The Russian Connection 2

[onekidanddone]

1 minute ago, fraurosena said:

But that Ted Lieu though... loved watching him! "Either you lied on your form, or you lied here under oath, which is it?"

I do think the timing is fishy. First Sessions says he is looking to a special counsel. Then he is called to testify.  Now he says he won't call a special counsel.  All very strange.

[GrumpyGran]

8 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

I do think the timing is fishy. First Sessions says he is looking to a special counsel. Then he is called to testify.  Now he says he won't call a special counsel.  All very strange.

Yeah, they are splintering spectacularly now. I think Sessions is scared. Wonder if he'll be the next one offered a deal. Do we know what's happening with the Flynn pressure washing? Damn, Mueller is so quiet, never a leak. Dumpy and his people must be terrified of what Flynn can give Mueller.

[fraurosena]

7 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

I do think the timing is fishy. First Sessions says he is looking to a special counsel. Then he is called to testify.  Now he says he won't call a special counsel.  All very strange.

While everyone is busy disecting Sessions testimony, Buzzfeed dropped this bombshell. 

Secret Finding: 60 Russian Payments "To Finance Election Campaign Of 2016”

Quote

On Aug. 3 of last year, just as the US presidential election was entering its final, heated phase, the Russian foreign ministry sent nearly $30,000 to its embassy in Washington. The wire transfer, which came from a Kremlin-backed Russian bank, landed in one of the embassy’s Citibank accounts and contained a remarkable memo line: “to finance election campaign of 2016.”

That wire transfer is one of more than 60 now being scrutinized by the FBI and other federal agencies investigating Russian involvement in the US election. The transactions, which moved through Citibank accounts and totaled more than $380,000, each came from the Russian foreign ministry and most contained a memo line referencing the financing of the 2016 election.

The money wound up at Russian embassies in almost 60 countries from Afghanistan to Nigeria between Aug. 3 and Sept. 20, 2016. It is not clear how the funds were used. At least one transaction that came into the US originated with VTB Bank, a financial institution that is majority-owned by the Kremlin.

The US Treasury Department placed VTB Bank under sanctions in 2014, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The sanctions prohibit VTB Bank from raising capital or accepting loans from American individuals or companies. A wire transfer to the embassy’s US bank account is permitted, however, and Citibank has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

In a statement, Citibank spokesperson Jennifer Lowney wrote that the financial institution is "diligent" in reporting suspicious transfers but that "given the confidential nature of these reports, we do not comment on or confirm any particular report or transaction."

After discovering the $30,000 transfer to the embassy in Washington, Citibank launched a review of other transfers by the Russian foreign ministry. It unearthed dozens of other transactions with similar memo lines. Compliance officers in Citibank’s Global Intelligence Unit flagged them as suspicious, noting that it was unable to determine the financial, business, or legal purpose of the transactions.

Much as checks include a memo line, wire transfers often include a note that states what the money is for. The note on this set of transfers does not indicate what election the money was to be used for, or even the country. Seven nations had federal elections during the span when the funds were sent — including the Duma, Russia’s lower house of Parliament, on Sept. 18, 2016. Russian embassies and diplomatic compounds opened polling stations for voters living abroad.

The FBI was first made aware of the suspicious transactions two months ago. Two FBI sources said that FBI legal attaches in other countries are now investigating whether the money may have been used for the US presidential election and, if so, how.

Officials with the Russian embassy and the Russian foreign ministry did not return multiple phone calls or emails seeking comment. A VTB spokesperson said in a statement: "VTB strictly conducts its operations in full compliance with applicable rules and regulations. The U.S. banks also monitor and abide by all the restrictions imposed by the (Office of Foreign Assets Control)."

This past January, the United States’ Office of Director of National Intelligence, in a “high-confidence” assessment, concluded that Vladimir Putin personally signed off on an influence campaign to help Donald Trump win the presidency. Now, the FBI, a special counsel, and three congressional committees are conducting investigations. The committees have formally requested a wide range of banking and financial records on numerous individuals and businesses with ties to Russia from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN for short.

Specifically, the Senate Intelligence Committee committee asked FinCEN for “any actions” the agency took to support law enforcement or intelligence inquiries about these individuals and businesses, any documents it sent to the FBI, and any requests for information it sent to banks. A separate letter sent to the Treasury Department by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations sought information on the sanctioned bank.

These requests led to the discovery of the wire transfers. Two congressional sources said the Senate Intelligence Committee is aware of the transactions. Spokespeople for the committees would not comment.

All financial institutions are required to tell FinCEN about any transactions they deem suspicious. Such “suspicious activity reports” do not necessarily prove or even indicate wrongdoing. Federal law also requires financial institutions to file reports on any cash transactions of more than $10,000 in a single day, even if those transactions are legitimate. Banks must also file the reports whenever they suspect money laundering or other financial crimes.

Following the congressional requests, Citibank turned over a range of financial documents. The material includes more than 650 suspicious transactions between November 2013 and March 2017 totaling about $2.9 million. That money was sent to four Russian accounts operating in the US: the embassy; the Office of Defense, Military, Air and Naval Attaches; and Russian cultural centers in Washington and New York City.

Most of these wire transfers were not related to the election, sources say, but are the subject of FBI scrutiny for their possible ties to Russian corruption and money laundering.

The FBI and congressional investigators are now inspecting each of those transactions.

One FBI special agent said the transfers are critical for the bureau and lawmakers investigating Russia’s interference in last year’s presidential election. He said even if there is a logical explanation for the suspicious wire transactions the FBI has to investigate what the money was used for.

“We had an election and the intelligence community concluded Russia interfered in it,” said the FBI agent. “How could we not investigate a suspicious financial transaction that contained a memo that said, ‘finance election campaign 2016?’ Given the climate and what was in that memo line it would be very irresponsible for us not to investigate. It’s a good lead.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, onekidanddone said:

Oh boy!  Get ready for the Orange Wall Tidal Wave of Sludge to smack Sessions upside the head.

What kind of game are they playing anyway? The will investigate Clinton; They won't: They will; They won't. 

I'm getting sea sick watching this.

Remember, the repugs play the long game. I think Sessions is trying to get the TT to fire him, so he can try to be the write-in candidate for his old seat PLUS that will give the TT license to appoint a new AG who hasn't recused himself from the Russia investigation. Said new AG could then fire Mueller. If Mueller is fired, the repugs can go back to assuming all the Russia connections will stay hidden.

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Remember, the repugs play the long game. I think Sessions is trying to get the TT to fire him, so he can try to be the write-in candidate for his old seat PLUS that will give the TT license to appoint a new AG who hasn't recused himself from the Russia investigation. Said new AG could then fire Mueller. If Mueller is fired, the repugs can go back to assuming all the Russia connections will stay hidden.

If Mueller is fired, prepare yourself for civil war. I don't think the American people will stand for it. They will flood the streets in protest, lay down work, and march on the WH and the hill. It will not end well. 

 

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

If Mueller is fired, prepare yourself for civil war. I don't think the American people will stand for it. They will flood the streets in protest, lay down work, and march on the WH and the hill. It will not end well. 

 

I think you're right. And that's an interesting notion @GreyhoundFan. If Sessions wants that seat, he better hurry. And if Dumpy were to replace him with someone who then fires Mueller, the Repubs will look weak when they don't then do something about Dump. They have seemed to make it clear that they will not tolerate Dumpy directing his AG to fire Mueller.

How many times today did Sessions say "I can't recall"?

[apple1]

39 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

I think you're right. And that's an interesting notion @GreyhoundFan. If Sessions wants that seat, he better hurry. And if Dumpy were to replace him with someone who then fires Mueller, the Repubs will look weak when they don't then do something about Dump. They have seemed to make it clear that they will not tolerate Dumpy directing his AG to fire Mueller.

How many times today did Sessions say "I can't recall"?

Just my personal opinion - I don't think Sessions wants the Alabama senate seat back.

As for the "I can't recall" - Dang, I didn't know they allowed people in advanced stages of dementia to be Attorney General of the US. (rolling eyes, sarcasm font)

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

If Mueller is fired, prepare yourself for civil war. I don't think the American people will stand for it. They will flood the streets in protest, lay down work, and march on the WH and the hill. It will not end well. 

 

I would hope that would be the case, but never underestimate the Branch Trumpvidians, who will blindly do anything the TT spews forth on twitter and/or Faux and Friends.

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

They have seemed to make it clear that they will not tolerate Dumpy directing his AG to fire Mueller.

The problem is the Repug leadership has shown that they won't stand up when it counts. So, they may say that now, but when the chips are down, they are still trying to get re-elected, and the teabaggers and BTs have taken over the Repug party.

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

How many times today did Sessions say "I can't recall"?

I can't count that high. He's such a slimy worm.

[onekidanddone]

15 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

How many times today did Sessions say "I can't recall"?

Eleventy millionty billionty.

[fraurosena]

@onekidanddone, I'm laughing way to hard at that eleventy millionty billionty. In my mind I can hear it in the presidunce's voice, and it sounds entirely like something he would say! 

Seth Abramson has a plausible theory about who was also in that meeting that Sessions had with Kislyak. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/15/christopher-steele-trump-russia-dossier-accurate

Christopher Steele believes his dossier on Trump-Russia is 70-90% accurate

The respected ex-MI6 officer told Guardian journalist and author Luke Harding that his FBI contacts greeted his intelligence report with ‘shock and horror’

 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/15/how-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke

The long read

How Trump walked into Putin’s web

The inside story of how a former British spy was hired to investigate Russia’s influence on Trump – and uncovered explosive evidence that Moscow had been cultivating Trump for years. By Luke Harding

[Rachel333]

There are protests planned if Mueller is fired: https://act.moveon.org/event/mueller-firing-rapid-response-events/search/

[fraurosena]

This made my eyes pop, although I shouldn't be surprised at all.

I wonder who it was though? Michael Cohen? Marc Kasowitz? Jay Seculow? 

[GrumpyGran]

27 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

This made my eyes pop, although I shouldn't be surprised at all.

I wonder who it was though? Michael Cohen? Marc Kasowitz? Jay Seculow? 

I think this was a patronizing move. Dumpy may be screaming about this now, especially if they have gotten wind that Flynn is rolling. He doesn't understand the process and told someone, everyone to get the charges dropped, not comprehending that the ship has sailed. So someone scribbled a motion on an envelope and tried to file it just so they would have proof that they all are "trying" to make it go away. We'll see if Dumpy mentions something about it in a tweet.

[fraurosena]

One of the best moment during Sessions’ testimony.

I hope Mueller will do exactly what Hakeem Jeffries suggests and hold him to Sessions’ own stated standard.

(By the way, note how his wife always looks at her husband when he speaks. She did this during the whole testimony. Hmm. Where have we seen this wifely behavior before?)

[GreyhoundFan]

"Hope Hicks may hold the keys to Mueller's Russia puzzle"

Spoiler

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is preparing to interview the woman who’s seen it all: Hope Hicks.

She’s been part of Donald Trump’s inner circle for years, first at Trump Tower and then as an omnipresent gatekeeper and fixer who could get emails or other communications directly to the boss during the 2016 campaign.

As a senior White House adviser and now as communications director, she’s been in the room for moments critical to Mueller’s probe, which has grown to include the president’s response to the Russia investigation itself.

Hicks’ history with Trump makes her one of the more useful witnesses for Mueller as he looks for insights into the president’s habits and moods. She also is one of the few people well positioned to recount the president’s reactions at various moments as the Russia scandal has sidetracked his presidency — including the Mueller appointment itself.

Mueller’s decision to request an interview with Hicks — who hasn’t been named in any criminal wrongdoing — also indicates he’s reached a critical point in the overall investigation, according to former prosecutors and veterans of past White House investigations. Typically, conversations with such senior-level aides are saved for near the end of a probe.

“Anytime you can get someone who is the right-hand person or who’s been around the primary target of an investigation, under oath, answering detailed questions, means you’ve progressed very far along in the investigation,” said Adam Goldberg, a former Clinton White House lawyer.

White House attorney Ty Cobb wouldn’t say specifically when Hicks planned to appear before Mueller’s team, though he did say he was “bullish” that all current White House aides, including Hicks, will have completed interviews with the special counsel “shortly after Thanksgiving.”

“Nothing about the White House’s commitment to fully cooperate with the special counsel, including doing necessary interviews, has changed,” Cobb said on Wednesday. “We continue to be in a full cooperation posture.”

Hicks, her attorney and Mueller’s office all declined comment for this story.

People who know Hicks, 29, say she’s been preparing for months for her sit-down with Mueller’s prosecutors. She’s hired as her attorney Robert Trout, a former assistant U.S. attorney and co-founder of a white-collar law firm that has represented other high-profile people mired in Washington scandals, including President Richard Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell during Watergate, Fawn Hall during Iran-Contra and President Bill Clinton’s paramour Monica Lewinsky.

Friends in touch with Hicks say they expect her to cooperate fully with the special counsel. “I think she’s smart enough and sensible enough that she knows she’d be doing no one any favors by lying — the best thing she can do for everyone is to tell the truth,” said one friend.

But the potential for her to be tripped up by investigators looms large given the complexity of the Russia probe and the sheer amount of time Hicks has spent by Trump’s side.

“It’s not going to be easy,” said a former Clinton White House aide who was questioned under oath during one of the many independent-counsel investigations that shadowed that Democratic administration. “It’s more of a root canal than a checkup.”

Hicks first came into Trump’s world in 2012, two years after graduating college, when the New York PR firm at which she was working tapped her to help one of its clients: Ivanka Trump. Donald Trump poached Hicks in October 2014, according to a GQ profile, and she’s listed as the point of contact that month on a news release announcing a new reservation system for the under-construction Trump hotel in Washington that would let people buy the right to book a room “should their chosen candidate become the next President of the United States.”

Hicks continued to work on Trump business operations in 2015, though her portfolio expanded into politics as her boss started hiring his first campaign staffers and early-primary state advisers ahead of his June entry into the presidential race. A McClatchy story that January — profiling the “sideshows of the Republican presidential campaign” — quotes Hicks explaining that Trump’s visits to Iowa and South Carolina in recent years had been done “to advance his goal to make America great again.”

In March 2015, during the span of nine days, Hicks is on a news release touting a new PGA golf tournament at Trump’s Los Angeles course, as the point person for the creation of Trump’s presidential exploratory committee and responding to Trump’s winter residence newspaper, the Palm Beach Post, to explain that he was looking at a run for the White House as a Republican, with plans to give up his NBC show “The Apprentice.”

After Trump officially entered the race in the late spring, with a controversial speech at Trump Tower, Hicks served as one of few core staffers and held a central role as the primary spokesperson for the campaign.

Hicks was dealing with Russia questions as early as December 2015, when she issued a statement on Trump’s behalf calling it “a great honor” after President Vladimir Putin praised him as “an outstanding and talented personality” and the “absolute leader of the presidential race.”

As the calendar flipped to 2016, Hicks started publicly crossing paths with several campaign associates who would later become central figures in Mueller’s Russia investigation.

In March 2016, Hicks joined Trump at a Washington Post editorial board meeting when he first announced a foreign policy advisory team that included Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty last month for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials.

Papadopoulos, according to Mueller’s court filings, emailed senior Trump campaign aides in late April, including then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, to tell them about calls he’d been getting “about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right.” A month later, in May 2016, Hicks went on the record to the Daily Mail to dismiss a story in the Israeli newspaper Maariv saying Trump was planning a trip after the GOP convention to Israel, Germany and Russia.

She also dealt with Page, who told the House Intelligence Committee during a closed-door hearing last month that he had emailed her, Lewandowski and senior aide J.D. Gordon in June 2016 to tell them he had been invited — after joining the campaign — to speak in Moscow.

A month later, Hicks made the first in a series of comments to reporters about the Page speech — in which he slammed the U.S. for a “hypocritical focus” on democracy and corruption in Russia — trying to explain it was not reflective of the views of the Trump campaign.

Hicks tangled with Roger Stone, the longtime Trump adviser and GOP dark-arts operative who has drawn scrutiny in the Russia investigation for seemingly predicting WikiLeaks’ October 2016 release of emails hacked from Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta.

And she also had to answer for Paul Manafort, whose role spearheading GOP delegate-counting efforts at the Republican National Convention and later as campaign chairman prompted a series of media inquiries about his past business relationships. The Washington Post reported this September that Manafort had emailed Hicks in April 2016 telling her to disregard the newspaper’s questions about his ties to Putin ally and Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska. Manafort was indicted last month along with his protégé, Rick Gates, on multiple charges of money laundering and fraud.

Hicks tried to avoid making waves on several other Russia-related stories as the general election campaign heated up.

She referred media questions in June 2016 to the Secret Service amid the first reports in The Washington Post that Russian government hackers had breached the Democratic National Committee. She pointed reporters back to Trump’s Twitter feed that July after he joked that Russian hackers should help to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing” from Clinton’s State Department account.

Two days after Trump’s election win, Hicks told the Times, the Washington Post and other media outlets that the campaign had no contacts with the Russian government. Those comments were quickly debunked, starting with the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, who told reporters that Moscow had been in touch with Trump’s “immediate entourage.” Subsequent reports have revealed Russian meetings with, among others, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Manafort, Page and Papadopoulos.

Hicks has also been present for key Russia-related moments since arriving at the White House. She was with Trump in Bedminster, New Jersey, during the early May weekend when he decided to fire Comey. The Washington Post in September also reported Hicks was in the Oval Office for a meeting the day before the FBI director was ousted when the president described a draft letter he and senior aide Stephen Miller had written spelling out at length Trump’s complaints about Comey.

According to the Post, Hicks, White House spokesman Josh Raffel and lawyers for Kushner tried unsuccessfully while flying home from Germany in July on Air Force One to urge Trump into a more transparent public response as news broke about the Trump Tower meeting his eldest son had organized during the campaign with a Russian lawyer who was offering dirt on Clinton.

Hicks was also the only Trump aide in the room when the president sat for a Times interview in July where he revealed he wished he hadn’t nominated Sessions to be attorney general because of his recusal over the Russia probe. He also questioned the political leanings and ethics of Sessions’ deputy Rod Rosenstein.

Mueller’s team has already interviewed others who worked in the White House —including former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former press secretary Sean Spicer — but almost no one can offer prosecutors the window into the past 2½ years that Hicks can.

“If she is forthcoming and cooperative, she can be very useful to them,” said Renato Mariotti, a former assistant U.S. attorney closely tracking the case, who added that Hicks can explain “what was normal” and “what wasn’t normal” during the course of a typical day in the Trump campaign and the White House.

“Her access to Trump is going to be important, what she saw, what she heard,” Mariotti added.

It will be interesting to see what comes of her testimony.

[GrumpyGran]

12 hours ago, fraurosena said:

(By the way, note how his wife always looks at her husband when he speaks. She did this during the whole testimony. Hmm. Where have we seen this wifely behavior before?)

Actually, I interpreted her looks as her knowing he is lying. She did not look like she was buying it. I think she's pissed. He's made a mess of their lives and she's going to keep a close eye on him. Those were not Gothard looks.

And the SS guy behind him looked like he was ready for a new assignment.

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Hope Hicks may hold the keys to Mueller's Russia puzzle"

  Reveal hidden contents

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is preparing to interview the woman who’s seen it all: Hope Hicks.

She’s been part of Donald Trump’s inner circle for years, first at Trump Tower and then as an omnipresent gatekeeper and fixer who could get emails or other communications directly to the boss during the 2016 campaign.

As a senior White House adviser and now as communications director, she’s been in the room for moments critical to Mueller’s probe, which has grown to include the president’s response to the Russia investigation itself.

Hicks’ history with Trump makes her one of the more useful witnesses for Mueller as he looks for insights into the president’s habits and moods. She also is one of the few people well positioned to recount the president’s reactions at various moments as the Russia scandal has sidetracked his presidency — including the Mueller appointment itself.

Mueller’s decision to request an interview with Hicks — who hasn’t been named in any criminal wrongdoing — also indicates he’s reached a critical point in the overall investigation, according to former prosecutors and veterans of past White House investigations. Typically, conversations with such senior-level aides are saved for near the end of a probe.

“Anytime you can get someone who is the right-hand person or who’s been around the primary target of an investigation, under oath, answering detailed questions, means you’ve progressed very far along in the investigation,” said Adam Goldberg, a former Clinton White House lawyer.

White House attorney Ty Cobb wouldn’t say specifically when Hicks planned to appear before Mueller’s team, though he did say he was “bullish” that all current White House aides, including Hicks, will have completed interviews with the special counsel “shortly after Thanksgiving.”

“Nothing about the White House’s commitment to fully cooperate with the special counsel, including doing necessary interviews, has changed,” Cobb said on Wednesday. “We continue to be in a full cooperation posture.”

Hicks, her attorney and Mueller’s office all declined comment for this story.

People who know Hicks, 29, say she’s been preparing for months for her sit-down with Mueller’s prosecutors. She’s hired as her attorney Robert Trout, a former assistant U.S. attorney and co-founder of a white-collar law firm that has represented other high-profile people mired in Washington scandals, including President Richard Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell during Watergate, Fawn Hall during Iran-Contra and President Bill Clinton’s paramour Monica Lewinsky.

Friends in touch with Hicks say they expect her to cooperate fully with the special counsel. “I think she’s smart enough and sensible enough that she knows she’d be doing no one any favors by lying — the best thing she can do for everyone is to tell the truth,” said one friend.

But the potential for her to be tripped up by investigators looms large given the complexity of the Russia probe and the sheer amount of time Hicks has spent by Trump’s side.

“It’s not going to be easy,” said a former Clinton White House aide who was questioned under oath during one of the many independent-counsel investigations that shadowed that Democratic administration. “It’s more of a root canal than a checkup.”

Hicks first came into Trump’s world in 2012, two years after graduating college, when the New York PR firm at which she was working tapped her to help one of its clients: Ivanka Trump. Donald Trump poached Hicks in October 2014, according to a GQ profile, and she’s listed as the point of contact that month on a news release announcing a new reservation system for the under-construction Trump hotel in Washington that would let people buy the right to book a room “should their chosen candidate become the next President of the United States.”

Hicks continued to work on Trump business operations in 2015, though her portfolio expanded into politics as her boss started hiring his first campaign staffers and early-primary state advisers ahead of his June entry into the presidential race. A McClatchy story that January — profiling the “sideshows of the Republican presidential campaign” — quotes Hicks explaining that Trump’s visits to Iowa and South Carolina in recent years had been done “to advance his goal to make America great again.”

In March 2015, during the span of nine days, Hicks is on a news release touting a new PGA golf tournament at Trump’s Los Angeles course, as the point person for the creation of Trump’s presidential exploratory committee and responding to Trump’s winter residence newspaper, the Palm Beach Post, to explain that he was looking at a run for the White House as a Republican, with plans to give up his NBC show “The Apprentice.”

After Trump officially entered the race in the late spring, with a controversial speech at Trump Tower, Hicks served as one of few core staffers and held a central role as the primary spokesperson for the campaign.

Hicks was dealing with Russia questions as early as December 2015, when she issued a statement on Trump’s behalf calling it “a great honor” after President Vladimir Putin praised him as “an outstanding and talented personality” and the “absolute leader of the presidential race.”

As the calendar flipped to 2016, Hicks started publicly crossing paths with several campaign associates who would later become central figures in Mueller’s Russia investigation.

In March 2016, Hicks joined Trump at a Washington Post editorial board meeting when he first announced a foreign policy advisory team that included Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty last month for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials.

Papadopoulos, according to Mueller’s court filings, emailed senior Trump campaign aides in late April, including then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, to tell them about calls he’d been getting “about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right.” A month later, in May 2016, Hicks went on the record to the Daily Mail to dismiss a story in the Israeli newspaper Maariv saying Trump was planning a trip after the GOP convention to Israel, Germany and Russia.

She also dealt with Page, who told the House Intelligence Committee during a closed-door hearing last month that he had emailed her, Lewandowski and senior aide J.D. Gordon in June 2016 to tell them he had been invited — after joining the campaign — to speak in Moscow.

A month later, Hicks made the first in a series of comments to reporters about the Page speech — in which he slammed the U.S. for a “hypocritical focus” on democracy and corruption in Russia — trying to explain it was not reflective of the views of the Trump campaign.

Hicks tangled with Roger Stone, the longtime Trump adviser and GOP dark-arts operative who has drawn scrutiny in the Russia investigation for seemingly predicting WikiLeaks’ October 2016 release of emails hacked from Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta.

And she also had to answer for Paul Manafort, whose role spearheading GOP delegate-counting efforts at the Republican National Convention and later as campaign chairman prompted a series of media inquiries about his past business relationships. The Washington Post reported this September that Manafort had emailed Hicks in April 2016 telling her to disregard the newspaper’s questions about his ties to Putin ally and Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska. Manafort was indicted last month along with his protégé, Rick Gates, on multiple charges of money laundering and fraud.

Hicks tried to avoid making waves on several other Russia-related stories as the general election campaign heated up.

She referred media questions in June 2016 to the Secret Service amid the first reports in The Washington Post that Russian government hackers had breached the Democratic National Committee. She pointed reporters back to Trump’s Twitter feed that July after he joked that Russian hackers should help to “find the 30,000 emails that are missing” from Clinton’s State Department account.

Two days after Trump’s election win, Hicks told the Times, the Washington Post and other media outlets that the campaign had no contacts with the Russian government. Those comments were quickly debunked, starting with the Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, who told reporters that Moscow had been in touch with Trump’s “immediate entourage.” Subsequent reports have revealed Russian meetings with, among others, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Manafort, Page and Papadopoulos.

Hicks has also been present for key Russia-related moments since arriving at the White House. She was with Trump in Bedminster, New Jersey, during the early May weekend when he decided to fire Comey. The Washington Post in September also reported Hicks was in the Oval Office for a meeting the day before the FBI director was ousted when the president described a draft letter he and senior aide Stephen Miller had written spelling out at length Trump’s complaints about Comey.

According to the Post, Hicks, White House spokesman Josh Raffel and lawyers for Kushner tried unsuccessfully while flying home from Germany in July on Air Force One to urge Trump into a more transparent public response as news broke about the Trump Tower meeting his eldest son had organized during the campaign with a Russian lawyer who was offering dirt on Clinton.

Hicks was also the only Trump aide in the room when the president sat for a Times interview in July where he revealed he wished he hadn’t nominated Sessions to be attorney general because of his recusal over the Russia probe. He also questioned the political leanings and ethics of Sessions’ deputy Rod Rosenstein.

Mueller’s team has already interviewed others who worked in the White House —including former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former press secretary Sean Spicer — but almost no one can offer prosecutors the window into the past 2½ years that Hicks can.

“If she is forthcoming and cooperative, she can be very useful to them,” said Renato Mariotti, a former assistant U.S. attorney closely tracking the case, who added that Hicks can explain “what was normal” and “what wasn’t normal” during the course of a typical day in the Trump campaign and the White House.

“Her access to Trump is going to be important, what she saw, what she heard,” Mariotti added.

It will be interesting to see what comes of her testimony.

I think nothing. My belief is that she's in this up to her neck. She will lie like a dog, pull a few "Session"s when cornered("uh, I can't remember"), and just play dumb. She's going to try to play the innocent, naive yet very attractive young woman card.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Senate Judiciary panel: Kushner had contacts about WikiLeaks, Russian overtures he did not disclose"

Spoiler

President Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner received and forwarded emails about WikiLeaks and a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite” that he kept from Senate Judiciary Committee investigators, according to panel leaders demanding that he produce the missing records.

Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) sent a letter to Kushner’s lawyer Abbe Lowell on Thursday charging that Kushner has failed to disclose several documents, records and transcripts in response to multiple inquiries from committee investigators.

In the letter, Grassley and Feinstein instruct Kushner’s team to turn over “several documents that are known to exist” because other witnesses in their probe already gave them to investigators. They include a series of “September 2016 email communications to Mr. Kushner concerning WikiLeaks,” which the committee leaders say Kushner then forwarded to another campaign official. Earlier this week, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. revealed that he had had direct communication with WikiLeaks over private Twitter messages during the campaign.

Committee leaders said Kushner also withheld from the committee “documents concerning a ‘Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite’ ” that he had forwarded to other campaign officials. And they said Kushner had been made privy to “communications with Sergei Millian” — a Belarusan American businessman who claims close ties to the Trumps and was the source of salacious details in a dossier about the president’s 2013 trip to Moscow — but failed to turn those records over to investigators.

“You also have not produced any phone records that we presume exist and would relate to Mr. Kushner’s communications,” Grassley and Feinstein wrote.

Grassley and Feinstein demanded that Kushner comply with their request for documents by Nov. 27, but stopped short of issuing a formal threat to subpoena those records if Kushner misses the deadline.

Kushner’s team last produced documents to the committee Nov. 3, according to Grassley and Feinstein, who stressed that what they received “appears to be incomplete.” They noted that their letter was an effort “to clarify the scope” of the committee’s request, after Lowell asked for more details about precisely what the committee was searching for.

In addition to the emails and records that Grassley and Feinstein noted as missing, the Judiciary Committee is waiting for Kushner to turn over promised transcripts from his interview with other committees. Kushner has spoken with investigators from both the Senate and House intelligence committees, but has not met with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Grassley and Feinstein also wrote that Kushner’s team “should produce” his SF-86 security clearance forms, which Kushner had to update on more than one occasion because he left out contacts with foreign individuals. Kushner’s team has argued that the forms are confidential — an argument the committee leaders do not accept.

The committee leaders also expressed general frustration that Kushner’s team had left out communications about individuals they had identified when asking Kushner to turn over his records.

Finally, the committee leaders asked Kushner’s team to search for a series of records of communications with and about former national security adviser Michael Flynn, including any that Flynn may have simply been copied on involving many of the Russian individuals and businesses that were known to have contact with members of Trump’s campaign team.

Maybe our holiday wish will come true and Jared will soon be sporting a striped jumpsuit.

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Senate Judiciary panel: Kushner had contacts about WikiLeaks, Russian overtures he did not disclose"

  Reveal hidden contents

President Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner received and forwarded emails about WikiLeaks and a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite” that he kept from Senate Judiciary Committee investigators, according to panel leaders demanding that he produce the missing records.

Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) sent a letter to Kushner’s lawyer Abbe Lowell on Thursday charging that Kushner has failed to disclose several documents, records and transcripts in response to multiple inquiries from committee investigators.

In the letter, Grassley and Feinstein instruct Kushner’s team to turn over “several documents that are known to exist” because other witnesses in their probe already gave them to investigators. They include a series of “September 2016 email communications to Mr. Kushner concerning WikiLeaks,” which the committee leaders say Kushner then forwarded to another campaign official. Earlier this week, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. revealed that he had had direct communication with WikiLeaks over private Twitter messages during the campaign.

Committee leaders said Kushner also withheld from the committee “documents concerning a ‘Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite’ ” that he had forwarded to other campaign officials. And they said Kushner had been made privy to “communications with Sergei Millian” — a Belarusan American businessman who claims close ties to the Trumps and was the source of salacious details in a dossier about the president’s 2013 trip to Moscow — but failed to turn those records over to investigators.

“You also have not produced any phone records that we presume exist and would relate to Mr. Kushner’s communications,” Grassley and Feinstein wrote.

Grassley and Feinstein demanded that Kushner comply with their request for documents by Nov. 27, but stopped short of issuing a formal threat to subpoena those records if Kushner misses the deadline.

Kushner’s team last produced documents to the committee Nov. 3, according to Grassley and Feinstein, who stressed that what they received “appears to be incomplete.” They noted that their letter was an effort “to clarify the scope” of the committee’s request, after Lowell asked for more details about precisely what the committee was searching for.

In addition to the emails and records that Grassley and Feinstein noted as missing, the Judiciary Committee is waiting for Kushner to turn over promised transcripts from his interview with other committees. Kushner has spoken with investigators from both the Senate and House intelligence committees, but has not met with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Grassley and Feinstein also wrote that Kushner’s team “should produce” his SF-86 security clearance forms, which Kushner had to update on more than one occasion because he left out contacts with foreign individuals. Kushner’s team has argued that the forms are confidential — an argument the committee leaders do not accept.

The committee leaders also expressed general frustration that Kushner’s team had left out communications about individuals they had identified when asking Kushner to turn over his records.

Finally, the committee leaders asked Kushner’s team to search for a series of records of communications with and about former national security adviser Michael Flynn, including any that Flynn may have simply been copied on involving many of the Russian individuals and businesses that were known to have contact with members of Trump’s campaign team.

Maybe our holiday wish will come true and Jared will soon be sporting a striped jumpsuit.

Lying liars who lie. Does Ivanka's holiday shopping include a divorce attorney? Maybe she can get Mommy's. If he's still alive and not dating Mommy.

[Howl]

DH was flipping through channels after

5 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

I think nothing. My belief is that she's in this up to her neck. She will lie like a dog, pull a few "Session"s when cornered("uh, I can't remember"), and just play dumb. She's going to try to play the innocent, naive yet very attractive young woman card.

 Jake Tapper and ended up (briefly) on Lou Dobbs (Fox) blathering on how Fusion GPS is an agent of Putin and framed Jared (I think).  Apparently it's obvious to everyone but us that it is the DEMOCRATS WHO COLLUDED WITH RUSSIA.  It was idiotic and toxic and about three minutes was more than enough.    

re: Hope Hicks

Papadopoulos should serve as a very current reminder that you NEVER, EVER lie to the Feds.  You can be as innocent as a newborn baby, but they WILL catch you in a lie and it can land you in prison. If she's been preparing for months, she's got to be concerned.  Will her lawyer accompany her as she gives testimony?

[onekidanddone]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Senate Judiciary panel: Kushner had contacts about WikiLeaks, Russian overtures he did not disclose"

Maybe our holiday wish will come true and Jared will soon be sporting a striped jumpsuit.

Two simple words seems to be their modus operandi.

I forgot

[GreyhoundFan]

This is a good opinion piece: "The Russia investigation’s spectacular accumulation of lies"

Spoiler

I spent part of my convalescence from a recent illness reading some of the comprehensive timelines of the Russia investigation (which indicates, I suppose, a sickness of another sort). One, compiled by Politico, runs to nearly 12,000 words — an almost book-length account of stupidity, cynicism, hubris and corruption at the highest levels of American politics.

The cumulative effect on the reader is a kind of nausea no pill can cure. Most recently, we learned about Donald Trump Jr.’s direct communications with WikiLeaks — which CIA Director Mike Pompeo has called “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia” — during its efforts to produce incriminating material on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. But this is one sentence in an epic of corruption. There is the narrative of a campaign in which high-level operatives believed that Russian espionage could help secure the American presidency, and acted on that belief. There is the narrative of deception to conceal the nature and extent of Russian ties. And there is the narrative of a president attempting to prevent or shut down the investigation of those ties and soliciting others for help in that task.

In all of this, there is a spectacular accumulation of lies. Lies on disclosure forms. Lies at confirmation hearings. Lies on Twitter. Lies in the White House briefing room. Lies to the FBI. Self-protective lies by the attorney general. Blocking and tackling lies by Vice President Pence. This is, with a few exceptions, a group of people for whom truth, political honor, ethics and integrity mean nothing.

What are the implications? President Trump and others in his administration are about to be hit by a legal tidal wave. We look at the Russia scandal and see lies. A skilled prosecutor sees leverage. People caught in criminal violations make more cooperative witnesses. Robert S. Mueller III and his A-team of investigators have plenty of stupidity and venality to work with. They are investigating an administration riven by internal hatreds — also the prosecutor’s friend. And Trump has already alienated many potential allies in a public contest between himself and Mueller. A number of elected Republicans, particularly in the Senate, would watch this showdown with popcorn.

But the implications of all this are not only legal and political. We are witnessing what happens when right-wing politics becomes untethered from morality and religion.

What does public life look like without the constraining internal force of character — without the firm ethical commitments often (though not exclusively) rooted in faith? It looks like a presidential campaign unable to determine right from wrong and loyalty from disloyalty. It looks like an administration engaged in a daily assault on truth and convinced that might makes right. It looks like the residual scum left from retreating political principle — the worship of money, power and self-promoted fame. The Trumpian trinity.

But also: Power without character looks like the environment for women at Fox News during the reigns of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly — what former network host Andrea Tantaros called “a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency and misogyny.” It looks like Breitbart News’s racial transgressiveness, providing permission and legitimacy to the alt-right. It looks like the cruelty and dehumanization practiced by Dinesh D’Souza, dismissing the tears and trauma of one Roy Moore accuser as a “performance.” And it looks like the Christian defense of Moore, which has ceased to be recognizably Christian.

This may be the greatest shame of a shameful time. What institution, of all institutions, should be providing the leaven of principle to political life? What institution is specifically called on to oppose the oppression of children, women and minorities, to engage the world with civility and kindness, to prepare its members for honorable service to the common good?

A hint: It is the institution that is currently — in some visible expressions — overlooking, for political reasons, credible accusations of child molestation. Some religious leaders are willing to call good evil, and evil good, in service to a different faith — a faith defined by their political identity. This is heresy at best; idolatry at worst.

Most Christians, of course, are not actively supporting Moore. But how many Americans would identify evangelical Christianity as a prophetic voice for human dignity and moral character on the political right? Very few. And they would be wrong.

Many of the people who should be supplying the moral values required by self-government have corrupted themselves. The Trump administration will be remembered for many things. The widespread, infectious corruption of institutions and individuals may be its most damning legacy.

The Politico article, linked under the spoiler, is a long read, but there is tons of information organized in a readable fashion.

[Rachel333]

I was in a waiting room today and Fox News was on. They were complaining about the Mueller investigation and marveling at how it could still be going on when there is absolutely no evidence that the Trump team colluded with Russia and the only evidence of actual collusion is from the Democrat side. 

[fraurosena]

This news contains a bombshell that is way more explosive than the headline suggests.

Kushner failed to disclose outreach from Putin ally to Trump campaign

Quote

President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, failed to disclose what lawmakers called a "Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite" involving a banker who has been accused of links to Russian organized crime, three sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

An email chain described Aleksander Torshin, a former senator and deputy head of Russia's central bank who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as wanting Trump to attend an event on the sidelines of a National Rifle Association convention in Louisville, Kentucky, in May 2016, the sources said. The email also suggests Torshin was seeking to meet with a high-level Trump campaign official during the convention, and that he may have had a message for Trump from Putin, the sources said.

Kushner rebuffed the request after receiving a lengthy email exchange about it between a West Virginia man and Trump campaign aide Rick Dearborn, the sources said.

Kushner responded to the email by telling Dearborn and the handful of other Trump campaign officials on the email that they should not accept requests from people who pretend to have contacts with foreign officials to aggrandize themselves, according Kushner's lawyer, Abbe Lowell. Dearborn currently serves as a deputy chief of staff in the White House.

"Pass on this," Kushner responded, according to a letter Lowell sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday evening. "A lot of people come claiming to carry messages. Very few we are able to verify. For now I think we decline such meetings."

However, Torshin was seated with the candidate's son, Donald Trump Jr., during a private dinner on the sidelines of a May 2016 NRA event during the convention in Louisville, according to an account Torshin gave to Bloomberg. Congressional investigators have no clear explanation for how that came to be, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Trump Jr.'s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Congressional committees and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

Spanish anti-corruption officials have identified Torshin as a "godfather" in the Russian mafia — something Torshin has denied.

The disclosure is the latest example of a senior Russian official seeking to make high-level contacts with the Trump campaign.

It comes after the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Kushner a letter this week accusing him of failing to disclose a series of documents pursuant to requests by Congressional investigators. Lowell said Kushner had responded to every request.

The source familiar with Kushner's document production said his team made clear to the committee that they were starting with documents he's provided to other congressional committees and were going to subsequently exchange other information.

One source familiar with Kushner's testimony before congressional intelligence committees said he specifically denied, under oath, that he was familiar with any attempts by WikiLeaks to contact the campaign. But, according to the source, Kushner was sent an email by Trump Jr. about his conversations on Twitter with WikiLeaks, which were first disclosed by the Atlantic this week. Kushner forwarded an email about the WikiLeaks conversations to communications director Hope Hicks, the source said. A second source familiar with Kushner's testimony did not dispute that account.

Lowell said in the letter to the judiciary committee chairman and ranking member Friday that the WikiLeaks document has been mischaracterized.

"Mr. Kushner had no contacts with that organization and was, along with others, forwarded an email from Donald Trump Jr. that has been widely reported and disseminated. There is no new document concerning Mr. Kushner," Lowell said.

"As to the document from Mr. Trump Jr., Mr. Kushner was one of many people to whom one email was sent, and he did not respond," Lowell said in the letter.

So, although Kushner says he rebuffed Torshin's request for contact at the NRA convention in Louisville, Junior ended up there sitting next to him.