Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

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Re: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby Belligerent Savant » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:21 pm

.
Repeating it -- over and over again -- does not, by itself, make it true.

Analysis has been performed on Cozy Bear/Guccifer 2.0, as already stated. The findings are counter to what's been spread across standard 'news' channels.

I'll share it again, a last time:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41097&p=658776&hilit=guccifer#p658776
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Re: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:23 pm

the Dutch is no news channel

and I have read your thread...I guess we'll leave it there
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: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby Belligerent Savant » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:31 pm

.

Correction: "The findings are counter to what's been spread across standard 'news' channels OR reported by STATE INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES."

Or are we in the business of simply accepting the work of intelligence agencies without any critique and/or analysis, here in RI?
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Re: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:36 pm

and I am supposed to believe you ...why??

you are making me dizzy

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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: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:41 pm

Todd Zwillich

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Rep Cummings asked if committee will subpoena Alan Weisselberg, Donald Trump Jr given what Cohen has alleged. "I think we probably will."

"I think there are still a number of shoes to drop."



Reporter: “Do you believe that the President committed a crime while in office?”

House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings: "It appears that he did"
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: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby Belligerent Savant » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:43 pm

.

seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 27, 2019 8:36 pm wrote:and I am supposed to believe you ...why??


NO, you're NOT supposed to believe ME. NOR are you SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE the mainstream media narratives at face value. NOR are you "supposed to believe" STATE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY reports AT FACE VALUE.

What we SHOULD do, on the other hand, is ANALYZE and CRITIQUE available information and assess AVAILABLE EVIDENCE.

THIS is what I've done, and I've shared findings, or otherwise shared my thoughts. You can either choose to IGNORE it, or LOOK INTO IT YOURSELF. OR, simply continue with confirmation bias.

But please, do NOT believe my words. Though I'd be willing to wager a year's worth of my hard-earned pesos that my words, on average, are far more honest than the words of the sources you've been copy/pasting in this forum the last 2+ years.
Last edited by Belligerent Savant on Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:45 pm

just please stop lecturing me ...can we move on now


analyze away be my guest

you are so cute when you are condescending I can almost feel the pat on my head
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: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:11 pm

Now that I have throughly chastised for my reckless behavior I will return to my regularly scheduled update

AND IT HAS BEEN AN AMAZING DAY


Getting back to the Cohen hearing


There seems to be something is being investigated in the SDNY.....quite the mystery

And there are at least 4 people in this conspiracy but only one is going to jail so far as far as this crime is concerned

trump
trump jr
Cohen


trump tower projected lasted way longer than trump said

Hundreds of millions of dollars

Michael Cohen’s other client is under investigation. Well, that would be Broidy or Hannity.

Tax evasion crimes

May 2017 meeting in White House with trump and Cohen to discuss Cohen's upcoming congressional testimony. Cohen says unmistakable message from trump was to lie about Moscow deal.

When Watergate special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, a conservative Texan brought in by Nixon to do the job, heard the tape of President telling staff to commit perjury, it was the turning point for Jaworski. There was no turning back.


6 months into the presidency trump writes this check to reimburse Cohen for hush payments

THIS IS A CRIME

42FDC0FC-549B-4A52-B10A-4F3009B4B7C2.jpeg



Looking forward to the SDNY RICO



Anyone that would say at this point that the Mueller report is the end of this mess ...either they have not been paying attention at all or really needs to do a bit more analyzing :roll: Sorry you couldn't accept the truth about Assange and Stone....I did ANALYZE that one


The D.C. attorney general has subpoenaed Trump’s inaugural committee for documents related to any payments to the Trump Organization and related to Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric Trump.

and we haven't even got the Money Launderer's tax returns yet


Cohen had a conversation with trump at White House about testimony before 2017 congressional

the trump organization is a criminal enterprise

Cohen connected Stone Assange and trump today and that is a FACT ...there are more witnesses

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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: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:15 am

I am going to say this ONE more time...maybe someone is just not paying attention but I do know what is going on ....I am well aware of the facts.....I know I do understand the subject I am covering...I understand it very well

EXAMPLE

for ANYONE to NOT understand AT THIS POINT that the Mueller report is NOT the end of process to rid us of this criminal enterprise is just NOT paying attention and is TOO BUSY up my skirt schooling me on how and why to post here that he missed the basic simple FACT that the Mueller report is just the BEGINNING and now we are on to the Democrats in congress starting all the hearings that will in fact take down this faux president after 2 years of the republicans covering up for this faux president. It seems to me someone is just trying to distract from the FACTS that I am posting...I am not sure why but here we are once again....GO RIGHT AHEAD BE MY GUEST ANALYZE AWAY but I do not see you even having a basic knowledge of this subject so please refrain from schooling me PLEASE stop patting me on the head....I DO NOT NEED YOUR OR DESIRE YOUR ADVICE ON HOW I COVER THIS CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE

Molly Jong-Fast
The Michael Cohen hearing was the perfect metaphor for the maggot-eaten rotting corpse of the Republican party under Trump

“This caused Jim Jordan to have what can only generously be described as an epileptic Tucker Carlson-style rage seizure;”



It would be best if one reads everything and analyze it all for yourself and not rely on anyone else's opinion and that's what you can do here

so very odd that Semyon Mogilevich name did not come up at the hearing yesterday :P

But they all know it. And they know our President laundered his blood money.

who at this point does not understand how complicated it is to cover the MOB???? A international criminal enterprise

BACK TO Kaspersky Lab AND Sergei Mikhailov.

Russia Biggest Cybersecurity Firm Head Arrested For Treason
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40330


Ivan Pavlov, a lawyer for one of the defendants, previously told CNN that Stoyanov and Mikhailov were involved in a two-year long secretive case of treason "on behalf of the United States."

Treason convictions in Russia raise questions about 2016 hack on Democrats


Moscow (CNN)Convictions handed down this week in a high-profile treason case in Russia have reopened questions about the Russian hacking of the 2016 US presidential election.

On Tuesday, a Russian military court issued lengthy sentences to two top cyber-security experts, Russian news agencies reported. Sergei Mikhailov, a former officer with the Federal Security Service (FSB) -- Russia's domestic intelligence agency -- received 22 years in prison, and Ruslan Stoyanov, a former Kaspersky Lab employee, was sentenced to 14 years.

Both men had years of experience fighting cyber-crime, and Mikhailov was one of the few FSB officers who had the privilege of traveling abroad and interacted with Western colleagues at events and conferences.

Former FSB officer Sergei Mikhailov (L) and former Kaspersky Lab employee Ruslan Stoyanov at a hearing in court on February 26.


Complicating matters is the secrecy surrounding the case. The court proceedings were closed, but Ivan Pavlov, a lawyer for one of the defendants, previously told CNN that Stoyanov and Mikhailov were involved in a two-year long secretive case of treason "on behalf of the United States."
Asked by CNN to comment on Tuesday's verdict, Pavlov described the sentencing as "the most severe one for a treason case in the modern history of Russia."

Who are the Russians who allegedly hacked Yahoo?

A lawyer for Stoyanov, Inga Lebedeva, said she will file an appeal: "The guys think that with their activity aimed against hackers they've stepped on someone's toes," she said, according to state-run news agency RIA Novosti, without elaborating.

Russian and international media have long speculated that the secrecy of the proceedings, the timing of the arrest -- as well as Mikhailov's and Stoyanov's sensitive line of work -- indicated the two cyber experts had helped the US investigate the intrusion into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, and the 2016 US election hacking.

The case against Mikhailov and Stoyanov was launched just a month after President Trump's victory in the US presidential election. Not long after the arrests, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on the FSB and the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU, as well as its four top officials. Special counsel Robert Mueller subsequently indicted 12 Russian agents of conspiring to interfere in the election.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russian cyber-security and intelligence, believes the arrest of Mikhailov and Stoyanov was a response to the furor in the United States over Russian election meddling. Mikhailov, he said, was the top FSB officer in charge of maintaining contacts with Western security agencies in cyber security, and Stoyanov, in turn, was the top contact person in the Russian private cyber sector with the West.

'Patriots of Russia'


Few details have emerged officially about the case in the years since Russian media reported that Mikhailov, the former deputy chief of FSB's Information Security Center, was escorted out of a meeting at the FSB with a bag over his head.
A source familiar with the investigation told CNN the formal charges revolve around a 2010 incident in the investigation of online payments company Chronopay.

The founder of Chronopay, Pavel Vrublevsky, was convicted in 2013 of hiring hackers to disrupt the business of a rival, an intrusion that took down the online payments system of Russia's national airline, Aeroflot, for several days. Mikhailov was an expert witness in the case that led to Vrublevsky's conviction.

Pavel Vrublevsky was convicted in 2014 of hiring hackers to distrupt the business of a rival.

Vrublevsky told CNN that in 2010 he prepared a report for Russian authorities alleging that Mikhailov was involved in leaking sensitive information to the United States about his company and other companies allegedly involved in cybercrime.

Russian media said Mikhailov and other participants were accused of passing sensitive information about the FSB's investigation methods in detecting the hackers to US intel services. A source familiar with the case also confirmed an allegation that FSB officers allegedly gave compact discs with the data to Stoyanov who allegedly passed them to a US agency, via Kimberly Zenz, a former cyber security expert for Verisign.


Vrublevsky told CNN he had testified in the case and confirmed "the substance of the accusations." He then added: "I believe it's a good thing for both countries [Russia and US]. These people are directly responsible for the cyber hysteria eventually going as far as election meddling scandal. I am very happy it's over."

Zenz confirmed she met Stoyanov at a security conference in Canada, but disputed Vrublevsky's characterization, telling CNN she never had any contact with other defendants in the case.

"This never happened," she said. "I have never been an agent for any government organization... It makes little sense for an FSB agent seeking to share information with a US agency by putting secrets on a CD (which were no longer in common use by 2010) and give that CD to a private sector researcher."

Zenz added: "I believe that the old conspiracy theory of Vrublevsky's has been resurrected so many years later because it conveniently links the desired targets to the US and espionage accusations."

Kaspersky Lab previously said in a statement that Stoyanov, who joined the company in 2012, was "under investigation for a period predating his employment."

A wanted poster for FSB officer Dmitry Aleksandrovich Dokuchaev is displayed at the Justice Department on March 15, 2017.

The other two defendants in the case, Dmitry Dokuchaev, a former FSB officer and Mikhailov's subordinate, and businessman Georgy Fomchenkov, are still awaiting verdict in a separate proceeding. They've struck a deal with the prosecution and partially admitted the guilt, a lawyer for one of the defendants told CNN.

Russian business daily RBC, citing a source close to the FSB, and two sources familiar with the investigation, reported last year the two admitted to passing information to foreign intelligence agencies but claimed their goal was to help fight cybercrime around the world, and reportedly did not understand the criminal nature of what was happening.

Mikhailov was also stripped of his rank and state awards "For Military Merit" and "For Merit to the Fatherland," according to state-run news agency TASS. In their final remarks, both he and Stoyanov said they do not admit any wrongdoing and remain "patriots of Russia," Russian agencies said.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/27/euro ... index.html



Was Russia Treason Trial About U.S. Election Meddling or a Convict’s Revenge?
Sergei Mikhailov, left, a former deputy director of the computer crimes unit of the F.S.B., and Ruslan Stoyanov, a senior researcher at an antivirus company, at their trial in Moscow on Tuesday.
Credit
Pavel Golovkin/Associated Press

Sergei Mikhailov, left, a former deputy director of the computer crimes unit of the F.S.B., and Ruslan Stoyanov, a senior researcher at an antivirus company, at their trial in Moscow on Tuesday.CreditCreditPavel Golovkin/Associated Press
By Andrew E. Kramer
Feb. 26, 2019

MOSCOW — The treason trial of some of Russia’s top cybersecurity officials ended on Tuesday without solving the mysteries at the center of the case: Why had the men been arrested and what, if anything, did they have to do with Russia’s efforts to disrupt the 2016 American presidential election? Was the prosecution driven not by geopolitical concerns but by a businessman’s desire for revenge?

The case began when Russian counterintelligence investigators seized several leading cybersecurity officials in raids conducted in early December 2016. With the arrests coming one month after the American election, speculation swirled that the men had been caught leaking information that helped the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russia’s election hacking.

But no clear evidence of that has ever emerged, and the drawn-out trial wrapped up in a Moscow military courtroom without shedding any official light on the reasons for the arrests or if the timing of them, coming so close to the election, signaled a connection to the Russian meddling.

Under the watchful eye of security forces wearing ski masks, journalists were allowed into the courtroom for the first time on Tuesday to hear the verdict. Speaking for about 10 minutes, a judge convicted the two main figures and sentenced them to lengthy terms in prison for treason, without saying why.

Sergei Mikhailov, a former deputy director of the computer crimes unit of the Federal Security Service, the main successor agency to the K.G.B., was sentenced to 22 years in a penal colony on two counts of treason.

Ruslan Stoyanov, a senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab, an antivirus company, was sentenced to 14 years on one count of treason. Two other suspects had earlier pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

Both men convicted Tuesday had for years cooperated with United States law enforcement and Western computer security researchers on bread-and-butter cybercrime issues like stopping spam and bank fraud.

But then came the election hacking scandal in 2016, and the men’s arrests signaled that this type of cooperation would stop.

Cooperating with the United States was “something that went out of fashion after the scandal,” said Andrei Soldatov, the author of “The Red Web,” and an authority on Russian internet policies.

As part of the election interference operation, two Russian hacking groups intruded into the servers of the Democratic National Committee. One group was affiliated with the F.S.B., Mr. Mikhailov’s agency, and the other with the Russian military intelligence organization known as the G.R.U., according to United States government officials and cybersecurity researchers who studied the breach.

Only the G.R.U. leaked the stolen information, according to a United States interagency report on the hacking released in 2017. The special counsel investigating Russian meddling, Robert S. Mueller III, last year indicted 12 G.R.U. officers.

The detailed accusations by American intelligence agencies against Russia, and the stated high level of confidence in their findings, gave rise to questions about whether they had sources inside Russia.
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Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers last year.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

Leaks about the treason case reported in the Russian news media, as well as interviews with defense lawyers and a witness, have indicated that the defendants’ ties to American officials long predated the presidential campaign, and that the information they passed on was not directly related to the hacking investigation.

Kommersant, a Russian newspaper, reported this month that Mr. Mikhailov and Mr. Stoyanov were accused of revealing to the F.B.I. information about F.S.B. investigative methods while cooperating with American colleagues on a criminal case nearly a decade ago.

Mr. Mikhailov, through intermediaries, passed the data to the F.B.I. in 2011 while investigating ChronoPay, a Russian online payments processing company, the newspaper report said, potentially opening a window on money flows in the Russian online underworld — information that could also be useful in the investigation of the election hacking.

At the time, Russia was under diplomatic pressure from the United States and Canada to prosecute the company’s owner, Pavel Vrublevsky, for selling counterfeit erectile dysfunction pills to Americans through websites. Mr. Vrublevsky has denied ties to that scheme.


Mr. Mikhailov led the successful prosecution of Mr. Vrublevsky on a separate accusation of hacking the payment system for online ticket sales at Aeroflot, the Russian national airline.

Outside the courtroom on Tuesday, a defense lawyer, Inga Lebedeva, told reporters that Mr. Vrublevsky had initiated the treason case in a vendetta against the F.S.B. official and the cybercrime researcher who had put him in prison in the Aeroflot case.

“His goal was revenge,” Ms. Lebedeva said. At no point during the closed trial, she said, had Russian meddling in the 2016 United States election come up.

“The boys think that in their activities against hackers and criminals they stepped on somebody’s tail,” Ms. Lebedeva said of the two defendants. She said both men would appeal their convictions.

Mr. Vrublevsky, in an interview, said he had testified against the pair in the treason trial and believed that they had indeed illegally passed information to the American authorities, but not about election hacking. “These guys were selling fairy tales to the United States about people doing business, like me,” he said.

Still, the arrests amounted to a purge of the leadership of the cyberwing of Russia’s main intelligence agency in the midst of the electoral hacking scandal, an issue carrying immense implications for Russia’s relations with the United States.

Along with Mr. Mikhailov, who was reportedly dragged from an F.S.B. meeting with a bag over his head, Russian counterintelligence officers detained his deputy, Dmitry A. Dokuchaev. Mr. Dokuchaev pleaded guilty in the treason case.

The United States has not accused Mr. Dokuchaev of having any role in the election hacking but has indicted him in a separate cybercrime case that overlaps with sanctions imposed on Russians for election meddling. Federal authorities in Washington and San Francisco in 2017 accused Mr. Dokuchaev, who at the time was also facing the treason charge in Russia, of doubling as a cybercriminal while working at the F.S.B. He was accused of hacking Yahoo and stealing 500 million passwords.

That indictment identified him as having overseen the work of one of three others named in the Yahoo hack, a suspected cybercriminal, Aleksei A. Belan, whom the Obama administration placed under sanctions in relation to the election hacking.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/worl ... trial.html



Trump joins Nixon as the second President to lose in Vietnam.

Hopefully, like Nixon, Trump will be the second President to resign.
Image


‘SPIN IT’
Rashida Tlaib is Right: It's Racist to Use a Black Woman as a Prop, Mark Meadows
It's a challenge constructing a sentence in which both "Mark Meadows" and "new low" appear, but he may well have hit one at the Cohen hearing.
Sophia A. Nelson

In an altogether stunning day as Michael Cohen testified before the House Oversight Committee, one moment stood out.

It came early on, when the Republican side—on the same committee where back in 1998 I was the first black person ever to be an investigative committee counsel on the GOP majority counsel team—brought into the hearing room a non-committee staffer, Lynne Patton, and allowed her to stand on the GOP side of the dais while a member of Congress berated a sworn witness in the middle of a nationally televised hearing.

Patton, a former party planner for the Trump Organization and old friend of Cohen’s who now oversees public housing in New York and New Jersey for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, stood silently as Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC) pointed to her, a black woman:

“Lynne Patton says she would not work for a man who is racist,” the congressman said, after Cohen had referred to Trump in his prepared remarks as a racist. “She disagrees with you.”

“She says as a daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Ala., that there is no way that she would work for an individual who was a racist,” said Meadows. “How do you reconcile the two of those?”

Cohen replied, “Neither should I as the son of a Holocaust survivor.” Later, he pointedly noted that the Trump Organization employs no black executives.

Meadows’ argument here—as he stressed that Patton had appeared on her own time and not as a government employee, even as he pointed to her government work to “pardon” Trump— is preposterous, offensive, and demeaning to back people with roots in Alabama, or to any of us who deal with racial micro-aggressions routinely, including from our employers.

Insulting “shithole countries,” which all happen to be mostly black.

Calling black women like Omarosa Manigault “a dog,” and black female members of Congress “dumb,” “wacky,” and worse, i.e., Representatives Maxine Waters and Fredericka Wilson to name two.

Calling black NFL players who peacefully protest racism in America by taking a knee “sons of bitches.”

Trump showed us all who he is—if there was any doubt remaining—when he said there were fine people on “both sides” after the white supremacists' murderous march through Charlottesville.

As for Patton, Eric Trump’s former party planner, she finally spoke for herself hours later, telling PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, "Today was not about the color of my skin" but about a president who only "sees success and failure. He doesn't see color, sex, race, creed, religion."

Hours after that, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) flat-out said Meadows had used Patton as a "prop." I agree. Meadows was enraged, saying that he believed Tlaib was calling him "racist." She was not. She was clear that "it is racist" to do such a thing, speaking to the action rather than the person.

Meadows tried to defend his actions by mentioning his nieces and nephews of color. In my lifelong experience as a black person, that does not make you a person who cannot do racist things.

As to Patton, who says she works for a man who doesn't see color, yes this is the same woman heard on a call with Katrina Pierson and Omarosa, who’d recorded it when she was in the White House and shared it with CBS News after she’d left it, and was selling a book. In the recording, which was not independently verified, the three black female staffers discuss the president’s alleged use of racial slurs, talking about what they would do if the long-rumored tape of then candidate Trump saying the N-word existed and were made public.

“I am trying to find at least what context it was used in to help us maybe try to figure out a way to spin it,” Pierson said.

Patton then says, “I [told Trump], ‘Well, sir, can you think of any time where this happened?’ And he said, ‘no’… He goes, ‘How do you think I should handle it?’ and I told him exactly what you just said, Omarosa, which is, well, it depends on what scenario you are talking about. And he said, ‘Well, why don’t you just go ahead and put it to bed.’”

In the audio recording, Pierson—who later claimed she had just “humored” Omarosa about the tapes—replies, 'No, he said it. He is embarrassed.”

Meadows should be more than embarrassed; he should be ashamed of himself. To bring in a black woman to point to as a silent “prop” to supposedly show that President Donald Trump couldn’t be racist is about as low as I have seen the GOP sink. And I have seen them sink pretty damned low in the over 25 years I have been a member of and staffer to the Republican Party.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/to-smear- ... itter_page



Republicans Committed the Classic Cross-Examination Blunder
Trump’s supporters in Congress did not successfully destroy Michael Cohen’s credibility.
FEB 27, 2019
Ken White
Attorney and former federal prosecutor
Michael Cohen
KEVIN LAMARQUE / REUTERS
Everyone involved in the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Wednesday needed a good lawyer.

Michael Cohen, the convicted felon, disbarred lawyer, and former fixer to Donald Trump, needed a trial lawyer to rein in his mugging for the camera, his tendency to take cheap shots at his detractors, and to remind him of the limits of his own credibility. He needed a stern counselor to elbow him in the ribs, tell him not to bait the politicians even if they deserved it, and to hiss at him stop quibbling over what lobbying for Khazakh banks means, stop it this instant.

House Democrats needed a good trial lawyer too, to teach them how to handle a morally bankrupt cooperating witness. As a former prosecutor, I know that your tone has to be stern and your questioning methodical. You have to convey to your audience that although the witness is nobody to admire he can still offer useful information. If you’re friendly, the jury just thinks you’ve fallen for a con artist. The Democrats treated Cohen like a minor celebrity, perhaps a YouTube star. A trial lawyer would not have simply draw out Cohen’s incriminating information about Trump, but used Cohen to emphasize the corroborating evidence from the Special Counsel investigation that backs many of his accusations. This was an opportunity to build the outline of a case against Trump. Democrats didn’t. Instead they triumphantly repeated Cohen’s more salacious accusations, speechified, and uncritically embraced Cohen’s I-am-a-sinner-seeking-redemption narrative. They didn’t hurt his credibility, but they utterly squandered the chance to support it.


House Republicans needed a trial lawyer—or even a moderately bright junior-high mock-trial participant—to tell them how to do anything. Cross-examination is hard. It’s not just barking at the witness. It takes meticulous planning and patience. Republicans could have marshaled Cohen’s many sins of the past to undermine his statements today. Instead they returned repeatedly to lies and misdeeds he’d already admitted, wallowed in silly trivialities like the “Women for Cohen” Twitter account, and yelled. The effect was to make an unsympathetic man modestly more sympathetic. Republicans committed the classic cross-examination blunder: They gave the witness the opportunity to further explain his harmful direct testimony. They provided Cohen with one slow pitch up the middle after another, letting him repeat the cooperating witness’s go-to explanation like a mantra: I did these bad things so often and so long because that’s what it took to work for your guy. I have seldom seen a cross-examination go worse.

If the hearing’s participants needed trial lawyers, its absent subject needs them even more. Whether the danger is looming impeachment hearings or the Special Counsel’s investigation, the president of the United States is in the soup.


Cohen put Donald Trump squarely at the middle of the harebrained scheme to hide hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels. He corroborated that tale with checks from Trump and from the Trump organization. The odd and haphazard way Trump reimbursed Cohen helps make the case that Trump knew the entire ruse breached campaign finance laws—if not clearly enough for a federal jury, at least enough for a House Committee on Impeachment. Cohen offered enough specific examples of Trump Organization financial skulduggery to launch a thousand subpoenas. He confirmed that Trump’s lawyers knew about, and even edited, Cohen’s prior false statements to Congress, suggesting a possible conspiracy to obstruct justice and lie to Congress. He also claimed that Trump talked to Roger Stone about Wikileaks in advance of the release of hacked DNC emails. That’s not itself illegal or “collusion”—it’s not against the law to receive dirt, even eagerly—but it probably contradicts the statements Trump has given under oath to the Special Counsel, leading to more danger for the president. Finally, Cohen confirmed that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is still investigating Trump for unspecified crimes. Nothing good has come out of the Southern District for this administration.

Team Trump should be worried. Republicans did not successfully destroy Cohen’s credibility. Cohen, while characteristically squirrelly on some subjects, did not exude his customary arrogance.In fact, he probably gained credibility by limiting his accusations—he passed up numerous opportunities to make expansive claims about collusion or salacious ones about sex tapes, focusing instead on relatively narrow allegations. Democrats didn’t help him, but they signaled that they were willing to conduct further investigations based on his word.


Time after time, Trump and his underlings and supporters have stumbled when they’ve missed the difference between court and culture. Stone learned last week that U.S. District Court is not like Instagram. Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and Cohen have learned that the easy lies offered thoughtlessly in the media scrum can lead to jail time when uttered to FBI agents. Today Republicans had the opportunity to learn—though if they actually learned who can say—that theatrical committee hearing tactics are ineffective against a witness trained to withstand cross-examination. Will the president of the United States ever learn that a federal criminal investigation is not a reality show?
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... ly/583777/



The Michael Cohen hearing was the perfect metaphor for the maggot-eaten rotting corpse of the Republican party under Trump

It’s hard to feel sympathy for a man who harassed journalists and paid off porn stars, but it’s possible that these GOP Congressional members achieved it. Bravo

Today the president finally made it to Vietnam (his bone spurs must have healed) but Trump’s second meeting with Kim Jong-un was far from the central focus on the day.

8,756 miles away, the president’s ex-lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen gave his second day of testimony but his first day of public testimony. To say it was a circus is greatly disrespectful to circuses. Circuses bring joy. No one got joy from today’s circus.

Before the insanity started there was a warm-up act that involved one of the most icky freedom caucus clowns, Representative Mark Meadows—who immediately demanded a postponement using congressional rule 9F, which states that witness testimony needs to be received 24 hours in advance. Democrats quickly moved for a vote that they won and Meadow’s motion was tabled. Then, apparently seeing that that tactic wasn’t working, a panicked-looking Jim Jordan interrupted Representative Meadow and went full insane conspiracy theorist by accusing CNN of being in cahoots with Michael Cohen.

“You know who had this material before all the members of the committee?” Jordan seethed. “CNN had it before we did. CNN had [it] before we did.”

And that was when the hearing finally started. A deflated-looking Michael Cohen glumly hung his head but read an extremely compelling opening statement that included the usual assertion that the president was a cheat, conman and a racist; and then unusual assertion that “he was a presidential candidate who knew that Roger Stone was talking with Julian Assange about a WikiLeaks drop of Democratic National Committee emails”.


This caused Jim Jordan to have what can only generously be described as an epileptic Tucker Carlson-style rage seizure; this time he called Cohen both a “fraudster” and a “convicted felon”. It’s almost as if Jim forgot that Michael Cohen was the president’s lawyer and fixer for 10 years.

There were many moments of epic failure for House Republicans during the whole charade. One of the more pathetic was when Congressman Mark Meadows brought Eric Trump’s wedding planner Lynne Patton to stand behind him so that the American people could see that Donald Trump was not a racist because his second son’s wedding planner is black. This is a few steps more pathetic than the “I can’t be racist because I have a black friend” defence. It’s also the most relevant Eric Trump has ever been.

Another extremely questionable moment came when Representative Gosar (who is most famous for being a dentist and having his six siblings campaign for his opponent) presented an enormous sign that said “Liar Liar pants on fire”. At one point Gosar backed up what his sign was proclaiming by adding: ”You’re a pathological liar. You don’t know truth from falsehood.”

Cohen responded, “Are you referring to me or the president?”

Racist. Conman. Cheat. The biggest revelations from Cohen's testimony


Then there was Rep Carol Miller from the state of West Virginia, who launched into an endless tirade about what a waste of time this hearing was, thus wasting everybody’s time.

But the more Republican members of Congress harassed and berated Michael Cohen, the more Michael Cohen seemed like a broken man desperate for redemption. One could clearly see the dark circles under his eyes, the shame in his affect, the sorrow in his voice.

It’s hard to feel sympathy for the man who harassed journalists and paid off porn stars, but it’s possible that the GOP Congressional morons may have achieved it. There was something uniquely ridiculous about watching Rep Meadows and Rep Jordan scream at the president’s lawyer combined with numerous, lesser-known representatives wasting their five minutes complaining that the hearing shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Perhaps the Cohen hearing was the perfect metaphor for the maggot-eaten rotting corpse that the Republican party under Trump has become, filled with grandstanding and incompetence but still trying desperately to spin a completely unspinnable narrative, to whistle like the boy alone in the dark, to keep themselves from the realisation that Trumpism is doomed and with it the future of the party they hold so dear.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/mi ... 00696.html



Image


How Big of a Deal Is It That the U.S. Shut Off the Russia Troll Farm’s Internet Access?

Josephine WolffFeb 27, 20198:45 PM
A blue ethernet cable floats in front of a gray cable.
Unplugged!

The Trump administration came in with a fair bit of cyber-sabre rattling. Last spring, the Department of Defense elevated the status of Cyber Command to it them to do more offensive work. Then there was the August 2018 classified presidential order that made it easier for the military to engage in offensive cyber operations, followed by the new National Cyber Strategy and Department of Defense cyber strategy, both issued in September 2018, which emphasized the importance of taking preemptive actions against adversaries in cyberspace and “defending forward” to “persistently contest malicious cyber activity.” But, so far, the administration’s bark appears to be worse than its byte.

In the Washington Post this week Ellen Nakashima reports on one of the first offensive operations run by Cyber Command under these new policies—an effort to take the Russian Internet Research Agency offline during the 2018 midterm elections. The IRA, based in St. Petersburg, is a private company that, according to an indictment filed last year by Robert Mueller, did extensive social media work for the Russian government during the 2016 U.S. elections to stir up controversy, generate protests, and criticize Hillary Clinton.

For instance, employees of the IRA and other co-conspirators allegedly created the Twitter account “March for Trump” and the Facebook accounts “Clinton FRAUDation” and “Trumpsters United.” They also allegedly ran an Instagram account called “Woke Blacks” and posted on it the message: “[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.” The indictment also describes their alleged role in purchasing political advertisements on social media sites, using Paypal accounts created with stolen identities, saying things like “Hillary is a Satan, and her crimes and lies had proved just how evil she is.” The IRA was not named in a separate indictment of GRU Russian intelligence agents who allegedly hacked Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee servers as well as email accounts belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign officials and volunteers during the 2016 election.

Yet it was the IRA that apparently bore the brunt of Cyber Command’s newfound offensive powers during the 2018 midterms, according to Nakashima’s reporting. And the result of the attack was that the organization’s internet access was blocked for a brief window, on the day of the election and “a day or so afterward,” in order to defend against any IRA efforts to “cast doubt on the results.” But most of the IRA disinformation tactics seem designed to sow confusion and influence voters prior to casting their votes.

All of which is just to say: This was a fairly timid operation for an administration that has pushed for some pretty aggressive language and policies. Instead of going after the GRU, the unit that seems to be responsible for actual hacking activities, Cyber Command went after its social media counterpart, the IRA. Instead of actually deleting any of their records or stealing or releasing any of their files, Cyber Command merely interrupted their online access for a brief period. U.S. officials told Nakashima, “The blockage was so frustrating to the [IRA] trolls that they complained to their system administrators about the disruption.” In other words, it was a bit of a nuisance—it prompted a nasty email or two to the company sysadmin. But nothing even close to the kind of national soul-searching and hand-wringing that Russia’s offensive cyber operations have generated in the United States.

That’s not a bad thing. A cautious strategy of forbearance in cyberspace makes a lot of sense given that the United States is not clearly dominant in this domain. In fact, it’s vulnerable because it relies heavily on computer-based infrastructure. We potentially have more to lose than we do to gain by needling adversaries like Russia and North Korea into launching more aggressive attacks directed at those critical infrastructure systems. Still, it’s striking that the Trump administration has chosen to go this temperate route given all its cyber bombast about offensive operations and forward defense.

In October, we learned that Russian intelligence agents had received pop-up messages alerting them to the fact that the U.S. government knows who they are and what they’re up to.
Tactics like that and the brief internet outage may not turn out to be the most effective means of deterring other countries from using online avenues of attack against the United States, but they’re certainly some of the more prudent options in terms of their restraint. In fact, they resemble the kinds of operations that were carried out during the Obama administration’s notably cautious use of cyber tactics, including shutting off internet access for North Korea following the 2014 Sony Pictures breach.

Last September, national security adviser John Bolton said at a press conference that thanks to the Trump administration’s new cyber policies, “Our hands are not tied as they were in the Obama administration.” In practice, however, despite all the aggressive posturing and the flurry of new policies, the Trump administration’s use of offensive cyber operations seems to still be following the Obama-era playbook of judicious, small-scale interventions. The U.S. cyber strategy has certainly gotten more aggressive on paper, but in cyberspace it appears to be the same as it always was—which may be for the best.
https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/ir ... terms.html
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: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby Belligerent Savant » Thu Feb 28, 2019 9:44 am

.

I assure you this will be my final response here, as you have no interest in having any of this information challenged.

My commentary is specific to the "Russian hacking" bit only, as much of the allegations Re: "Russian meddling" is underpinned by the purported actions of alleged Russian hackers.

Yes, let's go "BACK TO Kaspersky Lab AND Sergei Mikhailov" once more. In your copy/paste above, the only tangible reference to the 2016 Election is the following:

(As a reminder: the arrest and allegations of treason are related to a 2010 incident, NOT the 2016 Election)


Russian and international media have long speculated that the secrecy of the proceedings, the timing of the arrest -- as well as Mikhailov's and Stoyanov's sensitive line of work -- indicated the two cyber experts had helped the US investigate the intrusion into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, and the 2016 US election hacking.

[BSavant comment: "Russian and international media have long speculated". Based on what? Where's the compelling evidence? Where are the sources for this speculation?]

The case against Mikhailov and Stoyanov was launched just a month after President Trump's victory in the US presidential election. Not long after the arrests, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on the FSB and the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU, as well as its four top officials. Special counsel Robert Mueller subsequently indicted 12 Russian agents of conspiring to interfere in the election.

[BSavant comment: Again, NOTHING of substance here. The words are framed -- cleverly or otherwise -- to connect disparate events.]

Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russian cyber-security and intelligence, believes the arrest of Mikhailov and Stoyanov was a response to the furor in the United States over Russian election meddling. Mikhailov, he said, was the top FSB officer in charge of maintaining contacts with Western security agencies in cyber security, and Stoyanov, in turn, was the top contact person in the Russian private cyber sector with the West.

[BSavant comment: an arrest as a response to 'furor' indicates the motivation was political. Regardless, there is nothing in the bolded bit that contains anything other than more speculation.]
.

What I have found compelling to this point, however, is the actual analysis performed by experts, specific to the claims Re: Cozy Bear and Guccifer 2.0.

You're welcome to assess these findings and provide thoughts/rebuttals.

But it appears the interest of those frothing at the mouth at the prospect of TRUMP's REMOVAL is not in getting to the truth of the matter, but to simply go along with whatever narratives are thrown our way that may lead to his ouster, aligning with liars and criminals in intelligence agencies along the way. I can NOT get in line with that. TRUMP's a vile character, to be sure. And he may well be undone, at some point.

But this is all a lure. I for one will not fall prey to the bait.


Belligerent Savant » Wed Feb 27, 2019 8:21 pm wrote:.
Repeating it -- over and over again -- does not, by itself, make it true.

Analysis has been performed on Cozy Bear/Guccifer 2.0, as already stated. The findings are counter to what's been spread across standard 'news' channels.

I'll share it again, a last time:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41097&p=658776&hilit=guccifer#p658776
Last edited by Belligerent Savant on Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:12 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:09 am

amusing.....bait

oh I AM getting to the truth of the matter despite your help

I am not sure why you are even posting in this thread you all ready have declared months ago that I am way too ignorant to even understand anything you are saying :P

I am just fulfilling your prophecy :evil grin

go ahead you can shop your link as many times as you want .....I see how well it went over I guess you just want more people to see it...be my guest do your commercial as many times as your little heart desires
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
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: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby Belligerent Savant » Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:13 am

.
No, I never stated or implied that you're ignorant. Far from it.

Stubborn, perhaps -- which can be a good/necessary trait at times.

I respect and admire your tenacity.
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Re: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:15 am

I'll get back to you with that link in the Art thread...you are very clever I will say that


I have to remember that word if it is a really useful word and you may be a truly impressive poster

I don't know if you were attempting to be extremely condescending but I do understand very well what you were saying

If it's a form of performance art/trolling: it's somewhat impressive.
If it's a lack of reading comprehension, my condolences.

Enjoy these virtual/avatar friends of yours.


we could get along if.........
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby Belligerent Savant » Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:25 am

.
If you're going to re-post a prior comment, please include the link/actual quote from that thread.

One more statement: I'm not "shopping" my link. I have zero interest in such an endeavor -- that's a zero sum game. My interest is in attempting to get to the truth of a matter. Fool's errand, more often than not.
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Re: Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Elec

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:26 am

I posted the pertinent words ....the words that stood out to me ...the stench of condensation will never leave my nose

how many times did you post that link in my thread? I am not complaining but why don't you just bump your thread that might help

My interest is in attempting to get to the truth of a matter.


that is my intention also...we just have different ways of getting there....the only difference is that I do not go after you for the way you chose to do it or question your intellectual ability...save your condolences

it would be nice if moving forward you could just stop posting your objections to my postings ...it is abundantly clear by now how you feel do we really need to go over it a dozen more times?
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
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