The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 17, 2017 8:53 am

Scott Dworkin‏Verified account
@funder
Scott Dworkin Retweeted Michael S. Schmidt
Buried in @nytimes story: Trump said to Comey that he should consider putting reporters in prison


so nice of him at least he doesn't want them killed like his butt buddy Putin

Image

Image

Image

so there are recording devices in the Oval Office ....and they are Russian :P

it is always a good day when you have to call Putin to the stand to help with your defense :lol:

Putin Offers To Provide Congress Record of Trump Meeting
Image
Russian Foreign Ministry
By Eric Tucker, Catherine Lucey and JULIE PACE, Published MAY 17, 2017 8:24 AM
0Views
WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia President Vladimir Putin offered Wednesday to turn over to Congress records of President Donald Trump’s discussions with Russian diplomats in which Trump is said to have disclosed classified information. His offer added a bizarre twist to the furor over Trump’s intelligence disclosures.

Putin’s remarks come as Washington was reeling over revelations late Tuesday that Trump personally appealed to FBI Director James Comey to abandon the bureau’s investigation into National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The White House issued a furious denial after Comey’s notes detailing Trump’s request.

The White House has played down the importance and secrecy of the information Trump gave to the Russians, which had been supplied by Israel under an intelligence-sharing agreement. Trump himself said he had “an absolute right” as president to share “facts pertaining to terrorism” and airline safety with Russia. Yet U.S. allies and some members of Congress expressed concern bordering on alarm.

Putin told a news conference that he would be willing to turn over notes of Trump’s meeting with the Russian diplomats if the White House agreed. He dismissed outrage over Trump’s disclosures as U.S. politicians whipping up “anti-Russian sentiment.”

Asked what he thinks of Trump presidency, Putin said it’s up to the American people to judge but his performance can only be rated “only when he’s allowed to work at full capacity,” implying that someone is hampering Trump’s efforts.

As for Comey, whom Trump fired last week, the FBI director wrote in a memo after a February meeting at the White House that the new president had asked him to shut down the FBI’s investigation of Flynn and his Russian contacts, said a person who had read the memo. The Flynn investigation was part of a broader probe into Russian interference in last year’s presidential election.

Comey’s memo, an apparent effort to create a paper trail of his contacts with the White House, would be the clearest evidence to date that the president has tried to influence the investigation.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, sent a letter to the FBI on Tuesday requesting that it turn over all documents and recordings that detail communications between Comey and Trump. He said he would give the FBI a week and then “if we need a subpoena, we’ll do it.”

The panel’s top Democrat, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, a constant Trump critic, called the allegation of Trump pressure on Comey “explosive” and said “it appears like a textbook case of criminal obstruction of justice.”

John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said late Tuesday that the developments had reached “Watergate size and scale.”

Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, said simply, “It would be helpful to have less drama emanating from the White House.”

The person who described the Comey memo to the AP was not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. The existence of the memo was first reported Tuesday by The New York Times.

The White House vigorously denied it all. “While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” a White House statement said.

Trump fired Flynn on Feb. 13, on grounds that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with Russians.

The intensifying drama comes as Trump is set to embark Friday on his first foreign trip, which had been optimistically viewed by some aides as an opportunity to reset an administration floundering under an inexperienced president.

When Trump fired Comey, he said he did so based on Comey’s very public handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe and how it affected his leadership of the FBI. But the White House has provided differing accounts of the firing. And lawmakers have alleged that the sudden ouster was an attempt to stifle the bureau’s investigation into Trump associates’ ties to Russia’s meddling in the campaign.

Mark Warner of Virginia, top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said he would ask Comey for additional material as part of that panel’s investigation. “Memos, transcripts, tapes — the list keeps getting longer,” he said.

According to the Times, Comey wrote in the February memo that Trump told him Flynn had done nothing wrong. Comey said he replied that “I agree he is a good guy” but said nothing to Trump about limiting the investigation.

The newspaper said Comey was in the Oval Office that day with other national security officials for a terrorism threat briefing. When that ended, Trump asked everyone to leave except Comey, and he eventually turned the conversation to Flynn.

The administration spent the first half of Tuesday defending Trump’s disclosure of classified information to senior Russian officials. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the president’s comments were “wholly appropriate.” He used that phrase nine times in his briefing to reporters.

The highly classified information about an Islamic State plot was collected by Israel, a crucial source of intelligence and close partner in the fight against some of the America’s fiercest threats in the Middle East. Trump’s disclosure of the information threatened to fray that partnership and piled pressure on the White House to explain the apparently on-the-spot decision to reveal the information to Russian diplomats in the Oval Office.

A U.S. official who confirmed the disclosure to The Associated Press said the revelation potentially put the source at risk.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/putin ... mp-meeting



Image

Image


Image

Image


ИДИОТ!
Trump Official: We ‘Let the Biggest Perpetrator of Fake News into the Oval Office’
Team Trump is “either in bed with the Russians or too stupid to understand the severity of this mistake,” an official fumed after Kremlin press got exclusive Oval Office access.
LACHLAN MARKAY
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
05.11.17 4:19 PM ET
Senior members of the Trump administration are livid that the White House allowed the Russian government to steer the narrative of the president’s Wednesday meeting with top Russian diplomats by giving Kremlin-backed media exclusive access to the event.
The White House did not allow American press into the meeting between President Donald Trump, Russian foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. But it did admit a photographer from TASS, a state-owned Russian news service. Its photos were subsequently posted on TASS’s website, giving that outlet a monopoly on publishable visuals of the meeting.
Russian government Twitter accounts shared photos of the event shortly after its conclusion. They revealed Kislyak’s presence—a fact that was not even mentioned in the official White House readout of the meeting. Some U.S. officials suspect Kislyak, whose conversations with Trump’s former National Security Adviser have fed an FBI investigation of his campaign, is a Kremlin spy—or at least spy-adjacent.
Two senior administration officials, one an Obama holdover and the other a Trump appointee, told The Daily Beast that the resulting reliance of U.S. media on a propaganda arm of a foreign government let Russia set the public tone of the meeting and embarrassed the administration amid already contentious discussions with Russian diplomats.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to candidly express their views. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This isn’t an ‘America First’ policy,” one of the officials fumed of the White House’s decision “to let the biggest perpetrator of fake news into the Oval Office.” Trump, the official added, is “either in bed with the Russians or too stupid to understand the severity of this mistake. Either way, the implications are truly terrifying.”
The hurt feelings inside the White House weren’t much sunnier.
“Yes, I admit the optics are bad—that was not intentional or anything,” one senior White House official told The Daily Beast. “I literally face-palmed with this one.”
The official noted that White House senior staff and press office were “sour” about the way this played out because top White House staff “somehow” did not foresee that the photos of Trump’s chummy, American-press-free meeting with Kislyak and Lavrov would be almost immediately published by TASS.
Administration officials also claimed on Thursday that they had been misled into believing that TASS was documenting the event internally, just as an official White House photographer on hand for the meeting was. “We were not informed by the Russians that their official photographer was dual-hatted and would be releasing the photographs on the state news agency,” an administration official told The Washington Post.
Furthermore, National Security Agency director Mike Rogers said Thursday that the NSA was not consulted ahead of time regarding the Russian-government visit to the Oval Office that produced what amounted to glam shots for Russian state-news and official social-media channels.
Following Wednesday’s meeting, members of the White House press corp were finally allowed into the Oval Office. But by that time, the ambassador and foreign minister had safely ducked out, and U.S. press found President Trump and Henry Kissinger, the highly controversial Nixon-era secretary of state, sitting side-by-side for a photo op.

What happened during Kissinger and Trump’s private discussion on Wednesday? The conversation quickly steered towards Russia as a regional power, a Trump administration official, who was briefed on the exchanges, confirmed to The Daily Beast. Kissinger advised President Trump on possible “avenues of cooperation” that could be negotiated between the two geopolitical adversaries, especially with regards to the fight against ISIS, and Islamist terror groups in Syria.
On Thursday morning, U.S. newspapers such as The New York Times were forced to credit the Russian Foreign Ministry for photos appearing in their publications. “It’s beyond insulting, it really is,” another senior administration official said of U.S. media’s reliance on the news service of an adversarial foreign government.
“It’s boneheaded on so many levels but it’s certainly insulting to the U.S. press to be forced to use TASS photos and to identify [Russian state media] as its source for a meeting between Lavrov and Trump,” the official said.
Asked about the White House’s explanation for TASS’s presence at the event, the official suggested that it knew or should have known the nature of the news service’s work—and that its photos would eventually be published. “Of course they knew what TASS was, everybody does,” the official said. “If they didn’t then it’s a pretty shameful admission, honestly.”
The embarrassment that officials described at TASS’s access to the event compounded frustration at Lavrov’s opportunistic trolling at the meeting. Peppered with press questions on his way to the event, Lavrov sarcastically feigned shock that Trump had the day before fired FBI director James Comey amid his investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
On Thursday, a spokesman for Lavrov was indignant at suggestions that TASS’s presence at the meeting might have left the Oval Office vulnerable to espionage activities such as wiretapping.
Those reports are "making our [TASS] correspondents feel like Jews in 1933," the spokesman said.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... val-office




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTh5cut5S6U


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfyVsjQRMaM


Russian State-Run Bank Financed Deal Involving Trump Hotel Partner
Russian-Canadian developer put money into Toronto project after receiving hundreds of millions from deal involving VEB

The Moscow headquarters of Russian state-run bank Vnesheconombank, known as VEB. PHOTO: ANDREY RUDAKOV/BLOOMBERG NEWS
By Rob Barry, Christopher S. Stewart and Brett Forrest
Updated May 17, 2017 11:59 a.m. ET

VEB, a Russian state-run bank under scrutiny by U.S. investigators, financed a deal involving Donald Trump’s onetime partner in a Toronto hotel tower at a key moment for the project, according to people familiar with the transaction.

Alexander Shnaider, a Russian-Canadian developer who built the 65-story Trump International Hotel and Tower, put money into the project after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from a separate asset sale that involved the Russian bank, whose full name is Vnesheconombank.

Mr. Shnaider sold his company’s share in a Ukrainian steelmaker for about $850 million in 2010, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. According to two people with knowledge of the deal, the buyer, which hasn’t been identified publicly, was an entity acting for the Russian government. VEB initiated the purchase and provided the money, these people say.

U.S. investigators are looking into any ties between Russian financial institutions, Mr. Trump and anyone in his orbit, according to a person familiar with the probe. As part of the investigation, they’re examining interactions between Mr. Trump, his associates and VEB, which is now subject to U.S. sanctions, said another person familiar with the matter. The Toronto deal adds a new element to the list of known connections between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

Developer Alexander Shnaider, left, with Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump at the ribbon cutting for the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto in April 2012.
Developer Alexander Shnaider, left, with Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump at the ribbon cutting for the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto in April 2012. PHOTO: GEORGE PIMENTEL/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES
After Mr. Shnaider and his partner sold their stake in the steelmaker, Mr. Shnaider injected more money into the Trump Toronto project, which was financially troubled. Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer, Symon Zucker, said in an April interview that about $15 million from the asset sale went into the Trump Toronto project. A day later, he wrote in an email: “I am not able to confirm that any funds” from the deal “went into the Toronto project.”

A spokesman for the Trump Organization, the family’s real-estate firm, said Mr. Trump had no involvement in any financial dealings with VEB and that the Trump company “merely licensed its brand and manages the hotel and residences.” VEB didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Trump has said he has no dealings with Russia. “To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does,” he said in February. On Friday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers released a two-month-old letter stating that 10 years of his tax returns show little income, investments or debt from Russian sources beyond items already known to the public.


VEB has long been viewed by Russian analysts as a vehicle for the Russian government to fund politically important projects, including the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. A VEB executive in New York was sentenced to prison last year after pleading guilty to conspiring to act in the U.S. as a Russian agent without notifying U.S. authorities.

In the wake of U.S. intelligence agency findings that Russian government-directed hackers interfered in the 2016 election, several agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are conducting a counterintelligence probe into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign staff had any contact with Russian officials. Committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate also are investigating the matter. Russian authorities have denied any interference.

At the time of Mr. Shnaider’s steelmaker deal, Russian President Vladimir Putin was chairman of VEB’s supervisory board, and major deals would have been approved by him, according to a former Russian government official and several Russian government and economic experts. The bank later was placed on the U.S. sanctions list after Russia’s intrusion into Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea in 2014. American entities are barred from financial involvement with the bank.

VEB made headlines when it emerged that its chairman met with Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner in December. A bank spokesperson has said VEB’s leaders met Mr. Kushner and numerous global financial executives as it developed a new strategy for the bank. White House press secretary Sean Spicer has said Mr. Kushner’s meeting was part of his role during the Trump transition as the “primary point of contact with foreign government officials.”

The Toronto project was billed in 2007 as a joint venture between Mr. Trump and Mr. Shnaider and was projected to cost about 500 million Canadian dollars. Mr. Trump said at the time he would manage the hotel’s operations and Mr. Shnaider planned to develop the tower, which also would include condominiums, through his company, Talon International Development Inc.

The project has been dogged by financial problems. In November, it entered insolvency proceedings, and a judge in March approved its sale.

Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s general counsel, said the company “was not the owner, developer or seller” of the project. While The Wall Street Journal and others reported in 2011 and 2012 that Mr. Trump had a minor ownership stake in it, Mr. Garten now says Mr. Trump “did not hold” equity and had no involvement with the financing.

The Trump Toronto Hotel Management Corp. has received at least $611,000 in fees from the project since 2015, federal financial-disclosure forms filed last May show. The forms don’t disclose the company’s total income from the deal.

The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto was dogged by financial problems. PHOTO: GEORGE PIMENTEL/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES
Shortly after the project broke ground in 2007, about 85% of the units were presold. During the financial crisis, some buyers pulled out and others were unable to get financing, receivership documents show. Midland Resources Holding Ltd., then owned by Mr. Shnaider and a partner, was on the hook for cost overruns, the documents show.

Midland Resources had acquired its stake in the Ukrainian steelmaker, called Zaporizhstal, for about $70 million after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The 2010 transaction to sell it was opaque. Midland transferred ownership of its portion of the steelmaker to the unnamed buyer through five offshore companies, according to Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer and court documents.

The idea for the deal was brought to a top VEB executive by a former Ukrainian government official, according to an investment banker familiar with what happened. Although the buyer wasn’t named, a steel trader with knowledge of the deal said VEB itself ended up with control of Midland’s share of the steelmaker. At the time, Russian entities saw gaining control of large industrial assets in Ukraine as having strategic value to Russian political interests in the future, said another investment banker with knowledge of the deal.

Mr. Zucker, Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer, said Midland Resources “has never had any relationship with VEB” and “does not dictate where their purchasers borrow funds.” He declined to identify the buyer, citing confidentiality provisions, other than to say it was a “Ukrainian industrial group.”

Mr. Shnaider’s companies continued to pump money into the Toronto tower as it struggled to stay afloat, according to his lawyer and later court documents. Later, Mr. Shnaider became embroiled in a legal battle with Mr. Trump’s companies over management issues. The Trump Organization declined to comment.

In November, a Canadian judge placed the tower into receivership. Mr. Trump’s company was owed C$116,165.72, and Mr. Shnaider’s company as much as C$105 million, court documents show.

Recently, a judge approved the sale of the building to a California-based investment firm for about $220 million.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-st ... 1495031708


Vladimir Putin personally signed off on Russian bank financing of Trump International Hotel and Tower
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 12:01 pm EDT Wed May 17, 2017 | 0

On a day when Donald Trump is fending off his exploding Russia scandal from all sides, the news just got much worse for him. Despite his ongoing insistence that he’s had virtually no business dealings with Russia, it’s now been exposed that the Trump International Hotel and Tower was secretly financed by a Russian government controlled bank – and that the deal was approved by Vladimir Putin himself.
That’s the word from the Wall Street Journal today, after it dug into the financial history of the Toronto based Trump-branded hotel (link). The newspaper has reported that Donald Trump owned a stake in the hotel at the time, a claim which he now denies. But his camp is acknowledging that the hotel is managed by the Trump Organization. Worse, the bank involved has direct ties to Vladimir Putin, Trump’s own family, and a Russian spy ring in New York.
VEB bank is so thoroughly controlled by the Russian government that at the time of the Trump hotel financing deal, Russian president Vladimir Putin was the chairman of its supervisory board and was personally approving on all major deals – meaning that Putin himself was the one who signed off on the Trump Toronto project. VEB is also the bank that Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with at Trump Tower in New York during the transition period.
And then there’s the Russian spy ring in New York, which included one spy whose cover was a day job at VEB bank. That spy ring was busted in part by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara – whom Donald Trump ended up firing after he took office.
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/pu ... ssia/2898/


WSJ: Toronto Hotel Deal Now Part Of Probe Into Trump Ties To Russia
Joe O'Connal/CP
By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published MAY 17, 2017 1:04 PM
For the first time, President Donald Trump’s Canadian real estate dealings have been identified as another area of interest for U.S. federal investigators probing ties between Russia and Trump and his associates.

The connections between the Toronto deal and Russia are indirect and opaque but investigators appear to be zeroing in on the hundreds of millions of dollars Trump’s former business partner received from a Russian-state bank shortly before he put money into the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto, according to a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report.

The Journal reported that Russian-Canadian developer Alexander Shnaider received $850 million from Vnesheconombank in 2010 for selling his company’s share in a Ukrainian steelmaker. Russian President Vladimir Putin was chairman of the bank’s supervisory board at the time, and would have approved these sorts of high-level deals, according to the report.

According to the Journal:

After Mr. Shnaider and his partner sold their stake in the steelmaker, Mr. Shnaider injected more money into the Trump Toronto project, which was financially troubled. Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer, Symon Zucker, said in an April interview that about $15 million from the asset sale went into the Trump Toronto project. A day later, he wrote in an email: “I am not able to confirm that any funds” from the deal “went into the Toronto project.”

A Trump Organization spokesman told the Journal that Trump had no financial arrangement with the bank, and that the company “merely licensed its brand and manages the hotel and residences.”

The U.S. office of Vnesheconombank did not immediately return TPM’s request for comment.

A personal familiar with the U.S. probe told the Journal that federal investigators are looking at all interactions between Trump, his associates and Vnesheconombank.

Vnesheconombank is the same financial institution whose CEO met with Trump White House adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner in December. The bank and Kremlin said that Kushner spoke with CEO Sergey Gorkov in his capacity as head of Kushner Companies, his family’s real estate business, but the Trump administration said Kushner was acting as “the official primary point of contact” with foreign entities for the campaign and transition at the time.

Vnesheconombank was placed on the U.S. sanctions list in 2014 after Russian forces entered Ukraine and annexed Crimea, and the Journal reported that American entities are forbidden from any financial involvement with the bank.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/w ... estigators



seemslikeadream » Sat Feb 18, 2017 11:34 pm wrote:
Does Trump Have Ties To The Mob?
Alex Shnaider, Trump's partner for Trump Tower Toronto, has ties to Sergei Mikhailov, leader of the SoInsteva Gang, a ruthless "Russian crime syndicate."
http://www.dailywire.com/news/3936/does ... on-bandler



December 2016
Also arrested was Sergei Mikhailov, described as a senior intelligence officer with the FSB, which is the successor to the KGB,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/worl ... /97029796/


Russia: Alleged Crime Figure Seemingly Rebrands Himself Under “Right to Forget” Law
Published: Thursday, 02 June 2016 16:23

Said to have been a key figure in an organized crime group, Sergei Mikhailov has seemingly been working to clean up his image by using a new law to remove information about his past from Russian search engines, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported.


Does Putin have a bad memory? I doubt it :P


Mikhailov, also known as Mikhas, moved to Israel in 1994 and was granted automatic citizenship because of his marriage to a Jewish woman. Last May, seven Israelis--including former employees of the Israeli Interior Ministry--were convicted of helping Mikhailov and other Russian mafia figures obtain citizenship by forging documents and arranging fictitious marriages.

A New Breed of Gangster Is Globalizing Russian Crime
Corruption: Authorities say these wise guys work both sides of the law and rival the Mafia and drug cartels.
September 23, 1998|RICHARD C. PADDOCK | TIMES STAFF WRITER


GENEVA — To Swiss authorities, Sergei Mikhailov is a dangerous man who heads one of Russia's largest crime groups from the isolation of his Geneva jail cell. He has been locked up without trial since October 1996 and going to occasional court appearances in an armored Mercedes with a SWAT team escort.

Police arrested one of his Swiss lawyers, accusing him of smuggling Mikhailov's letters out of jail and passing them to an accomplice who faxed them to Moscow. And, fearing Mikhailov's long reach, the Swiss government took the extraordinary step of granting asylum to the main witness against him--a Russian police inspector.

But to Mikhailov and his defenders, the 40-year-old prisoner is a legitimate businessman who has been unfairly imprisoned simply because he is Russian. He is a dealer in the export of gas and oil, they say, a generous man who buys bells for churches in Russia and donates money to an orphanage.

"I haven't done anything illegal," Mikhailov protested to a panel of judges during a recent court hearing. "I am an honest person. If I did something wrong, show me concrete proof. Where is this alleged criminal organization?"

Russian crime--The caption for a photograph accompanying a Sept. 23 Times article on the globalization of Russian crime should have identified the man pictured as defense attorney Alec Reymond.


The answer, police say, is: all over the world. Although Mikhailov's accusers have been slow to bring their evidence to court, authorities allege that he is the boss of the notorious Solntsevo gang--reputed to be the largest Russian crime syndicate. If what they say is true, that would make him one of the most feared and powerful criminals anywhere.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the operations of ruthless, well-financed Russian crime groups have spread internationally with lightning speed. From Moscow to Geneva to Los Angeles, law enforcement officials say the Russian mob has become one of the world's biggest crime threats over the past six years, rivaling the Italian Mafia and the Colombian drug cartels in scope and power.

"I look at the 1990s as the decade of the Russians," said Larry Langberg, who heads the FBI's Russian organized crime task force in Los Angeles. "We do have a big problem. This is a very active group."

Billions Smuggled From Homeland

Western countries that once worried about the Soviets' military might are now trying to combat the invasion of the brutal and disciplined Russian mafia. With the collapse of the Iron Curtain, Russian gangs have smuggled as much as $50 billion out of Russia and into other parts of Europe, Asia and the Americas, Interpol estimates.

Much of this newfound wealth has been laundered through banks in Switzerland, as well as Cyprus, the Caribbean and other offshore banking havens, officials say. Billions of dollars have gone to finance criminal operations ranging from prostitution and car theft rings to extortion and contract murder. Billions more have been used to buy into legitimate businesses and purchase real estate in locations from the Mediterranean to Manhattan.

Cunning survivors of one of the harshest regimes in history, Russian criminals have easily moved their operations into more than 50 countries, according to the FBI. In the process, they have struck up cooperative relations with powerful international mafia clans and drug cartels.

"What was once organized crime has become transnational crime," said Stephen Handelman, author of the book "Comrade Criminal" and an expert on the Russian mafia. "The Russians were better prepared than other crime groups to take part in the global economy. They have now emerged as a full-blown network, passing huge amounts of money around the world."

Russian gangs have roots deep in the Soviet past. Despite the Communists' efforts to destroy them, they formed a close-knit brotherhood with strict rules of behavior. Their training grounds were Soviet prison camps, and their operations were often run from behind bars by senior bosses.

During the final years of Soviet rule, the mafia grew increasingly stronger, forging alliances with corrupt Communist officials. The black market became one of the principal distributors of goods throughout the country--helping to keep the economy running and the Soviets in power.


When the Communist state collapsed at the end of 1991, the crime syndicates were in a perfect position to take advantage of privatization. Cooperating with corrupt officials, they took over government enterprises and factories and won a controlling stake in the country's economy. Then they stripped wealth from their homeland, shipped it abroad and went into business in the West.

Russian gangs have proved themselves to be a new breed, bringing together crime overlords, entrepreneurs, former KGB operatives and government bureaucrats and engaging in diversified activities on both sides of the law.

"As a former superpower, with intelligence links all over the world, they could take advantage of the channels of information for greed and profit," Handelman said. "Because of the global economy, you have transnational groups now doing legitimate and illegitimate business. It's hard to draw the line between what is illegal and what is legal."

Officials estimate that there are more than 6,000 mafia groups in Russia, many with international ties. More than 200 operate in the United States, according to the FBI.

Russian crime groups, having evolved in a totalitarian state, typically impose rigid discipline on their members and display a callous disregard for anyone outside their circle. While cruelty and contract murders are commonplace methods of doing business, the gangsters are also willing to negotiate profit-sharing agreements with potential rivals.

And in the day-to-day fight between law enforcement and organized crime, it appears that the Russian syndicates are winning. Authorities say crime groups are often better organized and better financed than police agencies. Their operations cross so many international boundaries that intergovernmental collaboration to curtail them can be awkward.


"They cooperate with each other much better than we do," said Gwen McClure, who heads Interpol's organized crime section at its headquarters in Lyons, France. "Unfortunately, organized crime groups have fewer laws, less bureaucracy. They share intelligence much better. They have much more money than we have. They can afford to get the best technology."

FBI Task Forces in Major U.S. Cities

In the United States, the Russian mafia found ready victims and a good base of operations in the communities of Russian Jews who immigrated during the Soviet era. Recognizing the mounting Russian crime threat in 1994, the FBI formed task forces in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York to deal solely with the Russian mafia.

In 1996, the U.S. government scored its biggest success with the New York extortion conviction of Vyacheslav Ivankov, the top Russian crime boss in the U.S. and an alleged associate of Mikhailov.

In Los Angeles, the FBI says, the Russian mafia is involved in protection rackets within the Russian community and in frauds such as staged auto accidents and phony medical insurance claims. Russian criminals also engage in scams such as stealing credit card numbers or "phone cloning," in which they illegally obtain cellular telephone numbers from the airwaves and sell them.

Outside their homeland, Russian criminals are most active in the United States, Switzerland, Cyprus, Canada, the Caribbean and Israel, authorities say. In major European cities, Russian syndicates have built a thriving prostitution business, bringing in women from the former Soviet states as virtual slaves.

Money laundering is central to Russian criminals' operations as they try to legitimize their earnings. Russian syndicates have bought as many as two dozen banks, mainly in Cyprus and the Caribbean, to hide illegal money, according to Interpol. In Berlin, Russian mobsters launder money through more than 200 gambling parlors they own or control, police say.

In Israel, where Russians make up one-sixth of the population, the Russian mafia has brutally shoved aside Israeli criminals and taken over prostitution, gambling, money laundering and racketeering operations.

In one prominent Israeli case, Russian mobster Gregory Lerner pleaded guilty in March to defrauding banks of $48 million and trying to bribe officials, including members of parliament and Shimon Peres when he was prime minister. Lerner is serving eight years in prison and has become something of a cult figure. He placed fourth in a "most popular immigrant" poll conducted by a Russian-language newspaper.

Notorious Killer Slain in Greece

One of Russia's most notorious gangsters, Alexander Solonik, was found strangled last year in an Athens suburb. Solonik murdered four Russian police officers in 1995 and then escaped from prison. Police say he was dealing in arms and running a prostitution ring in Greece. The week he died, he was reportedly due to carry out a murder in Italy, where police say he kept an apartment stocked with weapons.


In Geneva, the case of Mikhailov has demonstrated the difficulty of prosecuting an alleged mafia chief who has conducted his activities around the globe.

A waiter in Moscow during Soviet times, Mikhailov was first schooled in the world of crime when he was 26 and spent six months in jail for falsely reporting his motorcycle stolen to claim the insurance. After his release, he allegedly began organizing the Solntsevo gang, named after a district in southwest Moscow. The gang grew to dominate much of the city after winning a series of bloody turf battles with rival gangs.

In 1989, he was arrested on extortion charges but released after the main witness refused to testify. In 1993, he was detained in the killing of a casino operator, but the case fell apart for lack of evidence. At one point, he had one ID saying he was a CNN correspondent and another saying he was a member of the Kremlin security detail, according to "Who's Who in the Russian Criminal World" by Alexander Maximov.

Mikhailov, also known as Mikhas, moved to Israel in 1994 and was granted automatic citizenship because of his marriage to a Jewish woman. Last May, seven Israelis--including former employees of the Israeli Interior Ministry--were convicted of helping Mikhailov and other Russian mafia figures obtain citizenship by forging documents and arranging fictitious marriages.

While the nature of his business activities is unclear, Mikhailov has built a far-flung empire with dealings in the United States, South America, Israel, Austria, Belgium, Hungary and other parts of Europe. His attorneys say he was involved in negotiating gas and oil deals with Russia. Press reports say he was building a five-star hotel in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and exporting bananas from Costa Rica. Authorities say he was involved in arms dealing, drug trafficking, blackmail and money laundering.

Russian crime--The caption for a photograph accompanying a Sept. 23 Times article on the globalization of Russian crime should have identified the man pictured as defense attorney Alec Reymond.


He moved to the village of Borex outside Geneva, where he traveled around in a blue Rolls-Royce. He allegedly bought a villa there through a Swiss intermediary.

Costa Rica made him an honorary consul and gave him a diplomatic passport--although Russia refused to recognize his appointment. He was carrying the Costa Rican passport--along with Russian and Israeli passports--when the Swiss police arrested him on his arrival at the Geneva airport in 1996.

Mikhailov is charged with being a member of a criminal organization, laundering money, falsifying evidence and buying real estate illegally. The police froze $4 million in his Swiss bank accounts.

"This is not preventive detention," said Swiss Atty. Gen. Carla del Ponte, who has been personally involved in the case. "He is kept in jail so he doesn't flee and so he doesn't tamper with evidence."

But Mikhailov's Swiss defense team protests that the government has kept him behind bars for nearly two years without enough evidence to go to trial.

"I have to emphasize that Mikhailov did not commit any crimes on Swiss soil," attorney Alec Reymond said. "In Russia, he is not accused of anything either. I think the prosecution doesn't know what to do with him, and that's why they are keeping him in jail for so long."

During Mikhailov's recent court hearing, armed guards were posted throughout the courtroom, and police officers with machine guns stood watch outside. Mikhailov seemed frustrated and weary from his long detention.

"If Russian authorities have concrete proof, let them show it," he told the court. "I haven't been to Russia in four years. All the evidence the Swiss supposedly have is false. Why does Switzerland treat an innocent man this way? I don't feel guilty."

Times staff writers Rebecca Trounson in Jerusalem and Richard Boudreaux in Rome, Times researcher Christian Retzlaff in Berlin and special correspondent Maria Petrakis in Athens contributed to this report.


http://articles.latimes.com/1998/sep/23/news/mn-25630


Donald Trump Russian Connection Surfaces in Trump Tower Bankruptcy
In Deep With Billionaire Vladimir Putin Pal

By Keith Girard, November 4th, 2016
Image
Donald Trump and his Russian business partner are snarled in lawsuits over another real estate deal gone bad, The Trump International Hotel & Tower in Toronto, Canada. (Photo: Toronto Star)

Donald Trump’s ties to Russian businessmen extend to more than “selling a few condos,” as he’s claimed. The Trump International Hotel & Tower in Toronto went bankrupt this week, revealing Trump’s partner–a Russian billionaire business mogul with ties to Vladimir Putin.
Trump was a minority investor in the 65-story tower with Russian billionaire Alex Shnaider.

Shnaider is co-founder with Ukrainian billionaire Eduard Shifrin of the Midland Group, an international trading and investment holding company.

The company owns a number of subsidiaries located in Russia and Eastern Europe that are deep into agriculture, manufacturing, real estate, shipping and steel.

Last month (Oct 26), Putin granted Russian citizenship by decree to Shifrin and his daughter, who was surprised by Justin Bieber at her 16th birthday party.

JCF Capital ULC, which had purchased the construction loan on the building, said last month it planned to put the tower–mired in more than $301 million in debt–into receivership.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice approved the request today (Nov. 4), just four days before the U.S. presidential election.

Because no U.S. bank will loan money to Trump or the Trump Organization in the wake of four bankruptcies, the Republican presidential candidate has turned to overseas sources for financing or partnerships.

That’s raised concerns that Trump will be beholden to foreign financiers with close ties to Putin, or at the very least faces serious conflict-of- interest questions.

Trump has refused to release his tax returns unlike presidents going back to 1976, which might shed some light on his finances.

Trump has also denied substantial ties to Russian businessmen. But the Toronto tower illustrates his deep involvement in a multi-million dollar deal.

Shnaider put up the money and bought a license to use Trump’s name. The Trump Organization retained the management contract, according to news reports and bankruptcy court papers.

Trump and children Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka led the ribbon-cutting ceremony when the tower opened in 2012, although it’s still unfinished to this day, according to local press reports.

The building ran into trouble almost immediately. The Trump Organization failed to sell condos as promised; nearly two-thirds still remain vacant.

Investors, many middle-class, claimed the were induced into buying time-share hotel units based on inflated projections regarding the performance of the hotel-portion of the project.

Trump promised “worst case scenario” occupancy rates of at least 55 percent, but rates never exceeded 45 percent and fell as low as 15 percent, according to court papers. Hotel rooms have been renting at $100 below market.

Trump and Shnaider, who owns the property through a subsidiary known as Talon International, are also locked in litigation, over management issues, according to Politico.

Small investors, who were misled by a investment prospectus and other “deceptive documents,” were granted the right to sue Trump and Talon, after a judge called the offering “a trap to these unsurprisingly unwary purchasers.”

The city of Toronto has pleaded with the hotel to change its name. Over the past year union workers, women’s groups and Muslim groups have staged protests at the property. Trump, meanwhile, is widely disliked in Canada, because of his misogyny, racism and sexism.

As things now stand, the building is heading for an auction to satisfy creditors. The Trump Organization, however, could still retain its long-term deal to manage the property, although allegations of mismanagement and fraud are at the root of a number of lawsuits.

But don’t count on the next owner to keep the building’s tarnished name.
http://www.theimproper.com/144178/donal ... ankruptcy/


Security analysts link arrested Russian computer expert to crime websites

Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of his Security Council in Moscow on Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017.

BY TIM JOHNSON

One of the key figures in a cyber-treason scandal shaking Russia and possibly related to Russian efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election has been linked to underground criminal forums on the web, something cybersecurity analysts say shows the overlap between Russia’s security services and the criminal underworld.

Dmitry Dokuchaev, a major in Russia’s FSB security service and its Information Security Center, the nation’s premier unit investigating cybercrime, used the screen name “Forb” when he mingled with the large underground community of Russian-speaking criminals who use the so-called dark web to trade tools for defrauding consumers in the West.

Dokuchaev’s activities have potential significance to congressional inquiries into President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. Prosecutors under President Vladimir Putin have charged Dokuchaev and his boss with treason, accusing them of collaborating with the CIA just weeks after the Obama administration made public its conclusions that Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election.


FACEBOOK TWITTER EMAIL SHARE
Trump addresses Russia accusations, business dealings in post-election press conference
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday delivered his first press conference since the November presidential election. Trump addressed his relationship with Russia and how he will handle his business once taking office.
C-SPAN
“If you look at his history, he did lots of general cybercrime stuff. He did lots of account takeovers. He did lots of stuff with carding – credit card fraud,” said Vitali Kremez, senior intelligence analyst at Flashpoint, a New York-based firm that provides services to confront cyber threats.

Whether Dokuchaev or his boss, Sergei Mikhailov, had direct ties with the CIA is not known publicly. But Dokuchaev’s activities open a window onto how Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as the FSB – the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB spy agency – has deep links to the murky world of cybercrime and uses criminals to help reach state objectives.

“The Russian intelligence services are notorious for using criminal groups to create backstopping or moonlighting for their own benefit,” said Leo Taddeo, who until 2015 headed the cyber division of the FBI’s New York City office. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, “there was a great melding of criminal activity and intelligence gathering activity on the part of the FSB.”

Dokuchaev’s arrest sometime before the turn of the year made less news than that of Mikhailov, a colonel who was deputy director of the Information Security Center. According to Russian media closely linked to Putin, Mikhailov was led from a room in the nine-story FSB headquarters in Moscow with a sack over his head.

THE WHOLE STRING OF ARRESTS IS UNPRECEDENTED.
Vitali Kremez, senior intelligence analyst at Flashpoint


FACEBOOK TWITTER EMAIL SHARE
Trump administration eases Russian sanctions to allow U.S. tech exports
Press Secretary Sean Spicer during a press conference on Thursday said the Treasury Department amended recent sanctions imposed by the Obama administration that prevented U.S. companies from exporting electronic products to Russia.
C-SPAN
“The whole string of arrests is unprecedented,” Kremez said, noting that two other men outside of government who are known for advanced hacking and computer skills also were arrested.

Treason charges brought an intense spotlight to the two FSB officers.

“Treason is a particularly unique charge, and it sends a message. It wouldn’t have been brought without very high-level deliberation in the Putin regime,” Taddeo said.

The treason scandal broke in late January, a month after then-President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russians identified as intelligence operatives in retaliation for what the White House called “very disturbing Russian threats to U.S. national security” in connection with hacking during the U.S. election campaign.

In a follow-up 25-page declassified report Jan. 6, the U.S. intelligence community blamed Russia for hacking aimed at helping Trump win the vote.

“Russia’s intelligence services conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including targets associated with both major political parties,” the assessment said.

U.S. officials accused Russian military intelligence and the FSB of what the U.S. officials called “malicious cyber activity.”

The FSB has many roles in the cyber sphere domestically and abroad, but is not the only agency involved in regulating and investigating the digital realm. The Russian Interior Ministry also has a dedicated unit, known as Division K (K is for Kiber, or Cyber in Russian).

The FSB conducts counterespionage efforts in the cyber sphere and works with law enforcement in investigations. It also has a commercial function, licensing some products for consumer use, a potential source of corruption.

Before the treason charges were levied, Russian media had sought to portray Mikhailov as corrupt.

“LifeNews.ru, a news outlet that is often linked to the FSB, reports that the FSB found $12 million in cash in a search of his apartment and dacha,” said a U.S. investigator based in Western Europe who closely follows Russian cyber policy and criminal groups but fears retaliation and asked to remain anonymous.

A pro-Kremlin television network, Tsargrad TV, which is controlled by Konstantin Malofeev, a billionaire favored by Putin, reported in late January that Mikhailov had passed to U.S. agents the information that allowed Washington to issue the intelligence report blaming Moscow for election-related hacking.

Cybercriminals from Russia and Russian-speaking Eastern Europe and Central Asia buy and sell malicious tools, services, stolen personal data and passwords in forums on what is known as the dark web, an area of the internet that can be visited only with a Tor browser that guarantees anonymity.

At the RSA Cybersecurity conference here this week, researchers said Russian cyber-criminal techniques were expanding rapidly. Researchers in 2016 identified 62 new families of ransomware, or code used to encrypt a victim’s data until a ransom is paid. Of those, 47 are associated with Russian groups, said Anton Ivanov, senior malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based company that sells anti-virus and other cybersecurity products.

Such ransomware is deployed all over the world, he said, attacking a victim every 20 seconds.

How deeply Dokuchaev may have been involved in forums is not known.

Kremez, who was born in Belarus, a former Soviet republic, said he didn’t believe Dokuchaev had acted alone in visiting dark web criminal forums or without FSB knowledge.

“He was a high-level FSB agent,” Kremez said. “There must be more than one individual. It’s a safe assumption.”

Details of the case against Dokuchaev and Mikhailov are secret.

TREASON CASES ARE CLASSIFIED . . . SO GETTING DIRECT, VERIFIED INFORMATION MAY BE HARD.
U.S. investigator of Russian cyber activities

“Treason cases are classified . . . so getting direct, verified information may be hard,” said the investigator.

Russian media, principally the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, also suggest a link between the two detained officers with a hacking group known as Shaltai Boltai, which means Humpty Dumpty in Russian, and which has leaked emails hacked from high-level Russian politicians and shaken down others to avert publishing their stolen information, the investigator said.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation- ... rylink=cpy


The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports:

“Erovinkin was a key aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister. He has been described as a key liaison between Sechin and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now head of the state-owned oil company Rosneft, Sechin is repeatedly named in the so-called Trump dossier… [Christopher] Steele wrote in the dossier, which was dated July 19, 2016, that much of the information it contained was provided by a source close to Sechin. That source was Erovinkin, according to Russia expert Christo Grozev of Risk Management Lab, a think-tank based in Bulgaria.”

Through their mutual love of petrochemicals and profits, Igor Sechin and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil are pals, and in fact Sechin complained that US sanctions against Russia kept him from coming to America to “ride the roads…on motorcycles with Tillerson.”
http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.768228



mmm.... now when was that Flynn phone call? 19.5 here 19.5 there 19.5 everywhere :)

In December, Russia announced the sale of a 19.5 percent share of Rosneft, that massive government oil company run by Igor Sechin. He and Putin appeared on television to announce the deal, and Reuters reported that Putin “called it a sign of international faith in Russia, despite US and EU financial sanctions on Russian firms including Rosneft.”
........
mentions that Carter Page, a member of Trump’s foreign policy team during his campaign, had a secret meeting with Sechin in Moscow in July 2016, in which the two reportedly discussed the possible lifting [of] US sanctions against Russia, in exchange for a 19 percent stake in Rosneft (It is not clear from the memo who would get the stake, but apparently it would have been the Trump campaign)” [Italics mine. mw]. She speculates that this, too, may have been another leak by the now-deceased Oleg Erovinkin.
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/14/for-ame ... ussia-now/


U.S. inquiries into Russian election hacking include three FBI probes

By Joseph Menn | SAN FRANCISCO
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is pursuing at least three separate probes relating to alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential elections, according to five current and former government officials with direct knowledge of the situation.

While the fact that the FBI is investigating had been reported previously by the New York Times and other media, these officials shed new light on both the precise number of inquires and their focus.

The FBI's Pittsburgh field office, which runs many cyber security investigations, is trying to identify the people behind breaches of the Democratic National Committee's computer systems, the officials said. Those breaches, in 2015 and the first half of 2016, exposed the internal communications of party officials as the Democratic nominating convention got underway and helped undermine support for Hillary Clinton.

The Pittsburgh case has progressed furthest, but Justice Department officials in Washington believe there is not enough clear evidence yet for an indictment, two of the sources said.

Meanwhile the bureau’s San Francisco office is trying to identify the people who called themselves “Guccifer 2” and posted emails stolen from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s account, the sources said. Those emails contained details about fundraising by the Clinton Foundation and other topics.

Beyond the two FBI field offices, FBI counterintelligence agents based in Washington are pursuing leads from informants and foreign communications intercepts, two of the people said.

This counterintelligence inquiry includes but is not limited to examination of financial transactions by Russian individuals and companies who are believed to have links to Trump associates. The transactions under scrutiny involve investments by Russians in overseas entities that appear to have been undertaken through middlemen and front companies, two people briefed on the probe said.

Reuters could not confirm which entities and individuals were under scrutiny.

Scott Smith, the FBI's new assistant director for cyber crime, declined to comment this week on which FBI offices were doing what or how far they had progressed.

The White House had no comment on Friday on the Russian hacking investigations. A spokesman pointed to a comment Trump made during the campaign, in which he said: "As far as hacking, I think it was Russia, but I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people."

During a news conference Thursday, President Donald Trump said he had no business connections to Russia.

The people who spoke to Reuters also corroborated a Tuesday New York Times report that Americans with ties to Trump or his campaign had repeated contacts with current and former Russian intelligence officers before the November election. Those alleged contacts are among the topics of the FBI counterintelligence investigation.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t ... SKBN15X0OE
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu May 18, 2017 6:57 pm

First on CNN: House Russia investigators get access to Treasury data
By Tom LoBianco, CNN
Updated 5:05 PM EDT, Thu May 18, 2017

The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has turned over documents
Two congressional panels requested that data last week
(CNN) Investigators on the House intelligence committees have obtained access to valuable data from the Treasury Department, a development that will open their doors to investigate possible connections between President Donald Trump's business empire and Russians, CNN has learned.

Investigators received access to the financial data this week, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the development.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee told reporters Thursday that his committee also had gotten the Treasury Department data.

The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network -- or FinCEN -- monitors global financing and frequently investigates money laundering. The agency collects data from banks around the world and is a critical source in identifying how shell companies move money.

"While I cannot confirm any briefings or requests made by the House Intelligence Committee, I will say that examining financial records and transactions is absolutely crucial to our investigatory effort," Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Russia investigation, told CNN Thursday.

Democratic lawmakers have been saying for months now that they need to follow the money, and have amplified those calls in recent weeks.

Warner grilled Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin Thursday on Treasury's continued cooperation with the Senate probe. Earlier in the week, Warner questioned Trump's nominee to oversee FinCEN at the Treasury Department, Sigal Mandelker. Warner, in his testimony, referenced a May 4 meeting at his office with Mandelker.

"We requested documentation from FinCEN that will be absolutely critical to the Russia investigation. Our ask included things like the FinCEN flash notices. I know that we've received a preliminary response from treasury that they're quote unquote 'working on it,'" Warner told Mandelker this past Tuesday. "Well, I've got to tell you, that's not good enough in an investigation that is so critical it is dominating the news."

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Russia investigation, placed a hold on Mandelker's nomination until FinCEN provided documents requested by Senate investigators on April 26. It was not immediately clear Thursday if Wyden had lifted his hold.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/05/18/poli ... index.html


‘If I was involved, I’d be nervous’: Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes division looking at Trump associates
Bob Brigham BOB BRIGHAM
15 MAY 2017 AT 23:23 ET


Senate investigators hot on the trail of potential collusion between Russia and Donald Trump are turning to a little known Treasury Department database that could provide evidence of criminal money laundering.

The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is a huge database of financial transactions that indicate possible money laundering. Under the Bank Secrecy Act, US financial institutions are required to notify the Treasury Department of any such transactions.

“It goes to the old adage of ‘follow the money.’ If there was collusion between the Russians and members of the Trump campaign, was it for free, or was there some exchange of moneys or payments from foreign governments?” Notre Dame Law School Professor Jimmy Gurulé told NPR.

As NPR noted, “Trump made much of his fortune in real estate and gaming, two industries that have been notorious venues for money laundering.”

Professor Gurulé had oversight responsibility for FinCEN when he served as Under Secretary for Enforcement at the Treasury Department. He is an internationally recognized expert in the field of anti-money laundering.

“If I was involved with some criminal wrongdoing related to this investigation, this would make me very nervous,” Professor Gurulé says of the FinCEN database of possible money laundering transactions.

“These make for attractive landing pads, if, say, you’re a suspicious person wanted for criminal activity in your home country and you actually need a place to cool your jets,” explained Mark Hays, who heads the anti-money-laundering campaign at the nonprofit Global Witness. “You make the purchase real estate person says, ‘Who owns this company?’ It’s so-and-so LLC. ‘Well, who owns that?’ That’s not on the record. No one knows that.”

Last week, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) also focused on potential money laundering when questioning acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

“We hear stories about Deutsche Bank, Bank of Cyprus, shell companies, Moldova, the British Virgin Islands,” Wyden said. “I’d like to get your sense, because I am over my time, Director McCabe, what should we be most concerned about with respect to illicit Russian money and its potential to be laundered on its way to the United States?”

McCabe told Senator Wyden he couldn’t speak about such aspects of the investigation in a public setting, but agreed those issues also concerned the FBI agents working the investigation.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/05/if-i-w ... ssociates/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby JackRiddler » Thu May 18, 2017 9:15 pm

Hate to disappoint you, but the appointment of Bob "Anthrax" Mueller as special counsel may spell the end of this affair for a while. Prosecutorial investigations at this level usually are kept at a slow boil for a year or more. It will be a good long time before Muelller has even staffed his office and set up expense accounts. In the meantime, Congressional committees can claim they are restricted from interfering. They can choose not to call witnesses who might be questioned by the special counsel. This probably means Comey will not be testifying in public any time soon, as the Democrats have anticipated. It is up to Republican whim if they want to cut down Trump for this matter, even more so than before. They have a leash on Trump now and will only make the move if they judge it expedient for their team. Meanwhile the Trump team have their latest reboot opportunity. (I'm pretty sure the Syrian crematorium story was a floater for a new strike to make the apparatus unite behind him again, but it didn't seem to catch.) The wild card is whether this obviously sick (since always) and possibly senile show runner can keep his fucking yap shut and his thumbs off his phone keypad.

I remembered the other day it was 1987 and I was 21 and a graduate and my parents took me to Atlantic City. I left them, took to the boardwalk, won some money at blackjack in one casino, then walked out to find them at the one they were playing in. I saw the Trump sign, on top of his first casino there. Flush with confidence, I ran in, played two hands, won a hundred bucks, and walked right out happy that I'd taken something from this asshole I already hated intensely, for all the right reasons, because at that point he'd been pushed so hard for a decade as the avatar of American success. Remember, at this time, I of course had no idea who the governor of Arkansas might have been. Not counting the racists and Christofanatics of the Republican base, this is the scam artist a certain number of patsies bought into as the guy who would drain the swamp and bring them jobs. Even end interventionist policy (which you really had to not be listening to believe at all, ever). Doesn't matter how much the others were also lying. No excuses. Stupid.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 15983
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu May 18, 2017 9:37 pm

I've got the time ..first Flynn

I waited 2 years for Nixon

Only been at this for 119 days :P

New York ....Trump can't touch this

The New York Times has reviewed one of the subpoenas. It demands all “records, research, contracts, bank records, communications” and other documents related to work with Mr. Flynn and the Flynn Intel Group, the business he set up after he was forced out as chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014.

The subpoena also asks for similar records about Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman who is close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and is chairman of the Turkish-American Business Council. There is no indication that Mr. Alptekin is under investigation.

Signed by Dana J. Boente, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, the subpoena instructs the recipient to direct any questions about its contents to Mr. Van Grack.

Mr. Van Grack, a national security prosecutor based at the Justice Department headquarters in Washington, has experience conducting espionage investigations. He prosecuted a businessman for illegally exporting thousands of sensitive electronics components to Iran and a suspected hacker in the Syrian Electronic Army. In 2015, he prosecuted a Virginia man for acting as an unregistered agent of Syria’s intelligence services.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/us/p ... viser.html


POLITICS 05/18/2017 06:25 pm ET
Why Is Donald Trump Sticking By Michael Flynn?
The president has dismissed his ties to Paul Manafort and Carter Page. So why is he supporting the national security adviser he fired?
By Mollie Reilly

The controversy surrounding former national security adviser Michael Flynn has engulfed President Donald Trump’s White House. And yet it is Trump’s own staunch defense of Flynn that has fanned the intrigue.

Flynn was fired after just 24 days on the job after it was revealed he discussed sanctions against Russia with its ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, before Trump’s inauguration and then repeatedly lied about doing so.

Yet Flynn has remained in the spotlight as the FBI investigates his ties to the Russian government as well as his lobbying on behalf of the Turkish government during Trump’s campaign.

But Flynn has also received a great deal of attention over Trump’s unusual devotion to him. Even though he fired him, Trump has continued to heap praise on the retired lieutenant general, has defended his communications with Russia and possibly attempted to obstruct justice in order to clear his former adviser’s name.

Few other Trump associates have received this kind of backing. His team has sought to distance the president from other ex-staffers under FBI investigation, including Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his onetime foreign policy adviser Carter Page. In March, White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed Manafort played a “very limited role for a very limited amount of time” in Trump’s presidential campaign. (Manafort managed the campaign from March to August 2016.) The same week, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway claimed the president didn’t know Page, despite the work he did on the presidential campaign.

With Flynn, it’s a different story.

According to a New York Times report, the White House knew Flynn was under investigation for his work with the Turkish government weeks before the inauguration. Trump still named him national security adviser, giving him access to the highest levels of classified information. The president also ignored a warning from President Barack Obama, who shortly after the election cautioned Trump against hiring Flynn. (Obama fired Flynn from his post at the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014.)

And, according to the Daily Beast, Trump actually talked Flynn into taking the job even though Flynn was “reluctant.”

A week after the inauguration, then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned the administration that Flynn was “compromised” and “could essentially be blackmailed” by the Russian government. However, Flynn wasn’t fired until 18 days later.

Even after Flynn’s Feb. 13 dismissal, Trump maintained that Flynn did nothing wrong by speaking to Kislyak, claiming he fired Flynn only because he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his Russian communications. He also described Flynn as a “wonderful man” who was “treated very, very unfairly by the media.”

Most notably, the president reportedly asked then-FBI Director James Comey on Feb. 14 to drop his investigation of Flynn. “He is a good guy,” Trump reportedly told Comey. “I hope you can let this go.”

The revelation, which emerged after Trump fired Comey on May 9, has thrown the White House into further chaos and has sparked discussion of impeachment.

Trump reportedly told Flynn last month to “stay strong” amid his growing legal woes.

So why would Trump potentially risk his own presidency to defend Flynn?

One possible explanation is Flynn’s fierce devotion to the president.

Loyalty, while not a virtue he seems to practice often himself, is one of the qualities Trump admires most in others. And Flynn had been one of Trump’s most loyal allies.

Flynn joined the campaign relatively early in the Republican primary, in February 2016, while most of the Republican Party was siding with candidates such as Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. He was a frequent presence on the campaign trail and famously led the Republican National Convention in chants of “Lock her up!” in reference to Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. While the GOP national security establishment lined up against Trump, Flynn advised his campaign on how to improve its foreign policy message and touted that message on cable news. And he stood by Trump during the fallout from the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump boasted of sexual improprieties, even as many Republicans (at least temporarily) retracted their endorsements of him.

There’s been some speculation that Flynn must have some dirt on the president.

Wait. What if Mike Flynn has the pee tape?

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) May 18, 2017
Joking aside, that speculation kicked into high gear after Flynn sought immunity in exchange for testifying in front of Congress and the FBI, an offer that was refused. But according to a report in Yahoo News, people close to Flynn say that his loyalty has not wavered and that the retired general has no plans to turn on Trump.

“These are two men who bonded on the campaign trail,” a Flynn associate told Yahoo. “Flynn always believed that Trump would win. They were together so much during the campaign that Flynn became family. There has been zero sign of anything but supreme loyalty.”

A White House official echoed that sentiment to The Atlantic:

“They got so close during the campaign,” said a senior White House official who was brought on by Flynn and has stayed after his departure. When Flynn left, “the real person who probably took it hardest was the president because General Flynn was the person closest to him on national-security matters.”
That loyalty has strained Trump’s relationship with Flynn’s replacement, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Politico reported. According to its sources, Trump “misses his conversations with Flynn” and is “struggling to connect” with his new national security adviser.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/don ... 684b0a901d




As Impeachment Talk Hits the Mainstream, Over a Dozen Nervous House Republicans Have Flipped on Trump
The Trump administration is spiraling.
By Jefferson Morley / AlterNet May 17, 2017

The surprise appointment of former FBI director Robert Mueller as an independent counsel to investigate the Trump campaign's ties to Russia came as Washington was already undergoing a sea-change in thinking about President Trump’s future. Impeachment is in the air and on the airwaves—cable TV, radio, newspapers, and all over social media. A recent national poll puts public support for impeachment seven percent over Americans who aren't there yet.

Even before Mueller's appointment, David Gergen, a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan, said Trump was in "impeachment territory." While a chorus of House Democrats called for impeachment, House Speaker Paul Ryan tried to bolster the Republican Party line that there was no need for a special counsel or to investigate Trump. "I don't think that's a good idea," Ryan maintained.

The announcement of Mueller’s appointment undercuts Ryan’s defense and gives cover to the growing number of Republicans who were already deviating from the party line.

Before Mueller’s appointment, at least a dozen House Republicans had spurned Ryan’s talking points in favor of positions the Republican leadership opposes. While these GOP representatives did not issue bold calls for action, they did display an unwillingness to go along with White House officials and Republican leaders who are losing credibility in the face of President Trump's false statements and self-incriminating actions. The representatives either called for a special prosecutor, or said they were open to the idea of one, or supported the idea of forming a joint House-Senate investigating committee.

Now that a special prosecutor has been named, these Republicans have gained political traction for the first time. They are not rebelling against Trump, not yet. But they have declared independence. For a president hemorrhaging political support, that is not good news.

Here are the Republican dissenters.

1. Rep. Walter Jones, North Carolina

This maverick conservative is fond of breaking ranks. In March, Jones was the first Republican to call on Rep. Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

In February, Jones was the first Republican to co-sponsor the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which would create a bipartisan-appointed investigatory commission similar to the one Congress authorized after the September 2001 terror attacks.

And a decade ago, Jones was one of the first House Republicans to break with the Bush White House and call for withdrawal from Iraq. As AlterNet reported in 2005, Jones "grew a conscience."

Jones represents North Carolina's Third District, home to the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp Lejeune and other military installations. He is known to his constituents as a staunchly conservative Christian, which makes him an especially credible Trump critic.

2. Rep. Erik Paulsen, Minnesota

“The extraordinary decision to fire Director Comey definitely raises questions which must be answered,” said this suburban Minneapolis moderate in a statement. "I believe these circumstances call for an independent investigation that the American people can trust with confidence."

3. Rep. Barbara Comstock, Virginia

“I can’t defend or explain… the firing of FBI director James Comey,” Comstock said last week. “The FBI investigation into the Russian impact on the 2016 election must continue. There must be an independent investigation that the American people can trust.”

4. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, Florida

"We must pursue the facts wherever they may lead," Curbelo said after Comey’s firing. "Today I reiterate the need for Congress to establish a Select Committee with full investigatory powers to thoroughly examine this matter.”

5. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, Pennsylvania

At a Rotary Club meeting last week, the first-term congressman hinted he would support a new congressional investigation. The dismissal of Comey "raises serious and legitimate questions about timing, intent and the integrity of ongoing investigation,” he said. “I believe we need a fresh start. It’s time for Congress to fully examine all circumstances surrounding Russia’s involvement, and to look at ways to ensure a fair and straightforward investigation."

6. Rep. Tom McClintock, California

“Because of the highly politicized circumstances involving the Russia inquiry, I think an independent prosecutor would be advisable to place the inquiry above reproach," McClintock said in a statement. "I believe it is equally important to appoint an independent prosecutor to pursue the investigations that were swept under the rug during the Obama administration.”

7. Rep. Fred Upton, Michigan

After Comey’s firing, Upton said he was open to the idea of a special prosecutor. He said he was “hopeful that the existing bipartisan congressional committees in the House and Senate can find answers for the many questions. If need be, I would support a special prosecutor at the appropriate time. We must continue to follow the facts wherever they lead.”

8. Rep. Pat Tiberi, Ohio

Tiberi said he supported the ongoing investigations of the House and Senate intelligence committees, but added, "If the leaders of these committees together determine that a special prosecutor is warranted, I would support that decision.”

9. Rep. Charlie Dent, Pennsylvania

The six-term representative from central Pennsylvania called Comey’s firing “confounding and troubling," adding, "it is now harder to resist calls for an independent investigation or Select Committee.”

10. Rep. John Faso, New York

In the wake of Comey's firing, Faso called for appointment of a new FBI director “who will be someone of unquestioned integrity and experience, acceptable to both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate…. If the nominee does not pass that test, then the only alternative in my view would be the selection of an independent investigator to get to the bottom of this matter once and for all."

11. Rep. Scott Taylor, Virginia

Taylor echoed Faso, saying, “The president has a duty to put forth an independent and non-political leader at the FBI to achieve the aforementioned goals. Anything less is unacceptable and may be cause for a select committee or special prosecutor."

12. Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina

Gowdy made a name for himself as a Benghazi conspiracy theorist and Republican hardliner, but in a Fox News interview he broke with Ryan about the need for an investigation. A former prosecutor himself, Gowdy said there was “sufficient evidentiary basis for a crime” and expressed the hope that the Justice Department could bring charges. If not, he said he was “open-minded” about a special prosecutor. He also took pains to praise the reporting of the New York Times.

If Gowdy turns on Trump, it will be a sign the president's prospects are growing ever more dire.

http://www.alternet.org/dozen-republica ... ping-trump



couple of months ago Mike Flynn said he had a story to tell — he’s now starting to tell that story.”

leaking in hopes of getting the immunity he had sought

this isn’t even the worst of it — he’s got more things to say,

Kushner and Flynn Met With Russian Envoy in December

Flynn was Kushner's guy

then we move on to Pence

Pence being kept in the dark


Pence Takes Steps to Build War Chest as White House Stumbles :P

I bet Gen. Yellowkerk has plenty of memos himself


or


IS TRUMP FLIRTING WITH A PALACE COUP?
Conservatives are beginning to whisper about the 25th Amendment.

In the highest echelons of Washington, survival depends on getting used to countless minor provocations and threats. They are like bees crawling on your arms and face. Ignore them, and most will fly away. Swat them, and they’ll swarm and sting. Donald Trump swats and swats and swats. So here we are. And we thought last week was bad.

That Trump might have pressured then-F.B.I. director James Comey to drop an investigation is big news, as is the appointment of former F.B.I. director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate whether Trump’s campaign had any ties to Moscow. But what feels bigger is the change in vibe. Demoralization is in the air. White House staffers are unguardedly venting to the press, and who can blame them? If you’re a true believer—and many, probably most, West Wing staffers in any administration are true believers—then you’re seeing all your policy hopes and dreams get butchered. Instead of changing the country, you spend your days trying to fix the latest thing your boss has broken, and as soon as you look up he’s broken another 10. The rage builds.

Outside the White House, conservatives and Republicans are distancing themselves more than ever. Mitch McConnell—Exhibit A of the adage that if you want to accomplish terrible things in Washington, be sneaky about it—has requested “less drama” from Trump. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee has talked about a White House in a “downward spiral.” Last week, Rod Dreher of The American Conservative called for Trump’s impeachment. This week, Ross Douthat took to The New York Times to ask Cabinet members to exercise the 25th Amendment—the palace-coup option—to remove the president. (This would happen if Vice President Mike Pence were to declare that Trump was “unable to discharge” the duties of his office and a majority of Trump’s Cabinet concurred.) And we’re just four months in.
Many conservatives suspect that our major media outlets and intelligence agencies are out to get Trump, and they’re probably right. (How many of the damaging Trump stories have concerned an unverified allegation by an unnamed source with unknown motives? Many.) But such pitfalls were obvious from the start, and Trump could have overcome them by playing a cool game of humility, cunning, and discipline. (Recall how much Dick Cheney pulled off by staying quiet. Sorry, but do recall it.)

For all that Trump supporters complain of media bias, the most damaging stuff hasn’t come from the press but from the man himself. No one but Trump fired James Comey. No one but Trump tweeted out taunts right afterward. No one but Trump tweeted out soft threats about possible “tapes,” in quotation marks. No one but Trump cited Comey’s investigations into Russia as an explanation for firing him. No one but Donald Trump fired off unbaked tweets in March about being spied on by Barack Obama. No one but Trump has sent aides scurrying almost daily to come up with an excuse for his latest lapse of self-control. If Trump were capable of self-control lasting more than a day, he wouldn’t be in trouble nearly this bad. But counterfactuals will be of no help to him. His slavery to impulse has been obvious for at least a year now, ever since Trump kept sabotaging himself even after all but wrapping up the Republican nomination.
palace coup seems increasingly likely, but if it happens, it will be the result of a cautious build over many months. No one likes to be involved in betrayal, no matter what the circumstances are, nor is planning it much fun. One Cabinet member has to make overtures to another and speak with elaborate indirectness, with each revealing just enough to advance the ball but not too much to prevent acting like nothing was ever said. Even finding a pretext for getting in touch becomes a challenge. Why would the secretary of agriculture need to speak to the secretary of education on a normal day? He-e-e-y, Betsy. Just calling to see, uh, how you’re doing.

And, despite what’s shaping up to be the nuttiest presidency we’ve ever had, slowness still looks less dangerous than speed. Nothing creates blowback quite like a coup. Argentina’s Juan Perón, Iran’s Mohammad Mosaddegh, Chile’s Salvador Allende—all were flawed and tyrannical leaders who nevertheless, because of how they were ousted, became symbols of a utopia denied. Decades of bloody aftereffects followed in all three countries. The consequences would be less serious here, but to leave a quarter of the country embittered and alienated would cause terrible trouble in the decades ahead. We survived the ouster of Richard Nixon because not just Democrats but also Republicans got fed up—which meant even fans of Nixon were able to make their peace with what happened. Removing a president requires the president’s welcome to be really, really, really outworn.

And Trump is steadily taking us there. To be sure, this week, the Drudge Report and Fox News are focusing on malicious leakers and Establishment plotting, but last week there was more criticism in the air. These things ebb and flow, with Trump’s defenders occasionally letting down their guard to complain and at other times closing ranks. All of us take a fitful and reluctant approach to breaking allegiances. It hurts. And if people feel they’re being rushed along—especially at the hands of an adversary—they reverse course. The right-wing blogger Ace of Spades recently summed up where much of the Trump-sympathizing right seems to be these days. “I do expect some shoes to drop on Trump,” he wrote on Tuesday. “But they must be actual shoes for me to hear them—not rumors of shoes, not breathless insistence that friends-of-friends swear to me that in the darkness, Shoes Lurk. Show me the fucking shoes.”

It’s a fair request. And if anyone can fulfill it and provide the shoes, Trump can. That’s not because he’s a foreign agent or Siberian candidate or a totalitarian or another Hitler. It’s just because he’s Trump. No writer wants to say something obvious, but sometimes there’s nothing else to say. The presidency requires super-human self-control. Trump has none. Will he make it to 2020? Will he make it to next week? Will we?

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/ ... alace-coup


Conservatives begin to whisper: President Pence
With Trump swamped by self-inflicted scandals, Republicans find solace in the man waiting in the wings.
By MATTHEW NUSSBAUM and THEODORIC MEYER 05/17/2017 06:50 PM EDT
Mike Pence is pictured. | AP Photo
Some conservatives are hinting that Vice President Mike Pence looks like a particularly good alternative right now, especially as the Justice Department moves ahead with a special prosecutor for the FBI’s Russia probe. | AP Photo


Not since the release of the Access Hollywood tape, in which Donald Trump bragged about groping women by the genitals, have some conservatives thought so seriously, if a bit wistfully, about two words: President Pence.

The scandals clouding Trump’s presidency — including, most recently, his firing of FBI Director James Comey, his alleged leak of classified information to Russian officials, and reports that he urged Comey to drop an investigation into a top aide — have raised once more the possibility that Trump could be pushed aside and replaced by Vice President Mike Pence.

“If what the [New York Times] reported is true, Pence is probably rehearsing,” one House Republican who asked not to be named quipped Wednesday. “It’s just like Nixon. From the standpoint that it’s never the underlying issue, it is always the cover-up.”

The still far-fetched proposition of removing Trump from office has increasing appeal to Republicans who are growing weary of defending Trump and are alarmed by his conduct in office. But such whispers are cringe-worthy for Pence and his aides, who have made an art of not upstaging the mercurial president. Pence’s press secretary declined to comment for this article.

On the campaign trail, Pence would shut down any conversations about the possibility of his own future bid should Trump lose, telling donors who raised the prospect that he was entirely focused on the race at hand. Aides said that sentiment was sincere — even if they engaged in some thinking about what Pence’s future could entail after a likely loss.

Still, some conservatives are hinting that Pence looks like a particularly good alternative right now, especially as the Justice Department moves ahead with a special prosecutor for the FBI’s Russia probe.

Erick Erickson, a conservative pundit who was a strong Never Trumper but then pledged to give the president a chance, wrote on Wednesday that Republicans should abandon the president because they “have no need for him with Mike Pence in the wings.”

And conservative New York Times op-ed writer Ross Douthat, argued that abandoning Trump now should be easier because someone competent is waiting in the wings. “Hillary Clinton will not be retroactively elected if Trump is removed, nor will Neil Gorsuch be unseated,” Douthat wrote in Wednesday’s Times.

The pining for Pence is nothing new, however. From Capitol Hill to K Street, the notion that many Republicans prefer Pence to Trump in the Oval Office is perhaps the worst-kept secret in Washington.

Just ask Republican lobbyists who have watched the Trump administration struggle to move tax reform, health care and other top priorities.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz immediately said he’s prepared to subpoena the memos that James Comey reportedly wrote.

“I find it unlikely that Trump is going anywhere,” one GOP lobbyist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, wrote in an email. “That being said, Pence is well-liked on the Hill, fairly predictable, and doesn't stir up much unnecessary drama.”

A number of Republican lobbyists already view Pence as a source of stability in an otherwise tumultuous White House. Many of Pence’s top staffers — including his chief of staff, Josh Pitcock — worked for Pence during his years in the House and are deeply familiar with the legislative process. Other former Pence staffers from his House days are working elsewhere in the administration, including Marc Short, the legislative affairs director, and Russ Vought, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

While Pence may not be as commanding a figure in Trump’s White House as Dick Cheney was in George W. Bush’s, Trump has leaned on him heavily. Lobbyists who set up meetings between Pence and their clients must warn them that the vice president may be an hour and a half late or have to leave after 10 minutes because Trump is constantly calling him into the Oval Office to confer with him, according to one Republican lobbyist.

But that doesn’t mean a Pence transition would be smooth. In the unlikely event that Trump is removed from office, Pence would assume the presidency amid a constitutional crisis. He could also be considered tainted by his past devotion to Trump.

Only once in American history has a president been forced from office by scandal, when Richard Nixon resigned amid Watergate. Ford assumed the presidency and sparked controversy by pardoning Nixon, a move that may have cost him the 1976 election but one that historians have since praised.

Ford, like Pence, had enjoyed a career in the House of Representatives and rose to a leadership position. There are other echoes, too.

“It’s almost an eerie comparison that a more mild-mannered, religious conservative Republican Gerald Ford came in,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “He’s much like Pence in temperament and personality. He doesn’t have that acerbic side that Nixon and Trump had.”

And, like Ford, Pence “has made so few enemies,” Brinkley said.

“Having Pence in reserve is one of the few things, I think, that is calming Republican nerves,” he added. “It would just be a more mild-mannered Pence who never says anything offensive, who doesn’t take to Twitter, who goes to Church every Sunday.”

But unlike Pence, Ford was appointed to the job after the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew. Ford did not have the baggage of having campaigned for and championed Nixon.

Almost like a reminder of Pence’s political ambitions, news broke on Wednesday that Pence had formed a new leadership political action committee called the Great America Committee. It is unusual for a vice president to form his own PAC, as the vice president would traditionally merge his political operation with the Republican National Committee.

A spokesman confirmed the existence of the new committee and said it is being overseen by Marty Obst and Nick Ayers, two former Pence campaign aides and close confidants of the vice president.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/1 ... ump-238525
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby Elvis » Fri May 19, 2017 6:21 pm

After all the calls for a "special prosecutor," I was curious about the announcement of a "special counsel" and wondered if there is any difference. Turns out no, it means the same thing, "special counsel" just sounds "less confrontational"; perhaps, too, lowered expecations?

Terminology

The terms "special prosecutor", "independent counsel" and "special counsel" have the same fundamental meaning, and their use (at least at the federal level in the U.S.) is generally differentiated by the time period to which they are being applied. The term "special prosecutor" was used throughout the Watergate era, but was replaced by the less confrontational "independent counsel" in the 1983 reauthorization of the Ethics in Government Act.[4] Those appointed under that act after 1983 are generally referred to as independent counsels. Since the independent counsel law expired in 1999, the term special counsel has generally been used. This is the term used in the current U.S. government regulations concerning the appointment of special counsels.[5]

While the term special prosecutor is sometimes used in historical discussions of all such figures before 1983, the term special counsel appears to have been frequently used as well, including, for example, in contemporary newspaper accounts[6] describing the first presidentially appointed special counsel in 1875.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_prosecutor


I don't really have a handle on Meuller, except I remember he was the only official I ever heard admit that the 9/11 hijackers used stolen identities, and consequently we can't know their true identities. That little fact of stolen identities upsets the whole official narrative and especially the popular legend of 19 hijackers mostly coming from Saudi Arabia, etc.

So if Meuller was aiding a coverup, why did he admit that the FBI didn't really know the hijackers' identities?

I'd have to look back at videos, but the statement could have been a rather unavoidable answer to a knowledgable reporter's question. In the end, though, the fact of the stolen identities is, for all practical purposes, forgotten. The names and photos of the 19 named hijackers persist on the FBI website.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
User avatar
Elvis
 
Posts: 7413
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:24 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 19, 2017 6:30 pm

covering up 9/11 ...for sure

covering up for traitors in the White House ..no way ..too many other investigations under way

and trump has really pissed off the FBI :P

Flynn's got the goods and he wants to stay out of jail for espionage

at the very least trump is going down for the cover up


too bad trumpy ...you are not a bush :D

bush is old money...trumpy's is from the Russian mob


maybe we won't need Mueller

Sources: White House lawyers research impeachment

By Evan Perez, CNN Justice Correspondent
Updated 6:15 PM ET, Fri May 19, 2017

Washington (CNN)White House lawyers have begun researching impeachment procedures in an effort to prepare for what officials still believe is a distant possibility that President Donald Trump could have to fend off attempts to remove him from office, two people briefed on the discussions tell CNN.

White House officials believe the President has the backing of Republican allies in Congress and that impeachment is not in the cards, according to the people briefed on the legal discussions. Even Democrats have tried to calm impeachment talk out of concern it is premature.
But lawyers in the White House counsel's office have consulted experts in impeachment during the past week and have begun collecting information on how such proceedings would work, a person briefed on the matter told CNN.
The White House did not comment for the story.
One outside attorney close to the office of White House counsel Don McGahn cast doubt on impeachment preparations, saying it wouldn't be something McGahn would authorize.
The legal discussions are part of a broader internal effort to bolster the president's legal defense, which has become more complicated with the Justice Department's appointment of a special counsel to pursue the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Earlier this week, close advisers to the President, including lawyer and surrogate Michael Cohen, visited the White House to discuss his need to hire personal attorneys for Trump.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 22, 2017 6:10 pm

Donald Trump Failed to Disclose Foreign-Owned Business on Financial Disclosure
Posted by Janet Shan
The Democratic Coalition Against Trump dropped another bombshell about Donald Trump and his finances.


Trump reportedly failed to “list one of his European companies on the Public Financial Disclosure Report submitted at the start of his campaign to the United States Office of Government Ethics,” DCAT said in a news release.
“The company he failed to list is DT Connect Europe Limited which is registered in Turnberry, Scotland and co-owned by Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. The paperwork for the company can be found through the United Kingdom’s official government business register by clicking here.”

“According to the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, “the Attorney General may bring a civil action against any individual who knowingly and willfully falsifies or who knowingly and willfully fails to file or report any information that such individual is required to report,” on the Public Financial Disclosure Report. Additionally, the individual may be fined or may be imprisoned for up to one year.”

“At this point, Trump has to release his tax returns to give the American public a full overview of his business dealings, both foreign and domestic,” said Scott Dworkin, Senior Advisor of the Democratic Coalition Against Trump. “But Trump obviously doesn’t have an issue lying on government documents, so who knows if we’ll be able to to trust what’s in the returns when he does release them. It only makes sense that the Attorney General’s office open up an investigation into the matter.”

This latest revelation comes as the Washington Post issued a bombshell report that Trump’s charitable foundation reportedly received about $2.3 million from companies owing he or his businesses money. The companies were reportedly told to pay the monies to his foundation, The Washington Post reports.
http://hinterlandgazette.com/2016/09/do ... osure.html


Image


'Espionage Act': The Oval Office is Leaking (Bigly): 'BradCast' 5/16/2017
Guest: Brennan Center's Elizabeth Goitein says Trump may have violated the law during Oval Office meeting with Russians; And then... BREAKING: Trump said to have asked Comey to shut down Flynn probe...
By BRAD FRIEDMAN on 5/16/2017, 5:54pm PT
On today's BradCast: Coverage of the two (yes, two) most recent (yes, most recent) blockbuster reports regarding the President, as leaked out of the Oval Office. [Audio link to show follows below.]

First up today: Washington Post's explosive report from late yesterday detailing Donald Trump's alleged (and all but confirmed by Trump himself) sharing of highly classified information (reportedly now from Israel) during his recent meeting in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyiak. The White House, largely via National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, strongly denies any wrong doing.

We're joined to discuss that and what we know and don't about it all, by Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at NYU's Brennan Center for Justice. And, unlike those who are reporting that Trump broke no laws in his alleged disclosure of sensitive information regarding ISIS, Goitein argues the case is not so clear cut.

Classification and declassification of sensitive information is spelled out by Executive Order of the President. "The existing Executive Order was written by President Obama. It is still in force unless or until Trump revokes it or replaces it," Goitein explains. "But President Obama himself would not have been bound by his own Executive Order. President Trump is not bound by that Executive Order. I think it's problematic that Presidents are not bound by their own Executive Orders. Or, I should say, it's problematic they can secretly depart from those orders. Ideally we would have a classification Executive Order that says what the President can do, even if it's just 'The President is exempt from all of these rules.'"

However, Goitein suggests that even a President could face legal exposure via the Espionage Act of 1917.

"The Executive Order is not the only law that is at play here," she tells me. "Congress has also stepped in on various occasions, to regulate the disclosure of national security information. And there are several statutes in which Congress has done that. The statute that seems most relevant here is the Espionage Act. And this is the law that President Obama infamously used to prosecute national security whistle-blowers and others who leaked information to the media, rather than actual spies and traitors, which is whom the law was designed to address. But this law, on its face, prohibits the communication of information related to the national defense --- whether that information is classified or not --- to anyone not entitled to receive it, if there's reason to believe it could be used either to harm the United States or to aid a foreign nation. So on it's face, that statute would certainly seem to apply."

I discuss that and much more with Goitein about this entire fine mess today. It's worth tuning in for that alone. But then...

Breaking hard mid-show today: The New York Times' perhaps even more explosive report detailing a memo written by then FBI Director James Comey describing his February one-on-one meeting with the President in the Oval Office, in which Comey reportedly charges that Trump requested he drop the Bureau's ongoing investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. "I hope you can let this go," Trump said to Comey, according to the Times, in an account also vigorously denied by the White House, but which, if true, would amount to a very serious case of Obstruction of Justice by the President of the United States.

If only there was a taping system of some kind in the Oval Office so we could figure out who's telling the truth.

Finally today, after disembarking from that insane news roller coaster, if only for the moment, we finish up today with Desi Doyen and our latest Green News Report, because the planet doesn't really give a damn about either national security or politics...

Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below...
http://bradblog.com/?p=12148


Opinion: Jeff Sessions is in deep trouble, and here's why
Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post Published 1:28 pm, Thursday, May 11, 2017

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe is contradicting the White House claim that fired director James Comey had lost the support of rank-and-file members of the bureau. He said Comey "enjoyed broad support" within the agency. (May 11)
Media: Associated Press
Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation. "During the course of the last several weeks, I have met with the relevant senior career Department officials to discuss whether I should recuse myself from any matters arising from the campaigns for president of the United States," he said in his written recusal released on March 2. "Having concluded those meetings today, I have decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States."
Any existing or future investigations. Related in any way.
Sessions consulted with the president and coordinated the firing of James Comey. Recall that Comey had testified on March 20 that he was heading the Russia investigation:
"I've been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. That includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed. Because it is an open, ongoing investigation, and is classified, I cannot say more about what we are doing and whose conduct we are examining."

Sessions consulted with the president and coordinated the firing of James Comey. Recall that Comey had testified on March 20 that he was heading the Russia investigation:
That is the investigation that Sessions promised to stay away from. Firing the man heading the investigation -- especially if Sessions knew that the reason was not the one stated in Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein's May 9 memo -- is a matter "arising from the campaigns for President of the United States."
Sessions may have some explanation for why he chose to participate in the firing of Comey. But the attorney general may now be in considerable legal peril.

Refusing to recuse oneself from a conflict or breaking the promise to recuse from a conflict is a serious breach of legal ethics. "Someone could file a bar complaint, and/or one with DOJ's office of professional responsibility, if Sessions had a conflict of interest when it came to the firing decision, and if he did not follow the ethics rules, including those of DOJ by acting when he had a conflict of interest," legal ethics expert Norman Eisen tells me. "The fact that he broke his recusal commitment, if he did, would be relevant context, and violating an agreement can sometimes in itself be an ethics violation." In sum, Sessions has risked his law license, whether he realized it or not. He needs to testify immediately under oath; if there is no satisfactory explanation, he must resign. The alternative could be impeachment proceedings.
RELATED STORIES
President Trump threatens to cancel White House briefings because it is 'not possible' to always tell the truth
Trump to Comey: Better hope there are no 'tapes' of talks
Don't forget those smiling images of Trump and the Russians
The problem for Sessions (as it is for Trump) is legal as well. This returns to whether firing Comey constituted obstruction of justice. Lawfare blog supplies us with the persuasive analysis:
"Under 18 U.S.C. 1505, a felony offense is committed by anyone who 'corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation in being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress.'
"An accompanying code section, 18 U.S.C. 1515(b), defines 'corruptly' as 'acting with an improper purpose, personally or by influencing another, including making a false or misleading statement, or withholding, concealing, altering, or destroying a document or other information.' This is where obstruction of justice intersects with the false statements law. If you knowingly and willfully make a false statement of material fact in a federal government proceeding, you've potentially violated 1001, and when you add an objective to influence, obstruct, or impede an investigation, you've now possibly violated 1505 as well. Perjury can intersect with obstruction of justice in the same way.
"Under the statute, a 'proceeding' can be an investigation. Section 1503 criminalizes the same conduct in judicial proceedings. So obstruction during an investigation might violate 1505, while if that same investigation leads to a criminal prosecution, obstruction during the prosecution itself would violate 1503. The individual also has to know that a proceeding is happening in order to violate the statute, and must have the intent to obstruct-that is, act with the purpose of obstructing, even if they don't succeed."
The question for Sessions -- and for the president -- is whether there was intent to obstruct justice. ("As applied to the President and his staff, the first two elements appear to be a slam dunk. First, courts have given "proceeding" a broad definition. . . . Second, Comey himself had recently confirmed that the investigation was ongoing-in extremely public and publicized congressional hearings.") That leaves the matter of intent.
While ordinarily one might find this hard to prove, here we have overwhelming evidence that the reason for the firing was not his handling of the Hillary Clinton email matter. Saying it was not about Russia constitutes a lie, part of an effort to interfere with the investigation. Firing the lead investigator to slow the investigation appears to be designed "to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding."
So Sessions faces a host of serious, potentially career-ending questions. "As I see it, the President's discharge of FBI Director Comey on a clearly pretextual basis for the obvious purpose (even if unlikely to be achieved) of shutting down the FBI's then-accelerating investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was on its face an obstruction of justice, the very same charge that the first Article of Impeachment against Richard Nixon made," says constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe. "And part of the evidence supporting the charge of AG Sessions' conscious involvement in that obstruction is the way in which he violated his public recusal commitment, something he cannot possibly have done in a fit of absent-mindedness."
We are open to alternative explanations for Sessions's conduct, but what could they possibly be?
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/J ... 139288.php



WaPo: Trump Putting Together Legal Team To Guide Him Throughout Russia Probe

By ESME CRIBB Published MAY 22, 2017 5:24 PM
President Donald Trump is lawyering up, according to a report published Monday by the Washington Post.

Trump and his advisers are “moving rapidly” to secure outside counsel to guide the President through ongoing investigations into possible collusion between members of his campaign and Russian officials, the Washington Post reported, citing four unnamed sources briefed on the discussions.

The administration has put together a list of finalists, according to the report, including Marc E. Kasowitz, Robert J. Giuffra Jr., Reid H. Weingarten and Theodore B. Olson.

Kasowitz has defended Trump in the past, and wrote a letter during Trump’s campaign last year demanding a retraction and apology from the New York Times for publishing a report that Trump groped women years earlier.

Weingarten is a high-profile D.C. defense attorney who represented former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) against charges related to Jackson’s misuse of hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds.

Two unnamed sources “close to the search” told the Washington Post that Trump wants a team of lawyers to represent him rather than a single attorney.

The White House did not immediately respond to TPM’s request for concept.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/w ... ssia-probe
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby BenDhyan » Wed May 24, 2017 2:42 am

John Podesta: ‘I see no sign’ that Donald Trump will be impeached....

Ben D
User avatar
BenDhyan
 
Posts: 867
Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:11 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby 0_0 » Wed May 24, 2017 2:51 am

^I wonder whose entrails he checked :rofl2
playmobil of the gods
0_0
 
Posts: 615
Joined: Mon Nov 26, 2012 9:13 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby norton ash » Thu May 25, 2017 4:59 pm

Check this Twitter footage of Trump thugging. Don't know how to embed these, but trust me.

https://twitter.com/ReaganBattalion/sta ... 4367788032
Zen horse
User avatar
norton ash
 
Posts: 4067
Joined: Wed Nov 08, 2006 5:46 pm
Location: Canada
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Jun 14, 2017 7:09 pm

:P 26 days
JackRiddler » Thu May 18, 2017 8:15 pm wrote:Hate to disappoint you, but the appointment of Bob "Anthrax" Mueller as special counsel may spell the end of this affair for a while.




Happy Birthday trump :yay

Orb-struction of Justice it is!

Image

Special counsel is investigating Trump for possible obstruction of justice, officials say

This 2013 photo shows then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III on Capitol Hill. Mueller, the special counsel leading the Russia investigation, plans to interview senior intelligence officials as part of a widening probe that now includes possible obstruction of justice by the president. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
By Devlin Barrett, Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Sari Horwitz June 14 at 6:21 PM
The special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election is interviewing senior intelligence officials as part of a widening probe that now includes an examination of whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice, officials said.

The move by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to investigate Trump’s conduct marks a major turning point in the nearly year-old FBI investigation, which until recently focused on Russian meddling during the presidential campaign and on whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Investigators have also been looking for any evidence of possible financial crimes among Trump associates, officials said.

Trump had received private assurances from then-FBI Director James B. Comey starting in January that he was not personally under investigation. Officials say that changed shortly after Comey’s firing.

Five people briefed on the requests, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Daniel Coats, the current director of national intelligence, Mike Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, and Rogers’s recently departed deputy, Richard Ledgett, agreed to be interviewed by Mueller’s investigators as early as this week. The investigation has been cloaked in secrecy, and it is unclear how many others have been questioned by the FBI.

The NSA said in statement that it will “fully cooperate with the special counsel” and declined to comment further. The office of the director of national intelligence and Ledgett declined to comment.

Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests VIEW GRAPHIC
The White House now refers all questions about the Russia investigation to Trump’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz. “The FBI leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal,” said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Kasowitz.

The officials said Coats, Rogers and Ledgett would appear voluntarily, though it remains unclear whether they will describe in full their conversations with Trump and other top officials or will be directed by the White House to invoke executive privilege. It is doubtful the White House could ultimately use executive privilege to try to block them from speaking to Mueller’s investigators. Experts point out that the Supreme Court ruled during the Watergate scandal that officials cannot use privilege to withhold evidence in criminal prosecutions.


The obstruction-of-justice investigation of the president began days after Comey was fired on May 9, according to people familiar with the matter. Mueller’s office has now taken up that work, and the preliminary interviews scheduled with intelligence officials indicate his team is actively pursuing potential witnesses inside and outside the government.

The interviews suggest Mueller sees the question of attempted obstruction of justice as more than just a “he said, he said” dispute between the president and the fired FBI director, an official said.

Probing Trump for possible crimes is a complicated affair, even if convincing evidence of a crime were found. The Justice Department has long held that it would not be appropriate to indict a sitting president. Instead, experts say, the onus would be on Congress to review any findings of criminal misconduct and then decide whether to initiate impeachment proceedings.

Comey confirmed publicly in congressional testimony on March 20 that the bureau was investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians.


Comey’s statement before the House Intelligence Committee upset Trump, who has repeatedly denied that any coordination with the Russians took place. Trump had wanted Comey to disclose publicly that he was not personally under investigation, but the FBI director refused to do so.

Justice Department appoints special counsel to investigate Trump and Russia

The Washington Post's Devlin Barrett explains the Justice Department's decision to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate possible connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. (Peter Stevenson,Jason Aldag,Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)
Soon after, Trump spoke to Coats and Rogers about the Russia investigation.

Officials said one of the exchanges of potential interest to Mueller took place on March 22, less than a week after Coats was confirmed by the Senate to serve as the nation’s top intelligence official.

Coats was attending a briefing at the White House with officials from several other government agencies. When the briefing ended, as The Washington Post previously reported, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

Coats told associates that Trump had asked him whether Coats could intervene with Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on former national security adviser Michael Flynn in its Russia probe, according to officials. Coats later told lawmakers that he never felt pressured to intervene.


A day or two after the March 22 meeting, Trump telephoned Coats and Rogers to separately ask them to issue public statements denying the existence of any evidence of coordination between his campaign and the Russian government.

Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the president’s requests, officials said.

It is unclear whether Ledgett had direct contact with Trump or other top officials about the Russia probe, but he wrote an internal NSA memo documenting the president’s phone call with Rogers, according to officials.

As part of the probe, the special counsel has also gathered Comey’s written accounts of his conversations with Trump. The president has accused Comey of lying about those encounters.

Mueller is overseeing a host of investigations involving people who are or were in Trump’s orbit, people familiar with the probe said. The investigation is examining possible contacts with Russian operatives as well as any suspicious financial activity related to those individuals.

Last week, Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had informed Trump that there was no investigation of the president’s personal conduct, at least while he was leading the FBI.

Comey’s carefully worded comments, and those of Andrew McCabe, who took over as acting FBI director, suggested to some officials that a probe of Trump for attempted obstruction may have been launched after Comey’s departure, particularly in light of Trump’s alleged statements regarding Flynn.

“I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning, but that’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work towards, to try and understand what the intention was there, and whether that’s an offense,” Comey testified last week.

Mueller has not publicly discussed his work, and a spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.

Accounts by Comey and other officials of their conversations with the president could become central pieces of evidence if Mueller decides to pursue an obstruction case.

Investigators will also look for any statements the president may have made publicly and privately to people outside the government about his reasons for firing Comey and his concerns about the Russia probe and other related investigations, people familiar with the matter said.

Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that he was certain his firing was due to the president’s concerns about the Russia probe, rather than over his handling of a now-closed FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, as the White House had initially asserted. “It’s my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation,” Comey said. “I was fired, in some way, to change — or the endeavor was to change the way the Russia investigation was being conducted.”

The fired FBI director said ultimately it was up to Mueller to make a determination whether the president crossed a legal line.

In addition to describing his interactions with the president, Comey told the Intelligence Committee that while he was FBI director he told Trump on three occasions that he was not under investigation as part of a counterintelligence probe looking at Russian meddling in the election.

Republican lawmakers seized on Comey’s testimony to point out that Trump was not in the FBI’s crosshairs when Comey led the bureau.

After Comey’s testimony, in which he acknowledged telling Trump that he was not under investigation, Trump tweeted that he felt “total and complete vindication.” It is unclear whether McCabe, Comey’s successor, has informed Trump of the change in the scope of the probe.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... 9a00b5cc33


Zero to Obstruction in Under 5 Months

By JOSH MARSHALL Published JUNE 14, 2017 6:35 PM

This seemed pretty clear based on circumstantial evidence and James Comey’s testimony last week. But The Washington Post is reporting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is now investigating President Trump for possible obstruction of justice. That’s zero to obstruction in under 5 months, amazing and genuinely impressive in the sense of achievement in corrupt behavior and malicious intent.

Donald Trump. He’s doing great work. And people are noticing.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/zer ... r-5-months
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby mentalgongfu2 » Wed Jun 14, 2017 7:19 pm

Rick and Morty' season 3 release date: This fan-favourite character won't be returning

Rick and Morty" has been off the air for nearly 18 months. And it seems like the wait for the third season is nearly over with the second episode titled "Rickmancing the Stone" expected to air sometime in the summer. The first episode, titled "The Rickshank Rickdemption," was suddenly released on April Fools' Day after fans were kept in the dark about the launch date of the new season.

Adult Swim's impromptu release saw steady progression from season 2 storylines. After the Galactic Federation invaded Earth, genius siblings Summer and Morty summoned the Council of Ricks in pursuit of their imprisoned grandfather. Rick C-137, in trademark Rick fashion, managed to transport his mind into one of the other Ricks to crash the meeting of the council before killing the rest of his doppelgangers.

The episode also teased a brewing rivalry between Rick and Morty, the two primary characters, after Morty and his sister set out to rescue their genius grandfather. “Who's stupid now, bi*ch?” reacted an annoyed Morty after he shot Rick in the head with a fake gun. After realising that it was a fake gun, Morty mumbled, “Uh, good thing I saw that note.” There was also another subplot which saw Morty explaining to his sister that “Rick is hardly a hero who bails on things and leaves whole worlds behind” before the siblings set off to rescue Rick from the Galactic Federation prison.

Rick and Morty season 3 won't feature Mr. Meeseeks

Meanwhile, Ryan Ridley, one of the writers on Rick and Morty, recently told the Y Combinator podcast that Mr. Meeseeks won't be making a comeback during the third season. The blue humanoid creatures became a fan-favourite character during the show's opening season but were not featured in season 2.

“We’ve talked about how we’d bring back Meeseeks, and if we were … if we’re going to bother to do it. We’d want to really explore a different aspect of it. But that’s one way to do it, right there, is to show what the inside of a Meeseeks box looks like. That would have been really cool," said Rildley, via Inverse.

During a 2015 Comic Con, co-creator Dan Harmon had made a “personal promise” that the Mr. Meeseeks would return for Rick and Morty Season 3. “I’m going to force Mr. Meeseeks into Season 3. There was a heavy impulse in Season 2 to not call anything back from Season 1. However, it seems like Mr. Meeseeks won't be featured during any of the remaining 13 episodes of Rick and Morty Season 3.

Rick and Morty season 3 release date: 13 more episodes from July

To promote the third season of the animated series, a giant Rick is going to reportedly drive across the United States this summer in his "RickMobile." Rick and Morty season 3 episode 2 titled "Rickmancing the Stone" will air sometime over the summer. If the previous season is anything to go by, episode two could air in July.
"When I'm done ranting about elite power that rules the planet under a totalitarian government that uses the media in order to keep people stupid, my throat gets parched. That's why I drink Orange Drink!"
User avatar
mentalgongfu2
 
Posts: 1966
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:02 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Jun 14, 2017 7:28 pm

:P


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xXBkZ5eS3o






GARRETT M. GRAFF
SECURITY
06.14.1708:05 AM
ROBERT MUELLER CHOOSES HIS INVESTIGATORY DREAM TEAM


Aaron Zebley (left) and Robert Mueller (right) arrive for a court hearing at the Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco, on April 21, 2016.JEFF CHIU/AP
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP had almost certainly never heard the name Aaron Zebley before the announcement that the former FBI agent was joining the special counsel investigation into ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia. But to those who have followed the arc of the bureau during the past twenty years, Zebley’s is a name that underscores just how far-reaching and dogged—and potentially long—the probe will likely be.
Just ask Steve Gaudin’s ex-girlfriend.
She wasn’t at all happy when Zebley, her boyfriend’s FBI partner, called at 3 one morning in August, 1999. Despite all of Gaudin’s international travel, chasing al Qaeda long before the terrorist group was a household name, he and his girlfriend had managed to settle down in New York City and carve out a life together in between his overseas terrorist hunts. The couple was even looking forward to an imminent, albeit brief, summer vacation.
But then came the call from Zebley.
“I’ve found Ali Mandela,” Zebley said, excitedly. Mandela, the fugitive terrorist suspected of helping execute the previous year’s bombings of US embassies in East Africa, appeared to still be on the continent, he told Gaudin. Somewhere in South Africa. They had to leave immediately.
Angry at yet another sleepless night—and vacation—ruined by the bureau’s demands, Gaudin’s girlfriend gave him some advice: Don’t bother coming back.
But that was just the way it was for the elite agents on one of the FBI’s most storied squads. Nothing could come between them and their search for justice.
The details of that trip—and the subsequent capture of one of America’s most wanted terrorists by Zebley and Gaudin—help illuminate the makeup of the special counsel team that former FBI director Robert Mueller is assembling. It’s a team that contains some of the nation’s top investigators and leading experts on seemingly every aspect of the potential investigation—from specific crimes like money laundering and campaign finance violations to understanding how to navigate both sprawling globe-spanning cases and the complex local dynamics of Washington power politics.
Meet Mueller's Roster
As Mueller begins investigating Russia’s interference in last year’s election and its possible links to Donald Trump’s campaign, he is quietly recruiting lawyers and staff to the team. And in recent days, Trump associates have stepped up criticism of Mueller and his team—including a report, quickly rejected by the White House, that Trump is considering firing Mueller before he even gets started.
Tuesday morning on Good Morning America, Newt Gingrich blasted Mueller and his still-forming team. “These are bad people,” Newt Gingrich told George Stephanopoulos. “I’m very dubious of the team.”
But that criticism flies in the face of widespread, bipartisan acclaim for the team. In fact, just a day earlier, on the same program, former Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr praised Mueller at length. “I don’t think there’s a legitimate concern about Bob Mueller,” Starr said, explaining that the former FBI director was “honest as the day is long.”
From the list of hires, it’s clear, in fact, that Mueller is recruiting perhaps the most high-powered and experienced team of investigators ever assembled by the Justice Department. His team began with three lawyers who also quickly left WilmerHale, the law firm where Mueller has also worked since he left the FBI in 2013—Zebley, James Quarles III, and Jeannie Rhee.
The rapid recruitment of Quarles attracted immediate attention: A famed litigator who was an assistant special prosecutor for the Watergate investigation, Quarles specialized in campaign finance research for the Watergate task force, which surely will be an area of focus for Mueller’s investigation. (The FBI has been serving subpoenas regarding the finances of campaign adviser Michael Flynn and campaign chairman Paul Manafort, both of whom have retroactively registered as foreign agents, admitting that they were paid by foreign governments during the period when they were also advising Trump.) In more recent years, Quarles has risen through the law firm’s ranks to run its DC office, and is an experienced manager. In granting him the firm’s top recognition in 2007, one of his colleagues said that Quarles “represents precisely the values that should define us culturally and reputationally: He is an excellent lawyer, he is an extraordinary hard worker, he is the ultimate team player, and he treats everyone with respect and collegiality.”
It’s a team that’s not just a paper office tiger but one with deep experience investigating crime around the world.
More recently, Mueller has recruited Andrew Weissmann, his one-time general counsel at the FBI and a long-time adviser who once led the Justice Department’s fraud unit. In the early 2000s, Weissmann also oversaw the Enron Task Force, the storied Justice Department unit that investigated the complex machinations of the failed energy giant. (The task force’s team of prosecutors was so well-respected that they went on to dominate the Justice Department’s top ranks for the better part of a decade, including former officials like White House homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco, White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler, assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell, and acting assistant attorney general Matthew Friedrich.)
Then Mueller added Michael Dreeben, who has worked for years in the Justice Department’s solicitor general’s office, which argues the government’s cases before the Supreme Court. “Dreeben is 1 of the top legal & appellate minds at DOJ in modern times,” tweeted Preet Bharara, the former top Manhattan federal prosecutor. Walter Dellinger, an accomplished law professor at Duke and former acting solicitor general, went one step further, telling The Washington Post, “Michael is the most brilliant and most knowledgeable federal criminal lawyer in America—period.” Writing on the Lawfare blog, Paul Rosenzweig recalled watching Deeban argue a Supreme Court case—one of more than a hundred he’s done—without a single note, and also concluded, “He is quite possibly the best criminal appellate lawyer in America (at least on the government's side). That Mueller has sought his assistance attests both to the seriousness of his effort and the depth of the intellectual bench he is building.”
Also, while the Special Counsel’s office has yet to make any formal announcements about Mueller’s team, it appears he has recruited an experienced Justice Department trial attorney, Lisa Page, a little-known figure outside the halls of Main Justice but one whose résumé boasts intriguing hints about where Mueller’s Russia investigation might lead. Page has deep experience with money laundering and organized crime cases, including investigations where she’s partnered with an FBI task force in Budapest, Hungary, that focuses on eastern European organized crime. That Budapest task force helped put together the still-unfolding money laundering case against Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, a one-time business partner of Manafort.
But despite the other more high-profile names, it’s the career of Zebley, a dogged FBI agent turned prosecutor turned confidant, that perhaps best points to how Mueller intends to run his new investigation: With absolute tenacity and strong central leadership from Mueller himself. It’s a team that’s not just a paper office tiger but one with deep experience investigating crime around the world.
Tenacious Z
Zebley, who has worked alongside Mueller since their departure from the Hoover Building in 2013, attended the College of William & Mary—James Comey’s alma mater—and went on to the University of Virginia’s law school, a prime feeder school for federal prosecutors, including Mueller himself. Zebley then started with the FBI on I-49, one of its most storied squads and part of the small group of agents in New York who were chasing Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda before September 11th.
I-49 was tasked with investigating the twin bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, known within the Bureau as KENBOM and TANBOM; each agent on the squad was assigned a specific suspect. Zebley, one of the squad’s youngest agents, pursued Ali Mandela, a man whose nickname referred to his resemblance to a younger Nelson Mandela.
When Gaudin and Zebley got to South Africa in the summer of 1999, they almost immediately realized the news wasn’t good. The suspect they assumed to be Ali Mandela in fact wasn’t him. Nevertheless, Gaudin and Zebley found themselves in a small conference room in Cape Town with the FBI’s South African liaison and officers from the country’s immigration and refugee asylum service, who insisted that the visiting FBI guests at least review some immigration records while they were there.
The South Africans pulled out boxes stuffed with immigration cards and dumped them on the table. Gaudin and Zebley groaned and agreed to peruse the cards before their evening flight back to the States. Miraculously, the second card Gaudin picked up to examine bore fruit.
“Zeb, where do I know this name from? Who is Zahran Nasser Maulid?” Gaudin asked, holding up the picture with the name written across the top.
“That’s KKM!” Zebley almost shouted.
“Who the fuck is KKM?” a South African official asked. “That’s not your guy.”
“What’s going on here?” the FBI’s liaison asked, also confused.
Gaudin and Zebley pulled the South African aside—they realized they were onto something big, and couldn’t risk a leak. “Who do you trust? This is important.”
Just months earlier, the agents had discovered that Khalfan Khamis Mohamed—the man the FBI suspected of assembling the bomb used in Tanzania—had used the name Maulid as an alias to get a Tanzanian passport. The South African police officer shooed a few people from the room and assembled five officers, four men and one woman. “These people, these are the best. What’s going on? Who’s KKM? I thought we were looking for Ali Mandela.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Gaudin said, holding up the picture. “This guy is Khalfan Khamis Mohamed. There’s already an indictment for him—he’s one of the bombers. If we can get him, there’s a $5 million​ reward on his head.”
Gaudin called back to the New York Field Office and told his bosses that the two agents had stumbled upon one of the country’s most wanted terrorists. And they even had a plan to arrest him.
The South African immigration services explained that every 42 days, like clockwork, Mohamed had to come back to the refugee office to get his visa renewed. As long as he wasn’t scared off, there was no reason to think he wouldn’t walk right into the FBI’s arms if they were patient. A small team of backup FBI agents was dispatched to South Africa, and they settled in to wait.
Working undercover, Zebley and Gaudin waited at the immigration facility, with Gaudin posing as a South African colonel. Refugees seeking asylum queued each morning, and in typical bureaucratic fashion, not everyone got his or her visa stamped. Latecomers were turned away, forced to return some other day or risk arrest if the authorities found that they’d overstayed their visas. Tensions ran high in the queue, with the crowd becoming more frantic as the day wore on and hopes of getting visas successfully renewed dwindled. One afternoon, Zebley and Gaudin watched in horror as the authorities wheeled out a fire hose and blasted the crowd to keep it under control.
The two agents realized that, given the line’s chaos, the only practical thing to do was somehow to get to the applicants early: They had to streamline the refugee office’s visa renewal process if they hoped to capture KKM. The team hatched a plan. Gaudin, dressed in his full colonel’s uniform, complete with epaulets and medals, and looking vaguely like a character from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, went out each morning with a basket to collect the refugees’ immigration cards. Then all the cards were brought inside and stamped. The refugees waited peacefully outside for their documents, which were returned in the afternoon. This meant not only that the FBI had a first, calm look at the documents but also that the South Africans suddenly had a much more efficient mechanism for processing immigration claims.
Their system worked smoothly—​a little too smoothly, actually. The crowds got larger as word spread in the refugee community that a new policy meant everyone was getting a stamp. No more wasted days! The head of refugee services, who had no idea that an American FBI team was operating undercover in his agency, asked to meet this innovative new colonel who had so streamlined and revolutionized his agency’s process. Gaudin, nervous that he’d blow the whole operation, was summoned and thanked for his contribution. “We haven’t had to use the fire hose all week,” the head of refugee services announced, without any idea of Gaudin’s real identity.
The weeks ticked by as KKM’s 42​-day deadline approached. Finally, the last day arrived: October 5, 1999. The small team of FBI agents and South African immigration officers stationed themselves strategically around the building. Zebley and other agents positioned themselves in cars around the corner.
Gaudin went out with his basket. After weeks of the dulling routine, he searched each refugee’s face with renewed enthusiasm, his energy mounting as he worked his way down the line. KKM was here somewhere. Yet Gaudin made it to the end of the morning line without any luck.
Then came a shout from his South African partner at the front door of the office: “Steve, the boss wants to see you.”
“Not now. I’m busy.”
“No, Steve, the boss really needs you. You need to come right now.”
Walking inside, dejected, Gaudin boarded the elevator and found himself standing just inches away from Khalfan Khamis Mohamed. Sully, the South African officer, had seen the terrorist suspect walk up to the end of the line and, unaware of the new policy that ensured everyone a stamp, turn away after mentally calculating that he was unlikely to reach the front of the line that day. The officer had approached him and, thinking quickly, quietly told Mohamed that for some money he would take him to the head of the line and get him a stamp. The Tanzanian bomb maker happily forked over a few hundred rand—after all, getting the stamp that day meant he wouldn’t have to miss another day at the Burger World franchise where he had worked since the attack. The South African officer then led him up to the front and sent his partner to grab the FBI agent.
As the elevator ascended, Gaudin cracked a joke about how he was probably in trouble and was being summoned to the boss’s office. The group disembarked on the top floor, still laughing. The two South African police officers went first, KKM second, and Gaudin brought up the rear, the police acting as casually as they could. Ten feet passed. Twenty feet passed. Gaudin, last in the line, was getting nervous. The building was cavernous; if KKM got spooked and escaped down a hallway or made it to a stairwell, it was possible that they would never see him again. Finally Gaudin’s anxiety overcame him. He broke into a full sprint and slammed into the bomber from behind, his arms encircling KKM and pinning his arms. The two men dropped hard, like a linebacker sacking a quarterback in a high school football game.
Gaudin handcuffed the dazed and confused suspect and rolled him over, growling, “FBI. Don’t even bother telling me you’re not KKM.” Zebley and the other agents pounded up the stairs and into the hallway, with South African officers close behind. The agents hustled the terrorist down to the basement, into a waiting car, and off to the airport for the long flight to the United States. He was convicted and sentenced to life without parole in 2001.
By that point, Zebley had thought he was done with counterterrorism. He transferred off the counterterrorism squad on September 10, 2001, heading to work criminal cases.
The transfer lasted exactly one day.
Mueller’s Right-Hand Man
Within days of the devastating attack, the brand-new FBI director—Robert Mueller, who had started only on September 4th—decided to centralize the investigation into the September 11th attacks at the Bureau’s headquarters in Washington, an all but unprecedented move to lead an operational case from the Hoover Building itself.
While Mueller didn’t personally lead the PENTTBOM case, the decision to centralize it at headquarters—where he could see it, touch it, and have investigators be instantly available for questions—marked a significant departure from the FBI’s tradition of allowing field offices wide independence on investigations. It also underscored Mueller’s understanding that high-profile, politically sensitive investigations required a tactile, hands-on approach. It is a model that Mueller will likely carry forward into his role as special counsel in the Russia investigation, ensuring that he’s always personally involved even as he delegates threads of the case to experienced investigators like Quarles and Zebley, who was one of the first agents the FBI assigned to the PENTTBOM case in Washington.
On that PENTTBOM case, Zebley was so steeped in the intricacies of the 9/11 attacks that the Justice Department turned to him as the courtroom witness in 2006 to testify that, if Zacarias Moussaoui—the so-called 20th hijacker who was arrested in August 2001—cooperated and allowed his belongings to be searched sooner, the FBI could have likely unraveled the 9/11 plot before it was executed.
Zebley told the courtroom and jurors that the FBI could have used information in Moussaoui’s possession, including phone records and money transfers, to identify and draw links between 11 of the 19 hijackers who participated in the 9/11 attacks. One of the defense attorneys asked Zebley if the FBI could have used that information to stop the attacks.
“We’ll never know, right?” the defense attorney asked.
“Correct,” Zebley replied.
In the years that followed, Zebley rose to become a special counselor to Mueller himself, and after Mueller’s ten-year term as FBI director had been extended for an additional two years by a special act of Congress, Zebley took over as his chief of staff. He also later worked in the Justice Department’s National Security Division, which oversees counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases, like the one into Russia’s election meddling.
In every instance, their investigations have been textbook examples of sober, patient, thorough exploration.
Zebley followed Mueller to WilmerHale in 2014, where Mueller has built a steady practice as the respected voice beyond reproach that organizations turn to when they need sensitive internal investigations. He served as Mueller’s right hand during major investigations, including one that Mueller led into the NFL’s handling of the Ray Rice domestic violence incident in 2014, and ones into more recent crises like Takata’s deadly airbags and VW’s emissions scandal.
In every instance, their investigations have been textbook examples of sober, patient, thorough exploration. Zebley helped lead the way through the political minefield of the NFL investigation, even as it ultimately and unexpectedly concluded—after a fruitless search of emails, telephone calls, and in-person interviews—that the NFL headquarters had never received a video of Rice’s assault. In the straightforward language that is Mueller’s trademark, the investigation was scathing in its conclusion that the NFL erred in its handling: “The NFL should have done more with the information it had,” the so-called “Mueller report” concluded, “and should have taken additional steps to obtain all available information about the February 15 incident.”
Now, though, Zebley and Mueller—as well as Quarles and the rest of the investigators—will face perhaps their biggest challenge yet, one that will return Zebley to his element as a tireless investigator, pursuing the Russia investigation with all the patience and doggedness of his years-long hunt for al Qaeda suspects across the globe.
https://www.wired.com/story/robert-muel ... tion-team/



The WaPo Obstruction Blockbuster and the World of Hurt To Come

By JOSH MARSHALL Published JUNE 14, 2017 8:51 PM

After marveling at the lede of this new Washington Post bombshell – Mueller investigating Trump for obstruction of justice – I went back and read the whole piece again. You would think that news would be enough for a single piece. But when you read it all the way through the picture it paints is actually considerably more dire.

One key point is that Mueller did not start this obstruction investigation. According to the Post, that probe began “days after Comey was fired on May 9…” Mueller was appointed on May 17th. Reading the Post piece closely, I do not think it explicitly says that the probe began prior to the 17th. But the wording and logic of the piece strongly suggests that is the case.

One key point I draw from this is that it was clear to people at the DOJ and FBI almost from the beginning that this was a potential case of obstruction of justice. That makes me consider who then was in place to make such a decision. Once James Comey was fired, the acting Director of the FBI was Andrew McCabe, who remains in that role. If my surmise about the chronology is correct, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein remained in charge of the Russia probe. Thus I think he would have been acting in Attorney General Sessions’ stead to make the decision to authorize such a probe.

This last point isn’t crystal clear to me since this would not necessarily have been considered part of the Russia investigation. In any case, you do not begin such an investigation of a sitting President except at the very highest level. That decision apparently came quickly. We can note here that soon after Comey’s firing Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein made statements suggesting that he may have been a witness to something that could be construed as a crime. If my memory serves, McCabe did as well. They are the two logical people to have signed off on an investigation at that point.

What were they going on?

Remember, President Trump gave his interview to Lester Holt two days after the firing on May 11th. It was in that interview that Trump said this: “[Rosenstein] had made a recommendation. But regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it. And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”

Reading through this article, contemplating that the President less than five months in office is already being investigated for obstruction of justice, what is so mind-boggling is that the case isn’t even really a he said, he said dispute. How do we know the President fired Comey because of the Russia investigation? He said so on national television! And he said something similar the day before, on May 10th, only this time in a private setting.

On May 19th, the Times reported a White House memorandum summarizing Sergei Lavrov’s meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office. In that meeting President Trump said “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

This meeting was on May 10th, the day after Comey’s dismissal. The memorandum was likely written later that day. In other words, almost immediately after firing Comey, within the following two days, President Trump made at least two statements in which he essentially admitted or more like boasted about firing Comey with the specific goal of impeding or ending the Russia probe. There are various and highly significant complexities tied to the unique role of the President. He is the only person in the country who can, arguably, obstruct an investigation by exercising his statutory right to fire a members of the executive branch. But on its face, this is essentially admitting to obstruction.

It will be interesting to see whether either or both of these admissions played into the decision to launch a probe and precisely who authorized it. In any case, Robert Mueller has now subsumed it into his broader mandate and purview.

The additional detail about this part of the Russia investigation writ large is that Mueller appears to see this potential obstruction of justice as either including Trump’s requests to DNI Coats and NSA chief Rodgers or in some way evidenced by what he asked these two men to do. The article also says preliminary interviews suggest Mueller’s team is “actively pursuing potential witnesses inside and outside the government.”

What does this mean?

Here’s one guess. We know that President Trump has a number of close friends who he calls frequently to shoot the shit, rant or just unwind. Newsmax owner Chris Ruddy seems to be one of these. There appear to be plenty more. We can see that Trump was far from discreet in sharing his thinking and motivation about firing Comey. He literally said it in a nationally televised TV interview and in a conversation with the Russian foreign minister. We also know that he spent the previous weekend at his Bedminster golf club stewing in his anger at Comey and finally deciding it was time to fire him. Given all this, it seems close to impossible that Trump didn’t stream of consciousness with many of his sundry associates and toadies about what he was planning to do and why.

Those people are all now witnesses.

The one additional part of the WaPo article is broad and vague but in its own way represents the most peril for the President and his entourage. At one point the article reads: “Mueller is overseeing a host of investigations involving people who are or were in Trump’s orbit, people familiar with the probe said. The investigation is examining possible contacts with Russian operatives as well as any suspicious financial activity related to those individuals.” Earlier in the piece, there’s this: “Investigators have also been looking for any evidence of possible financial crimes among Trump associates, officials said.”

The seeming multiplicity of investigations speaks for itself. But it is the repeated reference to “financial crimes” or “suspicious financial activity” that grabs my attention.

Experts will tell you that “financial crimes” can often mean technical infractions, ways of structuring or organizing movements of money, failures to disclose, certain actions that are prima facie evidence of efforts to conceal, etc. This doesn’t mean these are just ‘technicalities’ in the colloquial sense. They are rather infractions the nature of which may be hard for a layperson to understand but which often end up snaring defendants when other crimes are too difficult to prove. But here’s the thing about the Trump world. I don’t have subpoena power. And we’ve yet to assign a reporting crew to the Trump entourage beat full time. But even with my own limited reporting, it is quite clear to me that there are numerous people in Trump’s entourage (or ‘crew’, if you will) including Trump himself whose history and ways of doing business would not survive first contact with real legal scrutiny. It sounds like Mueller sees all of that within his purview, in all likelihood because the far-flung business deealings of Trump and his top associates are the membrane across which collusion and quid pro quos could have been conducted.

As I said, a basic perusal of business in the Trump world makes clear that serious legal scrutiny would turn up no end of problems. Just consider what was from a financial perspective, a tiny island in the Trump archipelago of mischief, The Trump Foundation which David Fahrenthold did so much with. Almost every rock Fahrenthold overturned exposed some self-dealing, at least legal violations and often real wrongdoing and as much as anything a wild level of sloppiness and indifference to doing business like even semi-honest people. From one perspective it’s hard to say Trump knowingly broke the law with the Foundation since the whole conduct of the Foundation seemed to be carried on as though none of the relevant laws even existed. Again, the Foundation was just a sideline for Trump. It’s not where he made his big money and ran off from his biggest obligations. That’s how they do business.

If Mueller is taking a serious prosecutor’s lens to Trump’s financial world and the financial worlds of Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn and numerous others, there’s going to be a world of hurt for a lot of people. And that is if no meaningful level of 2016 election collusion even happened.

And I don’t think that’s true.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the ... re-1065012
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 15, 2017 12:00 pm

Most Trump real estate now sold to secretive buyers
Nick Penzenstadler , Steve Reilly and John Kelly , USA TODAY Published 4:50 p.m. ET June 13, 2017 | Updated 22 hours ago

Ever since winning the Republican nomination, the majority of President Donald Trump's companies' real estate sales have gone to shell companies that conceal the buyers' identities. USA TODAY

Since President Trump won the Republican nomination, the majority of his companies’ real estate sales are to secretive shell companies that obscure the buyers’ identities, a USA TODAY investigation has found.

Over the last 12 months, about 70% of buyers of Trump properties were limited liability companies – corporate entities that allow people to purchase property without revealing all of the owners’ names. That compares with about 4% of buyers in the two years before.

USA TODAY journalists have spent six months cataloging every condo, penthouse or other property that Trump and his companies own – and tracking the buyers behind every transaction. The investigation found Trump’s companies owned more than 430 individual properties worth well over $250 million.

Since Election Day, Trump’s businesses have sold 28 of those U.S. properties for $33 million. The sales include luxury condos and penthouses in Las Vegas and New York and oceanfront lots near Los Angeles. The value of his companies' inventory of available real estate remains above a quarter-billion dollars.

Profits from sales of those properties flow through a trust run by Trump’s sons. The president is the sole beneficiary of the trust and can withdraw cash any time.

The increasing share of opaque buyers comes at a time when federal investigators, members of Congress and ethics watchdogs are asking questions about Trump's sales and customers in the U.S. and around the world. Some Congressional Democrats have been asking for more detail about buyers of Trump’s domestic real estate since USA TODAY’s initial report.

Their concern is that the secretive sales create an extraordinary and unprecedented potential for people, corporations or foreign interests to try to influence a President. Anyone who wanted to court favor with the President could snap up multiple properties or purposefully overpay, without revealing their identity publicly.

The real estate cache, which Trump has never fully revealed and is not required by law to disclose, offers unique opportunity for anyone to steer money to a sitting President. The increase in purchasers shielded by LLCs makes it far more difficult to track who is paying the President and his companies for properties ranging in price from $220,000 to $10 million – or more.

The clear post-nomination shift since last year to more shell-company purchases is unique to sales by Trump’s companies, even in his own towers and neighborhoods. Condos owned by others in the same buildings, and sold during the same time period, were bought by LLCs in no more than 20% of the transactions. In some areas, the share was far less.

Trump condos worth $250 million pose potential conflict
Here's who is behind LLCs buying Trump real estate
“If what’s going on is somebody is buying something from The Trump Organization to buy favor, there’s no way you’d ever figure out who that person is or what favor they’re trying to buy,” said Jack Blum, a Washington attorney specializing in offshore tax evasion and financial crime and former staff lawyer for two U.S. Senate committees.

The reason for the shift is unclear. The White House refers all questions about Trump's businesses to The Trump Organization, which would not answer questions about the sales.

Experts in real estate and corporate law say there are many reasons to create an LLC and use it to buy property. Some buyers, including celebrities, foreign political dissidents and even police officers, may use them to protect privacy. Investment groups use them to purchase properties in partnership.

The method is more common among the wealthy or famous in the buying of multimillion-dollar properties. For instance, President Obama and his wife are behind Homefront Holdings LLC, a corporation registered in Delaware which in May purchased the family’s home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington D.C. for $8.1 million, according to district property records.

President Trump
President Trump (Photo: MICHAEL REYNOLDS, EPA)
There are more nefarious reasons to use LLCs, including to illegally hide assets, shield profits from taxation and launder drug money or funds embezzled from a foreign company or government. Even when LLCs are used legally, they can hide the identities of the buyers.

USA TODAY found no sales by Trump's companies that were obviously above the market rate, based on analysis of comparable properties in the same buildings and neighborhoods.

In Las Vegas, condos sold by Trump’s companies sold within a few dollars per square foot of other resellers’ units in the building. Prices were near flat, moving up $6 per square foot since Trump took office compared to before he announced he was running.

In New York, the tiny number of sales and uniqueness of each skews comparisons. Two were below-market sales by Trump to his son, Eric. The two since the election are at opposite ends of the spectrum. One $16 million deal was a short sale of a penthouse at Trump Park Avenue. At $3,800 per square foot, it sold in the low end of the range of a dozen comparable units in its Manhattan neighborhood. A smaller $2.5 million condo at Trump Parc East, at $3,085 per square foot, was at the high end of the range for 47 recent sales of comparable condos in the area.

The Trump Organization announced in January that a new corporate ethics officer would screen all real estate deals to prevent conflicts of interest. Neither the company, nor the ethics lawyer, would discuss on the record its screening process, specific deals or buyers' identities.
Image

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians during the 2016 election, raised concerns about the source of funds, considering Trump’s history with foreign investors in his development projects.

“Once you know—as we do – that corrupting influence by Russia is a matter of Russian practice through shell corporations, that puts a particular spotlight on transactions in which the President of the United States through his direct business interests is involved,” said Whitehouse, who is pushing legislation that would force more disclosure about the owners of all LLCs in real-estate transactions. “It’s easy: simply disclose who the party of interest is on the other side so we know it’s an ordinary business transaction and it’s not influence peddling.”

USA TODAY used corporate, financial and other records to track down 18 officers and other people related to 17 LLCs that bought Trump properties since last May. Six spoke to reporters; 10 did not respond to calls or other attempts to reach them. One who responded did not want to discuss his purchase and another hung up on a reporter asking questions about a recent purchase.

Tracking down the people behind 2 L Nevada LLC shows how difficult it can be to determine who is paying Trump.

The LLC paid a half-million dollars for two condos in the President’s shimmering golden tower near the Las Vegas strip in April. The only person identified for the buyer in public real estate records is the lawyer for the company.

In incorporation papers, 2 L Nevada lists one officer -- another LLC with an address at a Vancouver mail drop being used by as many as a dozen Canadian companies.

Eric Trump speaks during a news conference previewing
Eric Trump speaks during a news conference previewing the U.S. Women's Open Championship golf tournament last month at his family's golf club in New Jersey. (Photo: The Associated Press)
USA TODAY reporters scoured public records to identify the names of every company and person using the mail drop address in Canada, and eventually found the buyer.

Brian Lovig of Kelowna, British Columbia, the conservative blogger behind 2 L Nevada LLC, said he had nothing to hide. It's an investment, and he said his family used an LLC on the advice of their trust’s manager. He said he didn’t think any buyer could influence the President via real estate purchases.

“Buying a few units in a hotel isn’t going to make the President jump circles,” Lovig said.

In fact, Trump attorneys have argued that same point, saying profits from individual real-estate sales route through a maze of subsidiaries and eventually become mixed in a large pool of undifferentiated money in the trust. That, they say, makes a conflict from an individual sale difficult to imagine.

Another entity using LLCs to deal in luxury Trump real estate is the Black Tulip Organization, a French-owned investment firm with offices in New York and Miami. Records show Black Tulip provided the money behind the purchase of two of Trump’s Vegas condos during the election, and three more since Election Day – using five different LLCs.

Public records tie the $1.3 million worth of purchases to Benoit Pous Bertran, a French national, who said he was not trying to hide his firm’s identity with shell company names like “JOYP Holdings” and “Galiz Holdings.” Rather, Black Tulip was using the routine protections of a LLC. He said the purchases are not aimed at gaining attention or influence from Trump.

“This is one of the few buildings in Las Vegas where you can buy hotel condominium units, which is why we purchased there. I’m not too into politics and I’m not even a citizen. I’m French,” Pous Bertran said.

Black Tulip, which Pous Bertran said has invested in other Trump projects, runs a real estate investment fund it has said is bankrolled by investors around the world, including Brazil and Russia.

At Trump National Golf Course near Los Angeles, the President’s company sold a pair of oceanfront lots to LAT Homes LLC and Author Homes LLC in April. The two companies trace to one address, a house on the same street. The LLCs are incorporated in Michigan by a Bangladesh-born author and investor who owns a mansion adjacent to the lots.

A golfer practices on the driving range at Trump National
A golfer practices on the driving range at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., where the President's company is selling mansion-building lots overlooking the Pacific Ocean. (Photo: Nick Ut, AP)
Subir Chowdhury said his deal was motivated by a desire to develop the oceanfront properties, not politics.

Chowdhury buys high-end lots and develops luxury houses, and he says he likes working with The Trump Organization. “My experience, not only with Mr. Trump but the Trump Organization, is stunning — literally stunning experience. Brilliant. Because of the professionalism,” he said.

Chowdhury, a management expert who has written 15 books including several bestsellers, negotiated an earlier land buy in the Rancho Palos Verdes neighborhood with Trump over Twitter back in 2013.

Chowdhury’s companies paid Trump $3.8 million and $2.4 million for two lots this year. Per square foot of ground, that is about twice what others paid for lots on the same street. He said the premium reflects the lots’ much-better views of the Pacific Ocean.

Even though he tweeted a picture of Eric Trump, thanking him for visiting his family's home, weeks before the sale, Chowdhury repeatedly asked a reporter not to reveal his purchase.

“Because these are all LLC owners," he said, "and I don’t want the rest of the world (to) know, hey, I’m the owner of these properties.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/201 ... 102399558/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: The Impeachment of President Donald J Trump

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Oct 12, 2017 9:54 am

Mr. President, words spoken by the President matter. Are you tonight recanting of the oath you took on January 20th to preserve, protect, and defend the First Amendment?”



Ben Sasse‏Verified account
@BenSasse

Mr. President:
Are you recanting of the Oath you took on Jan. 20 to preserve, protect, and defend the 1st Amendment?
Image


Image

Republican Senator Ben Sasse comes out swinging at Donald Trump, lays groundwork for impeachment
Bill Palmer
Updated: 11:56 pm EDT Wed Oct 11, 2017
Home » Politics

If you’ve been waiting for another Republican Senator to follow Bob Corker’s lead by coming out swinging against Donald Trump, then wait no more. On Wednesday, John McCain hit Trump firmly but narrowly over his failure to abide by Russian sanctions. But then Ben Sasse stepped to the plate late on Wednesday night, and let’s just say that he was more direct in his condemnation of Trump.


After Trump spent the day lamenting how awful it is that the media has freedom of the press, and explicitly threatening to shut down broadcast networks such as NBC, Senator Ben Sasse fired back at him at the end of the day. Sasse tweeted a a brief press release after 10pm eastern time. It was titled “Sasse to Trump: are you recanting of your oath?” Then came the press release itself.


The press release text said “U.S. Senator Ben Sasse issued the following release tonight after President Trump yet again attacked the First Amendment: Mr. President, words spoken by the President matter. Are you tonight recanting of the oath you took on January 20th to preserve, protect, and defend the First Amendment?” (link). Sasse’s statement is far more carefully worded than Corker’s all-out rant, but here’s what really matters: Sasse has directly accused Trump of violating the Constitution, in exact words. That’s everything, because it’s specifically impeachable, and Sasse knows it.

Bob Corker condemned Donald Trump for being a psychologically unstable infant, but impeachment is supposed to be for committing crimes. Ben Sasse just accused Trump in exact words, albeit in the form of a question, of committing a specific crime against the Constitution: trying to deny citizens the First Amendment. This lays the groundwork for an eventual impeachment effort. It’s the first sign that the Republicans might actually try to strategically impeach Trump before the midterms after all.
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/im ... rump/5468/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

PreviousNext

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 39 guests