. I'll have to read through all the embedded links in the article in detail, but from what I parsed thus far:
- NO new evidence uncovered; it references findings already addressed by the linked articles I posted earlier;
- This "update" is based purely on a Daily Beast report (shocker!) which never reveals even a hint as to their source(s) for this information.
I'll revise my thoughts if there's anything I may have missed after a more careful review of the content, but as it stands this is low-grade farce territory.
Last edited by Belligerent Savant on Mon Mar 26, 2018 10:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
How much is Rick Gates telling Mueller about Trump?
Lawyers and Trump associates describe deep unease in Trump world about what the former deputy to indicted Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort might be telling special counsel Robert Mueller in exchange for leniency.
DARREN SAMUELSOHN 03/26/2018 05:00 AM EDT
When Rick Gates struck a plea deal last month with special counsel Robert Mueller, the 45-year-old former Trump campaign official likely avoided decades behind bars and salvaged a chance to watch his children grow up.
The question is what Gates offered Mueller in return. Though it is a virtual given that Gates will sell out his business partner and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, less understood is the direct threat Gates could pose to President Donald Trump.
That’s the conclusion of several lawyers involved in the Russia case and more than 15 current and former Trump aides and associates interviewed by POLITICO to determine how much danger Gates’s guilty plea could pose to the president and his inner circle, and how alarmed they might be by his testimony.
While Gates now wears a GPS monitor around his ankle, in 2016 he wore a Secret Service lapel pin that gave him easy access to Trump on the campaign trail and at Trump Tower.
“He saw everything,” said a Republican consultant who worked with Gates during the campaign. The consultant called Gates one of the “top five” insiders whom Mueller could have tapped as a cooperative government witness. One defense attorney in the case said that Gates’s plea has triggered palpable alarm in Trump world.
Manafort may have struck a larger public profile, but Gates spent more time in Trump’s orbit. Manafort left the Trump campaign under a cloud of scandal in mid-August 2016. Gates, his right-hand man, stayed on through the election before assisting the Trump inauguration and Trump’s early presidency.
Worst of all for the White House, Gates lacks hard-wired loyalty. He is not family like Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., or his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Nor is he among true Trump believers like Corey Lewandowski and Brad Parscale.
“Let’s be honest, Don Jr. is not ratting out his dad. Gates is different,” said Paul Rosenzweig, who served as a senior counsel to Whitewater independent counsel Ken Starr.
Gates’s senior campaign role alongside Manafort, who has longtime ties to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, might give the special counsel’s team insight into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin. And his proximity to Trump early last year could make him privy to White House conversations of interest to Mueller, possibly including discussions of Trump’s May 2017 firing of FBI director James Comey.
John Dowd, the Trump personal attorney who stepped down last week, brushed aside questions about Gates’s plea, which will likely limit his sentence to a maximum of six years. “Draw your own conclusions. I’m not concerned,” he told POLITICO in an interview before his resignation.
A defense attorney working on the Russia case said the reality is different. Trump aides and associates are concerned that Gates’s cooperation will greatly increase Manafort’s legal jeopardy—adding pressure on the 68-year-old Manafort to flip against Trump and other senior campaign aides, such as Kushner. A federal judge recently said Manafort faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.
Trump aides and associates understand that Mueller is sure to ask Gates not just about Manafort but also about his interactions with Trump, his family members and his 2016 campaign team.
“They’ve been very concerned about it,” said the defense attorney. “It's something they're worried about.”
Mueller obtained indictments against Manafort and Gates last October on 12 counts related to their lobbying work on behalf of a pro-Russia political party in Ukraine and its former leader, Viktor Yanukovych. Both men pleaded not guilty to the charges, which included money laundering, tax evasion and operating as unregistered foreign agents.
Gates abandoned Manafort in late February after a federal grand jury added more new charges to the case related to bank and tax fraud, with Gates pleading guilty to two felony charges. The move had devastating implications for Manafort, with whom Gates collaborated to illegally launder large payments for the work in Ukraine, according to Mueller. Legal experts expect Gates will provide Mueller with more details about the payments and how they were concealed, which could add additional years to Manafort’s sentence if he is convicted.
Friends say the decision to turn on a friend and partner of so many years must have been painful, but that Gates likely concluded it was his only chance to have a future outside of prison.
“He still has a life ahead of him if he does it this way,” said Charlie Black, a Republican lobbyist who hired Gates in the mid-2000s.
Gates met Manafort nearly 30 years ago as an intern at the lobbying firm Manafort co- founded with Black and the GOP operative Roger Stone. They reconnected as partners in 2006 and maintained a lucrative roster of foreign clients over the next decade before linking up with Trump through Stone and Tom Barrack, a wealthy real estate executive close to both Manafort and Trump. Gates and Manafort joined Trump’s campaign in late March 2016.
Manafort rose quickly and became the campaign’s chairman, and Gates his deputy. Based at Trump Tower in New York, they ran many of the campaign’s core functions, oversaw Trump’s selection of Mike Pence as his running mate and helped to orchestrated Trump’s wider election strategy.
Gates would have been privy to a wide range of Manafort’s activities, potentially including the now-famous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting Manafort attended—along with Kushner and Trump Jr.—with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Clinton.
Gates and Manafort also emailed in May 2016 about Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadapolous’s efforts to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian officials. While the emails appear to show Manafort and Gates dismissing that idea, many other questions remain about Papadapoulos—including whether he informed any campaign officials about the fact that he had been told about hacked Democratic emails in Russia's possession.
Manafort was ousted as campaign chairman in mid-August 2016 after the New York Times published a story describing a secret ledger he kept for his lobbying work in the Ukraine on behalf of pro-Russian politicians. But Gates, whose name never commanded headlines, stayed on the Trump campaign despite also working on the account.
A larger shakeup downgraded Gates’s role on the campaign, and he left New York for its Alexandria, Virginia-based offices, where he became a liaison to the Republican National Committee. Former colleagues said Gates wasn’t fired along with Manafort because he was competent and experienced—qualities in short supply on the Trump campaign. (“Rick gets shit done,” a person close to the campaign told POLITICO at the time.)
Before a September 2016 debate on Long Island, Gates was seen talking with casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and Michael Flynn, according to the New York Times. Gates was also spotted back at Trump Tower in the days before the election.
After the election, Barrack hired Gates to run day-to-day operations for Trump’s Presidential Inaugural Committee; he helped to raise more than $100 million.
A growing cloud around his and Manafort’s work in Ukraine didn’t keep Gates away from Trump’s White House, either. Gates helped to organize a non-profit group, America First Policies, to boost the new administration’s agenda. The Washington Post also reported that he had visited the White House in March to discuss the group’s efforts with Trump officials. But Gates was ousted later that month after new details emerged about work he and Manafort had done for a Russian oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Barrack soon hired Gates as a political adviser. Given Barrack’s close relationship with Trump, the job kept Gates in the president’s immediate circle. Multiple sources confirmed a June 2017 Daily Beast report that Gates was seen on several occasions at the White House when Barrack was visiting with Trump.
During an October briefing on the day Mueller indicted Manafort and Gates, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged Gates’ visits but downplayed his access, telling reporters he had attended “meetings here at the White House, but nothing directly with the president.”
Gates was also fired by Barrack after the October indictment. Through a representative, Barrack declined to comment. Gates’s attorney, Thomas Green, also declined to comment.
Manafort himself issued a stinging statement in response to Gates’s plea last month.
"Notwithstanding that Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence," he said. "I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise. This does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me."
Several former colleagues disputed the idea that Gates poses a grave danger to Trump.
“I don’t think Rick has anything that’d incriminate the president or anybody else in the family in the campaign,” said Black, who said he thought the plea deal was mainly “about Manafort.
But veteran law enforcement experts said that Mueller would only grant Gates leniency on his prison sentence in return for his unrestricted testimony about subjects ranging well beyond his work with Manafort.
“He’s their bitch,” said Solomon Wisenberg, a former Starr deputy.
Gates is already enjoying some benefits from his cooperation. He is free on $5 million bail and living at his home in Richmond, and was recently granted permission to take a spring break trip with his family to Boston—though he rearranged the trip over security concerns. (In a court filing, his lawyer cited an online comment that warned: “Bring a food taster.”)
Mueller recently approved a request by Gates’s lawyers to remove the GPS tracking device he’s worn since October to prevent him from fleeing. But a federal judge denied the request, noting that Gates’s plea had “turned the prospect that he could be sentenced by a court into a certainty that he will.” She also noted that “[h]is change of heart is quite recent.”
The judge did give Gates a green light to travel without advance permission from Richmond to Washington “for meetings or activities at the request of the Office of Special Counsel or the Federal Bureau of Investigation”—an indication that Gates is already making visits to Mueller’s team to share his recollections.
John Dean, the former Richard Nixon White House counsel who flipped in 1973 to become a star prosecution witness against the Republican president, said he’s not surprised to see Mueller’s team giving Gates deferential treatment.
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.
by Ken Thomas and Chad Day | AP March 26 at 12:32 AM
Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said in a statement Sunday that Washington lawyers Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing have conflicts that won’t allow them to represent the president regarding special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Sekulow had announced diGenova’s appointment last week.
If he can’t resurrect Roy Cohn, I remember reading that F. Lee Bailey may be looking for work (as a consultant since he can no longer practice, but that really shouldn't matter).
O.J.’s last defender — F. Lee Bailey — is broke, disbarred and working above a hair salon
Last year, Bailey filed for bankruptcy after a string of scandals inside and outside the courtroom left him disbarred and shamed. He was accused of misappropriating funds from his defense of an alleged drug dealer.
trump attorney Jay Sekulow no longer has references to trump or POTUS on his Twitter bio. Is he quitting? Protecting his damaged image? Obviously ashamed at what he’s become.
speaking of trump lawyers ...there is a possibility that Cohen threatened Stormy
here is what then-daily beast (now npr) reporter timkmak says he rec’vd from Cohen while writing a piece on DT’s divorce:
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.
How A Putin Ally Met Key Trump Officials And Worried European Intelligence
European counterintelligence officers say Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos's meetings with Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos before and after the election should alarm US investigators. And Papadopoulos isn't the only official he managed meetings with.
March 26, 2018, at 2:01 p.m.
George Papadopoulos (third from left) and Panos Kammenos (fourth from left) at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC, on the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration. Dimitrios Panagos / GOA George Papadopoulos (third from left) and Panos Kammenos (fourth from left) at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC, on the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration.
When Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, attention fell on his meetings with a mysterious Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud, who, according to court documents, told Papadopoulos that the Russians had thousands of Hillary Clinton emails — nearly two months before the Democrats themselves knew that their computers had been hacked.
But European security officials say another set of meetings Papadopoulos held in Europe in the months before and after the 2016 election should alarm US investigators. That’s because the person with whom he met, Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, is known to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin — a relationship that goes beyond Greece’s traditional ties to Russia through the Eastern Orthodox Church and a growing relationship brought on by Greece’s economic collapse.
“Like much of the Greek economic and security establishment, the Ministry of Defense is considered compromised by Russian intelligence,” said one NATO military intelligence officer, who like the others in this story declined to be identified by name because of the sensitivity of his work. “Specifically, we have been officially warned against briefing Greek ministry representatives about sensitive intelligence operations involving the Russians” because of concerns about his apparent links to their intelligence services.
What Papadopoulos and the Greek defense minister discussed during their meetings is unknown. The Greek Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment, and Papadopoulos declined to comment, referring questions to his attorneys, who said they could not discuss Papadopoulos’s interactions with Kammenos or his cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller.
But the concerns of the European security officers are a reminder that the US government’s interest in contacts between Trump campaign aides and Russia began as a counterintelligence probe, with Obama-era CIA director John Brennan stressing that such contacts might have been unwitting. The Russians “try to get individuals, including US persons, to act on their behalf, either wittingly or unwittingly,” Brennan told Congress last May in testimony explaining how the counterintelligence investigation began.
Greek Defense Ministry Kammenos meeting with Priebus and Bannon (left), and posing for a portrait with Priebus (right) at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington, DC, on Jan. 21, 2017.
Papadopoulos also was not the only Trump-connected figure who met Kammenos. Over the weekend of Trump’s inauguration, Kammenos was photographed at social events talking with incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus and Trump political adviser Steve Bannon. That was in contrast to Kammenos’s visit to Washington in 2015, when President Barack Obama’s secretary of defense, Ash Carter, canceled an already scheduled meeting with him. Photographs showing Priebus and Bannon with Kammenos were distributed by the Greek Defense Ministry.
How substantive those encounters — widely reported in Greece at the time — were is unclear. The Greek Defense Ministry portrayed them as private meetings where Kammenos discussed Greek foreign policy goals, and photos of Kammenos and Priebus, shot on Jan. 19 and Jan. 21, 2017, appear to show the two in intense conversation. Priebus declined to comment.
Dimitrios Panagos / GOA / Via Hellas Journal, Greek Defense Ministry / Via Hellas Journal Kammenos and Priebus at the St. Regis Hotel on Jan. 19, 2017, (left), and at the Hay Adams Hotel on Jan. 21, 2017.
But Bannon possibly knew who Kammenos was when he encountered him on Jan. 21. A month earlier, Papadopoulos had sent emails to Bannon and Michael Flynn, Trump’s designated national security adviser, describing his contacts with Kammenos, according to a report in the Washington Post. Those emails were sent in the same month Kammenos and Papadopoulos dined together at a restaurant in Piraeus, a port city outside Athens.
According to the Post, Papadopoulos’s email said Greece wanted “to sign a government-to-government agreement with the USA for all rights to all energy fields offshore, strategic foothold in the Mediterranean and Balkans.” Bannon forwarded the email to Flynn and Flynn’s deputy, K.T. McFarland. Later that month, the Post reported, Flynn emailed Papadopoulos, urging him to “stay in touch, and, at some point, we should get together.”
Greek political observers say it’s no surprise that Papadopoulos, a Greek-American whose parents are from Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, would be greeted warmly once word was out in March 2016 that he was a foreign policy adviser to a US presidential candidate.
By the time he met with a Greek journalist on May 27, 2016, the 10th day of a visit to Greece that Papadopoulos documented on social media, Papadopoulos had already met with Kammenos, Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos, and Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, the journalist, Marianna Kakaounaki of Kathimerini, a newspaper in Athens, told BuzzFeed News. By May 31, Papadopoulos was posting photos of the meetings to social media. The Greek Defense Ministry site touted Kammenos's meetings with Priebus and Papadopoulos at Trump's inauguration. Screenshot from mod.mil.gr The Greek Defense Ministry site touted Kammenos's meetings with Priebus and Papadopoulos at Trump's inauguration. “The president of Greece is a mostly ceremonial position, and it’s not much for a prominent Greek-American to get a meeting,” according to one Greek government official who asked not to be identified discussing internal political issues.
But Papadopoulos’s meeting with Kammenos was more of an oddity, the official said. “To a Greek, Papadopoulos meeting with Kammenos is a bit of an eyeroll because he’s seen as a bit of a clownish figure with close ties to the Russians,” the official said of the defense minister.
To EU security officials, it was alarming. At a minimum, they said, it showed the Trump campaign was naive in allowing a representative to meet with him.
“Trump has called him a ‘coffee boy’ or something like it but that doesn’t matter,” said a Central European counterintelligence official, speaking of Papadopoulos.
Then he explained why: “Either they knew officials were meeting with a [Ministry of Defense] in Athens that has a big black mark next to it due to Russian infiltration, or they didn’t know what meetings were being taken.” Papadopoulos and Greek President Pavopoulos GDP Papadopoulos and Greek President Pavopoulos
And Papadopoulos’s contacts with Kammenos didn’t end with Trump’s election. Papadopoulos met again with Kammenos in December, an encounter that was documented in a photo posted on social media.
The two were also together on Jan. 19, 2017 — the day before Trump’s inauguration — at a reception at Washington’s St. Regis Hotel after a ceremony where the highest-ranking Greek Orthodox Church cleric, Archbishop Demetrios of America, presented the church’s Medal of St. Paul to incoming chief of staff Priebus, longtime Trump aide and incoming White House scheduling and advance director George Gigicos, and Florida Rep. Gus Bilirakis, all prominent Greek-Americans.
A video posted by a Greek journalist at the event, which was hosted by the Hellenic Initiative, a Greek nonprofit, shows Kammenos, the highest-ranking Greek official in Washington for the inauguration, congratulating and embracing Priebus. He also presented Priebus with a gift plaque.
Two days later, Priebus and Kammenos were photographed together on the roof of the Hay–Adams Hotel near the White House. The photo was posted on the Greek Defense Ministry website and widely shared in Greek media reports, which cited a private meeting in which Kammenos briefed Priebus on Greek policy issues.
The event where the two met was a reception held to celebrate Priebus’s wife’s baptism in the Greek Orthodox Church, according to Stavros Papagermanos, a press officer for the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, was also photographed at the reception with Kammenos. Kammenos and Russian President Vladimir Putin during an arrival ceremony at the Athens Airport. Alexei Druzhinin / TASS Kammenos and Russian President Vladimir Putin during an arrival ceremony at the Athens Airport.
Kammenos has never been shy about his affection for Russian President Vladimir Putin, often bragging to associates and even the public of his close connections to Putin.
When Putin visited Athens in May 2016, at the same time Papadopoulos was there, Kammenos greeted him at the airport in Russian. “He would have been a very friendly face to the Russians,” said a Greek opposition member of parliament, who like all Greek officials interviewed for this story requested anonymity when talking about domestic politics.
Since he became defense minister in 2015, Kammenos has promoted closer military ties with Russia. He announced a program in June 2016 to begin production in Greece of Kalashnikov-style weapons under license from Russia. He has also repeatedly criticized European Union and US sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea and intervention in Eastern Ukraine.
“Greece is a member of NATO and the EU, and my message to these organizations is that we need to work together with Russia and do everything possible to lift the embargo, which has been a disaster both for Russia and the EU. Greece is prepared to act as a go-between to make this happen,” Kammenos said of the sanctions to Sputnik News, a state-owned Russian news agency, on April 17, 2015.
But what worries European counterintelligence officers more than Kammenos’s public positions are the close ties between Kammenos’s think tank, the Institute of Geopolitical Studies, and the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, a Moscow think tank managed by Russia’s foreign intelligence services.
The two think tanks have an open partnership that was outlined in an agreement signed in late 2014. The Moscow Times newspaper described the RISS — which was operated by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service until 2009, when it was brought under the control of the president’s office — as a landing spot for retiring Putin loyalists from the intelligence services in April 2017.
“It’s hard to find a straighter line between Kammenos and Russian intelligence than this arrangement,” said a NATO military intelligence official. A former British intelligence officer, who asked not to be identified because he still works under contract for his government, said RISS does little to hide its close ties to the Russian intelligence, political, or defense establishments and is widely considered to be a proxy for them.
“It’s sort of like a less intellectually independent version of the Rand Corporation in the US or maybe Janes here in the UK,” the former officer said. “But instead of using the experience of former intelligence analysts to support internal debate on policy, they offer heavily politicized reports and valuable cover stories for off-the-books operations.”
Western intelligence services consider Kammenos’s arrangement with RISS compromising, he said.
“The official assessment that Kammenos and other prominent Greek officials are compromised by Russia didn’t come from these relationships, that came from very specific intelligence I cannot get into,” he said. “But they do show a willingness to openly work together. It’s pretty brazen for what should be a subtle intelligence operation to wield influence.”
By the time Papadopoulos arrived in Athens on May 17, 2016, he had already heard that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, according to court documents filed in Washington in connection with his guilty plea to charges that he lied to the FBI.
In those documents, Papadopoulos said Mifsud told him that in April 2016 and that Mifsud said he'd learned it while he was in Moscow. Papadopoulos would later pass that information to an Australian diplomat in London, who in turn passed it to his government, which alerted the US government in July after WikiLeaks began publishing hacked Democratic Party emails. The FBI launched a counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016. Papadopoulos has been cooperating in the Mueller probe since his arrest July 27, 2017.
But the meetings with Mifsud, who has since dropped from sight, and the subsequent attention Papadopoulos received from Kammenos are indications, according to three active-duty intelligence or police officials from NATO countries, that Papadopoulos was likely being assessed as a possible asset for Russian intelligence.
The Central European counterintelligence agent said Papadopoulos's interactions with Mifsud raise that possibility, noting that Mifsud not only told the young Trump adviser about Russia having stolen emails but also introduced him to a mysterious Russian woman, who Papadopoulos said he thought — wrongly, as it turned out — was Putin’s niece, and later to Ivan Timofeev of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think tank then–Russian president Dmitry Medvedev created by decree in 2010.
“So he’s identified as a potential asset because of his ambition and proximity to the Trump campaign by the professor, who then brings in a Russian associate likely from the intelligence services herself and eventually George gets handed off to a mysterious individual in Moscow who claims to be working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” said the Central European counterintelligence agent, describing how counterintelligence officials would likely interpret these actions.
“These relationships would be a huge red flag to my service,” he added. “We’d open an aggressive investigation off these data points alone.”
When Trump won the 2016 election, Kammenos was quick to tweet his congratulations and to point out, in Greek, that “Important now is the position of Greek-American George Papadopoulos for Greece.”
Συγχαρητήρια στον νέο πρόεδρο Τραμπ σημαντική η θέση πλέον του Ελληνοαμερικανού Γιώργου Παπαδόπουλου για την Ελλάδα
07:44 AM - 09 Nov 2016 Papadopoulos, however, did not land a position in the Trump administration and was being questioned by the FBI just seven days after Trump’s inauguration.
Since Trump’s inauguration, Kammenos has made just one trip to the United States, meeting with Secretary of Defense James Mattis on March 24, 2017, at the Pentagon. The topics the two men discussed were to be expected of two NATO military commanders, according to the Pentagon’s statement: “Mediterranean migration; terrorism; and instability in the Balkans, Northern Africa, and the Middle East.”
There was no mention of Russia or NATO’s position on Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, which was a flashpoint when Kammenos visited Washington in 2015. Then–defense secretary Carter and his deputy Robert Work both canceled meetings with Kammenos, citing a scheduling conflict. Greek media tied the snub to Kammenos’s very public support of a military-to-military relationship between his country and Russia.
Instead, Kammenos was offered a meeting with then–undersecretary of defense for policy Christine Wormuth. Having hoped for a meeting and a photo op with Carter himself, Greek defense officials seemed insulted but agreed, according to a former Pentagon official who said that the sit-down soon became a testy back-and-forth.
During their meeting, Wormuth tried to convince Kammenos to back another round of sanctions on Russia, and he refused, calling Russia "an ally and friend, with whom we are related to with indissoluble bonds," according to the Greek Defense Ministry.
"I was asked to support the prolongation of the sanctions, particularly in connection with Crimea. I explained the Ukrainian issue was very sensitive for Greece, as some 300,000 Greeks live in Mariupol and its neighborhood, and they feel safe next to the Orthodox Church," he told Greek journalists afterward, according to a transcript on the Greek Defense Ministry’s website.
Before Wormuth’s meeting with Kammenos she would have been provided with a biography from the intelligence community that would have noted his involvement with Russia, according to an official with knowledge of the matter. The desk officer who prepared the materials would have been very aware of Kammenos’s ties to Russia, the official said.
Donald Trump posted this photo to his Instagram account. George Papadopoulos is third from the left. Instagram / Reuters Donald Trump posted this photo to his Instagram account. George Papadopoulos is third from the left.
Papadopoulos’s importance to the Trump campaign remains disputed.
Early in February, Rep. Devin Nunes, the California Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview with Fox News that Trump had never met Papadopoulos, an assertion seemingly refuted by a Trump post on his Instagram account showing Papadopoulos seated at a table, with Trump at its head. Also in the photo are then-senator Jeff Sessions, now Trump’s attorney general, and J.D. Gordon, a former Pentagon spokesperson who would be the Trump campaign’s point person on foreign policy platform issues at the Republican National Convention three months later.
That same day, Trump described Papadopoulos as an “excellent guy” when he unveiled his foreign policy team to the editorial board of the Washington Post.
Greek journalists who interacted with Papadopoulos during his visits to Greece in the months after that photo was posted say he told them that Trump personally phoned to ask him to join the campaign.
“He told me that Trump had called him for about five minutes in a casual conversation when he asked him to join the campaign and that on March 21 they’d met at the unfinished [Trump] hotel in Washington, DC,” said Kakaounaki, who covered Papadopoulos’s visits to Greece for Kathimerini, the Athens newspaper.
It is unclear who made up the guest list for the pre-inauguration reception at the St. Regis Hotel where Kammenos, Papadopoulos, and Priebus were photographed. Trump adviser Anthony Sacramucci, who at the time was expected to be named to lead the Office of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs, was also photographed at the reception. He said he’d been invited in an email that he is “pretty sure” went to “all assistants to the president.” He said he doesn’t remember who sent the email. Trump campaign adviser Anthony Scaramucci was photographed at the St. Regis Hotel Jan. 19, 2017. Papadopoulos and Kammenos were photographed at the same reception. Dimitrios Panagos / GOA Trump campaign adviser Anthony Scaramucci was photographed at the St. Regis Hotel Jan. 19, 2017. Papadopoulos and Kammenos were photographed at the same reception.
The NATO security officer was not surprised that Kammenos and Trump administration officials would be brought together by something as innocent as a church event.
“NATO of course was largely formed to protect Democratic Europe from the Soviet Union,” the official added. “But over the last decade we have seen a number of new NATO and, in the case of Greece, first-generation NATO countries become at least partially compromised by a newly active and focused Russian intelligence community that uses the lure of money and political support for right-wing nationalist causes. And with the Greeks, as with the Serbs, Bulgarians, and others, we have found the Orthodox church and its associated charitable associations provide ample opportunities for contact with the Russian government.” https://www.buzzfeed.com/mitchprothero/ ... mwWBp9pkmN
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.
“A Target, Not a Witness”: Will Trump’s Legal B-Team Collapse Before Mueller?
trump is a target
It's possible Mueller intervened to stop Trump from doing something profoundly harmful to his self-interest — which would suggest Mueller views Trump as "a target, not a witness"
Mueller to Trump: "Sir, you have a right to an attorney. You can't hire people with ties to someone who thinks you obstructed justice. Do you need help finding an attorney."
trump can not find a lawyer to represent him..
Another prominent lawyer, Dan Webb, declines offer to represent Trump in Mueller's Russia investigation "due to conflicts." Webb is the lawyer of DIMITRYO FIRTASH, top-tier comrade of Russian mafia boss Semyon Mogilevich. That's some conflict. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 5cc18c12de
On-again, off-again extradition of Ukranian oligarch on again — maybe
Kim Janssen The on-again, off-again saga of billionaire Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash’s extradition to Chicago is back on again — maybe.
Firtash, who has past ties to President Donald Trump’s indicted former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, has been wanted in Chicago since 2014 for his alleged role as the mastermind of an international titanium racket.
He’s been stuck fighting extradition from Austria for three years and has assembled a team of legal all-stars, including former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb, former Bill Clinton White House attorney Lanny Davis and former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to help keep him out of a Chicago courtroom.
Webb on Friday wrote to U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer to warn her that Firtash’s extradition may once again be imminent. A ruling in an Austrian court case now expected Tuesday could quickly lead to Firtash’s extradition “sooner than was predicted” previously, warned Webb, who wants Pallmeyer to toss out the case before Firtash can be put on a plane bound for O’Hare International Airport.
Webb has previously issued various warnings about the waxing and waning prospects of his client.
The case initially attracted international interest because of Firtash’s ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It has since taken on increased significance because of Manafort’s October indictment on charges of failing to register as an agent of former pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a close ally of both Firtash and of Putin, and of laundering payments from Ukraine to evade taxes.
Though Manafort’s known direct ties to Firtash are limited to discussions over an abandoned New York real estate deal in 2008, Chicago feds recently revealed the titillating detail that they have “thousands of intercepts” of Firtash and his alleged co-conspirators in the titanium scheme. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chic ... story.html
The Allegedly Murderous Oligarch, the Duped CIA Chief, and the Trumpkin
Who was behind a mysterious fake hearing in the basement of the U.S. Capitol?
On Sept. 25, 2017, a windowless room in the basement of the Capitol Building became the site of one of Washington’s more mysterious recent events.
On hand: an investor who was once unsuccessfully sued for allegedly helping murder his own boss, a former congressman from the Florida panhandle, and a former Trump campaign staffer. One of two Ukrainian media outlets to cover the event is owned by an old associate of Paul Manafort’s—a man who federal prosecutors allege to be an “upper-echelon associate of Russian organized crime.”
Oh, and the former director of the CIA was involved.
The former CIA director told The Daily Beast he wouldn’t have gotten involved if he had known what was going on. One of the American lobbyists said the event was used for propaganda. The guy who got sued over his boss’s death? He now takes credit for the whole shebang.
This story starts in Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 19, 2014. That’s when a woman named Valeriya Gontareva became the chair of the country’s powerful central bank. Ukrainian politics is rife with corruption, especially by American standards, and is dominated by the country’s powerful oligarchs. As chair of the national bank, Gontareva made a host of changes to the country’s financial system—and some powerful enemies.
One of the biggest changes she oversaw was a government takeover of the country’s biggest commercial bank, Privatbank. The oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky (who The Wall Street Journal once described as “feisty”) co-founded it. When Gontareva presided over the bank’s nationalization, its accounts were missing more than $5 billion, according to the Financial Times, in large part because the bank lent so much money to people with connections to Kolomoisky.
“International financial institutions applauded the state takeover,” wrote FT. “It has been widely seen as the culmination of Ukraine’s efforts since 2014 to clean up a dysfunctional banking sector dominated by oligarch-owned banks.”
The bank’s founders weren’t pleased.
After the bank takeover, Gontareva received numerous threats. One protester put a coffin outside her door, according to Reuters. On April 10, 2017, she announced at a press conference that she was resigning from her post. She touted her accomplishments at the event, but cautioned that in her absence the country’s financial sector could fake greater troubles.
“I believe that resistance to changes and reforms will grow stronger now,” she said.
Five months later, in Washington D.C., something odd happened: American lobbyists hosted an event, ostensibly on anti-corruption issues, in the basement of the Capitol Building. The event vilified Gontareva. Organizers distributed literature featuring a grim close-up of her face, calling her a threat to Ukraine’s economic security, and asking if she was “CINDERELLA OR WICKED STEPMOTHER?”
Serhiy Taruta, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, is named as the author of the report. In 2008, Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.7 billion. According to a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, American government officials believed Taruta played a role in the sale of a majority stake in the sale of one of Ukraine’s largest steel groups—valued at $2 billion—to a powerful Russian businessman. Taruta was a close ally of politician Yulia Tymoshenko at the time, and the cable said she and Taruta wanted to keep the deal “hidden from public view” to avoid criticism. Had the nature of the deal been made public, the cable said, Tymoshenko could have faced “increased attacks from political rivals for ‘selling out’ Ukrainian assets to Russian interests, perhaps to finance her presidential campaign.”
The event’s organizers are adamant that they did not plan for it to look like a fake congressional hearing. But Ukrainian reporters who attended the event covered it that way. Former Rep. Connie Mack, one of the American lobbyists who organized the event, sported the pin that members of Congress wear. James Woolsey, former CIA director, attended and spoke briefly to the group.
Woolsey’s spokesperson, Jonathan Franks, later said he was duped.
“Ambassador Woolsey was deliberately misled about the nature of this event when he agreed to attend,” Franks told The Daily Beast. “He expected to be a member of the audience for a serious discussion of issues facing the Ukraine, an area he’s been interested in for decades. He didn’t agree to be identified a ‘special guest’ nor did he agree to speak. Perhaps he was guilty of being old fashioned, but it never occurred to him the organizers would lure him to an event in the Capitol in order to make him an involuntary participant in a sham.”
Rep. Ron Estes, a freshman from Kansas, booked the room for Mack and Co. His office later told The Daily Beast this won’t happen again.
Mack and Matt Keelen, a lobbyist whose firm’s website boasts of his “well fostered relationships” in the Trump administration, both disclosed in federal registration forms that they put on the event for a shell company based in the British Virgin Islands called Interconnection Commerce SA.
“I never portrayed this as a hearing,” Mack told The Daily Beast. “We didn’t do anything to make it look like a hearing. It was in a very stale room in the basement, no markings of a congressional hearing at all.”
At the event, Mack used the term “we” when referring to Congress, and was emphatic that members should investigate Gontareva.
“One thing is clear: that we, the Congress of the United States—and there are taxpayer dollars at risk, and there are allegations, suggestions, and evidence—should investigate,” he said, according to an audio recording of the event.
Mack blamed BGR Group, a lobbying firm that works for Ukraine’s current president, Petro Poroshenko, for pushing the narrative that he and Keelen put on a fake hearing.
Two Ukrainian news outlets covered the event. One of those outlets, ChannelOne, described it as a hearing of the nonexistent “U.S. Congressional Committee on Financial Issues.”
“That was pure propaganda on their part,” Mack said. “Whoever those news outlets are, it really is fake news. They had to go a long way to try to make it look like a hearing.”
The other Ukrainian news outlet that covered the event was UkraNews, which—according to the Objective Project, which monitors media ownership in Ukraine—belongs to Dmitry Firtash.
That name should ring a bell, if you’ve been following the far-flung drama into foreign influence on the 2016 election. Federal prosecutors in Chicago are seeking Firtash’s extradition to the United States to put him on trial for racketeering. Manafort, former Manafort deputy Rick Gates, and Firtash worked on a deal in 2008 to buy New York’s Drake Hotel—for a cool $850 million—but the deal fell through.
Lanny Davis—a former special counsel in Bill Clinton’s White House who today represents Firtash—said his client had nothing to do with the hearing.
“Mr. Firtash had and has no knowledge of, no position on, and no involvement whatsoever in the congressional briefing that occurred and takes no position and has no interest in the issues discussed,” Davis said.
So who dreamed up this fake hearing? And who paid for it? For months, the backer of this so-called sham was a mystery. But when The Daily Beast started asking who paid for the event, a little-known figure came forward to take full responsibility: Anatoly Motkin, a one-time aide to a Georgian oligarch accused of leading a coup attempt.
A spokesperson for Motkin, formerly an associate to the now-deceased Badri Patarkatsishvili, told The Daily Beast that he paid for the entire event. Alison Patch, a spokesperson for Motkin, said Motkin paid for the event himself in his personal capacity.
Motkin was an aide to Patarkatsishvili when he reportedly tried to foment a coup in Georgia. After Patarkatsishvili died, Motkin found himself embroiled in a legal battle with Patarkatsishvili’s cousin. The cousin alleged in documents filed as part of a civil suit in New York state court that Motkin was part of a plot to kill Patarkatsishvili (PDF).
A spokesperson for Motkin said he decided to fund the event because Taruta, the Ukrainian billionaire, brought the allegations about Gontareva to his attention.
“Although this report was entirely brought by Mr. Taruta’s initiative, for many years Mr. Motkin has worked on promoting democratic values amongst communities close to the former Soviet Union,” said Patch. “Knowing of his interest in supporting anti-corruption efforts, Mr. Taruta shared the information about his report. Mr. Motkin found the evidence presented compelling and decided that if he could help get the issues in front of people who may make a difference, he would.”
Anders Aslund of the Atlantic Council, an expert on oligarchs’ politicking, didn’t quite believe it. Aslund said he believes the driving force behind the event was Ihor Kolomoisky—the Ukrainian oligarch whose cronies lost all that money when Privatbank was nationalized. Kolomisky would have millions of reasons to detest Gontareva, the object of the fake hearing’s ire, according to Aslund.
“This was entirely Kolomoisky,” he said. “Kolomoisky is crooked and clever. He is a person who makes business by doing bankruptcy rather than making profits.”
Kolomoisky has faced allegations of involvement in contract killings, which he denies. An attorney for Kolomoisky did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The short version of all of this: Eastern European politics are circuitous, colorful, and—weird. And last September, a little of that weirdness seeped across the pond and into the basement of the Capitol. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-alleg ... e-trumpkin
From their digital headquarters in San Antonio, Texas, the Trump campaign placed between 70,000-175,000 different pieces of content on Facebook every day specifically targeting profiles provided from Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica’s parent company was until recently owned by a British-Iranian businessman with ties to Putin-linked Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash who is wanted for bribery by the U.S. and was allegedly involved in a racketeering scheme with Paul Manafort.
More importantly, the way Cambridge Analytica gained access to some 30 million Facebook accounts without users’ consent, along with private voting records, raises serious privacy concerns. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40854&p=651489&hilit=DMITRY+FIRTASH#p651489
The case also potentially affects the interests of another Ukrainian oligarch, Dmitry Firtash, now in exile in Austria awaiting possible extradition to the US on corruption charges that he has described as trumped up. His company, Group DF, is owed $300m by Raga, according to Mr Gorbunenko, after having partially financed the initial privatisation of Ukrtelecom in 2011. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40370&p=649341&hilit=DMITRY+FIRTASH#p649341
For his mastery of political campaigning, Manafort was dubbed a “mythical figure” in the Ukrainian press, and the country’s powerbrokers still give him much of the credit for turning the pro-Russian party around. “I can tell you he’s a real specialist,” says Manafort’s friend Dmitry Firtash, the Ukrainian billionaire and former partner to the Kremlin in the European gas trade. “He won three elections in Ukraine. He knew what he was doing.” viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40370&p=646464&hilit=DMITRY+FIRTASH#p646464
Jared Kushner's parents were friends with Netanyahu. He has forged an alliance with Putin. His Chief Strategist is Steve Bannon. Bannon is the CEO of Breitbart, with the Mercer family having majority ownership. The Mercers, along with Bannon are heavily involved in Cambridge Analytica a data gathering firm. Cambridge Analytica’s parent company is SCL Group, which lists Dmitry Firtash as a board member. Breitbart and Bannon have extensive ties to the far right movement in Europe which is also funded by Putin. His second campaign manager was Paul Manafort. He had to resign in August due to having questionable Russian ties like Dmitry Firtash and the former Ukrainian President. Manafort lives in Trump tower, along with Kellyanne Conway and her husband. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40179&p=640125&hilit=DMITRY+FIRTASH#p640125
Married to the Ukrainian Mob
Meet Dmytro Firtash, the shady billionaire at the heart of Russia’s energy stranglehold over Kiev.
Buried in the news of Russia’s invasion, and now annexation, of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea was the second most important event to affect the new Ukrainian government last week — and it happened in Austria. On the evening of March 12, one of the most notorious Ukrainian oligarchs, Dmytro Firtash, whose fortune has been estimated at anywhere from $673 million to the tens of billions, was arrested in Vienna, right outside of one of his offices in the Margareten district. Neither he nor his bodyguards put up a struggle, according to press reports, although Group DF, the massive international holding company Firtash owns, has said in a statement that the whole thing was a "misunderstanding" which would be "resolved in the very near term." viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40179&p=638086&hilit=DMITRY+FIRTASH#p638086
Manafort's co-defendants were Dmitry Firtash, a Ukranian gas executive under federal indictment for bribery, and Semyon Mogelivich, identified by the Justice Department as head of a transnational criminal organization that posed a threat to U.S. national security. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2015 because Tymoshenko was unable to show the role of each defendant in the alleged money-laundering plot viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40179&p=634648&hilit=DMITRY+FIRTASH#p634648
Austria grants US request to extradite Ukrainian mogul Dmytro Firtash Vienna court overturns previous decision to reject extradition on grounds it was politically motivated Tuesday 21 February 2017 08.55 EST An Austrian court has granted a US request to extradite Ukrainian mogul Dmytro Firtash over bribery allegations. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40179&p=631734&hilit=DMITRY+FIRTASH#p631734
“A Target, Not a Witness”: Will Trump’s Legal B-Team Collapse Before Mueller?
The president’s struggle to recruit experienced lawyers could mask more ominous concerns. “As far as I can tell, Ty Cobb is the only attorney left on the Trump team with experience handling federal criminal investigations,” says one former prosecutor. “The team is thinner than you might expect for perhaps the most important investigation of our lifetime.”
Abigail Tracy March 26, 2018 5:43 pm
At the very moment when Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is spinning into higher gear, Donald Trump’s legal team is falling apart in extraordinary fashion. John Dowd, the president’s lead personal lawyer, resigned last week. Ty Cobb, who is running point for the White House on everything Russia, is on the outs. Even Joseph diGenova, the shit-kicking conspiracy theorist who was expected to join the team, unexpectedly bowed out Sunday, alongside his wife, Fox News regular Victoria Toensing, citing undefined conflicts. (The New York Times reported that Trump did not believe he had “personal chemistry” with the couple.) “I don’t think you have seen anything like this,” said former Obama general counsel Bob Bauer, struggling to identify a historical antecedent. “Like so much else around Trump, [the shake-up] is marked by confusion, a lack of consistency, and an apparent reflection of the president’s uncontrolled impulses.”
Trump’s personal legal team now consists of just one full-time attorney—Jay Sekulow—a remarkably shallow bench for a president facing potential obstruction of justice charges and the prospect of impeachment. “As far as I can tell, Ty Cobb is the only attorney left on the Trump team with experience handling federal criminal investigations,” said Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor who has been closely following the probe. “The team is thinner than you might expect for perhaps the most important investigation of our lifetime.”
One of the most critical questions, in the wake of Dowd’s departure, is who is handling negotiations over Trump’s potential interview with Mueller. For months, Dowd had been in contact with the special counsel over the issue, which had reportedly emerged as a sticking point. Dowd was rightly worried about the president testifying under oath, given his penchant for mistruths and exaggerations. Trump, however, has publicly and privately signaled an eagerness to face Mueller. With Dowd out, it is unclear where those negotiations stand. “Cobb can’t do it because he doesn’t represent Trump personally and no one else currently on the team has any experience in this area,” noted William Jeffress, an attorney who worked on the Valerie Plame leak case. Sekulow has reportedly tried to recruit more experienced lawyers, but none have yet signed on. Trump himself recently met with veteran Republican lawyers Emmet Flood and Theodore Olson, but both declined to take the case. Later Monday, it was reported that Tom Buchanan and Dan Webb were the latest prominent lawyers to decline to work for Trump.
Trump’s inability to assemble or maintain an experienced legal team could prove crippling if he is forced to square off against Mueller, a fearsome federal prosecutor assisted by “16 of the best lawyers in the country.” Cobb and Dowd were the only members of the team with the relevant credentials. Sekulow rose to prominence as a conservative commentator and for his work on religious-freedom cases through his work with the American Center for Law and Justice. A team of roughly a half dozen individuals, also affiliated with the conservative nonprofit, are reported to be working with Sekulow on Trump’s defense on a part-time basis. “You wouldn’t go to an ear and nose and throat specialist to perform heart surgery,” Bauer told me. “It is an odd notion that you just reach out and recruit lawyers that you are personally comfortable with . . . rather than select the people that have the experience and the training to address the very specific problem that you face.”
Bauer was withering when asked about the possibility that fellow New York attorney Marc Kasowitz might rejoin Trump’s team, as my colleague Gabriel Sherman reported last week. “There is nothing I know of that qualifies Mr. Kasowitz to take something like this on except that the president knows him and has had a good experience with him in the areas in which Mr. Kasowitz does practice.”
It is incredible to imagine that the president of the United States—a billionaire—should be unable to secure proper representation. But Trump is hardly the ordinary presidential client. A tightfisted septuagenarian with an itchy Twitter finger, Trump is as infamous for stiffing contractors as he is for his mean streak—hardly winsome character traits for top-flight attorneys with their choice of assignments. “You’re kidding right?” one Washington defense lawyer spat last year when I asked about the challenges of representing Trump. “Representing this guy would be almost an impossibility. I mean I don’t know who would want to do that.”
Hours before news broke that diGenova and Toensing would not be joining his legal team, Trump tried to throw cold water on the narrative that he couldn’t find a good lawyer. “Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case . . . don’t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on,” he wrote Sunday on Twitter. “Fame & fortune will NEVER be turned down by a lawyer, though some are conflicted.” But other members of the bar are skeptical. “If he says many lawyers are willing to work for him, that may only be true because we have a country with a huge number of lawyers in it,” Bauer said. “But how many of the willing ones would have the credentials and experience for the job?” Other members of the White House, after all, have had no trouble securing representation. White House counsel Donald McGahn, former chief strategist Steve Bannon, and erstwhile chief of staff Reince Priebus are all being represented by William Burck, for example. (Burck reportedly turned down a chance to work for the president.) Abbe Lowell, another heavy hitter, is representing Jared Kushner.
Trump, meanwhile, keeps giving prospective law firms more reasons not to work with him. “Trump’s latest tweets reflect his low opinion of lawyers which is only one reason lawyers who care about their reputation don’t want to represent him,” Jeffress told me. “He will no doubt find a lawyer eager to represent him but most lawyers are not.”
Given the sheer number of lawyers representing clients in Mueller’s probe, it is possible, too, that a small town like Washington is simply running out of white-shoe firms without conflicts. That was, after all, the reason that diGenova and Toensing ostensibly parted ways with Trump. Toensing has been representing Mark Corallo, who represented Trump’s legal team last year, before resigning in the wake of revelations about Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer.
Such a prosaic explanation, however, could mask more ominous concerns. “What happened between last week, when DiGenova and Toensing were announced as joining the team, and yesterday?” mused Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general under President Obama. “The conflict of interest issue was apparent on Tuesday, and yet we were told they were joining the team and that Mark Corallo (the person with the most significant conflict) had waived any concern. Then Dowd resigns Thursday, and yet by Sunday DiGenova and Toensing are gone, leaving the president with only two lawyers.” That strange development, Katyal posited to me, suggests that Robert Mueller may have intervened. “Diligent prosecutors, when they see a defendant doing something profoundly dangerous to their self-interest (including hiring lawyers who have conflicts), will raise it with the defendant and suggest they rethink it,” he explained. “I think it very possible that that happened here—Mueller is a scrupulous prosecutor and may have told Trump he had concerns about Trump’s own rights. If it did happen, it would strongly suggest that Mueller is formally thinking of Trump as a target of his investigation . . . A prosecutor would issue such a warning to a target, not to a witness.” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03 ... rt-mueller
Joseph Mifsud: The mystery professor behind Trump Russia inquiry By John Sweeney & Innes Bowen BBC Newsnight 21 March 2018
How Joseph Mifsud fits into Trump Russia inquiry
Who connects the FBI investigation into Trump and Russia, the snapping up of British nuclear knowhow and a reality TV star who makes dresses for the UK prime minister? Step forward, mystery professor Joseph Mifsud of the London Academy of Diplomacy, originally from Malta, who mixed with Britain's foreign secretary and ex-CIA people, but who also helped connect Team Trump with the Russians. A Newsnight investigation into Mifsud has thrown new light on to the enigmatic don and his circle, who include a Kremlin trusty and a third man, Dr Stephan Roh, a wheeler-dealer who bought a British nuclear firm which suddenly started coining millions of dollars. Mifsud left a job at the University of Malta under something of a cloud in 2007, then led a new university in Slovenia. He left that too, disputing claims that he had fiddled expenses worth €39,332 ($48,550 / £34,320). Next stop was the London Academy of Diplomacy in 2013. It was a rum outfit, now bust, linked to the University of East Anglia and then the University of Stirling. At one conference he was described as "Ambassador Mifsud" but, although he worked for six months in the private office of the Maltese foreign minister, he was never a diplomat. Mifsud became a selfie king of the diplomatic circuit. Boris Johnson and then Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood were photographed with Mifsud - as was the Russian ambassador to London. Mifsud joined a private university in Rome alongside two former Italian foreign ministers. In Riyadh he worked for a think-tank run by former head of Saudi intelligence Prince Turki al Faisal, introducing an ex-CIA operative at a seminar. Mifsud had a fiancée based in Ukraine, according to Buzzfeed. The woman says she hasn't seen or heard of the professor for months but she gave birth to their daughter two months ago. In April 2016 in the run-up to the American election, Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos says Mifsud told him that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, according to court documents.
George Papadopoulos: The Trump adviser who lied to the FBI
That conversation, which Papadopoulos carelessly relayed to an Australian over drinks in a posh London bar, was reported to American officials weeks later when emails hacked from the Democratic Party were leaked. The exchange reportedly so concerned the FBI that it opened its investigation into alleged Russian interference into the 2016 election and whether the Trump team helped. Last year Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with people who claimed they could put him in touch with the Russian government. The Trump-Russia saga in 200 words All you need to know about Trump Russia story A former academic colleague described Mifsud as "cunning", part of a "third rate diplomatic community where there is an element of braggadocio". So maybe he exaggerated his closeness to the Kremlin to impress Papadopoulos, but one source reflected: "It's clear that Mifsud knew something before the world did. And that raises questions." In April 2016, Mifsud reportedly introduced Papadopoulos via email to Ivan Timofeev, who works for a think tank close to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That same month, Mifsud was in Moscow on a panel run by the Kremlin-backed Valdai Club with Timofeev and the third man, Dr Stephan Roh, a German multi-millionaire. Mifsud and Roh interlock: in 2014, Roh became a visiting lecturer at the London Academy of Diplomacy. Roh bought Link Campus University, a private institution in Rome where Mifsud was part of the management and Mifsud became a consultant at Roh's legal firm. Roh and his Russian-born wife, Olga, have homes in Switzerland, Monaco, London and Hong Kong. And then there is a derelict castle in Scotland - buying it made Stephan and Olga the Baron and Baroness of Inchdrewer.
Olga was a star in Fox's reality TV show Meet The Russians, in which, surrounded by the trappings of extreme wealth, she purrs: "My family was always achievements orientated." She's extraordinarily well-connected, running an upmarket fashion company in London's Mayfair. Among her customers is Britain's prime minister. There is a photograph of Theresa May meeting the Queen in an Olga Roh coat. In 2005 Dr Roh bought Severnvale Nuclear Services Ltd from its one man-band owner, British nuclear scientist Dr John Harbottle. He then invited Dr Harbottle on an all-expenses paid trip to a conference in Moscow. But the nuclear scientist was alert to the danger that visitors to Moscow can be targeted or even honey-trapped in compromising situations. Dr Harbottle said: "We smelt a rat. It didn't sound as if it would ring true and I decided that I wasn't going to go to this meeting." Shortly afterwards, he was fired. Russia-Trump: Who's who? The tactics of a Russian troll farm Under Dr Harbottle the company's turnover had been £42,000 a year. Within three years under Dr Roh, Severnvale Nuclear, with just two employees, was turning over more than $43m (£24m) a year. Dr Roh declined to respond to repeated attempts by the BBC to ask him to explain how he had transformed the business. Professor Mifsud too didn't respond to Newsnight's attempts to contact him, but has always denied that he is a spy. When approached by Italian newspaper La Repubblica the mystery professor said: "Secret agent! I never got a penny from the Russians: my conscience is clean." The FBI investigation into whether Team Trump colluded with the Russians continues - but in doing so it has thrust the troubling connections of characters such as Professor Mifsud and Dr Roh into the light. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43488581
Trump’s Longtime Lawyer, Michael Cohen, Knows Way Too Much. So Why is He Still in Exile?
He’s the president’s ‘Ray Donovan.’ But he never had a home at the White House. Now, he’s plotting his next act.
Michael Cohen Knows Too Much
Before his remarks at a $35,000-per-plate fundraiser last June in Miami, Florida, President Donald Trump took the podium to acknowledge his biggest boosters in the crowd. Eventually, he got to Michael Cohen, the longtime private employee of the Trump Organization who is currently serving as “personal attorney” to the president. Trump praised Cohen’s lawyering, his loyalty, and his love for appearing on television.
“I haven’t seen Michael in a month,” he added, wistfully. “It’s good to see you, Michael. I miss you, man.”
The feeling was mutual.
Cohen, 51, isn’t just an employee of Donald Trump, he’s a disciple. He dresses in the same slightly too large suits and wide-knot silk ties. He talks in short punchy bursts and refers to his enemies as “haters” and “idiots.” Even their sleep schedules are the same. (“Well, I don’t sleep,” Cohen told The Daily Beast.) And when Cohen says he’d “take a bullet,” for Trump, one gets the impression he’s serious.
For over a decade, Cohen was Trump’s right-hand man and the two rarely spent much time away from their offices on the 26th floor of Trump Tower.
But the presidency has changed things, creating a rare and growing distance between these kindred spirits. Cohen told a Vanity Fair reporter in August that it had been weeks since he had even spoken with the president, the first lady, or “the kids,” as he calls Trump’s adult children, Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric. He also said that his lawyer suggested the separation continue until Cohen complied with an invitation for any information and testimony he might provide to congressional investigators looking into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Describing it as “difficult,” and “disappointing,” Cohen explained that his forced exile was for the greater good of shielding the Trump family from any headaches that may arise from his meetings with investigators. But they have still come.
“Cohen explained that his forced exile was for the greater good of shielding the Trump family from any headaches that may arise from his meetings with investigators. But they have still come.”
After Cohen released his planned remarks to that same Vanity Fair reporter, the Senate committee accused him of violating a gag agreement and canceled his appearance. The questioning was rescheduled to consecutive-day appearances before both the Senate and House intelligence committees at the end of October. Cohen complied, but he described the marathon grilling as “abusive.”
“There’s no reason that you keep somebody for 14 hours. I mean, it’s a really long long time,” Cohen told The Daily Beast of the closed-door session, which reportedly focused heavily on emails concerning an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to open a Trump Tower in Moscow. “You know, to be sitting there and being asked the same question, to be asked ‘Have you ever seen this document?’ ‘No, well are you included?’ Yeah, along with 800 other people on a Cc. Do you have any idea how many emails I get a day?”
It’s unclear if Cohen has been interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links with the Trump campaign. He’s reportedly been under scrutiny in the FBI’s probe of alleged Russian election-meddling. Of interest to investigators are Cohen’s personal and business connections in Ukraine; emails and meetings between Cohen and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman and convicted criminal who has bragged about his ties to Vladimir Putin; an email Cohen sent to Putin’s spokesman seeking support for a Moscow project; and a report that Cohen hand-delivered a sealed “peace plan” for Russia and Ukraine that included lifting Russian sanctions to then-national security adviser Michael Flynn. Initially, Cohen seemed to confirm the peace plan report, but later denied delivering any documents. He has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
It’s his unshakable devotion coupled with this tendency to be creative with his construction of the truth that has some Trump insiders concerned about the prospect of Cohen potentially being ensnared in Mueller’s investigation, which has already lead to the indictments of four former Trump associates, and one lawyer who lied about his communications with a former campaign official.
“I’m just worried for Michael, worried for what [Mueller’s senior financial prosecutor] Andrew Weissmann might find when he calls him in,” said Sam Nunberg, an early political aide to Trump who still supports the president despite being fired by him in 2014 and again in 2015. “He can find anything that was illegal and prosecute you.”
Nunberg stressed that he had no reason to believe Cohen had done—or would do—anything illegal, but said, “I’m worried that they are going to target Michael as a way to take down Trump.”
If Mueller’s team wants to know what was happening inside Trump Tower or Donald Trump’s mind in the run-up to the election—and they clearly do—talking to Michael Cohen would be smart. Few other people outside of Trump’s own family, after all, have spent as much time with the president.
Cohen grew up on Long Island, worked as a personal injury lawyer, then spent the ’90s buying up taxi medallions in New York City and Chicago and hustling side projects like a Miami gambling boat and several family-run Ukrainian ethanol businesses. By the aughts, Cohen and his extended family were investing in real estate—specifically in Trump properties.
“Michael Cohen has a great insight into the real-estate market,” Trump told the New York Post in 2007 of Cohen’s appetite for his apartments. “He has invested in my buildings because he likes to make money – and he does.”
Three months after Trump’s comments, Cohen was brought on as both “special counsel” and executive vice president for the Trump Organization and given an office a few doors down from the boss’. As EVP, Cohen “oversaw business dealings globally,” as he explained in a recently shopped book proposal obtained by The Daily Beast last month. His special counsel role was less defined. “I basically handled, shall we say, ‘issues.’ In other words, I was the family fix-it guy,” Cohen wrote.
By 2011, Cohen was playing an instrumental role in building the framework for Trump’s forthcoming political career. He had enlisted the help of a few other rich men and launched ShouldTrumpRun.com, a website that urged “the many frustrated Americans sick and tired of hearing the same old mundane political campaign promises,” to “convince Donald Trump to run for President in 2012.”
Trump did not run that year. But the site, along numerous television appearances cheerleading for Trump and a flight to Iowa on Trump’s private jet to to meet with state officials, caught the attention of the Federal Election Commission. The FEC launched an investigation into a complaint that Cohen had violated campaign finance laws but ultimately sided in Cohen’s favor (PDF).
After years of teasing presidential runs, Trump officially announced his candidacy in the summer of 2015. Cohen soon appeared on television and in print, promoting and defending his boss. But just what his role entailed has never been clear.
“I used to call him the Ray Donovan of the office,” said Nunberg, referring to the Showtime drama about a “fixer” who uses threats to rid rich and famous clients of their problems.
“We never knew specifically what he did, but we knew he took care of the garbage,” he added. “He’s also, and I mean this as a compliment, he’s a crazy man.”
“I used to call him the Ray Donovan of the office. We never knew specifically what he did, but we knew he took care of the garbage... He’s also, and I mean this as a compliment, he’s a crazy man.”
— Sam Nunberg on Michael Cohen
Cohen refused to elaborate on the specifics of his role, citing “attorney client privilege” in a text. But he seems to relish his reputation as Trump’s personal pit bull. “It means that if somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit,” Cohen famously told an ABC News reporter in 2011. “If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished.”
Reporters, lawyers, and regular folks who dared to challenge Trump’s carefully crafted image as the consummate businessman would often find themselves locked in Cohen’s proverbial jaws. Cohen once bragged of “destroying” the life of Sheena Monnin, a beauty queen who in 2012 questioned the legitimacy of Trump’s Miss USA pageant. Monnin’s father, who said he spoke to Cohen twice, described Cohen “throwing a fit,” on the phone. “I’m sure if you check other people who have had to deal with him, you’d hear the same. Just bullying tactics and intimidation.”
And, indeed, that’s precisely what others who have dealt with Cohen have faced. In the summer of 2015, as Trump was barreling his way toward the Republican nomination, Cohen threatened a Daily Beast reporter who had called for comment on allegations that Trump abused his ex-wife, as detailed in a 1993 biography. “Tread very fucking lightly,” Cohen told the reporter, Tim Mak, “because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting.”
The Trump campaign, then-helmed by Corey Lewandowski, distanced itself from Cohen after The Daily Beast report came out—saying that despite Cohen’s nearly constant television appearances where he defended Trump, Cohen was not affiliated with the campaign.
A week later, against the better judgement of top campaign officials, Cohen was back in the surrogate’s chair on CNN and in the good graces of his longtime boss. He walked back his statements about rape, but expressed little regret for his treatment of Mak. Recently, he told The Daily Beast, “The guy went way too far and I probably went too far and OK, I’ve been known to lose my temper here and there. But I’m not what the press tries to create me into. It’s just not me, you know?”
The Mak incident wasn’t the only headache Cohen would create for the campaign. In the year that followed, he was criticized for retweeting an account named “surfersfortrump” that said of then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly: “We can gut her.” Then, in August 2016, he turned heads by denying to CNN’s Brianna Keilar, that Trump was lagging in polls
“Says who?” Cohen asked. Keilar dryly responded, “Polls. Most of them. All of them.”
The moment became a viral joke, with a corresponding hashtag. But Cohen has had the last laugh. The polls—most of them, at least—were wrong.
By that point, however, Cohen and his media hits had already become an internal punchline to many senior staffers on Team Trump, according to three top campaign alums. Several called him the “Says Who Guy.” Others were more disparaging, referring him an “idiot,” and a liability.
In a White House full of backbiters and opportunists, Cohen would have been a true believer. But it wasn’t meant to be. According to former and current administration officials, senior Trump aides, including Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon, wanted nothing to do with Cohen. Too many saw him as a hothead (even compared to others in the uniquely tumultuous Trump-world) and an inept political operator who would inevitably get the White House into trouble.
The week of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Cohen said the president elect asked him to stay on as his “personal attorney.” Cohen said he was “honored” at the request, but others inside the campaign have said the longtime aide-de-camp was expecting an official White House post.
“He wasn’t expecting attorney general, but he was holding out for a senior job that would have also allowed him to continue being an attack dog for the president,” a source familiar with the situation said, corroborating what other people close to Cohen and Trump told The Daily Beast.
The White House did not return a request for comment.
“He wasn’t expecting attorney general, but he was holding out for a senior job that would have also allowed him to continue being an attack dog for the president.”
Instead of relocating to Washington along with Ivanka and Jared, Cohen moved his office just six blocks south of Trump Tower and with plans to travel between D.C. and New York in service of President Trump. His title—personal attorney to the president—is misleading. He is not acting as an attorney in the way most people think of the job. He is not representing Trump in court against any of the women who accused the president of sexual assault; that’s Marc Kasowitz’s job. And he is not helping Trump with any crises or fallout extending from the Russia investigations; the president already has a team for that.
He remains, very much, a mysterious operator, one whose methods and past work continue to generate embarrassing headlines. In mid-February, The New York Times reported that during the campaign, Cohen had been tasked with stopping any damaging stories about his boss from seeing the light of day, including at least two stories from women—one a former Playboy Playmate, another a porn star—who claimed they’d had consensual affairs with Trump in the mid-2000s. In one case, Cohen arranged a $130,000 payment to porn star Stephanie Clifford, better known by her stage name Stormy Daniels, in the month before the election to effectively buy her silence.
Cohen first denied a sexual encounter had taken place, and sent reporters a written denial of any affair signed by “Stormy Daniels.” A week later, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen established a private Delaware LLC to facilitate the payment. Though Cohen established the company in Delaware ostensibly for the state’s reputation for privacy (owners and managers aren’t required to disclose their names) he curiously volunteered himself as the “authorized person” on the formation documents, instead of hiring a third party to act as the signatory.
The following day, InTouch magazine published a 5,000-word interview with Clifford from 2011 that had been shelved after Cohen threatened the publisher with a lawsuit, according to the Associated Press. After a D.C. watchdog group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Committee claiming that the $130,000 payment violated campaign finance laws, Cohen released another statement admitting that he had facilitated the payment to Clifford, but claiming he had used his own money and was never reimbursed by the campaign or the Trump Organization. The carefully worded statement stopped short of denying any reimbursement and Cohen did not respond to follow-up questions.
Cohen still insists the affair never happened. He added in his statement, “I will always protect Mr. Trump.” It’s just not clear how much protection he’s providing. Cohen, once more, found himself a national punchline for the services he had rendered to his favorite client. A commercial parody on Jimmy Kimmel Live! asked, “Have you never had sex with a porn star? Then you need a lawyer to give that porn star large amounts of cash! Not your own cash, his own cash. Call the law firm of Michael Cohen & Associates.”
After a year of being vilified in the press, targeted by federal investigators, and perhaps worse, isolated from his idol, Cohen reveled in a counterattack one evening this January.
He announced on Twitter that he had filed two defamation lawsuits: one against Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned “the Steele dossier” a salacious 35-page report that alleged connections between Donald Trump and Russia, and another against BuzzFeed News, over its decision to publish the document.
The unverified dossier named him as a central player in a Russian conspiracy to influence the 2016 election in favor of Trump, a claim that Cohen has repeatedly denied. For BuzzFeed’s alleged defamation, Cohen was demanding $100 million.
When reached by phone, Cohen called it “premature” to discuss damages. “But you can only imagine,” he said. “It’s not just me that has been harmed in many different ways, forgetting about just financial, it’s the attacks on my wife, the attacks on my children.
“You can imagine what goes on at these schools where it’s become increasingly chic to be a far-left liberal,” he said. “You know it’s beyond, I can’t tell you the number of friends who no longer associate with us because our views are just so diametrically opposite.”
And that’s just the personal, Cohen said. The allegations that he may have played a role in Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election are affecting his business prospects, too.
“There’s all sorts of businesses, where they’re like, ‘You’re exactly what we want, but can we hold off until maybe this Russian thing is over?’”
On Fox News, famed defense lawyer and newcomer Trump defender Alan Dershowitz reacted to news of Cohen’s lawsuit by questioning the common sense of a case that would have Trump deposed.
“He’s going to withdraw the case,” Dershowitz told Martha MacCallum. “I’m not sure whether Cohen got the permission to file this lawsuit.”
Dershowitz was onto something. When asked whether President Trump had indeed supported his actions, Cohen told The Daily Beast, “I’m sure he does. I haven’t spoken to him about it.”
There are some signs that Cohen’s exile from the administration is no longer so absolute. Though he may not be at the White House physically, he is serving as a helping hand on Trump-world odd jobs and pet projects.
Later this year, the Trump White House is hoping to unveil an “Urban Revitalization Plan” targeting black and minority communities that the president has outsourced to outside allies, led by pro-Trump pastor Darrell C. Scott. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Scott credited Cohen, a close friend of his, as “one of the originators” of the plan—which Scott tongue-in-cheek refers to as the Trump administration’s “black people plan.”
“We came up with it together,” Scott said.
But even as he’s been tasked with helping to save America’s ailing urban centers, Cohen still lacks allies in Trump-world. White House officials continue to describe him as a “non-entity” and a goofy “character,” according to a senior Trump aide.
In addition to co-founding the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, Cohen in his spare time is pitching in with the Republican National Committee’s fundraising crew, lashing out at Trump critics on Twitter, and shopping a book.
According to a proposal sent to several publishers and obtained by The Daily Beast earlier this month, Cohen’s book will likely be titled, “Trump Revolution: From the Tower to the White House, Understanding Donald J. Trump,” and will focus on the attorney’s role in the campaign and the business empire.
“No issue was too big, too sticky or too oddball for me to tackle,” Cohen teases in the book proposal. “I saw it all, handled it all. And still do.”
Michael Cohen wants you to know that he’s not making a comeback any time soon. After all, he’s been with Mr. Trump the whole time.
“I haven’t gone anywhere,” Cohen wrote in a text message to The Daily Beast. “Sadly, the press wants to create the narrative that I am on the outside. More fake news!” https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-lo ... ia=desktop
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.
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.
The emoji you used is called an evil grin. That name is closer to what I see than a shit-eating grin, but an emoji nevertheless. It's more complicated than that.
It's the part of prosody that we are privileged to experience without sound (easily) on a forum.
I think those grins are just a sign of relief from passing gas from all that rich Greek food
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.
Trump fundraiser turned to Foreign Affairs chair for help winning work in Romania
By Ben Wieder And Peter Stone
Top Donald Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy sought help last summer from the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and lobbyist Rick Gates, a key figure in the Russia influence probe, as a Broidy defense company was trying to win business in Romania.
Broidy, a Los Angeles-based investment manager and venture capitalist, attempted to use a visit by Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., who chairs the House panel, to Romania last August to help his defense firm Circinus and win points with some controversial political allies in Bucharest, according to emails and documents reviewed by McClatchy.
Before Royce’s trip, Broidy offered him some unsolicited advice, and documents suggest that the businessman himself was in Romania at about the same time as Royce.
A spokesman for Royce confirmed that Broidy and Royce discussed the Romania trip, but said that Royce did not take his suggestions.
“Broidy was aware of the trip, and offered unsolicited input,” said Cory Fritz, a spokesman for Royce.
Broidy also sought the assistance of Gates, with whom he had worked on President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee, to win a U.S. Commerce Department endorsement for his company as it tried to win work in Romania, according to the materials. Gates is a cooperating government witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election; he pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy and making false statements.
Broidy re-emerged as an important Republican fundraiser in 2016, working in turn with the presidential campaigns of Sens. Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz before signing on as a vice-chair for the Trump Victory Committee, a joint fundraising effort benefiting Trump’s campaign and the RNC. He’s currently a national deputy finance chair for the RNC. The investor’s political giving had slowed after he pleaded guilty in 2009 to providing nearly $1 million in bribes to New York state pension officials in exchange for their investment of $250 million with his Israel-focused Markstone Capital Partners. Broidy ultimately paid an $18 million fine, but the charges were reduced to a misdemeanor in exchange for his assistance, which led to prison time for former New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
Romanian efforts
McClatchy previously reported that Broidy invited two prominent Romanian politicians to several events connected with Trump’s 2017 inauguration, months before Broidy’s defense company, Circinus, opened up shop in Romania seeking a share of contracts valued at more than $200 million.
During the inaugural visit, the two Romanian politicians – then-Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu and Liviu Dragnea, speaker of the lower chamber of Romania’s parliament and head of the country’s leading political party – met briefly with Trump and with some potential political allies, including Royce, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and Trump’s first National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who has also pleaded guilty in Mueller’s probe and is cooperating.
Dragnea-Royce Facebook A Facebook post by Romanian politician Liviu Dragnea shows him with Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., during the weekend of President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Just two months earlier, Dragnea was charged with leading a “criminal group” that siphoned off funds from public projects, including some funded by the European Union. And at the time of the inauguration, he was scheduled to stand trial just weeks later for creating fictitious government jobs; that trial is ongoing. He can’t be prime minister because he was convicted of vote-rigging in a 2012 presidential recall election. Efforts by Dragnea’s party to weaken the country’s anti-corruption laws led to massive protests in Romania soon after Trump’s inauguration.
Before Royce’s trip to Romania last year, Broidy tried to convince him not to meet with Romania’s top anti-corruption prosecutor, Laura Kovesi, who has brought charges against Dragnea and several other politicians connected to his party, the emails show. The emails suggest that Circinus hosted an event with Royce and that Broidy met with the U.S. Ambassador to Romania, Hans Klemm, around the same time.
After the trip, Circinus CEO Alan Blaine Stone drafted a letter that Circinus officials hoped Royce would send to the Romanian economic minister, Mihai Fifor, touting the company’s efforts to win defense contracts there.
Broidy donated $5,400 – the maximum allowable – to Royce’s campaign two weeks before Royce went to Romania, Federal Election Commission records show. And Royce was a featured speaker at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s November 2017 California Bash, which was co-hosted by Broidy, who’s on the national board of the pro-Israel advocacy organization.
At the time of Broidy’s donations in July 2017, the lawmaker faced a difficult re-election campaign in a district that went for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Royce announced his retirement from congress in January 2018.
Royce’s spokesman said that the lawmaker did, in fact, meet with the anti-corruption prosecutor and did not advocate for Circinus during the trip or write a letter endorsing the company to the economic minister after the trip.
On top of his Romania projects, Broidy was in talks to work on behalf of a Malaysian businessman to kill a Justice Department corruption investigation and appeared to have prepared talking points for the Malaysian prime minister ahead of a U.S. visit, the Wall Street Journal reported. Broidy also has advocated with Trump on behalf of the United Arab Emirates and against the UAE’s regional rival Qatar, according to the New York Times.
In a statement, Broidy defended Circinus’s efforts and said that the company has complied with U.S. law.
“I acquired Circinus in 2015 and I moved quickly to bring in the best people, including a number of former flag officers,” Broidy said. “We have been particularly adept at and are uniquely positioned to compete in markets that have required highly specialized national security and counterterrorism expertise. Our company ensures that all of our efforts are in full compliance with U.S. and international laws."
The Times reported that Broidy was in frequent contact with George Nader, a political adviser to the UAE, who helped Circinus win defense contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars there and worked with Broidy to promote to Trump policies that favored the UAE and Saudi Arabia, including the removal of former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Nader, who was convicted in the Czech Republic in 2003 of multiple counts of sexually abusing minors, is now yet another cooperating witness in Mueller’s Russian influence probe.
Gates, too, lent a hand to help Broidy win foreign defense work.
The messages and documents reviewed by McClatchy show that Gates was involved in Circinus’s efforts to win an endorsement last year from the Advocacy Center of the Commerce Department, which helps U.S. businesses win contracts from foreign governments. It’s unclear exactly what his role was in the effort but Circinus ultimately received the endorsement.
Gates and Broidy were seen dining together at the Trump International Hotel late last year according to a GOP fundraiser who knows them both.
Middle East machinations
McClatchy received the messages and documents from an anonymous e-mail account.
Broidy’s lawyer, Lee Wolosky, said in a statement that Broidy believes Qatar hacked Broidy’s computer and disseminated the information.
“There was hostile attack on computer servers belonging to Broidy Capital Management and the theft of electronic data. The computer hack and related activities have caused Mr. Broidy substantial damages,” Wolosky said. “Irrefutable forensic evidence ties Qatar to this unlawful attack on, and espionage directed against, a prominent U.S. citizen within the territory of the United States.”
Broidy sued Qatar Monday, seeking an injunction "to prevent the further accessing, use, and dissemination" of the allegedly stolen materials and monetary damages. He said in the lawsuit that he was targeted by Qatar for his public claims that the country supports terrorism.
Qatar’s embassy did not respond to requests for comment by McClatchy, but Qatari officials have denied the claims previously.
McClatchy reported last year that Broidy was one of the sponsors of an event at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, entitled “Countering Violent Extremism: Qatar, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood.” Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was one of the speakers there.
Old Friends
The documents also show that Broidy’s defense company was in talks to partner with a controversial Romanian businessman and a movie producer who played a key role in the New York state pension scandal.
A draft agreement would have paid a company connected to Romanian businessman Cristian Burci and movie producer Steve Logiscli a portion of any business they helped Circinus secure in Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Azerbaijan.
The agreement was never formalized, according to a person with knowledge of Circinus business operations, and Circinus has yet to win any contracts in Romania.
Burci is one of the wealthiest men in Romania, with media and transportation holdings, among others. He was questioned in 2016 by Romanian prosecutors on suspicion of evading millions in taxes.
Burci and Broidy were at an event together in Washington with Fifor, the Romanian official Broidy had hoped Royce would contact on Circinus’s behalf, according to media reports in Romania.
Burci’s company did not respond to requests for comment about its relationship with Circinus.
Broidy knows Steve Loglisci from way back. He’s the brother of David Loglisci, the former chief financial officer of New York’s state pension fund and one of the officials involved in the pension pay-to-play scandal.
Alexander Torshin — a Putin ally/Russian banker who's under FBI investigation for potentially funneling $ thru the NRA to the Trump campaign — sent Trump an interesting bday tweet in 2015.
A month later, Trump told Torshin's asst he would drop sanctions on Russia.
-Trump met with Torshin at the NRA conference in April 2015. -Trump announced his run in June 2015.. -Trump told Torshin's assistant Maria Butina that he would drop sanctions on Russia in July 2015. Here's the video of that Here's Trump in 2015, suggesting to Maria Butina (Russian crime boss Alexander Torshin's special assistant) that he would lift sanctions on Russia.…
Here's a primer on "lifetime NRA member"/"Russian godfather"/Putin ally Alexander Torshin... A bit of background info on Alexander Torshin, the Russian bank exec and suspected mobster/organized crime boss who is now being investigated for potenti…
hacked emails ........coming back to haunt the lover of hacked emails
How the UAE's Effort to Turn Trump Against Qatar Became a Focus of Mueller's Investigation
George Nader, an adviser to the UAE and a witness in the U.S. special counsel investigation into foreign meddling in American politics, wired $2.5 million to a Trump backer to influence Trump against Qatar
The Associated Press Mar 26, 2018 4:24 PM
In this Tuesday, May 11, 2010 file photo, Arab gulf leaders from left to right, Kuwaiti Emir Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Omani Deputy Prime Minister Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Saeed, Saudi King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz, Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz and Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai pose for a group photo before the opening of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) consultative summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
In this Tuesday, May 11, 2010 file photo Arab gulf leaders pose for a group photo before the opening of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) consultative summit in Riyadh, Saudi ArabiaAP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File A top fundraiser for President Donald Trump received millions of dollars from a political adviser to the United Arab Emirates last April, just weeks before he began handing out a series of large political donations to U.S. lawmakers considering legislation targeting Qatar, the UAE’s chief rival in the Persian Gulf, an Associated Press investigation has found.
George Nader, an adviser to the UAE who is now a witness in the U.S. special counsel investigation into foreign meddling in American politics, wired $2.5 million to the Trump fundraiser, Elliott Broidy, through a company in Canada, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. They said Nader paid the money to Broidy to bankroll an effort to persuade the U.S. to take a hard line against Qatar, a long-time American ally but now a bitter adversary of the UAE.
A month after he received the money, Broidy sponsored a conference on Qatar’s alleged ties to Islamic extremism. During the event, Republican Congressman Ed Royce of California, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, announced he was introducing legislation that would brand Qatar as a terrorist-supporting state.
In July 2017, two months after Royce introduced the bill, Broidy gave the California congressman $5,400 in campaign gifts — the maximum allowed by law. The donations were part of just under $600,000 that Broidy has given to GOP members of Congress and Republican political committees since he began the push for the legislation fingering Qatar, according to an AP analysis of campaign finance disclosure records.
Broidy said in a statement to AP that he has been outspoken for years about militant groups, including Hamas.
“I’ve both raised money for, and contributed my own money to, efforts by think tanks to bring the facts into the open, since Qatar is spreading millions of dollars around Washington to whitewash its image as a terror-sponsoring state,” he said. “I’ve also spoken to like-minded members of Congress, like Royce, about how to make sure Qatar’s lobbying money does not blind lawmakers to the facts about its record in supporting terrorist groups.”
While Washington is awash with political donations from all manner of interest groups and individuals, there are strict restrictions on foreign donations for political activity. Agents of foreign governments are also required to register before lobbying so that there is a public record of foreign influence.
Cory Fritz, a spokesman for Royce, said that his boss had long criticized the “destabilizing role of extremist elements in Qatar.” He pointed to comments to that effect going back to 2014. “Any attempts to influence these longstanding views would have been unsuccessful,” he said.
In October, Broidy also raised the issue of Qatar at the White House in meetings with Trump and senior aides.
The details of Broidy’s advocacy on U.S. legislation have not been previously reported. The AP found no evidence that Broidy used Nader’s funds for the campaign donations or broke any laws. At the time of the advocacy work, his company, Circinus, did not have business with the UAE, but was awarded a more than $200 million contract in January.
The sanctions bill was approved by Royce’s committee in late 2017. It remains alive in the House of Representatives, awaiting a review by the House Financial Services Committee.
Meetings probed
The backstory of the legislative push is emerging amid continuing concerns about efforts by foreign governments or their proxies to influence American politics. While reports about possible Russian links to Trump’s campaign and his presidential administration have been making headlines since 2016, questions are now arising about efforts during the Trump era to influence U.S. policy in the Middle East.
The U.S. has long been friendly with Saudi Arabia and the UAE as well as Qatar, which is home to a massive American air base that the U.S. has used in its fight against the Islamic State. But as political rifts in the Gulf have widened, the Saudis and Emiratis have sought to undercut American ties with Qatar.
Qatar and UAE have also exchanged allegations of politically motivated hacks. Scores of Broidy’s emails and documents have leaked to news organizations, drawing attention to his relationship with Nader. Broidy has alleged that the hack was done by Qatari agents and has reported the breach to the FBI.
“It’s no surprise that Qatar would see me as an obstacle and come after me in the way it has,” he said in a statement.
A spokesman for the Qatari embassy, Jassim Mansour Jabr Al Thani, denied the charges, calling them “diversionary tactics.” Representatives of the UAE did not respond to requests for comment.
The timeline of the influx of cash wired by Nader, an adviser to Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the de facto leader of the UAE, may provide grist for U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s legal team as it probes the activities of Trump and his associates during the 2016 campaign and beyond. However, it is not clear that Mueller has expanded his investigation in that direction.
Mueller’s investigators are looking into two meetings close to Trump’s inauguration attended by Nader and bin Zayed. The pair joined a meeting at New York’s Trump Tower in December 2016 that included presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s chief strategist at the time. A month later, Nader and bin Zayed were a world away on the Seychelles island chain in the Indian Ocean, meeting with Erik Prince, the founder of the security company Blackwater, and the Kremlin-connected head of a large Russian sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev.
Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s team after investigators stopped him at Dulles International Airport, according to a person familiar with his case.
That person and others who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity said they could not be identified because of the sensitivity of the issues surrounding the Mueller investigation.
A lawyer for Nader declined to comment for this story.
Policy push
Broidy and Nader first met at Trump’s presidential inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Both men have checkered legal histories. Nader was convicted in a Czech Republic court in 2003 of multiple counts of sexually abusing minors. Broidy, a businessmen and prolific Republican fundraiser, was sidelined for a few years after he pleaded guilty to bribery in a case stemming from an investment scheme involving New York state’s employee pension fund.
Broidy later re-emerged as a player in GOP politics. During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he raised money for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz. After Cruz bowed out of the race, Broidy signed on to help Trump during the 2016 election and beyond, co-hosting fundraisers across the country.
The meeting between Broidy and Nader at the dawn of Trump’s presidency soon led the two to work together in an effort to shift U.S. policies on the Middle East.
On April 2, 2017, Nader asked Broidy to invoice his Dubai-based company for $2.5 million, according to someone familiar with the transaction who spoke on condition of anonymity.
On the same day, Broidy attached an invoice for that amount from Xiemen Investments Limited, a Canadian company directed by a friend. The money was forwarded to his own account in Los Angeles from the Canadian account, the person said. It was marked for consulting, marketing and advisory services, but was actually intended to fund Broidy’s Washington advocacy regarding Qatar, two people familiar with the transaction said. The financial transaction and the White House meetings were first reported by The New York Times.
It was on May 23, 2017, when Royce, a 13-term Congressman, appeared at a conference on Qatar’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and announced that he was introducing the sanctions bill that would name Qatar a state sponsor of terrorism.
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a think tank that hosted the conference, said Broidy had approached it about organizing the event. Broidy bankrolled that conference and contributed to the financing of a second conference hosted on a similar theme in October by another think tank, the Hudson Institute.
Both organizations said Broidy said that no money from foreign governments was involved. FDD says it does not accept money from foreign governments and Hudson only accepts money from Democratic countries allied with the U.S.
“As is our funding policy, we asked if his funding was connected to any foreign governments or if he had business contracts in the Gulf. He assured us that he did not,” FDD said in a statement.
Broidy donated millions of his own money to efforts to fight Qatar, in addition to the $2.5 million from Nader, according to someone close to him, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss Broidy’s private finances.
Broidy’s behind-the-scenes efforts unfolded as animosity was growing between the UAE and Qatar. These tensions came to a head when the UAE and Saudi Arabia launched an embargo with travel and trade restrictions against Qatar less than two weeks after Royce introduced the sanctions legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Weeks later, Trump himself waded into the fracas, accusing Qatar of funding extremism in tweets on June 6.
Royce and a staff member met with Broidy at Washington’s Capitol Hill Club to discuss the bill, according to someone who was at the meeting. An associate, who Broidy paid for some of the work, also had frequent contact with congressional staff.
Strong language
Broidy’s effort to cultivate allies in Congress extended beyond Royce.
Broidy has personally given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans over the past decade or more. But he gave nothing during the 2012 and 2014 election cycles and just $13,500 during the 2016 cycle. Things changed after Trump’s election as Broidy ramped up his advocacy on Middle East policy. Broidy has given nearly $600,000 to GOP candidates and causes since the beginning of last year when he began his advocacy push— more than in the previous 14 years combined.
Campaign finance records going back two decades show Broidy had not given any money to Royce — until he gave the lawmaker a pair of $2,700 donations on July 31, 2017.
By then, the sanctions bill was on a fast track.
The original draft considered by the Foreign Affairs Committee contained language singling out Qatar as a supporter of Hamas, a Palestinian organization that has been designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department.
“Hamas has received significant financial and military support from Qatar,” the draft bill states.
Soon Qatar was lobbying hard to have that language excised. Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, declared in a statement to the committee that Qatar does not fund Hamas.
According to two people familiar with the committee deliberations, both Republican and Democratic staff members reached a consensus that because of the tensions in the Gulf, the language would look like the lawmakers were taking sides. They agreed to take it out of the bill.
Qatari officials and lobbyists thought the matter had been settled, according to one lobbyist and a committee staffer. But just before the bill was to be put up for debate ahead of the committee’s vote, Royce ordered the language on Qatar not only reinstated, but strengthened, they say. The bill was approved by the committee in November with the stronger language on Qatar intact.
A Royce aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, denied that Royce had ever considered removing the Qatar language.
In January, Royce announced that he would not seek re-election, saying that he wanted to focus on his committee in the last year of his chairmanship rather than a political campaign.
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.
Mueller just blew up Trump’s lie that indictments aren’t about collusion
March 28, 2018 Special counsel Mueller has told a court at least one member of Trump's campaign was knowingly working with a former Russian spy.
Late on Tuesday evening, a new bombshell report revealed special counsel Robert Mueller has alleged in a court filing that former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates knew that he and chairman Paul Manafort “were working with a former Russian intelligence officer during the 2016 election.”
The allegation, which appears in the sentencing document against attorney Alex van der Zwaan for lying to Russia investigators, also reveals the officer still had ties to Kremlin intelligence during the campaign, whether or not Gates knew that.
This blows the lid off one of Trump’s main defenses against the Russia allegations: that Mueller’s indictments against campaign officials, and subsequent guilty pleas, have nothing to do with Trump or collusion.
Trump initially tried to deny Russia was behind foreign election interference at all despite receiving briefings during the election saying so. And as the Mueller indictments stacked up, he and his defenders tried to claim the charges Mueller has brought have “nothing to do” with Trump, or with Russian collusion.
Until now, this defense, though implausible, was not entirely disproven. Manafort and Gates were indicted for money laundering and fraud, not conspiring with Russia per se. George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn, like van der Zwaan, both pled guilty to lying to investigators, not any criminal activity involving Russia itself. And while Mueller did indict 13 Russians for election interference, he did not directly allege in the indictment that they had inside help.
But Mueller’s new allegation is impossible to brush aside. He believes at least one member of Trump’s team knowingly worked with someone linked to the Kremlin, during the 2016 election campaign. So Trump can no longer say the investigation has nothing to do with Russia collusion.
As Mueller uncovers the truth little by little, Trump’s team has had to move the goalposts again and again. There is now little left that they can deny happened — and there are few publicly known facts left that they can defend. https://shareblue.com/mueller-russia-co ... rump-lies/
Yesterday’s news that Rick Gates and Alex Van Der Zwaan believed that Konstantin Kilimnik, the Oleg Deripaska crony with whom they were engaging through the entire period Manafort and Gates were working on the Trump campaign, was a current or former Russian military intelligence agent, should put that canard to rest. As the government sentencing memo in Van Der Zwaan’s plea explains,
MUELLER PREPARES TO REVEAL THE FIRST CARDS IN THE HACK-AND-LEAK CONSPIRACY
March 28, 2018/24 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel For weeks, I’ve been having a persistent exchange with people, including editors. They say there’s no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russians. I say it wouldn’t be collusion anyway, but conspiracy. They say there’s no evidence of conspiracy either. Then I point to Rick Gates’ guilty plea on conspiracy to defraud the US. I note that Gates effectively pled guilty to hiding the fact that he and Paul Manafort were working for pro-Russian Ukrainians while pretending to be engaging in politics for independent reasons. My interlocutors always say, in spite of the fact that Mueller has always insisted this went through the election period, that that doesn’t have anything to do with the election.
Yesterday’s news that Rick Gates and Alex Van Der Zwaan believed that Konstantin Kilimnik, the Oleg Deripaska crony with whom they were engaging through the entire period Manafort and Gates were working on the Trump campaign, was a current or former Russian military intelligence agent, should put that canard to rest. As the government sentencing memo in Van Der Zwaan’s plea explains,
That Gates and Person A were directly communicating in September and October 2016 was pertinent to the investigation. Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agents assisting the Special Counsel’s Office assess that Person A has ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016. During his first interview with the Special Counsel’s Office, van der Zwaan admitted that he knew of that connection, stating that Gates told him Person A was a former Russian Intelligence Officer with the GRU.
Worse still, and less commented on in the coverage of this, at some point, Kilimnik actually worked for Manafort’s company!
Person A worked with Manafort and Gates in connection with their Ukraine lobbying work. Person A is a foreign national and was a close business colleague of Manafort and Gates. He worked in Ukraine at Manafort’s company Davis Manafort International, LLC (DMI).
So Manafort either still was or had employed a person that the FBI believes still works for the intelligence agency behind the hack-and-leak of Hillary Clinton’s emails (the same agency, as I keep pointing out, that Sergei Skripal shared secrets about with the Brits), and that’s one of the things Manafort and Gates were hiding all the way through their election work by not disclosing who they were really working for on the Ukrainian lobbying.
That seems like pretty significant evidence in the hack-and-leak conspiracy.
Still, commentators seem to miss some of what is going on with this disclosure, made to ensure that Van Der Zwaan gets prison time for actions that (as I’ll return to, probably next week) make Van Der Zwaan look far sketchier than even his plea does.
Mueller’s team (effectively, the same prosecutors who are prosecuting Manafort, with one junior prosecutor added) filed this sentencing memo on March 27. Last week, the same folks filed a request for extra time to respond to Manafort’s various challenges to his prosecution so far: a challenge to Mueller’s jurisdiction in this matter (arguing it’s outside the scope of what Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller to do), as well as two challenges to the way he was charged. In their motion (which Manafort did not oppose), they asked for an extension from March 28 — yesterday — to April 2 for their response to Manafort’s challenge to Mueller’s authority, and two more days for the challenge to how he was charged. Significantly, they asked for the extension because 1) they were busy with other matters preparing this case for trial and 2) they needed to sit down with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to work out how they were going to respond to the challenge to Mueller’s authority.
Under that schedule, the government’s response to [the challenge to Mueller’s authority] would be due on April 2 and the government’s response to [the challenge to how he was charged] would be due on April 4, 2018. The additional time is needed because the government is preparing its responses while conducting other matters to prepare this case for trial and because one of the responses—involving the challenge to the Special Counsel’s authority to conduct this prosecution—requires the Special Counsel to coordinate closely with other interested components of the Department of Justice, including the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, who is the Acting Attorney General for this case.
Understand, while these are totally valid challenges in their own right, the special counsel challenge, especially, is unlikely to succeed, not least because of the strong precedent in the Scooter Libby case, so long as Mueller shows how Rosenstein approved his actions and agreed they were related to the hack-and-leak case. That said — and the real reason Manafort’s team challenged Mueller’s authority — by laying out how Manafort’s efforts to hide who he’s actually working for and the overwhelming debt that led Manafort to trade influence with Trump to obtain loans to stave off bankruptcy relate to the hack-and-leak and therefore legitimately arose out of that investigation, Mueller will have to disclose a significant part of his theory of the case.
Effectively, Manafort is doing this in significant part to understood how much Mueller understands about the conspiracy as it pertains to the hack-and-leak.
Manafort made a similar (and equally justifiable) demand yesterday for unredacted versions of the search warrants against him, again, to understand more about the investigation and case against him.
Manafort is likely doing this for two reasons. First, to weigh whether he wants to flip on Trump, while he still can. And relatedly, to reveal to Trump where Mueller is going, and how much it implicates things Trump and his family members have done. This is Manafort’s bid to change the momentum in this case, which is now all working against him.
It has been clear for some time that Mueller has been trying to line up as many cooperating witnesses as he can and obtain evidence in the case in chief without revealing to Trump details that will make Trump do something rash, like firing Mueller and/or pardoning Manafort and all his spawn. Manafort has, unsurprisingly, employed various tactics to undermine Mueller’s ability to implement his timing strategy unchallenged. This one is a legitimate tactic bolstered by his trial schedule.
So faced with the deadline to lay out how the Ukrainian lobbying relates to Manafort’s involvement in the hack-and-leak, Mueller asked for a slight delay. One thing he did in that slight delay was reveal that he knows that Rick Gates knows that Konstanin Kilimnik — who was working with Gates to try to delay the disclosure of how Gates and Manafort had screwed over Ukraine before the election, and was trying to help Manafort spin his prosecution as recently as November — is or was part of the same intelligence agency behind the hack-and-leak conspiracy.
Surely Mueller’s team knew they were going reveal this detail in the sentencing memo, and the certainty that Mueller would provide such details may be why Manafort agreed to the delay.
Mueller just revealed that at the same time GRU was implementing a hack-and-leak campaign designed to hurt or defeat Ukrainian hawk Hillary Clinton, a current or former GRU official was also conspiring to prevent or delay (until after the election) full disclosure of how GRU and Russia conspired with Trump’s campaign manager and his deputy to tamper in Ukrainian affairs.
At the same time GRU was tampering in our election, GRU was conspiring with Trump’s campaign manager to hide how they had conspired to tamper in Ukrainian democracy as well.
The other thing Mueller did with the delay is win one more day before the grand jury.
I’m vacationing in an undisclosed location right now, writing this while the spouse sleeps so he doesn’t accuse me of failing vacation, hoping to hell none of this breaks while I’m still supposed to be relaxing. But it seems like a whole lot is going to start breaking on Monday. https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/03/28/m ... onspiracy/
FBI looked into Trump plans to build hotel in Latvia with Putin supporter
Exclusive: US authorities made inquiries even before 2016 election campaign into Trump property dealings in former Soviet Union
Jon SwaineThu 29 Mar 2018 01.00 EDT
They wanted to build the Las Vegas of the Baltics.
In 2010, a small group of businessmen including a wealthy Russian supporter of Vladimir Putin began working on plans to build a glitzy hotel and entertainment complex with Donald Trump in Riga, the capital of Latvia.
A senior Trump executive visited the city to scout for locations. Trump and his daughter Ivanka spent hours at Trump Tower with the Russian, Igor Krutoy, who also knows compatriots involved in arranging a fateful meeting at the same building during the 2016 US election campaign.
Then the Latvian government’s anti-corruption bureau began asking questions.
The Guardian has learned that talks with Trump’s company were abandoned after Krutoy and another of the businessmen were questioned by Latvian authorities as part of a major criminal inquiry there – and that the FBI later looked into Trump’s interactions with them at Latvia’s request.
Those involved deny that the inquiry was to blame for the deal’s collapse.
Latvia asked the US for assistance in 2014 and received a response from the FBI the following year, according to a source familiar with the process. Latvian investigators also examined secret recordings in which Trump was mentioned by a suspect.
This means the FBI looked into Trump’s efforts to do business deals in the former Soviet Union earlier than was widely known. Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is now investigating other Trump dealings with Russians as part of his wide-ranging criminal inquiry into alleged collusion between Moscow and members of Trump’s 2016 campaign team.
The Riga developers saw their potential partner in New York as a ticket to lucrative western revenues.
“They were very proud to be talking with Trump,” said Andrejs Judins, a Latvian Unity party MP, who has been a vocal critic of the prosecutor general’s decision to close the corruption inquiry in 2016 without pursuing charges.
Krutoy, a well-known composer in Russia, has written music for Emin Agalarov, the Russian singer whose father hosted Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow. Krutoy attended the contest, where he was photographed with Trump.
Emin once named Krutoy as one of his closest friends in music. Public records show the Krutoys and the Agalarovs owned neighbouring houses in New Jersey in the 1990s, and now own condominiums in the same luxury complex in Florida. Krutoy said he considered the Agalarovs as acquaintances rather than friends.
Igor Krutoy, Donald Trump and Aleksander Serov in Moscow during the festivities around Miss Universe 2013.
In June 2016, the Agalarovs were involved in setting up a meeting at Trump Tower with senior campaign officials that is now a flashpoint for Mueller’s investigation. Emin’s manager emailed Donald Trump Jr beforehand to say the Agalarovs had dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russian government. Trump Jr responded enthusiastically.
Krutoy, 63, was a celebrity representative for Putin’s 2018 election campaign and has received major state honours from the Russian government for his music.
He was born in Ukraine and is also a close friend of Rinat Akhmetov – a Ukrainian steel tycoon who in 2005 hired Paul Manafort, Trump’s future campaign chairman, as an adviser. Krutoy said he did not know Manafort, who has been charged by Mueller with financial crimes and failing to register as a foreign agent.
Yet Trump’s brush with Krutoy has gone largely unnoticed amid intense scrutiny of the president’s financial links to Russia, which is accused by US intelligence agencies of attacking the US election system in 2016 in an effort to help elect Trump.
The Latvian talks began without fanfare. David Orowitz, Trump’s senior vice-president for acquisitions and development, discreetly visited Latvia in September 2010 to explore locations, according to one source. The island of Zakusala, in Riga’s Daugava river, emerged as the likeliest site.
Viesturs Koziols shakes hands with Donald Trump. Photograph: Vip Invest
In June 2011, Krutoy and two associates met Trump’s elder daughter, Ivanka, at Trump Tower in Manhattan to discuss the possible development, according to Krutoy and Viesturs Koziols, a well-connected Latvian businessman who was one of the other attendees. Ivanka Trump is now a senior White House adviser.
The businessmen were also ushered in to see Ivanka’s father in his office, they said. Koziols said the meetings were scheduled for 40 minutes but lasted four hours.
“We had an extraordinarily good meeting with Ivanka,” said Koziols, who added that he and Donald Trump “shook hands as possible partners”.
The discussions centred around developing a permanent venue for New Wave, an annual musical talent contest that Krutoy co-founded. A comparison with Las Vegas was made in an attempt to catch Trump’s eye, according to one person familiar with the discussions.
“The idea was that we could use the hotel during the festival for the singers and musicians, and we could use the concert hall for performances,” Krutoy told the Guardian.
Krutoy flew to Riga and in July gave a press conference about the Trump talks alongside Ainārs Šlesers, a flamboyant Latvian businessman and former deputy prime minister, who was assisting the efforts to secure Trump’s involvement.
“By attracting the attention of such a serious investor like Trump, we can think about directing New Wave towards a western European audience,” Krutoy said at the time.
Šlesers said in August 2011 that he, too, met Trump in New York and discussed the Riga collaboration “several times” with Ivanka Trump. Detailed plans went back and forth with the Trump Organization, which signaled a willingness to press ahead, according to one person involved.
During the following weeks, however, difficulties arose. Krutoy was called in for questioning by Latvia’s Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB), which had recently embarked on an investigation that became known locally as the “Oligarchs Case”. No allegations were made against Krutoy, he was never charged, and he denied any wrongdoing.
But Šlesers was a central figure in the inquiry, suspected of using public office to influence decisions on property developments benefiting companies he secretly owned. He and Koziols were also questioned in 2011. They denied any wrongdoing and were not charged. Šlesers did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Discussions with the Trumps about developing the complex in Riga ground to a halt. People who were involved deny that the KNAB investigation was to blame. Koziols said he and his associates simply could not secure enough external financing.
During a visit to Riga in May 2012, Donald Trump Jr acknowledged that his family had explored the potential Latvian development. “We were talking,” he told reporters, after being asked about Krutoy’s group. “We went back and forth for a little while. Nothing went forward, but it’s an area that we are interested in.”
At the heart of the Latvian inquiry were secret recordings of meetings involving suspects at a hotel in Riga. According to leaked transcripts published by the magazine IR, Šlesers was heard telling a potential investor in February 2011 that he had “an agreement with Trump” after meeting him in New York, and that they were “ready to make the Trump Plaza Riga”. Šlesers did not respond to a request for comment by IR.
Apparently keen to chase down this line of inquiry, Latvia made an official request for judicial assistance from the US in February 2014. The interest from Latvian authorities in Trump was first reported last year by Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze of Riga.
Latvia’s request was described to the Guardian by two sources who have reviewed it but were not permitted to discuss it publicly.
The Latvian authorities asked for Trump himself to be interviewed for their inquiry, according to the sources. At least one Trump Organization executive did speak with FBI officials, and the company provided written answers to additional questions.
The US did not formally respond until September 2015, the sources said. By then, Latvian investigators were close to concluding their case, and appear not to have pursued the link with Trump any further.
Alan Garten, chief legal officer of the Trump Organization, said he could not recall whether the company had received a request for information relating to Latvia. “But if we were contacted by the authorities, we would have certainly cooperated,” Garten said in an email.
The FBI, justice department and Latvian authorities declined to comment.
Igor Krutoy with Emin and Aras Agalarov, at a birthday party for Aras Agalarov in November 2015.
The Agalarovs denied any wrongdoing. Their attorney, Scott Balber, said: “The Agalarovs did not introduce Mr Krutoy to the Trumps and had no involvement in any discussions between Mr Krutoy and the Trumps. The Agalarovs did not know the Trumps in 2011.”
Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Ivanka Trump’s attorney, said: “Work and meetings Ms Trump had five years before the election, which had nothing to do with the election, are not relevant topics to which we will respond.”
The blunted conclusion to the Oligarchs Case remains a source of intense frustration to anti-corruption campaigners in Latvia. Judins, the MP, examined the case on a special commission and said it exposed “state capture” in his country.
Great catch. Malloch was allegedly arrested by Mueller’s team in London hours ago. Glenn Simpson named him as a Bannon/Stone associate.Scott Stedman added, David Carroll
Glenn Simpson (FusionGPS) to @RepAdamSchiff
My guess (based on some off the record chats) is that Malloch likely knows a lot about Nigel Farage.
All of this leads me to believe that Mueller’s team is zeroing in on the WikiLeaks/Cambridge Analytica aspect of the investigation recently.
Maybe no coincidence Julian lost Internet and visitor access
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Thu Mar 29, 2018 10:26 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.
Trump's Latvian business plans include the first key link to Putin, 5 years before the election, EXACTLY as Steele's trumpRussia dossier says.
A bombshell report just confirmed the key underlying premise of the Trump-Russia dossier
By Grant Stern March 29, 2018
A new report in The Guardian just confirmed the lede sentence of British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s Trump Russia dossier, which claimed that Russian efforts to recruit Donald Trump stretched back five years before the 2016 election.
Igor Krutoy, who was a Putin campaign surrogate in this month’s Russian sham “election” and close associate of the Agalarov family, met with Donald Trump in June 2011.
The Trump Organization sent a scout to Riga, Latvia in 2010 which eventually led to the four-hour meeting that took place at Trump Tower with Krutoy, and two other Latvian businessmen who wanted to build a Vegas-style hotel and entertainment venue.
Donald Trump had begun planning his presidential campaign only two months earlier in April 2011 by commissioning polls and hiring longtime confidante Roger Stone, along with sidekick Sam Nunberg. Steele’s dossier begins: Krutoy also happens to be a musical composer for Crocus City developer Aras Agalarov’s son Emin, who combined to bring Miss Universe to Moscow in 2013, and whose manager Rob Goldstone setup the June 2016 meeting about Hillary Clinton’s emails with Don Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner.
The Agalarovs and Krutoy are so close that they’ve owned homes next door to each other in America for many years, in multiple states.
Shortly after Donald and Ivanka Trump’s meeting with Krutoy, Latvia’s Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau (KNAB) opened an inquiry into the Trump Organization’s plan to open a venue with similarities to Moscow’s Crocus City, which hosted Miss Universe 2013 in Moscow.
According to local press reports, Latvian authorities sent a formal investigatory request to the FBI after a lengthy investigation on February 14th, 2014. Just a few short months before Donald Trump declared his presidential campaign. Jon Swaine of The Guardian reports:
“Latvia asked the US for assistance in 2014 and received a response from the FBI the following year, according to a source familiar with the process. Latvian investigators also examined secret recordings in which Trump was mentioned by a suspect.”
“The Guardian has learned that talks with Trump’s company were abandoned after [Igor] Krutoy and another of the businessmen were questioned by Latvian authorities as part of a major criminal inquiry there – and that the FBI later looked into Trump’s interactions with them at Latvia’s request.”
“Krutoy, a well-known composer in Russia, has written music for Emin Agalarov, the Russian singer whose father hosted Trump’s 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow. Krutoy attended the contest, where he was photographed with Trump. [He is] 63, was a celebrity representative for Putin’s 2018 election campaign and has received major state honours from the Russian government for his music.?
KNAB’s investigators spoke to one of the Latvian businessmen, Viesturs Koziols, and with Igor Krutoy about what they regarded as a shady deal, in late 2011.
All parties denied that the investigation deterred them from closing the deal with the Trumps, but the Latvian investigation continued all the way through Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, at least.
A graphic illustrates the relationship between Trump and Agalarov family associate Igor Krutoy via The Guardian The Guardian reports that the Koziols, who also met Donald Trump with Ivanka for four hours in New York City’s Trump Tower, says that the Riga concert hall deal fell through because of lack of financing.
Donald Trump Jr. visited Riga, Latvia in 2012 – which Occupy Democrats reported in October 2016 – speaking in a video reinterview about his frequent trips to Russia for the family business.
After the 2016 US election, Baltic International congratulated Donald Trump and released a series of previously unseen photos depicting Don Jr. meeting Valeri Belokons, the bank’s majority owner, personally.
It turned out that Donald Trump Jr. had visited Latvia in May 2012 for a paid speaking gig soon after KNAB’s investigation had begun, and when the family’s real estate deal lacked financing.
Last summer, Baltic International Bank confirmed to this author, that Donald Trump Jr. visited, but the bank denied that he was there for another business opportunity involving Belokons.
The bank’s owner Valeri Belokons stands out as a top-level money launderer for accepting Mexican cartel cash from El Chapo’s Sinaloa gang with the now-defunct American bank Wachovia. Just 18 months ago, Baltic International Bank was fined in October 2016 by Latvian regulators for literally writing a Russian language “how-to” launder money manual.
Then, Belokons was convicted in absentia of money laundering by the former Soviet state Kyrgyzstan, after he pursued a successful, but false civil claim in an international court against that government. But Belokons’ Manas Bank proceeded to lose a decisive, subsequent Paris appeals court case to Kyrgyzstan’s government because they proved he was laundering money.
It’s not a stretch to imagine that Donald Trump Jr. personally met with Belokons in 2012 to ask him for a loan to continue his family’s big plans in Riga.
Latvia is a former Soviet state that’s home to a thriving banking sector infamous for laundering the proceeds of Russian corruption, including millions of dollars from the Hermitage Capital tax fraud, which led to the Magnitsky act sanctions that Putin’s agents discussed at Don Jr.’s Trump Tower meeting during the election.
So it would not terribly surprising that the Trump Organization’s extensive business ties to Latvian money launderers and Putin-connected developers could lead to an FBI investigation long before Donald Trump’s plans to run for office were announced.
But this certainly seems like one of the reasons that Donald Trump weakly declared that investigating his family’s Russian business ties was a “red line” to Special Counsel Mueller, a line, which he has very publicly crossed.
Now, The Guardian‘s reporting has exposed a factual basis for one of the Trump Russia dossier’s central claims, that Putin’s efforts to recruit Donald Trump began with a closely-linked businessman, five years before the 2016 election. https://washingtonpress.com/2018/03/29/ ... n-premise/
Mueller probing Russia contacts at Republican convention: sources
Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Investigators probing whether Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia have been questioning witnesses about events at the 2016 Republican National Convention, according to two sources familiar with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiries.
Delegates celebrate at the conclusion of the final day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. July 21, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein Mueller’s team has been asking about a convention-related event attended by both Russia’s U.S. ambassador and Jeff Sessions, the first U.S. senator to support Trump and now his attorney general, said one source, who requested anonymity due to the ongoing investigation.
Another issue Mueller’s team has been asking about is how and why Republican Party platform language hostile to Russia was deleted from a section of the document related to Ukraine, said another source who also requested anonymity.
Mueller’s interest in what happened at the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio in July 2016, is an indication that Trump campaign contacts and actions related to Russia remain central to the special counsel’s investigation.
Trump, who was nominated as the Republican Party candidate for the November 2016 election during the convention, has denied any collusion with Russia during the campaign. Moscow has denied U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings that it interfered in the campaign to try to tilt the election in Trump’s favor.
Investigators have asked detailed questions about conversations that Sessions, then a Trump campaign adviser, had at a convention event attended by then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, said the first source, who was questioned by Mueller about the event.
The same source said Mueller’s team also has been asking whether Sessions had private discussions with Kislyak on the sidelines of a campaign speech Trump gave at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel in April 2016.
Sessions’ spokespersons have denied repeatedly that he had any private discussions with Kislyak at the Mayflower. Sessions told lawmakers last year he could not recall any conversations with Russian officials at the hotel but could not rule out that a “brief interaction” with Kislyak may have occurred there.
Spokespersons for Mueller and Sessions declined to comment on Mueller’s interest in Sessions’ activities at the convention and other convention-related events.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller (R) departs after briefing members of the U.S. Senate on his investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts UKRAINE LANGUAGE
The special counsel’s investigators have also interviewed attendees of the committee meetings that drafted the Republican Party platform in Cleveland.
At one committee meeting, according to people in attendance, Diana Denman, a member of the platform committee’s national security subcommittee, proposed language calling for the United States to supply “lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine’s armed forces and greater coordination with NATO on defense planning.”
But the final platform language deleted the reference to “lethal defensive weapons,” a change that made the platform less hostile to Russia, whose troops had invaded the Crimean peninsula and eastern Ukraine.
After the convention, Denman told Reuters in 2016, J.D. Gordon, a Trump foreign policy adviser, told her he was going to speak to Trump about the language on Ukraine, and that Trump’s campaign team played a direct role in softening the platform language.
The Trump campaign has denied playing any role in the weakening of the party’s position regarding Ukraine. Gordon has called Denman’s version of events “inaccurate.”
Stephen Yates, co-chair of the platform committee’s national security subcommittee, said he has “heard nothing about other members of the subcommittee being called in for questioning, and I have had no interaction with anyone working on the investigation.”
Sessions recused himself last year from the federal probe into Russian election meddling after it emerged that he had failed to say during his Senate confirmation hearing to be attorney general that he had met with Russia’s ambassador in 2016.
(This version of the story corrects paragraph 8 to show Sessions did not rule out a “brief interaction” with Kislyak instead of he admitted to speaking briefly to Kislyak) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN1H52VT
Report: Mueller Investigating 2016 Republican Convention In Russia Probe By Kate Riga | March 29, 2018 4:55 pm
Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into Russia-related events that occurred during the 2016 Republican Convention in Cleveland, Reuters reported Thursday.
Anonymous sources told Reuters that Mueller is primarily investigating a meeting between then-Sen. and current Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Russia’s U.S. then-Ambassador Sergei Kislyak at a convention event, as well as the softening of platform language supportive of Ukraine after Russia’s invasion.
The platform reportedly initially called for the United States to supply “lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine’s armed forces and greater coordination with NATO on defense planning,” though the first half of the sentence was later removed. Diana Denman, who sat on the platform committee’s national security subcommittee, told Reuters that the Trump campaign had a direct hand in altering that language.
Sessions’ meetings with Kislyak have created problems for him before, after he initially failed to disclose them when asked by former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) if he was aware of any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials during the attorney general’s January 2017 confirmation hearing. The revelation of those meetings by the Washington Post a couple months later forced Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia probe, leading to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein taking over the investigation and appointing Mueller as special prosecutor. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ ... convention
Mueller's team to question former RNC officials on Russia
Mueller departs a closed-door Senate Judiciary Committee meeting in June. (AP's J. Scott Applewhite) Members of Robert Mueller's team have begun reaching out to former Republican National Committee staff who were familiar with the digital operations of the Trump campaign, according to a source with knowledge of the outreach. The only outreach I can confirm happened recently.
Yahoo News' Michael Isikoff first reported that Mueller's prosecutors are interested in "the party digital operation that worked with the Trump campaign to target voters in key swing states." Isikoff adds: "They are seeking to determine if the joint [RNC-Trump campaign] effort was related to the activities of Russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the American electorate..."Isikoff says some of these interviews have already happened. Context: Congressional investigators have had lots of questions for campaign digital alums, including senior official Brad Parscale. They've also interviewed Alexander Nix, president of Cambridge Analytica (a firm that worked on data issues for the campaign).
The collusion theory-of-the-case that's held most widely in Washington is that if any collusion happened, it would have been through Trump's data operation. There's no public evidence the data team did anything wrong. https://www.axios.com/muellers-team-to- ... f6baa.html
Anonymous sources told Reuters that Mueller is primarily investigating a meeting between then-Sen. and current Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Russia’s U.S. then-Ambassador Sergei Kislyak at a convention event, as well as the softening of platform language supportive of Ukraine after Russia’s invasion.
The Shadowy Operative at the Center of the Russia Scandal
Court documents call him Person A, but descriptions link the officer to Russian intelligence—and to Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.
Natasha BertrandMar 29, 2018 Updated on March 30, 2018.
Buried in a late-night court filing in Robert Mueller’s expansive probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was an explosive claim: An adviser to President Donald Trump’s campaign and transition teams had knowingly been in contact with a former Russian intelligence officer as late as September 2016, prosecutors said. The revelation is the strongest connection to date between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s intelligence services, which U.S. officials say were behind the cyberattacks on Democrats during the election.
The adviser, Rick Gates, was a deputy to Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort and stayed on as a liaison between Trump’s transition team and the Republican National Committee after the election, well after Manafort was forced to step down over his alleged ties to dirty Ukrainian money. Manafort and Gates’s arrival to the campaign team coincided with the most pivotal Russia-related episode of the election: the release of emails that had been stolen from the Democratic National Committee by hackers working for the GRU, Russia’s premier military-intelligence unit. The GRU remained at the center of the Russians’ interference campaign, using the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to publish the hacked material in droves before the election. Gates and Manafort, meanwhile, remained in touch with the former GRU officer who the special counsel’s office believes was still connected to Russian intelligence services during the election—raising new questions about what the campaign officials knew about Russia’s hack-and-dump scheme.
The former GRU officer was identified in Mueller’s latest filing only as “Person A.” But the descriptions allude to Konstantin Kilimnik—a Russian-Ukrainian dual citizen who attended a Soviet military school and later joined the Russian Army as a translator. A former classmate of Kilimnik's told me that, between 1987 and 1992, Kilimnik attended the First Department of the Moscow Military Red-Banner Institute of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR, which "was the premier military education institution for training military linguists, information and psychological warfare experts, and military jurists.” Kilimnik graduated in June 1992 as a lieutenant, the former classmate said. The Institute is now called The Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
Gates knew of Kilimnik’s background. He told Alex van der Zwaan—a lawyer he and Manafort worked with on a project to shore up support for Manafort’s client at the time, ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych—about the former intelligence officer’s past as a GRU officer, according to prosecutors. Gates was indicted last October on charges including money laundering and tax fraud, and is now cooperating with the special counsel.
Kilimnik left the army and eventually landed at the Moscow office of the International Republican Institute (IRI) in 1995, where he worked for over a decade. An IRI spokeswoman told me that “he was asked to leave because he violated IRI’s code of ethics,” and that, to her knowledge, “no one had any reason to believe that he was affiliated with Russian intelligence.” The spokeswoman would not elaborate on Kilimnik’s alleged ethics breach, but it may have had something to do with his overlapping work as a translator for Manafort in 2005. Kilimnik soon began working for Manafort’s firms full time. The lawyer at the center of Tuesday’s court filing, van der Zwaan, had “grown too close to Manafort, Gates, and Person A,” prosecutors alleged.
Manafort, like Gates, was in touch with Kilimnik in 2016. As The Atlantic reported last year, emails Manafort turned over to investigators as part of their examination of Russia’s election interference included correspondence with Kilimnik about a Russian oligarch with whom Manafort hoped to curry favor—using his campaign role. Manafort and Kilimnik also had two in-person meetings in May and August 2016.
The special counsel’s office appears to have referenced Kilimnik in court filings before Tuesday: Urging a judge to reject a proposed bail deal for Manafort in December, prosecutors noted that Manafort and his “longtime Russian colleague” who is “assessed to have ties to a Russian intelligence service” had been collaborating on an English-language op-ed aimed at portraying Manafort’s work in Ukraine in a positive light. But the special counsel’s office did not specify then, as it did on Tuesday, that this individual “had such ties in 2016”—seemingly drawing a straight line from the Trump campaign to Russia.
Legal experts and former federal prosecutors told me it was too difficult to say, at this point, why Mueller’s team had declined to identify Kilimnik by name. “There are many reasons why a prosecutor might not name a person uncharged in an indictment,” said Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor and longtime white-collar defense attorney. “Indeed, DOJ standard policy holds that persons not charged should, presumptively, NOT be named in indictment, as a simple matter of fairness. Of course, there are sometimes reasons that rule is not followed.” Another possibility is that Kilimnik is already cooperating with prosecutors.
“It’s certainly possible that he’s a U.S. asset,” said Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he specializes in national-security law. “It’s also possible that they’re still investigating his role, and don’t want to say any more than they have to so as to not provide too much information to him (or others who might be implicated).” Kilimnik “might be cooperating and an asset, or there might not be a possible allegation against him yet,” said former federal prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney Jeff Cramer. “This could, however, change that dynamic.”
The special counsel’s office did not offer evidence that Kilimnik’s relationship with Russian military intelligence—which he denies having—persisted through 2016. Mark Galeotti, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague who specializes in modern Russian politics and organized crime, told me that “just having a GRU background does not mean anything.” John Sipher, a retired CIA officer who ran the agency’s Russia operations, noted that, in Russia, someone’s past ties to the security services “certainly suggests that they can continue to be tasked and trusted”—and it is “a standard Russian line that there’s no such thing as a ‘former’ KGB officer. That said, there are a ton of people who worked for a short time for Russian military intelligence who have moved on to civilian lives.”
Steve Hall, who retired as CIA chief of Russia operations in 2015 after 30 years of managing and running intelligence operations, agreed that the “once a GRU officer, always a GRU officer” wisdom was “a bit exaggerated.” But, he said, “the ties are there.”
Hall noted that because informal relationships among power brokers in Russia are “much more important” than in the West, Kilimnik’s past work for military intelligence—even if wasn’t later formalized—is “notable.” It’s not surprising, moreover, that associates of Manafort would’ve had ties to Russian security services, Hall said. “Manafort would have at the very least been vetted by the Russians when he worked for [Viktor] Yanukovych in Ukraine.” Yanukovych, the pro-Russian former president of Ukraine whom Manafort advised for over a decade, was ousted in 2014 and fled to Russia amid mass popular protests over his refusal to sign an agreement that would’ve brought Ukraine closer to the West.
Kilimnik later acknowledged in an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that he and Manafort emailed each other “about Trump and everything” during the campaign. “There were millions of emails,” Kilimnik told RFERL in a text message. “We worked for 11 years. And we discussed a lot of issues, from Putin to women.” Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, said last fall that Manafort had simply been trying to leverage his high-level role on the campaign to collect past debts. Kilimnik seemed to echo that statement, telling RFERL: “Our clients owe us money.” https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... al/556823/
Konstantin Kilimnik was supremely qualified and positioned to be a conspiracy and collusion back channel with Gates as the treasonous campaign official. The shear number of Trump campaign officials and associate actively working to collude is staggering.
current serving AG is being investigated by Mueller
Sessions getting buggy
Renato Mariotti
THREAD: What does today's report that Mueller is investigating events at the Republican Convention tell us about his investigation? 7:03 PM - 29 Mar 2018
1/ Today @Reuters reported that Mueller is investigating events at the Republican convention, including an event attended by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Russian Ambassador.
2/ The most important part of this story is that Mueller is looking at why language hostile to Russia was removed from the GOP platform. This suggests that Mueller is looking at whether this change was made in exchange for something of value from Russia.
3/ It is a federal crime to trade an official act (for example, a decision whether to give weapons to Ukraine, which was the provision in question) in exchange for something of value. The crime is called "theft of honest services" and it's akin to taking a bribe.
4/ The agreement itself--agreeing to exchange an official act for a thing of value--is a crime. You don't have to follow through with it. For example, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was convicted of attempting to sell Obama's Senate seat. He never completed the deal.
5/ One issue would be that Trump was not yet in office at the time of the Republican convention. I'm not aware of a case charging a candidate who promised to trade an official act prior to being elected, but some states (such as New York) but I haven't researched the issue.
6/ Some states (like New York) have criminal statutes that clearly cover this conduct by candidates not yet elected, however: http://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article200.htm … /end
Fired FBI Official Andrew McCabe Is Crowdfunding A Legal Defense Fund As He Says He "Might Consider" Lawsuits McCabe's crowdfunding page says he's raising money to respond to congressional inquiries, the DOJ inspector general investigation, "and any potential lawsuits he might consider."
Zoe TillmanMarch 29, 2018, at 1:59 p.m. Andrew McCabe Aaron P. Bernstein / Reuters Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe launched a legal defense fund website on Thursday, saying the money will be used to defray the costs of responding to congressional inquiries and an inspector general investigation, as well as "any potential lawsuits he might consider."
A spokesperson for McCabe confirmed the authenticity of the crowdfunding campaign launched under McCabe's name through the site GoFundMe. The site lists a fundraising goal of $150,000.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe on March 16, two days before McCabe was set to retire after more than two decades at the bureau. Sessions said in a statement at the time that his decision was based on findings by the Justice Department's inspector general's office and the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility that McCabe "made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions."
McCabe has denied wrongdoing, writing in a March 23 op-ed in the Washington Post that he acted within his authority in approving contacts with a reporter, and, when asked about those contacts by investigators, "answered questions as completely and accurately as I could."
McCabe hasn't taken any legal action to date to challenge his firing. According to the crowdfunding page, McCabe and his team are still figuring out the financial consequences of his firing two days before his 50th birthday, when he would have become eligible to start receiving annual payouts from his pension.
McCabe is being represented by Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general and a senior counsel at the law firm Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber.
UPDATE
March 30, 2018, at 9:55 a.m.
Less than a day after launching, Andrew McCabe's legal defense fund had upped its goal to $250,000. As of Friday morning, the campaign had already surpassed that amount, raising more than $417,000 from nearly 10,000 people in less than 24 hours. https://www.buzzfeed.com/zoetillman/fir ... bwrkr2rlAp
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.
by Daniel Hopsicker · Published March 27, 2018 · Updated March 27, 2018
Oleg Deripaska is the Oliver North of Russiagate. He’s the one Russian oligarch whose name you need to know. Oleg The Oligarch. Vladimir Putin’s go-to guy.
A brutal history, a mysterious past
Where Putin is concerned, Deripaska will do anything to please. He’s a big-time player in Russiagate. And the millions he paid out to Paul Manafort may turn out to be the least of it.Deripaska is one of Russia’s best-connected oligarchs. A leaked US Moscow Embassy cable called him “one of the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.”
And, of course, Paul Manafort worked for Oleg Deripaska for many 10 million dollar a year years. Who knows? Maybe they were cooking something up.
Oleg Deripaska and Donald Trump— an early adapter—are figures who just happen to be onstage for the biggest story of our time: the globalization of organized crime.
He’s a man with a mysterious past, as well as a well-documented brutal history as the one Russian gangster who was ruthless enough to be the last man standing at the end of what Russians call the Aluminum Wars.
Ever heard of the Great Patriotic Aluminum Wars? There were three of them. And bloody affairs they were too. Maybe not quite Mexican cartel bloody, but way past the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
I have several stories to tell about Oleg Deripaska. One about who he is. The other is about the strange circumstances during which Oleg the Oligarch first crossed my radar. When I first wrote about him in 2008 few knew his name, other than a few Republican lobbyists like Bob Dole holding out a beggar’s bowl and taking Deripaska’s money to get him a visa to enter the U.S.
As it happened, the FBI wasn’t having it.
Funny old FBI.
Rackets can be fun
In the criminal history of planet Earth, aluminum is the biggest racket ever run by a single organized crime family. A Russian crime family.
Ownership of Russia’s most valuable assets was up for grabs in the 1990’s. Protection rackets were run by organized crime, former KGB agents and cadres of special forces troops.
Russia’s mineral wealth was divided on the factory floors of Russia’s massive aluminum smelters in a series of violent and bloody stand-offs. Enough blood flowed during Oleg Deripaska’s “consolidation” during what Russians called “The Aluminum Wars” to float his 200-ft long yacht.
As Deripaska made his way up, he created a powerful security service of his own, and cemented his position in Russia’s ruling elite — if it wasn’t already—by marrying into Boris Yeltsin’s family in the early 2000’s.
Deripaska formed a combine with the Gambino Family of the former Soviet Union, a criminal organization led by Anton Malevsky.
It’s called the Izmailovsky crime family. And today’s its boss is called “the most powerful gangster on the planet.”
Uber-Oligarch Oleg
He’s been called Russia’s Uber-Oligarch. The story of the Russian oligarch most deeply implicated in Russiagate is filled with fake news. The reason is unknown.
The New York Times identifies him as “a former nuclear physicist.” But if Deripaska is a former nuclear physicist, John Gotti was a plumbing contractor. Gotti wasn’t a plumbing contractor. And Deripaska isn’t a “nuclear physicist.”
The Times writes he “wrested control of the Russian aluminum industry from a netherworld of organized crime figures.”
But they offer no examples of this “wresting,” which means “forcibly taking something from someone else’s grasp.”
What we’d like to ask the Times: “On this ‘wresting’ business: Were automatic weapons involved? Mortars? Rocket-propelled grenades?
Any ‘yes’ answers would detract from the picture the Times was painting of Oleg as a “former nuclear physicist.”
It isn’t just the Times.
A profile of him in the Toronto Globe and Mail profile in 2011 reports Deripaska as not being eager to publicize his numerous charities. But apparently he allows himself the occasional humble brag. He told the Globe & Mail he’d donated $250 million between 2000-09, but offered no proof. Among mainstream journalists, nobody asked.
“Tall, with boyish features, cropped blond hair and relentless blue eyes, Deripaska looks not unlike Daniel Craig – and shares the Bond actor’s reputation for toughness,” reported London’s Guardian . “Deripaska is a cunning businessman whose mere survival in the cutthroat Russian aluminum industry is a testament to his abilities.”
So, who is Oleg Deripaska? One thing seems certain. For a gangster, he gets great press.
The Aluminum King
Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska Because of his vice-like grip on the industry, Oleg Deripaska is called Russia’s “Aluminum King.” He enjoys a reputation as the hard man of the infamously ruthless metals business.
In Siberia fights to control aluminum factories were bloody. Deripaska never faced criminal charges during that period but his associates did.
Yet when Deripaska in 2000 moved to gain control over 70 per cent of Russia’s aluminum output, the bosses of two huge aluminum smelters opted to sell their stakes to him. It was either that, or go to prison. After the sale, the pair saw their criminal charges dropped. They later filed suits in London against Deripaska for allegedly coercing them into selling their stakes. Both settled out of court.
Since that time numerous lawsuits filed in the West—where its safer—have accused Deripaska of using violence and intimidation to take over Russia’s metals companies.
Grabbing hold of a dominant global position in a strategic metal like aluminum made Oleg Deripaska—and the people he ‘fronts’ for—true Masters of the Universe.
Somehow Oleg emerged with more assets than anyone else. Today—without exaggeration— he owns it all.
Oleg Deripaska is the sole beneficiary owner of the “RusAl” Company.
Dateline: Yerevan, April 4 2006. Headline: “RUSAL” OFFICIALLY CALLS OLEG DERIPASKA ITS ONLY OWNER”
The “Russian Aluminum” Company, one of the three biggest aluminum producers in the world, was officially disclosing its ownership structure for the first time.
Announcing a credit extension for RusAl’s “Komi Aluminum Project,” The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development disclosed that Deripaska is the owner of “RusAl” and “Base Element.”
Publications around the world have reported recent years that Oleg Deripaska was on the move outside of Russia, wheeling and dealing and making investments.
Yet the New York Times has repeatedly said that the U.S. State Department has denied Deripaska a U.S. visa, supposedly over questions about his role in the so-called Aluminum Wars.
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.
