Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 24, 2017 8:16 pm

Remember, the Niger Uranium forgeries which played such a notorious role in the lead up to the Iraq War and controversies lasting long after it were in fact forgeries included in a batch of genuine documents.

This Is Huge, Astonishing

Cliff Owen/FR170079 AP
By JOSH MARSHALL Published MAY 24, 2017 5:08 PM

It’s so far in the weeds and doesn’t directly implicate or exonerate Trump. So I suspect it may somehow not get the attention it deserves. But the new report from the Post that James Comey’s decision to announce the Clinton “no charges” decision on his own in July 2016 may itself have been the product of a successful Russian disinformation campaign is simply remarkable.

For almost a year we’ve understood that the main reason James Comey chose to announce his recommendation not to bring charges against Hillary Clinton on his own was tied in significant part to that tarmac meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton. Early this month we learned that in a Russian hacked email cache the FBI had also found a letter that, while ambiguous, seemed to suggest that Lynch had agreed to go easy on Clinton. That too figured into Comey’s decision. And the impact of the tarmac meeting may only have been so great because of the earlier email.

At least as I recall this new detail, the email was ambiguous but enough to make the FBI worry that if it subsequently came out in a Wikileaks email dump it could bring Lynch’s independence into question.

Now this new story tells a very different story. The email appears to be much more specific, suggesting that Lynch had given her assurance that she wouldn’t let the probe go too far. But that’s not the big news: it now appears to be the consensus opinion in the FBI and intelligence community that the email is in fact fraudulent, presumably a fake document woven into a trove of genuine documents with the aim of having it be found by the FBI and trigger something just like what in fact happened. Notably, the apparently fraudulent email never appeared in any of the document dumps during the course of the election. It only seems to have dropped directly into the FBI’s hands.

There is a lot here that is unclear, a lot left to supposition. But fraudulent documents get woven into caches of genuine documents for specific reasons, sometimes merely to sow confusion, more often to trigger specific actions. Remember, the Niger Uranium forgeries which played such a notorious role in the lead up to the Iraq War and controversies lasting long after it were in fact forgeries included in a batch of genuine documents. Some dissenting sources suggest that the phony email didn’t play much role in Comey’s decision. It only got pulled in as an ex-post facto explanation once Comey’s decision-making came into question. (Even if true, that in itself would be a highly disturbing development.) Regardless, the idea that the FBI and James Comey himself could have been punked by such an operation and taken such consequential actions on the basis of it is simply astonishing.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/thi ... stonishing



CBS NEWS May 24, 2017, 5:28 PM
Report: Possibly fake Russian document affected FBI's investigation into Clinton

A disputed Russian intelligence document obtained by the FBI during the 2016 election influenced the Bureau's then-director, James Comey, to personally announce the end of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server last summer, the Washington Post reports. The existence of the document has been confirmed by CBS News.

Comey's July 2016 announcement that the FBI would not recommend that charges be brought against Clinton while still criticizing her for maintaining a private email server was characterized as unprecedented at the time. Typically, when an FBI investigation ends without charges, the Bureau and the Department of Justice (DOJ) do not comment on the matter.

But Comey felt that it was best for him to personally explain the Bureau's reasoning to reporters. And part of the reason for that decision, current and former officials told the Post, is the existence of a document alleging that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch had assured the Clinton campaign that she would limit how far the FBI investigation into the email server went.

The FBI, however, deemed the document -- supposedly an analysis conducted by Russian intelligence -- to be bad intelligence. The Americans mentioned in the document insisted they did not know each other and had never spoken, and there was no evidence to back up its veracity. The person who had supplied the document, officials told the Post, had provided intelligence in the past that the Bureau could not corroborate.

The documented summarized an alleged email from then-Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida, to Leonard Benardo, an official at an organization founded by left-wing billionaire George Soros. In this email, according to the document, Wasserman Schultz said to Benardo that Lynch had told a Clinton campaign staffer, Amanda Renteria, that she would limit the FBI's investigation into the email server.

The FBI never obtained the email in question, was unsure that it ever existed, and never interviewed anyone mentioned in the document. Additionally, both Wasserman Schultz and the Soros affiliate she was alleged to have talked with told the Post that they did not know each other nor have they ever communicated.

Comey's fear, according to official who talked to the Post, was that the document would leak, which could call into question the Bureau's impartiality in the case. The possibility of such a leak factored in to his decision to publicly announce the end of the Clinton investigation without discussing it with the Department of Justice.

"It was a very powerful factor in the decision to go forward in July with the statement that there shouldn't be a prosecution," a person familiar with the matter told the Post. "The point is that the bureau picked up hacked material that hadn't been dumped by [the Russians] involving Lynch. And that would have pulled the rug out of any authoritative announcement."

The FBI later determined the document was either bad intelligence or possibly even a fake, and could be part of what sources tell CBS News was Moscow's efforts to plant fake news "into the bloodstream" of the election to discredit Clinton and influence the presidential election.

Another major factor in Comey's decision was Lynch's meeting on a Phoenix tarmac with former President Bill Clinton the week before Comey publicly cleared Clinton. A month after Comey's announcement, the FBI informed Lynch about the existence of the document, but assured her that it "didn't have investigative value."

Lynch told the FBI that she had never communicated with Renteria, according to someone familiar with the matter. And Renteria told the Post she had never communicated with Lynch. "I don't know Loretta Lynch, the attorney general," Renteria told the paper. "I haven't spoken to her.''

According to the Post, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Comey about the document at a hearing before Comey was fired from his job. Comey replied that while he had talked about it privately with members of the congressional intelligence committees, he could not discuss it in public.

"The subject is classified, and in an appropriate forum I'd be happy to brief you on it," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "But I can't do it in an open hearing."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-poss ... o-clinton/

How a dubious Russian document influenced the FBI’s handling of the Clinton probe
The FBI used an unreliable intelligence document in the Clinton email probe

The FBI used an unreliable intelligence document to defend former FBI director James B. Comey’s handling of the Clinton email probe. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
By Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett May 24 at 3:02 PM
A secret document that officials say played a key role in then-FBI Director James B. Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation has long been viewed within the FBI as unreliable and possibly a fake, according to people familiar with its contents.

In the midst of the 2016 presidential primary season, the FBI received what was described as a Russian intelligence document claiming a tacit understanding between the Clinton campaign and the Justice Department over the inquiry into whether she intentionally revealed classified information through her use of a private email server.

The Russian document cited a supposed email describing how then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch had privately assured someone in the Clinton campaign that the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter. If true, the revelation of such an understanding would have undermined the integrity of the FBI’s investigation.
\
Current and former officials have said that Comey relied on the document in making his July decision to announce on his own, without Justice Department involvement, that the investigation was over. That public announcement — in which he criticized Clinton and made extensive comments about the evidence — set in motion a chain of other FBI moves that Democrats now say helped Trump win the presidential election.

But according to the FBI’s own assessment, the document was bad intelligence — and according to people familiar with its contents, possibly even a fake sent to confuse the bureau. The Americans mentioned in the Russian document insist they do not know each other, do not speak to each other and never had any conversations remotely like the ones described in the document. Investigators have long doubted its veracity, and by August the FBI had concluded it was unreliable.

The document, obtained by the FBI, was a piece of purported analysis by Russian intelligence, the people said. It referred to an email supposedly written by the then-chair of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), and sent to Leonard Benardo, an official with the Open Society Foundations, an organization founded by billionaire George Soros and dedicated to promoting democracy.

The Russian document did not contain a copy of the email, but it described some of the contents of the purported message.

In the supposed email, Wasserman Schultz claimed Lynch had been in private communication with a senior Clinton campaign staffer named Amanda Renteria during the campaign. The document indicated Lynch had told Renteria that she would not let the FBI investigation into Clinton go too far, according to people familiar with it.

Current and former officials have argued that the secret document gave Comey good reason to take the extraordinary step over the summer of announcing the findings of the Clinton investigation himself without Justice Department involvement.

Comey had little choice, these people have said, because he feared that if Lynch announced no charges against Clinton, and then the secret document leaked, the legitimacy of the entire case would be questioned.

From the moment the bureau received the document from a source in early March 2016, its veracity was the subject of an internal debate at the FBI. Several people familiar with the matter said the bureau’s doubts about the document hardened in August when officials became more certain that there was nothing to substantiate the claims in the Russian document. FBI officials knew the bureau never had the underlying email with the explosive allegation, if it ever existed.

Yet senior officials at the bureau continued to rely on the document before and after the election as part of their justification for how they handled the case.

Wasserman Schultz and Benardo said in separate interviews with The Washington Post that they do not know each other and have never communicated. Renteria, in an interview, and people familiar with Lynch’s account said the two also do not know each other and have never communicated. Lynch declined to comment for this article.

Moreover, Wasserman Schultz, Benardo and Renteria said they have never been interviewed by the FBI about the matter.

Comey’s defenders still insist that there is reason to believe the document is legitimate and that it rightly played a major role in the director’s thinking.

[FBI director says he feels ‘mildly nauseous’ about possibility he affected election, but has no regrets]

“It was a very powerful factor in the decision to go forward in July with the statement that there shouldn’t be a prosecution,” said a person familiar with the matter. “The point is that the bureau picked up hacked material that hadn’t been dumped by the bad guys [the Russians] involving Lynch. And that would have pulled the rug out of any authoritative announcement.”


Other people familiar with the document disagree sharply, saying such claims are disingenuous because the FBI has known for a long time that the Russian intelligence document is unreliable and based on multiple layers of hearsay.

“It didn’t mean anything to the investigation until after [senior FBI officials] had to defend themselves,” said one person familiar with the matter. “Then they decided it was important. But it’s junk, and they already knew that.”

An FBI spokesman declined to comment. Comey did not respond to requests for comment.

The people familiar with the Russian document spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss its contents. No one familiar with it asked The Post to withhold details about its origins to safeguard the source.

Several of them said they were concerned that revealing details now about the document could be perceived as an effort to justify Trump’s decision to fire Comey, but they argued that the document and Comey’s firing are distinct issues. Most of the people familiar with the document disagree strongly with the decision to fire the director, but they also criticized current and former officials who have privately cited the document as an important factor in the decisions made by Comey and other senior FBI officials. Comey told lawmakers he would discuss it with them only in a classified session.

Email not obtained
After the bureau first received the document, it attempted to use the source to obtain the referenced email but could not do so, these people said. The source that provided the document, they said, had previously supplied other information that the FBI was also unable to corroborate.

While it was conducting the Clinton email investigation, the FBI did not interview anyone mentioned in the Russian document about its claims. At the time, FBI agents were probing numerous hacking cases involving Democrats and other groups, but they never found an email like the one described in the document, these people said.

Then on July 5, Comey decided to announce on his own — without telling Lynch ahead of time — that he was closing the Clinton email case without recommending charges against anyone. Aides to Comey said he decided to act alone after Lynch met privately with Bill Clinton for nearly a half-hour on an airport tarmac in Phoenix about a week earlier — and have since said privately the Russian document was also a factor in that decision.

The appearance of possible conflict arising from the Phoenix meeting led FBI leadership to want to show it had reached the decision independently, without political interference from the Justice Department.

About a month after Comey’s announcement, FBI officials asked to meet privately with the attorney general. At the meeting, they told Lynch about a foreign source suggesting she had told Renteria that Clinton did not have to worry about the email probe, because she would keep the FBI in check, according to people familiar with the matter.

“Just so you know, I don’t know this person and have never communicated with her,’’ Lynch told the FBI officials, according to a person familiar with the discussion. The FBI officials assured her the conversation was not a formal interview and said the document “didn’t have investigative value,’’ the person said.

Nevertheless, the officials said, they wanted to give the attorney general what is sometimes referred to as a “defensive briefing’’ — advising someone of a potential intelligence issue that could come up at some future point.

The agents never mentioned Wasserman Schultz to Lynch but told her there was some uncertainty surrounding the information because of “possible translation issues,” according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Lynch told them they were welcome to speak to her staff and to conduct a formal interview of her, the person said. The FBI declined both offers.

‘I’ve never heard of him’
Renteria, a California Democrat, first heard of the Russian document and its description of her role when a Post reporter called her.

“Wow, that’s kind of weird and out of left field,’’ she said. “I don’t know Loretta Lynch, the attorney general. I haven’t spoken to her.’’

Renteria said she did know a California woman by the same name who specializes in utility issues. The Loretta Lynch in California is a lawyer who once did campaign work for the Clintons decades ago involving the Whitewater investigation. Bloggers and others have previously confused the two women, including during Lynch’s nomination to be attorney general.


Wasserman Schultz and Benardo, the alleged emailers, were also perplexed by the Russian document’s claims.

Wasserman Schultz said: “Not only do I not know him — I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know who this is. There’s no truth to this whatsoever. I have never sent an email remotely like what you’re describing.’’

She added that she had met Lynch, the former attorney general, once briefly at a dinner function.

Benardo said of Wasserman Schultz: “I’ve never met her. I’ve only read about her.”

“I’ve never in my lifetime received any correspondence of any variety — correspondence, fax, telephone, from Debbie Wasserman Schultz,’’ he said. “If such documentation exists, it’s of course made up.’’

As for Renteria, Wasserman Schultz said she knew who she was from past political work but had “virtually no interaction” with her during the 2016 campaign. “I was definitely in the same room as her on more than one occasion, but we did not interact, and no email exchange during the campaign, or ever,’’ she said.

When asked, the individuals named in the document struggled to fathom why their identities would have been woven together in a document describing communications they said never happened. But others recognized the dim outlines of a conspiracy theory that would be less surprising in Russia, where Soros — the founder of the organization Benardo works for — and Clinton are both regarded as political enemies of the Kremlin.

“The idea that Russians would tell a story in which the Clinton campaign, Soros and even an Obama administration official are connected — that Russians might tell such a story, that is not at all surprising,” said Matt Rojansky, a Russia expert and director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center. “Because that is part of the Kremlin worldview.”

The secret intelligence document has attracted so much attention recently that Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Comey about it during the director’s final public appearance in Congress as FBI director before he was fired.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... 59e8b0dd93


Dubious Russian Intel Doc Spurred Comey To Speak On Clinton Emails Probe

By ALICE OLLSTEIN Published MAY 24, 2017 5:05 PM

Former FBI Director James Comey told Congress in early May that he felt “mildly nauseous” at the idea that he may have influenced the outcome of the U.S. election by speaking publicly about Hillary Clinton’s “carelessness” in using a private e-mail server as secretary of state.

The Washington Post on Wednesday shed more light on why he chose to make that announcement, which broke FBI protocol not to comment on closed cases where no charges are brought. Before Comey’s July announcement, the FBI obtained a Russian intelligence document of dubious origin and veracity that claimed to cite communications between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Clinton’s campaign, in which Lynch assured a campaign staffer that the Justice Department would not closely investigate the email server.

The document did not include the email in question and merely described its contents. The Post reported that many people within the U.S. intelligence community believed the document either contained bad intelligence or was fake. FBI officials, who said the source who provided the document had offered up un-corroborated information in the past, called the document “junk” and “unreliable and based on multiple layers of hearsay.”

The agency tried to verify the document by searching for the compromising email in question and could not find it, according to the report. Then when the FBI interviewed Lynch to determine the validity of the document’s claims, she said she had never communicated with the Clinton staffer in question.

Still, the Post reported that the document had a major impact on Comey, who believed he needed to speak publicly about the Clinton email server case in order to get out ahead of accusations of coziness and special favors. Without giving Lynch a heads up, and in the heat of the general election, he publicly criticized Clinton’s handling of classified material over email, a decision some have argued helped Donald Trump clinch the presidency.

The New York Times reported on the existence of the document back in April, but did not characterize it as a document prepared by Russian intelligence officials and did not question its validity. Instead the Times cited: “The document, which has been described as both a memo and an email, was written by a Democratic operative who expressed confidence that Ms. Lynch would keep the Clinton investigation from going too far.”

The Times reported, as did the Washington Post, that Comey feared the document could be leaked by Wikileaks, undermining the public’s view of the Justice Department’s integrity.

Ironically, Comey was also the man who led the federal investigation into Russian efforts to sow disinformation and undermine American democracy until Trump fired him in early May.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/washing ... ton-emails


Fake Russian document tricked James Comey into publicly condemning Hillary Clinton for her emails
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 6:56 pm EDT Wed May 24, 2017 | 0
Home » Politics


Former FBI Director James Comey’s unilateral decision to give a public monologue about Hillary Clinton’s emails last summer was highly unorthodox, wildly inappropriate, and a big part of the reason Russian puppet Donald Trump is now sitting in the Oval Office. As it turns out, Comey’s decision to publicly lash out at Clinton over her emails was also based at least partly on a Russian document that has since been revealed as a fake.


That’s the stunning word from the Washington Post, which is confirming this evening that James Comey made his decision to public about the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails to the public because he’d seen intel that Attorney General Loretta Lynch was colluding with the Clinton campaign to hamper the investigation (link). But that document is now viewed by the FBI as being somewhere between “unreliable” and “fake.”


In other words, the supposed collusion between Lynch and the Clinton campaign never happened, and thus Comey’s entire prolonged public tongue lashing of Hillary Clinton over her emails was motivated by a Russian hoax. This raises even more severe questions about the inappropriateness of his election meddling, which began with his anti-Clinton sermon in July and peaked with the misleading letter he sent to Congress just nine days before the election, which falsely implied that Clinton was being newly investigated when she was not.


This further underscores four points which have already been fairly well established: 1) James Comey rigged the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor, whether through naivete or incompetence or megalomania. 2) Trump is a puppet who was illegitimately installed in the White House by the Russian government, an act of war against the United States. 3) The 2016 election results were illegitimate by any measure. 4) By all rights, Hillary Clinton should be the President of the United States
[/quote]

Lock him up: Jeff Sessions committed felony by lying about Trump-Russia on his clearance forms
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 7:42 pm EDT Wed May 24, 2017 | 0
Home » Politics

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, after having recused himself in the Trump-Russia investigation, may now have to recuse himself in the Department of Justice’s investigation into his own criminal activities. Not only did Sessions lie to the American public and to the United States Senate about his secret meetings with Russian officials on behalf of the Donald Trump campaign, he also lied on his clearance forms.



When Jeff Sessions filled out the standard SF-86 clearance form in order to take the Attorney General job, he lied about his multiple meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (link). Anyone can download a blank copy of the SF-86 form through the official federal government website for the General Services Administration (link). The form is more than a hundred pages long, page you only have to get to Page Two to find the relevant passage:



“The U.S. Criminal Code (title 18, section 1001) provides that knowingly falsifying or concealing a material fact is a felony which may result in fines and/or up to five (5) years imprisonment. In addition, Federal agencies generally fire, do not grant a security clearance, or disqualify individuals who have materially and deliberately falsified these forms, and this remains a part of the permanent record for future placements.”



Note the word “felony” and potential multi-year prison sentence. This makes Jeff Sessions the second member of the Trump campaign to commit a felony by lying on the SF-86 form about secret meetings with the Russian government, after Jared Kushner was caught committing the same crime on the same form. With Sessions and Kushner now each facing potential prison sentences for their roles in the Trump-Russia scandal, it raises the question of whether either of them is willing to go to jail just to protect Donald Trump. We wouldn’t be shocked to see either one of them flip on him to save themselves.
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/lo ... lony/3052/
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.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 24, 2017 10:24 pm

I BET YOU THINK THIS NOTE IS ABOUT YOU
Reince Priebus Sweating Secret Comey Memos, White House Sources Say
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus is nervous of what could be in store for him if the former FBI director reveals more details of his secret memos.

BETSY WOODRUFF
LACHLAN MARKAY
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
05.24.17 8:10 AM ET
President Donald Trump isn’t the only one in the White House who could be caught in a compromising position by James Comey’s secret memos. The president’s chief of staff is worried he could be soon in the crosshairs, as well.
Comey, the former FBI director who was fired earlier this month by Trump, took detailed notes of his interactions with the president and senior Trump administration officials in order to properly document conversations that were on the verge of improper.
Three White House officials told The Daily Beast that Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has privately expressed worry about a possible Comey memo specifically involving one of their reported chats, and how it might play in the press and to investigators.
“Nervous laughter,” one official succinctly characterized Priebus’ demeanor in the midst of recent revelations.
In late February—long before Trump fired Comey over the “this Russia thing”—Priebus had reportedly already acted on the president’s behalf in trying to use the FBI to quash the Trump-Russia news.

According to CNN, Priebus asked Comey and his then-top deputy, Andrew McCabe, on Feb. 15 to refute news reports about conversations between Trump campaign staff and Russian government officials. Comey and McCabe reportedly refused. The White House denied the story at the time.

That conversation happened the day after President Trump reportedly asked Comey to dial back the bureau’s investigation of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s ousted, and preferred, national security adviser. As first reported by The New York Times, the former FBI director subsequently documented that conversation in a memo that leaked last week.
This week, The Washington Post reported Trump had been unsuccessful in persuading two of the most senior U.S. intelligence officials to publicly deny the existence of evidence linking his 2016 campaign to Russian efforts to undermine the American political process. Trump’s request was made after Comey informed the House Intelligence Committee that the FBI was investigating.
Senior Trump aides recounted to The Daily Beast the shockwaves and “sustained panic,” as one official described it, that news of the initial Comey memo sent through the administration and Trump’s political inner circle. Along with the chaos and continued frustrations that came with attempting to manage the fallout, there was an immediate unease expressed by senior staffers, including Priebus, that more damning memos could be revealed in the coming weeks, if not days.
These officials spoke on the condition of anonymity so as to speak freely.
“Reince is worried about leaks, since elements in the FBI seem determined to wage this war in the press,” a White House staffer said. “Initially the concern was about public perception—trying to get Russia out of the headlines—but it’s looking more like this will be a drawn out legal battle too, even if [Trump associates are] eventually exonerated.”
That attitude reflects a “growing realization of this thing’s staying power,” the staffer said, referring to the larger controversy involving alleged Russian election-meddling and administration attempts to limit fallout from the investigation. There’s “a sense that if there’s damning information out there it’s going to come out one way or another—someone leaks it to the Times, or the president just blurts it out in an interview.”

Priebus and the White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
Any anxiety on Priebus’ part, however, would appear to be well-justified. According to one former general counsel of a large law-enforcement organization who is familiar with Comey, the fired FBI director took judicious notes on likely every conversation he had with anyone from the White House—and he almost certainly wrote a memo about the Feb. 15 conversation with Priebus.
Priebus’ private conversation with Comey could have violated longstanding FBI policy barring officials from discussing its cases with the White House, according to Politico. Comey certainly knew about this policy—meaning it’s all but certain he would have written a memo about such a controversial conversation.
The former general counsel described Comey’s memos as a “time bomb,” and noted that Comey took handwritten notes, and kept hard copies of all his memos in his office at FBI headquarters, and also kept digital copies.
Over the past few months, Comey had a host of meetings—not just with Trump and Priebus—that could have provided fodder for private memos.
In the first week of January, Comey joined then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers, and CIA Director John Brennan for an intelligence briefing with the president. Comey pulled Trump aside after the briefing to tell him one-on-one about the dossier that allegedly contained “kompromat” on him, according to CNN.
On Jan. 22, two days after inauguration, Comey shook hands with Trump and spoke with him in the Blue Room of the White House during the president’s National Law Enforcement and First Responders reception. Getty Images has pictures of the encounter. Vice President Mike Pence and other law enforcement leaders were also present for the reception.
Naturally, Comey has also had multiple meetings with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is above him in the Justice Department’s chain of command. Before his firing, Comey answered to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who answers to Sessions. They appeared together publicly on Feb. 9, the day Sessions was sworn in, and on April 18 for a meeting on transnational organized crime.
Sessions was a key player in the White House’s move to fire Comey, as has been widely reported. His involvement in the decision drew sharp criticism, as Sessions announced in February that he would recuse himself from all matters related to the Russia investigation—an investigation Comey was overseeing until President Trump canned him.
In the coming weeks, Comey is set to publicly testify on Capitol Hill. Until then, Trump and his inner circle are left to wonder what Comey and his allies have in store for the president next.
“We’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, quite frankly,” one White House official told The Daily Beast. “We’re all waiting.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... ources-say
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.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu May 25, 2017 4:53 pm

05.25.2017 - 4:24 PM EDT
Our First Full Collusion Story
We seem to have our first full GOP/Rus collusion story, albeit with a relatively low level GOP operative in Florida.

Strongly suspect there are many more to come.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/





Florida GOPer Helped Russian Hacker Disseminate Dems’ Voter Turnout Data

By ALICE OLLSTEIN Published MAY 25, 2017 3:54 PM
Image

A Republican political operative in Florida asked the alleged Russian hacker who broke into Democratic Party organizations’ servers at the height of the 2016 campaign to pass him stolen documents, according to a report Thursday by the Wall Street Journal.

In return, that operative received valuable Democratic voter-turnout analyses, which the newspaper found at least one GOP campaign used to its advantage. The hacker went on to flag that same data to Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of Donald Trump’s who briefly advised his presidential campaign, and who is currently under federal investigation for potential collusion with Russia.

The Wall Street Journal’s report presents the clearest allegations to date of collusion between people connected to Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.

Cybersecurity experts were sounding the alarm as early as last July that Guccifer 2.0, which had tapped into both the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic National Campaign Committee, was connected to the Russian military intelligence apparatus. However, in September, Florida GOP consultant Aaron Nevins wrote to Guccifer 2.0 to tell the hacker to “feel free to send any Florida based information,” according to the Journal.

Guccifer 2.0 ended up passing Nevins 2.5 gigabytes of stolen documents, including information about Democrats’ get-out-the-vote strategy in Florida and other swing states, the Journal reported. Nevins then posted the documents on his blog, HelloFLA.com, under a pseudonym.

The stolen documents Nevins published on his blog and then passed along to Florida journalists included detailed analyses commissioned by the DCCC of specific Florida districts—reports that revealed how many dependable Democratic voters, likely Democratic voters, and frequent-but-not-committed voters resided in each area.

Stone told the Journal that while he did receive a link to Nevins’ blog from Guccifer 2.0, he didn’t share the stolen data published on the blog with anyone. At least one Florida Republican campaign admitted to using the stolen information to their advantage, however.

Anthony Bustamante, a campaign consultant for U.S. Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), told the Journal he ramped up his TV ad buys and dialed back a mailer effort: “I did adjust some voting targets based on some data I saw from the leaks.”

Mast succeeded in flipping a previously Democrat-held seat near Palm Beach.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/anthony ... r-analyses
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.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu May 25, 2017 6:36 pm

:)

NBC: bureau's sprawling counterintelligence and criminal investigation not only on the doorstep of the WH, but in the Trump family circle

Jared Kushner Now Under FBI Scrutiny in Russia Probe, Say Officials
by KEN DILANIAN, PETER ALEXANDER and COURTNEY KUBE

Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and one of his senior advisers, has come under FBI scrutiny in the Russia investigation, multiple U.S. officials told NBC News.

Investigators believe Kushner has significant information relevant to their inquiry, officials said. That does not mean they suspect him of a crime or intend to charge him.

The FBI's scrutiny of Kushner places the bureau's sprawling counterintelligence and criminal investigation not only on the doorstep of the White House, but on the cusp of the Trump family circle. The Washington Post first reported last week that a senior White House official close to Trump was a "person of interest," but did not name the person. The term "person of interest" has no legal meaning.

Jared Kushner departs the White House with President Donald Trump on March 15. Win McNamee / Getty Images
The officials said Kushner is in a different category from former Trump aides Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, who are formally considered subjects of the investigation. Records of both Manafort and Flynn have been demanded by grand jury subpoenas, NBC News has reported.

Related: Feds Subpoena Records for $3.5M Mystery Mortgage on Manafort's Home

It is not known whether Kushner has received any records requests from federal investigators.

Also unclear is what precisely about Kushner's activities has drawn the FBI's interest as it investigates whether Trump associates coordinated with the Russian campaign to interfere in the election. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller is now leading the probe as a special counsel.

Play Kushner Company Apologizes Over Pitch to Chinese Investors Facebook TwitterEmbed
Kushner Company Apologizes Over Pitch to Chinese Investors 2:19
Kushner met at least once in December with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, and he also met last year with a Russian banker, Sergey Gorkov.

"Mr. Kushner previously volunteered to share with Congress what he knows about these meetings," Kushner's lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, told NBC News. "He will do the same if he is contacted in connection with any other inquiry.

Congressional aides have said they would like to question Kushner about that meeting, and Kushner has said he would voluntarily appear before the Senate intelligence committee as part of its Russia investigation.

Gorkov is chairman of VneshEconomBank, a Russian government-owned institution that has been under U.S. sanctions since July 2014. Gorkov studied at the training school for the FSB, one of Russia's intelligence services.

Kushner, whose family's real estate empire is worth $1.8 billion, according to Forbes, wields significant power in the White House. His is married to Trump's daughter, Ivanka.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jar ... ls-n764826


Senate Intel heads get broad subpoena power in Russia probe
BY KATIE BO WILLIAMS - 05/25/17 04:27 PM EDT 443

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee now have broad authority to issue subpoenas in the Russia investigation without a full committee vote, Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said Thursday.

The panel voted unanimously to give Burr and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) the blanket authority for the duration of the investigation into Russia's election meddling and possible collusion with President Trump's campaign.

The two Senate leaders must be in agreement in order to issue an order.

The committee recently issued its second round of subpoenas in the investigation to businesses associated with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, whom Trump forced to resign in February.

The panel has also requested information from other former Trump associates — Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Roger — but has not issued subpoenas.

Manafort recently turned over hundreds of pages of documents to the committee voluntarily.
http://thehill.com/policy/national-secu ... ssia-probe



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1YsmpGtRp4
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby Iamwhomiam » Thu May 25, 2017 9:03 pm

What a gentleman the Montenegro PM is! A Trump supporter would have instinctually decked him if he pushed by them like that.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TPYmeSqLjc
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 26, 2017 2:04 pm

The Story of the Phony Lynch Email Grows Bigger

By JOSH MARSHALL Published MAY 26, 2017 1:53 PM

We’ve just had some highly disturbing, vaguely surreal new information reported by CNN. Two days ago The Washington Post reported that James Comey’s decision not to notify the Department of Justice about his July Clinton emails press conference was driven in part by emails or documents describing emails the FBI had found in troves of Russian-hacked emails which appeared to compromise Attorney General Lynch’s independence. The gist of the Post story was that Comey may have relied on what was in fact an exquisitely successful disinformation operation to make what turned out to be a highly consequential decision affecting the 2016 election.

This new CNN story contains an important twist.

According to sources who talked to CNN, Comey and the FBI knew the document was a fraud but used it anyway, both to make the decision and justify the decision after the fact.

This isn’t necessarily quite as crazy as it sounds. Comey’s apparent reasoning was that if the document was later released in a Russian/Wikileaks document dump, the fact that it was fake wouldn’t necessarily matter. The Bureau wouldn’t necessarily be able to publicly prove it was a phony without disclosing sources and methods, or perhaps not at all. The point being, whether or not the document was real didn’t really matter. Its release would potentially discredit the integrity of the DOJ/FBI decision making either way.

Two points seem worth noting.

First, we’re dealing with conclusions that are inherently uncertain. You seldom definitively determine that a document is fake. It’s more a preponderance of evidence. It also seems like the consensus opinion on the document’s authenticity evolved over time, with less and less credence being given to it and time went on. The issue here is that it seems like almost everyone involved would have some reason to shade their recollection of events and their relative certainty about key matters to shape the best story possible. That doesn’t even get into knowing deception. It just seems like there’s a lot of gray area and we should keep that in mind.

A second point. The anti-Hillary people (both legitimate opponents and Sputniknews nutballs) always poo-poohed the idea that fraudulent documents might be woven into the legitimate, stolen documents that were laundered through Wikileaks. At least in those, I know of no cases where this happened. But the ability to do this (which is what Comey seems to have feared, if we take this account at face value) is always part of such an operation. Always.

The big takeaway here is that the Russian interference and subversion campaign appears to have gone much deeper and reached much higher than we’ve heretofore known. Whichever version of events you credit, Russian disinformation operations seem to have reached to the very top of the law enforcement and national security state and driven critical decisions at that level. Remember, the October 28th letter to Congress flowed directly from commitments Comey made because of that July press conference. The impact of this decision was quite simply vast.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the ... re-1061658
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 26, 2017 4:14 pm

Report: FBI Looking Into Attempted Cyberattack On Trump Organization

By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published MAY 26, 2017 12:36 PM
A recent attempted overseas cyberattack against the Trump Organization is under investigation by the FBI, ABC News reported Friday.

The article did not mention the country or region of the world where the alleged hack originated. But investigating the computer network of the President’s company would be delicate for the FBI, given that the bureau’s agents are currently probing possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russian operatives working to influence the 2016 election.

Eric Trump, executive vice president of the family real estate business, declined to confirm or deny whether he and his brother Donald Jr. were brought to the FBI’s New York headquarters to discuss the attempted hack, as ABC reported. He denied the company’s systems were compromised.

“We absolutely weren’t hacked,” Trump told ABC. “That’s crazy. We weren’t hacked, I can tell you that.”

Anonymous law enforcement officials told ABC that President Donald Trump’s sons were brought in to discuss the attempted hack on May 8, the day before the President abruptly fired FBI director James Comey.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/a ... ganization



FBI probing attempted hack of Trump Organization, officials say
By JOSH MARGOLIN, MATTHEW MOSK and BRIAN ROSS
May 26, 2017, 10:32 AM ET

The FBI is investigating an attempted overseas cyberattack against the Trump Organization, summoning President Donald Trump’s sons, Don Jr. and Eric, for an emergency session with the bureau’s cybersecurity agents and representatives of the CIA, officials tell ABC News.

Law enforcement officials who spoke to ABC News on the condition of anonymity confirmed the attempted hack and said the subsequent meeting took place at the FBI’s New York headquarters on May 8, the day before Trump fired FBI director James Comey. Spokesmen for the FBI, CIA and Secret Service all declined to comment.

Reached by phone, Eric Trump, an executive vice president of the family company, would not confirm or deny that he and his brother had met with the FBI but told ABC News that the company had ultimately not been infiltrated.

“We absolutely weren’t hacked,” Eric Trump said during the brief call. “That’s crazy. We weren’t hacked, I can tell you that.”

As federal agencies monitor international computer networks in order to protect government and private sector computer infrastructure and data, the Trump Organization’s networks would be given high priority, according to Richard Frankel, a retired senior official with the FBI's New York office and an ABC News contributor.

"If there was a hack or an attempted hack of ... the company that was owned by the president, that would be at the top of the list of investigations," Frankel said. "If the FBI saw that kind of hack, they'd have to track that. There's no telling what a hacker could get that's connected to the president, corporate records, financial records, even things that were going on during the transition.”

The FBI’s involvement could come with some risks, Frankel said, both for the company and the president. In the course of its investigation, the FBI could get access to the Trump Organization’s computer network, meaning FBI agents could possibly find records connected to other investigations.

"There could be stuff in there that they do not want to become part of a separate criminal investigation," Frankel said.

In this case, if there had been communication between the Trump Organization and Russian entities, that information might be pertinent to the ongoing investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. A key focus of that probe is to see whether there was any collusion or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian hackers.

Because the unusual session involved two of the President’s children, agents sent a special alert, or VIP notice, to senior officials at 26 Federal Plaza, the fortress-like headquarters for the FBI’s New York area operations. Officials briefed on the meeting said the discussion centered on a suspected hack of computer systems used by the international real estate holding company, but they did not say who was suspected in the attempted intrusion.

The May 8 meeting came at a tense time for those closest to the president. The FBI was, and still is, in the midst of the widening probe into Russian meddling in 2016 presidential election. A grand jury empaneled in Virginia had issued subpoenas in connection with Trump’s first national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. The session with the president's sons also occurred the same day former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified on Capitol Hill, and less than a week after Comey himself testified before Congress, officials say.

In addition to the meeting at the FBI's offices, FBI agents working on the cyber inquiry were also seen at Trump Tower during the week of May 8. Officials who spoke to ABC News would not say whether the subject of Russia’s hack of the 2016 election was raised during the discussions.

Over the past decade, both Don Jr. and Eric made trips to Russia on behalf of the Trump Organization, and both of them have been quoted in the past describing the significant sums coming into the company from Russian sources.

On May 5, golf writer James Dodson told WBUR radio that Eric Trump had bragged to him that Trump golf courses “have all the funding we need out of Russia,” a statement Eric Trump later denied making. In 2008, Don Jr. told investors in Moscow that the Trump Organization had trademarked the Donald Trump name in Russia as “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets … We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia,” according to an account on the real estate website eTurboNews.

Three weeks before Election Day, Don Jr. was paid $50,000 to travel to Paris to speak at a private dinner in Paris organized by an obscure pro-Russia group that promotes Kremlin foreign policy initiatives and has since nominated Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Nobel Peace Prize.
http://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/fbi- ... d=47652150
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri May 26, 2017 7:37 pm

Game changer


Malcolm Nance‏Verified account @MalcolmNance 1h1 hour ago
Espionage Act of 1917 in play! WaPo. Russian ambassador told Moscow Kushner wanted secret comms channel w/Kremlin


Image

Russian ambassador told Moscow that Kushner wanted secret communications channel with Kremlin

Jared Kushner, the White House adviser, listens as President Trump and Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni participate in a joint news conference in the White House, April 20. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
By Ellen Nakashima, Adam Entous and Greg Miller May 26 at 7:01 PM
Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Ambassador Sergei Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.

The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

The White House disclosed the fact of the meeting only in March, playing down its significance. But people familiar with the matter say the FBI now considers the encounter, as well as another meeting Kushner had with a Russian banker, to be of investigative interest.

Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate — a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.

Neither the meeting nor the communications of Americans involved were under U.S. surveillance, officials said.

The White House declined to comment. Robert Kelner, a lawyer for Flynn, declined to comment. The Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

Russia at times feeds false information into communication streams it suspects are monitored as a way of sowing misinformation and confusion among U.S. analysts. But officials said that it’s unclear what Kislyak would have had to gain by falsely characterizing his contacts with Kushner to Moscow, particularly at a time when the Kremlin still saw the prospect of dramatically improved relations with Trump.


Kushner’s apparent interest in establishing a secret channel with Moscow, rather than relying on U.S. government systems, has added to the intrigue surrounding the Trump administration’s relationship with Russia.

[CIA director alerted FBI to pattern of contacts between Russian officials and Trump campaign associates]

To some officials, it also reflects a staggering naivete.
What you need to know about Jared Kushner's ties to Russia. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
The FBI closely monitors the communications of Russian officials in the United States, and it maintains a nearly constant surveillance of its diplomatic facilities. The National Security Agency monitors the communications of Russian officials overseas.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that although Russian diplomats have secure means of communicating with Moscow, Kushner’s apparent request for access to such channels was extraordinary.

“How would he trust that the Russians wouldn’t leak it on their side?” said one former senior intelligence official. The FBI would know that a Trump transition official was going in and out of the embassy, which would cause “a great deal” of concern, he added. The entire idea, he said, “seems extremely naive or absolutely crazy.”

The discussion of a secret channel adds to a broader pattern of efforts by Trump’s closest advisers to obscure their contacts with Russian counterparts. Trump’s first national security adviser, Flynn, was forced to resign after a series of false statements about his conversations with Kislyak. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from matters related to the Russia investigation after it was revealed that he had failed to disclose his own meetings with Kislyak when asked during congressional testimony about any contact with Russians.

Kushner’s interactions with Russians — including Kislyak and an executive for a Russian bank under U.S. sanctions — were not acknowledged by the White House until they were exposed in media reports.

It is common for senior advisers of a newly elected president to be in contact with foreign leaders and officials. But new administrations are generally cautious in their handling of interactions with Moscow, which U.S. intelligence agencies have accused of waging an unprecedented campaign to interfere in last year’s presidential race and help elect Trump.


Obama administration officials say members of the Trump transition team never approached them about arranging a secure communications channel with their Russian contacts, possibly because of concerns about leaks.

The State Department, the White House National Security Council and U.S. intelligence agencies all have the ability to set up secure communications channels with foreign leaders, though doing so for a transition team would be unusual.

Trump’s advisers were similarly secretive about meetings with leaders from the United Arab Emirates. The Obama White House only learned that the crown prince of Abu Dhabi was flying to New York in December to see Kushner, Flynn and Stephen K. Bannon, another top Trump adviser, because U.S. border agents in the UAE spotted the Emirate leader’s name on a flight manifest.

Russia would also have had reasons of its own to reject such an overture from Kushner. Doing so would require Moscow to expose its most sophisticated communications capabilities — which are likely housed in highly secure locations at diplomatic compounds — to an American.

The Post was first alerted in mid-December to the meeting by an anonymous letter, which said, among other things, that Kushner had talked to Kislyak about setting up the communications channel. This week, officials who reviewed the letter and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence said the portion about the secret channel was consistent with their understanding of events.

For instance, according to those officials and the letter, Kushner conveyed to the Russians that he was aware that it would be politically sensitive to meet publicly, but it was necessary for the Trump team to be able to continue their communication with Russian government officials.

In addition to their discussion about setting up the communications channel, Kushner, Flynn and Kislyak also talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a “Russian contact” in a third country whose name was not identified, according to the anonymous letter.


The Post reported in April that Erik Prince, the former founder of the private security firm Blackwater and an informal adviser to the Trump transition team, met on Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean with a representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... 3ee8f13b3d


The Trump/Russia Story Just Got A Lot Darker

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
By JOSH MARSHALL Published MAY 26, 2017 8:54 PM

For the last few hours I was writing the post below and then on the phone about something not news related. Then I went online and saw this stunning piece from the Post about Jared Kushner. It has frankly taken me a while to absorb what it means and I’m still trying to.

Put simply, in secret meetings in December, Jared Kushner proposed to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak setting up a “back channel” so the Trump team could communicate secretly and securely with Moscow. But this use of the phrase “back channel” does a serious disservice to back channels. A back channel is secret and unofficial communication through trust intermediaries that goes around the national security and diplomatic bureaucracy and provides some plausible deniability. Kushner proposed using the Russian government’s own secure communication facilities, presumably housed in Russian diplomatic facilities in Washington and New York, to communicate with Moscow behind the back of the US government, state, intelligence apparatus, military, etc.

Why exactly would you want to do that?

Here are key passages from the Post.

Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.

The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.



Kislyak reportedly was taken aback by the suggestion of allowing an American to use Russian communications gear at its embassy or consulate — a proposal that would have carried security risks for Moscow as well as the Trump team.

This is truly extraordinary. As the Post notes, even Kislyak seems to have found it shocking, not least because under normal or even abnormal circumstances the Russians (or any other government) would never let the US government see or have any contact with these facilities and hardware.

Frankly, I’m still forming my opinions about what this means. But it makes all the most ominous reads about what is at the heart of Trump/Russia story considerably more plausible. What exactly did the Trump team need so urgently to discuss with the Russian government? Why the need for such absolute security? After all the transition would be the US government in little more than a month.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the ... lot-darker


POLITICS | Fri May 26, 2017 | 9:07pm EDT
Exclusive: Trump son-in-law had undisclosed contacts with Russian envoy - sources

By Ned Parker and Jonathan Landay | WASHINGTON
U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, had at least three previously undisclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, seven current and former U.S. officials told Reuters.

Those contacts included two phone calls between April and November last year, two of the sources said. By early this year, Kushner had become a focus of the FBI investigation into whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, said two other sources - one current and one former law enforcement official.

Kushner initially had come to the attention of FBI investigators last year as they began scrutinizing former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s connections with Russian officials, the two sources said.

While the FBI is investigating Kushner’s contacts with Russia, he is not currently a target of that investigation, the current law enforcement official said.

The new information about the two calls as well as other details uncovered by Reuters shed light on when and why Kushner first attracted FBI attention and show that his contacts with Russian envoy Sergei Kislyak were more extensive than the White House has acknowledged.

NBC News reported on Thursday that Kushner was under scrutiny by the FBI, in the first sign that the investigation, which began last July, has reached the president’s inner circle.

The FBI declined to comment, while the Russian embassy said it was policy not to comment on individual diplomatic contacts. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Kushner's attorney, Jamie Gorelick, said Kushner did not remember any calls with Kislyak between April and November.

"Mr Kushner participated in thousands of calls in this time period. He has no recollection of the calls as described. We have asked (Reuters) for the dates of such alleged calls so we may look into it and respond, but we have not received such information," she said.

In March, the White House said that Kushner and Flynn had met Kislyak at Trump Tower in December to establish “a line of communication.” Kislyak also attended a Trump campaign speech in Washington in April 2016 that Kushner attended. The White House did not acknowledge any other contacts between Kushner and Russian officials.

BACK CHANNEL

Before the election, Kislyak’s undisclosed discussions with Kushner and Flynn focused on fighting terrorism and improving U.S.-Russian economic relations, six of the sources said. Former President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Russia after it seized Crimea and started supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

After the Nov. 8 election, Kushner and Flynn also discussed with Kislyak the idea of creating a back channel between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that could have bypassed diplomats and intelligence agencies, two of the sources said. Reuters was unable to determine how those discussions were conducted or exactly when they took place.

Reuters was first to report last week that a proposal for a back channel was discussed between Flynn and Kislyak as Trump prepared to take office. The Washington Post was first to report on Friday that Kushner participated in that conversation.

Separately, there were at least 18 undisclosed calls and emails between Trump associates and Kremlin-linked people in the seven months before the Nov. 8 presidential election, including six calls with Kislyak, sources told Reuters earlier this month. . Two people familiar with those 18 contacts said Flynn and Kushner were among the Trump associates who spoke to the ambassador by telephone. Reuters previously reported only Flynn’s involvement in those discussions.

Six of the sources said there were multiple contacts between Kushner and Kislyak but declined to give details beyond the two phone calls between April and November and the post-election conversation about setting up a back channel. It is also not clear whether Kushner engaged with Kislyak on his own or with other Trump aides.

HOW KUSHNER CAME UNDER SCRUTINY

FBI scrutiny of Kushner began when intelligence reports of Flynn’s contacts with Russians included mentions of U.S. citizens, whose names were redacted because of U.S. privacy laws. This prompted investigators to ask U.S. intelligence agencies to reveal the names of the Americans, the current U.S. law enforcement official said.

Kushner’s was one of the names that was revealed, the official said, prompting a closer look at the president’s son-in-law’s dealings with Kislyak and other Russians.

FBI investigators are examining whether Russians suggested to Kushner or other Trump aides that relaxing economic sanctions would allow Russian banks to offer financing to people with ties to Trump, said the current U.S. law enforcement official.

The head of Russian state-owned Vnesheconombank, Sergei Nikolaevich Gorkov, a trained intelligence officer whom Putin appointed, met Kushner at Trump Tower in December. The bank is under U.S. sanctions and was implicated in a 2015 espionage case in which one of its New York executives pleaded guilty to spying and was jailed.

The bank said in a statement in March that it had met with Kushner along with other representatives of U.S. banks and business as part of preparing a new corporate strategy.

Officials familiar with intelligence on contacts between the Russians and Trump advisers said that so far they have not seen evidence of any wrongdoing or collusion between the Trump camp and the Kremlin. Moreover, they said, nothing found so far indicates that Trump authorized, or was even aware of, the contacts.

There may not have been anything improper about the contacts, the current law enforcement official stressed.

Kushner offered in March to be interviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also investigating Russia’s attempts to interfere in last year’s election.

The contacts between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials during the presidential campaign coincided with what U.S. intelligence agencies concluded was a Kremlin effort through computer hacking, fake news and propaganda to boost Trump’s chances of winning the White House and damage his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

(Reporting by Ned Parker and Jonathan Landay; Additional reporting by John Walcott, Warren Strobel and Phil Stewart in Washington; Editing by Kevin Krolicki and Ross Colvin)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN18N018


PowerPost
Senate Intelligence Committee requests Trump campaign documents
By Robert Costa May 26 at 7:03 PM

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), left, and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) speal with the media on May, 16. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential race, has asked President Trump’s political organization to gather and produce all documents, emails and phone records going back to his campaign’s launch in June 2015, according to two people briefed on the request.

The letter from the Senate arrived at Trump’s campaign committee last week and was addressed to the group’s treasurer. Since then, some former staffers have been notified and asked to cooperate, the people said. They were not authorized to speak publicly.

Dozens of former staffers are expected to be contacted in the coming days to make sure they are aware of the request, the people added.

The letter was signed by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the Senate committee’s chairman, and Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), the committee’s ranking Democrat. Spokespeople for Burr and Warner declined to comment.

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)

The request to Trump’s political operatives represents the first time that Trump’s official campaign structure has been drawn into the Senate committee’s ongoing bipartisan investigation. That investigation is separate from the federal probe being led by the Justice Department’s special counsel, former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III.

In recent months, several Trump campaign associates, such as Roger Stone and Carter Page, have been contacted by Senate investigators, but the campaign itself had not been asked to preserve and produce materials.

Trump’s campaign committee is now led by former deputy campaign manager Michael Glassner and John Pence, a nephew of Vice President Pence. It is based in New York at Trump Tower.

A White House spokesperson could not be reached for comment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pow ... c75d0ee59e


Image
Melania's $51,500 jacket she wore in Italy


Image
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat May 27, 2017 10:54 pm

WHITE HOUSE
Russia scandal casts uncertainty over Kushner’s future role
Trump’s son-in-law, who’s long been above White House infighting, now has to defend his position in the West Wing.
By ANNIE KARNI and JOSH DAWSEY 05/27/2017 05:31 PM EDT

Once the untouchable son-in-law in a White House where top aides jockey for the president’s ear, Jared Kushner has now been cast in a new role: reassuring people that he’s not going to resign, while colleagues question whether he can survive politically.

Any victory lap Kushner hoped to enjoy after pulling off a successful presidential foreign trip to the Middle East was cut short after the Washington Post reported that during the transition he discussed setting up a secret backchannel with the Russian Ambassador. He also failed to disclose earlier phone calls with Russian officials, according to a Reuters report.


The backchannel was never established. But the news puts Kushner squarely in the middle of a wide-ranging FBI investigation into whether Trump campaign advisers were working with Russian operatives to influence the results of the 2016 election.

And it means that the main architect of Trump’s visit to the Middle East is now the lead distraction that will greet the president, who was flying home from nine days abroad on Saturday, returning from what was seen as overall a successful foreign trip.

“It’s clear that Jared Kushner will be under intense scrutiny at a time when his father-in-law has named him everything but Chief Cook and Bottle Washer,” said Democratic strategist David Axelrod, a former top White House adviser to President Barack Obama. “It’s bad for the prospects of calm at the White House.”

Kushner’s allies are quick to point out that he hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing, and his lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, has said he volunteered to share with Congress anything he knows about meetings with the Russians. People familiar with the matter also speculated that Kislyak may have exaggerated Kushner’s role in his version of events.

A senior administration official said there was widespread concern, predating the foreign trip, that Kushner was in trouble – but “no one that I know has been asked to provide documents” and that it wasn’t talked about openly in the White House or staff meetings.

“No one knows what to make of it because he’s there every day, making decisions, in the Oval,” this person said. “So everyone just tries to act normal.”

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

But outside of Kushner’s small circle of trust – a group that includes Kushner’s wife Ivanka Trump, and advisers Hope Hicks, Josh Raffel, Dina Powell, Gary Cohn, Chris Liddell and Reed Cordish – many West Wing advisers are simultaneously rattled by the backchannel revelations, and feeling a sense of schadenfreude.

The focus on a family member also brings the Russia-related heat closer to Trump. Kushner has risen so quickly in the White House that his colleagues grumble about “principal confusion” -- when a staffer thinks that the reflected spotlight of the boss is actually shining on him. Colleagues have rolled their eyes that Kushner has hired a communications adviser to work on his own portfolio. That aide, Raffel, traveled abroad with him to Riyadh, Jerusalem and Rome.

Kushner, who some say has sealed himself off from the competing White House power centers, may now be in a position of needing allies. And the pool of people in New York City eager to come to his defense has shrunk.

Internally at the White House, according to multiple sources, there is a feeling of resentment among people about Kushner’s special status as a family member, and a feeling that it’s about time for him to have a turn under the gun.

There is also a sense of uncertainty about how long Kushner and Ivanka Trump – who associates say likes, but doesn’t love, Washington – are planning to stick it out. Some have noted that they rent their Kalorama mansion, which allows them to keep their options of moving back to Manhattan more open.

But for now, according to a person familiar with the situation, Kushner isn’t going anywhere.


On Friday, a White House official said, Kushner was back in his West Wing office and had a working lunch with chief of staff Reince Priebus to recap the trip.

Kushner, who flew home from Rome commercial on Thursday with his wife, Ivanka, after deciding a week earlier to cut his trip short, is not easily ruffled, this person said. His plan moving forward is to keep his head down and focus on his work, including turning his attention back to building his Office of American Innovation now that the foreign trip is behind him.

The news about Kushner, whose face blanketed cable news on Saturday, overshadowed Trump’s foreign trip on its final day.

At a press briefing in Taormina on Friday, White House officials were peppered with questions about Kushner’s role, and tried to downplay the significance of the alleged backchannel plan.

“We have backchannel communications with a number of countries,” National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said. “What that allows you to do is communicate in a discreet manner so I’m not concerned.”

Chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, a close Kushner ally, added: “We’re not going to comment on Jared.”

Another official noted that it was Kushner’s conversations with foreign officials during the transition that allowed him to form relationships with the Saudis and pull off a successful first foreign trip for Trump. They also pointed to the good relationships with China and Mexico, that they credited to “backchannel” style relationships Kushner developed with those countries during the campaign.

But many outside observers pointed to Kushner’s naiveté in understanding the need for caution when it comes to handling relationships with Moscow.

The spotlight on Kushner’s involvement with the Russians comes at a time when the powerful son-in-law has been telling associates that he is frustrated with his job.

Two associates who have spoken to Kushner in recent weeks described him as “unhappy” and “miserable,” in part because he has not been able to make the changes he wants to under his father-in-law. Kushner, the source said, has recently seemed resigned to the fact that the internal dysfunction that has defined the first months of Trump’s administration is unlikely to pass. “He’s still trying to tell people it will improve but he seems like he was trying to convince himself,” the source said.

Others, however, said there’s a healthy recognition that this is what it’s like to be in the Trump White House: a successful foreign trip one week, drowned out by negative headlines the following.

Meanwhile, Democrats said they are planning to make Kushner a focus in the coming weeks.

“There is no way Jared Kushner should have a top-level security clearance right now,” said Brian Fallon, who served as press secretary to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and before that as a spokesman for the Department of Justice. “In light of what we now know he discussed with Kislyak, it is impossible to believe Kushner’s omission of that secret meeting from his clearance application form was an accident. His clearance should be stripped at least until the FBI gets to the bottom of this.”

He added: “If Republicans will not join in demanding this of the White House, Democrats would be more than justified in grinding the Senate to a halt and opposing any new Trump nominees.”

And Senate Democrats said that they were planning to use the latest Russia-related crisis to increase pressure on attaching Russia sanctions to the Iran sanctions bill that passed the Foreign Relations Committee last week. One source on the Hill said many Democrats don’t want that bill to move without Russia sanctions bill alongside it, and that pressure will now only increase.

Kushner’s attorney, Gorelick, said she was not available to speak on Saturday. On Friday, she said in a statement that Kushner had “no recollection” of the calls reported by Reuters but did not respond directly to reports concerning the backchannel communications.







Along with RNC operatives dispatched to San Antonio, the operation employed staff from Cambridge Analytica, the U.S.-based offshoot of a British company that deploys what it calls “psychographics,” research using personality, values and other voter traits for targeting.


http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... ca#p637711

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The Man Behind Trump’s Bid to Finally Take Digital Seriously

BRAD PARSCALE IS a survivor—at least in Donald Trump’s universe. Today, Parscale, Trump’s digital director, is one of the last men standing as the Trump campaign’s revolving door keeps spinning. And with 80 days left in the campaign, he’s about to get a lot busier.

Trump has cycled through campaign personnel—first Corey Lewandowski, and then today Paul Manafort. Through it all, Parscale has kept his head down, working on the campaign since before Trump even announced his candidacy publicly. But from an office in San Antonio, far from the Washington—New York hub of campaign drama, his influence has only grown.

The bearded, 6-foot-7-inch Kansan was there in Cleveland during the Republican convention, hopping into a car with Trump’s social media manager and pushing his way through the chaos on the convention floor to shoot a Facebook Live video of Trump’s children the night their father received the official nomination. Through it all, he’s remained out of the spotlight, but that may soon change. Tomorrow, the Federal Election Commission releases the presidential campaigns’ July financial disclosures. Parscale says the Trump campaign’s ledger will show an $8.4 million payment to his digital marketing firm, about 90 percent of which was spent on digital ads.1 It’s a massive leap that shows Trump may finally be getting serious about a digital strategy that goes beyond tweets.

In June, the Trump campaign spent just $1.63 million on digital advertising, which itself was still dramatically more than the $21,000 Parscale’s firm, Giles-Parscale, made between October and the end of December 2015. During that same time period, the Clinton campaign paid nearly 100 times that to its digital consulting firm, Bully Pulpit Interactive. During primary season, when his poll numbers were strong, Trump utilized free media exposure to gain an edge on his competitors. Now that Clinton’s dominating the polls, it seems, Trump is not only raising money ($80 million in July), he’s spending it too. And Parscale is helping him do it online.

“Mr. Trump understands the value of digital operations,” he says, “and he’s been extremely supportive of this operation.”


Me and Mr. Trump
Parscale, who grew up in Kansas, says he sees a lot of himself in the man he calls “Mr. Trump.” For starters, like Trump, he’s a political novice who has built a professional reputation for himself in Texas but has never worked in Washington. “Brad is a non-traditional guy, and he’s good for a non-traditional campaign,” says Vincent Harris, a Republican digital strategist who briefly worked for Trump’s campaign.

But more than that, Parscale feels his story parallels Trump’s rise in business. Parscale started out with a small investment in 2004. (Parscale’s was his own $500. Trump’s was his father’s $1 million). He began by cold-calling local clients but soon graduated to major contracts with the likes of the Trump Organization, which led to gigs building websites for Trump Winery and the Eric Trump Foundation. Now he’s managing multi-million dollar advertising budgets for perhaps the most-watched man in the world.

In conversation, Parscale expresses fierce loyalty for his controversial boss. He says Trump gave “a farm boy from Kansas” a chance. “When I was successful, he continued to reward me over and over again, because I worked hard and produced success,” he says.

Still, while his boss called for boycotting Apple and prefers talking about the glory days of trade in Pennsylvania steel country, Parscale exhibits the the forward-looking attitude of the typical tech exec. Among other things, he recently helped found a group called Tech Bloc in San Antonio, which represents the tech industry’s interests there. Among its biggest accomplishments was pushing San Antonio’s city council to reverse its decision to ban Uber from the city. Parscale is proud to say he was “rider zero” for Uber when they launched.

“Tech can be something that can be great for us. We don’t need to fear it,” Parscale says.

And yet the Trump campaign has lagged in embracing tech, both as a campaign tool and a policy priority. Unlike Clinton, Trump has not released anything resembling a tech policy agenda. And while Trump initially rejected the need for data as a crucial tool for targeting voters, Clinton has built a huge tech team in Brooklyn, drawing talent from the likes of Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Even some of Trump’s primary season competitors outstripped his campaign in terms of tech. Now, Trump’s team is finally trying to catch up, and Parscale is at the center.

This Ain’t Hollywood
Just before Trump spoke at the Republican convention, Parscale made a six-figure ad buy on Twitter, purchasing the promoted hashtag, #TextTrump88022. Meanwhile, the campaign has released a truly odd series of ads that feature Trump and various shots of astronauts and other space imagery.

For Harris, who ran digital for Sen. Rand Paul’s 2016 presidential bid, it’s the weirdness of these ads that makes them work. “I think the Trump campaign has shown again to Beltway consultants that this isn’t about $50,000 Hollywood video shoots,” Harris says. “This is about effective digital operations. It’s gritty. It’s fast-paced, and it’s about what the base wants to hear.”

Trump’s attempt to make up the gap via digital ads will be a difficult battle for a candidate who’s already starting from behind.
There is, of course, another reason why Trump’s campaign has to spend more on digital advertising, and that is because the campaign has not reserved much television time. According to a July report in AdAge, between July and November, Trump and his PACs had reserved $654,455 in TV and radio advertising compared to $111 million by Hillary Clinton and her PACs. Though he just recently spent $4 million on a new ad buy, that’s still a small amount compared to what Clinton has planned. That could make Trump’s attempt to make up the gap via digital ads a difficult battle for a candidate who’s already starting from behind and whose base is less likely to see those ads anyway.

“Republican voters in the general election are traditionally older,” says Harris. “Older people traditionally get their news and information from television.”

Still, Parscale is satisfied that the investment in digital produced a serious return for Trump in July. He declined to say what percentage of the $80 million raised was the result of the surge in digital ad spending. But it seems unlikely the campaign will let up on the digital front. Trump’s new campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, has spent the last few years sitting atop a far-right digital media empire. He seems to know how the web works. And finally Trump seems ready to spend the money to make the web work for him, if it’s not already too late.
https://www.wired.com/2016/08/man-behin ... seriously/


S.A. web firm might be included in probe of the Trump-Russia ties
By Bill Lambrecht, Washington BureauMay 26, 2017 Updated: May 26, 2017 7:52pm

Image
Brad Parscale, who was the Trump campaign's digital director, waits for an elevator at Trump Tower, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Photo: Carolyn Kaster, STF / Associated Press / Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Photo: Carolyn Kaster, STF / Associated Press
IMAGE 1 OF 4 Brad Parscale, who was the Trump campaign's digital director, waits for an elevator at Trump Tower, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
WASHINGTON — The FBI’s wide-ranging criminal investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election may include scrutiny of the Trump campaign’s San Antonio-based digital operation overseen by senior White House adviser Jared Kushner.

CNN reported that along with Kushner’s contacts with Russians and his relationship with fired national security adviser Michael Flynn, the FBI is looking at the campaign’s 2016 data analytics programs conducted largely out of San Antonio under the direction of local digital advertising executive Brad Parscale.

In looking at possible ties with Russia, the FBI has collected data on computer bots — software that runs automated scripts over the internet — that pushed negative information on Hillary Clinton and positive information on Trump, the cable network reported.

An FBI spokesman declined comment Friday, and the White House did not respond to messages.

Parscale did not respond to phone messages left at Giles-Parscale, the San Antonio web design and digital marketing company that he co-owns.

Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has not been accused of wrongdoing. His lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said he will cooperate with the FBI if asked.

“Mr. Kushner previously volunteered to share with Congress what he knows about these meetings,” she said in a statement, referring to reports of meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and with a Russian banker. “He will do the same if he is contacted in connection with any other inquiry.”

Parscale, 41, became heavily involved in the Trump campaign after designing a website for the campaign exploratory committee and carrying out other tasks for the Trump family. He worked under Kushner. By the campaign’s end, Parscale ran Trump’s digital operation, media buys and overall advertising, an exceptionally large role for someone with little experience in political campaigns.

“It was a data-driven campaign, so I was in the middle of it all,” Parscale said in an interview with the San Antonio Express-News after the election.

Federal Election Commission reports showed that Giles-Parscale received over $91 million from the Trump campaign and an allied super PAC over an 18-month period.

Parscale noted that while his company ended “in a healthy situation,” much of that money was paid for advertising and vendors.

Parscale remained on the campaign payroll through January and is associated with Trump’s re-election committee. FEC records show that his company received an additional $1.6 million through March for what was described as digital consultation and online advertising.

In the “Project Alamo” operation, Parscale had over 100 people employed on Trump’s behalf last year in San Antonio, many of them digital and media experts.

They worked closely with the Republican National Committee, which invested heavily in data and digital technology after losing the previous two presidential elections. The RNC provided the Trump campaign with a massive database that included details on millions of voters’ attitudes, buying habits and personal information available from public and private sources, combined with information the party had gleaned from contacts over the years.

The Parscale-run operation relied heavily on Facebook both for targeting voters and fundraising, Parscale has said, noting that Facebook helped the campaign raise more than

$260 million.

Along with RNC operatives dispatched to San Antonio, the operation employed staff from Cambridge Analytica, the U.S.-based offshoot of a British company that deploys what it calls “psychographics,” research using personality, values and other voter traits for targeting.

Cambridge was paid $6 million for its work, which Republican operatives described as voter persuasion.

BusinessWeek quoted an unnamed member of the Trump campaign staff late in the campaign as saying that their digital operation used Facebook ads and other means to suppress Clinton’s vote totals with negative messages aimed at African-Americans, young women and segments of liberals.

Parscale said in an earlier interview with the Express-News that his operation’s ability to identify 14.4 million persuadable voters in several swing states just prior to the election was a key to Trump’s victory.

“That’s why we won. We knew just the voters we needed to turn out, and we turned them out in big numbers,” he said.

Parscale’s success earned him the Digital Strategist of the Year Award, presented in March by the American Association of Political Consultants.

While not commenting on the report about FBI scrutiny of Kushner, Parscale has used his Twitter account in recent days to step up attacks on CNN and other news outlets with more than a dozen posts since last weekend.

“SO fake news,” Parscale tweeted May 20 in response to a CNN report that a former Trump staffer wants the president to set up a fund to help associates caught in the Russia investigation pay their legal bills. “Let’s fight back against @CNN.”

In another tweet that day, he wrote: “#1 lesson I’ve learned. Media is the enemy of this country.”
http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/a ... 177097.php




'This is off the map': Former intelligence officials say the reported Kushner-Russia plan is unlike anything they've ever seen

Natasha Bertrand

White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner listens during President Donald Trump's joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the East Room of the White House in Washington, March 17, 2017. Jim Bourg/Reuters
Former intelligence officials described Jared Kushner's reported attempt to set up a backchannel line of communication with Russia last December that would bypass the US' national security and intelligence apparatus as "off the map," "explosive," and "extremely dangerous."

Trump's national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said during a press conference on Saturday that, if Kushner did try to set up such a back channel, "I would not be concerned about it."

"We have back-channel communications with a number of countries," McMaster said. "So, generally speaking, about back-channel communications, what that allows you to do is to communicate in a discreet manner."

Scott Olson, a recently retired FBI agent who ran counterintelligence operations and spent more than 20 years at the bureau, agreed that it is not unusual for low-level staffers to work between governments and bypass bureaucracy to exchange views and build consensus in advance of higher-level negotiations.

But what Kushner appears to have done is "substantially different, in two ways," he said.

"First, he is not seeking a back-channel for a low-level staff exchange," Olson said. "He wants high-level direct-contact communication. This is extremely dangerous because it results in verbal (and therefore undocumented and unwitnessed) agreements, which are binding on governments. Free governments do not work this way. They can't. If they do, they are no longer free."

He continued:

"Second, he asked to use a foreign government's communication facilities. This is way beyond a private server. This is doing US government diplomatic business over a foreign government's communication system. It's not an off-the-record conversation. It's a conversation recorded by the opposing party. This shows a staggering lack of understanding of the US and its place in the world. Actually, it shows a staggering lack of common sense. When he negotiates a business deal does he use the other guy's notes?"

Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a top White House adviser, was willing to go extraordinary lengths to establish a secret line of communication between the Trump administration and Russian government officials, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Kushner met with Russia's ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in December at Trump Tower, where he floated the possibility of setting up a secure line of communication between the Trump transition team and Russia — and having those talks take place in Russian diplomatic facilities in the US. That would essentially conceal their interactions from US government scrutiny, The Post wrote, citing US intelligence officials briefed on the matter.

Jared Kushner
White House Senior Advisor and son-in-law to the president Jared Kushner (L) joins other cabinet members and senior members of the Trump administration during a news conference. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The New York Times confirmed the Post's story late Friday night, adding that the planned purpose for the secure channel was to discuss military strategies in Syria.

If true, "this actually is even more disturbing," said Susan Hennessey, a former attorney for the National Security Agency. "Why in God's name would they want to conceal plans on Syria strategy from the US military?"

"Even accepting their Syria spin, what Kushner tried to do was blind the US government on incredibly important national security matters," Hennessey added. "That's not how it works. That's not the behavior of someone who recognizes America is still, at its core, a common endeavor."

Kislyak reportedly passed along Kushner's request to Moscow. The Post's Ellen Nakashima, Adam Entous, and Greg Miller reported that the Russian ambassador was "taken aback" by Kushner's request, because it posed significant risks for both the Trump team and the Kremlin.

"This was probably as off-putting to Kislyak as it is for you and me," Michael Hayden, who served as the director of the NSA and the CIA, told CNN on Saturday. "This is off the map. I know of no other experience like this in our history, and certainly not within my life experience."

"What manner of ignorance, hubris, suspicion, and contempt [for the previous administration] would you have to have to think doing this with the Russian ambassador would be a good or appropriate idea?" Hayden added.

Kushner, who did not disclose the meeting on his security clearance form, is now under scrutiny in the FBI's investigation of Russia's election interference, and whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials to undermine Hillary Clinton.

"GOOD GRIEF. This is serious," Robert Deitz, a veteran of the NSA and the CIA who worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations, said in an email of the latest developments.

"This raises a bunch of problematic issues. First, of course, is the Logan Act, which prohibits private individuals conducting negotiations on behalf of the US government with foreign governments. Second, it tends to reinforce the notion that Trump's various actions about Comey do constitute obstruction."

"In other words, there is now motive added to conduct," Deitz said. "This is a big problem for the President."

'You are, in the eyes of the FBI and CIA, a traitor'
Trump fired FBI Director James Comey earlier this month as Comey was overseeing the FBI's investigation. Trump told NBC's Lester Holt shortly thereafter that "the Russia thing" was on his mind when he fired Comey, leading lawmakers and legal experts to question whether Trump obstructed justice — a criminal and impeachable offense.

Kushner was among those who pressured Trump to fire Comey, according to The New York Times.

"If you are in a position of public trust, and you talk to, meet, or collude with a foreign power" while trying to subvert normal state channels, "you are, in the eyes of the FBI and CIA, a traitor," said Glenn Carle, a former top counterterrorism official at the CIA for more than two decades. "That is what I spent my life getting foreigners to do with me, for the US government."

James Comey
James Comey. Eric Thayer/Getty Images
Carle said that if the Kushner-Kislyak meeting and reported discussion were an isolated incident, it could be spun as “normal back-channel communication arrangements among states."

But Kislyak and the Trump campaign interacted extensively, and Trump associates either kept those interactions secret from US officials or misrepresented them. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign on February 13 amid questions about his communication with Kislyak, also spoke with the Russian ambassador about setting up a secret backchannel during the transition, according to Reuters.

Trump reportedly pressured Comey, in a meeting one day after Flynn resigned, to drop the bureau's investigation into his foreign contacts and payments.

"We know about the multiple meetings of Trump entourage members with Russian intel-related individuals," Carle said. "There will be many others that we do not know about."

'A huge red flag'
Mark Kramer, the program director of the Project on Cold War Studies at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, said Saturday that Kushner's reported backchannel plan is "a huge red flag."

"If the report accurately recounts what Kislyak transmitted, and if Kislyak's transmission accurately reflects what Kushner was seeking, then it's a very damaging piece of evidence," Kramer said.

He added: "A back channel in itself would not be suspicious, but a back channel relying solely on Russia's facilities would be egregiously unwise and dangerous. It's a huge red flag, and it's not surprising that the FBI investigators would have been taken aback by it."

Carle said that while this reported back channel is "explosive," it is worth questioning who tipped off The Post to the story. The Post said it received an anonymous letter in December tipping it off to the Kushner-Kislyak meeting.

Donald Trump Sergey Lavrov Sergey Kislyak
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, next to Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP

Additionally, as a longtime diplomat, Kislyak would have known that his communications were being monitored. So the possibility remains, Carle said, that the Russians used the meeting with Kushner to distract the intelligence community and the public from potentially more incriminating relationships between the campaign and Moscow.

Indeed, "FBI investigators are examining whether Russians suggested to Kushner or other Trump aides that relaxing economic sanctions would allow Russian banks to offer financing to people with ties to Trump," Reuters reported on Friday, citing a current US law enforcement official.

Kushner met with the CEO of Russia's state-owned Vnesheconombank, Sergey Gorkov, in December 2016, The New York Times reported in late March. The meeting — which had not previously been disclosed and came on the heels of Kushner's meeting with Kislyak at Trump Tower — caught the eye of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting its own investigation Russia's election interference.

Kislyak reportedly orchestrated the meeting between Kushner and Gorkov, who was appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in January 2016 as part of a restructuring of the bank's management team, Bloomberg reported last year.

The Kremlin and the White House have provided conflicting explanations for why Kushner met with Gorkov.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, in testimony last week before the House Intelligence Committee, said that "the information and intelligence" he saw before leaving office in January "revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals."

"It raised questions in my mind about whether the Russians were able to gain the cooperation of such individuals," he said.

http://www.businessinsider.com/jared-ku ... ynn-2017-5
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.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby Elvis » Sun May 28, 2017 5:17 pm

Kushner’s allies are quick to point out that he hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing, and his lawyer, Jamie Gorelick


Hm, so Kushner’s lawyer is Jamie Gorelick, very interesting. Gorelick is a recurring fishy character on the Washington scene.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun May 28, 2017 7:27 pm

fitting Gorelick, member of the September 11 commission would be helping Kushner......Jared is in need of that kind of high priced defense.....cause he is in really big trouble.

Gorelick a recurring fishy character helping out another fishy character


Schiff: ‘There Ought To Be A Review’ Of Kushner’s Security Clearance

By ESME CRIBB Published MAY 28, 2017 9:45 AM

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that senior White House adviser Jared Kushner’s security clearance should be reviewed in light of reports that Kushner did not disclose additional contacts he had with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.

“I do think there ought to be a review of his security clearance to find out whether he was truthful, whether he was candid. If not, then there’s no way he can maintain that kind of a clearance,” Schiff said on ABC’s “This Week.”

He cited reports that Kushner, who is President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, discussed setting up a secret communications channel between Trump’s transition team and Moscow with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Trump’s inauguration.

“You have to ask, well, who are they hiding the conversations from?” Schiff said.”If these allegations are true and he had discussions with the Russians about establishing a backchannel and didn’t reveal that, that’s a real problem in terms of whether he should maintain that kind of a security clearance.”

Schiff said he was “disappointed” with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster’s response to reports that Kushner discussed setting up a backchannel to the Kremlin.

“We have backchannel communications with a number of countries,” McMaster told reporters on Saturday. “What that allows you to do is communicate in a discreet manner so I’m not concerned.”

“I was disappointed to see the general say that. I have a lot of respect for him. Sadly I think this is an administration that takes in people with good credibility and chews them out and spits out their credibility at the same time,” Schiff said. “Anyone within the Trump orbit is at risk of being used.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/s ... -clearance


Kushner Met With Russian Banker Who Is Putin Crony, Spy School Grad
by TOM WINTER and ROBERT WINDREM

The Russian banker Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner met with in December is viewed by U.S. intelligence as a "Putin crony" and a graduate of a "finishing school" for spies who was often tasked with sensitive financial operations by Putin, according to multiple U.S. officials and documents viewed by NBC News.

Sergey Gorkov, 48, graduated from the FSB Academy, which was chartered in 1994 to educate Russian Intelligence personnel. He has long served Russian President Vladimir Putin in critical economic roles. Most recently, Putin chose him to head of the state-owned VneshEconomBank (VEB). As the Russian state national development bank, VEB has played a critical role in blunting the impact of U.S. sanctions against Russia by finding other sources of foreign capital.

Before that, Gorkov was the deputy chairman of Sberbank, Russia's biggest bank, also state-owned, and also under U.S. sanctions since 2014.

NBC News reported Thursday that Kushner, the president's son-in-law and one of his senior advisers, has come under FBI scrutiny in the Russia investigation, according to multiple U.S. officials. Investigators believe Kushner has significant information relevant to the Russia probe, officials said. That does not mean they suspect him of a crime or intend to charge him.

It is not known what has drawn FBI scrutiny, but congressional aides have said they would like to question Kushner about a meeting Kushner had with Gorkov in December 2016. At the time, Kushner was an adviser to President-elect Trump and Gorkov was chairman of VEB.

Play Sources: Kushner Under Scrutiny By FBI as Part of Russia Investigation Facebook Twitter Embed
Both the White House and VEB confirm that Kushner and Gorkov met at a banking "road show" but haven't disclosed either the location for the meeting or the specific date in December. Details of what they discussed have not been released, although Kushner's lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said Kushner is prepared to cooperate with congressional investigators or the FBI if asked.

“It is the talent pool [Putin] draws from.”
The White House subsequently characterized the meeting as part of Kushner's role as a transition adviser and conduit for the State Department. But Gorkov in a written statement to Reuters, said it was a business meeting. According to Reuters, Gorkov met "with a number of representatives of the largest banks and business establishments of the U.S., including Jared Kushner, the head of Kushner Companies."

Gorkov is close to Putin, "a Putin crony," as one official put it. Gorkov has also been awarded the "Certificate of Honor of the Government of the Russian Federation" and the "Medal of the Order of Merit for Services to the Fatherland," both presented by Putin.

Putin has long called on former Soviet and Russian intelligence operatives to play critical roles in Russian political and economic life.

Image: Jeff Sessions, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump
Ivanka Trump, daughter of President Donald Trump, with her husband Jared Kushner, talk to Attorney General-designate Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., during the inaugural luncheon in honor of President Donald Trump, Friday, Jan. 20, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington. Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP file
"It is the talent pool [Putin] draws from," said one U.S. official. "Because Gorkov is former FSB doesn't mean that he still is, but Putin uses the security state — the FSB and military intelligence — as an extension of his rule."

Sberbank and VEB, Gorkov's two banks, have been critical to the Russian economy, but have also engaged in high-profile bailouts of Russian companies, including those owned by favored oligarchs. They have also played a major role in attempts to mitigate the U.S. sanctions that were imposed on Russia following its annexation of Crimea.

VEB was sanctioned in July 2014, Sberbank two months later. The U.S. cited the banks' record of securing medium- and long-term U.S. sources of financing. Sanctions severely limited their ability to raise funds in the U.S. The European Union later joined in the sanctions. The banks have responded by seeking funds from other sources, including China.

The U.S. did not cite any particular transactions when it sanctioned the bank, but said instead that Russia's failure to meet "basic standards of international conduct" warranted onerous sanctions.

Gorkov was not sanctioned personally.

Image: Evgeny Buryakov, a former New York banker who was convicted in federal court of conspiring to act in the United States as an agent of the Russian Federation, escorted by deportation officers and turned over to Russian authorities, April 5, 2017.
Evgeny Buryakov, a former New York banker who was convicted in federal court of conspiring to act in the United States as an agent of the Russian Federation, is shown in this handout photo sitting on a commercial flight, escorted by deportation officers and turned over to Russian authorities, April 5, 2017. Reuters
Putin authorized a $22 billion of state financing for VEB to cover bad debts built up since the imposition of sanctions.

VEB was also implicated in an espionage case that began before Gorkov took over 2016 but continued after he took over.

One of its New York-based employees, Evgeny Buryakov, was arrested on espionage charges in January 2015. According to court records reviewed by NBC News, Buryakov used his position to spy on unnamed U.S. companies, and sought information on high-frequency trading. Prosecutors said his internet searches included "NYC Homeland Security" and "New York City critical infrastructure."

Buryakov claimed he had diplomatic immunity in his defense, which was paid by VEB, but after a court ruled he didn't qualify, he pleaded guilty in March 2016. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and a $100,000 fine. He returned to Russia last month after being released.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kus ... ad-n765311


(A Bit More) About Last Night

By JOSH MARSHALL Published MAY 27, 2017 1:08 PM

Let me follow up on last night’s Post blockbuster about Jared Kushner and an attempted backchannel to Russia.

To review, Kushner allegedly asked Russian Ambassador Kislyak to arrange a secret, secure backchannel through which members of Trump team could communicate directly to the Kremlin. This was the heart of last night’s Post blockbuster. Kushner reportedly asked Kislyak to allow Trump team members access to the secure channels Russia itself uses to send secure communications back to Moscow. This presumably involves secure facilities/hardware at the Russian Embassy and other US-located diplomatic facilities. These definitely exist. We have the same thing in Moscow.

It is difficult to capture how extraordinary and close to incomprehensible such a step would be. As a number of former intelligence officials have noted, if an intelligence officer or really any other US government official did this it would be considered espionage. This meant opening a channel where Trump team members could speak openly with Russian counterparts without fear of being heard by and behind the backs of the US intelligence community, US diplomats and the US military. Even Kislyak was apparently taken aback by the request. And as a sidelight to this, even if we believe the absolute worst about Kushner and Flynn, no country would ever let foreign nationals have access to those kinds of facilities.

Why would Kushner and Flynn push for such a secret channel of communications?

A Reuters report published a short time after the Post reported added this key detail …

FBI investigators are examining whether Russians suggested to Kushner or other Trump aides that relaxing economic sanctions would allow Russian banks to offer financing to people with ties to Trump, said the current U.S. law enforcement official.

The head of Russian state-owned Vnesheconombank, Sergei Nikolaevich Gorkov, a trained intelligence officer whom Putin appointed, met Kushner at Trump Tower in December. The bank is under U.S. sanctions and was implicated in a 2015 espionage case in which one of its New York executives pleaded guilty to spying and was jailed.

The bank said in a statement in March that it had met with Kushner along with other representatives of U.S. banks and business as part of preparing a new corporate strategy.

Let’s note that this is something investigators are supposedly “examining.” That doesn’t mean it’s true. But the near contemporaneous meetings between Kushner and Gorkov are quite difficult to explain in any innocent way.

A bit later in the evening, the Times followed with its own version of the story. The Times was not able to report the detail about using Russian secure communications facilities for the secret channel but neither did it dispute that part of the story. The key detail in the Times story is an alternative version of why Kushner and Flynn were trying to do this.

It is unclear who first proposed the communications channel, but the people familiar with the meeting said the idea was to have Mr. Flynn speak directly with a senior military official in Moscow to discuss Syria and other security issues. The communications channel was never set up, the people said.

The three people were not authorized to discuss the December meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The White House declined to comment on Friday night.

If this explanation were proposed by anyone else I would say it was absurd on its face. But it comes under the bylines of three of the Times’ best reporters. Is this credible?

I would say it is not a credible explanation, at least if by that we mean an explanation of some legitimate activity. This all takes place in December. Trump would be President only a month later. Normally, it would be highly irregular for an incoming national security team to be this actively involved in policy during the transition. But certainly Flynn could speak to whoever he wanted to. It is difficult to imagine anything so urgent that it couldn’t wait until Trump’s team was in office in January. It is similarly hard to imagine what details Flynn would need access to. After all, the US also has a military and intelligence services. They could certainly brief Flynn on a lot.

The key thing here is that Flynn wanted to have these communications in secret without the US military, the intelligence services or the Obama administration knowing. I think it is highly unlikely that this was to discuss operational military matters in Syria. And if it were, the only possible explanation for the secrecy from the US government is that bad acts of some sort on Flynn or Kushner’s side were involved.

Indeed, the Times itself says as much a bit later in the article …

Even if the proposal was designed primarily as a conduit to discuss policy issues, it is unclear why such communications would have needed to be carried out though a secret channel.



The idea behind the secret communications channel, the three people said, was for Russian military officials to brief Mr. Flynn about the Syrian war and to discuss ways to cooperate there. Neither side followed up on it. And less than two weeks later, the idea was dropped when Mr. Trump announced that Rex W. Tillerson, a former chief executive of Exxon Mobil who had worked closely with Russian officials on energy deals, was his choice to become secretary of state.

Why Tillerson’s entry into the picture would change anything in this regard is a mystery to me. We’ve wondered for months why Mike Flynn would communicate with Sergei Kislyak on phone lines he would have known – indeed, was explicitly warned – would be monitored by US intelligence. This mystery seems at least partly solved. He and Kushner knew they needed a mode of communication with Moscow that would remain secret from US intelligence, the US military etc. And they asked Kislyak to help them set it up.

We shouldn’t assume they didn’t succeed.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-b ... last-night
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.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 29, 2017 5:25 pm

Elizabeth Drew JUNE 22, 2017 ISSUE

Trump: The Presidency in Peril


If Donald Trump leaves office before four years are up, history will likely show the middle weeks of May 2017 as the turning point. Chief among his mounting problems are new revelations surrounding the question of whether Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia in its effort to tip the 2016 election. If Trump has nothing to hide, he is certainly jumpy whenever the subject comes up and his evident worry about it has caused him to make some big mistakes. The president’s troubles will continue to grow as the investigators keep on investigating and the increasingly appalled leakers keep on leaking.

Two especially damaging disclosures occurred on Friday, May 19, the day Trump departed on his first foreign trip. That afternoon, while Air Force One was in the air, The Washington Post broke an ominous story that law enforcement investigators had under scrutiny a “person of interest” on the White House staff, described as “close to the president.” No longer was the focus on a small number of people at some distance from Trump, such as his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, longtime adviser and political troublemaker Roger Stone, or Carter Page, briefly Trump’s national security adviser during the campaign. The indications are that the “person of interest” is Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.

Though younger and more composed, Kushner is a lot more like Trump than is generally understood. Both of them moved their father’s businesses from the New York periphery to Manhattan. Like his father-in-law, Kushner came to Washington knowing a lot about real estate deals but almost nothing about government. Both entered the campaign and the White House unfamiliar with the rules and laws and evidently disinclined to check them before acting. Thus, Kushner has reinforced some of Trump’s critical weaknesses. Trump has thrust project after project upon him (the only top aide he could trust), and Kushner, who has a high self-regard, has taken on a preposterous list of assignments. He was able somehow (likely through his own leaks) to gain a reputation—along with his wife, Ivanka Trump—as someone who could keep the president calm and prevent him from acting impulsively or unwisely.

In the days before Trump’s foreign trip, however, others on the White House staff, by now not fans of Kushner, leaked that he had encouraged Trump to make the shortsighted decision in early May to fire FBI Director James Comey. By getting rid of the man who was overseeing the investigation into the Trump campaign’s relationship with the Russian government, the president stirred widespread outrage and reinforced suspicions that he had something to hide. (Richard Nixon, who was a lot smarter than Trump is, similarly misread the way the public would react when he arranged for the firing of his special prosecutor, Archibald Cox.) One concrete and dangerous result was that Trump was quickly confronted with something worse: a special counsel—Robert Mueller, Comey’s predecessor as FBI director—who is respected by both parties and, unlike Comey, can focus on this one assignment and will be much harder to fire.

But the widely applauded decision to name a special counsel won’t resolve some momentous matters raised by the Russia affair. Mueller’s investigation is limited to considering criminal acts. His purview doesn’t include determining whether Trump should be held to account for serious noncriminal misdeeds he or his associates may have committed with regard to his election, or violations of his constitutional duties as president. The point that largely got lost in the excitement over the appointment is that there are presidential actions that aren’t crimes but that can constitute impeachable offenses, which the Constitution defines as “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

When it was considering the impeachment of Richard Nixon, the House Judiciary Committee concluded that “high crimes” meant something broader than offenses listed in the criminal code. The concept of impeachment was largely lifted by the Founders from English law, which Edmund Burke explained to Parliament meant that “statesmen, who abuse their power” will be accused and tried by fellow statesmen “not upon the niceties of a narrow jurisprudence, but upon the enlarged and solid principles of state morality.”1

Among the crimes that the Watergate defendants were convicted of and that might be applicable to the more recent misadventure are bribery, subornation of perjury, criminal obstruction of justice, money laundering, tax evasion, witness tampering, and violations of election laws including campaign finance laws. Other crimes that might have occurred in the Russia affair are violations of the foreign agent registration laws and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, perjury itself (including lying to federal investigators), plus espionage and even treason.

Unlike ordinary crimes, impeachable offenses are “political” questions—ones that deeply affect the polity. Alexander Hamilton said that impeachable offenses were political, “as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.” For example, of the three articles of impeachment adopted by the Judiciary Committee against Richard Nixon in 1974, the most important was for “abuse of power.” The critical holding by the committee was that a president can be held accountable for the acts of subordinates as well as for actions that aren’t, strictly speaking, crimes. In the end, an impeachment of a president is grounded in the theory that the holder of that office has failed to fulfill his responsibility, set out in Article II of the Constitution, to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Unless a single act is itself sufficiently grave to warrant impeachment—for example, treason—a pattern of behavior needs to be found. That could involve, for example, emoluments or obstruction of justice.

This concept of accountability is critical to preventing a president from setting a tone in the White House, or dropping hints that can’t be traced, that lead to a pattern of acts by his aides that amount to, as in the case of Watergate, a violation of constitutional government. Many of what seemed disparate acts—well beyond the famous break-in in the Watergate complex and the cover-up—were carried out in order to assure Nixon’s reelection in 1972, and they amounted to the party in power interfering with the nominating process of the opposition party. That way lay fascism.

Similarly, in the case of the Russia affair, even if the president’s fingerprints aren’t found on any single act, misdeeds committed by Trump’s aides and close associates could amount to an impeachable offense on the part of the president. By definition, impeachable offenses would appear to concern conduct only during a presidency. But a number of constitutional law scholars, including the Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who was dubious at first, believe that if a president or his associates working on his behalf acted corruptly and secretly to rig the election, then the preinaugural period should be included.

Michael T. Flynn
Michael T. Flynn; drawing by James Ferguson
Mike Flynn, Trump’s former campaign adviser and dismissed national security adviser, is obviously a problem for the president, who has acted toward him in a most bizarre way. Trump ignored the warnings of Obama and Chris Christie not to hire Flynn. Then he resisted firing him even though, six days after the inauguration, then-acting attorney general Sally Yates warned the White House that Flynn had been “compromised” by Russia, and that Flynn had lied to Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in late December 2016. Yates also alluded to what she called Flynn’s “underlying conduct.”

Trump asked for Flynn’s resignation only on February 13, after stories about Yates’s warning appeared in the press—and then, two days after he fired him, the president called Flynn “a wonderful man.” Ignoring admonitions not to be in touch with someone under investigation, Trump has done so and, weirdly, recently told aides that he’d like to have Flynn back in the White House. Trump’s conduct has the unmistakable ring of a man concerned about what the other man has on him.

More recently, the McClatchy news organization reported that Flynn, in conversations with outgoing national security adviser Susan Rice during the transition, asked that the Obama administration hold off on its plan to arm Kurdish forces to help the effort to retake Raqqa, the ISIS capital in Syria. Since Flynn was a paid lobbyist for the Turkish government, which strongly opposed the plan, this action could possibly lead to a charge of treason.

In late May, it was reported that Flynn had told Kislyak that it would be preferable if Russia didn’t retaliate against sanctions imposed by the Obama administration in response to Russia’s meddling in the election. Flynn was leading the Russians to believe that they’d receive much better treatment under a President Trump and the Russians went along. (They’ve been disappointed because once Russia’s behavior in the election became known it was clear that Congress wouldn’t allow Trump to lift the sanctions.) A big question is whether Flynn discussed such important policy matters with the Russians without the knowledge of the president-elect. Once it became clear that Russia wasn’t retaliating, Trump tweeted: “Great move on delay (by V. Putin)—I always knew he was very smart!”

Another major question is how far the Russians got in recruiting allies in the Trump campaign. Recently, former CIA director John Brennan testified that last summer he’d become concerned about the number of contacts between Russians and people involved in the campaign, so much so that he told a bipartisan group of congressional leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, neither of whom has yet to show any sign of being perturbed. (But they are people to watch closely for any sign of movement away from Trump.)

Brennan testified he was worried that the Russians may even have recruited some Americans to cooperate with their effort to tilt the election. Intelligence analysts picked up conversations by Russians in which they bragged that they’d cultivated Flynn and Manafort and believed they would be useful for influencing Trump. (This doesn’t prove guilt on the part of either man.) According to CNN, some Obama administration officials viewed Flynn as a security risk.

While Mueller’s investigation could preempt some congressional inquiries, it still leaves them important work to do. It doesn’t fall to the special counsel to consider the enormous and pressing question of how to prevent a foreign power from interfering in our elections again. It’s up to Congress to determine what new laws to write to deal with that. Conflicts are likely to arise between what Mueller says he needs by way of secrecy and not subjecting witnesses to self-incrimination, and the committees’ desire to remain involved; these will have to be negotiated.

Laurence Tribe is gathering what he believes are impeachable offenses committed by Trump.2 Going back to the first days of the Trump presidency and continuing up to the present, Tribe sees Trump flouting the constitutional ban on accepting “emoluments”—payments by foreign governments that might compromise the president’s presumably undivided commitment to US interests. Examples include accepting money paid by foreign governments to Trump’s luxury hotel just down the street from the White House in order to curry favor with its owner, and Trump’s failure to cut himself off from ownership of a business that has projects all over the world.

Also, Trump may be held to have attempted to impede the FBI’s Russia investigation. In addition to his request to Comey that he “let…go” his investigation of Flynn, this could include Trump’s firing of Comey for, as he ultimately admitted, “this Russia thing.” Or Trump’s saying to Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and to Ambassador Kislyak, of firing Comey: “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” Collectively, these acts could amount to the impeachable offense of covering up other potential, substantive misdeeds. There were also Trump’s efforts very early in the administration to get Comey to pledge “loyalty” to him (Comey dodged, saying he’d give him his “honesty”). In another form of pressure, Trump asked Comey when the FBI would announce that he wasn’t under investigation. Comey didn’t respond.

When it was revealed that Comey had taken notes of their conversations, there came Trump’s not-very-veiled threat that Comey “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations.” Whether this was a feint or Trump had actually taped some conversations is as yet unknown, but by now Trump’s habitual lying has put him in a difficult spot when it is his word against Comey’s—or pretty much anyone’s. Whether or not Trump has recognized it—after all, he deals in threats—the revelation that Comey had notes of Trump asking him to drop the Flynn investigation was a clear sign that Comey wasn’t going to simply go away.

Where are all the leaks coming from? Many Republicans want to make this the issue rather than what the leaks reveal, but the fact that they keep coming is a sign of the state of near collapse of the White House staff. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Trump has the most unhappy staff ever, with some feeling a higher duty to warn the public about what they see as a danger to the country.

From the stories that emanate from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue the impression one gets is that Trump is a nearly impossible person to work for: he screams at his staff when they tell him something he doesn’t want to hear; he screams at them as he watches television news for hours on end and sees stories about himself that he doesn’t like, which is most of them. Some White House staff are polishing their résumés. Leaks are also being made by the intelligence community, many of whom see Trump as a national menace.

People who have been to the Oval Office have come away stunned by Trump’s minimal attention span, his appalling lack of information, his tendency to say more than he knows. (Intelligence officials have been instructed to put as much of his daily briefing as possible in the form of pictures.) Aides have been subjected to public embarrassment by his propensity for changing his story.

Trump sullies the reputation of people who have signed on with him. The respected general H.R. McMaster, now the national security adviser, humiliated himself by trying—presumably under orders—to combat the Washington Post story on May 15 that Trump had revealed highly classified intelligence about ISIS to Lavrov and Kislyak. What made this even worse was that the intelligence had been passed on to the US by Israel under a strict international concordat that classified information shared between allies is not to be revealed to anyone else. McMaster has yet to recover his reputation from having emphatically refuted things the Post story didn’t say. Over and over, McMaster characterized the president’s passing along to the Russian officials the most sensitive information as “wholly appropriate.”

Trump’s reckless act is believed to have endangered the life of an Israeli intelligence asset who had been planted among ISIS forces, something extremely hard to pull off. Trump’s mishandling of the intelligence provoked dismay in Washington. During his visit to Jerusalem on May 22, Trump claimed that the press stories about it were wrong because he hadn’t mentioned Israel; but the reports didn’t say he did.

That same day, The Washington Post disclosed that Trump had asked the heads of two major intelligence agencies to announce that there had been no collusion between his campaign and Russia. Both declined. Some Trump defenders will argue that he didn’t know enough to understand that he shouldn’t have made those calls, or to try to get Comey to back off investigating Flynn—what might be called the ignorance defense. But while ignorance of the facts might be an acceptable defense in criminal or impeachment proceedings, ignorance of the law isn’t.

The particular challenges of serving in the Trump administration have led some people to make compromises that outsiders are prone to judge. In very short order, the same person can be almost rapturously admired as a hero and then scorned as a coward and a loser. Consider Rod Rosenstein, a career government prosecutor with a reputation for integrity who became deputy attorney general in April. Within a couple of weeks Rosenstein found himself in a meeting with Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions (who had supposedly recused himself from any dealings on the campaign and the Russia matter) and under pressure to write a memo expressing his own strong negative views of how Comey had handled Hillary Clinton’s e-mail case. The choices before Rosenstein were to write the report, knowing that Comey was going to be fired anyway, or refuse to and resign or be fired. Then what use could he be?

Trump had reportedly thought that Democrats, still unhappy over Clinton’s loss, would be pleased with his firing of Comey if his rationale was Comey’s handling of her case. But that made no sense; the timing was inexplicable; Democrats were incredulous that Trump was now suddenly sympathetic to Clinton. While Trump was within his legal rights to fire Comey, his doing so risked politicizing the FBI and set a terrible precedent.

Now Rosenstein was the goat. But despite numerous Democrats’ harsh condemnation of it, Rosenstein’s memo reads as if it had been written by any number of the Democrats or experienced prosecutors appalled by Comey’s behavior in the Clinton case. The memo set forth views widely expressed at the time that Comey had made a number of prosecutorial misjudgments. These included his tough public comments about Clinton’s handling of classified material even though he said there weren’t grounds for prosecuting her—this isn’t done—and his letter to Republican committee chairmen, which he had to know would be made public, eleven days before the election, saying that the inquiry into her handling of classified e-mails was being reopened, breaking a long-standing rule that prosecutors don’t comment on the status of continuing cases.

Comey’s problem was that in trying to protect his reputation he kept doing things that further damaged it. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3 he spoke melodramatically of his anguish in having to decide between two choices: to “speak” or to “conceal.” But many observers believed that he had a third choice: quietly to get a warrant and check out some of the e-mails that had traveled from Clinton’s laptop to her close aide Huma Abedin’s to that of Abedin’s then-husband Anthony Weiner before reopening an investigation, much less announcing one and perhaps affect the outcome of the election. Comey’s testimony also angered Democrats by wildly exaggerating the number of Clinton’s e-mails that had landed on Weiner’s laptop—“hundreds and thousands,” he said, when actually there had been just a handful. Comey’s comment that the thought that his actions may have affected the election made him “mildly nauseous” enraged Trump.

Rosenstein was at the least naive if he didn’t understand that his report would be used as the rationale for the firing, but when that ensued, drawing intense criticism of him, he indicated he might quit. That Trump changed his story two days later, now saying that when he fired Comey he was thinking about “this Russia thing,” showed how exasperating and even damaging it could be to work for him. Everyone who hewed to the White House line that the firing had been based on Rosenstein’s memo, including Pence, was now embarrassed and lost credibility with the press and the public. And then Rosenstein was the hero again when just over a week later he appointed Mueller as special counsel.

The survival of Trump’s presidency may depend most of all on congressional Republicans. Unless the Democrats take both chambers in the midterms, the Republicans will decide his fate. At what point might their patience with Trump be exhausted? How will they respond if high presidential associates or even the president himself are indicted and he chooses to fight it out rather than resign? Is it possible that a Congress in which the Republicans control both or even one chamber would consider impeaching Trump? The impeachment proceedings against Nixon were accepted by the country because they were bipartisan and considered fair. Too many different unknowns are in play to predict the outcome of the midterms, though the respected Cook Report anticipates substantial Republican losses in the House. Republicans are starting to panic.

Their challenge is how to overcome the twin blights of Trump’s chaotic governing and his lack of achievements on Capitol Hill (the exception is the confirmation of the very conservative Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court). Trump’s sole substantive accomplishment thus far is the House’s approval of a health care overhaul that required all but a few of them to vote to throw tens of millions of people off of health insurance. (It was followed by a grand celebration at the White House.)

The Republicans are in a bit of a spot: they don’t particularly like Trump and to them he’s an interloper. One reason many of them, especially Ryan, allied themselves with Trump was that they thought he would get their programs, especially tax cuts, through Congress, but prospects for major legislation are receding. (And there’s no reason to think that a President Mike Pence wouldn’t back the same programs.)

The problem with much of the predicting about what will or might happen in Washington is that it proceeds from an assumption of stasis—as if things won’t happen that could change the politicians’ calculations. When it comes to how long Trump will remain in office, one possibility often discussed is that things might get so bad for him that he’ll decide to return to his much easier life in New York. But he insists that he’s not “a quitter.” (There’s also a question about the corpulent Trump’s health, but that’s not considered a proper topic of conversation.)

Politicians are pragmatists. Republican leaders urged Nixon to leave office rather than have to vote on his impeachment. Similarly, it’s possible that when Trump becomes too politically expensive for them, the current Republicans might be ready to dump him by one means or another. But the Republicans of today are quite different from those in the early 1970s: there are few moderates now and the party is the prisoner of conservative forces that didn’t exist in Nixon’s day.

Trump, like Nixon, depends on the strength of his core supporters, but unlike Nixon, he can also make use of social media, Fox News, and friendly talk shows to keep them loyal. Cracking Trump’s base could be a lot harder than watching Nixon’s diminish as he appeared increasingly like a cornered rat, perspiring as he tried to talk his way out of trouble (“I am not a crook”) or firing his most loyal aides as if that would fix the situation. Moreover, Trump is, for all his deep flaws, in some ways a cannier politician than Nixon; he knows how to lie to his people to keep them behind him.

The critical question is: When, or will, Trump’s voters realize that he isn’t delivering on his promises, that his health care and tax proposals will help the wealthy at their expense, that he isn’t producing the jobs he claims? His proposed budget would slash numerous domestic programs, such as food stamps, that his supporters have relied on heavily. (One wonders if he’s aware of this part of his constituency.)

People can have a hard time recognizing that they’ve been conned. And Trump is skilled at flimflam, creating illusions. But how long can he keep blaming his failures to deliver on others—Democrats, the “dishonest media,” the Washington “swamp”? None of this is knowable yet. What is knowable is that an increasingly agitated Donald Trump’s hold on the presidency is beginning to slip.

—May 25, 2017
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/06 ... in%20Peril



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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.
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 30, 2017 10:33 am


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The Trump-Russia scandal is the subject of multiple investigations that may or may not unearth new revelations, but this much is already certain: Donald Trump is guilty.

We don't need additional information about the Russian covert scheme to undermine the 2016 campaign, or about the curious interactions between Team Trump and Russia, or about Trump pressuring and then firing FBI Director James Comey, to reach the judgment that the president of the United States engaged in wrongdoing.

From the start, Trump and his crew have claimed they had nothing to do with the hack-and-leak operation mounted by Russian intelligence to help Trump nab the presidency. They have dismissed the matter as fake news, and they have insisted there is no issue because there has been no proof that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. In May, for instance, Trump proclaimed, "Believe me, there's no collusion." Nothing to see; move along.

Explicit collusion may yet be proved by the FBI investigation overseen by special counsel Robert Mueller or by other ongoing probes. But even if it is not, a harsh verdict can be pronounced: Trump actively and enthusiastically aided and abetted Russian President Vladimir Putin's plot against America. This is the scandal. It already exists—in plain sight.


Did Team Trump conspire with the Kremlin? Here's a timeline of everything we now know about the attack on the 2016 election.
As soon as the news broke a year ago that the Russians had penetrated the Democratic National Committee's computer systems, Trump launched a campaign of denial and distraction. For months, he refused to acknowledge the Kremlin's role. He questioned expert and government findings that pinned the blame on Moscow. He refused to condemn Putin. Far from treating these acts of information warfare seriously, he attempted to politicize and delegitimize the evidence. Meanwhile, he and his supporters encouraged more Russian hacking. All told, Trump provided cover for a foreign government's attempt to undermine American democracy. Through a propaganda campaign of his own, he helped Russia get away with it. As James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, testified to Congress this spring, Trump "helps the Russians by obfuscating who was actually responsible."

On June 15, 2016, the day after the Washington Post reported that the DNC had been hacked and that cybersecurity experts had identified two groups linked to the Russian government as the perps, Trump's campaign issued a statement blaming the victim: "We believe it was the DNC that did the 'hacking' as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader." The intent was obvious: to impede somber consideration of the Russian intervention, to have voters and reporters see it as just another silly political hullabaloo.

In the following weeks, Trump continued to claim the Russia story was fiction. After WikiLeaks dumped nearly 20,000 DNC emails—a move that nearly blew up the Democratic convention—Trump tweeted, "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me." Two days later, he proclaimed at a news conference, "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press." Trump supporters including Rep. Mike Pompeo, who would become Trump's CIA director, and Roger Stone, the longtime political dirty trickster, cheered on WikiLeaks.

What could be better for Putin? The US government had called him out—yet Trump was discrediting this conclusion.
By midsummer, numerous cyber experts had bolstered the conclusion that Russia was behind the hacks. And President Barack Obama echoed those findings. So anyone paying attention to the facts—say, a presidential candidate and his advisers—would have been aware of this fundamental point. Indeed, in August, during his first intelligence briefing as the Republican presidential nominee, Trump was reportedly told that there were direct links between the hacks and the Russian government.

Still, he didn't change his tune. During a September 8 interview with RT, the Kremlin-controlled broadcaster that has been accused of disseminating fake news and propaganda, Trump discounted the Russian connection: "I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out. Who knows, but I think it's pretty unlikely." (Yes, he did this on RT.) He repeated a similar line at the first presidential debate at the end of that month, with his famous reference to how the DNC hacker "could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?"


The Spy Who Wrote the Trump-Russia Memos: It Was "Hair-Raising" Stuff
Private experts and US intelligence had already determined that Russia had pulled off this caper. Trump had been told this. Yet he continued to deny Russia's culpability, actively protecting Moscow.

Many Republicans followed his lead. Trump's stance—treating a widely shared conclusion as controversial speculation—essentially foreclosed a vigorous and bipartisan response to the Moscow intervention. It is hard to imagine how this did not embolden Russian intelligence and reinforce Putin's belief that he had backed the right horse.

On October 7, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence blew the whistle on Moscow, issuing a statement that the DNC hack and related cyberattacks had been authorized by "Russia's senior-most officials." Yet Trump remained on the side of the enemy. That same day, the now notorious grab-them-by-the-pussy video surfaced—and less than an hour after that story broke, WikiLeaks began releasing thousands of stolen emails from John Podesta, the Clinton campaign's chairman. Trump's response, at the second presidential debate: "I notice, anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say 'the Russians.' Well, [Hillary Clinton] doesn't know if it's the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking." The next day at a campaign rally, Trump, citing some of the Podesta emails, exclaimed, "I love WikiLeaks!"

Trump continued calling the Russia story a hoax, asserting that the hacks might have been waged by China or others. And he still showed no signs of confronting Putin.
What could be better for Putin? The US government had called him out, yet the GOP presidential candidate was discrediting this conclusion. Trump made it tougher for Obama and the White House to denounce Putin publicly—to do so, they feared, would give Trump cause to argue they were trying to rig the election against him.

At the final debate, Clinton accurately summed up Trump's position: "It's pretty clear you won't admit that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people." Trump replied, "Our country has no idea" who pulled off the hacks.


Read about the disturbing Trump-Russia dossier, whose existence was first reported by MoJo's David Corn.
After the election, he maintained this stance. "It's time for the country to move on," he said in December. Two weeks later, after the US intelligence establishment released a report concluding Putin had implemented this covert op to install Trump in the White House, the president-elect compared the intelligence community to Nazi Germany. Though he did at one point concede Russia was the culprit, Trump continued calling the Russia story a hoax whipped up by Democrats and eventually reverted to form, asserting that the hacks might have been waged by China or others. And he still showed no signs of confronting Putin. At the Russian leader's request, he jovially hosted the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in the Oval Office—and then disclosed top-secret information to them. Moreover, he did this the day after brazenly ousting Comey, who was overseeing the bureau's probe of Moscow's meddling and links between Trump associates and Russia.

It's been common for political observers to say the Trump-Russia controversy has generated a great deal of smoke, but the amount of fire is yet to be determined. It's true that the various links tying Trump and his associates to Russia have yet to be fully explained. Many questions remain: Was there any specific coordination? If not, did the Trump camp privately signal to Moscow that Russia would get a better deal if Trump were elected? That alone would have provided encouragement for Putin to attack.

This country needs a thorough and public investigation to sort out how the Russian operation worked, how US intelligence and the Obama administration responded, and how Trump and his associates interacted with Russia and WikiLeaks. But whatever happened out of public view, the existing record is already conclusively shameful. Trump and his crew were active enablers of Putin's operation to subvert an American election. That is fire, not smoke. That is scandal enough.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... dal-guilty



Investigation Turns to Kushner’s Motives in Meeting With a Putin Ally
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, MARK MAZZETTI and MAGGIE HABERMANMAY 29, 2017


Jared Kushner, center, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, at the White House in January. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, was looking for a direct line to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — a search that in mid-December found him in a room with a Russian banker whose financial institution was deeply intertwined with Russian intelligence, and remains under sanction by the United States.

Federal and congressional investigators are now examining what exactly Mr. Kushner and the Russian banker, Sergey N. Gorkov, wanted from each other. The banker is a close associate of Mr. Putin, but he has not been known to play a diplomatic role for the Russian leader. That has raised questions about why he was meeting with Mr. Kushner at a crucial moment in the presidential transition, according to current and former officials familiar with the investigations.

The New York Times first reported the meeting between Mr. Kushner and Mr. Gorkov in March, but the White House at the time did not explain its aim. That article quoted a White House spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, who said that the meeting came at the request of the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey I. Kislyak, with whom Mr. Kushner had met earlier in December at Trump Tower to discuss opening a communications channel with Russian officials during the presidential transition.

But the half-hour meeting with Mr. Gorkov since has come under increasing scrutiny. The current and former American officials now say it may have been part of an effort by Mr. Kushner to establish a direct line to Mr. Putin outside of established diplomatic channels.

The meeting came as Mr. Trump was openly feuding with American intelligence agencies and their conclusion that Russia had tried to disrupt the presidential election and turn it in his favor.

The Senate Intelligence Committee notified the White House in March that it planned to question Mr. Kushner about the meeting.

On Friday, citing American officials briefed on intelligence reports, The Washington Post reported that Mr. Kislyak told his superiors in Moscow that Mr. Kushner had proposed a secret channel and had suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications. The White House has not denied the Post report, which specified that Russian communication centers at an embassy or consulate in the United States were discussed as hosts for the secure channel.

It is not clear whether Mr. Kushner saw the Russian banker as someone who could be repeatedly used as a go-between or whether the meeting with Mr. Gorkov was designed to establish a direct, secure communications line to Mr. Putin.

The reasons the parties wanted a communications channel, and for how long they sought it, are also unclear. Several people with knowledge of the meeting with Mr. Kislyak, and who defended it, have said it was primarily to discuss how the United States and Russia could cooperate to end the civil war in Syria and on other policy issues. They also said the secure channel, in part, sought to connect Michael T. Flynn, a campaign adviser who became Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, and military officials in Moscow.

Mr. Flynn attended the meeting at Trump Tower with Mr. Kislyak.

Yet one current and one former American official with knowledge of the continuing congressional and F.B.I. investigations said they were examining whether the channel was meant to remain open, and if there were other items on the meeting’s agenda, including lifting sanctions that the Obama administration had imposed on Russia in response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its aggression in Ukraine.

During the Trump administration’s first week, administration officials said they were considering an executive order to unilaterally lift the sanctions, which bar Americans from providing financing to and could limit borrowing from Mr. Gorkov’s bank, Vnesheconombank. Removing the sanctions would have greatly expanded the bank’s ability to do business in the United States.

In a statement on Monday, Ms. Hicks said that “Mr. Kushner was acting in his capacity as a transition official” in meeting with the Russians. Mr. Kushner has agreed to be interviewed by congressional investigators about the meetings, she said.

Photo

Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, in February. Credit Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
In March, Mr. Gorkov said in a statement that his December meeting with Mr. Kushner was part of the bank’s strategy to discuss promising trends and sectors with influential financial institutions in Europe, Asia and the United States. That statement said he met with representatives of “business circles of the U.S., including with the head of Kushner Companies, Jared Kushner.” At the time, Mr. Kushner was still running the company, which is his family’s real estate business.

Vnesheconombank has not responded to questions about which other financial institutions and business leaders Mr. Gorkov met with while in the United States.

Trying to set up secret communications with Mr. Putin in the weeks after the election would not be illegal. Still, it is highly unusual to try to establish channels with a foreign leader that did not rely on the government’s own communications, which are secure and allow for a record of contacts to be created.

But the Trump transition was unique in its unwillingness to use the government’s communications lines and briefing material for its dealings with many foreign governments, partly because of concern that Obama administration officials might be monitoring the calls.

In addition, Mr. Kushner disclosed none of his contacts with Russians or any other foreign officials when he applied for his security clearance in January. He later amended the form to include several meetings, including those with Mr. Kislyak and Mr. Gorkov, but it is unclear whether he told the investigators who conducted his background check about the attempts to set up a back channel. His aides have said his omissions from the clearance form were accidental.

The meeting with Mr. Gorkov is now being scrutinized by the F.B.I. as part of its investigation into alleged Russian attempts to disrupt last year’s presidential campaign, and whether any of Mr. Trump’s advisers assisted in such efforts.

His bank is controlled by members of Mr. Putin’s government, including Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev. It also has long been intertwined with Mr. Putin’s inner circle: It has been used by the Russian government to bail out oligarchs close to Mr. Putin, and has helped fund the Russian president’s pet projects, such as the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014.

Vnesheconombank has also been used by Russian intelligence to plant spies in the United States. In March 2016, an agent of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the S.V.R., who was caught posing as an employee of the bank in New York, pleaded guilty to spying against the United States.

The spy, said Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney in Manhattan, was under “the guise of being a legitimate banker, gathered intelligence as an agent of the Russian Federation in New York.”

Mr. Gorkov is a graduate of the academy of the Federal Security Service of Russia, a training ground for Russian spies. Though current and former Americans said it was unlikely that Mr. Gorkov is an active member of Russian intelligence, they said his past ties to the security services in Moscow were a reason he was put in charge of the bank.

In March, both CNN and the Post columnist David Ignatius reported that Mr. Kushner had met with Mr. Gorkov because he wanted the most direct possible contact with Mr. Putin.

But days earlier, responding to questions from The Times about the meetings with Mr. Kislyak and Mr. Gorkov, Ms. Hicks said the meetings were part of an effort by Mr. Kushner to improve relations between the United States and Russia, and to identify areas of possible cooperation.

After the first meeting with Mr. Kislyak, she said at the time, the Russian ambassador asked for a follow-up discussion to “deliver a message.” Mr. Kushner sent Avrahm Berkowitz, a longtime associate and now a White House aide. At that session, Mr. Kislyak told Mr. Berkowitz that he wanted Mr. Kushner to meet Mr. Gorkov, Ms. Hicks said.

Ms. Hicks did not say at the time why Mr. Kislyak had wanted to arrange a meeting between Mr. Kushner and Mr. Gorkov. But she said then that during Mr. Kushner’s meeting with Mr. Gorkov, there was no discussion about the Kushner company’s business or about American sanctions against Russian entities like Vnesheconombank.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/29/us/p ... .html?_r=0
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 30, 2017 1:18 pm

With Kushner Revelations, The Worst Case Scenario Comes Into View

By JOSH MARSHALL Published MAY 30, 2017 12:01 PM
15800Views

In the roiling controversies surrounding Jared Kushner and the broader Trump/Russia probe, yesterday’s article in the Times was the first to get at what is likely the underlying story.

Consider these two key passages …

Yet one current and one former American official with knowledge of the continuing congressional and F.B.I. investigations said they were examining whether the channel was meant to remain open, and if there were other items on the meeting’s agenda, including lifting sanctions that the Obama administration had imposed on Russia in response to Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its aggression in Ukraine.

During the Trump administration’s first week, administration officials said they were considering an executive order to unilaterally lift the sanctions, which bar Americans from providing financing to and could limit borrowing from Mr. Gorkov’s bank, Vnesheconombank. Removing the sanctions would have greatly expanded the bank’s ability to do business in the United States.




In March, Mr. Gorkov said in a statement that his December meeting with Mr. Kushner was part of the bank’s strategy to discuss promising trends and sectors with influential financial institutions in Europe, Asia and the United States. That statement said he met with representatives of “business circles of the U.S., including with the head of Kushner Companies, Jared Kushner.” At the time, Mr. Kushner was still running the company, which is his family’s real estate business.

We’ve heard it claimed that this secret channel to Moscow Kushner and Flynn wanted to set up was to discuss the situation in Syria. That is simply not plausible. At least it couldn’t have been just about Syria as there are numerous legitimate ways to do that. If the conversations were about Syria and ISIS, which I find dubious, they must have included other topics which had to be hidden from the US government, the intelligence agencies and US military.

The most plausible ‘bad’ story behind the Trump/Russia mystery has always been some kind of financial preferment to members of the Trump family in exchange for lifting the sanctions put in place after the Russian annexation of Crimea and subsequent low-intensity incursions into eastern Ukraine. This wouldn’t come out of the blue. It would probably come in the context of some ‘deal’ over Syria or Ukraine or perhaps some agreement about global counter-terrorism cooperation. As I’ve written, there is a more ‘innocent‘ explanation as well. It may not be any quid pro quo. It could simply be years of doing business with Russians and people from other parts of the former Soviet Union which has made Trump inclined to see their needs in a sympathetic light. His hostility toward the sanctions regime could also be driven by the fact that, with his dependence on Russian and FSU investments and purchases, they likely hurt him directly.

This chart, let me be clear, is not a statement of fact. It is an effort to illustrate a series of patterns which are the subject, the subtext, of many of the reports about the Trump/Russia story and indeed the investigation. It looks at what each side wants, what each side seems to be getting. President Trump’s efforts to destabilize NATO and the EU are the most clear. These things are happening. The election hacking and subversion did happen. We know the Trump Organization has taken vast sums of money from Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union over the last twenty years. Whether there’s any explicit quid quo pro today is what we don’t know. When people talk about collusion, this is the pattern of actions they’re looking at and trying to confirm.

Image
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/wit ... -into-view
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Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 30, 2017 1:31 pm

Congress expands Russia investigation to include Trump's personal attorney
By BRIAN ROSS MATTHEW MOSK May 30, 2017, 12:04 PM ET
Stephanie Keith/Reuters

One of President Donald Trump’s closest confidants, his personal lawyer Michael Cohen, has now become a focus of the expanding congressional investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 campaign.

Cohen confirmed to ABC News that House and Senate investigators have asked him “to provide information and testimony” about any contacts he had with people connected to the Russian government, but he said he has turned down the invitation.

“I declined the invitation to participate, as the request was poorly phrased, overly broad and not capable of being answered,” he told ABC News in an email Tuesday.

After Cohen rejected the congressional requests for cooperation, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to grant its chairman, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, and ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, blanket authority to issue subpoenas as they deem necessary.

While much of the media focus in recent days has fallen on Russian contacts made by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, there are few people closer to the president than his longtime lawyer. Insiders consider Cohen to be Trump’s pit bull or consigliere for his role in threatening legal action against Trump critics, gaining notoriety for threatening and browbeating reporters investigating Trump’s background.

He was quoted in 2015 telling Daily Beast reporters, “I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know … So I’m warning you, tread very f---ing lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f---ing disgusting.”

In a 2016 appearance on CNN that went viral, the stone-faced attorney flashed anger when anchor Brianna Keiler said the Trump campaign was “down.”

“Says who?” he challenged. When she cited polls, he countered, “Which polls?” She replied, “All of them.” His final response in that exchange proved prescient: “You’re going to all be very surprised when he polls substantially higher than what you all are giving him credit for.”

After the 2016 campaign, Cohen left the Trump Organization to become the president’s personal attorney, a job he still holds. From that post, he has continued to weigh in on Trump’s behalf on Twitter and during occasional television appearances.

After Trump dismissed FBI Director James Comey, for example, Cohen tweeted, “I believe @POTUS was justified in terminating #Comey as @FBI director. #RT if you agree with me!”

Cohen was also made a deputy national finance chairman of the Republican National Committee — a position that gives him some sway on how money will be allocated to Republican candidates. And in April he announced he formed a “strategic alliance” with the powerful D.C. lobbying firm Patton Boggs, a firm whose clients include Russia’s third-largest bank, Gazprombank. The arrangement enables him to work out of Squire Patton Boggs’ offices in New York, Washington and London, according to the announcement.

The emergence of Cohen as a subject of the Senate probe brings renewed attention to a strident Trump advocate who was named in the unverified dossier prepared by a former British intelligence agent during the 2016 campaign and provided by the FBI to Sen. John McCain, which contains a number of unconfirmed allegations that Cohen played a role in working with the Russians on the hacking of Democratic National Committee computers during the campaign.

In January, Cohen told ABC News the allegations in the dossier were “laughably false.” His wife is Ukrainian, and he once worked with her family in Ukraine to establish an ethanol business. ABC News was able to debunk some references to him in the unverified document, such as the assertion in the that his Ukrainian-born father-in-law had a vacation home, or dacha, near Russian President Vladimir Putin’s.

“I don’t even think my father-in-law has ever been to Moscow,” Cohen told ABC News earlier this year. “I wonder who’s living in the dacha.”

Another suggestion in those documents — that Cohen supposedly met with the Russians in Prague last August — is also false, he said. Then-President-elect Trump pushed back against the claim in a wide-ranging news conference held in January, saying that he saw Cohen’s passport.

“I said, ‘I want to see your passport.’ He brings his passport to my office. I say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. He didn’t leave the country. He wasn’t out of the country.’ They had Michael Cohen of the Trump Organization was in Prague. It turned out to be a different Michael Cohen,” Trump said. “It’s a disgrace what took place. It’s a disgrace, and I think they ought to apologize to start with Michael Cohen.”

Democrats in Congress have argued it is conceivable he entered Europe through another country — he was in Italy on vacation around the time the dossier alleges he was in Prague — and his passport would not receive a stamp for crossing the border, but no proof of any such trip has been produced.

“I’ve never actually walked the land in Prague,” Cohen told ABC News. “And last August I was not in Prague.”

Congressional investigators involved in the widening probe have already identified four Trump campaign advisers as people of interest because of their interactions with Russian officials. Only one of them, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, has received a subpoena for records. Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser, declined to provide them, citing his Fifth Amendment rights.

Lawmakers have also asked former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, informal adviser Roger Stone and former foreign policy adviser Carter Page to voluntarily hand over relevant records. All three men have said publicly they are producing records and cooperating with investigators.


http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/russia-i ... d=47646601


Trump lawyer Michael Cohen won't cooperate with Congress
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/politics/ ... -congress/


Investigators Are Right To Be Looking at Michael Cohen

By JOSH MARSHALL Published MAY 30, 2017 3:11 PM

This morning we heard news that investigative committees in the House and Senate have made broad document requests to Michael Cohen, longtime Trump Organization lawyer and Trump operative. These are similar or the same as those which have been issued to others often mentioned in the Russia probe. But Cohen declined the requests. (He can do that at this point since they are requests, not subpoenas.) I’ve done a lot of research and reporting on Cohen and plan to have our expanding team do quite a lot more.

Let me share a few thoughts.

This is a very bad sign for Donald Trump and Michael Cohen. In simple terms, whatever happened during the 2016 campaign, if I wanted to understand Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, the countries of the former Soviet Union and money from those countries and emigres from those countries, there’s no single person I’d want to look at more closely than Michael Cohen.

This may all sound very odd since for those who got to know Cohen during the campaign he comes off as nothing more than Trump’s bully lawyer who makes legal threats and mouths off on TV. He is a much, much more significant player.

Cohen is referred to as Trump’s personal lawyer. Not likely. President Trump has other lawyers who sue people on his behalf, defend him in lawsuits and criminal matters. From everything I’ve been able to tell, Cohen fills a business role for Trump as well as being his public threatener. Cohen has multiple personal and business relationships with people from Russia, Ukraine and emigres from those countries. He is a major real estate player in his own right, as well as working on numerous deals within the Trump Organization. Just back in 2015 Cohen bought a $58 million apartment building on New York’s Upper East Side. $58 million. That’s a lot of money. He appears to have made his original money in the New York City taxi business and remains heavily involved in it. That is a rough and unlovely business. He also has or had businesses in Ukraine. There was also the casino boat business he launched with other Russian/Ukrainian emigres.

Here’s one look at Cohen’s background in the Trump world which I wrote on March 1. More recently Cohen was the conduit that Felix Sater and that Ukrainian parliamentarian chose for their peace plan to settle matters between Russia and Ukraine and end sanctions. Cohen was supposed to deliver the paper dossier to Michael Flynn. He said he did deliver it to Flynn. Then he denied delivering it to him. What stuff gets hand delivered these days in paper copies? This was shortly before Flynn was fired. Cohen was also reportedly in touch with the same Ukrainian parliamentarian discussing peace overtures and sanctions relief during the campaign, going back to the first half of 2016. Again, that’s very interesting and something that seems considerably more interesting today than it did a few months ago when we first learned about it.

How did Cohen first come to Donald Trump’s attention and join the Trump Organization just over a decade ago? That’s another interesting story. It was apparently his ability to serve as a conduit for money emigres from the former Soviet Union were using to buy apartment units at Trump branded luxury developments. That was I believe what brought Cohen into the Organization.

Cohen is a much bigger deal in this whole story than I think is broadly realized. I’m not surprised the investigative committees are interested in him. Federal investigators are too.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/inv ... hael-cohen



Donald Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen is about to get subpoena’d in the Russia scandal
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 1:24 pm EDT Tue May 30, 2017 | 0
Home » Politics

Donald Trump’s Russia scandal, and the investigation into it, have expanded yet again. Just days after it was revealed that the FBI is investigating Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner for his role in the scandal, now comes word that Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen is now a focus of the Congressional investigation into the scandal.

Cohen has confirmed to ABC News that he’s being targeted by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has asked him to testify and provide records in relation to the Russia scandal (link). But Cohen says he’s refusing the request. In fact it was his refusal that prompted the committee to unanimously vote to give its two principal members blanket subpoena power. That means Cohen is about to get subpoena’d.

So what will Michael Cohen do once that happens? Michael Flynn invoked the Fifth Amendment when he was subpoena’d, but that’s seen by the public as an admission of guilt, even though legally it isn’t necessarily one. Cohen’s only options in response to the forthcoming subpoena will be to comply, to plead the Fifth, or to try to fight it in court and convince a judge that the subpoena is legally invalid. The big question here is why Cohen is now being targeted.

Cohen cannot be compelled to provide evidence against Donald Trump that was obtained by virtue of having represented him as a client. So the Senate Intel Committee is essentially asserting that Cohen played another role in the Russia scandal that would have gone beyond merely being Trump’s attorney at the time.

This brings us back to the now-infamous Trump-Russia dossier assembled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, which alleged that Michael Cohen secretly met with the Russian government in Prague to discuss the terms of Russia’s blackmail of Trump. Cohen has long denied that claim, and asserts that he’s never been to Prague. So is the committee trying to get to the bottom of the dossier, or does it have some other lead on Cohen that’s led to him being targeted?
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/co ... oena/3164/
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