Russian Connection 5: In Which We Plan Sleepovers

[Howl]

Jeez, can you imagine being stuck in Air Force 1 with Trump, wondering if you job is on the line?  Or finding out you're fired, and then being trapped on the plane for the rest of the flight. 

[Howl]

Venezuela appears to have taken a page out of the "oops, fell out of a window!" Russian playbook. One of the comments refers to "assisted suicide": 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Bookmarking for later 

 

[WiseGirl]

17 hours ago, Howl said:

can you imagine being stuck in Air Force 1 with Trump,

I don't want to be stuck anywhere with him. Stuff of nightmares. 

[fraurosena]

Good read from Seth Abramson. I'm looking forward to his book.

 

[fraurosena]

Destroying the evidence is a criminal offence.

Russia Troll Factory's Office Set On Fire With Molotov Cocktail

Quote

The office of the Russian media company that emerged from the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the infamous St. Petersburg troll factory that was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in February, was set on fire on Tuesday when someone broke into the ground floor of the building and threw a Molotov cocktail.

The IRA is best known for its role interfering in the U.S. 2016 presidential election through social media posts and by staging political rallies in the U.S. while posing as Americans. The organization, which had a budget of $1.25 million a month, was based out of an office on 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg before it was outed as a proponent of disinformation.

Once the IRA’s cover was blown, however, an investigation by the Russian media company RBK revealed that it had moved several blocks and rebranded itself as a legitimate media outlet named the Federal News Agency (FAN).

The company now has around 16 media websites attracting an estimated 30 million page views each month. It claims to produce original reporting and analysis with a patriotic twist, but many of its articles attack Ukraine as a Nazi state and give a favorable review of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his policies.

On Tuesday, FAN published the surveillance videos from its own office demonstrating that someone had set the office on fire by throwing a Molotov cocktail. The video shows an unextraordinary office with tan desks and black office chairs, but does not show the suspect.

It is unclear what the attacker’s motive was, but the company’s editor-in-chief said that the organization had become a target due to its work.

“I believe this is tied to FAN’s activities,” editor Yevgeny Zubarev told the media. “We’re most often attacked online, but these types of attacks have already taken place offline.”

The IRA and its successor FAN are believed to be owned by billionaire restaurateur Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a man who has been nicknamed “Putin’s chef.” Prigozhin, a failed cross-country skier and hot dog salesman who spent nearly a decade in prison for robbery, is a close ally of Putin. He was indicted by Mueller’s team for allegedly interfering in the U.S. presidential election.

Aside from his work with the troll factory, Prigozhin is believed to be in charge of managing the Russian mercenary armies stationed in Syria. Reporters from FAN have reportedly been sent to embed with the mercenaries.

 

[fraurosena]

Chris Steele, author of the dossier, has broken his silence. Don't get your hopes up for something spectacular though.

Ex-MI6 spy's veiled swipe at Donald Trump revealed

Quote

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 officer behind the Russia dossier on Donald Trump, has broken 18 months of silence with a veiled swipe at the US president.

He has written about the importance of speaking "truths to power", a possible reference to the allegations he made about collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin in the run-up to the US presidential election two years ago.

Sky News has seen the text of an email written by Mr Steele to the editor of Vanity Fair after he was chosen to feature on its list of the 100 most influential people in the media, politics, entertainment and finance.

The 54-year-old wrote: "In these strange and troubling times, it is hard to speak unpalatable truths to power, but I believe we all still have a duty to do so. I salute those on your list, and otherwise, who have had the courage to speak out over the last year, often at great personal cost. At a time when governance is so distorted and one-sided, as I believe it currently is in the United States, the media has a key role to play in holding it accountable."

Mr Steele enters the at-times lighthearted list at number 38. He is the only named British national on the American-dominated countdown.

Topping the chart is Robert Mueller, a former FBI director who is leading a special inquiry into Russia.

Former first lady Michelle Obama is at number six, while singer Beyonce is at number eight.

Mr Trump did not make the list.

Mr Steele made headlines when the content of a dossier he compiled into allegations of a Russian conspiracy to help Mr Trump into the White House was posted online. The US president strongly denies any collusion with Russia.

The dossier was commissioned by political opponents of Mr Trump but its claims were deemed so sensitive by Mr Steele that he also shared it with US and British intelligence. The work is a strand in a wider investigation into alleged Russian meddling led by Mr Mueller.

Mr Trump has branded the probe a "witch-hunt" and often hurls insults at Mr Steele on Twitter.

The former intelligence officer has remained quiet since issuing a single statement in March 2017 after his identity became public.

But his entry onto the New Establishment List by Vanity Fair appears to have spurred him to make the new remarks in an email to the magazine's editor-in-chief Radhika Jones.

"I was surprised and honoured, particularly as a Brit, to be included" in the list, his message continued.

"I find myself in the company of many talented and distinguished people, although I personally would not accord such accolades to some of the other foreign nationals included in the list!"

Mr Steele was most likely referring to President Vladimir Putin who, at number 58, also makes the cut but comfortably behind him.

The former intelligence officer indicated he is unable to travel to the US at a time of deep divisions between Republicans and Democrats over the Russia probe.

"In more normal times, I would have welcomed the opportunity to join you at your New Establishment Summit in the US this week," Mr Steele wrote.

"Sadly, in the present legal and political situation I am unable to do so, but I sincerely hope and trust that these circumstances will change soon."

This change in circumstances is not specified.

The email concludes: "With Best Wishes, Christopher Steele."

The New Establishment List - which includes bankers, tech entrepreneurs, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and actors - has been running for five years.

Setting out the reason for Mr Steele's entry, Vanity Fair points to his "golden shower glory".

This is a reference to one of the most controversial allegations of the dossier: that the Russian authorities have evidence of Mr Trump hiring prostitutes to urinate on a bed in a Moscow hotel that had been used by Barack Obama.

The dossier claimed this was "kompromat" - compromising material.

Mr Trump has vehemently denied the allegation.

"The former head of MI6's Russia desk compiled the infamous dossier that raised the possibility Donald Trump was vulnerable to Russian blackmail," Vanity Fair said.

"Steele even grew a beard and went into hiding - merely adding to his mythic reputation on the left."

Jon Kelly, editor of Vanity Fair's The Hive, said in a statement: "Inasmuch as the New Establishment attempts to catalogue and rank influence throughout the culture, it's hard to imagine a comprehensive list without Christopher Steele.

 

[fraurosena]

Wut?

 

[AmazonGrace]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Wut?

 

Uh so why is Reality Winner in jail then?

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

Uh so why is Reality Winner in jail then?

Sheesh! Because she's a democrat, of course! 

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Sheesh! Because she's a democrat, of course! 

Don't forget, she's also a woman. You're only safe if you are a rich white man.

[Howl]

 

[Howl]

And another one.  Russian state media version: 

Quote

Colonel of SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia) Sergei Solovyev founded dead in his apartment in Moscow. He was hit by a car, but refused of medical assistance.

Makes sense to me.  I always decline medical aid after I've been his by a car. 

[WiseGirl]

I don't know what reactions to put for the above two posts. Who's behind all this/eliminating evidence?  Worrisome.

[fraurosena]

It seems that there are some questions about the background of Papadopoulos's wife. 

For wife of sentenced former Trump adviser, a doctored passport photo stokes new questions.

Quote

Last week, in an effort to beat back accusations that she has lied about her identity, Simona Mangiante provided ABC News with a photograph of her Italian passport.

But rather than quiet widespread speculation that the wife of the former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos was perhaps not who she presented herself to be, that passport photo has now raised more questions than it has answered.

Mangiante acknowledged on Monday that she altered the date of birth on the photograph to disguise her age. She now says she is 37, not 34, years old.

"I did happen to lie about my age," Mangiante said in a statement to ABC News. "I don’t owe anyone an explanation about it."

Papadopoulos is preparing to serve a two-week jail term for lying to the FBI about his attempts to arrange a meeting between campaign and Russian officials. His wife, who for months served as his public spokesman and defender, has faced persistent questions about her own background from social-media sleuths, media personalities and even her in-laws.

Last week, she attempted to mount a counterattack on those who have suggested she has lied about her past, sharing names of people she identified as former co-workers from the legal community and sharing a photo of the identifying information in her passport.

On Monday, Mangiante acknowledged altering the passport photo after she faced pressure online from an independent journalist who has raised persistent questions about her identity. The journalist, Scott Stedman, reported on Twitter that he had obtained a copy of Mangiante’s marriage certificate, where the date of birth listed differed from the one on the passport photo provided to ABC News. Her date of birth also differed on an Italian legal database, as ABC News noted in its reporting last week.

Mangiante said she altered the date in order to appear younger — which she considered an age-old desire of women everywhere, but especially in Hollywood, where she has moved to pursue an acting career. She argued that the discrepancy is proof of nothing more malicious than a bit of vanity, but felt it was important now to come clean.

"I admitted being born in 1981," she said. "That the picture of my passport was photoshopped to provoke journalist but that I was the one to set the record straight."

Stedman was not the first to harbor doubts about Mangiante’s personal history. When federal investigators from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office charged her then-fiancé in October 2017, they also pulled her aside to ask her whether she spoke Russian or had ever traveled to Moscow. In the months that followed, especially when she became more vocal in public, she was asked repeatedly if she was concealing any ties to foreign intelligence outfits.

The questions came in part because she and Papadopoulos had independent ties to a Maltese academic named Joseph Mifsud. Prosecutors have alleged that an unnamed professor -- later identified by sources as Mifsud -- was acting as an agent for the Russian government in April 2016 when he told Mangiante’s future husband George, then a volunteer foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. Mifsud denied those allegations, but he has since gone underground and has not been seen or heard from in public.

During a September appearance on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Papadopoulos said even his parents "thought that she might have been some sort of Russian spy. Of course I never believed anything like that. I don’t think every beautiful blonde person necessarily has to be a Russian agent. You know, there are many blonde Italians as well."

The following day on The View, host Joy Behar posed the question to Mangiante directly after she described the Mueller team’s efforts to determine if she was a spy.

"Are you?" Behar asked.

"No," was her reply. "And I would like to make a point – if I am a spy I would be an Italian one. Why a Russian one? That’s something I don’t get it yet."

 

[Cartmann99]

12 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Mangiante said she altered the date in order to appear younger — which she considered an age-old desire of women everywhere, but especially in Hollywood, where she has moved to pursue an acting career. She argued that the discrepancy is proof of nothing more malicious than a bit of vanity, but felt it was important now to come clean.

Um, you don't start an acting career in your late thirties unless you are trying to be some sort of character actor, but the fact that you are lying about your age shows that is not what you have in mind. Try again.

[fraurosena]

Oh wow! Now we have to keep our fingers crossed his findings will be made public too. The chances of that happening are significantly higher with a Democratic majority in Congress.

Mueller Ready to Deliver Key Findings in His Trump Probe, Sources Say

Quote

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is expected to issue findings on core aspects of his Russia probe soon after the November midterm elections as he faces intensifying pressure to produce more indictments or shut down his investigation, according to two U.S. officials.

Specifically, Mueller is close to rendering judgment on two of the most explosive aspects of his inquiry: whether there were clear incidents of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and whether the president took any actions that constitute obstruction of justice, according to one of the officials, who asked not to be identified speaking about the investigation.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Mueller’s findings would be made public if he doesn’t secure unsealed indictments. The regulations governing Mueller’s probe stipulate that he can present his findings only to his boss, who is currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The regulations give a special counsel’s supervisor some discretion in deciding what is relayed to Congress and what is publicly released.

The question of timing is critical. Mueller’s work won’t be concluded ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, when Democrats hope to take control of the House and end Trump’s one-party hold on Washington.

But this timeline also raises questions about the future of the probe itself. Trump has signaled he may replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the election, a move that could bring in a new boss for Mueller. Rosenstein also might resign or be fired by Trump after the election.

Rosenstein has made it clear that he wants Mueller to wrap up the investigation as expeditiously as possible, another U.S. official said. The officials gave no indications about the details of Mueller’s conclusions. Mueller’s office declined to comment for this story.

Pre-election lull

With three weeks to go before the midterm elections, it’s unlikely Mueller will take any overt action that could be turned into a campaign issue. Justice Department guidelines say prosecutors should avoid any major steps close to an election that could be seen as influencing the outcome.

That suggests the days and weeks immediately after the Nov. 6 election may be the most pivotal time since Mueller took over the Russia investigation almost a year and a half ago. So far, Mueller has secured more than two dozen indictments or guilty pleas.

Trump’s frustration with the probe, which he routinely derides as a “witch hunt,” has been growing, prompting concerns he may try to shut down or curtail Mueller’s work at some point.

There’s no indication, though, that Mueller is ready to close up shop, even if he does make some findings, according to former federal prosecutors. Several matters could keep the probe going, such as another significant prosecution or new lines of inquiry. And because Mueller’s investigation has been proceeding quietly, out of the public eye, it’s possible there have been other major developments behind the scenes.

Mueller only recently submitted written questions to Trump’s lawyers regarding potential collusion with Russia, and his team hasn’t yet ruled out seeking an interview with the president, according to one of the U.S. officials. If Trump refused an interview request, Mueller could face the complicated question of whether to seek a grand jury subpoena of the president. The Justice Department has a standing policy that a sitting president can’t be indicted.

At the same time, Mueller is tying down some loose ends. Four of his 17 prosecutors have left the special counsel’s office in recent months. Three are going back to their previous Justice Department jobs, and the fourth has become a research fellow at Columbia Law School.

After several postponements, Mueller’s team has agreed to a sentencing date for Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements last year. The Dec. 18 date comes more than a year after Mueller secured a cooperation deal with Flynn, suggesting that Mueller’s team has all it needs from him.

Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, struck his own cooperation agreement with Mueller last month, after being convicted at trial in Virginia on eight counts of bank fraud, filing false tax returns and failure to file a foreign bank account. The plea agreement let him avoid a second trial in Washington. The judge in the Virginia trial, who wasn’t part of the plea agreement, has scheduled a sentencing hearing Friday, which could complicate Manafort’s cooperation agreement with Mueller.

Mueller’s prosecutors also have met with Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer. Cohen pleaded guilty in New York in August to tax evasion, bank fraud and violations of campaign finance laws. That separate investigation, headed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, is one of several New York probes involving the Trump Organization, and could ultimately prove to be more damaging to the president than Mueller’s work.

Manafort’s Plea

Former federal prosecutors said that Manafort’s plea deal probably advanced Mueller’s timeline for determining whether there was collusion.

Manafort could be assisting Mueller’s team on questions related to whether the Trump campaign changed the Republican party’s stance on Ukraine as part of an understanding with the Russian government, and whether the Russians helped coordinate the release of hacked emails related to Democrat Hillary Clinton with members of Trump’s campaign, said another former prosecutor who asked not to be named.

Manafort is also key to understanding a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and a group of Russians who had promised damaging information concerning Clinton, the former official said.

Manafort appears to have good material to offer, said Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Duke University School of Law. “He’s not going to get that deal unless he can help Mueller make a case against one or more people,” Buell said. Cooperators can’t expect leniency unless they provide "substantial assistance in the prosecution of others," Buell added, citing sentencing guidelines.

Although the days and weeks after the election might test Mueller in new ways, he has confronted pressure before to shut down.

Done by Thanksgiving

Trump’s lawyers have attempted to publicly pressure Mueller into wrapping up his investigation, setting artificial deadlines since the early days of the probe when they predicted it would wrap by the end of 2017. In August 2017, then-White House lawyer Ty Cobb said he would be “embarrassed”if the investigation dragged on past Thanksgiving.

Even if Mueller’s probe stretched through 2019, the timeline wouldn’t be unprecedented. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr spent four years investigating President Bill Clinton before releasing his report on the Monica Lewinsky affair, which spun out of a probe into an Arkansas land deal known as Whitewater.

It took almost two years for Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to indict Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, for lying to investigators and obstruction of justice in October 2005 in the investigation into the public outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

 

[fraurosena]

It turns out a lot of people think that because of the Bloomberg article I posted above, Mueller is wrapping up his investigation. That's not how I read it, but because it's being spun that way on social media, I think it's pertinent to post Seth Abramson's thread on the matter. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Senior Treasury employee charged with leaking documents related to Russia probe"

Spoiler

A senior Treasury Department employee was charged Wednesday with leaking confidential government reports about suspicious financial transactions related to the special counsel’s probe of Russian election interference and Trump associates.

The charges reflect the latest move in the Trump administration’s effort to root out leakers within the government. Earlier this week, a former senior Senate staffer pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents in a separate leak investigation.

The Treasury case centers on a dozen stories published by BuzzFeed News that described suspicious activity reports, or SARs, which are generated by banks when a financial transaction may involve illegal activity.

Prosecutors charged Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards with the unauthorized disclosure of suspicious activity reports and conspiracy. The charges were filed in federal court in New York but she is scheduled to make her first court appearance in Northern Virginia, officials said.

Edwards, 40, works as a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, often referred to as “FinCEN.”

Geoffrey S. Berman, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Edwards “betrayed her position of trust by repeatedly disclosing highly sensitive information.”

The stories cited in the criminal complaint filed against Edwards match the headlines, wording and information contained in BuzzFeed News stories, though the court papers did not identify the company by name. Those stories often focused on suspicious activity reports related to key figures in the investigation being conducted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Russian diplomats and other Trump associates.

The last such story was published on Monday, again drawing largely from SARs reports.

About 2 million suspicious activity reports were filed in 2017 from banks, money service businesses, casinos and others, according to FinCEN officials. On their own, suspicious activity reports do not mean very much. But taken with other evidence, they can help guide investigators to specific transactions that might involve financial crimes.

The 18-page criminal complaint details a search of Edwards’s phone and a flash drive she possessed, on which FBI agents say they found a lengthy digital trail of her interactions with the reporters, in which she shared SARS reports.

“The majority of the files were saved to a folder on the flash drive entitled ‘Debacle — Operation-CF,’ and sub-folders bearing names such as ‘Debacle\Emails\Asshat’,” the complaint stated. “Edwards is not known to be involved in any official FinCEN project or task bearing these file titles or code names.”

The flash drive files “appear to contain thousands of SARs, along with other highly sensitive material relating to Russia, Iran, and the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” the complaint charges.

When FBI agents questioned Edwards on Tuesday, she initially denied having contacts with the reporter whose name appears on the stories at issue, then “changed her account, and admitted that on numerous occasions, she accessed SARs on her computer, photographed them, and sent those photographs to Reporter-1” using an encrypted application on her phone, according to the complaint.

The court filing said Edwards referred to herself as a whistleblower in the interview, but added while she had previously filed a whistleblower complaint related to her work, that did not involve the SARs disclosures.

The court documents also indicate the FBI has investigated one of Edwards’s bosses, an associate director of FinCEN, noting that person exchanged 325 text messages with the reporter in question during the month when the first story appeared citing SARs reports.

A FinCEN spokesman said Edwards has been placed on administrative leave. He did not respond to a question about the status of the associate director referenced in the indictment.

A BuzzFeed spokesman declined to comment.

 

[fraurosena]

Just when you thought you knew everything about that June 9 meeting, something else is revealed, and of course it's just as shady as everything else connected to that fateful meeting.

Revealed: Russian billionaire set up US company before Trump Tower meeting

Quote

A Russian billionaire who orchestrated the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting formed a new American shell company a month beforehand with an accountant who has had clients accused of money laundering and embezzlement.

The billionaire, Aras Agalarov, created the US company anonymously while preparing to move almost $20m into the country during the time of the presidential election campaign, according to interviews and corporate filings.

The company was set up for him in May 2016 by his Russian-born accountant, who has also managed the US finances of compatriots accused of mishandling millions of dollars. One of those clients has its own connection to the Trump Tower meeting.

In June 2016, Agalarov allegedly offered Trump’s team damaging information from the Kremlin about Hillary Clinton, their Democratic opponent. The offer led Trump’s eldest son to hold a meeting at their Manhattan offices that is now a focus of the inquiry into Moscow’s election interference by Robert Mueller, the special counsel.

Agalarov’s previously unreported shell company is another example of intriguing financial activity around the time of the Trump Tower meeting. Mueller is looking into such activity and whether any of the money involved could have been used to fund Russian meddling in the US election, which Agalarov denies.

Scott Balber, Agalarov’s attorney, said the company was formed for “real estate transactions” and did not elaborate. Ilya Bykov, the accountant, said it was created to “handle certain investment projects which never materialised”.

Balber said in an email: “For the avoidance of any doubt, no Mr Agalarov has not used his accountant – or anyone else – to commit any wrongdoing and no Mr Agalarov has not used the money you referenced – or any other money – to fund any activity relating to the US election.”

Agalarov, 62, is a Moscow-based property developer who has won major contracts from Vladimir Putin’s government. He hosted Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe contest at his concert hall in Moscow. A leaked opposition research dossier alleged that Russian officials obtained compromising information about the future president during his stay in the city. Trump has denied wrongdoing and claims the dossier is false.

Early in June 2016, a publicist for Agalarov and his son, Emin, said in an email to Donald Trump Jr that Agalarov had been offered “documents and information that would incriminate Hillary” by a Russian prosecutor. The publicist said the material was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin”.

On 9 June, one of Agalarov’s top executives and several other Russians met Donald Trump Jr and two other senior Trump aides at Trump Tower to discuss the offer.

A month earlier, Bykov, Agalarov’s US-based accountant, had incorporated a corporation for him in Delaware, a state favoured by businesses for its low taxes and protection of corporate secrecy. Agalarov was not named in the paperwork but Bykov was listed as the company’s president and director.

BuzzFeed News reported last month that Agalarov moved $19.5m from an offshore investment vehicle to a US bank account 11 days after the meeting. The transfer was reportedly flagged to US Treasury officials as suspicious. The Delaware company used the same name, Silver Valley Consulting, as the offshore vehicle.

On the day of the money transfer, Trump fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, leaving his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in charge. Manafort, who has extensive business links to the former Soviet Union, is now cooperating with Mueller after having been convicted of financial crimes.

Having initially said that Agalarov’s Delaware company was formed to handle investments that did not materialise, Bykov later said it was actually set up specifically to receive the $19.5m money transfer, but that the money was ultimately sent to Agalarov’s personal US bank account instead.

Bykov said Agalarov used some of the transferred funds to buy an apartment in Florida and to pay down personal debt. Property records from Miami-Dade county state that Agalarov bought an apartment there in April 2016, before the company was created and the money was transferred. Bykov said the money was used to buy a different apartment, but did not give details.

A 60-year-old US citizen and graduate of New York University, Bykov leads a Manhattan-based firm that provides US legal and financial services for some of Russia’s wealthiest people. Among them is Igor Krutoy, a composer and prominent Putin supporter, who was part of a consortium that tried in 2011 to develop a hotel in Latvia with Trump. Krutoy was not accused of any wrongdoing.

Bykov dismissed suggestions that Agalarov was part of Russia’s election interference as “sensationalism” from critics of Trump. “Aras is a fantastic guy,” he said. “A great guy. Very accomplished, very fair, very likable, very open, very down to earth, very smart.”

Another of Bykov’s clients is separately linked to the Trump Tower meeting. Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-linked Russian attorney who attended the meeting, was at that time representing Prevezon Holdings, a Russian investment company. Prevezon was being sued by the US government for allegedly laundering part of $230m stolen by a Russian criminal network into upscale New York condominiums.

Corporate filings to New York state regulators show that several of the Prevezon companies allegedly used for money laundering were registered to Bykov’s offices.

During an interview earlier this year, Bykov first suggested that the Prevezon he worked with was a different company using a similar name, which was “selling some electronics”. But he later confirmed his firm “provided bookkeeping and tax services for a short period of time” for the Prevezon pursued by the US government. The company was officially owned by Denis Katsyv, a Russian businessman.

Bykov said his firm ran checks on Katsyv, and these “did not reveal any information, negative or otherwise”. He said he eventually ended the business relationship over disagreements about information that Prevezon was required to disclose for tax purposes. Bykov denied any involvement in Prevezon’s alleged wrongdoing.

The justice department announced in May last year that Prevezon would pay a $5.9m settlement to halt the government’s legal action. No wrongdoing was admitted and Prevezon maintained its innocence.

Bykov also managed the US financial affairs of Larisa Markus, the ex-president of Russia’s Vneshprombank. Markus is now serving a nine-year prison sentence in Russia, having been convicted of embezzling about $2bn of the bank’s money before it collapsed in 2016.

Vneshprombank was sued in New York by a creditor that alleged Markus used the stolen funds to pay for apartments she bought in New York through a network of shell companies. These companies were registered to Bykov’s office. Separately, Bykov was subpoenaed for his records on Markus by the bank in US bankruptcy court.

The creditor’s lawsuit against the bank was dismissed after a judge ruled the bank was protected by the contract between them. The bankruptcy case remains open.

Bykov said lawyers who reviewed Markus’s financing for him were satisfied it was legitimate. “I have to be very, very careful, because on one hand I have a response for the client and on the other hand I have a response for the law,” said Bykov. “And they’re not always identical.”

He said Markus was innocent and was made a scapegoat for Vneshprombank’s collapse. “Larisa was a victim of what’s going on in Russia,” said Bykov. “Not for one second do I believe she was involved in stealing this money.”

Bykov said he had no involvement in misconduct and that the vast majority of his clients had spotless records. He said: “If, out of 500 clients over 15 years, three were accused of doing something wrong, that’s a pretty good number, don’t you think?”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Justice Dept. charges Russian woman with interference in midterm elections"

Spoiler

The Justice Department announced Friday it had charged a Russian woman who prosecutors say conspired to interfere with the 2018 U.S. election, marking the first criminal case that accuses a foreign national of interfering in the upcoming midterms.

Elena Khusyaynova, 44, was charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Prosecutors said she managed the finances of “Project Lakhta,” a foreign influence operation they said was designed “to sow discord in the U.S. political system” by pushing arguments and misinformation online about a host of divisive political issues, including immigration, the Confederate flag, gun control and National Football League protests during the national anthem.

The charges against Khusyaynova came just as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned that it was concerned about “ongoing campaigns” by Russia, China and Iran to interfere with the upcoming midterm elections and the 2020 race — an ominous message just weeks before voters head to the polls.

Prosecutors said the sophisticated campaign Khusyaynova was a part of “did not exclusively adopt one ideological viewpoint” but instead tried to push incendiary positions on various political controversies on social media platforms. The Russians involved, prosecutors said, created fake personas and spread their divisive messages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The group attempted to sow conflict along racial lines and sometimes advocated positions that directly opposed each other, apparently agnostic to whom they supported as long as it turned Americans against one another, prosecutors said.

For example, in relaying how to discuss an August 2017 story about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, one operation participant said Mueller should be termed “a puppet of the establishment” whose work was “damaging to the country,” according to prosecutors. But later that year, another operation member tweeted: “If Trump fires Robert Mueller, we have to take to the streets in protest. Our democracy is at stake.”

The group took similarly cynical positions on U.S. politicians. While one account said President Trump “deserves a Nobel Peace Prize” for agreeing to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, another predicted Trump “might not even be president by then.” One tweet encouraged voters to donate to a political action committee aiming to unseat Senate Democrats Tammy Baldwin (Wis.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), as well as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

As a reporter tried to ask about the charges Friday, Trump interjected: “Had nothing to do with my campaign. You know, all of the hackers and all of the — everybody that you see, nothing to do with my campaign. If the hackers — a lot of them probably like Hillary Clinton better than me. Now they do. Now they do.”

He added, “We’ve done a lot to protect the elections coming up.”

Those involved in the conspiracy, prosecutors said, would analyze U.S. news articles and advise how to draft messages about those stories. For example, before his death in August, operation participants advised that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) should be branded “an old geezer who has lost it,” and they said House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) should be portrayed as “a complete and absolute nobody.”

“The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions,” said G. Zachary Terwilliger, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, said in a statement: “Combatting election interference is a task that requires cooperation from government and private industry.”

Twitter declined to comment.

The messages spread widely on the platforms; prosecutors say one Facebook page reached over 1.3 million people, while several of the Twitter accounts had tens of thousands of followers.

The operation did not seem to include any outright hacking efforts. In a statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said officials “do not have any evidence of a compromise or disruption of infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt our ability to tally votes in the midterm elections.” But the statement noted: “We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies. These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision making in the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections.”

The statement, which was joined by the Justice Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security, came on the eve of a trip national security adviser John Bolton is making to Moscow, where he is expected to raise the issue with his counterparts.

A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

Court papers say Khusyaynova’s operation was funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, an associate of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin who is known as “Putin’s chef,” and two companies he controls: Concord Management and Consulting, and Concord Catering. A federal judge in Washington this week expressed reservations about the special-counsel office’s prosecution of one of Prigozhin’s companies and directed Mueller’s prosecutors to provide a more detailed response to the company’s bid to dismiss the central charge.

A criminal complaint filed against Khusyaynova charges that she managed the finances of Project Lakhta, including detailed expenses for activities in the United States.

Between 2016 and 2018, Project Lakhta’s proposed operating budget exceeded $35 million, although only a portion of that money targeted the United States, prosecutors said.

Lakhta is the name of a neighborhood in St. Petersburg near the location of the longtime office of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that has been the focus of special-counsel prosecutors. The agency moved to an office building, called Lakhta-2, in the neighborhood last winter, according to Russian news reports.

Investigating Russian interference in U.S. elections has largely been the purview of Mueller, though his probe is focused on the 2016 election and the Trump campaign. His office has charged a dozen Russian military officers with hacking Democrats’ computers, as well as 13 people and three companies that his prosecutors allege ran an online propaganda operation to push voters away from Hillary Clinton and toward Trump in 2016.

The members of Project Lakhta seemed keenly aware of Mueller’s work. After the special counsel’s indictment of the 13 Russian nationals in February, alleging similar behavior in the 2016 election, one alleged member of the operation tweeted that he hoped the accused were sent to Guantanamo Bay prison. But, he added, apparently hoping to convince U.S. voters of his position: “We didn’t vote for Trump because of a couple hashtags shilled by the Russians. We voted for Trump because he convinced us to vote for Trump.”

The group communicated with real Americans to advance their work. For example, in July 2017, one of the conspirators used a fake “Helen Christopherson” Facebook account to contact three real U.S. organizations to collaborate with the groups in opposing Trump. One of those organizations agreed to make the “Helen Christopherson” account a co-organizer of an anti-Trump event on Facebook.

The case is being prosecuted by lawyers in the cyber division of the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia and the Justice Department national security division’s counterintelligence and export-control section.

The complaint against Khusyaynova was filed under seal in late September and kept secret for three weeks. Officials said the calculation to publicly unveil the accusations now was based on a number of factors, including the unlikelihood that the suspect, who is believed to be in Russia, might travel to a country where she could be arrested and the pending meeting between Bolton and Russian officials, allowing him to raise the issue with them now that the complaint has been made public.

Overriding all of those concerns, officials said, was a desire to raise public awareness about Russian political influence campaigns — to warn voters that such activity was not limited to the 2016 campaign and that fake online personas are still trying to manipulate Americans heading to the polls in a matter of days.

The Justice Department has been broadly assessing how it should respond to foreign influence operations targeting U.S. elections, and this summer it issued a lengthy report on the topic. U.S. officials have warned repeatedly about foreign attempts to influence the 2018 midterms.

 

[WiseGirl]

Will the layers and layers of corruption ever end? Nevermind...I know the answer...

[fraurosena]

Rachel Maddow has been asking questions about his inauguration fund for quite some time now. It's good to know Mueller is also looking into it. 

Donald Trump and the Case of the $107,000,000

Quote

Donald Trump spent far less on his presidential campaign than Hillary Clinton did, but the eye-popping money surrounding his inauguration weekend raises a few questions. The president’s inaugural committee, which is supposed to be a nonprofit organization, brought in $107 million in donations and used nearly all of it, far exceeding the money spent by Barack Obama in 2009 ($55 million) and in 2013 ($43 million). As has been revealed across several reports stemming from the release of the Trump Inaugural Committee’s tax return, the excess of funds may have been used for more than just trying and failing to convince Paul Anka to perform “My Way” at the Inaugural Ball. 

Interest in the inauguration money was reinvigorated last Friday, when ABC News revealed that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating foreign donations to Trump’s inaugural fund, particularly those coming from individuals with ties to Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Those questioned by investigators – including billionaire Thomas Barrack, who chaired the inaugural committee – were reportedly asked about specific donors, including Andrew Intrater, the CEO of Columbus Nova, one of the companies that paid Michael Cohen’s LLC for “consulting” advice in 2017. Columbus Nova is an affiliate of a larger company owned by Intrater’s cousin, Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin. Intrater donated $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration, and both he and Vekselberg were in attendance, as were several other figures with close ties to Russia.

On Monday, MSNBC’s Ari Melber discussed the news with Steve Kerrigan, the president and CEO of Obama’s 2013 inaugural committee. Kerrigan explained that because, unlike with campaign finances, there is very little oversight of inaugural funds, the committee could have been used to funnel money. “They either totally mismanaged the $107 million they raised, or they treated it as it can be treated because of the loose transparency requirements around it: as an opportunity to have a slush fund,” Kerrigan explained.

Greg Jenkins, who oversaw George W. Bush’s 2005 inaugural committee, was similarly perplexed about how Trump’s committee could have spent $107 million on inaugural events. “It’s inexplicable to me,” he told ProPublica. “I literally don’t know. They had a third of the staff and a quarter of the events and they raise at least twice as much as we did. So there’s the obvious question: Where did it go? I don’t know.”

Concerns over how the committee’s money was used began to gain traction in the summer of 2017, and after the tax return was filed in February, the New York Times reported that the majority of the $107 million was used for overinflated administrative expenses, as well as to pay four separate event-planning firms. One of those firms, WIS Media Partners, was created only six weeks prior to the inauguration by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a close friend of Melania Trump. The firm received close to $26 million from the inaugural committee, and questions have been raised as to how exactly that money was allocated. Craig Holman of the watchdog group Public Citizen, which has investigated how the committee spent its money, told the Times that the committee’s use of the donations represented “fiscal mismanagement at its worst.”

Kerrigan also noted on MSNBC that in 2009, Obama’s inaugural committee paid its entire staff of 450 people a combined $6.5 million, over four times less than the amount received by WIS Media Partners alone. According to the Times, Trump’s inaugural committee only employed 208 people.

The plot thickened on Monday, when the Center for Responsive Politics reportedthat $1 million of the money gifted to the inaugural committee came from conservative legal activists who have since wielded influence over the Trump administration’s process for nominating federal judges. The donation came via a Virginia company called BH Group, LLC, which appears to have been established solely to mask the real source of the money. In addition to their influence over federal judgeships, those connected to the payment were involved in the effort to stall Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, as well as the introduction of Trump to Neil Gorsuch, who was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice last April.

Along with ProPublica, the Center for Responsive Politics found that the sources of several other donations were similarly obfuscated, as well as that two members of the inaugural committee have been convicted of financial crimes, and that the committee’s treasurer was reportedly a co-conspirator in an accounting fraud case. Trump’s inaugural committee appears to be the first that has been willing to accept donations from dark money groups. In other words, it took full advantage of the lack of transparency referred to by Kerrigan.

It’s impossible to know the extent to which influence was peddled and donations were potentially rerouted into the pockets of figures close to Trump. When Trump Inaugural Committee Chairman Thomas Barrack was asked in 2017 what would become of the millions of dollars that was sure to be left over after the cost of the inauguration was taken care of, he insisted that it would be given to charity.

 

 

[Howl]

Holy Rufus Little Reindeer.   And ya know, this malfeasance is being replicated all over the place and is the tip of the iceberg of Russian dark money influence in ever sphere where money can influence, meaning everywhere in DC and Congress. 

[fraurosena]

A Mueller mystery...

Mueller link seen in mystery grand jury appeal

Quote

Special counsel Robert Mueller appears to be locked in a dispute with a mystery grand jury witness resisting giving up information sought in the ongoing probe into alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

It's unclear exactly what the two sides are fighting over, but the case appears to resemble a separate legal battle involving an associate of Trump ally Roger Stone, Andrew Miller, who is fighting a Mueller subpoena. Miller's lawyers are using the case, slated to be argued at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals early next month, to mount a broad legal assault on Mueller's authority as special counsel.

In the more shadowy case, which involves an unknown person summoned before a grand jury this summer, the D.C. Circuit on Monday set a separate round of arguments for Dec. 14.

The case traveled in recent months from U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, back down to Howell and back up again to the appeals court with most details shrouded in secrecy, another indication that much of Mueller's activity is taking place behind the scenes and is rarely glimpsed by the press or public.

Nothing on the two dockets for the mystery grand jury fight mentions Mueller or his team.

However, a POLITICO reporter who visited the appeals court clerk's office on a day when a key filing in the dispute was due earlier this month observed a man request a copy of the special counsel's latest sealed filing so that the man's law firm could craft its response. The individual who asked for the secret filing declined to identify himself or his client and replied “I’m OK” when offered a reporter’s business card to remain in touch.

Three hours later, a sealed response in the grand-jury dispute was submitted to the D.C. Circuit.

Another detail emerged Wednesday strengthening the secret legal battle's apparent tie to Mueller's probe.

The first appeal appears to have been rejected by a D.C. Circuit panel as premature. The witness's lawyers asked the full bench of the appeals court to review that decision but a notation in court files says only nine of the court's 10 active judges participated. Bowing out was Judge Greg Katsas, the court's only member appointed by President Donald Trump.

Katsas served as a deputy White House counsel before Trump tapped him for the powerful D.C. Circuit last year. At Katsas's confirmation hearing, he acknowledged working on some issues related to the Russia investigation and signaled he would take a broad view of his recusal obligations stemming from that work.

"In cases of doubt, I would probably err on the side of recusal," Katsas told senators last October.

A spokesman for Mueller's office, Peter Carr, declined to comment on the litigation.

Lawyers for Trump said the mystery grand jury subpoena fight moving through the D.C. Circuit had nothing to do with the president. “No idea,” said Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow when shown the docket for the case.

Attorneys for Stone said they didn’t know of anyone challenging a Mueller subpoena beyond Miller. Miller's lawyers agreed with Mueller's prosecutors to make many aspects of that dispute public.

No such agreement appears to have been struck in the other fight, although Mueller's team and the mystery witness did file a joint motion earlier this month asking the appeals court to expedite resolution of the dispute.

Several other lawyers who represent witnesses in the Mueller investigation also said they were unaware of who's crossing legal swords with the special counsel's team in the largely secret case.

A few, bare-bones details about the dispute are available in the public record. While all records about the litigation in the district court are sealed, the D.C. Circuit's docket shows that the case was brought in the District Court on Aug. 16 and Howell ruled on it on Sept. 19. The initial appeal was filed five days later.

"The bottom line is the most likely scenario is someone filed a motion to quash or otherwise resisted a grand jury subpoena, and the judge issued an order denying that and saying the witness needs to testify," said Ted Boutrous, a Gibson Dunn & Crutcher attorney who has handled grand jury-related litigation for journalists and media organizations.

It's unclear whether the case the appeals court has agreed to hear in December involves an assertion of attorney-client privilege or some other privilege, is framed as a broader attack on Mueller's authority, or perhaps advances both sets of arguments.

"It's very hard to tell from this docket," Boutrous said.

The grand jury cases pose a threat to Mueller's investigation because they can serve as vehicles to get questions of his authority and legal legitimacy before appellate judges relatively quickly. Such questions have also been raised by defendants in some of Mueller's criminal cases, but all the human defendants who have set foot in a courtroom have ultimately decided to plead guilty and drop any challenges to the special counsel's authority or tactics.

One Russian company charged in and fighting a Mueller case, Concord Management and Consulting, has attacked the special counsel's authority, but the judge turned down the motion. Concord attempted an immediate appeal, but since dropped it.

Mystery cases moving through the courts involving grand jury matters and independent counsel matters aren’t uncommon. A 1997 conflict-of-interest investigation into AmeriCorps chief Eli Segal’s fundraising activities was conducted under seal from its start. And a final report remains out of public view involving another Clinton-era probe into Labor Secretary Alexis Herman and influence peddling accusations.

“This can get a step or two weirder than it already is,” said an attorney representing a senior Trump staffer in the Russia inquiry. The lawyer recalled a case from a previous investigation where he couldn’t even get to see a judge’s opinion because it was under seal.

“It could be anyone who’s been subpoenaed by the special counsel for anything,” the attorney added.

 

Edited October 25, 2018 by fraurosena
removed extra spacing