an “almost comically elaborate and surreal” plan to sneak in “through the many hidden arteries of the courthouse” to obtain a grand jury indictment without tipping off reporters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And worried about the possibility that Mr. Trump would fire them and the Justice Department would then seal off or destroy their evidence, the Mueller team members packed their numerous applications to judges for search warrants with extensive, up-to-date details about their investigation — ensuring they backed up their work beyond the reach of the executive branch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ty Cobb, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, also privately promised to be a “canary in the coal mine” and provide a heads up if Mr. Trump was going to fire the special counsel team, according to Mr. Weissmann. In an email, Mr. Cobb wrote that he “never made the commitment” described by Mr. Weissmann.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The investigation played out against the backdrop of regular vilification of the Mueller team by Mr. Trump and his allies like Fox News’s Sean Hannity — who turned out to be in regular contact with Mr. Manafort cooking up a “smear campaign” over text messages. Mr. Weissmann, a major target, wrote that such “ad hominem” insinuations of bias appealed to emotion rather than reason.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I am a registered Democrat,” he wrote. “Does this make Paul Manafort or any of the other 32 people our office charged any less guilty? Did Russia not attack our democracy and disrupt our election with its self-described online information warfare operation? Which facts that we alleged in our various indictments — and to which many of those we indicted, including Manafort, would plead guilty — did our attackers believe were invented as a result of our alleged bias as ‘angry Democrats?’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Trump’s allies have recently pointed with alarm to documents showing that cellphones issued to Mr. Mueller’s team were erased during the investigation; Mr. Weissmann twice entered an incorrect passcode too often, triggering a security measure that erased his phone. In an interview, he portrayed the concerns as a “tempest in a teapot” and said his understanding was that all emails and other such data from phones were backed up. He called on the Justice Department to release information about the special counsel’s data backup system.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann also wrote that he is not “anti-Trump” but rather “pro the rule of law.” Still, the distinction is less than clear in a book that also portrays Mr. Trump as a liar and a dangerous demagogue trying “to peel the world around him away from the rule of law — away from reason itself — and mold it to accommodate his desire for unchecked power.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann was equally scathing about Attorney General William P. Barr, calling him an enabler and likening his misleading letter last spring about the then-still-secret Mueller report as a betrayal and “gut punch.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann also criticized colleagues, portraying the special counsel team as divided between aggressive investigators like him, the F.B.I. special agent Omer Meisel and the prosecutor Jeannie Rhee — who headed “Team R,” which investigated Russian issues other than those centered on Manafort — and far more risk-averse law enforcement officials like Mr. Zebley who pulled punches.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In one episode in 2017, the Mueller team issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank for information about Mr. Manafort’s income in Ukraine. Deutsche Bank had also lent large sums to the Trump Organization, and the White House somehow found out about the still-secret subpoenas — though not their focus. The White House demanded to know what investigators were doing, and Mr. Mueller authorized Mr. Zebley to tell the White House that they had not been seeking Mr. Trump’s financial information.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“At that point, any financial investigation of Trump was put on hold,” Mr. Weissmann writes. “That is, we backed down — the issue was simply too incendiary; the risk, too severe.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The book provides many other examples of concessions large and small. Investigators did not try to question Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka — who had spoken in the lobby to a delegation of Russians who came to Trump Tower in June 2016 to meet with campaign leaders who had been promised that they were offering dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They “feared that hauling her in for an interview would play badly to the already antagonistic right-wing press — look how they’re roughing up the president’s daughter — and risk enraging Trump, provoking him to shut down the special counsel’s office once and for all,” he wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Similarly, they did not subpoena the Trump Organization for emails about its efforts to develop a Trump-branded building in Moscow, which were active deep into the 2016 campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And they did not immunize Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., a step that would have prevented him from being able to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying about matters like the Trump Tower meeting. Bound by grand-jury secrecy rules, Mr. Weissmann did not come out and say whether Donald Trump Jr. was threatened with or actually issued a subpoena and used his right against self-incrimination to repel it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann laid much of the blame for what he saw as a pattern of timidity on Mr. Zebley, portraying him as a primary decision maker. “Repeatedly during our 22 months in operation, we would reach some critical juncture in our investigation only to have Aaron say that we could not take a particular action because it risked aggravating the president beyond some undefined breaking point.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Weissmann acknowledged, but did not clearly address, concerns that the aging Mr. Mueller had lost a step, both declaring that he was capable of making the tough decisions despite “speculative concerns” about his health but also describing him in one scene as looking drained and worn down by his years of grueling public service.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Mr. Zebley obtained Mr. Mueller’s sanction for many of his cautious directives, in one striking episode, Mr. Zebley appeared in Mr. Weissmann’s telling to have unilaterally agreed — without Mr. Mueller’s knowledge — to a request by the office of the deputy attorney general overseeing them, Rod J. Rosenstein, not to coordinate with state prosecutors “as it would undermine the president’s pardon power.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Two other former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, disputed the account. Mr. Rosenstein did not decline any request to share information with state prosecutors, a person familiar with his thinking wrote in an email.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another person familiar with how the special counsel’s office interacted with Mr. Rosenstein’s office denied that there had been any agreement about sharing evidence with or withholding it from state prosecutors, and said Mr. Zebley had consulted with Mr. Mueller on every material decision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the failure to subpoena Mr. Trump, Mr. Mueller was determined to avoid “any public disagreements” with Mr. Rosenstein, Mr. Weissmann wrote. Because the special counsel regulations required telling Congress about any instance in which Mr. Rosenstein overruled him, Mr. Mueller never actually proposed subpoenaing Mr. Trump, instead coyly asking what Mr. Rosenstein’s reaction would be. Mr. Rosenstein just kept demurring.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the end, Mr. Weissmann said in an interview, the caution was more justified early on to avoid provoking Mr. Trump into firing them before they could get going. But he and Ms. Rhee, among others, believed the office should have been willing to be more aggressive later on, after they had learned much of what Russia had done and had already used indictments to drag it into public view.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We would have subpoenaed the president after he refused our accommodations, even if that risked us being fired,” he wrote. “It just didn’t sit right. We were left feeling like we had let down the American public, who were counting on us to give it our all.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> =</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/oldest-living-cia-agent-believes-russia-infiltrated-gop-long-before-trump-took-over/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">raw </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The oldest living CIA agent believes Russia sank its hooks into the Republican Party well before President Donald Trump emerged as a viable candidate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Peter Sichel was one of the CIA's first agents at the start of the Cold War, and he sees evidence of Russia's spycraft against Trump and the GOP in the Senate Intelligence Committee, reported The Daily Beast.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"One great advantage the Soviets always had over us, is that they played the long game. We thought in terms of quarters, whereas they thought in terms of years or even decades," Sichel said. "They were opportunistic, willing to let matters gradually develop until the right political faction or right leader to support had emerged."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate investigators found the Kremlin sought to infiltrate the Republican Party long before Trump became its nominee as part of Russian president Vladimir Putin's effort to deny the White House to Hillary Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Putin had fostered right-wing political movements across Europe to gain influence there, and Trump's presidential campaign promoted many of the same nationalist themes, and Sichel found numerous instances where Trump campaign operatives opened themselves up to possible Russian blackmail.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The KGB were absolute masters at it," Sichel said, "and they would use whatever they could get their hands on. A favorite was honey traps [or sexual entrapments], but bribes, favors, whatever they could find. And once they had their hooks into you, they owned you."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Manafort stayed in close contact with Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik throughout the campaign, while Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn met with Russian intelligence operatives promising dirt against Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The key thing is that all of them then lied about it to investigators, and that's where the potential blackmail comes in. Imagine if the FBI hadn't caught Flynn out, and he had remained in his post," Sichel said. "The Russians knew he lied — I'm sure they taped all their communications with him — so they would have had him over a barrel forever."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 97-year-old Sichel said the president himself continued to compromise himself by lying about his own dealings with Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I know he doesn't see it this way, but by having all this stuff brought out in public, it removes the blackmail threat," Sichel said. "The smartest thing Trump could have done when all this started to break was to just come out and say, 'Yes, it appears there was Russian involvement with my campaign, but that's over with now, I'm the president, so let's move on.' But he didn't do that, obviously. Perhaps there were reasons why he couldn't."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/former-fbi-agent-on-the-mueller-team-says-trump-was-badly-compromised-in-2016/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">peter strock</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/hhs-official-who-manipulated-cdc-reports-on-19-has-deep-russian-ties-report/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On September 11, Politico reported that Michael Caputo, assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, interfered in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s reports on COVID-19 in order to make them conform to President Donald Trump’s claims about the pandemic. And Caputo, journalist Mary Papenfuss reports in HuffPost, is drawing scrutiny for another reason as well: his ties to the Kremlin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Caputo, Papenfuss notes, lived in Russia for six years and served as an adviser to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin from 1995-1999 before Vladimir Putin became Russia’s president. The HHS assistant secretary was an adviser to a subsidiary of Gazprom, an energy company owned by the Russian government — and Papenfuss points out that Caputo “reportedly helped shore up Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reputation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Caputo’s Kremlin ties were so concerning that he became a target of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election,” Papenfuss explains. “He was questioned but was not charged with any offenses. He also testified before the House Intelligence Committee that he had no contact with Russians while serving on the Trump campaign.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Caputo, a long-time ally of veteran GOP operative Roger Stone, has promoted the debunked conspiracy theory that it was the Ukrainian government, not the Kremlin, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election — and that the interference was in support of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, not Trump.Papenfuss notes that Caputo “has spread baseless accusations concerning activities in Ukraine by Joe and Hunter Biden. A key source of that Ukrainian smear, Andrii Derkach, turned out to be a Russian spy attempting to interfere in the current U.S. election, the Treasury Department revealed last week.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, Trump denounced the impeachment as “phony” — and he was also highly critical of the Russia investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Mueller report says of Caputo, “In the spring of 2016, Trump campaign advisor Michael Caputo learned through a Florida-based Russian business partner that another Florida-based Russian, Henry Oknyansky — who also went by the name Henry Greenberg — claimed to have information pertaining to Hilary Clinton. Caputo notified Roger Stone and brokered communication between Stone and Oknyansky. Oknyansky and Stone set up a May 2016 in-person meeting.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">9/20 cohen says he does not think trump was launder $ (except all russian olig $ was putin's?) bogus fla mansion deal</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">hmmn, if he really had goods, he would risk jail?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/fbi-is-sitting-on-classified-intelligence-that-could-destroy-trump-ex-agent-peter-strzok/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/putins-favorite-congressman-offered-julian-assange-a-pardon-if-he-covered-up-russian-meddling-lawyers/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">raw story</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">american prosecutors said this week that former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) offered WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a pardon from President Donald Trump if he agreed to help cover up Russia’s role in interfering in the 2016 presidential election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Daily Beast reports that witness Jennifer Robinson has testified that she attended a meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange in 2017 in which he made a direct quid-pro-quo offer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rohrabacher was joined in the meeting by Charles Johnson, a pro-Trump racist internet troll, and the two men led officials at the Ecuadorian embassy in London to believe they were acting on behalf of the president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They stated that President Trump was aware of and had approved of them coming to meet with Mr. Assange to discuss a proposal—and that they would have an audience with the president to discuss the matter on their return to Washington, D.C.,” Robinson said. the White House has denied that Trump was ever aware of such a scheme, however, and attorneys representing the U.S. government seemed to dispute Rohrabacher’s claims.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“After Robinson read her testimony in a London courtroom on Friday, lawyers representing the U.S. accepted the witness statement as accurate and confirmed they had no intention of cross-examining the claim,” The Daily Beast reports. “They did dispute, however, that President Donald Trump gave his blessing for the pardon offer.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/former-fbi-agent-on-the-mueller-team-says-trump-was-badly-compromised-in-2016/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">peter s</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/the-warning-lights-are-flashing-red-how-trumps-toadies-are-helping-him-collude-with-russia/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After reviewing classified intelligence reports about Vladimir Putin’s attempts to interfere in the 2020 election over three weeks ago, Senator Richard Blumenthal tried to sound the alarm.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The warning lights are flashing red. America’s elections are under attack.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This week, I reviewed classified materials in the Senate’s Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility and received a similarly classified briefing on malign foreign threats to U.S. elections. I was shocked by what I learned — and appalled that, by swearing Congress to secrecy, the Trump administration is keeping the truth about a grave, looming threat to democracy hidden from the American people. On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement that only hints at the threats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The facts are chilling. I believe the American public needs and deserves to know them. The information should be declassified immediately.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Blumenthal went on to say that what he learned makes “Moscow’s past interference and nefarious actions look like child’s play.” We still, however, have no idea of what shocked him enough to write that op-ed in the Washington Post.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What we do know is how the Trump administration reacted. Last Friday, the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, told Congress that his office would no longer brief them in person about foreign election interference, but would submit written reports. Clearly they don’t want to face probing questions from Congress. In defending his actions, however, Ratcliffe admitted that it goes beyond that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[no twt]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ratcliffe’s initial argument doesn’t make any sense. He said that he is going to stop in-person briefings because members of Congress leaked classified information to the press. What he didn’t explain is how that would stop leaks. Classified information provided in writing is even easier to share with reporters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a scathing rebuke of Ratcliffe’s announcement, the Washington Post editorial board pointed out that the only so-called “leaks” came from the kind issued by Senator Blumenthal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the intelligence community briefed members of Congress in late July about threats to the upcoming election, Democrats expressed alarm about what they had learned — and about the fact that the information had not been shared with the American public. “The warning lights are flashing red. America’s elections are under attack,” wrote Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in a Post op-ed, without disclosing any specifics…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[T]he only “leak” was the simple fact that the administration was withholding critical information about Russia’s interference — which, of course, is intended to help President Trump win reelection.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In that clip of Ratcliffe’s Fox News appearance, he eventually got to the point by saying that Democrats leaked information that “simply wasn’t true, that somehow Russia is a greater security threat than China.” In a case of obvious projection, Ratcliffe is telling us that the Trump administration doesn’t want Congress or the public to know what Moscow is doing to interfere in the election, but instead wants to change the narrative to focus on the distraction they’re offering about the threat posed by China. In other words, Ratcliffe is suggesting that he will now cherry-pick what intelligence is shared with Congress to provide cover for what Moscow is up to.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Added to that is a troubling story about yet another purge in the Justice Department by Attorney General Barr.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Current and former national security officials are raising concerns over Attorney General William Barr’s recent decision to remove the head of a Justice Department office that helps ensure federal counterterrorism and counterintelligence activities are legal – and replace him with a political appointee with relatively limited experience.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barr has reassigned 23-year career professional Brad Wiegmann, who had been serving as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Law and Policy. As ABC News reports, “The office shapes government efforts by ensuring that new policies and executive actions don’t violate federal law.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We’ve heard stories from former Trump administration officials who have said that they often found themselves having to tell the president that the actions he wanted to take were not legal. As former DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor said, Trump would claim to have “magical authorities” to break the law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now Barr has removed the person whose job it is to tell the administration when they are breaking the law and replaced him with a partisan loyalist. While it might not be unprecedented to do that, the fact that it comes a couple of months before an election makes this one troubling. Here is the most telling part about Wiegmann’s replacement, Kellen Dwyer:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From 2018 to 2019, he served as a fellow at the conservative-leaning Leonine Forum, a non-profit organization that says its alumni are “committed to the cause of reintroducing the tenets of [the Catholic church] into the political, policy, legal, business, and cultural activities of society.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Leonine Forum was created by the Catholic Information Center (CIC), an extremist group founded by Father John McCloskey, who eventually left the organization over allegations of sexual assault. Several members of the Trump administration have close ties to the CIC, including Attorney General Barr, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and economic adviser Larry Kudlow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What appears to be happening is that both Ratcliffe and Barr are paving the way for Putin and Trump, who speak regularly by phone, to illegally collude in their efforts to influence the election—this time from the Oval Office with the entire federal bureaucracy at their disposal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/democrats-slam-shocking-abdication-of-responsibility-as-intelligence-officials-scale-back-election-security-briefings</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx twt</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Julia Conley / Common Dreams August 31, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) indicated on Sunday that his committee may subpoena intelligence officials, following Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s announcement that regular election security briefings will be scaled back ahead of the general election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This intelligence paid for by taxpayers doesn’t belong to Donald Trump, it doesn’t belong to the intelligence agencies, it belongs to the American people,” Schiff told Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats expressed outrage over the weekend after Ratcliffe announced that lawmakers will no longer be receiving in-person briefings on election security, even amid concerns that foreign powers are attempting to interfere with the 2020 general election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In what Democratic leaders called a “shocking abdication” of responsibility, Ratcliffe sent letters to members of the Senate and House Saturday evening, indicating that only written briefings will be provided until the November election and blaming leaks from Congress for the decision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Schiff (D-Calif.) accused Ratcliffe of betraying “the public’s right to know how foreign powers are trying to subvert our democracy.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This intelligence belongs to the American people, not the agencies which are its custodian. And the American people have both the right and the need to know that another nation, Russia, is trying to help decide who their president should be,” said Pelosi and Schiff, referring to intelligence shared in a briefing last month.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Twitter, Schiff accused President Donald Trump of “lying and projecting” after Trump spoke about the decision in a press conference.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They leaked the information,” Trump said of Ratcliffe’s decision. “And what’s even worse, they leaked the wrong information. And he got tired of it. So he wants to do it in a different forum, because you have leakers on the committee.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The scaling-back of briefings comes a month after Politico reported on a classified security briefing given to all members of Congress by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. At the meeting, Evanina acknowledged that “Russia is again trying to boost President Donald Trump’s reelection and denigrate his opponent.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats in the briefing urged Evanina to acknowledge the information publicly and denounced an earlier public statement he made in which he warned of potential election interference by Russia, China, and Iran.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The vague statement was “almost meaningless” and not helpful to voters, Democrats said. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Trump of using Ratcliffe, a loyalist to the president who was elevated to his current position after serving in the House, “to hide the ugly truth from the American people—that the president is again receiving the help of the Kremlin.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“DNI Ratcliffe has made clear he’s in the job only to protect Trump from democracy, not democracy from Trump,” said Schumer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Previously, Trump and his postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, have overseen what critics call the sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service. Ahead of a general election in which millions of Americans will rely on voting-by-mail due to the coronavirus pandemic, DeJoy ordered cuts to overtime, the removal of mailboxes and mail-sorting machines, and changes to post office hours. The president has also baselessly claimed that the use of mail-in ballots will invite fraud, despite the fact that he himself has voted by mail, and openly admitted that undermining the USPS will ensure universal voting-by-mail is not possible.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations including a government-supported “troll farm” with conspiring to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election. Trump had long accused Mueller of leading a “witch hunt” and a “hoax” about Russia’s involvement. The Mueller Report, released in 2019, found that Trump campaign officials had extensive contacts with Russians and that many lied about those communications, but stopped short of accusing the president and his advisors of conspiring with Russia in 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This year, former Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub tweeted, “if America has a legitimate election, it’ll be in spite of Trump’s best efforts to prevent one.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, who was at the center of Trump’s impeachment trial last year regarding the president’s attempt to bribe Ukraine to open a public investigation into Biden’s son, accused Ratcliffe and Trump of violating the country’s “national security and sovereignty.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“For the DNI to curtail one of the most basic duties of our nonpartisan Intelligence Community—to keep the United States Congress fully informed about threats to our nation, in this case, about the real and rising threat of foreign election interference—is nothing less than a shameless partisan manipulation to protect the personal interests of President Trump,” said Biden. “And it is a betrayal of the oath sworn to the American people and our Constitution.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/rosenstein-blocked-fbi-from-probing-trumps-russian-ties-then-ordered-mueller-to-ignore-them-as-well</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the many oddities of the now-terminated Robert Mueller probe into Russian election interference and its links to various members of the Trump campaign and family, and in fact of all known federal probes into Russia’s Trump-related actions, has been the seeming lack of any counterintelligence probe on Donald Trump’s myriad, longstanding financial connections to Russia—and what role those financial ties have played both in the Russian government’s actions on behalf of Trump and their possible leverage over the now-president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A new story from The New York Times‘ Michael Schmidt reports that that’s because in the first months of the new Trump administration, former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein shuttered that investigation—then ordered special counsel Robert Mueller to steer clear of it himself. It’s not that the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s known ties to Russian crime figures, to money laundering, and his family’s stated reliance on Russian cash has been kept closely-held: It never existed. And it still doesn’t.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The accusation being leveled by acting Federal Bureau of Investigation director Andrew McCabe against Rosenstein goes further, suggesting that Rosenstein intentionally misled him. Schmidt reports that McCabe launched a counterintelligence probe into Trump’s Russian ties immediately after Trump’s firing of former FBI director James Comey, a move that was widely publicly speculated to be a Trump move to quash investigations into Russian election actions and into numerous of Trump’s top advisers and allies. The fear within the intelligence community was that Trump’s behaviors could be impacted by unknown Russian pressures, representing an immediate national security threat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rosenstein, however, ordered the probe shut down. Rosenstein did not tell McCabe that directly, says Schmidt, but instead left McCabe “with the impression that the special counsel would take on [that] investigation” as part of Mueller’s overall Russian interference inquiry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">but separately, Rosenstein told Mueller that he wasn’t to pursue the counterintelligence concerns either.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That means no federal investigation into Trump’s Russian cash have been undertaken during his presidency, despite numerous papers and journalists themselves identifying significant ties between Donald Trump’s finances and individuals close to the Russian government. Not by intelligence officials, not by the special counsel’s team, and not the Senate’s own Russia probes. Through the entirety of Trump’s term, all probes of financial ties to Russian interests—which he has retained, even in the presidency—have each been blocked.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schmidt’s claims here seem impossible to fully believe. It would require that federal law enforcement officials turn a blind eye to a potentially massive national security threat—the very real chance that Trump was and is being intimidated into, or merely bribed into, pursuing Putin-preferred policies damaging to the United States. Trump’s moves to weaken NATO, his pressure on allies to weaken Russian sanctions and re-elevate Russia as economic leader, and his mostly-successful sabotage of the Ukrainian government’s ability to push back Russian forces during a key Russian military push have each been contrary to longstanding U.S. interests. None have been competently explained, not even by Trump’s own national security officials.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As expert Marcy Wheeler suggests, that both Rosenstein and Sen. Richard Burr specifically chose, in their probes, “not to look into the most obvious source of compromise suggests that someone knows what they would find.” After Trump’s continued pattern of gleeful lawbreaking, it’s now more plausible to believe Trump is acting for personal financial gain in his dealings with Russia than it is to believe his actions rest on any supposed ideological foundation. The Senate and Justice Department both continue to make rigorously sure, however, to leave those questions intentionally unanswered.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/heres-what-the-senate-intel-report-tells-us-about-trump-and-roger-stones-39-phone-calls-during-the-2016-election/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">on August 18, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its bipartisan report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. One of the things addressed in the report is Donald Trump’s phone conversations with veteran GOP operative Roger Stone during the election — and according to an August 19 article by New York Times reporter Julian E. Barnes, the Senate Intelligence report sheds even more light on those interactions than the Mueller report and Stone’s criminal trial.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barnes notes that according to court records, Stone and Trump had 39 phone conversations from March-November 2016 — one of which Barnes describes as “an intriguing phone call, on October 6, 2016, to Mr. Trump.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“According to the Senate report,” Barnes explains, “Mr. Stone received a call that afternoon from a number belonging to an aide to Mr. Trump, who regularly used others’ phones to make calls. The topic of the conversation was not known, Senate investigators wrote, but they noted that Mr. Stone was focused on a potential WikiLeaks release.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report concludes, “It appears quite likely that Stone and Trump spoke about WikiLeaks."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in October 2016, WikiLeaks published hacked Democratic e-mails that had been stolen by Russians.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barnes points out that in its report, the Senate Intelligence Committee “laid out a range of evidence that Mr. Stone was focused on WikiLeaks. He and Mr. Trump had spoken a few days earlier, on September 29, also on the aide’s phone. Another campaign aide, Rick Gates, witnessed it and told investigators that the two men discussed WikiLeaks. After that call, Mr. Trump told Mr. Gates that ‘more releases of damaging information would be coming.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Times reporter also notes that Stone “said the Senate conclusion that he had discussed WikiLeaks with the president was based solely on testimony by Mr. Gates and Mr. Trump’s former lawyer Michael D. Cohen. Mr. Stone called their testimony tainted by agreements with prosecutors to answer their questions.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone has insisted that he did not know that people connected to the Russian government were behind the stolen Democratic e-mails that WikiLeaks published in October 2016 — and that he never discussed WikiLeaks with Trump. Barnes, notes, however, “The Senate report made clear that WikiLeaks, at least, ‘very likely’ knew the e-mails were coming from Russian intelligence, and that Mr. Stone knew about the most critical WikiLeaks release before it happened.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone is among the many Trump associates who has faced criminal charges: he was convicted of charges ranging from witness tampering to lying to Congress and sentenced to 40 months in federal prison by Judge Amy Berman Jackson, a Barack Obama appointee. But Trump commuted Stone’s sentence in July, saving him from the prison sentence he was about to begin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barnes notes that the Senate Intelligence Committee “rejected Mr. Trump’s statement to prosecutors investigating Russia’s interference that he did not recall conversations with his long-time friend, Roger J. Stone Jr., about the e-mails, which were later released by WikiLeaks.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the Mueller report, former special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that the 2016 Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians — however questionable — did not rise to the level of a full-fledged criminal conspiracy. And Barnes points out that the Senate Intelligence report does not accuse Trump of lying. But Barnes also points out that the report “laid out extensive contacts between Trump advisers and Russians” and “detailed even more of the president’s conversations with Mr. Stone than were previously known, renewing questions about whether Mr. Trump was truthful with investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, or misled them.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/this-is-what-collusion-looks-like-gop-led-senate-report-far-more-devastating-than-mueller-probe</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> lots of docs in twt not here</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘This is what collusion looks like’: GOP-led Senate report ‘far more devastating’ than Mueller probe</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Igor Derysh / Salon August 18, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on its bipartisan Russia investigation revealed even more numerous contacts between President Donald Trump’s advisers and Russian operatives than former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The committee, which is chaired by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Tuesday released its fifth and final report, totaling nearly 1,000 pages, following a three-year bipartsian investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The report documents the extent to which Russia sought to influence the election — and members of Trump’s team welcoming their assistance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Senate report — even more extensive than the Mueller investigation — paints a far more devastating picture of Russian intelligence operatives’ access to the Trump campaign, describing far more insidious connections than even Mueller did in his report,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report, like Mueller’s, did not conclude that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia, but it found that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked with a “Russian intelligence officer” and handed him internal campaign data. The report also suggested that Manafort might also be linked to Russia’s hack of the Clinton campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The committee obtained some information suggesting that the Russian intelligence officer, with whom Manafort had a longstanding relationship, may have been connected to the G.R.U.’s hack-and-leak operation targeting the 2016 U.S. election,” the committee’s Democrats wrote. “This is what collusion looks like.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report found that Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime associate of Manafort, was a “Russian intelligence officer” who might be connected to Russia’s “hack and leak operation.” (Manafort provided internal Trump campaign polling data to Kilimnik.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the Senate Russia report mentioned Kilimnik 819 times, the House Republican report did not mention him once. The Senate report also found that Kilimnik later “almost certainly helped arrange some of the first public messaging that Ukraine had interfered in the U.S. election.” Trump has repeatedly echoed the claim that Ukraine interfered in the election — not Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another part of the report also cited evidence raising the “possibility of Manafort’s potential connection” to the hack and leak operation, though the evidence was redacted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report described Trump’s former campaign chief as a “grave counterintelligence threat,” who worked with Russian operatives before and after the election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report also found that Trump did discuss WikiLeaks with longtime adviser Roger Stone, even though he told Mueller’s team that he did “not recall” doing so. It also revealed that Stone directed an associate to request a leak of hacked emails by Clinton’s top aide when the infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped. The emails were published a half hour after the release.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Like the Mueller report, the Senate report also detailed efforts by Trump and his team to impede the years-long probe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the vice chairman of the committee, urged the public to “review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and reach their own independent conclusions.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rubio, however, tried to spin the report as favorable for the president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We can say, without any hesitation, that the committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election,” he said in a statement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What the committee did find however is very troubling,” he added. “We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Rubio’s statement brushed over actions by Trump’s advisers, as well as the president’s own statements to investigators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One part of the report notes that Trump told Mueller in written responses that he did “not recall” discussing WikiLeaks with longtime adviser Roger Stone, who was later convicted in the former special counsel’s probe before being granted clemency by the president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions,” the report said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report also noted that WikiLeaks “likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort” by publishing stolen Democratic emails.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone “obtained information indicating” that Clinton campaign chief John Podesta would “be a target of an upcoming release, prior to WikiLeaks releasing Podesta’s emails . . . Stone then communicated his information to Trump,” the report said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone directed an associate to tell WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to “drop the Podesta emails immediately” the day the Trump campaign learned about the looming Access Hollywood tape.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report also noted that the Senate investigation was met with “unprecedented potential executive privilege claims” from the White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The committee was surprised by these assertions, because they were made inconsistently and because they have no basis in law,” the report said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Trump campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort,” the report added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report further concluded that Donald Trump Jr. might have obstructed the investigation, but the panel declined to pursue the issue due to “time and resource considerations.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Jr. participated in the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Kremlin-linked lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya about obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton. Veselnitskaya’s ties to the Russian government “were far more extensive and concerning than what had been publicly known,” the report said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report concluded by warning that “what happened to the United States in 2016 should be an alarm bell.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Russia is actively interfering again in the 2020 U.S. election to assist Donald Trump, and some of the president’s associates are amplifying those efforts,” the report said. “The Russian intelligence services’ assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process, and Trump and his associates’ participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats” to the homeland.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wow, contrast fox: </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate Intel says FBI gave 'unjustified credence' to Steele dossier, Russia 'took advantage' of Trump trans...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate Intelligence Committee found that the FBI gave the unverified anti-Trump dossier “unjustified credence,” and that Russia “took ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5 hours ago</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Washington Post</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate Intelligence Committee has released the fifth and final volume of its report into Russian interference in the 2016 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wapo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/senate-intelligence-trump-russia-report/2020/08/18/62a7573e-e093-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1k pp doc: https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-senate-intelligence-committee-s-report-on-russian-interference-in-the-2016-election/ca706d82-5df2-4af0-81a5-72f792b9f5f4/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_9</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Security</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Karoun Demirjian and </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ellen Nakashima</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">August 18, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman posed a “grave counterintelligence threat” due to his interaction with people close to the Kremlin, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday that found extensive contacts between key campaign advisers and officials affiliated with Moscow’s government and intelligence services.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In its report, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee states that Trump’s then-campaign chair Paul Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that purported Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It found that a Russian attorney who met with Manafort, along with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and his son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in 2016, had “significant connections” to the Kremlin. The information she offered them was also “part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part with elements of the Russian government,” the report stated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the panel also concluded that the FBI’s handling of Russian threats to the election was “flawed” and that the bureau gave “unjustified credence” to allegations about Trump’s Russia ties made in a dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, “based on an incomplete understanding of Steele’s past reporting record.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Document: Read the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate Intelligence Committee’s three-and-a-half year investigation stands as Congress’s only bipartisan examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The panel, significantly, agreed that the FBI overestimated Steel’s reliability and that Manafort and other aides exposed the campaign to undue Russian influence. But its leaders were noticeably divided along party lines in how they interpreted the report’s significance, and several committee members — including its acting chairman Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — endorsed dissenting conclusions about Trump’s own culpability.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The partisan divisions are a sign that the panel’s tome likely will not put to rest the political wrangling over how seriously to treat foreign interference in U.S. democracy as the country heads into its most divisive election in modern history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“After more than three years of investigation by this Committee, we can now say with no doubt, there was no collusion,” a group of six panel Republicans, including Rubio, wrote in a statement instead accusing the Democratic Party of coordinating with foreign actors to produce Steele’s dossier.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In 2016, the Democratic Party, using a series of arm’s length transactions, hired a foreign citizen to seek out dirt on a political opponent, provided by foreign sources,” the Republicans wrote, attacking the FBI for “sloppy work and poor judgment.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Five Democrat senators — including Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), the party’s 2020 vice-presidential nominee — asserted the report “unambiguously shows that members of the Trump Campaign cooperated with Russian efforts to get Trump elected.” Referring specifically to their findings on Manafort, the Democrats wrote, “This is what collusion looks like.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The intelligence committee’s vice chairman, Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who did not sign onto the Democrats’ dissenting views, noted “a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections,” and he encouraged “all Americans to carefully review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and to reach their own independent conclusions.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The committee’s past chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who oversaw the bulk of the investigation and also steered clear of the GOP’s dissent, struck a position in the middle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“One of the Committee’s most important — and overlooked — findings is that much of Russia’s activities weren’t related to producing a specific electoral outcome, but attempted to undermine our faith in the democratic process itself,” he said in a statement. “Their aim is to sow chaos, discord, and distrust. Their efforts are not limited to elections. The threat is ongoing.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate panel told Justice Dept. of suspicions over Trump family members’ Russia testimony</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Burr and Warner launched the committee’s probe before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and sustained the bipartisan investigation over the following three and a half years, even as other Congressional investigations into the same matter faltered along partisan lines. Since the Senate Intelligence Committee began its probe, former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III also released a 448-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election — and Trump was impeached and acquitted after Democrats accused him of coercing Ukrainian leaders to interfere in the 2020 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though the committee’s probe covers much of the same turf as Mueller’s investigation, it was different in nature. Mueller was running a criminal probe; the Senate committee was conducting an intelligence investigation — a distinction that helps to explain some of nuanced differences between their conclusions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate panel’s probe, which was mostly driven by the committee’s bipartisan staff, included more than 200 witnesses and considered evidence relating to Russian disinformation, Trump’s personal, business and campaign contacts with Russians and the transition period following the 2016 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At one point, the document all but concludes that Trump aides were duped and manipulated by Russian interests they were too callow to understand.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Russian officials, intelligence services, and others” acting in concert with the Kremlin “were capable of exploiting the transition team’s shortcomings,” the report concluded. “Based on the available information, it is possible — and even likely — that they did so.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report also presents a damning portrait of the Trump campaign’s hasty move in March 2016 to assemble a foreign policy team, asserting that it had recruited inexperienced people without thoroughly vetting them and thus potentially exposed itself to Russian influence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Ultimately,” the committee wrote, “the foreign policy team exposed the Trump Campaign to significant counterintelligence vulnerabilities.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The committee pointed to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who attempted to secure a face-to-face meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin through “highly suspicious” contacts with people close to the Russian government. Ultimately, investigators concluded, Papadopoulos “was not a witting co-optee of the Russian the Russian intelligence services. The panel also found that while Russia seemed to show an interest in campaign adviser Carter Page, investigators “found no indication that Page had useful Campaign information for the Russian intelligence services to extract, nor meaningful influence for them to exploit.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The committee did find however that Putin personally directed the 2016 hack-and-leak campaign targeting the Democratic Party, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Clinton campaign. The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks “actively sought and played a key role in the Russian campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort,” the report stated, surmising that a Russian military spy agency, known as the GRU, transferred hacked emails to WikiLeaks likely because it offered a more effective platform for publicity than the GRU’s own methods.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet investigators could not “reliably determine the extent of authentic, nonpublic knowledge” Trump’s friend Roger Stone had about WikiLeaks’s coming releases and shared with the campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The panel noted that its investigation was hampered by several witnesses’ refusing interviews and to produce documents, citing Fifth Amendment rights that protect against self incrimination. These included Stone, Manafort and Rick Gates, the campaign’s deputy chair at that time. The panel’s request to interview Julian Assange was rebuffed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The committee also outright accused Blackwater founder and Trump supporter Erik Prince of stonewalling its investigation, saying that it was “hampered by a lack of cooperation” and that his account of a controversial 2017 meeting in the Seychelles alongside a Russian official was “brief and deceptive.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The committee previously released other volumes detailing aspects of its inquiry. Those reports focused on U.S. election security, Russia’s use of social media in disinformation campaigns, the Obama administration’s response to the perceived threat in 2016 and the intelligence community’s joint assessment that Russia had interfered in an attempt to tip the scales in Trump’s favor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet the panel’s effort to maintain a bipartisan approach has not saved it from partisan scrutiny. Last year, the panel came under fire from Senate Republicans after issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. to come in for a second round of testimony.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After his testimony, Trump Jr. was one of several witnesses that the panel referred to the Justice Department for closer scrutiny over discrepancies between their testimony and that of Gates, the ex-deputy campaign chair who was a key witness in Mueller’s probe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Earlier this year, Burr stepped aside as panel chairman after coming under scrutiny over stocks he sold in industries hit badly by the coronavirus pandemic. Rubio has been serving as acting chairman in his place.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ellen.nakashima@washingtonpost.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tom Hamburger, Rosalind S. Helderman, Greg Miller and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Most ReadNational Security</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> 1</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had repeated contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> 2</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Senate panel told Justice Dept. of suspicions over Trump family members’ Russia testimony</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> 3</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Ex-FBI lawyer, accused of falsifying document in probe of Trump’s campaign, to plead guilty</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> 4</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> U.S. military made $2 million in civilian casualties payments in Afghanistan in recent years</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> 5</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Paul Manafort released from prison, granted home confinement due to coronavirus fears</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Security</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senate panel told Justice Dept. of suspicions over Trump family members’ Russia testimony</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump Jr. departs Capitol Hill in June 2019 after meeting privately with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Karoun Demirjian, </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ellen Nakashima and </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matt Zapotosky</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">August 15, 2020 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republican and Democratic chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee notified federal prosecutors last year of their suspicion that several individuals, including President Trump’s family members and confidants, might have presented misleading testimony in the panel’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, people familiar with the matter said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The list of individuals included the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose accounts of their pre-election meeting with a Russian lawyer were contradicted by the president’s former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates in interviews that were part of the criminal investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, these people said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss what remains a highly politicized and sensitive matter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Inside the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting: A droning Russian lawyer and hot pink jeans, but no Clinton dirt]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the intelligence committee, one person said, reserved its harshest allegations for the president’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, former campaign co-chair Sam Clovis and private security contractor Erik Prince, saying it had reason to believe all three had lied to congressional investigators — a potential felony.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The committee’s concerns were detailed in a formal letter sent to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., in June 2019, people familiar with the matter said. Existence of the letter was first reported by the Los Angeles Times late Friday night.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Senate Intelligence Committee referred several individuals’ testimony to the Justice Department over the course of its 3½ -year probe, citing discrepancies in their accounts, three officials said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The panel, which has prided itself on having pursued its investigation without the politically charged disruptions that have undermined similar probes undertaken by other congressional committees, already has issued reports affirming that the Russians worked to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election while bolstering Trump. It is expected to release the final volume of its findings as soon as next week.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The committee’s referrals were signed by then-Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), officials said. Some letters went to Mueller, whose investigation focused not only on Russia’s activities in 2016 but also on whether anyone within the Trump campaign conspired with those efforts. Others went to the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is unclear whether the Justice Department took action on the referrals. Officials there and with the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A referral is a tip that Congress suspects a crime was committed but does not by itself spark an investigation, let alone a prosecution. Prosecutors generally view referrals from Congress with suspicion, often seeing them as partisan attempts to embarrass political opponents — although this referral was made with bipartisan agreement. Others fall short of alleging serious legal wrongdoing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Burr acknowledged in 2018 that the panel had made criminal referrals — and that “in a lot of those cases, those might be tied to lying to us.” At the time, he said the intelligence committee had interviewed more than 200 witnesses. His office declined to comment for this report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the Los Angeles Times, which viewed a copy of the referral letter, the committee told the Justice Department than Bannon may have lied about his interactions with Prince and others regarding a meeting Prince held in the Seychelles with an official close to President Vladimir Putin. Prince had told Mueller’s team that he briefed Bannon on the meeting, which occurred before Trump’s inauguration in early 2017; Bannon denied the conversation took place.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Last year, shortly after a report was released detailing Mueller’s findings, the Democrat-led House Intelligence Committee made a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Prince, accusing him of intentionally misleading the panel during its examination of the 2016 election. The Times article also notes that Clovis was referred for possibly lying about his contacts with a Republican operative spearheading an effort to obtain undisclosed emails from a personal computer server belonging to Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">William Burck, a lawyer for Bannon, declined to comment, saying “it’s impossible to respond to something I’ve never heard about before.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Victoria Toensing, a lawyer for Clovis, said: “You mean former Chairman Burr, who is under investigation for insider trading, also doesn’t know the legalities of a false statement? Mr. Clovis testified at length before the special counsel’s grand jury and was never charged. After his testimony, we never heard again from the special counsel.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Justice Department has been investigating stock sales Burr made before the coronavirus pandemic crashed global markets, and in recent months seized his cellphone and executed a search warrant for his electronic communications. Burr stepped down as committee chairman amid the probe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matthew L. Schwartz, a lawyer for Prince, noted that Prince had testified to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017 and his testimony has been public for years. That committee made a criminal referral in April 2019. “It unsurprisingly went nowhere,” Schwartz said in a statement. “If members of the Senate likewise made a referral — which we don’t know anything about — there would be nothing new for the Department of Justice to consider, nor is there any reason to question the Special Counsel’s decision to credit Mr. Prince and rely on him in drafting its report.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats examine Erik Prince’s statements on Seychelles meeting</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prince, according to a person familiar with the matter, never testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee, though he provided a copy of his House testimony to that panel.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The letter sent to prosecutors last year was divided into two sections, according to two people familiar with its contents. The first named those suspected of making false statements: Bannon, Clovis and Prince.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Its second section raised concerns about other witnesses whose testimony was contradicted by Gates, though it did not pointedly make a false-statements allegation, people familiar with the letter said. In addition to Trump Jr., that section of the letter also cited Trump’s former communications director Hope Hicks and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schiff says Donald Trump Jr. refused to answer some questions</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) said Donald Trump Jr. did not answer some questions in a closed hearing on Dec. 6, 2017. (The Washington Post)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We are fully confident in the testimony and information provided by Donald J. Trump, Jr.,” said Alan Futerfas, his lawyer. “In our view, this is a non-story.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Jr. says he’s ‘not at all’ worried about perjury charges</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A lawyer for Manafort declined to comment. A representative for Kushner did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Hicks declined to comment immediately, citing a lack of familiarity with the referral.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Jr., Kushner, Hicks and Manafort all either took part in or were involved in strategizing how to speak to the media about a June 2016 meeting at Manhattan’s Trump Tower with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer promising damaging information about Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Jr., who first sat for a lengthy interview with the Intelligence Committee investigators in late 2017 and returned under subpoena to speak with the full panel in June 2019, told investigators that he never informed his father about the Trump Tower meeting. But Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen told investigators working with Mueller that he recalled otherwise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen told Mueller’s team of being present when Trump Jr. “told his father that a meeting to obtain adverse information about Clinton was going forward,” according to a report detailing the special counsel’s findings. Cohen said he did not remember whether the meeting was connected to Russia, Mueller’s report said. He was later sentenced to three years in prison for, among other crimes, lying to Congress.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gates, meanwhile, told Mueller’s team that he recalled that in the days before the Trump Tower meeting, Trump Jr. announced at a regular gathering of senior campaign staff and Trump family members that he had a lead on negative information about Clinton’s family foundation, according to the special counsel’s report. Among those present, Gates told Mueller, were Manafort, Hicks and Eric Trump, another of the president’s sons.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Karoun Demirjian</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Karoun Demirjian is a national security reporter covering Capitol Hill, where she focuses on defense, foreign affairs, intelligence and policy matters concerning the Justice Department. She was previously a correspondent based in The Post's bureau in Moscow. Follow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ellen Nakashima</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ellen Nakashima is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering intelligence and national security matters for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 1995 and is based in Washington, D.C. Follow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matt Zapotosky</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matt Zapotosky covers the Justice Department for The Washington Post's national security team. He has previously worked covering the federal courthouse in Alexandria and local law enforcement in Prince George's County and Southern Maryland. Follow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More from The Post</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/senate-panel-referred-trump-family-members-to-doj-over-suspicions-of-misleading-russia-testimony-report/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wapo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee last year notified the Department of Justice that members of President Donald Trump’s family and close circle “might have presented misleading testimony” to the panel during its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Washington Post reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the Post, then-Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-VA) referred a list of individuals, including Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner to federal prosecutors after their accounts of a pre-election meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya “were contradicted by the president’s former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates” during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a separate section, the congressional panel said it had reason to believe Steve Bannon, Erik Prince and former campaign co-chair Sam Clovis “had lied to congressional investigators — a potential felony,” the Post reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the referrals and viewed a copy of the panel’s letter, the committee believes Bannon may have lied about his knowledge of a meeting Prince held in the Seychelles with a Russian official tied to the Kremlin. Per the Post, “Prince had told Mueller’s team that he briefed Bannon on the meeting, which occurred before Trump’s inauguration in early 2017; Bannon denied the conversation took place.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/axios-reporter-reveals-most-shocking-revelations-trump-made-in-interview-about-russian-bounties/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha doh trump does what about both siderism all the time on issues he wants to duck? eg russian activ meas, we do it too</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Travis Gettys / Raw Story July 29, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">361</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Donald Trump admitted he never confronted Russia’s president Vladimir Putin about bounties on U.S. troops, but the reporter who interviewed him said that wasn’t even the “most shocking” revelation he made.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Axios reporter Jonathan Swan interviewed the president about the bounties allegedly placed on U.S troops in Afghanistan and his recent call with Putin, but he told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” what shocked him the most about their conversation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In some ways, the most shocking part of that clip is actually not the first part where he admits for the first time on the record that he hasn’t raised the issue of the bounties with Vladimir Putin,” Swan said. “That’s the least shocking part of that call, because actually, frankly, you know, you could have a debate within policy circles about whether it’s the appropriate thing.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I mean, that there are dissenting opinions within the intelligence community about this intelligence,” he added. “It certainly is serious intelligence, being taken seriously by the allies, and there is a very good argument for why the president should raise it with Putin.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that wasn’t the most surprising revelation Trump made, Swan said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The second question is actually more important, which is, fine, you don’t believe this intelligence, or you’re skeptical of it,” Swan said. “Let’s try and take the most good-faith interpretation of it. But you know that Russia has been supplying weapons and money to the Taliban because the man who ran your forces in Afghanistan, John Nicholson, under your administration, said this on the record when he worked for you, and for him to say then, well, I didn’t — I don’t know if I’ve heard about this, never reached my desk, and by the way, we gave them weapons, too.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I mean, like in a different era,” he added. “I just — honestly, it was one of the most shocking — I’ve covered president Trump for five years. I think it’s one of the most shocking exchanges I’ve ever had with him.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5/20</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omfg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/on-putins-payroll-what-the-corrupt-move-to-drop-the-case-against-michael-flynn-really-means</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dcj dc reptr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a major step toward establishing a Trump dictatorship, the Justice Department moved Thursday to drop the criminal case against confessed felon Michael Flynn, the retired Army general and secret foreign agent who was Trump’s first national security adviser.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Instead of seeking equal justice under law, an extraordinary court filing demonstrated that Trump has one standard of justice for his enemies and an entirely different one for his allies. The court action shows how fully Trump has turned our Justice Department into his personal protection agency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 108-page court filing is rife with falsehoods and tortured interpretations of established facts, a mendacious necessity since Flynn twice confessed to multiple crimes under oath in open court. It argues that the lies Flynn told FBI agents were not “material” to the case against him. The trial court judge has already dismissed that as nonsense.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Flynn was secretly a well-paid agent of foreign interests while serving as Trump’s national security adviser.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It also argues that there was no legitimate reason ever existed to investigate Flynn, an astonishing claim since Flynn was secretly a well-paid agent of foreign interests while serving as Trump’s national security adviser. The claim is all the more remarkable because it is made by an ostensibly Republican administration after decades of Republican clamor about Russian spies and influence peddling.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Based on all this and more we can now reasonably refer to Trump’s Injustice Department.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump could have pardoned Flynn. “He was an innocent man,“ Trump said in a bald-faced lie in front of video cameras Thursday afternoon. “I’m very happy for General Flynn.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But a pardon would not have allowed Trump to mark his territory, signaling to any who dare challenge his assertions that he is above the law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From President to Dictator</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By demonstrating unfettered control over our Justice Department, Trump has achieved a critical step required for a transition from a president with limited authority to de facto dictator.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The motion to drop the Flynn case fits Trump’s fact-free declaration last summer that “I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our Constitution allows no such thing. You might think that Trump, who has been saying since 1987 that he should be president, would have read Article II, which is only 1,023 words. But either Trump never read Article II or he doesn’t care about the limits it places on him including the requirement that he “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Attorney General William Barr—better and properly called Attorney Specific to Trump—lacks unilateral power to dismiss the case against Flynn. Dismissal requires court approval under Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Admitted His Crimes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eminent lawyers stood beside Flynn when he confessed twice in open court to felonies. He allocated to crimes for which charges were dropped in a plea deal. Given this robust record of criminality, the Injustice Department’s action raises obvious questions:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will Republican senators, notably lawyers Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Lamar Alexander and Ted Cruz, at long last stand up for the rule of law or continue as moral jellyfish – blind, spineless and floating aimlessly in the waves of chaos and corruption flowing from the Trump White House?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will Speaker Nancy Pelosi authorize House investigative hearings into Trump violating his oath to “faithfully execute” the duties of his office and endangering our national security?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Trump persists with his refusal to cooperate with all House investigations, will Pelosi exercise the House’s Constitutional power to arrest recalcitrant witnesses, including Barr, and if appropriate to try them and upon conviction incarcerate them for contempt of Congress and other crimes?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will Joe Biden pledge that if elected his Justice Department will fully pursue the Russian connections to Trump and his campaign until we find out why Team Trump has worked so diligently to hide the truth?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Justice Department Turmoil</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The extraordinary court filing follows what must have been a ferocious, months-long fight inside Barr’s Injustice Department because some career prosecutors resignedfrom the case earlier to avoid sullying their reputations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Thursday motion was signed only by Timothy Shea, a Barr protégé installed three months ago as acting United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Missing from the latest court papers were the signatures of Jocelyn Ballentine, an assistant prosecutor, and Brandon Van Grack, a veteran espionage case prosecutor. Van Grack resigned from the case in a one-sentence filing just moments before the motion to dismiss was submitted to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of U.S. District Court.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Judge Sullivan can order Justice and its lawyers to explain these unusual actions. He could refuse to allow the case to be dropped or allow it, but with leave to refile the charges in the future. That would make Flynn vulnerable if Trump does not get a second term.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Putin’s Payroll</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Flynn and his company were on Putin’s payroll and worked for Turkish interests with deep ties to the Kremlin. Flynn was paid at least $680,000, some of which he lied about. At the time he was the president elect’s designated national security adviser.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the allocation, Judge Sullivan told Flynn “arguably you sold out your country.” (Trump, on Thursday, called Flynn “a hero.”)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“All along, you were an unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security advisor to the president of the United States,” Sullivan told Flynn. “That undermines everything this flag over here stands for,” Sullivan said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is a very serious offense… A high ranking senior official of the government making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation while in the White House, very serious crime.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That the Trump administration would shield a secret foreign agent who was the White House intelligence chief shows how important it is to Trump that he keep Flynn in his fold. Flynn made himself susceptible to blackmail by taking Russian money and lying about it, but it is not known if Flynn engaged in unquestionably traitorous conduct.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More Kremlin Connections</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Flynn case has its roots in Russian interference to help Trump win the 2016 election. So do other allies. Among these are the felony prosecutions of Roger Stone, Trump’s dirty tricks specialist, and campaign Manager Paul Manafort, a longtime foreign agent for dictators and Russian-speaking criminals and politicians.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump denies the Russians helped him become president. But America’s intelligence agencies, the bi-partisan chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the 418-page Mueller report and emails from none other than Donald Trump Jr. all make clear the Kremlin helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. The only issue on which the facts are not complete was whether Trump was a passive beneficiary or he knowingly worked with the Kremlin, whether obliquely or hand-in-glove.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The president’s eldest son was told in writing in June 2016 that the Kremlin wanted to help his father become president. Trump Jr. replied enthusiastically “love it” and then met at Trump Tower with Kremlin agents. The son then lied and denied, telling both Fox News and ABC News that no such contact took place. More than a year later, as The New York Times was about to expose these lies, the namesake son released the damning emails.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Economic Collapse and Riots</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has openly talked six times about being president for life. When criticized for such assaults on American Constitutional principles, Trump lamely claimed he was joking. He also said last June that he anticipates that after completing the maximum of two terms his supporters will “demand that I stay longer.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump campaigned on a promise to destroy our government, an issue that has disappeared from the news after getting almost no attention during his campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘Country Goes to Total Hell’</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That promise came after Trump told Fox News in 2014 how to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. “When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell, and everything is a disaster… you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Wednesday, as the pandemic death toll surpassed 75,000 Americans he renewed his demand that the law be made history. Repeal would leave at least 20 million Americans with no health insurance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just weeks after assuming office Trump held an unannounced meeting in the Oval Office with Russia’s foreign minister and Russian ambassador and a “photographer” for the Kremlin-owned Tass news agency. The Russians revealed the meeting. They also disclosed that Trump gave them “sources and methods” intelligence, which is closely guarded to protect human and technological assets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump Places Trust in Putin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2018 in Helsinki Trump declared that he trusts Putin fully, but not America’s intelligence agencies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has met alone with Putin and Putin subordinates through his presidency. He ripped up the notes of his translator after one meeting, a crime under federal law. He met alone with Putin for at least one lengthy conversation using Putin’s interpreter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These actions demonstrate Trump’s disloyalty and unfitness to be president, yet Senate Republicans refused to hear testimony after the House impeached him last year. Senate Republicans then voted twice not to convict except for one vote by the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, now the junior senator from Utah.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This latest abuse of power to protect a criminal crony who was on Vladimir Putin’s payroll and a secret foreign agent is more than an impeachable offense. Trump, Barr and Shea also sent a clear message: Team Trump harbors no regard for the rule of law, the foundation of our liberties and democratic freedoms.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/newly-released-fbi-documents-reveal-extent-of-roger-stones-direct-communications-with-julian-assange-report/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">veteran GOP operative and long-time Donald Trump ally Roger Stone, who was sentenced to three years in federal prison in February for felonies that included witness tampering and lying to Congress, continues to vie for a presidential pardon. Meanwhile, FBI documents continue to offer insights on Stone’s past communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange: according to FBI documents made public this week, Stone asserted in a 2017 direct message via Twitter that if prosecutors came for him, “I will bring down the entire house of cards.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Associated Press (AP) is reporting that FBI documents show that Stone sent that message weeks after former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed to head the Russia investigation. According to AP reporters Eric Tucker, Colleen Long and Michael Balsamo, the FBI records “reveal the extent of communications between Stone and Assange, whose anti-secrecy website published Democratic e-mails hacked by Russians during the 2016 presidential election, and underscore efforts by Trump allies to gain insight about the release of information they expected would embarrass Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI records, according to AP, show that in a direct Twitter message sent in June 2017, Stone “reassured Assange that the issue was ‘still nonsense’ and said, ‘As a journalist, it doesn’t matter where you get information — only that it is accurate and authentic.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone, AP reports, mentioned a 1971 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for newspapers and magazines to publish the Pentagon Papers — documents about the Vietnam War that had been classified. The Trump ally, via Twitter, told Assange, “If the US government moves on you, I will bring down the entire house of cards. With the trumped-up sexual assault charges dropped, I don’t know of any crime you need to be pardoned for — best regards. R.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone, in that message, appeared to be referring to the Swedish government’s sexual assault case against Assange, which was dropped.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.mediamatters.org/pete-hegseth/pete-hegseth-democrats-and-media-are-agents-russia-not-donald-trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">after maguire report on meddle to schiff?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omg witchhunt vengeance</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 220 vengeance</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/lindsey-graham-says-barr-has-process-for-biden-probe-russian-investigators-going-to-jail/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How the FBI Botched Its Russia Inquiry, One of the Most Closely Watched Cases in Its History</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eric Lichtblau</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The investigation was slowed by communication failures, concerns about political optics, and an overall lack of urgency, along with plenty of mistakes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE ?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">intercept</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">when THE FBI opened a secret investigation in the summer of 2016 into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, top FBI officials deemed it an urgent priority and put more than a dozen people on the case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But deep inside this week’s massive report from the Justice Department’s inspector general, a conflicting narrative emerged that suggests the FBI may not have pursued the investigation as quickly or aggressively as it should have. Instead, the investigation was slowed at key points by communication failures, concerns about political optics, and an overall lack of urgency in some quarters, according to a series of episodes recounted by the inspector general.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> News coverage about the report was dominated by its repudiation of President Donald Trump’s claims of an illegal FBI spying campaign directed against him, as well as its criticism of significant FBI errors in seeking wiretap approvals. But the findings about the erratic pace and aggressiveness of the investigation — on the eve of the 2016 election — raise troubling questions as well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It took seven weeks, for instance, before reports about Trump-Russia links from British intelligence source Christopher Steele finally reached the FBI investigators that fall, a delay that FBI officials acknowledged was “excessive,” the inspector general’s report said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The slow pace of the investigation into former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort — now in prison on money-laundering charges — was a particular source of frustration, multiple officials at the Justice Department and the FBI told the inspector general. One senior Justice Department attorney complained bluntly that line-level prosecutors working with the FBI were “not moving quickly enough on its Manafort investigation,” the report said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And a top Justice Department official at the time, Dana Boente, moved to speed up and centralize the entire Trump-Russia investigation in early 2017, weeks after Trump’s inauguration, because he believed that it “had not been moving with a sense of urgency,” the inspector general reported. The missed chances, some officials suggested, might have hampered the FBI’s abilities to gather fresh evidence of improper activity while it was happening.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How did such missteps happen during one of the most important and scrutinized investigations in the FBI’s history?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Top officials at both the FBI and the Justice Department, while pushing their people for an urgent investigation, were also voicing competing concerns about avoiding any “overt” steps that could be seen as influencing or interfering in the election that November, the report found.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe directed officials to “get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible, but leave a light footprint,” and he and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates “agreed that they did not want to do anything that could potentially impact candidate Trump,” the report said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the final weeks of the campaign, top FBI officials were also distracted by the discovery of a new cache of emails potentially related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation, leading then-FBI Director James Comey to send Congress an alert about the matter just 11 days before election — a move that Clinton blamed for helping tilt the election to Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FBI’s willingness to go to Congress with the new information on the Clinton emails — while keeping a tight lid on the Russia probe — bothered some people involved in the investigation. Steele, for one, told the inspector general that the FBI’s contrasting approach to the two cases was one reason he decided to break off his dealings with the FBI for a time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The long-awaited report from the office of Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz was the most exhaustive examination to date of the FBI’s historic probe into Russia and the Trump campaign, and the final conclusions proved damaging to both the president and the FBI. Horowitz expanded on his findings in testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, as Democrats and Republicans seized on different parts of the report to advance competing agendas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a central finding that dominated headlines this week, the review debunked Trump’s repeated claims that the FBI had illegally spied on his campaign, finding instead that the FBI had justified reasons to open the investigation. Nor was there evidence that “political bias” influenced the investigation, the report concluded....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/here-are-5-huge-lies-republicans-are-telling-about-the-new-report-on-the-russia-probe</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here are 5 huge lies Republicans are telling about the new report on the Russia probe</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Cody Fenwick December 10, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s new report on the origins of Crossfire Hurricane, commonly called the Russia investigation, blew up many of the right wing’s favorite talking points and conspiracy theories about the FBI. At the same time, it exposed real failures of procedures meant to protect American citizens against undue surveillance and exposed the need for serious law enforcement reforms.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But most Republicans seem unfazed that the report undercuts President Donald Trump’s repeated accusations of “treason” and a “witch hunt,” and they show no genuine interest in pushing policy to generally make law enforcement more responsible. Instead, they’re trying to pin the blame on the Obama administration and bias against Trump, even though these claims actually distract from the genuine problems uncovered.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So instead of grappling with the complicated facts of the report, Republicans are just lying about what it says. Here are five huge lies you should be on the look out for, and why they’re false:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Aaron Rupar</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@atrupar</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump on the IG report: "It is incredible. Far worse than I ever would've thought possible. It's an embarrassment to our country, it's dishonest. It's everything that a lot of people thought it would be, except far worse."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Embedded video</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is absolutely not true. Trump has accused the FBI of “treason” for its investigation of members of his campaign, an accusation that was always ludicrous. Obviously, the report didn’t find anything “far worse” than treason — the worst finding seems to be that an FBI lawyer falsified a piece of evidence in an application for surveillance, making Carter Page’s activities look more suspicious than they otherwise would. This is quite bad, if true, but it’s far milder than much of what the FBI’s critics have claimed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And in contrast to what Trump has been saying for more years now, the report said: “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open” investigations of Trump associates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ronna McDaniel</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@GOPChairwoman</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The mainstream media cannot dispute this fact:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Comey’s FBI repeatedly misled the FISA court and omitted key facts about the phony Steele Dossier, which launched the 2-year, $35M Russia investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This should have never happened!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, the media can dispute this fact, because it’s not true. The work of Christopher Steele did not “launch” Crossfire Hurricane, as Horowitz made perfectly clear. It explained that the officials working on the investigation “did not become aware of Steele’s election reporting until weeks [after the investigation began] and we therefore determined that Steele’s reports played no role in the Crossfire Hurricane opening.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senator John Cornyn</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@JohnCornyn</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It confirms that the Obama Justice Department spied on an American citizen by misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court into issuing 4 separate warrants. https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1204151940202020864 …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Breaking911</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@Breaking911</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Schumer on Justice Department IG Report: "Let me repeat, so that all of those conspiracy theorists out there here it, this report confirms that the predicate for the FBI's investigation was valid and without political bias."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Embedded video</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Again, this is false. Putting aside the controversial use of the word “spying,” and acknowledging that the report found serious errors in the application for the surveillance of Carter Page, these errors spanned both the Obama administration and the Trump administration. The application was re-approved by officials appointed by Trump himself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Undercover Huber</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@JohnWHuber</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Statement from Attorney General Bill Barr</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barr is particularly cagey, and he is trying to contradict Horowitz even while ostensibly praising his work. By inserting the phrase “in my view,” he’s trying to blend together his own unsupported claims with the contrary assertions of Horowitz.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps the most significant conclusion Horowitz reached, however, is that Crossfire Hurricane properly predicated, despite what Barr said. He explained:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Additionally, given the low threshold for predication in the AG Guidelines and the DIOG, we concluded that the FFG information, provided by a government the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) deems trustworthy, and describing a first-hand account from an FFG employee of a conversation with Papadopoulos, was sufficient to predicate the investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s true that, as the report says, the standards for predication are low. But it’s possible for the predication to fail to meet the standard — it can’t simply be that FBI agents have a “hunch.” Having concerning, first-hand information from a friendly foreign government — which public reporting indicates was Australia — that implicates national security is not “the thinnest of suspicions.” And Barr is just wrong to say that the report supports the idea that it is.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Steve Scalise</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@SteveScalise</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?? BREAKING ? The IG report proves Obama officials abused their FISA power to trigger an investigation into @realDonaldTrump's campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just more evidence Dems will break any rule or law to rig an election against Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These crooked bureaucrats must be held accountable!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet again, this is blatantly wrong and grossly misleading about the underlying facts. The investigation was not of the campaign more broadly but of four distinct individuals tied to the campaign. And the fact that the report found no evidence to support the idea that there was political motivation behind the investigation refutes the claim that it is “more evidence Dems will break any rule or law to rig an election against Trump.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And Scalise lied about the opening of the investigation, which preceded the decision to apply for FISA surveillance by several months. Again, there’s no evidence in the report that the investigation was opened improperly, even though it says that there were serious problems in the FISA process.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cody Fenwick is a senior editor at AlterNet. He writes about politics, media and science. Follow him on Twitter @codytfenwick.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former CIA officer: Trump and his allies have a long history of bullying intelligence experts who probe Russian election interference</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/former-cia-officer-trump-and-his-allies-have-a-long-history-of-bullying-intelligence-experts-who-probe-russian-election-interference/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Alex Henderson November 26, 2019 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council (NSC) senior director specializing in Russian and European affairs, testified before the House Intelligence Committee on November 21, she stressed that there was zero evidence to support the claim that Ukraine rather than Russia interfered in the United States’ 2016 presidential election. Nonetheless, the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory persists on the far right. And journalist Alex Finley, in a report for Just Security, discusses the extremes that President Donald Trump’s allies have been willing to go to in the hope of discrediting intelligence on Russian election interference in 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The CrowdStrike conspiracy theory claims that in 2016, the cyber-security firm CrowdStrike conspired with Democrats and the Ukrainian government to frame the Russian government for interfering in the presidential election. According to the false claim that the Ukrainian government — not Russian President Vladimir Putin — was the real villain in 2016, Finley notes, “Trump never could have colluded with Russia, because Russia never did anything wrong.” And Finley notes that Attorney General William Barr has been investigating people in the U.S. intelligence community who have been part of the Russia investigation — and appointed federal prosecutor John Dunham to head that investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finley explains, “Last month, media outlets reported that Barr’s investigation had become a criminal one. Whether true or not, the claim — much like the public attacks from Trump, Republicans and the conservative media ecosystem — seemed like a clear signal to civil servants — whether in the FBI, the CIA or the NSA — to tread very carefully if they planned to take any actions that came anywhere near the Russia-Trump nexus again.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finley adds, however, that Barr’s investigation “was not the first threatening message sent to the intelligence and law enforcement community” about Russia: Trump and his allies have a long history of going after people who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, Finley points out, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were both fired. And Trump, Finley notes, “has repeatedly attacked FBI investigators Peter Stzrok and Lisa Page on Twitter and elsewhere with particularly prurient and unsettling comments.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finley observes, “One of Mike Pompeo’s first actions when he became head of the CIA was to interrogate the analysts who had written the report concluding that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and had aimed to help Trump win. More recently, Barr traveled to both the United Kingdom and Italy to meet with intelligence officials in those countries. While there, he asked those foreign governments about the actions of his compatriot American intelligence officers.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the Ukraine investigation and the impeachment inquiry, Finley adds, many of the witnesses have been smeared by Trump and his supporters — including Marie Yovanovitch (former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine) and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What effect does this have on our national security?,” Finley asks. “If our intelligence community becomes reticent to chase down counterintelligence leads because the president or his associates might be involved or have an interest in how they play out, how vulnerable does the country become? The good news is: these civil servants seem like they won’t be cowed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former CIA officer: Trump and his allies have a long history of bullying intelligence experts who probe Russian election interference</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/former-cia-officer-trump-and-his-allies-have-a-long-history-of-bullying-intelligence-experts-who-probe-russian-election-interference/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Alex Henderson November 26, 2019 </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council (NSC) senior director specializing in Russian and European affairs, testified before the House Intelligence Committee on November 21, she stressed that there was zero evidence to support the claim that Ukraine rather than Russia interfered in the United States’ 2016 presidential election. Nonetheless, the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory persists on the far right. And journalist Alex Finley, in a report for Just Security, discusses the extremes that President Donald Trump’s allies have been willing to go to in the hope of discrediting intelligence on Russian election interference in 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The CrowdStrike conspiracy theory claims that in 2016, the cyber-security firm CrowdStrike conspired with Democrats and the Ukrainian government to frame the Russian government for interfering in the presidential election. According to the false claim that the Ukrainian government — not Russian President Vladimir Putin — was the real villain in 2016, Finley notes, “Trump never could have colluded with Russia, because Russia never did anything wrong.” And Finley notes that Attorney General William Barr has been investigating people in the U.S. intelligence community who have been part of the Russia investigation — and appointed federal prosecutor John Dunham to head that investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finley explains, “Last month, media outlets reported that Barr’s investigation had become a criminal one. Whether true or not, the claim — much like the public attacks from Trump, Republicans and the conservative media ecosystem — seemed like a clear signal to civil servants — whether in the FBI, the CIA or the NSA — to tread very carefully if they planned to take any actions that came anywhere near the Russia-Trump nexus again.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finley adds, however, that Barr’s investigation “was not the first threatening message sent to the intelligence and law enforcement community” about Russia: Trump and his allies have a long history of going after people who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, Finley points out, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe were both fired. And Trump, Finley notes, “has repeatedly attacked FBI investigators Peter Stzrok and Lisa Page on Twitter and elsewhere with particularly prurient and unsettling comments.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Finley observes, “One of Mike Pompeo’s first actions when he became head of the CIA was to interrogate the analysts who had written the report concluding that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and had aimed to help Trump win. More recently, Barr traveled to both the United Kingdom and Italy to meet with intelligence officials in those countries. While there, he asked those foreign governments about the actions of his compatriot American intelligence officers.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the Ukraine investigation and the impeachment inquiry, Finley adds, many of the witnesses have been smeared by Trump and his supporters — including Marie Yovanovitch (former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine) and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What effect does this have on our national security?,” Finley asks. “If our intelligence community becomes reticent to chase down counterintelligence leads because the president or his associates might be involved or have an interest in how they play out, how vulnerable does the country become? The good news is: these civil servants seem like they won’t be cowed.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/long-awaited-doj-review-of-the-russia-probe-origins-looks-to-be-a-bust-for-conservative-conspiracists/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Long-awaited DOJ review of the Russia probe origins looks to be a bust for conservative conspiracists</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Cody Fenwick November 23, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans and President Donald Trump have eagerly awaited a report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz into the origins of the Russia investigation, due out on Dec. 9. But from all appearances — though there will be findings conservatives will latch on to in order to support their conspiracy theories — it looks to be a big bust for the main thrust of their favorite attacks on the investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and his defenders — mostly in right-wing media, but also, notably, Attorney General Bill Barr — have repeatedly suggested or claimed outright that the Russia investigation was a “hoax” designed to take down the president before he was even elected. President Barack Obama, some of them have argued, was behind the whole thing. Trump himself actually started much of this with a completely baseless and false tweet early in his presidency:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald J. Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">@realDonaldTrump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the heart of all this is the right-wing theory that the Russia investigation, particularly the element that probed connections between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin effort to interfere in the 2016 election, was an unjustified political attack. This would be a great abuse of the Justice Department and an egregious civil rights violation, at the very least. But according to three new reports published Friday from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, Horowitz’s forthcoming report will find that the investigation was properly predicated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, this shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who read Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Even though it did not find enough evidence to charge a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, it found extensive evidence of suspicious and troubling ties between the two sides that undoubtedly warranted investigatory scrutiny.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Times reported: “[The] draft report … concludes that the F.B.I. had enough evidence to meet the legal standard for opening the investigation, though Mr. Horowitz emphasized that the bar is low, the people said.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The report isn’t expected to accuse top FBI officials of abusing their authority because they were biased against Mr. Trump, a person familiar with it said—a claim the president and his supporters have long alleged,” the Journal noted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Post found: “In broad terms, the report refutes accusations of a political conspiracy by senior law enforcement officials against the Trump campaign to favor Democrat Hillary Clinton, while also knocking the bureau for procedural shortcomings, said the officials.” (It was easy to dismiss the view that the Justice Department was weaponized against Trump from the start, however, given that FBI Director James Comey likely put the nail in the coffin of Hillary Clinton’s campaign by publicly reopening the investigation of her emails days before the election.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So what did Horowitz find that conservatives will like?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The most explosive allegation seems to be that an FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, reportedly fabricated part of the application for surveillance of Carter Page. The FBI began monitoring Page — who had ties to Russia and was reportedly targeted by spies as a potential asset before he worked for Trump — after he had worked for the Trump campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What’s the significance of the Page surveillance application? It’s all a bit circuitous. Trump’s claim about Obama tapping the wires at Trump Tower has been thoroughly debunked, and no evidence ever supported it. But Trump defenders have twisted it into an allegation that there was spying on the Trump campaign, which then was twisted mostly around vague allegations about the improper surveillance of Page.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That a DOJ official apparently falsified evidence in a criminal investigation while authorizing surveillance of Page is a big deal, and if true, it’s great that it was uncovered. Everyone should be happy when law enforcement abuses are uncovered. But the reports do not indicate that the errors in the applications for surveilling Page would have undermined the case for the surveillance, even if they are serious.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And the finding doesn’t suggest what conservatives have long asserted, which is that the Russia probe was a hit job. Instead, it reflects what we should expect — that heavy scrutiny is likely to find some errors and wrongdoing in any human endeavor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clinesmith reportedly worked both on the Russia investigation and the Clinton email investigation, though, which will certainly inspire more conspiracy theories. Clinesmith no longer works at the FBI, the reports said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reports also suggest that Horowitz found addition “errors and ommissions” and procedural issues in the Page surveillance and the FBI’s work, but none are as significant as the Clinesmith finding. One FBI working on the case will reportedly be found to have been “careless,” according to the Times. Horowitz reportedly referred the Clinesmith case to U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is working with Barr on a separate criminal investigation related to the probe. The scope of Durham’s probe is unclear.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report will also reportedly debunk some specific aspects of conspiracy theories that conservatives have pushed. In particular, the Times found:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report is also said to conclude that Joseph Mifsud, a Russia-linked professor who told a Trump campaign official that Russia had damaging information on Mrs. Clinton in the form of hacked Democratic emails — a key fact used to open the investigation — was not an F.B.I. informant. That undercuts an assertion of conservative critics of the inquiry.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">None of the evidence used to open the investigation came from the C.I.A. or from a notorious dossier of claims about Trump-Russia ties compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent whose research was funded by Democrats, the report concludes, according to the people briefed on it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, it also said: “Still, people familiar with questions asked by Mr. Horowitz’s investigators have suggested that he is likely to conclude that the filings exaggerated Mr. Steele’s track record in terms of the amount of value that the F.B.I. derived from information he supplied in previous investigations.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Times also noted:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">…while Mr. Horowitz criticizes F.B.I. leadership for its handling of the highly fraught Russia investigation in some ways, he made no finding of politically biased actions by top officials Mr. Trump has vilified like the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey; Andrew G. McCabe, the former deputy who temporarily ran the bureau after the president fired Mr. Comey in 2017; and Peter Strzok, a former top counterintelligence agent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Again, any legitimate criticism of law enforcement should be welcome. Given the immense power the FBI has to involve itself in ordinary people’s lives, it should subject to sharp oversight and scrutiny.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it should also be recognized that Horowitz is conducting his investigation under intense political pressure. Trump, Barr, and the conservative media world are clearly desperate for him to find something to distract from the president’s wrongdoing. This isn’t to suggest that he would fabricate findings, of course, but that he may overstate their significance.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He’s already done this. He released a report on Comey’s handling of memos memorializing his interactions with Trump in early 2017, which the former FBI director later released publicly in a successful effort to trigger the special counsel investigation. As I’ve previously argued, that report completely vindicated Comey. But Horowitz framed his findings as a harsh condemnation of Comey, absurdly dinging the former director for rules violations that occurred after he no longer even worked for the Justice Department. And he completely ignored the context of Comey’s decisions, which is that his termination was likely a criminal act of obstruction of justice by the president.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So while I don’t expect Horowitz’s findings to be false, and while I welcome any findings that shine light on the functioning of law enforcement, I don’t expect him to give everyone a fair shake.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even more confidently, I predict that, regardless of the general thrust and conclusions of Horowitz’s findings, the right wing will blow it out of proportion. If, as seems likely, the conspiracy theories about an FBI plot against Trump — and that the Russia investigation was a hoax — are thoroughly demolished, they won’t care at all. After all, the best conspiracy theories can never be disproven in the minds of true believers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/treasure-trove-of-mueller-memos-shows-trump-benefited-the-russians-beyond-their-wildest-expectations/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Sunday morning, an MSNBC “AM Joy” panel took up the release of a batch of memos from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that were released on Saturday that shed light on even more connections between aides to the president and Russian officials.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reviewing the documents obtained by Buzzfeed News, conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin said Russia lucked out with Trump as a presidential candidate...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/mueller-report-secret-memos-1</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx many docs</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">THE MUELLER MEMOS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Mueller Report’s Secret Memos</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BuzzFeed News sued the US government to see all the work that Mueller’s team kept secret. We have published the first installment, with revelations about the Ukraine conspiracy theory, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, and more.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Posted on November 2, 2019, at 12:08 p.m. ET</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Manafort was pushing the unfounded conspiracy theory — now part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump — that Ukraine hacked the Democratic National Committee's emails as early as 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, "had to keep Trump out of the messaging related to Russia” in preparation for his testimony to Congress under oath and that the false testimony was "not his idea."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Top Trump campaign aide Rick Gates said the campaign was “very happy” when a foreign government helped release the hacked DNC emails.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These are some of the revelations that BuzzFeed News pried loose after pursuing five separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for all the subpoenas and search warrants that then–special counsel Robert Mueller’s team executed, as well as all the emails, memos, letters, talking points, legal opinions, and interview transcripts it generated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Read the documents here.]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to a court order, the Justice Department released the first installment of documents: hundreds of pages of summaries of FBI interviews with witnesses, available here for the first time. Another installment will be released every month for at least the next eight years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The documents revealed Saturday, known as “302 reports,” are summaries of interviews with former White House official and Trump campaign manager Stephen Bannon, Cohen, Gates, and more. They are some of the most important and highly sought-after documents from Mueller’s investigation. They reveal what key players in the campaign told FBI agents about Russia, Trump, the email hack during the 2016 presidential campaign, and Trump's associates’ handling of the special counsel’s investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mueller’s 448-page report last March was the most hotly anticipated prosecutorial document in a generation, laying out the evidence of Russia's interference in the 2016 election and the Trump administration’s efforts to obstruct the inquiry. The report, however, reflected only a small fraction of the billions of primary-source documents that the government claims Mueller’s team may have amassed over the course of its two-year investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[We want your help! If you see something in these memos, you can email reporter Jason Leopold at jason.leopold@buzzfeed.com or reach us securely at tips.buzzfeed.com.]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those documents are a crucial national legacy, a key to understanding this important chapter in American history. But the public has not been allowed to see any of them. Until now.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After years of speculation and accusation, these documents offer a chance for everyone to view a key function of American democracy. That opportunity — hard-won, but enshrined anew with each additional FOIA release — commences today. It will last long after all the players have departed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some takeaways from the memos:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Manafort was pushing the conspiracy theory that Ukraine hacked the DNC as early as 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an April 2018 interview with the special counsel’s office, Rick Gates, who had served as deputy Trump campaign chair and had long been Paul Manafort’s right hand, told investigators that after the campaign learned the DNC had been hacked, Manafort pushed the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had orchestrated the attack. It’s a conspiracy theory that’s persisted in right-wing circles, even after the US Intelligence Community concluded Russia was involved, and one that Trump brought up in his July 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a written memorandum of the July call released by the White House, Trump at one point says to Zelensky, “I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more on this.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 14:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Cohen "had to keep Trump out of the messaging related to Russia"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The documents reveal how Cohen, Trump's former personal lawyer who spent years in his inner circle, worked through how to talk about issues related to Trump and Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In preparation for his testimony to Congress, "Cohen's message had several components," according to notes of his FBI interview. "COHEN has to keep TRUMP out of the messaging related to Russia and keep TRUMP out of the Russia conversation." He also told investigators that any false testimony was "not his idea."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen told Congress in February, “In his way, he was telling me to lie,” about concealing negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress about when discussions related to the Trump Tower Moscow deal had ended.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 77:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cohen also "learned the message to have the Russia investigations end early from discussions with TRUMP, SEKULOW" and a third person whose name is redacted.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 74:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gates said the Trump campaign was "very happy" about the release of hacked DNC emails</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gates, who served as Trump’s deputy campaign chair, told Mueller’s team in late 2018 that the release of the hacked emails “offered a mode of deflection for the campaign after a sink in polling numbers following Trump's comments about Ted Cruz's father at the end of the Republican National Convention.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in June 2016 that the group had an upcoming email leak related to Hillary Clinton. After that, Manafort instructed Gates to “periodically call” someone whose name is redacted from the documents “to check in on where the information was and when it would be coming,” Gates told the FBI.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Trump was generally frustrated Clinton's missing emails had not been found,” Gates also told investigators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more and view the relevant documents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the hacked DNC emails, Trump told Gates that "more leaks were coming"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shortly after the Democratic National Convention in 2016 — which came right after Russian hackers stole DNC emails, throwing the party into disarray — Trump and Gates, a top campaign aide, were riding in a car from Trump Tower in Manhattan to LaGuardia Airport.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump told Gates that "more leaks were coming."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When it came to the Trump campaign conspiring with Russia to influence the election, Mueller's report, released in April, found that no charges were warranted, but that there is still information he did not know.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“While the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign,” Mueller wrote about a conspiracy with Russia, “the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 42:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon told the FBI that Jared Kushner vacationed with a Russian oligarch</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon told FBI investigators that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were on vacation in Croatia with a “Russian billionaire” in August 2016 — appearing to confirm a long-suspected and long-denied connection between Trump world and a Russian oligarch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Messages between Bannon and an unnamed individual with a Breitbart domain email address — exchanged in July 2017, one month before Bannon was fired from his position as White House chief strategist — revealed that they were hoping to leverage this information against Kushner. Bannon cofounded the far-right Breitbart and rejoined it in August 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The messages and information were documented as part of an interview with then–special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, and were revealed by BuzzFeed News for the first time Saturday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Representatives for Kushner and Ivanka Trump didn’t immediately return requests for comment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a Feb. 14, 2018, interview with the special counsel’s office, Bannon said that Kushner had been on vacation with a Russian oligarch when he took over the Trump campaign in August 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the documents released Saturday, Bannon told investigators that Kushner had been in Croatia with the unnamed Russian billionaire, Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife Wendi Deng, and the Russian’s girlfriend, whom Bannon said his sources in the intelligence community found to be “questionable.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 109:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kushner and his family’s Croatian vacation in August 2016 was widely covered in the media. Throughout the trip, Deng was photographed with Kushner and his wife, Ivanka, who also shared a picture of herself and Deng in the country’s capital city on her Instagram account.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Deng didn’t immediately return a request for comment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon referenced Kushner’s vacation in an email dated July 24, 2017, to an individual with a Breitbart domain email address whose name has been redacted. Bannon appeared to indicate that the information, if reported and confirmed, could be valuable against Kushner, his rival for power in the Trump administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“He was on ‘vacation’ off the coast of Croatia with a Russian billionaire when I took over the campaign,” Bannon wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“How do we prove that?” The unnamed person replied. “That’s game set match.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 178:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The same day as these emails, Bannon exchanged messages with someone at Breitbart about a Guardian story reporting that Kushner secured a real estate deal with another Soviet-born oligarch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Don’t touch yet,” Bannon said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“k this is big though isn’t it? It’s the ball game…” the Breitbart person responded.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“All and everything,” Bannon replied.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 179:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Manafort was advising the Trump campaign up until days before the election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon’s emails show that Manafort was still advising the Trump campaign three days before the Nov. 8, 2016 election — despite having been fired in August — and said the campaign needed to hide that fact.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Manafort emailed Kushner on Nov. 5 and wrote that he was “feeling really good about our prospects on Tuesday.” He said that he was focused “on preserving the victory” and had sent Kushner “a memo deal[ing] with this concern.” Manafort wrote that he had sent the memo to Reince Priebus, the former chair of the Republican National Committee and Trump's former chief of staff, and “briefed Rick Gates and Hannity.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kushner forwarded the email to Bannon the same day and asked him what he thought.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We need to avoid this guy like the plague,” Bannon said in an email to Kushner dated Nov. 5. “Paul is nice guy but can’t let word get out he is advising us.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They are going to try to say the Russians worked with wiki leaks to give this victory to us.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 238:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Page 29, Rick Gates's 302:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gates said Trump's "Russia if you're listening" line was an "ad lib." He was referring to Trump's comment, "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," at a July 27, 2016, press conference in Florida. He was urging Russian hackers to work to find emails belonging to his opponent, Hillary Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gates also said that he recalled "staff meeting conversations about 'someone out there has to have the missing emails.'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Related document:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Trump associate sent Bannon a bizarre debate tactic</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump supporter and associate Ted Malloch emailed Bannon before the first debate and said Trump should start by handing Hillary Clinton a "Writ of Indictment."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and his associates by that time had led "lock her up" chants at his rallies at the Republican National Convention. And he told Clinton during the second debate she'd "be in jail" if he became president over her email controversy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 230:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon on recognizing the Israeli capital as Jerusalem</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In December 2017 Trump formally recognized the contested city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The move broke with the long-standing international consensus to refrain from recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital until it brokered a peace agreement with the Palestinians. But Trump made it a major campaign pledge.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After a Feb. 14, 2018, interview, the FBI wrote, "Bannon had been working on a proposal to move the Israeli capital to Jerusalem, the Christian right movement, putting money into a 501(c)(4) using UAE money or 'those guys' which didn't end up happening, and putting together a security conference over in the Middle East in the Spring/Summer of 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 118:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is just, well, lol</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Bannon first met Trump in August of 2010. Their first meeting was approximately 2 hours long. David Bossie was present and said that Trump was thinking of running for president in 2012. Bannon said 'for what country?'"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 111:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Regarding Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The file for Cohen's FBI interview from August 2018 contained a few handwritten pages, with one note that read, "DJT Jr.: I have a meeting in order to get dirt on Clinton. (or, 'Hillary')."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Relevant document on page 265:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here's the full file</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Page 1 of 278</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MORE ON THE MUELLER MEMOS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump's Campaign Was Talking About The Conspiracy Theory That Ukraine Was Involved In The DNC Hack Back In 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zoe Tillman · Nov. 2, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Former Trump Campaign Aide Said The Campaign Was "Very Happy" About The Release Of Hacked DNC Emails</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Emma Loop · Nov. 2, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Mueller Investigation Is Having An Unexpected Moment In Democrats’ Impeachment Inquiry Months After It Ended</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zoe Tillman · Nov. 1, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jason Leopold is a senior investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles. He is a 2018 Pulitzer finalist for international reporting, recipient of the IRE 2016 FOI award and a 2016 Newseum Institute National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame inductee.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Contact Jason Leopold at jason.leopold@buzzfeed.com.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Got a confidential tip? Submit it here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">omg this could finish djt? 10/18/19</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.mediamatters.org/john-solomon/how-conservative-writer-john-solomon-served-conduit-rudy-giulianis-ukraine-conspiracy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the center of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump lies a disinformation campaign led by his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani that was aided and abetted by conservative writer John Solomon. Through Solomon, Giuliani injected his disinformation campaign straight into the heart of conservative media -- Fox News -- with seemingly full knowledge of at least some at Fox. And eventually, Solomon landed a job at the network.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is now known that Trump blessed Giuliani to run a shadow foreign policy campaign in Ukraine, in which he sought information that would undermine the intelligence community's findings that Russia interfered in our 2016 election to benefit Trump. Giuliani was also trying to dig up dirt to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, a front-runner to challenge Trump in the 2020 election. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Much attention has focused on Giuliani’s actions and the shady cast of characters he worked with, but less has been paid to the right-wing media figures who colluded with the president’s lawyer to make his smear campaign public -- a plan that came dangerously close to succeeding. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What follows is a case study in how right-wing media work hand in hand with Trump cronies to smear his enemies, undermine democracy, and defend the president at all costs. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s how it went down.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Key Takeaways</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani, working with con men and Trump cronies, pursued an “investigation” in Ukraine that he claimed showed both Ukrainian collusion with Democrats in 2016 and evidence that then-Vice President Joe Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine to benefit his son.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In March, Giuliani sent the results of his investigation to the State Department to be investigated and to conservative columnist John Solomon. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The same month, Solomon began publishing a series of columns that mirrored the sourcing and claims Giuliani made in his State Department dossier.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the next six months, Solomon published 45 columns aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation, 12 of which focused primarily on Ukraine. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During that same time period, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fifty-one of those appearances were on Hannity, whose host dutifully promoted Solomon’s scoops and wove them into his ever-evolving conspiracy theory that deep state elements in the government have been plotting to overthrow Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On October 5, John Solomon landed a job at Fox.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Key players</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rudy Giuliani -- the president’s personal attorney who has traveled around the globe attempting to dig up dirt on Democrats and discredit the Russia investigation on Trump’s behalf.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman -- two Soviet-born con men with ties to Ukraine who worked with Giuliani to concoct the disinformation campaign and to get the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine fired, reportedly in the hopes of advancing their business interests in the country. The two have since been arrested for campaign finance violations related to making allegedly illegal campaign donations to Republican candidates and committees, as well as a pro-Trump super PAC. They also reportedly worked for Dmitry Firtash.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dmitry Firtash -- a Ukrainian pro-Russian oligarch and former business associate of Paul Manafort who is in Austria fighting extradition to the United States to face charges related to a bribery conspiracy. At the same time Parnas and Fruman were working with Giuliani, the two were reportedly also working on Firtash’s behalf to push for the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine as part of a plan to install new leadership at Ukraine’s Naftogaz gas company. Part of this plan reportedly would have included Naftogaz paying “Firtash a debt of more than $200 million that Firtash believes he is owed by the company.” NBC reported that while this was happening, Firtash “was playing a key role in the effort by Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani to hunt for dirt on Donald Trump's political opponents in Ukraine.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova -- two attorneys closely tied to Trump who also worked with Giuliani to support his efforts in Ukraine. The duo are known for their role in bolstering conspiracy theories about the Russia investigation and at one point were considered to join Trump’s personal legal team. The two quietly represent Dmitry Firtash in fighting his extradition to the United States. They hired Parnas as an “interpreter” to work with them on the Firtash case while Parnas was also working with Giuliani.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Solomon -- a conservative columnist who until recently was the executive vice president of The Hill. Solomon was the conduit through which Giuliani, Parnas, Toensing and diGenova planted their stories in order to spread their coordinated disinformation campaign through the media.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sean Hannity -- Fox News host who is close to Trump and worked with Giuliani to make his show an integral part of their media strategy, providing a place where they could sow the seeds of the smear campaign against Biden. Giuliani and Hannity discussed this strategy in January, and Solomon became a staple on Hannity’s prime-time programming.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The plan</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to Parnas, his friendship with Giuliani began two years ago as they were running in similar political circles and attending the same events. In late 2018, Parnas and Fruman began connecting Giuliani to a network of disgraced former and current Ukrainian officials and prosecutors to dig up dirt on Biden and the 2016 election. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The conspiracy theory they concocted went like this: Ukrainian officials worked with Democrats to find dirt on Trump’s one-time campaign manager Paul Manafort in order to damage Trump. They did so, Giuliani claimed, by fabricating the “black ledger” that showed that Manafort had received millions of dollars from the former pro-Russia Ukrainian ruling party that had been recently overthrown. The revelation of this ledger helped force Manafort’s resignation from Trump’s campaign, and Manafort was eventually prosecuted and convicted of a wide range of crimes as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian electoral interference in the 2016 election. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, according to Giuliani’s conspiracy theory, the Ukrainian Embassy was working with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and in return, the American Embassy and the Obama administration actively blocked investigations in Ukraine that Giuliani claims targeted Democrats’ political allies. As with most conspiracy theories on the right, George Soros is involved in this one too. The theory posits that a Ukrainian good governance, anti-corruption group -- the Anticorruption Action Centre (AntAC) -- was involved in framing Manafort and was corruptly tied to an FBI agent who was investigating Manafort. Giuliani also claims that an investigation into the group was shut down due to U.S. pressure and that the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine provided Ukrainian officials with a “do not prosecute” list that included people linked to AntAC. As a bonus, through the “investigation,” Giuliani claims to have been presented with evidence that then-Vice President Biden acted corruptly by withholding U.S. aid to force the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nothing about this conspiracy theory is true. First, there’s no evidence that the infamous “black ledger” was fraudulent, and several payments listed in the document have been confirmed to be accurate. The Intercept reported: “Sergii Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist and reformist member of parliament who helped publicize the off-the-books payments” said that “Giuliani ‘is a liar’ for saying that the black ledger was a forgery. ‘It is a real document, with real signatures,’ Leshchenko said in a telephone interview, explaining that it had been examined by Ukrainian law enforcement experts.” Giuliani seems to have adopted the false claim about the ledger from Manafort, whose legal team has embraced it since 2017 and whom Guiliani has been meeting with to discuss the materials. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As for Giuliani’s claims that investigations into AntAC were dropped due to political pressure, the State Department has called claims of a so-called “do not prosecute” list “complete poppycock.” And an investigation into the group’s handling of foreign aid money was widely believed to be politically motivated retaliation for the group’s anti-corruption work. Finally, while Biden did pressure Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was roundly criticized for blocking corruption investigations, there’s no evidence that he did so to benefit his son. In reality, the push to get the prosecutor in question, Viktor Shokin, fired was a part of an anti-corruption effort by advocates and international supporters of Ukraine. The United States’ well-established position was that ousting Shokin was a critical aspect of anti-corruption measures. The investigation into the energy company whose board included Hunter Biden was long dormant, and Hunter Biden was never the subject of the investigation. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nonetheless, Giuliani says he completed his “investigation” in March and sent his findings to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with the understanding that Pompeo would investigate. (NBCNews.com, however, reported: “A source with knowledge of the events said ... that Pompeo never promised Rudy Giuliani that he would investigate the contents of the envelope or anything related to Ukraine.”) Giuliani also sent the materials to Solomon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NBCNews.com obtained a copy of the documents that Giuliani sent to the State Department in March and reported that they contained “a glimpse of an intricate media strategy to spread the story including segments being placed on Fox News.” NBC said the “documents also show that Giuliani, through conservative writer John Solomon’s columns in The Hill, attempted to tie former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to the liberal donor George Soros as part of a massive conspiracy to take down Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election.” The materials Giuliani sent included interview notes from interviews he conducted with then-current and former Ukrainian prosecutors that “paint the picture of the narrative that Giuliani has been pushing involving the Bidens.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The media strategy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani and associates feed story to Solomon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Around the same time Giuliani sent his packet of materials to the State Department, he also sent the materials to Solomon, who began reporting on its contents through the opinion pages of The Hill without identifying the materials as having originated with Giuliani. Solomon’s writing for some time had focused heavily around trying to discredit the Mueller investigation and the notion that Russia meddled into the 2016 elections to help Trump. On March 20, he published the first of many scoops specifically related to Ukraine’s involvement in this effort. Over the next six months, Solomon published 45 columns aimed at discrediting the Russia investigation, 12 of which primarily focused on Ukraine. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his reporting, Solomon spelled out Giuliani’s conspiracy theory in detail. For instance:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He reported that Ukrainian officials claimed to have “evidence of wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from 2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes,” at least some of it related to Biden. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Solomon reported that these officials tried to “deliver their evidence to Washington” but were unable because the American ambassador (Yovanovitch) “blocked” them “from obtaining a visa” to the U.S. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He weaved an elaborate story about Americans working with Ukrainians to dig up dirt on Trump’s one-time 2016 campaign manager Manafort, in order to damage Trump. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He claimed that the infamous “black ledger” that showed Manafort had received millions in undisclosed payments from Ukrainian officials was fabricated and released to damage Trump. He also suggested that in January 2016, Obama’s Department of Justice pressured Ukraine to help the department investigate Manafort in response to Trump’s rise in popularity in the Republican primary race (Manafort did not join the Trump campaign until March 2016). </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He strongly suggested that the Obama State Department pressured Ukrainian officials to drop an investigation into a Ukrainian good governance group linked to Soros because Soros backed Clinton. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He also claimed the U.S. ambassador’s “do not prosecute” list included people related to this organization, and he strained to link the group to the Manafort investigation by claiming that an FBI agent involved in the investigation is tied to the same group.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And, of course, he claimed that Biden withheld a billion dollars worth of U.S. aid to shut down an investigation into Burisma Holdings and Biden’s son Hunter through his position on the company’s board.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Solomon’s reporting relies heavily on the sources Giuliani fed him. In an interview with The Washington Post, Giuliani named three current and former Ukrainian prosecutors as persons he interviewed, specifically former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko, and Nazar Kholodnytsky, head of Ukraine’s Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office. Giuliani is also known to have met with a former Ukrainian diplomat named Andrii Telizhenko and is linked to Kostiantyn Kulyk -- Lutsenko’s deputy who was indicted on corruption charges in 2016. Eight of the twelve columns Solomon wrote on the topic featured at least one of these five sources.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At least three of Solomon’s columns feature information meant to undermine the validity of the Russia investigation that may have been leaked from the Ukrainian pro-Russia oligarch Dmitry Firtash’s legal team, which included diGenova and Toensing. Toensing and diGenova have been working with Firtash since at least July -- and indeed Solomon published an entire column in July based exclusively off material and anonymous sources from Firtash’s legal team. They appear to have been involved with his case much earlier than July, though. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Included in the material Giuliani sent to the State Department is a March 26 email from Solomon -- titled “Fwd: Outline of Soros reporting, including embedded documents” -- in which Solomon forwarded a draft of his article before it was published to the same three people working with Giuliani who are also known to have been working with Firtash -- Parnas, Toensing, and diGenova. The column was the first of three that mentioned Firtash, and it attempted to tie AntAC -- and through it Soros -- “to highly visible U.S. actions against the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a major target of the Soros group, and Manafort.” Solomon repeated the suggestion in his August 7 column on Soros’ “secret 2016 access” to State Department officials. In a fourth column, Solomon reported on an affidavit of a former Ukrainian prosecutor that he exclusively received. The affidavit was prepared “at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash … for use in legal proceedings in Austria.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Solomon brings the conspiracy theory to Fox</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The next stage in the plan involved Solomon taking his “scoop” to Fox News, specifically to Sean Hannity. From March 20 -- when Solomon published his first story on the Ukraine conspiracy theory -- through October 2, Solomon appeared on Fox News or Fox Business at least 72 times. Fifty-one of those appearances were on Hannity, whose host dutifully promoted Solomon’s scoops and wove them into his ever-evolving conspiracy theory that “deep state” elements in the government have been plotting to overthrow Trump. Giuliani also appeared on those networks frequently, clocking in at least 64 appearances on Fox News and Fox Business during that time period. Toensing and diGenova appeared over 75 times on the two networks during this period. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fact that they were working together on these stories, or -- in the case of Toensing and diGenova -- that they were legally representing Firtash, was certainly not transparent to viewers. In perhaps the most egregious example, on the September 26 episode of Hannity, Hannity hosted Solomon to report on an affidavit he obtained from the disgraced prosecutor Shokin, who claimed he was forced to resign to stop the investigation into the company connected to Hunter Biden. Hannity then hosted diGenova and Toensing to discuss it, and the two hailed the affidavit as proof of their conspiracy theory and declared it would “shoot a hole in” Biden’s defense. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, the affidavit states that it was prepared “at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash … for use in legal proceedings in Austria.” In other words, diGenova and Toensing were part of the legal team that produced the affidavit that Solomon later exclusively obtained, wrote up, and then took to Hannity -- a fact not mentioned by any of them. Giuliani has since repeatedly referenced this affidavit in numerous media appearances to support his claims about Biden’s alleged corruption. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hannity repeatedly gave clues suggesting he knew the full range of stories Solomon would be reporting. For instance, despite the fact that Solomon’s March 20 column did not mention Biden or corruption, Hannity teased on his radio show that day that “I just happen to have a little birdie telling me in my ear that, well, Joe Biden may have an issue here that is bigger than anything ever alleged about Donald Trump.” On September 23, Hannity and Giuliani admitted to having talked about the Biden Ukraine story as early as January.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The payoff</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Giuliani repeatedly touted and praised Solomon’s “blockbuster” reporting. He has at least twice opined that Solomon should “get a Pulitzer Prize” and has taken to Twitter to sing Solomon’s praises:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hannity, too, repeatedly praised Solomon’s “great reporting” as he hyped Solomon’s columns. He regularly described Solomon as a “friend” of the program and declared that mainstream news outlets, like The New York Times, “peddled lies, conspiracy theories and hoax[es]” about the Russia investigation whereas Solomon “was right” all along. On April 25, Hannity asked Trump about Solomon’s and others' reporting around the Russia investigation, and the president replied: “These are great reporters. … These are people that should be getting Pulitzers.” Trump added, “These are the ones that should be winning. It sounds like big stuff. It sounds very interesting with Ukraine.” </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Solomon’s efforts paid off. On October 5, Fox News confirmed that John Solomon had joined the network as a contributor. During his first appearance on Hannity as an official Fox News employee, Hannity said: “John Solomon, welcome to the family. It’s been a long time coming, sir.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2019/02/23/feature/a-whos-who-of-the-many-many-people-in-the-russia-investigations-orbit-illustrated-by-steve-brodner/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Drawing to a close</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An illustrated guide to the many, many people in the Russia investigation’s orbit</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FEBRUARY 23, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Individual 1</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vladimir Putin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President of Russia</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jared Kushner</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senior adviser, son-in-law</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Attended the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Led the campaign’s digital outreach efforts, which have been a focus of Mueller’s team, given the extent of Russian activity online.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sam Clovis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Trump appointee at USDAand campaign and White House adviser</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Point of contact for the campaign’s foreign policy advisory team, including Page and Papadopoulos.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stephen K. Bannon</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former campaign CEO and senior adviser</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Helped lead the campaign in its last few months and was in the West Wing during the period when FBI Director James Comey was fired.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reince Priebus</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former chief of staff</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ran the West Wing during the first few months of Trump’s presidency, including when Comey was fired. As head of the Republican National Committee during the campaign, he was privy to the party’s inner workings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stephen Miller</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senior adviser</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Helped draft the letter firing Comey.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corey Lewandowski</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former campaign manager</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Led the campaign until he was supplanted by Manafort.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">George Papadopoulos</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former campaign adviser</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Had repeated interactions with Russia-linked individuals. Appears to have precipitated the entire investigation when he told an Australian diplomat in 2016 that he knew of compromising material the Russians had on Hillary Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sergei Millian</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Belarus-born businessman</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reportedly an unwitting source for the Steele dossier. Worked to gain access to the Trump campaign through Papadopoulos.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Erik Prince</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Founder of the private security company Blackwater</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Met in January 2017 with a Russian official close to Putin. Prince described it as a chance encounter, but a witness cooperating with Mueller has said the meeting was planned to help establish a backchannel to the Kremlin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ivan Timofeev</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senior official at a Russian government-funded think tank</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Contact of Papadopoulos, with contacts in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Tried with Papadopoulos to arrange a meeting between Trump and Putin during the campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sergei Lavrov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian foreign minister</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Met with Trump in the Oval Office the day after Comey’s firing. During the meeting. Trump revealed highly classified information that, according to U.S. officials, jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">K.T. McFarland</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former deputy national security adviser</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A close ally of Flynn. First told investigators she never spoke with Flynn about a discussion Flynn had with the Russian ambassador about sanctions during the transition. She revised her statement after Flynn’s guilty plea contradicted her initial claim.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Konstantin Kilimnik</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian political operative</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His meeting with Manafort and Gates at Manhattan’s Grand Havana Room on Aug. 2, 2016, is a fulcrum of the investigation. Prosecutors believe the men exchanged information, including internal polling data, then left through separate exits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alex van der Zwaan</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">London-based lawyer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Son-in-law of a prominent Russian-based banker and the first person sentenced in the Mueller probe, he received a 30-day sentence for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Gates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Manafort</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former campaign chairman</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Extensive Russian ties and questionable financial activity came to light even before the campaign ended. He was convicted of bank and tax fraud in August and pleaded guilty in September to conspiring to defraud the United States and obstruct justice. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said this month that Manafort lied to prosecutors after agreeing to cooperate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rick Gates</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former campaign staffer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A longtime ally of Manafort who joined him on the campaign. Was indicted with Manafort on bank and tax fraud charges, but pleaded guilty and testified against Manafort.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oleg Deripaska</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian billionaire</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Onetime Manafort business partner. Investigators say that, through Kilimnik, Manafort offered to give Deripaska “private briefings” on the campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vice President Pence</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pence was lied to by Flynn during the transition process, when Flynn denied he had discussions with the Russian ambassador about sanctions relief. Flynn was forced to resign just 24 days into his tenure as national security adviser.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Flynn</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former national security adviser</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The highest-ranking Trump aide to plead guilty as part of the investigation. Mueller argued that Flynn should receive no prison time because of his substantial assistance in the investigation. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan delayed sentencing, which suggests Flynn may still go to prison.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Aras and Emin Agalarov</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian father-and-son billionaires</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Aras (left) and Emin (right) financed Trump’s Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013, then requested the 2016 sit-down at Trump Tower. Phone records provided to Congress show that Trump Jr. and Emin spoke briefly three days later.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Maria Butina</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian agent and gun rights activist</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first Russian national convicted of seeking to influence U.S. policy in the run-up to the 2016 election by acting as a foreign agent. Butina admitted to working with an American political operative to forge connections with the National Rifle Association and conservative leaders and candidates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alexander Torshin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Russian government official</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Putin ally supervised Butina’s activities and became a regular at NRA events, meeting with Trump Jr. at an event in Louisville.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Viktor Vekselberg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian billionaire</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of Russia’s richest men and part of Putin’s inner circle. Gave Cohen a reported half-million dollars after the election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Richard Pinedo</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">California man who pleaded guilty to identity theft. Prosecutors said Pinedo significantly aided the investigation by linking anonymous Internet activity to charged Russians.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Internet Research Agency</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian state-sponsored “troll factory” based in St. Petersburg. It was named in a February 2018 indictment as the hub of an ambitious effort to trick Americans into following and promoting Russian-fed propaganda online.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Roger Stone</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican political operative</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mueller has charged that Stone, a longtime Trump ally, sought to gather information about hacked Democratic Party emails at the direction of an unidentified senior campaign official and engaged in extensive efforts to hide the details of his actions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Julian Assange</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WikiLeaks founder</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the campaign, Stone claimed that he was in contact with Assange. Since then, Stone has emphatically denied any communication with Assange or advance knowledge of WikiLeaks document dumps.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jerome Corsi</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Author</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Randy Credico</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Radio host</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jason Sullivan</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Social media consultant</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone associates whom Mueller has questioned about a potential WikiLeaks connection.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guccifer 2.0</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to a Mueller indictment, the online persona was operated by a dozen Russian military intelligence officers conspiring to hack Democrats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stormy Daniels</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Adult-film star</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Says she had an affair with Trump a decade ago. Trump lawyer and fixer Cohen came under federal investigation over a $130,000 payment he made to Daniels during the 2016 campaign to keep her silent. Cohen pleaded guilty and agreed to work with the Mueller investigation. Daniels is suing Trump to void a nondisclosure agreement about her claims. She also sued him for defamation, but a federal judge dismissed that case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Cohen</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lawyer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Told a federal judge that Trump was pursuing a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow throughout the first half of 2016 — as the candidate was stepping onto the world stage as a political figure and breaking with the GOP by praising Russia and Putin, whose help Cohen sought for the project.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Felix Sater</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian-born businessman</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The point person for the 2016 Trump Tower Moscow project. Sater suggested to Cohen that they give a $50 million penthouse to Putin as a way to market the tower: “If we have Putin in the penthouse every oligarch in Russia would want to live in that building.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rob Goldstone</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">British music publicist</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Set up the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, promising incriminating information about Clinton as part of a Russian effort to help the Trump campaign.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Carter Page</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former campaign adviser</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Page was under surveillance by the FBI for his contacts with Russian actors beginning in October 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sergey Kislyak</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Russian ambassador</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Met with several Trump advisers during the campaign (Sessions, Page) and during the transition (Flynn, Kushner).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Donald Trump Jr.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Son</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Attended the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ike Kaveladze</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S.-based employee of Aras Agalarov’s company</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Attended the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting on behalf of Aras and Emin Agalarov.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Natalia Veselnitskaya</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moscow-based lawyer</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Attended the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Said she was there to persuade the Trump campaign to oppose the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wm barr is investigating those at FBI who opened the investigation? at the instigation of?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/sean-hannitys-bizarre-fixation-on-hillary-clinton-exposed-in-new-review-of-his-primetime-show/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sean Hannity’s bizarre fixation on Hillary Clinton exposed in new review of his primetime show</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Shira Tarlo / Salon September 11, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It has been nearly three years since President Donald Trump clinched the White House, however Fox News host Sean Hannity has remained fixated on the Democrat nominated in the 2016 elections: Hillary Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the last presidential election cycle, Hannity labeled his primetime show the “Stop-Hillary Express” because of its sustained focus on defeating the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. In the more than two years since Trump defeated Clinton and seized control of the White House, it appears the one-time conductor has continued taking his viewers for a ride on the anti-Clinton train.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 through August 2019, Hannity mentioned Clinton in 505 of the 587 episodes of his program — a figure that represents 86 percent of his shows — according to a review conducted by Media Matters for America, a progressive news watchdog. And if you include mentions from guests, Clinton’s name was dropped in a staggering 91 percent of the episodes Hannity hosted over that time period.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hannity’s apparent obsession with Clinton is “largely a reflection of his show’s focus on the dizzying conspiracy theory he constructed to defend Trump” from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gertz further explained: “Hannity places Clinton at the center of several key strands of that web. In his telling, 1) federal investigators should have been charging Clinton for crimes related to her email server rather than looking into Trump’s associates; 2) some of the attorneys involved in the probe had conflicts of interest because they supported her election; and 3) the investigators ignored the ‘real’ collusion with Russia that she supposedly engaged in through the Uranium One pseudoscandal and via an anti-Trump dossier that became part of the investigation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since Clinton largely receded from the national political spotlight in the wake of her defeat, Hannity’s references to the former presidential hopeful decreased in each of the first four months of Trump’s administration, according to Media Matters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2017, Hannity mentioned Clinton in 88 percent of the episodes he hosted in January after Trump’s inauguration, 76 percent in February, 70 percent in March and just 39 percent in April, the lowest total over the course of the study. That figure spiked to 79 percent in May. Since then, Hannity’s mentions haven’t fallen below 60 percent in any month since October of 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gertz noted that the longest consecutive streak in which Hannity mentioned Clinton on the shows he has hosted was 60 — from April 8, 2019 to July 12, 2019. Hannity did not mention Clinton on five shows he hosted between April 26, 2017, through May 2, 2017, the longest consecutive streak in which the Fox News host did not name-drop Clinton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“When Hannity takes a night off, the ‘stop-Hillary express’ rolls on, as the show typically features the same guests and themes, including the Clinton-focused anti-Mueller conspiracy theory,” Gertz concluded. “His guest hosts mentioned Clinton in 63% of their episodes, and she was mentioned in 85% of the episodes they hosted during the period of the study.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Watch the astonishing supercut of Hannity’s Clinton name-drops here:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mueller sum 719</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...According to Fox News reporter Chad Pergram, Nunes also said that Democrats refuse to accept reality because they live in an alternative universe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It doesn’t much matter to Nunes that, during the primaries, prior to DNC law firm Perkins Coie hiring the company Fusion GPS, it had been paid by the conservative Washington Free Beacon to conduct opposition research. It doesn’t matter that Steele didn’t write the first memo in his collection of intel reports until over a week after the Russia investigation had already begun. It doesn’t matter that 73% of Steele’s findings have been completely or partially confirmed by press releases and the Mueller report. It doesn’t matter that when Steele made his discoveries, he didn’t deliver them to Perkins Coie, the DNC, or the Clinton campaign—he gave them to the FBI. If the plan had been to release a bunch of made-up negative information about Trump, giving it to the people who ultimately fired him as a source because he had talked to the media and didn’t reveal anything until months after the election wasn’t the smoothest move. It doesn’t matter that the DOJ inspector general just this week revealed that he had found Steele to be credible after interviewing him for 16 hours.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nope. Even though James Comey is a Republican, Rod Rosenstein is a Republican, and Robert Mueller is a Republican, this was all a “Democrat-generated hoax,” even though there are outstanding indictments for 13 Russians who are either members of the GRU or work for the Internet Research Agency. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has been prosecuted for lying about his contacts with Russia. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has been prosecuted and imprisoned for lying about his contacts and business deals with Russia and for campaign finance violations. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has been prosecuted and imprisoned for lying about his business deals with Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, while also being in contact with someone with ties to Russian intelligence and sharing internal polling information with them. Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, has been prosecuted for his financial ties to Russia and Ukraine. Attorney Alex Van Der Zwaan, who has links to Manafort in Ukraine, has been prosecuted and imprisoned for lying about communications between Rick Gates and Russian intelligence. Trump’s longtime friend and Manafort’s former business partner, Roger Stone, is currently being prosecuted for lying about being in contact with Russian Intelligence, WikiLeaks, and the Trump campaign while sharing information back and forth between them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All of the lies, deletion and destruction of documents, obstruction, and witness tampering carried out by these Trumpsters may have been a cover-up conspiracy that ultimately succeeded and blocked Mueller from gathering the evidence he needed to make his case. It’s not that there wasn’t any collusion or conspiracy on the part of the Trump campaign; it’s that the obstruction itself may have prevented the special counsel’s office from proving conspiracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a h </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/heres-the-damning-evidence-of-felony-coordination-between-trump-campaign-and-russians-that-the-mueller-report-overlooked-report/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump have been railing against Republicans for admitting that they haven’t read former special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report for the Russia investigation and for saying that they don’t plan to. But journalist and Trump critic Jed Shugerman takes a different approach in an in-depth piece published in the Daily Beast this week: rather than attacking Republicans and Trump supporters for not bothering to read the report, Shugerman argues that Mueller’s report isn’t as damning of the president and his allies as it should have been — and that Mueller is downplaying the importance of some key events.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The bottom line is that the Mueller Report is a failure not because of Congress or because of public apathy, but because it failed to get the law, the facts or even the basics of writing right,” Shugerman asserts. “When Mueller testifies before Congress on July 17, he should be pressed on all of this."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his report, Mueller concluded that the 2016 Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians, although questionable, didn’t rise to the level of a full-fledged criminal conspiracy. But Shugerman views Mueller’s analysis as flawed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It seems Mueller did not hire any legal experts with experience in campaign finance regulation,” Shugerman complains. “Given that this investigation was about campaign crimes, this appears to a revealing oversight with serious consequences.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shugerman goes on to say that Mueller’s “errors meant that, first, he failed to conclude that the Trump campaign criminally coordinated with Russia.” And the Daily Beast writer adds that Mueller “failed to indict campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, for felony campaign coordination."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2018, Manafort was vigorously prosecuted in federal court for a long list of financial crimes thanks to Mueller’s investigation — and Gates became the prosecution’s star witness. But neither of them was accused of “felony campaign coordination,” Shugerman writes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shugerman, in his article, goes on to list and describe, in detail, interactions between Trump’s campaign and Russians in 2016 — and those interactions, he believes, are more damning than Mueller concludes in his report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, Shugerman asserts, “Mueller should have concluded that both Manafort and Gates engaged in felony campaign coordination, and he should have indicted Manafort for it. Manafort is a lawyer with decades of experience working for presidential campaigns: it would be less difficult to establish knowing and willful violations. And Manafort’s extraordinary record of lying to prosecutors — and coordinating his lies with Trump’s lawyers — would help prove the case as an inference of consciousness of guilt.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shugerman concludes his piece by stressing that when Mueller publicly testifies before two committees in the House of Representatives on July 17, he hopes members of Congress will address some of the ways in which his report falls short — and why the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians three years ago were more damning than the report indicates...“Given Mueller’s failure and Trump’s exploitation of that failure,” Shugerman stresses, “it is now Congress’ duty to the public, the candidates under investigation and future candidates to identify the law clearly and to explain that some of this behavior was a civil violation — and in fact, a criminal violation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/the-mysterious-professor-who-launched-muellers-investigation-has-gone-missing/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The mysterious professor who launched Mueller’s investigation has gone missing</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies during a House Appropriations Committee hearing on the FBI Budget, on Capitol Hill on March 19, 2013 in Washington, D.C. (UPI/Kevin Dietsch via Creative Commons)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story July 1, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to a report in the Washington Post, a Maltese professor with mysterious ties to the Russians — and who precipitated special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Donald Trump — is still missing and everyone wants to talk to him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Joseph Mifsud, who was identified in the Mueller report as the person who offered to serve up emails belonging to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has fallen off the map since an October 2017 interview where he insisted “I never got any money from the Russians: my conscience is clear, I am not a secret agent.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mifsud, who has had extensive contacts with the Russians — including a meeting with President Vladimir Putin according to a former aide to the academic — reportedly met with George Papadopoulos, an aide to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the report, “The conversation between Mifsud and Papadopoulos, eventually relayed by an Australian diplomat to U.S. government officials, was cited by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as the event that set in motion the FBI probe into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now that Mifsud is missing and only speaking through an attorney, both Trump’s defenders in the Republican Party and Democratic investigators want to talk to him — but he is not making himself available.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to some of Trump’s most avid defenders, they believe Mifsud is working both sides and is also connected to the CIA or the FBI — which they hope to use as evidence of a plot against Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Seizing on the vacuum of information about him [Mifsud], they have promoted the idea that he was working for the FBI, CIA or possibly British or Italian intelligence, citing exaggerated and at times distorted details about his life,” the Post reports. “Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani told Fox News in April that Mifsud was a ‘counterintelligence operative, either Maltese or Italian,’ who took part in what sounded to him like a ‘counterintelligence trap’ against Papadopoulos.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of interest to Democrats who are holding public hearings with Mueller, are his Russian contacts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“An examination of Mifsud’s activities also shows that he began forging ties in Russia years earlier — and that he was working to expand his network in that country around the same time he met Papadopoulos in 2016, including by trying to broker new academic deals with a powerful Russian state university,” the report states. “Mifsud visited Moscow just weeks before the U.S. presidential election to mark the signing of the deal, according to Russian media reports at the time. In a previously unreported episode, he welcomed a Kremlin-linked academic to speak at Rome’s Link Campus University in December 2016, shortly after Trump’s election.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report notes that “the Mueller report … states Mifsud ‘had connections to Russia’ and ‘maintained various Russian contacts,’ including a former employee of the Internet Research Agency, the Russian organization that carried out a social media disinformation campaign in 2016,” while also pointing out that former FBI Director James Comey publically identified the professor as “a Russian agent.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">You can read more here.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 519 no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/former-director-of-national-intelligence-makes-it-clear-that-trump-would-not-have-won-without-russias-help</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former director of national intelligence makes it clear that Trump would not have won without Russia’s help</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Former director of national intelligence makes it clear that Trump would not have won without Russia’s help Kremlin</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos May 26, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">375</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Donald Trump produced the first list of names for his death list this week, he didn’t include that of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. But Clapper appears to be out…</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Donald Trump produced the first list of names for his death list this week, he didn’t include that of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. But Clapper appears to be out to remedy this oversight by pointing out the fact that the Trump campaign didn’t just cooperate with Russia—it’s extremely unlikely Trump would have been elected without Russian support.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Newsweek reports, Clapper’s just-released memoirs don’t shy away from drawing the obvious conclusion about the impact of the Russian interference and the benefits to Trump. As Clapper writes, “Surprising even themselves, [Russia] swung the election to a Trump win. To conclude otherwise stretches logic, common sense and credulity to the breaking point. Less than eighty thousand votes in three key states swung the election. I have no doubt that more votes than that were influenced by this massive effort by the Russians.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not only did the intelligence community have the information they needed to see that Russian interference was more than sufficient to cover Trump’s narrow margin of electoral victory—Trump knows it. Because the information Clapper is referencing was included in the first presentation that the intelligence community gave to Trump in January 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clapper is also clear in exactly why there wasn’t a larger effort in 2016 to fight back against Russia launching a military operation to interfere in a U.S. election.”House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said they would not support a bipartisan statement that might hurt their nominee for president,” wrote Clapper. “It seemed they had decided by then that they didn’t care who their nominee was, how he got elected or what effects having a foreign power influence our election would have on the nation, as long as they won.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump has referenced Clapper dozens of times in Twitter and in his rally speeches. At first he claimed that the DNI had absolved Trump of any collaboration with Russia, though that wasn’t what Clapper said. Then that Clapper had written a “beautiful letter” praising Trump. But by the time that the Mueller investigation began, Trump listed Clapper among the “liars” who were conspiring against him, including FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan. The former DNI also became a frequent target of attacks on Fox News, including by Trump favorites Hannity and Fox and Friends.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/how-corporate-media-is-preparing-to-repeat-the-mistakes-it-made-in-2016/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Continuing a firm tradition of admitting no mistakes in the 2016 campaign season, and certainly offering up no apologies for glaring errors that were made, most news organizations have played down the pivotal and almost jovial role they played in marketing Russian hackers who stole Democratic National Committee emails during the last presidential election cycle. The collective shrug comes in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report on Russian election interference, which offered up even more details regarding the brazen act of foreign sabotage. It was a campaign dirty-trick operation that only worked because the media so willingly played along as they piled on Hillary Clinton and hyped the stolen DNC emails as hugely important.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With the media’s stubborn insistence that they did nothing wrong in eagerly amplifying the work of Russian hackers, the threat looms for a repeat in 2020—and it’s not just hypothetical. For the third time in three years, House Democrats have tried to get Republicans to support a pledge not to use hacked materials against opponents in 2020. And for the third time in three years, Republicans have refused.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And there’s this:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vice President Mike Pence refuses to answer if 1) he regrets using hacked emails during the 2016 campaign & 2) if he pledges not to do so in the next presidential campaign. He walked away upon attempted follow-up</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-bizarre-link-between-wisconsin-and-russia/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no twt pix clarke w/ rooskie soldier</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Mueller Report had plenty of information as to how Russians worked to subvert our elections and gained influence in our current US government. But what jumps out to me is how much of that story and related Russian affairs connected back to Wisconsin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our state appears in the Mueller Report as one of a handful in the Midwest that former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort passed information about to a Russian intelligence agent. The report indicates that this was done to tell the Russians the best way to boost Trump’s chances in those states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[twt manafort briek kilimnick?]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">nd you may recall that Trump did surprisingly well in all of those states in November 2016. Funny, that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the biggest assists Trump got was in the form of a record investment by the National Rifle Association. Keep that NRA support in mind when you hear about this story from Friday night. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Maria Butina, who has admitted to working as a Russian agent to infiltrate an influential U.S. gun rights group and make inroads with conservative activists and Republicans, asked the court to sentence her to time served ahead of her April 26 sentencing, according to court documents.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Butina, 30, a former graduate student at American University who publicly advocated for gun rights, pleaded guilty in December to one count of conspiring to act as a foreign agent for Russia. She has remained in custody since her arrest in July 2018.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prosecutors filed a memo on Friday ahead of this week’s sentencing. And check out this segment of that report, which might be familiar to you.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Soon after [Butina] drafted the Diplomacy Project proposal, in April 2015, she traveled to the United States to attend the Gun Rights Organization (aka the NRA) annual meetings with the Russian Official, where she highlighted her experience as a gun-rights advocate in Russia and was introduced to influential members of Political Party 1, one of whom announced his Presidential campaign shortly thereafter. Statement of Offense at 3. She did so in furtherance of the conspiracy’s goal to establish the back channel of communication as laid out in the Diplomacy Project. Id. at 3. Butina attended this announcement event in July 2015 and, after being tasked by the Russian Official to do so, wrote a report to him in which she emphasized the fact that she was introduced to one of that candidate’s three advisors for matters concerning international politics. A copy of the Twitter chats, along with the report, is attached hereto as Exhibit 4. According to her notes from a meeting with then-Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in May 2015, she said she would “send the name of the advisor [to the candidate whose announcement event she later attended] who can come to Moscow.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Looks like those Twitter chats will be released when the Butina file is redacted, likely after the sentencing happens on Friday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But who was this candidate that Butina and Putin-appointed central banker Alexander Torshin met up with, and whose presidential announcement event did she go to in July 2015?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After Walker washed out of the 2016 election race, the sentencing memo describes how Butina organized a meeting with the NRA back home in Mother Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In December 2015, Butina invited powerful members of the Gun Rights Organization to Moscow as part of the conspiracy’s plan to establish the unofficial channel of communication. Statement of Offense at 3. She actively sought out meetings for this group with high-level Russian government officials, as arranged by the Russian Official. Id. As part of this endeavor, the defendant sought information from U.S. Person 1 about the degree of political influence held by the Gun Rights Organization members in the United States and stressed the need for a “political program” as part of the Gun Rights Organization trip to Moscow. Id. at 3-4.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following the Gun Rights Organization trip to Moscow, the defendant and the Russian Official discussed the need to “hold the spot” now that “everyone has realized that [the Gun Rights Organization] is a valuable contact,” and she noted that there will be “attempts to seize the initiative.” Exhibit 2. Butina has since confirmed that she was worried about others within the Russian government or a political group or activist noticing that the contacts she had built with the Gun Rights Organization were valuable and cutting her and the Russian Official out of the loop. Just days later, Butina noted to the Russian Official that they would “quietly press” or “put pressure on [members of the Gun Rights Organization] later.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guess who was in Russia in December 2015?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[pix]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also don’t forget that a couple of Wisconsin politicians knew about these Russian efforts before the 2016 election, but hid it from unsuspecting Wisconsin voters. In late Summer 2016, President Obama organized a “Gang of 12” to let them know about potential Russian hacking and interference, and 2 of the members of that meeting were then-House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate Homeland Security Chair Ron Johnson. That meeting that was kept from public knowledge before the elections after complaints from Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I’ve referenced this Bruce Murphy article in Urban Milwaukee from January 2017 in the past, and that’s because it continues to link back to developments in the Trump-GOP-Russia connection. It also points to Johnson being complicit in keeping Wisconsinites from knowing about the Russian garbage that was being sent to their computers, and flat-out lying later on about what intelligence agencies told him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russia’s interference with the American elections fit the pattern of a country engaged in disinformation and destabilization efforts across the globe, as Johnson has described it. And Russia’s leader was someone Johnson already suspected of nefarious acts. Johnson had previously sponsored resolutions calling for a full investigation into the murder of a Russian political opposition leader and for an investigation of Russia’s attacks on the Ukraine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson, in short, had an opportunity to be a patriot and condemn the fact that Russia was now engaged in such activities in the United States. But he issued no resolutions — in fact, not one word — on Russian’s cyber attacks on America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Worse, he has engaged in his own pattern of misinformation on the subject. After the CIA publicly released a report in January concluding that Russia meddled in the presidential election to help Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election, Johnson issued a statement to the Wisconsin State Journal saying he would “would need more definitive information before drawing further conclusions.” Johnson did not reveal that he had been informed back in September this was happening.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson went on to complain to CNBC that the CIA refused to brief him on Russian hacking, saying “I have not seen the evidence that it actually was Russia,” while failing to note the CIA report’s echoed the briefing he’d received from other intelligence leaders in September.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, Ron Johnson was 1 of several GOP Senators who decided last year’s US Independence Day was a great time…to visit the Russians.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sounds like investigative media might want to ask some questions of these Sconnie Republicans, why many seem to have no problem hanging out with high-level Russian officials, and ask what’s being done to prevent Wisconsinites from being targeted and propagandized against in 2020. The (non)-answers they give might be quite illuminating.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I’d also like to see Walker, Clarke, Paul Ryan, ex-Trump Chief of Staff Reince Priebus (named several times in the Mueller Report) and Ron Johnson go before Congress and answer some pointed questions in the coming months. They have a lot to answer for in how they’ve allowed our democracy to be threatened over the last few years, and why they don’t seem too willing to do much about it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2017/01/10/murphys-law-ron-johnson-asleep-on-russian-hacking/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yesterday, in an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio, Sen. Ron Johnson made it clear he takes a very tough stand on Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’m very wary of Vladimir Putin,” Johnson said. “There have been close to 30 suspicious political assassinations since he has taken power.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As for Putin and Russian using cyber hacking to interfere with America’s elections, he declared, “I take it very seriously. As chair of European Subcommittee on Foreign Relations, we’ve held a number of hearings on Russia’s disinformation campaign and how they are trying to de-stabilize certainly Eastern European countries, but just their destabilization efforts around the world.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, Johnson had “heard firsthand of Russia’s efforts to destabilize and interfere in the internal affairs of its neighbors,” he told the Wisconsin State Journal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And yet back in mid-September when Johnson was informed by intelligence leaders of Russian hacking and was asked to join a bipartisan effort to warn Russia to desist, Johnson did nothing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To date no one in the Wisconsin media has even reported that Johnson attended this intelligence briefing, much less that he had no response to the information.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The details of the mid-September meeting are in a story by the Washington Post, which reported that President Barack Obama had dispatched his counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, FBI Director James B. Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson “to make the pitch for a ‘show of solidarity and bipartisan unity’ against Russian interference in the election,” as a senior administration official told the Post.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Johnson was one the so-called “Gang of 12,” the top 12 congressional leaders, who were invited to the meeting. (House Speaker Paul Ryanalso attended the meeting.) Johnson later confirmed to Politico that he participated in the briefing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In a secure room in the Capitol used for briefings involving classified information, administration officials broadly laid out the evidence U.S. spy agencies had collected, showing Russia’s role in cyber-intrusions in at least two states and in hacking the emails of the Democratic organizations and individuals,” the Post reported.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“And they made a case for a united, bipartisan front in response to what one official described as ‘the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process.’”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Republican leaders declined to join a bipartisan response to the information. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics,” the Post reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russia’s interference with the American elections fit the pattern of a country engaged in disinformation and destabilization efforts across the globe, as Johnson has described it. And Russia’s leader was someone Johnson already suspected of nefarious acts. Johnson had previously sponsored resolutions calling for a full investigation into the murder of a Russian political opposition leader and for an investigation of Russia’s attacks on the Ukraine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson, in short, had an opportunity to be a patriot and condemn the fact that Russia was now engaged in such activities in the United States. But he issued no resolutions — in fact, not one word — on Russian’s cyber attacks on America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Worse, he has engaged in his own pattern of misinformation on the subject. After the CIA publicly released a report in January concluding that Russia meddled in the presidential election to help Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election, Johnson issued a statement to the Wisconsin State Journal saying he would “would need more definitive information before drawing further conclusions.” Johnson did not reveal that he had been informed back in September this was happening.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson went on to complain to CNBC that the CIA refused to brief him on Russian hacking, saying “I have not seen the evidence that it actually was Russia,” while failing to note the CIA report’s echoed the briefing he’d received from other intelligence leaders in September.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson also complained that Obama had failed to confront the Russia government with strength, even though the Obama administration had proposed a strong stand on cyber hacking which Johnson declined to join.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So things stood until this week, when Johnson did an about face and declared his concern about Russia’s cyber hacking of his country. Why the sudden shift of position?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Perhaps because Trump’s election was certified last week so Russia’s efforts to help elect him can’t be used to pry away any electoral votes. Or perhaps because of the Senate hearing last Thursday, where senators on both sides of the aisle expressed concern about testimony by intelligence leaders on Russian hacking. As GOP Sen. Lindsay Graham noted, Republicans could be the next target of cyberattacks. “Could it be Republicans next election?” he said. “It’s not like we’re so much better at cybersecurity than Democrats.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, all Americans are threatened when a hostile nation targets us for cyber attacks. That’s true now, and was true back in mid-September when Ron Johnson failed to take any action. Perhaps it’s time for him to explain why.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you think stories like this are important, become a member of Urban Milwaukee and help support real independent journalism. Plus you get some cool added benefits, all detailed here. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More about the Russian Affair</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Op Ed: Is Walker a Russian Dupe? - Bill Kaplan - Jul 24th, 2018</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gov. Scott Walker Political Operation Snagged $250,000 Check Mere Days After Meeting With Accused Russian Spy - One Wisconsin Now - Jul 20th, 2018</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What’s Walker Hiding? - Democratic Party of Wisconsin - Jul 18th, 2018</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Campaign Cash: Russian Operative Highlights Walker’s NRA Ties - Wisconsin Democracy Campaign - Jul 18th, 2018</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matt Flynn Blasts Scott Walker for Meeting with Russian Spy - Matt Flynn - Jul 16th, 2018</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Plenty of Horne: Giuliani Can’t Practice Law in D.C. - Michael Horne - Jun 28th, 2018</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Pocan Statement Regarding Reports that Russian-Linked Facebook Ads Targeted Wisconsin - U.S. Rep Mark Pocan - Oct 4th, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wisconsin Notified of Unsuccessful Russian Hacking Attempt - Wisconsin Elections Commission - Sep 22nd, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Murphy’s Law: Wisconsin A Key State for Russian Hacking - Bruce Murphy - Aug 8th, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Report Suggests Wisconsin Voters Targeted by Collusion Between Trump Campaign, Russian Fake News Operation - One Wisconsin Now - Jul 13th, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Pocan Statement on Former FBI Director James Comey’s Testimony on Trump and Russia - U.S. Rep Mark Pocan - Jun 8th, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Speaker Paul Ryan Swears House GOP To Secrecy Regarding Trump’s Ties To Russia, Spokesperson Lies About The Conversation - Democratic Party of Wisconsin - May 17th, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As FBI Confirms Russia Investigation - Democratic Party of Wisconsin - Mar 21st, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FBI Investigation into Links Between Trump/Russia Highlights Need for Special Prosecutor - U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore - Mar 20th, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revelations about Sessions’ Contact with Russia Warrants his Removal - U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore - Mar 2nd, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senators Call for Independent Prosecutor to Investigate Trump Officials’ Collusion with Russia and Apparent White House Cover-Up - U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin - Feb 15th, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Pocan Urges President Trump to Fully Declassify Report on Russian Interference in 2016 Election - U.S. Rep Mark Pocan - Feb 14th, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Murphy’s Law: Ron Johnson Asleep on Russian Hacking? - Bruce Murphy - Jan 10th, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin Joins Call for Bipartisan Senate Select Committee Investigation of Russian Interference in 2016 Election - U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin - Jan 3rd, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin Statement on Russian Cyberattacks - U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin - Dec 16th, 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wisconsin Comrades Set to Welcome Donald Trump, Whitewash Russian Attempts to Influence Elections- One Wisconsin Now - Dec 13th, 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">also ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/07/05/johnson-urges-dialogue-russia-but-warns-against-midterms-interference/761043002/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">reppublican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said Thursday that he and others in a congressional delegation to Moscow put Russians on notice not to interfere with the 2018 midterm elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson was in the group of congressional Republicans that traveled this week to Moscow for talks with Russian lawmakers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson said Russia's meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections was "brought up constantly by multiple senators."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The point was made," Johnson said. "I think they are very well aware of the fact that a way to blow up this first step would be to interfere in the 2018 elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"They were very well put on notice that we're not buying what they're saying. That we're basically issuing, let me be kind here, guidance that it would not be smart to be caught meddling in 2018. I think they got the message. There's no way they couldn't have had."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Washington Post reported the Republicans "sounded a newly conciliatory tone" in the talks that were held ahead of President Donald Trump's July 16 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) led the delegation. Johnson said he was only "cleared" to go on the trip last week, left for Moscow on Sunday and returned to Wisconsin Thursday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Late last year, Johnson and fellow Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming called off a planned trip to Moscow after Russia denied a visa to Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED: Sen. Ron Johnson backs Russia probes but downplays urgency</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED: Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson walks back claims of an anti-Trump 'secret society' within FBI</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RELATED: Russian Twitter trolls stoked racial tension in wake of Sherman Park rioting in Milwaukee before 2016 election</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson said relations between the U.S. and Russia are "strained."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"I've been saying for a long time that I wish Russia was no worse than a friendly rival as opposed to an unfriendly adversary," he said. "I don't want it to degrade to the enemy category."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Right now, we're adversaries, there's no two ways about it," he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Johnson was hopeful that a process could be started for "an ongoing dialogue to find individuals so we can actually find relationships."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Those on-going personal relationships can be crucial in uncertain times," he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"My takeaway there was a sincere desire on both sides to improve relationships," he added.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Johnson, who chairs the European subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, defended the trip that saw the U.S. lawmakers in Moscow over July 4th.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is an important relationship," he said. "Russia is not going away."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He added, "The main reason you go there is to understand their perspective."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This was Johnson's first trip Moscow, which he described as "a modern, well-maintained European city. There was nothing shabby about it."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He said there was "no evidence" that international sanctions were having an effect on the Russian economy. But he said Russia is rankled by sanctions on individuals, "targeting the oligarchs, their legislators."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/how-deep-does-the-russia-collusion-go-to-mcconnell/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">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.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/a-matter-of-public-record-yale-history-professor-lists-50-reasons-trump-is-indebted-to-putin-dating-back-to-1984/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Timothy Snyder is the author of “The Road To Unfreedom”, of which The Guardian says — “Timothy Snyder is professor of history at Yale. His book Bloodlands, about the fallout of second world war atrocities on the eastern front, won the prestigious Hannah Arendt prize and was described by the late, great Tony Judt as “the most important book to appear on this subject in decades”. And yet as he unfolds this contemporary sequel, you might well hear, as I did from time to time, those sneery voices now lodged in your head that whisper of “liberal elitism” and “fake news” and “MSM” and “tempting conspiracies”, and which refuse ever, quite, to be quieted. How did we get here? Snyder has a good idea.”...Why we do think that Mr. Trump owes a debt to Mr. Putin? Here are fifty reasons. All of the facts are a matter of public record, and all of the sources can be found in my book The Road to Unfreedom. #RoadToUnfreedom</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1/50 In 1984, Russian gangsters began to launder money by buying and selling apartment units in Trump Tower (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 220).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2/50 In 1986, Mr. Trump was courted by Soviet diplomats, who suggested that a bright future awaited him in Moscow (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 220).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3/50 In 1987, the Soviet state paid for Mr. Trump to visit Moscow, putting him up in a suite that was certainly bugged (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 220).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4/50 In 2006, Russians and other citizens of the former Soviet Union financed Trump SoHo, granting Mr. Trump 18% of the profits — although he put up no money himself (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 221).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5/50 In 2008, the Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev in effect gave Mr. Trump $55 million in an unusual real estate deal. In 2016, Mr. Rybolovlev appeared in places where Mr. Trump campaigned (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 221).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">6/50 In 2008, Donald Trump Jr. explained that the Trump Organization was dependent upon Russia. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 221).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7/50 In 2010, the Russian propaganda server RT helped American white supremacists to spread the lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In 2011, Mr. Trump became the most prominent backer of this lie. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 223).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8/50 Mr. Trump was endorsed by the Russian political technologist Konstantin Rykov in 2012 (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 102).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">9/50 In April 2013, the FBI busted two gambling rings inside Trump Tower, which according to authorities were run by a Russian citizen. The US attorney who ordered the raid was later fired by Mr. Trump (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 103).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">10/50 Mr. Trump expressed the wish, on 18 June 2013, to be Mr. Putin’s “best friend.” (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 102).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11/50 Mr. Trump was paid $20 million by Russians to spectate at a beauty pageant in summer 2013. The man who did the work, Aras Agalarov, would later help to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russians. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 102).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">12/50 In summer 2014, a Russian advance team was sent to the United States to plan the cyber war of 2016 (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 194).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">13/50 In 2014 Mr. Putin’s advisor Sergey Glazyev anticipated the “termination” of the American elite (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 226).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">14/50 In 2014 a Russian think tank, the Izborsk Club, outlined the principles of a new information war to be fought against the United States (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 226).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">15/50 Steve Bannon met with Russian energy executives in 2014 and 2015, and tested messages about Putin on American voters. He would later run Mr. Trump’s campaign (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 194).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">16/50 In late 2014 Russia penetrated the email networks of the White House, the Department of State, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 194).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">17/50 When Mr. Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, Russia’s Internet Research Agency created and staffed a new American Department. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 227).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">18/50 In October 2015, while running for president, Mr. Trump signed a letter of intent to have Russians build a tower in Moscow and put his name on it. The Trump Organization planned to give its penthouse to Mr. Putin as a present (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 222).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">19/50 In October 2015, Mr. Trump tweeted that “Putin loves Donald Trump” (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 222).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">20/50 Felix Sater, who had brokered deals between the Trump Organization and Russian investors, wrote in November 2015 that “Our boy can become president of the United States and we can engineer it” (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 222).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">21/50 Mr. Trump was endorsed in late 2015 by the think tank of the pro-Kremlin oligarch Konstantin Malofeev (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 150).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">22/50 In early 2016, the chair of the foreign relations committee of the Russian parliament said that Mr. Trump could “drive the Western locomotive right off the rails” (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">23/50 In February 2016, Mr. Putin’s cyber advisor boasted: “We are on the verge of having something in the information arena that will allow us to talk to the Americans as equals” (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 227).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">24/50 Russian military intelligence penetrated the Democratic National Committee in March 2016 as well as personal accounts of leading Democrats. Stolen emails were then used to discredit Hillary Clinton and aid Mr. Trump. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 232).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">25/50 George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy advisor of the Trump campaign, is told by Russians in April 2016 that “dirt” on Hillary Clinton is available. He then met with Mr. Trump. He was later convicted of lying to the FBI (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 240).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">26/50 A Russian military intelligence officer bragged in May 2016 that his organization would take revenge on Hillary Clinton on behalf of Mr. Putin (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 227).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">27/50 Carter Page, an advisor of the Trump campaign, traveled to Moscow in July 2016. He then worked with success to make the Republican platform friendlier to Russia at the Republican National Convention (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 214).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">28/50 General Michael Flynn, an advisor of the Trump campaign and then Mr. Trump’s national security advisor, called himself “General Misha” and followed and retweeted Russian material from five Russian accounts. He later confessed to a federal crime (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 241).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">29/50 Mr. Trump requested, on 17 June 2016, that Russia search for Hillary Clinton’s emails. That same day Russian military intelligence began a phishing campaign to do just that (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 232).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">30/50 Some 22,000 emails stolen by Russia were released right before the Democratic National Convention, on 22 July 2016. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 232).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">31/50 Thanks to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, 126 million Americans saw Russian propaganda designed to aid Mr. Trump in 2016. Almost none of them were aware that this was happening (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 230).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">32/50 Over the course of 2016 some fifty thousand Russian bots and some four thousand human accounts exploited Twitter to influence American public opinion on behalf of Mr. Trump. Almost no Americans were aware of this (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 230).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">33/50 In 2016, Russia sought to break into the electoral websites of at least thirty-nine American states (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 231).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">34/50 Throughout 2016, Russian elites referred to Mr. Trump as “our president” (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">35/50 Throughout 2016, Russian journalists were instructed to portray Mr. Trump positively and Hillary Clinton negatively (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">36/50 In June 2016 the leaders of the Trump campaign, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump, Jr., and Paul Manafort met with Russians in Trump Tower as part of, as the broker of the meeting called it, “the Russian government’s support for Trump” (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 261).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">37/50 Mr. Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort resigned in August 2016 after news broke that he had received $12.7 million in cash from a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician. Mr. Manafort was later convicted of crimes (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 236).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">38/50 When Mr. Trump seemed to be in trouble when a tape of his advocacy of sexual assault was published on 7 October 2016, emails stolen by Russia were released to change the subject (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 233).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">39/50 Mr. Trump personally encouraged his followers to explore the emails that Russia had stolen in tweets of 31 October and 4 November 2016 (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 232).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">40/50 In the months between Mr. Trump’s nomination as the Republican candidate and the election, anonymous limited liability (“offshore”) companies furiously purchased his properties (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 222).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">41/50 After Mr. Trump was accorded the victory in the presidential election in November 2016, he was given a standing ovation in the Russian parliament (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">42/50 After Trump was accorded the victory in the presidential election, he called Mr. Putin to be congratulated (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">43/50 In December 2016, before the inauguration, Michael Flynn illegally met with Russian officials to discuss Russia-friendly policy. One of his aides explained: “Russia has just thrown the U.S.A. elections to” Mr. Trump (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 242).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">44/50 After Mr. Trump’s victory, the leading man of the Russian media, Dmitry Kiselev, celebrated the end of human rights and democracy as US policy (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 218).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">45/50 In May 2017, Mr. Trump fired James Comey for taking part in an investigation of Russia’s cyberwar against the United States, and then bragged about doing so to Russian officials in the Oval Office (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 245).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">46/50 In June 2017, Mr. Putin essentially admitted that Russia had intervened in the election, saying that he had never denied that “Russian volunteers” had carried out a cyberwar on behalf of Mr. Trump (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 227).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">47/50 In June 2017, Mr. Trump ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, who had been tasked to carry out an investigation of Russian interference. The White House Counsel refused to carry out the order. Russia then began a campaign to slander Mr. Mueller (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 246).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">48/50 In September 2017, a Russian parliamentarian said on national television that the American security services “slept through” as Russia chose the US president (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 225).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">49/50 2017-2018 Mr. Mueller’s investigation led to the indictment of Russia’s Internet Research Agency, several Russian military intelligence officers, and multiple associates and campaign officials of Mr. Trump. It also produced a report that we have not yet been allowed to read</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">50/50 In June 2018, Mr. Putin confirmed before the international press that he had wanted Mr. Trump to win. At that same summit, in Helsinki, Mr. Trump said that he trusted Mr. Putin more than his own advisors. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 227).”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AN 419</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont conceded the 2016 Democratic presidential primary to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and encouraged his supporters to vote for her in the general election, many of them agreed that Clinton—shortcomings and all—would be much better for his liberal/progressive movement than GOP nominee Donald J. Trump. Sanders aggressively voiced his support for the centrist Clinton during his speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, stressing that a Trump presidency would be terrible for the United States (an assertion that proved to be frighteningly accurate). The “Bernie or Bust” crowd, however, adamantly maintained its opposition to Clinton: some voted for Green Party nominee Jill Stein or Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson (a former Republican governor of New Mexico), some didn’t vote at all, some even voted for Trump. And the Washington Post, in an article published on Friday, is reporting that some of Sanders’ more anti-Clinton supporters may have been manipulated by the Kremlin three years ago.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian interference in the 2016 election and President Vladimir Putin’s preference for Trump over Clinton was probed extensively by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose Russia investigation concluded in March. But one thing that hasn’t been reported nearly as much is efforts by the Kremlin to manipulate and deceive Sanders’ supporters. And in the Washington Post, Michael Kranish reports that three years ago, there was a concerted effort by Russians to convince Sanders supporters that they would be better off under Trump.[wacko at mta MOVIE] Kranish reports that in 2016, a Twitter account called Red Louisiana News told Sanders supporters, “Conscious Bernie Sanders supporters already moving towards the best candidate Trump! #Feel the Bern #Vote Trump 2016.” And analysis by Clemson University, according to Kranish, found that Red Louisiana News was among thousands of pro-Trump online accounts that were actually based in Russia—not the United States—and stressed to Sanders supporters that they had more in common with Trump than with Clinton. Kranish also reports that Mueller, during his Russia investigation, alleged that a St. Petersburg, Russia-based group called the Internet Research Agency instructed its employees to write social media posts that were anti-Clinton but favorable to Sanders and Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a 2018 interview, Kranish notes, Sanders told Vermont Public Radio that in 2016, one of his campaign workers suspected that Russians were behind those posts and warned the Clinton campaign, “I think these guys are Russians.” Kranish adds, however, that the campaign worker didn’t share those concerns with Sanders himself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sanders also told Vermont Public Radio that in 2016, Russian government operatives “were playing a really disgusting role” in the election and set out to “sow division in this country.” The senator commented, “What they were saying is—in so many words—is Bernie Sanders is not going to win. So if you are a Bernie Sanders supporter, let me tell you: Hillary Clinton is a criminal, a murderer, a terrible person…. crazy, all of these disgusting things.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clemson University’s research, Kranish adds, found that “some 9000” tweets coming from Russia used the name “Bernie” and were retweeted 61,804 times and “liked” 59,281 times.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to a report at Politico, Sen, Chuck Grassley (R-IUA) is conducting a war with President Donald Trump’s White House over their refusal to turn over information related to Russia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report states that Grassley “is accusing the Trump administration of stonewalling him over a request for documents related to the Russia investigation,” so he is holding up the nomination of a key Trump appointeeAccording to Politico, “The Iowa Republican’s demand for Justice Department documents on its probe of possible links between the Trump campaign and Moscow has left William Evanina’s nomination to head the National Counterintelligence and Security Center in limbo for the past year, frustrating the nation’s top intelligence leaders and even some fellow Senate Republicans.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report notes that Grassley is specifically seeking documents related to DOJ official Bruce Ohr, “who became a conduit between former British spy Christopher Steele and the FBI.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a statement submitted to the Congressional Record, Grassley wrote, “The administration’s continued, ongoing, and blatant lack of cooperation has forced my hand.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Grassley has placed the blame for the lack of cooperation on Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and was highly critical of how he is being treated.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/mueller-subpoenas-director-of-controversial-data-firm-cambridge-analytica-in-russia-probe/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brittany Kaiser, a director of data company Cambridge Analytica, has been subpoenaed as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible ties between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, the Guardian reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokesman for Kaiser confirmed she is fully cooperating with Mueller, according to the Guardian, and that she is working with separate “US congressional and legal investigations into the company’s activities.>Kaiser is the second person from Cambridge Analytica who has been subpoenaed by Mueller. As the Guardian notes:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In August, Sam Patten, a US political consultant who had worked for Cambridge Analytica on campaigns in the US and abroad, struck a plea deal with Mueller after admitting he had failed to register as a foreign agent for a Ukrainian oligarch.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Patten worked with Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who Mueller on Friday recommended spend up to 24 years in prison for “serious, longstanding, and bold” financial crimes,” and with Russian oligarch Konstantin Kilimnik, a subject of Mueller’s probe.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Kaiser, however, is the first person connected directly to both the Brexit and Trump campaigns known to have been questioned by Mueller,” the Guardian reports.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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