The Russian Connection 3: Mueller is Coming

[fraurosena]

How utterly unsurprising. 

The Kremlin: News about AIVD helping FBI adds to anti-Russia hysteria (link to Dutch-language news site)

My translation:

Quote

According to the Kremlin, articles from Nieuwsuur and De Volkskrant about Russian hack-attacks during the US elections only 'add oil to the fire of anti-Russia hysteria in the US'. Putin's press secretary Peskov points out that this news isn't based on official statements by the intelligence agencies.

Last night, Nieuwsuur and De Volkskrant announced that the AIVD and military intelligence service MIVD provided the FBI with information about Russian hackers active during the presidential electoral campaigns in the US. By infiltrating the hackers group, the intelligence services 'saw' how computers from the Democratic Party, the White House and the Ministry of State were penetrated.

The hackers were being controlled by the Russian secret service, aiming to influence the elections.

Not honorable

Press secretary Peskov says the publications are 'not the most honorable method'. He stresses that Russia has not received any statements from the Dutch intelligence agencies. He does not want to say anything else on the subject, as it is 'unreliable to do anything based on Dutch newspapers'.

In the Hague, the ministers of State and Defense, Ollongren and Bijleveld, have stated they are proud of the intelligence services' work. They declined to speak further about the contents of the news articles, as it concerns sensitive intelligence services' operations .

 

[Howl]

@fraurosena posted this tweet from Seth Abramson: 

Quote

Seth Abramson✔@SethAbramson

(THREAD) On November 4, 2016—96 hours before the presidential election—Trump advisor Erik Prince went on a radio network controlled by Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon to say that an anti-Clinton cabal at NYPD was conspiring to leak false information about Clinton pre-election.

10:59 PM - Jan 24, 2018

This "anti-Clinton cabal at NYPD" tidbit has been gnawing at my mind for months.  It was a seemingly important bit of information that  never had context or attribution that I was aware of, rose briefly in the news and then sank beneath the waves.  That the source was global mercenary and arrogant ass Erik Prince is somewhat dumbfounding -- the one guy you'd think would know that loose lips sink ships.    Anyway, I'm curious to see if this goes anywhere. 

Thanks also, @fraurosena for the information on hacking of Russian hackers in the Dutch press.  It's fascinating, and, I dunno, kind of uplifting!  The big plus is that it leaves Comrade Putin looking like a dufus. 

Really, fj is the most amazing news aggregator. 

[fraurosena]

I agree with you, @Howl, that the Trumplandia thing at the NYPD is underreported and something we should keep our eyes on. That, and the connections to Erik Prince and of course Rudy Giuliani. I do think the FBI, and Mueller, know exactly what's up with this, and it might even be an integral part of the investigation.

That the Dutch intelligence agency hackers are (dare I say) the best of the best, is in part because the Netherlands have the best internet infrastructure in the world. The downside of that extensive and stable connectivity, many, maybe even most, hack-attacks on the planet are done via our network. The Dutch have been at the hacking game since the turn of the century, and that experience has gained us unique insights that stand us in good stead, as in this instance of the Russian hacking of the US institutions. It's a pity that the FBI and other US intelligence agencies didn't take us seriously enough when we warned them, and it took them months to react adequately. I wonder why that was?

As an aside, I have to say that the 24-hour hacking 'combat' is worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster. What an incredible story of real life cyber warfare!

[hoipolloi]

In addition to the work of the Dutch, partners in the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance ALL have similar info on tRump & the Russians. There is likely additional intel generated & held by EU & Asia-Pacific nations beyond the Five Eyes group.

As I said above, the US cannot control these any of these entities. It would be best if Mueller completes his investigations & brings the guilty to justice but removing him & the OSC will not make stuff go away.

[fraurosena]

John Schindler points out some painful truths, and adds some explosive new facts that haven't been reported yet.

Dutch Report Reveals Obama Administration Knew About Russian Hacking in Real Time

Quote

For all its management and security shortcomings, the National Security Agency remains the world’s most important spy service. Its signals intelligence reach is truly global, and its highly classified SIGINT, year in and year out, accounts for something like 80 percent of the actionable intelligence in our Intelligence Community. NSA, which recently celebrated its 65th birthday, remains the backbone of Western security, our top-secret shield against spies and terrorists.

No small part of that success can be attributed to NSA’s effective leveraging of foreign partnerships. Its spy links with the Anglosphere date to World War II and are termed Five Eyes (for the USA, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom). Inside NSA, this alliance is called Second Party. This partnership is so close that it’s best to view the Five Eyes SIGINT arrangement as really one integrated espionage effort that covers the globe.

However, those are hardly NSA’s only foreign partnerships. The agency enjoys intelligence-sharing links with spy services all over the world. Some of these relationships, termed Third Party inside the SIGINT system, date to NSA’s founding in 1952, and all are shrouded in strict secrecy. They are seldom mentioned in the media, as some of these top-secret links are highly sensitive politically.

However, one of the agency’s Third Party partnerships has just burst into the public eye in an unprecedented manner that profoundly shifts the debate about Russian shenanigans against our politics in 2016 and the election of President Donald Trump. Yesterday, the Dutch daily de Volkskrant published a detailed account of the secret spy-games conducted by Western intelligence against Kremlin hackers in the lead-up to our presidential election. Based on insider accounts in both the United States and the Netherlands, the article rings true to anyone who’s acquainted with how NSA Third Party relationships function.

The essential storyline is relatively straightforward—and shocking. In the summer of 2014, hackers working for the 300-person Joint SIGINT Cyber Unit, staffed by the Dutch internal security service or AIVD and the Dutch military’s foreign intelligence service or MIVD, managed to crack into Cozy Bear. Known as APT29 in spy circles, since 2010 the shadowy Cozy Bear has pillaged countless Western governments and businesses with its aggressive hacking. The JSCU’s covert infiltration of Cozy Bear’s headquarters in downtown Moscow represented a stunning intelligence coup.

The Dutch hackers saw everything inside Cozy Bear, which they quickly assessed was a front for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service or SVR. They monitored not just Cozy Bear activities in real time, they even watched their goings-on by getting control of cameras inside their offices. What JSCU witnessed was damning for Moscow. In November 2014, they observed Cozy Bear operatives hack into the computer networks of the U.S. State Department.

The Americans had to be informed, and Dutch spies quickly contacted the NSA’s representative in The Hague. Third Party ties went into immediate action. What followed, as SVR hackers went after the State Department, was explained by de Volkskrant:

The Russians are extremely aggressive but do not know they’re being spied on. Thanks to the Dutch spies, the NSA and FBI are able to counter the enemy with enormous speed. The Dutch intel is so crucial that the NSA opens a direct line with Zoetermeer [AIVD headquarters], to get the information to the United States as soon as possible.

Close NSA-JSCU collaboration after the State Department hack enabled an ongoing look at how the SVR launched cyber-raid after cyber-raid on American institutions in 2014 and after. Washington was so grateful they sent cake and flowers to their Dutch partners. However, this top-secret look at Cozy Bear activities means that Western intelligence had a clear, real-time window into what Kremlin hackers were up to, for instance, when they stole the emails of the Democratic National Committee in the spring of 2016. Those were the very same emails that did so much damage to the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton when WikiLeaks posted them online a few months later.

NSA used Dutch intelligence to get even deeper access to what SVR officials were up to in their SpyWar against America. As de Volkskrant stated:

In late 2015, the NSA hackers manage to penetrate the mobile devices of several high ranking Russian intelligence officers. They learn that right before a hacking attack, the Russians search the internet for any news about the oncoming attack. According to the Americans, this indirectly proves that the Russian government is involved in the hacks.

This means that top-secret Washington possessed a detailed understanding of Kremlin hacks of our country as they happened. Why the Obama administration did so little to counter these nefarious activities—a troubling question that has lingered as the extent of Russian espionage against our 2016 election has come into clearer focus—now must be answered if we hope to avert future Kremlin hacks of our democracy.

President Barack Obama’s lethargy about admitting—much less confronting—Russian espionage and propaganda is a matter of record. Why the Obama White House shut down the State Department’s tiny effort to counter weaponized Kremlin lies in late 2015 has never been properly explained. Now, Congress should ask why the previous administration did so little to defend our democracy from Russian espionage and subversion—an inaction that did grave damage to Obama’s own party.

Of late, Obama’s defenders have started to address this knotty issue. This week, former Vice President Joe Biden explained that it’s all the Republicans’ fault by stating that, a couple months before the 2016 election, Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, stonewalled White House efforts to craft a bipartisan response to Russian hacking. That unquestionably merits investigation to determine whether McConnell’s motivation was personal or partisan.

However, that does nothing to explain why the Obama administration did little if anything for two years before the 2016 election, despite possessing detailed intelligence about the secret Kremlin effort to attack our democracy. That fateful failure lies exclusively with the executive branch and demands explanation. With each passing day, the Obama administration’s non-response to Vladimir Putin’s SpyWar against America looks increasingly like the run-up to the 9/11 attacks, when repeated intelligence warnings were ignored by policymakers who hewed to wishful thinking right until disaster struck. Congress needs to find out what went wrong here so it never happens again.

We owe the Dutch deep gratitude for their outstanding intelligence work against Cozy Bear. This is payback of sorts for the 193 Dutch citizens who were murdered by the Kremlin in late July 2014, when Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was blasted out of the sky over eastern Ukraine by a Russian missile. Moreover, the JSCU-NSA collaboration against Cozy Bear demonstrates the impressive capabilities of Western intelligence against even the hardest targets.

Dutch secret access to Cozy Bear was lost when the SVR conducted a cyber-upgrade, as is routine in the world of espionage, but not before the shocking extent of Russian online dirty tricks was revealed to Western intelligence. Dutch spies aren’t entirely happy with Washington, however, feeling that American intelligence has spoken too freely about JSCU successes—which can imperil future spy operations. Moreover, Dutch intelligence has doubts about President Donald Trump, fearing his ties to the Kremlin, and these days they are reluctant to share their most valuable secrets with the Americans.

Dutch spies are hardly alone there. Over the past year, several of our close intelligence partners abroad have withheld classified information from Washington out of fears it might travel from the White House to Moscow. Trump should be concerned by the de Volkskrant report too, particularly its mention of NSA access to the mobile phones of senior SVR officials. My friends still in the spy trade tell me that program continued into 2016 and included intercepts that are highly troubling regarding the Trump campaign and its secret ties to Moscow. Eventually that, too, will probably be leaked to the media, just as this remarkable Dutch espionage success was this week.

 

[GrumpyGran]

6 hours ago, Howl said:

THREAD) On November 4, 2016—96 hours before the presidential election—Trump advisor Erik Prince went on a radio network controlled by Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon to say that an anti-Clinton cabal at NYPD was conspiring to leak false information about Clinton pre-election.

Ok, I have to confess this confuses the hell out of me. Did he also release a very anti-Clinton rant at about the same time? There's so much here sometimes it's hard to keep up.

[fraurosena]

Now we know why Don McGahn, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon all have the same lawyer

Quote

For the past several months, current White House Counsel Don McGahn and former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus have been represented by the same attorney in the Russia scandal. By definition that meant they were taking identical positions. Then earlier this month, Steve Bannon also hired the same attorney, meaning he was taking the same position. But what precisely were they up to? Now, thanks to the latest round of leaks, we have a much better understanding.

The picture wasn’t all that difficult to decipher, even before we got this week’s revelation that Trump tried and failed to fire Mueller last June. Priebus turned over his personal notes to Mueller last fall, meaning he’s cooperating. In turn that means McGahn must have begun cooperating at the same time, or their attorney would not have been allowed to continue representing them both. It also means that Bannon decided to cooperate with Mueller when he hired that attorney. But now we know how the three of them got there.

Trump ordered McGahn to fire Mueller back in June. McGahn instead went to Priebus and Bannon and told them he would resign rather than go through with the firing (link). They all agreed that Mueller shouldn’t be fired, and Trump backed down. So, at least as it’s now being reported, they were the three Trump advisers who collectively stood up to Trump on the Mueller firing issue.

This explains why Priebus and McGahn grabbed the same attorney once Robert Mueller tapped them on the shoulder last fall: they were both involved in the same obstruction of justice incident, they had taken the same side, and they had the same story to tell. The same was true of Bannon, once Mueller finally got around to him. It’s now more clear than ever that all three men have sold Trump out.

I believe Bill Palmer's conclusion is the most logical one, and if true, the ammo Mueller has will be enough to obliterate this administration. Rufus, make it so!

[fraurosena]

Hmmmm, well seeing is believing. And only then. Republican words are only so much air. It's actions that count, and to date I haven't heard a single one of them proposing a bill to protect Mueller.

Republican lawmakers consider need to protect Mueller

Quote

Republican lawmakers on Sunday grappled with the potential need to protect special counsel Robert Mueller in light of a report that said President Trump called for his firing last year.

Hosts on the Sunday shows questioned lawmakers about the revelations in The New York Times report and what they mean for the investigation into Russia’s election interference and any potential ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a key Republican who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own Russia probe, said it “wouldn’t hurt” to pass legislation protecting Mueller.

“It certainly wouldn’t hurt to put that extra safeguard in place given the latest stories,” she told CNN’s “State of the Union.” 

Collins also noted that only Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller last year after the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, could fire the special counsel.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who last year proposed legislation protecting Mueller, said the special counsel should “look at” the Times’s report.

"I don't know if the story is true or not, but I know this: Mueller should look at it," he told ABC's "This Week." 

Graham, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is conducting its own Russia probe, also said firing Mueller would end Trump’s tenure. 

"I don't know what happened last year, but it's pretty clear to me that everybody in the White House knows it would be the end of President Trump's presidency if he fired Mr. Mueller,” he told ABC.

Some Republicans have criticized the special counsel’s probe over anti-Trump text messages exchanged between an FBI agent and a bureau lawyer who were formerly part of the investigation, arguing the messages reveal an anti-Trump bias within the bureau.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Sunday he has confidence in the special counsel and that Mueller’s critics should “leave him the hell alone.”

“Mueller didn’t raise his hand and say ‘pick me,’ ” Gowdy told “Fox News Sunday.” “We as a country asked him to do this.”

But one Republican was unwilling to commit to legislation enshrining protections for Mueller. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he doesn’t believe a bill shielding Mueller is necessary “right now.”

“If there’s an issue that arise, we’ll take it up at that time,” McCarthy told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “But right now, there is not an issue, so why create one when there isn’t a place for it?”

Democrats, meanwhile, were reinvigorated by last week’s report in the Times, which said Trump called for Mueller’s firing, but backtracked when White House counsel Don McGahn threatened to quit.

The revelation provided fodder for Democrats, some of whom have argued the president obstructed justice in the course of the Russia investigation.

But not all Democrats are committed to labeling Trump’s reported call to fire Mueller, or any of his other moves, as obstruction of justice.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), another member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, refused to join Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in declaring that there is an obstruction of justice case against Trump.

“I haven’t gone down that road, nor am I going to go down that road. I believe in the rule of law and it pertains to all of us,” the West Virginia Democrat told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“We’re all treated the same. And if any of this has happened it will come out.” 

Manchin, who is up for reelection this year in a state Trump won by more than 40 points, said it’s “premature” for Democrats to place provisions safeguarding Mueller in the upcoming budget negotiations.

“I think it’s premature for us to go down that road, too. There’s a process they have to go through,” Manchin told Jake Tapper.

“Mr. Rosenstein would be the first person that I would think — if there’s going to be some movement in that direction — where they’re going to go first. And I think that would give us time to move and act if we need to. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I really do. But we have to wait and see.”

Lawmakers in the upper chamber last year introduced two separate bipartisan bills aimed at protecting Mueller. A bill from Graham and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) would stipulate that a judge must approve a request from the Justice Department to fire Mueller, or any special counsel. Another bill, proposed by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.), would allow Mueller or any other special counsel to challenge a firing in court.

White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short on Sunday said he had no knowledge of the president ever suggesting he wanted Mueller fired.

“I’m not aware the president ever intimated he wanted to fire Robert Mueller,” Short told “Fox News Sunday."

“Robert Mueller is still the special counsel, Don McGahn is still head of White House counsel, the White House continues to cooperate in every manner, providing every document the special counsel has asked for."

Trump also dismissed the report that he once called for Mueller’s firing as “fake news.”

“Fake news. Fake news. Typical New York Times. Fake stories," the president told reporters in Davos, Switzerland last week.

And Trey Wannabe-Draco Gowdy? Wasn't he siding with Nunes' #releasethememo conspiracy theory just a couple of days ago? 

 

[Howl]

Did someone add lithium to the drinking water in Congress or spike their food with MDA (mellow drug of America)?

Trey Gowdy R: Gowdy To GOP Colleagues: Mueller Is ‘Fair’ So ‘Leave Him The Hell Alone’

Lindsey Graham says that he would be willing to pass a law protecting Mueller from being fired. 

[fraurosena]

Oh dear... 

German Bank Surrenders Access To Trump Family's International Financials

Quote

As part of a broad effort to prevent suspicious monetary transactions, Paul Achleitner, board chairman of Deutsche Bank, recently called for an internal investigation into the bank’s accounts.  The investigation found that some accounts have a history of “suspicious transactions”.

Interestingly, the accounts in question are the family accounts of Jared Kushner.

Jared Kushner is the son in law of President Donald Trump, and inexplicably, Trump’s Senior White House Advisor.  Deutsche Bank has a long history of doing business with Trump and Kushner.

The bank has handed over the evidence that was discovered to BaFin, which is the German equivalent of our country’s FDIC.  German sources in Manager Magazin said, “Achleitner’s internal detectives were embarrassed to deliver their interim report regarding real estate tycoon Kushner to the financial regulator BaFin.”

Deutsche Bank has a history of problems with Donald Trump.  In November 2008, an attorney for the bank wrote the Supreme Court of New York concerning a loan Trump accepted from the bank in 2005 for $640 million.  The loan was supposedly for construction of a new hotel in Chicago.

Unsurprisingly, Trump defaulted on the loan while he still owed $330 million in payments.  Deutsche Bank was seeking an immediate payment of $40 million and legal fees.

The ever-litigious Trump filed a counter-suit in which he claimed that Deutsche Bank was personally responsible for the 2008 economic crash, and therefore, per Trump’s lawyers, he wasn’t obligated to pay back his loan.  Even further, Trump claimed Deutsche Bank owed him around $3 billion.

Duetsche Bank is only slightly concerned about any condemnation by BaFin.  Their bigger concern is the likelihood that special Counsel Robert Mueller will request the transaction records as part of his investigation into Russian tampering during the 2016 Presidential Election, and what that would do to the bank’s reputation.  Given their very valid concern, and their history with Trump, Deutsche Bank’s best bet is to hand all the evidence over to Mueller and his team now.

 

[fraurosena]

Last week, we learned that Dutch intelligence agencies had managed to hack Russian Kremlin-backed hackers. Yesterday, two major banks in the Netherlands were victims of vicious DDoS attacks, disabling monetary transactions for hours. Coincidence? 

In 2016, it became clear that Russia was interfering with American elections. Today, a Dutch news site is reporting that Russia is now accusing America of interfering with the Russian elections. Irony, much?

Russia accuses US of interference in Russian presidential elections (link to Dutch language site)

My translation:

Quote

New American sanctions against Russia that could be enforced on Monday, are an attempt at interfering with the Russian elections. So states the Kremlin, adding that the US won't succeed.

It is expected that Washington will announce new sanctions against a number of prominent Russian oligarchs, and restrictions will be laid upon holding Russian government bonds.

The Russian presidential elections will be held on March 18. Current president Vladimir Putin is up for re-election. The only other candidate, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has been banned from competing by the Supreme Court. He has been sentenced in the past for not having a permit to take part in protests against Putin.

Russian interference

American intelligence agencies say they have proof that Russia tried in various ways to interfere with the 2016 presidential elections. Special Councel Robert Mueller is now undertaking a large investigation into it.

American President Donald Trump denounces these accusations and says he trusts Putin. The Russian president is persisting in his denial that his country interfered in the American presidential elections.

 

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/29/mark-warner-global-politico-216545

Mark Warner: ‘We’ve Had New Information That Raises More Questions’

The top Democrat on the Senate's Russia investigation says he's worried about what he's just learned.

By SUSAN B. GLASSER

January 29, 2018

 

 

Spoiler

 

Congress late last year received “extraordinarily important new documents” in its investigation of President Donald Trump and his campaign’s possible collusion with the 2016 Russian election hacking, opening up significant new lines of inquiry in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe of the president, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) says in an exclusive new interview.

 

Warner, the intel committee’s top Democrat, says “end-of-the-year document dumps” produced “very significant” revelations that “opened a lot of new questions” that Senate investigators are now looking into, meaning the inquiry into Trump and the Russia hacking—already nearly a year old—will not be finished for months longer. “We’ve had new information that raises more questions,” Warner says in the interview, an extensive briefing on the state of the Senate’s Trump-Russia probe for The Global Politico, our weekly podcast on world affairs.

Warner also warns about a “coordinated” attack by the president and “Trump zealots” in the House of Representatives to undermine the legitimacy of the investigations against him, an effort Warner says includes the president’s threats to fire special counsel Robert Mueller and other officials as well as a secret Republican memo alleging “shocking” FBI surveillance abuse against Trump that Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) is now threatening to release. Warner calls out Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in arguably more explicit terms than any Democrat has yet, saying he has read the underlying classified material used in the memo and that Nunes misrepresented it as part of a McCarthyite “secret Star Chamber” effort to discredit the FBI probe of the president.

“We’re seeing this coordinated effort to try to impede the investigation,” Warner says. The Nunes memo, which is apparently drawn from information contained in the same late-2017 document dumps that has caused the Senate panel to expand its inquiry, is based on “fabrications” and “connecting dots that don’t connect,” Warner asserts.

My interview with Warner—and his revelation of the Senate panel’s expanded investigation into Trump—came a few hours before the New York Times reported that the president had threatened to fire Mueller last summer, leading to days of headlines over whether Congress should step in to legislatively block Trump from being able to oust the special counsel investigating him. Warner and other Democrats, joined by a few Republicans, have been urging such a step for months. Although GOP congressional leaders are unlikely to permit a vote, many senators in both parties have signaled to Trump in recent days that a move against Mueller would amount to an explosive escalation. Firing Mueller “would be the end of his presidency,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has been an on-again, off-again ally of Trump’s, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”

Beyond the understandable focus on Mueller’s job security, both disclosures struck me as getting at a perilous truth for the Trump White House one year into his presidency: Not only is the Russia investigation not going away, but questions associated with it are multiplying, whether it’s the new evidence Warner says his committee must now investigate or the revelation that the special counsel himself is on the long list of those, like fired FBI director James Comey and the current deputy FBI director and deputy attorney general, that Trump has made very clear he wants out.

At a minimum, the fact that we continue to learn so much new information after so many months of investigation is a reminder of why it’s important to be cautious about the endless punditry analyzing the prospects of a probe whose substance we still know very little about. For now at least, questions like the ones endlessly debated on cable TV — Will Trump be impeached if the House is retaken by Democrats in November? When and how will Mueller deliver a final report on the allegations, and will he seek the unprecedented step of trying to indict a sitting president? — remain almost pointless speculation.

And they will continue to be until the basic concerns we started the investigation with are no longer hanging out there, shadowing the Trump White House with serious doubts that clearly infuriate the president: Did Trump or any close advisers actively collaborate with the Russians who sought to sway the 2016 race on his behalf? Did the president or others seek to cover up their dealings with Russians – or promise them concrete actions, like lifting U.S. economic sanctions on the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in exchange for Kremlin help? Once in office, have the president or members of his inner circle tried to obstruct the investigations into those questions?

We may not have the public evidence yet to definitely resolve those questions, but Warner offers a provocative rationale for why it is we are now seeing such a stepped-up campaign by Trump and his defenders against those who seek to provide us the answers.

“Mueller is getting closer and closer to the truth,” Warner tells me, and “closer and closer to the truth is getting closer and closer to the president.”

***

The Senate Intelligence Committee that Warner leads along with Republican Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina has remained a relative outpost of bipartisanship amid the escalating partisan catcalls over Russia, and throughout our nearly hour-long conversation about the investigation, I found Warner, a successful tech entrepreneur before he became a politician, careful to say what he and the committee know -- and don’t know -- about the explosive Trump-Russia allegations.

On the revelations contained in the latest document dumps, for example, Warner says the panel still cannot attest to their “veracity or truthfulness” and is now “trying to either corroborate or not” by calling up to a dozen new witnesses. He also says that the allegations contained in the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and made public last year remain neither “proven nor, conversely, disproven” despite the extensive investigations. “That's pretty amazing,” he says, “because as long as that sits out there, there's going to be a cloud that hangs over this administration.”

Warner says he and the Senate panel remain focused almost exclusively on the initial questions surrounding the Russian election intervention and alleged collusion; the senators have decided that questions surrounding possible Trump obstruction of justice, “because it falls into criminality,” should remain largely in the “purview” of Mueller.

While he acknowledges that the Senate probe may have months more to run and that no conclusions have been reached on the key question of Trump and collusion, Warner tells me that a bipartisan majority on the panel is now in agreement on the basic facts of the case aside from that. “Virtually every member of our committee, Democrat or Republican, would agree,” he says, that Russia sought to intervene in 2016 on Trump’s behalf with “traditional spycraft” of stealing information and then releasing it, along with not-so-traditional methods of using social media platforms, compromising state voting systems and offering “dirt” on Trump’s 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton.

“Senator Burr and my Republican colleagues, they’ve looked at the same facts I’ve looked at, and we may have areas where we disagree on conclusions, but we don’t disagree on facts,” Warner says, still a noteworthy conclusion given that President Trump himself has continued to cast doubt on the intelligence community’s conclusion that the Russians did in fact seek to influence the presidential race to Trump’s benefit.

Still, the spiraling investigation by the senators as well as Mueller suggests there is much we still don’t know about a case that already has, as the Watergate author Elizabeth Drew put it in an interview for The Global Politico last spring, “more characters than a Russian novel.”

In our conversation, Warner reels off a few of the characters whose actions he finds particularly significant – and about which he did not know when the probe started – including Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s efforts to build a Trump hotel in Moscow, efforts that continued up to the campaign; the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Trump’s son, son-in-law, and campaign manager, and Russians claiming to have damaging information on Clinton; and the claim to an Australian diplomat by a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser that he’d been offered information by the Russians.

But mid-investigation, much confusion still abounds. Consider the case of that former foreign policy adviser. The little-known George Papadopoulos emerged as a surprise figure in the Mueller investigation late last year, when it was revealed he had decided to cooperate in the probe and plead guilty to a charge of lying to the FBI. The president’s defenders have characterized him as little more than an obscure junior official, “the coffee boy,” as one Trump ally put it. But in an interview last week, Papapdopoulos’s fiancée spoke out for the first time and insisted that, far from being a coffee boy, he would emerge as a “John Dean”-like figure in the Trump case, offering damning revelations akin to those from the Nixon White House counsel that helped bring down that president.

So which is it, I ask Warner: coffee boy or John Dean? “I don’t know any coffee boy in any campaign that I’ve been involved with,” the senator quickly replies, “that had direct communications with the absolute senior leadership with the campaign.”

Still, it will be months if not years before we know for sure what George Papadopoulos – or Donald Trump for that matter -- knew and when he knew it.

In the meantime, the spectacle on Capitol Hill is sure to continue. In the Senate, Warner and Burr are negotiating over which witnesses to call next, and Warner makes it very clear he does not believe the Senate panel can finish its work without public testimony from key players like Donald Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and lawyer Michael Cohen. Over on the House side, meanwhile, Republican leaders may allow a vote as soon as Monday on whether to publicly release the controversial Nunes memo – despite fervent objections from Trump’s own Justice Department that doing so could harm national security.

None of which has all that much to do with the basic, jaw-dropping question that started the investigation off in the first place: just how and why Russia succeeded in intervening in an American presidential election on behalf of one of the candidates. With the 2018 midterm elections set to begin little more than a month from now, Warner says that’s still the big story, even if it’s in danger of being lost in a drumbeat of partisan name-calling.

“If you add up all of the money Russia spent interfering in our election; if you add on what they spent in the French elections, where Facebook took down 50,000 sites that were connected to Russia because they’d seen the Russian intervention, if you add up what they spent on the Dutch elections, where the Dutch hand-counted all of their ballots because they were so afraid of Russian intervention,” he tells me. “You add all that up and you’re still talking about less money than the cost of one new F-35 airplane.”

Russia, Warner says, is not the only U.S. adversary in the world that can figure out a smart investment in America when it sees one.

 

TL;DR

-Senate got some important documents in late 2017

-they concentrate on the Russian interference aspect and leave the obstruction to Mueller

-Warner thinks Mueller is getting closer to Trump.

-there are at least a dozen more witnesses the Senate wants to interview

[AmazonGrace]

 

Soooo.... apparently the memo shows that Rosenstein found there was enough evidence to ask the court to continue the Carter Page surveillance  --- and for some reason Trumpublicans are eager to publish this information. 

I just don't get it. 

This is supposed to reflect badly on Rosenstein? But it looks to me like it reflects badly on Carter Page and whoever hired him.

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

14 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Hmmmm, well seeing is believing. And only then. Republican words are only so much air. It's actions that count, and to date I haven't heard a single one of them proposing a bill to protect Mueller.

Republican lawmakers consider need to protect Mueller

And Trey Wannabe-Draco Gowdy? Wasn't he siding with Nunes' #releasethememo conspiracy theory just a couple of days ago? 

 

Maybe it was a momentary lapse of reason for Gowdy.
 

This sounds more like what you'd expect from him:

I mean, everyone who investigated Bill Clinton and Benghazi was a Democrat, right? RIGHT?  

I expect people in murder trials will be acquitted shortly on the grounds that no one in the jury has voted for the defendant.

[AmazonGrace]

They took their sweet time doing anything about the sanctions:

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/29/politics/russia-sanctions-treasury-department-report-cnntv/index.html

US expected to proceed with Russia sanctions that 'name and shame' companies

By Maegan Vazquez, CNN

US expected to proceed with Russia sanctions that 'name and shame' companies

By Maegan Vazquez, CNN

Updated 1522 GMT (2322 HKT) January 29, 2018

Now Playing Connolly: Actions...

Source: CNN

Connolly: Actions against Russia done despite Trump 05:30

Washington (CNN)The US Treasury Department plans to take the next step on Russia sanctions established following interference in the 2016 election on Monday and issue what's expected to be a "name and shame" list of companies and individuals that will be sanctioned for doing businesses with blacklisted Russian entities.

"The Department of Treasury does plan to act today to issue a report and take this process the next step forward," White House principal deputy press secretary Raj Shah told CNN's "New Day" Monday morning.

A White House official told CNN later Monday morning that their expectation is that the report will list individuals who might be in violation.

The sanctions were mandated by Congress in a bill passed last year. Trump called the legislation, which passed nearly unanimously in Congress, "seriously flawed" when he signed it in August, adding that it "encroaches on the executive branch's authority to negotiate."

The administration missed its first deadline on October 1 to issue guidance on which Russian entities in the military and intelligence sectors should be subject to sanctions. The State Department was almost a month late on that -- perhaps because Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had eliminated the office that oversees sanctions and moved all that work to the deputy director in his policy planning bureau -- but they finally named names on October 26.

The administration was facing a Monday deadline for naming the businesses and enterprises from various countries that have continued to do business with those Russian entities and which will face sanctions as a result.

The Trump administration also announced new sanctions on Friday related to Russia's occupation of Crimea and ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine, just days ahead of Monday's congressionally mandated deadline for the implementation a separate, broad array of Russia-related sanctions.

The agency also sanctioned senior leaders of two Ukrainian separatist groups, the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, as well as people and entities alleged to have provided them with material support.

CNN's Nicole Gaouette and Laura Koran contributed to this report.

[fraurosena]

4 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Soooo.... apparently the memo shows that Rosenstein found there was enough evidence to ask the court to continue the Carter Page surveillance  --- and for some reason Trumpublicans are eager to publish this information. 

I just don't get it. 

This is supposed to reflect badly on Rosenstein? But it looks to me like it reflects badly on Carter Page and whoever hired him.

 

 

It's supposed to serve as a pretext for firing him. Nothing more, nothing less.

[GrumpyGran]

26 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

It's supposed to serve as a pretext for firing him. Nothing more, nothing less.

And McCabe just bailed. I don't blame him but it's getting a little scary. We need some people who will stand and fight. I know he was going out in a couple of months anyway, but come on, make them fire you!

[fraurosena]

Whoah! 

 

if ever there was a case for obstruction...

[apple1]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

And McCabe just bailed. I don't blame him but it's getting a little scary. We need some people who will stand and fight. I know he was going out in a couple of months anyway, but come on, make them fire you!

If they had officially fired him, as I understand it, he would have forfeited his pension. That's a really big deal.

[AmazonGrace]

Our friend Natalia is a busy lady. She's also somehow connected to the case of a rogue Swiss agent . Also feat. another dead Russian poisoned by a flower.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-tower-russian-lawyer-natalia-veselnitskaya-exposed-in-swiss-corruption-case?source=twitter&via=desktop

[onekidanddone]

16 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Whoah! 

 

if ever there was a case for obstruction...

My man

 

[fraurosena]

16 minutes ago, apple1 said:

If they had officially fired him, as I understand it, he would have forfeited his pension. That's a really big deal.

Well, @apple1, it seems they actually did fire him!

 

 

Of course Seth Abramson is on it too.

 

 

[GrumpyGran]

10 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Well, @apple1, it seems they actually did fire him!

 

 

Of course Seth Abramson is on it too.

 

 

I am sorry about his pension, if he loses it but that alone should be cause for everyone to sit up and take notice. It would seem to me that this is punishment for not being on Dump's side. After all these years, to lose his pension.

We need to take back Congress, take back out country. This info about Russia attempting to hack state election systems needs to become story number one. And I still am not convinced it didn't happen.

And once we get the Repubs out of office, I think we need to start investigating some of them for obstruction of justice. Then we'll see how they like losing their pensions.

[apple1]

I guess time will tell whether (yes, I know it sounds like a "technicality") McCabe was fired or given the option of resigning.

This is very significant financially because someone at his level with his number of years of service could have earned a very significant pension (WELL over 6 figures). Additionally, while a person is earning federal pension, they are not earning social security. So their pension is very significant financially for them to be able to live on after retirement.

 

I am currently seeing conflicting news stories on this part of the story. 

[AmazonGrace]

Fredo is an a-hole

Fredo's dad is also an a-hole