Russian Connection 5: In Which We Plan Sleepovers

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[Drala]

Love this headline, because it's exactly what I wondered when the Orange Toddler mentioned revoking his security clearance.  Rachel Maddow's piece is embedded in the article, which is more commentary than news.

https://www.wonkette.com/who-the-fuck-is-bruce-ohr-a-wonksplanation-of-who-the-fuck-that-guy-is

[Cartmann99]

18 minutes ago, Drala said:

Love this headline, because it's exactly what I wondered when the Orange Toddler mentioned revoking his security clearance.  Rachel Maddow's piece is embedded in the article, which is more commentary than news.

https://www.wonkette.com/who-the-fuck-is-bruce-ohr-a-wonksplanation-of-who-the-fuck-that-guy-is

From the article:

Quote

But no matter! Now, Bruce Ohr is on Donald Trump's enemies list of people whose security clearances he wants revoked, which by extension means Ohr would lose his DOJ career. Why? Because Trump has heard shitwhistles like Devin Nunes screaming his name on Fox News, and for the president of the United States, that's even better than an intelligence briefing, because the president is the most insanely fucking stupid person in all of America.

Can I get an amen?

[Howl]

Amen, sister! 

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[Howl]

Craig Unger just released his book, House of Trump, House of Putin,  about Trump and the Russian mob.  I'm following him now on the Twitters.  It's becoming more apparent that Trump's Achilles heel is his background with Russian mobligarchs and money laundering through Trump properties. To whet your appetite, here's the final paragraph to Craig Unger's article I have linked to below: 

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In sum, a key to understanding Trump’s relationships with Russia goes through organized criminal syndicates. As I report on all this information and more in House of Trump, House of Putin, unlike the American Mafia, Russian mobsters operate as de facto state actors, with high-ranking crime bosses like Mogilevich working with and at the behest of Putin. All of which raises the question of whether Trump, by coming down on Ohr and perhaps also [Lisa] Page, is trying to keep the real story behind his many ties to Mogilevich operatives from unraveling.

 Craig Unger  posted this piece on  Just Security website yesterday (Thursday, Aug. 30) titled  Understanding Trump vs. Bruce Ohr: Think Russia’s top crime boss, Semion Mogilevic  I've put the whole thing under a spoiler.  It's a succinct summary, so don't be all TLDR. 

Spoiler

Amidst President Donald Trump’s ongoing threats to revoke security clearances from various critics, perhaps the most mysterious person on his enemy list is Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department lawyer who has repeatedly been a Trump target for reasons that have never been clearly articulated. Ohr has never criticized Trump as far as anyone is aware, and has worked at the Justice Department as an award-winning civil servant for nearly thirty years in Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

It has been noted that Ohr had ties to the notorious Christopher Steele dossier and that his wife worked for Fusion GPS, which hired Steele, a former British agent, to investigate Trump. But there is quite likely another reason which could trouble Trump even more: Ohr’s job in the Justice Department involved facing off against Russian crime boss Semion Mogilevich whose operatives have been using Trump branded properties to launder millions of dollars for more than three decades. If the FBI’s investigations turn toward Trump’s ties to Russian organized crime, which is entirely foreseeable, the president may be interested in trying to delegitimize those efforts as he has attempted with other aspects of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. What the public should also understand is how Mogilevich has served as an agent for Vladimir Putin’s efforts in the United States and abroad.

If one tracks Trump’s ties to Russia, the name Mogilevich pops up more than any single name, beginning in 1984 when alleged Mogilevich operative David Bogatin bought five condos in Trump Tower for $6 million in cash. Over the years, no fewer than 1,300 Trump-branded condos were sold in all cash purchases to anonymous shell companies—the two criteria that set off alarm bells among anti-money laundering authorities. In 2002, after Trump had gone belly up in Atlantic City, Bayrock, a real estate development company that allegedly had ties to Mogilevich, moved into Trump Tower and partnered with Trump—in the process bailing out the bankrupt real estate mogul and putting him in a position to eventually run for the presidency.

And Ohr is not the only Mogilevich specialist who has been the subject of Trump’s ire. Last September, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page was fired from her position on Mueller’s probe into the Trump-Russia scandal after anti-Trump text messages exchanged between her and Peter Strzok came to light. (Strzok, a member of Mueller’s team with whom Page was having a relationship, was also fired.) However, little attention was paid to what may well be the most interesting item on Page’s resume—her considerable experience prosecuting money laundering cases involving Russian organized crime, including working with the FBI’s task force in Budapest to prosecute a money-laundering case against Dmitry Firtash, the Ukrainian oligarch who partnered with both Paul Manafort and Semion Mogilevich.

“For him to be in the Justice Department, and to be doing what he did, that is a disgrace,” the President recently told reporters in reference to Ohr. Why go after Ohr, when many close observers assess that he was doing his duty by reporting Steele’s information to the FBI in late November 2017? Sitting on that information from the former British intelligence officer, who had his own track record helping the United States fight Russian organized crime, would have been a serious dereliction. And why does the president risk so much politically by even threatening to pull the security clearances of an active Justice Department official without any of the ordinary procedures for doing so?

In sum, a key to understanding Trump’s relationships with Russia goes through organized criminal syndicates. As I report on all this information and more in House of Trump, House of Putin, unlike the American Mafia, Russian mobsters operate as de facto state actors, with high-ranking crime bosses like Mogilevich working with and at the behest of Putin. All of which raises the question of whether Trump, by coming down on Ohr and perhaps also Page, is trying to keep the real story behind his many ties to Mogilevich operatives from unraveling.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 31, 2018 by Howl

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Because of course they are https://twitter.com/DefenseOne/status/1035369595190824960?s=19 

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Never heard of Sam Patten but Mueller just charged him  https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1035533940130500608?s=19

 

[fraurosena]

Here are two articles with more info on Sam Patten. To say it's interesting would be an understatement.

1. WaPo reports on what he has been charged with, and his ties to Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik.

Washington consultant for Ukraine party set to plead guilty to violating lobbyist disclosure law, court filings show

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A Washington consultant who advised a Ukrainian political party and worked with a co-defendant of Paul Manafort has been charged with violating federal lobbying disclosure requirements and is expected to plead guilty Friday morning, according to court filings.

W. Samuel Patten, 47, of Washington, D.C., was charged with one count of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act for failing to register with the Justice Department when he his represented the Ukrainian opposition bloc from 2014 to 2018.

Patten was charged by criminal information, a type of charging document used when a defendant waives indictment, usually signaling a plea deal with prosecutors. A hearing is set for 11 a.m. Friday before Judge Amy Berman Jackson in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Prosecutors with the Justice Department’s national security division and U.S. attorney’s office of the District contend that Patten formed a company with a Russian national, identified only as Foreigner A, on lobbying and political consulting services. Beginning in about 2015, the company received about $1 million for its works advising the opposition bloc and members of that party, including a prominent Ukraine oligarch, identified only as Foreigner B.

As first reported by the Daily Beast, Patten was listed as an executive and Konstantin Kilimnik as a principal of Begemot Ventures International, a limited liability corporation formed in 2015. A website for Begemot linked to Patten’s email for inquiries, but did not list the company’s clients, the Daily Beast reported.

Federal prosecutors have indicted Kilimnik along with former Trump presidential campaign chairman Paul Manafort with witness tampering in Manafort’s criminal conspiracy and money laundering case pending in the District.

Prosecutors with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III have said Kilimnik, a longtime Manafort associate in Ukraine, has been assessed by U.S. investigators to have links to Russian intelligence. He and Manafort are charged with repeatedly contacting two members of a public relations firm and asking them to falsely testify about what prosecutors say was secret lobbying they did at Manafort’s behest.

Manafort, 69, has pleaded not guilty to all charges in the Washington case, which relate to his political work and alleged attempts to hide income from 2006 to 2017. Prosecutors allege that during that time, he laundered $30 million as a consultant for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine.

2. Bloomberg reports on Patten's ties to Cambridge Analytica, his work for the US Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs and two US Senators:

Manafort Associate Sam Patten Charged With Lobbying Law Violation

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A former associate of Paul Manafort, Sam Patten, was charged Friday with failing to register in the U.S. as a foreign agent for his work lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian political party.

U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office referred the case to the U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, according William Miller, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu.

From 2014 until now, Patten worked with a Russian national on lobbying and political consulting services, including on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch and a Ukrainian political party, according to a document filed by the U.S. in federal court in Washington.

As part of his lobbying work, he violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the U.S. said. The charge is a felony and carries a maximum prison sentence of five years, Miller said. Because it’s a pending case, the U.S. Attorney declined to comment further.

The charges are spelled out in a criminal information, which often precedes a guilty plea. A company not identified in the document received more than $1 million for work for the Ukrainian opposition bloc, the U.S. said.

Patten is scheduled to appear in federal court in Washington before U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson at 11 a.m. as part of a plea agreement, according to the court docket.

Patten worked for multiple political parties and office-holders in Ukraine, according to his website. He previously worked on the microtargetting operations of Cambridge Analytica during the 2014 election cycle, the Daily Beast reported in April.

His work for Cambridge Analytica was later adopted by "at least one major U.S. presidential candidate," the Daily Beast said. Patten told the publication that his work for Cambridge Analytica was separate from the work of his consulting firm.

He headed the International Republican Institute’s Moscow office from 2001 to 2004, and provided technical assistance to a range of political parties and non-governmental organizations, according to the website.

He worked closely with the late opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, whose center-right party, the Union of Right Forces, pushed for free market and democratic reforms. From 2009 to 2011, Patten served as Eurasian program director at Freedom House, an advocacy group, where he continued to focus on Russian affairs, as well as those in the broader region.

In 2008, he was appointed as a senior adviser to the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global affairs and has worked as a legislative adviser and speechwriter to two U.S. senators, he said in his online biography.

 

[fraurosena]

This is the real reason why the presidunce wants to get rid of Bruce Ohr.

AP sources: Lawyer was told Russia had ‘Trump over a barrel’

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A senior Justice Department lawyer says a former British spy told him at a breakfast meeting two years ago that Russian intelligence believed it had Donald Trump “over a barrel,” according to multiple people familiar with the encounter.

The lawyer, Bruce Ohr, also says he learned that a Trump campaign aide had met with higher-level Russian officials than the aide had acknowledged, the people said.

The previously unreported details of the July 30, 2016, breakfast with Christopher Steele, which Ohr described to lawmakers this week in a private interview, reveal an exchange of potentially explosive information about Trump between two men the president has relentlessly sought to discredit.

They add to the public understanding of those pivotal summer months as the FBI and intelligence community scrambled to untangle possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. And they reflect the concern of Steele, a longtime FBI informant whose Democratic-funded research into Trump ties to Russia was compiled into a dossier, that the Republican presidential candidate was possibly compromised and his urgent efforts to convey that anxiety to contacts at the FBI and Justice Department.

The people who discussed Ohr’s interview were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the closed session and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Among the things Ohr said he learned from Steele during the breakfast was that an unnamed former Russian intelligence official had said that Russian intelligence believed “they had Trump over a barrel,” according to people familiar with the meeting. It was not clear from Ohr’s interview whether Steele had been directly told that or had picked that up through his contacts, but the broader sentiment is echoed in Steele’s research dossier.

Steele and Ohr, at the time of the election a senior official in the deputy attorney general’s office, had first met a decade earlier and bonded over a shared interest in international organized crime. They met several times during the presidential campaign, a relationship that exposed both men and federal law enforcement more generally to partisan criticism, including from Trump.

Republicans contend the FBI relied excessively on the dossier during its investigation and to obtain a secret wiretap application on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. They also say Ohr went outside his job description and chain of command by meeting with Steele, including after his termination as a FBI source, and then relaying information to the FBI.

Trump this month proposed stripping Ohr, who until this year had been largely anonymous during his decades-long Justice Department career, of his security clearance and has asked “how the hell” he remains employed.

Trump has called the Russia investigation a “witch hunt” and has denied any collusion between his campaign and Moscow.

Trump and some of his supporters in Congress have also accused the FBI of launching the entire Russia counterintelligence investigation based on the dossier. But memos authored by Republicans and Democrats and declassified this year show the probe was triggered by information the U.S. government received earlier about the Russian contacts of then-Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos.

The FBI’s investigation was already under way by the time it received Steele’s dossier, and Ohr was not the original source of information from it.

One of the meetings described to House lawmakers Tuesday was a Washington breakfast attended by Steele, an associate of his and Ohr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, who worked for the political research firm, Fusion GPS, that hired Steele, attended at least part of the breakfast.

Ohr also told Congress that Steele told him that Page, a Trump campaign aide who traveled to Moscow that same month and whose ties to Russia attracted FBI scrutiny, had met with more senior Russian officials than he had acknowledged meeting with.

That breakfast took place amid ongoing FBI concerns about Russian election interference and possible communication with Trump associates. By that point, Russian hackers had penetrated Democratic email accounts, including that of the Clinton campaign chairman, and Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign associate, was said to have revealed that Russians had “dirt” on Democrat Hillary Clinton in the form of emails, according to court papers. That revelation prompted the FBI to open the counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, one day after the breakfast but based on entirely different information.

Ohr told lawmakers he could not vouch for the accuracy of Steele’s information but has said he considered him a reliable FBI informant who delivered credible and actionable intelligence, including his investigation into corruption at FIFA, soccer’s global governing body.

In the interview, Ohr acknowledged that he had not told superiors in his office, including Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, about his meetings with Steele because he considered the information inflammatory raw source material.

He also provided new details about the department’s move to reassign him once his Steele ties were brought to light.

Ohr said he met in late December 2017 with two senior Justice Department officials, Scott Schools and James Crowell, who told him they were unhappy he had not proactively disclosed his meetings with Steele. They said he was being stripped of his associate deputy attorney post as part of a planned internal reorganization, people familiar with Ohr’s account say.

He met again soon after with one of the officials, who told him Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein did not believe he could continue in his current position as director of a drug grant-distribution program — known as the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force.

Sessions and Rosenstein, Ohr was told, did not want him in the post because it entailed White House meetings and interactions, the people said.

Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores declined to comment.

 

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[wotdancer]

Seth Abramson is publishing a book about collusion with Russia! I just preordered mine.

 

 

Edited August 31, 2018 by wotdancer

[GreyhoundFan]

7 minutes ago, wotdancer said:

Seth Abramson is publishing a book about collusion with Russia! I just preordered mine.

Bob Woodward's forthcoming book should also be great.

[fraurosena]

There's even more info on Patten in this Buzzfeed article. I've bolded the new info.

A DC Lobbyist Linked To Players In The Russia Probe Has Been Charged With Failing To Report His Work For Ukraine

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Sam Patten, a longtime Washington lobbyist and political consultant with ties to several players in the Russia investigation, will plead guilty Friday for failing to report his work for a Ukrainian political party to US authorities.

Patten's case mirrors allegations against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, who is set to go to trial this month in part on charges that he failed to report for his work on behalf of Ukraine. (Manafort was found guilty on eight unrelated charges of tax and bank fraud in Virginia earlier this month). Patten was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller's office, according to a source familiar with the investigation, but his case isn't being handled by Mueller's office. According to court records, the US attorney's office in Washington, DC, and the Justice Department's National Security Division are prosecuting Patten.

According to charging papers, from 2014 to 2018 Patten did work for the Opposition Bloc, a political party in Ukraine that was a successor to the Party of Regions — the pro-Russia party that Manafort had as a client for years. Manafort also did work for the Opposition Bloc, according to charging papers in his case.

The criminal information against Patten states that he formed a company to do work for the Opposition Bloc with a "Russian national" referred to as "Foreigner A" — the description appears to match reports about Patten's work during that time with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Ukrainian Russian national who reportedly had ties to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik is a longtime associate of Manafort, and is a codefendant in Manafort's criminal case in DC; Kilimnik is charged with attempting to interfere with potential witnesses.

Patten was allegedly paid by an unidentified Russian oligarch, referred to as "Foreigner B," via a bank account in Cyprus. That's also how Manafort was paid for his work in Ukraine, according to evidence presented during Manafort's first trial earlier this summer in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Manafort wasn't charged with registration violations in that case; he's facing those counts in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, where jury selection is scheduled to start Sept. 17.

According to the charging papers, Patten set up meetings in 2015 between "Foreigner B" and members of Congress and the executive branch, including the State of Department. In January 2017, prosecutors say he drafted an op-ed for "Foreigner B" about Ukraine's ability to work with the Trump administration and got it published in a national media outlet.

Prosecutors say Patten knew he was required to report this work under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, but didn't do so after consulting with "Foreigner B," who advised against it.

According to reports, Patten's clients also included Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm that was hired by the Trump campaign. The company shut down earlier this year amid controversy over how it used the data of millions of Facebook users. Patten isn't charged in relation to that work, which reportedly took place in 2014 leading up to the congressional midterm elections that year.

Patten is scheduled to appear in the US District Court for the District of Columbia for a plea hearing on Friday. He'll go before US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the same judge handling Manafort's case. His lawyer, Stuart Sears, did not immediately return a request for comment.

'A bank in Cyprus'. Would that be Deutsche Bank? Or Wilbur Ross"s Bank of Cyprus?

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His wife has been on TV complaining that he was set up and saying he should withdraw his guilty plea but I guess ol' George doesn't always listen to his wife.

 

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[fraurosena]

Annnnnd.... Patten has flipped.

Robert Mueller got another cooperator

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The Mueller investigation has resulted in yet another plea deal. Sam Patten, a Republican lobbyist, pleaded guilty Friday to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act in his unregistered work for a Ukrainian politician and a Ukrainian oligarch — and agreed to cooperate with the government.

Patten was charged by the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia. But Mueller’s team referred the investigation there and Patten’s plea agreement specifically says he must cooperate with the special counsel’s office. Andrew Weissmann, an attorney on Mueller’s team, attended Patten’s hearing Friday.

There are several similarities between Patten’s work and the unregistered Ukrainian lobbying allegations against Paul Manafort. Like Manafort, Patten worked for Ukraine’s pro-Russian political faction. Like Manafort, his payments went through offshore accounts in Cyprus.

Also like Manafort, Patten worked closely with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national who Mueller claims is tied to Russian intelligence services. (Mueller indicted Kilimnik alongside Manafort this year for attempted witness tampering, but he is overseas and has not been arrested.)

Weissmann, who attended the Patten hearing, is Mueller’s lead attorney handling the prosecution of Manafort. Manafort was convicted of eight counts of financial crimes in Virginia last week, but he is scheduled to face another trial on conspiracy, unregistered lobbying, and witness tampering charges in Washington, DC, next month.

What Sam Patten pleaded guilty to doing

According to the criminal information document filed by the DC US attorney’s office, Patten and Kilimnik (who is not named but referred to as “Foreigner A”) founded a lobbying and consulting company together. They did campaign work in Ukraine and lobbying work in the US, and were paid over $1 million between 2015 and 2017.

Specifically, the document claims that Patten contacted members of Congress and their staffers, State Department officials, and members of the press on behalf of his Ukrainian clients — all without registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as required by law.

Patten also admits to helping his Ukrainian oligarch client get around the prohibition on foreign donations to Donald Trump’s inauguration committee. The oligarch sent $50,000 to Patten’s company, and then he gave that money to a US citizen, who bought the four tickets. The tickets were used for the oligarch, Kilimnik, another Ukrainian, and Patten himself to attend the inauguration.

Finally, Patten also admits to misleading the Senate Intelligence Committee and withholding documents from them during testimony this January.

Who is Sam Patten?

Patten worked for George W. Bush’s State Department, and according to his website, he’s done work in Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Iraq, and Russia. He also worked as the Eurasian program director at Freedom House, a group that promotes democracy and human rights, between 2009 and 2011.

Patten’s ties to Kilimnik were known publicly and described in profiles by the Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay and the Atlantic’s Natasha Bertrand earlier this year. Indeed, Patten even publicly defended Kilimnik in the press when he came under Mueller’s scrutiny this year.

Intriguingly, Patten is also tied to the controversial political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Patten told the Daily Beast earlier this year that he worked with the company in its 2014 US elections work and on “several overseas campaigns.”

Cambridge later did work for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and came under investigative scrutiny for, among other things, its use of Facebook data. Mueller’s team reportedly looked into Cambridge Analytica in their Russia probe, but has not charged any matter related to the firm.

This is the third known referral by Robert Mueller to other Justice Department offices — but now, Patten is cooperating with Mueller.

Either because of lack of resources or a desire to avoid expanding his probe too much beyond the central players in the Russia investigation, Mueller is now known to have referred several potentially criminal matters he has discovered to other offices in the Justice Department to investigate.

The special counsel reportedly referred another inquiry of prominent Washington figures’ Ukrainian lobbying to the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), this one concerning Tony Podesta, Vin Weber, and Greg Craig. (This trio worked with Manafort and his associate Rick Gates on some of their Ukraine projects.)

Mueller also referred the investigation of Michael Cohen for tax and campaign finance violations to SDNY (though he appears to have continued investigating Cohen on matters related to Russia). Cohen pleaded guilty on eight counts in the SDNY case last week.

The charge here — not registering as a foreign agent under FARA — is believed to be widespread in Washington, but it is rarely prosecuted. Mueller’s probe, however, seems to have turned up a plethora of evidence of such violations, even for figures he hasn’t closely focused on.

The Patten investigation is the third known probe Mueller has referred. Yet this does not seem to have been a complete handoff, since his plea agreement specifically mentions he must cooperate with the special counsel’s office. So Patten has become Mueller’s newest cooperator.

 

[fraurosena]

For those of you interested in these things, here's the official plea agreement.

(Tip: click on the link, not the pic. You can enlarge the linked document; the tiny letters in the pic are difficult to read.)

TLDR: I've copied the most important part below:
 

Quote

 

Your client shall cooperate fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly with this Office, the Special Counsel's Office, and other law enforcement authorities identified by this Office in any and all matters as to which this Office deems the cooperation relevant. This cooperation will include, but is not limited to, the following:

(a) The defendant agrees to be fully debriefed and to attend all meetings at which his presence is requested, concerning his participation in and knowledge of all criminal activities;

(b) The defendant agrees to furnish to the Government all documents and other material that may be relevant to the investigation and that are in the defendant's possession or control and to participate in undercover activities pursuant to the specific instructions of law enforcement agents or the Government;

(c) The defendant agrees to testify at any proceeding in the District of Columbia or elsewhere as requested by the Government;

(d) The defendant consents to adjournments of his sentence as requested by the Government;

(e) the defendant agrees that all of the defendant's obligations under this agreement continue after the defendant is sentenced; and

(f) The defendant must at al times give complete, truthful, and accurate information and testimony, and must not commit, or attempt to commit, any further crimes.

Your client acknowledges and understands that, during the course of the cooperation outlined in this Agreement, your client will be interviewed by law enforcement agents and/or Government attorneys. Your client waives any right to have counsel present during these interviews and agrees to meet with law enforcement agents and Government attorneys outside the presence of counsel. If, at some future point, you or your client desire to have counsel present during interviews by law enforcement agents and/or Government attorneys, and you communicate this decision in writing to this Office, this Office will honor this request, and this change will have no effect on any other terms and conditions of this Agreement. 

 

I'm not sure how any undercover activities by Patten would actually work now that this plea deal is in the public domain, though. 

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[fraurosena]

Here’s Seth Abramson’s views on the Papadopoulos’ sentencing memo:

 

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My man Sam lied to the Senate.

[fraurosena]

The reason why Ohr is constantly being attacked by the presidunce becomes clearer. Ohr worked on a secret program to flip Russian oligarchs. Oleg Deripaska was one of them.

Agents Tried to Flip Russian Oligarchs. The Fallout Spread to Trump.

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In the estimation of American officials, Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin, has faced credible accusations of extortion, bribery and even murder.

They also thought he might make a good source.

Between 2014 and 2016, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department unsuccessfully tried to turn Mr. Deripaska into an informant. They signaled that they might provide help with his trouble in getting visas for the United States or even explore other steps to address his legal problems. In exchange, they were hoping for information on Russian organized crime and, later, on possible Russian aid to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to current and former officials and associates of Mr. Deripaska.

In one dramatic encounter, F.B.I. agents appeared unannounced and uninvited at a home Mr. Deripaska maintains in New York and pressed him on whether Paul Manafort, a former business partner of his who went on to become chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign, had served as a link between the campaign and the Kremlin.

The attempt to flip Mr. Deripaska was part of a broader, clandestine American effort to gauge the possibility of gaining cooperation from roughly a half-dozen of Russia’s richest men, nearly all of whom, like Mr. Deripaska, depend on President Vladimir V. Putin to maintain their wealth, the officials said.

Two of the players in the effort were Bruce G. Ohr, the Justice Department official who has recently become a target of attacks by Mr. Trump, and Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled a dossier of purported links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The systematic effort to win the cooperation of the oligarchs, which has not previously been revealed, does not appear to have scored any successes. And in Mr. Deripaska’s case, he told the American investigators that he disagreed with their theories about Russian organized crime and Kremlin collusion in the campaign, a person familiar with the exchanges said. The person added that Mr. Deripaska even notified the Kremlin about the American efforts to cultivate him.

But the fallout from the efforts is now rippling through American politics and has helped fuel Mr. Trump’s campaign to discredit the investigation into whether he coordinated with Russia in its interference in the election.

The contacts between Mr. Ohr and Mr. Steele were detailed in emails and notes from Mr. Ohr that the Justice Department turned over to Republicans in Congress earlier this year. A number of journalists, including some at conservative news outlets, have reported on elements of those contacts but not on the broader outreach program to the oligarchs or key aspects of the interactions between Mr. Ohr, Mr. Steele and Mr. Deripaska.

The revelation that Mr. Ohr engaged with Mr. Steele has provided the president’s allies with fresh fodder to attack the investigation led by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, casting it as part of a vast, long-running conspiracy by a “deep state” bent on undermining Mr. Trump. In their telling, Mr. Ohr and his wife — who worked as a contractor at the same research firm that produced the dossier — are villainous central players in a cabal out to destroy the president.

While Mr. Steele did discuss the research that resulted in the dossier with Mr. Ohr during the final months of the campaign, current and former officials said that Mr. Deripaska was the subject of many of the contacts between the two men between 2014 and 2016.

A timeline that Mr. Ohr hand-wrote of all his contacts with Mr. Steele was among the leaked documents cited by the president and his allies as evidence of an anti-Trump plot.

The contacts between Mr. Steele and Mr. Ohr started before Mr. Trump became a presidential candidate and continued through much of the campaign.

Mr. Deripaska’s contacts with the F.B.I. took place in September 2015 and the same month a year later. The latter meeting came two months after the F.B.I. began investigating Russian interference in the election and a month after Mr. Manafort left the Trump campaign amid reports about his work for Russia-aligned political parties in Ukraine.

The outreach to Mr. Deripaska, who is so close to the Russian president that he has been called “Putin’s oligarch,” was not as much of a long shot as it might have appeared.

He had worked with the United States government in the past, including on a thwarted effort to rescue an F.B.I. agent captured in Iran, on which he reportedly spent as much as $25 million of his own money. And he had incentive to cooperate again in the run-up to the 2016 election, as he tried to win permission to travel more easily to the United States, where he has long sought more freedom to do business and greater acceptance as a global power broker.

Mr. Steele sought to aid the effort to engage Mr. Deripaska, and he noted in an email to Mr. Ohr in February 2016 that the Russian had received a visa to travel to the United States. In the email, Mr. Steele said his company had compiled and circulated “sensitive” research suggesting that Mr. Deripaska and other oligarchs were under pressure from the Kremlin to toe the Russian government line, leading Mr. Steele to conclude that Mr. Deripaska was not the “tool” of Mr. Putin alleged by the United States government.

The timeline sketched out by Mr. Ohr shows contacts stretching back to when Mr. Ohr first met Mr. Steele in 2007. It also shows what officials said was the first date on which the two discussed cultivating Mr. Deripaska: a meeting in Washington on Nov. 21, 2014, roughly seven months before Mr. Trump announced that he was running for president.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an initiative that remains classified. Most expressed deep discomfort, saying they feared that in revealing the attempts to cultivate Mr. Deripaska and other oligarchs they were undermining American national security and strengthening the grip that Mr. Putin holds over those who surround him.

But they also said they did not want Mr. Trump and his allies to use the program’s secrecy as a screen with which they could cherry-pick facts and present them, sheared of context, to undermine the special counsel’s investigation. That, too, they said they feared, would damage American security.

The program was led by the F.B.I. Mr. Ohr, who had long worked on combating Russian organized crime, was one of the Justice Department officials involved.

Mr. Steele served as an intermediary between the Americans and the Russian oligarchs they were seeking to cultivate. He had first met Mr. Ohr years earlier while still serving at MI6, Britain’s foreign spy agency, where he oversaw Russia operations. After retiring, he opened a business intelligence firm, and had tracked Russian organized crime and business interests for private clients, including one of Mr. Deripaska’s lawyers.

To facilitate meetings, the F.B.I. pushed the State Department to allow Mr. Deripaska to travel to New York on a Russian diplomatic passport as part of a Russian government delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. The State Department had previously rejected some of Mr. Deripaska’s efforts to secure visas to enter the United States — even as part of prior diplomatic delegations — but it approved diplomatic visa requests in 2015 and 2016.

Mr. Steele helped set up a meeting between the Russian and American officials during the 2015 trip. Mr. Ohr attended the meeting, during which the Americans pressed Mr. Deripaska on the connections between Russian organized crime and Mr. Putin’s government, as well as other issues, according to a person familiar with the events. The person said that Mr. Deripaska told the Americans that their theories were off base and did not reflect how things worked in Russia.

Mr. Deripaska would not agree to a second meeting. But one took place the following year, in September 2016, when F.B.I. agents showed up unannounced at his door in New York. By then, they were already investigating possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, and they pressed Mr. Deripaska about whether his former business partner, Mr. Manafort, had served as a link to the Kremlin during his time as Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman.

It was not only the F.B.I. that was concerned about Russian interference in the final months of the campaign. American spy agencies were sounding an alarm after months of intelligence reports about contacts between Trump associates and Russians, and Moscow’s hacking of Democratic Party emails. (American intelligence agencies would later conclude that the interefence was real and that Russia had acted to boost Mr. Trump’s candidacy.)

There was also a growing debate at the highest levels of the Obama administration about how to respond without being seen as trying to tip the presidential election toward Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Deripaska, though, told the F.B.I. agents that while he had no love for Mr. Manafort, with whom he was in a bitter business dispute, he found their theories about his role on the campaign “preposterous.” He also disputed that there were any connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to the person familiar with the exchange.

The Justice Department’s efforts to cultivate Mr. Deripaska appear to have fizzled soon after, amid worsening relations between the United States and Russia.

This past April, the Treasury Department imposed potentially crippling sanctions against Mr. Deripaska and his mammoth aluminum company, saying he had profited from the “malign activities” of Russia around the world. In announcing the sanctions, the Trump administration cited accusations that Mr. Deripaska had been accused of extortion, racketeering, bribery, links to organized crime and even ordering the murder of a businessman.

Mr. Deripaska has denied the allegations, and his allies contend that the sanctions are punishment for refusing to play ball with the Americans.

Yet just as it was becoming clear that Mr. Deripaska would provide little help to the Americans, Mr. Steele was talking to Mr. Ohr about an entirely new issue: the dossier.

In summer 2016, Mr. Steele first told Mr. Ohr about the research that would eventually come to make up the dossier. Over a breakfast in Washington, Mr. Steele said he believed that Russian intelligence had Mr. Trump “over a barrel,” according to a person familiar with the discussion. But the person said that it was more of a friendly heads-up, and that Mr. Steele had separately been in touch with an F.B.I. agent in a bid to get his work to investigators.

The research by that point was being funded by the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, and Mr. Steele believed that what he had found was damning enough that he needed to get it to American law enforcement.

F.B.I. agents would later meet with Mr. Steele to discuss his work. But former senior officials from the bureau and the Justice Department have said that the investigation into ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia was well underway by the time they got the dossier.

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump and his allies have seized on the fact that Mr. Ohr and Mr. Steele were in touch about elements of the dossier to attack the investigation into Russian election interference as a “rigged witch hunt.”

Mr. Trump and his allies have cast Mr. Steele’s research — and the serious consideration it was given by Mr. Ohr and the F.B.I. — as part of a plot by rogue officials and Mrs. Clinton’s allies to undermine Mr. Trump’s campaign and his presidency.

The role of Mr. Deripaska has gotten less attention, but it similarly offers fodder for the theory being advanced by the president’s defenders.

Among the documents produced to Congress by the Justice Department is an undated — and previously unreported — handwritten note jotted down by Mr. Ohr indicating that Mr. Deripaska and one of his London-based lawyers, Paul Hauser, were “almost ready to talk” to American government officials regarding the money that “Manafort stole.”

Even after the concerted effort to cultivate Mr. Deripaska appeared to have broken down, and as he was emerging as a subject of increasing interest in investigations into connections between Mr. Trump’s circle and Russia, both sides continued sporadic outreach.

Last year, Mr. Ohr asked someone who communicated with Mr. Deripaska to urge the oligarch to “give up Manafort,” according to a person familiar with the exchange.

And Mr. Deripaska sought to engage with Congress.

The oligarch took out newspaper advertisements in the United States last year volunteering to testify in any congressional hearings examining his work with Mr. Manafort. The ads were in response to an Associated Press report that Mr. Manafort had secretly worked for Mr. Deripaska on a plan to “greatly benefit the Putin government” in the mid-2000s.

Mr. Deripaska deplored that assertion as “malicious” and a “lie,” and subsequently sued The A.P. for libel, though he later dropped the lawsuit without receiving a settlement or payment.

Soon after the advertisements ran, representatives for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees called a Washington-based lawyer for Mr. Deripaska, Adam Waldman, inquiring about taking his client up on the offer to testify, Mr. Waldman said in an interview.

What happened after that has been in dispute. Mr. Waldman, who stopped working for Mr. Deripaska after the sanctions were levied, said he told the committee staff that his client would be willing to testify without any grant of immunity, but would not testify about any Russian collusion with the Trump campaign because “he doesn’t know anything about that theory and actually doesn’t believe it occurred.”

“I told them that he would be willing to talk about Manafort,” Mr. Waldman added.

Mr. Waldman said he did not hear back from the committee’s staff members, but he contends that they played a role in pushing the claim that the talks over Mr. Deripaska’s potential testimony had fallen apart because he demanded immunity.

“We specifically told them that we did not want immunity,” Mr. Waldman said. “Clearly, they did not want him to testify. What other conclusion could you possibly draw?”

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Yeah, about that. Seth Abramson has a theory about Sessions in this threadlet that will blow your mind. 

Sessions cooperating with Mueller...