Re: Will Flynn bring back Yellowcake to WH Menu after 1-21-1
Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 2:06 pm
MinM » Sun Apr 02, 2017 11:53 am wrote:
Flynn dismissal linked to meeting with Cambridge graduate "Crazy Miss Cokehead"
http://dailym.ai/2ol6A98 via @MailOnline
Doesn't really belong in this thread (or does it?)
but I wanted to give this thread a bump...
One other off-topic:The Spanish connection with Trump’s Russia scandal
Alexander Torshin, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia and investigated in Spain for money laundering, has infiltrated the US president’s circle
On February 1, Alexander Torshin, 63, a Russian politician and banker who is close to Vladimir Putin and whom the Spanish anti-corruption prosecutor and the Civil Guard define in their reports as a godfather from a notorious Russian mafia organization, had in his diary for the next day an appointment to meet in Washington with the world’s most powerful man: Donald Trump. The encounter was due to take place before an official and well-attended breakfast meeting, which Torshin attended as the head of a Russian delegation. The meeting was canceled that very night, according to sources from the White House, given the wave of criticism in the US press related to the influence of determined Russian circles in President Trump’s power teams. But the information reveals the heights to which this person, who has been investigated by the Spanish authorities, had reached in his rise to the upper echelons of the American leader’s circle.
Torshin, who is currently the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia, has met with one of the children of the US president, has close links with the organization that provided the most money for Trump’s election campaign, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and attended the aforementioned breakfast that Donald Trump presided over in the White House in February.
The high-ranking official from the Central Bank of Russia has long been on the radar of the Spanish public prosecutor and the Civil Guard. He was on the brink of being arrested in Palma de Mallorca in the summer of 2013 during a meeting with a mafioso – who has just been sentenced in Spain – but he didn’t turn up to the meeting. A unit consisting of 12 officers was awaiting him at the airport and in a hotel, where he was expected to arrive accompanied by other people being investigated in a money-laundering ring. The Russian Federation’s Prosecutor General, which was aware that Torshin was being investigated, requested information about the case on at least two occasions, but received no response from the Spanish authorities given that the investigation was sealed.
His case constitutes another element to lay the foundation for the FBI investigation currently being conducted into the influence of the Russian government in the outcome of the US presidential elections last year. The political offensive by Torshin appears to form part of a strategy by the Kremlin aimed at influencing the internal policies of the United States. One of the most spectacular results of this apparent strategy was the mass hack of the internal communications of the campaign for Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival, which was made public by WikiLeaks, according to the US intelligence services. Over the last year a number of trusted allies of Trump have been forced to resign given their shady contacts with Russia. The most recent was his national security advisor, Michael Flynn, on February 13.
The difference in the case of Torshin is that for the first time, a Russian mafia boss – at least one identified as such by the Spanish anti-corruption prosecutor – is within the circle of support to the new president of the United States.
As well as being a powerful banker, a leader of President Putin’s political party (United Russia) and his trusted ally, and a senator between 2001 and 2015 (as well as being chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament between May 19 and September 21, 2011), he is, according to the investigation carried out by the Spanish security forces, a boss of a notorious criminal organization known as Taganskaya.
The relationship between Torshin and Alexander Romanov, a Russian mafioso established in Palma de Mallorca, is the key. An investigation carried out between 2012 and 2013 by a Palma court and the anti-corruption prosecutors José Grinda and Juan Carrau into Romanov concluded that Torshin was the boss of a Taganskaya criminal operation to launder money by buying up hotels in Mallorca. A total of 33 telephone conversations between Torshin and Romanov, to which EL PAÍS has had access, reveal that their relationship is not “purely social,” as Torshin claims, but rather based on business.
An internal document from the Civil Guard Information Service, dated July 2013, explains Torshin’s central role in the criminal plot. “As a consequence of the phone tapping carried out in the aforementioned inquiries it has been ratified that, above Romanov, on a higher hierarchical level, is Alexander Torshin. In the numerous phone conversations and with different contact persons, Alexander Romanov himself recognized his subordination before someone who he describes as ‘the Godfather’ or ‘the boss’ ... which in itself is telling when it comes to situating their relationship.”
The Spanish police followed Torshin, but he managed to slip away: three judicial and police sources from the investigation have confirmed that Torshin decided not to attend Romanov’s birthday party on August 21, 2013 as planned, because, they believe, he was warned by the Russian prosecutor that if he stepped onto Spanish soil he would be arrested. “The liaison from the Russian Interior Ministry in Madrid had written a report about the Taganskaya and we believe that in Russia they put the screws on him. We suspect that it was him who warned that Torshin was being investigated in Spain and that was why he didn’t come,” a judicial source explains. “The case had not been completed and we could not give out that information,” explains another judicial source. “Russia also discovered that we were investigating Torshin because Romanov’s lawyers told the Russian prosecutor as much in writing and they complained saying that they were being persecuted in Spain.”
The confidential report, which is not to be found in the legal case, points to the connection between the Russian state and the Russian mafia. “The criminal organizations from the countries of the East have as their main characteristics the penetration of different state powers, such as politics, which is represented in this case by the figure of the First Vicechairman of the Federation Council of Russia of the Federal Assembly of Russia of the Russian Federation, Alexander Porfirievich Torshin.” The five-page document, entitled Alexander Porfirievich Torshin in Operation Dirieba, was produced so that the Anti-Corruption Public Prosecutor could decide whether or not to charge Torshin with the laundering of more than €14 million in the purchase of a hotel in Mallorca, and concludes that both the money and the hotel belonged to the Russian ex-politician. It even claims that the hotel forms part of the inheritance that Torshin wants to leave to his two daughters.
Why was Torshin not prosecuted? “It made no sense to charge Torshin because Russia does not process letters rogatory [requests for legal assistance from abroad] that we file with that country and there would have been no practical purpose: it would have delayed the investigation, it would have slowed it down,” explains a clearly irritated judicial source. “Calling on Russia to arrest him would have been useless because Russia does not cooperate. This summer there will be a trial in Spain in the Troika case – against the Russian mafia in Spain. There are a number of fugitives in Russia and they won’t hand them over to us. We don’t have the support of the Russian authorities.”
The formidable and powerful Taganskaya organization of which Torshin is allegedly part is recognized by the US and the EU information and intelligence services (Europol, the FBI…), according to the dossier about Torshin from the Spanish Civil Guard. Its activities include the appropriation of companies using violent or fraudulent methods, bank scams, extortion and the carrying out of contract killings.
The point of entry for Torshin to the upper echelons of US politics was the National Rifle Association (NRA), which is perhaps the most powerful lobby in the United States. The NRA invested more than $21 million in Trump’s election campaign, more than any other organization. According to the group’s official magazine, the NRA proclaimed itself to be “the key” to the Trump victory.
Torshin has managed to become a “life member” of the NRA. He is also linked to the Russian group The Right to Bear Arms, which was created in 2012 and copies the objectives of the NRA. It is presided over by Maria Butina, a young admirer of Putin who has had a meteoric career by Torshin’s side, and who now resides in Washington. Butina celebrated her birthday with a costume party in the US capital on November 12 last year, four days after the presidential elections. According to the press in Washington, the main reason for the celebration was the election victory of Donald Trump. Among the guests were a number of the new president’s campaign consultants.
The first direct contact between Torshin, an “honorary member” of the Russian pro-arms group, and the NRA took place in May 2013. Torshin traveled to the annual NRA convention in Houston. He himself wrote about this in an article published eight months later in the Washington Times, a pro-Trump daily, whose Opinion section editor, David Keene, was president of the NRA and is a friend of Torshin.
At that time, Torshin was a Russian senator. But his political career was on the rise. In January 2015 he was named deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia. And one of his first measures was to designate Butina “personal executive assistant.” Some months later, on December 11, 2015, the pro-arms group presided over by Butina invited a delegation from the NRA, nearly all Trump acolytes, to an event in Moscow. Torshin gave the welcome speech.
In May 2016, in the midst of the US electoral campaign, Torshin traveled once more to the NRA convention, which was celebrated this time in Louisville, Kentucky. Trump, who was by that point the de facto Republican candidate to the presidency, attended the annual event run by his main benefactors. There Torshin had fleeting contact with the future president, who only went so far as to shake his hand. With his son, Donald Trump Jr., things went further: he sat by his side during a private dinner in a restaurant in Kentucky.
The rise of Torshin in the upper circles of the United States continued to progress. When Trump, a self-declared admirer of Putin, reached the presidency, Torshin was invited to an official breakfast at the White House scheduled for February 2, along with other guests. The event was later to be remembered thanks to Trump’s jibes aimed at Arnold Schwarzenegger. Torshin traveled there as the head of a Russian delegation. Together with the invitation, Torshin received a proposal for a meeting with the president just before the breakfast, according to Yahoo News, which contributed to this article. This meeting was suddenly cancelled. The reason, according to sources from the White House, were the rumors and suspicions about which all of Washington is now talking: the links between Trump’s political team and Moscow. The White House gave no official explanation for the cancellation. Maria Butina, who attended gala dinners to celebrate Trump’s inauguration, confirmed to Yahoo News in an email that the notification of the cancellation of the meeting between her boss and the president arrived the night before the breakfast.
During that visit to Washington, Torshin did have dinner with two Republican congressmen. The date was February 1 in a French restaurant, according to an article published in Time magazine two weeks ago, and at which Maria Butina and a close friend of Trump White House strategist Stephen Bannon were also present.
The apparent mission by Torshin to infiltrate the highest spheres of power worked. And the Russian connection continues to create intrigue in Washington. As the veteran columnist Thomas Friedman wrote last month in the New York Times: “[...] the biggest national security question staring us in the face today: What is going on between Donald Trump and the Russians?” After the investigations by the Spanish judicial authorities and the police into the banker, politician and mafia godfather Alexander Torshin there are more unanswered questions today, and more scandals in Washington to be investigated.
http://elpais.com/elpais/2017/03/31/ine ... 09827.html
Aside from the NRA, other "strange" organizations supported financially by the Russian Putin and his Mafia:
- Give Alaska back to Russia
- California secession (Calexit) Movement
- Taliban
- Assad
- Eastern Ukrainian rebels
- Marine Le Pen (right wing French Presidential Candidate
- Right Wing German Populists
- Hackers of progressive group
Malcolm NanceVerified account
@MalcolmNance
BREAKING: There it is. Flynn poss caught in FSB honeypot w/female Russian Intel asset. Nance's Law dude! reporting!
Michael Flynn invited female Russian operative Svetlana Lokhova to accompany him to Moscow
By Bill Palmer | April 2, 2017 | 0
The ongoing saga of Michael Flynn and Russia keeps growing stranger – and more disconcerting. Two weeks ago Palmer report brought you the story of how Flynn had met a Russian woman at a security conference in 2014 while he was running the DIA, and he failed to report it as required. Now it’s being reported by The Guardian that the woman is indeed some kind of Russian operative – and that Flynn later attempted to travel back to Moscow with her.
The woman in question is Svetlana Lokhova. She and Flynn first met at conference in the United Kingdom. Intelligence officials in Flynn’s position are required to report incidental contact with someone from a hostile nation, due to the frequency with which foreign operatives try to use such “incidental” interactions as a way of obtaining information or recruiting people. Shortly afterward, Flynn began acting so erratically on the job at the Defense Intelligence Agency that he had to be fired. He then maintained his contact with Lokhova.
Based on the extremely rare access which Vladimir Putin granted Svetlana Lokhova to GRU spy records, which have only been seen by two or three people in recent years, it’s become evident that she’s either a Russian government operative or a Russian spy or she has close connections with Russian spy. What’s not clear is whether Mike Flynn knew she was Russian operative when he invited her to accompany him on his next trip to Moscow, asking her to act as his translator. That never happened. But Flynn did return to Moscow in December 2015 to have a now-infamous dinner wth Putin, and then he joined the Donald Trump campaign just two months later.
The Guardian report on Flynn and Lokhova does not address the question of whether or not there was a romantic element to their interactions (link). However, NBC News security analyst Malcolm Nance tweeted his assessment that “Flynn poss caught in FSB honeypot w/female Russian Intel asset” (link). Our research points to Lokhova being 36 years old (link), making her barely half Flynn’s age. It raises the question of whether Lokhova recruited Flynn into the Kremlin’s arms to begin with.
http://www.palmerreport.com/news/svetla ... scow/2150/
Banker who earned £750,000 a year was only hired for her body, tribunal hears
A City banker who earned £750,000 a year was singled out by her boss for the sack after rejecting his sexual advances, an employment tribunal has heard.
Svetlana Lokhova
By Martin Evans6:27PM GMT 08 Mar 2013
Russian born Svetlana Lokhova, 32, is suing her bank for more than £5 million after claiming she was subjected to a “sustained and vicious campaign of harassment and discrimination”.
Miss Lokhova claimed she was the victim of sexist bullying and had even been told by one colleague that she was only been hired “because of her t***”.
Bosses falsely accused her of being a regular drug user, labelling her “Crazy Miss Cokehead” and suggested she have sex with Nigerian tribesmen in order to “calm her down”.
Miss Lokhova, whose basic salary of £160,000 a year was supplemented by bonus of £666,000, turned to her line manager, Timur Nasardinov, for support.
But she claimed that despite personally head hunting her for the job, he too turned on her, placing her name on a list of people to be fired.
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Miss Lokhova, who is the daughter of a Russian shipbroker said: “On reflection, it seems to me that this may have been because, on or around 1 December 2011, Timur made an inappropriate and unwanted sexual overture towards me at an after work dinner event, which I rejected.
“Having now read Timur's statement, it seems perhaps that Timur was irritated that I had rejected his advances and sought to punish me by means of placing my name on a list of people to be fired.”
She told the tribunal that colleagues had also made references to the fact he was attracted to her, with one commenting he must have wanted “extra services” and that she must have been hired for her physical appearance rather than her talent.
Miss Lokhova had originally worked as a trader for the Russian owned Sberbank, but resigned her position after blowing the whistle on a senior colleague who she accused of insider trading.
The tribunal heard she was lured back to work for the bank’s London based subsidiary Troika Dialog UK when Mr Nasardinov offered her a guaranteed annual bonus of £666,000.
She said: “For example, my manager and colleagues described me in sexist terms as 'Miss Cokehead', 'b****', 'chemically dependent minigarch daughter' and 'Miss dodgy septum' in communications made to senior people within Troika group and to clients.”
In one email, her line manager David Longmuir, who has accepted the drug allegations were untrue, told a client: “We are all quaking here - awaiting arrival of Ms Cokehead in a puff of sulphurous smoke.”
While one senior analyst wrote an email to a co-worker that he “knew a few tribe leaders in Nigeria” who could help her relax in stressful periods.
Miss Lokhova told the tribunal she burst into tears when she read details of the derogatory comments made about her.
She said: “I believe this comment is indicative of the bank's chauvinistic culture generally, and discriminatory treatment of me.
“The references to me being mentally unstable and a drug user were particularly hurtful for me because my mother suffers from mental illness and alcoholism.
“My whole life has been dedicated to trying to rise above the destructive behaviour that had afflicted her. To discover the extent of the sexist comments made against me is shocking.”
Just six months after re-joining the bank she had been placed on a list of people who were likely to be sacked due to poor performance.
After initially being signed off with stress, she finally resigned last April.
She is suing the bank for sex discrimination, harassment, victimisation and constructive dismissal.
The bank has strongly denied the allegations and has claimed that Miss Lokhova routinely lost her temper and lacked experience in the field in which she was employed.
The hearing continues.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... hears.html
Was Michael Flynn Russia’s “primary channel of communication with the Trump team”?
By Juan Cole | Mar. 31, 2017 |
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –
Former National Security Adviser to president Trump, Lt. Gen. (ret.) Michael Flynn, has allegedly offered to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Russia’s role in the US election, on condition that he is granted immunity from prosecution.
This development could be important, because Flynn was called by Russian analyst Vladimir Frolov, known for pro-Moscow journalism, one of “primary channels of communication with the Trump team” for the Russian government.
Frolov’s assertion was given some weight by the reactions in Moscow to Flynn’s firing in mid-February, according to the Moscow Times:
“Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, wrote that ‘Russophobia had permeated the White House.’
Duma deputy Alexei Pushkov tweeted that ‘it was not Flynn who was targeted but relations with Russia.’
That such high level Russian government officials complained so bitterly about the loss of their asset, Flynn, is more than suspicious. Pushkov seems to have thought that US-Russian relations depended on Flynn being on the NSC.
Flynn had visited Moscow in 2015 and was seated with Vladimir Putin at a gala in celebration of the founding in 2000 of Russia Today, the Russian government-owned cable news channel. Flynn was allegedly paid tens of thousands of dollars for this appearance. Since he is a retired general, he should not have taken money from a foreign government and/or should have reported it, since officers can always be called back up.
Then there are allegations that Flynn began meeting with Russian ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. After the Trump victory, which many believe was orchestrated by Russian cyber-cons, Flynn was in regular contact with Kislyak. He called him 5 times on Christmas Day. In a later telephone conversation, Flynn is alleged to have reassured Kislyak that new Obama sanctions would be reversed by the Trump administration.
The Moscow Times writes:
“Russian analyst Dmitry Suslov says Flynn’s five phone conversations with the ambassador on the day of sanctions were nothing out of the ordinary. ‘It was necessary for him to guarantee a smooth transition and devise a foreign policy for the administration,’ says Suslov.”
Soon after Flynn’s resignation, on Feb. 20, Tatyana Stanovaya, director of the Analysis Department at the Center for Political Technologies, wrote at Politcom.ru, according to BBC Monitoring, “ Michael Flynn’s resignation has come as a great disappointment to Russia, since his name was linked to some degree to hopes of a future warming of relations and a review of the sanctions regime.”
On Feb. 23, Viktor Olevich wrote in Izvestia, according to BBC Monitoring, that Trump letting Flynn go was “a sign of weakness.” He added that Flynn believed that the US could not simultaneously confront China, Iran and other threats and also handle Russia. Olevich wrote,
“In terms of America’s national interests Flynn was an advocate of detente in relations with Moscow . . . He saw opportunities for fruitful cooperation with Russia in the fight against Islamist terrorist groupings in the Middle East. At the same time, the retired general pursued the goal of driving a wedge between Moscow and Tehran, of detaching Russia from its strategic partners and allies.”
So Flynn is alleged by this Russian pundit to have sought, by his contacts with Russia, to detach Moscow from Tehran and to free the US to concentrate on China.
——
Related video added by Juan Cole:
CBS Evening News: ” Flynn offers to be interviewed provided he is shielded from “unfair prosecution”
https://www.juancole.com/2017/03/michae ... ation.html