The Russian Connection 2

[Audrey2]

4 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Who paid for this?  What parent on Rufus's green earth would want to pimp their own kid like this?

The Trump Davidians would be honored to have their child chosen/ sacrificed for their Beloved Leader.

[GrumpyGran]

14 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Who paid for this?  What parent on Rufus's green earth would want to pimp their own kid like this?

A Trumphumper. I would be interested to know if Faux or Dumpy's campaign made it. I better not have paid for it.

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

I would guess he's very paranoid right now. All he can do, other than the usual bullying and insulting is say what's happening isn't happening.

We could add "Cleopatra, Queen of Denial" to our list of nicknames for him.

 

45 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

 What parent on Rufus's green earth would want to pimp their own kid like this?

I'd imagine that that piece of work from the "Chelsea Instragram" thread would be thrilled to participate. She threw one of her girls a Drumpf themed birthday party. She'd pose all four girls with huge MAGA bows (since they wear bows more than hats) and some obnoxious matchy outfits.

[onekidanddone]

9 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'd imagine that that piece of work from the "Chelsea Instragram" thread would be thrilled to participate. She threw one of her girls a Drumpf themed birthday party. She'd pose all four girls with huge MAGA bows (since they wear bows more than hats) and some obnoxious matchy outfits.

All I keep seeing are the little girls from the Shining.  "Come play with us Danny. Forever and ever".

[Howl]

So back to Russia and our very dear friend and No. 1 Broski!  V. Putin and  NATO.  V. Putin would love to nuke NATO and dispense with the European Union.  So guess who's not so much into NATO?  Or is he?  Or isn't he?  Trump's kind of flip flopping around on the issue.   

Where Does Trump Really Stand on NATO's Article Five?

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

Page is a legend in his own mind.  One has to wonder who finally passed his dissertation, since the original readers bailed -- a giant red flag that even the revised dissertation was a train wreck.  I'm betting that whoever passed the dissertation is connected with Russians, somehow. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"12 things we can definitively say the Russia investigation has uncovered so far"

Spoiler

To review everything we've learned about Russia this year, let's rewind to May. That was a big month President Trump, who fired his FBI director because he thought “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story."

His own administration didn’t see it that way. A few weeks later, the No. 2 at the Justice Department, Rod J. Rosenstein, appointed a special counsel to ramp up the FBI’s existing investigation into “this Russia thing.”

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's mission: Look into how Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election, whether it colluded with Trump’s campaign, and investigate anything else he sees fit to investigate.

Congress launched its own parallel investigations into Russian interference, and lawmakers haven’t ruled out collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Meanwhile, journalists have been revealing connections between the campaign and Russia on a sometimes near-daily basis.

So what have all these ongoing Russia investigations found so far?

A lot, but at the same time, no one big thing we can point to that indicates a sure direction of the investigation. “What we can take away is we are in the midst of a major investigation with foreign policy ramifications,” said Jeffrey Jacobovitz, a white-collar lawyer who has defended Clinton administration officials.

Here are all the things we know about the Russia investigation to date, ranked in order of their perceived magnitude:

1. Two Trump officials pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about their connections and conversations with Russians.

Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying about his attempts to connect the campaign and Russia; top campaign officials knew he was reaching out to Russia.

And, the biggie: Former national security adviser Michael Flynn admitted he lied to the FBI about the nature of his conversations during the transition with the Russian ambassador to the United States. (The two talked about political issues, such as U.S. sanctions on Russia, which Flynn originally denied.)

Now Flynn is cooperating with the special counsel, which could be a big deal. As The Washington Post’s Rosalind Helderman, Tom Hamburger and Karen DeYoung reported: “If anyone on the campaign coordinated with the Russians in their efforts to interfere with the election, Flynn would probably have been aware.”

2. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, were also indicted in Mueller’s investigation. They pleaded not guilty to charges related to money laundering and making false statements related to their past work advising a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine.

3. The special counsel is looking into the president himself, specifically whether Trump obstructed justice by abruptly firing former FBI director James B. Comey.

4. Trump’s lawyer said the president knew Flynn had probably given the FBI inaccurate information about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Trump found this out a few weeks before Comey claims the president asked him to go easy on Flynn. Legal experts say if Trump knew Flynn had lied, it could explain why he allegedly asked Comey to “let this go.” Trump denies making the request.

5. Comey all but accused the president of obstructing justice. He testified under oath to Congress that he believes Trump fired him because of the Russia investigation. “It’s my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation — I was fired in some way to change, or the endeavor was to change, the way the Russia investigation was being conducted,” Comey said. “That is a very big deal.”

6. Emails revealed Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Manafort met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer in Trump Tower in New York during the campaign on the premise that she had dirt on Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Legal experts told The Fix that this likely crossed the legal line on collusion.

7. When that meeting became public knowledge in 2017, Trump dictated his son’s misleading statement on what it was about, telling him to say it was primarily to discuss policies on Russian adoptions. It’s still not clear if the president knew about the meeting when it happened.

8. Various members of the Trump campaign and administration have repeatedly not been forthcoming about their Russia connections. Two high-profile examples: Kushner didn’t include his meetings with Russians on his security clearance, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to retestify to Congress that he did have conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the campaign despite indicating under oath he hadn’t.

“They either denied or omitted their meetings with Russians,” Jacobovitz said.

9. During the transition, Kushner suggested establishing secure communication lines between Trump officials and the Kremlin via Russian diplomatic facilities. That’s according to the Russian ambassador, who relayed this request to his bosses in Moscow.

10. Mueller has interviewed two dozen current and former Trump aides, including Kushner, former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former press secretary Sean Spicer and current communications director Hope Hicks.

11. Trump Jr. exchanged private messages with WikiLeaks during the campaign, at the same time the website was publishing hacked emails of Democratic National Committee staffers and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

12. The Russians extensively used Facebook and Twitter to interfere with the election.

Here’s one big thing we don’t know: whether any of this implicates the president or his campaign. It might. Or it might not. And we may never uncover a smoking gun, legal experts say.

“I think it’s unlikely to be the kind of case where there’s one event or one development that is so significant that it blows the story out of the water,” said Jens David Ohlin, vice dean of Cornell Law School. “It’s a slow accumulation of dozens of different events, conversations and moments that are pieced together. And then, when you look at the whole story, you say: ‘Hey, wait a minute. Something is going on here.’ ”

Throughout all of this, Trump has maintained this entire Russia investigation is a hoax.

... < tweet from twitler >

He also hasn’t fully acknowledged the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia to interfere, saying he believes Putin when he claims Russia didn’t meddle.

Ohlin says he has a sense that the special counsel’s office is in the middle of the investigation, and we could have a long way to go before the outstanding questions are answered: “I’d say that the investigation is going to be measured in years, not months.”

Nothing we didn't already know, but it's interesting to see the information in list form. I keep going back to the "what if" -- what if Hillary (or ANY Dem) had won -- the Repugs in Congress would be erecting crosses on Pennsylvania Avenue to start the crucifixions.

[Howl]

I think the smoking gun will be financial -- that's how Trump got involved with the Russians in the first place and Mueller is all up in the grille of  Trump family financial shenanigans. 

[GrumpyGran]

On 12/23/2017 at 12:50 PM, Howl said:

I think the smoking gun will be financial -- that's how Trump got involved with the Russians in the first place and Mueller is all up in the grille of  Trump family financial shenanigans. 

I agree, I think it started with Dumpy really wanting to build that hotel in Moscow. He wants to have his name everywhere and he saw that as a challenge. Hence the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. And Putin saw his weakness, took it from there.

[GreyhoundFan]

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/24/fbi-investigates-russian-linked-cyprus-bank-accused-of-money-laundering

FBI investigates Russian-linked Cyprus bank accused of money laundering

Request for financial information may be connected to inquiries into possible conspiracy between Trump and Kremlin

The FBI has asked officials in Cyprus for financial information about a defunct bank that was used by wealthy Russians with political connections and has been accused by the US government of money laundering, two sources have told the Guardian.

The request for information about FBME Bank comes as Cyprus has emerged as a key area of interest for Robert Mueller, the US special counsel who is investigating a possible conspiracy between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin.

Spoiler

 

Trump-Russia investigation: the key questions answered

 

Read more

People familiar with the FBI request told the Guardian that federal investigators and the US Treasury approached the Central Bank of Cyprus in November seeking detailed information about FBME, which was shut down this year.

One person familiar with the FBI request said it appeared to be connected to Mueller’s ongoing examination of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign manager who was indicted in October, and money that flowed between former Soviet states and the US through Cypriot banks.

 

The Central Bank of Cyprus, which in 2014 placed FBME under administration in a direct response to US action and obtained full access to the bank’s data, declined to comment. The US special counsel’s office also declined to comment.

FBME has vigorously denied accusations that it has been a conduit for money laundering and other criminal activity.

The owners, Lebanese brothers Ayoub-Farid Saab and Fadi Michel Saab, issued a statement following a series of recent critical articles about the bank and denied all wrongdoing.

Bloomberg reported last week that FBME was the subject of two US investigations: one into the bank’s credit card unit, and another into alleged laundering of money from Russia. Bloomberg said the Russia-related investigation, which is being led by the US attorney’s office in New York, was connected to a flow of illegal Russian funds into the New York real estate market.

 

FBME, previously known as the Federal Bank of the Middle East, was based in Tanzania but about 90% of its banking was conducted in Cyprus. A report by the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in 2014 said the bank was an institution of “primary money laundering concern”.

The report found that the bank was evading efforts by the Central Bank of Cyprus to supervise its activities, and that FBME was facilitating money laundering, terrorist financing, transnational organised crime, fraud, sanctions evasion, weapons trading and political corruption.

A 2014 internal report by the Central Bank of Cyprus about FBME that was obtained by the Guardian found that FBME had banking relationships with several Russians who were considered to be politically sensitive clients and that about half of the bank’s clients were Russian nationals, including Vladimir Smirnov, who is close to Putin, and Aleksandr Shishkin, a member of Putin’s political party.

 

FBME was subjected in 2016 to what is known as a “fifth special measure”, a hard-hitting US regulatory tool that was established after the 9/11 attacks to address law enforcement concerns in the banking sector. The move prohibited the bank from doing business in the US or using US dollars, and barred US banks from opening or using any bank accounts on FBME’s behalf. In effect, it shut the bank down. FBME has challenged the decision but US courts have so far upheld the move.

It is not clear why Mueller and his team of investigators appear to be interested in FBME’s financial data. But it indicates that the special counsel is continuing to examine money flows from Cyprus.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to charges that he laundered millions of dollars through foreign banks as part of a scheme to hide his work for political parties in Ukraine. He is accused of funnelling the funds through foreign shell companies, including many that were based in Cyprus.

Manafort’s attorney, Kevin Downing, has called the charges, including those related to his use of offshore accounts, “ridiculous”.

A spokesman for FBME bank told the Guardian that Manafort was never a client of FBME.

Mueller’s team has separately issued a subpoena for information from Deutsche Bank. According to a person close to the bank, the subpoena was issued in the autumn. The German bank is Trump’s biggest lender.

Deutsche also worked as a correspondent bank for FBME. Internal emails seen by the Guardian show that executives from both banks were in contact in 2014 discussing accounts that were “on the radar” of US law enforcement.

Deutsche Bank said in a statement: “We severed our relationship with FBME in 2014 and have added more than 1,000 anti-financial crime staff in recent years to make our business safer and increase our controls.”

 

https://www.asiasentinel.com/econ-business/us-fincen-shuts-down-fbme-bank/

http://cyprusbusinessmail.com/?p=43539

Older articles that say Wilbur Ross is connected  with this bank somehow.

[Cartmann99]

On 12/23/2017 at 10:24 AM, Howl said:

Page is a legend in his own mind.  One has to wonder who finally passed his dissertation, since the original readers bailed -- a giant red flag that even the revised dissertation was a train wreck.  I'm betting that whoever passed the dissertation is connected with Russians, somehow. 

Yup. Looks like trying to baffle these guys with bullshit didn't work out so hot for him:

Quote

The viva, held at University College, London, went badly. “Page seemed to think that if he talked enough, people would think he was well-informed. In fact it was the reverse,” Andrusz said. He added that Page was “dumbfounded” when the examiners told him he had failed.

Quote

In emails seen by the Guardian, Page compares his decade-long struggle to get a postgraduate qualification to the ordeal suffered by Mikhail Khodorkovsy – the Russian oligarch sent to a Siberian prison by Vladimir Putin.

In one unhappy note to his examiners, he writes: “Your actions to date have been far more destructive than anything I have personally experienced in my 39 years on this planet.” The fate of Khodorkovsky, he adds, represents “the closest analogy in recent history to my trials”.

Perspective Carter, get some. 

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/24/fbi-investigates-russian-linked-cyprus-bank-accused-of-money-laundering

FBI investigates Russian-linked Cyprus bank accused of money laundering

Request for financial information may be connected to inquiries into possible conspiracy between Trump and Kremlin

The FBI has asked officials in Cyprus for financial information about a defunct bank that was used by wealthy Russians with political connections and has been accused by the US government of money laundering, two sources have told the Guardian.

The request for information about FBME Bank comes as Cyprus has emerged as a key area of interest for Robert Mueller, the US special counsel who is investigating a possible conspiracy between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Trump-Russia investigation: the key questions answered

 

Read more

People familiar with the FBI request told the Guardian that federal investigators and the US Treasury approached the Central Bank of Cyprus in November seeking detailed information about FBME, which was shut down this year.

One person familiar with the FBI request said it appeared to be connected to Mueller’s ongoing examination of Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign manager who was indicted in October, and money that flowed between former Soviet states and the US through Cypriot banks.

 

The Central Bank of Cyprus, which in 2014 placed FBME under administration in a direct response to US action and obtained full access to the bank’s data, declined to comment. The US special counsel’s office also declined to comment.

FBME has vigorously denied accusations that it has been a conduit for money laundering and other criminal activity.

The owners, Lebanese brothers Ayoub-Farid Saab and Fadi Michel Saab, issued a statement following a series of recent critical articles about the bank and denied all wrongdoing.

Bloomberg reported last week that FBME was the subject of two US investigations: one into the bank’s credit card unit, and another into alleged laundering of money from Russia. Bloomberg said the Russia-related investigation, which is being led by the US attorney’s office in New York, was connected to a flow of illegal Russian funds into the New York real estate market.

 

FBME, previously known as the Federal Bank of the Middle East, was based in Tanzania but about 90% of its banking was conducted in Cyprus. A report by the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in 2014 said the bank was an institution of “primary money laundering concern”.

The report found that the bank was evading efforts by the Central Bank of Cyprus to supervise its activities, and that FBME was facilitating money laundering, terrorist financing, transnational organised crime, fraud, sanctions evasion, weapons trading and political corruption.

A 2014 internal report by the Central Bank of Cyprus about FBME that was obtained by the Guardian found that FBME had banking relationships with several Russians who were considered to be politically sensitive clients and that about half of the bank’s clients were Russian nationals, including Vladimir Smirnov, who is close to Putin, and Aleksandr Shishkin, a member of Putin’s political party.

 

FBME was subjected in 2016 to what is known as a “fifth special measure”, a hard-hitting US regulatory tool that was established after the 9/11 attacks to address law enforcement concerns in the banking sector. The move prohibited the bank from doing business in the US or using US dollars, and barred US banks from opening or using any bank accounts on FBME’s behalf. In effect, it shut the bank down. FBME has challenged the decision but US courts have so far upheld the move.

It is not clear why Mueller and his team of investigators appear to be interested in FBME’s financial data. But it indicates that the special counsel is continuing to examine money flows from Cyprus.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to charges that he laundered millions of dollars through foreign banks as part of a scheme to hide his work for political parties in Ukraine. He is accused of funnelling the funds through foreign shell companies, including many that were based in Cyprus.

Manafort’s attorney, Kevin Downing, has called the charges, including those related to his use of offshore accounts, “ridiculous”.

A spokesman for FBME bank told the Guardian that Manafort was never a client of FBME.

Mueller’s team has separately issued a subpoena for information from Deutsche Bank. According to a person close to the bank, the subpoena was issued in the autumn. The German bank is Trump’s biggest lender.

Deutsche also worked as a correspondent bank for FBME. Internal emails seen by the Guardian show that executives from both banks were in contact in 2014 discussing accounts that were “on the radar” of US law enforcement.

Deutsche Bank said in a statement: “We severed our relationship with FBME in 2014 and have added more than 1,000 anti-financial crime staff in recent years to make our business safer and increase our controls.”

 

https://www.asiasentinel.com/econ-business/us-fincen-shuts-down-fbme-bank/

http://cyprusbusinessmail.com/?p=43539

Older articles that say Wilbur Ross is connected  with this bank somehow.

Wasn’t Wilbur Ross its (vice) president or something? I recall Rachel Maddow metioning something to that effect sometime in the beginning if the year.

[AmazonGrace]

8 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Wasn’t Wilbur Ross its (vice) president or something? I recall Rachel Maddow metioning something to that effect sometime in the beginning if the year.

He was vice chairperson for the Bank of Cyprus, the bank they're investigating now is FBME Bank and he had something to do with a company that invested in them

[AmazonGrace]

Nunes is at it again

[Howl]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Nunes is at it again

On Christmas eve, on the portico of the White House, while the Boss Tweed is away?  

Do these dickheads ever consider how relentlessly shitting on the FBI could backfire in a big way,  especially when there have been clear implications that at least some of Trump's staff used or are are using private servers?  Or tried to set up back-channel communications with Russia?

 

 

[GrumpyGran]

7 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Nunes is at it again

It's pretty sad when this is your only way to get attention on Christmas Eve. Couldn't he find a homeless shelter to go to so he could get a hot meal and a bed?

[formergothardite]

5 hours ago, Howl said:

Do these dickheads ever consider how relentlessly shitting on the FBI could backfire in a big way

Fucking with the FBI is a terrible idea. I really think that a lot of these guys are up to their eyeballs in illegal shit and it is either Russia stuff or stuff Russia as evidence of and will release if they don't do Putin's bidding. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"No longer a ‘lonely battle’: How the campaign against the Mueller probe has taken hold"

Spoiler

For months, efforts to discredit special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign flickered at the fringes of political debate.

Now, the allegation that FBI and Justice Department officials are part of a broad conspiracy against President Trump is suddenly center stage, amplified by conservative activists, GOP lawmakers, right-leaning media and the president himself. The clamor has become a sustained backdrop to the special counsel investigation, with congressional committees grilling a parade of law enforcement officials in recent days.

“Until recently, it has been a lonely battle,” said Tom Fitton, whose conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch has helped drive the charges by unearthing internal Justice Department documents. “Our concerns about Mueller are beginning to take hold.”

The partisan atmosphere is a sharp departure from the near-universal support that greeted Mueller’s selection as special counsel in May — and threatens to shadow his investigation’s eventual findings. Trump, while vowing to cooperate with the special counsel, has also encouraged attacks on Mueller’s credibility, tweeting that the investigation is “the greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. political history.”

The controversy, percolating for months, escalated dramatically in early December with the revelation of text messages in which one of Mueller’s former top investigators, Peter Strzok, called Trump an “idiot” last year and predicted Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton would win the election in a landslide.

As the deputy head of counterintelligence at the FBI, Strzok played a critical role in both the Clinton email investigation last year and the Russia probe before he was removed by Mueller this summer.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who met with Fitton earlier this year and has for months alleged that the FBI was working against Trump’s election, said in an interview that many of his Republican colleagues now share his view that there has been an orchestrated effort against Trump.

“I’ve had all kinds of Republicans come up to me and say, ‘This is unbelievable, it looks like the FBI was trying to put its finger on the scale here,’ ” Jordan said.

Among current and former law enforcement officials, the public attacks on the FBI are seen as an indirect way of trying to discredit Mueller and blunt future findings he may issue, a view shared by many Democratic lawmakers.

“There is a concerted push from the White House . . . and their allies to bring the investigations to a halt,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview. “They are also trying to attack Mueller’s credibility and the credibility of the FBI, so that whatever Mueller finds can be rejected . . . as a fake.

“The White House would like to have the best of both worlds,” he added. “They make the public case that they are cooperating, while their allies do the dirty work.”

In response, Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer overseeing the response to the Russia investigation, said in a statement that “the President respects the Special Counsel and his process and will continue to fully cooperate with the Special Counsel.”

A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment.

Some of the key players in the campaign against the special counsel probe are veterans of politically charged investigations, having helped drive attacks against the Clintons in the 1990s and during last year’s presidential campaign.

One leading critic is David Bossie, a former Trump deputy campaign manager. He was a congressional investigator who examined President Bill Clinton’s campaign finances in the late 1990s and currently leads Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group that produced movies critical of Hillary Clinton and other Democrats.

Bossie now makes frequent appearances on Fox News and other conservative media outlets, arguing that the special counsel is being used to try to delegitimize Trump. He said it is crucial to make a sustained fight against the probe.

“It is not that I wake up and say, ‘How do I match the Clinton playbook?’ ” Bossie said. “I just have the experience of understanding the rapid-response aspect of messaging. You have to be out there with a counter, set-the-facts-straight message or highlight what the problems are very quickly, or these things get away from you.”

He argues there is no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

“I’m not against Mueller; I’m against the concept of an investigation as a red herring,” he said.

Fitton’s Judicial Watch group, too, has a long history of investigating the Clintons, having filed numerous lawsuits against the administration of President Bill Clinton. During the 2016 campaign, the organization obtained thousands of emails written by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state.

This year, Judicial Watch has helped stoke the attacks against the Mueller probe with material it obtained through lawsuits and Freedom of Information Act requests. The nonprofit group, which has a $35 million budget and 50 employees, does not release the names of its approximately 500,000 donors, Fitton said.

Fitton has frequently gone on Fox News, conservative websites and Twitter to report his findings. On Dec. 2, after Fitton tweeted that Trump “needs to clean house at FBI/DOJ,” Trump retweeted another user’s summary of Fitton’s statement.

In one email obtained through a Judicial Watch lawsuit, Andrew Weissmann, a senior lawyer working for Mueller, wrote in January that he was “so proud” of then-acting attorney general Sally Yates’s decision to defy Trump’s executive order banning travel by certain immigrants. The FOIA request was filed in May and was received in the fall, Fitton said. Other requests have taken longer or been rejected altogether, he said.

Judicial Watch also obtained emails regarding FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe that the group says show he was involved in helping his wife, Jill, run as a Democratic candidate for a state Senate seat in Virginia.

McCabe was told in one email that then-Director James B. Comey had “no issue” with McCabe’s wife seeking the seat. Another document said Hillary Clinton attended a June 2015 fundraiser for Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee, which in turn gave nearly $500,000 to Jill McCabe for her state Senate bid.

Republicans have also raised questions about the FBI’s handling of a dossier produced by Christopher Steele, a former British spy who was hired by a research firm called Fusion GPS to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia. Senate Intelligence Committee investigators on Thursday interviewed Bruce Ohr, a Justice Department official whose wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS in 2016.

In a recent court filing, Fusion GPS said it was being targeted by congressional committees “coordinating with the President [and] his personal lawyers . . . to misdirect attention to Fusion . . . due to their perceived role in exposing the ties between the Trump campaign and the Russians.”

Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s outside attorneys, has called for a second special counsel to be appointed to investigate the Fusion GPS matter. He said in an interview that his proposal “is in no way related to Robert Mueller,” with whom he said he has “a professional and cooperative relationship.”

The pressure on Mueller’s team has increased as prosecutors unveiled charges this fall against four former Trump advisers.

Less than two weeks after former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, the Justice Department disclosed anti-Trump and pro-Clinton texts that Strzok exchanged with another senior FBI official, Lisa Page, while they were having an affair and managing sensitive political investigations of those candidates.

The texts were uncovered in July by the Justice Department’s inspector general, which has been investigating FBI decision-making during the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

When the inspector general warned Mueller in the summer about what the probe had found, Mueller immediately removed Strzok from his team. Strzok was reassigned to a job in the FBI’s human resources division. Page had also worked on the Mueller team but left two weeks earlier for what officials said were unrelated reasons.

The Post has reported that in a 2015 text, Strzok said that Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), who sought the Democratic nomination against Clinton, was “an idiot like Trump. Figure they cancel each other out.” In 2016 texts, Strzok wrote, “God, Hillary should win 100,000,000-0” and that he was “worried about what happens if [Clinton] is elected.”

Former colleagues defended him, saying Strzok’s opinions had no impact on how he conducted investigations.

“To think Pete could not do his job objectively shows no understanding of the organization,” said Michael Steinbach, former executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, adding: “We have Democrats, we have Republicans, we have conservatives and liberals. . . . Having personal views doesn’t prevent us from independently following the facts.”

But as news of Strzok’s text messages spread, Trump jumped on the story, tweeting: “Report: ‘ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE’ Now it all starts to make sense!”

Republicans in Congress took the cue, seizing upon the texts to attack the credibility of the FBI and the Mueller investigation.

“The senior levels of the FBI have been infected with an intractable bias that seemed to favor Hillary Clinton and work against President Donald Trump,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida on Fox News on Wednesday, adding, “It’s time for Bob Mueller to put up or shut up: If there’s evidence of collusion, let’s see it.”

The calls for Mueller’s ouster are strongest in the House, where a group of Republicans has been calling for the special counsel to resign.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has said Mueller’s investigation should proceed without interference. But he has allowed several committee investigations that are calling into question the integrity of the probe.

“The House has a constitutional obligation to exercise congressional oversight, and the speaker is supportive of our committee chairmen carrying out their work,” said Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong.

In recent days, for example, three House committees grilled McCabe over his participation in the FBI’s Russia investigation and his role in the FBI examination into Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Democrats called it a thinly veiled attempt to weaken McCabe and slow down Mueller’s probe. McCabe plans to retire in a few months when he becomes fully eligible for pension benefits, people familiar with the matter told The Post.

“Those people should be investigating the real crime, which is Russia’s interference in our democracy, and instead they’re being hauled before a six-hour series of interviews,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.).

At the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and a small group of Republican lawmakers are discussing writing a report next year that would highlight alleged “corruption” at the FBI, according to people familiar with the plans. Such a report would focus on information about the conduct of FBI officials in the course of the Russia investigation, those people said.

On the Senate side, one of the loudest voices has been Republican Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who chairs the Judiciary Committee and has raised questions about the impartiality of Mueller’s probe.

He has called for McCabe to be fired and shown a willingness to dig into Mueller’s past tenure as FBI director, complaining Thursday that the FBI and the Justice Department have been too slow to rout out people peddling “political influence.”

Grassley has also called for a second special counsel to look at decisions the FBI and the Justice Department made at the time that the Obama administration approved a uranium deal giving Russia a significant stake in the U.S. market. The inquiry would bring de facto scrutiny of Mueller, who was FBI director at the time.

Grassley said that his staff is in touch with Nunes’s staff, though he would not specify exactly what elements of their committees’ parallel inquiries they were communicating about.

“I wouldn’t want to say there’s coordination,” Grassley said. “There’s communication.”

He insisted that he was not aiming to discredit Mueller, adding that he has “got confidence [Mueller’s] going to be able to do what he’s doing.”

Trump, meanwhile, has continued to urge on the questions. This month, he tweeted that after the FBI’s “phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more) . . . its reputation is in Tatters - worst in History! But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness.”

Oh, so there's collusion between Nunes and Grassley? I swear, these Repugs are ridiculous. The FBI has traditionally been very conservative and there has never been much Hillary (or Bill) love in the ranks.

[fraurosena]

Oooooh, this has me rubbing my hands in gleeful anticipation!

Mueller is reportedly zeroing in on the Trump campaign's data operation — and the RNC

Quote

Special counsel Robert Mueller has begun to question Republican National Committee staffers about the party's 2016 campaign data operation, which helped President Donald Trump's campaign team target voters in critical swing states.

Two sources told Yahoo News that Mueller's team is examining whether the joint RNC-Trump campaign data operation — which was directed on Trump's side by Brad Parscale and managed by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner — "was related to the activities of Russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the American electorate."

The FBI has been scrutinizing Kushner's contacts in December 2016 with the Russian ambassador to the US and the CEO of a sanctioned Russian bank.

The special counsel's office declined to comment on its ongoing investigation. Multiple requests to various current and former RNC officials on Wednesday went unanswered. A source close to one of the Trump campaign's data firms said they were "unaware of anyone being questioned."

It is not surprising that federal investigators have begun to examine the possibility that Russia and the Trump campaign helped each other during the election. Investigators have been looking into whether Russia provided the campaign with voter information stolen by Russian hackers from election databases in several states, and whether the Trump campaign helped Russia target its political ads to specific demographics and voting precincts.

The general counsels for Facebook, Twitter, and Google gave enigmatic replies when asked by the House Intelligence Committee last month whether they had investigated "who was mimicking who" when it came to online ads promoted by both the Trump campaign and Russia during the election.

Facebook said in September that about 25% of the ads purchased by Russians during the election "were geographically targeted," though many analysts have said they find it difficult to believe that foreign entities would have had the kind of granular knowledge of American politics necessary to target specific demographics and voting precincts.

Facebook's general counsel Colin Stretch paused before indicating that the committee had access to intelligence that could better contextualize the information Facebook had turned over.

"We've provided all relevant information to the committee, and we do think it's an important function of this committee, because you have access to a broader set of information than any single company will," Stretch said.

"I agree with that," said Kent Walker, Google's counsel and senior vice president.

"Same for Twitter," Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett said.

'We brought in Cambridge Analytica'

Investigators have long wondered whether the data-mining and analysis firm Cambridge Analytica served as a link between the campaign's data operation and Russia.

That scrutiny intensified following revelations that Cambridge CEO Alexander Nix reached out to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in June 2016 asking for access to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's "stolen" emails. 

It is still unclear how much Cambridge Analytica actually did for the campaign. Trump campaign aides and even current and former Cambridge employees have consistently tried to downplay its role.

Parscale was asked about Cambridge during his interview with the House Intelligence Committee in October.  The ranking members of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees sent him a separate letter that month asking whether his firm received "information from a foreign government or foreign actor" at any point during the election.

The letter was also sent to Nix and the heads of Deep Root Analytics, TargetPoint Consulting, and The Data Trust — firms hired by the Republican National Committee last year to bolster the Trump campaign's data operation.

Deep Root  accidentally leaked  the sensitive personal details of roughly 198 million citizens in June, as its database was left exposed on the open web for nearly two weeks. The firm had stored details of about 61% of the US population on an Amazon cloud server without password protection. 

Whereas Deep Root, TargetPoint, and The Data Trust responded to the documents request, Nix did not. 

Parscale's letter, meanwhile, mirrored those written by the RNC data firms and used virtually the same language — with one notable exception.

Whereas the firms' letters included a line denying that they had had contact with any "foreign government or foreign actor," Parscale's did not.

In a postelection interview, Kushner told Forbes that he had been keenly interested in Facebook's "micro-targeting" capabilities from early on.

"I called somebody who works for one of the technology companies that I work with, and I had them give me a tutorial on how to use Facebook micro-targeting," Kushner said.

"We brought in Cambridge Analytica," he continued. "I called some of my friends from Silicon Valley who were some of the best digital marketers in the world. And I asked them how to scale this stuff ... We basically had to build a $400 million operation with 1,500 people operating in 50 states, in five months to then be taken apart. We started really from scratch."

6

 

[AmazonGrace]

Spoiler

 

Updated | President Donald Trump should pardon his former national security adviser and campaign aide Michael Flynn, who “has taken the biggest fall,” Flynn’s brother said Tuesday.

In a since deleted tweet, Joseph Flynn said Trump must get the former Army general off the hook for his December 1 guilty plea stemming from his contacts with the former Russian ambassador. The plea deal is a part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.

Related: Will Trump pardon Michael Flynn? “We’ll see,” he says

 

“About time you pardoned General Flynn who has taken the biggest fall for all of you given the illegitimacy of this confessed crime in the wake of all this corruption,” Joseph Flynn tweeted, though the post was deleted after about 15 minutes.

Flynn’s tweet came after Trump posted his own miniscreed on Twitter complaining about Mueller’s probe, among other things.

[Twitter

Twitter]

Joseph Flynn told Newsweek that he found Trump’s tweet interesting and so, “I responded.” He added about his own tweet, “I said it, and maybe he’s listening.”

Hours later, he wrote in a tweet to Newsweek about his earlier post, “I stand by my tweet. This is all my personal opinion and I stand by it.”

Moments later, he tweeted again to Trump. “Mr. President, I personally believe that a pardon is due to General Flynn, given the apparent and obvious illegitimacy of the manner in which the so called ‘crimes’ he plead (sic) guilty to were extracted from him,” he wrote. “I ask for quick action on this. Thank you and keep up the good work!”

Days after Flynn pleaded guilty, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters she was “not aware” about any discussion of a pardon.

“I haven’t asked the president whether or not he would do that,” she added. “I don’t feel that it’s necessary until you get further down the road and determine whether or not that’s even something needed.”

Trump later told reporters, “I don’t want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens. Let’s see.”

Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, leaves federal court, in Washington, D.C., on December 1. He pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his contacts with the former Russian ambassador. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty

Joseph Flynn is helping organize a legal defense fund for his brother. A week and a half after Flynn’s guilty plea, he told Newsweek by email, “We have seen a very big surge in support, especially after last week.”

He estimated that the amount in the fund had doubled since the guilty plea, adding, “I want to be clear: The expense far outweighs the donations, most of which are small amounts that average citizens who support General Flynn can put forth.... The burden of expense of multiple investigations, which of course were not expected and no one prepares for, is financially crippling to him and his family.”

Trump has asked advisers about his authority to pardon, The Washington Post reported in July. The day after that report, he tweeted, “While all agree the U.S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us. FAKE NEWS.” In August, the president pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, which analysts have speculated was to signal to associates that he could pardon them in the Russia probe too.

This article has been updated to include additional tweets from Joseph Flynn.

 

http://www.newsweek.com/trump-pardon-michael-flynn-mueller-russia-investigation-759563

Tl;Dr, Flynn's bro is begging for a presidential pardon because Flynn is "taking a fall for Trump" (doesn't this kinda imply that Trump did something shady that Flynn is covering up?)

[fraurosena]

Looks like Mueller isn't done with Manafort just yet.

Robert Mueller May Indict Paul Manafort Again

(Warning: this Daily Beast article is very long, but it's also very informative on more than just Manafort)

Quote

From its inception, two things about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation were clear: first, the White House’s biggest concern was that Mueller would follow the money; and second, Mueller is following the money.

It’s been seven months since Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein ordered Bob Mueller to take over the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into possible links between the Kremlin and people associated with the Trump campaign. Trump’s lawyers have long said they expected the probe to stay focused and end quickly. Instead, Mueller has assembled a team of prosecutors with expertise in handling financial investigations and white-collar crime, and obtained guilty pleas for crimes that weren’t committed during the election year.

And, most importantly, he’s sent a thinly veiled warning to the White House: No one’s finances are off limits. If 2017 had the president’s inner circle sweating, 2018 could feel like a sauna.

And no one may feel more heat than Paul Manafort. In Washington legal circles, there’s a broad expectation that Mueller will file what’s called a superseding indictment of Manafort and Rick Gates, his erstwhile business partner—and alleged partner in crime. Gates and Manafort both pleaded not guilty when Mueller’s team filed their indictment on Oct. 30. Legal experts say there may be more charges to come.

“I would expect a superseding indictment to come down relatively soon,” said Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University’s law school.

“There was much in the narrative of the indictment that referenced crimes not charged,” he added. “Prosecutors will often issue a superseding indictment as the grand jury continues its work. There’s also a tactical reason for this, that superseding indictments tend to grind defendants a bit more over time.”

A superseding indictment would essentially replace the current indictment of Manafort. And in that current indictment, Mueller’s team hinted there was more to come. In particular, they hinted at potential tax charges for Manafort’s foreign financial transactions. Federal prosecutors can bring charges against any American who has money in a foreign bank account and doesn’t check a box on their tax forms disclosing it. The Manafort/Gates indictment describes financial behavior that may be liable for that kind of prosecution. And that’s an indicator that Mueller’s team may be preparing to formally charge both men with violating tax laws.

A former prosecutor from the Justice Department’s tax division said Mueller handed down what’s known as a “speaking indictment”—in other words, an indictment that contains more information than necessary.

“It’s a way of dirtying up a defendant without having to actually prove the conduct,” he said. “I think, in fairness to them, they probably rushed it because they didn’t want to wait for the tax division approval on those tax counts. That, I assume, would be working its way through the system.”

Anytime federal prosecutors want to charge someone with breaking tax law, they must get approval from the Justice Department’s Tax Division. That approval process can be time-consuming, and the would-be defendant’s attorneys often can petition Tax Division lawyers against authorizing the charges. Following the money, it turns out, can be circuitous.

“Superseding indictments are frequently brought in financial investigations due to defendant recalcitrance to cooperate and also because they take so long to be put together,” said Martin Sheil, a retired supervisory special agent for the IRS’ criminal investigations unit.

Mueller has been working with IRS criminal investigators, as The Daily Beast first reported in August. Those agents specialize solely in financial crimes with a tax nexus; their cooperation was an early indicator that money mattered to Mueller.

And Manafort and Gates may not be the only Trump campaign alums with headache-generating finances. On Dec. 1, retired Gen. Michael Flynn—the president’s former national security adviser—pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian government officials. Court documents indicate that Flynn has agreed to help Mueller’s team with their investigation in exchange for leniency.

Sheil noted that if Flynn isn’t as cooperative as Mueller expects, then his financial dealings could be easy fodder for Mueller.

“Flynn did not disclose payments received from Russia in 2015 nor Turkey in 2016 on his Security Disclosure forms,” Sheil said. “What is the likelihood he reported these sums on his tax returns?”

Additional trouble for Team Trump could arise out of the blizzard of subpoenas that reportedly went out to Deutsche Bank in the last few weeks.

The German mega-bank is likely accustomed to hot water. In January of 2017, they agreed to pay $425 million to the New York Department of Financial Services to settle allegations that they let Russian traders engage in what those regulators called “a money-laundering scheme.” In that particular scheme, Russians moved $10 billion to the United States.

It’s an eye-popping concession, but one that largely got lost in the noise of Trump’s inauguration and the political implications of Russian efforts to intervene in the 2016 elections. But it points to close ties between the bank and Kremlin elites. The bank’s lawyers signed court documents admitting they were “on clear notice” about their insufficient safeguards against unlawful activity (PDF)—while the multibillion-dollar scheme was unfolding. In fact, those lawyers admitted their traders in Moscow went “to significant lengths” to make the scheme work. They even admitted that one of their Moscow supervisors appeared to have taken bribes related to the scheme that were worth up to $2.3 million. It was underway from 2011 to early 2015.

Jared Kushner and Trump himself have had significant dealings with the bank, which also helped the hedge fund of billionaire Trump patron Robert Mercer trim billions from its tax bill. The bank has long interested congressional investigators looking into potential connections between Trump World and the Kremlin. And if reports about Mueller’s subpoena of the bank are correct—and the White House says emphatically that they are not—then Mueller’s money trail may be making a pit stop in Germany.

Besides that, Mueller’s probe is causing bipartisan anxiety in Washington. The indictment of Manafort and Gates mentioned two lobbying firms—referring to them only as “Company A” and “Company B”—which are widely assumed to be the Podesta Group and Mercury LLC. Within hours of the indictment’s release, Tony Podesta resigned from his firm. He’d previously drawn criticism for helping Manafort push Kremlin-friendly talking points to Capitol Hill offices.

“The Manafort and Gates indictment left a number of torpedoes in the water,” said Turley. “We’re just waiting to see who they hit. One of the most likely targets is Tony Podesta.”

The only person in a position to constrain Mueller and his deputies is Rosenstein, who has been overseeing all Trump/Russia matters since Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal. A former Justice Department official who worked under now-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told The Daily Beast that he’s unlikely to rein in Mueller at all.

“As long as Rod is supervising, he is never going to put Mueller under any kind of pinch,” he said. “That’s just the way Rod operates.”

It means that as long as Rosenstein stays in place, Mueller will likely be able to follow that money trail wherever it leads.

3

It's a relief to read that at the DOJ people don't think it likely that Rosenstein will rein in Mueller. It does make me worry for Rosenstein though. If Mueller gets too close for the presidunce's comfort, then I wouldn't put it past him to fire Rosenstein and replace him with someone who'll either fire Mueller, or severely rein him in.

[onekidanddone]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Oooooh, this has me rubbing my hands in gleeful anticipation!

Mueller is reportedly zeroing in on the Trump campaign's data operation — and the RNC

 

Happy  New Year!

[fraurosena]

Here's a Seth Abramson mini-thread (it's positively minuscule in comparison to his usual threads).