The Russian Connection

[RoseWilder]

No wonder Michael Flynn wants immunity - he's even shadier than we realized: 

 

[RoseWilder]

I hope they nail his ass to the wall: 

 

[fraurosena]

Oh dear. Mike Flynn's in deep doo-doo and wants immunity, and then this comes out:

Mike Flynn Didn’t Disclose Russian-Linked Payments in Initial Document

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President Donald Trump’s embattled former national security adviser Mike Flynn initially didn’t disclose payments he received from three Russian-linked entities on a financial disclosure form he filed upon entering government.

As part of the routine public release of the financial disclosure reports from top officials, the White House provided two versions of Mr. Flynn’s 2016 financial disclosure form over the weekend—an initial version he filed in February and a more complete version he submitted last week.

On the earlier version of the form, Mr. Flynn didn’t provide a full list of organizations and companies that had paid him for speaking engagements, including three Russia-linked organizations. Those payments became a source of controversy for the former national security adviser and retired three-star Army general who was forced to resign from the Trump administration earlier this year.

On a second, amended form filed on March 31, Mr. Flynn acknowledged that he had received fees from RT, the television network and media outlet funded by the Russian government; as well as Volga-Dnepr Group, a Russian air-cargo company; and Kaspersky Government Security Solutions, a U.S. subsidiary of a leading Russian cybersecurity firm. Those three speaking engagements had been previously reported.

The article goes on to state that Flynn was in the process of filling in the second form when he was fired, so he was trying to correct the ommissions on the earlier one, and just didn't get the chance. Poor widdle Mikey. Yeah, makes total sense... 

[candygirl200413]

I want But her emails tattooed all over my body because of this entire mess. I will also start chanting Lock Him Up. Funny when projecting on others gets you so badly.

[GreyhoundFan]

Interesting article about Russian hacking: "New details emerge about 2014 Russian hack of the State Department: It was ‘hand to hand combat’"

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Over a 24-hour period, top U.S. cyber defenders engaged in a pitched battle with Russian hackers who had breached the unclassified State Department computer system and displayed an unprecedented level of aggression that experts warn is likely to be turned against the private sector.

Whenever National Security Agency hackers cut the attackers’ link between their command and control server and the malware in the U.S. system, the Russians set up a new one, current and former U.S. officials said.

The new details about the November 2014 incident emerged recently in the wake of a senior NSA official’s warning that the heightened aggression has security implications for firms and organizations unable to fight back.

“It was hand-to-hand combat,” said NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett, who described the incident at a recent cyber forum, but did not name the nation behind it. The culprit was identified by other current and former officials. Ledgett said the attackers’ thrust-and-parry moves inside the network while defenders were trying to kick them out amounted to “a new level of interaction between a cyber attacker and a defender.”

But Russia is not the only top-tier cyber power flexing its muscles in this way, said other current and former senior officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

In recent years, China and to a lesser extent Iran have become more aggressive in their efforts to break into U.S. computer systems, giving fight to defenders from within the network and refusing to slink away when identified, the current and former officials said.

Ledgett, speaking at the Aspen Institute last month, placed the State Department incident in late 2015. But officials at the NSA, which defends the government’s national security computer systems, clarified that it took place in 2014.

Fortunately, Ledgett said, the NSA, whose hackers penetrate foreign adversaries’ systems to glean intelligence, was able to spy on the attackers’ tools and tactics. “So we were able to see them teeing up new things to do,” Ledgett said. “That’s a really useful capability to have.”

The State Department had to shut down its unclassified email system for a weekend, ostensibly for maintenance purposes. That was a “cover story,” to avoid tipping off the Russians that the government was about to try to kick them out, said one former U.S. official.

The NSA defenders, aided by the FBI, prevailed over the intruders, who were working for a Russian spy agency. Private sector analysts have given the hacking group various names, including Cozy Bear, APT29 and The Dukes. That group also compromised unclassified systems at the White House and in Congress, current and former officials said.

...

I'm thinking maybe I should move to an uncharted desert island, just not the same one where we want to send Agent Orange and his ilk.

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo just published this breaking news: "Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel"

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The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.

The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would likely require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.

Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian.

Prince was an avid supporter of Trump who gave $250,000 last year to support the GOP nominee’s campaign, records show. He has ties to people in Trump’s circle, including Stephen K. Bannon, now serving as the president’s chief strategist and senior counselor. Prince’s sister Betsy DeVos serves as education secretary in the Trump administration. And Prince was seen in the Trump transition offices in New York in December.

U.S. officials said the FBI has been scrutinizing the Seychelles meeting as part of a broader probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and alleged contacts between associates of Putin and Trump. The FBI declined to comment.

The Seychelles encounter, which one official said spanned two days, adds to an expanding web of connections between Russia and Americans with ties to Trump — contacts that the White House has been reluctant to acknowledge or explain until they have been exposed by news organizations.

...

It just gets dirtier and dirtier.

[onekidanddone]

Hitting it out of the park every time

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Dwindling Odds of Coincidence"

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We are still not conclusively able to connect the dots on the question of whether there was any coordination or collusion between members of Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russians who interfered in our election to benefit him, but those dots do continue to multiply at an alarming rate.

First, and we have to keep saying this because this fact keeps getting obscured in the subterfuge of deflection, misdirection and ideological finger-pointing about what has yet to be proven: It is absolutely clear that the Russians did interfere in our election. This is not a debatable issue. This is not fake news. This is not a witch hunt. This happened.

The investigations, rightly, are seeking to figure out exactly how and to what degree, and those questions obviously depend on knowing more about campaign contacts with Russian meddlers.

...

There is something here, but I can’t yet put my finger on what it is.

But unlike some others, I find no glee in the prospect of something amiss.

To be sure, Donald Trump is a despicable man and an awful president who deserves whatever he gets. He is crude, a liar, a bully and a cheat. He is vainglorious and vengeful.

It is not clear to me that America — and indeed the world — can survive a full-term Trump presidency.

But there are no real winners here, regardless of what the current investigations reveal. Russia has already unveiled an incredible vulnerability in our electoral process — the relatively cheap vehicles of information disclosure and propaganda advancement — and the damage that has already been done to faith in the system will not only be hard to measure, but hard to erase.

The public and the press’s appetites for prurience far outweigh their appreciation of prudence.

If coordination or collusion with the Russians by anyone on the Trump campaign is revealed, just as important is the question of “What then?”

Polls continue to find a strong appetite for the ultimate remedy: Trump’s impeachment. You would get no resistance from me if it ever came to that. But I also understand the order of succession and that, too, gives me pause.

It moves from the zealot Mike Pence, to the weasel Paul Ryan, to anti-abortion crusader Orrin Hatch, to Rex “Russian Order of Friendship” Tillerson, to the former Hollywood producer Steven Mnuchin, who had to apologize last week for plugging “The Lego Batman Movie,” for which he was an executive producer.

The list goes on and on.

Yes, an administration without Trump would be less of an international embarrassment and exceedingly more predictable, but these men have all cozied up to Trump or were picked by him, so there is little daylight among them on policy.

Then there is the brazenly political, callously calculating school of thought — which is as dangerous as it is interesting — that holds that the severe distaste for sitting-President-Trump will likely be the best liberal motivator for success in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election. Following this logic, a crippled Trump is better than a vanquished one.

At this point this is all conjecture. First we must clear the hurdle of finding out exactly what happened and who was involved. That could take months, if not years.

We must now decide how to process the mounting suggestions of impropriety.

The journalistic caution in me keeps having to write that these could all be coincidences, but the journalistic instinct has learned long ago that coincidence is the albino alligator of political reality: It exists, but is exceedingly rare.

 

[JMarie]

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/04/03/a-trump-associate-reportedly-set-up-a-secret-meeting-to-establis/22024425/

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Days before President Donald Trump's inauguration, Blackwater founder Erik Prince met with a Russian close to President Vladimir Putin in the Seychelles islands to create a communication back-channel between Trump and Russia, according to The Washington Post.

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Despite not having an official role with the transition, Prince reportedly told Zayed that he was authorized to act as an unofficial surrogate for Trump. He then asked Zayed to set up a meeting with the Russian, whom sources did not identify to the Post.

Prince is known to have close connections to the Trump administration. He donated $250,000 to support the Trump campaign last year, has close ties to Bannon, is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and was seen in the Trump transition offices in December, according to the Post.

So now we know how De Vos got her job.

[candygirl200413]

That's why when people are saying that we can just go down the line of succession in the case of an impeachment that all of them need to be removed because they are all going to be tainted from this Russia connection.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The Russia scandal gets weirder and weirder"

Quote

The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.

The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.

As with so much else involving the Trump-Russia connection, one is compelled to ask: What?!?! A former senior intelligence official remarked to me, “This cannot possibly get more weird … right?” Umm, I wouldn’t be too sure.

I asked former CIA officer and independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin in a telephone interview Monday night about his reaction to the purported back channel. “It raises more questions as to why a transition team with so many documented connections to Russia would require another one — a secret one,” he said.

Then, no sooner than The Post’s report stunned observers, BuzzFeed reported:

A former campaign adviser for Donald Trump met with and passed documents to a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013.

The adviser, Carter Page, met with a Russian intelligence operative named Victor Podobnyy, who was later charged by the US government alongside two others for acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government. The charges, filed in January 2015, came after federal investigators busted a Russian spy ring that was seeking information on US sanctions as well as efforts to develop alternative energy. Page is an energy consultant.

At various times, the Trump team has denied that Page was an adviser or, at least, a senior one. We can see why it would want to disown him.

Page declined to answer questions posed to him by Right Turn on whether he knew he was in contact with a spy and whether he disclosed that to the Trump campaign. Instead he provided a written statement complaining that he was the victim of “politically-motivated unmasking” and insisting that he “shared basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents with Podobny who then served as a junior attaché at the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations.”

Nevertheless, as Clint Watts (whose testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee left even jaded newspeople and intelligence gurus slack-jawed) of Foreign Policy Research Institute told me, “If this is true, it would demonstrate targeted recruitment of Page to be a Russian asset, wittingly or unwittingly. Years later he mysteriously surfaces as a confidant to the Trump [campaign].” Hmmm. Watts added it appears to him that “the Trump campaign didn’t know who they were dealing with, or didn’t care, and based on [Michael] Flynn’s associations [this] further suggests Russia intended to influence the campaign through fellow travelers, those ideologically aligned with Russia or deliberate agents, believing Trump was ripe for manipulation.”

The constant flow of bizarre and incriminating information, just the portion of which has seeped out, is becoming so voluminous that the Trump administration can no longer wave this off as much to do about nothing. “There is so much smoke — and it’s so dark and thick — the administration has a lot of explaining to do,” McMullin says.

The Trump obsession with “unmasking” names is a blatant attempt to distract and obviously irrelevant. It’s not even helpful to Trump’s case. There are many legitimate reasons for unmasking, and nothing suggests requesting information about the identities of those Russia was trying to assist was illegal or improper. Ironically, by focusing on unmasking, the Trump spinners just remind us that there was an extensive, serious investigation underway because of  a comprehensive Russian effort to manipulate American voters and because of unprecedented connections between one candidate’s team and Russia. McMullin exclaims: “If you are going to establish a secret channel with a hostile foreign power, you shouldn’t expect to have your name kept secret!”

...

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s shell game on Russia makes everything look suspicious"

Quote

When Gen. Michael Hayden visited a secret intelligence facility in the United States a decade ago while he was CIA director, the staff gave him a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Admit Nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter Accusations.”

That motto is much-beloved by covert operators. It also seems to be President Trump’s rubric for responding to the FBI investigation of whether any members of his campaign team cooperated with Russian hackers. Maybe it’s becoming our national slogan.

There are now competing narratives for any issue that touches Russia or intelligence. And every day brings a new set of improbable facts: a cloak-and-dagger visit to the White House by a congressman who’s supposedly leading an investigation of the president; a secret meeting in the Seychelles islands between the founder of Blackwater and a Russian emissary.

Good grief! The cascade of news is dizzying. It’s like living inside a tumbling washer-dryer.

...

Yeah, that pretty much describes how this feels.

[RoseWilder]

After looking at this chart, all I can think is, why the hell don't we have an independent investigation yet?

It's really startling to see it all laid out in a chart like this. 

[fraurosena]

Yassssss...... 

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes Steps Aside From Russia Probe

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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he is stepping aside from the panel’s probe of possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, citing the need to confront “false and politically motivated” ethics complaints filed against him.

In a short statement issued on Thursday, the California Republican said he would temporarily remove himself from the investigation into alleged Russia meddling in the 2016 election on behalf of President Donald Trump and whether any members of either political campaign were in contact with foreign agents.

The probe will instead be run by Rep. Mike Conaway (R, Texas), with assistance from Reps. Trey Gowdy (R, S.C.) and Tom Rooney (R, Fla.), though Mr. Nunes will remain the chairman of the intelligence committee and participate in the panel’s other activities.

The three will “temporarily take charge of the Committee’s Russia investigation” while the Office of Congressional Ethics looks into the accusations lodged against him.

Okay then. Nunes is being optimistic, by temporarily  removing himself. Or maybe he's putting a brave face on it. I love it that somebody apparently lodged ethics accusations against him.  The article doesn't mention what these accusations the Office of Congressional Ethics are looking into are though. I wonder if this 'looking into' will be public (or made public after the fact).

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Yassssss...... 

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes Steps Aside From Russia Probe

Okay then. Nunes is being optimistic, by temporarily  removing himself. Or maybe he's putting a brave face on it. I love it that somebody apparently lodged ethics accusations against him.  The article doesn't mention what these accusations the Office of Congressional Ethics are looking into are though. I wonder if this 'looking into' will be public (or made public after the fact).

I was soooo excited when I read this. I hope he still gets nailed for his crap and loses his seat in the House.

[fraurosena]

Sigh.

With Nunes Out, the New Guys Running the Trump-Russia Probe Ain't Much Better

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[...]

Nunes, who is retaining his post of committee chairman, assigned the task of running the Russia investigation to Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas). He also noted that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) will assist Conaway. At the committee's first hearing for its Russia probe—before Nunes ran the investigation into a ditch—his three designees, as they questioned FBI chief James Comey and National Security Agency head Mike Rogers, focused on the narrow issue of leaks and unmasking. [...] Or they asked questions designed to raise doubts about the intelligence community's assessment that Putin meddled in the election to assist Trump. That is, they stuck to the GOP's political script.[...]

This attitude was on full display during the hearing with Comey and Rogers—at which Comey declared the FBI had no evidence to support Trump's Obama-wiretapped-me claim and revealed the FBI had been investigating Trump-Russia contacts since July. When Conaway was granted time for questioning, he dwelled on when and why the FBI and the NSA had reached the conclusion that the Russian operation was designed to help Trump. Conaway tried to make an issue out of the fact that the FBI hit this conclusion with more certainty a few weeks before the NSA did late last year. [...]

Conaway's intent was clear: to attempt to show this damaging-to-Trump assessment was still iffy. [...] Conaway had not bothered to express any outrage over the Russian intervention or to encourage the FBI's ongoing investigations. He was in Trump-damage-control mode.

Rooney used his grilling time to pose to Rogers a long and detailed series of questions about incidental collection and unmasking. These are not unimportant subjects. But they have nothing to do with how Putin and Russian intelligence intervened in the election.[...]  Rooney was more concerned about the leaking than Flynn's deceptions and back-channel communications. [...] Rooney decried the "serious crime" that had apparently been committed via a presumed act of unmasking. He noted he was worried that the intelligence community had broken a "sacred trust" with the American people. [...] He did not once address the Russian intervention.[...]

Gowdy picked up this line of questioning. Gowdy is best known for running the House special committee on Benghazi that went on endlessly—after other House committees had scrutinized the matter and blown apart the various anti-Clinton conspiracy theories of the right—and was marred by partisan moves and, yes, leaks from the GOP side of the committee. [...]

Gowdy did not ask anything related to how the Kremlin had targeted a political party and presidential campaign to subvert an election. Instead, he fixated on leaks and locking up journalists who receive and report classified secrets. He pressed Comey to investigate the Flynn leak, and he ticked off a list of Obama officials who might have had access to unmasked names—James Clapper, John Brennan, Susan Rice, Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates—as if to suggest one or more of them deserved to be investigated for the Flynn leak. [...]

Gowdy then cautioned people not to confuse "evidence" with "facts" and to be wary of hearsay. This seemed to be an indirect way of questioning media reporting regarding the Russian intervention in the election and the contacts between Trump associates and Russia. In any event, Gowdy had tried to turn the hearing into an inquiry about the Flynn leak and the once-obscure subject of unmasking—which matched the agenda of Trump defenders. [...]

Conaway, Rooney, and Gowdy have not yet demonstrated they can mount an independent and vigorous investigation on this politically sensitive terrain. Nunes may be gone, but the challenges facing the committee remain.

 

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Nunes, who is retaining his post of committee chairman, assigned the task of running the Russia investigation to Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas).

Seriously?  Why not just hand the whole damn thing over to Eric and Donald Trump Jr?

Mike Conaway's a conservative pro-life Christian whose hobbies include: yapping about Jesus while screwing over poor people, cuddling his guns, crying in his beer about abortion, and kissing Trump's ass. 

[fraurosena]

An Interesting article on how Manafort managed to charm the Toddler and become part of his campaign.

Quote

On Feb. 29, 2016, Mr. Manafort, the former lobbyist and Republican operative who now sits at the nexus of investigations into Russia’s meddling in the presidential election, reached out to Mr. Trump with a slick, carefully calibrated offer that appealed to the candidate’s need for professional guidance, thirst for political payback — and parsimony.

The letters and memos provide a telling glimpse into how Mr. Trump invited an enigmatic international fixer, who is currently under investigation by United States intelligence services, a Senate committee and investigators in Ukraine, to the apex of his campaign with a minimum of vetting. The answer? Through family and friends, handshakes and hyperbole.

Mr. Manafort, who has not been accused of any crimes — and who denies any wrongdoing in his political, business and investment dealings — is nonetheless a central figure in the investigation into the interactions of Trump campaign officials with foreign governments. How he got to know Mr. Trump, and how he rose from overseeing the candidate’s operations at the Republican convention to the entire campaign, is very likely to be a focus during coming Senate hearings about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. [...]

It began when he sent two succinct memos to Mr. Trump through Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a mutual friend. [...]

Mr. Barrack passed Mr. Manafort’s pitch to Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who were Mr. Trump’s closest advisers, as they are now.

Ms. Trump printed it out for her father — who hates reading documents online — along with Mr. Barrack’s recommendation that Mr. Manafort be hired to manage the Trump operation at the Republican convention in Cleveland. Mr. Manafort was brought onto the campaign by the end of March.

Note the roles played by Jared and Ivanka, the auriferocious* couple.

 

*auriferocious: a combination of auriferous (meaning 'to contain gold') and ferocious -- which is perhaps a better description than the too nice-sounding 'golden' couple 

[fraurosena]

Russian arrested in Spain 'over US election hacking'

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Spanish police have arrested a Russian programmer for alleged involvement in "hacking" the US election, Spanish press reports say.

Pyotr Levashov, arrested on 7 April in Barcelona, has now been remanded in custody. 

A "legal source" also told the AFP news agency that Mr Levashov was the subject of an extradition request by the US. The request is due to be examined by Spain's national criminal court, the agency added. El Confidencial, a Spanish news website, has said that Mr Levashov's arrest warrant was issued by US authorities over suspected "hacking" that helped Donald Trump's campaign.

Several cybersecurity experts, including Brian Krebs, have also linked Mr Levashov to a Russian spam kingpin, who uses the alias Peter Severa.

I wonder which US authorities are referred to here... 

[onekidanddone]

I have this anxious feeling that Agent's s sudden break with Russia over the gas attack in Syria is just another deflection.  As anybody seen anything new with the Russia/Trump connection?  I think he is making this whole rift up so we forget he and Putin are BFFs  

[fraurosena]

19 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

I have this anxious feeling that Agent's s sudden break with Russia over the gas attack in Syria is just another deflection.  As anybody seen anything new with the Russia/Trump connection?  I think he is making this whole rift up so we forget he and Putin are BFFs  

I agree. It's way too suspicious for me that 59 tomahawks didn't manage to do much damage to that airport. Let me say that again, with more emphasis: FIFTYNINE tomahawk missiles hardly did any worthwhile damage at all. You can't tell me that this wasn't intentional. They were up and flying again from that airport within a couple of hours! And the Russians were warned in advance. Something that's conveniently forgotten in all the news reports about it.

Deflection supreme going on here. 

That said, the Toddler will be the Toddler. Something new will happen before the week is out.

[GreyhoundFan]

Hmm "FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter Page"

Quote

The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.

This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.

Page has not been accused of any crimes, and it is unclear whether the Justice Department might later seek charges against him or others in connection with Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The counterintelligence investigation into Russian efforts to influence U.S. elections began in July, officials have said. Most such investigations don’t result in criminal charges.

The officials spoke about the court order on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of a counterintelligence probe.

During an interview with the Washington Post editorial page staff in March 2016, Trump identified Page, who had previously been an investment banker in Moscow, as a foreign policy adviser to his campaign. Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks later described Page’s role as “informal.”

Page has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his dealings with the Trump campaign or Russia.

“This confirms all of my suspicions about unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance,” Page said in an interview Tuesday. “I have nothing to hide.” He compared surveillance of him to the eavesdropping that the FBI and Justice Department conducted against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

...

Reference the bolded: oh please.

[GreyhoundFan]

"CNN Exclusive: Classified docs contradict Nunes surveillance claims, GOP and Dem sources say"

Quote

After a review of the same intelligence reports brought to light by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal, multiple sources in both parties tell CNN.

Their private assessment contradicts President Donald Trump's allegations that former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice broke the law by requesting the "unmasking" of US individuals' identities. Trump had claimed the matter was a "massive story."

However, over the last week, several members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees have reviewed intelligence reports related to those requests at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

One congressional intelligence source described the requests made by Rice as "normal and appropriate" for officials who serve in that role to the president.

And another source said there's "absolutely" no smoking gun in the reports, urging the White House to declassify them to make clear there was nothing alarming in the documents.

Still, some members of Congress continue to have concerns about the justification given for the unmasking requests and the standards for the intelligence community to grant such requests, which reveal the private data of US persons mentioned in intelligence reports based on routine intelligence collection aimed at foreign nationals.

Such collection regularly targets officials and nationals from Russia, Taiwan, Israel and other countries.

The lawmakers' assessment comes after Trump, in a New York Times interview last week, accused Rice of breaking the law.

Trump has not revealed which intelligence reports he is relying on to make his charge that Rice may have acted illegally.

"I think it's going to be the biggest story," Trump said. "It's such an important story for our country and the world." He also called it "truly one of the big stories of our time."

Asked by the Times if he believed Rice's actions were criminal Trump responded, "Do I think? Yes, I think."

Sebastian Gorka, a Trump foreign policy aide, cast Rice's actions as worse than the Watergate scandal that felled President Richard Nixon in an interview with pro-Trump Fox News host Sean Hannity.

"Losing 14 minutes of audiotape in comparison to this is a little spat in the sandbox in the kindergarten," Gorka said.

...

 

 

[candygirl200413]

Waiting for another shoe to drop! it's so close!

[GreyhoundFan]

Gee, a little late, don't you think? "Manafort is expected to register as a foreign agent"

Quote

Paul Manafort, the former campaign chair for Donald Trump, has signaled that he plans to register as a foreign agent for his past work on behalf of political figures in Ukraine.

If he files, Manafort would become the second former senior Trump adviser in recent weeks to retroactively acknowledge the need to disclose foreign work. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former White House national security adviser, filed a disclosure last month saying he had done on behalf of Turkish interests.

A spokesman for Manafort said Wednesday that the longtime political consultant considered a new filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) after receiving “formal guidance recently from the authorities” regarding work he and a colleague had performed on behalf of a Ukrainian political interests.

Manafort’s spokesman, Jason Maloni, said that “the work in question was widely known” and ended before Manafort began working with the Trump campaign, while emphasizing that the work “was not conducted on behalf of the Russian government.”

Manafort’s ties to Ukraine have been controversial because he worked for a political figure, Viktor Yanukovych, who became aligned with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin.

For nearly a decade, Manafort advised Yanukovych, who was elected president in 2010 but fled to Moscow four years later after demonstrations demanding his ouster.

Manafort has done work advising political leaders around the globe, including some troubled figures, such as former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. Manafort expects to file any additional FARA disclosure amendments within the next 30 days. It was not clear Wednesday whether Manafort was considering filing reports based on foreign work he did outside of Ukraine.

Manafort’s acknowledgment of the foreign registration issue came Wednesday afternoon, hours after a detailed statement was issued by the Podesta Group, which, along with another firm, helped Manafort with a campaign to improve Ukraine’s image in the United States between 2012 and 2014.

...

Last summer, the Associated Press reported that Manafort and business colleague, Rick Gates, had overseen the lobbying effort in Washington on behalf of Ukraine’s Party of Regions, which was being criticized in Congress for jailing a prominent political opponent. Gates joined Manafort in working for the Trump campaign and stayed on after Manafort resigned in August.

That resignation followed the report from the AP and another from the New York Times that discussed payments Manafort allegedly received from the Party of Regions. Manafort has consistently denied any wrongdoing and said that reports of his receiving funds improperly are false.

The involvement of the Justice Department creates a reminder of potential pitfalls for Manafort and others associated with the campaign who did work overseas. Flynn’s work for Turkey has received scrutiny as had Manafort’s work for the now controversial Ukrainian leader. It is a felony to fail to register under FARA. But legal experts said individuals typically avoid prosecution by cooperating with Justice Department recommendations.