The Russian Connection

[fraurosena]

Hmm. What ties does DeSantis have to Russia? Because he surely has them, if he wants to quash the Mueller investigation. It's either that, or the presidunce has intel on him.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I know, @fraurosena, I was just coming to post about this.  I'm guessing there will be a twitter tantrum tomorrow morning. Especially since Melania and John Kelly will have to have him up early tomorrow to go to Texas and disrupt everyone there.

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Well, Mueller's keeping busy and getting overtly closer to the presidunce's personal conduct. I wonder how TT is taking this news?

He is going to a rally in Missouri tomorrow boost this spirit, accuse the MSM of FAKE NEWS, and brag about the Hurricane. 

[fraurosena]

Don't you just love that the internet is forever?

 

[onekidanddone]

9 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Don't you just love that the internet is forever?

Silly @fraurosena, don't you know the internet and the world wide web is a lie spread by the vast left wing conspiracy? I know it is true because I read it on Alex Jones's web site... errr 

[GrumpyGran]

57 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Silly @fraurosena, don't you know the internet and the world wide web is a lie spread by the vast left wing conspiracy? I know it is true because I read it on Alex Jones's web site... errr 

except for the Wikileaks, which were bad, then good.

[candygirl200413]

GOP lawmaker proposes amendment to stop Mueller investigation after 180 days

Quote

A Republican lawmaker has put forth an amendment that would stop funding for the special counsel’s Russia investigation 180 days after it becomes law. 

The amendment from Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) would also prevent special counsel Robert Mueller from probing “matters occurring before June 2015,” which is the month Trump announced his presidential bid.

The amendment was submitted as part of the upcoming spending package the lower chamber is expected to weigh after the congressional recess.

Mueller, who was appointed special counsel in May, is responsible for investigating Russia’s interference in the presidential election and any potential ties between President Trump’s campaign staff and Moscow.

Again fuck anyone who supports this.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another good one from Jennifer Rubin: "What more proof of a secret Russian connection do we need?"

Spoiler

Evidence that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was pursuing a lucrative business deal with Russia and that his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, emailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personal spokesman to intervene raises the stakes in Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation substantially. The Post reports:

Cohen’s email to [Dmitry] Peskov provides an example of a Trump business official directly seeking Kremlin assistance in advancing Trump’s business interests. … Cohen said he discussed the deal three times with Trump and that Trump signed a letter of intent with the company on Oct. 28, 2015. He said the Trump company began to solicit designs from architects and discuss financing.

Ethics expert Norman Eisen warns: “Now we have a second group of emails from those in Trump’s orbit suggesting high-level outreach to Russia in and around the election season. Like the now-famous email exchange with Don Jr. about Russia’s ‘support for Mr. Trump,’ these new documents promising that ‘Putin’s team’ will ‘buy in’ on Trump raise the question of what the president knew of all this and when he knew it.” He tells me, “The emails add important additional evidence to the special counsel’s investigation, both as to possible collusion and as to obstruction of justice, inasmuch as they deepen the suspicion of a possible malign Trump motive for attempting to block the Russia investigation.”

Now, Cohen insists to The Post that the Trump Tower Moscow proposal was “not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.” But of course, we don’t know that and neither does he. Mueller, however, will be looking for evidence, as Eisen puts it, “that Trump or his agents actually agreed to better treatment for Putin and Russia in exchange for a present or future Trump Tower Moscow.” That would, he says, “go beyond collusion to outright corruption.” But even without a smoking gun showing a quid pro quo, the extent to which Trump was compromised — and may remain so — should concern Congress and the voters.

Was Trump trying to keep on Putin’s good side to advance his deal? Did he think Putin was someone the United States could do business with because he was seeking to do business with Russians? Trump’s effort to conceal his finances and mislead the public about business dealings, with a foe of the United States no less, may have affected his rhetoric and decisions in ways we have yet to discover.

As we learn more about Trump’s Russian dealings, his actions in trying to shut down the investigation become more understandable. “These new emails make the obstruction charge more substantial, because it gives heavier context to the cover-up,” says Fordham law professor Jed Shugerman. “There was fire under all that smoke. The firing of Comey was already impeachable as obstruction, but it’s politically more powerful in connecting the cover-up to real corruption.”

The extent of Trump’s political and legal jeopardy slowly comes into focus with new, daily discoveries. Clint Watts, a former FBI special agent (who has testified on Russian meddling) and now a fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, tells me, “Trump’s claims to have nothing to do with Russia are clearly false with revelations Cohen emailed the Kremlin directly to gain support for a Trump Tower Moscow. Trump’s laudatory comments of Putin came at times when Trump’s companies also sought Kremlin-assisted business help.” He continues, “Some will interpret Felix Sater’s comments as over-the-top salesmanship leading to no direct connections with the Kremlin. But why would Sater believe he would get ‘Putin on this program’ and that the Kremlin could get Trump elected?” Unless Sater chooses to take the Fifth Amendment, we won’t have to guess; Mueller’s team will no doubt question him and include the findings in his final report.

Some in Congress are disturbed that Trump himself has not been forthcoming or, indeed, has been misleading about his Russia dealings. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, tells me, “If this new report is true, why wasn’t this disclosed sooner? Why, like so many times before, are the American people forced to find out new details about the President’s relationship with Russians from strong investigative reporting instead of from the President himself?”

All of this comes in the context of Trump’s eagerness during the campaign for Russia to hack and release Hillary Clinton’s emails. “[The Cohen] emails came at a time when Russia’s hacking teams breached the DNC and numerous other American targets and Russian media began promoting Trump even though he seemed nothing more than a reality TV star looking for attention,” Watts observes. “For those that continue to deny Russian meddling, I can’t imagine what additional evidence they would need to know that Russia sought to elect Trump, and Team Trump wasn’t adverse to it, and maybe even hopeful for it.”

The interaction of Trump’s personal finances with foreign powers should also remind Congress and voters that Trump continues to receive money through his businesses from foreign governments, be they be in the form of bookings at his hotel or benefits derived from expedited trademarks. This is the essence of financial corruption — when someone benefits financially because of his official position. The extent to which it affects judgments on policy issues invariably remains murky. And in the case of Trump — who assumes anyone who likes him and treats him well is a “good guy” — the combination of personal finances and presidential powers is unconscionable.

Republicans have refused to address this issue in any serious way, allowing the conflicts to fester and Trump’s finances to remain opaque. Congress has the power to legislate — to disallow emoluments, require divestiture of businesses, bar relatives (with their own holdings) from serving in government and mandate disclosure of tax returns. In failing to take any action, Republicans are complicit in Trump’s debasement of the presidency and of our democracy.

So long as Republicans retain the majority in both houses, the problem will deepen. Either their indulgence of Trump or their majorities must go if we are to reestablish normal government and reject foreign corruption of our political system.

Sadly, the Repugs will continue to look the other way.

[GreyhoundFan]

Hmmm: "Kremlin says it got the Trump Tower email but didn’t respond"

Spoiler

MOSCOW — A spokesman for Russian President Vladi­mir Putin confirmed on Wednesday that he had received a request for assistance on a stalled Trump Tower real estate project in Moscow from a close aide to President Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, but added that the Kremlin did not respond to the letter.

“I confirm that among a number of emails one from Mr. Michael Cohen came to us. This indeed happened,” said Dmitry Peskov, a personal spokesman for Putin, during a telephone briefing with Russian and foreign journalists. “But as far as we don’t respond to business topics, this is not our job, we did not send a response.”

The stalled deal as described to congressional investigators by Cohen, a close aide to Trump since 2007 who now serves as one of his personal lawyers, was for a licensing project between Trump and a Moscow-based developer called I.C. Expert Investment. According to Cohen, Trump signed a letter of intent with the company in October 2015, but added that the project was later abandoned for “business reasons.”

Peskov said that the email described a “Russian company together with certain people [who] had the goal of creating a new skyscraper in Moscow city, but the deal is not moving forward, and they were asking for some recommendations and help advancing this deal.”

Peskov said that he had seen the email but that it was not given to Putin.

The email was sent in mid-January 2016 shortly before the first Republican Party primaries, as Trump stood out on the campaign trail for his warm rhetoric about the Russian president. It is one of a number of contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials that have become the subject of congressional inquiries and an investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III exploring Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Cohen has served as a personal lawyer for Trump since January. He did not have a formal role in the campaign, 

“Over the past few months I have been working with a company based in Russia regarding the development of a Trump Tower-Moscow project in Moscow City,” Cohen wrote to Peskov, according to a person familiar with the email. “Without getting into lengthy specifics, the communication between our two sides has stalled.

“As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance. I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon,” Cohen wrote.

The email was sent to a general inbox used by the Kremlin press service, which Peskov said receives thousands of emails pertaining to courts, law enforcement and business topics that the Kremlin regularly passes on. In a statement to Congress, Cohen said he was encouraged to write to Peskov by Felix Sater, a Russian American businessman who was serving as a broker on the deal.

Peskov, a former diplomat who speaks fluent English and Turkish, is seen as one of several gatekeepers to Putin and regularly travels with him on official trips. He was appointed head of the presidential press service during Putin's first term in 2000, and has served as a spokesman for Putin in various roles since.

 

[onekidanddone]

21 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Hmmm: "Kremlin says it got the Trump Tower email but didn’t respond"

Ah yes, and Putler is a shining example of truth.

[AmericanRose]

On ‎8‎/‎29‎/‎2017 at 8:57 AM, candygirl200413 said:

GOP lawmaker proposes amendment to stop Mueller investigation after 180 days

Again fuck anyone who supports this.

So there's plenty of time and money for Benghazi and e-mails, but foreign involvement in our elections? Not worth it!

Got it.

[GreyhoundFan]

Methinks the heat is turning up. "Mueller teams up with New York attorney general in Manafort probe"

Spoiler

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is working with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on its investigation into Paul Manafort and his financial transactions, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The cooperation is the latest indication that the federal probe into President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman is intensifying. It also could potentially provide Mueller with additional leverage to get Manafort to cooperate in the larger investigation into Trump’s campaign, as Trump does not have pardon power over state crimes.

The two teams have shared evidence and talked frequently in recent weeks about a potential case, these people said. One of the people familiar with progress on the case said both Mueller’s and Schneiderman’s teams have collected evidence on financial crimes, including potential money laundering.

No decision has been made on where or whether to file charges. “Nothing is imminent,” said one of the people familiar with the case.

Manafort has not been accused of any wrongdoing and has previously denied it. A spokesman for Manafort didn’t return phone calls seeking comment.

A representative for Mueller’s office declined to comment, as did the New York attorney general’s office.

People close to Manafort say the team has pressured him by approaching family members and former business partners. A number of other firms and people who have worked with him have received subpoenas.

Federal agents also conducted an early-morning raid at Manafort’s home in late July, seizing documents and other items.

Manafort did not resist the search, his spokesman Jason Maloni said at the time of the raid.

State and federal prosecutors believe the prospect of a presidential pardon could affect whether Manafort decides to cooperate with investigators in the federal Trump investigation, said one of the people familiar with the matter.

While Trump has not signaled any public intention to pardon Manafort or anyone else involved in the Russia investigations, the president has privately discussed his pardon powers with his advisers.

Mueller’s team has been looking into Manafort’s lobbying work and financial transactions, including real estate deals in New York.

Schneiderman has a contentious history with Trump. The president has mocked him relentlessly on social media and TV, denouncing him as a “hack” and “lightweight.”

The attorney general won a $25 million settlement last November after a lengthy investigation into fraudulent practices at Trump University. The president said he settled just to have the matter behind him, though his previous mantra was to never settle cases.

The New York prosecutor’s office also is looking into some of Trump’s business transactions and could potentially share those records with Mueller’s team, one of these people said. Those inquiries are in the preliminary stage.

 

[fraurosena]

Seth Abramson has just started another one of his highly informative threads, this time on Carter Page. Interesting stuff, as per usual. 

 

[GrumpyGran]

13 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“I confirm that among a number of emails one from Mr. Michael Cohen came to us.

What does this mean? He's confirming the one email, obviously. But it seems he's hinting at others specifically from Trump's team. "a number of emails"? The article says that email box receives lots of emails for a variety of reasons, not just "a number of emails."

12 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Methinks the heat is turning up. "Mueller teams up with New York attorney general in Manafort probe"

  Hide contents

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is working with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on its investigation into Paul Manafort and his financial transactions, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The cooperation is the latest indication that the federal probe into President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman is intensifying. It also could potentially provide Mueller with additional leverage to get Manafort to cooperate in the larger investigation into Trump’s campaign, as Trump does not have pardon power over state crimes.

The two teams have shared evidence and talked frequently in recent weeks about a potential case, these people said. One of the people familiar with progress on the case said both Mueller’s and Schneiderman’s teams have collected evidence on financial crimes, including potential money laundering.

No decision has been made on where or whether to file charges. “Nothing is imminent,” said one of the people familiar with the case.

Manafort has not been accused of any wrongdoing and has previously denied it. A spokesman for Manafort didn’t return phone calls seeking comment.

A representative for Mueller’s office declined to comment, as did the New York attorney general’s office.

People close to Manafort say the team has pressured him by approaching family members and former business partners. A number of other firms and people who have worked with him have received subpoenas.

Federal agents also conducted an early-morning raid at Manafort’s home in late July, seizing documents and other items.

Manafort did not resist the search, his spokesman Jason Maloni said at the time of the raid.

State and federal prosecutors believe the prospect of a presidential pardon could affect whether Manafort decides to cooperate with investigators in the federal Trump investigation, said one of the people familiar with the matter.

While Trump has not signaled any public intention to pardon Manafort or anyone else involved in the Russia investigations, the president has privately discussed his pardon powers with his advisers.

Mueller’s team has been looking into Manafort’s lobbying work and financial transactions, including real estate deals in New York.

Schneiderman has a contentious history with Trump. The president has mocked him relentlessly on social media and TV, denouncing him as a “hack” and “lightweight.”

The attorney general won a $25 million settlement last November after a lengthy investigation into fraudulent practices at Trump University. The president said he settled just to have the matter behind him, though his previous mantra was to never settle cases.

The New York prosecutor’s office also is looking into some of Trump’s business transactions and could potentially share those records with Mueller’s team, one of these people said. Those inquiries are in the preliminary stage.

 

This looks good, eh? Karma calling! 

[fraurosena]

50 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

What does this mean? He's confirming the one email, obviously. But it seems he's hinting at others specifically from Trump's team. "a number of emails"? The article says that email box receives lots of emails for a variety of reasons, not just "a number of emails."

Good catch, @GrumpyGran! The wording is quite ambivalent, isn't it? It does suggest they got 'a number of emails' from the toddler's cronies. It seems he really, really wanted a tower with his name on it in Moskow.

But I do think the tower was to be the proverbial 'cherry on top'. The REAL important deal, I believe at least, were those Rosneft shares mentioned in the Seth Abramson thread posted above. 

[GrumpyGran]

41 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Good catch, @GrumpyGran! The wording is quite ambivalent, isn't it? It does suggest they got 'a number of emails' from the toddler's cronies. It seems he really, really wanted a tower with his name on it in Moskow.

But I do think the tower was to be the proverbial 'cherry on top'. The REAL important deal, I believe at least, were those Rosneft shares mentioned in the Seth Abramson thread posted above. 

Yes, that was interesting. If it's true, he took money from this Russian company in exchange for a promise to try to loosen sanctions. And if I understood correctly, this happened after he was elected?

I want to know if this happened because it explains a lot. This man who can't shut up simply will not say anything negative about Russia. This may be what Putin holds over his head.

[fraurosena]

1 minute ago, GrumpyGran said:

Yes, that was interesting. If it's true, he took money from this Russian company in exchange for a promise to try to loosen sanctions. And if I understood correctly, this happened after he was elected?

I want to know if this happened because it explains a lot. This man who can't shut up simply will not say anything negative about Russia. This may be what Putin holds over his head.

The way I understand it at the moment, on 7 December the Rosneft deal was closed. 19,5% of the largest oil company in Russia was sold off to an anonymous buyer. Carter Page met with Rosneft CEO's on 8 December. The timing is extremly suggestive, and it now looks like the shares could have been sold to the then presidunce-elect. So if this is true (which we don't know for a fact yet, no matter how suggestive it seems) then the deal was brokered during  the presidential campaign, and finalized after the elections.

If any irrefutable evidence is found that the tangerine toddler (or one of his companies) was the anonymous buyer of (part of) those Rosneft shares, then it is also irrefutable evidence of collusion and corruption. Any additional evidence of kompromat (the Miss Universe competition in 2002, or the one in 2013) and evidence about that Moskow tower deal will only seal his fate more conclusively.

And remember, these are only the things we the public know. You can bet the intelligence agencies and the Mueller investigation know much, much more.

[fraurosena]

More details on who's joined the Mueller investigation.

Good to know they have Bharara's approval.

[onekidanddone]

3 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

This looks good, eh? Karma calling! 

Karma may be calling, but I want the fucking phone answered. TT is getting more and more insane and dangerous. Take the codes away from already.  

[fraurosena]

This article is from the 13th, but I don't think we've talked about this here yet. Disclaimer: I don't know the reputation of this news site, but they do link to Bloomberg and Vanity and various other reputable sources, so it seems legit.

EXCLUSIVE: Emails Say Whole Trump Family Participated In SoHo Hotel Criminal Enterprise

Spoiler

It’s beginning to look like Special Counsel Mueller will catch President Trump and his three eldest children committing the first ever reality TV show assisted financial crime, all collaborating in a $350 million dollar bank fraud.

Three weeks ago, Bloomberg News reported that Mueller is focusing on the lower Manhattan Trump Soho Hotel deal and Vanity Fair reported today that new emails reveal the Trump family’s participation in a criminal enterprise there.

Tonight, we’ve obtained leaked copies of those emails which are embedded below.

These leaked emails are the first evidence that proves that Donald Trump and his family personally knew of Felix Sater’s felony crime and participated in a meeting about covering it up.

Donald Trump hawked the Trump SoHo Condo Hotel extensively on NBC’s The Apprentice, but committed a bank fraud to keep the project afloat the following year, and dragged his family into it.

The newly leaked emails from the Sapir Organization’s attorney document a “time sensitive and should not be pushed back” meeting the Trumps demanded on January 21st, 2008.

The meeting happened soon after the New York Times publicly revealed in mid-December 2007 that the Trump Organization’s investor and SoHo partner Bayrock Company’s manager-member Felix Sater had secretly entered financial felony plea deal in the late 1990s.

Donald Trump, his daughter Ivanka and sons Don Jr. and Eric collectively demanded and presumably attended the important meeting to chew out Bayrock about the project, and specifically Felix Sater about his felony past.

We know because Sater wrote Bayrock’s investors complaining that his own company wanted to fire him after meeting the Trumps.

Hiding a financial felon’s involvement is a form of criminal bank fraud. The Trump SoHo project ultimately failed and was foreclosed by lenders.

Instead of informing banks and buyers about Sater’s criminal past, as was the Trump Organization’s obligation, the Trump family proceeded to keep the felony secret as Sater engaged in a scheme to hide his interests in the deal.

The Trump family proceeded to squeeze their partner Sater to take his financial stake in the deal.

There are major legal ramifications for the Trump-Sater meeting because the project is already the subject of an ongoing RICO civil trial by a whistleblower who worked inside the Bayrock Company; that is, the Trump SoHo hotel is being accused of operating a criminal enterprise.

These kinds of RICO cases are subject to enforcement in both civil lawsuits with tripled damages and criminal law, with jail and restitution to the victims as the penalty.

Here is the smoking gun email showing that the Trump family and all partners in the venture attended the meeting (full chain embedded below) to discuss Sater’s felony past, which they then kept secret:

>email copies<

The newly leaked email chain also confirms a major German public television report on Trump SoHo that the Trumps participated in concealing a felon’s association in their hotel.

ZDF interviewed financial fraud expert Professor William Black, who was told the fact pattern of the Trump SoHo frauds — without the names of the participants — and he concluded based on their thorough reporting that the first family committed a bank fraud that violated the federal RICO Act.

The information about Trump and Sater defrauding banks has come to light only because attorneys Fred Oberlander and Richard Lerner refused to back down. They filed and are litigating two of the civil cases against the Trump SoHo’s developers.

Federal judges and prosecutors threatened them with prosecution for revealing that Sater was given an illegally light sentence for his crime, in secret. The judges even issued an order that gagged them from telling Congress about the judges’ own misconduct, but the attorneys persisted and are pursuing a civil law claim against the developers of Trump SoHo.

The attorney Richard Lerner has since written an extensive, fact-checked article about the harmful effects of secret sentencing in Law360 based on his wild experiences in the Trump SoHo case with Sater, who became an FBI informant against his mafia partners in the scheme.

The Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is America’s top anti-mafia federal law and the threshold for violating the law is merely participating in a business which engages in a pattern of illegal or fraudulent behavior.

New York state also has a RICO law, which is not subject to the powers of the Presidential pardon and could be enforced by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, alongside any federal investigation.

“The statute of limitations on RICO acts lasts for ten years from the last known act,” for RICO based upon bank fraud, according to lawyer Joshua Gold, who is licensed to practice in New York since 1999. “These emails are less than ten years old.”

Even though Trump’s participation in the project dates back to far more than ten years ago — and was far more than just licensing the family’s brand name — only criminal acts like hiding his partner’s felony count, start the clock ticking on the ten years a prosecutor could call forth a criminal case on the matter.

During Season 5 of NBC’s “The Apprentice” Donald Trump awarded a job at the Trump SoHo Hotel to winner Sean Yazbek in February 2006.

Later, Donald Trump pitched the Trump SoHo Condo Hotel project on The Apprentice in early September 2007. He launched the boxy tower shortly thereafter according to the New York Daily News with “servers in masks pour champagne while Cirque du Soleil performed. The reigning Miss USA attended.”

The following year when major Wall Street firms failed, killing real estate lending markets for years, Donald Trump didn’t want to scare his lenders by admitting the truth, but he stopped hawking the SoHo deal on TV.

By the end of 2009, the New York Times reported that the condotel market had been dead as far back as 2007, giving Donald Trump a lot of incentive to conceal crucial information that would cause his lenders to repossess his tower then.

Eventually, lenders did foreclose on the property and sold off the Trump SoHo condo after 2/3rds of the units remained unsold in 2014.

In Trump SoHo’s three active civil litigations which includes one RICO lawsuit, and a suit Vanity Fair reports is related to an official from a former-Soviet Republic who bought units at Trump Soho, the Trump family is not a named defendant, but this new evidence could subject them to criminal liability.

The email with Sater’s after-action report that described the meeting with the Trump family in detail was released last October in Forbes. It revealed Trump’s future Senior Advisor describing his scheme to defraud the banks to his project’s Icelandic equity investors from Stodir (aka FL Group), who themselves went bankrupt only 9 months later.

Sater intricately recounted the story of Bayrock’s General Counsel Julius Schwarz's attempt to immediately force him out of Bayrock over the revelation of his felony conviction which he described as “damaging.”

One of the Bayrock Company whistleblowers suing Trump’s partners for RICO violations learned that Sater financed the SoHo hotel with money from Vladimir Putin, via Icelandic investors.

Special Counsel Mueller will have his hands full unraveling all of the Russian money connections to the Trump SoHo project.

It’s increasingly looking like there is substantive proof of criminal ties between the Trump family and Felix Sater, which may deliver the evidence of crime prosecutors seek to flip witnesses against larger targets.

Theoretically, even Donald Trump’s children could turn into the state’s witnesses against their father, the President because he dragged them into the Trump SoHo bank fraud scheme and cover up of their shady real estate deal partners’ financial crimes.

Here are the two sets of smoking gun emails, with the exclusive email chain linked here and on the left:

>emails/links<

Not only does this fall under federal RICO law, but NY RICO law also applies, which does not fall under the presidunce's pardon power. And of course there are also ties to Russia, and Putin in particular.

There really seems to be no end of Russian connections.

[Howl]

Mueller has been called a brilliant strategist, and I think he is pardon-proofing the investigation and Congress-proofing it as well, to the extent that he can.  They are likely at a point that they know who to squeeze and how hard. 

Good to see Preet Bharara cheering from the sidelines and I'll bet he's having  discussions with the Mueller investigation because he knows a LOT.  Honestly, Preet's the sexiest non-sexy man evah! if you know what I mean. 

I'll bet this whole thing is raising the mean income of lawyers in DC and NY.  Lots and lots of billable hours. 

[fraurosena]

Well of course they did. 

Trump Attorneys Lay Out Arguments Against Obstruction-of-Justice Probe to Mueller

Quote

Lawyers for Donald Trump have met several times with Special Counsel Robert Mueller in recent months and submitted memos arguing that the president didn’t obstruct justice by firing former FBI chief James Comey and calling into question Mr. Comey’s reliability as a potential witness, people familiar with the matter said.

One memo submitted to Mr. Mueller by the president’s legal team in June laid out the case that Mr. Trump has the inherent authority under the constitution to hire and fire as he sees fit and therefore didn’t obstruct justice when he fired Mr. Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in May, these people said.

Another memo submitted the same month outlined why they believe Mr. Comey would make an unsuitable witness, calling him prone to exaggeration, unreliable in congressional testimony and the source of leaks to the news media, these people said.

The legal arguments and meetings offer a first detailed look at the interplay between the high-profile, wide-ranging investigation and the team that is representing the president since the special counsel was appointed by the Justice Department in May.

The White House referred questions to Ty Cobb, the president’s special counsel. Mr. Cobb said: “We have great respect for the special counsel. Out of respect for his process we will not be discussing incremental responses.”

The federal probe began by looking into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race and whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian operatives to help him win. It was initially led by Mr. Comey as director of the FBI.

After Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey on May 9, Mr. Mueller was appointed by the Justice Department with a broad remit to investigate not just possible coordination but “any matters” that arose from the investigation. That now includes whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice by attempting to alter the course of the investigation, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.

Mr. Trump has given conflicting reasons why he dismissed Mr. Comey. At first, he said it was in response to advice from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who concluded in a memo for the president that Mr. Comey was an ineffective leader.

Two days after the firing, Mr. Trump told NBC News that the decision to fire Mr. Comey was his alone and that when he did it, “I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.”

In giving the memos to Mr. Mueller, the president’s lawyers hoped to get a swift conclusion to the obstruction of justice piece of the investigation and, potentially, an exoneration of the president, the people said.

The obstruction-related memo advanced other arguments beyond the matter of the president’s executive powers, citing case law that the lawyers believed buttressed the contention that Mr. Trump had not obstructed justice.

Mr. Mueller didn’t offer a response to that memo or the arguments pertaining to Mr. Comey’s reliability as a witness, people familiar with the matter said. There is no indication he accepted the lawyers’ reasoning or has dropped the part of his inquiry that is looking at any obstruction of justice by the president.

John Dowd, who now heads the president’s outside legal team, said: “I just don’t think it’s appropriate to discuss my communications with Special Counsel Mueller. Why should I rupture a relationship with the special counsel?”

A spokesman for Mr. Mueller declined to comment. Mr. Comey declined to comment.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion between his campaign and Russia. The Russian government also denied meddling after U.S. intelligence agencies released their findings that the Kremlin had engaged in a campaign that included hacking political party committees and attempting to break into state and local election machinery. Moscow also was accused of spreading false stories about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to help Mr. Trump’s election prospects.

Experts said the Trump team’s outreach to Mr. Mueller wasn’t unusual as a tactic in a legal defense. For defense lawyers, “your objective is to find out what they’ve got and get ahead of them,” said Julie Rose O’Sullivan, a Georgetown Law professor who was part of the independent counsel’s office investigating the Whitewater matter in Bill Clinton’s presidency. “You definitely want some contact so you get a sense of where it’s going and take their temperature.

I just love it that Mueller saw through their little scheme to find out what he's got on the presidunce and chose not to respond to the memo's. Mueller is just way out of their league. And thank goodness for that!

[fraurosena]

Raging Rufus! They have Manafort's notes... and they're a doozy.

Manafort Notes From Russian Meet Contain Cryptic Reference to ‘Donations

Spoiler

Paul Manafort's notes from a controversial Trump Tower meeting with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign included the word "donations," near a reference to the Republican National Committee, two sources briefed on the evidence told NBC News.

The references, which have not been previously disclosed, elevated the significance of the June 2016 meeting for congressional investigators, who are focused on determining whether it included any discussion of donations from Russian sources to either the Trump campaign or the Republican Party.

It is illegal for foreigners to donate to American elections. The meeting happened just as Trump had secured the Republican nomination for president, and he was considered a longshot to win. Manafort was the campaign chairman at the time.

Manafort's notes, typed on a smart phone and described by one briefed source as cryptic, were turned over to the House and Senate intelligence committees and to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. They contained the words "donations," and "RNC" in close proximity, the sources said.

Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni told NBC News that "it is 100 percent false to suggest this meeting included any discussion of donations from Russian sources to either the Trump campaign or the Republican Party. Mr. Manafort provided the Senate Intelligence Committee with the facts and his notes so this speculation and conjecture is pointless and wrong."

As NBC News has reported, Mueller is closely scrutinizing the Trump Tower meeting, which was hosted by President Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., and was attended by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, along with Manafort.

They gathered in an office to hear from Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who has represented clients with links to the Kremlin.

She was accompanied by Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who testified recently before a grand jury in Washington, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told NBC News.

Akhmetshin declined to comment on his testimony. A spokesman for Manafort did not respond to a request for comment.

NBC News reported earlier this week that Mueller's investigators are keenly focused on President Donald Trump's role in crafting a response to the New York Times article that first disclosed the meeting.

The sources told NBC News that prosecutors want to know what Trump knew about the meeting and whether he sought to conceal its purpose.

The president dictated a statement sent out under the name of his son that was drafted aboard Air Force One, people familiar with the matter have said.

It described the 2016 meeting as "a short introductory meeting."

"I asked Jared and Paul to stop by," the statement said. "We primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children that was active and popular with American families years ago and was since ended by the Russian government, but it was not a campaign issue at the time and there was no follow up."

According to the New York Times, he added: "I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand."

In fact, as subsequent emails and interviews revealed, the meeting was scheduled with a promise from a Russian oligarch to convey damaging information about Hillary Clinton and her campaign.

In a June 3, 2016, email, publicist Rob Goldstone told Trump Jr. that a Russian prosecutor had "offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton] … and would be very useful to your father."

Goldstone said he was representing Aras Agalarov, a Russian businessman with close ties to Vladimir Putin.

Trump Jr. responded, "f it's what you say, I love it."

Emails show that the following day, Goldstone and Trump Jr. began arranging the Trump Tower meeting.

Veselnitskaya told NBC News that she did not provide any meaningful information about Clinton.

A person familiar with Mueller's strategy said that whether or not Trump made a "knowingly false statement" is now of interest to prosecutors.

"Even if Trump is not charged with a crime as a result of the statement, it could be useful to Mueller's team to show Trump's conduct to a jury that may be considering other charges," the person said. 

 

TPM's editor has an op-ed about them:

My Theory on Manafort’s Notes

Spoiler

Fascinating bit of news on the Manafort front from NBC News. Manafort’s notes from the infamous Don Jr./Trump Tower meeting with that Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer contain a reference to “donations” which are “near a reference to the Republican National Committee,” as the NBC report puts it. The report also says that the meaning of the notes is “cryptic.”

Now, it goes without saying that it is quite difficult to divine the meaning of stray notes, the contents of which we’re hearing about at one of two stages of remove. The reference to their being “cryptic” doesn’t surprise me. Often when I take notes in a meeting I just jot down stray words that catch my attention in the moment. Often I don’t even remember when I meant unless I review and write up the notes within a short period of time. However, in a meeting with a foreign national, who’s there as part of her country’s stated support for Donald Trump and either offering dirt on Hillary Clinton or pushing to change US law, it’s fairly hard to think of an innocent or even legal reason why anything about “donations” would come up in the discussion.

Let’s consider a few possibilities.

It’s possible that this was just a ‘dangle’, a phony offer or discussion meant to gauge the Trump campaign’s openness to work with Russia or simply to compromise people at the top of the campaign. It’s also possible that “donations” was about potential donations to the RNC – what the proximity of the reference to the RNC seems to indicate. If Russia was going to siphon money into the Trump campaign, the RNC is hardly the stealthiest way to do it. And there have been consistent unconfirmed reports that a major right-wing activist group received millions of dollars from Russia which were then used in field operations supporting Trump.

Donations, albeit indirectly, to Trump are the juiciest possibility. But here’s the possibility that intrigues me the most. The Trump staffers in that meeting say it was a bust and nothing came of it. According to Donald Trump, Jr., the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, said she knew about illicit money transactions by the DNC. But when he asked whether she had evidence to back it up, she said the Trump team would have to do the research themselves. But the Russian-American lobbyist who was in the meeting, Rinat Akhmetshin, told a different or at least more detailed story. He said Veseknitskaya had non-public documents that proved or at least suggested DNC wrongdoing.

Here’s a snippet from an AP interview with Akhmetshin …

Veselnitskaya brought with her a plastic folder with printed-out documents that detailed what she believed was the flow of illicit funds to the Democrats, Akhmetshin said. Veselnitskaya presented the contents of the documents to the Trump associates and suggested that making the information public could help the campaign, he said.

“This could be a good issue to expose how the DNC is accepting bad money,” Akhmetshin recalled her saying.

Now, if making the information public could help Trump, that had to mean the information wasn’t already public. That almost certainly means they were acquired by illegitimate means. There is at least some evidence that the hacks themselves focused on people in the committee’s finance department.

In any case, we seem to be on pretty strong ground with the assumption that questions about the DNC’s finances and the contributions it received were a subject of discussion at the meeting. There’s good reason to believe it was the entirety of the discussion. Don Jr. and the other Trump staff at the meeting say so. They just say Veselnitskaya said she didn’t have any proof. But Akhmetshin says she did or at least that she had a dossier of documents she said contained key details. It’s still guesswork. But it seems the most logical explanations of Manafort referencing “donations” would be a reference to this conversation about secret documents about the DNC’s finances.

With all that, was the meeting really such a bust? We know that Russian intelligence operatives already had a huge cache of documents and emails tied to the DNC’s finances and fundraising. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to think Veseknitskaya brought some of them with her from Russia. It’s by far the most logical read – either that she had some of them and was ready to share or that she was there to test the Trump campaign’s interest in such documents. (It’s possible that the Trumpers readiness to do business with this clandestine outreach was all she was there to confirm.)  The man who set up the meeting between Don Jr. and Veselnitskaya said the offer was tied to the Russian government’s support for Trump’s campaign. If Veselnitskaya had documents, what happened to them? Did the Trump team get them? Did they refuse to take them? I don’t think we have close to the full story yet about what happened at that meeting.

 

[GrumpyGran]

28 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

they believe Mr. Comey would make an unsuitable witness, calling him prone to exaggeration, unreliable in congressional testimony and the source of leaks to the news media, these people said.

 Goodness, these people do project, don't they?

[fraurosena]

Ari Melber has an informative thread concerning pardons and local prosecutions. Oh, and don't worry, it's quite short and nowhere near Seth Abramson's usual thread-length.